I think this is a subset of the overall shape of capitalism now: soul extraction, not just physical labor. The system wants to mine out the things that make us human and sacrifice them on the altar of profit. No wonder some of the people who think that capitalism is a good idea came up with a religion based on creating an infinite torture AI that would make humanity immortal explicitly to torture us forever. It's barely any different from what life already gives us.
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in reply to @cathoderaydude's post:
I think one of the things that will always trip up people when they talk about games is trying to convert their individual experiences into broad rules.
The older and jadeder I get, the more I can't shake the thought that game development is bad. As in, game development best practices that people teach to each other is what makes games as a whole worse.
I think the answer to this is to create simulations rather than games. No Mans Sky is the antithesis of a simulation. Everything in that game is placed there for the player to find and see. There is no real experience to be had.
Game design has calcified into orthodoxy like every other capitalized medium. Look at film: the three-act structure, "Save the Cat", Campbell, "women can't lead" ... capital hits on a formula it decides "works", and keeps cranking that thing out until the mines run dry, and if you even suggest it might be changeable they get furious because they can only see that as a threat to the mining industry.
The difference it feels like is that with gaming, the consumers themselves seem to enforce that orthodoxy to a stronger degree than even capital. I've seen otherwise reasonable people get vicious with rage at the merest suggestion that some tenet of game design they've internalized from their favorite game/series/genre might be changed. You'd have better luck prizing a three-year old's comfort blanket from their mitts, than you would convincing many MMO fans that there might be other ways to make a multiplayer game than "the Trinity".
I find the overall message of your post fascinating (and I think I've read similar stuff you've written previously about some games being skinner boxes though I might have imagined that? 🤔). I'm thinking about all the games I've played and own and wondering which ones might also fall into the category of being skinner box-esque like you describe. Would I still enjoy those games if I knew they were made like that? If I did still enjoy them, would that be somehow 'wrong'? Should I be careful about how much time I sink into those games, more so than I would be if I was playing a game that didn't count as a skinner box?
Aside from that, I'm interested to know more about what leads you describe Bohemian Rhapsody as "created to be a hit"? I read the wikipedia entry and my takeaway was different from what you describe, it sounded like a pretty organic and creative development process to me. I'm wondering if there's something I'm potentially missing.
No I apparently misremembered which '70s hits I was thinking of, so I removed those from the post. There were two really well-known ones where the wiki page had citations of interviews with a band straight up said that they'd had a couple hits and sat down and decided to plan out a new anthem, and that there wasn't really any meaning to it because they were just trying to make a song that sounded Big
As far as the question of what games would count as exploitative: I don't sit around worrying about this, I just keep in mind that I value my time on this earth, and if I feel like a game is wasting it without giving me any return, I follow that feeling and stop playing it. As long as you're pretty sure you are actually enjoying what you're doing and not just letting yourself feel compelled to do it because you've told yourself "this game is fun", then I don't think there's anything to worry about.
did i miss dozens of micro transactions in power wash simulator or is it simply that there's a progression mechanic that features in-game money? cause there is a free play mode, if the career mode is offensive to you.
my brain chemistry needs a treadmill in order to focus on other things- almost literally, since this works with actual treadmills too- so i use these sorts of games or activities in order to do phone calls, listen to podcasts, or listen to audiobooks without getting distracted. i actually can't imagine playing these sorts of meditative, brain-wrinkle-smoothing games without having another thing i'm doing at the same time- i suspect if i did, i'd be similarly horrified by their skinner box nature, in the same way i was horrified to realize what was happening when i played through the entirety of diablo 3 with my friends on launch night ages ago.
I really find this post fascinating and illuminating, thank you for sharing your points!
I also wanna point out a very specific feeling I had during Powerwash Simulator that made it feel like you're a cop pretending to be invested in what you're doing: there's multiple areas of the game covered in not just grime but various kinds of graffiti. Most of it is rather innocuous, but as I was playing with my partner we tried to avoid getting rid of the graffiti for so long b/c we both believe street art should be preserved.
