Video Games Satisfy Basic Human Needs
nautil.us
nautil.us
http://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm
Personally, I seem to be closest to the explorer type. I always liked single player games more, and I prefer well-written lore, depth and new things to discover over the mechanics or social aspect.
Yeah, it's a classic. It's even called Bartle taxonomy, after the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_type...
I do however always accumulate/optimize for maximum ammo/currency/gear/weapons/items, to the point where I believe I completed >80% of Half-Life with the crowbar, to conserve ammo.
I also like you love singleplayer games and a well-written story, but I on the other hand hate open world games (because they're never open nor "worldy" enough), and equally hate too linear games (looking at CoD past 3 and the like).
I grew up loving games like Quake (for the multiplayer/mechanics/general tech side of it), The Longest Journey for the story, Half-Life for both aspects, and a bunch of games struggling with either storytelling/mechanics or other but loveable for their attempt at trying something more than they could achieve (examples being Outcast, Citizen Kabuto, Oni, Advent Rising, Too Human).
When thinking of what the last bigger/sorta AAA games I enjoyed playing was I think it's Half-Life 2 (kind of obvious), but also FarCry (1), Crysis (1, but also Warhead), Just Cause 2.
All of them had a story, most of them were open world and allowed you to approach a problem with undesigned solutions, which is what I really love.
I've bought GTA 4, 5, Far Cry 3, 4, Just Cause 3, and many many others, played them for less than a handful hours, and given up because it just feels like I have to churn this mill just to advance a movie, at which point I may as well watch a movie, or watch someone else play the game (which I now completely understand as a concept).
"Open world" games I've played in recent years - after the original concept of open world once went linear for consoles, and then consoles catching up enough to enable open world games again - don't seem to be so much about designing a world with some rules and a number of tools, but simply providing more than 1 or 2 designed solutions to a problem, which feels completely hollow to me.
I have no doubt that this is why MineCraft (which I haven't played much for lack of story/"game", although having plenty of sandbox/open world) and that genre has sprouted up to much success.
Sorry for hijacking. I don't know how this turned into a longwinded games rant, but it raised questions since I identified with you, while still feeling characterized under "achiever".
Rimworld is now the only game I have and it is the first time I didn't regret a single cent I spend for it. Even when it's 30$.
Rimworld is a Base Building game. Handling may be compared to Prison Architect but with seemingly never ending depth (Prison Architect didn't work for me too...). The learning curve is part of the game and even now with the extended tutorial, you'll find new ways to optimize and new possibilities. The Modding community is very active too.
Also the reddit community is also pretty active: https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld
Going by yours and your child-comment, I'll have to look into Rimworld. I steered clear from Dwarf Fortress after trying it for an hour, because of the daunting learning curve. And funny enough I've bought and played Prison Architect too, but didn't find it very fun after a couple of hours.
Thanks for the tip!
Interesting, because I identify with a lot of what you wrote, too.
- optimizing for ammo/currency: check; I do that out of the fear that I might need it later, which in case of Fallout 1 and 2 ended up with me finishing the game with more gear and cash than I knew what to do with
- I did play a lot of shooters too - mostly Quake 2 & 3, Unreal Tournament, and currently Overwatch
- I do enjoy achievements in most games a lot, which presumably makes me fall under the "achiever" archetype
As for open world games - they tend to bore me out after a while, when I hit the discovery limit. First time I discovered Minecraft (a friend gave me a pirate copy -> no multiplayer), I spent many hours exploring caves, discovering biomes, and building subway tunnels. But when I reached the point of knowing pretty much all the mobs, blocks and features of the game, I got bored. Similarly with Terraria and Starbound (though I started playing it again now on a server with a group of friends - probably scratching my "social" itch there).
So the categories are pretty fluid, I guess.
Yeah, I think that's what I was trying to get at. I want both what MineCraft and Terraria (played some of that) gives you as well as a story on top of it, otherwise I don't feel I have a motivation/direction towards which to utilize the world. (I assume psychologists would have a field day with that)
Yes, they do work a lot better in multiplayer, but like you said, then it's much closer to socializing.
