Is Zizek right about the Reality of the Virtual

...

...

it's way too cartoony for it to be actually gorey

I firmly believe that civilization would have burned to the ground by now if it wasn't for video games.

pro tip
playing tabletop rpgs is actually a very good way to understand the basic underlying psychology of your friends and family, try it with a female friend you're seeing.

I actually haven't even touched any video game for years.

This is the only board that I go to, so I guess I should say those are equally as bad now.

It is very consciously "childish" and unrealistic and for that reason I like that it appeals to edgy kids way less than "serious" productions like Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, Dota or whatever else is popular nowadays, you get the gist. I do believe that paradoxically makes it more mature in its intent. Those are also the type of games that Zizek tackles here. Not like he's talking about Minesweeper or Angry Birds here ffs, but those that can greatly imitate you, your subconscious desires by putting you in a different reality.

I also have nothing against something like Wolfenstein 3D. It's an fps, but it's not edgy at all and it certainly does appeal to my inner desire to kill nazis, which I don't want to get rid of contrary to my inner desire to be a rapist, which I'd rather repress into non-existence instead. Doom released like a year later was super edgy though and wasn't it the one that raised disputes about realistic ultra violence in video game industry or something? Either way it's too edgy and too focusing on delivering pleasure from massacring for me to handle nowadays as is any modern interation of Wolfenstein franchise. I know it's arguable but for me Wolfenstein 3D isn't that at all and succeeds at drawing the line where you deliver pleasure from mental challenges and testing your reflexes (and killing nazis) rather than just being violent for the sake of being violent. TF2 also succeeds at that. It's not the kind of game that psychopaths would rather choose.

And we all know all those strategies for "intellectuals" like Hearts of Iron and so on are actually imperialism simulators so…

Actually sctratch that, all somewhat realistic strategy games in general whether it's Civilization or Total War.

Pretty sure that even on default settings there's flying corpses, body parts and blood everywhere regardless. It could be argued that its cartoonishness added to that is a satire of all those games that satisfy the needs for realistic violence though. It doesn't take it seriously.

I don't think so. If we go back to the 1980's we didn't have this concern except from the Christian puritans that thought everything was corrupting youth. There was a concern on both sides of the iron curtain of how video games would effect children devloping social skills but that is a concern that has been drown out by the irrational fear of it promoting violence.

Zizek here completely over looks that video games has rules set down by the developer thus there are constraints put on the player. What you have is players either conforming to what is expected of them by the developer or trying to subvert the developer yet mostly the later is a exercise in futility as the game Stanley Parable explored in that unless you actual manage to break the game you tend to still be within the limits of actions the developer has allowed you to perform. For example if the developer doesn't want the player to harm a NPC or fellow player, he can make them invincible or even remove your ability to attack them. Thus your actions in a game can't be your true self as your actions are manipulated by the developer of the game.

Many games in the simulation and sandbox traditions give you a wide license to do what you please in the context of the game-world, which can be a many faceted simulation.

It's a source of much confusion in the media because these games don't explicitly incentivize you for doing nasty things (rewards/points/victory and such), they just allow you.

For example, the early Fallout games had child characters in the game world. You also had guns in the game world. You could kill the child characters, but there was no in-game "quest" or "incentive" to do so. In fact, it destroyed your in game reputation, much like killing civilians in Grand Theft Auto summons the police.

That was also a major source of conflict in G*mergate, because the academic consensus was that even permitting the player agency to do rotten things should be strongly discouraged and prohibited. They want games to be restrictive and instructive, not anarchic.

He is right. I find it hard to play evil characters in RPGs like Neverwinter Nights or Fallout, partly because often this leads to you missing out on rewards and bonuses, which is of course a constraint in some games where the developer would rather have his players act as a good character, and also because it just doesn't feel right to do evil things.

There is also a sense of vigor that these games give you. RPGs in particular can do this for me after finishing a quest where you save a group of people by killing some raiders. But honestly I wish more games would give you hard choices, choices where you don't really know whether you will do good or bad, and all you have is your intuition.

You actually have games where you can pretty much do whatever you want. The Fallout series up to NV (I don't know about F3 and F4, those were pieces of shit) allow you to kill anyone you want. Some games don't.

The game with the bunny-hopping wall-hackers spraying porn on the walls while mic spamming Rick Astley was serious?

Isn't empathy and reading others' emotional cues fairly non-autistic?

wasteland 2

didn't nv have immortal characters?

i was using a very loose, slang definition of "autistic".

Videogames usually make emotions more obvious than in real life and some high functioning autists have empathy of the sense of "feel bad for hurting you", just a huge deficit in "knowing they're hurting you" or something like that.

Even then the game tends to coerce the player.

youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1tAmAFSc-YS63RrFMwkG0GuPVN70ku_G

Suggestions aren't coercion. You can ignore the missions and goals of GTA completely and just enjoy the other aspects of the simulation, if you want. Hence the "multifaceted" part.

But again, academics analyze games as though being given the *option* to do something means *you must* do something. This extends to the fact that they could just not play the game, but the option to play it is also unacceptable.

Did you watch the series I linked? It shows how GTA 5 multiplayer makes it much harder to be a pacifist.

It's something you play as a 13 year old to appear badass to your peers. Right next to GTA and bragging how much pussy you have obliterated last week. We all know it's designed to appeal to teens.

I'd expect that from a game called Grand Theft Auto.

But I also think his argument undermines itself, because although the games' purpose as a crime and mayhem simulation and story (exactly "what's on the tin"), he uses his in-game agency to subvert that intention, and is at least partially successful.

To believe that other players wouldn't think of rebelling similarly, or the developers didn't anticipate such, is just being obnoxious.

In many sandbox/adventure titles, players get absorbed in ancillary activities and never even get around to the "missions" or "big adventure" that they're supposedly coerced into.

I've spent numerous hours in GTA just driving around and taking in the in the sights, treating it as a driving simulator so I can save gas.

The lesson to take from all that is that there's probably a large untapped market for simulators of nonviolent activities that's going unserved.

Games are hard to make and the market is starving and receptive to anything novel.

...

You never played Counterstrike before. The thirteen year-olds never lasted long before ragequitting. Oh god, it was funny when they had mics.

Get you some Tropico, and be on the other end of the imperialism business.

everyone played it back in times at school in 2004 or so

Honestly, I just listen to his stuff for entertainment.

They probably played just long enough to get no-scoped by a scout.

You're all a bunch of fucking hackers! RRRRAAAAAGHHH!

Was that when Source first came out? If so, I think I know what you are talking about.

The issue is the agency of the player vs the agency of developer and how the systems actual work within the game. How the game reacts to the player in turn effects how players react to the game.

Can somebody please reply to this post so I can have the piece of mind that I ain't been banned or muted? It said in red text on one of my threads that I was taken on a "quiet car ride"…

traffic noises

I dunno if I should feel relieved or on edge, but thanks, comrade.

So I'm not the only person who does this
Its so strange that for me escapism is being a good person and solving problems in a pacific manner

i just want them to be happy

I only play warships, eu4 and hoi4.

Am I really a ship or a nation?

Hello newfriend.

Yes and that is the interesting and disturbing part
capitalism has eroded the public sphere so much that ideal communal interactions are a dream worth escaping to.

Anywho do you guys have any cool recs for games that let me be a good neighbor?

i haven't been playing in almost years but with the risk of being trite you should play the first two fallouts and planescape: torment.

I could never do a playthrough in which i didn't swindle the mayor of vault city for being an unbelievable cunt.