But again if you are enjoying your time your not really wasting it if your having fun..... Then again there are some people that play games they hate which is weird
The main reward in most games seems to be equipment and power ups that makes previous tasks quicker. You're so thrilled to finally craft an axe that will allow you to cut down a tree in 10 seconds instead of 15 seconds that you forget to ask yourself why you are cutting down these non existent trees at all.
This is something that Yahtzee said about WoW, and it completely ruined quite a lot of games for me. He broke down the cycle of raiding, to get gear, to raid, to get gear etc etc... Nowadays I often find myself noticing that if I'm not engaged by a story or enjoying a core gameplay loop, I am falling into that cycle, and that causes me to lose interest in the game.
Excally and then you realize that you can actually do the same at real life and for example make money XD. You spend 3 h everyday to make your character stronger XD but you can spend 1 h everyday at workout and after 1 year you can change from someone who can't make 5 push ups to someone who is quite good in sport etc Or any skill 1 h everyday and after year you will notice big dif
@@callumlackie4166 yo exact same thing happened to me with Zero Punctuation. "Two blokes in hats standing around waiting to swing at each other and see whose number is bigger" and such. Basically just showed me which games are skinner boxes too. Pretty much always looking for a new mechanic or gameplay style(or good story) in a new game, or at least a fresh take on a dependable old one.
@@PendjiYou sure? I used to think that but now to me videogames have no pay of a What so ever. Real life has huge implications. A lot Higher stakes with lasting emotional impact. Much more pay off if you ask me
Just had an idea on this topic. In modern world filled with Internet and social media, we tend to spread our focus around, which in turn forces us to spend less time on things, otherwise, which is my theory, you have a feeling that you're getting behind the world - you can't just stop and enjoy something thoroughly - the world goes without you. That you're not productive enough, even if this productivity means wasting hours on social media. Currently, social media fights over your attention, with endless scrolling and preference algorithm to get you hooked. Your dopamine tolerance increases, which means you'll more dopamine later to get the same amount of pleasure. If you read to this point, ask yourself - how much will did it take for me to read some random internet guy's comment. Do I have to make haste to find something else to enjoy and think about? If yes, then why? Why not stop somewhere and take your time? The whole world won't care for you anyway, so you shouldn't too. If there will be some really important news, you'll hear them from people surrounding you. We probably lost our ability to thoroughly enjoying something, taking time, and not participating in a meaningless rat race. P.s. Wow, what a block of text. If you read through all of this - thank you, and take care. May you find meaning in your life.
If you think anybody can just talk to somebody in the real world then I think you undermine or forgot how hostile some real environments can be to anybody. Interacting online often eliminates those problems because you can choose your environment to be in. In the real world if you're a sheep surrounded by wolves you can't change it similarly if you're stuck with bigots in your family you're stuck with bigots as your family for the rest of your whole life, life is much more static if you compare it online. We can pick the groups we interact with easily irl and that's why some people choose to interact online, can you imagine how much effort it would take to sift through a city just to find somebody you have in common with that with a very small niche hobby for example? That's what the online part is for the same way I'm reading this comment like we're having this interaction online for the sake of variance. I think it would be very hard to replicate online interactions irl, and same goes bothways.
@@russayoooyou can absolutely change the people around you and I would argue that finding solace in social groups online can take time away from changing your real life environment. Unless you're a kid - Which I completely understand and please forgive my ignorance, I know what it's like being stuck around bigots who are full of toxic masculinity - you can break away, though, it won't be easy. As terrible as real life can be, getting too deep and reliant on social media echo chambers is very unhealthy as well.
@@russayoooI understand what you’re saying. Much of this does differ by environment. (And I echo the below comment about it being 100x more difficult if you’re still a kid). But also… I have lived in nearly a dozen US states. It does take work to find your people, but it is possible just about anywhere and those interactions are so much more meaningful than anything online. And yes, I have made incredible real life friends based on very niche hobbies. It takes courage for sure but all friends start as strangers. So often though, the infrastructure is already in place to encourage these relationships. Things like meetups, groups, clubs, libraries, venues that hold regular events for niche hobbies. So much of it is out there if you look. And it is possible to start these things yourself too.
i thought about this the other day when i sat for two hours endlessly scrolling in facebook, i realized that it is easier for the brain to do something that only requires you to sit down or lay in bed and look at something that gives it dopamine for hours, your brain is basically blinded by it, by its presence, and after being filled with dopamine, your brain will crave for more every day, and btw if i get into a philosophical aspect with this, do not just think of your brain as a machine that works with chemicals, but also as a carrier of consciousness and a creator of potential, remember the phrase i think therefore i exist? or the typical idea of the mind crested the reality? well it also applies to games, if your everyday reality, only exist in games and the pleasure that comes from them, then your whole life will spin around it, thus your whole reality will be based on an illusion, deep inside we know that games are just codes pretending to be reality, but that doesn't mean imagination is bad, it only becomes bad when more importance is given to the illusion rather than real life, the illusion is supposed to exist as a temporal stimulation, not to replace your whole reality the whole time but who knows, if the life that we live, is another illusion that we decided to put all our time in?
It's not the games that are wasting your life, but they are helping you to ignore all those emotions and ideas that try to stop you from wasting your life.
Facts! I love immersing myself In a good game but it's always a good idea to keep in mind that the grind/progression part is there to simulate IRL progression which is always superior. I do my best to stay away from major time sink games and put that energy towards a real world hobby or goal.
@@jasonsoliva6678 Give me a time when people were 'truely free'. Even when they were free, they probably had to spend a lot of time on the survival aspect of that free life. I doubt that, let's say', the first settlers in the US had plenty of time to sit around and play games. I think they were truely free, but few of them had the comfortable lives we have now. There's plenty of videos of people that want to quit the rat-race and go live rural or off-grid. One common denominator in most of these videos is: a sense of freedom, but also a lot of hard work. So, freedom is not something they offer you, but you have to work towards it.
im very happy to see this video. i honestly believe a lot of "game design" nowadays is just casino design and behaviorism. I noticed it has an impact on less predatory games too, as audiences gradually flock to more cynical games.
@@nicktw8688 Terraria and Don’t Starve are amazing semi-exceptions that I’ve loved…but I also haven’t diven very deep into them because I had that “wasting my life” feeling. Forager was fairly enjoyable, had great concepts…but I remember I worked at it like a chore! If not for OCD, I never would’ve made any ground with Forager.
The trick to solve this whole problem is surprisingly simple, be self aware enough to notice when you're having fun with a game, and when you aren't. As soon as you notice that you're not having fun anymore stop playing that game. If you find yourself feeling compelled to play a game that you know you aren't having fun with, recognize that it's become an addiction. If you have an addiction seek help. I keep seeing articles about how gaming isn't fun anymore, but for me it's a golden age of gaming. There are more games than ever to play, and a surprising number of them are a lot of fun. Also, occasionally go outside and touch grass.
@@Demsky83 It is in certain places. Elden Ring, Balders Gate 3, Armored Core VI, FF14 (one of the few MMOs that respects your time no endless grinding for gear), Valheim, Jedi: fallen order, all of the indy games that have come out, etc. There are a lot of good games and I think that has pulled back the wool for a lot of gamers going; wait a minute why am I grinding for skins or shelling out money for battle passes that force me to play more or feel like I wasted my money. More and more people are seeing this especially as money gets tighter and tighter. I would say we are in the middle of a gaming renaissance. (Maybe not for mobile gaming but PC and console for sure.)
I think the issue is a lot of these games get our time without giving us anything in return. Not even fun, sometimes. But there are games that last 100 hours like Elden Ring or Baldurs Gate that make me forget every other aspect of my life but pay me with compelling narrative, sense of accomplishment or simply a constant feeling of awe. Even stuff like Valorant, it just gives me fun and social interaction and that's fine.
Games at their core were always entertainment, and entertainment is often considered not productive. Video games as an industry have experienced a long evolution, and some of these time waster mechanics or even more insidious ones have been present for ages. Early arcade games were sometimes made harder in order to eat more pocket change. Backtracking or expansive areas to pad out game time and make it feel like you got your money's worth. Repeat levels over and over for collectibles. Grind levels so you could actually beat the next boss. I remember the rise of Minecraft, and endless hours punching blocks to build things with friends. Microtransactions may have peeled back the curtain and added a dark cynicism and profiteering to time wasting, the mechanics may have evolved, but it's not new. It's grown more blatant as the formulas have been distilled, and I think the last few years being so crazy with so many soulless cash grabs and predatory schemes has made us more disillusioned with the mechanics and gaming as a whole. Personally, I miss the days when friends would just meet up for some local co-op or even online multiplayer, with no other reward systems. The motivation was having fun with friends. The reward of completing a game was talking about it with friends. Yes, insert a joke about the friends we made along the way here. I've been grinding the recently added battlepass in Hunt Showdown, a game I've had a lot of fun playing. It's sucked the fun out of it. Monster Hunter: Rise is another game I've enjoyed. But one thing I noticed is base Rise people would argue there isn't enough of a grind. People hail the addition of random armour upgrades that take a lot of grinding to work on, that it gave them a "reason to keep playing." Shouldn't the reason be... that you enjoy playing the game? Or maybe you want to perfect your skills, have the fastest hunt times, some other goal, that's not... grind endlessly for random chance upgrades? I'm rambling at this point, so I'll leave it with this: maybe more gamers need to think about why they play games and what they enjoy about them. Life's too short and there's too many great games out there to waste all your time on games that don't really bring you joy.
very well said. they only real difference is that there are microtransactions attached to these mechanics now to make money off people wanting to save time. maybe some people are just too young to remember the days before microtransactions and that these mechanics have always been there. who knows. i usually choose to just go grindy f2p and play it like it would've still been if the microtransactions were never introduced lol. game developers have been experimenting with techniques to keep people playing their game for longer periods of time before microtransactions were really prominent. just dont play game genres that are inherently grindy ezpz. and the onetime payment model is still easily sustainable for non live service/non online multiplayer titles that dont have constant updates (not including random bug fix updates every ), and maintenance/server upkeep. personally though i prefer the microtransaction model to an extent (it goes too far in some games) over the subscription model for most online multiplayer/live service games. any single player game with only minimal updates that have microtransactions are completely whack af though.
I loved the drops on Rise, I loved the rampage, then Sunbreak comes along and makes it more like a traditional monster hunter game and no updates to the rampage, sad to see even if I do enjoy playing the expansion
This I actually find that I'm not much of a gamer after I got out of school and everyone moved on with their lives other than the rpg and gta I only play multiplayer games with friends. So I guess storytelling and fun with friends.
Well games can serve purposes of mental excercise or catharsis. Where it becomes a true waste of time is when it occupies you at the minimum level to keep you going without achieving either
I like the notion of certain games being categorised as mere “tree-punchers”. There you have it, an opportunity for a series together with a scoring system that could rival “Before you buy” and would receive praise by many overnight. This has been on so many minds lately, so far you articulated it the best.
I think part of the problem is players view high run time as if it is a mark of quality... when the reality is actually the opposite. Most of the time a high run time means a lot of grinding and repetitive tasks. Doing boring stuff so you can get to "the real game." Also, replay value or mastery is something smaller devs try to focus on since they can't make enough content for a large run time, and can exponentially increase the amount of time you spend with a game.
I used to be one of these. I felt if I was going to be spending my hard earned money on a game, I better get my moneys worth out of it. Now, I don’t have the time to play most of these games, as they are just too much. I’ve moved completely away from open world games because as soon as I see the map with all the icons on it, I immediately think “I don’t have time for this shit”. To me now, if I had fun with a game, it was worth the money, even if it only lasts 5 hours.
@@scottwagner2566this is my thoughts exactly. If I had a great experience and fun then it was worth my money, it doesn’t matter the length of the game. Some people really just think that length=worth and will play through 100h bloated games that they’re not even having too much fun, but hey gotta make my moneys worth, right? Nah, I’ll drop a game if I’m not having fun, my time is more important than the money I spent on it, I’m not making myself miserable to “make my money worth it”. If you’re miserable playing, you already lost
I would say there’s exceptions to this. For example, monster hunter is designed around having an intricate and methodical grind (for the most part there are exceptions) and the result of pouring hours into it is genuinely one of the most satisfying and well executed grinds to exist in most games. There are definitely time wasting areas though (grinding lands) but for the most part it’s a case where a 300 hour play time is time enjoyed (particularly if you have friends with you).
This is very common complaint in a certain community that I’ll never understand even tho the game isn’t finished they have the absurdity to say things like “update ONLY let me play for 24 straight hours before going back to endgame loop” like wtf not many games would even give you 96 hours of enjoyment for the entire game let only only the first half Kinda baffles me bc why would u think a good story game should let u play for 24 hours straight every day??? Sometimes they don’t even want sorry just unlimited grinding and I just don’t get it man like at least respect urself and want real content Weird brain rot mentality that also doesn’t respect the developers or resources games take to make imo and that sometimes less is more. Runtimes padded out by grinding don’t really make games better just worse the more and more pronounced it is
I have little patience for games that don't respect my time. I play a lot of indie games nowadays and it's great since they often are more innovative and wrap up the story within 8 to 12 hours, letting me move on to the next thing. I'll still play the occasional 30-50 hours game, Dragon Quest XI was great for example. Great video, looking forward to more content from you!
My guess is that AAA games rely on grinding to pad out a short game. They can make 3 minutes of content and pad it out for hours because it takes so long to level up
This is exactly the same approach i have taken lately. I think the only 50+ hour game I played lately is Elden Ring, which is a gold standard for big games if you ask me because I hated how most open world games are blatantly padded out with collectibles and stuff i couldnt bother to care about. But ER had none of that, you were (mostly) free to go do whatever you want as long as you had the skill to do it 😂 Otherwise, I also just stick to short indie games that don't require a metric fuckton of grinding
I have been playing Breath of the Wild, and at a stage where I’m ready to confront Ganon, I have over 100 hours in-game. Sometimes it feels a bit grindy, but the content is certainly there. There are time of day and weather mechanics that are only there to make the basic game more difficult, but it also gives the game a sense of passing time. That being said, I probably haven’t put this much time into anything since Halo, and I probably won’t again for some time.
I actually haven't really played a game in many years because my anxiety is always in the background saying I should be doing something else. It is a gift and a curse.
@@MrCmon113 specifically to games because that was the main thing I did as a kid so the thought still lingers. I can play guitar and watch stupid videos no problem.
Ironically, the games I spend the most time on today are games with minimal or no microtransactions. Games that are designed from the ground up to keep you playing for thousands of hours fail at doing so for me. Factorio is one example of a game that I've sunk literal thousands of hours into now. The difference with that game though, is that while there's a lot of stuff to do, the game makes no attempt at trying to keep you from quitting.
