/gamergatehq/ - We still have our A.T. Field!

TERMINOLOGY

"Flat Games"

In the below, a video game is called a "Flat Game" if:

1) The difficulty curve is flat, or nearly so.

2) The difficulty level is ridiculously low.

This characterizes quite a few of the most hated games that have come out of the Indie Clique, as is explained below.

BJ Fogg Behavioral Model

First, regarding their philosophy of the mind: There's a Psychologist by the name of B.J. Fogg who developed a model of behavior; the "Fogg Behavior Model.[1] " The Indie Clique uses this model when developing their video games.

According to Fogg, there are three "Principal Elements" required for someone to do things: Motivation, Ability, and "Trigger". Motivation makes you want to do things, Ability is what makes you able to do things, and Triggers set you off to do the thing. To rephrase it, an able, motivated person who is triggered to do something will do it. Someone who is not able, or not motivated, or not triggered will not do things.

Here's an example: Let's say you're a normie/small child trying to get through Banjo-Kazooie. You try to get to the end as fast as possible, so you play through with the motivation to get to the next level. You need Jiggies to get to the next level; this is your trigger to go collect Jiggies. If you suck, you get the easy ones until you have enough.

This model appears to have been developed with the goal of helping people modify their behavior voluntarily [2]. In the below, we suggest that elements of the Indie Clique are using this behavior model when designing/marketing their games. That is, they appear to be using this model to induce behavior in people other than themselves.

ANALYSIS OF FLAT GAMES

Motivation

First, you have to be motivated to do certain things in the game. Normally, video games motivate behavior via progress; that is, you want to get to the next level/stage/thing, so you shoot ships/collect stuffs/etc. However, in Flat Games, the motivation is, for most players, external to the game itself.

Some examples:

-Depression Quest, developed by Zoe Quinn, is a game that would have gone mostly unheard of if not for a push from Games Journalists and Gamergate[3]; Zoe Quinn had no reputation as a developer[4], and the game had no conventional advertising campaign. That is, Depression Quest was a game that people played because of the controversy surrounding the developer.

-Gone Home was a game that had almost no fun factor - it's a game about walking around and reading things [5]. Lacking this, Gone Home's advertisement scheme appeals its ("innovative") lack of violence, inflating its artistic value greatly [6]. That is, the people who designed Gone Home attempted to get people to play the game by advertising it as art in the form of a video game, rather than as a video game. So, the motivation is to consume a piece of art, rather than to play a video game.

-Undertale had a large pre-existing community surrounding it, due to Homestuck[7]; that is, Toby Fox said that he was going to make a game, and people who already knew who Toby Fox was flocked to it[8]. That is, Undertale was a game that gained popularity because they liked the person who was going to make it. However, it is worth noting that after gaining popularity, a set of people played it simply because it did, undeniably, break some ground.

-Heather Kelley's Breakaway (a lesser-known title Heather Kelley made for the explicit purpose of enacting social change[9]) was heavily advertised by UNFPA.

Although an external motivation to play the game is common among Flat Games, it is not something that should be used to define such games. Rather, external motivation is often required for someone to even begin playing a game that does not look like it is fun, else they will completely fail (like Breakaway).

Ability

Next, you have to be able to play the game. Most video game developers, striving to make the game fun, increase the difficulty of the game as time goes on, expecting the player to get better as they play. The author believes that this is best explained through a concept that psychologists call "flow"[10] - basically, a combination of a high skill level and a high difficulty makes the player feel a rush, so a good developer will try to make a difficulty curve that pushes gamers to get good at a reasonable rate. That is, a good developer makes you develop skills as you play, so that you get good, so that you can have more fun as the game progresses. Further, note that this is actually where the term "Flat Game" comes from: the difficulty curve is flat, so you feel "flat" when you play the game as a gamer.

These Flat Games, however, do not do this. For example, in Gone Home [11], Revolution 60 [12], Depression Quest [13], and Breakaway [14] the difficulty curve is (mostly) a flat line, and all of these games are rather easy. That is, almost everyone is able to beat these games. Moreover, most of these games have been designed to be accessible to as many people as possible; Revolution 60 and Breakaway are available on mobile [9,15], Depression Quest and Breakaway are free [9,16], and so on.

