That graph only validates what I have said. If you do not have fun doing activities with a high challenge level it is because they give you anxiety or worry as opposed to flow, that means you have low skill. The heros, the great people, the people worthy of respect, the people who matter in the world are the people with high skills who take on the most difficult challenges. If you are the kind of person with low skill who only takes on small challenges, then of course I'm going to judge you.
We're supposed to judge people based on the content of their character. Abilities, will power, and ambition, are all part of someone's character. They are perfectly fair things to judge someone by. The only problem is that said same people do not like to hear the truth. If you do suck, and I tell you that you suck, you're going to be upset.
I think the real problem is that I rarely actually lay down judgement on actual people, but only on things. Consumable items of entertainment. People get upset though, because I laid the smack down on a thing they like, and they don't like that. They think that if the thing they like is crap, and they enjoy it, then they are crap. They think rightly. Therefore, they will defend the things they enjoy and come up with excuses like "anything is ok as long as it feels good" or "I liked it, therefore it's OK" to hid the truth, which is that they suck.
Think about people who watch reality shows. You look down on them. You know you do. It's a form of entertainment that is especially constructed to entertain those of lower intellect. It's no secret that television intentionally produces the dumbest content possible that will get viewers because advertisers will pay more for that. Ads work really well on dumb people and not so well on smart people.
If I'm sitting here playing Eclipse and you are playing Yahtzee, you can bet your ass I'm looking at you the way I look at people who eat at McDonald's and care about American Idol. What's more, I'm right for doing so. You won't type it into a forum, but you know in your heart that your attempts to defend shit non-games like Farmville or whatever are mere expressions of your own denial so that you don't have to admit to yourself that you suck.
Instead you should be like me. Admit you suck! I have never won a game of Counter-Stsrike gungame in my life. I am getting owned at Dominion online. I've been sucking even worse at NS lately. Can't even shoot skulks. The difference is that I don't give in and switch to some other low skill, low brow, cheap thrill, shallow entertainment. I'll stick with it until the day I die.
The heros, the great people, the people worthy of respect, the people who matter in the world are the people with high skills who take on the most difficult challenges.
So, by solipsism, I trust that you believe that you do in fact matter, from this we can see that you have high skills and take on the most difficult challenges; so, Scott Rubin, what are these skills and challenges? Spewing this into a microphone twice a week? Playing games which have no risk and require no true skills? Going to large gatherings of people and telling them they are wrong? What?
Scott you are thinking (or at least talking) about things in too big absolutes.
Yes, maybe if a person only watches low brow tv, plays only Yhatzee and facebook games and seek the easy way out in everything they ever do, maybe just then I could accept your oppinion of them and think that they haven't lived their lives in full potential. But life needs mixes of challenge and easiness. Sometimes I like to really challenge myself with the games I play and sometimes I just like to press x to see pretty pictures and "you win"-message.
If you judge person based on selective details, that's no good. Also because getting bandages in Super Meat Boy is too hard for you I will think that you are, as a human being, below me no matter what else you have achieved in your life.
Scott you are thinking (or at least talking) about things in too big absolutes.
Yes, maybe if a person only watches low brow tv, plays only Yhatzee and facebook games and seek the easy way out in everything they ever do, maybe just then I could accept your oppinion of them and think that they haven't lived their lives in full potential. But life needs mixes of challenge and easiness. Sometimes I like to really challenge myself with the games I play and sometimes I just like to press x to see pretty pictures and "you win"-message.
If you judge person based on selective details, that's no good. Also because getting bandages in Super Meat Boy is too hard for you I will think that you are, as a human being, below me no matter what else you have achieved in your life.
I do suck. I can't get no bandages. But I try! You guys are in total denial acting like your WoW is the highest brow.
I don't think someone who can't even get bandages in Super Meat Boy is qualified to judge games. I revoke your Game Snobbery permit. Come back when you suck less.
I do suck. I can't get no bandages. But I try! You guys are in total denial acting like your WoW is the highest brow.
First, the majority of the bandages I have now, I picked up using the keyboard, rather than the controller. So, Dibs on any woman you might like to have some sort of intimate relations with in the future.
Second - Point out to me exactly where anyone has said anything like that WoW is high-brow, or tried to defend WoW. The only person in this thread who has mentioned WoW is you, and I don't think that people saying things like "Enjoy whatever you're going to enjoy, it's okay to enjoy things which might not be of the highest quality" is defending WoW or anything like it.
