Most things in life that are worthwhile require time, effort, and many time repetition.
Not entertainment. Do you want your fav tv episode again, again and again? Does reading a good novel requires effort or a lot of time (may be a few days most)? How about good movies ... 2 and a half hours?
And "worthwhile" is clearly subjective.
What an utterly ridiculous comparison; not sure how your mind concocted that one. O.o
As has already been stated several times, not all entertainment is created equal.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
If you are playing a game, perhaps they should come to an end.
But virtual worlds don't have to, they can continue to evolve such as EVE has done, about 12 years running (I've been playing since 2006) and still relevant in my opinion.
Right ... but most MMOs are games now, not virtual world. Otherwise instances, lobbies, queuing ... would not be so prevalent.
Most things in life that are worthwhile require time, effort, and many time repetition.
Not entertainment. Do you want your fav tv episode again, again and again? Does reading a good novel requires effort or a lot of time (may be a few days most)? How about good movies ... 2 and a half hours?
And "worthwhile" is clearly subjective.
But games are interactive. Watching a movie over and over is not going to make me better at movie watching and the experience the tenth time will be much the same as the first time. The whole thing that makes games different and potentially better than passive entertainment is that they change depending on the player's skill level and time investment.
First of all, entertainment is entertainment. Interactive ones are not "better" than passive ones. Heck, Game of Throne is better ("better" is subjective, let's also remember that), for me, than 99% of games out there.
Secondly, who says interactive entertainment has to be dependent on skills & time investment. Best puzzle game i played in the last few weeks is Lara Croft Go (check it out, you may be pleasantly surprise). It needs some thinking skills, absolutely zero hand-eye coordination skills (since it is turned base), and zero time investment. And it is a great game. Ditto for Portal 2.
Fun is about what you get to do ... time investment is a misnomer. I don't invest in games. If i play a game for many hours, it is because those hours are fun (which again, is subjective).
Most things in life that are worthwhile require time, effort, and many time repetition.
Not entertainment. Do you want your fav tv episode again, again and again? Does reading a good novel requires effort or a lot of time (may be a few days most)? How about good movies ... 2 and a half hours?
And "worthwhile" is clearly subjective.
But games are interactive. Watching a movie over and over is not going to make me better at movie watching and the experience the tenth time will be much the same as the first time. The whole thing that makes games different and potentially better than passive entertainment is that they change depending on the player's skill level and time investment.
First of all, entertainment is entertainment. Interactive ones are not "better" than passive ones. Heck, Game of Throne is better ("better" is subjective, let's also remember that), for me, than 99% of games out there.
Secondly, who says interactive entertainment has to be dependent on skills & time investment. Best puzzle game i played in the last few weeks is Lara Croft Go (check it out, you may be pleasantly surprise). It needs some thinking skills, absolutely zero hand-eye coordination skills (since it is turned base), and zero time investment. And it is a great game. Ditto for Portal 2.
Fun is about what you get to do ... time investment is a misnomer. I don't invest in games. If i play a game for many hours, it is because those hours are fun (which again, is subjective).
I was saying that games provide a different experience than movies or books one that is *potentially* better depending on what you like. I obviously was not saying that every game is better than every book or movie and yes what you consider better or worse is highly subjective. That is very obvious.
By the same token I wasn't saying that games have to be challenging or require time investment to be good but surely you can't deny the fact that a lot of people like to spend time and effort getting better at games? You may view it as a waste of time and unimportant to you but for a lot of people it is what attracts them to games over movies or books or whatever. The fact that they can learn the game and get better at it and there's skill involved.
By the same token I wasn't saying that games have to be challenging or require time investment to be good but surely you can't deny the fact that a lot of people like to spend time and effort getting better at games?
I am not denying that *some* people like to spend time and effort getting better at games. Just look at e-sports.
However, I am questioning that boring time sink counts. Practicing at LoL, or SC2 .. yes. Walking from point A to B for 20 min .. not so much. In fact, if so, why games are becoming more and more convenient.
If people like to spend time & effort .. i would also bet that the time they spent has to be fun too.
Most things in life that are worthwhile require time, effort, and many time repetition.
I have to get up, do exercise every morning, and make my smoothie to be a bit healthy and get the nutrients I need. It's not very exciting and it's something many people could do, but most people do not.
The concept with time consumption in an MMO is the same. Those with little will power and determination will quit quickly.
That doesn't seem related to the post you were responding to, which is summed up as
People choose to spend their time in efficient entertainment, not wasteful entertainment (ie entertainment heavily characterized by timesinks.)
It's a choice ("would") not a matter of ability ("could")
So I'm not really sure what you thought you were disagreeing with, because what you said has no relevance to either of those facts.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Perhaps the point that almost all of the gameplay is fundamentally repetitive tasks that largely are various forms of time sinks, even including combat pacing. It's a misnomer to begin with to claim "efficient entertainment" is a thing when ultimately it only has itself to contrast against and there is a wide enough array of entertainment forms with very different pacing and time investment into them for negligible endeavors.
Example, cookie clicker.
What's going on is not actually engaging content, but the notion of achievement and reward. People respond positively to the current time sinks because they more readily offer reward for their endeavor, regardless of how engaging or entertaining the fundamental gameplay is on it's own.
A more extreme and topical example of this is any running game. We can pull Temple Run 2 as a reference to this more keenly and point out a very obvious point here. There's almost nothing to this game yet it's stably had ~5million daily users. When the game doesn't really have anything other than collecting, jumping, and endless running there's not a whole lot to be hooked on. The game is very much so devoid of content. And yet it works. Why? Because the entertainment comes from the game delivering a rather consistent sense of reward for it's otherwise trivial nature.
