Monster Hunter
Do you ever get a sense of uncomfortable pointlessness? That you're going to eventually die having wasted some large amount of your time on things that bring little to no meaning on their own, yet have enough rules and limitations to them that it's hard to make your own meaning out of them? That you're getting little out of what you're doing outside of the sheer sensory input you're receiving?
There are times where I play a game - often a single-player sandboxy/survival/endless one - and after maybe a few rounds, after an hour or two or three, I get a sense of genuine dread. The horror, really. It's like... it's like that feeling you might get when you fuck around until it's 2 AM and for the entire time you were fucking around playing games or running around outside, you knew you had that assignment due for one of your classes. You knew you had some chore you promised to do, and now it's almost too late. It's almost like a disappointment in yourself for wasting your time mixed with questions of, "Was this alternative activity worth it? What did I get out of it? Could I be doing something else more productive instead?"
Even the mediocre or bad games I've played, provided they at least have some actual point they're trying to get across, don't give me that feeling. Party games or pure multiplayer sandboxes let you experience joy, sorrow, anger, and more with your friends or family in a safe yet unusual environment. Games which strive to just play incredibly well can be used as examples for how to make a game that is fun, and they can be built upon by later games which do the same thing yet incorporate more stimulating stories, sound, et cetera.
But there are games which give me this sense of dread and emptiness because, at least in my eyes, they really don't have anything going for them. Maybe the game is meant to be local/friend-only multiplayer yet has an entire sprawling single-player-accessible campaign, making it incredibly unlikely that you'll be able to play through the whole thing with a party of friends. Maybe the game is sandboxy to a degree, but doesn't let its walls down enough for you to truly create that which you want to create. Or maybe the game tries to pride itself on its gameplay, putting little stock in its other qualities, but that gameplay is middling or worse. Maybe the game... is just an escapist power fantasy with nothing of interest being brought to the table besides perhaps a design here or there or a few tracks a composer put a lot of time into.
There are times where I play a game - often a single-player sandboxy/survival/endless one - and after maybe a few rounds, after an hour or two or three, I get a sense of genuine dread. The horror, really. It's like... it's like that feeling you might get when you fuck around until it's 2 AM and for the entire time you were fucking around playing games or running around outside, you knew you had that assignment due for one of your classes. You knew you had some chore you promised to do, and now it's almost too late. It's almost like a disappointment in yourself for wasting your time mixed with questions of, "Was this alternative activity worth it? What did I get out of it? Could I be doing something else more productive instead?"
Even the mediocre or bad games I've played, provided they at least have some actual point they're trying to get across, don't give me that feeling. Party games or pure multiplayer sandboxes let you experience joy, sorrow, anger, and more with your friends or family in a safe yet unusual environment. Games which strive to just play incredibly well can be used as examples for how to make a game that is fun, and they can be built upon by later games which do the same thing yet incorporate more stimulating stories, sound, et cetera.
But there are games which give me this sense of dread and emptiness because, at least in my eyes, they really don't have anything going for them. Maybe the game is meant to be local/friend-only multiplayer yet has an entire sprawling single-player-accessible campaign, making it incredibly unlikely that you'll be able to play through the whole thing with a party of friends. Maybe the game is sandboxy to a degree, but doesn't let its walls down enough for you to truly create that which you want to create. Or maybe the game tries to pride itself on its gameplay, putting little stock in its other qualities, but that gameplay is middling or worse. Maybe the game... is just an escapist power fantasy with nothing of interest being brought to the table besides perhaps a design here or there or a few tracks a composer put a lot of time into.
4 Games
Video games are an interesting medium. Contrary to books or movies or even television, it's so incredibly simple to point out that video games may exist purely to waste time. Sure, they can have epic stories beyond a lot of what you've read or make your brain run a lot harder than solving a complex physical puzzle, but on the flip side you can have games that are products for the sake of being products. You can have soulless licensed games made for a quick buck, you can have annual or biennial series which do little to nothing to improve upon themselves as they strive to rake in dough from people who don't know or care. At the very least even the most braindead television can just be used as background noise for productivity or loneliness, and even the most trite book can be read as a way just to practice or improve one's vocabulary or reading speed. Video games require a bit more engagement and attention to really work with, and more of your brain and body are stimulated at once with what might effectively just be the sensory equivalent of white noise for several hours.
Why do we make this, and why do we do this? Whenever I work on my own game projects, I always want to put a lot of myself and my feelings and thoughts into them. As a single developer turns into a team, fewer and fewer individual ones come through outside of perhaps the director's. As that team grows bigger, a greater sense of purpose and direction ought to be kept. I wonder, then, why exactly the biggest wigs of the industry continue to make games played by millions which have little to nothing to say. It's not got to be anything deeply moral or philosophical, but just... anything at all, like a yarn to spin or a deep feeling to generate. The only really consistent thing I do see is power fantasies and the propping up of the biggest player demographics as great heroes for doing nothing in particular of moral value. If they are, it's got to be something of gigantic, epic proportions.
