We present the following without further comment.
Shooting things in games is intrinsically compelling. Firing, watching something blow up, and then seeing our score ping higher on the screen creates an exciting feedback loop that gives us immediate agency and power. Shooters are the most popular genre of video game in the U.S. and account for 25% of all games sold. The defining titles of our era are battle royale mass brawlers such as Fortnite and Apex Legends, and epic narrative adventures (with plenty of shooting) such as Grand Theft Auto, Far Cry, and Uncharted.
But after years of playing games like these, I’ve started to ask myself: Would it be possible for any of these mainstream blockbusters to exist without guns? Have developers overlooked other ways to explore stories? Are there more interesting dynamics we could play with in games, designs that could encourage a different kind of feeling in players?
The obvious answer is to swap out guns for something just as intuitive and rewarding, but without the lethal force. Nintendo’s brilliant Splatoon is a multiplayer online shooter with paint guns rather than assault rifles, and in the excellent Marvel’s Spider-Man, our hero webs enemies to walls and hangs them from threads, rather than murdering them. “You can imagine a get-hit-and-you’re-out version of Battle Royale, but with a Frisbee rather than guns,” said game designer Mitu Khandaker. “There’s a rich wealth of mechanics to explore when we draw inspiration from playground games.” …
TRU LUV’s first app, SelfCare, is a series of mini-games in which you lie in bed, cuddling your cat, consulting tarot cards or sorting laundry into colors. “There is a reward structure,” said [game designer Brie] Code, “it’s just that it’s based on connection rather than challenge. Almost anything that humans find rewarding could be put on a design curve — gardening, decorating, fashion design, throwing parties, knitting, cooking. These experiences are about deepening connection rather than [increasing] tension.”
Keith Stuart in Designers Are Imagining Video Games Without Guns
My prediction:Next CEO of EA when they go woke. After that they go broke.
EA is the producer of the “Battlefield” series games.
Before they started to destroy them with PC boolschnitt I would enjoy playing these somewhat historically accurate online tactical shooters. They are – or were – fun time wasters on slow days when the kids were home with the XBOX.
One of the odd side effects I noticed from the games was a heightened sense of awareness and scanning for movements that may have been out of place … and to tell the truth, it improved my driver awareness on the road.
“My prediction:Next CEO of EA when they go woke. After that they go broke.”
Doubtful, but it *could* happen. Only problem for them is, they are making a shit-ton of cash on those FPS games. They are in business to make money.
Something tells me there already is a growing movement to pressure the game companies to stop making those games. It’s up in the air whether that will happen or not, but look at the playbook that was used against the tobacco companies. A combination of legislation banning smoking in public areas, and a campaign to make smoking un-cool.
The Hollywood machine helped them with the making of smoking increasingly socially unacceptable. Ever noticed how fewer and fewer actors in movies now smoke? Some still do, most these days don’t.
The game industry and Hollywood are currently making too much money to kick guns to the curb. But that could change. They could one day decide to ‘bite the bullet’ and only portray guns as evil things. That would be the beginning of the end for American gun rights…
They make vastly more on their sports franchises, though- FIFA, etc- that they repackage with different numbers and sell full-priced to the same customers.
With the way the left demonizes football, i wouldnt doubt that madden will at some point be on borrowed time
It seems to me that they have been trying unsuccessfully to tap the female market in video games fro at least thirty years now.
Maybe now that there’s a few dozen extra genders, most of them NOT toxic male, there might be a small market for what they describe. Only slightly larger than the former female-oriented games they couldn’t sell either.
This is what happens when you accept degenerates.
This is what happens when you get games “Urinalists” writing articles about games. They are bottom of the barrel out of journalism school(or some other worthless degree). Most of them are not even gamers.
Oh and cuddly cats are probably thinking about killing you as you cuddle with them. They are cold blooded killers after all.
And then those game development companies will go out of business, and their designers won’t be able to find work again.
There’s been no shortage of non-gun-based (or at least centered) video games through the years. The ones that are boring don’t do well, guns or no. Those that are interesting, do.
Subnautica is a perfect example of an excellent game that doesn’t focus on shooting.
MineCraft as well. It’s actually creative, but has a somewhat destructive side if you play that way.
I’ve seen small kids entranced by world building, farming, and creating things without the stress of having to run around in a manic haze looking for things to kill.
Minecraft is awesome. My kids got me hooked on it back when it was in version 0.4 and we’re all still playing it.