I played Dota (2) for a few years (stopped a couple of years back), which is simultaneously the best and worst game. It has depth enough that no one can define the outer bounds of possible strategies, all while only inhabitating a single map. But it also has so many frustrating legacy mechanics that should not be there, as well as a community that is, let's say, mixed.
I also realized how impossible it is to attempt to even grasp it when a youtube video named "7.00 Patch Notes First Impressions" [1] (the latest version of the game) is a non-sarcastic 9h26m long without breaks. It also destroys the myth that people don't have attention spans for videos longer than 10m when the mentioned video has 347k views.
Needless to say I can't go back to it.
I recently picked up the latest Hitman game, and while the story is minimal, and you can still see the seams of a lot of solutions to each hit, there are enough variables at your disposal that you can engineer a lot of your own solutions. It is the Hitman:iest game since the first one I think.
I tend to do that too, but I hate it. Ruins the fun. Though, one time I did tell a friend playing Doom 3 to conserve ammo as much as possible because he'd "need it later". He wasn't too happy with me after his hard work was stripped from him mid-game. :)
It's even worse though when the game itself incentivizes the behavior. Deus Ex: Human Revolution, for example. Melee kills awarded more XP, so it made sense to just melee everything to max your skill progression. Then you finish the game (and its terrible ending, unfortunately) with enough ammo to fight a one-man ground war.
I just completed the original (Shadow of Chernobyl, ca 2007), with the bug-fix and enhancement mod from 2009 (Stalker Complete 2009) last week, and it's hands down one of my all time favorite games, such that I immediately started the sequel.
I'm also a game developer, and I believe you will love the game I'm making:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/539400
It's a roguelike with various weapons and items like The Binding of Isaac, but has 4-player co-op, fantasy theme and different combat styles depend on the starting character you choose.
Anyway, shoot me an e-mail, I'll send you a free Steam key. The address is in my HN profile.
Nuclear Throne, while having an avid fan base, is too unpredictive, and leaves no room for strategy and planning. In BoI you can (mostly) see all enemies, and when hit you get a grace period. In Nuclear Throne you can get shot up off screen, and lose any amount of your HP in a second (most often 50% or more of it). I wanted to like it but couldn't.
Neurovoider I haven't tried, but the criticism I've heard mirror that I experienced with Nuclear Throne, which makes me hesitant.
Risk of Rain was fun and worked both in single-player and multi-player, but didn't have as much depth, so it didn't last as long.
The Madness of Little Emma (as the name suggests) is a very blatant try to mimic BoI, but as a sidescroller instead, and mouse aim. I couldn't get into it, but can't articulate why.
You absolutely don't have to, but I'd gladly take a key and try it out, my wife has been asking me for games we could play together, so it could be fun to try. I'll shoot you an email, thanks.
I have the same problem with it. I mostly play local co-op and it's even worse because you often at the edge of the screen.
From similar games I can recommend Rampage Knights, although there aren't many weapon/item synergies it's got pretty fair and fun combat.
And thank you for the Linux version. Added to my wishlist
I've been out of the community for a while, but the updates have been somewhat controversial due to people missing/enjoying the sandboxy simplicity of the game; the new systems have added complexity that some believe doesn't really enhance the game.
Minecraft was more of a social game for me anyways -shrugs-
Also, some of what you describe can be counted as explorer. Particularly exploring the game mechanics to see whether they'd allow you to do certain things.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023242/The-Gamer-Motivation-Pr... is the GDC version, though I imagine they're exactly the same, with the slides at http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022959/The-Gamer-Motivation-Pr...
This kind of reminds me of enneagram in the sense that it seeks to uncover intrinsic motivations and drives. I'm 7w6.
Video games, and all the media choices available we have are a direct result of not being constrained.
And supposing that we are playing more and more video games why is that sad?
