<story><title>Video Games Satisfy Basic Human Needs</title><url>http://nautil.us/blog/how-video-games-satisfy-basic-human-needs</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>croon</author><text>I didn&amp;#x27;t think I would, but I seem by those archetypes to land under &amp;quot;Achievers&amp;quot;, this despite me never 100%:ing a game (the rare exception being Binding of Isaac, love the item synergy sandbox&amp;#x2F;breaking of that game), and hating achievements, never looking for collectables, etc.&lt;p&gt;I do however always accumulate&amp;#x2F;optimize for maximum ammo&amp;#x2F;currency&amp;#x2F;gear&amp;#x2F;weapons&amp;#x2F;items, to the point where I believe I completed &amp;gt;80% of Half-Life with the crowbar, to conserve ammo.&lt;p&gt;I also like you love singleplayer games and a well-written story, but I on the other hand hate open world games (because they&amp;#x27;re never open nor &amp;quot;worldy&amp;quot; enough), and equally hate too linear games (looking at CoD past 3 and the like).&lt;p&gt;I grew up loving games like Quake (for the multiplayer&amp;#x2F;mechanics&amp;#x2F;general tech side of it), The Longest Journey for the story, Half-Life for both aspects, and a bunch of games struggling with either storytelling&amp;#x2F;mechanics or other but loveable for their attempt at trying something more than they could achieve (examples being Outcast, Citizen Kabuto, Oni, Advent Rising, Too Human).&lt;p&gt;When thinking of what the last bigger&amp;#x2F;sorta AAA games I enjoyed playing was I think it&amp;#x27;s Half-Life 2 (kind of obvious), but also FarCry (1), Crysis (1, but also Warhead), Just Cause 2.&lt;p&gt;All of them had a story, most of them were open world and allowed you to approach a problem with undesigned solutions, which is what I really love.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve bought GTA 4, 5, Far Cry 3, 4, Just Cause 3, and many many others, played them for less than a handful hours, and given up because it just feels like I have to churn this mill just to advance a movie, at which point I may as well watch a movie, or watch someone else play the game (which I now completely understand as a concept).&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Open world&amp;quot; games I&amp;#x27;ve played in recent years - after the original concept of open world once went linear for consoles, and then consoles catching up enough to enable open world games again - don&amp;#x27;t seem to be so much about designing a world with some rules and a number of tools, but simply providing more than 1 or 2 designed solutions to a problem, which feels completely hollow to me.&lt;p&gt;I have no doubt that this is why MineCraft (which I haven&amp;#x27;t played much for lack of story&amp;#x2F;&amp;quot;game&amp;quot;, although having plenty of sandbox&amp;#x2F;open world) and that genre has sprouted up to much success.&lt;p&gt;Sorry for hijacking. I don&amp;#x27;t know how this turned into a longwinded games rant, but it raised questions since I identified with you, while still feeling characterized under &amp;quot;achiever&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>TeMPOraL</author><text>Wow, the original &amp;quot;4 types of players&amp;quot; paper is really, really good and also very detailed. Makes some interesting observations about the dynamics of those types of players in a shared game world.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mud.co.uk&amp;#x2F;richard&amp;#x2F;hcds.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mud.co.uk&amp;#x2F;richard&amp;#x2F;hcds.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I seem to be closest to the explorer type. I always liked single player games more, and I prefer well-written lore, depth and new things to discover over the mechanics or social aspect.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aluhut</author><text>You should really try Rimworld. I am just like you. I usually downloaded (stopped bying them for this reason but I still had hope for one that would justify the money...) one of those AAA games, played it on a weekend and deleted them afterwards. Battlefield was perfect since they had an open Beta. Guess there is a reason why you have to pay for Betas today and Demos are pretty much dead.&lt;p&gt;Rimworld is now the only game I have and it is the first time I didn&amp;#x27;t regret a single cent I spend for it. Even when it&amp;#x27;s 30$.&lt;p&gt;Rimworld is a Base Building game. Handling may be compared to Prison Architect but with seemingly never ending depth (Prison Architect didn&amp;#x27;t work for me too...). The learning curve is part of the game and even now with the extended tutorial, you&amp;#x27;ll find new ways to optimize and new possibilities. The Modding community is very active too.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;rimworldgame.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;rimworldgame.