fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4762 ]

You do tabletop gaming which is:

1. gaming, and
2. an order of magnitude more complex than many digital games.

Yes, but the secret was about videogames.

I think if someone (I’m not the OP) made a secret to the effect of “I don’t enjoy watching TV,” no one would bat an eyelash. I certainly wouldn’t hop on and suggest that OP try children’s TV, or reality TV, because those are less time consuming, or recommend that they watch the TV adaptation of a comic they liked.

Some people don’t enjoy videogames. If you want a laundry list of why I enjoy tabletop RPG and not videogames even where they require similar skills, time commitment, an complexity, I’d be happy to provide one, but I’m also curious as to why gamers are so insistent that everyone enjoy their hobby.

If someone made a secret to the effect of "I don't enjoy watching TV because it's all privileged people doing wish-fulfillment" then we'd probably get a string of recommendations for TV that deals with socioeconomic issues. I don't see how that's a bad thing.

No one has asked you to enjoy videogames. We are only correcting factually incorrect statements that you're making about videogames.

That's not a very good analogy secret. It's more like if OP made a secret to the effect of "I'm not sure if I don't like TV because watching it gives me a headache or if I get a headache from watching TV because I don't like it."

I agree that we'd then get a bunch of recommendations, probably for painkillers and ambient lighting and different types of screens to try and yoga. It would be equally annoying as what you're doing here.

You're the first person to even mention physical limitations. Instead, this thread has tried to push the claim that games are inaccessible because they all require skills that are difficult to learn.

But, there are entire genres of games that are designed around the same skills you used to make that comment. (And have better choices in screen design than Dreamwidth, especially f!s which uses one of the themes that's unreadable at alternate screen sizes.) If that's not your thing, it's not your thing. But if you're going to do armchair criticism of electronic games, your errors of fact are open to challenge.

I said that the effort and the time to become good at games (not to play any game but to become good at them; certainly I could fill my time with Minesweeper if my goal was to fill time) were overwhelming. Since you don’t know my level of time, skill set, or interest, it’s impossible for you to gauge whether my statement is factually correct or not. I made no judgment about the quality of games or their value as a hobby or an art form.

Now, if I’d said “I don’t like games because gamers are incredibly defensive about their hobby and quick to leap down the throat of anyone who says something remotely critical about it” you might have a leg to stand on. However.

You use Dreamwidth. There are games that are considerably less complex to "become good at" than writing a comment on Dreamwidth.

Where did I say that I was incapable of doing complex tasks?

This discussion is about your repeated claim that electronic games are inaccessible because all of then require complex tasks. They don't. In fact, casual games constitute a majority of electronic games revenue. Your criticism of electronic games involves parroting damaging myths about contemporary game design.

I think you’re conflating things that are too different for your argument to have value.

OP: I don’t know if I hate books because I’m bad at reading or if I’m bad at reading because I hate books.

Me: i know what you mean. Reading is an acquired skill that not everyone wants to put the time commitment into mastering.

You: you’re so ignorant have you tried reading The Hungry Hungry Caterpillar or an email from your boss??? Obviously you have the skills to read and just hate the whole culture and industry of books!!!!

Yes, I can play Solitaire. Or Candy Crush or whatever the grannies are playing. Real games with narrative and immersive elements that are the equivalent of reading fiction for adults require a skill set that I don’t currently possess and don’t have the time or desire to learn. I won’t make assumptions as to why you find this so threatening and upsetting, but I can assure you that the videogame industry is doing just fine without my money.

Moving the goalposts such that solitaire and minesweeper are not real gaming demonstrates that your argument is in bad faith.

Nevermind that some of the best narrative in gaming is happening in visual novels, web games, "walking sims," and dating sims that don't require much more skill than clicking on the screen.

If I said my hobby was reading, would your assumption be that I was talking about:
1) reading your Dreamwidth comments?
2) reading novels?

Be honest. If I was slamming Candy Crush you wouldn’t have your hackles up.

I have played click through games, including some critical darlings. They are not an interesting way to spend my time. It’s okay if they are to other people. I didn’t enjoy Homestuck either.

Tile-matching puzzles are one of my jams, so your argument that Candy Crush is a bad game because it's easy to learn (after arguing at length that games are hard to learn) isn't the "gotcha" that you think it is. The specific problem with Candy Crush is that it has good mechanics (taken from other games) tied to a crappy monetization model. So if you want to slam the microtransaction model, I'd agree. But that's more a "mobile apps suck" problem than a problem with mechanics of tile-matching puzzlers.

Your argument about reading is also bullshit. Lots of my friends and family are readers. I do short stories and tech books, my mother does mysteries and history, my friends do non-fiction, one niece does young adult, while another is really into Russian lit. So of course, if you said your hobby was reading, I'd ask "what are you reading?" The same is true of gaming.

If tabletop is your jam and electronic isn't, that's great. You could have just left it there. But you've chosen this really weird hill to die on that easy games don't exist, and those that do don't have any real value. And that's the problem in this thread. You're behaving like an elitist snob regarding media you plainly don't understand.

I think you really, desperately want me to be anti-gamer, and I'm not. The Hungry Hungry Caterpillar is fine to give to a child. It has artistic merit. But you wouldn't recommend it to an adult who said that they didn't enjoy reading.

