I’m glad you can recognize how important this is to a kid. So many wow raiders in the 00s were ostracized by society for being this dedicated to a team of other humans and a shared goal. It really is something we need to learn to embrace and harness. I love the unique emotional responses that video games are capable of eliciting in people that movies and tv never could.
WOW is proof that human beings are biologically programmed to work together to achieve goals. It’s a shame capitalism suppresses this desire in people and forces them to only let it out in games. Imagine if we had a society where people’s work was properly valued, where they could self organise to accomplish great things.
In theory, capitalism is supposed to create exactly that environment. The problem is we have a society that doesn’t believe in proper regulation to prioritize the wellbeing of the society over that of the achievements and desires of individuals.
So much like how modern WoW has transformed into this uninteresting, solved meta that requires weakauras to do your thinking, gold buying to have gear and reagents, and no interesting competition for loot, our society is now an uninteresting solved meta where the wealthy nullify any possibility of competition, everyone is employed as wageslaves with a corporate handbook doing their thinking for them, and there’s no safety net to allow anyone take a chance at working together on interesting projects to actually compete.
The problem isn’t that we have capitalism, it’s that capitalism is synonymous with patriotism.
Seems orthogonal. I don’t care how regulation is accomplished, just that it is. I feel like the tax levels and safety nets we had in place ~70 years ago were fine, until red scare propaganda convinced everyone to vote against their own interests.
Also I feel a bit like you’ve hijacked this discussion about the importance of video games in child development.
In addition to what others said, due to the architecture it was notoriously hard to develop for. The Playstation dev kits were a dream to work with in comparison. Sega of Japan hedged their bets on 2D remaining king due to the Japanese market preferring arcade ports and slowness to accept change, and slapped on some 3D capabilities almost as an afterthought. Meanwhile Sega of America assumed the US market would scoff at spending 500 on a console when the 32X had just released and was very similar (and also selling poorly).
Sony took risks by pushing 3D hard, were aggressive with pricing, did a ton of marketing, and completely ate Sega’s lunch. Despite the Saturn being arguably more powerful and better made than the PS1, it wasn’t enough to right the ship. And it continued on this downward spiral due to the negative impressions that Sega was dying with the Dreamcast where they again flubbed the launch timing while people were enamored with the N64 and the PS1 had a massive library.
There were lots of other shenanigans involved, I’m skimming the surface here. Regardless, both consoles have some bangers and I recommend trying some out if you ever have the chance. The hardware is also very cool if you can find them cheap but might need refurbed at this age.
That’s incredible. Your son has far, far, more patience than I ever did. I still haven’t managed to clock most of the games I grew up with, such as Dangerous Dave, Prince of Persia 1 & 2, Wolf3D, Doom 1 & 2, Crystal Caves, Aladdin, Lion King, Jazz Jackrabbit, Mario (NES), Pokemon Red (GBA), Crash Bandicoot (PS1)…
Every now and then I try to clock one of those old games, but then I get stuck and/or lose interest, and move on to something else. Even among recent games, I spent over 400 hours playing BotW and only managed to do two of the divine beasts. I also have over 200 hours in TotK and still haven’t gotten to the first major spirit quest. Similarly, got several hundreds of hours in Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim, but never actually completed any of those games.
I think the only game that I recall beating would be the Bio Menace trilogy - which I finally managed to complete as an adult, and that too thanks to DOSBox’s save states. Oh, and Diablo II too, it someone had the perfect mix of action + story + game length, to keep me interested till the end.
Honestly I’ve no idea how people manage to stick to one thing for so long and see it thru till the end, without losing interest or getting distracted by something else.
He chooses to beat Elden Ring in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of his energies and skills, because that challenge is one that he is willing to accept, one he is unwilling to postpone, and one he intends to win, and the others, too.
Fallout: New Vegas, because it’s been like a decade and I want to play again, especially after watching the series.
Took a while for me to get back into it (and figure out the right mods and settings for me), and I’m still feeling a little bit of that overwhelming “fuck, there’s maybe too much shit to do”, but I’ll just chill with it for now.
Edit: LOOOOOOL. Legion already hates me and I haven’t even met (and killed) Caesar yet. Barely even started the main quest at this point, which I suppose is tradition with Fallout, to be fair.
I’ve expressed this many many times to him over the years. I’ve said something like “I want to play games to have fun. If the game isn’t fun for me, then I will not play it anymore”.
I believe that he understands this. However, he just wanted so much to understand Elden Ring and beat it.
Personally, Elden Ring is NOT fun to play and that’s why I don’t play it.
I’m just astounded that my 8-10 year old son persevered so much to beat it.
Elden Ring and Dark Souls games are not fun to play per se, but it’s very rewarding due to the difficulty and skill required. That sense of accomplishment is why a lot of people play, even if it’s not explicitly fun to keep dying and restarting. Not everyone’s cup of tea for sure but many good lessons and skills to be learned playing it
I’m in my 30s. I’m gradually getting calmer. But seriously, if a game doesn’t induce the urge to throw objects around the room from time to time, it probably won’t make my list of favourites.
Yeah ps4 works a charm, the hard part for me was figuring out why an Xbox controller didn’t. Turns out some of the older models had deprecated Bluetooth that it couldn’t connect to, so went with a ps4 one instead.
Nice find, I completely forgot. I remember either me or a friend having the XBLA disc, but I never even connected my original XB to the net, so I never used it, I just played offline.
Great console btw, funnily it was the one that turned me from PC to consoles, so I could play the newest Mortal Kombat with friends. I since switched mostly to Playstation, but always had some kind of XB from every gen.
It really hurts to see how MS dropped the ball with the console since, after doing the impossible and narrowly outselling Sony with the 360. I really though GamePass might turn the tide in their favor again, but as Sony now has a similar service, it seems to have not.
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