The meaning of (video) games

Again, with my introduction in mind, it would be time to write about gaming and what i see in it. So, consider this a introduction of philosophy of gaming and what to expect in the future.

The meaning of video games

It would be superficial to say that games have only the goal to entertain you. I would like to make the analogy (and i will make it a lot in the future) between video games and books. We can, of course, say that books have in goal to entertain us, but if we divide them in subcategories, like cooking, self-improving, philosophy, engineering, romance and so on, we can clearly see a different goal in every kind of book. The self-improving books aim to teach us how to care and improve our personality. The horror books aim to scare and excite us. The philosophy books aim to make us think and question everything. The psychology books aim to give us a better understanding of the self and its problems. 

We can then combine two different sub-categories in one. For example psychological-horror book aims to scare us trough the most personal fears a human can have: his body, mind, sanity etc. A philosophical-romance book aims to enable us to relieve a love story, which concludes in a lesson about life. We can go on and on, but i think the idea is clear.

Lets look at games as a medium, which combines all of this and enables us to be the writer. This is for me a video game. It is truly pointless if we perceive games of the like: "The secret of monkey island"; The souls series; "Elder-scrolls"; "Bioshock"; The Hitman series etc. as simply medium to entertain us.

If we look at games this way, we will miss out the lessons they teach us. And this is also an analogy to the books. Books exists to teach us something. Either how to cook, how to not make the mistakes the person made, how to love, how to win money and other superficial stuff, so do games teach us as well. 

Films have the same role, they let us relieve a certain lesson. But here comes the bold main point i want to discuss in future posts as well. 

Gaming is the most sufficient way to learn about life, death, cooking, surgery and everything we can possibly think of. Gaming surpasses books, movies, comics, magazines in any way possible.

This sentence will not be proved in this post. It is too big of a claim for one post to suffice. So lets go on the next sub-chapter of this post.

League of legends does not entail the meaning of life you stupid writer !

You are quite right my dear viewer! But saying that League of Legends has the meaning of life is the same as saying that the cooking book of Gordon Ramsay entails a philosophical answer to not fear death. 

This is the reason categories exist. Every category says something about the aim of the product. And here i will try to digest all the categories in to only three. The Green, yellow and red. So let's look at them.

The Green Category: This represents games, which were made with a lot of love and care. In them we can find hidden symbolic from literature and popular ideas. The goal of this games are to wrap you in their world and show you the meaning they have created. Such games are considered either hidden gems or game of the year (in the year they were published). As movies have cinematography tricks, so do games have tricks up their sleeves they need to master in order to be high quality: Difficulty, camera movement, dialogue, story writing and many more (which i will present in further posts). Green category games always have mastered at least one of the tricks. Masterpieces are considered those who have mastered most of them. Witcher 3 is a good example, but it can still be criticized. 

WARNING: A SUBJECTIVE OPINION INCOMING !!!

Such games to give an example are: The Witcher series, The souls series, Thief 1-2-3, Lucasarts point and click games, Elder-Scrolls, Age of Empires II, SystemShock, Stronghold, Starcraft, Ori and the Blind Forest, The Last of Us, Half-Life, Uncharted, Divinity Original Sin (as well as the old ones, without beyond evil),Castlevania SOFN, Journey, some Zelda games  and many many more. 

It would be interesting to comment on why they are masterpieces, but i will maybe to one of them per post explaining the philosophy, psychology and masterfully made tricks.

If you have anything you would add, please do write in the comments. It would be interesting to discuss. 

Yellow Category: This represents games, which were made either to win a lot of money or with the idea to experiment in a really radical way with no success. A good example is the Call of Duty franchise. Although it was revolutionary at one point, because of how it mastered the shooting mechanics (and in some cases the story) it fell short on its nose by becoming a generic generating money machine. The goal of this games are to wrap you in a play cycle, which doesn't reward you with anything but the basics. Points, high-scores, customization etc. Most of the time finishing yellow category games doesn't reward you with any particular feeling other than "meh".  Maybe they have a good beginning, a nice mid-game and a bad climax. Maybe they are too easy or the storytelling is really boring and predictable. Whatever the reason this games either generate money, only thanks to their name or they die in obscurity.

WARNING: A SUBJECTIVE OPINION INCOMING!!!

Such examples are: Diablo 3, Call of Duty (everything after black ops), No Mans Sky, Hunt Down the Freeman, almost all of the new EA titles, Duke Nukem Forever, Sacred 3 and many others. 

The Red Category: This represents games, which were made with the only with the goal to keep you playing and rewarding you with absolutely nothing. Most of the games, which are popular today are in this category and the reason for this is that the creators have mastered the way to keep you playing, despite everything you hate about the game. The way this kind of games work is similar to how facebook works. Let's take League of Legends for example (i need to admit i played this game for 8 years and was a ranked maniac, but this logic made me understand my idiocy). You do the same thing over and over. You go in a game, farm, fight, win or lose. At the beginning its fun, especially when you are playing with friends,because this gives the feeling of being social and thus productive. Afterwards, when you get to ranked games you repeat the cycle with the difference, that this times you have points which go up or points which go down and sometimes you get a flashy DIAMOND or MASTER. After every game you get a dopamine hit if you win. The logical thing is that you would like to reproduce this feeling, so you play again. This time you lose and the next logical thing is to play again in order to win, in order to get your points back. So you go into the loop of playing at least 4 games a day (which was definitely optimistic for me). The next thing which is important is a connection between your personality and the game. Here comes cosmetics. By making your account connected to your personality, like for example having all Chinese skins, it becomes harder for the person to detach from the game and to leave it. Most of the time cosmetics are bought with money, which makes the account a sort of investment and this only adds further to the problem of detaching. The games in the red category have as well perfected the thing they are supposed to do for example: Hearth Stone has perfected the card mechanics. League of Legends and DOTA characters and their inter-actions with each other. Overwatch- combination of MOBA and FPS. And so on and so on.

WARNING: A SUPER OFFENSIVE SUBJECTIVE OPINION INCOMING!!!

Such examples are: League of Legends, DOTA, Hearthstone, Overwatch, Smite, Warhammer Vermintide, Counter Strike, WOW, TeamFortress and many more.

Lets conclude: The Green category games are created by love to be loved. The Yellow category games are either created by love, but not well enough, or are created to generate money by trying to become mainstream and using their name. The Red category games are only made to generate money in a psychology loop.

What is the message of this post? 

The end result of this post is to conclude the meaning of video games as such: A medium, which is created to enrich a persons life by enabling him to live an impossible fantasy life, read a story, overcome difficulties, love, hate, fear and think from a first-person perspective with the end goal of: either to stay in silence and tears after the end of the story, to stay in silence and disappointment or to stay in silence and give your money away. I would like to create to important question to work as our basis for gaming analysis. What is the meaning of the game and in which category should it be put? I do believe that this could create a big door for argumentation and improvement.! 

All this is just the fundamental part i want us to have in order to digest games more deeply. I would also love to digest games requested from you dear viewer. 

Until we see each other in the comments i wish you a nice and pleasant gaming day.

Yours truly, 

Monstroz.

Image sources: 

1) https://pixabay.com/en/joystick-nes-video-game-3273842/ 2)https://www.flickr.com/photos/bagogames/13168243845
3) https://www.flickr.com/photos/bagogames/31049262986 4)https://www.flickr.com/photos/downloadsourcefr/15839810880