How come books are such rip offs?
It's about how those hours are being fulfilled, not just clogging your time with whatever is cheap and fun.
the ONLY cartoonists you should consider gleaning anything from are Daniel Clowes and Paul Kirchner
Are there any video games that aren't a complete waste of time?
>>7813260
who the fuck pays $25 for lotr?
do people not like django unchained?
>>7813290
Why do book worshiping autists still act like it's hard to get published these days?
>rocks
>price = 0
>infinite entertainment
>>7813271
Exactly, this is what fucking consumerism has done to our culture. People are ACTUALLY rating things based on the ratio of dollars spent to hours something has enraptured you.
PICKING MY NOSE AND EATING MY OWN FUCKING BOOGERS MUST BE THE ULTIMATE ENTERTAINMENT ACTIVITY BECAUSE I'VE PROBABLY SPENT HUNDREDS OF HOURS DOING IT OVER THE COURSE OF MY LIFE AND NEVER SPENT A CENT YOU FUCKING CRETINS.
Walking simulators, JK Rowling, 2 hour long capeshit flicks and 'binge watching' television series. This is what the early 21st century will be remembered for.
>>7813300
I was genuinely wondering if there were. Havent played in a long while and dont want to waste my time killing bears in azeroth at this point in my life.
>>7813315
MMORPGs are skinner boxes meant to get you to invest as much time as possible with as many human addiction triggers they could add.
>>7813290
i'm curious about this too, desu.
>>7813290
Hermione trainer, Dark Souls.
>>7813290
>>7813326
>>7813328
>Hermione trainer
Incomplete garbage
>>7813260
>>7813315
>>7813326
What do you mean by 'waste of time' ?
You can argue that anything that doesn't help you to achieve your goals is a waste of time (books movies music internet video games etc)
Books can give you some insight and some knowledge, but unless you are reading career related stuff, this knowledge means next to nothing.
>>7813323
But bro, the dollar per hour ratio is sick! I spend 70 hours a week playing WoW and only have to pay $15/mo!
It's not like I lose anything by devoting an inordinate amount of my time to a completely pointless activity right?
The worst thing is MMOs aren't even social games anymore. When I used to play them there was a real community, you couldn't solo shit, you had to be with people and make friends. Some of my lifelong friends were made in Everquest. Games actually had books in them, you had to read to do quests. It was actually a world, if you wanted to go somewhere far away you had to think about it, make a route and plan a little bit. The game was about making friends and exploring the world with them. We spent as much time discussing lore as exploring dungeons. This magic lasted maybe two expansions before SOE killed it.
But now in WoW you just use dungeon finder to do cross server groups with complete randoms, you don't need ANY social interaction, just press button, be matchmade with randoms, get loot. Quests are just follow the glowy light to the bad thing then kill it. The world is basically just teleport wherever you want with fast travel or go in a straight line with flying mounts. The game is explicitly about progression and nothing more.
The sad thing is the skinnerization has permanently malformed the MMO playerbase. Those original players have moved on and been replaced with people who only understand the MMO as a skinnerbox and would quickly be bored by a true online world. Where are my purples? WTF, WHERE IS MY MATCH MAKER BUTTON?
>>7813363
Go make some real friends, loser.
>BUT BUT MUH GRINDING VIDYA WAS ABOUT MAKING LE FRIENDSHIP AND MAGIC BAWWWW
Kill yourself lmao
>>7813271
Yeah, even the best games I've played are full of some sort of padding. Silent Hill 2 is full of wandering around the city, and you have to tediously kill the same enemies in Dark Souls. I've heard gamers say that it's important for you to like, immerse yourself in the environment or something, but art needs to be more than a virtual reality simulator for me.
And there's also those "non-games" which are just elaborate choose-your-own adventure stories, which maybe show some promise in allowing you to take part in a good story, but nothing has come close to even a minor masterpiece of literature.
>>7813331
I got my fill desu.
What about it was so incomplete you call it garbage for being unfinished?
>>7813335
I think the video game is a unique and potentially incredible story telling medium.
The video game creates, in effect, a virtual world. We speak of worldbuilding in sci-fi and fantasy literature but a video game allows you to do this literally. People, places and things are placed into existence by the game developer just as they are in a book. A video game has one chief advantage over the traditional forms: It can be banal.
In movies, exposition must be kept to a minimum on banal matters. You have to skimp on things to fit the time slot. In books, banality is more tolerable but it must fit within some semblance of a narrative or a reader will become bored or lost in petty details. In a game you can pack in as many petty details, as much of the banality of life as one can imagine. This makes the game more immersive, at least in theory. The potential is there but few people have taken full advantage of the medium.
