
Clash Rules Everything Around Me - Hooke
http://reallifemag.com/clash-rules-everything-around-me/
======
rrecuero
This article made me think a little bit about games. What are they? Art, waste
of time, intellectual gummies for your brain? All of the above?

However, I believe that there are forms of entertainment that can enrich your
life and others that are simply entertainment. As long as you are aware of it,
and being intentional about your decision there is nothing wrong with that.

I can definitely remember games that have enriches my life one way or another
like the original Metal gear Solid, Silent Hill or Braid but I can also think
of many counterexamples like Counter Strike... These games were polished as
hell but they just put me into this zombie state where I just cared about one
more frag, one more, one more... Without being aware.

What do you guys think?

~~~
r00fus
Some of the most insightful games I ever played were the Civ series...
Favorite being Alpha Centauri.

As I learned more about history and read more scifi I started to see more of
the inspirations for the characters but at that time it was new and
inspirational to me.

~~~
jwdunne
On that same strand, the following games have proven to be quite educational
to me:

Caesar III - first city builder I played. Fell in love with the Romans - was
well prepared when the basics of Ancient Rome was taught in school.

Pharoah - same deal as above, except Ancient Egypt camw before I had the
chance to play.

Age of Empires 2 - this one came with a mini encyclopedia built in about the
history of all the units, civilizations, etc. I remember finding this useful
when I chose to do a project on French military history for French lessons. I
despised French but the project was passed on to the head due to the notable
quality and depth (I owe AoK a lot for that one - it was a night before rush
job).

Crusader Kings 2 - again, had a little encyclopedia with history on all the
historical dynasties in the game. Playing this and reading up on the medieval
period & the feudal system is good fun.

Europa Universalis IV - if anything, I didn't know Spain was split between
Castile and Aragon until I played this and then looked into it more. Good fun
game and great to play alongside a depth dive into the era and the politics of
the time.

Graal - the big one. Crappy online Zelda clone. This one provided me the most
insight of all: you could build new stuff with it. It had a scripting
language, level editor and animation editor. You could take its kbd hack and
slash core and turn it into a point and click RPG. This is where I wrote my
first lines of code and shaped my career permanently. I owe my employment in
part to this game.

And, of course, Civ. Very similar effect as the above historical games.

A great game can stoke your wet ware in many ways. Waste of time? I don't
agree.

------
cellis
Chess is more addictive than Clash of Clans. Download the chess.com app and I
promise you will spend hours trying to get just a few more points. Ok, maybe
it is, maybe it isn't, but if you're writing this piece in the age of
convenience you've gotta ask yourself what you would've done instead with that
time. Would you work? If the answer is yes, I call bullshit. Humans can only
work high level jobs for about 4 hours with roughly logarithmic declines in
performance every hour thereafter. So that means you need to fill your time
with _something_. Whether it's clash of clans or some other useless hobby, it
most likely will be just as addictive. Oh, and learning new things counts as
work.

------
minimaxir
> I suspect this attitude has something to do with the human fallibilities of
> sunk cost and cognitive dissonance: if you’ve already spent hours and maybe
> some cash on a particular activity, you might keep playing because you don’t
> want that effort to “go to waste,” and then you might imbue that activity
> with all sorts of heavy meaning and nobility to assure yourself that your
> time was well spent.

Many new freemium games now are trying to copy Clash of Clans with unnecessary
resource management mechanics a low-effort PvP mode. Makes sense on paper.
However, I've read a lot of discussion about how people are getting _bored_ of
these types of games, especially now that they are aware of the time-sink
nature of the games after having experienced it (and consumed by it) once
before.

It would not surprise me if there is a shift from Clash-likes. (indeed, the
Hero-collectathons have been surprisingly popular lately...)

~~~
caseyf7
What are Hero-collectathons? Can you give us some examples?

~~~
minimaxir
The most well-known (#6 Grossing Game on iPhone) is Marvel Contest of
Champions ([https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/marvel-contest-of-
champions/...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/marvel-contest-of-
champions/id896112560)) by Kabam, which lets you "collect" Marvel heroes. This
lead to similar models for other Marvel mobile games like Marvel Future Fight
(which is _really_ good for a freemium game) and Marvel Avengers Assemble
(which is not).

Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes ([https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/star-wars-
galaxy-of-heroes/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/star-wars-galaxy-of-
heroes/id921022358)) (#14 Grossing) by Electronic Arts is similar, but is
surprisingly fair in terms of F2P mechanics on the low end.

In all these games, instead of using F2P on one-time consumables, F2P are used
for progression, and "heroes" are more permanent, tangible things to buy.
(this concept predates the Hero collectathons though: Puzzle & Dragons, for
example, was one of the big ones that did it first)

------
jasonlingx
Clash Royale is their new game of the moment. It's taken away most of the
meaningless grinding, leaving just enough to monetise.

~~~
SilkRoadie
After playing a bunch of Clash Royale I feel a lot like the author feel's
about clash of clans.

Clash Royale actually puts you into a routine of opening chests. Setting
things in the game before going to bed and then opening things first thing in
the morning. Paying increases the speed of your progress.

This works well because if you do not play the game you make no progress and
feel bad as everyone around you is making progress.

It doesn't help that every 3-4 hours you get a notification reminding you of
the opportunities you could be pursuing in the game.

If anyone is playing Clash Royale I would strongly suggest turning the push
notifications off for the game. It makes it far more enjoyable and it helps
eliminate the schedule that it tries to impose on your life.

------
rtpg
I have such mixed feelings about this style of monetisation.

On one hand, (as that talk that Blow gave a while back) it usually affects
game design badly. If you remove the money element, of course you wouldn't
have to sit around for days while things upgrade.

But on the other hand, the micropurchase model has helped to sustain games
much beyond their original "Fresh by" date. The one that comes to mind for me
the most is Team Fortress 2. A huge amount of content has been added, and is
at this point subsidised by item purchases. Of course League of Legends and
other DOTA-likes do this too.

And then there's Hearthstone, which keeps content fresh through constantly
selling new expansions a la MTG.

Some might make the distinction between the good games and the bad ones, but I
have a hard time imagining one without the other.

\----

I think a bit of a weird aspect of this is that games are now incentivised to
keep you entertained longer. If you buy a $50 game, it's fine for it to take 5
hours and for you to be done. There's no financial advantage for the game
maker to keep you around longer.

I guess a lot of this is a distinction between kinds of games though. Some
games are like books, others are like sports. Nobody complains about the
addictive nature of soccer....

~~~
ferbivore
Paywalled content is one thing. Most people - including, I expect, Blow -
would agree that DLC and unlockable items are fair ways to monetize a game. In
most cases, anyway.

Wait timers are completely different. It's hard to overstate how horribly
offensive they are to any self-respecting gamer. The only people who tolerate
them are the ones that have never experienced a game that didn't try to extort
money out of them.

------
tvural
I'm not sure, but I'm hopeful that the title is a reference to C.R.E.A.M

~~~
nkurz
Thanks, I presumed it was in reference to something, but I didn't know what:

    
    
      Wu-Tang Clan - C.R.E.A.M. 1993
      Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
    
      [Hook]
      Cash rules everything around me:
      CREAM, get the money
      Dollar, dollar bill y'all
    

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBwAxmrE194](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBwAxmrE194)

~~~
gosub
This mashup with fugazi is amazing:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ourDnKp6x14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ourDnKp6x14)

~~~
nkurz
Wow, I hadn't heard that before. Background:
[http://www.mtv.com/news/2694103/how-the-wugazi-mashup-
album-...](http://www.mtv.com/news/2694103/how-the-wugazi-mashup-album-came-
to-be/)

------
ovt
The only band that mattered.

~~~
slyrus
My thoughts exactly. And then "and what's wrong with that?" But then I
realized this was about a silly video game. Oh well.

------
bayesian_horse
I played for a few month and stopped it at least year or so ago. It was
slightly painful to let go of what I had "achieved". But this achievement was
mainly illusory, the only real part about it being the time and consistency
invested.

But the consistency is also fake: Your phone lets you know when to go back to
the game. No amount of organisation or perseverance "skill" required.

