How Computer Games Shaped Our Imaginations.
- Thread starter luka
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constant escape
winter withered, warm
Do you specifically mean computer games as in PC games? Or just video games in general?
constant escape
winter withered, warm
Well a ton of games, even shooters, involve a ton of stats to keep track of. Borderlands, for example. The player's skill largely boils down to how well they can balance and optimize stats. That, and fine-scale/digit motor/eye coordination.
Also, for more narrative-driven games, the player is nested within the character, to some degree. This can allow you to experience a world, albeit a less complex world, from a perspective different from your own. This can provide insight into how people's worlds differ across, say, demographic lines.
(edit: and the more atmospherically robust, even realistic, the game becomes, the more it can function to expose the player to kinds of people, demographics, that they may not otherwise enjoy exposure to.)
Also, for more narrative-driven games, the player is nested within the character, to some degree. This can allow you to experience a world, albeit a less complex world, from a perspective different from your own. This can provide insight into how people's worlds differ across, say, demographic lines.
(edit: and the more atmospherically robust, even realistic, the game becomes, the more it can function to expose the player to kinds of people, demographics, that they may not otherwise enjoy exposure to.)
luka
Well-known member
The flip side of that being when this is done badly, as it usually is the player takes a crude caricature for insight into an unfamiliar culture
constant escape
winter withered, warm
True. I'd imagine there's no shortage of that. My mind goes to however the enemies are portrayed in war games. Or civilians perhaps.
constant escape
winter withered, warm
Yeah the whole mechanism of having skill points and using them economically and allocating them in a strategic manner, that all seems to have sedimented into a common parlance, to some degree. I mean video game terminology underpins more and more of our cultural sensibilities, no?
Not hard to sense the profundity in an industry built around simulating ever more detailed and sprawling worlds. Even realistic ones. GTA V feels like LA.
Not hard to sense the profundity in an industry built around simulating ever more detailed and sprawling worlds. Even realistic ones. GTA V feels like LA.
luka
Well-known member
I would say so. It's one of the reasons for the thread.
luka
Well-known member
luka
Well-known member
Also worlds in which what is represented and rewarded are atavisms we left behind centuries ago or that never really existed eg 'honour' courage ultraviolence. Giving players a nostalgia for lives they never lived
. Games as one of the last bastions of these crude male fantasy projections
. Games as one of the last bastions of these crude male fantasy projections
games like Sonic and Mario would reward you for taking the alternate route - down a pipe here or through a wall there or jumping to a less obvious path etc. I think that in a lot of ways in real-life I can be like that - let's try something unexpected and different, let's see where this leads me.
I didn't really play shoot-em-up games, the violence didn't appeal to me. And Final Fantasy stuff was so long and boring, with all those cut scenes that were completely unconvincing. I liked being able to level-up quickly and easily in Tetris and Bust-A-Move.
I didn't really play shoot-em-up games, the violence didn't appeal to me. And Final Fantasy stuff was so long and boring, with all those cut scenes that were completely unconvincing. I liked being able to level-up quickly and easily in Tetris and Bust-A-Move.
constant escape
winter withered, warm
I just thought of this yesterday, but yeah in the case of a shooter.
In most cases where you have some world to navigate, there is a right way, and there are other auxiliary ways that provide rewards if you take the time to split from the main right way.
This kind of opting-away from the main path, knowing full well it is the main path, I think does have effects on how you go about progressing through things in real life. Do I have the time and resources to split from the main path and achieve such and such supplemental task? etc.
luka
Well-known member
Murphy
cat malogen
My own generation just about caught the first wave of Pong and Space invaders. Add Frogger, a classic in simplicity but the colour range was pretty eye opening for the period thinking back, G’s Garden too. The transition was (possibly) Tron, a film. Space frisbees, digital bikes that turned at right angles. Not quite Eddie Fiola and his Flying Banana bmx, but computer specific. I don’t look back on Tron with any degree of nostalgia, more a form of hauntology that could never fully deliver anything close to the possibilities hinted at. Brave New World etc.
The initial games forged genuinely social events. Friends gathered round a device and screen egging each other on after school, although they gradually seemed to compound isolation for too many. Subbuteo, flicking pin sized weebles at tiny goals? Gtfo. As @martin pointed out, arcades could be a bit sketchy as a yoof - territorial, violent, pervs everywhere, o.g. Grim Britannia, so you had no choice other than to adapt your imagination to playing outdoors exploring the world.
