Gamers, why so serious?
- Thread starter Salviar
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Salviar, your post addresses two issues:
As with any game there are different degrees of participation for different people. Chess, for example, has a specific system called Elo to rate highly ranked players' skills. Of course at the other end of the spectrum people play informally at home, or in a pub or café. In games like rugby & cricket there are also varying degrees of participation from amateur to international.
Games & the nature of play itself are intrinsic to our cultural development, the structure of our societies, & our development as individuals within these contexts. As well as teaching us how to interact with others they also teach us about critical thinking, & sometimes interaction & communication as a team. In addition to abstracting genuine conflict, games & the nature of play are also expressed in narrative, being closely linked to the participation/catharsis of observation (I recommend Richard Schechner's various papers on the correlation of action and identity). As we all know, some people take these things very seriously, as can be seen when someone supports a sports team, or when an audience vicariously participates in the narrative of a play, book or film.
Surely it can be no surprise that a lot of people take some games very seriously.
The second aspect of your post relates, in my opinion only, to the burgeoning miasma of self-entitlement so many children & adolescents seem to be cultivating. A complete lack of accountability for one's own actions, & an apparently eternal demand for unearned reward. Whether the result of parental neglect or the sheer conceit their parents created by dishonestly telling their spawn that they're special, I truly despise the grasping little cunts who seem to think that the world owes them something for nothing. On the other hand the world will, for the foreseeable future, need unskilled labour to operate factory machinery, stock shelves in supermarkets, & operate tills. And when their unskilled labour becomes redundant we can farm the worthless scum for donor organs.
As with any game there are different degrees of participation for different people. Chess, for example, has a specific system called Elo to rate highly ranked players' skills. Of course at the other end of the spectrum people play informally at home, or in a pub or café. In games like rugby & cricket there are also varying degrees of participation from amateur to international.
Games & the nature of play itself are intrinsic to our cultural development, the structure of our societies, & our development as individuals within these contexts. As well as teaching us how to interact with others they also teach us about critical thinking, & sometimes interaction & communication as a team. In addition to abstracting genuine conflict, games & the nature of play are also expressed in narrative, being closely linked to the participation/catharsis of observation (I recommend Richard Schechner's various papers on the correlation of action and identity). As we all know, some people take these things very seriously, as can be seen when someone supports a sports team, or when an audience vicariously participates in the narrative of a play, book or film.
Surely it can be no surprise that a lot of people take some games very seriously.
The second aspect of your post relates, in my opinion only, to the burgeoning miasma of self-entitlement so many children & adolescents seem to be cultivating. A complete lack of accountability for one's own actions, & an apparently eternal demand for unearned reward. Whether the result of parental neglect or the sheer conceit their parents created by dishonestly telling their spawn that they're special, I truly despise the grasping little cunts who seem to think that the world owes them something for nothing. On the other hand the world will, for the foreseeable future, need unskilled labour to operate factory machinery, stock shelves in supermarkets, & operate tills. And when their unskilled labour becomes redundant we can farm the worthless scum for donor organs.
Something without which my little brother and I would never have finished Probotector (the European version of Contra)Palademon said:
mindlesspuppet said:
I can understand your point, and I get that some gamers do take games seriously for the challenge. Hell, I use to do it too, but I would rage quite so much that I think it may have been unhealthy :/
Anyway, I'm not saying that the sort of serious you're talking about is bad, in fact I enjoy when someone can get as into a game as I can most of the time, I just mean that in the retail side of it all, there are a lot of people who just get really...angry over the littlest things and it's just confusing. I can understand someone being upset if they look forward to a game and it turns out to be faulty or it won't play properly, it freezes up, etc...But I don't understand why people become so detached from the world that they no longer care about common decency of just explaining and fixing the problem. (It's the same thing when someone things a game will be good, it isn't, and then they have a yell at the staff that sold it to them because it's obviously their fault that the game isn't good.)
Sorry, that was long winded. I'm not even sure if I made my point.
