I'm thinking all this time playing and developing video games is wasted. Video games are catering to the same zombie-TV experience and dopamine addiction roller-coaster of movie industry. Video game skills are shit and people get way unhealthier with them. Like when you game, you don't mind eating shit food and pretend you live in the game. But you can't live in the game or escape from life like that. Escapism is bullshit: the "We reject your reality" cliche is not about freedom, just denial. Videogames are most degenerative brain functionality i've seen, people warp their minds around the game and plan their life towards better playtime, as if the game was really important. All these speedrunners, progamers, elite players are not gaining anything valuable, they just adapt their brains into reflexive "game reality" instead of real life.
One day, video games will be treated like cigarette smoking is today.
It will be considered a very bad habit, only partaked in by the underclass. Governments will pass heavy regulations limiting videogame consumption and advertisement. Gamers will be looked down upon as smokers are today. People of the future will look back and say, "how could those cretins have played so many video games all day? they must have been stupid".
>>11 >it's not time well spent Why? If you enjoyed it, you spent your time doing something enjoyable. When you are at the deathbed, you will be like "at least I enjoyed my time" not "oy I wish I'd spent more of my life experiencing how shitty the world is". Life is pretty much shitty and has no possibility of achievement since you are always saddled with a bone bag that will decay over time, rendering everything you do worthless, so it is a lower quality experience than video games which are built around the possibility of meaningful achievement.
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Anonymous2017-09-12 11:30
>>12 Gaming is one of the most degenerate hobbies known to man. You waste time and money, decay your mind and eyes, all for marginal enjoyment.
I didn't achieve anything positive outside of the games. At best it was a distraction, but it wasn't that effective as escapism. I think the whole idea of escapism in video games doesn't work, because they require too much effort for a very little "escapism": like you play more like working on the game/character/strategy/teamwork and escapism is confined to a vague feeling, the suspension of disbelief and belonging to game community. But that isn't supporting any escapism by default, you have to believe and work toward making yourself an "escapist" by ignoring and devaluing stuff in the real world. Basically "escapism" means your health, finances, social capital and worldview are replaced by the game status. I think of some people who could balance gaming and living, however they have iron discipline and are a tiny minority of gamers. The whole hardcore gaming scene is filled with psychological illness and misanthropic rejects, people who worship their games at expense of everything else. Its as if they were hiding their heads in the sand and don't care about the world around them. This is the meaning of "escapism".
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Anonymous2017-09-13 5:40
>>12 "Time well spent", people vastly underestimate time spent in game. I was spending like 7hours per day on Guild Wars, but it seemed like a few hours per day. I was neglecting showering and ate near the screen.
>>14 Clearly he's talking about in game achievements
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Anonymous2017-09-13 14:07
>>16 Nah that title belong to mobile game developers milking normies by millions. MMORPG require somewhat beefy PC and minimal skill. These games target children and mentally handicapped with only requirement is a phone and ability to tap on screen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=la6vK6hI7rM
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Anonymous2017-09-13 14:46
I like MMORPGs with autoplay so I don't have to bother with all the tedious bits of actually having to play the game.
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Anonymous2017-09-13 15:14
>>18 MMOs also milk people. Somehow it's more addictive when there's skill to it.
>>21 Just like MMOs and mobile games, you need to pay a lot of money for it to happen.
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Anonymous2017-09-14 8:37
Imagine we're in the matrix and video games are another layer in the matrix. Instead of escapism, videogames is a path going deeper into the matrix.
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Anonymous2017-09-14 10:19
>>23 videogames is a path going deeper into the grave.
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Anonymous2017-09-14 10:27
playing mmos and mmorpgs..... Is it just living a second life, since you have to eat, make money, [whatever] while playing the mmos and mmorpgs as well as in "real" life? Doesn't this then prove that life is a simulation, an mmos and mmorpgs another being is playing?
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Anonymous2017-09-14 15:30
>>25 A simulation of what? For simulating anything, physical reality is overkill. All these atoms, photons/radiation, quantum mechanics, molecular forces. The computing power to simulate this..with 99.999% of that being wasted on stuff people never see but required to maintain realism.
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Anonymous2017-09-29 2:45
Well said Agreed
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Anonymous2017-09-29 5:31
Everything we do is escapism. Life is harsh and everyday is a struggle to survive and not die by our own hands or nature's. Going to work, advancing human understanding, or serving a peoples, having ideals, doing anything is just an escape from these harsh realities. Like drugs and video games and media. The world cannot be changed and anyone who tries is also escaping this fact by deluding himself into believing he is making a difference. Everyone finds a way to tell themselves they are not wrong, that what they are doing, as you say, "really important" and "valuable." The truth is nothing matters. Society has eroded to the point where the fathers have allowed their sons to be naked in this world. The opiates that were tradition, culture, religion, etc. are gone. They were there to keep us "sane" in an insane world. Or is it that we are trying to stay insane, running away from the truth, drugging ourselves up on dopamine and endorphins in whatever fashion we can to blind ourselves to this "sane" world. How can something so cruel and terrible and evil and painful be "sane?" How can it be "right?" No, it must not be, that's why I need to keep moving, keep keeping the mind off these thoughts, keep myself "sane."
It is a paradox. The world is painful and there is nothing an individual can do to change it, so he must change himself, but by changing himself he is just accepting his illusions. If you were to try to change the world, again you are believing you can, but the world is unchangeable so it is just another distraction. Accepting this is also an escape. The truth is it is painful and raw, and by "accepting it" deluding yourself that it is not painful is just another escape. So man has three options before him. He can continue his cycle of distraction, continue taking his "blue pill" daily and keeping himself asleep. Or maybe he'll choose the "red pill" and live a life without delusion, a pure and raw stream of pain will inhabit his entire existance. There won't be any escape or relief, once you've gotten a taste of the real how can you ever feel content going back to being without taste? You can't. You will try, but in the back of your head it will always fester, yelling, screaming, shaking to for you to wake up. Or maybe he will kill himself? If being asleep is the ultimate sin, but the pain of being awake is too painful and eternal, then the only relief is death itself. That is if you believe true that religions were useful constructs and that there is nothing after your death.
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Anonymous2017-09-29 9:01
Dunno. Sports games are good for exercising and a lot more fun, than just working out at gym. Also, games can promote team building.
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Anonymous2017-09-29 12:06
I largely stopped caring about video games after the sixth generation.
The only good videogames is where you don't associate yourself with the character: RTS, economic simulators(sim city), puzzles, board games. They actually train some skills.
>>37 So in this metaphor video games are a vehicle to create art just as a pencil is a tool to create art? What? That's absurd. I don't think you really thought this through.
Well, it would be construed as a piece of art to an artisan who crafts paintbrushes. The point, really, is that art is an end to a means. If a paintbrush is the means, then the end is what's on the canvas; if the means is crafting a wooden rod and fastening horse hairs or whatever onto that, then the paintbrush would be the end and thus art, in that context.
If the means is a means, and the art is also a means and there is no end, then what's the point of living?