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I am just tired of all the killing and war...
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I understand and agree with you, but I also understand why it is like this..
It's because it's easier to develop and It keeps players on their toes much like games like Tetris , but there is a certain limit how long you will find a variation of Tetris good no matter how different colors the cubes come in . A war game can come with 1000 of themes and variations , the use of violence is in almost every game, yeah If I'm not mistaken Hello Kitty Online uses combat with monsters as well (colorful monsters)
We strive for adrenalin and danger when we consume entertainment, we want to be the blazing heroes when we settle the dust from our work clothes..sometimes it's just a relief to bash a zombies skull in with a baseball bat, you are the survivor in a zombie apocalypse , these are themes that entertain people .
But of course there is a huge following for the sim games , farmville is a huge game, even thou I cant understand how anyone would want to play it, but obviously it's entertaining to some..
Sure , there is examples of non violent games, but you need to be some sort of super genius really to get it entertaining and fun, and If you manage to do that..I'm all for it..:)
Warhammer?.... vile heretic scum -ignites promethium flamer-
So I'm guess you don't wanna join when we play G.I. Joes or Cowboys and Injuns?
Fine, just go back to washing the chalkboard. We're going out to recess.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Of course, killing is the easiest way. Go to Golem of Death, kill him, loot Great Bag of Gold dust, exchange to 100 xp and sword...then repeat untill you kill 99 more Golems and get the title.
And people buy it, because everyone of us fought in Wolfenstein 3D or rode his carriots agains evil militia of enemy in Civilization or commanded rebel/imperial fleets in Star wars.
Yet there could be somebody who could out-smart what is today"
1. Thief-type MMORPG. A world of thieves, if you are noticed, you lose. Pickpocket evil guys, bring compromate to another. Using any weapon - failure, since you will be noticed and could not hide.
2. Spy game. You are a spy and your task is infiltrating Nazi Supertech division that is developing secret weapon. Enemy is on high alert, guards deployed everywhere and you have just one pistol with 8 bullets. Rest is up to you: knock down guard, take his uniform, bribe another guard, steal a car - just get to Supertech. Use your photocamera, send information to the Allies - and outsmart evil monsters.
3. Anti-spy game. You are an counter-intelligence officer in a country that is overrun by enemy spies. You can't kill them (killing civilians is prohibited), all you have to do is to watch, to make logical decisions and should you get enough of them - grats on victory, should you fail - you lose.
4. Rebuilding game. Your town/civilization is almost destroy due to The Cataclysm. Little of your folk remained and it is up to you to find materials for basic houses, construct tools and return your people to their previous glory.
http://www.mmoblogg.wordpress.com
The problem I've seen is very similar to what many have posted. Killing and violence is not in and of itself a problem, but the lack of both legitimate reasons and reasonable alternatives is. Being sent out to kill 10 rabbits because your buddy needs their furs to make into gloves and boots that he can sell on the market is very different from being told by random NPC A to go kill 10 rabbits and I'll give you 10 gold. Both include killing, but the former leads to other things and the violence isn't the primary point. Even the early pen and paper dungeon crawls were usually about more than violence for the sake of violence; sure, the allure of creating random havoc was always there, but so were other challenges and personal goals as well that were equally important.
A lot of games today focus make the entire experience of the game revolve around combat, and they just aren't as good because that combat eventually ends up being a repetitive grind with nothing particularly as stake, and nothing to particularly gain from it. Those other alternate activities are what gives combat true meaning; combat in a vacuum gets dull after a while no matter how well presented it is.
Shooter games are tied to the military industrial complex for starters, so there's an answer in there somewhere. Repressed shadow aspects of consciousness could potentially be another reason.
The main focus of playing games is "play". Sometimes people get hurt playing, yet it's usually an accident, especially in the early days of playing. "Play" is a natural activity that arises from early childhood. Running around in nature playing some sort of game, immersed within a fantasy world simply using imagination.
I can handle fantasy violence as it's usually kind of cartoon-y. Actually right now I want to play Sim City 5, yet will have to wait a few months after relocating.
Asking these kinds of questions is beneficial. Some interesting reads in this thread. Always fun to ask, wonder and philosophize. I obviously don't know what wrong with humanity. Teehee.
First game I ever played on a home computer, BBC Micro A in 1981, was a farming simulator... those were the days, proper games for proper gamers.. *sob* Then an arcade opened up near our school and its was Defender, Pac-Man, Scramble, Space Invaders, Centipede and I've been a homicidal maniac ever since.
OH! look.. http://www.farming-simulator.com/
Elikal there are plenty on non fighting games out there and a few MMO ones you are just not looking hard enough, or is it that you want SWG back?
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That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
Wow those graphics look great for 1981 /wink.
Because, yeah, that's the real choice... Total war genocidal hyper violence, or My Little Pony or Hello Kitty. Nothing obviously exists in the middle.
Eli, I actually agree. It gets boring for me as well so I go out of my way to break it up.
I place the blame on the overuse of made-up curse words from Battlestar Galactica. /wink
The second game was Star Trek, where you spent a great deal of time blowing up Klingons in a stunningly realistic text grid. Dates to the mid-70s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_%28text_game%29
On the CDC mainframe, we operated it at a stunning 180 baud. The guy with the 300 baud in the comp sci office had a clear (and completely unfair) advantage, his text screen would get scolled much more quickly.
