Gaming prowess, gamers, and maturity.

[Ruenis]

Among some folks who get a little too elated over their prowess at video games, there are those who would needlessly boast, or goad others into trying to "amount to their level of skill." It's a silly thing that can be dismissed with a chuckle and a drink over a nice movie or comfortable session in your favorite game(s), but I wanted to talk about the notion of just wanting to be good at something.

It's natural to want to not suck at things - a commonality among disparaged males, lol, but really, among anyone. As weird as it could be, overcoming/creating arbitrary hurdles and records can be really fun. Challenging yourself is fun, but you eventually reach an age where this stuff is simply a passing thing you'd do out of boredom, or if you just had a dropoff of free time, and wanted to experiment with something. Like, you could literally own some old junk that means very little in the grand scheme, yet want to prove to yourself that you can whoop a video game under grueling conditions set for yourself without modern amenities that casualize the experience, just because you want to be some old boomer who's trying to childishly reconnect with their past self all in one moment, or because you wanted to bond with a family member. However more or less odd, it's what you choose, and it has meaning because you give it meaning.

Steam is GREAT for giving games meaning to literally anyone who wants to prioritize almost any specific avenue of focus on a game's specifics. In most cases, it's the usual: Overcoming challenges. It could simply be exploring the game's modding potential, which branches out into all sorts of realms of subject matter. In the modern era, there's a vast multitude of reasons to call oneself a quote/unquote "hardcore" gamer, in spite of how awkward that sounds. One grouping will deem another "casual" when that group is verily engaged in another facet of gaming not heavily focused on by their group, which essentially makes the other group "hardcore" in an entirely different and unique sense. You don't have to die 3087 times in a "hard" video game while persevering greatly at trying to complete it to qualify as a "hardcore gamer."

I'm particularly "up there" in age, and an avid gamer, so I know what it is to play good games, bad games, strange games, tough games, the kinds of games everybody tells you you "need," popular games, fan games, little known project games, and everything in between. The notion of "strictly following rules or you're a p*ssy," or "Ha ha scrub, hope you get out of the tutorial soon," or "If you have even a THOUGHT against [X Game], you're an idiot" are ridiculously hilarious notions that are both foreign to me, and something I can only imagine someone in their 20s and below, or someone who thinks like someone who's in their 20s and below, would bother inflating their ego over before others as if to promote themself as "Number 1" or "The life of the party" or the "Head honcho," etc, and carrying on. It's very funny, and I'm only giving my attention to it in such lengthy detail because I bore witness to it most recently on a specific Steam forum I'm not going to reference.

There's a point where young people are essentially just saying "I could beat up an old man," and a sad reality of life is that in select places in the world, this is actually a reality of circumstance, crime wise. There are people younger than these """gigachads""" (cringe) who have nothing to prove to them, which makes them even more hilarious.

~

Have fun challenging yourselves at video games, folks. Soulslikes aren't "cancer" just because they're grueling, Baldur's Gate 3 isn't trash just because its gameplay can be "stunting," and Skyrim/Starfield isn't slop just because you can't remember the last time you got flayed by that fire mage/space dude. Gaming is for us all. People really took offence to Phil Spencer's stance on gaming, but their angst was more about crying about a lack of catering to worthless ideals, and less about a man's words accommodating people of all walks of life enjoying a hobby meant to entertain people from all corners of the world in any such way they would see fit.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

And the whole point of this thread is..?

As a fellow "older" gamer right here... OP, you are either projecting much or strangely meeting with a lot of unsavoury people to even have to get to the point of writing up an essay about something which supposedly don't affect you. Most of what you're written don't even have bearing with gaming directly and is more directed as society at large... I personally don't even bat an eye to any of that and if I had not felt like this post was directly targeted at me to get my attention I would not even have bothered to reply at all either.

Frankly, the whole OP feel like an introduction and I'm just kept waiting for the main course.

[Realigo Actual]

I used to mod most of the games I played.

I would play the game, beat the game, then mod the game.