I read once that the addiction involves two nueral pathways. The first is you enjoy something and so you start doing it more. The second is the more you do something, the more you develop it into a habit. Addiction comes in when you stop enjoying something but you don't break the habit. And I think that's often what happens with video games. We keep playing, not realizing we don't actually enjoy it anymore.
You can enjoy something and be addicted to it. Nobody has the "habit" of playing video games. You don't accidentally subconsciously video games. It's just addiction.
@@se7en910then you’re not addicted. What addiction is to me is someone playing game (watching tv series etc.) all day. Literally throwing their life away. With all the hours you put into that, you are killing the creative side, so much potential wasted! Imagine if you started a new creative hobby and did that for 50 hours instead of playing another game?
@@Softlol well u cant just spend time on somthing instead of games and call it a win,people use games to relax and rest their mind after 12 hours of work,i my self would be miserable if i just worked without resting my mind and having adventre with my friends is valheim or somthing else,yet we found ourselfes spending toooo much time grinding for a new gear that helps us progress through the game,so we used a duplication on some of those irons sinse we already looted a whole biome for it and yet we needed more iron,definitely didnt waate our time finidng another swamp(iron loot biome),in my opinion, as long as u are doing progress in real life without ruining it,ur free to play ur game,doesnt mean u should play games when ever u have free time tho,still playing these games with friends doesnt kill my creativity, infact it makes me use it and use my brain(ofcourse it depends on what game im playing) at the end these isnt much stuff to do with ur free time as a human,ur gonna do what u like and for some people its playing games with friends,yes it doesnt give u anything but joy,just like most hobbies,work hard play harder,it is deserved,its better than many other hobbies thats include spening money in bars and on hoes,enjoy ur short life without ruining it or making ut shorter
@@legionrules4729 if you truly want to give your mind a good rest, don’t do anything. Meditate and let every thought go away. This is the ultimate mind relaxation. You might think you’re relaxing, but you aren’t truly, as the mind is still active and get heavy stimulation!
Jacob sent me, and I am not disappointed! As a dad, I have very little time anymore to play and that should really ramp up the pressure to make what little gaming I do """meaningful""" but instead I end up playing hero wars :(
you already had a (assuming) childhood filled with copious entertainment addiction. please just make sure you raise your children to be functional adults lol. instead of playing a game yourself, play a game with your kids at least. dont get to your death bed and think "i wasted my chance to spend time with my kids because i was playing games that literal babies can play"
@@saturationstation1446 Man's allowed to have fun. I (assume) you've grown up with everything you've ever wanted with all the time in the world and little to no struggle in your life thanks to your parents. You should thank them by cleaning their house and car every day with 0 complaints instead of telling others what to do with their time.
I think this is why I unconsciously stopped playing games. I completely forget about things that don't hold my attention, and pointless game chores just aren't going to do it
Remember when games were just core well designed gameplay mechanics with no added bullshit. That were fun usually 10-20hrs games. that was just until ps3 generation.
Remember when stupid people didnt have access to computers and didnt complain that everything that takes time which they subjectively dont like is objectively needless bullshit?
This is exactly what I've been missing in tons of games, but games like FromSoftware games, System shock, Devil May Cry, God of War, Metro, Resident Evil Remakes and other less popular AAA games in recent years have started going back to the root(well a lot of them are remakes). But yeah games are too long, they take forever to actually start and they are padded as hell.
@@rattlehead999They try to, but there is a reason I consider that form of engineering lost technology. You had very little space to work with back in the day, actually looking at the big picture the platforms Frontier Elite II targeted were massive gaming systems, nothing compared to today, but they were functionally equivalent, you could have color graphics, and sound. A competent programmer could fit in a fast yet beautiful renderer of a type never ever done again, with newtonian mechanics, and the entire milky way and a bunch of music to boot. This will never happen again even though our low end entry level systems of today are orders of magnitude more powerful than the Amigas and Dos's Frontier Elite II were targeting. Elite: Dangerous is nothing like that. Jagged Alliance 3 will never be like the first two games, there will never be another Transport Tycoon Deluxe. These types of games arent made anymore, it was when game development was an art and a craft, today you just slap shit together in an engine that isnt optimized for a specific purpose anymore.
I've always thought storytelling in gaming suffered from extended play times (although longer games can be fun, it's always at the price of a well-told story) movies are two hours for a reason, it's hard to stretch an engaging story passed that five hour mark
If you ever think a Game is wasting your life, you probably need to go outside to do something and rebalance your life. Because after a long week of work I love sitting down and gaming for a few hours and the relaxation is so worth it, I've never thought I was wasting my life. XD
Or, do as addicts do, and never ask yourself if you can do anything better. Just keep mindlessly consuming and obsess over your addiction in a state of extended adolescence.
thank you. some people are using gaming as a form of meditation and for puttig their mind at ease. If your Job requires a lot of attention and you have to solve complex tasks, chopping wood in a videogame can be seen as relaxing.
I noticed this with cyberpunk. Part of the character building aspect of the game is ruined by the random loot drops. It drove me crazy when I'd waste hours trying to get a specific item to complete my build, only to have it pop up organicly on another play through where it's incompatible with the current build
Yep, I've disliked randomized loot long before people complained about lootboxes or gacha mechanics or whatever. When a game withholds some item, I want to get it by meeting a specific challenge, not by throwing dice a thousand times in a row.
Thanks for posting this. I've been really struggling with this issue for a while now. I often use Minecraft as an example. There are few joys like designing and an elaborate mining system, and while mining with stone and iron tools (early on) can get tedious and slow, the chance of finding ore keeps you hooked and doesn't feel like wasting time. But then you want to make a stone building and have to cook 10 stacks of cobble and it's like "Why the heck do I have to sit here and wait for this arbitrary cooking time?" It's not like having 10 stacks of cooked stone instead of 10 stacks of cobble is going to suddenly make me OP and ruin the gameplay. But the real kicker you alluded to is "What does Mojang get for my time sitting here waiting for cobble to cook?" Nothing. The answer is nothing, so again, "Why"? I just think it's a trend of bad game design. Where there's some kind of "grinding is realism" mindset devs are into and slap it onto every game. Some games have obviously directly profited off of this, but there's so many that expect the player to waste HOURS of time grinding and the devs aren't even making money on that. I literally can't even fathom the reason for it. I mean whether I played 10 hours or 1000 hours of Minecraft, I've still only spent $25 bucks 8 years ago on it. So why does Mojang need me to spend more time playing it?
I don't think its bad game design. Some people like that grind. Some people love endless farming, mining, etc. people will look at some action game and scoff at the fishing mini game while others will look at the action game and say to themselves that they don't like that and its just the same thing over and over, just shooting/hacking at the same enemies endlessly and t hey dont want that.
I've been playing ARK Survival Evolved recently and this has been on my mind a lot. I don't know what the correct way to handle these problems is, but ARK giving players the freedom to customize how much time they want to spend grinding is a good one.
I think this way about pikmin's 4 menu. It's not a literal menu but individual people on a field that each represent one point of a menu (start mission, see pokedex-like encyclopedia, train skills, etc). It's like yeah this is so realistic but I'm playing a game and would greatly appreciate the floating non-realistic letters instead of a walking simulator that's making me waste like ten minutes every time I need multiple things from the menu
As a long-time gamer it has been interesting to see the way that addictive RPG/MMO mechanics, leveling up in particular, have seeped into so many other types of games while a few other games seem to resist that game design/business model (e.g. Zelda Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring). The former depend mostly on extrinsic/abstract motivation ("just a few more x to grind through in order to get y!") while the latter lean much more towards intrinsically motivated, player-directed gameplay ("Ooh, what's that over there?").
BotW is an interesting one... I'd say it has some grinding features in terms of things like farming certain materials for equipment upgrades, side quests and the like, but it's definitely an optional opt-in feature, not core game play.
The thing about V rising is that, you can customize everything in it. How much you get from punching wood, how fast you gather resources, how fast your machines are and all that. You can even set your starting level. So you can fully customize the gameplay. And if you want to play in a public server, than there it's all needed, the timers and the amount you gather.
Agree 100%. At fifty, I feel my time is more precious the less of it I have. Game reviews should include the timewasting and addiction metrics so that people know and think about it before buying. Especially after Covid, it's important that people go outside and live in the real world and not close themselves up in their own little bubble. Good games are fun and a pleasure, but let's keep in mind that our time and life are more important.
Last year I picked up Civ 6 anthology and, being a newcomer to the series, I was really shocked that that game has basically no dangling carrots whastoever. No unlocks (besides the DLCs), no dailies, no overarching progression, no FOMO, not even a campaign mode that you feel compelled to finish. It just kind of says 'Here's what the game is. Play it if you want.' It occupies this special place for me now where it's the game I have the fewest 'ulterior motives' for playing. If a game gets boring I can just start a new one. If I don't want to play a certain way I don't have to. When I am playing it, it's because I want to and I am having fun. I guess thats why most people stop playing it. They are just done and the game does nothing to try and retain you. I kind of love that.
if i can share a tought, V rising and cult of the lamb have both a minion mechanic that is the reason the farm is so tedious, you need to interact with minions to make them do it instead.
Warframe was the one for me that made me realize this. I logged in one day as I was doing daily at that point and realized I had 2k hrs on it...and it made me realize the daily grind and long hours I was spending on it was wasted because at that point, I was no longer enjoying the game and just grinding every day to get better gear. I realized that this was time I could've been playing one of my other hundreds, maybe thousands, of games on my massive backlog that I might actual enjoy but instead I was wasting it on grind I started to loathe. I quit playing it and started working on my backlog of other games and discovered the act of enjoying games all over again. I might have wasted a lot of time to learn that, but at least I'm not wasting any more of it now and am back to having positive gaming experiences again
We made a top place (actually the first) in Warframe. That was the point I took inventory and decided: No game should occupy me more than 100--120 hrs in my life.
@EditioCastigata I'm honestly okay with a game taking up more than 100hrs of my time...if it's truly got content that continues to warrant it, be it lengthy story/quests worthy of playing, and is genuinely keeping me entertained/immersed. Games like all of the Borderlands games, BotW & TotK, Witcher 3, many rpgs I own, the XCOM games, Terraria, so many more I could list. I've put over 300hrs in all of those and never in that time did I feel like I was playing empty content or running out of things to do. Warframe after playing the main story stuff and getting to around roughly mr12-16 for most if I just had to throw a number at it, becomes an empty game that you're simply either farming for the sake of trying to get more weapons/frames you honestly don't need to play the game, farming for rivens & riven rerolls, or grinding to throw forma onto frames, and maybe doing fashion frame so someone you might meet online might possibly compliment your cosmetic style. Not to mention that everything you try to craft takes ridiculous amounts of time unless you want to rush it for platinum, which I never did once. The game just simply doesn't respect your time in that regards and eventually ends up rewarding you with nothing but exactly that - wasted time. So yeah, I'm okay with going over 100hrs, as long as it's worthwhile content
@@QuestionThings123 I very much agree with you, and share your assessment re Warframe as a game of a different kind. Though by the cutoff after symbolic 100hrs for me or 300 or thereabout for you, I suggest paying attention to the marginal gains of a game in the context of more, and maybe even better, games enriching one's treasure of cultural experiences and stories. IMHO, and it's possible that's particular to me and you don't share the tendency.
This Is The Way. I came to a similar conclusion with D3 many years ago; I went in on it with a friend and quit playing when I realized I was just going for a marginally more powerful crossbow by playing all the time.
The thing is, in most games nowadays, you are not “playing”. You are: - Logging in daily to keep your login streak like you’re attending a class. - Doing meaningless “daily challenges” that don’t require any skill or thought, that feel more like “rituals” that you have to do to get more points like you’re in some kind of cult. - Doing meaningless loot management to just not be weaker than the current enemies, like you’re doing chores. - Testing your luck like you’re gambling in a casino for no reason to do unrelated things like upgrade your weapons or armor or something. - Ticking boxes off a map like you’re doing a job. - grinding or farming daily to unlock a character, like you’re trying to pay a debt. - Spending money to get upgrades that don’t make a difference like you’re getting scammed. - Inviting your contacts to join the game like you’re in some kind of pyramid scheme. - Buying limited time special equipment or items from special events like you’re “being rewarded” by your kidnapper. - Getting genuine good content sparsely or rarely like you’re in a toxic relationship. - Finishing a long list of “quests” that are just fetch quests like you’re a delivery boy. - Finally not having an end to the game like being with an obsessive person.
In my personal experience, if a game is fun I can replay it ad-infinitum. If it's just trying to keep my attention with dirty psychological tricks, I usually drop it and don't look back. Just as the craziest example I have, I have played a $25 indie game that probably takes about 5~8 hours to beat normally your first time, and played it for over 1,500 hours. I've played and completed SMB3 a lot of times and I still have fun when I play it again. When a game is "fun", "content" is a bonus, when a game is not "fun", "content" is a treadmill.
But the problem with psychological tricks is that it is hard to be aware of (and harder to admit) In my opinion having 1500 hours in one game seems not like a healthy relationship but you are better aware of yourself!
I am less worried about the life time wasted while doing something I enjoy, but I noticed that games that makes me do chores just feel bad and so has gaming shiftet from a thing I want to do, to something I have to convince myself to do and I often fail. Browsing through steam feels like picking a game that I find the least tedious but maybe that's just the depression.
It's not the depression it's the wall to wall drop-in story quality across entertainment media. Games are just really important to a lot of people so their front and center along with movies. Games are also a lot darker than they used to be and I don't mean the lighting in the levels.
What I don't get is the hostility I end up getting from people for not playing video games. I have a job and spend the rest of my free time mostly eating, sleeping, browsing this and that or chatting with friends. When I tell my friends that I don't really play games, they usually get really critical of me, even accuse me of having autism. Is it so taboo in the modern day to not be addicted to gaming? I just don't understand.
@@dry-cleaning6255 I'm thinking of doing just that, because some of them are starting to show signs that they're not the type of people I should be associated with to put it nicely :\
I've never had much time on my day-to-day life to play videogames, even as a kid, so the idea of picking the right game has always been with me. Having said that, I never understood the obsession over play time. Hearing a game is "300 hours long" makes me bounce right off of it. I don't have time for that and it's probably not worth more than 10 shorter games I can play for 30 hours each.
300 hours yeah, but 60/70? Depends on the game. Fromsoftware’s games usually are that long but also very good games, fun, entertaining and engaging throughout the whole 60 hours. Personally I never had the issue, except with a couple of games, because I don’t play multiplayer games, I prefer story-driven singleplayer games, which are usually not very long and you know pretty fast once you start wether you’re going to enjoy it/It’s worth the money or not
@@juanmejiagomez5514 I mean, yeah, I was using general numbers for a general statement. A 60 hour game can be worth it. And, coincidentally, Elden Ring is one of the few games I have in Steam with around 100 hours of play time. My point was that an extremely high hour count is a red flag for padding, so I generally skip any game selling itself as long. Not sure what's the issue you never had, though. You do have a lot of time to play long games? Or you never encountered a game selling itself as having hundreds of hours of play time in it?
