{"id":1951,"date":"2015-01-19T00:14:23","date_gmt":"2015-01-19T00:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/?p=1951"},"modified":"2015-01-19T00:14:31","modified_gmt":"2015-01-19T00:14:31","slug":"hollow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/2015\/01\/hollow\/","title":{"rendered":"Hollow"},"content":{"rendered":"

A quote about a professional game reviewer and writer\u2019s feeling about games these days<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The time passes pleasantly, maybe even thrillingly at times, but it means nothing, there\u2019s no sense of achievement other than Achievements. Maybe it\u2019s more compulsive masturbation than Disneyland (or maybe Disneyland is masturbation? Discuss) \u2013 make the itch go away, risk a faint sense of guilt and self-disgust afterwards, then do it again anyway. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m perfectly happy for these things to exist, and even to spend some time with them myself, but I worry a) that this model is taking over, that the hollowness of Farmville is creeping into games on an intrinsic level and b) that I\u2019m too lazy to resist playing them. I don\u2019t want to miss out, and once I start playing I struggle to stop until most of those icons go away, because some reptile voice at the back of my skull tells me that cleaning up the map is essential to my wellbeing. That\u2019s not what I want for myself.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Me neither and that\u2019s why I block that reptile voice and don\u2019t even start playing those games. As a commenter rightly says:<\/p>\n

\n

Unfortunately (?), that means I\u2019m drifting away from mainstream gaming (and mainstream gaming culture) more and more with every passing month. I\u2019m starting to look at itch.io with more interest than I look at Steam. Not that I don\u2019t find some great gaming experiences anymore, among more \u201ctraditional\u201d games. Transistor and The Talos Principle are wonderful, and Dreamfall Chapters is a thing. (just 3 games of 2014, off the top of my head) But they\u2019re handpicked and unique games in a sea that mostly looks\u2026 uninteresting and unappealing, when not downright manipulative (Skinner Boxes, achievements, bars to fill, collectibles to find) and dedicated to the pursuit of escapism beyond repair. (Hollow is a good word for it)<\/p>\n

Gaming is the only environment in which \u201caddictive\u201d is used as a positive term.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ve only played and finished KRZ last year and it was a really great experience. <\/p>\n

We need so much more distinct look and feel to existent game designs and we need more risks taken but the vibe right now between political correctness, me-too behavior and development costs is not saying \u201cit\u2019s happening\u201d at a large scale, sadly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A quote about a professional game reviewer and writer\u2019s feeling about games these days: The time passes pleasantly, maybe even thrillingly at times, but it means nothing, there\u2019s no sense of achievement other than Achievements. Maybe it\u2019s more compulsive masturbation than Disneyland (or maybe Disneyland is masturbation? Discuss) \u2013 make the itch go away, risk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1951"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1952,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1951\/revisions\/1952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}