Again, the primary issue with the video game is the audience. The video game audience is stupid and getting stupider. Some games, like Planescape, Arcanum, the old isometric RPGs, have literary qualities that are admirable. Definitely better than most genre fiction of the times they were made in.
Other games, like Dark Souls, create an amazing world to explore. The writing is limited but most of the narrative is delivered through imagery, a bit like a comic book.
>>7813378
The 'padding' is one of the things video games could - and sometimes do - use to their advantage in an artistic way. Reading about someone doing minor things on their way through the plot is usually tedious - in films, it's always a montage. But video games can use the 'padding' to make narrative and thematic developments carry more weight. For example, Silent Hill 4 has a whole host of thematic concerns to do with childhood and the desire to return to the comfort of the womb, so for the first half of the game, where you traverse other worlds via a portal in your apartment bathroom, returning to said apartment refills your health and keeps you safe. And in the second half the room no longer does this, forcing you - and your player character, a reclusive loner - to move away from the comfort of your safe zone, which now is just as hostile as everywhere else. It's a neat little narrative contour that wouldn't work as well without the 'padding' of the actual gameplay in the first half.
>>7813417
>>7813427
>People taking video games seriously
Laughed in real life
>>7813427
90% of stories are about characters moving out of their safe zones, and some of them are even effective. Your description of Silent Hill 4 just sounds like a long drawn out example of that concept.
>>7813450
It's an example of a means of executing that concept that isn't possible in literature or movies, a way of making the medium reflect the message. I'm not suggesting that it's a superior way of executing it - to you it might seem "drawn out" - but it's definitely an effective one in my view.
>$0
>1200+ hours
>0
Do I win?
>>7813466
your life must be awful
>>7813471
>>7813363
>When I used to play them there was a real community, you couldn't solo shit, you had to be with people and make friends.
This is painfully true. Dungeon finder killed human interaction in wow to the point where the game wasn't playable.
>>7813290
I had a goddamned blast playing Half-Life 2 and Far Cry 3 and 4, and nothing anyone says can change that.
Those games do a great job of setting up extremely varied and challenging combat scenarios, and that's all I want in a game.
Also Starcraft is so intense that I know guys who have quit playing it because it was too stressful. They play LoL all day long but get run ragged by three games of SC2. That's got to mean something.
>>7813461
Well time is limited and I prefer not to put in several hours into a game to get a relatively trivial concept.
>>7813260
>I just want to spend money to waste time
Why are you here? You read books for knowledge. Even your typical fiction entertainment book gives you knowledge to walk way with. You are improving your mind.
>>7813466
>tfw I actually paid for that game but never played a substantial amount of time
That game is boring.
>>7813260
>Not reading the poems.
>>7813727
b-but muh hats
did you at least get the rest of the orange box when you bought it? cant possibly say portal was boring
>>7813330
he wasn't the first to say that
>>7813290
I'm still of a blooming generation, but vidya as of late (pretty much anything after 2006) has been complete shit. I think The Last of Us was the first game I played to complete satisfaction since. Everything else tries to milk consumers like dairy cows via micro-transactions and releases on pure hype with no delivery. It's honestly really hard to compete with the glory days of Halo 3 and WoW before the recession hit.
>>7813330
>he thinks evoking Bertrand "I Poorly Read The Entire Western Philosophical Canon" Russel will strengthen his argument
>>7813260
unless you get them from the library then its $0.00 for something potentially life changing/life affirming
>>7813305
>Walking simulators, JK Rowling, 2 hour long capeshit flicks and 'binge watching' television series. This is what the early 21st century will be remembered for.
if it's "remembered" at all, in the sense we're used to. no, i think this past decade is going to be flushed down the old memory hole, beyond which history remains irretrievably distant in the past. we're going to turn around in 2020 with no idea how we got there.
>>7813731
source?
>>7813739
I don't think he poorly read it. He just disagreed with certain philosophers (like Nietzsche for instance). A History of Western Philosophy is flawed (mostly due to Russell's predominant love for logic), but it does give some good social context for people looking to get into philosophy.
Plus, Russell, overall, was a great philosopher and political thinker (as well as mathematician), explaining concepts clearly and concisely for the masses.
>>7813305
kekd at walking simulators.
>>7813445
#VideoGamesMatter
>>7813290
I rather enjoyed the first Portal, BioShock 2, and The Last of Us
Sly Cooper 2 was always fun back in the day desu
>>7813287
Subnormality! Is cool desu
nobody cares how you spend your time, just do what you want and don't give a shit about what people think. If playing videogames or watching a movie makes you happy then by all means, really.