But no, you can't complete the level without clearing off the graffiti. That's a very specific feeling for me that resulted in me feeling like a fucking cop while playing it.
i played euro truck simulator a few years ago and felt the same exact way. it was just like... oh... i'm literally just driving a truck. its not like gta or burnout where it could reasonably be called "fun" or "a game" in any way. i could drive this truck for 8 hours and it would be like i did a job for no money and no purpose. and it seemed like it would take hundreds of hours to truly progress in that game to any significant degree too
something i also found slightly unnerving was the complete lack of human contact. there are cars driving around, sure, but exclusively as obstacles. every single thing you do just happens in menus or in the truck iirc. one of the few things i enjoy about Having A Job is having coworkers to shoot the shit with. truckers famously operate radios for fun (well, probably other reasons too), but i don't recall the game having any sort of radio voice chat to talk to other players or anything. after a few hours of playing, out of a mix of boredom and misery i crashed my truck into a building and never touched the game again
I feel like the thing about euro truck is that it's just driving, so if you like driving it's fun and if you don't it's not. the "game" is kind of incidental.
sure, but euro truck sim also has a bunch of gamified money elements where you are carrying out jobs, you're saving up to buy better vehicles, any crashes or nicks cost you money... etc. i find just peacefully driving around following street laws in games like just cause or gta satisfying in their own way that euro truck just does not match for me. like euro truck is recreating the grind, tedium, and consequences of real life to take the fun out of it, wheres in other games i can coast around enjoying myself for real...
of course different strokes for different folks etc etc, this is all just how i feel about it
I guess the question there is, what forces you to interact with that career angle? It seems to me that if you're just in it for the driving, then it doesn't really matter what truck or cargo you have, and the only distinguishing factor between one run and another is where you're driving to and from. So is the beef that if you don't play ball with the virtual money system, it prevents you from continuing on to new jobs, and you're just stuck with a few beginner missions?
yeah i mean its pretty much just like any other sim game. the money is the excuse to be driving, and you can get... longer haul trucks or something, i don't remember. i just didn't find it engaging. they went for feeling like you actually have a job where money is a bit tight and you need to get loans and stuff which is not what i go to video games for
and i don't really mind economies in general, i make spreadsheets for fun & i enjoy games like slime rancher or whatever. euro truck really just has Nothing Else going on so i was bored
that makes sense, any time I try to drive "politely" in gta the traffic is too realistic 
but I do love driving around the maps trying not to hit anybody too hard
also now that I think about it I do sometimes/often play with a steering wheel, which adds to the "truckiness" of the whole experience, and truck sim being a lot slower than racing games, and less chaotic than beamng or spintires, means I can actually use the wheel without having to whip it around super fast constantly
When you power wash your sidewalk you know what the end goal is. A clean side walk, you get the value out of it. I mean, if the goal was just spend time cleaning a side walk you could have skipped the power washer altogether and did it with scrub brush.
Power washing videos got popular because they give people a type of instant gratification. They watch someone rip away years of grime instantly. I think it is very much in the same category as restoration videos.
It works as a video game because it has that instant gratification. A hollow gratification is hallow. You are cleaning fake dirt of fake things. No one grains any value from this. The world is in the same place it was when you started.
This is the essences of low-quality leisure activities. You are not better off when you complete the activity, all it did was occupy your time and relive you of some temporary boredom.
Games today are rarely actually challenging. The challenging bits have been play tested out of the game prior to it being releases. There are exceptions, as there are for everything.
So the lasting value of a game is often the story the game tells you as you play it. Or some understanding of a system that you didn't have before. Making something of lasting value doesn't really fall into the schedule of a company.
PWS has always felt weirdly insincere to me, so I kinda get where you're coming from
Two points where I'm decidedly ehhhhhh on this post even as I broadly agree with the thesis:
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This blatantly misrepresents how two songs were written to make a point which could have been made with other, better examples. It's not really about personal attachment—I rather like "Bohemian Rhapsody" but "Stairway to Heaven" doesn't do much for me—so much as annoyance at getting the very basic facts wrong, I think out of the misguided belief that going after "dinosaur rock" will undermine the rockist myth of authenticity, which… I don't think that many people actually believe in anymore to begin with, at least not if they're taking this kind of critique seriously? And again, on the subject of actively manufacturing a hit, The KLF wrote The Manual nearly thirty-five years ago. This is a known quantity in rock, pop and electronic music. There are ways to make this point which don't involve whinging about how the lyrics to two songs from the '70s prog boom don't make sense, which is maybe the most old-mannish thing I've ever heard.
