@Retronator: Wow this is so awesome! It is so fantastic that we share the same idea! And your video is great, I'm going to finish the rest of them and subscribe to your channel in a little bit. I really agree with your sentiment that once people start getting in the mindset that it's not simply 'fight these guys and move on' we are going to start seeing this industry doing some really spectacular things! Thanks so much again for sending me the link to your blog!

@Dagbiker: I've been thinking about this a lot since yesterday, and i think there could be some interesting ways to apply them to specific genres. Specifically, a JRPG where you battle with words, attack with spatial reasoning questions and defend with the power of logic or a first person Paper Boy where you're trying to throw papers in the mailbox. The narrative would most likely need to be more about the protagonist productively trying to create something, as opposed to trying to stop someone from doing something else (like a crime). Maybe I should have guarded the Paper Boy idea for myself.

@Morrow said:

@MistaSparkle said:

I think that's a fairly good summary of the whole winning thing being tied to a sense of satisfaction, and I pretty much agree with all of that. I do not agree, however, that defeating an enemy is the most satisfactory thing you can do to get that feeling of accomplishment. This is all, of course, relative to each person. Most people would probably choose combat scenarios over something different because for so long combat has been the go-to thing for the accomplishing feeling we strive for, but further into the future I hope we start moving towards something different that can amount to the same satisfactory feeling.

Well, if it would exist, for me the most satisfaction would be virtual reality :D Be somewhere else, someone else, and do everything without consequence, experience places you'd never visit, or that don't exist. Screw combat, let me fly through space! :D

I think that virtual reality with violence would also be a great way to show people that games with violence aren't all there is. Imagine actually feeling the pain everytime someone hit or shot you, that'd put you off violence, and probably make you want to try something else, exposing all those people who only ever want to shoot people in the face to other things.

I remember personally pistol-whipping a developer just last week for wanting to make a game without violence. Taught him a thing or two.

@Morrow said:

@MistaSparkle said:

I think that's a fairly good summary of the whole winning thing being tied to a sense of satisfaction, and I pretty much agree with all of that. I do not agree, however, that defeating an enemy is the most satisfactory thing you can do to get that feeling of accomplishment. This is all, of course, relative to each person. Most people would probably choose combat scenarios over something different because for so long combat has been the go-to thing for the accomplishing feeling we strive for, but further into the future I hope we start moving towards something different that can amount to the same satisfactory feeling.

Well, if it would exist, for me the most satisfaction would be virtual reality :D Be somewhere else, someone else, and do everything without consequence, experience places you'd never visit, or that don't exist. Screw combat, let me fly through space! :D

That would be incredible. Imagine being able to explore a whole new world or even just places you've never been to on Earth using your own eyes and actually moving through it in virtual reality. I would love a game built solely on exploration just like that.

I thought watch dogs was going to be that game until I saw the gun shooting part. That let the wind out of my sails a bit.

@Shirogane said:

@Morrow said:

@MistaSparkle said:

I think that's a fairly good summary of the whole winning thing being tied to a sense of satisfaction, and I pretty much agree with all of that. I do not agree, however, that defeating an enemy is the most satisfactory thing you can do to get that feeling of accomplishment. This is all, of course, relative to each person. Most people would probably choose combat scenarios over something different because for so long combat has been the go-to thing for the accomplishing feeling we strive for, but further into the future I hope we start moving towards something different that can amount to the same satisfactory feeling.

Well, if it would exist, for me the most satisfaction would be virtual reality :D Be somewhere else, someone else, and do everything without consequence, experience places you'd never visit, or that don't exist. Screw combat, let me fly through space! :D

I think that virtual reality with violence would also be a great way to show people that games with violence aren't all there is. Imagine actually feeling the pain everytime someone hit or shot you, that'd put you off violence, and probably make you want to try something else, exposing all those people who only ever want to shoot people in the face to other things.

I can see where you're coming from, but that would be rather controversial because I think not everyone would react like that. I could image there would also be people who would become prone to violence and more desensitised towards it, maybe without realising it. Or another possibility would be that some individuals would no longer be able to distinguish the virtual pain from real pain, forgetting that beating someone in real life has actual consequence. That is the great danger of virtual reality I think, it could make you lose your connection to our reality almost completely, if you let yourself get immersed into it too much. Remember that scene in the beginning of Inception in that drug hole where all these people had chosen dreaming instead of living? That. Like those MMO fanatics...

