Buddhist Leader Defends Video Games!

[Ziggy]

Well maybe because I'm more mature or something, I don't find myself getting outrage (but sometimes still frustrated) for the most part. Although, when I play fighting games against a human opponent, I will some times become very angry if I can't seem to win a round for a while.

[sevin0seven]

I'll agree with the point, but also point out that there are some video games that give you stress and make you aggressive! I don't know about you guys, but some times video games make me want to punch holes in the walls and smash the controllers. Often time that same game usually does the opposite.

Sometimes I feel as if that is only true for us retrogamers and that feeling died off with the NES. Today's games don't seem to frustrate me as much (other than control and camera angles) - I don't know if they are easier now, life bars are bigger, or continues are too plentiful.

It seems like they don't want us gamers to get mad or annoyed anymore, or we will give them bad reviews. I actually think that limited continues or password games are more challenging and funner than most current games today. There's more replay value and you get to perfect your skills further and the memories stay with you. For example: NES Punch Out. I remember every details of how to beat every boxer to this day, but for most current games, not really.

[Hatta]

It all depends on whether the game is being fair or not. If I lose, and it feels like my fault, then I can dig in, practice, fix my game and beat it eventually. If it doesn't seem like my fault, then there's not much I can do and I get pretty frustrated.

I'm experiencing this now in Rogue Squadron. I've been stuck on Mof Seerdon's Revenge for months. 9 times out of 10 I'm blasted down by missiles within the first 30 seconds. If I could see the missiles, I could dodge them, but no. It gets really hard to want to stick with it, but I've come so far...

[MrPopo]

I'll agree with the point, but also point out that there are some video games that give you stress and make you aggressive! I don't know about you guys, but some times video games make me want to punch holes in the walls and smash the controllers. Often time that same game usually does the opposite.

Sometimes I feel as if that is only true for us retrogamers and that feeling died off with the NES. Today's games don't seem to frustrate me as much (other than control and camera angles) - I don't know if they are easier now, life bars are bigger, or continues are too plentiful.

A lot of it is how the game design mentality has evolved. Intially you have the arcade, where the goal is to get players to feed in quarters. So you make the game brutally hard. Then the initial Atari and NES games are frequently ports of arcade games and have the same mechanics. Games created for consoles exclusively stay with the trend of having lives and health bars and limited pickups, as it's expected to keep up the challenge. There was an overall mentality that games were supposed to be hard but beatable. It should be something you have to dedicate your time to doing.

However, once the SNES hit you suddenly were in a world where games could be of much greater length. Sure, the NES had the JRPGs with their battery backup that could take many hours to get through, but they still involved heavy grinding and no small amount of luck (Beat in DQ2 anyone?). Super Mario World had a very large world with many secrets and backtracking. As a result they added a save system into the game so you didn't have to beat it all in one go. And also as a result it was found that you could easily do things like farm lives (and that's before we consider the Top Secret Area). Combined with the ability to save pretty much at will (Donut Ghost House) there was less of a consequence for death. Additionally you now were seeing good narratives in games such as Final Fantasy IV, and in general budgets went up. As a developer I don't want to create a game and spend lots of time fleshing out the story and levels if no one gets further than 20% in. At this point games started shifting from the earlier arcade concepts of feeding quarters and memorization to the more nebulous concept of having a fun play experience.

What also sped things up is the inroads that gaming has made into the general public. As more and more people get into video games there is more incentive for a developer to make a game accessable. If every game on the market was as hard as Prinny then a large number of games would only be experienced by the hardcore crowd.

[Pulsar_t]

Excessive gaming is potentially harmful. Think of those twats on Live for instance. I'm for criticism of gaming just as long as it's not sensationalistic. After all gaming is only set to get more "realistic" thanks to the exponential increase of pixels rendered on screen and online interactions, and MMOs are a whole 'nother kettle of fish! Mortal Kombat had nothing on today's CoD's and GoW's.

[Betamax001]

I know I still get pissed off at a game. This seems to happen mostly with Sonic 2.

"Note to Game Developers: If you have an underwater stage, make your PC be able to BREATH in water!"

[Hatta]

If you can breathe underwater, that mostly negates the point of having an underwater section. The challenge in getting from air supply to air supply in a certain amount of time is part of the game.

[SpaceBooger]

A lot of it is how the game design mentality has evolved. Intially you have the arcade, where the goal is to get players to feed in quarters. So you make the game brutally hard. Then the initial Atari and NES games are frequently ports of arcade games and have the same mechanics. Games created for consoles exclusively stay with the trend of having lives and health bars and limited pickups, as it's expected to keep up the challenge. There was an overall mentality that games were supposed to be hard but beatable. It should be something you have to dedicate your time to doing.

However, once the SNES hit you suddenly were in a world where games could be of much greater length. Sure, the NES had the JRPGs with their battery backup that could take many hours to get through, but they still involved heavy grinding and no small amount of luck (Beat in DQ2 anyone?). Super Mario World had a very large world with many secrets and backtracking. As a result they added a save system into the game so you didn't have to beat it all in one go. And also as a result it was found that you could easily do things like farm lives (and that's before we consider the Top Secret Area). Combined with the ability to save pretty much at will (Donut Ghost House) there was less of a consequence for death. Additionally you now were seeing good narratives in games such as Final Fantasy IV, and in general budgets went up. As a developer I don't want to create a game and spend lots of time fleshing out the story and levels if no one gets further than 20% in. At this point games started shifting from the earlier arcade concepts of feeding quarters and memorization to the more nebulous concept of having a fun play experience.

What also sped things up is the inroads that gaming has made into the general public. As more and more people get into video games there is more incentive for a developer to make a game accessable. If every game on the market was as hard as Prinny then a large number of games would only be experienced by the hardcore crowd.

Well put. For some reason I like the arcade level of stress. I like the fact that I can challenge myself to a game. This kind of stress is good stress, it relieves (as mentioned in the OP - also a good segue back on topic) stress for me. Going back to play the same game again to get maximum stars or other achievements for playing the same game multiple times gives me stress - the bad kind.

[J T]

I have certain 'bread n butter' games that are good for stress relief, but a lot really aren't. I can get competitive and then they cease to be relaxing, despite being a lot of fun.

This monk is also talking about the idea of catharsis, which was critical to the thinking of early Freudian psychologists. There is this idea that we have internal conflicts that need some form of release or else they will have negative effects on our psyche. Psychologists would do all kinds of crazy things to get people to release their pent up aggression, sometimes even having them scream at the top of their lungs in the therapy room. However, the idea that catharsis is a critical component to mental health has largely been discredited now. While this monk's approach to videogames may be good for him, let's also not forget that he is a zen monk. He's probably not as likely to fly off the handle from all of the meditation he does. I don't really think it makes sense to prescribe videogames as therapeutic, especially with the diversity of experiences one can have while playing a videogame.

Nevertheless, I do like to think about the ways that videogames can be beneficial for people, as well as harmful. It seems like there is a huge bias out there that people want to believe that videogames rot your brain and make you violent. It's nice to hear someone say something positive about them for a change.

[Haoie]

Somehow, you don't see Buddha in many games, do you?