Theory

[Four]

I am curious as to what others derive their fun from in videogames. I would be grateful if you would share what you found fun and, if you can, to analyze what was fun.

[icycalm]

Analyzing fun "in videogames" won't get you anywhere. In the videogame industry the word 'fun' is used much in the same way the word 'art' is -- as a last-ditch method to defend the indefensible by means of mere words.

----

A: "That game sucks."

B: "But I had FUN playing it!"

----

A: "This game is complete and utter shit."

B: "But it's ART!"

----

Et cetera, et cetera.

So the problem is not to figure out what is fun in videogames, but what is fun in general. Once you have figured that out, the rest follows naturally. Videogames, after all, are simulations of reality. It follows that what is fun in videogames will be simulations of what is fun in reality.

And what is fun in reality? We have to turn to the philosophers for that.

What is good? -- All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

What is bad? -- All that proceeds from weakness.

What is happiness? -- The feeling that power increases -- that a resistance is overcome.

Not contentment, but more power; not peace at all, but war; not virtue, but proficiency (virtue in the Renaissance style, virtu, virtue free of moralic acid).

The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first principle of our philanthropy. And one shall help them to do so.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ (1888)

[icycalm]

And can people now see how absurd it is to decry videogames as "mere" power fantasies, and to ask for something "more" from them?

There IS nothing more!

That, however, seems to be such a deep and astonishing insight, and so incredibly difficult to grasp, that only people like Heraclitus, Nietzsche and Baudrillard ever manage to do so. Everyone else spends their time obsessed with "art", "messages", "meaning", and other assorted logically inconsistent claptrap.

And the world keeps turning, and no one ever learns, and nothing ever really changes.

[Four]

Analyzing fun "in videogames" won't get you anywhere.

That's true. To be honest, I intended to raise the complaint that it wasn't fun to play videogames. Someone playing a videogame is concentrated on overcoming a challenge and I'd have trouble telling that he's having fun from looking at him. (And when I'm playing a good videogame, I'm too absorbed to be aware of anything else. It's like we don't like being conscious.)

In the videogame industry the word 'fun' is used much in the same way the word 'art' is

I wouldn't restrain these words to being meaningless solely when being used within the game industry. (And when they do have meaning you could replace them by 'good'.)

[icycalm]

To be honest, I intended to raise the complaint that it wasn't fun to play videogames.

And what happened? You are not going to raise it now? And wtf is the sentence "it isn't fun to play videogames" supposed to mean anyway? Things are not universally fun or universally unfun -- what is fun to one person may not be fun to another, and vice versa. Calling things "fun" or "not fun" in general is just a symptom of stupidity.

Someone playing a videogame is concentrated on overcoming a challenge and I'd have trouble telling that he's having fun from looking at him.

This is just disgustingly stupid. I am not even going to touch it. Let's pretend you never said it.

And when I'm playing a good videogame, I'm too absorbed to be aware of anything else.

Like what? What's playing on TV? Because when you watch TV or read a book you are aware of many other things?

It's like we don't like being conscious.

More nonsense. As if you can read a book or play a game while unconscious.


You are probably very young, eh? Do me a favor and try to think your thoughts through a lot more before posting. It can get tedious having to set people right on every little thing they say.

[icycalm]

Nota bene:

The novel's tone is darker and more serious than the film's, and the politically-motivated fighters of the novel became thieves pretending to be terrorists in the film. Director John McTiernan states on the DVD commentary that the change from a tale of political terrorism to a heist film was made because he wanted to bring "joy" to the story, rather than having the villains be overly ponderous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Hard

[artfan]

Sometimes playing a game with cheat mode is less fun even though it's an example of more power. Does that mean there is more to fun than power? Or infinite lives is an unrealistic power? Or infinite lives makes other powers like shooting redundant?

[JoshF]

Cheat code = less power. Think about it. It's like taking all the weights off a barbell.

[artfan]

Analogies always go over my head. Please break things down into tiny parts for me to understand.

Take the case of a top down shooting game like Raiden. There are two things we can talk about: the player and what the player controls - the ship. A power-up like lasers that inflict more damage make the ship more powerful. However, the skill needed by the player decreases. Power-ups make these games more fun. (Perhaps the power-ups aren't fun it's getting the power-ups that is fun?)

Cheat codes make the ship more powerful but eliminate skill required by the player. They can make games less fun.

I'm confused.

[Bread]

After you activate, say, god-mode, noclip and all weapons in single-player Doom, you've got all the 'power' you're going to get. It's fun for a short time (or a longer time for a child). From then on, there's no further feeling of that increase in power, the challenges from the levels are made trivial (no resistance).

Power-ups make these games more fun. (Perhaps the power-ups aren't fun its getting the power-ups that is fun?)

Getting, or earning, power-ups is fun when it's done by non-trivial effort.