That is, Flat Games do not develop a difficulty curve. Flat Games are designed to be consumed with as little effort as possible, and do not strive to improve the player's ability to actually play the game. Moreover, many of these are simply designed to be accessed by as many people as possible, sometimes even without regard for a direct profit motive.

Undertale also has a flat difficulty curve, mostly; the majority of the game and its routes turn out to be reasonably easy, but not as much as the above Flat Games [17]. Even so, the difficulty curve is far from steep. However, the genocide route spikes the difficulty very sharply at the end. This appears to have been an artistic choice; Toby Fox wanted you to lose, often, during the Genocide route.

Trigger

And of course, you have to have a chain of triggers that compels you to actually do the thing in the game. Normally this is done by placing some sort of barrier in front of the player; a ship shooting at you to induce dodging/shooting, a locked door that requires you to search for a key, and so on.

Triggers, in general, are very basic; either you're avoiding getting hit by something ("I want to keep my health, I can dodge, I get out of the way.") or there's a door ("I want to get through the door, I can find a key, I go hunt for the key.") or something. There's no real way around making these very basic and primal. As such, they tend to fall into three categories: facilitators ("I can now do this thing!"), sparks (Reflexive, instant, impulsive), and signals (Messages, signs, etc.) [1]

There's not a lot of playing around that can be done with this, and the use of all three of these are often necessary to make a video game. However, a preference for "signals" rather than "sparks" and "facilitators" is prevalent in Flat Games, compared to most video games.

-Depression Quest's triggers are solely signals - you are told to make a choice from a list. [18]

-Gone Home's triggers are a combination of facilitators (keys, codes) and signals (indicators that you *can* do things). [19]

-Revolution 60's triggers are primarily signals - that is, the game is largely low-skill quick time events. [20]

-Breakaway relies on a mixture of sparks and signals, the signals being more central. [14]

-Undertale also leans towards having more signals than facilitators and sparks, but does have a healthy mix of them. [21]

A second point is that triggers and motivation are very often "coupled" in video games; that is, you are motivated to play the game because it has fun gameplay. That is, the motivation to play the game is directly tied to the types of triggers you expect to experience.

However, Flat Games actively "decouple" the motivation and the trigger; that is, the motivation to play the game and the things that directly induce behavior are different, as described above. This is because this set of Flat Games is created artificially within the context of this framework; outside of this framework, most of these developer's decisions make absolutely no sense. However, within this framework, many design decisions are clear, but unimaginative.

Conclusion 1

The conclusion here is that the most hated video games from the Indie Clique can be accurately characterized as "Flat Games" without this term being overly inclusive of other games. Moreover, the Indie Clique appears to be using B.J. Fogg's behavioral model as a mechanism to induce behavior in players; evidence for this comes from the distinct differences in Motivation/Ability/Triggers between Flat Games and most other games, as well as the decoupling of Motivation and Triggers which is not apparent in other games.

Conclusion 2

Despite not coming out of the Indie Clique, Undertale deserves to be classified as a Flat Game; with two exceptions (the last two fights in the Genocide route), Undertale not only has a flat difficulty curve, but shares a non-negligible number of characteristics of these Indie Clique games.

There is an argument to be made that Undertale having a reasonable mix of sparks as triggers and requiring a non-negligible degree of skill to play disqualifies it as a Flat Game. However, given Toby Fox's initial target audience (that is, Homestuck fans), it is readily assumed that Undertale was a game that was very easy for the average Homestuck fan to play.

Thus, there are games that haven't come out of the Indie Clique that are Flat Games. Moreover, such games have the potential to become popular. That is, there is a very real danger that this sort of analytically designed game can become popular and deliver propaganda effectively to a large audience; Undertale, in the author's opinion, is a clear proof-of-concept for this.

Psychological Manipulation

Applying this behavioral model allows the developer to induce certain behaviors in players. Moreover, by applying other methods of Psychology, they can use a single behavior of yours to induce further behaviors. Think of this as a sort of "Psychological Stun Lock" - the developer has incredible control over your actions, because they managed to get you to act in a certain way once.

Indeed, a lot of Flat Games (although, definitely not all) are designed to give the player a large degree of freedom, while encouraging the player give up large chunks of that freedom. Revolution 60, Depression Quest, Undertale, and Breakaway all give the player a large amount of choice, but they try to lock you in to a specific route once you pick your route.