I guess what I mean is...I do accept that there IS a serious side of gaming and I respect it, I just don't think that this specific type of seriousness in games is...well, good. Hopefully that all made sense.
No I never they weren't real gamers. I basically said they are illinformed. I never said they weren't real gamers. What this can lead to though is the illinformed gamers can turn into loud mouth assholes which is a problem. Yes I do expect that have genuine interest in gaming to keep up with some sort of gaming news. I never met a person that liked Football nad yet didn't talk about the latest scandals and player transfers I don't see why gaming should be a special exception to this. If you like gaming you should strive to be informed.mindlesspuppet said:
i must say i get annoyed when im paired up with noobs in team games like cod etc. and whenever i die im like "oh yeah! thats so realistic (sarcasticly)" but then i think, i was once rubbish at games, and also when i die, it usually is a fair death, its just i cant take losing lol.
overall i think people have got to chill out a bit (myself included) when it comes to gaming, if you want to be serious about gaming, play in game battles or something.
overall i think people have got to chill out a bit (myself included) when it comes to gaming, if you want to be serious about gaming, play in game battles or something.
Truly I don't know why people get so astronomically angry when things go wrong in a game (or involving their abilities to play games, see the WoW freakout kid), but I'd be lying if I told you it never happened to me. I can get viciously angry when I have to play a certain part again and again because the game demands such precise perfection to complete the level. It DOES feel as though the game is betraying you sometimes.
Dying when the save point or checkpoint is in clear view, having the last of your health blasted away by a cheap shot from the enemy you've got down to 1%, multi-phase boss fights that you can't save inbetween, timed platforming sections with unfair levels of difficulty...it all just gets old after a while. Recently I've been playing the Sega Genesis collection on my PSP, and I've found myself raging over the obligatory water levels that almost all of the Sega Genesis platformers resort to at one time or another. Sonic, Sonic 2, Ristar...now I've learned that any level background consisting of beaches is automatically hell.
But I do return to the games eventually, out of a love for it and a revived desire to go on. I guess I can be bipolar when it comes to games.
YEAH!!Zhukov said:
When you beat Tetris you know you're THE man!! (or woman...)
On Topic
I have no idea, I mean I swear that the Mario Galaxy series is harder as a 3D gaming platform to master than CoD or Halo since there's actually some pretty hard parts with jumping between all the annoying gravity fields...
i hate to say it man but i think you are in the presence of elitist jerks of the gaming community who think they are somehow better because it is not simply something to relax with but a crutch to support the fact they have nothing else in their life.Salviar said:
i know this because i did this for about 5 years as a way to avoid issues i had and i recognize other people doing it a bit too often.
really i think the only option is to hang out with people who aren't out there to see how big their e-peen can get from killstreaks on COD or Halo
Computer gaming is a wider topic than football. Every transfer and refereeing decision in the Premiership will have some effect on the order of teams at the end of the season, so fans have a good reason to know them. A better analogy would be to see them as sport fans and ask how much they know about controversial engineering techniques in Formula 1, or biased judges in figure skating. COD players have no reason to know anything about WOW, nor should they be expected to know about Need for Speed or Starcraft or Bejeweled.Glademaster said:
So you are still asking them to be informed in their topic which is all I ask. If you want to be a gamer of any description you need to be involved in some reading form of new. Whether it is a site such as this to the update notices on WoW. I never said they had to know every single piece of news of every single game. I think things like the L4D2 and MW2 boycotts along with say the SC2 boycott(yes I know they are all boycotts) should of been common knowledge among actual gamers at the time. Why shouldn't people who consider themselves gamers not know what is happening whatsoever in the medium. I am sorry but a lot of people don't. The sheer number of people in my school who are alleged devout CoD fans yet never even heard a whisper of the several boycotts and controversies over their supposed favourite game is astounding. I am not asking for in depth knowledge but basic knowledge like Football fans. You think Premier league fans watch other leagues? Very few. So I don't see the Football fan as bad comparison. Everyone should have a basic knowledge of news in their preferred league or genre of games if they really want to be considered a gamer. I never asked CoD players to know about other games.Bad Jim said:
What's there to know about CoD?
