WRONG ASPECTS IN THE GAME INDUSTRY, AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

author=Sooz
I'm severely internet poisoned because there are two things that I associate with the terms alpha, beta, and omega, and neither of them are video games. :V

Wolfhome?

author=Nicoliver
My familiy finances went very bad when my parents separated, but this didn´t mean I stayed without gaming when this happened.

I just couldn´t aquire anymore any videogames more modern than the PS2 or a top of line gaming computer, but I compensated for this by playing older or indie games, that could be played in the computers that I could afford.

I remember growing up with a single mom and two siblings. My brother and I played a lot of 90's PC games that had LAN play and could be run on both our bare-bones Windows XP laptop and the family PC. This was around 06-07. The computers couldn't handle the free MMORPGS available at the time, so those were out of the question.

You never have as much fun with a game as you do when you have no other options.

been softmodding some of my consoles recently to play any game I want *ahem* i mean backups but i realize i have no idea what to play after that and got a kick out of the hacking process instead

author=Nicoliver
THE BAD ASPECTS

Considering the last game I quit out of before logging on here was freaking Postal 2 I think that we're probably going to disagree on what are the "bad" aspects of video games. I think that things like violence and hatred belong in videogames if that can keep even a little bit of them out of the real world.

1.Violence and action for the sake of action
The fact t that do exist more games involving violence, conflict and destruction, than compromise, negotiation and building, did help on making society intellectually militarized. This conflict mentality did lead to making the social networks in battlefield, taken by rival gangs which fight for turf in a way that mirrors the offline gangs behavior.

If you look at human media, from our very oldest stories--the Odyssey, the Iliad, Beowulf and the Epic of Gilgamesh all the way to this week's latest release on HBO Max, we are overwhelmingly preoccupied with violence AS A SPECIES. The fact that violence has become something we write about and play at more often than we actually do it--I mean, you know, looking at the western/"developed" world only and kind of squinting past the "forever wars"--is, I think, progress. But a fascination with violence is hardwired into our DNA, and our culture.

"Action for the sake of action" is...what? Like, Super Mario Bros, Space Invaders, Gradius, freaking PacMan all of these things are action for the sake of action, but none of them are violent. "Action" is the second oldest metagenre of videogame behind adventure, and considering it is an entire genre...what is wrong exactly with action for the sake of action? This is distinct from our disagreements on the violence issue because action != violence.

2. Excessive immersiveness
Games, both online and open world offline ones, evolved to offering growingly more complex and detailed game worlds, filled with secondary missions and parallel minigames that went to take more and more time from the players. This excessive time spent in the virtual world makes gamers stray from the real world, leading to a psychological addiction similar to the alcohol and drugs ones, and in some cases even more damaging.

I think that this can actually be broken down into numerous issues here, but you're not actually talking about "Excessive Immersion" or "Excessive Immersiveness" so much as you're talking about how all videogames are slouching towards becoming "the Monogame", all game genres are shading towards the "megagenre", everything is an open-world quasi-shooter with RPG elements, sidequests, and minigames.

The idea that video game "addiction" is even in the same ballpark as alcohol and drug addiction is frankly offensive to me, as someone who has both personally struggled with these things and even more so watched family and loved ones struggle with it. Even if I didn't find the mere suggestion offensive, citation very much needed por favor that it can be "even more damaging".

3. Lack of trust in the gamers
Politics of DRM and intellectual property protection treats the gamers and potential delinquents, and not like someone who just wants to have fun with the products paying a just price for then, and using their code to create new things.

I'm anti-DRM and a fan of open source everything, so we're in agreement here, although I also think we need to temper our expectations to acknowledge the reality that corporations are motivated more or less solely by making a profit. Itch.io is the only market/company in the gaming sphere whose business practices I respect and laud and I've talked to devs on there and it doesn't seem like any of them sell a meaningful amount through that market compared w/ idk Steam or GOG.com...so clearly there is a problem here where companies with ethical and laudable business practices like itch are being effectively punished by the market for being good people. Not that companies are people but you know what I mean, I think.

4 Psychological suffering by the gaming professionals
Many companies forces their employees to work many hours after their expected shifts, causing physical and mental damage to them. Games are made for being fun: they also should be fun for the people who work in their development and distribution.

Mandatory crunch bad, so we're in agreement there as well. And environments that make devs feel like crunching is the norm and expected of them even if it's not literally demanded of them to keep their jobs is also very bad.

