I'm waiting for "the mastermind", the type of gamer who tries to win games through meta-contests, to eliminate all serious challenge before it gets to be a problem. Through tactics like establishing a economy to steamroll the applications of superior tactics in strategy games, or exploiting a harder area in an RPG to build up the level of their characters before adventuring further, or even buying up all the property in games like Saint's Row or Assassin's Creed, so they will always have all the best equipment. This gamer's motto would be something like Sun Tzu, that you should already have won the war, before you fight a battle.
I'd say compatible with the horder and the min/maxer in building up their empire, but ultimately the exterminator and the difficult snob would find the minimalising of challenge and conflict to be less than satisfying.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Johnny. Now that feedbackula and what if machine are done for the year, I don't really have any reason to check Gamespot until 2013. Thanks to you and Seb and Guy and Danny and Cam and Mark and all the talented people supporting the on-air talent at Gamespot UK that we never hear about-- actually, especially them. Thanks for making 2012 that much more fun. I can't wait to see what you guys do in the new year. Assuming we haven't been eatten by a Mayan Blood God, that is. Cheers! Sincerely, Verenti
I saw this in the recommended videos for the Minecon 2012 video and got excited. "Yeah!" I silently shouted, "Star/Select is back!" Then I saw it was just one from the summer that mentioned Minecon 2012 and I got sad.
She suggests that playing action games, help improve eyesight and improves cognative abilities such as concentration and the ability to multi-task. Like most TED videos, well worth a watch.
Very interesting episode, but I think as someone who has done some work in the social sciences I think it is problematic to try to force this sort of quantitative ideal of the scientific method onto a phenomenon that is inherently restricted to the social world. Human beings and the interactions between them are some of the most complicated systems we have around today and to get them into a place where they can be processed into quantitative data requires a reduction of people down into a binary state. In short, it doesn't work. Beyond that, you have to make normative value judgements, as these researchers and, to a degree, this video does. This runs counterintiutive to a webshow based around examining things based on science, to see how real world science and videogames holds up, because it abandons this idea of impartiality. That's not an accusation, as a person it's impossible to seperate one's values and ethics from one's action. But it becomes problematic because a judgements is made on a character trait that is pretty fundamental to Human nature. It is assumed by these studies that aggression is bad. This is problematic because what we are inivertedly saying is that aggressive people are "bad" or "wrong" people, while aggression is a very important trait for people in competitive positions, such as leadership roles. So the question behind the outrage becomes, do we want people to not be aggressive? Do we want a society that doesn't prize achievment and competition? Or are there situations that aggression is not only acceptable, but desirable?
But if we ban violence, where do we stop? Sports are violent: Women's football is more violent than most combat sports (or atleast it seems to have more injuries). Do we stop pyschological violence from being present in games and other media? And would removing violence and aggression lead to a point where we would be less able to deal with these problems when they arise? I would agrue that a strong moral core is developed, like many things, by use. If someone is never placed in a position where they have to weigh the value of certain actions as moral actions, how can we expect them to deal with such dilemna when they encounter them in real life?
Shaming news sites would be nice, but its a dream. It's the same reason that we have trash food, trash books (wishful thinking there), movies, music and games. We live in societies where marketing is king. What sells is what's big, and tragedy and hysteria sell. As much as I would like a mechanism to punish media outlets, publishers and the Justin Biebers of the world from filling the cultural space with so much rubbish, such a tool would be a powerful tool of censorship and would be the symbol of anti-innovation. It's better to let people the ...Box... News and the... Schmaily Schmail... peddle their lies, then give anyone an infringe on every lunatic who wants to post their opinions in a comment box of their website of choice. Otherwise we might put Johnny out of buisness (and I have a sneaking hunch that if Feedbackula, as it currently stands, was forced to shut down due to lack of moronic content, that Johnny would be the happiest person of all.)
But I think this episode was ... phoning it in? "What will aliens look?" Really? I suppose it is possible that this was being watched by some idiot fourteen-year old who never considered that an alien would be bipedal mammals, but it's an interesting conceit of the science fiction genre that we have to make aliens as human as possible to be able to emphasise with them. But still that undermines the messages of Mass Effect, because none of the aliens are really ... alien. They are sub-humans. Also, reminding us that you need FTL drives to move ... faster than light? That's sort of logic that I don't need help with. That's why Star Trek had the Warp drive, and Dune had space folding. Some way to compress normal space.
Also the hubris of assuming that because we can't theorise a way to travel between stars that the aliens couldn't find a way.
Don't take this the wrong way, Cam. It's criticism, not hate mail. Not that I'd think you'd confuse the two.
Verenti's comments