The Problem with “Hardcore” Gamers

24 thoughts on “The Problem with “Hardcore” Gamers”

1. I really think you might have taken the whole thing too far and with too few solid well reasoned arguments to begin with…

   chess is the most casual of games? you justify this by saying there are variants of chess so the people who spend 14 hours a day practicing to become top tier pros aren’t even playing the same game?

   that’s no different than playing the casual gamemode (quickplay, non-ladder, mods/UMS) in a competitive game, which basically every “hardcore” game has.

   >”They often say we have plenty of easier games to play, as a prelude to telling us take it or leave it, stfu or gtfo. But they have the overwhelming majority of other games to go play as well. Again, this is part of the problem.”

   those overwhelming majority of games (which I do agree with, most online games where you play against other people will naturally trend towards people being competitive and for the game to benefit from having a more “hardcore” ladder or variant for people to play), also benefit casual players by having a “soft” queue version of the game where you don’t gain/lose ladder points or MMR.

   >”A badly coded game is a “challenge” too, and plenty of inept devs hide behind “challenge” as an excuse for being lousy coders. (Evil Dead on the Dreamcast springs to mind. Worst controls ever I think.) Ease of use in the application market on the other hand is usually an indicator of skill. Not so for game devs. Because of tryhards.”

   I agree with you that this can end up allowing devs to be lazy but ultimately the point of the game is to be fun for the people who play it, having a challenging interface for example in older games (such as starcraft BW, where half of the player skill is overcoming the lack of usability in the interface), this can add magnitudes of levels of play simply by increasing the skill level required to do basic things, it’s not something that would fly today because that was due to technical issues back then but generally, having a competitive league for a game means the devs need to everything but be lazy because the community becomes demanding of polished things (servers need to be up reliably, the mechanics of the game need to be reliable from game to game, the game needs to be stable etc), so any missing effort in the making of the game has to be returned several fold later on.

   >”Tryhards in any debate almost always first fall into an attack pattern of “Are you too stupid to read the rules?” Followed by “It’s just a game, the devs own it, you should be grateful for the opportunity to lick their boots, because other devs are even worse.”

   And that shit sounds way familiar out here in the real world. When business owners first objected to the civil rights movement it was on the exact same private property my yard my rules argument.

   Everyone sane and ethical scoffed, but virtually no one scoffs in the gaming world at the exact same logic. Gamers have no rights, and tryhards defend this lack of protection with all the vehemency of the Tea Party Movement.”

   Oh cmon, people make a game for a targeted audience of people who generally are people like the game dev (people tend to make games that they themselves would enjoy right?), the reason why those two things are different rather than the same is because you’ve strawmanned yourself into thinking a dev making a game to how they like is the same as people being treated unfairly in life asking to be treated fairly. (generally outside of p2w shit, gamers are treated fairly in games).

   let me put what this post is in a different light: You have everything you already need (outside of devs having a mindset towards making games that they themselves like, which you do not (which is fair, everyone has their own tastes) and even though they have almost always added in a variant of the game which you yourself should enjoy based on this post, you’ve instead gone out of your way to complain that someone enjoys the game in a different way to you. you’re complaining that other people enjoy things differently to you, you’re still almost always the focus when a dev makes a game (outside of games which are “ESPORTS M8” games simply due to the fact that the casual audience is the most profitable audience (there are esports games which aren’t in that group which make a LOT of money though).

   you’ve missed the mark so hard that you’ve argued for something you already have and mocked people for doing nothing other than enjoying the game in a different way, you’ve called them toxic and such yet this post is just as, if not more toxic than the vast majority of “hardcore” gamers posts that i’ve seen. I hate that it boils down to it but I genuinely think that if you were better at the game you played and threw yourself into being as good as you can be at them and feeling that competitive spirit rather than having your ego take the brunt of the hit when you lose, you would understand it better. put your ego aside and mute the people you don’t like in games and maybe start a game when it comes out, so everyone is new at it (if you’re anything like me, you’ll still lose to people who played massive amounts of similar games before playing it though!).

   best of luck!

2. _”chess is the most casual of games?”_

   No, chess is a 100% casual and hardcore friendly. My point is that obviously a game can cater to both, but PC game devs think it’s mutually exclusive because tryhards are a whiny dramatic lot with ever-open wallets.

   _”casual gamemode (quickplay, non-ladder, mods/UMS) in a competitive game, which basically every “hardcore” game has.”_

   No, they CAN have those modes but they don’t because they let tryhard balance choices and rule changes impact the “casual” modes as well. The number one change type is a rule change, which is like a coding change.

   PC games aren’t like chess variants because of coder greed, which is an additional issue. I don’t have to know code to add or modify chess rules. Plus devs hide code out of greed even I if did know it.

   “Casual” modes aren’t full power cheat and mod modes and that’s what chess has and what 100% casual is. Tryhards always get 100% tryhard modes, casuals get 80% tryhard modes.

   Devs could give us a rules tab in the settings and let us control basically everything, but essentially they never do. (Space Pirates and Zombies 2 is a glorious exception.)

   _”gamers are treated fairly in games”_

   By definition that’s 100% false. Gamers have the least power of any consumer group in history that isn’t literally also a second class like children, prisoners, or slaves.

   Just think about how absurd/impossible it would be to sue a game dev because I didn’t like a rule change?

   Gamers are workers who’ve never even heard of a union working for employers with zero regulation. Show me one law that protects gamers specifically.

   Show me one right gamers specifically have.

   These points address or obviate your others. Hence a lack of specific replies.

3. “By definition that’s 100% false. Gamers have the least power of any consumer group in history that isn’t literally also a second class like children, prisoners, or slaves.

   Just think about how absurd/impossible it would be to sue a game dev because I didn’t like a rule change?

   Gamers are workers who’ve never even heard of a union working for employers with zero regulation. Show me one law that protects gamers specifically.

   Show me one right gamers specifically have.

   These points address or obviate your others. Hence a lack of specific replies.”

   to start off with: we have the exact same rights anyone who purchases software/media has, it is no different, in fact, if you live in europe you immediately have a 30 day refund with no necessary reason for any purchase, that is fantastic, think how insane that would be for a physical item: use it as you damn well please and then return it if you don’t like it.

   http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-10-01-new-consumer-rights-act-puts-gamers-in-the-driving-seat

   >”Just think about how absurd/impossible it would be to sue a game dev because I didn’t like a rule change?”

   you are fucking insane if you think people should be able to do that. imagine how impossible it would be to make changes to a game? even if people like them generally not everyone does, so in order to update a game, you have to be sued? it really seems like you’ve thought this through enough to think you’re making a good point but not enough to realize how stupid of a point it is, if people were suddenly able to, a large part of gaming would collapse, MMO’s would be some sort of “purchase a new game every 3-4 months”, consumers would be up shit creek having to physically buy as close to a new game each purchase rather than having a game updated for a monthly fee.

   >Gamers are workers who’ve never even heard of a union working for employers with zero regulation. Show me one law that protects gamers specifically.

   I’m 100% with you on this one though, the gamedev industry is monumentally horrible, you basically have a job for a game and lose the job when the game is finished, the hours are as long if not longer then tech jobs and the pay is worse.

   >No, chess is a 100% casual and hardcore friendly. My point is that obviously a game can cater to both, but PC game devs think it’s mutually exclusive because tryhards are a whiny dramatic lot with ever-open wallets.

   most games cater pretty damn well to both… i seriously can’t see your point, how has a change to positively effect higher skilled players affected you negatively say 5 times? a lot of the times in really “hardcore” games or games with a very hardcore skill cap (as in, it’s impossible to play perfectly but players will practice to get as close as they can), one balancing method is to play with skills or tactics that are too reliable/too easy to pull off well but that negatively effects both you and other people so you haven’t lost anything relative to other people.

   seriously though, please state 5 times where something has happened to you negatively through all this in terms of a dev focusing on higher skilled players.

4. _”to start off with: we have the exact same rights anyone who purchases software/media has, it is no different, in fact, if you live in europe you immediately have a 30 day refund with no necessary reason for any purchase, that is fantastic, think how insane that would be for a physical item: use it as you damn well please and then return it if you don’t like it.”_

   Sounds like you’d like less rights as a consumer.

   _”you are fucking insane if you think people should be able to do that.”_

   I think people should be able to change a game as they see fit, period, just like I can with chess.

   How old are you? Is English your first language? Do you have any learning disabilities? I ask that before I question your reading comprehension.

   _”I’m 100% with you on this one though”_

   I said gamers, not game devs. See above about reading issues.