Right now we have lots of choice, but not meaningful ones.
For example: a medieval peasant was "fated" to die peasant, and do peasant things...
Yet, that medieval peasant, had a great probability of being able to complete life cycle, of being born, be someone's apprentice, date, have fun and mess around, sometimes with lots of free time, work hard, marry, have kids, and eventually die.
Right now there are millions of millenials, even ones already old enough to be grandparents if they were in medieval era, that can't have kids, can't have jobs that sustain themselves, and are forced to live with their parents.
Is life more confortable, with TV, games, modern medicine, and truckloads of information?
Sure yes, from that perspective life never been better, we are the apex of civilization.
But is that truly important? When people have even a instinct that drives them to want to marry and have kids, what is the point of the future when all you can do is stay unemployed in your parents home and have only fleeting relationships?
Is the modern amount of boatloads of sex with random stranger pleasurable?
Yes, a lot.
But... is it useful? Is it a choice that most of the population actually wants, even if they don't know in their 18s?
We have now lots of choices, except the choice that was the default for most of human history: have a boring job, marry, have kids, see the kids have boring jobs themselves, and die.
It wouldn't surprise me if the future got rid even of the "die" part, maybe when someone discover immortality they might make it mandatory, people would of course agree that being immortal is awesome and great... but that doesn't mean it would be actually better.
Really? I'd say we have an easier time accomplishing this than a medieval peasant - if we wanted. I'd buy it if you told me people chose not to live this way - but i don't think it is any more difficult to live this way.
In many countries youth unemployment (not occupation, but actual unemployment) is 10%+ sometimes it reaches 50%.
How you can marry, if you have no money to do that, and the law is against you? (with harsh penalties for divorce, but at the same time divorce is easy and encouraged, making marriage inherently overly risky).
How you can have kids, without money even to feed yourself?
I know plenty, plenty, plenty people with 25+ of age, that don't own anything, no car, no house, not even a bike, how these people can even consider having kids? Who will take care of them? Orphanages? The state somehow?
It's pretty easy to be sucked into a "things are bad" narrative, but plenty of people get married at much worse poverty levels (especially historically).
[1] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/youth-unemploy...
[2] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/youth-unemplo...
[3] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/youth-unemployment...
Also, if you look at your links and click "max", although things have improved since 2010, they aren't that good, specially when you consider also other factors.
For example, the percentage of youth forced to live with parents keeps increasing:
https://www.census.gov/hhes/families/files/graphics/AD-1.pdf
In many countries, there are large amounts of fatherless children, for example black children in US was about 73% of them being fatherless.
Some countries still have devastating amounts of youth unemployment, Greece for example right now is 46%
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/youth-unemployment-ra...
Also, although now everyone is "wealthier" because random stuff noone needs is cheaper, living costs keep rising, for example health care costs, housing costs, and in many places food costs have been rising faster than both inflation, and income.
Brazil for example is having constant strikes since about 10 years ago, even during economic boom, with people upset with food costs, frequently strikers instead of demanding higher wages, they instead demanded more food-related benefits.
Food prices in Brazil rose 173% in the last 10 years, while inflation was 122% and wages rose 68%.
And yes, it is easy to get sucked into "things are bad", when they are. At least to me, and almost every single friend I know.
edit: removed excessive personal information.
In that case you should compare properly:
English kept their children at home "till the age of seven or nine at the utmost" but then "put them out, both males and females, to hard service in the houses of other people, binding them generally for another seven or nine years"... most parents waved goodbye to them at about 14... Illiterate servants had no means of communicating with their parents, and the difficulties of travel meant that even if children were only sent 20 miles (32 km) away they could feel completely isolated... adolescents were a useful source of cheap labour for their masters. In 1350, the Black Death had reduced Europe's population by roughly half, so hired labour was expensive.[1]
Doesn't sound too awesome to me.
"In many countries, there are large amounts of fatherless children, for example black children in US was about 73% of them being fatherless."
