Why do you game?

LOOOOOOOOOVED Monday's post on Penny-Arcade... (the comic on Monday was awesome too)

http://www.penny-arcade.com/

"Old School
Mon, December 03 2007 - 12:37 AM
by: Tycho

Both our holiday visits had a number of moments like this one.

It's at least partially a story about how Nintendo dominates the entire universe, but that's not the core of it. Our parents and grandparents are playing videogames. A lot. My mom probably plays something like four hours a night. The "Brain Games" thing never got its hooks into me, but as a type of play that is a "Mental Exercise Regimen" it provides an in for people who won't allow themselves to enjoy leisure for leisure's (delicious) sake.

People play games (videogames included) for a number of reasons, and those motivations make different types of games more appealing than others. We're not measuring laser-cut slabs of aluminum here, with precise angles and volumes. We're talking about a context in which the weight of each element depends on the person viewing it. I will often read a review of a game I have played and cry aloud at its content, as though they were making false claims about demonstrable, physical phenomena. It's like I am gesturing with my whole body at what is obviously a pumpkin, and being told that the object on the table is, in fact, an opossum. They aren't liars, or villains. They are gamers. They simply have a different sort of metabolism, one that craves peculiar, to my mind heretical fare.

A good example of this playing out is in the guitars for Guitar Hero and Rock Band. When the Rock Band guitar is working, I vastly prefer it: its size and shape are much closer to electric guitars I have played, and the strum bar is thick at the outer edge to be gripped like a pick. Its operation is largely silent, without the characteristic click of a microswitch, designed (I am sure) explicitly to be quiet. Some people love that click, though - it means precision - and for the player who craves that fifth star, there is no higher virtue. Stars in single player are, for me, irrelevant. I'm sure this makes me a scoundrel. I only care about stars in co-operative multiplayer, where I see them as an index of our indomitable band spirit. I want a measurement of our unity. I'm playing the same game for an entirely different purpose. I wouldn't notice if it did click. When the song begins, I enter a trance.

That's a pretty serious distinction - people who play games in order to excel at them, and those who play games as a conduit to fantasy - and its only one axis of the diagram.

(CW)TB out.

your strange imagination


Gabe
Thanks
Mon, December 03 2007 - 12:06 PM
by: Gabe
I know today's comic is a strange one. It's not especially funny but the image of a pink DS in my Grandma's house was a potent one. Kara and I had just spent the better part of an hour talking with my grandparents about everything from how they met to what my Grandpa was thinking on VE day, being stationed in the Philippines. "Well, we're half done." is what he told me. He was telling me a story about being on night watch on a boat out in the Pacific. He was patrolling his side of the ship when a massive wave broke over the side and knocked him off his feet. He was nearly washed overboard but managed to grab onto a stanchion at the last minute. I kept asking questions and heard a few more incredible stories. I started to feel sort of ridiculous. What must our generation look like to them? I couldn't help but think about how different we are and that's when I noticed the DS. My Grandma told me she likes Card House games. It was a special moment for me and I'm proud that we captured it in a comic.

I know that I promised you all an interview with my Grandpa a couple years back. I showed him a WWII game and then talked with him about hisexperiences and what he thought of kids playing these kinds of games. I've still got the entire thing on a cassette tape and I'm honestly ashamed that I haven't transcribed it yet. It's my goal for this week.

Tycho talked about the different reasons people play games in his post and I thought it was pretty interesting. It's a conversation we've had before and I think it's something a lot of gamers probably don't think about. I remember it came up while we were both playing Metroid Prime: Corruption. I was talking to him about how I was getting frustrated because some of the boss battles were really giving me a hard time. I realised I don't play games for the challenge. I don't need or want to be punished by a game for making mistakes. I play games for what Ron Gilbert calls "new art". I play to see the next level or cool animation. I don't play games to beat them I play games to see them. Coming to that realisation was actually sort of important for me.

-Gabe out

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So what kind of gamer are you and why do you game? Is the "click" important to you? Are you into the "art" or "the challenge"?

I think I am a clicker in that the precision of whatever does help me feel a sense of achievement. I am also more into the art then the challenge. I'll definately use a money cheat in a game like the sims to just build and buy whatever I want. Its the building and the trying out of the new stuff that appeals to me... not the working towards levels to earn $$$ and awards. I do that too of course, but its not as satisfying for me.

