Hacker News Reader

Comment by rrecuero | Hacker News Reader

This article made me think a little bit about games. What are they? Art, waste of time, intellectual gummies for your brain? All of the above?

However, I believe that there are forms of entertainment that can enrich your life and others that are simply entertainment. As long as you are aware of it, and being intentional about your decision there is nothing wrong with that.

I can definitely remember games that have enriches my life one way or another like the original Metal gear Solid, Silent Hill or Braid but I can also think of many counterexamples like Counter Strike... These games were polished as hell but they just put me into this zombie state where I just cared about one more frag, one more, one more... Without being aware.

What do you guys think?

View on HN

Some of the most insightful games I ever played were the Civ series... Favorite being Alpha Centauri.

As I learned more about history and read more scifi I started to see more of the inspirations for the characters but at that time it was new and inspirational to me.

If you want a deep dive on SMAC: https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/

+1. I still remember those diagonal moves with my settlers... Good times!

On that same strand, the following games have proven to be quite educational to me:

Caesar III - first city builder I played. Fell in love with the Romans - was well prepared when the basics of Ancient Rome was taught in school.

Pharoah - same deal as above, except Ancient Egypt camw before I had the chance to play.

Age of Empires 2 - this one came with a mini encyclopedia built in about the history of all the units, civilizations, etc. I remember finding this useful when I chose to do a project on French military history for French lessons. I despised French but the project was passed on to the head due to the notable quality and depth (I owe AoK a lot for that one - it was a night before rush job).

Crusader Kings 2 - again, had a little encyclopedia with history on all the historical dynasties in the game. Playing this and reading up on the medieval period & the feudal system is good fun.

Europa Universalis IV - if anything, I didn't know Spain was split between Castile and Aragon until I played this and then looked into it more. Good fun game and great to play alongside a depth dive into the era and the politics of the time.

Graal - the big one. Crappy online Zelda clone. This one provided me the most insight of all: you could build new stuff with it. It had a scripting language, level editor and animation editor. You could take its kbd hack and slash core and turn it into a point and click RPG. This is where I wrote my first lines of code and shaped my career permanently. I owe my employment in part to this game.

And, of course, Civ. Very similar effect as the above historical games.

A great game can stoke your wet ware in many ways. Waste of time? I don't agree.

I wish it was easier to create games so that there were more games that could teach you specific lessons. The trick is, they have to be immersive enough that they're not merely the narrative equivalent of fables, or parables; they need to be more substantial, so the emotion and lessons take root. A great game should be like a great novel--expansive, teaching multiple lessons over time, not a trifle.

Yet with the rate of technological change, it's virtually impossible for someone to take, say, 10 years and write the Great American Game (formerly: Novel) that thematically covers the same breadth.

I agree. From my point of view, games as an art form is in its infancy period. It has so much potential because it is interactive and immersive (even more so now with VR), but games often get caught in a core game mechanic and rinse and repeat.

Same thing happened with movies too, right? People said that they were just toys and nothing profound could be told with them. In the end is like everything, there are good and bad sculptures, books, movies and games.

I am optimistic that we will see the medium evolve dramatically. As you said, with this pace of innovation everything can happen :)

This sounds remarkably like Dwarf Fortress. Virtually anything is possible if you're willing to spend enough time on it

There's quite a rabbit hole in this line of inquiry depending on how much you think about it.

Yes, games are all the things you mentioned and much more. It's a matter of perspective and the particular game. Some games are all those things and some are none of them.

One way that games can often differ from other forms of entertainment in that you can feel a sense of accomplishment from them. That makes the brain feel good. If you don't have much feelings of accomplishment in the rest of your life I suppose you could look at it as a kind of therapy or maybe just an escape or avoidance. Of course those brain rewards also have the potential to make it a bit addictive and self destructive in the worst cases. Yes and of course some games, like Clash of Clans, deliberately exploit this mechanism of games as much as possible in order to make more money.

This may all seem a bit obvious to some but it's just one more perspective on games that I have found helpful especially in the case of compulsive gaming. It can help to honestly ask yourself before playing a game, "why do I want to play this game?".

I consider the time spent playing high quality games the least wasted. My favourite example is Halo 3. I'm playing it since the launch. Sometimes less but in general, it never got boring. If a take some good average of 8 hours a week, I think I played already arround 3000 hours. Yes 125 days straight is a lot, but it was a hell lot of fun and its still challenging. I also have to say I felt in love with the story. For me Halo 1-3 have the best story I have ever read, played and watched.

On the other side, when I was younger there were some browser games which sounded exactly like Clash. But after months or years of time I just discovered it's a waste of time. It was a never ending story and it consumed more and more time. There I learned that such long lives games are bad, dangerous but also boring in long term. Now I just stay away from them, its better.

What matters more to me, I am having a harder and harder time finding good games. Some many games are just boring and the same as all games before, but somehow worse. I think games have been better 5-10 years ago.

I agree with you but it's difficult to pinpoint what makes a high quality game right? Story may be in the right direction. Although probably, we could not even agree on what makes a good story ;)

For me I crave games that make me feel something new, something that I haven't seen before and enrich my life with the experiences. Last of Us, Journey, Heavy Rain, Bioshock are some of the recent games that triggered this evasive feeling.

It is getting harder as you say to find this "veil piercing" games, but maybe it is just because we have seen more...

> What are [Games]? Art, waste of time, intellectual gummies for your brain? All of the above?

It's like asking: "What are books? Art, waste of time, intellectual gummies for your brain?" Or movies, or music. "Game" is a pretty vast medium, and encompasses all of those. An individual game might be just mindless drivel, but that doesn't prevent another game from being Art, or a political statement, or anything else that we can produce.

I enjoy playing flight simulators, especially flightgear and DCS, turned up to the most realistic level, and trying to do it "right". That way I feel I learn something remotely real, though of course I will probably never take the stick of a real airplane or helicopter myself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com