@@ekki1993 Never had issues with games having too much padding, because I usually tend to go for narrative-driven singleplayer games, which tend not to waste the player’s time and even when they’re long the extra time is usually worth it. I think if we really try we have the ability to sort and discern games that are worth playing from games that aren’t
You're kinda contradicting yourself. You say that you'd rather play ten 30h games. But you don't have time for a 300h game? Sounds like you do have time for a 300h game if you have time for ten 30h games. Sounds more like you just haven't encountered a game you'd wanna spend 300h on. Because "I don't have time" is clearly false.
@@halosaft First of all, "I don't have time" is a figure of speech. It means I'm not willing to dedicate 300 hours to a single game. Secondly, I didn't say I have the time to play 10 games with 30 hour expected playtime. I said I'd rather do that than play one 300 hours long game. It doesn't mean I have the time, I was just pointing out a reason why I think it's often a bad option to go for a long game. And what's going on with the sassy remark at the end? You jumped to a terrible misinterpretation of what I said with unwarranted confidence. Calm down Dunning Kruger. Re-read what I said.
Hey, thanks for the video! Definitely good questions to ask, although I don't think V Rising or Cult of the Lamb are great examples of the problem. V Rising definitely has a grind, but I was never sitting around waiting for my mills to process resources. I went out, gathered, then loaded them all up and went to do something else fun. Same with Cult of the Lamb.. You have your cult members to gather resources, so you don't need to sit and chop trees forever. :P I do really hope that microtransactions just vanish all of a sudden, and video games go back to what they once were, what some still are.. making money by selling copies, rather than stupid microtransactions.. But hey, I live in CA, and even our highways have microtransactions if you want to progress faster. (Express lanes; not tolls) SO frustrating. -_-
A lot of studios seem to think that gameplay hours per dollar spent is directly proportional to the value of a game. As a busy adult with a full time job, I simply don't care about this metric anymore. I'll happily pay $60 for a short game if that experience is well crafted and respects my time. I find that most of the well-regarded crafting/survival games and MMOs out there fail at this.
Great Video! The idea that games are adopting the mechanics of microtransaction and free to play models , even without their monetization methods, is fascinating.... like some kind of vestigial element that increases engagement for its own sake. Reminds me of a talk Jonathan Blow gave called, "the medium is the message" , where he argues that because these methods work to engage and then monetize, they get formalized as ""good design"" , and start to interfere in all experiences. On top of that, because designers and critics aren't aware of this, we inherit these methods and don't assume it can be otherwise. The tricky thing of course is to try and distinguish between good forms of engagement and perverse/predatory forms, because its not simply reducible to the dichotomy between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. How e do this probably requires more literacy about games than we presently have, but hopefully we get there someday .
No joke: a clip of that talk was in a previous version of this video. His comparison to '70s TV is spot-on, and has really played out in the ~10 years since that presentation. Thanks for watching!
Honestly, that's why I have stopped playing open world survival games like V rising. Only one I have gone back to time and time again is minecraft but even then you get that week of pure grind then you have to stop. That's why I love to play story driven/ fun experiences like Yakuza or Alan Wake 2. It respects your time and does not want you to play for 100s of hours
The funny/sad part is that all of those techniques they use to pull people in and hold them playing the game are exactly what push me away! And the fact that the whole industry is following that path and everything is becoming a crafty grindy skill tree level up crap I'm more and more leaning to older games from the time where the only ones who had these where RPGs and survivals! I miss the days we had different game genres now everything is the same with a different coat of paint! I just want a good short/lean game without all that crap but people are like "but bruh there's no progression and that's boring! I need to chop trees for 100h to make my purchase worth it!" we went from shorter fun games that were awesome to replay countless times to longer crappy ones that feel like a chore and you give up before reaching the end 'cause the gameplay loop is boring AF! A bunch of 100h+ boring new games could have been awesome 8h games if people and the industry weren't that greedy/stupid!
That's complete bullshit. There's more games, that don't include ANY grind or collection, released all the time, than you can possibly play. >I just want a good short/lean game without all that crap No, you do not. Otherwise you wouldn't have problems finding that thousandfold on Steam alone. >we went from shorter fun games No, we didn't. I'm looking at my Steam homepage and what I first see is Outer Wilds, Golf Club Wasteland, Rainworld and Superliminal. All well known, recent games with zero grinding or chores. There literally isn't a problem. No one forces you to go out of your way to spend 60$ on a game that makes you collect apples for ten hours. You can spend 15$ on a game that's purely a progression of puzzles and/or combat and you can do so for more games than you can play in a lifetime.
@@klawypl That's not even true either. First "AAA" game that stands out to me in my Steam Library is Alien Isolation - again zero grind or chores, just a one-and-done series of challenges.
8 hour game…? No chance in hell I’m spending $60 on an 8 hour game. I’m not even touching an 8 hour game unless it’s on gamepass. My money is valuable and my time more so. I’m not spending $60 every 8 gaming hours. Hell, I still play Skyrim. I’m getting my money’s worth.
Honestly, I agree. Sometimes grinding feels like a job. We gotta make an effort to not get tempted by the shiny graphics and play games that are less about farming and more about the experience a game can offer. I played Control recently, for example, and I enjoyed it so much, sometimes I felt like a child in awe again.
Too me, games were never different than literature, in that, I'm reading/playing to enjoy a story that better helps me to understand what it means to be a human on this plane. Subsurface Circular and Dear Esther was that for me recently, Firewatch was that for me in college, my deepest desire has always been to feel a little more emotoinally intelligent , a tad smarter, and more reflective of our world.
I loved reading this, I agree so much with your philosophical approach. Of the games you mentioned, I only heard about Firewatch, but haven't played it either. I'll make sure to play them :) thanks! If you read this, I'm still interested to know more games that you felt were meaningful :) cheers ♥
I deeply admire this approach, put my feelings into words perfectly. I will also add that just like books, I play video games to escape from my own body and immerse myself as the protagonist. Ghost of Tsushima made me feel like a Samurai experiencing the stories unfolding me in Japan firsthand.
It's really amazing to think that, despite being a short game with minimal mechanics involved, Dear Esther is a game that still haunts me to this day. The landscape, the caves, the mystery and then final scene, I can recall it all so vividly and emotionally.
V Rising is really weird for me. Once you get more experience and an intuitive feel for how much of things you need, you can balance your time better and leave your camp once you have stuffed your crafting stations full of raw materials. However, the process of gaining that experience is pretty tedious and the fact that making any base worth its salt from a design perspective instead of just a utilitarian, unplanned mess of growth takes so much time with base game settings really makes me appreciate the fact that there are ways to mitigate it. It just sucks that it feels like you're cheating the intended experience when you change the amount of resources you get from nodes and decrease crafting time. The fact that bosses limit your crafting options should be enough to force you to engage with the other systems but they decided to put insane timers on certain aspects of the game. I don't even waste my time with thralls, their gathering speed is so slow it is way faster to just make my own cotton or paper runs. Oh heck, I typed all this then realized the video was posted a year ago. Oh well, FOR THE ALGORITHM!
I wouldn't say it's cheating. The base ratios configured in the game are designed for online multiplayer play, with clanmates helping you. So, just like Ark Survival Evolved and other similar games, playing around with the server configuration when you play solo is not cheating, it's using options given by the devs themselves to mitigate the fact the game was never balanced for single player
I definitely agree, especially with the paying aspect. These things cost both time and money, and if something isn’t even a finished or well made product, it’s not worth my money, let alone my time. I think making those decisions is much more important these days (also as an adult who now has to work to earn money that I spend on my games 😅)
It is just a game, entertainment. I really think a shift is happening in this regard aswell. All those kids that grew up playing videogames are now adults and they notice the patterns that games try to push to keep us playing. Also our priorities and timemanagement has changed so we are much more picky on what to put time into. I think its healthy, alot of these kinda videos you made are popping up lately. Its good.
People who say that video games is a waste of their time are the same people that watch football, play board games/card games, smoke, and sit on their porch doing nothing.
It sucks to figure out who’s being exploited more when it comes to mediums of art but I’m happy to say that this is still a medium so popularity,passion, and fun still hold value. We will still get great games as long as that is true. We should really invest in the future of preserving games just in case tho.
I enjoy actual game design, like the physics in Tears of the Kingdom, the move set and obstacles in Mario, the creativity and the "sense" they make out of all the rules the devs set, especially "physical" rules. The toil of leveling up and the tedium of doing x to do y can creep in but if the process itself is inventive and new, I can see the value
This is not a problem that only occurs in modern games. Ever played Lineage, master of labor and self-enslavement? However, the formula Time=Value rather than Quality=Value has generally become established, and it's easier to implement time-wasting functions than qualitative content. And the fact that there are still many players who measure value by time played, we probably deserve it that way.
I actually do think that "if it involves grinding it's a bad game" is a valid law. The only exception is MMORPGs, where the grinding is the background for social interactions. Solo grinding is a lack of respect.
In RPGs I think slow grinding is sometimes unintentionally used as a design tool to make the player realize they're approaching the game with the wrong strategies, the problem is that also makes them a design flaw especially when you present all these false stylistic choices to players when there is only one practical solution to farming experience points the fastest and most efficiently that it makes the other choices irrelevant and only viable to players who are clueless to what the meta is and who are willing to throw hours and hours of their life away.
@@jasonsoliva6678 One of my favorite games of all times is Darkest Dungeon, and not until I played it did I realize how much of a waste of time and how much of a terrible game design farming/grinding is. Most JRPGs allow you to become so strong due to grinding that the epic "final boss" can't even touch you, so there goes the whole point of the narrative.
Eh, no, it applies to MMORPGs too :P i can only handle so much of ''go here and talk to this guy, not go talk to that guy, now collect 5 of these, now collect5 of those" Guild wars 2 had a separate PVP mode where you can jump up to max level, and items, and just go fight in pvp. I don't know why that concept never caught on in other MMOs.
@@alvideos2145 Those types of quests are generally low level, with the actual MMORPG meat being at max level. By grinding in MMOs I meant raiding/instancing/boss farming, which is in fact grinding but since it *generally* requires teamwork that's where the social layer comes. I'd argue that the majority of people play MMOs for its PVE and not its PVP, since the fact that specialized classes exist in most of them create horrible, horrible no good trash PVP balance.
Then there's Octopath 2, where the game just gives up and lets the Merchant use a skill that TURNS DAMAGE DEALT INTO *MONEY.* It's a 1-to-1 ratio, and it's beautiful! Also, Dancer's Bewildering Grace exists. Sometimes that grants *100x EXP* which is downright ludicrous...And other times the ground explodes!
The solution is pretty simple: STOP PLAYING CRAP! .... But no, people will play V rising, buy diablo 4, etc and just complain! Don't buy crap, stop rewarding developers and paying them for taking you for fools ffs!
This has always been my feeling with life wasting mechanics in a game. Which is why I always listen to an audio or long form you tube video so I feel like I’am doing something else to.
I only have 1 rule. No microtransactions. Games that push them, I drop. Usually only play those with friends, and spend no money. Subscriptions are ok. But right now, I'm enjoying my favorite game of all time (Space Exploration modpack for Factorio) and I functionally got it for free.
You briefly showed Forager, which is a game I felt this more than most. It's bizarre because if they take out predatory practices in a game we should be happy and yet when the gameplay is still so similar its hard to shake the uneasy feeling I get when I play it lol.
Maybe its just me but I never felt that from Forager. Maybe when you have mostly everything maxed it can seem like your wasting time, but when I was playing it actively I was having a lot of fun. The progression feels way quicker than other “wasting time” games until you want to get every upgrade.
I downloaded it because it looked cute. Spent maybe five minutes playing it then looked at all the menus for crafting then noped out and uninstalled. I felt so disgusted i had to go shower. Twice.
Reading a lot of these comments has me thinking, maybe when we as a species can reconize that not everything needs to be about efficiency and money, and sometimes people just wanto to have fun (you knoa, hobbies) and thats its ok and people shouldnt be shamed for that, maybe then we will start actually achieving good things.
You can tell this guy doesn't remember how games were designed around the same purpose, with mechanics those do not fit them in order to extend playtime with their own micro transactions, I'm talking about arcades and how systems like the lives and score extended to home console even tho they were absolutely useless in there, at the same time both arcades and home console games were extremely hard so you didn't notice the lack of content and instead wasted hours and hours trying to get through to the very end. And I'm haven't even mentioned the point and click adventures which despite having really good stories these were locked down behind stupid and impossible to figure out "puzzles" those made people either buy guides or call a phone line that would give you the answers. There were always games those were designed to waste your time, at the same time as there were games designed for you to enjoy at your own pace. So no, the question isn't "Are modern Games Designed To Waste Our Lives?" but instead "How And Where Do I Find Games Those Do Not Want To Waste My Life?"
"I've played video games for years, what's changed?" Maybe it's that you're now well into adulthood watching everyone on facebook have kids buy houses travel the world and accomplish things, and your subconscious is screaming at you "I've already see video games! Life has more to offer before you die!"? Could that be it?
I think they also affect our way of viewing life. Most games you play as the hero, or a character that has an important role. It makes us think that life is dull since there’s no heroic progression, when life at times is a grind. A grind that doesn’t always seem to be building to the next level up. And frankly some game worlds are spectacular and make us forget our own beautiful world. Biggest distraction of my life no doubt
In reality we are the NPCS, background characters without names who never change the direction of the game. We are the characters that we would never want to play as. We’re living the lives we wouldn’t want to live had we been given the choice. We know we aren’t important. We know we could die and only a few other NPCs would notice and then move on just as quickly. The reason we want to escape reality into movies and games is to trick our brains into experiencing a world where our lives did have that level of meaning, as if the experience was our own. To live in a world where our choices mattered… What kind of person wouldn’t want that?
I always thought of it as you play as the hero in the game that you aspire to be in real life as best you can like Superman for instance. the symbol of truth justice and the American way, the symbol of hope. Even if he can't save everyone it wasn't from lack of trying. Or Batman a billionaire turned superhero because he finally had it with crime and the way the criminals were running the city that was his and also millions home.
This is why I love Cave SHMUPs, Boomer Shooters, Kaizo Mario romhacks, rhythm games. They're not be immersive tales of epic proportions, but they are fun, fast, and best of all: zero tree punching. ...just be prepared for a difficulty spike every 2 seconds.
