> I suspect this attitude has something to do with the human fallibilities of sunk cost and cognitive dissonance: if you’ve already spent hours and maybe some cash on a particular activity, you might keep playing because you don’t want that effort to “go to waste,” and then you might imbue that activity with all sorts of heavy meaning and nobility to assure yourself that your time was well spent.
Many new freemium games now are trying to copy Clash of Clans with unnecessary resource management mechanics a low-effort PvP mode. Makes sense on paper. However, I've read a lot of discussion about how people are getting bored of these types of games, especially now that they are aware of the time-sink nature of the games after having experienced it (and consumed by it) once before.
It would not surprise me if there is a shift from Clash-likes. (indeed, the Hero-collectathons have been surprisingly popular lately...)
The most well-known (#6 Grossing Game on iPhone) is Marvel Contest of Champions (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/marvel-contest-of-champions/...) by Kabam, which lets you "collect" Marvel heroes. This lead to similar models for other Marvel mobile games like Marvel Future Fight (which is really good for a freemium game) and Marvel Avengers Assemble (which is not).
In all these games, instead of using F2P on one-time consumables, F2P are used for progression, and "heroes" are more permanent, tangible things to buy. (this concept predates the Hero collectathons though: Puzzle & Dragons, for example, was one of the big ones that did it first)
After playing a bunch of Clash Royale I feel a lot like the author feel's about clash of clans.
Clash Royale actually puts you into a routine of opening chests. Setting things in the game before going to bed and then opening things first thing in the morning. Paying increases the speed of your progress.
This works well because if you do not play the game you make no progress and feel bad as everyone around you is making progress.
It doesn't help that every 3-4 hours you get a notification reminding you of the opportunities you could be pursuing in the game.
If anyone is playing Clash Royale I would strongly suggest turning the push notifications off for the game. It makes it far more enjoyable and it helps eliminate the schedule that it tries to impose on your life.
This article made me think a little bit about games. What are they? Art, waste of time, intellectual gummies for your brain? All of the above?
However, I believe that there are forms of entertainment that can enrich your life and others that are simply entertainment. As long as you are aware of it, and being intentional about your decision there is nothing wrong with that.
I can definitely remember games that have enriches my life one way or another like the original Metal gear Solid, Silent Hill or Braid but I can also think of many counterexamples like Counter Strike... These games were polished as hell but they just put me into this zombie state where I just cared about one more frag, one more, one more... Without being aware.
I wish it was easier to create games so that there were more games that could teach you specific lessons. The trick is, they have to be immersive enough that they're not merely the narrative equivalent of fables, or parables; they need to be more substantial, so the emotion and lessons take root. A great game should be like a great novel--expansive, teaching multiple lessons over time, not a trifle.
Yet with the rate of technological change, it's virtually impossible for someone to take, say, 10 years and write the Great American Game (formerly: Novel) that thematically covers the same breadth.
I agree. From my point of view, games as an art form is in its infancy period. It has so much potential because it is interactive and immersive (even more so now with VR), but games often get caught in a core game mechanic and rinse and repeat.
Same thing happened with movies too, right? People said that they were just toys and nothing profound could be told with them. In the end is like everything, there are good and bad sculptures, books, movies and games.
I am optimistic that we will see the medium evolve dramatically. As you said, with this pace of innovation everything can happen :)
Some of the most insightful games I ever played were the Civ series... Favorite being Alpha Centauri.
As I learned more about history and read more scifi I started to see more of the inspirations for the characters but at that time it was new and inspirational to me.
On that same strand, the following games have proven to be quite educational to me:
Caesar III - first city builder I played. Fell in love with the Romans - was well prepared when the basics of Ancient Rome was taught in school.
Pharoah - same deal as above, except Ancient Egypt camw before I had the chance to play.
Age of Empires 2 - this one came with a mini encyclopedia built in about the history of all the units, civilizations, etc. I remember finding this useful when I chose to do a project on French military history for French lessons. I despised French but the project was passed on to the head due to the notable quality and depth (I owe AoK a lot for that one - it was a night before rush job).
