I feel like, aside from the specificity of video games taking far more time and investment to finish than other media, no to mention the dedication to F2P titles, the news could’ve really pointed out that it most likely is not turning a profit because no other streaming service does.
Netflix has always operated with billions of debt that only grows, Amazon, Disney+ and Max only exist because they’re backed by the biggest corporations in the world, and Spotify pays nickels to its artists.
Which might be another point to consider, that the convenience that users get from subscribing to these services do nothing to actually support the creators behind its titles - see every cancellation, whether its a tv show, movie or game - and while having an ever growing library of media is enticing, having few but objective choices still make far more sense when it comes to gaming.
As an aside I’m not particularly fond of the author brushing the change to digital streaming as inevitable, and going back to buying media being backwards, when we are on the verge of constant media erasure from companies, and with physical ownership - and piracy, in extreme cases - becoming more and more vital. If anything, it is less the technology that got us so far, and more the control that IP holders exercise over digital media, and the ability to delist, control prices and manipulate supply and demand at will.
Video games do not promote violence according to any modern ethical research on the question.
I can’t imagine the pain of these families, and I’d want to lash out at any available target, too. They might even get lucky and have a settlement offer from Activision rather dragging everyone through a trial. But if this even makes it into a courtroom, I would bet that it will ultimately go nowhere. There’s just no credible evidence to support the claim.
I mean, some game studios consult child psychologists and lawyers to better implement addictive gambling-like mechanics without being liable for that. Media does impact the consumer, and the bigger the initial predisposition, the worse the effect, and kids like shiny animated casino boxes. But violent games that do reach the market and aren’t dead on arrival are mild in that and can only supplement other, more real problems like mental health issues, trauma, neglect, bullying. And in 99.9% cases it’s just an excuse to push them under the carpet. Like, from drawing a line to what makes older demographics cause daily mass shootings. Not videogames, not even guns mostly, but the environment and culture as a whole.
I mean, some game studios consult child psychologists and lawyers to better implement addictive gambling-like mechanics without being liable for that.
For example? They couldn’t consult child psychologists for this purpose. It would be an ethics violation of the highest order and would get any license revoked.
Media does impact the consumer…
What kind of media? Evidence?
But violent games that do reach the market and aren’t dead on arrival are mild in that and can only supplement other, more real problems like mental health issues, trauma, neglect, bullying. And in 99.9% cases it’s just an excuse to push them under the carpet. Like, from drawing a line to what makes older demographics cause daily mass shootings. Not videogames, not even guns mostly, but the environment and culture as a whole.
Again, videogames simply do not influence social behavior. It’s difficult to find credible non-biased research, but here are a couple of relatively recent articles:
Tear, Morgan J., and Mark Nielsen. “Failure to Demonstrate That Playing Violent Video Games Diminishes Prosocial Behavior.” PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 7, July 2013, pp. 1–7. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0068382.
Goodson, Simon, et al. “Violent Video Games and the P300: No Evidence to Support the Neural Desensitization Hypothesis.” CyberPsychology, Behavior & Social Networking, vol. 24, no. 1, Jan. 2021, pp. 48–55. doi: 10.1089/cyber.2020.0029
What “older demographics”? “Daily mass shootings”? Where do you live?
All that said, environment does seem to impact social behavior. It’s likely a much stronger influence than a recreational activity.
There’s evidence that they’re linked to additional violent thinking, but not a sole factor in making a sane, healthy person into a killer. The former is more nuanced than simply "ban because bad correlation’ though
One thing I wish we could ban are opportunistic suits from hungry law firms that are just hoping that these companies will settle rather than fight an obviously frivolous suit. This is an insult to the civil legal system
What evidence links video games to violent thinking? I’m unaware of any.
That question aside, there’s simply no evidence that gaming impacts behavior, which as you suggest is the major interest here.