Revolution 60 is perhaps the most obvious offender: you have the choice to either play as a straight, professional assassin, or you can play as a sort of rogue. Once you make your first choice, you have a strong motive to continue making choices consistent with that character; this is because you feel like you're on a certain "route," and you don't want to get off it. (Note that the endings do not pan out like this. This is perhaps due to Brianna Wu emulating the style of game, while not actually being part of the indie clique, and thus not understanding the cliques goals.)

Depression Quest also does this, but it's more tightly guarded: you see choices that you "should" be able to make, but aren't. This doubles as an artistic choice ("You can't do that, you're depressed, silly! Depressed people are just incapable of things.") and a means of forcibly shepherding you into a set of actions.

Undertale does this too: once you're on the genocide route in Undertale, you don't really want to get off of it, because it took a lot of effort to get on the genocide route in the first place. The same applies to the pacifist route. However, the game spends an excessive amount of time making you feel bad for finishing the genocide route; the game warps the music and makes the game seem empty a lot, and at the end it breaks the game and only lets you play again if your character sells its soul.

Yet, I would suggest that Breakaway is the most important example; you're constantly being given the option to be a jerk to the girls, or to be reasonably nice to them. If you're nice to the girls and let them play, your team goes to the championships and wins. If you don't, then the game locks you out of shooting during certain matches, and you have scripted losses in those matches. As an example, there is a "futsal" match towards the end of the game, where you can side with the sexists or the girl; if you side with the sexists, you're allowed to shoot in the first half (and even score high enough to secure a win), but you can't shoot at all during the second half and your teammates act like you lost (even if you won). Moreover, if you generally act like a jackass, you get slapped on the wrist for it at each step; either Zak or your little sister shames you, or your coach gets on to you. Moreover, this is the point of the whole game; the point is to shame you into doing the right thing.

A possible explanation of why this works follows:

1) Humans like to be consistent (Cognitive dissonance)

2) Gamers typically like to get "the best" ending (Completionism)

Basically, because you've made a choice already, you want to keep acting within the boundaries of that choice; this is well known. After all, if you've started playing as a complete pacifist, you would feel odd suddenly murdering everything in your path.

The worrying thing, then, is that it is entirely possible for a malicious developer to do the following:

1) Induce a certain behavior using the BJ Fogg Behavioral model.

2) Psychologically lock the player into making a series of choices.

3) Point out that the player has "chosen" to do a series of actions.

4) Change player's beliefs.

Indeed, this is why so many people were concerned about Undertale; that is, with the exception of step 1), the Genocide route is a perfect example of this happening. (Indeed, Toby Fox perhaps does the opposite of enacting step 1), by making it very difficult to get on the non-neutral routes.)

Possible Solutions

The natural methods of preventing this sort of thing from working are social change - that is, we must take action to make the people around us less vulnerable to these sorts of psychological tricks.

Unfortunately, highly effective solutions require a public outcry or popular media support. Given the downturn in activity in Gamergate, it is necessary to enact a more blunt solution.

Thus, I hereby propose that we mock people who would be vulnerable to this type of propaganda, and discourage the sort of behavior that makes one vulnerable to propaganda. So, what are the vulnerable points?

1) First, people are vulnerable to this sort of propaganda based on their actions during the game. Unfortunately, there's no real counter to this: if you're playing a game, then you're more or less bound by the rules of the game unless you want to lose the game.

2) Next, we could claim that people are vulnerable to this sort of propaganda based on the types of games they choose to play. Unfortunately, there is no obvious way to tell whether or not a game is propaganda before you have played it.

3) Last, we could claim that people are vulnerable to this sort of propaganda based on their willingness to take lessons from the game outside of the game. This is perhaps the weak point of the propaganda: if people stop taking the lessons in the game seriously, then even if the propaganda is consumed, the propaganda will not be effective.

Given that there is no effective method of identifying propaganda before playing the game, I claim that actions taken to reduce people's willingness to take lessons from video games would be effective. Thus, I propose the following two courses of action:

1) Don't take the messages contained in video games seriously. That is, if a video game delivers a powerful message about how friendship overcomes everything? Go ahead and cry your manly tear, but don't think that friendship overcomes everything in the real world.

