Games as escapism

To append onto this, with a good RPG I've never felt as though I've wasted time upon completion, but there are certain points when playing arguably more challenging games, like certain management sims or multiplayer games, where you reach a point of "why am I even bothering with this? It's just numbers on a screen".

Games that focus on escapism as at least part of the equation (doesn't have to be open world, e.g. Grim Fandango), never give me this feeling, since I feel the enjoyment came less from the "numbers" I managed to get and more from just experiencing the world and the characters.

I'm not sure where you are getting this from. Immersion isn't a binary thing.

yeah, it just plain doesn't exist. It's a phase you grow out of and is ultimately extremely ethereal.

Alright buddy.

so deep you feel like you're there?
that's a mental disorder.

I definitely get this. If it ever reaches a point in a game when I can significantly progress or even "win" just by opening up the save file into a hex editor and changing a few numbers, then I recognize the game as pointless. That's why I pretty much never play games unless they have some story, or are focused on building something largely visual. I can't "cheat" my way into building a giant, functioning, aesthetically pleasing city, so it's worthwhile.

Well obviously that's a non-literal use of language, but certain worlds do feel better realized and thus more immersive than others. It's no more a "mental illness" than reading one of Robert Graves' historical fiction novels and feeling more immersed in the time period than you would with a cheap period drama would be considered a mental illness.

I'm a professional escapist, I regularly partake in cannabis and alcohol to make my mind state as enjoyable as it was when I was younger, and able to forget my physical presence and immerse myself in the screen in front of me as if it was a window I can use to control an avatar in another world. Games with custom character settings were the easiest to do but almost anything with at least a name changer could work.

Interesting. The thing is for me, this tendency has only grown as I have grown older. When I was younger I used to play TFC in a fairly good clan and what have you, but these days I just regard that sort of enterprise as completely pointless.

Playing games for the "challenge" is understandable in some regards, but again, it strikes me as pointless. Why invest all that time for a challenge that yields nothing more than numbers on a screen and maybe some online bragging rights? Compared to something like taking up a sport becoming le souls game master xD is a complete waste of your energy.

At least my hard work can be seen in every single screenshot of that place.

Let me tell you, it's rough being sober and without vidya around family during the holidays, innit?

Yes, I really feel that playing games for the "challenge" is something only kids and teens do. Adult have enough challenges in their daily lives, with work and social networks, that it would be unreasonable to go home after a difficult shift and want to spend free time grinding at numbers. That's why most people just zone out watching movies, or play mobile games that don't require much thought.

Even people I know that still play multiplayer games mostly do it as social lubricant for people they know online. They can't physically meet up and hang around at a bar, so they do so in a multiplayer game. For the most part, they don't even give a shit about not being very competent at the game. "Git gud" is for children who have ten hours every day to grind at twitch shooters until they luck into winning a match. Then they can pretend as if it was their mastery and skill, or whatever.

Is this really something you wanna start before the new year?

Quiet, you. I'm having a grown-up discussion over here.

Why don't you go try to get the highest possible score in Japanese Tetris, or beat that screamy guy's best time in that one Goldeneye level, or something.

Nah I have live in gf. I got her into doing it too. I've always had an over active imagination, to this day I always day dream about what I would do if I was reincarnated with my memories intact. Escapism is what I prefer to do with my free time.

I don't think he's right in calling it "luck", but the learning curve for pursuing any sort of half-decent multiplayer FPS these days, just due to the generally increased average level of skill (which is in turn due to the massively increased number of normal people playing online shooters compared to 15 years ago) is actually fairly steep.

The "git gud" thing and multiplayer gaming comms in general are just obnoxious. LoLfags are pretty bad, but DotA2 morons are even worse because they've got this added arrogance concerning the fact their ASSFAGGOT supposedly "requires more skill" than the other ASSFAGGOT.

Here's the thing with online games: It's not the mechanics that determine the difficult, it's the average level of skill of the player involved in general, and the average skill for your tier. Quake 3 Arena had very simple mechanics, but it was fucking hard if you were playing against dedicated players all the same.

This is a really basic, simple fact a lot of shitters seem to miss.

