It sits there, on top of my tv, focusing all of it's evil energy upon me. I haven't turned it on in days, which only adds to the problem. Upon turning it on, I'll be flooded with text messages, voicemail, and the like demading that I return back to the real world. You see, This is the time of the year when I'm (supposedly) the busiest, but for whatever reason I just haven't felt motivated to do anything at all lately.
So for now, I'll just play Gears until I can think of something even less productive.
I've posted a few "blogs" before this one, but they've all been fairly stupid. By that, I mean that they weren't intended to start any kind of discussion. Now that users such as Sweep and Lies have gained "blog noteriety," I figured I may as well contribute the the conglomerate of user-generated content that is Giantbomb. I apologize in advance if you find this immensly boring, because I'm in a philosophical mood at the moment. With that in mind, on to the topic...
Video games. (I've heard they're decent) What are they? The number of different answers to this question varies as diversly as the number of different kinds of people that play (or don't play) video games. For example, here's how each of the following stereotypes (and for mattbodega, I realize that stereotypes are bad things) would likely respond to this question:
1. The Casual Gamer - "I just play games in my spare time, you know, like wii games and stuff. I can probably get by on owning a few games, because of the limited amount of time I spend playing them."
2. The Skeptic - "Video games are a waste of time, energy, and resources. The people who play games are only seeking cheap thrills, as video games contain nothing that is socially significant. (art, music, literature, etc.)"
3. The Hardcore - "Video games are awesome."
4. etc,etc,etc...
I know I oversimplified the "hardcore" gamer, but I did so because I wanted to elaborate on that gamer specifically. But not right now, I'll get around to it later.
This is appropriate
For the main point of this blog, let me give you my take on video games. In order to understand this, I must first give you information about myself. I'm generally very cynical, yet I stupidly remain optimistic about a lot of things. I think that most activities/jobs/hobbies you could chose to pursue are wastes of time. I don't assign a whole lot of importance to things like religion, patriotism, etc. Those idealistic kinds of things serve a purpose, but I'm not the kind of person that single-mindedly devotes themselves to an arbitrary cause. That being said, I completely devote myself to the arbitrary "hobby" of playing video games. Wait, have I contradicted myself? I don't think so. The things I mentioned earlier (remember, patriotism and whatnot?) are ideals that have some kind of purpose or goal. These said goals are usually unattainable, you can easily spend your whole life devoted to something such as religion and in the end, you may have realized that you've spent your whole life devoted to a goal, a goal that may (and most likely) or may not be worth all the time and effort. So what makes video games any better? Video games provide an escape from the clusterfuck that is life. Remember, I'm a fairly negative person. Anything that can pull me away from that mindset earns a spot way up high on my priority list. That might sound shallow; "who wants to waste their life playing video games?" Well, I think of it this way: Anything other than playing video games would be a waste of time for me, and video games are fun, therefore I should play them as much as possible. That doesn't sound so barbaric, does it?
All of that probably puts me in the "hardcore" category of gamers, (I promised I'd talk about it ;) ) but I realize that I may be on the extreme end of the spectrum. Which brings me to the question I wanted to ask. Most of the people who read this will follow in the "hardcore" category, and I want to know:
What are video games?
Please comment, and leave an answer if you want.
(hint: I'm looking for a personal answer. Why do <i>you</i> play video games? What are the social benefits? etc,etc,etc...)
I've posted a few "blogs" before this one, but they've all been fairly stupid. By that, I mean that they weren't intended to start any kind of discussion. Now that users such as Sweep and Lies have gained "blog noteriety," I figured I may as well contribute the the conglomerate of user-generated content that is Giantbomb. I apologize in advance if you find this immensly boring, because I'm in a philosophical mood at the moment. With that in mind, on to the topic...
Video games. (I've heard they're decent) What are they? The number of different answers to this question varies as diversly as the number of different kinds of people that play (or don't play) video games. For example, here's how each of the following stereotypes (and for mattbodega, I realize that stereotypes are bad things) would likely respond to this question:
1. The Casual Gamer - "I just play games in my spare time, you know, like wii games and stuff. I can probably get by on owning a few games, because of the limited amount of time I spend playing them."
2. The Skeptic - "Video games are a waste of time, energy, and resources. The people who play games are only seeking cheap thrills, as video games contain nothing that is socially significant. (art, music, literature, etc.)"
3. The Hardcore - "Video games are awesome."
4. etc,etc,etc...
I know I oversimplified the "hardcore" gamer, but I did so because I wanted to elaborate on that gamer specifically. But not right now, I'll get around to it later.