2) Mock people who take the messages contained in video games seriously. That is, if someone says something to the effect of "Killing people is bad! Didn't you learn that lesson from Undertale?" you should make fun of them for needing Undertale to teach them that killing people is bad. Alternatively, if someone says something to the effect of "Killing people in war is good! Didn't you learn that lesson from US WAR PROPAGANDA GAME?", you should make fun of them for being an idiot who thinks killing people is good because of video games.

After all, we mock anyone who thinks video games turn people into murderers.

We should similarly mock those who can't tell video games from reality. Because awful people will take advantage of those people, and we need such people to harden up. Quickly.

Citations

[1] https://archive.is/AGp07

[2] https://archive.is/HDqw7

[3] https://archive.is/En7tH is Grayson's article. This helped spark Gamergate, which led to Depression Quest's fame.

[4] https://archive.is/6omer

[5] https://archive.is/cQD8v

[6] https://archive.is/cQD8v, https://archive.is/LqwPI

[7] https://archive.is/jBcnA

[8] https://archive.is/CeCMr

[9] https://archive.is/VGmk9

[10] https://archive.is/OY3rH

[11] https://archive.is/LqwPI

[12] https://archive.is/I4C0e

[13] https://archive.is/1xjqL

[14] http://www.breakawaygame.com/play.php?lang=EN (This flash game doesn't archive or download very well.)

[15] https://archive.is/pH8RE

[16] https://archive.is/bI3wF

[17] https://archive.is/yUwq6

[18] https://archive.is/1xjqL

[19] https://archive.is/LqwPI

[20] https://archive.is/I4C0e

[21] https://archive.is/yUwq6

I think I've seen this thread before - back in April when the video was first released. Is there anything new here besides repeatedly lumping Undertale in with the asshole Indie clique?

>>312031

> along with an analysis of the game Undertale

pirate link: https://mega.nz/#!7JYXARgR!ipOnWS3DtGwQdyPXU_CvWauXOjhwl_9hD06xvMpGKTg

(haven't used since Dec-twentysomething, should still be valid)

Toby Fox and Undertale are relatively benign, but serve as an unwitting model for future SJWs.

He uses chan language fairly fluently, and has a more than surface deep understanding of anonymous board culture. Furthermore, a rich furry tried to overdonate to shoehorn in a self-insert fur character into the game, and Toby hid it behind a very-hard-to-activate easter egg.

There three playthroughs(Neutral, Pacifist and Genocide). Regardless of whether you choose to fight or tiptoe your way around enemies, the core gameplay remains largely the same. You still dodge silly sprites or effects with your red heart/soul in a white box. Fighting and killing adds an additional mechanic of a 'golf swing' type timing meter to determine damage values.

Fighting and the Genocide route are actively discouraged by the game designer and NPC dialogue/events. While it is a valid way to play the game, you are consistently given guilt trips while playing in an attempt to emotionally manipulate you. It is also the shorter story, with less effort given from a writer's perspective, and you are given new, harder boss fights. Furthermore, the game is designed from the ground up with a mechanic that alters multiple playthroughs; when you complete a Genocide run, it "corrupts" the story and its alternate timelines premise by having the game hide small "flag" files on your computer, which tells the game on subsequent playthroughs to make little changes so that when you attempt a Pacifist run, you're reminded that you did a Genocide in the past and more guilt is laid on you. Also it leads to a twist of the Pacifist ending where your harmful actions in the past run corrupts the would-be peaceful NPC characters into spreading hate in a post-game setting across the world. You have to know the exact location of these flag files or use a third-party program made by fans to remove them(which supposedly offended Toby, but if true is probably only because the secret behind the mechanic was laid bare, the way most datamining offends game designers).

Neutral runs are the typical first timer's experience, when they get frustrated by mechanics and fail to negotiate with a monster or find the non-violent solution to a battle, or forget to romance all available NPCs. On completion of a neutral run, you're given specific hints on what to do with your current file or on a new playthrough to get the better Pacifist ending. Therefore, the game and designer clearly favor you playing through the Pacifist route, even if you don't make it the first time.

Knowing that Toby was a longtime member of an Earthbound fan community(the 90's-00's kind where anyone can sign up to a forum but you'd never find such a place without being a superfan), I can appreciate his approach to steering players behavior through gameplay. Earthbound has similar design, most notably in Dungeon Man, a character so obsessed with RPGs and dungeons that he becomes one, and litters the path through himself with commentary on player choices and game design. One of the first things you come to is a fork with left and right paths that lead off screen, and a sign states "87% of players with go left at a fork in dungeons," which then influences the player consciously or subconsciously.