And in Iceland over 70% of children are born to single parents[2]. I'm not sure what your point is - this isn't necessarily bad unless you are making a value judgement here?
[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26289459
[2] https://www.fatherly.com/parenting-and-relationships/why-ice...
Carl Jung's encounter with American Indians is quite a good read, http://www.cgjungpage.org/learn/articles/analytical-psycholo...
I get the feeling our modern western society has taken a few wrong turns and some feel the only way out is to live in the matrix.
Common sense tells me that video games aren't going satisfy basic humsn needs. Computer games can be addictive.
Putting aside the obvious hit aginst the western preoccupation with living alone (really? what is so terrible about living with your parents, and was this the case culturally in the west 600 years ago?).....
Children are relatively inexpensive. What is difficult is having children, giving them 'the best' as far as your social group is concerned, and also doing all the things you enjoy doing as a single person.
If you make sacrifices you can give your children the best. It's what our parents did. It's what our grandparents did. It may be little talked about, but it is reality... They gave up having bigger houses like we demand today in order to have 3 children.
They gave up having empowering fun jobs in order to have stable ones that provided for their children.
I will use myself as example, but 80% of my friends are in the same boat.
I am 29. My income is zero, my net worth is negative (in great part because student loans) and interest is making thr debt deeper.
Some days my family, even with my grandparents here and helping with their money had to eat only potatoes or corn, because we couldn't afford protein.
Mind you, everyone is very educated, even my grandma have a degree, despite it being uncommon for her demographics group, my sister did a 6 month post-graduate stint on MIT.
Yet, sometimes we are forced to skip buying medicine we absolutely need.
How would you raise children in that environment? children is cheap how? How you save money when you are already using clothes with holes because lack of money to buy new ones?
No more or less sad that some upperclass Victorian types reading more and more novels. Or even before that, some medieval upper clerics overindulging in rich foods.
Doing it sparingly is good, - the well earned prize after a long day of hard work, perhaps. Doing it more is even better, - meaning you are actually successful at your more productive pursuits and can spare the time/resources to indulge. But doing it "more and more" implies an unhealthy detachment from both your responsibilities and all other goodies the rest of the world has to offer.
That somehow undermines the point of roleplaying. Would he also suggest, that actors who play questionable or evil characters are supposed to be evil in real life? That's like some extreme form of Stanislavski's system in reverse.
> They found that video games that allowed players to play out their “ideal selves” (embodying roles that allow them to be, for example, braver, fairer, more generous, or more glorious) were not only the most intrinsically rewarding, but also had the greatest influence on our emotions.
And that's also considered the worst form of roleplaying. A classical Mary Sue is based on reflecting too much of your own image into the character while at the same time idealizing it.
So it's surely not the only reason to play games. Some actually like more elaborate roleplaying than creating Mary Sues.
I have anecdotal evidence that this isn't the case.
I can be an extreme jerk in games: textually abusive, team-killing just for fun, etc.
But I can also be super nice: lead clans, go out of my way to be helpful to everyone, etc.
Not sure what triggers my behavior one way or the other. Perhaps it has to do with consistent worlds (MMO) vs team deathmatch (FPS). Once it's manifested itself for a particular game, it stays that way.
In real life I'm a pretty nice guy. But I still go home at night and kill people while simultaneously insulting them.
I have my doubts. I'm sure you come off as a lot nicer, but I suspect you're doing subtle things constantly that you might not even be aware of, or that you write off as normal and therefore perfectly fine.
My ethics and morals don't stop at my router. I don't attack people online any more than I attack them in person. People's feeling matter, no matter the medium.
Maybe, but I doubt it. I'm sure I'm not the world's nicest person or anything, but unless everyone is lying to me: I have a fun personality and people prefer to be around me than not.
If your ethics and morals don't allow you to let the other player feel bad, how do you even play games? Usually the point of games is to win, or to at least out-achieve others. How do you spare their feelings while you shoot someone in the face in an FPS?