   _”most games cater pretty damn well to both… i seriously can’t see your point”_

   That’s not my problem. I’ve been as clear as I can be.

   _”how has a change to positively effect higher skilled players affected you negatively say 5 times?”_

   Dude. The entire history of nerfs. In PoE alone I’ve got about 90 examples. And that’s not even messing with game economies and drop rates.

   Literally every game I’ve ever played had some rule change which robbed me of an option or technique because some tryhard pushed the system to the limit. One time it was even me that did the pushing.

   http://steamcommunity.com/app/252470/discussions/2/2592234299579401515/

5. lmao the author of this article is an idiot

6. What a thoughtful and articulate response. I am thoroughly impressed. >.>

7. “How old are you? Is English your first language? Do you have any learning disabilities? I ask that before I question your reading comprehension.”

   >”What a thoughtful and articulate response. I am thoroughly impressed. >.>”

   jesus christ, the irony.

8. There’s no irony. All I’d need to admit wrongness is specific and valid, factual or logical objections. It’s interesting how many seem to believe acting like a point is had while being snarky/mean, is the same as actually having provided such objections. They act as if scoffing itself is evidence.

   Though of course since facts and logic have zero power to persuade, they’re right in some qualitative ways. I mean, it follows that if facts and logic don’t persuade, you don’t actually need them rhetorically speaking. Scoffing is a enough apparently in some social way.

   I don’t know how I ended up in a place where facts and logic matter to me while so many others did not. Of course it’s possible I’m equally immune but I don’t know how I could prove or disprove that.

   All I can say is I don’t feel any sort of loyalty to any of my positions. They are all conditional on what I believe are relevant facts and consistent logic. But if that’s the case, why am I alone? Or is it as simple as saying that only my opponents are fact/logic immune but those that agree aren’t? That feels like a dangerous possibly deluded line of thinking, but of course it may objectively be true.

9. Are you into conspiracies? you seem like that sort of bloke.

11. The point of the “deal with it or gtfo” shit that people spew is that if a game is too hard, you have three options. You can try to improve, you can complain and demand the game change for you, or you can play a different game. Even if you don’t believe in capitalism, economies in which video games exist are all at least partially capitalistic, and behaving as if you aren’t living in a mixed economy makes no sense. Vote with your currency. The obvious problem with this would be a game that isn’t free to try, and that isn’t to your liking, and that you can’t get your money back for after realizing that it’s not something that you’d play. Ideally, you should be able to enjoy something that you bought, but it matters how we define games as products.

    If you go to a movie theater and it turns out that the movie sucks, the theater won’t give refunds, what you paid for is access to the theater in which the movie is being played, you aren’t buying the movie per se. Conversely, if you buy the DVD copy of a movie, you ARE buying the movie, and you can return it, or resell it for some portion of your money back. Games like League of Legends, for example, functions like a theater. You own nothing associated with the game, and anything can be revoked from you without compensation if they decide that you shouldn’t have it, including your account, and anything purchased on it, whereas with a game like Fallout 3, you have purchased the game, and ultimately, the devs and publisher no longer control how you choose to experience the media. I vehemently support modding for nearly all games.

    Now… Finally, I can get on to another point… To cut to the heart of the discussion, I think it’s absurd that you would say that your position and/or the position of “casual” gamers, is more ethical than that of “hardcore” gamers, and that developers should not make games for the hardcore crowd. I don’t give a shit how you like to play your games. If you want to play DOOM, but none of the demons ever try to hurt you, and your own guns do no damage, and instead shoot sparkles and make fart noises, that’s fantastic and I hope there’s a mod for that. The problem is that most “hardcore” games are multiplayer, and that means that the experience has to be basically standardized for general online play, otherwise, it inherently loses its competitive value. I will agree that if you purchase a game, you should be able to experience it however you choose, but in competitive games even if there are other rule sets, when you play together, you use one. Take chess for example. There are optional rules, but when you go to a tournament, everyone is playing the same way. When you’re playing with your friends, you might have a particular rule that you all follow, but that is by nature, a variant of the core game. Consumers should have power, but not at the expense of other consumers.

    I personally find the label “hardcore gamer” to be grating and honestly, try-hard is probably a more fitting description than “hardcore” (I found that part of the post amusing), but it’s probably the one I’d fall under. My counterpoint is that there’s nothing wrong with trying hard, there’s nothing wrong with a developer making a game that caters to people that want to have to put in significant effort to win, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting a game that doesn’t have a steep learning curve either. What I find absurd is saying that casual gamers are ethically superior to hardcore gamers. If your problem with hardcore games is the community that surrounds them, it’s for two reasons that I can clear up pretty easily. First, hardcore game communities develop based on competition more than cooperation, even in games where you have to work with other players, and it’s because that’s the way the games are designed, and that’s the type of game that those players seek out. Second, the toxic in-group out-group bullshit that you’re pinning to hardcore gamers exists in literally. Every. Single. Community. It’s just that the basis for communities of hardcore gamers is that they all play games that they think are hard, and so, coming into that community and complaining about the game looks to them like someone going to a hot-dog eating contest and saying “How the hell am I supposed to eat all these hot dogs? There are WAY too many, and I don’t even LIKE hot dogs. >:C”. They’d probably be wrong for assuming that, but them being wrong does not make you right.

    And just an aside, Sueing a company because you don’t like a rule change is either a terrible example of the lack of power gamers have as consumers, or you have garbage ideas about how to deal with things you don’t like.

    Hope you read this, I’d be happy to respond to any points I addressed poorly.

12. > You can try to improve, you can complain and demand the game change for you, or you can play a different game.

    The way you phrased the choices is highly prejudicial and insulting, by design obviously. Though not sure if it’s your design.

    It makes me not take any of your further comments seriously. My reply is hostile in tone as a result. It’s clear to me you’re simply a tryhard here to bully the uppity casual. (Poor target choice really.)

    Besides, it’s clear that facts/logic don’t matter to ~99% of humanity.

    > Ideally, you should be able to enjoy something that you bought, but it matters how we define games as products.

    Ideally? I paid to enjoy, if I don’t enjoy then they failed. When you buy a meal you like it or you send it back. A game should at the very least be held to that minimum standard. I didn’t buy a lottery ticket. There should be no gamble, especially when it costs them literally nothing to give me a copy of their precious number. Or next to nothing for some server time.

    > If you go to a movie theater and it turns out that the movie sucks, the theater won’t give refunds…

    And that’s intellectual property law theft crap also.

    > Conversely, if you buy the DVD copy of a movie, you ARE buying the movie, and you can return it, or resell it for some portion of your money back.

    No you aren’t buying the movie, you’re renting a license to view it under conditions they’d love to strictly control. DRM yes? They made reselling textbooks illegal in places or controlled the market such that it became impractical or ineffective. They’d do worse to movies. They’d probably like us all to pay rent on the memories.

    > and ultimately, the devs and publisher no longer control how you choose to experience the media.

    Again only because they don’t have a choice yet. Once consoles move to 100% downloaded media expect to have fewer and fewer rights. (Because of people like you eager to bend over and call it challenge.)

    > I think it’s absurd that you would say that your position and/or the position of “casual” gamers, is more ethical than that of “hardcore” gamers…

    Too bad because it is. Only one of use is trying to tell the other how to play. Period.

    Your rights end where mine begin and like a typical ayn right cultist you’re trying to extend your rights to include stomping on mine.

    > I don’t give a shit how you like to play your games.

    Except that’s EXACTLY the tryhard position. You people can’t tolerate giving my people options because it undermines the baddassery you feel playing an ultracompetitve tryhard game.

    The era of friendly AI is gonna be such a shitfest for you guys X) You’re not gonna be able to control anyone against their will. And it’s gonna drive you insane.

    You don’t want mods or any freedom because that means someone might cheat and rob you of your (completely baseless) sense of accomplishment.

    > that means that the experience has to be basically standardized for general online play, otherwise, it inherently loses its competitive value.

    Except that’s not true. If you all could grow up and realize it’s just a game you could allow for both modes, but you can’t because you people are toxic, insecure, and wannabe exploiters. But don’t worry, eventually all games will be like chess thanks to democratized technical ability and we’ll all be able to alt as we please, no experts required.

    See above about chess. You guys actually think if you don’t changes the rules for EVERYONE you can’t play your own version of “sparkles and farts.”

    > Consumers should have power, but not at the expense of other consumers.

    Uhhh, that’s my entire point, you’re contradicting yourself.

    > Second, the toxic in-group out-group bullshit that you’re pinning to hardcore gamers exists in literally. Every. Single. Community.

