'Seeking connection': video game where players stopped shooting, started talking - Comments

Games of tag where you are “out” when hit, optionally with a mechanism for being revived are a staple game for young kids around here. Video games with shooting just seems like a logical extension of that into the virtual domain and with ranged “tag” of that.

Besides shooters there are many puzzle games as well.

Shooting isn't the core mechanic in the majority of video games.

It's pointing and clicking. It's just one of the simplest things a game can make a player do. It's intuitive what sound roughly it should make and what visual effect to show up.

It's as if it was weird that most dancing has a lot of putting one foot in front of the other.

I mean, the really good ones can be beautiful, terrifying, balletic displays of dominance, skill and tactical intelligence. There’s nothing in all of gaming quite like being hunted by a human being. It’s a real thrill.

Any simple input scheme mapped to a game of skilled hand-eye coordination usually holds up, even ancient arcade games.

Back when games were mostly 2D, a lot of action games got consolidated into platformers. Shooters just seem to be the equivalent genre in 3D.

> "It has always puzzled me a little bit that shooting is a core mechanic in a majority of video games. Does this serve any purpose?

My personal theory is that violent video games (and films and other media) are encouraged in highly militarised societies to desensitise their populations to violence - if you normalise it so it all seems like a game or other form of entertainment, you get a lot less internal opposition when you go about killing real people in other countries.

It's often just a part of a broader puzzle - you need to aim with precision, react quickly, properly chain your movements, be aware of your surroundings, know when to be offensive/defensive, apply your tools/skills to specific situation, manage your resources, etc. Shooting is just a subset of all that.

With that logic you could also dumb down chess to killing, because that's the core mechanic.

It's not really that complex.

Humans have historically been better competition than AI. Writing AI that is evenly matched with a human so as presenting a challenge that is tough but not unwinnable is much harder than just playing against another person.

> Maybe it makes joining the military not too unappealing for teenagers.

Someone should have told the US Army: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Army

(Surprisingly for a government project it was pretty playable)

I don't mind shooting.

But I do mind shooting human being. I wish we would be more creative on that front.

I’m always on the lookout for non-violent low-stress games. I do like exploration. Games like A Short Hike are few and far between.

I thought Death Stranding was supposed to be less-stressful but I’m quite near the start and so far I’ve got to worry about items degrading, inventory management and enemies. I was just looking for more of a peaceful walking simulator game. I wish more games had a non-combat option, or maybe a “Jesus take the wheel” mode for the stressful bits that turns it into more of an interactive cutscene.

People sort themselves into cliques and bubbles all the time?

There are plenty of real life examples of this, from softball leagues that self-sort based of levels of seriousness / competitiveness / aggressiveness, to people actively avoiding going into areas like investment banking or high-pressure sales because they have a reputation of being very aggressive.

You can’t always avoid people who are aggressive towards others, but I’ve found that my life is a lot more stressful when I work with aggressive people, so I actively try to avoid these situations and work in more collaborative environments.

My first "player encounter" was with someone who patiently took me through many of the basics for over an hour at the very beginning (like 15 minutes in), then tricked me into attacking them so they could blow me up and get away with it.

That's the kind of troll I love. Technically they taught me another useful thing in the process, and it cost me effectively nothing because I could just reroll the character. High effort and low payoff is the best kind.

Games of tag where you are “out” when hit, optionally with a mechanism for being revived are a staple game for young kids around here. Video games with shooting just seems like a logical extension of that into the virtual domain and with ranged “tag” of that.

Besides shooters there are many puzzle games as well.

Shooting isn't the core mechanic in the majority of video games.

It's pointing and clicking. It's just one of the simplest things a game can make a player do. It's intuitive what sound roughly it should make and what visual effect to show up.

It's as if it was weird that most dancing has a lot of putting one foot in front of the other.

I mean, the really good ones can be beautiful, terrifying, balletic displays of dominance, skill and tactical intelligence. There’s nothing in all of gaming quite like being hunted by a human being. It’s a real thrill.

Any simple input scheme mapped to a game of skilled hand-eye coordination usually holds up, even ancient arcade games.

Back when games were mostly 2D, a lot of action games got consolidated into platformers. Shooters just seem to be the equivalent genre in 3D.

> "It has always puzzled me a little bit that shooting is a core mechanic in a majority of video games. Does this serve any purpose?

My personal theory is that violent video games (and films and other media) are encouraged in highly militarised societies to desensitise their populations to violence - if you normalise it so it all seems like a game or other form of entertainment, you get a lot less internal opposition when you go about killing real people in other countries.

It's often just a part of a broader puzzle - you need to aim with precision, react quickly, properly chain your movements, be aware of your surroundings, know when to be offensive/defensive, apply your tools/skills to specific situation, manage your resources, etc. Shooting is just a subset of all that.

With that logic you could also dumb down chess to killing, because that's the core mechanic.

It's not really that complex.

Humans have historically been better competition than AI. Writing AI that is evenly matched with a human so as presenting a challenge that is tough but not unwinnable is much harder than just playing against another person.

> Maybe it makes joining the military not too unappealing for teenagers.

Someone should have told the US Army: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Army

(Surprisingly for a government project it was pretty playable)

I don't mind shooting.

But I do mind shooting human being. I wish we would be more creative on that front.

I’m always on the lookout for non-violent low-stress games. I do like exploration. Games like A Short Hike are few and far between.

I thought Death Stranding was supposed to be less-stressful but I’m quite near the start and so far I’ve got to worry about items degrading, inventory management and enemies. I was just looking for more of a peaceful walking simulator game. I wish more games had a non-combat option, or maybe a “Jesus take the wheel” mode for the stressful bits that turns it into more of an interactive cutscene.

People sort themselves into cliques and bubbles all the time?

There are plenty of real life examples of this, from softball leagues that self-sort based of levels of seriousness / competitiveness / aggressiveness, to people actively avoiding going into areas like investment banking or high-pressure sales because they have a reputation of being very aggressive.

You can’t always avoid people who are aggressive towards others, but I’ve found that my life is a lot more stressful when I work with aggressive people, so I actively try to avoid these situations and work in more collaborative environments.

My first "player encounter" was with someone who patiently took me through many of the basics for over an hour at the very beginning (like 15 minutes in), then tricked me into attacking them so they could blow me up and get away with it.

That's the kind of troll I love. Technically they taught me another useful thing in the process, and it cost me effectively nothing because I could just reroll the character. High effort and low payoff is the best kind.