Escapism is for faggots

games are for challenge and self-improvement

THIS TBH OP

This. Game's fucking suck now though.

Yes, my age has actually increased my appreciation of linear games too. All those old adventure games and what have you.

Same with me.

Absolutely nothing relevant about your skillset as a human being improves as a result of playing games. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

This. Ever since I got engaged and had to dedicate my physical time with her I lost touch with my irl male friends. They're all console plebs but we get together on PS4 about every other night.

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It's mostly luck. Especially more modern ones like PUBG. You run around and hope to not get your head blown off by someone camping a nearby ridge. I find it's an excellent comparison to war in real life, in that it's not in the least bit fucking fair, and whether you live or die is mostly down to dumb luck. Ask anyone who was actually in war; ask him whether he thinks the people who came back with all their limbs intact were the "good" ones, and the ones who died were "n00bs".

Obviously I play them as a form of escapism, why else would I do it? They help me forget that life is hopeless.

YOU'RE A PART OF THE PROBLEM THAT PLAGUES THE VIDYA INDUSTRY

I haven't even bothered with PUBG. I get the impression when games journos hype stuff, they fail to realize that 95% of other people simply do not have the time to invest 8-10 hours a day into a single video game, so for someone like me, who can maybe play an hour or two a day (at most), it's a complete waste of time to even attempt.

I also get where you're coming from about luck, it seems to me PUBG is about exploiting mechanics rather than learning them, but this is from someone who has only seen videos.

Why? Escapism-based games have existed since the earliest text-based adventures, the likes of Zork, various MUDS, early LucasArts stuff later on and so on.

Are you one of those people who thinks anything with more than a Nintendo-tier plot is a "movie game" or something?

What about reaction times?

Someone post the rick and morty cereal bong picture

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Reaction times only improve marginally as a result of gaming, and then only in the short term.

Reaction times are actually a pretty good proxy for psychometric g you see, so they're a good indication of really innate levels of intelligence (I'm not exaggerating).

Yeah, it's really obvious. Since I'm the "baby" of my family, a lot of my social group is composed of people 10+ years older than I am and I'm fucking 30. And you know what they all have in common?

They love the games that Holla Forums tends to hate. Most of them play mobile games as "timewasters", and all of them like Bethesda games and play them often. The thing about Fallout 4 or Skyrim is that they're neatly compartmentalized and not searingly difficult. If you've only got a couple hours of free time per day, you can go explore one cave or go on one raiding mission, and expect to finish it when you run out of time. Also, if you haven't had time to play for a couple weeks because real-life got in the way, your skills will have rusted a little bit, but not to the point when you're basically starting over.

Doesn't translate into real life. Being quick with the mouse click or the keypress isn't going to make you quick at catching a glass falling off a table, for instance. Most of the things that require precision and speed, outside of video games, are done by machines.

just play games for fun. Also what's that game?

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tbh i don't really consider text based adventures or cinematic heavy games to be "games". they're more simulations than anything.

Okay, buddy. Why don't you put those things on your resume and see what a local business's HR director thinks about your "skills". You think leading a group in a multiplayer game is going to be the same as actually being in an army squad? Come on, man.

That's cool, but everyone else disagrees with you. Just because a game is cut-scene heavy, doesn't mean it isn't a game. Keep the halfchan nonsense in halfchan.

I'm exactly the same age as you, my brother is 5 years older. We both hold opinions that Holla Forums would consider verboten: Skyrim was great, Witcher 2/3 were better than Witcher 1 and so on.

Interestingly for me, there's a certain hierarchy for games I enjoy as escapism. Fantasy universes tend to come top, sci-fi ones second. Real-world third. I'm not actually a big fan of GTA games for that reason, the world doesn't feel purposeful or interesting, it just feels like a giant parody/satire, which doesn't really hold my interest. If that makes any sense. I also prefer TES to Fallout for similar reasons, the latter is just a lot more… unpleasant as a world. Although I like the series.

I play video games only when there is nothing else to do. You have to be quite intellectual to get what I'm on about so let me explain it to you: I merely use it to occupy my thoughts and prevent my superior brain from ever getting bored.