    Uhhh no. The whole defining trait of being casual is being laid back about something. By definition once you start to take it seriously you stop being casual. Casuals simply aren’t like that because we don’t care enough about the game to be.

    > coming into that community and complaining about the game looks to them like someone going to a hot-dog eating contest and saying “How the hell am I supposed to eat all these hot dogs? There are WAY too many, and I don’t even LIKE hot dogs. >:C”

    Except tryhards are the ones going into every casual game and forcing everyone to join the contest or find food elsewhere. “GTFO git gud” etc. Shaming everyone who isn’t a tryhard for being whiners or weak. Like you keep doing here.

    Tryhards are the invasive species here, not casuals.

    You don’t see the alt chess variants descending on the grand master tourneys demanding everyone player their personal alt. And thanks to chess’s totally open source nature those same masters can’t pester the alts either.

    That’s the future of all gaming. Embrace it or be steam rolled by history, your call.

    > And just an aside, Sueing a company because you don’t like a rule change is either a terrible example of the lack of power gamers have as consumers, or you have garbage ideas about how to deal with things you don’t like.

    Again with the prejudicial right wing tryhard work ethic crap. You keep trying to bully me. Like you’re gonna shame me into feeling bad about being a casual, while at the same time painting yourself as the victim. It’s transparent.

    Tryhards are the one doing the invading and forcing and whining about what THEY like. Not casuals.

    I Am scolding by the way and you Should feel shame. Just to be crystal clear. the difference is I have the ethical high grounds because again, if given power, I’d turn your favorite game into chess and you’d lose nothing but the authority to force your will on the alts.

13. I’m going to go point by point here because you made a lot of assumptions about me based on what you think about hardcore gamers in general.

    At the beginning, you accused me of being hostile and derogatory in my wording of the possible responses to difficulty, but my intention wasn’t simply to insist that you quit complaining and/or leave. I was mostly getting at the fact that ultimately, you can control your reaction to adversity, and there is a range of possible ways to deal with it. You can change yourself, you can try to change the world, or you can do nothing (silently or otherwise). You are a proponent of changing the world/systems to better fit you, than changing yourself to fit the world/systems, which isn’t inherently bad. As a matter of fact, it’s one of the significant factors that make humans the dominant species on the planet. In this context, however, there are many people who prefer their media to force them to adapt, and lowering the skill floor in some cases can make something FEEL less challenging, even if the skill ceiling is just as high.

    As for the nitpick about me saying “ideally”, All I’m saying here is that unfortunately, things aren’t always what we expect, or hope for. It sucks, and it’s another example of the philosophical difference between our priorities in the face of adversity. I would probably say “damn, that sucks. I don’t think I’ll be buying shit from them anymore.” I would attempt to work within the system, and you would rather replace it whole-cloth. I will reiterate. That is not necessarily a bad thing.

    As for the movie theater bit, I’m basically setting up a point here. Not giving refunds isn’t really a part of the copyright law fuckery, but rather because theaters are stingy businesses, and this isn’t really a point that I feel strongly about holding on to. I wasn’t describing how it should be, rather I was describing how it is as far as I’m aware. Refunds are good, and I’d prefer the option in more scenarios, but I was setting up a distinction for my next point, not attempting to justify the behavior

    The comparison with DVDs. I am entirely against the prohibition of selling something that you purchased. Just so we’re clear. The textbook racket is fucked, and I wouldn’t want that to be the case for pretty much anything. My point here was that there is more than one form of media, and based on their qualities, they’re monetized differently. If you pay to go to a musical, you couldn’t go to every showing of it from now on because you paid once.

    Your point about consumer rights disappearing in favor of corporate greed: I pretty much agree, and I largely support as much user control as possible, only really stopping at the point of forcibly changing other people’s experience. You’re arguing as if I’m all for DRM and limits on how to play games, and against modding and such, but I explicitly stated that I am in favor of player agency, and modding.

    Then you call me an ayn rand cultist, which sounds like you’re trying to insult my beliefs, except it doesn’t really work because it just literally doesn’t describe me. It would be like me calling you a “self-important audio quality snob”.

    Then you go on about how I want to stomp on your rights despite my point about how you should be able to play pacifist doom if you can find a mod for it. (this is the part that really irritated me because it’s the most significant straw man) All I’m saying is that in games and sports where competitive integrity is important, rules are standardized for competitive play. You can choose to play minimal contact, but if you get into a hockey league, expect to play by the standard rules, and the ranked game-modes in games are where standard rules come in. I have spent a HUGE amount of time in halo 3 custom games where the goal is nothing like the normal game, and I had a blast, but I wouldn’t expect to find jenga in ranked, and probably not even for regular quick queue, since that’s not what most people are logging onto halo 3 for.

    Some clarification on my in-group out-group statement: I’m saying that humans are prone to tribalism and oversimplifying other people’s positions, beliefs, and intentions. Unfortunately that garbage comes standard with the human operating system, and it takes conscious effort to avoid it, and so we end up with people like you who feel that hardcore gamers are a threat to their freedom of experience, and hardcore gamers who feel that casual gamers are a threat to their competitive environment. You yourself are an example of someone who isn’t laid back about this. In your experience of games, you probably are, but in your discussion, and beliefs about them, you don’t appear to be.

    Realistically, “casual” is the standard, with “hardcore” being the ones that are unusual. This is objectively true if you look at the statistics of how people self-identify in regards to their gaming habits. Most people play some kind of video game, but many fewer would call themselves gamers, and fewer still would consider themselves hardcore gamers. When you consider the scope of games available and consider which games fit into the bubble of “casual games” hardcore gamers tend not to feel strongly enough about them to try to fuck with them at all. I’ve never met a moba player who complained that minecraft should be harder, or that candy crush should add a ranked ladder. I won’t say that no hardcore gamers try to add intensity to otherwise casual games because I guarantee that has happened plenty of times, but they do care about making sure that their games of choice remain “hardcore”.

    I am not shaming you for being weak, because it’s just games, and I don’t care how you like to play them. If I were to call you a whiner, it certainly wouldn’t be because of your gaming habits, but the blog might be a bit of fodder for that. (don’t take that too seriously please, I’m just poking fun. I enjoy these sorts of blogs even when I disagree with the author. Maybe especially when I disagree with the author.)

    As far as I can tell, mostly, gaming is pretty casual, but there are pockets of hardcore gamers and enthusiasts who take their games more seriously than other people. This is not a good or bad thing, it’s simply how some people like their entertainment. The thing is, Hardcore gamers, despite being smaller, because of their investment, hold a disproportionate market share, so they get a disproportionate amount of attention from developers.

    The part about suing a company is not because I feel that companies should be beyond reproach, or because I feel that consumers shouldn’t be able take action against a company that has acted unethically, but rather because a rule change does not constitute an unethical, legally actionable slight as far as I’m concerned. I was saying it was a poor example of the sort of thing that you were arguing for, not that what you’re arguing for is bad.

    Also, you really shouldn’t assume that just because someone disagrees with you they’re right wing. I’m not right wing. Here are my political compass results if you’re familiar with political compass https://i.imgur.com/UumFKDA.png

14. In my last post, I tried to be more cordial because I realized I came off a bit aggressive in my first. Part of that is the fact that I swear a lot in casual conversation, and over text that can come off poorly.

15. Swearing and aggression are not the issue. Be as crass as you wish to be. Contrary to common arguments made it simply doesn’t matter how rude you are. People will either agree or disagree based entirely on how well the assertion meets their emotional needs. No other factors are relevant in the context of persuasion. This is a disturbing fact about humanity.

16. > I’m going to go point by point here

    ok

    > you made a lot of assumptions about me based…

    …on your expressed ideology and its logical consequences.

    > my intention wasn’t simply to insist that you quit complaining and/or leave.

    Yes it was. The only reason we’re speaking as opposed to me being kicked is your camp has no power here. The only variable would be how fast a given tryhard would like to kick me.

    You’re an authoritarian. It’s logically unavoidable from your other positions unless you’re thick with double think, which is of course absolutely disturbingly possible.

    > You are a proponent of changing the world/systems to better fit you

    If by “fit you” you mean “fit everyone” then yes.

    You keep projecting your need to control on me. It’s an amusing paradox. Being intolerant of intolerance, wanting to constrain that which constrains.

    It’s complicated no question. It seems like a form of authoritarianism, and maybe it is. I leave such meta to others more interested in labelling label labels.

