All I will say is, most people are like children that don't know what's best for themselves.
Haha! Maybe, maybe not. You can talk about social games and Skinner boxes if you like... but regardless, what a colossally arrogant claim!
Is it really? Children exist, so
some people must be like children, because they
are children. You can replace "most" with a different determiner or percentage until it stops sounding arrogant to you, I guess. What
I see as arrogance is the belief that all people suddenly become equal upon reaching a certain age. Perhaps you think it's arrogant for parents to treat their children this way in the first place, though. I know I did... when I was a child.
Some people are children, of course, but most video-gamers
aren't children - mean age was in the 30s, last time I saw statistics? - so treating them (in aggregate) as though they
were children seems pretty unwarranted to me.
Certainly different people of the same age will have different levels of maturity and intelligence... but in general, most children are significantly less mature than most adults. It's generally fairly easy to tell a child from an adult, even in a space so anonymized as the Internet; their lack of maturity
will show through. (This of course grows more difficult with the age of the child...) The "specific age" thing is generally an artifact of lawmaking ("age of majority", etc). Certainly it's unfair, but I don't think anyone actually
believes that people become vastly more mature at the exact date of their 16th, 18th, or 21st birthday. Problem is that it's very difficult to practically
test maturity, so age is used as a very rough stand-in; it's not
good, but it's better than nothing. (The above paragraph rambles on far too much. I apologize.)
As for the last two sentences - I've read them about half a dozen times now, and I really have no idea what it's trying to say. You think that I feel that it would be arrogant for parents to treat their children like children...? As an analogy between you (us) and the general body of gamers...? That can't be right.
(I assume you wouldn't class yourself among those 'children'?)
No, I have the honesty to recognize some ways in which I am still a child, as well as the ways I
used to be.
For an on-topic example of the former, this is exactly how I would feel if I tried to pick a shooting game, because it is a genre I know very little about. I would be like a kid set loose in a candy store, grabbing at anything bright and colorful, swallowing without tasting, stuffing myself until I was sick, then complaining later that the experience wasn't as good as I thought it would be.
Even for genres I already loved, reading
Insomnia heightened my senses, making me not only a better player but a
more aware player. With a more considered approach, I enjoy games now more than I ever have before, barring perhaps some of the highest points of enthusiasm when I was younger. And I am very grateful for it.
Interesting! Essentially, you're saying that people can't enjoy games (or enjoy them 'poorly', 'like children') without expertise in the genre?
You mentioned about a post ago that learning the rules of a game is one of the largest joys of gaming (paraphrased) - which I would agree with - so the idea that you can't enjoy games well
until you've passed that initial, learning stage seems strange to me. Would you like to clarify?
Player