...that said I mean I went 36 hours w/o sleep to finish my jam game (which basically no one played sadface but that's a digression) so like...idk. I was under absolutely no external pressure to do this, direct or indirect, but I did it anyway. So like...yeah...

5. Monopolist and concentrating production logic:
The way the industry works perpetuates subordination relationships between developed countries and regions where the game production units are located, and those who consume them. The former concentrate the means of development in a way that ends up generating a vicious circle where the latter are much less likely to be able to compete in a competitive manner, with products from dominant countries and regions controlling almost the entire market.

This is frankly outside of (larger than) the scope of the topics of video games and/or the game industry. I am very concerned about the fact that four de facto monopolies have circumvented antitrust laws to control virtually the entire digital world--Amazon, Apple, Google, and Walmart--but videogames are one of the least important arenas of concern for this.

6. Encouraging of hate groups:
The gamer world is known to be a stronghold of several problematic groups, such as incels, MRAs, white supremacists, and other hate groups. Effective measures are not taken to keep these groups under control.

Okay, first off, incels and MRAs are not hate groups. These "communities" have a disturbing amount of overlap with hate groups and the alt right pipeline--not counting like, people that are actually activists for men's rights issues, which are totally a real thing, and not just vocal misogynists. People that actually care about Men's rights activism are the minority among those using the MRA label and I kind of feel bad for them that the label "MRA" was coopted by odious twats.

"Effective measures are not taken to keep these groups under control" I mean like, I would certainly like there to be less Nazis, like I'm with you there, but your wording seems to suggest some downright dystopian "solutions". This may in part be an ESL/native English thing but it kind of sounds like you're suggesting we line a certain number of incels against the wall and shoot them or something.

Second of all, see below.

author=Nicoliver
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

1. Don't reward violence:
Creating games where avoiding violence is rewarded, and using force for no reason is punished or at least strongly discouraged.

I think we need games where violence is possible, where violence is impossible, where violence is necessary, where violence is incentivized, where violence is discouraged, and everywhere else in between.

2. Avoid excessive immersiveness:
Create games whose mini-games and side missions do not divert the player too far from the main mission. Limit immersiveness to well-defined pedagogical and plot-building purposes.

No. Also pedagogy can stay the fuck out of my videogames, thanks. I'm much more concerned with the "gamification" of everything else, things like work and learning, and every other damn thing, where the things that make videogames addictive are being programmed into things that are exploitative and/or not even fun.

3. Trust the integrity of people:
Create open source games, with great possibilities for customization by players who want to create new experiences. Make the DRM policy more flexible when it does not completely end it.

Corporations need to be motivated to care about this somehow.

6. Making games hateful for those who hate others:
Stop creating games that encourage machismo, racism, homophobia and other forms of prejudice. The more humanist and inclusive games that are produced, the less reason the extremists will find to identify with them.

The idea that videogames cause or encourage any of these things has been thoroughly debunked and entirely discredited since 2004 at the latest, which could well be longer than some users on this site have even been alive, but I'm old enough to remember Jack Thompson. Again...citation very much needed, because I don't believe that videogames can meaningfully encourage any of these things. They reflect these things in a society where these issues are already out there. That's not the same thing.

Even if you could drive the people you find "problematic" out of the gaming space...does it not occur to you that those people would then spend their time doing things much more dangeorus and harmful?

author=Nicoliver
I also played through Dosbox some even older, but also nice games, like Hidden Agenda and Master of Orion.

...I just couldn´t aquire anymore any videogames more modern than the PS2 or a top of line gaming computer, but I compensated for this by playing older or indie games, that could be played in the computers that I could afford.

I've also been on an emulator/Dosbox/retro FPS shooter binge of late.

author=Sooz
Been thinking about this a lot with the absolute glut of options available now vs when I was wee and got like two video games a year. Played the shit out of those things, whereas now I have a Pile of Shame.

It's funny, just the other day I was saying how even if I were to live another 33 years, I would have more than enough videogames to keep me entertained for the entire natural span of my life w/o ever buying a new GAME, let alone a new CONSOLE, between all of the thousands of old games I haven't played on all of the current and old console generations and on PC and the thousands and thousands of games on this website and websites like this one and on itch.io. And that's assuming that I spend like 8 hours a day every day playing videogames, a thing that no one can realistically do. I'm not saying that I'm like, dedicated to never buying a new videogame again--actually I just bought Control the other day, but I do think this is almost certainly my final console generation.