Bill’s talked a lot–well, in bits and pieces–about how most computer games are inherently conservative in their values, simply because the gameplay is based on the principles of self-defense and the development of wealth/skills via “grinding” AKA long hours of hard work. I’m planning on exploring this idea in a little more depth using the games I play as an example, since right now all the non-gamers on this site have to work with are the occasional Star Citizen posts–but the video below just came out and got me thinking down a side trail:
Now, unless you’re playing Empyrion: Galactic Survival or are looking for a new space survival/exploration/building game there’s not really any point in watching it. It’s just a discussion between a couple of the better-known players and one of the game developers about the upcoming 10.6 alpha update. Lots of specs and details that won’t make any sense unless you’re already familiar with how the game works.
But it’s a beautiful example of one of the things which is increasingly common in our time and would’ve been all but unimaginable even twenty years ago: direct and fairly extensive contact between the developers and the people playing the game. In this particular instance, the devs also periodically put out polls to get direction from the players about which features of the game should be focused on next.
This sort of thing can be pretty dangerous when it’s writers and their audience, as there seems to be a tendency for the characters/storyline to get warped rather than improved, with the writers starting to simply pander to the people that shout loudest. With games, though, it seems to be a good way to make sure that things are actually working and of levering the experience and creativity of the group as a whole.
What I really find most striking about this, though, is how I almost shrugged at this as nothing worthy of remark–but it would’ve been unimaginable back when I was a kid! We got the finished version of the games and that was that, and if some mechanism was utterly broken, well too bad, you just had to figure out how to work around it. Nowadays, it’s common for games to spend years in open alpha as the developers work with broad player feedback to get everything patched and balanced into something that’s really solid. It’s easy to take this kind of collaboration for granted, but it’s something new and great about current society that’s been made possible by the internet.
It’s easy to point at the various ways the internet/social media is damaging society–it’s good, I think, to look for some of the many counter-examples.
13 replies on “Power of the collective for good”
Yup! It’s a nicely rounded game, although there’s currently a bit of panic over the developers trying to rebalance things in the new experimental build for better performance in multi-player mode. Given how attentive they seem to be to player feedback, I’m not worried, but some of the players have spent many many hours building beautiful and elaborate spaceships and are afraid they’ll get completely broken.
But for someone who’s interested in dabbling in the whole spaceships-and-guns-in-pretty-locations genre, it’s a much lower (and cheaper) threshold of entry, with a huge amount of gameplay already available, as opposed to Star Citizens’ current state.
Alternately: Lego for people who want to be able to actually fly around in their creations.
Entrapped in the matrix? It is beginning to look like it to me. How about using that method to work on real problems in the real world instead of imaginary problems in total fantasy universes?
Has some good come from the game development world? Yes. It has made computer hardware super fast and super cheap so I can accomplish more, faster, and spend much less money doing it. I am working with a 6 month old 4″x4″x2″ Intel NUC computer that cost me less than $600. It has many multiples the capability of the mid tower computer it replaced. Since I don’t play computer AR/VR games, the built in graphics is more than fast enough for my purposes.
The NUC computer could not have been matched five years ago for under $10000. Considering it is only an 8th generation CPU based computer, it was obsolete by the time I started using it. It replaces an antique 4th generation CPU based computer that I had used for more than five years before it died.
Given the massive funds raised within hours of any given catastrophe, or the online groups that work together to track down terrorist groups or trafficking circles, I think there are plenty of “in real life” instances of collaboration via the internet for good.
Video games are good deal less dangerous and “entrapping” than most social media sites, I’d say. If there’s anything analogous to the Matrix, it’s something more like Facebook or Instagram than an exploration game like Empyrion. One of the reasons I keep playing it is because I find that it helps me better observe and appreciate the natural world around me–but I’ll discuss this more at length in its own post at some other time.
Stay on context. The entrapment I mention is by the games themselves and not necessarily the internet. Also, I mentioned one good not as if it were the only good but that it was one good.
Hence I was not saying that all games are evil all the time. There are some benefits to be gained. However, games, any game, are simulated reality and NOT reality. It looks to me that far too many game players lose themselves in their synthetic universes as a protection from having to deal with the real universe.
Take a breather once in a while. Smell the roses. Listen to the birds singing. Do something that makes the real world a better place some of the time. You might find a much more satisfying relationship to reality as compared with simply collecting more points in a synthetic universe. In other words, actually live in reality sometimes.
Yeah, I’m definitely going to reply to this in a separate post.
Though given that I tend to go 3-4 months at a stretch without playing anything at all, your admonition really isn’t applicable.
Am I to understand you prefer synthetic living over really living?
By the way: Admonition
noun
an act or action of admonishing; authoritative counsel or warning.
Do you actually believe I view you an authority on anything?
No, I believe that you believe that you are an authority on the matter. My usage fits the definition you supplied.
And like I said, I often go MONTHS without playing any video games at all. How do you take that as a preference for “synthetic living”?
I am very disappointed to see such a low level of reading comprehension from a member of this community–and the seeming need to dominate. If I were less certain of my conservative values, such a response would make me question whether this was a place for me to discuss ideas and have them be granted a fair hearing.
Like I said, though, I will be writing a small series of posts on the question of whether there’s value in gaming–and probably one on the danger of gaming vs. social media, because I think one is far more insidious than the other. If you feel the need to continue pressing this topic, please save any further comments for those posts, as this particular post really is mostly unrelated.
I AM the authority on my understanding of the subject matter.
I did not know, nor cared, that you existed. You were NOT my target. I was addressing the general case as I understand it and suggesting an alternate path might be more satisfactory to one and all.
Yet you object to the suggestion in that you felt attacked by me. I asked why and you continue to express a feeling that you are attacked by me.
Am I not permitted to ask questions? Are your feelings so sanctimonious they are beyond questioning?
Sir, you are most certainly permitted to ask questions. However, a conversation can only work if all participants are open to learning from each other. As you seem unable to respond to what I actually say as opposed to the filter of expectations that you’re overlaying over my words, I will no longer respond to any of your comments.
Are you sure I am the one unwilling to have a conversation about the substance of the issue? You have yet to address it and have taken my initial comments as if they were specifically directed to you. This even though they were not and I clearly explained that I did not know you existed nor did I care that you existed. Yet you take it as a personal attack and overlay MY comments by that which is not there.
A true joy to behold.
I’ve been watching this play out in real w/ Imperator: Rome. The game was roundly panned, possibly rightly so, when it was released last spring. Since then, Paradox, rather than get defensive, has gone completely transparent. First releasing a 1yr dev map for the game and then releasing a playable beta of the Cicero update in July, I think. And they’ve been very good re: taking input from the users and shaping the game based on that. Cicero was released about a week ago. The reviews were uniformly positive and Paradox seems to have earned a lot of goodwill for bringing the users into the dev process.
It’s always great to see that happen–when an organization takes a mistake and learns from it rather than just doubling-down.