    > In this context, however, there are many people who prefer their media to force them to adapt…

    And a casual is more than willing to let any tryhard flog themselves or headbutt stones as they wish. But tryhards in order to really get off on it have to make everyone else do it also. The existence of casuals insults them. It’s *exactly* like a religious fanatic being angered by someone not taking their beliefs seriously.

    > I would attempt to work within the system, and you would rather replace it whole-cloth.

    Again, chess. I’m not asking to replace anything. I’m asking that My options not be replaced/prevented. Let alone mocked.

    There simply is no cogent argument you can make here. You HAVE to argue against the freedom to make chess alts in order to consistently defend tryhard authority. You are evading/obfuscating that inability.

    What I want is for people to have the freedom to create a casual version of any game. Intellectual property law criminalizes this. Making us wait 200 years for the patents to expire is clearly an affront. All the rest is just your ink in the water clouding the issue.

    > I am entirely against the prohibition of selling something that you purchased.

    Just the modification of something I purchased and the freedom to use it as I see fit?

    > based on their qualities, they’re monetized differently. If you pay to go to a musical, you couldn’t go to every showing of it from now on because you paid once.

    Only because the level of power IPL has over each media is arbitrarily different. Mark my words, they are pushing for more power on every front. It’s a new church.

    I could remember the musical. But what happens when I can share that memory? Relive it? They’ll demand fees or DRM on your mind. You watch. They already ban cellphones everywhere to control the equivalent. What happens when the cellphone is a brain implant?

    You need to wake up to the pathogen that IPL is and the truth of tryhards as IPL foot soldiers.

    > I largely support as much user control as possible, only really stopping at the point of forcibly changing other people’s experience.

    Except that’s a contradiction with your other positions. Double think. By definition organized competitive gaming is authoritarian.

    > You’re arguing as if I’m all for DRM and limits on how to play games, and against modding and such, but I explicitly stated that I am in favor of player agency, and modding.

    But you can’t be, and be a tryhard at the same time. Double think.

    > Then you call me an ayn rand cultist, which sounds like you’re trying to insult my beliefs, except it doesn’t really work because it just literally doesn’t describe me.

    Yes it does. Your recognition of the logical consequences of your stated positions isn’t impacted by your belief about them. You serve that segment of society and culture. You Are working for ayn rand’s minions. They invented IPL. They invented this Horatio Alger work ethic which you have internalized to the point of needing it in your games.

    > despite my point about how you should be able to play pacifist doom if you can find a mod for it.

    I was assuming your positions were self consistent. My apologies. Clearly they aren’t. You’re bouncing around between tryhard and casual as needed to “win” whatever sentence is in your field of view.

    > All I’m saying is that in games and sports where competitive integrity is important, rules are standardized for competitive play.

    That’s not what you said before. But yeah obviously I agree. Thing is, you people force everyone to play competitively or not at all. To protect your illusion of accomplishment. It’s hazing.

    > You can choose…

    Your voluntaryist obsession is another part of your mental commitment to Ayn Rand’s ilk. You keep implying the same right wing my yard my rules boycotts and the market solve everything argument. It doesn’t work that way irl.

    You think glenn beck cares if I don’t buy his book? Are the vegans gonna crush the beef industry? You think not voting is gonna change anything? Etc etc. It’s all the same trick. A way to con reformers into self marginalizing. As you have clearly done.

    > people like you who feel that hardcore gamers are a threat to their freedom of experience

    Except THEY ARE. By definition. As explained in the original post. The ONLY thing that keeps tryhards from annihilating all casual versions of the games they enjoy is their lack of power to do so. Casuals given that same power by definition would care insufficiently to use it not least because that camps wants to expand options, not constrain them.

    > You yourself are an example of someone who isn’t laid back about this. In your experience of games, you probably are, but in your discussion, and beliefs about them, you don’t appear to be.

    Like the group says, I’m a militant casual. I’m a reformer. I’m casual about achievement in games. I’m not casual about our freedom or the IPL pathogen. In that sense you’re the casual. To me, you’re like “ethics, meh.”

    > Realistically, “casual” is the standard, with “hardcore” being the ones that are unusual.

    Uhhh no. Wake me when even 1% of the games on steam are open source and free as in speech. All IPL wrapped games are authoritarian. Even the open source ones typically have profit prohibitions. Which is the difference between open source and public domain.

    > This is objectively true if you look at the statistics of how people self-identify in regards to their gaming habits.

    I can identity as an apache attack helicopter. That’s not gonna turn my junk into a hellfire missile.

    I don’t care what people call themselves. Actions define. Most games aim at a casual market first yes but that’s a constraint they are under, not a choice. The profit motive demands what amounts to a wide net and free samples at first. Granted some examples persist, like your candy crush, but really, those games seek to exploit a different sort of hardcore, like say how path of exile aims at gambling addicts and market manipulators.

    Yes casuals outnumber tryhards. That doesn’t make you people any less dangerous. Religious fanatics of every stripe share this ratio. By definition the fanatic will always be in the minority. It’s a positional quality. Like genius, or height. Once they become the norm new fanatics evolve and the overton window moves.

    > but they do care about making sure that their games of choice remain “hardcore”.

    And doing that requires constraining the freedom of others, hence their ethical inferiority.

    > I am not shaming you for being weak, because it’s just games, and I don’t care how you like to play them.

    Then you’re a casual and your other arguments are contradictory. Again double think. You’re bouncing back and forth.

    > The thing is, Hardcore gamers, despite being smaller, because of their investment, hold a disproportionate market share, so they get a disproportionate amount of attention from developers.

    Yup, fanatics win eventually. It’s disturbing.

    https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15

    See also: https://underlore.com/moloch-is-screwed/

    > a rule change does not constitute an unethical, legally actionable slight as far as I’m concerned.

    “Rule” in this context implies authority and imposition. “No chess alts, on pain of steam account deletion.” You’re defending the moral equivalent. Oscillate though you may.

    I’m not even allowed to *discuss* the ethics of piracy anywhere on steam. Drink that in.

    > Also, you really shouldn’t assume that just because someone disagrees with you they’re right wing. I’m not right wing.

    You’re right wing compared to me and basically the world. It’s just that Americans are hilariously right wing as a whole compared to said world. Yay for the overton window being cleverly dragger right since the mid 30s.

    https://underlore.com/about/

    P.S. You might also like these:
    https://underlore.com/its-not-just-a-game/
    https://underlore.com/why-devknights-exist/

17. I think the biggest reason that my views appear to be contradictory is that the views that you’ve assigned to hardcore gamers as a group don’t line up neatly with what I actually believe. My positions are internally consistent as far as I can tell, but you’ve set up a false dichotomy in which by being a hardcore gamer and enjoying that sort of experience, I inherently cannot then allow other people to enjoy their games how they want.

    The problem is that your concepts of casual gamers and try-hards are not sufficiently broad as to allow for human variance within the groups, or varied enough that there is an appropriate lexicon do label the different possible positions within those groups, so when I say something that a hardcore gamer might not be expected to say, then I suddenly don’t fit into the group of hardcore gamers anymore despite the fact that the way I consume videogames is in line with the way hardcore gamers traditionally do, which is, in my opinion, the only really important factor in defining the groups.

    Also, calling me an ayn rand cultist for being to the right of you is still silly since you’re apparently an anarcho-communist/socialist, almost everyone is to the right of you.

    I don’t really feel as though I’m oscillating, or plagued with doublethink, but it may be because I argue quite a lot, and play devil’s advocate quite often, so my positions tend to be pretty nuanced.

    I don’t believe the market solves everything.

    And by the way, when I said “they’re just games” I really didn’t intend to minimalize the significance of games because I do actually feel that they’re fairly important for a few reasons. First, they are a form of art and entertainment, two things which have great cultural importance. For humans, play is serious business. Second, they’re the most interactive form of media that has ever been available to humans up until now. (I’m not counting dreams as media here, however, I think that there may come a time when we do consume dreams as media) When I said that, what I meant was that whatever large-scale significance that games have, on an individual basis, they have no more importance than one allows them. Granting them so much importance that I base my judgments of people based on their gaming habits seems excessive to me. It would be like insulting someone for only listening to music while they do other things instead of really absorbing the music. To me it’s a richer experience, but I recognize that there is more than one way to appreciate music.

    The problem is that our disagreements go MUCH deeper than games.
    (fuck I meant for this response to be short.)

    >”Yes it was. The only reason we’re speaking as opposed to me being kicked is your camp has no power here.”

