How it used to be...

[MrKusakabe]

It's the current age of gaming and shift in gaming culture and to a big extend the current state of media cunsumption in general



I know I sound like some very old person now, even though I am not that many generations afar from the average gamer (I am born in 1990), but I never caught up on several hypes of the past decade and now I can basically watch the madness going on from the outside:


* Smartphones
* Too much media consumption
* Too much media input
* Mobile gaming devalueing quality
= People forget they have lots of sparetime



What do I mean? I am 28 years old, and basically "everybody" in my age has a cellphone. I have none. I have a landline, and I don't pick it up when I am not in the mood What comes with the cellphone? Apps. What comes with apps? Media consumption. Too much and everywhere.


People do not have "less time" or it being "more stressfull" than in 2005 or 2013, when ARR launched. Cellphones and mass media consumption just spun up the world to a higher speed, and people think they need to keep going with that for some reason. At the staff break room at work - I work as department manager in retail - I see 80% on their phones, two of them using every of their 30 minutes to make mindless and unnecessary phone calls about random shit they could tell each other in a calm manner at the dinner table after work. The other people scrolling mindlessly trough pages of pages of Facebook content, handing out useless likes here and there and get angry and depressed when their "friends" count, "like" count or "follower" count does not raise. Or when person X posts photos of a vacation a person can not afford. A ringing phone in the bus makes at least 10 people go wild, their heads franticly seeking where the ringtone is coming from. My posts on this forum for example are comparably long, and usually I get a "TL;DR" request because, you know, fast fast fast! Reading two paragraphs is already too much for generation Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and even SMS. In the evening they can't sleep, and over the daytime they intoxicate themselves with MONSTER and REDBULL instead of letting their body regernation cells. And then they wonder why they feel sick, depressed, stressed...



So, let me close the circle now:

When playing FFXIV, I heard people play "with one hand on the phone", "watching Netflix", having actual phone conversations. All at once! What are these phone conversations? Mindless bullshit. Let's be frankly there. People do this game too fast, drinking toxic softdrinks (Red Bull etc). instead of actually enjoying the game. I have time for people. I have time for chat. I have time for failure, and wipes. I have no distraction, my mind is focussed, I do not get sweaty hands and press F5 on every stupid social media pages inbetween loading screens. This culture right now of dashing trough everything is the same anger, hate, vile behaviuor people do at sales in a department store. Why this rush though? I can't remember your average workday going from 8 hours to 15. It is still 8 hours. But the culture, the community right now, exposes themselves to so much home entertainment that they, ironically, lost the ability to enjoy being entertained. To do things slowly.



It is so hard to put in words what I mean. The shift in people's time management. But so, so many players don't take this leisure time activity as what it is: LEISURE TIME ACTIVITY. They water their plants here more than their actual plants in real life. As if this a chore, a job. "I need to train my Chocobo, else..." Yeah, what else? What happens if you don't do a dungeon in 24 minutes, but 25:50? 1:50 minutes less for useless Facebook?


I have no tinfoil hat. I do use computers a lot. I have a Surface [Tablet], and I consume lots of media. But focussed. Hence why my posts are usually longer, and I put no "TL;DR" after a 2-paragraph posts.



But when I do, I have no TV running, no phone conversations and my capacities are there to talk to, to help and do dungeons with all the consequences. I do my own judgements if someone is slacking or trying, and I have no problems standing in for a person. I decline almost all votekicks just because some tank on RedBull pulled too much for a newbie (lower iLevel) healer and then the tank got mad.



And as "blunt German with no humour", I am far of being sensitive or a snowflake either...



EDIT: Just found that. Perfect example.

ps: i could write and talk more about this topic, but no one likes reading a wall of text or an essay.

Yes, I do like reading your opinion and thoughts to the fullest and not a crippled version. This is why I am here, on the forums. You are here, start to express your thoughts and feelings just to basically stop and cancel it. You even say you have more to say, more insights. I'd like to hear them, but you would not because......oh yeah, forum speedrunning!!
What is the rush again? Is reading trough a bunch of forum posts already giving someone a mental breakdown so we have to shorten it down? What super life threatening things would happen if it takes 25 seconds longer to appreciate your post? Don't worry, they can watch Netflix at 1.25 speed now if they think they could miss something........





Sincerely,

[Maneesha]

post..

I appreciate that you take your time and read through longer post and also encouraging others to take their take to write longer texts or expressing themselves.

For me its not only the part of writing longer texts and taking more time, its true i dislike receiving a "tl;dr" which then feels like i wasted my time expressing my thoughts/opinion, but also i try not to "ramble" and try to stay on topic, not saying you did any of those (just to be clear). Yes i could have gone into more detail about some stuff, but decided not to in fear of going off-topic and giving the impression of rambling. Some of those would have included the change in perception regarding gaming. It was always seen as something for the younger folks and had, and still has to a certain degree, the stigmata of being for people without work or real life, the nerds and so on. Since gaming is not anymore a niche thing to do, but more mainstream, it brings also more people to it,which can also mean more "bad apples", also a lot of those not having much time due to real life obligations and responsibilities, but still wanting to progress and reach the same "highs" as those who actually have more time and invest much more to pursue their in-game goal or fame.

Of course developers/publishers would actually want to satisfy them, especially if those people are also the ones holding more "buyers" power then a school kid or a student.So games become more "casual", which is good and bad, like everything and depend on the point of view. Remember when everyone knew mmorpgs are a huge time investment and you simply could not play them for an hour or two and expect any real progression, when people were aware they will have to invest hundreds if not thousands of hours to only reach the max level and that this was only a small portion of the game? Yes gone are those days, simply because the targeted audience and the costs to develop and expected profits for a game have gone way up, at least the "AAA" quality stuff, indies are a different topic, but since i rarely play any of those i have no opinion on those.

Another reason why i try to not write long texts is simply because english is a foreign language for me and i am not very confident in my proficiency in it, it takes a long time to write a text with whom i am satisfied and think i expressed my self clearly.


PS:I share a lot of your views regarding social media, the "lack of time" people always express and so on.

[seraphmage]

It's the current age of gaming and shift in gaming culture and to a big extend the current state of media cunsumption in general
...

You are my hero. Thank you for this post.