I started playing Minecraft about two weeks ago and I’m hooked. I had no interest in Minecraft until a few weeks ago. Then I watched some video online and thought, interesting, I might want to give it a shot. It seems like just a dumb kids game, but it’s fun.
I also play No Man’s Sky. I didn’t start until Next which is two years after release. There is something fun about building bases and structures just to see what you can do. I have played way too many hours of that game exploring weird planets, building bases and just seeing what’s out there.
In both games you can fight things, but it is not the central focus. You can also avoid most fights.
No Man’s Sky… I’m going to have to check that out. It’s the building that keeps me hooked on Minecraft. The possibilities there are endless. And I do enjoy the fighting to an extent, too; even better than fighting monsters is fighting them on MY terms because they have something I want.
There are so many great examples of non-shooting games. The issue here is that this author wants there to ONLY be non-shooting games. Because reasons.
(Hint: the reason is authoritarianism)
Oooohhh! I want a game about sorting laundry! Said no one ever.
This will be the plot of John Wick 4: He realizes the errors of his ways and goes to work in a dry cleaners with his cats.
Laundry, cooking, yard work . . . title of this game is “My Shitty Life”. You can play it after you get done doing laundry, cooking and finish you yard work. I fail to see A) why a sane person would ever want to do this and B) why spending your leisure time virtually doing things that you never could is some sort of problem.
I hope these people are too busy coding and playing video games to breed.
Must be a French company…
Speaking of the French, Ubisoft (French Video Game developer) has put out the best Tom Clancy games. I prefer these to Call of Duty and Apex Legends.
Red Storm entertainment Tom Clancy games were excellent. The original was a lot of fun with the planning phase and execution phase of each level. There were a few frustrating levels, but you kept playing because you wanted to figure it out. The Ubisoft games haven’t drawn me in like the old ones. Ubisoft seems to be better than EA though and their really dumb game making decisions. I haven’t touch an EA game in a long time. I was disgusted when EA bought out Bioware as I knew they would decline over time. Boy was I right!
Yes! The original Ghost Recon was amazing! Still one of my favorite games ever.
No, it’s about a challenge. If Call of Duty was on a 1st grade level, no one would play. If you got points for doing nothing, no one would play. That little T-ball trophy you got for showing up… Did you save it?
This is your brain on soy and a useless college degree.
Dude, I’m with you on that. The demasculination of us….
I can’t stand soy in anything
Now I don’t know about laundry simulator that was being talked about in the article. I guess if that’s your thing, go for it.
However, video games are typically about doing things you can’t do in real life. Which is why shooting games and dating simulators are so popular…
Probably also why hunting and fishing games are so popular among a certain crowd too…
I’ll stop throwing shade, I am half joking anyway. But there are a plethora of video game types out there. Want an action game with no violence, such a thing exists. Like it? Get down with your mild mannered self. Want incredible gore, that exists too. I see nothing wrong with exploring either. Do what you enjoy. Simulated (insert thing) is rarely harmful to yourself or to society.
You nailed it. If I want to lay on the bed and pet the cat, well, I have a bed and a cat. Maybe the cat is keeping score but all he ever tells me is “restart game “. As far as the laundry, the wife doesn’t mind if I play all I want on the console in the laundry room.
Yep, niche market for some of the odder video games. Sims was pretty popular though for reasons I never understood, and that was about mundane activities.
Anyway, I enjoyed a batman game for a few days some time ago, and there was no shooting in that (at least not by the player character). It was about solving puzzles. And beating enemies unconscious with you bare hands.
The fact that the author left out Call of Duty and the Battlefield franchise when listing the most popular shooter games of the era tells a surprising amount about him. The day our young males replace shooting games with folding laundry and cuddling cat video games is when you know society is beyond repair.
The games listed aren’t really shooters. Fortnight? Really? Guy needs to check out some old school Medal of Honor for a real shooter…
Or the STALKER series for immersive atmosphere.
Amazing. These people have dropped out of real life to such a point they seek to experience everyday tasks virtually. How many, I wonder, would jump at the chance to become a head in a jar jacked into a simulator.
Clean your room. You’re rewarded with a clean room. Sort your laundry. You’re rewarded with sorted laundry.
Asteroid, famine, war, Godzilla, something please come and cleanse us of these worthless degenerates.
2nd world pandemic.
just venture a little further in to that mountainous rainforest cave, make sure to cart out some samples of that discoverable noteworthy.
or smod…
Clean your room, Bucko!
This is another example of why I, for one, will welcome our robot overlords.
Already here, called red-light cameras…
Illegal in TX.