    Stop telling me what I mean, what I think, and what I am. You keep saying that hardcore gamers are telling you how to play games, but from the very beginning, you’ve been repeatedly telling me what I think and how thinking those things makes me a bad person. Seriously, I understand that you don’t play games like most people do. I really don’t care, and a live-and-let-live attitude does not make me any less competitive, adaptive, or “hardcore” except by your personal definition.

    instead of continuing to rebut your points, I’m going to simply try to explain who I am to an extent just so that you at least get a sense of perspective of where I’m coming from that isn’t rooted in assumptions.

    Quick rundown:
    ENTP (the debater)
    *enneagram type 6/7
    8-values https://i.imgur.com/G2hsm4U.png
    Previously posted political compass https://i.imgur.com/UumFKDA.png

    *I feel that enneagram is a bit too vague in its descriptions and I suspect that it may mostly be barnum effect

    More in-depth:
    I feel that many of society’s problems have no simple solution, and too often context and possible solutions are ignored due to adherence to ideology. In terms of large-scale problems I’m probably more pragmatic than idealistic and principled, but to me, every solution is a value proposition of whether the solving of the problem is more valuable than the principle it may violate.

    (long unrelated aside incoming)

    As an example of my thought process in regards to a social problem, I am in favor of gun regulation. Unfortunately, in the united states, the zeitgeist is in support of owning firearms just for the sake of enjoyment. The obvious solution to gun violence is to remove guns from the population, but unfortunately, the problem the US has with violence isn’t limited to guns, and we’ve seen in countries which have banned guns outright, knife attacks increase substantially in frequency. People will find ways to hurt each other, but guns make it easier. If we were to ban guns, how many lives would really be saved? Probably quite a few, but it isn’t likely that people would willingly give up their guns. So practically, how do we limit firearm related crime? We could start by destroying all unregistered guns found by the police, tightening regulations on how guns are sold. (closing gun show loopholes, making it more difficult to acquire guns, severely limit the import of new firearms, etc…) However, the ownership of weapons is laid out as a right in the constitution and considered a right to most Americans.
    Another problem is that a large portion of gun violence in the US is related to gang activity, which exists largely because of the culture which has developed in the underprivileged ghettos of many cities because of lack of opportunity, quality education, or legal means of earning money. This is compounded by the fact that, due to the period of time that these disadvantages have been around and the relative quarantining of these communities, a subculture has developed in which crime is almost assumed, and where traditional morality isn’t respected as much as a sort of “honor among thieves” set of creeds.
    So how might we limit gun violence in the united states? Alleviating poverty in cities, decriminalizing drugs, providing better public education, and of course, regulating guns.

    It’s this sort of train of thought that might make it sound like I’m contradicting myself. when I think out a problem, I constantly play devil’s advocate for myself to make sure my solution is effective rather than ideologically sound. despite my position on the political compass, I generally make no attempt to label myself politically, because I feel that it’s mostly pointless because I’m not as concerned about the principles as I am about the effectiveness of the system, and people’s ability to exist happily within it.

    so please… stop calling me an ayn rand worshipper. I don’t even like ayn rand.

18. > I think the biggest reason that my views appear to be contradictory is that the views that you’ve assigned to hardcore gamers as a group don’t line up neatly with what I actually believe.

    If you want all gamers to have the freedom to play as they wish, if you want all games to end up like chess, then you’re not a tryhard in that sense.

    I don’t see how that squares with a desire to compete, but then again maybe it doesn’t have to square.

    > My positions are internally consistent as far as I can tell

    All the scolding from your initial post seems to have vanished and you’ve become a casual. So yes I guess so. Though as a competitive gamer we likely have conflict in the area of suffering.

    The idea of participating in a system that arbitrarily creates suffering for the enjoyment of others is toxic to me. I’m reminded of Hostel. Or the gladiatorial games of fiction. (The historic reality is up for debate.)

    But we don’t choose our emotional needs. I’ve certainly got my own temptations that trump my ethics. (Beef for example. I literally cannot wait for lab grown meat.)

    > (implication that) I inherently cannot then allow other people to enjoy their games how they want.

    Tryhards can’t. At least not without deep mockery. The very terms hardcore and softcore in a community of mostly males is clearly insulting. I’d say you could pitch tryhards on casual modes if the mode wrappings were sufficiently humiliating. Like a “pussy” mode or a “pathetic scrub” mode. (sparkles and farts yea?)

    > The problem is that your concepts of casual gamers and try-hards are not sufficiently broad as to allow…

    To a tryhard, the perceived value of a win, and the win itself, is more important than fun. Whatever that takes. To a casual fun is the only thing that matters.

    A casual on the other hand wants freedom for themselves to play as they wish and either actively wants the same for others or doesn’t care enough to have an opinion.

    The chess analogy is perfect imo. I’m saying ultimately all publicly exposed abstractions need to be open source and easily accessible for modification.

    There is of course variation among tryhards, an ethical tryhard would theoretically be one who for whatever reason works very hard at winning, but has no desire to restrict access to the game for casuals. I guess that’s you?

    They are profoundly rare in my experience. (Indeed you’re the first I’ve met as far as I know.) It seems impossible for a human to invest emotionally in the value of a hierarchy and not also begin to defend that hierarchy. Stockholm syndrome comes to mind.

    But then again maybe it is, the unbounded potential of emotion is like a black hole for logical evaluation. Which I am just now looking at directly thanks to your replies. So thanks.

    > the way I consume videogames is in line with the way hardcore gamers traditionally do

    Ok.

    > almost everyone is to the right of you.

    True, ish… I mean fair enough. But I’m anti SJW (and SQW,) I’m pro nuclear and I carry a gun. (And of course I’m a white guy, which in some camps is enough alone to make me right wing.) And again you’re not talking like you were before.

    I don’t know what I am politically. I do question the value of democracy, and I certainly see the need for regulation generally.

    http://underlore.com/an-argument-in-favor-of-the-state/

    But I am staunchly opposed to suffering, and death to a lesser more complex extent.

    You may not strictly be an Objectivist but they absolutely worship competition and disregarding the suffering of others, especially if they can spin it as “voluntary.” Wanting to compete for its own sake has a lot of overlap with Objectivism.

    > I do actually feel that they’re fairly important for a few reasons.

    Agreed. They are deeply, sadly, underused now thanks to IPL and the profit motive. But that’s also true of computers and software generally.

    Apparently it’s gonna take an AI to rectify at this point.

    > there may come a time when we do consume dreams as media

    I agree, like I said about memory licensing. A cultural showdown is coming. IPL is gonna force a choice between profit and innovation. Much like we’re gonna have to choose between privacy and security theater.

    > Granting them so much importance that I base my judgments of people based on their gaming habits seems excessive to me.

    We agree.

    > The problem is that our disagreements go MUCH deeper than games.

    Time will tell. You’re talking differently now, (or you convinced me somehow) so who knows. Frankly I don’t care what you were, only what you (we?) are.

    Though I don’t see how anyone ethical/aware can enjoy competition. At least without some contradictions. Like how I enjoy animal products despite knowing they are evil 🙁

    > Stop telling me what I mean, what I think, and what I am.

    Meh, fair enough. Mea culpa.

    > You keep saying that hardcore gamers are telling you how to play games.

    Go complain about anything in any game forum about making the game more free/friendly/accessible. You need that lesson.

    http://underlore.com/why-devknights-exist/

    > You’ve been repeatedly telling me what I think and how thinking those things makes me a bad person.

    Because that’s logically unavoidable. Tryhards inherently dismiss the suffering of others. Suffering is a feature, not a bug, for tryhards. That’s why they create situations that are zero sum. They are inherently hierarchical and exploitative. That’s what competition does. It’s the opposite of cooperation. But thinking more about it like eating meat and the zero constraint of emotional possibility creates pause for me.

    After all, I don’t blame criminals, so how can I blame tryhards?

    http://underlore.com/prison/

    > a live-and-let-live attitude does not make me any less competitive, adaptive, or “hardcore”

    So you simultaneously strongly value (enough to complete and try hard) and yet totally disregard (freedom for all casuals and no looking down on them)?

    I’m having to rethink. Anything is possible with regard to emotions. Perhaps that’s the root of the contradiction I was detecting. You feel both love and apathy for your victory?

    Or is it more like a necessary evil? Like you know you’re hurting people but that’s the only way to fulfilment for you? Like someone cursed with sadism?

    > (gun stuff)

    http://underlore.com/2nd-amendment-and-related-links/

    At the end of the day it appears we mostly agree.

