dont even need to watch the video fr i fuck with the title, outer wilds fuckin slapped especially bc you can only play it once lmao, remove progression systems from games
I played a lot of Hades because the play cycle was fun, and getting good was enjoyable. But once I finished the story, and I romanced who I wanted to romance, I’ve never picked it up again. And I like it that way.
i liked hades but i would have liked it better with less “+10 health/+10 damage” type metaprogression tbh, something like FTL where you’re mostly unlocking sidegrades and new gameplay options instead of straight upgrades alongside the narrative
under communism the only progression system allowed will be the checklist from kirby air ride
terraria is fun though
terraria is even more fun with mods that remove grinding from the game so you’re only locked by boss kills and not time. that and calamity for some extra CBT
Skinner box game mechanics suck and are just hollow “entertainment” but are manufactured very carefully to maximise fomo and engagement. They’re very profitable though which is ofc why its used, battle passes, timed events, seasonal content, lIvE sErVicE shite.
It’s designed specifically to prey on people who are vulnerable to these tactics, I even fell into it myself around the modern warfare reboot getting extremely worked up over battle passes. Hated every minute of it but just couldn’t stop myself until someone hacked my Activision account and stole it breaking me out of the cycle.
Fukn crapitalism.
Skinner box game mechanics suck and are just hollow “entertainment”
All Vidya Gamez are fundamentally Skinner Boxes. At the same time, when you’re trapped in a cube all day, it’s nice to get a food pellet. Stop shaming people for food pelleting themselves.
Hated every minute of it but just couldn’t stop myself until someone hacked my Activision account and stole it breaking me out of the cycle.
My original experience with online games was in a big social circle that whittled away over time. It’s less the game pass model itself (which always just descends into “How much pop culture can we shove into your generic Blood Gulch shooter/looter?”) than the fact that I’m playing with an endless parade of anonymous that nobodies I ultimately find so upsetting.
I play chess with a co-worker every lunch break we’re free, and it’s far more fun and fulfilling than the time I spent grinding amid a sea of faceless nobodies.
At the same time, it feels cruel to tell people who don’t have an active social circle to just not be online at all.
The only thing worse than the Skinner Box is solitary confinement.
All Vidya Gamez are fundamentally Skinner Boxes.
No they are not and I will fight you. If you mean multiplayer online games, well maybe, you might have a point, but I don’t play those games and so I will make no claims about them.
However. If you call Outer Wilds or Pathologic/Pathologic 2 or Disco Elysium or A Short Hike or Journey skinner boxes, well, you’re just wrong. Games are experiences, they’re stories that can be more immersive than a movie or a book and if they’re done well, holy shit are they good!
Games are (can be) amazing, and I’m sick of pretending they’re not.
That shit’s effective and that’s the reason it keeps being done. Every smug
looking down on people that get caught into it under pretense of feeling superior can fuck off forever.
“Addiction is a specific thing that requires biological dependency therefore you said the wrong word and everything you said is invalid!” 
I posted that there so pedants don’t have to.
I absolutely hate that argument, it would mean gambling addiction is not real. In other words: one of the most harmful addictions to public health is not an addiction by that definition, because there’s no “biological dependency”.
That’s exactly how the struggle session went.
It was despicable, shameful treat defending from fairweather leftists.
Wait we had a struggle session about gambling of all things?? How are you going to be anti-capitalist and pro-gambling industry?
Stef rules on this issue
I don’t think there’s any one cause for this bs making off unless you just wanna say capitalism, but my god when I got my first smartphone and every app had “addictive!” as the positive rating I knew I was already in my way to becoming a buzz kill baba, and rightly so.
With that in mind as a marketing word, I really hate the smuglordery from treat defenders that say “if you get addicted to it (or if they pedantically say addition isn’t technically biologically happening because pedantic reasons) that’s on you. I’m fine. I got mine” and apply that to everything from deliberately habit-forming gameplay loops to FOMO and predatory monetization practices such as time-conditional “battle/season passes” and the like, or as had happened on Hexbear at least once: to fucking corporate sports gambling apps.
It’s assholish and low-key ableism on top of that, seeing psychologically vulnerable people as deserving of suffering in some treat-Calvinistic way.
It’s not low key ableist, it’s plainly ableist. Literally blaming a sick person for their disease.
I called it “low-key” because I’m sure the fair-weather self-described leftists that said it during the corporate sports gambling struggle session (not going to name names) didn’t want to think it was ableist to say “if you can’t afford to gamble don’t gamble. Simple. I don’t want a nanny state telling me what to dooooooooo.”
Yes, it all boils down to “I don’t care what harm may come. I want my treats!”
Also, anyone “pedantically” arguing it needs a biological mechanism is just flatly wrong, no pedantry involved to call them such. Of all the fucking things in psychology to suddenly insist on a biological mechanism, addiction, a highly profitable affliction to deliberately cause,… Well it makes sense why they suddenly demand a specific type of mechanism to dismiss the obvious and well explored ones
I wholeheartedly agree.
I fucking hate when such treat defenders go as far as saying “well that means someone can be addicted to chocolate, which would be silly amirite?”
I have a small quibble in this video actually,they says “(bad addictive) in a way we haven’t linguistically differentiated yet”
That’s backwards, “positive addiction”, to the extent that could be applied to the treat machine accurately, is the new form, it simply obliterated the old definition in the context of treats.
I’m not convinced we need to hold the new (positive) differentiation at all, nevermind form a more clear distinction between it and the presumptive negative older understanding of the word.
Tangential example actually. Look how much I’ve posted the the two days I’ve had this account. I’m averaging like 3 an hour even including the hours I sleep and am at work, I’m posting at work right now, and reading almost every post on the site.
There are times I get so stressed willingly subjecting myself to posting addiction feels preferable, but I always delete the account and go back to lurking fairly shortly cause I can’t actually just live like this. This time prolly a day or two after the election, a place to rage with like minds is cathartic, but that’s not a thing I should be seeking all the time, catharsis. For obvious reasons, political and psychological
Plenty of people can post responsibly. I literally cannot.
Agreed, was thinking this as well
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
