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Games Aren't Good Because They're "Addictive" (The Jimquisition)
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this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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Skinner box game mechanics suck and are just hollow "entertainment" but are manufactured very carefully to maximise fomo and engagement. They're very profitable though which is ofc why its used, battle passes, timed events, seasonal content, lIvE sErVicE shite.
It's designed specifically to prey on people who are vulnerable to these tactics, I even fell into it myself around the modern warfare reboot getting extremely worked up over battle passes. Hated every minute of it but just couldn't stop myself until someone hacked my Activision account and stole it breaking me out of the cycle.
Fukn crapitalism.
That shit's effective and that's the reason it keeps being done. Every smug
looking down on people that get caught into it under pretense of feeling superior can fuck off forever.
All Vidya Gamez are fundamentally Skinner Boxes. At the same time, when you're trapped in a cube all day, it's nice to get a food pellet. Stop shaming people for food pelleting themselves.
My original experience with online games was in a big social circle that whittled away over time. It's less the game pass model itself (which always just descends into "How much pop culture can we shove into your generic Blood Gulch shooter/looter?") than the fact that I'm playing with an endless parade of anonymous that nobodies I ultimately find so upsetting.
I play chess with a co-worker every lunch break we're free, and it's far more fun and fulfilling than the time I spent grinding amid a sea of faceless nobodies.
At the same time, it feels cruel to tell people who don't have an active social circle to just not be online at all.
The only thing worse than the Skinner Box is solitary confinement.
No they are not and I will fight you. If you mean multiplayer online games, well maybe, you might have a point, but I don't play those games and so I will make no claims about them.
However. If you call Outer Wilds or Pathologic/Pathologic 2 or Disco Elysium or A Short Hike or Journey skinner boxes, well, you're just wrong. Games are experiences, they're stories that can be more immersive than a movie or a book and if they're done well, holy shit are they good!
Games are (can be) amazing, and I'm sick of pretending they're not.
They're still feedback loops of input and reward. That the reward is "compelling narrative" rather than "loud ding with big number go up" changes the quality of the treat dispensed but not the nature of the box.
Skinner Boxes are tools to gauge the behaviors of their subjects.
The form can still be artistic and the reward for interaction can be sublime and the thing itself can still be what it is.
do you think a novel is a skinner box
No. There's no human input that determines the response.
Goosebumps choose your own adventure novels.
But to take you a tiny bit more seriously, ok? So what? Why does "I have some agency in this story" make a story bad? What actually are you getting at here?
Primitive, but closer to the mark.
I don't think it does. The box is just a mechanism. In the same way that a book or a painting can be good or bad, a gameplay loop can, too.
You can have a Beautiful Skinner Box in the same way you can have a Van Gogh or a Tolstoy novel.
So you're using some weird definition of "skinner box" where you simply mean "human inputs lead to various outputs". Why use this definition? By this definition a fucking mathematical function is a skinner box.
I simply do not understand, in general, what you're trying to say.
Somehow you missed the point completely about predatory business practices preying on vulnerable people to draw out massive profits.... The entire thing this comment and post is about
Krogers employs predatory business practices on people. What are you going to tell them? "Don't eat!"
People play these games to escape the horrid reality of daily life.
I haven't told anyone to do anything you're arguing with something you made up in your head