Places I've seen bad sportsmanship do fine (or prosper):
- All major sports (NFL, NBA, college, etc.)
- Business: Steve Jobs, (everywhere else)
- Presidential Elections
People in these cases (and more I'm not thinking of) generally don't care about how much of a jerk you are and some even respect you more for it.
Mixing up IC and OOC behaviors is the first major mistake that should be corrected by any roleplayer.
Edit: To be more explicit, when those mechanics don't exist anybody saying "I'm just role-playing a jerk" is full of crap.
It's also one of the reasons why it's so challenging to make a good RPG of that sort - it's hard to scale. With bigger player base, you need more GMs, and most ignore it in attempt to commercialize the "massive" aspect of things. Quality plummets in result.
In single player experience, yes. You roleplay for yourself. Still, it doesn't mean the motivation of that roleplaying is supposed to be self idealization.
In multiplayer roleplaying game, you don't just roleplay for yourself. It's a shared experience of several players (and possibly someone like GM). So, from their perspective, your acting is close to the common role of an actor in other arts. Except it's interactive. And the quality of your acting affects that shared experience.
There's a GTA series game, I think GTA:SA but maybe wrong, where there are hidden things all over the map, and you have to do crazy non-game plot urban exploring like jump your motorcycle across a river to the roof of a building where you jump a ramp to the next building and hidden up some stairs behind an AC unit there's a treasure chest or whatever. And of course there's about 100 in this game all over the entire map. So it appeals to both the achiever who's gotta get that last one and the explorer who ends up pretty much walking every sq foot of the game and every obscure corner. Pretty cool. And yes I did get addicted and eventually found all 100 and got some kind of reward. This was 10, maybe 15 years ago, and the memory of the details of even which GTA game is weak, but the memory of the experience and how much I enjoyed it is very strong. Other GTA games didn't appeal to me as much because they didn't have a reason (meaningless counters) to explore the map.
Likewise there's some achiever / explorer in games like nethack.
A game like Minecraft (modded, anyway) hits all four categories to some extent or another, and is quite popular.
Yes, I've been meaning to replay the whole Mass Effect series as a Renegade character, but I can't get myself to actually do it.
In the first game it does usually mean being an asshole for no reason, so that one's hard to play other than nearly-pure paragon. Except for hanging up on the council every time you talk to them—they give you plenty of reasons, and you should definitely always do that.
[EDIT] typo fix
And the Council, yes - they worked hard to make me regret saving them in ME1...
Except in WWII games. During the early days of WWIIonline there were a few people who took playing german units a little too seriously and were quietly asked, told, to stop. I was a member of a german squad that rarely participated in mass offensives specifically to avoid confrontations with die-hard "recreationists".
Then there's open world games like Fallout that allow you to steal everything not nailed down in entire settlements, gaining more currency and supplies than you can likely ever use. It feels cheap to me and I find it more interesting and challenging to obtain what I need more ethically.
(Fyi, WWIIOL was probably the first mmorpg in a persistant game space. This was new territory.)
I usually end up being some form of neutral character.
So yes, the bully scammers exist, but I think that compared to any other MMO, a greater percentage of the community actually cares about others.
Doesn't change the fact that they will blow your ship up given half a chance though :P
With things like Skyrim or Deus Ex, the NPCs seem like lifeless robots (shoot them in the foot and they die, for example) and I feel nothing as I turn cities into mountains of skulls and rivers of blood.
I guess you could bend finishing a super mario level in to "achievements" but it's really more about the challenge.
Games could even be random generated without any level progression, it's just that random generated levels are not as good in creating interesting and non-repetitive challenges.
i see this sentiment and similar echoed a lot and the issue i take with it is that there are degrees to everything. Just like there are good and bad hand designed games, there is the same spectrum of procedural games
there are many games that do this extremely well but they are mostly not very well known indie efforts. Off the top of my head:
* Dungeon of the Endless
* Invisible Inc
* Downwell
* Rogue Legacy
* Spelunky
* Teleglitch
I just wanted to make my point that it doesn't need to have progressing levels for the basic thrill. I really like clever human-designed levels though :) Much more surprising and less optimization, more quick grasping and adaption required.