I don't mod every game I play anymore. Sad.

[Ruenis]

Publicado originalmente por Eagle_of_Fire:

And the whole point of this thread is..?

As a fellow "older" gamer right here... OP, you are either projecting much or strangely meeting with a lot of unsavoury people to even have to get to the point of writing up an essay about something which supposedly don't affect you. Most of what you're written don't even have bearing with gaming directly and is more directed as society at large... I personally don't even bat an eye to any of that and if I had not felt like this post was directly targeted at me to get my attention I would not even have bothered to reply at all either.

Frankly, the whole OP feel like an introduction and I'm just kept waiting for the main course.

What I posted is common sense, lol. The only "people it's directed at" are the types that ache for all the world to know how great they are at whatever they're good at. This goes above and beyond video games. It applies to both them, and some folks' aching need for recognition regarding all sorts of avenues of expertise.

Publicado originalmente por D. Flame:

Am I the best? Yes. Do I feel the need to brag about it? No.

:lunar2019coolpig::lunar2019coolpig:

Case in point. See: The OP's 4th paragraph.

[Ruenis]

Dying and trying again in a video game proves little else but that you intend to finish it. My end quip about Skyrim and Starfield not being slop just because you can't remember the last time you got owned applies because it's a general fact of life that getting your sh*t stomped at something means you suck at it. It doesn't mean you'll never improve. It just means there's room for improvement on your part.

The whole "git gud" culture is bunk. Dismissing people with troll lingo and offering nothing in return doesn't solve sh*t. If you're that concerned about how well another male flexes at your favorite "sport" (because 9 times out of 10 this only occurs between males in the most undeniably, honestly, dismissively homoerotic fashions ever, lmfao), help him "get good" so you can stop "obsessing over him all-the-ding-dong-day" all your life," LOL.

[D. Flame]

Publicado originalmente por Ruenis:

The whole "git gud" culture is bunk.

Nah, I was there when it was coined. It is a solid concept. The only problem is that it is often misapplied.

When it is meant to be applied is when someone is trying to blame the game for their own faults and flaws.

Like if the game hands you as shield and basically says, "block or die," and you refuse to use the shield, only to die, then start crying about how the game is cheap and artificial difficulty because you CHOSE not to use the shield...

...that is when "git gud" is meant to be applied.

[Ruenis]

Publicado originalmente por D. Flame:

Publicado originalmente por Ruenis:

The whole "git gud" culture is bunk.

Nah, I was there when it was coined. It is a solid concept. The only problem is that it is often misapplied.

When it is meant to be applied is when someone is trying to blame the game for their own faults and flaws.

Like if the game hands you as shield and basically says, "block or die," and you refuse to use the shield, only to die, then start crying about how the game is cheap and artificial difficulty because you CHOSE not to use the shield...

...that is when "git gud" is meant to be applied.

The credence I give to what sometimes unsavory people relatively describe as "hardcore gaming" comes large-and-by from that I was born and raised on the ORIGINAL video games, at least, starting from the mid early 80s period of Commodore 64 fame. "Hercules," C64 version? I'd have NEVER had the reflexes necessary to play it. The Boulder Dash games? I knew them like the back of my hand, and when my plans failed, I was prone to literally chuck the joystick over the computer room desk. Sometimes I did...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7715fpLelHI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiEVfa1OK_o

I'm not saying there's zero place for wanting to be great at something challenging. Take this thread as an older person's perspective on gaming from a distant viewpoint that most younger people would likely scoff at.

Most young people, even tons of older people, want to "be the badass." They want to know that if someone walks up to them with a challenge, that person doesn't have a snowflake's chance in Hell at usurping them. And we have eSports to prove that there is a valid place for this manner of mindset to flourish in a profitable environment. I'm just here to say that in the most common gaming case, there is a video game purchase, and a regular person with free time. The game is hard, or casual, mildly difficult, or laughably easy, and regardless of the type of game it is, the goal of even having purchased it is to have fun with it.