Undertale is not the worst fan-made RPG made, and not SJW by design. It has problems with incongruent style and design, but is a finished product made to be easily digestible by today's sloppier players. It is really only relevant to GamerGate because it bridges the gap between shit made at indie game jams and really polished products made for commercial success, and has a number of easily copied design elements that SJWs would like to use to subvert the industry and made them painfully easy to understand.

>>312036

>Thus, I hereby propose that we mock people who would be vulnerable to this type of propaganda, and discourage the sort of behavior that makes one vulnerable to propaganda. So, what are the vulnerable points?

I love the term "Flat Game."

It's simple, intuitive, easy to understand the context of, and fresh. It's a clear successor to the previous term we coined in 2012ish, "walking simulator" and "non-games." Both have been used successfully, but have since lost their bite and have been largely disarmed through repeated ironic use. Pushing FLAT GAMES into derogatory image macros, infographics will definitely be meme-worthy.

F L A T G A M E S

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>>312074

The new point is that we have a method of identifying Indie Clique games without doing excessive digging on the developer, and that we have a tentative mechanism that we can use to reduce the effectiveness of propaganda.

Harmony "Fuck Marxist Propaganda" Korine is reported to be experimenting with making video games.

Pray he's the antidote.

>>312140

> Pushing FLAT GAMES into derogatory image macros, infographics will definitely be meme-worthy.

This game like is week old Pepsi. It's low energy.

It's FLAT

>>312137

Not to mention that while the game does steer you towards pacifism, it also acknowledges that being merciful is not a be-all-end-all solution to all of your conflicts. If you are doing a non-genocide playthrough, then the three boss battles that you do get in to where the bosses are dead-set on killing you, being merciful won't work and you're forced to come up with alternative solutions (and in Asgore's case, a solution won't come unless you've done a full-pacifist run). This is also flipped on its head during a genocide playthrough, as being merciful won't save Papyrus or Toriel (and you'll get most of your easiest kills when attacking an enemy while the let their guard down and think you're not a threat), and Sans acknowledges before his boss battle and in one of the worst endings, Sans will acknowledge that most of what's happened is his own fault for not confronting and stopping you earlier when it was obvious that you were a threat.

It still has its own issues (i.e. knowing that a genocide or a pacifist run exists at all will inherently damage the experience since your expectations have been altered to reflect it), but I think it handles the topic of killing in video games much better than, say, Spec Ops: The Line and it's grand artistic message of making you do bad things then saying you're a bad person for doing it.

>>312149

Sunset and Tale of Tales would be a much better example. We're talking about game "developers" who:

1. Have no sense of game design

2. Hate gamers

3. Look down on most other video games

4. Rely on nepotism and manufactured controversy for publicity

5. Pretentious, obnoxious and unlikable - PR is an alien concept to them

I can't see Toby Fox as part of this group even though his game has progressive themes. He doesn't shit on gamers or video games. He seems to understand the minds of his target audience perfectly. And /v/ adored Undertale until tumblr found it and started shitting it up.

>>312031

>It has been elsewhere established (See: OMFGNinja's "#GAMERGATE: SMOKING GUN", Thidran's "#ThinkSerious" series, S4T's "#Gamergate: Actually it's About…".

S4T's video is filled with inaccuracies, unsupported claims, and unsupported implications. Somehow I doubt the others are any better.

>a desire to make massive amounts of money from the gamification of education (see: Bill Gates).

There is no evidence of this. It's just bullshit so that S4T and others like him can try to justify their preexisting obsession with Bill Gates and his supposed "Common Core Depopulation Enslavement Agenda".

>BJ Fogg Behavioral Model

This is presented as if it has something to do with videogames, but actually it's just a webpage the writer found that never mentions games.

>The Indie Clique uses this model when developing their video games.

There is no evidence of this, or indeed that any of them even know who this random psychologist is.

>that people will unknowingly be brainwashed by video games

There is no evidence that videogames have any special ability to brainwash people. This seems like McIntosh or Thompson style bullshit where you try to justify why videogames are somehow more dangerous than all the other forms of media that moral-panic mongers have freaked out about in the past.