While they’re at it, Hollywood should stop making gun movies and make cat cuddling, gardening and knitting movies, etc. Of course any knitting movie coming out of Hollywood would involve someone being murdered with a pair of knitting needles, but it’s still better than being shot.
ea has a rosy grier franchised needlepoint sim?
Hollywood: Do as we say, not as we do.
“and in the excellent Marvel’s Spider-Man, our hero webs enemies to walls and hangs them from threads, rather than murdering them.”
I have Spider-man. It is an excellent game, but I have thrown several enemies off of roofs… fairly sure I murdered or horribly maimed those guys.
“… to starve or die of exposure.”
yeah, toss me from the parapet.
Hahahaha.
If only Sony would stop monopolizing the Spiderman brand and open the game up to other platforms…. As it is, I’ve been stuck playing GTA5 for the last 6 years and I don’t want to upgrade my computer to play RDR2. Personally, I blame Sony for me being a violent sociopath.
This is why I just console game. I don’t have to worry about what game meets the specs of my unit, though upgrades suck up a bunch of money.
“It’s called ‘Clam Digger,’ and you & you’re friend Jeffy both grab your shovels & buckets & run down to the beach…and the goal of the game is to find parking.”
Do these humorless scolds have any idea how lame they are? Like, any idea at all? Cuddling a digital cat & folding digital laundry? Working a butter churn would give a higher adrenaline rush, and a greater ‘reward.’
well, when they’re done with comfort food and cuddling, laundry and toxoplasmosis is all that’s left.
+1000 for ATHF reference. You cannot disassemble the broodwich.
It’s so unhealthy for a person to practice hand/eye coordination and to tap into their primal combat-play instincts for recreation (ie every sport there is…), it’s so much healthier to spend dozens of hours obsessively collecting arbitrary spreadsheet items through tedious, repetitive tasks, so they can be tediously assembled into other arbitrary spreadsheet items, ad infinitum with no defined goal or purpose.
you just described all aspects of minecraft.
Ha! Minecraft is not for the weak-willed or simpleminded.
I think the Diablo series were a physiological and psychological experiment on how many times someone could or would click a mouse button.
“There’s a rich wealth of mechanics to explore when we draw inspiration from playground games .” …
As long as it’s not Dodgeball. You know how triggering and violent dodgeball is! Think of the childrens!!!
“As long as it’s not Dodgeball. You know how triggering and violent dodgeball is! ”
In the 70s we played “kill the man with the ball”…
No Way Geoff, you went to the same skool I did? Saint Paul High School St. Paul Ks. Did you? Kill the man with the ball, no rules, and no scores. And like idiots we fought for procession of that ball. what fun that was.
“And like idiots we fought for procession of that ball.”
Yeah, in retrospect, it was kinda fucked-up, but these days now I know it was training for marriage life.
(Just how much shit will you put up with for a piece of ass?)
And Possum, it was southwest Oklahoma, back then…
These people are nuts. 13.4 billion years ago or so the Universe was born of violence, whether you subscribe to “Let there be light”, or “The Big Bang”. Violence is what makes everything possible, including life.
I’d like to see a game without guns where you play a character that just slaps soy boys and snowflakes until they grow a spine, fight back, and start to become men.
IF you can find a real world prototype to model
Goldeneye: battle royal you could slap fest. it was awesome.
Get woke go broke…there’s a helluva lot of competition for bucks. Poor Bart Simpson was not happy with Lee Carvalo’s putting challenge😄😊😏
Cuddle with a cat?
Um, I’m more of a dog person really. We even speak the same language. Just ask my ex-wife, she knows.
“We even speak the same language”
MEAT
Well my wiener dog seems to be saying “Look at Me!” as he drags random objects into the middle of the room and relentlessly humps them anytime I have a visitor.
It’s the intense eye contact that so unsettling.
“It’s the intense eye contact that so unsettling.”
I can translate that for you. I speak jive (dog).
He’s saying “If only you were that size, motherfucker…”
That is how daschunds communicate. Through “the look”. And you learn what they want in context to their body language and location. Interesting dogs. Very aloof and independent.
Not border collie trainable smart. More self interested smart. They want food, comfort, and company on their terms. But very loyal when you’ve earned their loyalty.
Many daschund owners agree they are the only dog you can lose an argument with and finding yourself negotiating a compromise.
My family has had several over the years. My parents like my lab/kelpie cross because she is obedient. But unfortunately she is also big.
He may have a point. First person shooter games have always just bored me. I find them completley uninteresting.