@MistaSparkle said:

@Morrow said:

@MistaSparkle said:

I think that's a fairly good summary of the whole winning thing being tied to a sense of satisfaction, and I pretty much agree with all of that. I do not agree, however, that defeating an enemy is the most satisfactory thing you can do to get that feeling of accomplishment. This is all, of course, relative to each person. Most people would probably choose combat scenarios over something different because for so long combat has been the go-to thing for the accomplishing feeling we strive for, but further into the future I hope we start moving towards something different that can amount to the same satisfactory feeling.

Well, if it would exist, for me the most satisfaction would be virtual reality :D Be somewhere else, someone else, and do everything without consequence, experience places you'd never visit, or that don't exist. Screw combat, let me fly through space! :D

That would be incredible. Imagine being able to explore a whole new world or even just places you've never been to on Earth using your own eyes and actually moving through it in virtual reality. I would love a game built solely on exploration just like that.

Yeah, like in Avatar, exploring a place like Pandora would be awesome :)

@MistaSparkle: Dumb, i must ask why must we move away from the competitive aspect?

@Carryboy said:

@MistaSparkle: Dumb, i must ask why must we move away from the competitive aspect?

I didn't say move away from the competitive aspect of gaming. I said move away from wanting to be the best at shooting someone. There are other goals out there and other things to be competitive at. Simply saying that most competitive games have the same problem that I find in a lot of other games. It's mostly a competition of who can defeat these enemies better than everyone else. That's fine, I don't want to take that away, I just want more games that have something to strive for other than defeating foes to reach a goal.

@MistaSparkle: But you have those games, like civilisation.

@Morrow: Quite true all that. Once you get into virtual reality you get into the Matrix/Total Recall/Inception thing of not know what's real anymore, that could be really dangerous. I guess all we've really figured out from this is that you can't trust people to not use something for evil. To get back to the main topic, it would seem that the majority people don't actually want to remove violence from games, the ones that play them anyway, they want their violence, even if it hurts them in the process.

I wonder what would happen if we just forcefully removed violence from all video games, would the industry just collapse? Or do we actually have enough different ideas to keep it afloat...

@Shirogane said:

I wonder what would happen if we just forcefully removed violence from all video games, would the industry just collapse? Or do we actually have enough different ideas to keep it afloat...

Well, I think we would adapt in a really positive way. I was thinking the situation where violence was removed would more resemble a prohibition, so there would be a period to develop ideas using nonviolence, and then later let violence become valid again. That way we could find new ideas for games without the constant mechanic of defeating enemies, but still use that mechanic later on in a more diluted sense, if you get what I'm saying.

@Carryboy said:

@MistaSparkle: But you have those games, like civilisation.

Sort of. Like I said strategy games are much easier to apply to this concept. Civilization does great things with win-states because you don't have to play aggressively to win. Some of us want to see games where defeating enemies is not the main focus of the game mechanics, and we think it would be interesting to see what developers can do by completely removing that mechanic. We want more games that think similarly to how Civ was built.

I agree with you that I would like to see the industry less reliant on violence as the main draw in alot of games, but for me there is also a danger that shying away from violence in games will make them to abstract. I prefer games that, internal logic aside, are based in reality. If that reality is a sci-fi future or a fantasy past, or a mundane present is not really relevant. For these games to be interesting, they need some kind of conflict. And in a conflict, violence is often a natural consequence. I'm not saying moral or ethical, but natural.

Man is a violent beast, and if games where to remove the element of phycial (and even psychological) violence, I'm afraid I will quickly lose interest. That's not to say that I'm happy with the level of glorification of violence that there is a certain amount of in games today, but to remove it or actively supress it will, like I said, make alot of games too abstract for me. What I would like to see are different solutions and approached to violence.

I recently played through Spec Ops: The Line, and found myself enthralled by the game's handling of the effect and morality of violence in conflict. But your 3-man squad slaughtering wave after wave of incoming enemies took away alot of the impact for me. Later, I heard a really interesting idea on one gaming podcast or other. (possibly Weekend Confirmed) What if Spec Ops played like Heavy Rain? I think that would make for a much more interesting approach to the subject matter handled in the game, and the way I see it, that's where the solution lies. Have violence be a factor in games still, but move the focus of the challenge away from inflicting violence, and move it to dealing with the morality and the effect of the act instead.

@Draugen: Yes, absolutely. That was very well put. I still think that you can make interesting and engaging games without violence at all, but my main point I've been trying to prove her is, like you said, "move the focus of the challenge away from inflicting violence." Of course there will be a struggle to find something that feels as engaging as combat, but when we do find them it will open up so much more potential for games in all senses of the word.

A racing game without crashes would suck.