Crusader Kings 2 - again, had a little encyclopedia with history on all the historical dynasties in the game. Playing this and reading up on the medieval period & the feudal system is good fun.
Europa Universalis IV - if anything, I didn't know Spain was split between Castile and Aragon until I played this and then looked into it more. Good fun game and great to play alongside a depth dive into the era and the politics of the time.
Graal - the big one. Crappy online Zelda clone. This one provided me the most insight of all: you could build new stuff with it. It had a scripting language, level editor and animation editor. You could take its kbd hack and slash core and turn it into a point and click RPG. This is where I wrote my first lines of code and shaped my career permanently. I owe my employment in part to this game.
And, of course, Civ. Very similar effect as the above historical games.
A great game can stoke your wet ware in many ways. Waste of time? I don't agree.
There's quite a rabbit hole in this line of inquiry depending on how much you think about it.
Yes, games are all the things you mentioned and much more. It's a matter of perspective and the particular game. Some games are all those things and some are none of them.
One way that games can often differ from other forms of entertainment in that you can feel a sense of accomplishment from them. That makes the brain feel good. If you don't have much feelings of accomplishment in the rest of your life I suppose you could look at it as a kind of therapy or maybe just an escape or avoidance. Of course those brain rewards also have the potential to make it a bit addictive and self destructive in the worst cases. Yes and of course some games, like Clash of Clans, deliberately exploit this mechanism of games as much as possible in order to make more money.
This may all seem a bit obvious to some but it's just one more perspective on games that I have found helpful especially in the case of compulsive gaming. It can help to honestly ask yourself before playing a game, "why do I want to play this game?".
I consider the time spent playing high quality games the least wasted. My favourite example is Halo 3. I'm playing it since the launch. Sometimes less but in general, it never got boring. If a take some good average of 8 hours a week, I think I played already arround 3000 hours. Yes 125 days straight is a lot, but it was a hell lot of fun and its still challenging. I also have to say I felt in love with the story. For me Halo 1-3 have the best story I have ever read, played and watched.
On the other side, when I was younger there were some browser games which sounded exactly like Clash. But after months or years of time I just discovered it's a waste of time. It was a never ending story and it consumed more and more time. There I learned that such long lives games are bad, dangerous but also boring in long term. Now I just stay away from them, its better.
What matters more to me, I am having a harder and harder time finding good games. Some many games are just boring and the same as all games before, but somehow worse. I think games have been better 5-10 years ago.
I agree with you but it's difficult to pinpoint what makes a high quality game right? Story may be in the right direction. Although probably, we could not even agree on what makes a good story ;)
For me I crave games that make me feel something new, something that I haven't seen before and enrich my life with the experiences. Last of Us, Journey, Heavy Rain, Bioshock are some of the recent games that triggered this evasive feeling.
It is getting harder as you say to find this "veil piercing" games, but maybe it is just because we have seen more...
I enjoy playing flight simulators, especially flightgear and DCS, turned up to the most realistic level, and trying to do it "right". That way I feel I learn something remotely real, though of course I will probably never take the stick of a real airplane or helicopter myself.
> What are [Games]? Art, waste of time, intellectual gummies for your brain? All of the above?
It's like asking: "What are books? Art, waste of time, intellectual gummies for your brain?" Or movies, or music. "Game" is a pretty vast medium, and encompasses all of those. An individual game might be just mindless drivel, but that doesn't prevent another game from being Art, or a political statement, or anything else that we can produce.
I have such mixed feelings about this style of monetisation.
On one hand, (as that talk that Blow gave a while back) it usually affects game design badly. If you remove the money element, of course you wouldn't have to sit around for days while things upgrade.
But on the other hand, the micropurchase model has helped to sustain games much beyond their original "Fresh by" date. The one that comes to mind for me the most is Team Fortress 2. A huge amount of content has been added, and is at this point subsidised by item purchases. Of course League of Legends and other DOTA-likes do this too.
And then there's Hearthstone, which keeps content fresh through constantly selling new expansions a la MTG.
Some might make the distinction between the good games and the bad ones, but I have a hard time imagining one without the other.