But ponder a game where the goal is to pet as many dogs, coyotes, foxes and wolves as possible. Of course, you have to find them, catch them, and pet them. Occasionally you pick the wrong dog and it rips your throat out. If you’re too loud or scare puppies, packs of happy Corgis arrive and tear you apart, tearing out your Achilles tendons during their opening rush.
If you beat/pet the boss rabid coy wolf, they send you a real shelter dog. Which is, in reality, just another level of the game. (Is it rabid? Does it have some sort of disease where it’s bowels are falling out? Is it stolen? Did someone pack a key of coke in it’s rectum and their looking for that dog? Who knows?)
I would play that game.
i lived it. it should be titled “meter reader.”
That was comedy gold.
Gold.
tsbhoa.p.jr,
There you go! We need a game called Meter Reader where you are a virtual meter reader that has to go from one customer to the next, trying to read their electric or gas meter, all the while surviving drunk drivers crashes, territorial dogs, vicious stray dog attacks, dangerous wild animals, bee/wasp/hornet nests, deranged property owners, random thieves and muggers, and even street gangs who accost you for being in their “territory”. Of course you would have a clipboard and pen, along with a can of pepper spray and your fists at your disposal to handle all of those dangerous events.
And you could earn bonus points for negotiating safe-passage agreements with street gangs in their territories as well as bonus points for holding thieves and muggers until police arrive to take them away.
holy crap, if you had mentioned naked sunbathing female octogenarians (nothing wrong there, mind you) with yards of wild onion rather than lawn i would have been convinced you were local15.
the b&e toolset was highly specific yet personal (improvised), butter knives, small sheets of stout flexible plastic, large rings of “maybe” keys, a good klein screwdriver, picksets. a stout length of buckthorn for spider webs and mongrel deterrence, a russian 8x monocular, a decent knife to worry a fence hole for a line of sight.
a cell phone would have been marvelous; the garbage picking was first rate.
Holy shit, there is a ‘Meter Reader’ game out there :
“When the ARB reader player reaches a dot outside a house they draw a card which will either give them the meter reading or present an obstacle. ARB player does not have to enter a house to get the reading. Once read they move on to next house.
When a conventional reader player reaches a dot outside a house they draw a card which will either allow them to enter the house or give them some reason they cannot. If allowed into the house they wait until their next turn and then rolls the die. If an EVEN number is rolled they put their pawn on the inside dot where they ‘read’ the meter by drawing another card which allows the reading or presents an obstacle. Once the meter is read player must roll an ODD number to exit the house. On the next turn they head to the next house.”
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/192485/arby-meter-reader-game
Fear not good Sir. Rock Star games has all the dog petting you could ever need. It is just set in a game where you have to also occasionally do cowboy/anti-hero stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXYtgUpWQaM
Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag had animals you could interact with.
There are cats to pet as you do a parkour routine over the rooftops. You’d hear them purr as they circled your feet if you bothered to stop for them. There are also Amazon parrots in a few of the markets to talk to.
For a murderous imaginary Welsh pirate Edward Kenway wasn’t really a bad guy … and the game itself was a pretty good se-going pirate simulator.
So there’s a game based on how I actually live? Not shocking.
Man…how does weekly post hole digging with a rock bar translate to the joystick? I’m not thinking very well.
ha, i thought you meant the parkour rooftop part- never mind.
Oddly, there is a section in the epilogue where you set fence posts and build split rail fences…
The Yard Simulator!
Believe it or not there is a Farm Simulator series. And the latest version was sponsored by John Deer.
My son said if I bought that for him he would wonder what he was being punished for.
“Shooting things in games is intrinsically compelling”
If you have NO life and/or are bone idle. Get a fing job or go volunteer for something useful. Teach poor ghetto fok to shoot.
James Thurber had it right. Walter Mitty wants to imagine adventure. He already has cats.
Good parenting is the paramount. My boys play Fornite and Roblox shooting games online. My wife an I keep and eye on them, making sure they know it’s only a game, limit their usage of video games and electronics. They also play with nerf guns and study martial arts (with weapons) and we keep an eye on them, still. When problems arise are when parents use the electronic devices (iPad, PC, smartphone, XBOX) as unsupervised pacifiers. On a side note, I refuse to let my kids play “lawn mower simulator” or “mining simulator” since they are mindless games that don’t teach or improve reaction time, strategy, good quick decision making, memory, problem solving, etc. I have already taught them how to fold and put away their own clothes.
