Video Games: Keanu Re3ves Is Breathtaking

[KingintheNorth4]

I've been playing the Spider-Man heist DLC for the past couple of days, and so far I've enjoyed working alongside Black Cat while completing new challenges and collections.

[Inkdaub]

Yeah I don't know.  I didn't play Automata this week on my game day.  I might go back to it one day, but I am putting together a long list of games I might go back to one day.  We'll see.

I played Shadow of the Tomb Raider instead.  I am a big fan of the recent trilogy of Tomb Raider games.  I have been playing Shadow very slowly and taking lots of breaks as I don't want it to end and then be without any Tomb Raider to play.  I only play once, sometimes twice, a week so I can drag a game out for months.  I love Tomb Raider.

Neil Druckmann wrote Uncharted 4 so maybe I'll play that soon. 

[Rhom]

2 hours ago, Inkdaub said:

Yeah I don't know.  I didn't play Automata this week on my game day.  I might go back to it one day, but I am putting together a long list of games I might go back to one day.  We'll see.

I played Shadow of the Tomb Raider instead.  I am a big fan of the recent trilogy of Tomb Raider games.  I have been playing Shadow very slowly and taking lots of breaks as I don't want it to end and then be without any Tomb Raider to play.  I only play once, sometimes twice, a week so I can drag a game out for months.  I love Tomb Raider.

Neil Druckmann wrote Uncharted 4 so maybe I'll play that soon. 

Uncharted 4 was great.

I have whichever of the recent Tomb Raiders that was free on PS+ sometime last year.  Don’t remember which one.

[Mexal]

2 hours ago, Rhom said:

Uncharted 4 was great.

I have whichever of the recent Tomb Raiders that was free on PS+ sometime last year.  Don’t remember which one.

I really enjoyed Uncharted 4 as well... so much so that I've gone back and started playing Uncharted 2.

[Werthead]

The next Total War game looks like it will be Total War Saga: Troy.

[Heartofice]

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

The next Total War game looks like it will be Total War Saga: Troy.

Can only hope they learn from the mistakes of Thrones of Britannia. 

It could be interesting though were it to incorporate elements of 3 Kingdoms romance mode and make it very character led 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 8/9/2019 at 5:46 AM, Inkdaub said:

Yeah I don't know.  I didn't play Automata this week on my game day.  I might go back to it one day, but I am putting together a long list of games I might go back to one day.  We'll see.

I played Shadow of the Tomb Raider instead.  I am a big fan of the recent trilogy of Tomb Raider games.  I have been playing Shadow very slowly and taking lots of breaks as I don't want it to end and then be without any Tomb Raider to play.  I only play once, sometimes twice, a week so I can drag a game out for months.  I love Tomb Raider.

Neil Druckmann wrote Uncharted 4 so maybe I'll play that soon. 

I'm playing Rise of the Tomb Raider now, and I like it quite a lot. It's a great game. Shadow looks like a lot of fun.

And also playing Friday the 13th. Such a horribly made game, but it is fun. I've been playing far longer than I should thinking, "I just want to unlock Part 4 Jason" (my favorite movie). I have played WAY longer than I'm comfortable saying, and still haven't unlocked him. This game has some issues.

[Inkdaub]

On 8/9/2019 at 6:55 AM, Rhom said:

Uncharted 4 was great.

I have whichever of the recent Tomb Raiders that was free on PS+ sometime last year.  Don’t remember which one.

I am definitely eyeballing Uncharted 4.  I have heard it is similar to Tomb Raider and Naughty Dog has my trust.

[Inkdaub]

9 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

I'm playing Rise of the Tomb Raider now, and I like it quite a lot. It's a great game. Shadow looks like a lot of fun.

And also playing Friday the 13th. Such a horribly made game, but it is fun. I've been playing far longer than I should thinking, "I just want to unlock Part 4 Jason" (my favorite movie). I have played WAY longer than I'm comfortable saying, and still haven't unlocked him. This game has some issues.

I like to think of them as one long game instead of three.  There are differences for sure, though.  Shadow, for example, is FAR less violent than the first two.  Great game but different in that way.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

6 hours ago, Inkdaub said:

I like to think of them as one long game instead of three.  There are differences for sure, though.  Shadow, for example, is FAR less violent than the first two.  Great game but different in that way.

Yeah, I think the second one is far less violent than the first (I hit my first trap last night that reminded me of the first game, but I've been playing about 8 hours). The first game, as these things go, seemed gratuitous in that nature. A lot of the ways Lara could die were a bit upsetting in terms of the imagery involving women. Either way, I really enjoy the second one a lot more than the first, and it sounds like the third will be even better!

[briantw]

16 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Yeah, I think the second one is far less violent than the first (I hit my first trap last night that reminded me of the first game, but I've been playing about 8 hours). The first game, as these things go, seemed gratuitous in that nature. A lot of the ways Lara could die were a bit upsetting in terms of the imagery involving women. Either way, I really enjoy the second one a lot more than the first, and it sounds like the third will be even better!

The third smartly leaned a lot heavier into the puzzling and exploration aspects of the game than the gunplay.  There's still too much of it, but at least they toned it down a bit overall.  The optional tombs are the highlight of the game, though, with basically zero combat and all puzzle-solving.  

[Werthead]

I'm still bemused by the fact that Rockstar and Bethesda seem to be pretty sanguine about letting at least a decade and possibly more elapse before we see new games in their respective top franchises. It seems impossible we'll see Elder Scrolls VI before the end of 2021 (when Skyrim turns ten years old) or GTA6 before 2023 (when GTA5 turns ten years old), or for that matter Fallout 5 before 2025.