Sorry to turn a fire extinguisher on your merrily burning straw-man, but frankly, I fucking well expect better from you, Rubin. Argue well or Concede.
Aaah, nothing better to relax, than read Apreche comments. They're like that truck-roll scene in Drive Angry. Utterly atrocious but utterly hilarious in its atrocity.
We're the pretentiousness police. Will everyone in the room without a psychology degree -- or has been published on the topic -- please leave the thread.
Whatever kiddo. Cult of the expert. How is me stating my enjoyment of soccer or what I learned in screenwriting class pretentious? Don't be so snotty! Anyway, Scott often conflates things he doesn't like or understand with objectively "bad." He has always done this. Stop being surprised.
So based on the graph supplied by WUB, i assume that "fun" only occurs in the right half of the square. Ie Arousal, Flow, Control, Relaxation. Any permutation of these 4 states in a game or activity makes it "fun", assuming that "fun" is defined as a pleasurable response to a current activity or situation and thus causing a desire to repeat or prolong it.
One of my main questions was if Fun was related to challenge. Using the graph i see that it is, but only with relation to individual skill level. High Skill level i see, is always good. All 4 of the states occur at mid to high skill level, while low skill level frames the other 4 states, which are unsatisfactory.
However, randomness and hence, luck, is still unaccounted for, skill level will never affect that, again taking the example of rock paper scissors, or a game of Mahjong, or random crits in team fortress 2. Randomness would probably be outside the graph, acting as a variable to affect the level of fun in any of the 4 "fun" related states.
lifecircle is precisely right. All these social non-games are closer to video slot machines than they are to Tetris. The only difference is that you can put money in for a better chance of winning, or even guaranteed winning, but you don't win real money! Imagine a casino where you paid to spin the slots, but money never came out. You could only win more spins, lines, and change the symbols on the wheels.
People with low skills love games with more randomness and less challenge. The reasons are obvious. And plenty of people who are not experts at gaming have already recognized this fact, and have moved on it.
Anyway, Scott often conflates things he doesn't like or understand with objectively "bad." He has always done this. Stop being surprised.
To be fair, Shads is pretty new, I don't know if he's been around long enough to know that this is the normal state of affairs. I don't say that to be mean or cruel, it's just what I've observed of the man - when it comes to doling out grains of salt, you gotta give Scott his own special flavor.
There's lots of flavors of fun in videos games, but one of my favorites is a sort of emotional orgasm. It's that moment when you overcome hardship and trumph. It is on the opposite side of the coin with frustration (where you falter and lose with no payoff), which is like emotional blue balls (note, this is different from losing in Dwarf Fortress since losing in that game is basically the release of tension since you know it's coming eventually).
Gratifying release of tension is the bread and butter of singleplayer games; there's nothing better than almost losing and then winning. There's a good example in the Company of Heroes campaign mission 4: Carentan Countreattack. You are tasked to hold the line against a German counterattack which will be coming from the north over three bridges for 45min (or something).
You are setup in a town square and you have a fallback position at a church in the lower corner of the map. There's a peroid of calm before the storm where you setup your defenses, but you don't have quite enough to totally cover all of the bridges (tension builds). Then the first waves arrive. They break themsleves against your defenses but they get blown up by mines, caught up on barbed wire, cut down by machine gun fire (tension releases slightly). But they don't stop. Before long, your mines are cleared, your machine guns can't kill Nazis fast enough, tanks start rumbling over the bridges (tension builds). You move AT guns forward and blast away at the armored forces bearing down on you (tension releases slightly). A couple slip by and start blown stuff up in the town. You are forced to split your attention between hunting down tanks that have pierced your defenses and repositioning AT guns to prevent more from crossing (tension builds more).
Nazi forces get even more numerous, now armored cars start to cross, avoiding your AT guns and dropping troops off at your supply points; you start losing ground. You pull men off the bridges and fall back further into the town, firing out of window and down tight alleys, trying to keep your points from being captured (tension BUILDS). All of a sudden, German artillery fire starts smashing your defenses. In seconds, what forces remain on the bridge are obliterated, your men in the city are quickly getting overwelmed. (TENSION BUILDS) You box your forces and hit a mass Retreat! You fall back to the church, Nazis bearing down on all sides. Your ragged forces fire from makeshift cover, desperate. (OOH SHIIIIT)
All of a sudden, BLAM, SPLODE, BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA, fucking mustangs start dive bombing the germans (RELEASE). Sherman Tanks arrive and start blasting the enemy armor. Fucking reinforcements arrive en masse (HNNNNNNNNNNNNNG). You use these to roll over the Germans, taking every inch land back (PPPPhhhoooooooooooo...). VICTORY!