And the news is reporting that a whacko used a can of gas and a lighter to burn 33 folks to death in Japan.
Are there any video games that use gas as a weapon that we can blame? (full disclosure. I do not play video games.)
In Postal 2 you play as a crazy postal worker and one of the weapons is a gas can and matches. Another weapon is an anthrax infected cow head that you throw at people. I haven’t seen that used yet in real life though.
you win the game when they fly the flag at half mast signifying that “they’re hiring.”
“And the news is reporting that a whacko used a can of gas and a lighter to burn 33 folks to death in Japan.”
The backstory on that one is kinda bizarre. The pyro was probably a disgruntled employee, and from what I am now hearing about having a job in those places, they have *plenty* to be disgruntled about. In a nutshell, the companies are exploiting the fuck out of their animators, the folks doing the grunt work of drawing it. The companies use the fans of the magazines themselves to produce it, at wages far lower than minimum wage in the US. But they are *fans*. They *want* to work there. It’s kind of fucked up.
Check these comments out –
“For new hire animators, pay starts at 770 yen (6.75) an hour. If an animator works 8 hours a day and 260 days a year, the salary would be the equivalent of $14,040.
That’s way lower than what convenience store jobs pay! Those wages start at around 920 yen ($8) and can get as high as 1150 yen ($10) for the graveyard shift. And the hourly wage at McDonalds is somewhere between 980 yen ($8.60) and 1225 yen ($10.75).
That’s right, the animator salary is significantly less than minimum wage.”
https://kotaku.com/make-anime-in-japan-get-a-shitty-salary-1820035912
“We already know that the work hours for animators in Japan are awful. But, as NHK reports, the average pay is shit, too.
” I worked at a slave-labor-inbetween-studio called “nakamura pro” for 8 months before moving onto Pierrot which is where I am now. At Nakamura pro we were paid $1 per drawing, meaning you earned between $5 and $25 a day. At Pierrot it`s way better… but still pretty bad. 1 drawing = $2-$4 …. so on any given day I can earn about $40. (HORRIBLE by anyone’s standards…. but, if you want to work on cool anime, there’s not much choice.)”
https://kotaku.com/being-an-animator-in-japan-is-brutal-1690248803
So, not too surprising one would snap like a rubber band…
The real issue is that the designers of the Cat Cuddle game will want to force you to pay their development expenses when capitalism inevitably results in their business failure.
And their college loans too,
Nah, they’ll just change their business model to the current industry standard of getting people to pay for pre-releases of games that don’t and probably never will function properly before moving on to the next strutcure-fire-for-cash “release”.
When Janet Reno complained about video games, Penn and Teller purposely came up with the worst game. In “Desert Bus,” you’re the driver of a bus from Tucson to Vegas on a deserted 2 lane road going 50 MPH with an alignment that pulls slightly to the right. It’s in real time. Occasionally, a bug hit the windshield. After several hours, you reach Vegas, get a point, and the drive back to Tucson. Just like a real job! Gearbox released a VR version of it a couple years ago.
“Video Games Should Replace Shooting Things with Sorting Laundry or Cuddling With Your Cat”
OMFG…
They’re trying to create a nation of pacifists… invasion would be easier then…
And besides, I have dogs…
Peak SoiBoi…
I never got into video games, either. However, I have long wondered if there is any correlation between the rise of violent shoot-em-up video games (not to mention watching dozens if not hundreds of people die in TV/movie shows) and the rise of mass shootings in our society. The weak-minded losers who pulled off the shootings had to get their inspiration somewhere, and I suspect that violent games/TV/movies, social isolation and uninvolved parenting are primary suspects. In my lifetime, I’ve had guns since I was 12 years old, and I certainly absorbed my share of bullying in school, hazing in the military and lots of frustration and occasional failures in life, but I’ve never had the desire to blow anybody away because of it.
I dont think thats entirely the case… I was bullied when I was little, and been around guns my whole life. Played video games then and still do. Including GTA5. I never once thought about bringing a gun to school to shoot someone who picked on me.
I think it’s several things.
One is parents not paying attention to what their kids are doing.
Two, is infamy. How many of the kids killed at Sandy Hook can you name? But everyone knows who Adam Lanza is.
Three, some are suicidal, but are too chicken to do it, so they do something horrible to try and get the police to do it for them.
Four, some people are just mentally unstable.
…social isolation and uninvolved parenting…
Combine that with feminism destroying the traditional model of male behavior — while offering nothing constructive to replace it — and you’ve got yourselves a recipe for derangement.