>Applying this behavioral model allows the developer to induce certain behaviors in players. Moreover, by applying other methods of Psychology, they can use a single behavior of yours to induce further behaviors. Think of this as a sort of "Psychological Stun Lock" - the developer has incredible control over your actions, because they managed to get you to act in a certain way once.

More bullshit trying to justify games somehow being dangerous in a way other media isn't.

>>312228

Holy shit, it took a full 3 days for the low-effort shill to pop up! That's a bad sign.

>S4T's video is filled with inaccuracies, unsupported claims, and unsupported implications. Somehow I doubt the others are any better.

Point to inaccuracies in S4T's video, and then we'll talk.

>There is no evidence of this.

There are 5 lights.

>This is presented as if it has something to do with videogames, but actually it's just a webpage the writer found that never mentions games.

1) Know behavioral model

2) Use behavioral model to predict behavior

3) Design video game to manipulate predicted behavior.

>There is no evidence of this, or indeed that any of them even know who this random psychologist is.

Did you even read the entirety of the post? We can break down the video games they design and show that the components of the design are consistent with a game that was designed within the framework of this behavioral model.

>More bullshit trying to justify games somehow being dangerous in a way other media isn't.

You think they're not trying to do this with other media, too?

>>312030

It isn't about political control.

It's about economic control. Politics is just a tool for that. Just like identity politics and social justice are.

It's all about getting you to buy worthless shit that you don't need or that doesn't even function as advertised and making it impossible for you to report on that lack of quality or usefulness to others.

You HAVE to buy our video game or you're a homophobe.

If you say anything critical about our videogame, it's because you're a racist.

Since you're a racist and a homophobe, we can now get you fired from your job, which will result in you no longer having money.

Then somoene else will get your job. And they better give us our cut.

Or else.

This is what it's all about in the end. An enforced consumer class.

>>312299

>I disagree

>SHILL!

First sign that you aren't interested in the truth, as much as defending your untouchable "dig". I don't see how you can believe that there is a realistic threat of games "brainwashing" people with social justice any more than games can make people violent, or turn them into REACTIONARY MRA RAPE CULTURE RIGHT WING DEATH SQUADS, or whatever the retards say these days. Regardless, if we do what we set out to do and destroy the corrupt media then there will be nobody shilling these turds to the general audience and nobody will play them because they want gameplay.

The BJ Fogg Behavioral Model analysis is meaningless. It just describes a system but doesn't prove anything. It's like jumping in the air, analyzing it with Newtonian physics, and concluding that gravity is a government agenda to keep humans out of space. You use Banjo-Kazooie as an example. How can something like Depression Quest brainwash people but B-K doesn't make me want to go hunt for Jiggies in real life? Your conclusions don't match your analysis.

And how in the fuck is Undertale a "flat game"? It's nowhere close to something like a walking simulator. You're just having a knee-jerk response to the community around the game and trying to shoehorn it into your agenda just like the SocJus cultists try to do it with their agenda.

The j00t connections are interesting, though. After the luggage lad stuff nobody ever bothered to connect him to these people to see the full extent of how they censored us. And if we want to get rid of flat games, the answer is definitely to laugh at and mock them. The audience in general will do what others tell them is cool, and if the media tells them Life is Strange is the coolest thing ever then they will buy it. If they don't like a game then tey won't cover it.

>>312309

>Regardless, if we do what we set out to do and destroy the corrupt media then there will be nobody shilling these turds to the general audience and nobody will play them because they want gameplay.

I thought I'd highlight this because this is a good point. Making sure that the current set of gaming journalists aren't ever taken seriously is a good step towards removing these people's ability to push these sorts of games.

>And if we want to get rid of flat games, the answer is definitely to laugh at and mock them.

Just like the OP said.

>>312309

You're missing the key point that video games aren't made to make people violent or sexist. What's being proposed is that video games are created to get a specific behavior. It's the basic gamification concept of getting people to collect items or grind to raise their rank/level/etc taken to a whole different level.

These people aren't asking if video games can make people sexist/violent/etc. They're looking at how games like Mario encourage you to take risks to find secrets or get 1ups. Or how MMOs encourage you to go on lame as fuck fetch quests. Or how League of Legends gets people to play endlessly to try and improve their rank in ranked mode. And they're wondering how they can use that mechanic to get people to play games and instead of doing what I mentioned above, do things that encourage a social justice mind set.