    I wonder where you stand on suffering.

    http://underlore.com/the-apex/

    Feel free to comment on this other posts, they could use the expansion 🙂

19. >Time will tell. You’re talking differently now, (or you convinced me somehow)

    I did change my tone. I attempted to remove pretty much all accusatory language from my writing so that there wouldn’t be anything insulting to latch on to. I realized the discussion was a bit hostile, but even though I disagree with you, I think you have a very interesting and unique personal philosophy, so I really wanted to talk about ideas more than trading insults.

    As for my thoughts on suffering… I don’t view suffering as either inherently good or bad, rather, one should define its harm or value based on the effects of that suffering. It wouldn’t be controversial to say that pain is a subset of suffering. If we say that physical pain is a form of suffering, then it should be judged based on the reason for it was inflicted, and the effects of it. I will use three examples here to illustrate a contrast.

    First, a man is stabbed. He was stabbed because there was another man on a knifing spree. the victim loses an excessive amount of blood and eventually dies as a result of his injuries. This is uncontroversially bad, because there wasn’t a good enough reason for him to be hurt, and it caused him to die.

    Second, a man is terminally ill with a disease which causes him great pain every day, but there is a procedure which could extend his life and lessen or eliminate the pain he experiences. Unfortunately, the procedure itself causes a great deal of pain and suffering. In this scenario, the value of the suffering can only be properly judged afterward, because if it works, then it would most likely be considered a net good. If it doesn’t work, it would be a net evil, however, there is no way to know beforehand whether it will work or not, so to attempt to make it as ethical as possible, the decision to have the procedure must be left entirely to the patient after being properly informed of the possible consequences.

    Third, A man is overweight and feels terrible about it. He decides that it’s important for him to lose weight and attempt to become more healthy. To do this, he restricts his diet, the frequency of his meals, and begins to exercise regularly. The dietary restrictions cause him hunger and angst for quite some time, and the strain of exercise causes him physical pain. Eventually, he loses much of his excess weight, builds muscle, improves his endurance, lowers his blood pressure, lowers his cholesterol, and his psychological state improves. He voluntarily put himself through pain and suffering in order to improve his physical and mental wellbeing.

    In each of these scenarios, there is suffering. One is clearly bad, One is potentially bad, and one is good. It’s because the circumstances that bring about the pain and outcome are, in order, bad/bad good/unknown and good/good.

    Another factor involved is the severity of the suffering. If to prevent a serious disease you must endure the suffering of a relatively small needle, it’s worth it. If to prevent this disease you must remove a limb, then the disease would have to be VERY VERY bad to make it worth it.

    The suffering of competitive games falls basically into good/unknown. The people who play them overall enjoy the experience of playing them, and so they will risk suffering for a chance that they will enjoy themselves. If they do not, they can opt out once it becomes clear that the reward is not worth the suffering involved.

    >You feel both love and apathy for your victory?

    This is fairly close to the truth. Winning matters a bit, but only if the activity itself is engaging. Ultimately, win or lose, The feeling joy or disappointment doesn’t stick with me for very long either way, so if I enjoy it while I’m playing, and there’s maybe a 40/60 (I’m not always upset when I lose.) chance that I’ll be upset afterward, then I’m willing to take the risk. I assume the majority of people who play competitive games are unconsciously or consciously weighing these options when they queue up for a match.

    Additionally, competition is a very human desire. People wish to be challenged, be it physically, mentally, or emotionally. children will invent games in which there are winners and losers fairly naturally, as well as games where there aren’t. Humans naturally seek both conflict and companionship by nature, and games are an effective tool to allow for that conflict without major stakes is, at least right now, a good thing overall in my opinion.

    Engaging very regularly with the culture and communities of competitive gaming, I will readily admit that there are plenty of people who are real pieces of shit of seem to genuinely be sadists, however, I have also met plenty of people who I get along with very well and who have become real friends. It’s a mixed bag because the human population is. It’s just that the shittiness doesn’t come out as readily in other areas because there isn’t enough pressure.

    Also… Just throwing it out there, I’m in exactly the same boat on vegetarianism. Were I born in a culture in which meat wasn’t everywhere and a part of nearly every meal, I would pretty much certainly be a vegetarian. I don’t really care about the health benefits, but I think about the animal that died every single time I eat a piece of meat. In that sense, I would liken myself to a non-participant beneficiary of slave labor in the south. It’s wrong, and I would prefer that animals didn’t have to die for me to eat my burger, but I’m not about to stop the meat industry, it feels basically useless for me to abstain until there’s enough cultural momentum or lab-grown meat.

20. > I attempted to remove pretty much all accusatory language from my writing so that there wouldn’t be anything insulting to latch on to.

    If you were a pathogen you thereby made yourself invisible to my cognitive immune system XD

    Sly X)

    > but even though I disagree with you

    Do you? Where? It seems on the game front there’s no deep disagreement, I just don’t think you realize you’re doing wrong yet. not to rain on your parade but I hope to help you see that even gently tormenting other players is a bit like having a ham sammich. I feel your actions conflict with your positions, but as with me and beef, I fully understand. That doesn’t make your positions wrong, and it’s positions that matter most, and we apparently share them on the gaming front at least.

    > I think you have a very interesting and unique personal philosophy, so I really wanted to talk about ideas more than trading insults.

    Thank you, I share that desire. Though I do prefer a critical examination because the whole point of making my views public is to error check them. Peer review so to speak 🙂 I am substantially different now than when I started this project 17 years ago.

    > As for my thoughts on suffering…

    You’re conflating damage detection and information sensitivity with suffering.

    It’s perfectly possible to gather data about harm without suffering.

    There is zero justification for suffering. And less than zero justification for ever intentionally causing it. Period.

    https://www.amazon.com/Biotechnology-Abolish-Suffering-David-Pearce-ebook/dp/B075MV9KS2

    I’m not surprised that a competitive gamer doesn’t know that yet. I was competitive before I realized what suffering was. Though I did stop competing before I was aware of it consciously. I did understand subconsciously that the outcome of any competitive game was bad, I either felt compassionate guilt or the sting of defeat.

    I’m actually rather good at a couple fighting games and RTS games. Or at least I was when I stopped.

    “Strange game, the only winning move is not to play.” ~WORP/Joshua

    > Another factor involved is the severity of the suffering. If to prevent a serious disease you must endure the suffering of a relatively small needle, it’s worth it.

    Preferring to be punched in the leg over being punched in the face doesn’t make being punched good. The lesser of evils is still evil.

    Sidenote: Always voting the lesser of evils makes you rational and easier to exploit from a game theory perspective. This is why I don’t tactically vote. I vote for who I actively want, and nothing else matters.

    https://underlore.com/moloch-is-screwed/

    http://underlore.com/decision-2016-the-moratorium-on-democracy-itself/

    (Really talking to me means exposure to a warren of rabbit holes, sorry hehe.)

    > The suffering of competitive games falls basically into good/unknown. The people who play them overall enjoy the experience of playing them, and so they will risk suffering for a chance that they will enjoy themselves. If they do not, they can opt out once it becomes clear that the reward is not worth the suffering involved.

    Stuff like this is why I called you an objectivist. You seems to have a libertarian’s mythology of choice in some ways.

    Ultimately free will is an illusion. That’s just unavoidable physical fact.

    Higher up the scale ladder you have social pressures and options. Why people play games and how they relate to social status. And then gender issues and economic pressures. And over to psychology and neurology we have dopamine addiction/exploitation. Manipulation and public relations.

    COD for example might as well be a state funded recruitment tool. Merica, the vidya game. And it’s jam packed with exploitative nationalist state religion military industrial complex bullshit. It’s hard to imagine a denser colder package of toxic memes.

    See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casino#Design

    Always ask who benefits.

    There are no excuses for suffering. Making ways to absolve yourself for inflicting it is evil basically. Proportional to the net suffering created. I don’t make excuses for the suffering of the cows involved in making my cheese and burgers. I admit it’s wrong, period. Yes I can’t stop myself, but that’s part of why I advocate for the closing of factory farms to replace them with suffering free meat.

    Vegan meat substitutes are mostly soy and that shit is dangerous imo.

    http://www.foodrenegade.com/dangers-of-soy/

    Making excuses for the suffering of others is what the shadiest evil suits and prison people and serial killers do.

    You are morally obligated to not do that. To what degree you fail to do that is to what degree you’re a failure as a person imo. I judge myself by this calculus.

    I’m not perfect and neither are you. When people make excuses for the suffering they cause they are saying they are perfect. They are saying “this bad thing about me actually isn’t bad” which leaves nothing bad left and nothing bad plus existence means some variety of perfection.

    > This is fairly close to the truth. Winning matters a bit, but only if the activity itself is engaging.