The last video game I played was Pong. I always found real life to be plenty interesting enough.
Hey man, don’t be knocking Pong! It takes a Hell of a lot of skill to hit the “ball” (white dot) with the corner or thin edge of your “paddle” (thick white line) and send the “ball” off in an unpredictable direction, especially when the “ball” is moving at high speed.
I still have a Tetris game. It helps me relax. Takes my mind off of everyday shit
Or……. my son and I go for a hi,e outdoors. I don’t think these people know where
the outdoors is.
“TRU LUV’s first app, SelfCare, is a series of mini-games in which you lie in bed, cuddling your cat, consulting tarot cards or sorting laundry into colors.”
Things that are wrong with this app:
1. Cats
2. Cats in bed
3. Cats anywhere
4. Cuddling cats anywhere
5. Consulting tarot cards
6. Laundry sorting as a recreational concept
7. The name of the app
8. The very existence of the app
9. The name of the developer
10. The very existence of a company that would develop such an app
And in the end you climb into a belltower…………..
Sports games?
Yeah this is not all that new. The left has always been a fan of trying to change society with media. There’s actual college courses on the use of media to try and influence social politics with the specific aim to change society. Mark Dice over on YouTube was talking about it a few days back. Look up the term ‘Social Impact Entertainment’ at the Skoll Center at UCLA.
The kind of funny thing though is that most of the time S.I.E. doesn’t work. Because of the fact those low IQ partisans in HollyWeird can’t really write with a damn anymore. So they always end up trying to shoe-horn in the message first and everything else second. That’s why the new Star Trek season has been just absolutely terrible. The writers focused almost entirely one just writing ‘diverse’ characters, but didn’t bother writing them into situations that made sense or were entertaining.
Back in the 80s a friend made a dos game called villa runner where the player goes to brothels to score without getting a dose. X rated in those days .
leisure suits?
Hrmmm… OK, without going into a rant about the game industry, or at least trying not to go I to such a rant…
Games are an interesting culture which really is a bunch of different cultures.
I note that games like this person discusses are out there and they are popular with the Facebook crowd. Farmland being an example.
Shooters tend to break down, generally, into two major groups that attract extremely different people.
There are “pure” FPS games. Think Doom, Quake, CounterStrike, Crysisetc. These games are all about personal numbers in terms of a Kill/Death ratio. Even in team “modes” they still have a dynamic that’s all about personal numbers based purely on quick twitch reaction time.
Then there are team/squad based games like the Battlefield franchise after 2142, The Division/TD 2, Ghost Recon:Wildlands (2/3rds of thethe TC games mentioned here reviewed on TTAG by some toxic asshole) etc.
The difference is that the squad based games require teamwork and reward it, and often prize strategy/tactics and team play over pure shooting skill. Four loan wolves in a squad might be really skillful at shooting and still be one of the worst squads in the game.
People who like the prior tend to hate the latter style and RAGE about it when they play it.
Then there are other FP games in the vein of Wing Commander, notably Star Citizen. SC is a very interesting game in a lot of ways. Easily the largest game ever created it allows FPS combat and FP flight/dogfighting. While the game has these elements it’s also a “life sim in deep space”. While you can do your own thing the game is far more rewarding if you’re part of an Organization since the main mechanic is money and money comes from a variety of lucrative activities both licit and Illicit. For example, get a mining ship and mine resources on planets then stop off at a certain location to buy narcotics to mix with your cargo then pick up a bunch of package deliveries. Deliver your packages while finding good places to sell your raw ore and deal some drugs along the way so you can finance a newer and better ship to add to your hangar/organizations fleet. Your organization can buy large ships that can carry smaller ships long distances and launch them acting as a carrier/mobile base. You can do bounties or take jobs for theft. You can fight other players for resources or engage in piracy against them. Be legit or criminal or a mix of both. Balance your risk and reward but you’ll always do better with other people in an Org and with a mix of revenue streams.
Further SC is revolutionary in it’s dev process. The game has been around for a few years and is still in Alpha, openly so with a couple million players. Why is that important? Because the point is that the game industry has become somewhat reliant on pushing out “releases” that are not finished and probably never will be. Battlefield 5, The Division 2, and Fallout ’76 all had MAJOR problems on release. Problems that shouldnt be in a “release” and took a lot of time to fix, some still aren’t fixed.
Robert’s Space Industries decided that the concept of saying “It’s complete!” and releasing what amounts to at best a beta for $50+, never fixing the issues and instead focusing on paid for DLC addon content was bullshit. Instead they went with a years long Alpha project and a pledge system. Buy a ship for cash, play the Alpha (it’s got bugs, it’s an alpha, we told you that!) and if you don’t like it… return the ship and get your money back!