----
I think a bit of a weird aspect of this is that games are now incentivised to keep you entertained longer. If you buy a $50 game, it's fine for it to take 5 hours and for you to be done. There's no financial advantage for the game maker to keep you around longer.
I guess a lot of this is a distinction between kinds of games though. Some games are like books, others are like sports. Nobody complains about the addictive nature of soccer....
Paywalled content is one thing. Most people - including, I expect, Blow - would agree that DLC and unlockable items are fair ways to monetize a game. In most cases, anyway.
Wait timers are completely different. It's hard to overstate how horribly offensive they are to any self-respecting gamer. The only people who tolerate them are the ones that have never experienced a game that didn't try to extort money out of them.
I played for a few month and stopped it at least year or so ago. It was slightly painful to let go of what I had "achieved". But this achievement was mainly illusory, the only real part about it being the time and consistency invested.
But the consistency is also fake: Your phone lets you know when to go back to the game. No amount of organisation or perseverance "skill" required.
Chess is more addictive than Clash of Clans. Download the chess.com app and I promise you will spend hours trying to get just a few more points. Ok, maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but if you're writing this piece in the age of convenience you've gotta ask yourself what you would've done instead with that time. Would you work? If the answer is yes, I call bullshit. Humans can only work high level jobs for about 4 hours with roughly logarithmic declines in performance every hour thereafter. So that means you need to fill your time with something. Whether it's clash of clans or some other useless hobby, it most likely will be just as addictive. Oh, and learning new things counts as work.
30 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 84.1 ms ] threadMany new freemium games now are trying to copy Clash of Clans with unnecessary resource management mechanics a low-effort PvP mode. Makes sense on paper. However, I've read a lot of discussion about how people are getting bored of these types of games, especially now that they are aware of the time-sink nature of the games after having experienced it (and consumed by it) once before.
It would not surprise me if there is a shift from Clash-likes. (indeed, the Hero-collectathons have been surprisingly popular lately...)
Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/star-wars-galaxy-of-heroes/i...) (#14 Grossing) by Electronic Arts is similar, but is surprisingly fair in terms of F2P mechanics on the low end.
In all these games, instead of using F2P on one-time consumables, F2P are used for progression, and "heroes" are more permanent, tangible things to buy. (this concept predates the Hero collectathons though: Puzzle & Dragons, for example, was one of the big ones that did it first)
Clash Royale actually puts you into a routine of opening chests. Setting things in the game before going to bed and then opening things first thing in the morning. Paying increases the speed of your progress.
This works well because if you do not play the game you make no progress and feel bad as everyone around you is making progress.
It doesn't help that every 3-4 hours you get a notification reminding you of the opportunities you could be pursuing in the game.
If anyone is playing Clash Royale I would strongly suggest turning the push notifications off for the game. It makes it far more enjoyable and it helps eliminate the schedule that it tries to impose on your life.
However, I believe that there are forms of entertainment that can enrich your life and others that are simply entertainment. As long as you are aware of it, and being intentional about your decision there is nothing wrong with that.
I can definitely remember games that have enriches my life one way or another like the original Metal gear Solid, Silent Hill or Braid but I can also think of many counterexamples like Counter Strike... These games were polished as hell but they just put me into this zombie state where I just cared about one more frag, one more, one more... Without being aware.
What do you guys think?
Yet with the rate of technological change, it's virtually impossible for someone to take, say, 10 years and write the Great American Game (formerly: Novel) that thematically covers the same breadth.
Same thing happened with movies too, right? People said that they were just toys and nothing profound could be told with them. In the end is like everything, there are good and bad sculptures, books, movies and games.
I am optimistic that we will see the medium evolve dramatically. As you said, with this pace of innovation everything can happen :)
As I learned more about history and read more scifi I started to see more of the inspirations for the characters but at that time it was new and inspirational to me.
Caesar III - first city builder I played. Fell in love with the Romans - was well prepared when the basics of Ancient Rome was taught in school.
Pharoah - same deal as above, except Ancient Egypt camw before I had the chance to play.