Too often, we play these hyper-surrealistic games thinking "I'm that person. I've got to do or die. It's now or never." I think sometimes the photorealistic graphics don't help to deter from this subjective mindset, lol, but it's a facet that has more, less, or considerably more or considerably less impact on a gamer's perspective concerning what they play, mostly in the cases of movie-like triple-A games, if not movie-like indie games, lol. And, provided modern gamers can stomach original gaming graphics, lol, this needn't be the only case in which gamers verily engage a feeling of oneness with their games. I'm positive most indie game loving individuals bonded with - maybe not specifically the character per se, but the gameplay itself in particular, when playing Celeste. It's a title that requires the player's full attention, bar none, and doubly so on the harder stages/mode.

Reality itself has it that there will always be a place for the toughest of challenges. It's just that it needn't become a matter of toxicity between individuals.

I also understand that some folks actually warmly welcome that level of toxicity. It's like the feeling of a warrior in a colosseum surrounded by onlookers of intentions of varying scruples. Sometimes it's sad that people wish to be "thrown to the wolves" so to speak in such a manner, but I honestly understand that side of a man; even a woman, or other individual. People want to know that they've survived something they can equate to Hell itself, or at least something as close to Hell as they can feasibly imagine, to tell the tale. It's why we anticipate actually good video game releases. The struggle invigorates us.

God I need an Ayn Odin 2 Max...

[Ruenis]

Publicado originalmente por Chelle:

I am a dinosaur.
I know my place.
I am sixty years of age and thus confirms the previous.
The entire premise of gaming has changed beyond all and any semblance of those very early beginnings of home computing.
To those of a mere two decades of age or thereabouts the measure they shall use is their own life and experiences of gaming within a much shorter time-frame.
That and the genre's that exist today have mostly zero appeal to me and indeed many like me or older.

We are dinosaurs.
The direction of gaming tomorrow does not include me or those like me because we are ( you guessed it) dinosaurs.

Makes little to zero difference what we say or wish for in terms of direction and what we find appealing.
How do I know this?
Well I was once young and was exactly the same.
Wash rinse repeat this generation shall in time understand this write-up.

Yet it cannot today be given.
They themselves must arrive to know what I am writing of.

The conclusion to this enigma or circle of gaming regarding generational differences is 'time'.
Truly I say the following and from my heart:

Gaming is dying.
It is before our eyes forming into something else. Something alien to me and those like me.
Politics and woke implementation and even to some extent religion is masked within games. A directive a narrative that must be praised.
Anyone that doesn't toe the line? Something is wrong with them.

The game is over.
What is left at best is a backlog of the past. The future? I could not give a flying rats arse about.

From the heart.

I think you might like a recent release that came out just a week or so ago. 😊

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1069160/SKALD_Against_the_Black_Priory/

[Eagle_of_Fire]

I am sorry, but when I was younger and still fascinated by computer science and electronics... I certainly was not the same. I pretty much learned everything in those field by my lone self, without help. Just because I liked it that much and knew it was going to become important in our lives. We were also literally drowning in people similar to me in my graduation year, as far as I could tell. Do you feel like it is still like this nowaday? Where I live education seem to be turning into a frigging national disaster even tho I can't say that I feel like the quality of education really dropped that much in comparison to what I had to experience. Heck, with technology nowaday it should be miles ahead; I can safely say that I didn't have access to a 100th of the learning opportunities youngsters have access to right now. But it won't do them any good if they don't want to do it in the first place.

And also, I dare say, that gaming is dying simply because the new gens is simply letting it die. As in, literally, they're asking for it to happen. Micro transactions? Would not be a thing if nobody buy them. Only online gaming/service? Would not be a thing if nobody was playing them.

But the good news in all of this is that there is the start of a small semblance of pushback from those gens. Finally. Probably way too late to save anything, but still...