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I feel like the focus on simulation games of a slightly anorak-ish character kind of leans into some ugly ableist implications, probably not on purpose but certainly in practice. Of course, one could make the counter-argument that these things are preying on autistic people, and in some cases I wouldn't actually disagree; I think it's fairly uncontroversial to say that certain gameplay loops which are monetised beyond the initial purchase are designed to target people for whom that sort of repetition might be rewarding, particularly if tied to a special interest. That said, in instances where you're talking about a single purchase which does not continue to financially exploit the person who bought it—a point on which you're not exactly clear here—it sort of comes off as saying that a game appealing to an uncommon interest which most people find boring and not literally being that thing in reality is somehow a grave violation of the natural order and inherently exploitative. Which is pretty condescending and pretentious, honestly! And I don't think that's the best tone to strike in this kind of post, I guess.
Apparently I misremembered which 70s mega hits had said in interviews "yeah we'd had a few hits and we wanted to make another." Could have sworn it was those two.
The complaint I have isn't 'this isn't the same as the real thing", it's "this is actually more tedious than the real thing to the point that it seems to visibly waste your time for no reason."
But that's the thing: You zeroed in on a personal feeling of "this personally bugs me," which is fine and could have been said pretty concisely and directly, and turned it into a weird moralising generalisation that implies that finding enjoyment in dweeby task-oriented games is functionally brainwashing at work, which strikes me as pretty insulting to people who just, y'know, like that sort of thing for their own decidedly personal reasons? It also implies that these sort of niche titles, often created by very small teams of people with these oddly specific interests, are automatically suspect as some sort of grand capitalist scheme, which strikes me as… a mite conspiratorial when the proliferation of such things is better explained by the increased availability of game-making tools and access by people with niche interests to such things? Which can, of course, be economically exploited, as literally everything is, something something The Society of the Spectacle, but like, this feels less like "we should be inherently sceptical of how these things work because our society incentivises the monetisation and exploitation of all aspects of our lives," and more like "this type of thing which personally bores and discomfits me is popular and I am upset about this fact."
It's not that I'm upset that someone wants to spend time on tasks I would find dull. I mean, I am someone who wants to spend hours pressure washing stuff in a videogame, I bought it for that reason, not to make fun of it. I'm not standing here mocking Some Other Set, I am that set. I spent $20 on it hoping to have a good time.
Nonetheless, it probably came off like that. Sorry for not being clearer.
That's fair. My apologies for coming off as a bit aggressive here.
honestly i think you have some not-unreasonable angles here as far as how i put things, and if i hadn't been six beers in last night I wouldn't have written it the way I did
I don't... understand the complaint here. These games don't gain anything from forming any addiction cycle unless they have predatory practices like lootboxes or any form of microtransactions to squeeze more money out of addicted players, but... these don't. At lease PWS doesn't.
The fact that these games are designed to give people an objective to work towards isn't inherently a bad thing or predatory either. It's just an aspect of video games, and one that many people enjoy. If they're designed to give people things to work towards, that gives people a reason to want to continue to play the game if they enjoy it. This isn't predatory. In order to experience the gameplay cycle and find that you enjoy it, you have to already have paid for the one-time purchase, and no more money can be taken from you.
And the alternative is to have an experience that doesn't have any inherent gameplay loop? Sure, that's fine, I'm sure some people would enjoy that. But not me, and not a lot of other people. It's not inherently better to not have a built in gameplay loop, just a matter of preference. It doesn't make a game soulless to have this, or money hungry. Just a design principle that a lot of people enjoy.
I would understand all of this in regards to actually predatory games - ones that draw people in with really shallow gameplay loops and then push microtransactions. But these are games that a lot of people find fun because of their gameplay experiences, and they don't do anything predatory. They're just simple experiences that aren't meant to be big challenges, or miserable, or unpleasant. Just simple things to do that you might enjoy.
Also, the idea that misery is an inherent part of hobbies, and that they only exist as the thing that you happen to be doing, is very confusing to me. I don't find any of my hobbies to be miserable at any point in time. They aren't always perfect and idyllic, there are times when they're less fun, but if they were ever miserable, I would not be doing them. They wouldn't be hobbies for me.
At the time that I wrote the first post I couldn't figure out what exactly was setting off this feeling. Later I figured it out and went into it further in another post, but basically: PWS only simulates the part of washing something where you've exhausted all your options for bulk cleaning and are whittling away at the "tough spots" that didn't come off in earlier passes, a little tiny bit at a time. That's only one element of the experience, but PWS makes it the whole experience. From looking at decades of game development tropes, my gut says the most likely reason to focus on that is to pad gameplay time, and I think it makes it a lot less fun, for everyone, than it would be with a more varied experience.
Regarding the rest, I was drunk as hell and I don't know what I meant. It made sense at the time.