My "gaming life" changed a lot. In my teens and early 20s I was into mostly all games, even the ones that needed a lot of crafting and grinding. But it all changed around my late 20s and my 30s: I have to do intellingent choices to enjoy this hobby. Games that revolve too much on grinding and the like to be enjoyed are left in the shelf. Now I only play games that make every moment meaningfull. Dying a lot of times in a dark souls or in fear abd hunger is meaningfull for example: with every death your mind and reasoning are engaged every time.
@@zynix27 I'm sorry, but no. Grinding an object 3000 times is the same action repeated over and over. Dying in Souls like or games like fear and hunger is equal to learn something. Difficulties/hard bosses/situatutions are like puzzles. That's why in those games there are different options on how to deal with difficulties. A basic example is the first black knight in DS1. You can avoid him completely or killing it in different manners, even if you are in your first playthrough. Dying keeps me engaged, with my brain finding solutions; simply grinding a 0,01 % item is doesn't give anything meaningful for the experience.
I really dont want to brag , but as a 35yo gamer , who started gaming with titles such as Armored Core 1, old Tekkens , GT1-2, GTA VC & SA, Half Life , MGS2 etc, I have ZERO tolerance for time wasting mechanics. In the very few instances that I've faced "tree-chopping" mechanics and overt timers , it's an immediate uninstall from me. I HAVE enjoyed games with heavy grinding but only if the core gameplay is engaging enough that I dont consider the grind a grind. (I have 2500 hours in Planetside 2 for example)
For some people that grind is the goal. Ill spend hours mining in minecraft just because of how tranquil it is. I enjoy mindless games when i want to play on auto pilot, but still enjoy more focused games when im looking for that. while it can waste a players time, i think it really depends on what exactly the player is looking for
tbh you could make the argument that every single entertainment medium is a waste of time. Videogames, movies, literature everything. On the same note, you could also spend hours explaining how said things actually helped you get through life. I feel that people should enjoy whatever they want, if they don't enjoy it anymore find other thing that you're interested in, maybe share it with someone else whose also interested, now you can get more "value" off the thing.
I work out now instead of playing games. I grew up in the 80’s LOVED video games. I quit gaming two weeks ago. I’ve got fantastic memories of gaming. I just stopped enjoying it. For me gaming lost it's magic.
Many will wake up and regret all the time they spent on gaming and all the missed opportunity with family and friends. No purpose will kill you faster than the unhealthy lifestyle of a gamer, not to even mention the bad attitude youhave towards those that loved you, mistakenly.
When I saw those timers for processing resources in your clips, I found myself wanting to build a Factorio-style production chain. I think I've played a bit too much of that piece of digital crack if I'm starting to think in terms of it when looking at footage of other games.
I feel like many of these mechanics are actually put in because they are common and not for any sort of design reason. I've recently been playing stardew valley again and it wasn't the cutting trees or fishing that got me thinking about this same thing. It was smelting. Is there any reason to have the smelter, and really most the machinery, take time to work? There might be an argument for 'realism', a fish wouldn't bite instantly and you need to react that's an issue of skill. A tree would take some smacks to fell I can live with that. But the smelting takes so long I had to think what would change in the game if you put the ore in and a bar came back out instantly? Would it change the game? The progression? The sense of accomplishment? Does that time serve any game purpose? Or is it just there because every game before it that had smelting the smelting took time so it feels like it should?
I recently started using my resistance bands to do arm workouts while im in que for another match. doing little thing like this is an easy way to get pretty good set of reps while you'd otherwise be in a skirmish or loading screen.
This is why I dd not last long in mmo or open world games specially online games.So i just start choosing what is worth and if felt it start to be wasting time i may leave it. Since many game are being developed we have so much to chose from and limited time.
About V rising: The 1st 2 hours or so of a run are farming, and a bit of combat. The remaining 20 - 30 hours are mostly combat, with not a lot of farming.
And the timers on refining let you indeed engage with the other systems. But, ultimately, yes, it's a game where you have to spend a bit of time to enjoy It. It's designed to play on the week-end, with friends, for sessions of 1-3 hours... It is NOT a solo game... The problem is that it's not advertised as a multiplayer only.
great vid, i was thinking about this a lot with Cult of the Lamb too. its interesting how it's not just a design style, but a whole aesthetic; the pleasant pop of getting a bunch of reward materials slurped up into you whenever you open a chest or whatever is addictive in its own right, to an extent where i found myself running a loop around my cult just picking up 1 wood 1 stone 1 pumpkin from each chest in order without really thinking about it. i guess there's a connection to a game like vampire survivors or snkrx with that - both games which don't really have f2p-style timewaste mechanics, but which absolutely make use of the addictive noise / gobble up resources type of endorphin rush.
Yes. Me and my buddies were talking about it last night. You don’t just got short and sweet experiences anymore. Developers now feel the need to cram absolutely everything they can into the game and it makes them worse. But then gamers complain about everything, so even when there is a lot to do in a game, people still whine. Three examples of the ideas I’ve mentioned are: Portal 2 -A short and sweet game that’s made with incredible attention to detail. It’s just a fun experience for one and/or two people. Lovely. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla -People complain about open worlds being empty, but when it is packed with a crap ton of side stuff, it’s just “bloated”. Mortal Kombat 1 -It’s a fighting game, enough said. That’s what it’s always gonna be. Even in different modes, you’ll be fighting. But people complain because “there isn’t enough to do” even with a story mode, a seasonal event PVE mode, ranked online, kasual online, and some more stuff on the way. But the people need more, but 23 fighters to learn and master apparently isn’t enough either. You just GOTTA have something else to spend another 50 hours with, right? The mindset of gaming as a whole has completely changed because now gamers are entitled to something that they can spend the absolute maximum amount of time on. It’s not enough to just hop into a game and have quick fun across a few rounds or a rewarding mission anymore. It’s all about “how much content is there?”. But with modern prices, you can’t really blame anyone. Gotta get your money’s worth. The whole industry is just like this now.
It's not about being "entitled." It's addiction. These people have an awful relationship with their "hobby" and their "hobby" is keeping them in a state of extended adolescence. They're 35 but only lived about as much as a 17 year old. They spent half of their life gob faced at a screen.
whole video in 1 word: Escapism... yes.. "bread & circus" has existed for thousands of years to keep the sheep distracted. Same reason stadiums exist, TV, porn, etc.
I thought I was growing out of games from around 2017 onwards. Couldn’t find a game that had that feeling ya know where it gets it’s hooks in you so deep that you can’t sleep or are thinking about it when not playing, that feeling was just gone and I thought age had come for me. That’s when Miyazaki showed up to save me from the gaming hellscape modern gaming had become and blessed my soul with Elden Ring. Elden Ring was all I could think about for a about a month and it proved to me that it’s not gaming I was growing out of but I was tired of parasitic game design that I had become so used to.
Tl dr-ish: i miss the days where i was a kid and could spend dozens of hundreds of hours on games, loved em and truly enjoyed em. I know what you mean haha. For me its the same. I dont feel jack about any game anymore. Especially with my pc being and screen being broken now and that i wont be able to afford an replacement for years. There is only two phone games i play funilly enough. That would be world of tanks blitz (despite its grind i still play it since i played it for 7 or 8 years now and have no problem with ingame resources or tanks anymore despite being 95% f2p for the past 2y) and mostly league of legends wild rift. The only game with no cancerous micro transactions or lack of respect for the player. Only skill matters and not what you paid money for. And imo its the only true high quality mobile game to exist out there, there is nothing that can rival it. I have not found a single other non predatory or trash mobile game like wild rift. There is only 3 exceptions to "mobile" games i play outside of these two i mentioned. And i dont think it would be a surprise to say its emulators. GBA, NDS and PSP to be specific. With real games to boot. Tho regardless of me having access to hundreds of quality games as of now. I still dont truly love em. I only do when im intoxicated. Tho thats a whole other problem i wont delve into now. Ive said it for years now. The gaming market as a whole is just dead. There is only one person and one person only to blame for that, that would be the consumer/player. These are the true people enabling these predatory garbage products. Mindless fools. Novel end ☠
Elden ring is a good game but I can't understand how people act like it's the second coming of Christ. It's just DarkSouls but in an open world with horse riding mechanics
@@MALICEM12 that’s fine if it isn’t for you and it doesn’t sound to me like you actually played it at launch in spoiled. You can boil most games down to some reductive “this game plus that game” but sometimes that exactly the game someone is looking for.
This is why i love c&c red alert 2 yuri’s revenge, this game over 23 years old, the main reason why i love this game because i knew when i play it i am going to have a good time and i am not worry a game developer will steal my money, lastly there are an app you can unlock a lot of things in the game, so many players make maps and now it became very fun to play for hours and hours
Great video, i play currently a lot of old school 3d platformer and what is really od, they are just fun … every single second of the game a pure gameplay and feels awesome. No quest marker no side quest just pure fun. Oh and wenn u want to make a level to 100% u have to actuelly explore it because no marker an no mini map. And because this levels are perfect design for this kind of exploration and movement and just for sake of open world … all of this makes fun. Just düsad this kind of games are not made today anymore
These mechanics don't keep people coming back. It's the collection, easy access, and competitive features that keep people coming back. The time wasters are there to slow down progression to the point that you have to use micro transactions to progress.
No, vilifying these practises at the base label is what we all should do. It suhould be illegal practise to insert microtransactions to a game. Any game.
I've always felt that many mobile game mechanics, like gacha mechanics, are actually pretty cool mechanics. The issue is the way the are used to manipulate people.
I continue to not understand why people say gaming is a waste of time. How is it any different than watching TV, reading a book, or fishing? All of these things are done for relaxation, not to be productive. If you're enjoying the game, then it doesn't matter how long you spend with it, assuming it's not affecting your work/personal life
The biggest life waster I experienced was a factory job I had in my early thirties. Sixty hours a week, barely over minimum wage, and as a temp, no benefits. The work was absolutely mind numbingly boring and stressful and as much as I worked, I was financially going in the hole. At that time, video games were the only thing that kept me sane until I found better work.
honestly i dont really care for games with long playtimes. i have adhd and my gaming is very spotty and hyperfixation driven, so ive always preferred shorter games that i can finish before i lose interest in them. i honestly dont get how people can sink thousands of hours into certain games, the most hours i have on a game is a collective ~450 hours in splatoon 2 & 3
There definitely has been an "infiltration" into even the indie market of experiences that are meant to be had over hundreds to thousands of hours. And it is just sort of sad. Instead of going out and trying a wide range of unique experiences, people are spending all their time on 1-2 experiences that chsnge very little after the first dozen hours.
Most gamers are adults with kids now so they don’t really get a lot of free time outside of their family so I can see why gaming has become the go to for many people it’s cheaper than a lot of other hobbies and if you find the right game you don’t have to spend much time playing it.
This is exactly why I went to love rpg's and mmo's to exclusively playing shooters. The fact I have to play like 10 to 20 hours to even start feeling a bit good about the state of my character made me feel exactly as you state. Its like a second job but they take away the money from your real world.
I am not an expert, but is it true that there are even videogames that simulate real jobs? Do some guys really get home from school or work and they just... Keep working? Without even earning money?!
yo, nice vid subscribe smashed I've been feeling the same way a lot recently. I've played mmos and cookie clickers n shit before but these days I find it so hard to continue playing a "modern game" when I encounter these mechanics. it gives my brain a split second to think "why are you playing this you should be doing _____" which is the _last_ feeling a game should give the player. and then, if I power through that thought, I can't even enjoy the game without feeling guilt for the things I am not doing instead. as soon as I feel that, the game is pretty much dead to me and I'll drop it right then and there and go play some banjo kazooie or something
The premise of V Rising is absurd, vampires doing chores, and not helped by the fact that its mechanics are reminisicent of F2P browser time waste games.
Bad games waste your time, good games make you want to waste your time
But again if you are enjoying your time your not really wasting it if your having fun..... Then again there are some people that play games they hate which is weird
@@melodiasrojas8428 MOBA players came to mind. Glad I got out of that hellhole.
So they still waste your time
And what is the same in both ? They are waisting your time !
@@gregthomas6637 Everything is "wasting" your time though, it's about the illusion of fulfilment
The main reward in most games seems to be equipment and power ups that makes previous tasks quicker. You're so thrilled to finally craft an axe that will allow you to cut down a tree in 10 seconds instead of 15 seconds that you forget to ask yourself why you are cutting down these non existent trees at all.
You just described destiny 2 😂
This is something that Yahtzee said about WoW, and it completely ruined quite a lot of games for me. He broke down the cycle of raiding, to get gear, to raid, to get gear etc etc... Nowadays I often find myself noticing that if I'm not engaged by a story or enjoying a core gameplay loop, I am falling into that cycle, and that causes me to lose interest in the game.
Excally and then you realize that you can actually do the same at real life and for example make money XD.
You spend 3 h everyday to make your character stronger XD but you can spend 1 h everyday at workout and after 1 year you can change from someone who can't make 5 push ups to someone who is quite good in sport etc
Or any skill 1 h everyday and after year you will notice big dif
@@callumlackie4166 yo exact same thing happened to me with Zero Punctuation. "Two blokes in hats standing around waiting to swing at each other and see whose number is bigger" and such. Basically just showed me which games are skinner boxes too. Pretty much always looking for a new mechanic or gameplay style(or good story) in a new game, or at least a fresh take on a dependable old one.
So you can make an axe to cut down non existent trees in 7 seconds.
The whole gathering and crafting thing makes me feel like sometimes I should just go start a business IRL.
yea, we are to good at it - time to use it irl!
Yeah, except the government will bleed you dry in licensing long before that. It takes money to make money as they say.
See the thing is youre guaranteed payoff in games
@@PendjiYou sure? I used to think that but now to me videogames have no pay of a
What so ever. Real life has huge implications. A lot Higher stakes with lasting emotional impact. Much more pay off if you ask me
It's still wasting time
Just had an idea on this topic. In modern world filled with Internet and social media, we tend to spread our focus around, which in turn forces us to spend less time on things, otherwise, which is my theory, you have a feeling that you're getting behind the world - you can't just stop and enjoy something thoroughly - the world goes without you. That you're not productive enough, even if this productivity means wasting hours on social media.
Currently, social media fights over your attention, with endless scrolling and preference algorithm to get you hooked. Your dopamine tolerance increases, which means you'll more dopamine later to get the same amount of pleasure.
If you read to this point, ask yourself - how much will did it take for me to read some random internet guy's comment. Do I have to make haste to find something else to enjoy and think about?
If yes, then why? Why not stop somewhere and take your time? The whole world won't care for you anyway, so you shouldn't too. If there will be some really important news, you'll hear them from people surrounding you.
We probably lost our ability to thoroughly enjoying something, taking time, and not participating in a meaningless rat race.