    The key word there is engaging. What does that mean and how do the people that profit off your hobby exploit it?

    > I assume the majority of people who play competitive games are unconsciously or consciously weighing these options when they queue up for a match.

    I can see why you’d think that, but I doubt it. If you look at the rat studies where they run a lead into their brains to stimulate their pleasure centers you find that rats will do ANYTHING for that pleasure. They will walk across electrified grids, and starve to death or die of thirst right next to water because the brain is so hard wired to seek pleasure.

    http://cerebromente.org.br/n08/doencas/drugs/videorat_i.htm

    Joy is the point of our brains. (Joy is literally what makes life worth living.) Evolution and survival have shaped how that joy is doled out. Games hack that system and in a very real and crude way enslave the dopamine system. This is part of why tryhards are horrifying to me. They are basically a diffuse cult. They are rats fighting to the death over and over for tiny droplets of joy.

    It is absolutely not a profit of joy. It’s basically a socially acceptable form of gambling addiction.

    > People wish to be challenged…

    Again, “wish” here is a little misleading. People wish for joy, these games provide it by hacking the Darwinian brain hardware we’re currently enslaved to.

    There are other ways to provide that joy and I’d like to see a culture that’s aware of and honest about the cost of that hack.

    Picture a society of serial killers. Every game is about torturing hookers and for it to work when you log in you have a random chance of being the hooker that day. Imagine they wish they weren’t serial killers. So while yes they have those games they, like me and beef, are also moving towards a day when they can give them up for good.

    That’s how I see COD and the like. But we aren’t serial killers. PVP should be recognized for the (admittedly low grade) evil that it is. My breakfast was far more evil. I grant that. But I recognize it also.

    > Humans naturally seek both conflict and companionship by nature, and games are an effective tool to allow for that conflict without major stakes is, at least right now, a good thing overall in my opinion.

    Sure but it’s absurd to imply that games can’t be fun as purely co-op or vs AI. At best it’s a technical problem. Like how it’s easier as a coder to make “engaging” PVP than PVE.

    Any moron can cram two people in a room and say fight. But playing Frankenstein and making something for someone to fight is a lot harder. Ironic. Considering tryhards often rationalize via challenge rhetoric. Well, PVE is WAY more challenging to make than PVP. Surprise surprise, doing the right thing is also doing the harder thing in this context. Maybe that’s why we respect people who do the right thing.

    The problem is that tryhards are doing the wrong thing and they convince themselves they are doing the more right thing.

    They mock PVE players as scrubs and casuals. They actually think by rewarding coders that did the easier thing they are doing the right thing.

    > Engaging very regularly with the culture and communities of competitive gaming, I will readily admit that there are plenty of people who are real pieces of shit of seem to genuinely be sadists

    Isolating those people into a low harm setting is unarguably a good thing. I just wish we’d stop rewarding them with praise and cash and low grade victims.

    > It’s just that the shittiness doesn’t come out as readily in other areas because there isn’t enough pressure.

    Which is a great argument against all sorts of social evil. Why add pressure? Ever. Reality is zero tolerance enough.

    > it feels basically useless for me to abstain until there’s enough cultural momentum or lab-grown meat.

    It is. My solution/goal is to do more good via advancing the lab meat cause than my share of the evil of factory farming. Short term bad, long term good. I’m hoping on balance I’m a force for good.

    I extend that math to everything I impact to the best of my ability.

    http://underlore.com/the-apex/

21. this will probably be more disjointed than my previous posts

    So, your last post has been easily the most compelling argument so far, and it’s the first time that I don’t readily have a set of answers, so I’ll have to think about this more.

    Additionally, I would appreciate if you would elaborate on how exactly you would define suffering because I didn’t feel that I was making uncontroversial statements about it, and it’s important for the sake of discussion that we are both talking about the same thing.

    >The key word there is engaging. What does that mean

    Essentially something is engaging if it makes me think about my behavior, the behavior of others, or the behavior of the universe, and is challenging. I, for the most part, find very similar stimulation in discussing ideas with someone I disagree with as I do when I fight someone in a video game. It’s all competition to me, and winning isn’t the ultimate goal, just a treat for doing things the right way. It isn’t a coincidence that I happened to find your blog and start a long-winded discussion with you. I want to be more correct than I am, and I want the act of getting there to feel satisfying, whether that means being better at executing a string of commands in the right way at the right time, or being more knowledgeable on more subjects. Adversity, improvement, catharsis.

    >Ultimately free will is an illusion. That’s just unavoidable physical fact.

    I almost agree with that. I would go further though and say that we only think it’s an illusion, but on closer inspection, one can actually recognize first hand that it isn’t EVEN an illusion, and is merely a fabrication.

    I was once religious, but I am now an atheist. In the process of becoming an atheist and eventually a philosophical materialist, I read into a number of religions, and schools of philosophy. The ones that most caught my attention were nihilism and existentialism (about half of everything Neitzche says is pretty crazy) and existentialism is what I began to use as the conceptual foundation for much of my personal philosophy. Then I accepted free will as not being real, and I believe there are still artifacts of existentialism within my conceptual framework of the world which simply don’t square with there not being free will, as choice is effectively the most core principle of existentialism, though I don’t believe it’s all to be thrown out with the bathwater. I need to do a psychological inventory to ensure that my beliefs about free will don’t interfere with my beliefs about other things, but until then, I’ll explain my current position. Since I don’t have to convince you of determinism, I’ll just skip to the important parts.

    I see recognizing that there is ultimately no free will as being overall beneficial to humanity, as it removes the impetus for vengeance entirely, as an evil person is simply unlucky enough to be born with an evil brain, and in an environment where that nature might flourish. There’s not a meaningful difference between someone who does something bad because of a brain tumor that suddenly formed which caused them to have violent impulses and a person who was simply born with a brain which is naturally predisposed to those impulses. It allows for empathy where there otherwise would not be, and I think that in recognizing this, we can work toward actual solutions rather than simply being satisfied with revenge.

    I imagine none of this is new information for you

    What complicates the acceptance of determinism is that a natural response to it is a feeling of aimlessness and complacency, an attitude of just being along for the ride to see where it goes. The problem with that is that it’s not that we can’t make any decisions. It’s that we have NO CHOICE but to make decisions, and the decisions we make are conceivably predictable with enough information and unlimited processing power. Humans absolutely do make decisions, and those decisions being predictable is what the entire concept of psychology is founded upon. Our experience of consciousness is actually sort of more like a movie than a videogame. You are no more in control of the next thought you have as you are the next sentence I write. Moral or immoral, good or bad, pleasant or not, in line with what you consider to be your sense of self or not, they simply appear in your mind. For this reason, as actors in our own lives, we have no choice but to live as though we can choose. You cannot opt out of the system, and because we all must choose, and there’s some validity to the idea that for society to function, we must embrace choice even if it is a false choice, as choice is integral to the human experience. In this case, there is functional value in disregarding free will, but we must not forget that there is will. Although there may not objectively be accountability as we consider it, the concept of accountability is something that can influence human behavior in a positive way.

    Prisons of sorts (which would look VERY different were I to design the system) may still be necessary, but they MUST not exist as they do today. The purpose should be ENTIRELY rehabilitation and the protection of the population from those unfortunate enough to be harmful to those around them. The justice system as it is is inherently incompatible with the idea that there is no free will.

    … This turned out more rambly than I intended.

    Anyway, I will concede that there may be some logical inconsistencies in my views, but I’m actively working to either eliminate or realize and live with them. I am about half your age, so you’ve certainly had more time to mull over your positions, though I imagine that if we were to argue for 20 years I’d still find plenty to disagree with you about. It’s really what I do.

    I think we have more in common than I originally believed. Rather, I think we may define some important terms differently, have some different values, and come to different conclusions. Those differences are non-negligible, but there’s more overlap than it would appear on the surface.
    Heh… “Underlore”.

22. > So, your last post has been easily the most compelling argument so far, and it’s the first time that I don’t readily have a set of answers, so I’ll have to think about this more.

    Thank you and good luck 🙂

    > Additionally, I would appreciate if you would elaborate on how exactly you would define suffering

    Put crudely I mean the feeling of suffering. Defining it seems to require defining sentience.

    I can’t exactly do that, so let me share some things I feel can suffer:

    Humans, mammals, reptiles, fish, crustations, squid, probably not insects, or anything simpler. I also think it’s perfectly possible for an AI to suffer. the artificial rat brains and brains in a dish we make in the lab bother me deeply. To me that’s some real life black mirror shit. I vote we err on the side of caution and never assume suffering is impossible as a first principal.

