Why do we play Video Games?

Feel free to share with us the reason why are you playing games, How it all started or what keeps you going :)

Good Question..... I'm a Co-Op gamer so I play for Synchronicity and Companionship.....

But I also play single player games..... the reasons behind those are not as easy to identify..... even if we can narrow it down to one specific game..... like Portal 2..... what reason can I give for why I like puzzles ?

Entertainment and escapism

To escaped reality world and enter the Matrix world.

Fantasy, entertainment, competition.

I play for fun and entertainment. It may be testing my skills competitively against others or co-operatively with others. It may be to experience the story, world, and characters in a game. It could be something that challenges myself either physically or mentally in a game. It could be to appreciate something that other people created.

@SoNin360:

Alil Specificity couldn't hurt..... ;)

Besides its obvious those two answers are going to come up alot and a topic like this has so much to offer.......

I play for entertainment, fantasy, and narrative. I'm not a competitive person, so I love playing through vast open worlds, enjoy taking down enemies in many different fashions, and being a player in whatever story a game wants to tell.

I just enjoy playing games, cant really elaborate on it any further.

@thehig1:

Breaks my heart :(

@Lulu_Lulu: says the one who didn't elaborate either.

Neither of us know why then.

This, simple and concise

@mastermetal777:

I did elaborate.....

@Lulu_Lulu: with words that have no real context. And as for your single player explanation...there isn't one.

@mastermetal777:

I explained my first point quite well.... I didn't write an entire essay on the subject because then there would be no discussion left for everybody else......

As for my second point.... I thought somebody would atleast try to figure it out.....

@Lulu_Lulu: So you need someone else's opinion to understand why you, personally, play video games? Ah, yeah, okay.

@mastermetal777:

Yep..... pretty much.

Is there something wrong with that ?

It's one of my favorite weekend past times that I never outgrew.

Sometimes I'm able to get on during the weekday, but the weekend is DEFINITELY "ME" time when it comes to gaming.

I play them as it's an escape from reality and an enjoyable challenge.

Because it's fun and more engaging than being a zombie and watching tv all day

To put it simply, it entertains me like no other medium can. Nothing beats coming home after a hard days work and popping the lid off a beer and playing a game. Helps me relax & escape.

@Azre103: I play games to escape reality, not to be immersed in it. That's part of the reason I enjoy Nintendo the most and a lot of experimental indies. A lot of the war shooters and ultra realistic graphics put me too much back into the world we live in already. I play them to spark my imagination and to have fun.

I play video games to escape reality, get thrown into a world where I can experience things everyday life cant give me. I never had many friends and video games were one of the few things that were always there for me through tough times.

I play fist and foremost because i love gaming, and it's a hobby of mine that i really enjoy doing. I like the competetive aspect of multiplayer games and to challange my selv on how deep i can dig into the gameplay.

I also play videogames to experience and to simulate things that i probably would never do in real life. Like flying a jet or a spacecraft etc...

Entertainment , fallowing the stories , having fun , living in this fantasy worlds with their characters , playing games with friends and having a good time .... all that stuff ,

It's just like any other form of entertainment to me. I do it because I enjoy it.

I play video games to experience immersion, understand innovation, and to socialize.

The foremost would be entertainment. Since I do not have many personal pressures in my life, escapism is my least reason.

I've been playing video games for as long as I can remember.

Fun and to escape, mainly. They also help me ignore the unpleasant side effects of a chronic illness and its treatment.

But mainly, I love exploring the creative vision of another. Not just the creative side either, but it's enjoyable to scrutinize a game from a technical perspective and examine how mechanics interact and depend upon one another, can function independently of one another, or any degree in between. How audio and visuals interplay to present the constant illusion of living worlds, while also continually adapting to player agency.