I used to play them for escapism, now I play them for my life

I did use videogames for escapism when I was younger. I used Morrowind for that. I guess it did work for a little bit but clearly not enough since the mental problems caught up with me.

You cannot escape

I prefer Fallout for the gameplay (guns over swords; I don't really like melee) and TES for the story. But they both suffer a bit in the endgame when you just get so powerful that most things are little more than an inconvenience.

Given that the industry exists for that sole purpose, I’d imagine that everyone here uses it for that, you stupid motherfucking subsapient piece of shit.

Given that half the people in this thread disagree, perhaps you might be wrong?

YOU'RE WRONG

Good times, but a fucking shit game holy fuck how does anyone play that garbage?

The golden age was 4+ years ago. The only ones that are left are the dregs of society. After all, if your mindset could mesh with the modern world you would have a better outlet at interaction.

No, that's called having a fucking imagination. Or are you saying that other mediums like books are used by mentally ill people?

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that's because New Vegas had a story,Todd

Flip flopping faggot. The average MUD is more engaging than NV.

Of course. So did FO4. Just because you don't LIKE something, doesn't mean it doesn't EXIST. That's just you being a shitposting faggot.

tbh i hate any game that has todd howard in it

i mean this is for>>14075937

Not true nigger ever hear of Guitarsmith? What if I wanted to learn an instrument?

An exact simulation of reality isn't really a game.

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Why not just… learn to play guitar with a real fucking guitar?

Isn't that what that game basically is, though? A guitar tutorial? And yes it is a game, it's basically guitar hero on an actual guitar

That's not a game, either; that's a TOOL for teachers. Are vocabulary flash cards a game? Is a song or mnemonic made up to learn the ABCs or the order of planets in the solar system a game? What about Mavis Beacon teaches typing? Nobody is going to play this kind of stuff on their own time.

Granted, it's entirely possible to use Kerbal Space Program to teach basic orbital mechanics and explore the history of rocketry. But you could do that much more efficiently with a book.

Hair splitting faggot. At this point you are warping the definition of video games. At this point I will refuse to call garbage like New Vegas a video game simply because it's nothing but a tl;dr with walking.

The definition of a "video game" at its most basic, is something you play for fun. Not something you play because the teacher makes you do it because you have ADD and can't just read your lessons.

Confirmed for being under the age of 20. You are the type of faggot that gets upset when you see others read a non fiction book for fun.

Does what to be in a comfy environment count?

Confirmed for being under the age of 15. You're the type of faggot that gets upset when people don't agree with everything he says.

absolute pleb taste

You are just bitching for the sake of bitching at this point. You have no argument outside of "that's not vido gaem!".

Wurm is the best MMO I've ever played. I wish there was a less shitty and grindy version, I just want to build a city from the ground up with my bros and ride around being obnoxious assholes.

wurm seems really fun, but hard to get into and quite a time sink

pic related is my escapism/immersive wild simulator,
I find it oddly satisfying, just going through it, day by day, in desolation

are you retarded?

And you have no argument other than disagreeing with everything I say, because you want to feel as if your playing video games isn't a waste of time, little better than watching TV.

You know why video games are good for educating children? Because they are stuck in school and have very little ability to learn from the real world. You know why Brain Age games are good for staving off alzheimers in old folks? Because they are retired and stuck at home and have very little ability to be challenged by their day-to-day life.

If you're not a child or an old fart, you have NO BUSINESS pretending as if video games are going to be enriching you or helping you develop skills. Maybe they can, but nothing compared to just going out in the real world and DOING SHIT. Your justifying your laziness and fear with nitpicking semantics, to your own detriment.

I don't disagree that games develop your abilities somewhat, whether it being indirect learning of stuff, to the more direct management and logistical of a lot of complex things, like transport fever or factorio
or even having a sense for building and design, and having higher learning proficiency, (from quickly be able to learn features and interfaces of the several games we "play")

however you probably will never claim that on a job interview and it will be surely useless anyway
most jobs will require you to only learn a very specific skill and tool sets and use it repeatedly to boredom
being a good worker is much less about being higher IQ, and much more being a mindless drone that doesn't complain

That's why people watch Netflix and browse Instagram. Playing games is the same shit, all people escape reality, I hate it when people imply that gaming is somehow soooo inferior to watching tv or browsing Pinterest.

cakeboi detected

person that never have read a book ever…

So you don't think say, the level of attention to detail shown in Wolf Hall adds to the immersion of the work as a whole?