P.s. Wow, what a block of text. If you read through all of this - thank you, and take care. May you find meaning in your life.
You too.
If you think anybody can just talk to somebody in the real world then I think you undermine or forgot how hostile some real environments can be to anybody.
Interacting online often eliminates those problems because you can choose your environment to be in.
In the real world if you're a sheep surrounded by wolves you can't change it similarly if you're stuck with bigots in your family you're stuck with bigots as your family for the rest of your whole life, life is much more static if you compare it online.
We can pick the groups we interact with easily irl and that's why some people choose to interact online, can you imagine how much effort it would take to sift through a city just to find somebody you have in common with that with a very small niche hobby for example? That's what the online part is for the same way I'm reading this comment like we're having this interaction online for the sake of variance. I think it would be very hard to replicate online interactions irl, and same goes bothways.
@@russayoooyou can absolutely change the people around you and I would argue that finding solace in social groups online can take time away from changing your real life environment.
Unless you're a kid - Which I completely understand and please forgive my ignorance, I know what it's like being stuck around bigots who are full of toxic masculinity - you can break away, though, it won't be easy.
As terrible as real life can be, getting too deep and reliant on social media echo chambers is very unhealthy as well.
@@russayoooI understand what you’re saying. Much of this does differ by environment. (And I echo the below comment about it being 100x more difficult if you’re still a kid).
But also… I have lived in nearly a dozen US states. It does take work to find your people, but it is possible just about anywhere and those interactions are so much more meaningful than anything online.
And yes, I have made incredible real life friends based on very niche hobbies. It takes courage for sure but all friends start as strangers.
So often though, the infrastructure is already in place to encourage these relationships. Things like meetups, groups, clubs, libraries, venues that hold regular events for niche hobbies. So much of it is out there if you look. And it is possible to start these things yourself too.
i thought about this the other day when i sat for two hours endlessly scrolling in facebook, i realized that it is easier for the brain to do something that only requires you to sit down or lay in bed and look at something that gives it dopamine for hours, your brain is basically blinded by it, by its presence, and after being filled with dopamine, your brain will crave for more every day, and btw if i get into a philosophical aspect with this, do not just think of your brain as a machine that works with chemicals, but also as a carrier of consciousness and a creator of potential, remember the phrase i think therefore i exist? or the typical idea of the mind crested the reality? well it also applies to games, if your everyday reality, only exist in games and the pleasure that comes from them, then your whole life will spin around it, thus your whole reality will be based on an illusion, deep inside we know that games are just codes pretending to be reality, but that doesn't mean imagination is bad, it only becomes bad when more importance is given to the illusion rather than real life, the illusion is supposed to exist as a temporal stimulation, not to replace your whole reality the whole time
but who knows, if the life that we live, is another illusion that we decided to put all our time in?
It's not the games that are wasting your life, but they are helping you to ignore all those emotions and ideas that try to stop you from wasting your life.
Gaming addiction is symptomatic from a greater problem in modern life, lack of true freedom, agency and a level playing field.
Underrated comment
@@jasonsoliva6678beautifully said!
Facts! I love immersing myself In a good game but it's always a good idea to keep in mind that the grind/progression part is there to simulate IRL progression which is always superior. I do my best to stay away from major time sink games and put that energy towards a real world hobby or goal.
@@jasonsoliva6678 Give me a time when people were 'truely free'. Even when they were free, they probably had to spend a lot of time on the survival aspect of that free life. I doubt that, let's say', the first settlers in the US had plenty of time to sit around and play games. I think they were truely free, but few of them had the comfortable lives we have now.
There's plenty of videos of people that want to quit the rat-race and go live rural or off-grid. One common denominator in most of these videos is: a sense of freedom, but also a lot of hard work. So, freedom is not something they offer you, but you have to work towards it.
im very happy to see this video. i honestly believe a lot of "game design" nowadays is just casino design and behaviorism. I noticed it has an impact on less predatory games too, as audiences gradually flock to more cynical games.
Yes. This. My favorite games remain story driven RPGs/adventure games. It's about the story. I have no interest in 'crafting' or 'harvesting' .yuck.
@@nicktw8688 Terraria and Don’t Starve are amazing semi-exceptions that I’ve loved…but I also haven’t diven very deep into them because I had that “wasting my life” feeling. Forager was fairly enjoyable, had great concepts…but I remember I worked at it like a chore! If not for OCD, I never would’ve made any ground with Forager.
The trick to solve this whole problem is surprisingly simple, be self aware enough to notice when you're having fun with a game, and when you aren't. As soon as you notice that you're not having fun anymore stop playing that game. If you find yourself feeling compelled to play a game that you know you aren't having fun with, recognize that it's become an addiction. If you have an addiction seek help. I keep seeing articles about how gaming isn't fun anymore, but for me it's a golden age of gaming. There are more games than ever to play, and a surprising number of them are a lot of fun. Also, occasionally go outside and touch grass.
Fear of missing out and the guilty of wasting progress, makes it hard to quit.
I don’t know if it’s a golden era though with as much greed on display by big name developers and publishers
@@Demsky83 It is in certain places. Elden Ring, Balders Gate 3, Armored Core VI, FF14 (one of the few MMOs that respects your time no endless grinding for gear), Valheim, Jedi: fallen order, all of the indy games that have come out, etc. There are a lot of good games and I think that has pulled back the wool for a lot of gamers going; wait a minute why am I grinding for skins or shelling out money for battle passes that force me to play more or feel like I wasted my money. More and more people are seeing this especially as money gets tighter and tighter. I would say we are in the middle of a gaming renaissance. (Maybe not for mobile gaming but PC and console for sure.)
you sound to have a healthy relationship with playing games. Good job! You inspired me with your optimistic point of view :)
The Golden Age of gaming has passed. It was the 80's and 90's.
I think the issue is a lot of these games get our time without giving us anything in return. Not even fun, sometimes. But there are games that last 100 hours like Elden Ring or Baldurs Gate that make me forget every other aspect of my life but pay me with compelling narrative, sense of accomplishment or simply a constant feeling of awe. Even stuff like Valorant, it just gives me fun and social interaction and that's fine.
Games at their core were always entertainment, and entertainment is often considered not productive. Video games as an industry have experienced a long evolution, and some of these time waster mechanics or even more insidious ones have been present for ages. Early arcade games were sometimes made harder in order to eat more pocket change. Backtracking or expansive areas to pad out game time and make it feel like you got your money's worth. Repeat levels over and over for collectibles. Grind levels so you could actually beat the next boss. I remember the rise of Minecraft, and endless hours punching blocks to build things with friends. Microtransactions may have peeled back the curtain and added a dark cynicism and profiteering to time wasting, the mechanics may have evolved, but it's not new. It's grown more blatant as the formulas have been distilled, and I think the last few years being so crazy with so many soulless cash grabs and predatory schemes has made us more disillusioned with the mechanics and gaming as a whole.
Personally, I miss the days when friends would just meet up for some local co-op or even online multiplayer, with no other reward systems. The motivation was having fun with friends. The reward of completing a game was talking about it with friends. Yes, insert a joke about the friends we made along the way here.
I've been grinding the recently added battlepass in Hunt Showdown, a game I've had a lot of fun playing. It's sucked the fun out of it.
Monster Hunter: Rise is another game I've enjoyed. But one thing I noticed is base Rise people would argue there isn't enough of a grind. People hail the addition of random armour upgrades that take a lot of grinding to work on, that it gave them a "reason to keep playing." Shouldn't the reason be... that you enjoy playing the game? Or maybe you want to perfect your skills, have the fastest hunt times, some other goal, that's not... grind endlessly for random chance upgrades?
I'm rambling at this point, so I'll leave it with this: maybe more gamers need to think about why they play games and what they enjoy about them. Life's too short and there's too many great games out there to waste all your time on games that don't really bring you joy.
very well said. they only real difference is that there are microtransactions attached to these mechanics now to make money off people wanting to save time. maybe some people are just too young to remember the days before microtransactions and that these mechanics have always been there. who knows. i usually choose to just go grindy f2p and play it like it would've still been if the microtransactions were never introduced lol. game developers have been experimenting with techniques to keep people playing their game for longer periods of time before microtransactions were really prominent. just dont play game genres that are inherently grindy ezpz. and the onetime payment model is still easily sustainable for non live service/non online multiplayer titles that dont have constant updates (not including random bug fix updates every ), and maintenance/server upkeep. personally though i prefer the microtransaction model to an extent (it goes too far in some games) over the subscription model for most online multiplayer/live service games. any single player game with only minimal updates that have microtransactions are completely whack af though.
Microsoft slowly has done everything in their power to remove social features over the last 10 years
I loved the drops on Rise, I loved the rampage, then Sunbreak comes along and makes it more like a traditional monster hunter game and no updates to the rampage, sad to see even if I do enjoy playing the expansion
This I actually find that I'm not much of a gamer after I got out of school and everyone moved on with their lives other than the rpg and gta I only play multiplayer games with friends. So I guess storytelling and fun with friends.
Well games can serve purposes of mental excercise or catharsis. Where it becomes a true waste of time is when it occupies you at the minimum level to keep you going without achieving either
I like the notion of certain games being categorised as mere “tree-punchers”. There you have it, an opportunity for a series together with a scoring system that could rival “Before you buy” and would receive praise by many overnight. This has been on so many minds lately, so far you articulated it the best.
I think part of the problem is players view high run time as if it is a mark of quality... when the reality is actually the opposite. Most of the time a high run time means a lot of grinding and repetitive tasks. Doing boring stuff so you can get to "the real game." Also, replay value or mastery is something smaller devs try to focus on since they can't make enough content for a large run time, and can exponentially increase the amount of time you spend with a game.
I used to be one of these. I felt if I was going to be spending my hard earned money on a game, I better get my moneys worth out of it. Now, I don’t have the time to play most of these games, as they are just too much. I’ve moved completely away from open world games because as soon as I see the map with all the icons on it, I immediately think “I don’t have time for this shit”. To me now, if I had fun with a game, it was worth the money, even if it only lasts 5 hours.
@@scottwagner2566this is my thoughts exactly. If I had a great experience and fun then it was worth my money, it doesn’t matter the length of the game. Some people really just think that length=worth and will play through 100h bloated games that they’re not even having too much fun, but hey gotta make my moneys worth, right? Nah, I’ll drop a game if I’m not having fun, my time is more important than the money I spent on it, I’m not making myself miserable to “make my money worth it”. If you’re miserable playing, you already lost
High run time is a mark of quality, griding is a cheat to artificially increase the runtime by adding pointless chores and "pad the time"
I would say there’s exceptions to this. For example, monster hunter is designed around having an intricate and methodical grind (for the most part there are exceptions) and the result of pouring hours into it is genuinely one of the most satisfying and well executed grinds to exist in most games. There are definitely time wasting areas though (grinding lands) but for the most part it’s a case where a 300 hour play time is time enjoyed (particularly if you have friends with you).
This is very common complaint in a certain community that I’ll never understand even tho the game isn’t finished they have the absurdity to say things like “update ONLY let me play for 24 straight hours before going back to endgame loop” like wtf not many games would even give you 96 hours of enjoyment for the entire game let only only the first half
Kinda baffles me bc why would u think a good story game should let u play for 24 hours straight every day??? Sometimes they don’t even want sorry just unlimited grinding and I just don’t get it man like at least respect urself and want real content
Weird brain rot mentality that also doesn’t respect the developers or resources games take to make imo and that sometimes less is more. Runtimes padded out by grinding don’t really make games better just worse the more and more pronounced it is
"...we are buyers and sellers, trying to squeeze the most value out of one another" maybe that defines this moment in history as a whole
I have little patience for games that don't respect my time. I play a lot of indie games nowadays and it's great since they often are more innovative and wrap up the story within 8 to 12 hours, letting me move on to the next thing. I'll still play the occasional 30-50 hours game, Dragon Quest XI was great for example.
Great video, looking forward to more content from you!
My guess is that AAA games rely on grinding to pad out a short game. They can make 3 minutes of content and pad it out for hours because it takes so long to level up
married? divorced?
I have little patience who dont respect others time and want to devalue it. Make time or stop complaining.
This is exactly the same approach i have taken lately. I think the only 50+ hour game I played lately is Elden Ring, which is a gold standard for big games if you ask me because I hated how most open world games are blatantly padded out with collectibles and stuff i couldnt bother to care about. But ER had none of that, you were (mostly) free to go do whatever you want as long as you had the skill to do it 😂
Otherwise, I also just stick to short indie games that don't require a metric fuckton of grinding
I have been playing Breath of the Wild, and at a stage where I’m ready to confront Ganon, I have over 100 hours in-game. Sometimes it feels a bit grindy, but the content is certainly there. There are time of day and weather mechanics that are only there to make the basic game more difficult, but it also gives the game a sense of passing time.
That being said, I probably haven’t put this much time into anything since Halo, and I probably won’t again for some time.
I actually haven't really played a game in many years because my anxiety is always in the background saying I should be doing something else.
It is a gift and a curse.
Yet you watch TH-cam videos and comment pointless comments just like me.
@@se7en910 oh yeah that's my life
So you never do anything, because the anxiety always cancels it or does that just apply to computer games? Anyways you should try meditation.
@@MrCmon113 specifically to games because that was the main thing I did as a kid so the thought still lingers. I can play guitar and watch stupid videos no problem.
Ironically, the games I spend the most time on today are games with minimal or no microtransactions. Games that are designed from the ground up to keep you playing for thousands of hours fail at doing so for me. Factorio is one example of a game that I've sunk literal thousands of hours into now. The difference with that game though, is that while there's a lot of stuff to do, the game makes no attempt at trying to keep you from quitting.
i mean i would argue factorio was made expecting ppl to play it longer than 12 hours
@@ssbVanillaare there any other games like this?
@@weedGatorim world for example, and I’m sure there’s plenty more it’s just a niche genre.
@UnitTrace elaborate
@UnitTrace "addictive gameplay" but the rest of your points i agree with
I read once that the addiction involves two nueral pathways.
The first is you enjoy something and so you start doing it more.
The second is the more you do something, the more you develop it into a habit.
Addiction comes in when you stop enjoying something but you don't break the habit.
And I think that's often what happens with video games.
We keep playing, not realizing we don't actually enjoy it anymore.
You can enjoy something and be addicted to it. Nobody has the "habit" of playing video games. You don't accidentally subconsciously video games. It's just addiction.
Speak for yourself I'm hyper aware of my own being and time.
@@se7en910then you’re not addicted. What addiction is to me is someone playing game (watching tv series etc.) all day. Literally throwing their life away. With all the hours you put into that, you are killing the creative side, so much potential wasted! Imagine if you started a new creative hobby and did that for 50 hours instead of playing another game?
