june gloom on 3/12/2020 at 08:08
This thread is hilarious. You're walking right past the real problem while yelling.
Most people aren't nerds like us. Most people don't care about reviews or corporate shenanigans. They buy stuff because it makes the happy chemicals in the brain do their thing. Life is basically unending misery in late capitalism; why wouldn't you want to buy the Sequel To The Game You Liked? It's either this or heroin and video games are slightly less expensive.
I sweatergawd, "hardcore gamers" just love shooting themselves in the dick. It's 2020, let people be happy. Especially after this year.
PigLick on 3/12/2020 at 15:59
unending misery for most.
speaking of which, here is an audio/visual parable i made on the human condition and its relation to late-stage capitalism.
[video=youtube;hPFh7KcNrcA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPFh7KcNrcA[/video]
froghawk on 3/12/2020 at 16:51
Quote Posted by june gloom
This thread is hilarious. You're walking right past the real problem while yelling.
Most people aren't nerds like us. Most people don't care about reviews or corporate shenanigans. They buy stuff because it makes the happy chemicals in the brain do their thing. Life is basically unending misery in late capitalism; why
wouldn't you want to buy the Sequel To The Game You Liked? It's either this or heroin and video games are slightly less expensive.
I sweatergawd, "hardcore gamers" just love shooting themselves in the dick. It's 2020, let people be happy.
Especially after this year.
I take it you don't buy into the opiate of the masses argument, then. I do, and thus feel perpetually guilty about gaming.
PigLick on 3/12/2020 at 17:11
games are not passive entertainment. They engage more of the brain than watching other media, and certainly cannot be compared to any kind of morphine based drug. If you have ever actually tried heroin or even opium you would understand. When you inject heroin you can feel it washing through your body like a warm bath, then you dont feel much of anything at all.
If you are feeling guilty about gaming then thats an issue with your own personality. The "opiate of the masses" is an incredibly outdated concept, possibly only relevant to network television these days, which if you are an educator of young children, is absolutely not going to ever be a problem going forward into the future.
If you want to make yourself feel a little better about your gaming habits, then I recommend you read "The Game Believes in You" by Greg Toppo, and excellent book on how digital play is far superior to traditional educational methods.
froghawk on 3/12/2020 at 23:34
Just because it's engaging your brain doesn't mean that it isn't effectively pacifying people and staving off revolution. I disagree entirely that the concept is outmoded - it feels more relevant than ever today, as there are more distractions to pull people's attention than there has even been at any previous point in history. Whether it's actually like an opiate or not is entirely beside the point - is it or is it not keeping people focusing on something other than, say, the impending climate apocalypse (while exacerbating it with electricity use nonetheless)?
The book sounds interesting, but can adult gaming really be put in the same category as optimal childhood education?
PigLick on 3/12/2020 at 23:55
well for one video games (and games in general) are a very effective way to stave of the onset of alzhiemers and dementia.
Also the full quote is "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people". In Marx's time opium was used as a painkiller for surgery, before morphine.
froghawk on 4/12/2020 at 00:59
I am aware of all that, but the concept still applies if the essence is updated for the times. You're being pedantic.
And I'm really not sure what staving off dementia has to do with any of this. Just because something is good for you in one sense doesn't mean it isn't problematic in others. The world is complex like that.
PigLick on 4/12/2020 at 04:50
Your guilt is misplaced is what I am trying to say.
Cipheron on 4/12/2020 at 05:42
Quote Posted by june gloom
This thread is hilarious. You're walking right past the real problem while yelling.
Most people aren't nerds like us. Most people don't care about reviews or corporate shenanigans. They buy stuff because it makes the happy chemicals in the brain do their thing. Life is basically unending misery in late capitalism; why
wouldn't you want to buy the Sequel To The Game You Liked? It's either this or heroin and video games are slightly less expensive.
I sweatergawd, "hardcore gamers" just love shooting themselves in the dick. It's 2020, let people be happy.
Especially after this year.
Agreed, people have to really go into this realizing that other people have extremely different "use cases" than we may do.
The way I look at is that "money" is the wrong metric and "time" is the right one. Games are not expensive, it's people's time that is the most finite resource here.
People want stuff that just works and looks as good as possible because to them, that optimizes the things they actually care about. They've proven willing to pay a bit more for this. You have to already be fairly hardcore to hunt around for previous generation consolees or older games, or wait for specials.
Economist have a term for the waiting thing, it's "Temporal Discounting". For example say the new game is $70 and people think that's the going price. But if you wait a year you can get it cheaper. However, having something in a year isn't the same economically as having it now. To one person, that game in a year might be worth $30, and to another, having it in a year might be worth $40. If the expected sales price in 1 year is $35, then those two people will - rationally - make difference choices. Neither is more right than the others. For example, consider that if you think it's more rational to wait 1 year, surely it's more rational still to wait 2 years, and 3 years and so on, with the most rational person waiting for an indefinite amount of time until the game becomes free.
So this can be understood perhaps partly by realizing that people of different ages are going to evaluate temporal discounting differently, and a lot of that is down to difference in people's age, life, perceptions, certainty of the future etc.
Yakoob on 4/12/2020 at 08:10
Quote Posted by june gloom
Life is basically unending misery in late capitalism
Excuse me, my life is unending misery regardless of what stage capitalism is on, if any at all, thank you very much