[artfan]

Thanks for explaining it. Power without resistance and weak players being eliminated is not fun. I guess a combination of those qualities is needed.

The possibility of increasing power isn't necessary for a game to be fun. In Frogger, the resistance increases as you progress through levels but there are no power-ups.

[icycalm]

Cheat code = less power.

Cheat code = MORE power. But more power = LESS fun.

What is fun is not more power -- but the feeling of power increase. And in order to get that feeling an equal and opposite resistance is necessary. Fundamentally, what is fun is the resistance. That is what Nietzsche is saying. And that is what you are also saying in your next two sentences:

Think about it. It's like taking all the weights off a barbell.

To get back to artfan's muddling of the issue:

Sometimes playing a game with cheat mode is less fun even though it's an example of more power.

Yes, an example of more power THAT WAS JUST SIMPLY HANDED TO YOU. So again, it is not THE POWER itself that gives pleasure, but the process of ACQUIRING IT.

The possibility of increasing power isn't necessary for a game to be fun.

You are confusing the concept of "power" with that of "power-ups" in videogames, just because the latter is a cognate form of the former. I.e. you are being confused by mere words.

Here, I'll shout it to you so that it might perhaps get through your thick skull: THE POSSIBILITY OF INCREASING POWER IS INDEED NECESSARY FOR A GAME TO BE FUN, SINCE FUN = POWER INCREASE. BUT POWER IN THIS CONTEXT MEANS SKILL -- IT HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH POWER-UPS. WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THE POWER OF THE PLAYER OVER THE GAMEWORLD -- NOT THE POWER OF HIS AVATAR. THESE TWO ARE RELATED BUT NOT IDENTICAL.

[icycalm]

Power without resistance and weak players being eliminated is not fun.

This sentence makes absolutely no sense. "Weak players being eliminated is not fun"? WTF DOES THAT MEAN?

Do not post in this thread again.

[icycalm]

Bolded part is mine; italics are Nietzsche's.

It is a question of strength (of an individual or of a people), whether and where the judgment "beautiful" is applied. The feeling of plenitude, of dammed-up strength (which permits one to meet with courage and good-humor much that makes the weakling shudder) -- the feeling of power applies the judgment "beautiful" even to things and conditions that the instinct of impotence could only find hateful and "ugly". The nose for what we could still barely deal with if it confronted us in the flesh -- as danger, problem, temptation -- this determines even our aesthetic Yes. ("That is beautiful" is an affirmation.)

From this it appears that, broadly speaking, a preference for questionable and terrifying things is a symptom of strength; while a taste for the pretty and dainty belongs to the weak and delicate. Pleasure in tragedy characterizes strong ages and natures: their non plus ultra is perhaps the divina commedia. It is the heroic spirits who say Yes to themselves in tragic cruelty: they are hard enough to experience suffering as a pleasure.

Supposing, on the other hand, that the weak desire to enjoy an art that is not meant for them; what would they do to make tragedy palatable for themselves? They would interpret their own value feelings into it; e.g., the "triumph of the moral world-order" or the doctrine of the "worthlessness of existence" or the invitation to "resignation" (-- or the half-medicinal, half-moral discharges of affects à la Aristotle). Finally: the art of the terrifying, in so far as it excites the nerves, can be esteemed by the weak and exhausted as a stimulus: that, for example, is the reason Wagnerian art is esteemed today. It is a sign of one's feeling of power and well-being how far one can acknowledge the terrifying and questionable character of things; and whether one needs some "solution" at the end.

This type of artists' pessimism is precisely the opposite of that religio-moral pessimism that suffers from the "corruption" of man and the riddle of existence -- and by all means craves a solution, or at least a hope for a solution. The suffering, desperate, self-mistrustful, in a word the sick, have at all times had need of entrancing visions to endure life (this is the origin of the concept "blessedness"). A related case: the artists of decadence, who fundamentally have a nihilistic attitude toward life, take refuge in the beauty of form -- in those select things in which nature has become perfect, in which she is indifferently great and beautiful -- (--"Love of beauty" can therefore be something other than the ability to see the beautiful, create the beautiful; it can be an expression of the very inability to do so.)

Those imposing artists who let a harmony sound forth from every conflict are those who bestow upon things their own power and self-redemption: they express their innermost experience in the symbolism of every work of art they produce -- their creativity is gratitude for their existence.

The profundity of the tragic artist lies in this, that his aesthetic instinct surveys the more remote consequences, that he does not halt shortsightedly at what is closest at hand, that he affirms the large-scale economy which justifies the terrifying, the evil, the questionable -- and more than merely justifies them.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

[icycalm]

http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudi ... ulter.html

As “a reversal and a symbolic challenge” death then, for Baudrillard, must be enjoyed because “reversibility is the only source of enjoyment”.55 The writings of a writer are his life after life, a nuance of life – a rendezvous with many who are not yet born.