I love to play mmos and I think for me it is the social aspect of the game along with the competition that is rewarding to me. I love playing with other people... strangers who are not strangers... but who are people like me.

I don't care about the "fifth star"... in the game world I can't. In RL I am much more the perfectionist. The reflexes aren't there and I can't allow myself the luxury of worrying about whether I score a C, B or S, because I would never get through the games. I set my difficulty at easy and game away. In group games I didn't mind being the person who lagged behind. For me it was about the feeling of escape, the music and the comaraderie. I think the same for my YM, although he always scores extremely high. (They are playing Rockstar tonight, my YM keeps bragging to me that the game says he has "serious talent". Well, duh!)

Even prior to the end of my marriage, I was Lara Croft, and unfortunately my ex just didn't "see me" in my skin tight cargo shorts and wasn't the least bit curious about what I really carried around in that little backpack.

I do think there is some ego building side to gaming that for some people is as meaningful as the real thing.

I liked the little pink Ds in the cartoon. Have you seen the new red and black one. Seriously thinking about trading in my old standard gray one that doesn't really close because I carry this on my plane trips and play Sudoku or Cooking Mama.

I liked the pink DS too. I saw plenty of them at PAX. I really liked what that pink DS said about who gamers are in the cartoon.

unfortunately my ex just didn't "see me" in my skin tight cargo shorts and wasn't the least bit curious about what I really carried around in that little backpack.

I also really like what you said there. It is so true. We are in our "toon" personas and it is so fantastic to be seen there. It is especially nice when those that see us there are the ones we love. Makes the whole experience so meaningful doesn't it?

I play it cuz it's just fun.

I got sucked into it at an early age with a neighbor. Mom got one and would basically declare war on it and play for hours which made me and my older sister mad so she had to chill with the game time.

She's 50 something and still playing. She's addicted to Lara Croft. She just doesn't like shooting the people on the game. I'm different, I'll put a bullet in one before they get a chance at me.

Because my brain is wired to game. Lots of ADD people find comfort in gaming. Did you know that?

My son's therapist told us that's why our family is such big gamers. It holds our attention and gives us something to do with all our energy. And you know what he said? It's a good thing.

In fact it helps manage the type of ADD my boys suffer (ADHD with intermittent explosive rage). Usually this type of personality ends up in the juvenile system, a teenage parent, or on drugs.

None of the above for mine thus far. I know where they're at at all times and am often told that they are such well behaved children.

So much for gaming destroys children. Not always.

Though I admit I moderate them on time and content, especially any online content.

Yup

I was diagnosed with ADD. However I don't believe in that medical diagnosis. I only believe that it's there to shove Ritalin and crap down kids throats so that teachers don't have to learn how the kid opperates.

All the people diagnosed I have found have above average intelligence (As do I). In the 50's they'd be viewed as the smart kids instead of the trouble kids like today. Truth is they weren't challenged enough. Add that teachers apply pressure to the kid out of frustrations of their own to learn this or that and you get trouble.

I'm a self teacher. I absorb information like a dry sponge. I've forgotten more statistics and information than most people learn in a lifetime. That goes double for baseball.

Einstein had trouble in math but he was born when the label of ADD didn't exist. Nobody dares to call him stupid, yet we are playing catch up to what he already knew about in the scientific community.

It's my theory that people that are diagnosed with ADD like games because it is a way to apply what they love to apply in some kind of way. Their mind.

This goes double for visual learners. The military teaches this way. First Audio, then visual, then hands on.

I've noticed most teachers do audio with a lil bit of visual mixed in and it's almost an act of God if the kid ever gets a hands on in the learning process.

Ok that's enough. I've talked too much with too many teachers. :)

Both my girlfriend and I game.

It's the social aspect of the online games I like most, playing something with a group of friends, meeting new people the game works as a wonderful icebreaker since it sets a common ground to start conversations. And yes I met my girlfriend in an online 'game'. (Second Life, which isn't quite a game in the traditional sense).

But I enjoy offline games too...they keep my mind busy and I can even learn a lot, geography and history from historical games for example.