[Ruenis]

Publicado originalmente por Eagle_of_Fire:

I am sorry, but when I was younger and still fascinated by computer science and electronics... I certainly was not the same. I pretty much learned everything in those field by my lone self, without help. Just because I liked it that much and knew it was going to become important in our lives. We were also literally drowning in people similar to me in my graduation year, as far as I could tell. Do you feel like it is still like this nowaday? Where I live education seem to be turning into a frigging national disaster even tho I can't say that I feel like the quality of education really dropped that much in comparison to what I had to experience. Heck, with technology nowaday it should be miles ahead; I can safely say that I didn't have access to a 100th of the learning opportunities youngsters have access to right now. But it won't do them any good if they don't want to do it in the first place.

And also, I dare say, that gaming is dying simply because the new gens is simply letting it die. As in, literally, they're asking for it to happen. Micro transactions? Would not be a thing if nobody buy them. Only online gaming/service? Would not be a thing if nobody was playing them.

But the good news in all of this is that there is the start of a small semblance of pushback from those gens. Finally. Probably way too late to save anything, but still...

I think it's less about the death of gaming and more about gaming changing into something different, lol.

Gonna burst your bubble dude: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/7w2hxp/microtransactions_date_back_to_1990_with_double/

Microtransactions, didn't start with horse armor. They began with the arcade edition of Double Dragon 3, all the way back in 1990. And "DLC" practices carried on throughout the MS-DOS era in the form of buyable diskettes that you installed extra content for your games for. Commander Keen? Wolfenstein 3D? Duke Nukem 3D? Crystal Caves & Secret Agent? Blake Stone? All manner of Apogee, "Epic Megagames," and other companies' games that you had to "register" in order to obtain the "full game?" How soon people forget...

This didn't start with the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, man.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Publicado originalmente por Ruenis:

Publicado originalmente por Eagle_of_Fire:

I am sorry, but when I was younger and still fascinated by computer science and electronics... I certainly was not the same. I pretty much learned everything in those field by my lone self, without help. Just because I liked it that much and knew it was going to become important in our lives. We were also literally drowning in people similar to me in my graduation year, as far as I could tell. Do you feel like it is still like this nowaday? Where I live education seem to be turning into a frigging national disaster even tho I can't say that I feel like the quality of education really dropped that much in comparison to what I had to experience. Heck, with technology nowaday it should be miles ahead; I can safely say that I didn't have access to a 100th of the learning opportunities youngsters have access to right now. But it won't do them any good if they don't want to do it in the first place.

And also, I dare say, that gaming is dying simply because the new gens is simply letting it die. As in, literally, they're asking for it to happen. Micro transactions? Would not be a thing if nobody buy them. Only online gaming/service? Would not be a thing if nobody was playing them.

But the good news in all of this is that there is the start of a small semblance of pushback from those gens. Finally. Probably way too late to save anything, but still...

I think it's less about the death of gaming and more about gaming changing into something different, lol.

Gonna burst your bubble dude: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/7w2hxp/microtransactions_date_back_to_1990_with_double/

Microtransactions, didn't start with horse armor. They began with the arcade edition of Double Dragon 3, all the way back in 1990. And "DLC" practices carried on throughout the MS-DOS era in the form of buyable diskettes that you installed extra content for your games for. Commander Keen? Wolfenstein 3D? Duke Nukem 3D? Crystal Caves & Secret Agent? Blake Stone? All manner of Apogee, "Epic Megagames," and other companies' games that you had to "register" in order to obtain the "full game?" How soon people forget...

This didn't start with the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, man.

Shareware wasn't microtransaction. It literally was a service, an opportunity for people to have access to something they literally would not have had access without that service. The internet as we know it wasn't even a dream yet back then.

There was no such thing as DLC either. If you wanted to create an add-on (or "expansion" as it was commonly referred to) you would need to print it somehow. At that time frame we are probably still talking about 3 1/4 diskettes or brand new CDs, with DVDs very slowly looming at the horizon in the following decade. All of that required logistic and a certain cost that buyers were happy to cover, again because of the service provided.

Get your facts straight.

[Ruenis]

Publicado originalmente por Eagle_of_Fire:

Publicado originalmente por Ruenis:

I think it's less about the death of gaming and more about gaming changing into something different, lol.