Playing games to me is largely like taking something apart to understand how it functions, and how it could be improved upon or evolved from. It never ceases to amaze me to play well engineered software. To have so many different elements flow so effortlessly together to be able to create a cohesive, fun, dynamic experience is always impressive to witness. I appreciate and admire the craftsmanship.

This is mostly why I game.

@MirkoS77:

First post worthy of this thread.... ;)

Because they are fun and awesome.

@MirkoS77: Very well said, sir.

@frozengrudge, @Lulu_Lulu,

Thanks.

@Lulu_Lulu: I was thinking of TLoU when I wrote that. Mwuahahahahaha!!!!!

@MirkoS77:

You Sneaky Bastard.....

I hate how they made it difficult by just stifling all your options.

But you had options (unless you were careless with resources). That was kind of the beauty of the whole game. Once you chose an option, you were stuck with it. But you still had a choice.

@MirkoS77:

Thats exactly the problem..... to have options for one tiny section of the game you had to play many many many other sections as if you didn't have options..... and in the highest difficulty you had no options..... period.

@Lulu_Lulu: eh, I'd only agree with that on grounded. That difficulty definitely demanded avoiding all confrontations unless absolutely necessary, or if you just felt suicidal that day. But on hard (and even survivor if you're good), usually there were always just enough supplies to make a choice for each major encounter.

@MirkoS77:

Theres one thing about Survivor Difficulty that pisses me off..... Resources are scarce right...... there will be alot of empty drawers and cabinets but almost everytime you encounter enemies Ellie hands you something to help you through it..... which wouldn't be necessary if they just put those resources in the cabinets where you are suppose to find them......

Then there's the removal of Listen Mode....look there's just no other way of saying it.... the stealth mechanics and level design are below average..... listen mode is not a luxury hand holdy feature.... its absolotuely necessary to cut down on the trial and error that will occur when you get spotted by enenies you didn't even known where in the area through trial and error..... especially the human enemies that don't actually search for you..... they just get aggro'd in your general direction regardless if where your last known position was.... Listen Mode in the Last of Us is necessary..... removing just exposes all the cut corners and underwhelming design choices they made......

And the Weapons.....by far the most redundant thing Ive ever seen...... 2 shotguns, 2 Hand Guns and two Scoped Weapons..... all using their own unique ammo.... theres no reason to have both of each type of weapon in your holsters or in your backpack..... or even in the game at all.... all it does is spread your resources even thinner so now you have to run around with two hands, both of them holstered in case one runs out, which would be unnecessary if they only dropped anmo for just one of them.

Would you rather have Ellie be useless and not try to find anything for you? Besides, the game would've been infinitely more tedious and frustrating if Ellie didn't help you at all. And when it comes to scavenging in a post-apocalyptic game, you can't have everything be readily available to you. That just kills the challenge. And also, the ammo drops she gives are rare and only occur when you're severely outgunned and outnumbered. Same with the medkits. She only gives them to you when the game senses you're desperate for supplies in the middle of a firefight so you have a chance at winning.

Listen mode isn't necessary. It helps, sure, but it's not absolutely necessary to beating the game. I've played on all but one of the difficulties (grounded, which I'll eventually get to), and turned the listen mode off on the lower ones. Not only does the sound design help out with detecting enemy movements, but game feels more challenging and tense when you don't know exactly what's going on in terms of enemy positioning. And it's realistic of them to try and hunt down your last known position, because that's all the information anybody would know about at any given moment. And no, they don't aggro you wherever you are. They just happened to see you either from the side or from behind, which is assisted by a sound cue (which you'd be hard pressed to not hear) whenever you're in danger of getting spotted. Sound design is just as important as any other part of game design, and The Last of Us, while not perfect (no game is), is a well-designed game that also realizes it's a game that has to be both realistic and entertaining at the same time, so the design choices surrounding the enemies are there so that the player has a chance to win. And don't give that trial and error argument, since every single game in existence has trial and error gameplay.