Age of Empires 2 - this one came with a mini encyclopedia built in about the history of all the units, civilizations, etc. I remember finding this useful when I chose to do a project on French military history for French lessons. I despised French but the project was passed on to the head due to the notable quality and depth (I owe AoK a lot for that one - it was a night before rush job).
Crusader Kings 2 - again, had a little encyclopedia with history on all the historical dynasties in the game. Playing this and reading up on the medieval period & the feudal system is good fun.
Europa Universalis IV - if anything, I didn't know Spain was split between Castile and Aragon until I played this and then looked into it more. Good fun game and great to play alongside a depth dive into the era and the politics of the time.
Graal - the big one. Crappy online Zelda clone. This one provided me the most insight of all: you could build new stuff with it. It had a scripting language, level editor and animation editor. You could take its kbd hack and slash core and turn it into a point and click RPG. This is where I wrote my first lines of code and shaped my career permanently. I owe my employment in part to this game.
And, of course, Civ. Very similar effect as the above historical games.
A great game can stoke your wet ware in many ways. Waste of time? I don't agree.
Yes, games are all the things you mentioned and much more. It's a matter of perspective and the particular game. Some games are all those things and some are none of them.
One way that games can often differ from other forms of entertainment in that you can feel a sense of accomplishment from them. That makes the brain feel good. If you don't have much feelings of accomplishment in the rest of your life I suppose you could look at it as a kind of therapy or maybe just an escape or avoidance. Of course those brain rewards also have the potential to make it a bit addictive and self destructive in the worst cases. Yes and of course some games, like Clash of Clans, deliberately exploit this mechanism of games as much as possible in order to make more money.
This may all seem a bit obvious to some but it's just one more perspective on games that I have found helpful especially in the case of compulsive gaming. It can help to honestly ask yourself before playing a game, "why do I want to play this game?".
On the other side, when I was younger there were some browser games which sounded exactly like Clash. But after months or years of time I just discovered it's a waste of time. It was a never ending story and it consumed more and more time. There I learned that such long lives games are bad, dangerous but also boring in long term. Now I just stay away from them, its better.
What matters more to me, I am having a harder and harder time finding good games. Some many games are just boring and the same as all games before, but somehow worse. I think games have been better 5-10 years ago.
For me I crave games that make me feel something new, something that I haven't seen before and enrich my life with the experiences. Last of Us, Journey, Heavy Rain, Bioshock are some of the recent games that triggered this evasive feeling.
It is getting harder as you say to find this "veil piercing" games, but maybe it is just because we have seen more...
It's like asking: "What are books? Art, waste of time, intellectual gummies for your brain?" Or movies, or music. "Game" is a pretty vast medium, and encompasses all of those. An individual game might be just mindless drivel, but that doesn't prevent another game from being Art, or a political statement, or anything else that we can produce.
On one hand, (as that talk that Blow gave a while back) it usually affects game design badly. If you remove the money element, of course you wouldn't have to sit around for days while things upgrade.
But on the other hand, the micropurchase model has helped to sustain games much beyond their original "Fresh by" date. The one that comes to mind for me the most is Team Fortress 2. A huge amount of content has been added, and is at this point subsidised by item purchases. Of course League of Legends and other DOTA-likes do this too.
And then there's Hearthstone, which keeps content fresh through constantly selling new expansions a la MTG.
Some might make the distinction between the good games and the bad ones, but I have a hard time imagining one without the other.
----
I think a bit of a weird aspect of this is that games are now incentivised to keep you entertained longer. If you buy a $50 game, it's fine for it to take 5 hours and for you to be done. There's no financial advantage for the game maker to keep you around longer.
I guess a lot of this is a distinction between kinds of games though. Some games are like books, others are like sports. Nobody complains about the addictive nature of soccer....
Wait timers are completely different. It's hard to overstate how horribly offensive they are to any self-respecting gamer. The only people who tolerate them are the ones that have never experienced a game that didn't try to extort money out of them.
But the consistency is also fake: Your phone lets you know when to go back to the game. No amount of organisation or perseverance "skill" required.