Latest patch notes? Sandy Ravage is a beast? Ghost perk is OP?
Anyone who calls someone out for not being a "real gamer" while playing CoD on a console is just silly.
An example of FPS taken seriously:
Painkiller Cyberathlete Professional League 2005 had a total prize pool of US$1,000,000.
The world champion Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel walked away from the final with $150,000.
(Great match, btw ... watch it if you can find it)
That kind of thing is impossible on a console FPS, because controllers are so bad for FPS, aim assistance is a necessity.
Hence, PC FPS players have little, IF ANY, respect for console FPS.
Counterstrike 1.6, Painkiller, Sudden Attack, Quake Live, even COD4 (on PC, with PROMOD) .. those games are good for competitive play.
FPS can be serious business. Just never on console.
Latest patch notes? Sandy Ravage is a beast? Ghost perk is OP?
Anyone who calls someone out for not being a "real gamer" while playing CoD on a console is just silly.
An example of FPS taken seriously:
Painkiller Cyberathlete Professional League 2005 had a total prize pool of US$1,000,000.
The world champion Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel walked away from the final with $150,000.
(Great match, btw ... watch it if you can find it)
That kind of thing is impossible on a console FPS, because controllers are so bad for FPS, aim assistance is a necessity.
Hence, PC FPS players have little, IF ANY, respect for console FPS.
Counterstrike 1.6, Painkiller, Sudden Attack, Quake Live, even COD4 (on PC, with PROMOD) .. those games are good for competitive play.
FPS can be serious business. Just never on console.
MAGIC PENCIL TRICK AAARRRRGHHHH!!!!!!!!!1!'1!!!
Yeah, stupid people are stupid. Just grab an axe and cut them in half.
Yeah, stupid people are stupid. Just grab an axe and cut them in half.
Not quite sure I understand your reasoning behind this. There is absolutely no reason to keep up with gaming news. You could be the best Starcraft player in the world; know all the maps, all the mechanics, etc etc and not give a fuck if Blizzard laid off 20 employees, that Bobby Kotick said something stupid again, or that some housewives are blaming the game for making children worship the devil. None of this has any standing on how you play the game.Glademaster said:
You used football as an example, and it's a poor one. In general fans simply observe football, in gaming people play the game, which make a significant difference. That being said, I love football; I keep track of stats, follow trades, etc, however I don't give a rat's ass about the whole Brett Favre penis ordeal, the Vince Young drama, etc. This does not effect my ability to enjoy or understand the sport.
Yet if you are a SC player you are going to keep up with the latest meta strategies and build orders. You will also be on top of NEWS about updates. Regardless what kind of news it is if you are a serious gamer you know about what news concerns you. If you are that serious about SC you will know what units are a bit imba and which are complained about on forums. You will probably have an idea which units will be nerfed or balanced in the next update. You will know when the next expansion or game comes out after it has been announced. That is still news and people don't even have a notion about this. If a Starcraft player didn't keep up the news they wouldn't know that their new game(SC2) had shipped without Lan and that is a pretty big deal if you are a SC player. So yes it is a big deal to be involved in gaming news in some way or another to be a decent gamer especially about your favourite game.mindlesspuppet said:
No knowing about what Kotick says has no standing about how you play a game but neither does paying attention to Football news. People do it out of interest for their pass time. If someone doesn't have the time to switch on their computer go to their internet browser and load up something like the escapist or pop down to shop to the Xbox magazine or whatever to know what games are coming, reviews, controversy to see what concerns them no they are not a proper gamer.
Yet aside from the fact you don't care about these various events you still know about them which is the point I am making. People have little to knowledge especially on the console about their favourite games. The fact that no one had even heard of a MW2 boycott as there was one on the 360 and PC which is a game so many people talked about in my school is amazing.
I don't give a fuck if you know the damn story of it inside and out. Just be aware of what is happening in a world you are claiming to be a part of. Whether you consider yourself a just CoD gamer or an overall gamer have at least some idea of what is going on for that game.