Way too many people on imageboards who get mad at the notion that a game can deliver a narrative well. There are plenty of mindless grinds, competitive arena shooters, MOBAs etc for you to enjoy.

To me mine, and to you, yours.

Can you name a few games that are examples?

Grim Fandango, Blade Runner, PST, TLJ, Soma, KOTOR 2, RDR, TLOU, Silent Hill 2 just to name a few.

I used to do this in Minecraft but my toaster doesn't run it after MS bought it.

Anyone in the USA right now will understand the value of escapism.

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Also, what about something like learning a new language through games? That's how I learned english, is that useless as well?

That's incidental to playing games. And it's not that games can't teach you something, but that people harping on about how the only reason to play them is "challenge" and "competition" and that anyone who plays for worldbuilding, characters, story etc is a loser are hypocrites in this regard.

Man I don't even play video games anymore I just waste all of my god damn free time shitposting here.

I really used to to do it but nowadays its barely working for me
maybe fapping fucked this for me or something

Project harder.

I play video games because I have no other hobbies and nothing else to do, but I don't need to self-insert or anything.

I wish it weren't dead. What fun it was. I wish I had finished my arena and rarified my caravel.

Anyways, I occasionally boot up FSX to get my dose of 'tism, though I haven't in a while.

Dubs of truth.
You are the Video Game Dude.
Stay crotey totey, my dude.

Good for you.

I play games because it is illegal to kill people irl. But that soon may also change.

This, tbh.

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any form of entertainment is actually just escapism

Is that pic from brosmouth?

I use different genera for different purposes.
Sometimes when I need to clear my head I'll play something really intense that requires a lot of focus. A quick run of Doom between bouts of homework will usually offset the mental fatigue.
Whenever I'm listening to an audiobook or a podcast I'll play something that doesn't need a lot of attention just to keep myself alert and digesting the words.
The only game I use for escapism is Morrowind, and I get really immersed in RPing my characters using the journal mod. It's like being in a real-time book. People like to say that escapism isn't healthy, but there are certain problems in life that you can't solve, and escapism certainly helps ease the pain until you can make peace with them.

It isn't always possible to make peace with problems, sometimes it just makes it worse.

Well then that just fucking sucks because if you can't solve it or make peace there's really nothing you can do. I don't see how that was a useful comment.

You are forever trapped in reality

The same argument could me made against any number of hobbies, from martial arts to papercraft to range shooting. You may never apply those specific skills to a real situation outside of that hobby. But at some point you continue to do them out of the simple gratification of solving a challenging problem and improving upon yourself. That's the point.

There's a professional racer who won the Le Mans 24 hour endurance race, who got his start in pro racing by winning the Gran Turismo game's World Championship. Here's his youtube channel: youtube.com/channel/UCTyEUnIH0uTUctk0MISvueg
Wolfgang Reip. Have I proved you wrong yet?

Ideas flow. Creativity and imagination stem from something. Those roots can be the experiences derived from playing a video game. Case in point.

No.

Escapism is still the best reason to play video games. Deal with it.

What a display of shit taste.

That's not my point. I'm not arguing about reasons to play. I'm arguing games can help improve yourself.

Tell that to an automated factory line worker from 50 - 30 years ago. Among all activities that don't involve chemical poisoning nothing withers the brain faster than endlessly repeating a single, exactly the same move for 8 hours each day. Nothing.

I played SoC years ago, good game. Not sure what else you want me to say?

I'd rather play Call of Chernobyl than Fallout 3/4, and I guess it's the opposite for you. How to interpret that differently than lack of taste?

Poster now sticks to candy crush and other casual games for housewives.