>>7813290
Dark souls. And surprise surprise it's based off a literary concept.
>>7813330
what a stupid normie
Mother of god, even I who only buys pristine new copies of books because muh OCD wouldn't spend $25 on a book. Whoever made that chart is a fucking retard, if they want to buy new books but are conscientious of price, then buy paperbacks off BD or amazon for like $5
Also, half of the vidya time will be spent on loading screens, and then out of the remainder very little of it will be completely unique content. Campaign modes on games rarely last longer than 10 hours if you're doing it slowly (excluding obvious ones such as skyrim).
But who the fuck sits there reading a book thinking about the dollar to hour ratio? The fag who made that chart was just looking for an excuse as to why he sits on his fat hamplanet ass on vidya all day, and all he managed to produce was this shitty argument.
>>7813290
Metal Gear Solid 1-4. Especially the second one "has been considered an early example of a postmodern video game and has been cited as one of the most important examples of artistic expression in the medium." (wikipedia)
inb4
>wikipedia
>source
>>7813832
I vouch that these are probably the only games worth playing, maybe SotC as well, and perhaps along with some VNs like 999
>>7813935
>video games
>worth playing
>>7813260
> not including the price of electricity
Somebody's not paying their own bills!
>>>>7813831
I buy new books, but even my autistic ass goes to the library.
I usually buy a copy of a book I love and want to reread and marginalia the fuck out of.
>>7813739
Just because Russel sucked at reading philosophers he disagreed with does not make him a bad philosopher.
>>7813337
But the purpose of life isn't your career.
>>7814153
You can't possibly know that.
If you play SoC for 183 hours you'd be entertained by watching paint dry
That game is like 30 hours max.
>>7813290
OP game is actually way better than anything mentioned here so far and is not a waste of time.
>>7813331
Spend a good 20 hours playing it.
My dick is still broken though.
JUST A FEW MORE DAYS UNTIL PRINCESS TRAINER GOLD EDITION GUYS!
>>7814159
It's seems pretty bold to assume that my entire life should be devoted to my employment. What if I retire/get fired, should I commit sudoku?
>>7814185
But I didn't assume your entire life was your career, you assumed nobody's purpose was their career.
>>7813305
I feel you mate, this and shit like speed reading, pick up artistry, fandoms. What the fuck is going wrong.
Passage by Jason Rohrer is a great example of a video game poem (the cost per hour is like $10-20 though).
Journey is pretty fucking brilliant as well.
Mass Effect?
>>7813260
What kind of retard spends two hundred dollars for dvds he could watch for free and more conveniently?
>>7813813
>nobody cares how you spend your time
Is that why they get into endless arguments about it on the internet? Because they don't care about it?
>>7813260
Fuck it, you're not even trying and you managed +60 replies.
>>7813290
chess
It's a video game now because I'm not going to go to a public elementary school library just to play against warm bodies.
Extremely simple mechanics and rules, extremely balanced. It is an exact test of wit between two individuals.
It is the perfect game.
>>7813819
>Dark souls. And surprise surprise it's based off a literary concept.
A shame this post is 13 hours old because I'd like to know what that might be
>>7813290
THIS
>>7815706
I remember someone posting about how it's similar to Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence
Reminder this cartoonist is a complete moron
>>7813742
Why do you say that? Has that ever happened before, or has it ever not happened? What do people remember of the pop culture of the 90s, or even the 00s?
>>7813290
Playing a video game is or isn't wasted time depending on the mental activity you bring to it. In some sense, going for a walk outside is a waste of time. Reading a book can be a waste of time if you approach it in a dull way.
>>7815731
I liked Spec Op's but having a competent narrative amongst generic shoot em up gameplay does not make a great game, never mind matching the quality of HoD or AN
>>7814198
Mass Effect was shit. I dare you to play it again.
Bioware has been making piss poor dating sims with tacked-on and half-baked RPG mechanics for a long time now. They aren't worth anyone's time.
>not playing the best game in the last 10 years
>>7815731
spec ops the line is pleb bait, it's like the middlebrow videogame equivalent of candy crush
>>7813445
It's basically true though, video games, virtual worlds, or whatever you want to call them do have pretty impressive potential as artistic mediums.
But they're such commercial products that it's unlikely that this potential will be fulfilled.
