I feel like if there’s one thing that Japan really taught me it’s that fun things are simply fun. Maybe this sounds obvious, but I think the average person in this country doesn’t really behave that way. You don’t need some greater reason. People spend their whole lives fretting about productivity and about how they can better make use of their time. Self-help books fly off the shelves, and you see people filling their free time on advice about how they could potentially make their lives better. I think it’s just sad behavior. Every time they try to enjoy something themselves they have a guilty conscious about it and can never really get immersed into it. It results in people that don’t really have hobbies of their own outside of possibly their family or whatever is on television that night. And even with television they don’t really care about what they watch, to them it’s more a distraction to rest themselves mentally, so they can be in a good place to return to what they think “really matters”—their job. They think this is what adult behavior consists of. That’s not to say be a hedonist, but Utilitarianism teaches that the end of human life is pleasure and pain. It means the best activities are those that are easily available and don’t cause harm to those around you, course being an activity you enjoy. It means playing video games is no more noble than reading philosophy or playing the piano. If you do often read philosophy or play the piano it should be because you enjoy it, not that you think there’s some inherent value in the activity itself, and that by suffering through it it makes you a “higher “person.
I feel like people often say that as you get older you tend to lose interest in video games, or that you can’t recreate your childhood. Yet, my experience has been the opposite, as I’ve gotten older I’ve come to appreciate video games more. Mind you, I really wouldn’t classify myself as old, actually I’m relatively young. I won’t give my exact age, but this is the perspective I’m coming from. Video games have always kind of been part of my life. Before anything else I’d probably call myself a gamer. I think gaming communities are smarter than most. When I was younger I found it more difficult to keep focus on longer games or games that required more thinking. Yet, now that I’m older, I really don’t have that problem anymore. The bigger problem is time and balancing it with other things I want to do.
Yet, I think there’s a few reasons behind this and it mostly has to do with the types of games I play and my relationship with them. My favorite genre of video games is, by far, visual novels. Visual novels are so varied, and depending on how broad your definition is of what a ‘visual novel’ is, encompasses so many different things. The other is role playing games. I’ve always enjoyed the journey of starting off as some low-level grunt and then by the end of the game being powerful and achieving a satisfying conclusion. Often times games that combine the two. I also rarely play new games. I rarely play online games. I’ll never buy anything at full price or on release, and will only buy games during steam sales when games that were originally $60 are now, for their enhanced or whatever edition, under $10. I enjoy playing counter-strike every once in a while. I used to enjoy playing Overwatch quickplay, but ever since they implemented 5v5 the game just isn’t the same. Recently, I’ve sunk dozens of hours into ARPGs. I have a good number of hours in Path of Exile and I’ve been enjoying playing Last Epoch. Borderlands 2 is still my favorite game and the one I’ve put the most hours into.
There’s many types of gamers and probably they’re the reason why just video games in general aren’t thought of very highly. First, oh course, there’s mobile games. Vast majority of games that you can play on your phone probably aren’t great and I can accept people viewing them negatively. Then there’s console gamers. Problem with console is that with every generation it is basically a reset, it isn’t like on a computer where games from the 90’s are perfectly fine if you know how to install them. PCs give you freedom. The problem with console gaming is that it keeps you on a treadmill. Most console gamers are playing the latest and greatest and constantly on the look out for the next biggest game. I think the PC is best simply for the freedom it provides, you’re not subjected to the tyranny of a Sony or Nintendo. Games targeted at consoles are also often more ‘dumbed’ than those targeted for a PC audience because the average player is just smarter on PC.
There’s a problem with the internet that probably isn’t feasible to fix, and that is its recency bias. The way these online platforms work is that they always push the latest posts or videos. Content creators are encouraged, if they want to achieve the greatest audience, to always cover the latest games that are releasing. There’s also the problem of people acting as if they’re authorities on games they’ve probably never played. How is it possible to make a statement like: “best villain in gaming”? How would you know? A human life span is way to short to play all video games in existence. Now if you’re somebody who just likes to play single player games it probably doesn’t matter whether you play a game that is 8 years old or a game that is six months old. Except, due to these platforms encouraging trends, for websites and content creators there is a difference. To the average Joe it doesn’t matter, but since Joe sees all these people talking about the latest games and people constantly talking about games that are releasing, he ends of on what I like to call the AAA treadmill. All he does is purchase and play the latest AAA games. Then you get all these people who tire of modern game design, maybe they’re tired of just modern (Western) culture, and they come to the conclusion that video games are shallow and most impactful when you are a kid. Except, I think the problem isn’t so much video games in general, it’s them. They’re on the AAA treadmill without even realizing it. They’ve been socialized to think that way and they think their behavior is the only way people can enjoy video games. They don’t even need to be aware of it. Since they’ve been trained to behave in this manner, even if you gave them what’s probably a less constantly stimulating and more intellectually challenging game, they’d probably get bored because they’re just used to being handheld. Such people end up drifting away from video games. The same people who make such comments about video games.
Something that’s also probably another factor that causes people to think this way of video games is that increasing they’re online and trying to manipulate you to give them more time and money. Many people are getting increasingly tired of this. Except, I think this is just more a symptom of the AAA treadmill. I think if you change your attitude a bit towards video games, then I think you can find yourself getting more enjoyment out of them. Stop being a slave to companies and marketing. This isn’t just solely about video games too. In the words of a wise man:
I’m going to do something different, something unheard of. I’m not going to see it. If you know you’re not going to like it, then why give them your money?
Stop giving money to companies and consuming things you know you’re probably going to dislike then complaining about it. It’s miserable behavior.