They can do a lot, and have been documented doing so.
Spacial awareness, reaction time, tactical and strategic thinking, leadership from mmos, problem solving and so on.
The impact of these will be noticed more in some years. People who have played a lot of skill based games will stand out in certain fields.
If ww3 comes, there will be a large collection of naturally good shooters and snipers.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA FUCKING NO. Shooting a gun in real life is NOTHING like shooting a gun in a video game. You are not learning jack shit that applies to real sniper rifles when 360 noscoping in CS. When WW3 comes there will be a large collection of naturally good drone pilots and computer operators. Flying a drone from a chair on the ground is NOTHING like flying a real plane, and actual real pilots tend to have issues flying drones because they're not used to it. Video game players are ideal for those roles because they don't have to unlearn real plane flying.

What led you to believe this? I'm not that big on any post-apocalypse type games, that was the point of the post.

Are you just looking for things to rage about incoherently? Take your "le rage man grr hate everything xD" memetrash back to halfchan, faggot.

You joke, but when you're in your 30s and have a job it's actually very difficult to compete with a bunch of schoolkids who have (comparatively) limitless amounts of free time.

I'm not that poster, but for me it's more that I'm just not that interested in multiplayer games (asides from a few co-op and team-based ones) anymore. As already explained, they feel like more of a waste of time than a good single-player game does.

In some marginal ways, yes. But if you're looking to improve relevant skillsets, there is almost always a better equivalent IRL way.

Those result in tangible things or have tangible real-world applications (shooting especially).

The point of discussion here is that people criticize others for enjoying games as escapism while genuinely believing that playing them for the sake of on-screen number accumulation is somehow more mature. It's not.

You aren't fooling anyone. F4 is more popular than STALKER there, so you would fit in there better, double nigger that sees rage where it's none.

You're just ranting incoherently, I never said F4 was better than STALKER, it's some strawman you came up with in your head and decided to run with because you have some kind of mental illness. What I said was that I found fantasy universes more interesting than post-apocalypse ones.

Read again and give a DIFFERENT explanation than shit taste. I'm waiting. And yelling "faggot" won't work this time either, triple nigger.

I wasn't even talking about my favorite games, I was talking about preferences with reference to what the user I was replying to mentioned (TES and Fallout primarily). Read my post again, you literal ullililia-tier autist:

Do you seriously believe that if you omit a game from a discussion that is focusing on a few, that means you don't like that game?

Any activity you engage in to put your mind off things is escapism. So everyone who plays video games does. Even all the delusional faggots like this mongoloid do.

He's an anime shitter too. Probably plays Love Live and other trash-tier shit "for the challenge".

RIP brosmouth, the mythical city on the hills.
I can see my house from the pic.

The clouds are pretty, but the wing doesn't flex. In a real plane, that wing will be noticeably wiggling with any sort of turbulence.

Anyway, back a long time ago when I had a bigger desk, two monitors, and a lot more time, I playing FSX with a throttle quadrant and rudder box I built myself. That was some comfy shit. Half the time was spent doing logistics on the plane loadout and on a map with a notebook drawing out a flight plan. Never did figure out how to get compass bearings between the VOR markers, so I drew myself up a 360-degree protractor and just held it onto the monitor to get my exit headings.

Project a little harder, why don't you.

For once the smug animeposter is right. It's important to stive for the highest quality regardless of the task.

Why? It's just numbers on a screen.

Score isn't just a number, it's a testament to the drive of the individual who reached it. It looks like other anons in this thread already touched on this subject, see: >>14077932
and .

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That could be said of any pointless pursuit you can measure with a metric. Like "number of apples peeled in a three minute period".

Games are for escapism, and that is what they are best suited for, since the challenge they provide is ephemeral and doesn't offer you any benefits you wouldn't receive in greater abundance through a real life pursuit.

In contrast to this, experiencing a good story, characters, an interesting world etc - these are things that games can offer in a way other mediums cannot, and they're not pointless, since the journey is part of the reward anyway.

See? I think we both agree. Granted that example isn't a video game, but the same principles apply. Under exacting conditions one aims to be the best, which facilitates self-improvement. Modern video games are a lot more complex, so they have the potential to offer both a challenge and a narrative, but it's up to the individual to make use of these properties and gauge its effectiveness on the self.