Gonna burst your bubble dude: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/7w2hxp/microtransactions_date_back_to_1990_with_double/

Microtransactions, didn't start with horse armor. They began with the arcade edition of Double Dragon 3, all the way back in 1990. And "DLC" practices carried on throughout the MS-DOS era in the form of buyable diskettes that you installed extra content for your games for. Commander Keen? Wolfenstein 3D? Duke Nukem 3D? Crystal Caves & Secret Agent? Blake Stone? All manner of Apogee, "Epic Megagames," and other companies' games that you had to "register" in order to obtain the "full game?" How soon people forget...

This didn't start with the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, man.

Shareware wasn't microtransaction. It literally was a service, an opportunity for people to have access to something they literally would not have had access without that service. The internet as we know it wasn't even a dream yet back then.

There was no such thing as DLC either. If you wanted to create an add-on (or "expansion" as it was commonly referred to) you would need to print it somehow. At that time frame we are probably still talking about 3 1/4 diskettes or brand new CDs, with DVDs very slowly looming at the horizon in the following decade. All of that required logistic and a certain cost that buyers were happy to cover, again because of the service provided.

Get your facts straight.

Of course it wasn't directly downloadable, but the scruples were the same. You played a free demo, if not free episodes, and had to pay for the rest. We still have that practice today. No, you didn't pay incremental prices for small benefits in most cases, but you did in Double Dragon 3 Arcade Edition, so yes, I did in fact "Get my facts straight," as seen here (if the timestamp doesn't work, head to the moment at 16:37):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaDalfb_sZc&t=997s

[Eagle_of_Fire]

That's not even remotely close to what you see happening today. I feel like you are just trolling me right now.

[Ruenis]

Publicado originalmente por Eagle_of_Fire:

That's not even remotely close to what you see happening today. I feel like you are just trolling me right now.

It pioneered what was further greatly popularized today. It didn't necessarily have to have received huge recognition. The fact of the matter is that this is a part of gaming's history. EA would be proud...

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Publicado originalmente por Ruenis:

Publicado originalmente por Eagle_of_Fire:

That's not even remotely close to what you see happening today. I feel like you are just trolling me right now.

It pioneered what was further greatly popularized today. It didn't necessarily have to have received huge recognition. The fact of the matter is that this is a part of gaming's history. EA would be proud...

BS that was completely ignored in the 90's, to the point you didn't see it pop up again regularly (or even at all) until two decades later, is not a "trend setter". It is literally an example of people who could see thru the BS back then and who would have none of it.

[Ruenis]

Publicado originalmente por Eagle_of_Fire:

Publicado originalmente por Ruenis:

It pioneered what was further greatly popularized today. It didn't necessarily have to have received huge recognition. The fact of the matter is that this is a part of gaming's history. EA would be proud...

BS that was completely ignored in the 90's, to the point you didn't see it pop up again regularly (or even at all) until two decades later, is not a "trend setter". It is literally an example of people who could see thru the BS back then and who would have none of it.

In general you're just saying it was "infinitesimal, and went unnoticed," lol.

There needn't have even been a "trend setter" for DLC and microtransaction practices, and if there was, it was probably something completely outside of the realm of video games altogether. The high ranking folks who only care about their bottom line don't prioritize what well-meaning folks who just enjoy a good session with a video game do. They're greedy, and want for the utmost riches they can get their claws on. They live in a world far away from the idea of sitting down enjoying characters and morals and emotional arcs and what-have-you. They probably co-opted the idea from something like-to-be-likened to a carnival, or theme park fair, or theatre, or something primeval. That's how these kinds of people think.

Gamers too often follow this infantile mentality that the "sharks" of the industry are like the kids they ran with on their school playgrounds. They're human, but they're so uncouth, it's disturbing.

Todd Howard may be a gamer at heart, and while some folks see Starfield as a casual, "boring" mess, the man was inspired by a space age (board?) video game from the 70s when he made it for Christ's sake.