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also the reddit community is also pretty active: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;RimWorld&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;RimWorld&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Video Games Satisfy Basic Human Needs</title><url>http://nautil.us/blog/how-video-games-satisfy-basic-human-needs</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>croon</author><text>I didn&amp;#x27;t think I would, but I seem by those archetypes to land under &amp;quot;Achievers&amp;quot;, this despite me never 100%:ing a game (the rare exception being Binding of Isaac, love the item synergy sandbox&amp;#x2F;breaking of that game), and hating achievements, never looking for collectables, etc.&lt;p&gt;I do however always accumulate&amp;#x2F;optimize for maximum ammo&amp;#x2F;currency&amp;#x2F;gear&amp;#x2F;weapons&amp;#x2F;items, to the point where I believe I completed &amp;gt;80% of Half-Life with the crowbar, to conserve ammo.&lt;p&gt;I also like you love singleplayer games and a well-written story, but I on the other hand hate open world games (because they&amp;#x27;re never open nor &amp;quot;worldy&amp;quot; enough), and equally hate too linear games (looking at CoD past 3 and the like).&lt;p&gt;I grew up loving games like Quake (for the multiplayer&amp;#x2F;mechanics&amp;#x2F;general tech side of it), The Longest Journey for the story, Half-Life for both aspects, and a bunch of games struggling with either storytelling&amp;#x2F;mechanics or other but loveable for their attempt at trying something more than they could achieve (examples being Outcast, Citizen Kabuto, Oni, Advent Rising, Too Human).&lt;p&gt;When thinking of what the last bigger&amp;#x2F;sorta AAA games I enjoyed playing was I think it&amp;#x27;s Half-Life 2 (kind of obvious), but also FarCry (1), Crysis (1, but also Warhead), Just Cause 2.&lt;p&gt;All of them had a story, most of them were open world and allowed you to approach a problem with undesigned solutions, which is what I really love.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve bought GTA 4, 5, Far Cry 3, 4, Just Cause 3, and many many others, played them for less than a handful hours, and given up because it just feels like I have to churn this mill just to advance a movie, at which point I may as well watch a movie, or watch someone else play the game (which I now completely understand as a concept).&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Open world&amp;quot; games I&amp;#x27;ve played in recent years - after the original concept of open world once went linear for consoles, and then consoles catching up enough to enable open world games again - don&amp;#x27;t seem to be so much about designing a world with some rules and a number of tools, but simply providing more than 1 or 2 designed solutions to a problem, which feels completely hollow to me.&lt;p&gt;I have no doubt that this is why MineCraft (which I haven&amp;#x27;t played much for lack of story&amp;#x2F;&amp;quot;game&amp;quot;, although having plenty of sandbox&amp;#x2F;open world) and that genre has sprouted up to much success.&lt;p&gt;Sorry for hijacking. I don&amp;#x27;t know how this turned into a longwinded games rant, but it raised questions since I identified with you, while still feeling characterized under &amp;quot;achiever&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>TeMPOraL</author><text>Wow, the original &amp;quot;4 types of players&amp;quot; paper is really, really good and also very detailed. Makes some interesting observations about the dynamics of those types of players in a shared game world.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mud.co.uk&amp;#x2F;richard&amp;#x2F;hcds.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mud.co.uk&amp;#x2F;richard&amp;#x2F;hcds.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I seem to be closest to the explorer type. I always liked single player games more, and I prefer well-written lore, depth and new things to discover over the mechanics or social aspect.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TeMPOraL</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;it raised questions since I identified with you, while still feeling characterized under &amp;quot;achiever&amp;quot;.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Interesting, because I identify with a lot of what you wrote, too.&lt;p&gt;- optimizing for ammo&amp;#x2F;currency: check; I do that out of the fear that I might need it later, which in case of Fallout 1 and 2 ended up with me finishing the game with more gear and cash than I knew what to do with&lt;p&gt;- I did play a lot of shooters too - mostly Quake 2 &amp;amp; 3, Unreal Tournament, and currently Overwatch&lt;p&gt;- I do enjoy achievements in most games a lot, which presumably makes me fall under the &amp;quot;achiever&amp;quot; archetype&lt;p&gt;As for open world games - they tend to bore me out after a while, when I hit the discovery limit. First time I discovered Minecraft (a friend gave me a pirate copy -&amp;gt; no multiplayer), I spent many hours exploring caves, discovering biomes, and building subway tunnels. But when I reached the point of knowing pretty much all the mobs, blocks and features of the game, I got bored. Similarly with Terraria and Starbound (though I started playing it again now on a server with a group of friends - probably scratching my &amp;quot;social&amp;quot; itch there).&lt;p&gt;So the categories are pretty fluid, I guess.</text></comment>