Almost every moment described was crafted over hundreds of playthroughs to feel like they are organic. The bridges are too far apart to be on the screen at the same time, so you're constantly having to change where you're looking. You don't have enough AT guns to cover all the bridges at the same time so you have to move them, and they move SUPER SLOW. The control points are well behind your lines so you have to pull troops away from the bridges to prevent them from being captured once your lines have been breached. You can feel your line crumbling but all you can do is make sacrifices and put out fies as they start. The thing is, it is nearly impossible to fail this mission if you're not retarded. However, it is also nearly impossible to prevent that gradual push back to the lower corner of the map from happening.
This is a very specific type of fun that games are, I think, uniquely good at delivering; tricking you into thinking you're a bad ass. It's ruined when you know the mechanisms are there, however (sorry if you haven't played Carentan Counterattack yet) and doesn't really stand up to multiple playthroughs as you'll start seeing the man behind the curtain.
Now I want to play Company of Heroes, I remember getting into that mission and then giving up when it seemed that the bridges were lost and then something else caught my attention and I stopped playing CoH thinking that I would get back to it in the future.
Whatever kiddo. Cult of the expert. How is me stating my enjoyment of soccer or what I learned in screenwriting class pretentious? Don't be so snotty!
I didn't mean to target you specifically, but more the discussion of dopamine reception and bio-chemistry.
Anyway, Scott often conflates things he doesn't like or understand with objectively "bad." He has always done this. Stop being surprised.
To be fair, Shads is pretty new, I don't know if he's been around long enough to know that this is the normal state of affairs. I don't say that to be mean or cruel, it's just what I've observed of the man - when it comes to doling out grains of salt, you gotta give Scott his own special flavor.
I don't know all of you very well, but I've been listening to Geeknights for quite some time. I know Scott always does this. I don't expect him to stop. I also think it's fair for me to make fun of him about it.
Randomness decreases difficulty and minimizes the impact of skill. One absolves oneself of fault for failure in a random game.
In your Team Fortress 2 game recently, im sure you were faced with random critical hits onto your person, or be the one dishing them out. Would you say you felt accomplished when killing another player through a random chance, and thus feel more motivated, or would you dismiss that and instead feel accomplished because you managed a random crit on the soldier, was able to get the intelligence and thus win the game for the team. Do you feel that your experience was cheapened in any way?
Since you discuss absolving oneself off fault in a random situation, ie, you dying to a random critical hit, if the situation was reverse and you won the game for the team or killed a player your normally would have extreme difficulty doing, would you absolve yourself off that accomplishment as well? If so, do you still find that it is still objectively "fun" if you cannot even acknowledge that achievement?
While simple randomness does nothing to improve the state of most games, some games i feel, like TF2, have Randomnes for motivational use. If a newbie soldier who keeps dying and suddenly shoots a crit rocket and kill 3 people, he;s going to feel real good about himself. Sure he may think that was random, but still, it was his rocket, he aimed it, he pulled the trigger, and he got the kills. Its a great motivational feeling of accomplishment. Was he having fun till that point, maybe not, but like scott mentioned, you would feel accomplished in taking a headshot, and i think this is the same on principle with regards to carrots being there to motivate learning in a game.
Randomness decreases difficulty and minimizes the impact of skill. One absolves oneself of fault for failure in a random game.
In your Team Fortress 2 game recently, im sure you were faced with random critical hits onto your person, or be the one dishing them out. Would you say you felt accomplished when killing another player through a random chance, and thus feel more motivated, or would you dismiss that and instead feel accomplished because you managed a random crit on the soldier, was able to get the intelligence and thus win the game for the team. Do you feel that your experience was cheapened in any way?
The random crits just anger me, and I hate that they exist in the game. That's why I rarely play TF2. I regard my successes far less there than in other games, as they are heavily influenced by randomness and luck. It feels very cheap, because I'm motivated primarily by testing and exhibition of skill.
Since you discuss absolving oneself off fault in a random situation, ie, you dying to a random critical hit, if the situation was reverse and you won the game for the team or killed a player your normally would have extreme difficulty doing, would you absolve yourself off that accomplishment as well? If so, do you still find that it is still objectively "fun" if you cannot even acknowledge that achievement?
