DiscussionCurrent culture & thinking about video games.

submitted by Q-Continuum-kin from self.LGBDropTheT

Recently I had a back and forth here on saidit about how much the people who represent online trans culture live flat and boring characters in movies and TV because it allows them to overlay whatever they think that they are onto the characters.

I think this applies to Yaoi, porn, and all the other boring characters seen in movies today. It be omes so much easier for them to create their own ships and head cannon for each character if the character itself is not flushed out.

I was thinking about this in relation to video games from the 80s and 90s compared to today. I was thinking about "Oregon Trail" and how this was an actual game presented to children in elementary school in the 80s. A few years ago I was talking about the game to some zoomer friends and I ended up challenging all of them to play a round of the game because they were laughing at the idea that the game could be difficult. Basically they all died and lost rather quickly. They were all a bit shocked that they could lose. "How do you continue after you die?" ... "You mean I have to restart from the beginning? That's ridiculous!"

The point is that even in video games now, there is almost no way to permanently lose. This plays into the same idea of flat TV characters who are presented as if they have zero flaws even if the viewers can clearly see the flaws.

It's like the culture itself is pushing people to all have this "main character syndrome" and everything is going to cater to you at all times.

The culture at the time of Oregon Trail was saying here's this game and you will get a single life where you might try to get to the goal but you could lose. Chances are you might just lose most of the time.

You can add on layers with the performative nature of social media but I think you get the point. There is a giant generational gap being propped up by the media itself likely because it's more profitable to foster a culture of narcissism where.

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[–]lunarstrain 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Yes, games are substantially easier now. I say that as a 20-something gamer who enjoys games both new and old. However, I'd say the difficulty for 80s/early 90s games was at least sometimes artificially inflated, especially in the case of adventure games and RPGs. The instructions are often very cryptic and the solutions annoyingly abstract, likely to help pad out the game time. Oh, and don't get me started on the ways you could accidentally soft lock yourself.

I recently played through 1989's Mother with the original difficulty and I would definitely have not been able to beat it without a guide unless I was willing to dedicate an unreasonable amount of time to figuring every little thing out, and perhaps restarting a few times because I accidentally got rid of quest items while trying to work with the very limited inventory space. Oh, and the only NPC who gives you hints will permanently disappear if you don't immediately buy her first ridiculously expensive hint. Was hilarious to watch, though.

The point is that even in video games now, there is almost no way to permanently lose.

I would agree if not for the popularity of Roguelikes/Roguelites. A lot of people love games like The Binding of Isaac, Enter The Gungeon, Nuclear Throne, Risk of Rain, Downwell, etc. Some of the procedurally generated Survival games, like Don't Starve, also have permadeath. Although, with their difficulty it's clear that they're created with more seasoned/dedicated gamers in mind, minus Downwell which is more for Gameboy Color fans.

[–]Horror-SwordfishI don't get how flairs work 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I think you're right in that, a lot of times, the difficulty was artificially inflated in those older games. Those were the days before saving games was even a thing (except in a few limited instances, and most of those instances required you to write down a complex code to save - looking at you, Mega Man), so it was sort of expected that you should be able to complete a game in one sitting of maybe a couple of hours, once you played enough to become an expert at it.

Games like Ninja Gaiden were super hard when you first started out, but the "difficulty" wasn't in the actual gameplay, it was in learning the stages, because the enemies always popped out at the same place, always moved in the same patterns, etc. So you play the level over and over until you basically have it memorized and can breeze through it with no issue.

Now that games are designed to be played for hundreds of hours in some cases, it's a little much, in my opinion, to complain about not having permadeath. It would be pretty devastating, for example, to play through a game like Final Fantasy XIII, somehow manage to get through without the party ever being wiped, and get to the final boss, only to get killed and find out that all progress you made in the last fifty hours of playing was completely gone and you have to start over from the very beginning.

I know that permadeath is an option in some games like that (Last of Us comes to mind), and that's cool that it's an option for people, but I personally wouldn't want to play any games that way.

[–]Q-Continuum-kin[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I used to try and figure out the pattern to the mega man codes but it didn't seem to make sense because I could get to the same spot with all the same conditions and generate a different code.

I brought up the permadeath thing in Oregon Trail because it wasn't skill based. It was just luck sometimes about how safe you tried to be. Basically teaching that the hard mode can be won but also the easy mode can be lost because you got unlucky crossing a river.

[–]lunarstrain 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

... because it wasn't skill based. It was just luck sometimes about how safe you tried to be.

The game Reigns that came last decade has that sort of thing, too. You're a king and you have to manage 4 bars representing the church, the common people, the army, and your finances, if any of them run out or get too high, you are either killed or excommunicated. The whole game is random events and sometimes you can just get irreversibly screwed by bad luck through no fault of your own.

It's excellent, imo.

[–]MarkJeffersonTight defenses and we draw the line 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

With increased hardware memory enabling to limitless saves, mainstream games are generally easier(and much longer) than they used to be, though the increased range of choose-able difficulties including permadeath can still give the option for a challenge. Also the existence of crazy difficult games like Hearts of Iron make up for the easy ones.

"How do you continue after you die?" ... "You mean I have to restart from the beginning? That's ridiculous!"

I wonder if they played Getting Over It. There's no death, but make one wrong move with your mouse and it can feel like going bankrupt and having to start from scratch again with only the skill and knowledge you've gained through failure.

It's like the culture itself is pushing people to all have this "main character syndrome" and everything is going to cater to you at all times.

Idk, I think gamers just like roleplaying with blank slates. As graphics and realism improves, games are increasingly less plain "games" by definition, and more "Second Lives". Escapism appeals especially to the types who are into trans culture. Who are already in the process of LARPing away from biological reality anyway. Since they identify so much with the virtual characters and their in-game progress and development, a death of that character is the last thing they want, so game devs may design their avatars to be durable/unkillable, or the environment to be a cakewalk.