Oh, so there’s an Ebert joke in there I didn’t get? Wooosh, sorry about that AHunter3.
I’ve never played one, and I am completely baffled by the concept—especially the ones where you’re not even playing against another human. They just seem like an extremely elaborate version of solitaire. It never occurs to me that I want to waste some time doing that.
Over Christmas, I spent some time watching my niece navigate around Los Santos in GTA V, but the only interesting thing for me was recognizing the various real-life locations.
The main difference is that many games have some sort of computer AI component actively working to thwart you. Be it another guy with a gun trying to make you dead, another world leader racing your nation to develop space flight or an adversary trying to stump your investigation.
But even for the games that don’t have an active participant trying to stop you – hey, solitaire’s been popular for a couple hundred years with a bajillion variants. So someone must be enjoying it.
Also one involves a poorly programmed machine that frequently cheats to make up for its intelligence shortcomings. The other is just a single player AI. AI will really “make it” when they can program an adaptive antisemitism module.
FWIW I usually shy away from multiplayer games.
No need to be sorry for not being intimately familiar with every column Roger Ebert ever wrote. I thought AHunter was serious too (and I’m still not entirely sure he wasn’t, but I’m not that invested in it).
Generally speaking, if you understand why human beings might enjoy playing a game - any game, could be a card game or a board game or a sports game - then you understand why they enjoy playing computer games. There are rules, there are winners and losers, there are strategies to employ, etc. And yes, even in single-player games there is some sort of puzzle to figure out or AI to defeat or whatever. It is not just a form of solitaire.
I mean, I think that most sports are about the stupidest thing ever invented, and I have no desire to ever watch them myself, but I at least understand why other people like watching them. It’s not a great unsolvable mystery.
What? No… I can’t tell if AHunter3 is being serious or not, it just sounded like Ebert. You must remember that he gave many classic films a bad review and gave decent to good reviews to crap. Sometimes he went against the grain, the gaming stuff just seemed like he liked his lawn full of grass, not pixelated, and free of damn kids.
Not being familiar with any of Mr Ebert’s work at all, I thought AHunter’s response came across as appallingly condescending.
AHunter, could you go on about your opinions concerning video games? I think they’re germane to this thread.
I’m Gedd and I have spend thousands of hours playing video games.
About 6.5 of those hours were spent on video games that went “beep zeeee boop doodle boop” or were “trying to get through the maze or stop in the incoming missiles from zapping your city or playing ping pong against an invisible opponent in perpetuity.”
There are a few more options out there.
Can you believe they have a video game version of shuffleboard?! Do you like shuffleboard?
Yeah, there’s really a video game for everybody out there. You want virtual chess? Got it. Stories that unfold like interactive movies or books? Dragon-slaying? Tile-matching? Racing? Boxing? Wargames? City building? Altering history? Flying? Saving the world? Haunting people? Solving mysteries? Rocketing into space? Video games have it all! I can understand if you don’t want to spend time playing 99% of them, and I’d also understand that you don’t want to spend the time finding that 1% of games you do like…but it’s always a bit grating when someone dismisses all the options without even knowing what the options are (and worse, acts condescending about it!). Playing games of some kind is a fundamental human thing. Getting a dismissal like that only makes people want to find that 1% of games you might like.
Anyway, even my mother bought a DS lite and has great fun playing games like Brain Age and Professor Layton. It feels like a great achievement to have your mother become interested in video games all by herself.
She didn’t like Animal Crossing though - she said the perpetual mortgage to Nook felt “too realistic” in an ironic sort of way. That made me giggle 
Oh, definitely of the jerkishly & appallingly condescending variety.
Is a “video game” the same thing as a “computer game”?
(If not, I may be even more videogame ignorant than I thought!)
I’ve played [del]dozens[/del] umm, several computer games. I don’t remember most of them very well, but I have ‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets’ and I’ve played it [del]hundreds[/del] tens of times! And I have ‘The Uninvited’ which, thanks to tips from Lynn Bodoni a few years ago, I finally figured out how to win.
I once had something called ‘Myst’ and launched it a few times. Couldn’t get out of the room with the telescope, deleted it.
I played something called ‘Missile…’ umm, command? Something where you have to defend your city by intercepting inbound rockets? Back around 1987-88 but I don’t have it any more.
All total, I’ve probably played for hours! Plural hours, dual-digits’ worth of plural hours!
(… no, I really don’t get it, not the craving to do this all day long and so on. )
25 years ago, my oldest brother didn’t get joysticks and he probably still doesn’t. Tetris has always been his thing since the first one came to MS-DOS.
Goodness, that is a bit much. Noob Sindar’s Fatality isn’t much better.
I think violence is games is not really a big deal, but over the top gore, well, I don’t like horror movies that are over the top gore either.
Depends who you ask. Traditionally a “video game” was a game you played at home on a console which plugged into your TV, differentiated from an “Arcade Game” (that you played at a video game arcade), or a “computer game” which was something you played on a personal computer (Or IBM clone, as they used to be known).
Nowadays the terms “video game” and “computer game” are largely synonyms, though,
Games have changed so much since the time period you’re referring to it (1980s/1990s) saying you don’t get why anyone wants to play them would be like refusing to go and see The Wizard of Oz in 1939 because the last movie you saw was a Keystone Cops black & white silent film with intertitles.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who love to play video games, and those who are too busy with other things to realize they could love them too.
And that’s fine. But some of the most moving artistic experiences in my life have come from video games. Some of the most brilliant music I’ve heard in my life has come from video games. I learned to read at an early age by watching my dad play RPGs and having him read to me what all the words were.
Thinking that video games are some huge waste of time, or that you couldn’t possibly understand how anyone could like them, is kind of like saying that you don’t understand how anyone could like to play a sport, or read a book, or watch a movie, or listen to a symphony… because video games take all of that and wrap it up into one thing.
There’s lots of things I don’t “get the craving to do all day long” but still enjoy for an hour or so at a sitting. Funny, that.
Guess she had to split…
I’m always fond of saying that people who play games like Minecraft either have no life, or eventually end up having no life…but even that’s not nearly as pathetic as watching other people play video games. 
I must admit, I laughed out loud watching this.
I was both amused and disturbed. I mean, who comes up with these ideas on how to kill someone? Fortunately, very few little kids have a saw set up like that, so no one in the neighborhood is going to try this out on their little sister.
As for video games, I don’t play them much at all, but i understand their appeal. They are no different than playing solitaire with a deck of cards, if you are playing a single player game. And I don’t see anything wrong with solitaire.
Multi-player games seem interesting, but I’ve never played one myself. I think my lifestyle and when I grew up have a lot to do with it, though. I grew up when having a black and white 13 inch tv in your bedroom was a big deal, and when Santa brought me PONG, I thought I died and went to heaven.
The only thing I DO wonder about is the socialization skills of kids who are growing up in their bedrooms playing with other people who are also sitting in their homes. Do these kids know how to interact in a crowd? Or are they awkward and shy, not comfortable in a room full of people? I don’t know.
It’s like anything. If you are into it, it is great, and if you aren’t, you can’t understand why anyone would be.
Almost as pathetic as watching other people play sports, if you ask me.