This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I think this is one area where your understanding would benefit from watching a movie other than Boss Baby.
Contrary to popular belief, most gamers are not primarily motivated by the sheer intrinsic joy of seeing numbers go up. Video games usually provide some form of longer-term goal that you're building towards, to motivate the more repetitive small-scale gameplay. In traditional single-player games this is usually pretty straightforward: you want to get to the end, because you want to rescue the princess, or maybe because you want to hear the conclusion of the story. In other games you're motivated by a more vague concept of "mastering" the game, learning all the tricks and techniques to beat it perfectly.
If you give up on this goal, you'll immediately lose a lot of your motivation for playing the game. Jigsaw puzzles are fun, but if you know you're not going to finish the jigsaw puzzle, it feels kind of stupid and pointless to sit there adding a couple more pieces.
Live-service games like WoW also provide this kind of motivation, but they can't make it as obvious. It can't actually be possible to get to the end of WoW because then you'd stop playing, and they want you to keep playing forever. So they goal has to be something that you can't really achieve, and that fact kind of needs to be obfuscated from you. I'm not familiar with WoW in specific, but common mechanisms for this include:
There are probably some people who play WoW solely because it's a fun social hangout and a way to waste some time, but I bet a lot of players keep going because of a long-term "goal" like this. Even if the goal was an illusion and never actually achievable, giving up on it still feels like giving up. (EDIT: And if you're planning to pick up Forever when it comes out, that means giving up on Classic.)
...OK, but you haven't applied any of your vague concepts to the situation at hand. What we have here, taking only the individual case, is at best something like:
September 1: Player spends 20 hours a week on World of Warcraft TBC Classic Anniversary, a game played by 100,000 people any given week, which will run no later than next summer at which point it will end. They derive immense joy/value/meaning from the game.
September 30: Player refuses to spend any time on World of Warcraft TBC Classic Anniversary, and actively regrets prior time they invested, because now 50,000 people play any given week, and the game may drop off further in another month and a half.
There's no reasonably logic to me by which a game that lasted another year with 100,000 people is significantly more meaningful than a game that lasts a shorter period of time with 50,000.
I'm having trouble figuring out how someone loses all those motivations so suddenly under those circumstances. All the aspects of mastery are still there. They're not even meaningfully reduced for the most part*. It's like back in high school, when people would get real upset about breakups, and I'd ask if they figured they were going to marry that particular boyfriend/girlfriend and they'd say no, and I'd say well then obviously you were going to break up some time.
*I may need to check my privilege here, in that I exclusively play desirable classes and I'm not a complete idiot/prick, and so the social aspect of the game may be easier for me even in a reduced population setting than it is for others
I don't think the player numbers really matter, except insofar as they motivate the player to decide to switch to Forever.
September 1: Player spends twenty hours a week on World of Warcraft TBC Classic Anniversary, a game where they're eventually gonna become the best or get all the cool mounts or whatever it is, there's definitely something like that. They are probably not thinking ahead to the far future when the game will shut down, they've just got that vague near-future-but-not-really feeling that they're working towards a goal. It feels almost productive!
September 12(?): WoW Forever gets announced, launching in a couple months. Player makes a plan in their head: they're gonna switch to it on launch day. It'll probably be a little more fun, and a little more popular, and a little more actively maintained without losing that classic charm. They aren't thinking about their TBC Classic Anniversary goals when they make this choice, because those goals only really exist as vague feelings.
September 30: Player regrets spending time in World of Warcraft TBC Classic Anniversary, a game where they're never gonna be the best or get all the cool horse armor or anything, because they're going to stop playing it before they have a chance to achieve any of those things. It feels like a waste of time!
Sure but on September 1, the inevitable end of the game was known. Either the servers would move on to Wrath and all your TBC achievements would be irrelevant, or Classic+ would drop, or it would be a low-pop Era server. There was no universe where the "vague near-future-but-not-really feeling" lasted very long. Given that state of affairs, it shocks me that people invested anything that they weren't ok with losing?
I will note one thing that seems rotten is people who spent real money on boosts suddenly finding the toon they boosted in a different position.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link