>>7813966
Actually completely forgot about the existence of libraries when I made that post, shows even more that the cartoonist is just hunting out shit excuses for being human waste
>>7815731
Triggered me. So this is the kind of seething resenment tumblrinas feel all the time. They sure met with a terrible fate.
>>7815750
found the /v/ browser
>>7813290
Is there anything that isn't a complete waste of time?
>>7815823
who knows, maybe in 50 years or so they've developed AI-assisted gamemaking programs so someone in a basement can crank out something with the complexity of a modern AAA game in a few months or so without any deeper knowledge of programming
>videogames aren't lost time that you will regret at some point in your miserable life
>>7816204
>implying my entire life isn't lost time
>>7813819
So? Books have borrowed ideas from television. Visual art borrows from literally everything.
>>7813755
>Principia Mathematica
>clearly and concisely for the masses
You sure about that, buddy?
Everything is a waste of time.
Video games are still a young and growing medium. Although most are shit, some have some artistic merit.
Dark Souls
Bloodborne (p&k philosophy isn't anything new but it's interesting to see a concept like that in a video game.)
Ico
Shadow of the Colossus
At the end of the day, games aren't meant to be profound experiences like some literature is.
A good game just has to have good gameplay.
They are different mediums so they have to be treated as such.
>>7816272
man can't you just fuck off to /v/
>>7816289
I've been here longer than you faggot.
If you can't find any artistic merit in some of the other mediums you should contemplate suicide.
I suggest drinking clorox.
>>7813290
Dwarf Fortress desu
>>7816272
Something tells me you'd like the manga Berserk. Probably has nothing to do with two of those games borrowing heavily from it.
>>7816393
I've been talking about finding integrity in other forms of media, but anime is the one I really can't get into.
I did try watching Berserk and I didn't particularly enjoy it.
I'm sure the manga is good though, just not my cup of tea.
>>7813290
some cool short experimental games out there, as well as interactive fiction.
also that game the witness is p cool, although arguably a complete waste of time
>>7816297
lots of mad 'vidya' players in this thread
don't worry, maybe one day a girl gamer will show you her 'vagoo'
>>7813260
>implying a mediocre book, a semi-decent movie, a boring series and one of the best games ever made provide you with the same level of enjoyment per hour
>>7816407
I said the manga for a reason, I rather enjoy the comics medium (lots of issues with the industry though) but I can,t stand anime. Too many issues with it, especially in regards to padding.
If you don't enjoy byronic heroes though, it might not be for you.
>>7816344
This desu
>>7813290
Isnt being a total waste of time the whole point?
>>7813290
>>7815681
you can be good in chess just by simply memorizing moves
arimaa is better
>>7813290
I had a blast with the Ace Attorney games and Ghost Trick. They're not "deep" or anything but I really enjoyed playing them
>>7813363
Video games will never be the same.
>>7813290
I'm gonna post a few that I consider have enough artistic quality to be worth it:
Hotel Dusk, Ring of Red, Undertale, Attack of the Friday Monsters! A Tokyo Tale, LSD: Dream Emulator.
>>7816874
Comparing Morrowind to what came after it is the best example of how quickly that genre degenerated alongside the entire medium. Games were at a point where they MIGHT have become an artistic medium in the early years of the new millennium. Games had begun to escape the banal tropes and started to explore the utility of the medium, building worlds, filling them with characters and opportunities for exploration.
Morrowind required you to read, it required perception, it offered a truly alien fantasy experience that transcended the most typical tropes of the western fantasy genre in literature, in cinema and in games. Morrowind had deep mythological underpinnings, channeling the Vedas in the presentation of the concept of the god-head without outright repeating them, adding plot elements that drew on diverse tropes, synthesizing something which was novel.
Compare this to Oblivion or Skyrim, one is a generic European fantasy land with gates to hell, the other is a slightly better colored delivery of what is ultimately another generic European fantasy land which instead takes you to a glib facsimile of Valhalla to fight at Ragnarok.
It's not just the game developers that have denuded the game though, but also the wiki-culture that surrounds them which is far worse than the proliferation of online book summaries and notes have been for literature. Within days of a game's release every secret is documented and categorized for the player to access at his leisure. And if the developer tries some more taxing forms of obscurantism in their work, they run the risk of their idiotic playerbase not uncovering it and feeling 'ripped off' because they got less than 100 hours of gameplay for $60.
The last game I played that I enjoyed for the merits of its story telling was the last Witcher game, but ultimately the gameplay was that of a single player MMO which turned me off immensely. I persevered to figure out the story of Ciri though. I felt it was a good story but it was shoehorned into a mediocre at best game.