It's the same as a good book. You get so focused on the material you forget yourself. That's why you can scare people that are deep in a book or game, you jerk them back to reality.

My life's pretty great these days and I play them for fun and sometimes to kill time while waiting for the next work cycle. That said I completely understand people who play them for escapism because my life used to be shit and without vidya to distract me I wouldn't have made it.

People who complain about escapism are normalfags, who are mad at people who're having a hard time daring to cope with it, and will obviously not lift a finger to help anyways.

Then why would you play games? I agree with literally everything else in your post, but you would have to be bored to play games for anything other than escapism. That's what games are good for.

What? Why?

Completely untrue, because at the end of those three minutes, you'll have several peeled apples, perfect for slicing into a snack, or making into an apple pie.

At the end of a gaming session where you have a high score, you'll always be left with nothing but a marginally-higher electricity bill. That's what separates a game like, say, Minecraft from a game where the only result is a score. You can say the kid playing Minecraft is wasting his time, but at the end of the day he'll have MADE SOMETHING, that can later be improved or added to. It's not as good as building something real and tangible, but it at least has worth. You can shoop a high score window or a speedrun clock to show a "better score" in five seconds; you couldn't shoop a full 1:1 blocky recreation of Minis Tirith with all the animators in Disney.

I started playing games because they were more engaging than books. I have never understood playing games for competitive purposes. I play games to have virtual experiences real life can't offer. This is why shit like MOBAs and competitive FPS games have no appeal to me whatsoever beyond an excuse to socialize. I find people who actually take them seriously to be childish and misguided.

Escapism just is a fancy way of saying that you are avoiding other responsibilities in life. Its also an issue of being having motivation. The issue of men turning to games to escape their duties is a byproduct of a decadent and decaying social order. The moral of the society is born from their Ethos which provides one with a Talos. However, this is where the topic begins to veer towards Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy. To frame this topic in the rem of video games is unrealistic and its bound to lead towards discussions that will inform one's policy prescriptions in terms of Politics and their are people here who are too immature to discern political bait from genuine on point commentary pertaining to the subject at hand. So, essentially the eternal question is question one may ask is:

VIDEO GAMES?

:^)

Yes. The last time I felt genuinely relaxed was back in the day when I had the freedom to just play vanilla WoW all day. Only reason I come back to private servers. Doesn't work now, but I keep thinking "maybe this time."

At its basest, this is untrue. Escapism is a coping mechanism to better deal with life. You can either work hard and then go home and play video games, for a lifetime of productivity, or you can work hard and never relax and die of stress at age 35 having never left the mailroom.

Relaxation is crucial to a human being's psychological well-being. All work and no play puts Jack into an early grave.

all dysfunctional behavior is a perverted coping mechanism to deal with life's changes.

challenges*

I do.
Now what?

Recreation is not a dysfunctional behavior. The methods may have changed, but man has been doing this since the very beginning.

I don't get in anything that leaves the ground without a parachute so I have my little pocket of flight sims, because flight has become everything but a pleasure these days. Nothing quite hits the spot like throwing some random aircraft failure at myself and trying to knuckle it back down.

I agree with both of you, even the guy who disagreed with me.

This is what I find maddening. People who play "competitive Starcraft" spamming "git gud xD" at people turning around and saying someone who plays games for character/story/world/immersion to be "useless escapism".

The best games ever made have all been about escapism. And the odd occasions I have gotten into competitive multiplayer, the fun I garnered was overwhelmingly from meeting new people and making new online friends, as opposed to the game in of itself.

Did you grow up in a padded cell?

This post was the opposite of edge.

What game? Looks really nice.

Wurm

When does Brohan start up lads?

to be fair, you have to have an extremely high IQ to enjoy escapist games

Holla Forums always bitches about the servers other people host so whenever they get their shit together and host their own is when it starts again.

True. The average mundane life may be fulfilling enough for the more simplistic people, but it's just not stimulating for the more intellectually evolved.

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Wew. Failures like this need to go. I pity (You).

Probably never

Anyn and crew don't play anymore so it is unlikely they'll ever host another server. One of you goys need to host it.

(you) are posting on a virgin only Imageboard