CIG/RSI get trashed constantly in the gaming media and even in publications like Forbes. Why? Because they stand a very good chance of overturning the applecart and forcing major changes in the game industry to prioritize getting it right before final “release” instead of milking the download system for as much cash as you can before abandoning the game for the next piece of DLC garbage that doesn’t really work as it should.
Pretty much every major release from a big studio/dev these days has been a complete dumpster fire. I would look for that to start to change and for the industry to start being forced to respond better to demand.
/rant
Yeah, a bit.
The new ownership of this site doesn’t seem to understand something that Farago did understand. Andrew Breitbart articulated it the best: Politics is downstream from culture.
Video games are culture, or at least a reflection of it. Video games sell a lot more guns IRL than most people would think.
That culture is currently getting distorted by an industry that cares more about putting out “fresh content” for money than they do about making things that work and are therefore eminently playable, fun and attractive.
You might write that off as irrelevant nonsense but there’s good hard data to back up that these games sell guns IRL.
As the COD and Battlefield (two of the more popular shooters) franchises devolve into dumpster fires less people will play them, be exposed to firearms and therefore buy actual guns. COD, starting with the Modern Warfare set of games demonstrably sold a lot of Vectors for KRISS USA. That turned a lot of gamers into gun owners who now have skin in the gun control game, especially the “semi auto assault weapon” part of that game.
Or… we can just ignore it, let the whole thing go to shit and those people won’t buy guns and then will have no incentive to vote with us or listen to us because… they have no skin in the game.
I play at least once a month, Tom Clancy’s Wildlands and it lets you customize your character in 5.11 clothes and other popular tactical gear. I don’t know how popular the game is but I’m sure young males have bought their character’s real life outfits.
I reviewed that game. The apparel still sells. Glama de Oro shirts are something I see probably fortnightly (no pun intended, like every couple weeks).
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/game-review-tom-clancys-ghost-recon-wildlands/
“Four loan wolves in a squad…”…I had to deal with a loan wolf once…broke my left kneecap with a tire iron when I didn’t pay on time…
I fold my laundry, cuddle with my cat and go to the range to blow sh!t up.
I guess that makes me well-rounded.
I predict World of Laundrycraft is not going to be a big seller. It’s like these people don’t know any actual humans.
Next up, porn should replace naked girls with factoring quartic polynomials.
Oh yeah? I’ll factor your quadra tech ceremonial pal!
There are plenty of “non-shooting” games. Just as two examples, there are sports franchises and adventure games. I recently finished “after hours” which is a great game and never calls for the player to shoot anyone.
There is a large body of research that shows that gaming is not responsible for violence or depression. However, social media, of which cat videos are a staple fare, can be found to be causally related to both, to varying degrees. So, just possibly, cat cuddling videos are the more dangerous of the two.
It’s a medium.com article. Ninety-nine percent of what gets posted to Medium is crazies trying to look legitimate.
“There is a reward structure,” said [game designer Brie] Code, “it’s just that it’s based on connection rather than challenge. Almost anything that humans find rewarding could be put on a design curve — gardening, decorating, fashion design, throwing parties, knitting, cooking. These experiences are about deepening connection rather than [increasing] tension.”
This certainly is a step in the right direction and because video games target the adolescent sector of society it makes very good sense. When you start teaching the young that violence, aggressiveness, and “tension” is counter productive to quality of life I believe they will take the message and run with it. This is how a Socialist society should be. A society where ALL are equal – in pay, in medical treatment, in status. Games that are based on life experiences will reach far more children then games depicting wanton violence and depressing atmospheres.
We need to join hands for the future of America. Put down your guns and raise your consciousness. Support the David Hogg’s of the world for they are our brightest future. Whether our next president is Kamala, AOC, or Michelle I urge you to support the National Gun Ban agenda. It is only through our combined efforts that we will become great again. Do not listen to those who would offer jobs and financial security. They are liars. Remember, in the words of the great Hillary Clinton, “It takes a village.”
Er, yeah, no… This is a parody of a parody.
Besides, a real socialist progressive would never state his goals so clearly. And “Vlad Tepes” has never been this concise and coherent.
When i click on your name it takes me to
https://thefarsystem.wordpress.com/about/
Which is a website about role playing games. Is that what you’re doing? Please explain.