I find it far less fun when it's the result of randomness. I'm deeply unmotivated when the results of my actions are heavily influenced by chance in a game like this.
While simple randomness does nothing to improve the state of most games, some games i feel, like TF2, have Randomnes for motivational use. If a newbie soldier who keeps dying and suddenly shoots a crit rocket and kill 3 people, he;s going to feel real good about himself. Sure he may think that was random, but still, it was his rocket, he aimed it, he pulled the trigger, and he got the kills. Its a great motivational feeling of accomplishment. Was he having fun till that point, maybe not, but like scott mentioned, you would feel accomplished in taking a headshot, and i think this is the same on principle with regards to carrots being there to motivate learning in a game.
It's slot machine psychology, and it works very well on lower-skill players. But it does nothing but demotivate someone like myself. TF2, with no statefulness and no randomness, would be one of my favorite multiplayer FPSs. Instead, it's an occasional pasttime at best.
Of course the player in TF2 who gets a random crit is going to feel like they accomplished something. That's probably because they don't know it is random! There is an illusion of real accomplishment. It's living a lie. Like when someone dominates all their friends at Street Fighter, then goes to a real tournament and gets perfected out in the first round. Even if you know it's random, there is still the difference between being happy because you hit the jackpot on a slot machine vs. being happy because you won the World Series.
It's like the game is lying to you. Giving you compliments. Telling you how skilled you are. That you are awesome! Of course a game that lies to you will be enjoyable. People love it when others compliment them, even if the others are games. As long as they don't know it's a lie it works great.
Perhaps that is one of the key reasons I don't enjoy these games. I made my wisdom check against them, and I disbelieved. I can only actually get that enjoyment when I actually accomplish something for real, or the lie is so good that I believe it. For others, ignorance is bliss. Like when I played Pac-Man CEDX and those achievments popup I just get angry. Get the fuck off the screen! But when I see those 400 people with higher scores than me, oh boy does my blood boil.
Comments
Here's the part I'll dig at specifically: So, by solipsism, I trust that you believe that you do in fact matter, from this we can see that you have high skills and take on the most difficult challenges; so, Scott Rubin, what are these skills and challenges? Spewing this into a microphone twice a week? Playing games which have no risk and require no true skills? Going to large gatherings of people and telling them they are wrong? What?
Yes, maybe if a person only watches low brow tv, plays only Yhatzee and facebook games and seek the easy way out in everything they ever do, maybe just then I could accept your oppinion of them and think that they haven't lived their lives in full potential. But life needs mixes of challenge and easiness. Sometimes I like to really challenge myself with the games I play and sometimes I just like to press x to see pretty pictures and "you win"-message.
If you judge person based on selective details, that's no good. Also because getting bandages in Super Meat Boy is too hard for you I will think that you are, as a human being, below me no matter what else you have achieved in your life.
BOW DOWN, SAVAGES.
Second - Point out to me exactly where anyone has said anything like that WoW is high-brow, or tried to defend WoW. The only person in this thread who has mentioned WoW is you, and I don't think that people saying things like "Enjoy whatever you're going to enjoy, it's okay to enjoy things which might not be of the highest quality" is defending WoW or anything like it.
Sorry to turn a fire extinguisher on your merrily burning straw-man, but frankly, I fucking well expect better from you, Rubin. Argue well or Concede.
That must mean I suck, right?
Don't be so snotty!
Anyway, Scott often conflates things he doesn't like or understand with objectively "bad." He has always done this. Stop being surprised.
One of my main questions was if Fun was related to challenge. Using the graph i see that it is, but only with relation to individual skill level. High Skill level i see, is always good. All 4 of the states occur at mid to high skill level, while low skill level frames the other 4 states, which are unsatisfactory.
However, randomness and hence, luck, is still unaccounted for, skill level will never affect that, again taking the example of rock paper scissors, or a game of Mahjong, or random crits in team fortress 2. Randomness would probably be outside the graph, acting as a variable to affect the level of fun in any of the 4 "fun" related states.
People with low skills love games with more randomness and less challenge. The reasons are obvious. And plenty of people who are not experts at gaming have already recognized this fact, and have moved on it.
http://blog.betable.com/social-gamers-are-gamblers/
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/39632/Slot_machine_maker_IGT_buys_social_game_dev_for_500M.php
Gratifying release of tension is the bread and butter of singleplayer games; there's nothing better than almost losing and then winning. There's a good example in the Company of Heroes campaign mission 4: Carentan Countreattack. You are tasked to hold the line against a German counterattack which will be coming from the north over three bridges for 45min (or something).
