Are game developers basically modern drug dealers?

[MarkKol]

I had this very brief conversation with my German Grandma while I was thinking about which Laptop to buy. A Macbook or a Gaming Windows laptop. I ended up going with the Windows laptop just in case I want to get Into Game Development in the future. And because I was thinking out loud she heard this, and she literally said that game developers are like drug dealers, and that they ruin lives and create more addiction in the world.

Opinions?

[Leo Gura]

Tell granny that drugs help you find God

Edited January 20, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Basman]

Games can insight compulsive behavior in some people, for certain. But calling developers drug dealers is a way overblown statement. Games are art, and devs are artists. 

A significant portion of games bought are never even played (about 37% on Steam), and of the games played, only about 10-20% of gamers actually play to completion. 

They are just games.

[Javfly33]

On 20/01/2023 at 5:21 PM, Leo Gura said:

Tell granny that drugs help you find God

?

[Mada_]

do a block down any CBD street, almost every business has a product that can addict their customers

[Carl-Richard]

Education, not prohibition.

[Basman]

I've thought abot this some more and I think there is some degree of truth to the thougth that games can be like drugs, in the sense that they can control you and how you spend your time.

The heinous thing about modern video games is just how much time you can put into. You can only watch a movie or a read books once. But video games can go on forever. Video games are probably the one activity with the lowest effort to time spent ratio, I.E. you can easily spend 1000s of hours playing video games.

Modern video games have become quiet sophisticated at leveraging human psychology in order to keep you playing the same game over and over again. With the added context of FOMO, you can play some games for 100s of hours, where you would normally not bother as much.

That's in regard to live service games, but games are also just easy. Why bother trying something new when you can just play some video games and feel rewarded concistently. It's very easy to supplant creative projects or socializing with just playing some video games. I think its important to be creative and experience new novel experience, and games can be immensley distracting.

*(while watching a movie)

"I could be leveling up my battlepass right now..."

I think every gamer should experiment with a dry week/month, just to see how it feels. I did that recently (my dry month ended as of writting) and I've found just how little I had going on besides gaming. That is my own fault admittedly. But it's been good to distance myself and just deal with the boredome. I've gotten into baking for a bit and I started journaling way more (for fun).

[zurew]

On 2023. 01. 20. at 3:45 PM, MarkKol said:

Opinions?

I guess she was pointing to the fact, that there are people who are addicted to gaming. Ask her what is the difference between video game addiction vs any other addiction. Or ask her, whether playing video games could be done in a healthy or even in a productive way.

Of course there is a spectrum of addicting things, but the logic of "never create or do something that is addicting to some level" is a little bit reductive way to evaluate things. There are a lot of things to unpack from that train of thought.

Edited February 1, 2023 by zurew

[EugeneTheSage]

I think the path is not to give up videogames but to evolve them. The same is with modern education. It is not perfect. But does it mean children should stop going to school? No. Instead, we must make schools more interesting and useful.

I'm a 3d artist and I'm making 3d models for videogames. I often concern about whether my life purpose is not devilry. I often argument to myself that my goal is to become Hayao Miyazaki of videogames. I don't wanna participate in some zombie apocalypse or primitive shooter shit. Wanna make games with soul. But there is a lot of possibility to go off the path.

In my case it is important to make some works for portfolio that would attract projects that I'm resonating with.