Likewise, it's totally fine if you want to spend 100% of your time playing various types of games. I've tried immersive 3D games, click-through interactive stories, mindless phone games, and side-scrollers (hey, you haven't mentioned those yet, but they're probably at the maximum end of my manual dexterity). Of all of these, I can count on one hand the number of games I've enjoyed playing. That doesn't mean that I don't think that an incredible amount of talent goes into making and playing these games. It means that I. Don't. Like. Playing. Them.

How is this hard for you?

I'm going to use another analogy. I personally don't like ballet. I can explain at great length the history and development of ballet, argue for its artistic merit, and appreciate the technical skill that goes into doing it. But I will never have the physical dexterity or body type to be a ballerina. And while I will go to the ballet if a friend wants someone to go with, I don't really bond with it and I'd rather just listen to music. I've been like that all my life.

And yet, I have never once had someone freak out on me and get upset because I don't enjoy ballet. It's kind of normal—there are things about it as an art form that are very inaccessible to many people, and even people who really enjoy it recognize that not everyone does. And everyone understands that the fact that I, Sabotabby From the Internet, does not like ballet is not an argument or value judgement against whether ballet is a good or bad form of dance or art.

Likewise, it is very fashionable among a certain social circle that I'm part of to brag about never watching TV. Yet I've never seen anyone (myself included, and I love TV) lose their shit at someone who doesn't watch TV, or suggest they try types of TV that they may or may not have considered.

Videogaming, though? If you critique a videogame (unlike if you critique other art forms) or suggest that perhaps not everyone likes playing them, you inevitably have someone bleating that you're just not playing the right ones, or that you haven't tried hard enough, or that you're a Evil Feminist who wants to deprive them of their toys.

I suspect that you may feel a little insecure about your hobby, and that's why you're defensive. I get that. Because videogames are a relatively new medium and intimately bound up with commerce, it's been a struggle to have them recognized as culturally significant. I absolutely agree with you that games have cultural merit and value; in fact, I teach a course on that very question. But you do not do your argument any justice when you stomp your foot and insist that anyone who doesn't like your hobby is an elitist snob.

As I said: If tabletop is your jam and electronic isn't, that's great.

I'm a gamer with disabilities. I can't do twitch, online multiplayer, audio without subtitles, or small screen text. I prefer gaming experiences where I can set the pace and think through mechanics on my own sweet time. I'm also a queer gamer who recognizes that visual novels are an interesting medium for queer stories right now.

What you're doing here is creating a dichotomy where serious games are as difficult as ballet (*eyeroll*), while easy games are childlike. I disagree with that framing, and you're just parroting the "git gud" argument against accessible gaming and the game genres I engage in.

It is great that you have a hobby that you enjoy. As I've said before, there is value in it. But pressuring people to like it is silly.

All media has varying degrees of accessibility hurdles to overcome. Some are physical (ballet, immersive gaming), some are intellectual (reading level, background knowledge and theory), some are psychological (I'm a completionist, and neither choose-your-own adventures or interactive novels hold any appeal for me because of that). When we are interested in those media, we take the time to overcome those hurdles if possible (I could never be a ballet dancer, I could probably read Deleuze and Guattari if I joined a study group or took a class, and I could overcome my aversion to multiple-choice stories if the story interested me enough). When we are insufficiently interested in that media, we do not devote that time to mastering the skills needed to consume or participate in it.

This isn't a dichotomy; this is the acknowledgment that media consumption requires a skill set that we can choose to acquire or not.

Yoga's another example where people who are into it get very defensive. I have physical disabilities. There is accessible yoga that I could do. Many people with physical disabilities enjoy doing accessible yoga. I don't. Before I became disabled, I didn't enjoy it either. People who like yoga will swear up and down that I'm not doing it right, that there is a type of yoga out there for me, that I am not giving it a fair chance (despite months of effort!) but the point is that the types of yoga I am physically capable of doing don't give me the pleasure of mastery that it does people who like yoga.

That's it. That's all.

For the last time, I don't care what you do with your spare time or what you find fulfillment in. It's your insistence that people who don't enjoy the thing are hating on the thing that is undermining your argument.

No one fucking cares about what you do in your spare time. No one fucking cares about what you do in your spare time. No one fucking cares about what you do in your spare time.

But, your fox-and-sour-grapes argument about ballet is elitist, ignorant, and ablelist. There are many more modes for participation than becoming a ballerina. Expecting mastery in yoga is Missing. The. Fucking. Point. So is demanding it of gamePLAY. Throughout this entire argument you've been bagging on casual games, accessible games, story-based games, and just about every game except the impossible one that scratches your itch but is impossible for you to play.

No one fucking cares about what you do in your spare time. But that's not enough for you. You have repeatedly voiced "criticism" of contemporary game design that are factually incorrect and grounded in a complete ignorance of the field. And continuing to shift attention from your expressed negative opinions about game design onto something that NO ONE FUCKING CARES ABOUT is blatantly dishonest.

You seem to be very distressed that I don't play videogames in my spare time. Perhaps rather than shouting, you should examine why you feel this way.

No one fucking cares about what you do in your spare time. No one fucking cares about what you do in your spare time. No one fucking cares about what you do in your spare time.

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