What I’m really trying to articulate is the worlds they opened up - unimaginable colour schemes, the strategies of Space Invader success or failure. Spellbinding. Clive Sinclair’s daft bike never caught on and with good reason, I mean if you’d rode one of those on our old estate you’d have been filled in instantly. Overall, had as much fun with The Warlock of Firetop Mountain to be honest, due to it riffing on your own imaginative input. Equally, Andy Ruffell never pulled what our old crew did with a couple of bricks, a discarded shed door and a Chopper with wonky handlebars.
The initial games forged genuinely social events. Friends gathered round a device and screen egging each other on after school, although they gradually seemed to compound isolation for too many. Subbuteo, flicking pin sized weebles at tiny goals? Gtfo. As @martin pointed out, arcades could be a bit sketchy as a yoof - territorial, violent, pervs everywhere, o.g. Grim Britannia, so you had no choice other than to adapt your imagination to playing outdoors exploring the world.
What I’m really trying to articulate is the worlds they opened up - unimaginable colour schemes, the strategies of Space Invader success or failure. Spellbinding. Clive Sinclair’s daft bike never caught on and with good reason, I mean if you’d rode one of those on our old estate you’d have been filled in instantly. Overall, had as much fun with The Warlock of Firetop Mountain to be honest, due to it riffing on your own imaginative input. Equally, Andy Ruffell never pulled what our old crew did with a couple of bricks, a discarded shed door and a Chopper with wonky handlebars.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Rambling answer to follow
Video games had a big influence on a generation's musical taste, I think. To cite a much cited example:
But I think you're looking for something more existential.
I wonder if the ubiquity of games helps to explain the rise of this personal growth through daily routines phenomenon. Games can of course totally distract you from achieving anything else in life but they also can teach people the value of practicing something endlessly until it becomes second nature. I'm not surprised by those studies that have said that video games are actually good for your brain. Makes sense to me. (Although I would assume they're bad for your IRL attention span.) And the gamification thing we've talked about. Life is about getting a high score. Everything is adjustable (could this even have fed into the personal identity stuff around dissolving gender distinctions, transhumanism etc.?)
It's interesting to me that it's so evidently powerful at teaching people things and how apps like DuoLingo use that mechanic to make learning a language easier. (Have schools started making use of this mechanic?)
But are they good for your personality? Your morality? Your imagination? I think that's more debatable. There are probably people who argue that you can get as much out of playing Skyrim or The Witcher 3 or whatever as you could reading a classic work of literature, but I'm not so sure. The very essence of playing a game is that your actions don't have permanent, irreversible consequences.
There's an interesting limitation that games have here - i've read in in the last of us 2 there's this overarching theme of how terrible it is to kill people, how traumatic it is. And that works for cut scenes and certain one-off kills. But the game needs a lot of action, which means you have to kill dozens of dozens of people in it and most of the time it doesn't matter. Until it has to.
Video games had a big influence on a generation's musical taste, I think. To cite a much cited example:
But I think you're looking for something more existential.
I wonder if the ubiquity of games helps to explain the rise of this personal growth through daily routines phenomenon. Games can of course totally distract you from achieving anything else in life but they also can teach people the value of practicing something endlessly until it becomes second nature. I'm not surprised by those studies that have said that video games are actually good for your brain. Makes sense to me. (Although I would assume they're bad for your IRL attention span.) And the gamification thing we've talked about. Life is about getting a high score. Everything is adjustable (could this even have fed into the personal identity stuff around dissolving gender distinctions, transhumanism etc.?)
It's interesting to me that it's so evidently powerful at teaching people things and how apps like DuoLingo use that mechanic to make learning a language easier. (Have schools started making use of this mechanic?)
But are they good for your personality? Your morality? Your imagination? I think that's more debatable. There are probably people who argue that you can get as much out of playing Skyrim or The Witcher 3 or whatever as you could reading a classic work of literature, but I'm not so sure. The very essence of playing a game is that your actions don't have permanent, irreversible consequences.
There's an interesting limitation that games have here - i've read in in the last of us 2 there's this overarching theme of how terrible it is to kill people, how traumatic it is. And that works for cut scenes and certain one-off kills. But the game needs a lot of action, which means you have to kill dozens of dozens of people in it and most of the time it doesn't matter. Until it has to.