Do Video Games Have A Resource Collection Problem?
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- Have you ever felt bad cutting down a beautiful tree in a game, or killing a legendary animal? Me too. But why is that? Thanks for watching - you can support this channel: / gaminginthewild .
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Beautifully written 👏 It reminds me of a line in The Invincible game/book: "not everything everywhere is for us." I am encouraged to do my part in the flourishing of our world, thanks to your words.
There is a concept in foraging in the real world that is quite simple: Don't take more than you need. It really resonates with me as a level of respect and reverence for the nature that surrounds us, that it was there first. I do this in nearly every survival game I play. I won't pick all of the berries or chop all of the trees in an area so that it can regrow or survive. I would love to see more mechanics in survival games that rewards this!
Great video mate, really well presented and narrated, same with the rest of your videos! Thanks for your valuable insight.
That's a great point, there are relatively few games where sustainability stuff is rewarded. I vaguely remember one where you're encouraged not to fish areas out, but it's really rare.
I enjoy video game essays, but I love essays that touch upon interesting topics and offer unique perspectives. Well done!
Thanks, I appreciate that a lot ✨
really love your script/narration here :)
Beautifully stated, John. This reminds me so much of a book read back when studying game design in art school, The Ethics of Computer Games by Miguel Sicart. There's a chapter that simply observes how many genres ask us to associate "positive" player progress (points, etc.) with negative agency, no matter the in-world cost. It really changed my outlook on what games I want to see come out of the industry, but also how many fall into the above cycle by default.
Thanks, I appreciate that! I will look up the book.
Echoing others sentiments, lovely work. Two games that came to mind while watching, the obvious _Shadow of the Colossus_ and the not-quite-equally obvious _Rain World._ Neither are eco-games in any tangible sense, but both make the player confront their actions within the game world and I think that's a fairly rare trick to pull off effectively. So many games create stunning landscapes, some even expect you'll stop and admire them, appreciate them even, but they almost always remain passive experiences, few actually implicate you and your effect/presence within them. I'm not sure there's a grander point to be made here, only that I think that's an interesting part of effective worldbuilding, your emotional interaction with landscape/environment, that often goes overlooked in game development.
I wanted to love Rain World but man, it fights back hard. I kinda respect the commitment to the bit - obtuse, hostile, unfair - although I suppose it worked for FromSoft!
@@GamingInTheWild The thing about _Rain World_ is that it demands you play the game differently than "normal" games. It asks you to play the bottom rung of the food chain. So, if you approach the game "in character", sit back, be watchful from the shadows, you begin to understand the ecosystem, the order of things, and learn your place within it. That's the connection I didn't explicitly make as it connects to the video. The game forces you to confront not being the dominant species, which forces you to adapt to thinking differently about how to interact with your world. I'd say it's worth the effort (in the way a FromSoft game often isn't).
Yeah, good points, and I want that experience - I couldn't quite attune to what it was doing. I should try it again in a different mindset sometime.
@@GamingInTheWild You might find the terrific _Curious Archive_ (YT channel) video on the game, titled "The Most Complex Ecosystem in any Game", a good entry point/reframe for how to approach the game. There are "spoilers" in there, but it might help in orienting your approach to a retry.
I just want to encourage you. You have a good voice and are well spoken, you have great scripts and in the few videos I've seen you've had an interesting perspective. Good work, I hope this grows to the thing you hope and expect. Best of luck 🙂
Thanks, I really appreciate the encouragement. I'm out here tryin' 😁
Been listening to the podcast for around a year now and just want you to know that I really appreciate the work your doing. Your thoughts on games are insightful and beautiful. A personal favorite episode would have to be the interview with Madison Karrh. Thanks loads!!!
Hey, thanks for that :) talking to Madison was amazing, what a special person she is. Hope the Switch port of Birth pops off.
As an older person, relatively new to the gaming world, this resonates with me on a number of levels.
I would suggest the impact of imagery & narrative, being used to manipulate personal impulses, and society in general, throughout history, is a demonstrably unequivocal fact.
More recently, whether that manipulation is being done by Wall St. advertising agencies, arms-manufacturing companies, or other corporate entities; the massive amounts of money spent on creating images & stories, in order to drive public opinion, or increase market share, is a fundamental dynamic, which these powerful institutions clearly see as effective.
I would suggest that, evaluating the impact of grotesquely violent games in terms of not having specifically generated immediate violent incidents is a bit simplistic .. and, possibly, self-serving.
As one example: I have found the increase use of the term NPC used to dehumanize, not only individuals, but various groups, as being, in effect, "Disposable."
Clearly, there is not a sweeping case to be made for specific gaming experiences triggering specific violent incidents; but whether one wants to look at, say, the historical depictions
of African-Americans in the entertainment industry, which were effectively used to justify the stratification of human dignity, or the institutional demagoguery used to manipulate public sentiment during times of conflict - at any moment in time; the use of twisted narratives & provocative imagery to dehumanize groups, or individuals, to degrade our sense of common humanity is, for me, a consistent concern.
For the purposes of this essay - about games and the environment, eco games, and "environmental activations" - I stand by giving just a small nod to the media's scapegoating and villainisation of games. It's tangentially relevant, but not the primary topic at hand. I obviously don't agree that doing so is simplistic or self-serving, as you so charmingly put it!
I'm certain there are videos out there that deep dive into depictions of white heroes mowing down endless people of colour - which is a racist trope that's been going on since the early cinema - and the use of games and war movies as pro-American propaganda, if that's what you wanna hear about. Ive heard some interesting analysis of CoD in particular and its evolution over time.
It gets particularly bad and laughable when I reach a point that I don't even read what I'm grabbing/harvesting 😅 that's me in Rebirth right now
Haha yeah I was pretty much instantly in that zone in Rebirth. Who left these little bags of "blessings from the planet" everywhere?
Very nice essay. Love it.
Thanks, appreciate that! :) I'm hoping folks are up for some essays as well as the game reccos
@@GamingInTheWild Ones that come from the heart like this? I think you'll find people are always down for it 💪
When I read the title, my thought was yes. But in the sense of how many hours you need to spend in some games, collecting stuff in order to accomplish something. Or, the hundreds of people or animals you have to kill in order to raise your skills.
Yeah, grinding resources is a whole other conversation!
would love more "eco" games!
great video well down
Great video, keep up the good work
Cheers chucky
very interesting video. I like these deep thoughts about games. Very satisfying like philosophy.
Thanks Filip ✨
couldn't agree more, exhausted of gathering and crafting. There's a politics there, like its a settler-colonial way to interact with everything. I do disagree with Terra Nil, it is seemingly about forcing an invasive ecosystem where it doesn't belong and you have no real right to impose using the same expansionist mindset as the other games, I did not like that one.
I saw Terra Nil differently, as a setting where humanity is righting its own wrongs, but I see where you're coming from.
They aren't terraforming to live there, but rather trying to return the land to what it once was, I think, after human devastation. So I don't think it's like, ecological colonialism.
@@GamingInTheWild maybe I should give it another try, but what it came down to for me was the framing was different than other games, but the mechanical actions of command and control style scientific management were the same, like that's the horizon for how the game designer can understand changing the world. Not sure what conclusion I have there but I didn't love it. Spiritfarer left a way worse taste in my mouth for a lot of reasons, glad you brought that one up
@@GamingInTheWild in some ways Terra Nil reminds me of The Curse, where Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone are coming to a town to "fix" the wrongs created by colonialism. They may have ulterior motives, but the show makes the interesting point that even if they didn't the way they conceive of the world makes it impossible for them to right the wrongs they say they want to. Games like Terra Nil inverting the language of 4X games are interesting but I think flawed in that way, and games like Spiritfarer etc much more so flawed. Some interesting stuff to think about.
Yeah, I appreciate the perspective. Terra Nil actually had a big emotional impact on me. When one reward for your terraforming work in the game was a peal of thunder, and rain started to fall, I shed a tear, to my own surprise. It felt like hope, in the thinking behind that as a player reward, and my mind connected that to humanity's own wider understanding of things - it was the seed of the idea for this video. There's a full video about it in the back catalogue if you're interested :)
@@gameworkerty I loved _The Curse._ I agree, it's an indictment of whiteness and how most white Americans are essentially cultureless and therefore lost, unable to find a comfortable place in the world, the inevitable end of capitalist colonialism.
With The Curse and Poor Things, Emma Stone has had quite a 2023.