The companies can afford it - Fallout 4 sold as well as Skyrim and Fallout 76, although a huge sales disappointment, was still profitable, and of course RDR2 and GTA Online are keeping Rockstar ticking over nicely - but it just seems odd to me that these enormous companies with such vast resources can't find a way of getting games out faster. Rockstar have an insane number of people in three (might be four by now) studios, but they go all-in on one game each rather than working on different titles, and the core Bethesda team are still pretty small, with a reluctance to get other people involved, despite it working really well for them on New Vegas (maybe less so on Fallout 76, but to be fair that was a hodgepodge project, and the game has reportedly improved significantly since launch).

If we look at Bethesda, they gave us four massive open-world RPGs in six years (Oblivion in 2006, Fallout 3 in 2008, New Vegas in 2010 and Skyrim in 2011) through clever planning and resources, so it's even odder (especially given their very well-established engine) it's taking so long to get stuff out there.

[The Anti-Targ]

Walmart removing advertising displays for violent video games, I hear. I doubt this is because Walmart actually believes there's any kind of causal link between video games and mass shootings, so it'll be in response to actual or perceived public pressure or backlash. I'm guessing the industry will mostly ride this out as it will go away soon. 

As soon as politicians bump up against the "c" word they will run away from trying to put any legal controls in place, and I think the game industry knows this, so they don't really want to antagonise the politicians who are blustering right now.

[Relic]

The entire discussion around violent video games and their effect on gamers is so nuanced that it's basically impossible to have in our society. Which is a god damned shame. We're a stupid species. 

[The Anti-Targ]

What discussion can you have when academic studies have failed to find anything meaningful to discuss? Violence in video games should not be viewed any differently to violence in any other entertainment media. And of course like a lot of social sciences you can never do actual controlled trials, because how are you going to get enough parents to agree to expose their 5 year olds to hundreds of hours of violent imagery to determine what, if any, long term effects this has on their psychological development and anti-social behaviors that manifest in adolescence or adulthood? And how is any such influence mitigated or exacerbated by actual violence or abuse experienced in the home or the community?

Most societies simply pay it safe by either recommending that kids don;t be exposed to violent content, or making it actually illegal to expose kids to violent content. But no one really knows the effects, because proper repeatable experiments that can be used to draw hard conclusions can't be done. 

It's hard to properly apply the scientific method to anything to do with social matters. It's very easy to make observations and come up with hypotheses, which is the first half of the method, but then designing an experiment and conducting it with sufficient power and then repeating it to confirm (or negate) the conclusions is mostly impossible.

[Proudfeet]

Is this in response to the mass shooting? That's just typical. I think Terra said it best all those years back when he said that mass shootings are a price that Americans are willing to pay for their freedom to own guns. Just contrast it with the reaction of New Zealand in response to a mass shooting.

Even if for the sake of discussion, we accept that violent media including games cause violence, it is still just one cause. There are multiple other causes that exist. It is the access to guns that enables them.

But whatever, the rights of the Responsible American Gun Owners are more important than the lives of any gun violence, and also the rights of the Responsible Violent Media Consumers. 

[Gorn]

Violent video games might even be reducing the violence level in the society, especially with the teenage male demographic, by providing a safe way to discharge violent impulses. These discussions tend to ignore the fact that violent impulses are inextricable part of human nature, and that no external stimuli are needed; we are born that way.

[Heartofice]

3 hours ago, Gorn said:

Violent video games might even be reducing the violence level in the society, especially with the teenage male demographic, by providing a safe way to discharge violent impulses. These discussions tend to ignore the fact that violent impulses are inextricable part of human nature, and that no external stimuli are needed; we are born that way.

Agree. There seems to be an idea that if we remove all mention of violence from society then people would stop being violent. Yet we aren't going to get rid of peoples inner rage or those feelings of wanting to lash out, those are not purely products of media. 

 

[The Anti-Targ]

4 hours ago, Gorn said:

Violent video games might even be reducing the violence level in the society, especially with the teenage male demographic, by providing a safe way to discharge violent impulses. These discussions tend to ignore the fact that violent impulses are inextricable part of human nature, and that no external stimuli are needed; we are born that way.

I don't know that I entirely agree. Does that mean we should encourage sexual predators to play rape simulators in the hope that it will prevent them from committing sex crimes? I don't know if there's been any research into whether violent media decreases violent behavior in violent people. The fact that some mass shooters have been avid consumers of violent video games, and that one of the recent shooters said he played out his fantasies on CoD, suggest people who are excessively or pathologically violent in temperament are probably not going to satisfy themselves with virtual violence for long.

I don't think the science is there yet to go around confidently saying that violent video games has a causational link to decreases societal violence. But there is more data that suggests it has a moderating effect than data suggesting it causes people to be violent.

I don't agree that we're born inextricably violent. Most of our behaviors are learned by modelling and positive and negative reinforcement. And those behaviors that are reinforced most strongly will be the ones that are dominant in our lives. Humans are social creatures and the innate nature of social creatures is to be nurturing and cooperative with the members of their society (the us), aggression is the response to perceived threats to the society from outside the society (the them). The more people widen their conception of society to embrace people as us and not them the more aggression and violence in society will decrease.

 

[Ferrum Aeternum]

The Walmart thing is a token gesture. Walmart, like GameStop and other brick-and-mortar retailers, does a fraction of the physical game sales it once did. Video game displays at Walmart stores now consist of one endcap and maybe 3/4 of an aisle in the electronics department. Knowing how they operate (because I used to work for them) they were likely already planning to reduce the cost of in-store advertising for games anyway.

This way they can claim to be "doing something" while making no adjustments to their existing firearm sales policy, since unlike physical video game sales, that part of their business isn't shrinking.