@@Softlol well u cant just spend time on somthing instead of games and call it a win,people use games to relax and rest their mind after 12 hours of work,i my self would be miserable if i just worked without resting my mind and having adventre with my friends is valheim or somthing else,yet we found ourselfes spending toooo much time grinding for a new gear that helps us progress through the game,so we used a duplication on some of those irons sinse we already looted a whole biome for it and yet we needed more iron,definitely didnt waate our time finidng another swamp(iron loot biome),in my opinion, as long as u are doing progress in real life without ruining it,ur free to play ur game,doesnt mean u should play games when ever u have free time tho,still playing these games with friends doesnt kill my creativity, infact it makes me use it and use my brain(ofcourse it depends on what game im playing) at the end these isnt much stuff to do with ur free time as a human,ur gonna do what u like and for some people its playing games with friends,yes it doesnt give u anything but joy,just like most hobbies,work hard play harder,it is deserved,its better than many other hobbies thats include spening money in bars and on hoes,enjoy ur short life without ruining it or making ut shorter
@@legionrules4729 if you truly want to give your mind a good rest, don’t do anything. Meditate and let every thought go away. This is the ultimate mind relaxation. You might think you’re relaxing, but you aren’t truly, as the mind is still active and get heavy stimulation!
Jacob sent me, and I am not disappointed! As a dad, I have very little time anymore to play and that should really ramp up the pressure to make what little gaming I do """meaningful""" but instead I end up playing hero wars :(
you already had a (assuming) childhood filled with copious entertainment addiction. please just make sure you raise your children to be functional adults lol. instead of playing a game yourself, play a game with your kids at least. dont get to your death bed and think "i wasted my chance to spend time with my kids because i was playing games that literal babies can play"
@@saturationstation1446 Man's allowed to have fun. I (assume) you've grown up with everything you've ever wanted with all the time in the world and little to no struggle in your life thanks to your parents. You should thank them by cleaning their house and car every day with 0 complaints instead of telling others what to do with their time.
@@ThaiTacosthe worst vice is advice
@@ThaiTacosAgreed
Well, you re a dad, so you assume you won t have that much time to play video game.
I think this is why I unconsciously stopped playing games. I completely forget about things that don't hold my attention, and pointless game chores just aren't going to do it
Remember when games were just core well designed gameplay mechanics with no added bullshit. That were fun usually 10-20hrs games. that was just until ps3 generation.
Remember when stupid people didnt have access to computers and didnt complain that everything that takes time which they subjectively dont like is objectively needless bullshit?
That was until the tail end of the ps3/Xbox 360 generation.
This is exactly what I've been missing in tons of games, but games like FromSoftware games, System shock, Devil May Cry, God of War, Metro, Resident Evil Remakes and other less popular AAA games in recent years have started going back to the root(well a lot of them are remakes).
But yeah games are too long, they take forever to actually start and they are padded as hell.
@@rattlehead999They try to, but there is a reason I consider that form of engineering lost technology. You had very little space to work with back in the day, actually looking at the big picture the platforms Frontier Elite II targeted were massive gaming systems, nothing compared to today, but they were functionally equivalent, you could have color graphics, and sound. A competent programmer could fit in a fast yet beautiful renderer of a type never ever done again, with newtonian mechanics, and the entire milky way and a bunch of music to boot.
This will never happen again even though our low end entry level systems of today are orders of magnitude more powerful than the Amigas and Dos's Frontier Elite II were targeting.
Elite: Dangerous is nothing like that. Jagged Alliance 3 will never be like the first two games, there will never be another Transport Tycoon Deluxe. These types of games arent made anymore, it was when game development was an art and a craft, today you just slap shit together in an engine that isnt optimized for a specific purpose anymore.
I've always thought storytelling in gaming suffered from extended play times (although longer games can be fun, it's always at the price of a well-told story)
movies are two hours for a reason, it's hard to stretch an engaging story passed that five hour mark
If you ever think a Game is wasting your life, you probably need to go outside to do something and rebalance your life. Because after a long week of work I love sitting down and gaming for a few hours and the relaxation is so worth it, I've never thought I was wasting my life. XD
Or just play a better game.
Or, do as addicts do, and never ask yourself if you can do anything better. Just keep mindlessly consuming and obsess over your addiction in a state of extended adolescence.
Many games are quite literally designed to extract the maximum possible amount of time from the end users life though
Your one instance does not speak for all of us
thank you. some people are using gaming as a form of meditation and for puttig their mind at ease. If your Job requires a lot of attention and you have to solve complex tasks, chopping wood in a videogame can be seen as relaxing.
I noticed this with cyberpunk. Part of the character building aspect of the game is ruined by the random loot drops. It drove me crazy when I'd waste hours trying to get a specific item to complete my build, only to have it pop up organicly on another play through where it's incompatible with the current build
Yep, I've disliked randomized loot long before people complained about lootboxes or gacha mechanics or whatever.
When a game withholds some item, I want to get it by meeting a specific challenge, not by throwing dice a thousand times in a row.
Thanks for posting this. I've been really struggling with this issue for a while now. I often use Minecraft as an example. There are few joys like designing and an elaborate mining system, and while mining with stone and iron tools (early on) can get tedious and slow, the chance of finding ore keeps you hooked and doesn't feel like wasting time. But then you want to make a stone building and have to cook 10 stacks of cobble and it's like "Why the heck do I have to sit here and wait for this arbitrary cooking time?" It's not like having 10 stacks of cooked stone instead of 10 stacks of cobble is going to suddenly make me OP and ruin the gameplay. But the real kicker you alluded to is "What does Mojang get for my time sitting here waiting for cobble to cook?" Nothing. The answer is nothing, so again, "Why"?
I just think it's a trend of bad game design. Where there's some kind of "grinding is realism" mindset devs are into and slap it onto every game. Some games have obviously directly profited off of this, but there's so many that expect the player to waste HOURS of time grinding and the devs aren't even making money on that. I literally can't even fathom the reason for it. I mean whether I played 10 hours or 1000 hours of Minecraft, I've still only spent $25 bucks 8 years ago on it. So why does Mojang need me to spend more time playing it?
I don't think its bad game design. Some people like that grind. Some people love endless farming, mining, etc. people will look at some action game and scoff at the fishing mini game while others will look at the action game and say to themselves that they don't like that and its just the same thing over and over, just shooting/hacking at the same enemies endlessly and t hey dont want that.
I've been playing ARK Survival Evolved recently and this has been on my mind a lot. I don't know what the correct way to handle these problems is, but ARK giving players the freedom to customize how much time they want to spend grinding is a good one.
I think this way about pikmin's 4 menu. It's not a literal menu but individual people on a field that each represent one point of a menu (start mission, see pokedex-like encyclopedia, train skills, etc). It's like yeah this is so realistic but I'm playing a game and would greatly appreciate the floating non-realistic letters instead of a walking simulator that's making me waste like ten minutes every time I need multiple things from the menu
As a long-time gamer it has been interesting to see the way that addictive RPG/MMO mechanics, leveling up in particular, have seeped into so many other types of games while a few other games seem to resist that game design/business model (e.g. Zelda Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring). The former depend mostly on extrinsic/abstract motivation ("just a few more x to grind through in order to get y!") while the latter lean much more towards intrinsically motivated, player-directed gameplay ("Ooh, what's that over there?").
That is the biggest change I've noticed. I'm not a fan of RPG/MMO game design seeping into everything.
Isn’t eden ring already an rpg though?
@@juanmejiagomez5514elden ring has the ability to level up but "grinding" is pretty worthless
THIS right here is what's killing gaming for me, I can't even play fucking Madden without some grindy RPG leveling up bullshit is shoved in my face.
BotW is an interesting one... I'd say it has some grinding features in terms of things like farming certain materials for equipment upgrades, side quests and the like, but it's definitely an optional opt-in feature, not core game play.
The thing about V rising is that, you can customize everything in it. How much you get from punching wood, how fast you gather resources, how fast your machines are and all that. You can even set your starting level. So you can fully customize the gameplay. And if you want to play in a public server, than there it's all needed, the timers and the amount you gather.
Agree 100%. At fifty, I feel my time is more precious the less of it I have. Game reviews should include the timewasting and addiction metrics so that people know and think about it before buying. Especially after Covid, it's important that people go outside and live in the real world and not close themselves up in their own little bubble. Good games are fun and a pleasure, but let's keep in mind that our time and life are more important.
Last year I picked up Civ 6 anthology and, being a newcomer to the series, I was really shocked that that game has basically no dangling carrots whastoever. No unlocks (besides the DLCs), no dailies, no overarching progression, no FOMO, not even a campaign mode that you feel compelled to finish. It just kind of says 'Here's what the game is. Play it if you want.'
It occupies this special place for me now where it's the game I have the fewest 'ulterior motives' for playing. If a game gets boring I can just start a new one. If I don't want to play a certain way I don't have to. When I am playing it, it's because I want to and I am having fun.
I guess thats why most people stop playing it. They are just done and the game does nothing to try and retain you. I kind of love that.
if i can share a tought, V rising and cult of the lamb have both a minion mechanic that is the reason the farm is so tedious, you need to interact with minions to make them do it instead.
@@LeeroyFan101 I only play PvE with friends so, probably you’re right about that
Warframe was the one for me that made me realize this. I logged in one day as I was doing daily at that point and realized I had 2k hrs on it...and it made me realize the daily grind and long hours I was spending on it was wasted because at that point, I was no longer enjoying the game and just grinding every day to get better gear. I realized that this was time I could've been playing one of my other hundreds, maybe thousands, of games on my massive backlog that I might actual enjoy but instead I was wasting it on grind I started to loathe. I quit playing it and started working on my backlog of other games and discovered the act of enjoying games all over again.
I might have wasted a lot of time to learn that, but at least I'm not wasting any more of it now and am back to having positive gaming experiences again
We made a top place (actually the first) in Warframe. That was the point I took inventory and decided: No game should occupy me more than 100--120 hrs in my life.
@EditioCastigata I'm honestly okay with a game taking up more than 100hrs of my time...if it's truly got content that continues to warrant it, be it lengthy story/quests worthy of playing, and is genuinely keeping me entertained/immersed. Games like all of the Borderlands games, BotW & TotK, Witcher 3, many rpgs I own, the XCOM games, Terraria, so many more I could list. I've put over 300hrs in all of those and never in that time did I feel like I was playing empty content or running out of things to do. Warframe after playing the main story stuff and getting to around roughly mr12-16 for most if I just had to throw a number at it, becomes an empty game that you're simply either farming for the sake of trying to get more weapons/frames you honestly don't need to play the game, farming for rivens & riven rerolls, or grinding to throw forma onto frames, and maybe doing fashion frame so someone you might meet online might possibly compliment your cosmetic style. Not to mention that everything you try to craft takes ridiculous amounts of time unless you want to rush it for platinum, which I never did once. The game just simply doesn't respect your time in that regards and eventually ends up rewarding you with nothing but exactly that - wasted time. So yeah, I'm okay with going over 100hrs, as long as it's worthwhile content
@@QuestionThings123 I very much agree with you, and share your assessment re Warframe as a game of a different kind. Though by the cutoff after symbolic 100hrs for me or 300 or thereabout for you, I suggest paying attention to the marginal gains of a game in the context of more, and maybe even better, games enriching one's treasure of cultural experiences and stories. IMHO, and it's possible that's particular to me and you don't share the tendency.
This Is The Way. I came to a similar conclusion with D3 many years ago; I went in on it with a friend and quit playing when I realized I was just going for a marginally more powerful crossbow by playing all the time.
I find working unsatisfying job more of a lifewaster than playing a game (aka something you actually enjoy doing).
The thing is, in most games nowadays, you are not “playing”.
You are:
- Logging in daily to keep your login streak like you’re attending a class.
- Doing meaningless “daily challenges” that don’t require any skill or thought, that feel more like “rituals” that you have to do to get more points like you’re in some kind of cult.
- Doing meaningless loot management to just not be weaker than the current enemies, like you’re doing chores.
- Testing your luck like you’re gambling in a casino for no reason to do unrelated things like upgrade your weapons or armor or something.
- Ticking boxes off a map like you’re doing a job.
- grinding or farming daily to unlock a character, like you’re trying to pay a debt.
- Spending money to get upgrades that don’t make a difference like you’re getting scammed.
- Inviting your contacts to join the game like you’re in some kind of pyramid scheme.
- Buying limited time special equipment or items from special events like you’re “being rewarded” by your kidnapper.
- Getting genuine good content sparsely or rarely like you’re in a toxic relationship.
- Finishing a long list of “quests” that are just fetch quests like you’re a delivery boy.
- Finally not having an end to the game like being with an obsessive person.
In my personal experience, if a game is fun I can replay it ad-infinitum. If it's just trying to keep my attention with dirty psychological tricks, I usually drop it and don't look back. Just as the craziest example I have, I have played a $25 indie game that probably takes about 5~8 hours to beat normally your first time, and played it for over 1,500 hours. I've played and completed SMB3 a lot of times and I still have fun when I play it again. When a game is "fun", "content" is a bonus, when a game is not "fun", "content" is a treadmill.
what was the indie game that you enjoyed so much?
But the problem with psychological tricks is that it is hard to be aware of (and harder to admit)
In my opinion having 1500 hours in one game seems not like a healthy relationship but you are better aware of yourself!
Can I have some of that list, sir?
I used to grind a lot. But it was because of depression. I am thankful that games can help to deal with such a period, but it is still meaningless
I am less worried about the life time wasted while doing something I enjoy, but I noticed that games that makes me do chores just feel bad and so has gaming shiftet from a thing I want to do, to something I have to convince myself to do and I often fail. Browsing through steam feels like picking a game that I find the least tedious but maybe that's just the depression.
It's not the depression it's the wall to wall drop-in story quality across entertainment media. Games are just really important to a lot of people so their front and center along with movies. Games are also a lot darker than they used to be and I don't mean the lighting in the levels.
What I don't get is the hostility I end up getting from people for not playing video games. I have a job and spend the rest of my free time mostly eating, sleeping, browsing this and that or chatting with friends. When I tell my friends that I don't really play games, they usually get really critical of me, even accuse me of having autism. Is it so taboo in the modern day to not be addicted to gaming? I just don't understand.
@@dry-cleaning6255 I'm thinking of doing just that, because some of them are starting to show signs that they're not the type of people I should be associated with to put it nicely :\
I've never had much time on my day-to-day life to play videogames, even as a kid, so the idea of picking the right game has always been with me. Having said that, I never understood the obsession over play time. Hearing a game is "300 hours long" makes me bounce right off of it. I don't have time for that and it's probably not worth more than 10 shorter games I can play for 30 hours each.