What weapons did you find in the game? Here's the full list of weapons in The Last of Us:

• .45 Pistol that's all around useful in all departments, but without much real power behind it
• 6-shot revolver that's powerful, but slow to reload and sorely hindered by its small clip size
• "The Shorty" which is a hand cannon, not a shotgun. It's strong, but nowhere near as powerful as the shotgun and with far less range and has the slowest reload speed of the pistols. If you're considering this the second shotgun, it's inaccurate.
• "The Diablo", a strong armor-piercing scoped pistol with average range and very few shots per clip
• pump action shotgun with great stopping power but poor range and reload speed
• hunting rifle w/ upgradeable scope (doesn't come with one) and decent armor penetration, but slower reload speed
• bow and arrow that's silent and easy to reclaim ammo for, but also the hardest to aim properly
• flamethrower with decent range but wastes ammo too easily and doesn't instantly kill
• assault rifle near the end of the game. Doesn't see much use, but it's an ammo sucker as well.

That's not even to mention the molotovs, smoke and shrapnel bombs, bottles, bricks, and various melee weapons at your disposal. All items are useful for different scenarios, be it action-oriented, stealth-oriented, or a mix of both, because the game was designed for either play style to be played without either one being the better option, which is the thing I love most about The Last of Us aside from the gripping narrative. Is it perfect? Hell no. The AI on both sides lapses into stupidity like every video game AI ever, some encounters feel forced, and it has a slow gameplay pace compared to a lot of others, but either way, it's still a great lesson in how to properly design a game using its own rules and logic while also maintaining a game-like element that doesn't feel uncanny or jarring to the player.

I think we play game for fun. It's a importan target. When we have fun, we will do a lot of thing.

This. And just to pass time

@MirkoS77:

Nope.... there were definitely 2 shotguns...... a pump action shotgun with 7 shots and a Sawed off Shotgun with only two shots.....

And obviously theres a reason to swap a pistol for a flame thrower but tge majority of the time I'm switching one shotgun for the other for no other reason because my bullets ran out.......

I also have a system that governs which weapon I use on which enemy on what scenarios and this redundancy between the weapon types is screwing with my ability to do that.......

@mastermetal777

Ellie does'nt find resources for you she conjures them out of thin air and gives yhem to you, it was clearly a last minute fix to a design oversight...... and Ellie kinda does become more and more useless anyway if ypu increase the difficulty.

Actually removing all yhe resources in the game was not for the sake of challenge..... twas one of those stupid thing developers do for yhe sake of reremove ... removing all of the resources in the game may increase the challenge but it also decreases the elegance in the game play...... just because its a survival game doesn't mean it should have boring gameplay with no options.

Il concede with listen mode since I didn't hsve sorround sound.....

The enemies in their casual stance will walk around in a pattern like a typical stealth game.... but once they are in the alert stance all of them zone in on your location at once at the same time......

You could say it was to increase the challenge but I maintain they were cutting corners... again.

So lets go over the weapons.

A handgun

A slightly differebt hand gun

A shotgun disguised as a hand gun.

A long range rifle

A long bow..... the only actual weapon designed for stealth use

A medium range rifle disguised as a handgun

A regular shotgun

A flamethrower with ammo so scarce you never use it on anything except a bloater..... I don't even bother putting in the holster

A machine gun you don't get until literally the end of the game

And throwable items.

HALF OF THEM ARE USELESS BECAUSE THE GAME STIFLES ALL YOUR RESOURCES.

And don't even get me started on the shivs..... why do they even bother giving you the option to use it on sny enemy...... its only usefull on Clickers... opening locked doors to get more resources to build more shivs to use on clickers.... using it for anything else is a waste.... i find myself curse when my finger slips and I accidentily use a shive on anything else..... they should remove that input.... same goes for the handgun execution.... theres never anyreason to use it anywhere for anyreason... its counterintuitive.

And the narritive..... cutscenes and notes..... thats TheLast of Us' s narrative in a nutshell