Would young men be rioting in the streets if they didn’t have video games to pacify them?
Hear me out.
We are seeing record levels of young men unemployed and living with their parents: The future for them is bleak. Saddled with college debt, they can barely get a job that pays miimum wage, while living independently is forever out of reach.
I feel like at other points of history, there would be more social unrest, but things are exceedingly calm given the economics.
I was watching a video by Healthy Gamer, a gamer bro-turned psychiatrist. He points out that video games are very addictive and seductive because they MIMIC accomplishment. You can grind to get to the next level, you can gain new skills, you are continually put on a treadmill of constant progress. It’s very satisfying in a hollow way, satisfying in a way that might make you forget that society has nothing to offer you but debt and homelessness after you followed all the rules.
Are video games weapons of mass distraction, the metaphysical equivalent of a million Christians being fed to a million lions every day?
Phone gaming is very popular and most young people there have phones. Not everyone can afford consoles or a PC, but that’s a growing market too, especially in Kathmandu. But if anything, it’s phone games that are most aggressive about using addictive mechanics.
Yes, but I think I’m trying to focus in on the sense of AGENCY that a modern RPG might give you. I don’t know that a phone game, as addicting as it is, is as metaphysically satisfying.
I mean phone gaming is also stuff like Genshin Impact these days. We’re long past the days where phone gaming was mainly Candy Crush, quite a few phone games have similar levels of agency and complexity as your average AAA console release. Maybe not compared to a really in-depth CRPG, but most people in the west don’t play those either.
What’s a good game to illustrate what you’re talking about? Genshin Impact?