    > Adversity, improvement, catharsis.

    Interesting, so you’re doing here what I did with writing generally only you overtly added an emotional component where as mine wasn’t consciously planned.

    Here’s a question that should give you pause >:)

    How can you know you’re not immune to facts and logic?

    > one can actually recognize first hand that it isn’t EVEN an illusion, and is merely a fabrication.

    Elaborate.

    > I see recognizing that there is ultimately no free will as being overall beneficial to humanity, as it removes the impetus for vengeance entirely, as an evil person is simply unlucky enough to be born with an evil brain, and in an environment where that nature might flourish. There’s not a meaningful difference between someone who does something bad because of a brain tumor that suddenly formed which caused them to have violent impulses and a person who was simply born with a brain which is naturally predisposed to those impulses. It allows for empathy where there otherwise would not be, and I think that in recognizing this, we can work toward actual solutions rather than simply being satisfied with revenge.

    Excellent! I’ve never linked these two concepts directly, but they fit perfectly. That absolutely squares with my reasoning and makes arguing against vengeance significantly easier if I know the target believes against free will.

    Sadly it never matters how good the argument is, but I am emotionally pleased when I have good ones hehe.

    > I imagine none of this is new information for you

    The combination was new, those parts were not.

    > a feeling of aimlessness and complacency, an attitude of just being along for the ride to see where it goes.

    There’s a disturbing work ethic flavor to the way you phrased that. I think you have some Horatio Alger memetic pathogens lurking in your brain you should work (ironic) to purge.

    The work ethic is as much a lie as original sin. I suspect you’ve not aimed that anti vengeance at yourself. You don’t need to justify your existence for the same reasons. You don’t owe anyone anything by default expressly because you never had any choice, and you certainly didn’t have a choice to be born or where or to who. If anything, your ancestors owe you for the imposition of subjecting you to nature.

    The right wingers I speak with hate all branches of that tree, they call it entitlement with a sneer, and I in turn see them as slaves and dupes. They talk a big game about freedom but ultimately they argue for being property and versions of original sin.

    > The problem with that is that it’s not that we can’t make any decisions. It’s that we have NO CHOICE but to make decisions, and the decisions we make are conceivably predictable with enough information and unlimited processing power.

    So you don’t believe in randomness at all either? I’m on the fence on that. My gut reaction is to believe randomness does ultimately exist and sensitive dependence on initial conditions drags it up and out into the macroscopic world.

    > Our experience of consciousness is actually sort of more like a movie than a videogame.

    What if time doesn’t exist either and it’s more like a book than a movie? I have a strong feeling that this is how it is, and I feel like I could test it by asking an AI (since people never listen to me) to subtract time from the standard model and then try to merge it with quantum mechanics. I strongly feel that it would lead to a nearly complete theory of everything and would eliminate the need for all the kludgy best fits we currently cling to, like dark matter/energy, and various constants, and the singularities and infinities.

    > You are no more in control of the next thought you have as you are the next sentence I write.

    Agreed.

    > You cannot opt out of the system, and because we all must choose, and there’s some validity to the idea that for society to function, we must embrace choice even if it is a false choice, as choice is integral to the human experience.

    Or put a bit differently, Choice is subjectively real but objectively false.

    Rejection of subjectivity is a massive mistake science has made imo. Psychology is a crude accidental blind attempt to rectify that.

    My mind spins off on tangents here, thinking about systematic explorations of subjectivity that might analogize with science’s exploration of objectivity. Music, magic systems, art, dreams, drugs, etc.

    I feel like as we approach a TOE we’ll integrate more of these systems. Subjectivity is obviously real. Indeed that’s more certain than any external fact. (I feel therefore I am is more true than I think therefore I am, imo.)

    I’m reminded of how the holographic universe theory explains concepts currently thought of as paranormal.

    I expect a lot more of that in future.

    I think there’s a whole other kind of truth to the famous quote that sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

    Almost all of us seem to believe some aspect of this, we assert that god has a subjective experience. And animists say the universe feels. And cosmological structures look an awful lot like neurological structures.

    > In this case, there is functional value in disregarding free will, but we must not forget that there is will.

    I certainly agree that we must accept the subjective reality of free will as a matter of social policy, but dispense with vengeance. (http://underlore.com/prison/ (again for future readers)

    > Although there may not objectively be accountability as we consider it, the concept of accountability is something that can influence human behavior in a positive way.

    You should really drill down into how you define positive.

    http://underlore.com/the-apex/

    > Prisons of sorts (which would look VERY different were I to design the system) may still be necessary, but they MUST not exist as they do today. The purpose should be ENTIRELY rehabilitation and the protection of the population from those unfortunate enough to be harmful to those around them. The justice system as it is is inherently incompatible with the idea that there is no free will.

    Agreed. There’s nothing a prison (or a school for that matter) does that a hospital can’t do better.

    http://underlore.com/the-final-underclass/

    > Anyway, I will concede that there may be some logical inconsistencies in my views, but I’m actively working to either eliminate or realize and live with them.

    Well, let’s get back to the topic of this post then.

    You hurt people in your gaming habits. Sure they “volunteered,” and it’s not a large hurt by any means, and they also hurt you. Though you yourself seem especially resistant to that hurt, which further questions how “right” it is to compete.

    I think you should try to move away from direct competitive play. I’m on the fence about indirect, such as speed runners. I feel like that form of competition might be so removed from the kind of fighting our reward pathways evolved around that it’s almost totally an abstraction. But then again, I’m sure it hurts having your best time defeated, and frustration is a form of suffering. Seems like I’d rather people be frustrated with real problems vs reality than vs an arbitrary goal like the best completion time in a video game.

    The best simulation causes joy and nothing else. We don’t make music that hurts us sometimes to make us feel better later. (Though I guess that’s arguable with depressive “sad” songs.) But games all seem to do that. Like a casino.

    > I am about half your age, so you’ve certainly had more time to mull over your positions, though I imagine that if we were to argue for 20 years I’d still find plenty to disagree with you about. It’s really what I do.

    Heh, and I’m sure I’d be different in 20 years also. Each person is a string of corpses leading off into the past 🙂 All my past selves are as gone as my present self will be in time. Which is part of why I see no problem with biological immortality. I’ll give way to my “children” regardless.

    > I think we have more in common than I originally believed. Rather, I think we may define some important terms differently, have some different values, and come to different conclusions. Those differences are non-negligible, but there’s more overlap than it would appear on the surface.
    Heh… “Underlore”.

    Agreed 🙂 I would call you ultimately an agent of life and joy. That selects you as part of my in group as far as I’m concerned hehe. (We have amazing cookies, you just don’t even know.)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_utilitarianism

    http://underlore.com/the-apex/

23. The way you describe the passionate gamers’ behaviors as “bizarre work ethic” is exactly the reason why they don’t get along all that well with you casuals. You casuals actually don’t respect gaming as a whole, for you it’s only something to pass the time and you think people who are truly passionate about gaming are silly or childish. You don’t respect video gaming as a hobby, and you find it so baffling that there are people who hold a passion for video games.

    You should stay away from playing online competitive games with randoms, and only play them with close friends who share the same flippant attitude as you.

    I’ll very willingly bet that every casual “gamer” sees every passionate gamer as inferior simply because it isn’t “just a game” to them.
    It’s like someone who dislikes music telling an avid listener of music that “it’s just a song, why are you acting like it’s the best song ever?”

    In other words, if you’re not willing to put 101% into a public online competitive match of a game like, say, Call Of Duty, you’re a newbie in the wrong game. This isn’t Uno. Stop treating video games like party card games.

24. Says the coward hiding his name triggered by someone speaking the truth. You are a waste. And by definition it’s not a hobby anymore when you take it as seriously as you do. It’s an obsession, and the only difference between obsession and profession is the direction of cash flow. Regardless the cash is mostly flowing from the exploited and flowing to stock holders. It’s funny you say card games. /coughs in magic the gathering. The difference between uno and mtg primarily being uno doesn’t ruthlessly fleece the gamblers hope of someday making money by playing.

    “Hardcore” == desperate obsessed bootlicking gaslighted masochist corporate rube

    “Respect” is a bullshit code word for submission, and no I don’t submit to your corporate cock sucking ideology. You’re as tragic to me as those children forced into star craft bootcamps because the parents dream of sponsership and prize money. Games used to be about fun, now it’s just about gaslighting suckers and extracting as much cash as possible for share holders. Shouldn’t you be buying lootcrates? Fuck off.

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