300 hours yeah, but 60/70? Depends on the game. Fromsoftware’s games usually are that long but also very good games, fun, entertaining and engaging throughout the whole 60 hours. Personally I never had the issue, except with a couple of games, because I don’t play multiplayer games, I prefer story-driven singleplayer games, which are usually not very long and you know pretty fast once you start wether you’re going to enjoy it/It’s worth the money or not
@@juanmejiagomez5514 I mean, yeah, I was using general numbers for a general statement. A 60 hour game can be worth it. And, coincidentally, Elden Ring is one of the few games I have in Steam with around 100 hours of play time.
My point was that an extremely high hour count is a red flag for padding, so I generally skip any game selling itself as long.
Not sure what's the issue you never had, though. You do have a lot of time to play long games? Or you never encountered a game selling itself as having hundreds of hours of play time in it?
@@ekki1993 Never had issues with games having too much padding, because I usually tend to go for narrative-driven singleplayer games, which tend not to waste the player’s time and even when they’re long the extra time is usually worth it. I think if we really try we have the ability to sort and discern games that are worth playing from games that aren’t
You're kinda contradicting yourself. You say that you'd rather play ten 30h games. But you don't have time for a 300h game?
Sounds like you do have time for a 300h game if you have time for ten 30h games.
Sounds more like you just haven't encountered a game you'd wanna spend 300h on. Because "I don't have time" is clearly false.
@@halosaft First of all, "I don't have time" is a figure of speech. It means I'm not willing to dedicate 300 hours to a single game.
Secondly, I didn't say I have the time to play 10 games with 30 hour expected playtime. I said I'd rather do that than play one 300 hours long game. It doesn't mean I have the time, I was just pointing out a reason why I think it's often a bad option to go for a long game.
And what's going on with the sassy remark at the end? You jumped to a terrible misinterpretation of what I said with unwarranted confidence. Calm down Dunning Kruger. Re-read what I said.
I'm in my 40's and I can't seem to enjoy games that feels like another job.
Hey, thanks for the video! Definitely good questions to ask, although I don't think V Rising or Cult of the Lamb are great examples of the problem. V Rising definitely has a grind, but I was never sitting around waiting for my mills to process resources. I went out, gathered, then loaded them all up and went to do something else fun. Same with Cult of the Lamb.. You have your cult members to gather resources, so you don't need to sit and chop trees forever. :P I do really hope that microtransactions just vanish all of a sudden, and video games go back to what they once were, what some still are.. making money by selling copies, rather than stupid microtransactions.. But hey, I live in CA, and even our highways have microtransactions if you want to progress faster. (Express lanes; not tolls) SO frustrating. -_-
A lot of studios seem to think that gameplay hours per dollar spent is directly proportional to the value of a game. As a busy adult with a full time job, I simply don't care about this metric anymore. I'll happily pay $60 for a short game if that experience is well crafted and respects my time. I find that most of the well-regarded crafting/survival games and MMOs out there fail at this.
Great Video! The idea that games are adopting the mechanics of microtransaction and free to play models , even without their monetization methods, is fascinating.... like some kind of vestigial element that increases engagement for its own sake.
Reminds me of a talk Jonathan Blow gave called, "the medium is the message" , where he argues that because these methods work to engage and then monetize, they get formalized as ""good design"" , and start to interfere in all experiences. On top of that, because designers and critics aren't aware of this, we inherit these methods and don't assume it can be otherwise.
The tricky thing of course is to try and distinguish between good forms of engagement and perverse/predatory forms, because its not simply reducible to the dichotomy between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. How e do this probably requires more literacy about games than we presently have, but hopefully we get there someday .
No joke: a clip of that talk was in a previous version of this video. His comparison to '70s TV is spot-on, and has really played out in the ~10 years since that presentation. Thanks for watching!
It's a phenomenon called "cargo culting", they go through the steps without understanding why the steps were defined like that in the first place
Thank you for mentioning that talk, it was the first I'd heard of it
Honestly, that's why I have stopped playing open world survival games like V rising. Only one I have gone back to time and time again is minecraft but even then you get that week of pure grind then you have to stop.
That's why I love to play story driven/ fun experiences like Yakuza or Alan Wake 2. It respects your time and does not want you to play for 100s of hours
The funny/sad part is that all of those techniques they use to pull people in and hold them playing the game are exactly what push me away! And the fact that the whole industry is following that path and everything is becoming a crafty grindy skill tree level up crap I'm more and more leaning to older games from the time where the only ones who had these where RPGs and survivals! I miss the days we had different game genres now everything is the same with a different coat of paint! I just want a good short/lean game without all that crap but people are like "but bruh there's no progression and that's boring! I need to chop trees for 100h to make my purchase worth it!" we went from shorter fun games that were awesome to replay countless times to longer crappy ones that feel like a chore and you give up before reaching the end 'cause the gameplay loop is boring AF!
A bunch of 100h+ boring new games could have been awesome 8h games if people and the industry weren't that greedy/stupid!
i trully recomend to check out indie's and double A games, triple A games are for a long time jus getting worse and worse
That's complete bullshit.
There's more games, that don't include ANY grind or collection, released all the time, than you can possibly play.
>I just want a good short/lean game without all that crap
No, you do not.
Otherwise you wouldn't have problems finding that thousandfold on Steam alone.
>we went from shorter fun games
No, we didn't.
I'm looking at my Steam homepage and what I first see is Outer Wilds, Golf Club Wasteland, Rainworld and Superliminal. All well known, recent games with zero grinding or chores.
There literally isn't a problem. No one forces you to go out of your way to spend 60$ on a game that makes you collect apples for ten hours. You can spend 15$ on a game that's purely a progression of puzzles and/or combat and you can do so for more games than you can play in a lifetime.
@@klawypl
That's not even true either.
First "AAA" game that stands out to me in my Steam Library is Alien Isolation - again zero grind or chores, just a one-and-done series of challenges.
Look up Larian studio’s for some compelling games. Particularly their CRPG lineup. Their product is art in every interpretation of the word.
8 hour game…? No chance in hell I’m spending $60 on an 8 hour game. I’m not even touching an 8 hour game unless it’s on gamepass. My money is valuable and my time more so. I’m not spending $60 every 8 gaming hours.
Hell, I still play Skyrim. I’m getting my money’s worth.
Honestly, I agree. Sometimes grinding feels like a job. We gotta make an effort to not get tempted by the shiny graphics and play games that are less about farming and more about the experience a game can offer. I played Control recently, for example, and I enjoyed it so much, sometimes I felt like a child in awe again.
Too me, games were never different than literature, in that, I'm reading/playing to enjoy a story that better helps me to understand what it means to be a human on this plane. Subsurface Circular and Dear Esther was that for me recently, Firewatch was that for me in college, my deepest desire has always been to feel a little more emotoinally intelligent , a tad smarter, and more reflective of our world.
That is a wonderful attitude that many have, but not the majority right now
I loved reading this, I agree so much with your philosophical approach. Of the games you mentioned, I only heard about Firewatch, but haven't played it either. I'll make sure to play them :) thanks!
If you read this, I'm still interested to know more games that you felt were meaningful :) cheers ♥
Disco Elysium for me!
I deeply admire this approach, put my feelings into words perfectly. I will also add that just like books, I play video games to escape from my own body and immerse myself as the protagonist. Ghost of Tsushima made me feel like a Samurai experiencing the stories unfolding me in Japan firsthand.
It's really amazing to think that, despite being a short game with minimal mechanics involved, Dear Esther is a game that still haunts me to this day. The landscape, the caves, the mystery and then final scene, I can recall it all so vividly and emotionally.
Can we talk about how this works alongside this weird need for devs to create "realism" which usually just amounts to tedium and non enjoyment?
V Rising is really weird for me. Once you get more experience and an intuitive feel for how much of things you need, you can balance your time better and leave your camp once you have stuffed your crafting stations full of raw materials. However, the process of gaining that experience is pretty tedious and the fact that making any base worth its salt from a design perspective instead of just a utilitarian, unplanned mess of growth takes so much time with base game settings really makes me appreciate the fact that there are ways to mitigate it. It just sucks that it feels like you're cheating the intended experience when you change the amount of resources you get from nodes and decrease crafting time. The fact that bosses limit your crafting options should be enough to force you to engage with the other systems but they decided to put insane timers on certain aspects of the game. I don't even waste my time with thralls, their gathering speed is so slow it is way faster to just make my own cotton or paper runs.
Oh heck, I typed all this then realized the video was posted a year ago. Oh well, FOR THE ALGORITHM!
The weirdes thing about V rising is that you are a vampire but 90% of the game is just grinding resources to make a nice home
I wouldn't say it's cheating.
The base ratios configured in the game are designed for online multiplayer play, with clanmates helping you.
So, just like Ark Survival Evolved and other similar games, playing around with the server configuration when you play solo is not cheating, it's using options given by the devs themselves to mitigate the fact the game was never balanced for single player
I definitely agree, especially with the paying aspect. These things cost both time and money, and if something isn’t even a finished or well made product, it’s not worth my money, let alone my time. I think making those decisions is much more important these days (also as an adult who now has to work to earn money that I spend on my games 😅)
It is just a game, entertainment. I really think a shift is happening in this regard aswell. All those kids that grew up playing videogames are now adults and they notice the patterns that games try to push to keep us playing. Also our priorities and timemanagement has changed so we are much more picky on what to put time into. I think its healthy, alot of these kinda videos you made are popping up lately. Its good.
People who say that video games is a waste of their time are the same people that watch football, play board games/card games, smoke, and sit on their porch doing nothing.
It sucks to figure out who’s being exploited more when it comes to mediums of art but I’m happy to say that this is still a medium so popularity,passion, and fun still hold value. We will still get great games as long as that is true. We should really invest in the future of preserving games just in case tho.
I also find it crazy that people playing 3 to 4 hours everyday are considered “casual” now
I enjoy actual game design, like the physics in Tears of the Kingdom, the move set and obstacles in Mario, the creativity and the "sense" they make out of all the rules the devs set, especially "physical" rules. The toil of leveling up and the tedium of doing x to do y can creep in but if the process itself is inventive and new, I can see the value
This is not a problem that only occurs in modern games. Ever played Lineage, master of labor and self-enslavement? However, the formula Time=Value rather than Quality=Value has generally become established, and it's easier to implement time-wasting functions than qualitative content.
And the fact that there are still many players who measure value by time played, we probably deserve it that way.
I actually do think that "if it involves grinding it's a bad game" is a valid law.
The only exception is MMORPGs, where the grinding is the background for social interactions.
Solo grinding is a lack of respect.
In RPGs I think slow grinding is sometimes unintentionally used as a design tool to make the player realize they're approaching the game with the wrong strategies, the problem is that also makes them a design flaw especially when you present all these false stylistic choices to players when there is only one practical solution to farming experience points the fastest and most efficiently that it makes the other choices irrelevant and only viable to players who are clueless to what the meta is and who are willing to throw hours and hours of their life away.
@@jasonsoliva6678 One of my favorite games of all times is Darkest Dungeon, and not until I played it did I realize how much of a waste of time and how much of a terrible game design farming/grinding is. Most JRPGs allow you to become so strong due to grinding that the epic "final boss" can't even touch you, so there goes the whole point of the narrative.
Eh, no, it applies to MMORPGs too :P i can only handle so much of ''go here and talk to this guy, not go talk to that guy, now collect 5 of these, now collect5 of those" Guild wars 2 had a separate PVP mode where you can jump up to max level, and items, and just go fight in pvp. I don't know why that concept never caught on in other MMOs.
@@alvideos2145 Those types of quests are generally low level, with the actual MMORPG meat being at max level. By grinding in MMOs I meant raiding/instancing/boss farming, which is in fact grinding but since it *generally* requires teamwork that's where the social layer comes.
I'd argue that the majority of people play MMOs for its PVE and not its PVP, since the fact that specialized classes exist in most of them create horrible, horrible no good trash PVP balance.
Then there's Octopath 2, where the game just gives up and lets the Merchant use a skill that TURNS DAMAGE DEALT INTO *MONEY.* It's a 1-to-1 ratio, and it's beautiful!
Also, Dancer's Bewildering Grace exists. Sometimes that grants *100x EXP* which is downright ludicrous...And other times the ground explodes!
At least games are interactive and requires thinking. Our parents and grandparents used to sit on the couch and stare at tv for hours on end.
The solution is pretty simple: STOP PLAYING CRAP! .... But no, people will play V rising, buy diablo 4, etc and just complain! Don't buy crap, stop rewarding developers and paying them for taking you for fools ffs!
This has always been my feeling with life wasting mechanics in a game. Which is why I always listen to an audio or long form you tube video so I feel like I’am doing something else to.
I feel this too. The problem with the real world is nobody wants to do anything. Everyone is online. Nobody touches grass.
I only have 1 rule. No microtransactions. Games that push them, I drop. Usually only play those with friends, and spend no money. Subscriptions are ok. But right now, I'm enjoying my favorite game of all time (Space Exploration modpack for Factorio) and I functionally got it for free.
You briefly showed Forager, which is a game I felt this more than most. It's bizarre because if they take out predatory practices in a game we should be happy and yet when the gameplay is still so similar its hard to shake the uneasy feeling I get when I play it lol.
Maybe its just me but I never felt that from Forager. Maybe when you have mostly everything maxed it can seem like your wasting time, but when I was playing it actively I was having a lot of fun. The progression feels way quicker than other “wasting time” games until you want to get every upgrade.
I downloaded it because it looked cute. Spent maybe five minutes playing it then looked at all the menus for crafting then noped out and uninstalled. I felt so disgusted i had to go shower. Twice.
Reading a lot of these comments has me thinking, maybe when we as a species can reconize that not everything needs to be about efficiency and money, and sometimes people just wanto to have fun (you knoa, hobbies) and thats its ok and people shouldnt be shamed for that, maybe then we will start actually achieving good things.
You can tell this guy doesn't remember how games were designed around the same purpose, with mechanics those do not fit them in order to extend playtime with their own micro transactions, I'm talking about arcades and how systems like the lives and score extended to home console even tho they were absolutely useless in there, at the same time both arcades and home console games were extremely hard so you didn't notice the lack of content and instead wasted hours and hours trying to get through to the very end. And I'm haven't even mentioned the point and click adventures which despite having really good stories these were locked down behind stupid and impossible to figure out "puzzles" those made people either buy guides or call a phone line that would give you the answers.
There were always games those were designed to waste your time, at the same time as there were games designed for you to enjoy at your own pace.
So no, the question isn't "Are modern Games Designed To Waste Our Lives?" but instead "How And Where Do I Find Games Those Do Not Want To Waste My Life?"
"I've played video games for years, what's changed?" Maybe it's that you're now well into adulthood watching everyone on facebook have kids buy houses travel the world and accomplish things, and your subconscious is screaming at you "I've already see video games! Life has more to offer before you die!"? Could that be it?
