Addictive games

[Michaël Samyn]

Frank Lantz has a way of poetically describing game experiences that is very seductive and even convincing. When interviewed by Sam Anderson in the New York Times, he describes his Poker addiction as such:

It was like a tightrope walk between this transcendently beautiful and cerebral thing that gave you all kinds of opportunities to improve yourself — through study and self-discipline, making your mind stronger like a muscle — and at the same time it was pure self-destruction.

I recognize this feeling. But in my opinion these sorts of game experiences have the opposite effect of what the user thinks they're having. Like other forms of addictions, specifically use of drugs, games make players feel that they are opening their mind and learning and experiencing all sorts of new things, while in reality, they are in  fact closing their mind and building walls around their own little world. A world that only fellow addicts can enter.

In the case of games, I think it is the rules that capture the mind. The rules of a game are always infinitely simpler than any sort of logic that governs reality. And while it is impossible for any human to master the latter, the idea of mastering a game seems feasible, especially given that, in competitive situation, you only really need to master it slightly better than your opponents. This gives the human brain the rush of understanding, the rush that insight brings. It feels the same as the rush brought on by religion, science or art, so the player assumes that his newly found understanding applies, like those, to the world at large, while in fact it only applies to the little world of the game's rules.

I find it very dangerous for a human mind to be captured by systems of rules. As we get addicted to the feeling of mastery of the trivial, we lose sight of the astounding incomprehensibility of the universe. In fact, we probably start thinking that this universe can be captured by rules somehow, that it must be a game, that we only need to figure out its rules and then we can master it.

But the very idea of mastering something as the ultimate achievement horrifies me. Sure it's good to learn things and to get really good at something. Even if only because the experience brings pleasure (but hopefully also because what you are learning actually matters). But to make triumph the focus of one's life is the recipe for disaster. If you don't destroy yourself through it, it will destroy people around you. The most dangerous myth of modern times is the one that says we are all heroes!

[ghostwheel]

The most dangerous myth of modern times is the one that says we are all heroes!

Yes, instead we should all know are place as cogs in the machine, worthless, rotting hunks of meat. You're right, that is much better! Why aspire to be anything better when we can be nothing at all.

I think your POV is dangerous. Simply awful.

[troshinsky]

In fact, we probably start thinking that this universe can be captured by rules somehow, that it must be a game, that we only need to figure out its rules and then we can master it.

I think that as humans, we desperatedly seek to order this nonsensical world that surround us. We cannot stand the idea that this has no meaning, no purpose and no sense. We need to be constantly reassured that we are important, that we are here for something and that things happen for some reason. That´s one of the reasons why fiction exists, because it allows us to order the world, to give it a meaning. Games are a particularly powerful medium to depict an ordered world, they can actually build living worlds ruled with sense and meaning. That´s probably what makes them so attractive.

But because a game is so efficient at representing that I would love to see it to doing the opposite. That´s my personal ambition with "Landscape", to depict a world ruled by so many nonsensical rules that it escapes the control and understanding of the player.

[Albin Bernhardsson]

The most dangerous myth of modern times is the one that says we are all heroes!

Yes, instead we should all know are place as cogs in the machine, worthless, rotting hunks of meat. You're right, that is much better! Why aspire to be anything better when we can be nothing at all.

I think your POV is dangerous. Simply awful.

I think the black-or-white POV that either you're a hero or you're a "worthless, rotting hunk of meat" seems far more dangerous...

[ghostwheel]

The most dangerous myth of modern times is the one that says we are all heroes!

Yes, instead we should all know are place as cogs in the machine, worthless, rotting hunks of meat. You're right, that is much better! Why aspire to be anything better when we can be nothing at all.

I think your POV is dangerous. Simply awful.

I think the black-or-white POV that either you're a hero or you're a "worthless, rotting hunk of meat" seems far more dangerous...

I agree.

[Michaël Samyn]

Sorry. I was speaking from my own experience. I've been brought up with this belief and it seriously messed me up. Took me thirty years of my life to even realize it. And I'm still working on getting over it, over a decade later. I'm not saying that we should not develop ourselves. I'm just saying that it's stupid to believe we need to be the best, that we need to win, that everything is a competition.

[ghostwheel]

Sorry. I was speaking from my own experience. I've been brought up with this belief and it seriously messed me up. Took me thirty years of my life to even realize it. And I'm still working on getting over it, over a decade later. I'm not saying that we should not develop ourselves. I'm just saying that it's stupid to believe we need to be the best, that we need to win, that everything is a competition.

That make more sense to me, put like that. The computer games as competition thing is way over done.

[Michaël Samyn]

The human life as competition thing too.

[Michaël Samyn]

We are missing out on so much if we don't pay attention to the moment, to where we are now, to what we know and what we see and experience. Life happens now, not in the future. Or in the past. And there is so much beauty in our imperfection.

[Michaël Samyn]

Anyway, back on topic, playing games gives us a strong sensation that we are learning something, that we are getting better at something. But I think the sensation itself is much stronger than the amount of actual learning. Basically, games trigger disproportionate neuro-biological rewards that give us the illusion of making intellectual progress. I'm sure games teach us something that can be of use outside of the gaming experience. But not much, compared to other intellectual endeavors like reading a book, studying a painting or listening intently to beautiful music.

At least not in my experience. Frank Lantz's language always makes me feel like he is having experiences that I never have with games. But maybe it's the other way around. Maybe his addiction is motivating him to glorify his pass time in order to justify it. After all he is the man who claimed that Nabokov's butterfly collecting is somehow more interesting than his novels.

[ghostwheel]

I have to disagree again. I don't see how playing a game is any less worthwhile than any other human endeavour, short of scientific exploration. Humans have been playing games since we could be called human. I don't think that is trivial.

Speaking of trivial, Cory Doctorow argued recently that the "trivial" is as important as anything when it comes to interpersonal communication as most of our interaction is trivial. I would extend this to most of human activity.

Anyway, the argument is anecdotal. Just because some people have addictive personalities doesn't mean games are bad. That logic is totally broken.

[Michaël Samyn]

It's a funny coincidence then that an age that rejects religion, authority, beauty, morality and responsibility embraces games. Or is it? I keep thinking about Nietzsche and wondering if he would be proud when seeing what we have become, or ashamed.

[György Dudas]

that an age that rejects religion, authority, beauty, morality and responsibility embraces games

If you only look at our small western pocket of the world, you might be right. Unfortunately, I see the rise of religion, authority and false morality even in our western hemisphere...

[ghostwheel]

Religion isn't being rejected enough as far as I'm concerned.

[God at play]

All the recent research I've heard about (and studied myself) seems to suggest that, as a whole, organized religion is slowly and steadily declining in the Western world. Any growth seems to be within specific sub-groups and is not representative of the whole. But it is clearly growing in the Eastern world.

I actually think we need more of it, but that's because this is my definition: "to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

But in my opinion these sorts of game experiences have the opposite effect of what the user thinks they're having. Like other forms of addictions, specifically use of drugs, games make players feel that they are opening their mind and learning and experiencing all sorts of new things, while in reality, they are in  fact closing their mind and building walls around their own little world.

Well put! Yeah, Lantz seemed to be referring to games as a sort of "perfect drug." I find that really disturbing. I never figured he would join the segment of the industry that's trying to take games in that direction. What happened to just wanting to make a popular sport?