Maybe those things just let neurons secrete all the right neurotransmitters to make players cream their pants internally and want to buy more. Maybe it truly is far and away about the money, about the success, and about reproducing that which came before. Maybe that's even why games which have things - basic, simple things - to say, are considered master classes of thought-provoking interactive media. That somehow an idea as simple as "don't kill people" is considered groundbreaking decades after the flaws in mainstream game concepts had already been pointed out and yet evidently not improved upon.
Why do we make this, and why do we do this? Whenever I work on my own game projects, I always want to put a lot of myself and my feelings and thoughts into them. As a single developer turns into a team, fewer and fewer individual ones come through outside of perhaps the director's. As that team grows bigger, a greater sense of purpose and direction ought to be kept. I wonder, then, why exactly the biggest wigs of the industry continue to make games played by millions which have little to nothing to say. It's not got to be anything deeply moral or philosophical, but just... anything at all, like a yarn to spin or a deep feeling to generate. The only really consistent thing I do see is power fantasies and the propping up of the biggest player demographics as great heroes for doing nothing in particular of moral value. If they are, it's got to be something of gigantic, epic proportions.
Maybe those things just let neurons secrete all the right neurotransmitters to make players cream their pants internally and want to buy more. Maybe it truly is far and away about the money, about the success, and about reproducing that which came before. Maybe that's even why games which have things - basic, simple things - to say, are considered master classes of thought-provoking interactive media. That somehow an idea as simple as "don't kill people" is considered groundbreaking decades after the flaws in mainstream game concepts had already been pointed out and yet evidently not improved upon.
But why does escapist power appeal to players so much? I have no reason to try some dumb pseudo-intellectual blanket statement here. Instead I'll just talk about how I feel, because at least I'm pretty sure of that. I couldn't tell you what anyone else is feeling with nearly as much certainty, because I'm not them. It goes practically without saying that that sense of allegedly warranted power, superiority, superficial growth, and rewards for those things are wrapped up frequently into the package of a video game. It's second maybe only to 'sex sells' in terms of functioning as intended and succeeding with ease.
I really just don't get it in a personal sense, though. Maybe that dread and horror I feel is part of why. I personally have a strong sense of duty and responsibility for myself and for others that I might influence. Being called the chosen one or special for how powerful of a killer I am doesn't mean much of anything to me. Why should it? It feels good when a loved one gives me a hug and tells me I did well for their sake, or that they trust me the way I trust them or love me back; being talked up as more than the simple little life I am feels sickening. I can be a good boy or a cute kitten or whatever, because that is all I am: one life of many, indisputably important just as much as I am unimportant. I think I'm happier knowing that I do whatever I can with what I have, and what little power I do have is used responsibly for others to have slightly better lives. Saving the entire universe off of some extreme special ability I have almost feels like a bastardization of those feelings, then, and I don't like it. Do video game power trips just assign a far, far 'greater' purpose to what I described as a good feeling, to what I described as making me happier? Is that where the appeal is? Feeling indisputably important without having to acknowledge the inherent meaninglessness of the life you've got? I don't know.
By all measures I should like the sense of power I get by obtaining points through slaughtering things. At times I even feel wrong or stupid or something just for not getting it.
I really just don't get it in a personal sense, though. Maybe that dread and horror I feel is part of why. I personally have a strong sense of duty and responsibility for myself and for others that I might influence. Being called the chosen one or special for how powerful of a killer I am doesn't mean much of anything to me. Why should it? It feels good when a loved one gives me a hug and tells me I did well for their sake, or that they trust me the way I trust them or love me back; being talked up as more than the simple little life I am feels sickening. I can be a good boy or a cute kitten or whatever, because that is all I am: one life of many, indisputably important just as much as I am unimportant. I think I'm happier knowing that I do whatever I can with what I have, and what little power I do have is used responsibly for others to have slightly better lives. Saving the entire universe off of some extreme special ability I have almost feels like a bastardization of those feelings, then, and I don't like it. Do video game power trips just assign a far, far 'greater' purpose to what I described as a good feeling, to what I described as making me happier? Is that where the appeal is? Feeling indisputably important without having to acknowledge the inherent meaninglessness of the life you've got? I don't know.
By all measures I should like the sense of power I get by obtaining points through slaughtering things. At times I even feel wrong or stupid or something just for not getting it.
So what does peace really mean in the eyes of these kinds of video games? Does it mean anything at all? When you're spending hundreds upon hundreds of hours slaughtering 'monsters' in order to get stronger in order to spend even more hours killing bigger ones, what exactly are you really working towards? Is it just the ultimate silence of all opposition? Simply being stronger and having bigger anime weapons to swing around can't be all someone's life amounts to, right? Conflict and justification have to be made up, and made up with paper-thin reasoning. You're not the one going out and killing for the sake of killing, ruining and ending lives for no real reason. No, you're the savior, the strongest human in the guild or village, or at least you're on your way to be. You're the best! You're the one being attacked here. It's all self-defense, and hey, it's for a great purpose! You'll be the best and the strongest if you just keep doing it over and over and over again until your giant weapon gets even more gianter and even more weaponer.