They already have examples of this. Depression Quest is designed to make you think you're depressed and you can't do anything if you're depressed. It actually rewards you for taking the most depressing answers. That's the kind of stuff they want. Flat, linear, game choice is in your face and obvious, and it pushes an agenda or teaches a message.

>>312442

No wonder its so antithetical to modern games. GTA grew in popularity because it was about having more choices, and NOT following a strict path.

Hell it was originally supposed to a failed cops and robber sim, where you had to stay within the lines.

Why did the car glitch lead them to taking a different direction and asking well what you're the crook instead?

They were embracing what vidya is all about. Not an agressively controlled engine but an open field of choice and consequence.

Even if VR is full of these flat games, its still by any estimate a regression.

I think its important not just to laugh at flat games, but remind people why makers trended towrds such unruly, macabre, kick ass game design throughout history. Its the same desire to explore beyond our human limitations, not to be imprisoned by them.

Just like muh oppresion, the corrupted education system and naive political speech this shit is another mass scale anesthetization push to encourage the majority of people to not think like autonomous citizens, but like serfs and subjects. If you THINK like one you might as well BE one.

>>312858

Look. You might know it, and I know it, but that doesn't mean the casuals do. The point of this is to encourage further innoculation. Why? Because do you really want these ignorant fucks taking your vidya away or not?

>>312859

>doesn't mean the casuals

You're saying people who don't shitpost 8 hours a day on obscure imageboards don't know to not believe everything they are told? If that was the case the religion would be a lot more effective. If people were so dumb I could just walk up to them and tell them that they worship me now and should do what I say then you and I wouldn't have computers or an internet to shitpost on.

>do you really want these ignorant fucks taking your vidya

Who's taking vidya away? You mean the courts making rulings on censorship based off of popular lefty sentiment? Guess what, they'll do the opposite when it's popular to be right wing again. The jackboots aren't gonna kick your door in with ballistic vests and MP5s and confiscate all your Caw A Dudy and Crash Bandicoot anytime soon. And if they do I think we'll have much bigger problems than videogames.

While there is a slight bit of truth to the whole leftwing/marxist indoctrination of children thing. It's really not in videogames. It's in "standardized" mandatory state-sponsored and monitored education. It's in the mainstream media. It's in the White House. It's on TV and Hollywood to an extent. But videogames are almost entirely still the realm of smelly awkward nerdy white dudes who typically are pretty politically moderate and disinterested. Usually leaning a bit right too.

Indie games? Who gives a dick. Any dipshit can make a game and call it "indie". Even non-independent developers call themselves "indie" now. Term is watered down and mostly just means shitty cheap-ass p2w crowdfunded garbage. There's plenty of far left psychos and far right psychos who make their own shit-tier games and release them on Steam and Newgrounds and the Windows Store and any other avenue of indie publishing.

>>312860

> If that was the case the religion would be a lot more effective.

What are…

>militant atheists

>religious radicals

>creationists

>scientologists

>A whole host of cults of personality based off of celebrity

…I'd say it's quite effective for the morons.

And no, games aren't entirely. Look up gamification and who's getting government funding to push lefty games in comparison to before. You think it's a joke, but it's a repeat of what happened to Sommers.

>>312030

Videogames are the only thing not in control of the happy merchant. They will seek to destroy what they cannot control

>>312858

>So this whole damn thread is about "don't get your entire life philosophy from one particular source of goofy assholes"? Well no shit, Sherlock. Jesus fuck, you actually felt compelled to tell us this?

Given that quite a few people do this with other things (See: Religious/Philosophical texts), it seems to me that it's worth stating.

>>312860

>Who's taking vidya away? You mean the courts making rulings on censorship based off of popular lefty sentiment? Guess what, they'll do the opposite when it's popular to be right wing again. The jackboots aren't gonna kick your door in with ballistic vests and MP5s and confiscate all your Caw A Dudy and Crash Bandicoot anytime soon. And if they do I think we'll have much bigger problems than videogames.

See: DOAX3. Just because nobody's kicking down the door doesn't mean video games aren't being blocked from coming to certain audiences.