">You are dead. You are already dead."
Didn't Oregon Trail have occasional Injun attacks?
Advent had the groo that might eat you in the dark and thief throwing knives at you in the little maze of twisting passages that are all alike...or was the Groo from Zork?
By the time we got around to Arcades, the combating of alien invasions and suchlike were clearly earning more quarters than the pinball machines and foosball.
And indirectly, that's the answer to the op's question.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Brace yourself; there may be a new round inbound from Defiance.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Or an old Lucasarts adventure (Monkey Island, DOTT etc).
As long as "what you like" doesn't include leaving your little spaceship?
Just snarkin, never mind :P
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
But arcades were not ONLY fighting games. There were skiing games, racing games, sports games. I never got far with Dragon's Lair. Did Dirk the Daring ever actually fight anyone? I just remember trying (and failing) to react fast enough to choose the right path
I know that the majority of arcade games were fighting games, though.
I don't think anyone is saying combat and fighting is icky, yucky, and terri-bad. I enjoy it. To a point. I think most players do. But the focus has certainly gone overboard in MMOs in some players' minds.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Nothings new under the sun, PAY2WIN in the bloody 70's, have we really evolved?
It all comes down to economics do you spend x amount of time, money and resources on allowing players to dance and entertain for 1% of the playerbase who enjoy that sort of thing or do we concentrate on killing and adventuring which the other 99% love, Hmmm! decisions decisions.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
Fantastic computer that BBC micro, ahead of its time.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
Nothing wrong with variety, let's do them both.
But like Space Invaders vs Captain Fantastic, you can't really gripe about it when one earns more quarters.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Absolutely agree with OP. In fact, in my own case, I'd go further and say that I am a pacifist. It's not only the killing of "the other side" that I hate (in games as in real life), it's also the indiscriminate killing of other species. Kill the wolves, kill the deer, kill just about anything. It's getting to a stage that I find it hard to play any game any more because it just sickens me.
Back in vanilla WoW, I always loved the quest (druid quest maybe) where you had to cure the poisoned deer. And later in Wrath where you had to free baby mammoths from traps (or some such). I love stuff like that. Or maybe you could have options whereby you had a goal to achieve and you could either kill to get there, or sneak round/past/through, or use diplomatic skills, or something. Just give us more options, please.
I'm not saying I don't want any combat at all, but I would like it to be meaningful combat within a context, ie where I have to kill to save my life or that of other people/animals etc. You could argue that the over-arching story in most fantasy mmo's is exactly that: we are fighting to "save the world", but somehow it never feels like that, it just ends up feeling like repetitive slaughter.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
At the root, even stealth gameplay is about violence. You avoid NPCs who want to kill you, and you kill or disable them with less direct means than blazing your guns.
I am all for choices .. but choices for conflict resolution. Deus Ex is a great example. You can avoid violence. You can use less violence (disable, not kill). You can kill directly, stealthly, with robots and less direct means. But at the end, it is still about violence.
Now if you put in the choice to bake bread, or tends to garden in game, it is irrelevant for me, because that is not fun for me. I won't care if you put it in, but certainly that resouces going into make that does zero fun for me.
My two cents (again).
Stealth games may be not entirely on violence. Or, to make things better, they can offer great many choices.
Example: you are Allied top-spy and need to infiltrate Nazi facility, steal "Tiger IV" documentation and destroy equipment needed to produce these monster-tanks. And here you go with moral choices. You can kill the guard, sounding alarm (every kill does it) and fight too hard to neariest safe place. However, the more you kill, the more you are hated by any civilian or enemy and should you kill too much - everyone would try to kill you, also - do not expect any friendly civilian. You can knock the guard and have 45% probability of souding alarm - but if things go good, you just go to the neariest safe place. If you knock too much - Allied HQ will notice you refrain from violence and may drop some "silent way" equipment, commend you or even give a medal; civilians will be kind of friendly towards you. You can bypass guard, killing/knocking nobody. If you do it too much - enemy and civilians will respect you (reasons different, of course) and should some officer try to catch you - there is a good chance enemy soldier will try to be at your side, like "Herr Officer, but this Allied spy did not harm any of our men! He spared my life while he had a chance to kill!". Civilians will be helpfull: they will give you food, medicines, distract enemy patrols or occasionally self-sacrifice (however, up to first killing).
Imagine in this game player rushes to Tiger-IV base...and NPC asks to bring him to some place nearby, he would pay with a bunch of Reichsmarks. Player has to choose, whether this is Gestapo agent (and protagonist will be killed), deserter or civilian. Outcome may be different: if player acts positively towards civilians, they will help him: hide, give food, information. If player ignores civilians - they will mostly ignore him; if player is bad towards civilians - Allied war effort is slowed down, civilians become pro-Nazi.
Of course, in such game the more silent and stealth you are, the better equippment you may use. Be very silent and you could use enemy uniform with documents: nobody will suspect since you are Shadow, a legend whose face was not seen. Help great many civilians and one day you would be given secret flat where you could rest without being noticed by patrols.
It's all about fantasy and real choices. Maybe one day we would see MMORPG that would involve stealth instead of "kill 10.000 rainbow monkeys because I said so".
http://www.mmoblogg.wordpress.com