One thing I wish we could ban are opportunistic suits from hungry law firms that are just hoping that these companies will settle rather than fight an obviously frivolous suit. This is an insult to the civil legal system
Of course, media often overblows such studies because they don’t understand what a strong or weak correlation is and what behaviors these studies are correlating against, which leads to a lot of misunderstanding. Social science may be among the most difficult of the sciences simply because it is measuring patterns with unique biases in their subjects, such as the Hawthorne effect, and extremely high variance that can be difficult to address. For example, the frequency at which and types of games people play now vs 30 years ago is radically different. This is why meta-analyses that examine results across many studies can be valuable, as it often takes repeated studies under changing methodologies and populations to get a proper idea of a social correlation.
I should also emphasize that a positive correlation doesn’t really imply games need to be banned or controlled. In fact the articles linked above mention exactly that – the real concern with a lot of studies is the influence of violent video games on children and their propensity to bully. This doesn’t necessarily imply that video games should be banned, but it can be helpful for guidance to counselors to understand how even minor factors influence social dynamics.
If you didn’t buy up studios and then close them in a year, I think that would be even better for the business side of things. You know, the fact the business didn’t get arbitrarily shut down by the big corporation and all that.
I really enjoyed the story. The battle system was fun at first but then didn’t really offer much depth or player expression as the game progressed. Maybe that’s why you got tired of it?
Yeah perhaps they got bogged down with all the other stuff (graphics, music, settings, etc) and for that the story and mechanics suffered. Now that they have a game engine and experience, a second attempt might leave more time to flesh it out a bit more.
They also perhaps wanted to make it accessible but weren’t skillful at knowing how light to keep it.
I’m happy to say that I was one of them. Beat the game this past weekend, and have really been enjoying trophy hunting in the endgame. Without the pressure of the main story I’ve actually started to feel a little more freedom to take chances and be less concerned about damage and loss of resources.
All in all, Pacific Drive has been an absolute highlight this year.
I mean, okay. But it’s not really the ESA’s responsibility to archive art and cultural works for posterity. They’re going to care about whether it’s going to affect their bottom line and if the answer is “yes”, then they probably aren’t going to support it. Why ask them?
There was a point in time in the US when a work was only protected by copyright if one deposited such a work with the Library of Congress. That might be excessive, but it could theoretically be done with video games. Maybe only ones that sell more than N copies.
Legal deposit is a legal requirement that a person or group submit copies of their publications to a repository, usually a library. The number of copies required varies from country to country. Typically, the national library is the primary repository of these copies. In some countries there is also a legal deposit requirement placed on the government, and it is required to send copies of documents to publicly accessible libraries.
I agree it shouldn’t be the ESA’s responsibility. However as it says in the article:
In 2023, the Video Game History Foundation revealed 87 percent of games released pre-2010 were currently not preserved in any capacity. Attempts previously made by the Library of Congress were halted by the ESA, which said it’d rely on publishers to take care of those efforts themselves.
So the ESA have made themselves the problem by halting such attempts
It’s still circular. The ESA doesn’t run the Library of Congress. They can argue that the LoC shouldn’t do that, but they don’t have decision-making authority in that.
mandate it with full source code to participate in copyright related lawsuits of the work, and mandate all materials get posted online after the work enters public domain
The main announcer sounds like he is just phoning this in for the paycheck and stumbles over stuff like he can't believe he has to read this. Wow. AI is so authentic these days.
More seriously, I wouldn't be surprised if more games with announcers started replacing them with AI. In a lot of those games, it's easy to tune it out and not really pay attention to it. I'm not sure if someone casually playing would even realize it's AI. I'm curious how long it will take until a publisher tries to put AI voice-acting in a game where players would actually notice the dialogue sounding unnatural.
I think players are desensitised to unnatural dialogue. For example, to my Western ear lots of Asian games seem to have weird dialogue, no doubt due to poor translation. (Kojima is known to insist his dialogue be translated strictly and literally from the Japanese which explains, partially, why his games feel pretty strange. Plus Kojima is bonkers.)
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