This is no different in games like MMOs. Most all the aspects of gameplay are, by the virtue of their rather mechanically defined nature, repetitive and very often full of mediocre content. Some parts of them just happen to have had better methods attached to entice people into playing than other parts.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
This is no different in games like MMOs. Most all the aspects of gameplay are, by the virtue of their rather mechanically defined nature, repetitive and very often full of mediocre content. Some parts of them just happen to have had better methods attached to entice people into playing than other parts.
and yet some repetitive task (like waiting for a boat, or just walking from point A to are viewed as "boring" (again subjective, but viewed by many) and others, like combat, not so much.
I don't suppose we are arguing the repetitiveness of the tasks, but the fun factor. Repeating killing stuff, in glitzy graphics and use of many skills with variations, is fun, but repeating walking from a wilderness is boring (again for me ... although i doubt i am alone).
May be i should go watch more tv ... you are right ... games are repetitive. That is also why any game gets boring (for me) sooner or later.
This is no different in games like MMOs. Most all the aspects of gameplay are, by the virtue of their rather mechanically defined nature, repetitive and very often full of mediocre content. Some parts of them just happen to have had better methods attached to entice people into playing than other parts.
and yet some repetitive task (like waiting for a boat, or just walking from point A to are viewed as "boring" (again subjective, but viewed by many) and others, like combat, not so much.
I don't suppose we are arguing the repetitiveness of the tasks, but the fun factor. Repeating killing stuff, in glitzy graphics and use of many skills with variations, is fun, but repeating walking from a wilderness is boring (again for me ... although i doubt i am alone).
May be i should go watch more tv ... you are right ... games are repetitive. That is also why any game gets boring (for me) sooner or later.
This would be where that sentence "Some parts of them just happen to have had better methods attached to entice people into playing than other parts" that you can see in the section you quoted comes into play.
There are parts of games that have had better integration with reward systems than others, Combat for example has many things that have been utilized to present a player with some sense of achievement even though they are doing the same ultimately boring task ad-nauseam.
Your example, for example, shows a dichotomy where you say the combat has "glitzy graphics" and that the flip-side is "walking in a wilderness". This falls right into the point that I demonstrated with Temple Run 2. When you apply the same notion of glitz (intermittent rewards and achievements) to other gameplay elements like travel, it can be a sufficient enough change in how much "fun" a player perceives in it that you can make that a game unto itself.
Could very well be why you get bored of games fast. It's a rather thin veneer between the actual game mechanics and the things added on top to make it seem "good". For people that may be prone to pausing and thinking about a game before they jump into it, that's a part of the apprehension you end up developing when you think about doing what is ultimately the same stuff you did yesterday.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Comments
As has already been stated several times, not all entertainment is created equal.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
I was saying that games provide a different experience than movies or books one that is *potentially* better depending on what you like. I obviously was not saying that every game is better than every book or movie and yes what you consider better or worse is highly subjective. That is very obvious.
By the same token I wasn't saying that games have to be challenging or require time investment to be good but surely you can't deny the fact that a lot of people like to spend time and effort getting better at games? You may view it as a waste of time and unimportant to you but for a lot of people it is what attracts them to games over movies or books or whatever. The fact that they can learn the game and get better at it and there's skill involved.
Second they are wrong.
However, I am questioning that boring time sink counts. Practicing at LoL, or SC2 .. yes. Walking from point A to B for 20 min .. not so much. In fact, if so, why games are becoming more and more convenient.
If people like to spend time & effort .. i would also bet that the time they spent has to be fun too.
- People choose to spend their time in efficient entertainment, not wasteful entertainment (ie entertainment heavily characterized by timesinks.)
- It's a choice ("would") not a matter of ability ("could")
So I'm not really sure what you thought you were disagreeing with, because what you said has no relevance to either of those facts."What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Example, cookie clicker.
What's going on is not actually engaging content, but the notion of achievement and reward. People respond positively to the current time sinks because they more readily offer reward for their endeavor, regardless of how engaging or entertaining the fundamental gameplay is on it's own.
A more extreme and topical example of this is any running game. We can pull Temple Run 2 as a reference to this more keenly and point out a very obvious point here. There's almost nothing to this game yet it's stably had ~5million daily users. When the game doesn't really have anything other than collecting, jumping, and endless running there's not a whole lot to be hooked on. The game is very much so devoid of content. And yet it works. Why? Because the entertainment comes from the game delivering a rather consistent sense of reward for it's otherwise trivial nature.
This is no different in games like MMOs. Most all the aspects of gameplay are, by the virtue of their rather mechanically defined nature, repetitive and very often full of mediocre content. Some parts of them just happen to have had better methods attached to entice people into playing than other parts.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
I don't suppose we are arguing the repetitiveness of the tasks, but the fun factor. Repeating killing stuff, in glitzy graphics and use of many skills with variations, is fun, but repeating walking from a wilderness is boring (again for me ... although i doubt i am alone).
May be i should go watch more tv ... you are right ... games are repetitive. That is also why any game gets boring (for me) sooner or later.
There are parts of games that have had better integration with reward systems than others, Combat for example has many things that have been utilized to present a player with some sense of achievement even though they are doing the same ultimately boring task ad-nauseam.
Your example, for example, shows a dichotomy where you say the combat has "glitzy graphics" and that the flip-side is "walking in a wilderness". This falls right into the point that I demonstrated with Temple Run 2. When you apply the same notion of glitz (intermittent rewards and achievements) to other gameplay elements like travel, it can be a sufficient enough change in how much "fun" a player perceives in it that you can make that a game unto itself.
Could very well be why you get bored of games fast. It's a rather thin veneer between the actual game mechanics and the things added on top to make it seem "good". For people that may be prone to pausing and thinking about a game before they jump into it, that's a part of the apprehension you end up developing when you think about doing what is ultimately the same stuff you did yesterday.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin