
Video Games Satisfy Basic Human Needs - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/-how-video-games-satisfy-basic-human-needs
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nkozyra
> Except, of course, aside from its pre-set storyline, Grand Theft Auto
> doesn’t prescribe any of these things.

This is not a fair characterization of the game. Yes, you can avoid doing
those morally reprehensible things but not if you actually want to play the
game. In much the same way if you feel it's morally wrong to stomp goombas,
you can avoid doing so in Super Mario Bros. But unlike the latter, you cannot
proceed in GTAV without engaging in some of those undesirable actions.

The notion that we're making these choices independent of the game is
disingenuous.

~~~
d--b
Agreed about GTA, but not about Super Mario. At the very least you'll need to
kill Bowser to finish the game.

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saint_fiasco
Bowser always survives and shows up again in the sequels.

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cma
And GTA has a limited pool of pedestrians that repeat themselves and return
over and over.

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comex
That’s different. In Super Mario Bros., every Goomba in the game is an
identical sprite, but story-wise - to the extent the game has a story, anyway
- you’re meeting a series of different creatures of the same species. This is
evident if only from the fact that there are often multiple on screen at the
same time. The more modern GTA has a variety of looks for pedestrians rather
than just one, but the same principle applies: the NPC you just met might look
identical to the one you killed the other day, but story-wise, we should
assume they’re two different people - because it makes more sense that way and
the game hasn’t told us otherwise.

Bowser, on the other hand, is a named character with a specific personality.
Combined with supplementary materials and (in some Mario games, especially the
RPGs) in-game dialogue, it’s clear that he’s meant to be a single character
who Mario (also a single character) encounters repeatedly.

~~~
KGIII
I'd almost suggest that discussing the morality of pixel manipulation is a
bridge too far, but this is sort of why I come here.

I sort of now want a PETA for video game pixels.

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runj__
"Eager to steal a bicycle from a 10-year-old boy?"

There have never been children in any GTA game.

~~~
khalilravanna
I'm sure this isn't what they meant but I think technically you could steal a
bike from a 10 year old _player_ in GTA Online now.

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kaybe
To be fair, the 10-year-old can probably curb-stomp you online, so the usual
difference in power that makes 10-year-olds off-limits is not there.

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indescions_2017
Bartle's four quadrants is standard in gamification practise. Your assessment
of its validity probably tracks with how effective you feel gamification can
be in altering human behavior ;)

The more interesting modern use case is when people say: "there's this game on
my phone I play a lot that helps me with my anxiety." And it's usually
something trivial like a free Puzzle Bobble clone that was developed in a week
at zero-budget. But for that player, its a lifeline, a coping mechanism.

That's very interesting to me. What is it about this gameplay mechanic that
relieves stress? It can't just be escape. To me it seems it has to tap into
something more intrinsic than archetypal "hunter-gatherer" era categories.

~~~
rubinelli
I cannot speak for everyone, but in my experience, it is the sense of efficacy
and control. You may feel like you don't have any control over your life, but
at least you can rule over those colorful bubbles, and be pretty good at it.

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burkaman
> For these researchers, incredibly, enjoyment is not the primary reason why
> we play video games. Enjoyment is not the primary motivation—“it is rather,”
> they wrote, “the result of satisfaction of basic needs.”

Isn't this just the definition of enjoyment? Satisfying basic needs is the
only reason anybody does anything.

~~~
pm90
Its a good question, and I hope someone with more knowledge also responds to
this, but I don't think they are the same thing. There is a difference between
things that give you pleasure and things that you enjoy doing. e.g. you might
not enjoy doing drugs if you're an addict but its almost always pleasurable.

So I think enjoying something is more long term, higher level aspect than
pleasure, which seems more short term. Which explains a lot why people engage
in activities which they may not really enjoy, but get the short term pleasure
hit. e.g. binge eating, binge TV watching etc

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dugditches
To quote part of a recent Alan Kay post here:

"We are set up genetically to learn the environment/culture around us. If we
have media that seems to our nervous systems as an environment, we will try to
learn those ways of thinking and doing, and even our conception of reality."

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jblz
The STTNG Episode "The Game"[1] comes to mind :)

In the show, the device physically stimulates the pleasure centers of the
brain to the point that players are highly addicted & easily manipulated.

I interpret it as allegory to the way "real" video games leverage variable
rewards & other reinforcement to do something similar.

1\. [http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Game_(episode)](http://memory-
alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Game_\(episode\))

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graphitezepp
I am glad they took the time to mention Super Smash Bros Melee. That game took
over my life for a time, and in hindsight it was because it was the medium
that made me feel as if I was expressing myself honestly for the first time.

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hypertexthero
Simon Parkin is a good writer. See also Coming Of Age With Video Games —
[https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/coming-of-age-
wi...](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/coming-of-age-with-video-
games)

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jlebrech
Risk and reward

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AmIFirstToThink
I think we as society have lost the ability to give the kids a creative space,
that used to be a mile away from homes where they can play in the sand and
bushes and water, and just be kids, without adult supervision. Video games let
kids experience creation. Video games are satisfying an evolutionary need.

I think nautil.us should write an article on positive effects of mobile phone
connectivity. The snobs are looking down on that just like they are on video
games.

~~~
pm90
Urban centers through most of human history have lacked a lot of open spaces,
and kids have grown up fine. Human brains are incredibly resilient, and you
can raise healthy kids even in dense urban areas.

The problem seems to be more about the constant stimuli that comes from
internet enabled devices and video games. I grew up without access to much
video games or the internet but that made me dream up entire fantasy worlds as
a kid, because I was bored. I don't think the current environment allows kids
that kind of space to just be bored and create things via imagination.

I'm not a child specialist though so I might be totally wrong about this.

~~~
naravara
>Urban centers through most of human history have lacked a lot of open spaces

For most of human history transportation through urban centers was done
primarily on foot and roads were designed to facilitate that. Contemporary
urban planning is designed around speedily moving motorized vehicles through
and the streets, such as they are, are rivers of traffic that pedestrians have
to hurry themselves across during the short windows of time that cars aren't
speeding by.

The invention of the automobile has been terrible for letting kids roam
around. On the flip-side of the dangers they face in urban centers, the ones
growing up in newer suburban areas lack the density to have an appreciable
amount of kids of similar ages within walking/biking distance of each other.
Many older style, "streetcar" suburbs do, but we haven't build many of those
in the past 30 or so years.

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njarboe
"streetcar" density suburbs can and do function well with only cars. We just
need to start building them again. Just sprinkle in a few multi-story parking
lots behind street-level retail and they are great places to live.

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Density
e: To clear things up I'm not criticizing Bartle's work here.

~~~
jblz
I don't think your criticism is very obvious. Can you elaborate?

The Bartle Test is a pretty common tool / consideration in gaming psych &
gamified interfaces.

~~~
Density
I personally have no issue with the test. Players have different preferences
when it comes to video games.

What I have a problem with is researchers attempting to drawn a relationship
between video game preferences and basic needs. To me this reeks of Jack
Thompson.

~~~
ionised
> Players have different preferences when it comes to video games.

The point is why they have these preferences, and what these preferences lead
to in terms of how different people might approach the same game.

You could present a counter article instead of just telling us how much you
don't like the premise of this one.

Anecdotally, I know blasting the crap out of demons in Doom does a pretty good
job of channelling my anger. It's cathartic and not something society
typically caters for.

A lot of games are about building efficient systems, which naturally would
attract people that like solving problems with designs and creativity.

You are dismissing the entire premise of the article based on a dislike for
one man that tried (and failed) to convince America that GTA was a murder
simulator. A man that (if you bother to read up on what he is up to now)
doesn't even believe any of the shit he said back then and actually apologised
for it.

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TuringTest
_> A man that (if you bother to read up on what he is up to now) doesn't even
believe any of the shit he said back then and actually apologised for it._

Can you provide a pointer to that? I haven't found anything in that regard,
either at Wikipedia nor searching at news sites.

~~~
ionised
I'm struggling to find the exact article I read (and Wikipedia is light on
info about him for some reason) but it was an interview with Thompson himself
about where he is and what he is doing now.

He is teaching prisoners civics in Florida now after suffering major
stress/depression and marriage problems resulting from his crusade. He went
into how the whole thing started because stores were selling violent games to
under-age kids and even parents were buying them and that's what he took issue
with.

Based on his medical background and knowledge of how entertainment affects the
brain he believed that kids that young and also the mentally disabled should
not have access to violent games, but because he was beaten in court (multiple
times) he began to make tenuous links everywhere between violence and games,
music and movies and began behaving very legally dubious in pursuing his cases
like a fanatic to the point where he was calling for all-out bans and
ridiculous punishments.

He was eventually disbarred and went through a few years of trying not to be
such an angry asshole.

From the way the article ended it seemed like he had gone through a positive
transformation.

