LISTEN &/OR BELIEVE Why do Americans make an identity out of gaming? -

[CatParty]

Yeah no.

lol taking gamergate seriously

 

[Coleman Francis]

i guarantee that i'll stomp you and all your turkish friends out in the game world and i'll do it for my country

That doesn't seem hard to do. They don't have leisure time like we do. They barely bathe even.

 

[Lazuli]

lol taking gamergate seriously

Not as seriously as this guy

 

[timecop]

That doesn't seem hard to do. They don't have leisure time like we do. They barely bathe even.

good

 

[Holdek]

Because they are manchildren who want to make their hobby of playing video games out to be something more than just playing with toys.

 

[CatParty]

Because they are manchildren who want to make their hobby of playing video games out to be something more than just playing with toys.

supplementing fantasy for their shitty lives

 

[Orson Welles]

Spoiler

so sorry

Because there are marketing forces applying a perfected formula of mass appeal and buyer impulse control.

I will argue the people that just enjoy video games and are able to appreciate challange, good story-telling and atmosphere are still there doing what they have always done; play vidya on their free time and preferring split-screen multiplayer but the majority (aka. the second most preferred market demographic after 'everyone') relies on the path of least resistance; suggestion and emotional motivation with zero investment, for its entertainment. Thus the need to expand the market (to casuals, women and old people) meant that games had to be easier yet more competitive, unabstract, linear, politically-correct and rely heavily on a small set of, as Yahtzee put it, easily-digestible character archetypes and, I would add, narrative and situational archetypes. It also meant that games, like modern music and cinema, need constant 'hooks' to keep the attention of your average medicated bastard tween looking to be the next pewdiepie. These hooks are why modern games are so full of useless achievements, effects, and filler content and even why sandbox games like Skyrim need a cave/dungeon/stronghold/raid/event/fucking dragon every few inches of their unfinished landscape. This makes games more appealing to your average schmuck but because their appeal is essentially a series of dopamine spikes it quickly wears off and the player requires a bigger dose to get the same effect, which is a fact both Nvidia and AMD beat their meat to. Contrast this with games like The Longest Journey, Little Big Adventure, Abe's oddyssey and the early TES and Ultima which decades later still have a dedicated community of enthusiasts despite their absolute niche appeal and don't even suffer from the current "retro nostalgia" tumor. Hell, I'd so love to watch someone like markiplier do a TLJ let's play and watch as his average viewer retention drops to 5 seconds. Gaming today is to retro gaming as sugar is to the sugar cane, an analogy I'm sure op would appreciate.

 

[DuskEngine]

Spoiler

so sorry

Because there are marketing forces applying a perfected formula of mass appeal and buyer impulse direction control.

I will argue the small niche that 'just' enjoy video games and are able to appreciate challange and/or good story-telling and atmosphere is still there doing what it has always done; play vidya on its free time and preferring split-screen multiplayer but the majority (aka. the second most preferred market demographic after 'everyone') relies on the path of least resistance, by which I mean suggestion and emotional motivation with zero investment, for its entertainment. Thus the need to expand the market (to casuals, women and old people) meant that games had to be easier yet more competitive, unabstract, linear, politically-correct and rely heavily on a small set of, as Yahtzee put it, easily-digestible character archetypes and, I would argue, narrative and situational archetypes. It also meant that games, like modern music and cinema, need constant 'hooks' to keep the attention of your average medicated bastard tween looking to be the next pewdiepie. These hooks is why modern games are so full of useless achievements, effects, and filler content and even why sandbox games like Skyrim need a cave/dungeon/stronghold/raid/event/fucking dragon every few inches of their unfinished landscape. This makes games more appealing to your average schmuck but because their appeal is essentially a series of dopamine spikes it quickly wears off and the player requires a bigger dose to get the same effect, which is something both Nvidia and AMD beat their meat to daily. Contrast this with games like The Longest Journey, Little Big Adventure, Abe's oddyssey and the early TES and Ultima which decades later still have a dedicated community of enthusiasts despite their absolute niche appeal and don't even suffer from the current "retro nostalgia" trend. Hell, I'd so love to watch someone like markiplier do a TLJ let's play and watch as his average viewer retention drops to 5 seconds. Gaming today is to "retro" gaming as sugar is to the sugar cane, an analogy I'm sure op would appreciate.

The bit that might actually answer op's question is in how gaming companies try to control buyer-impulse. During the 3-day shit show known as E3 every mediocre title is presented as a giant leap in entertainment and technology as these absolute fools try hard to get a positive reaction out of the attendance. Games, now designed specifically to be "trailer-friendly" obviously look amazing in the trailer without the limitation of the console peasantry present in the official release, especially if you have no indipendent thought process of your own and shills are paid to participate in mock interviews with busty gamer bimbos where they continously assert their affiliation with "gamers" or "core gamers" while ovetstating a game's quality. In fact, a huge emphasis is made on the collective popularity of the medium that it has instilled the idea of belonging to an arbitrary community (or "fandom") as more important than it actually is. This is especially true with the laughable mess that is the modern MMO. People behave differently in a community than they do on their own and are less resilient to suggestion, especially if the suggestion is percieved as abiding by the group sentiment.

you know this subforum isn't for real right

 

[Orson Welles]

you know this subforum isn't for real right

but my passion is more than real