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Are video games more than just entertainment?


hunter558

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I\'ve been a fan of video games my entire life, since i was practically a baby i loved playing them. But as i got older i appreciated video games less for their play value but for their story, and thematic parallels to real life. I\'ve always been one for the story in a video game, they can often time bring out more than a book ever could although i do like books. Now im not someone who worships video games or anything like that, but i think a lot of people miss the points brought about by video games that have greatly changed my views on the world and influenced my life.

If it wasn\'t for games like Mass Effect, Deus Ex, and Halo(and many others which i wont mention), my fascination for science and technology would never have grown to what it is today, i may just be some blabbering idiot who only cares about my social life(which i do have, dont worry) and little else. While many video games cater to those people, like Call of Duty for example, which i do play admittedly, i can\'t say its a video game i enjoy, nor is it an example of a video game with the things ive described above.

Just wanted to know what people think about video games, do you actually think it\'ll help bring about the end of society, make us all idiots, or is there a hint of wisdom and intelligence that will inspire people for generations as things such as art have done? You already know my argument, i wanna hear yours.

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There\'s definitely some great people in the industry; although - due to the openness of Game Development - you get the worst out of a lot of people. It\'s not like Literature, Music or Film. Game development is the most open of the four, leaving open room for argument. This gets multitudes worse when you take in the fact that some very large games come out once or twice a decade. I\'m going to use SSBU as an example. Brawl came in 2008; Melee in 2001, and U is expected in 2014. That\'s 7 years between Brawl and Melee, and 6 years between U and Brawl. You can NOT screw up with such a long production cycle.

Earlier this week, it was announced that Namco Bandai were to develop U. As is expected, anger occured. To quote a site I visit daily;

Masahiro Sakurai, the lead game designer behind Smash Bros has called out a devoted fan on Twitter for criticising the collaboration between Nintendo and Namco Bandai for Smash Bros on Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. The Twitter follower claimed that Namco Bandai is incompetent, and ultimately shouldn’t be involved in the development of the game. Sakurai tweeted the following back to the aggravated Twitter fan.

“Knock off looking down on them with narrow-minded thinking.â€

I feel you get my point. If this wasn\'t announced, then no-one would be any the wiser.

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_(series)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(series)

These are the video games people have enjoyed for the last decade or so. Mindless, pointless, simple, pathetically easy, no-strategy-involved violence. You just push buttons like a monkey in an experiment.

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

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

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

These are the good games, the one that make you think, and strategize, and work to achieve something. And you fail like crazy, and that\'s the fun part, because you have fun doing it. These are the games that are just now starting to get popular - I think that\'s a good sign, but the majority of the public won\'t even look at a video game unless they can scream profanities through a headset at people they don\'t know while playing it.

So, while I doubt you can get much 'Wisdom and intelligence' out of the first three games, and none of them are exactly comparable to art, music, writing, et cetera, there\'s always a few gold nuggets somewhere in the tons of bland, boring stone.

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