Maybe I'm just jaded and heavily biased. After all, I'm deeply bothered by the general treatment of any non-humanesque species outside tokens being treated as inherent inferiors, as things to be slaughtered. As the vessels for the points which give the player more power. It's like its own sort of xenophobia. What fucks me up is that it isn't even like these games are trying to say 'humans good, all others bad'; it's instead just a concept treated as an inherent part of the world, the universe, everything. It's just a rule which does not ever need to be uttered for everything else to fall perfectly into place.
Maybe I'm just jaded and heavily biased. After all, I'm deeply bothered by the general treatment of any non-humanesque species outside tokens being treated as inherent inferiors, as things to be slaughtered. As the vessels for the points which give the player more power. It's like its own sort of xenophobia. What fucks me up is that it isn't even like these games are trying to say 'humans good, all others bad'; it's instead just a concept treated as an inherent part of the world, the universe, everything. It's just a rule which does not ever need to be uttered for everything else to fall perfectly into place.
When I get that sense of dread nowadays, it really makes me want to think more about what exactly it means and what everything I'm doing means. I can't just sit here and say "I should be doing something more productive" when, at the end of the day, going out and exercising vs. sitting and playing a game that sucks me off for 70 hours won't change the fact that I'll be in the grave a hundred or so years from now. It isn't like the dread is telling me "you'll die unless you do this other thing". But what is it telling me?
For a really long time now I've felt ashamed of myself and frustrated with myself because of my likes and dislikes, my natural attractions and aversions, all those sorts of things. Frankly it's hard for me to even put my paw down and say aloud how much I dislike all this stuff. I really push myself to be a jack of all trades whether I actually want to be or not. I don't think it's really FOMO, but it's some expectation I have of myself that if I don't like or know all the same things as anyone or everyone else, I'll never understand them. I think pressure to conform is as close of a term as I can get to what I feel a lot, but there's definitely more of an emphasis on some fear of not understanding someone else. I guess it's funny, really. I'm not afraid of what I don't understand, but of the fact that I might not have tried hard enough to understand those things.
After all this rambling, I do wonder if it's possible that the dread that I feel is really just an expression of "You're not enjoying this, and you really shouldn't be forcing yourself to continue." I don't think it's that simple, as even for games I have fun with in the moment I do wind up feeling the same way. But what I do know is that games like Monster Hunter suck out so much of the meaning I try giving to my own existence that I'm always left as a semi-depressed hollowed out husk of myself for several hours after playing one. I mean, it was the empty feeling of sadness for hunting some random virtual animal and mashing X for 12 minutes that even made me come here to write this in the first place.
After playing like 3-5 of them, I think I can safely say these games are deeply antithetical to my psychology, philosophy, and senses of fun and aesthetics. If these games didn't (somehow) bring joy to the apparent millions of players who pick them up, I would consider them to be actively making all life on this planet worse merely by existing. But thankfully people do (somehow) like them, so I guess there's that. I dunno. Maybe the feelings I have on this whole thing are really just mine. Being 'unique' or 'special' for that, though, makes me sad. It doesn't make me feel superior to anyone, and if anything it makes me feel inferior for being a human playing pretend as a cat for their whole life. I posted this because I needed to have my feelings and thoughts on paper, and deep down it was probably a cry for anyone to empathize at all with me about literally any of this.
For a really long time now I've felt ashamed of myself and frustrated with myself because of my likes and dislikes, my natural attractions and aversions, all those sorts of things. Frankly it's hard for me to even put my paw down and say aloud how much I dislike all this stuff. I really push myself to be a jack of all trades whether I actually want to be or not. I don't think it's really FOMO, but it's some expectation I have of myself that if I don't like or know all the same things as anyone or everyone else, I'll never understand them. I think pressure to conform is as close of a term as I can get to what I feel a lot, but there's definitely more of an emphasis on some fear of not understanding someone else. I guess it's funny, really. I'm not afraid of what I don't understand, but of the fact that I might not have tried hard enough to understand those things.
After all this rambling, I do wonder if it's possible that the dread that I feel is really just an expression of "You're not enjoying this, and you really shouldn't be forcing yourself to continue." I don't think it's that simple, as even for games I have fun with in the moment I do wind up feeling the same way. But what I do know is that games like Monster Hunter suck out so much of the meaning I try giving to my own existence that I'm always left as a semi-depressed hollowed out husk of myself for several hours after playing one. I mean, it was the empty feeling of sadness for hunting some random virtual animal and mashing X for 12 minutes that even made me come here to write this in the first place.
After playing like 3-5 of them, I think I can safely say these games are deeply antithetical to my psychology, philosophy, and senses of fun and aesthetics. If these games didn't (somehow) bring joy to the apparent millions of players who pick them up, I would consider them to be actively making all life on this planet worse merely by existing. But thankfully people do (somehow) like them, so I guess there's that. I dunno. Maybe the feelings I have on this whole thing are really just mine. Being 'unique' or 'special' for that, though, makes me sad. It doesn't make me feel superior to anyone, and if anything it makes me feel inferior for being a human playing pretend as a cat for their whole life. I posted this because I needed to have my feelings and thoughts on paper, and deep down it was probably a cry for anyone to empathize at all with me about literally any of this.