> Dota is a game where folks play avatars that come together to contest a pointless battlefield, murdering each other over and over while also murdering useless "creeps" that have the trappings of anthropomorphism but are explicitly considered value-less by the Heros.
It's not a boring or bad game, but the fundamental principle is "me and my friends murder your face with our amazing tactical teamwork for no special reason while our grunts carry on fighting like robots."
I am not sure what you want to convey. Simulated violence is base of any game really.
Heck, chess is literally a battlefield where soldiers are scarified to acheive victory.
> I am not sure what you want to convey. Simulated violence is base of any game really.
No, it's not. Simulated hardship is, and that comes in many forms. And this explains many more games than the simulated violence model.
> Heck, chess is literally a battlefield where soldiers are scarified to acheive victory. Playing chess doesn't make you violent or toxic.
Games don't make people like anything. They normalize things and provide frames of reference, though. Choosing what games to encourage and what viewpoints to adopt changes the way we reason about the world, and we should ocnsider that.
You act like the buyers of video games have no agency. Players gravitate towards gaming experiences they enjoy. You mention Minecraft but what is the Venn diagram overlap between people who enjoy Minecraft and people who enjoy fighting games like Smash or shooters like Fortnite? It's pretty high.
The genres of games that exist are a result of decades of experimentation in the market. They exist because people enjoy them. Not everyone likes the same stuff. Different personality types gravitate towards different gaming experiences. Same with movies, books, podcasts, etc. No reason to believe gaming should be any different.
Actually, the market overwhelmingly favors non-violent and only loosely competitive games. PUBG is a drop in the bucket compared to mobile gaming. How many daily actives does Candy Crush and Angry Birds have compared to PUBG?
So, simultaneously the market is all about realistic violent FPS games, which is a problem, but also it's not about that at all? Which one is it?
> How many daily actives does Candy Crush and Angry Birds have compared to PUBG?
I'm gonna make your point for you here: 'investment' can vary widely depending on game genre and mechanics and context. People who play Dwarf Fortress are going to be much more 'into it', on average, than people who play Angry Birds or Candy Crush. In practice, this is relevant to both the impact on the people playing, as well as their willingness to spend.
It's not a boring or bad game, but the fundamental principle is "me and my friends murder your face with our amazing tactical teamwork for no special reason while our grunts carry on fighting like robots."
I am not sure what you want to convey. Simulated violence is base of any game really.
Heck, chess is literally a battlefield where soldiers are scarified to acheive victory.
Playing chess doesn't make you violent or toxic.