There's a very big and important difference between "random" and "procedurally generated". Most great roguelikes (or roguelike-likes?) have strong procedural elements in their level generation, but certainly randomness is an important input.
I'll add brogue since I am a roguelike traditionalist. :)
Rogue-like games plague the Steam store [1], though there will always be games like Legacy that rise to the top of their category. You could say Candy Crush is an objectively successful game too, but I see it as a micro transaction laden piece of trash.
[1] http://store.steampowered.com/search/?term=rogue&tags=1716
The claims you made beyond that are invalid
Surely... Though, you can't point to community and critical acclaim like you could with Rogue Legacy, which is why they were linked and why the other poster was suggesting you back your statements with evidence. It's less so for people to like you or your comments and more so for people to gauge the veracity of your statements...
Same goes for plain action, there are a few endless level games where the score is insignificant, it just gets harder and you try to stay alive and the fun is reacting fast.
Google around and you should find papers on vr games reducing requests for painkillers in children's hospitals.
I got this from Invisibilia's "The Secret History of Thoughts", their first podcast from January 8th of last year.
In other words, my goal was to defeat the gods. And it's very much the way I live my life in general.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/ti...
Builders probably best fit under Explorer in the Bartle Taxonomy, with some Achiever elements.
Isn't this completely tautological? What else can you do in a game, and wouldn't you assume that some people would like some of these aspects more or less than others? And while he seems to have found that individual preferences tend to carry across games, is there any reason to assume that they stay consistent over time (either over the time spent playing a single game or over a lifetime across games?)
If video games satisfy me like even a run would, I wouldn't run. If I play a video game for more than 10 minutes, I feel like I'm wasting my life.
Go outside, do something actually incredible. Meet people. Make mistakes.
Stop living in someone else's imagined world. Learn fully how to be your own human self.
Videogames couldn't be more apt for the analogy of shadows on the wall. There's real problems in the world that need to be solved? Checking out and staring at pretty patterns of light is a total cop out.
Meaning, accomplishments, social interactions.
> If video games satisfy me like even a run would, I wouldn't run. If I play a video game for more than 10 minutes, I feel like I'm wasting my life.
If I run for more than 10 minutes, I feel like I am wasting my life because cardio won't help me build muscle and it's incredibly boring.
> Go outside, do something actually incredible. Meet people. Make mistakes.
You can do that and play video games. In fact, in various online games, you can do both and still have insightful experiences.
> Stop living in someone else's imagined world. Learn fully how to be your own human self.
While your second sentence is trite garbage, you can learn a lot about yourself by playing video games. Additionally, living in someone else's imagined world can spark your own creativity. Look around for the art and music people have created based off video games, it's incredible. We have orchestras playing the soundtrack to games. We have people who have built businesses from playing video games.
> Videogames couldn't be more apt for the analogy of shadows on the wall. There's real problems in the world that need to be solved? Checking out and staring at pretty patterns of light is a total cop out.
What problems are you solving? World hunger? Human and sex trafficking? Domestic abuse? Drug abuse?
It's great that you are healthy and have the ability to run. If we can infer a bit, it seems you are successful enough in your own life that you can consider helping other people. From that perspective, video games are certainly a waste of time and effort. Certainly in an ideal world we would all feel similarly. I am poor and do not enjoy perfect health. I'm doing what I can about those things, but there isn't some magic 'fix my body and career' option I'm afraid; things take time. Until then, escapism helps me stay sane. I could probably pay some therapist $120/hr to equivalent purpose, but video games are cheaper and more fun. I am happy that you do not need video games. I would encourage you to think more fully on circumstances where they might represent a necessity (at the least in the restricted sense of "something is necessary, this is something").
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acr.22939/abstrac...