Please do not humor this sad individual. There’s little merit to engaging such behavior and really does little beyond casting your personal values into a padded room…
Talking about the vlad tepes persona, sorry …
Yes, that is what I’m doing.
I’ve been a player of tabletop roleplaying games since the ’80s (think D&D, Middle Earth, etc.) and I’m designing a tabletop RPG set in the Wild West era. So the blog is about that, as well as roleplaying games and creative pursuits in general. And I talk about guns every once in a while, too.
We are socialist Vlad Tepes and you are not. You are racist. We will take all of your guns and all of your money and all of your property and all of your big girl panties. Very soon Hoggboy Vlad Tepes and OCrazyO Vlad Tepes and Camel Toe Vlad Tepes will be assimilated. You must comply. Resistance is futile. (Just think how good Hoggboy will look in his red shirt and official Vlad Tepes big girl panties, only $89.99 plus shipping and handling.) No mommy can stand against our derangement and our hatred. #RealitySucks #WhatsYoursIsOurs #WeAreAllMommyHaters
i enjoyed myst and obsidian during the ol’ lady’s first pregnancy.
when the boy got older we grooved on the gran turismo franchise.
it’s now a mix of career and online so, not as good.
Tell ya what, go to Hollywood first. Go to all the “TAKEN!” movies. Go to any film where Wahlberg is shooting a bunch of guys. Or, for that matter, any of the violent movies filled with actors that cream their jeans every time they talk about gun control. Go ahead and get those projects cancelled. Make it so that rom-coms are the only product coming out of Hollywood. Then we can talk about video games.
Would banning those movies make a difference? No, of course not, but there is zero chance that the liberal elites would ever think to put out their own eye by damaging the movie industry.
I don’t think you have much to worry about. The same money that is financing those movies is the same money financing the video games.
I started playing video games then quit because the laundry needed folding and the cat needed fed. All I did was sit and play, all day all night, change batteries in whatever you call the thing that makes you run around and do things. Gaming is fun but can become addictive
My cat likes watching me play Call of Duty.
Video game journalism and commentary is where you wash up when you and your gender studies education got laughed out of all the real job interviews.
Keith Stewart sounds like the kind of person who steps out of the shower to take a piss.
I was kind of with him on some of his ideas like frisbee, and Splatoon is genuinely fun, but he lost me in the last paragraph. Just no.
Any current first person shooter game designer, maker, distributor, manufacturer, if they want to get out of the virtual Gunplay business. Go right ahead. Our capitalist system will provide plenty of folks willing to invest and create products yo meet the Public’s demand.
They will replace these “old guard” Get woke go broke Leftists, with companies willing to give the customer want they want.
BTW
As a kid I remember back in the 1970s when the Liberals who hated war toys like GI Joe and cap guns, we’re promoting pornography to children saying how much safer it was for the kids to learn about gay sex, golden showers, bestiality and all the other wonderful things that you see in a San Francisco Pride Parade.
these are the kind of games you come up with when you smoke too much pot. it does effect the brain and this is proof.
Why would anyone want to pllay a video game based on mundane ordinary things like folding laundry? I can score points with the wife doing the real thing. And besides my cat likes to hang out with me while I’m at the reloading bench. I spend time with my pet and actually get something accomplished.
No games with guns? This won’t happen. Those companies actually like to sell games.
The slow drip of Estrogen into our cultural bloodstream has become an unchecked flood. To continue prioritizing the feminine at the detriment of the masculine is to prioritize the death of our society.
Superhero comics operate off the Big Gun Lie and superpowers are analogous to guns. Hero comics want you to believe they didn’t need guns to take on the bad guy, but might makes right in the end– the might of their superpowers to subdue the bad guys that otherwise can’t be challenged by the average citizen. Superpowers are no different than guns. Okay, Spider-Man is great! He uses webs and doesn’t kill people! I mean, he also has super strength and precognition, but we’ll leave that aside for now and ask what the man is without all of that? He fights enemies that no average can compete against because superpowers. Last I checked, that’s exactly what a firearm does. I don’t have to fear the Green Goblin or some random 350 pound aggressor. My super power is 45acp.
It is the website that all are talking about for free robux codes online here.
How do video games affect the educational process? We need more research to answer these questions definitively. In particular, we need randomized, controlled experiments, and those are lacking. But based on the limited information we have now, it seems that extreme claims on either side of the spectrum are wrong. I advise you to read the article https://www.sundayvision.co.ug/how-do-video-games-affect-the-educational-process/ and it may answer your question at least a little.
Comments are closed.