I think they also affect our way of viewing life. Most games you play as the hero, or a character that has an important role. It makes us think that life is dull since there’s no heroic progression, when life at times is a grind. A grind that doesn’t always seem to be building to the next level up. And frankly some game worlds are spectacular and make us forget our own beautiful world. Biggest distraction of my life no doubt
In reality we are the NPCS, background characters without names who never change the direction of the game. We are the characters that we would never want to play as. We’re living the lives we wouldn’t want to live had we been given the choice. We know we aren’t important. We know we could die and only a few other NPCs would notice and then move on just as quickly. The reason we want to escape reality into movies and games is to trick our brains into experiencing a world where our lives did have that level of meaning, as if the experience was our own. To live in a world where our choices mattered… What kind of person wouldn’t want that?
I always thought of it as you play as the hero in the game that you aspire to be in real life as best you can like Superman for instance. the symbol of truth justice and the American way, the symbol of hope. Even if he can't save everyone it wasn't from lack of trying. Or Batman a billionaire turned superhero because he finally had it with crime and the way the criminals were running the city that was his and also millions home.
"Life is wasting time until you die"
Just choose the time you waste is worth it for you
This is why I love Cave SHMUPs, Boomer Shooters, Kaizo Mario romhacks, rhythm games. They're not be immersive tales of epic proportions, but they are fun, fast, and best of all: zero tree punching.
...just be prepared for a difficulty spike every 2 seconds.
My opinion is reverse on that I think that I want epic story, difficulty gameplay to play probably because I want to accomplish something in life 😅
If the developer can dupe you into playing for more than 4hrs before you realize the game is rubbish then you can't get a refund.
My "gaming life" changed a lot. In my teens and early 20s I was into mostly all games, even the ones that needed a lot of crafting and grinding. But it all changed around my late 20s and my 30s: I have to do intellingent choices to enjoy this hobby. Games that revolve too much on grinding and the like to be enjoyed are left in the shelf.
Now I only play games that make every moment meaningfull. Dying a lot of times in a dark souls or in fear abd hunger is meaningfull for example: with every death your mind and reasoning are engaged every time.
With due respect, dying for the 3000th time is no different than collecting the 3000th piece of wood.
@@zynix27 I'm sorry, but no. Grinding an object 3000 times is the same action repeated over and over. Dying in Souls like or games like fear and hunger is equal to learn something. Difficulties/hard bosses/situatutions are like puzzles. That's why in those games there are different options on how to deal with difficulties. A basic example is the first black knight in DS1. You can avoid him completely or killing it in different manners, even if you are in your first playthrough. Dying keeps me engaged, with my brain finding solutions; simply grinding a 0,01 % item is doesn't give anything meaningful for the experience.
I say that's a waste of time.
I really dont want to brag , but as a 35yo gamer , who started gaming with titles such as Armored Core 1, old Tekkens , GT1-2, GTA VC & SA, Half Life , MGS2 etc, I have ZERO tolerance for time wasting mechanics. In the very few instances that I've faced "tree-chopping" mechanics and overt timers , it's an immediate uninstall from me.
I HAVE enjoyed games with heavy grinding but only if the core gameplay is engaging enough that I dont consider the grind a grind. (I have 2500 hours in Planetside 2 for example)
For some people that grind is the goal. Ill spend hours mining in minecraft just because of how tranquil it is. I enjoy mindless games when i want to play on auto pilot, but still enjoy more focused games when im looking for that. while it can waste a players time, i think it really depends on what exactly the player is looking for
tbh you could make the argument that every single entertainment medium is a waste of time. Videogames, movies, literature everything. On the same note, you could also spend hours explaining how said things actually helped you get through life. I feel that people should enjoy whatever they want, if they don't enjoy it anymore find other thing that you're interested in, maybe share it with someone else whose also interested, now you can get more "value" off the thing.
I work out now instead of playing games. I grew up in the 80’s LOVED video games. I quit gaming two weeks ago. I’ve got fantastic memories of gaming. I just stopped enjoying it. For me gaming lost it's magic.
Many will wake up and regret all the time they spent on gaming and all the missed opportunity with family and friends. No purpose will kill you faster than the unhealthy lifestyle of a gamer, not to even mention the bad attitude youhave towards those that loved you, mistakenly.
When I saw those timers for processing resources in your clips, I found myself wanting to build a Factorio-style production chain. I think I've played a bit too much of that piece of digital crack if I'm starting to think in terms of it when looking at footage of other games.
I feel like many of these mechanics are actually put in because they are common and not for any sort of design reason. I've recently been playing stardew valley again and it wasn't the cutting trees or fishing that got me thinking about this same thing. It was smelting. Is there any reason to have the smelter, and really most the machinery, take time to work? There might be an argument for 'realism', a fish wouldn't bite instantly and you need to react that's an issue of skill. A tree would take some smacks to fell I can live with that. But the smelting takes so long I had to think what would change in the game if you put the ore in and a bar came back out instantly? Would it change the game? The progression? The sense of accomplishment? Does that time serve any game purpose? Or is it just there because every game before it that had smelting the smelting took time so it feels like it should?
I recently started using my resistance bands to do arm workouts while im in que for another match. doing little thing like this is an easy way to get pretty good set of reps while you'd otherwise be in a skirmish or loading screen.
But you're still addickted to the game.
This is why I dd not last long in mmo or open world games specially online games.So i just start choosing what is worth and if felt it start to be wasting time i may leave it.
Since many game are being developed we have so much to chose from and limited time.
This appeared in my front page lmao, I guess YT knows how many smaller creator I watch; good to find another one! Remember me at that 100k mark bud :)
About V rising: The 1st 2 hours or so of a run are farming, and a bit of combat. The remaining 20 - 30 hours are mostly combat, with not a lot of farming.
And the timers on refining let you indeed engage with the other systems. But, ultimately, yes, it's a game where you have to spend a bit of time to enjoy It. It's designed to play on the week-end, with friends, for sessions of 1-3 hours...
It is NOT a solo game... The problem is that it's not advertised as a multiplayer only.
This said, I absolutly agree with you on the conclusion :/ Sadly :(
great vid, i was thinking about this a lot with Cult of the Lamb too. its interesting how it's not just a design style, but a whole aesthetic; the pleasant pop of getting a bunch of reward materials slurped up into you whenever you open a chest or whatever is addictive in its own right, to an extent where i found myself running a loop around my cult just picking up 1 wood 1 stone 1 pumpkin from each chest in order without really thinking about it.
i guess there's a connection to a game like vampire survivors or snkrx with that - both games which don't really have f2p-style timewaste mechanics, but which absolutely make use of the addictive noise / gobble up resources type of endorphin rush.
Yes. Me and my buddies were talking about it last night. You don’t just got short and sweet experiences anymore. Developers now feel the need to cram absolutely everything they can into the game and it makes them worse. But then gamers complain about everything, so even when there is a lot to do in a game, people still whine. Three examples of the ideas I’ve mentioned are:
Portal 2
-A short and sweet game that’s made with incredible attention to detail. It’s just a fun experience for one and/or two people. Lovely.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
-People complain about open worlds being empty, but when it is packed with a crap ton of side stuff, it’s just “bloated”.
Mortal Kombat 1
-It’s a fighting game, enough said. That’s what it’s always gonna be. Even in different modes, you’ll be fighting. But people complain because “there isn’t enough to do” even with a story mode, a seasonal event PVE mode, ranked online, kasual online, and some more stuff on the way. But the people need more, but 23 fighters to learn and master apparently isn’t enough either. You just GOTTA have something else to spend another 50 hours with, right?
The mindset of gaming as a whole has completely changed because now gamers are entitled to something that they can spend the absolute maximum amount of time on. It’s not enough to just hop into a game and have quick fun across a few rounds or a rewarding mission anymore. It’s all about “how much content is there?”. But with modern prices, you can’t really blame anyone. Gotta get your money’s worth. The whole industry is just like this now.
It's not about being "entitled." It's addiction. These people have an awful relationship with their "hobby" and their "hobby" is keeping them in a state of extended adolescence. They're 35 but only lived about as much as a 17 year old. They spent half of their life gob faced at a screen.
@@bobmcbobbington9220brother in chirst that is 90% of youtube commentators.
@@bobmcbobbington9220 Yes, you’re totally right, but a lot of gamers also are very, very entitled.
@@bobmcbobbington9220 No, it is entitlement.
whole video in 1 word: Escapism...
yes.. "bread & circus" has existed for thousands of years to keep the sheep distracted. Same reason stadiums exist, TV, porn, etc.
I thought I was growing out of games from around 2017 onwards. Couldn’t find a game that had that feeling ya know where it gets it’s hooks in you so deep that you can’t sleep or are thinking about it when not playing, that feeling was just gone and I thought age had come for me.
That’s when Miyazaki showed up to save me from the gaming hellscape modern gaming had become and blessed my soul with Elden Ring. Elden Ring was all I could think about for a about a month and it proved to me that it’s not gaming I was growing out of but I was tired of parasitic game design that I had become so used to.
All it takes is one good game, one game made with passion and soul to revive your love
Tl dr-ish: i miss the days where i was a kid and could spend dozens of hundreds of hours on games, loved em and truly enjoyed em.
I know what you mean haha.
For me its the same. I dont feel jack about any game anymore.
Especially with my pc being and screen being broken now and that i wont be able to afford an replacement for years.
There is only two phone games i play funilly enough.
That would be world of tanks blitz (despite its grind i still play it since i played it for 7 or 8 years now and have no problem with ingame resources or tanks anymore despite being 95% f2p for the past 2y) and mostly league of legends wild rift. The only game with no cancerous micro transactions or lack of respect for the player. Only skill matters and not what you paid money for. And imo its the only true high quality mobile game to exist out there, there is nothing that can rival it. I have not found a single other non predatory or trash mobile game like wild rift.
There is only 3 exceptions to "mobile" games i play outside of these two i mentioned.
And i dont think it would be a surprise to say its emulators.
GBA, NDS and PSP to be specific.
With real games to boot.
Tho regardless of me having access to hundreds of quality games as of now. I still dont truly love em. I only do when im intoxicated. Tho thats a whole other problem i wont delve into now.
Ive said it for years now. The gaming market as a whole is just dead.
There is only one person and one person only to blame for that, that would be the consumer/player.
These are the true people enabling these predatory garbage products.
Mindless fools.
Novel end ☠
For me, the game which REALLY got it's hook in me was Octopath 2. Excellent RPG that was worth the $60 and always stays engaging!
Elden ring is a good game but I can't understand how people act like it's the second coming of Christ. It's just DarkSouls but in an open world with horse riding mechanics
@@MALICEM12 that’s fine if it isn’t for you and it doesn’t sound to me like you actually played it at launch in spoiled. You can boil most games down to some reductive “this game plus that game” but sometimes that exactly the game someone is looking for.
This is why i love c&c red alert 2 yuri’s revenge, this game over 23 years old, the main reason why i love this game because i knew when i play it i am going to have a good time and i am not worry a game developer will steal my money, lastly there are an app you can unlock a lot of things in the game, so many players make maps and now it became very fun to play for hours and hours
Great video, i play currently a lot of old school 3d platformer and what is really od, they are just fun … every single second of the game a pure gameplay and feels awesome. No quest marker no side quest just pure fun. Oh and wenn u want to make a level to 100% u have to actuelly explore it because no marker an no mini map. And because this levels are perfect design for this kind of exploration and movement and just for sake of open world … all of this makes fun. Just düsad this kind of games are not made today anymore
"I have a full time job, I don't need a game that feels like another one" - true story
These mechanics don't keep people coming back. It's the collection, easy access, and competitive features that keep people coming back. The time wasters are there to slow down progression to the point that you have to use micro transactions to progress.
No, vilifying these practises at the base label is what we all should do. It suhould be illegal practise to insert microtransactions to a game. Any game.
I've always felt that many mobile game mechanics, like gacha mechanics, are actually pretty cool mechanics. The issue is the way the are used to manipulate people.
I continue to not understand why people say gaming is a waste of time. How is it any different than watching TV, reading a book, or fishing? All of these things are done for relaxation, not to be productive. If you're enjoying the game, then it doesn't matter how long you spend with it, assuming it's not affecting your work/personal life
It is different because you do not learn anything from gaming that you can use in real life.
Gaming does NOT bring relaxation!
i think
if you have fun, it's not wasting of time
if not, why are you even playing
The biggest life waster I experienced was a factory job I had in my early thirties. Sixty hours a week, barely over minimum wage, and as a temp, no benefits. The work was absolutely mind numbingly boring and stressful and as much as I worked, I was financially going in the hole. At that time, video games were the only thing that kept me sane until I found better work.
Wasting our time to collect money...
honestly i dont really care for games with long playtimes. i have adhd and my gaming is very spotty and hyperfixation driven, so ive always preferred shorter games that i can finish before i lose interest in them. i honestly dont get how people can sink thousands of hours into certain games, the most hours i have on a game is a collective ~450 hours in splatoon 2 & 3
There definitely has been an "infiltration" into even the indie market of experiences that are meant to be had over hundreds to thousands of hours.
And it is just sort of sad. Instead of going out and trying a wide range of unique experiences, people are spending all their time on 1-2 experiences that chsnge very little after the first dozen hours.
Most gamers are adults with kids now so they don’t really get a lot of free time outside of their family so I can see why gaming has become the go to for many people it’s cheaper than a lot of other hobbies and if you find the right game you don’t have to spend much time playing it.
@@Toastcat890true, it's the modern day sitcom or football game
Watching that jake from state farm bit made me physically recoil.
This is exactly why I went to love rpg's and mmo's to exclusively playing shooters. The fact I have to play like 10 to 20 hours to even start feeling a bit good about the state of my character made me feel exactly as you state. Its like a second job but they take away the money from your real world.
I am not an expert, but is it true that there are even videogames that simulate real jobs? Do some guys really get home from school or work and they just... Keep working? Without even earning money?!
yo, nice vid subscribe smashed
I've been feeling the same way a lot recently. I've played mmos and cookie clickers n shit before but these days I find it so hard to continue playing a "modern game" when I encounter these mechanics. it gives my brain a split second to think "why are you playing this you should be doing _____"
which is the _last_ feeling a game should give the player. and then, if I power through that thought, I can't even enjoy the game without feeling guilt for the things I am not doing instead.
as soon as I feel that, the game is pretty much dead to me and I'll drop it right then and there and go play some banjo kazooie or something
The premise of V Rising is absurd, vampires doing chores, and not helped by the fact that its mechanics are reminisicent of F2P browser time waste games.
V Rising is balanced as a multiplayer game.
if you want a single player experience you can do that by just changing the server settings.