You are setup in a town square and you have a fallback position at a church in the lower corner of the map. There's a peroid of calm before the storm where you setup your defenses, but you don't have quite enough to totally cover all of the bridges (tension builds). Then the first waves arrive. They break themsleves against your defenses but they get blown up by mines, caught up on barbed wire, cut down by machine gun fire (tension releases slightly). But they don't stop. Before long, your mines are cleared, your machine guns can't kill Nazis fast enough, tanks start rumbling over the bridges (tension builds). You move AT guns forward and blast away at the armored forces bearing down on you (tension releases slightly). A couple slip by and start blown stuff up in the town. You are forced to split your attention between hunting down tanks that have pierced your defenses and repositioning AT guns to prevent more from crossing (tension builds more).
Nazi forces get even more numerous, now armored cars start to cross, avoiding your AT guns and dropping troops off at your supply points; you start losing ground. You pull men off the bridges and fall back further into the town, firing out of window and down tight alleys, trying to keep your points from being captured (tension BUILDS). All of a sudden, German artillery fire starts smashing your defenses. In seconds, what forces remain on the bridge are obliterated, your men in the city are quickly getting overwelmed. (TENSION BUILDS) You box your forces and hit a mass Retreat! You fall back to the church, Nazis bearing down on all sides. Your ragged forces fire from makeshift cover, desperate. (OOH SHIIIIT)
All of a sudden, BLAM, SPLODE, BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA, fucking mustangs start dive bombing the germans (RELEASE). Sherman Tanks arrive and start blasting the enemy armor. Fucking reinforcements arrive en masse (HNNNNNNNNNNNNNG). You use these to roll over the Germans, taking every inch land back (PPPPhhhoooooooooooo...). VICTORY!
Almost every moment described was crafted over hundreds of playthroughs to feel like they are organic. The bridges are too far apart to be on the screen at the same time, so you're constantly having to change where you're looking. You don't have enough AT guns to cover all the bridges at the same time so you have to move them, and they move SUPER SLOW. The control points are well behind your lines so you have to pull troops away from the bridges to prevent them from being captured once your lines have been breached. You can feel your line crumbling but all you can do is make sacrifices and put out fies as they start. The thing is, it is nearly impossible to fail this mission if you're not retarded. However, it is also nearly impossible to prevent that gradual push back to the lower corner of the map from happening.
This is a very specific type of fun that games are, I think, uniquely good at delivering; tricking you into thinking you're a bad ass. It's ruined when you know the mechanisms are there, however (sorry if you haven't played Carentan Counterattack yet) and doesn't really stand up to multiple playthroughs as you'll start seeing the man behind the curtain.
Since you discuss absolving oneself off fault in a random situation, ie, you dying to a random critical hit, if the situation was reverse and you won the game for the team or killed a player your normally would have extreme difficulty doing, would you absolve yourself off that accomplishment as well? If so, do you still find that it is still objectively "fun" if you cannot even acknowledge that achievement?
While simple randomness does nothing to improve the state of most games, some games i feel, like TF2, have Randomnes for motivational use. If a newbie soldier who keeps dying and suddenly shoots a crit rocket and kill 3 people, he;s going to feel real good about himself. Sure he may think that was random, but still, it was his rocket, he aimed it, he pulled the trigger, and he got the kills. Its a great motivational feeling of accomplishment. Was he having fun till that point, maybe not, but like scott mentioned, you would feel accomplished in taking a headshot, and i think this is the same on principle with regards to carrots being there to motivate learning in a game.
It's slot machine psychology, and it works very well on lower-skill players. But it does nothing but demotivate someone like myself. TF2, with no statefulness and no randomness, would be one of my favorite multiplayer FPSs. Instead, it's an occasional pasttime at best.
It's like the game is lying to you. Giving you compliments. Telling you how skilled you are. That you are awesome! Of course a game that lies to you will be enjoyable. People love it when others compliment them, even if the others are games. As long as they don't know it's a lie it works great.
Perhaps that is one of the key reasons I don't enjoy these games. I made my wisdom check against them, and I disbelieved. I can only actually get that enjoyment when I actually accomplish something for real, or the lie is so good that I believe it. For others, ignorance is bliss. Like when I played Pac-Man CEDX and those achievments popup I just get angry. Get the fuck off the screen! But when I see those 400 people with higher scores than me, oh boy does my blood boil.