This is appropriate
For the main point of this blog, let me give you my take on video games. In order to understand this, I must first give you information about myself. I'm generally very cynical, yet I stupidly remain optimistic about a lot of things. I think that most activities/jobs/hobbies you could chose to pursue are wastes of time. I don't assign a whole lot of importance to things like religion, patriotism, etc. Those idealistic kinds of things serve a purpose, but I'm not the kind of person that single-mindedly devotes themselves to an arbitrary cause. That being said, I completely devote myself to the arbitrary "hobby" of playing video games. Wait, have I contradicted myself? I don't think so. The things I mentioned earlier (remember, patriotism and whatnot?) are ideals that have some kind of purpose or goal. These said goals are usually unattainable, you can easily spend your whole life devoted to something such as religion and in the end, you may have realized that you've spent your whole life devoted to a goal, a goal that may (and most likely) or may not be worth all the time and effort. So what makes video games any better? Video games provide an escape from the clusterfuck that is life. Remember, I'm a fairly negative person. Anything that can pull me away from that mindset earns a spot way up high on my priority list. That might sound shallow; "who wants to waste their life playing video games?" Well, I think of it this way: Anything other than playing video games would be a waste of time for me, and video games are fun, therefore I should play them as much as possible. That doesn't sound so barbaric, does it?
All of that probably puts me in the "hardcore" category of gamers, (I promised I'd talk about it ;) ) but I realize that I may be on the extreme end of the spectrum. Which brings me to the question I wanted to ask. Most of the people who read this will follow in the "hardcore" category, and I want to know:
What are video games?
Please comment, and leave an answer if you want.
(hint: I'm looking for a personal answer. Why do <i>you</i> play video games? What are the social benefits? etc,etc,etc...)
...and by music, I mean "music" that I've somehow managed to assemble by the means of FLStudio. currently all I have is a shitty (sound) quality youtube video of a hastily put together "remix" of Still Alive. If you don't know what that song is, start playing some damn video games. I also have a rather good (sound) quality link to a not entirely shitty remix of that mortal kombat theme. I like this one better than the portal one, mostly because the synthesized guitar came out pretty strangely. But who knows, listen to them yourself and judge. If you have any comments, criticisms, or suggestions for new songs, please leave comments. (if you leave them on this blog, it'll be easier to for me to judge) It'll inflate my self esteem.
I wrote about this in the forums shortly after Giantbomb's launch, and since I'm in dire need of a blog entry I thought I'd repost it in a coherent fashion. First of all, everything said from now on will be purely hypothetical. I'm writing this to provoke discussion, not an argument.
Let's pretend.......
......that AI technology becomes so sophisticated that an entire human brain can be perfectly mapped out. (you know, with virtual neural pathways and the like.) This would mean that if you fed the brain sensory information, it would react 100% exactly the same way a human brain would. It would work so well, that if you were chatting with it on the internet, you would instinctively think it was a human. It would have virtual feelings. If you digitally replicated every neuron, every neural pathway, (etc..), you could create a virtual brain that wasn't dependent on external programming, and it would be capable of generating it's own emotions.
Questions:
If this were to be created, would you feel comfortable thinking of the a virtual brain as an actual person?
If it were to be used in video games to give npcs each their own separate brains, would you approach the game differently?
Would you feel comfortable killing an enemy if you knew if was controlled by a fully functional brain, and that it was actually experiencing emotions? (fear/pain/etc...)
Lets pretend that the characters the Half Life series are controlled by virtual human brains. Does this change the game in any way? (SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!! IF YOU HAVEN"T PLAYED HALF LIFE, SKIP TO THE NEXT QUESTION. AND DON"T READ ANY OF THIS BLOG'S COMMENTS!!!!!!!!! REALLY!!! AVERT YOUR VIRGIN EYES!!!!!) Would it make Eli's death more meaningful? How would it affect your "relationship" with Alyx if she was (virtually) a real person?
Would you feel comfortable calling an npc your "friend?" Would you actually become emotionally attached to any of the characters?
Side Note:
You may have thought by now, "Hey, wait! If an npc has it's own brain, won't it make it's own decisions in the game? Couldn't they make a choice the game developers didn't anticipate and therefore ruin the game?"
Remember that disclaimer I gave at the beginning? "everything said from now on will be purely hypothetical" That's why i get to snap my fingers and assume that game developers could find a way to combat the aforementioned potential flaw. However, I do have some ideas on what developers could do:
(For a shooter such as cod4) I think that the npcs could actually be motivated to fight. I mean, wars do exist, and people really do go to wars knowing the risks. The game could have some kind of memory erasing component to use on the npcs minds every time you lost.
I admit, it would be hard to program the game, because you wouldn't have complete control over the characters' actions. However, you could do something where the npcs are given a "programmed personality" so you would be able to predict their actions well enough to know that they will shoot at a player. But for games that rely on non-cutscene storytelling, like Half Life games, you'd probably be forced to override their "brains" long enough to get them to carry out a scripted action, such as delivering a line.
I know this is all speculation, keep that in mind. Please don't leave a comment saying: "This is impossible!" Remember, this is a hypothetical situation. (What-if statements are still a threat!!!)
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