Total War: Warhammer, DOOM, Uncharted 4 Finished, Banner Saga, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs?, Your Emails and More!
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This week Shawn, Julian, Cory and Rob Zacny talk about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and how far games can go to meet them.
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Add And - Broke for Free - http://brokeforfree.com/ - 40:01
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00:01:43 DOOM
00:17:42 Uncharted 4
00:24:32 Total War: Warhammer
00:36:19 The Banner Saga
00:40:01 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
00:58:33 Your Emails
Great show this week! Whenever a new strategy game comes out, you guys definitely need to bring both Rob and Shawn to the table...amazing commentary, as usual.
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You bastard, Tanglebones. :)
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thrawn82 wrote:Tanglebones is a better man than I, in tears at my desk.
Holy crap I just realized Julian and another guy on the show are two different people, I'm not sure who the other guy is but wow they sound like the same person.
Ok, so is long and rant-y. Sorry.
(Abraham) Maslow's Heirarchy of needs has been widely discredited in the academic community. The short reasons are that:
1) They appear very centered around the experiences of a white, western man. There is a great deal of research that shows the needs change (especially at higher levels) for women, non-white people, non-Western people, and other identities and various intersection of those identities.
2) Even among white-Weatern men, we see people addressing needs out-of-order, i.e. sacrificing lower needs to attempt to satisfy higher needs. For example, an artist who sacrifices food and living conditions (physiological) to create art (esteem and self-actualization), a child being beaten by an abusive father (safety) so her little brother is spared (love/belonging), or a mountain climber risking her life (safety) to climb K2 (esteem)
3) Maslow ignores the need of the individual in a larger community and how the needs of the community being met meets the needs of the individual (total safety, civic pride, etc.).
If you want more, you can go down the wikipedia rabbit hole yourself.
Having said that, I would be cautious to say that games don't meet the higher needs in some form. Although I don't think games can or will meet either physiological or safety needs (unless you count /pizza), I think games can meet many of the community (love/belonging) and esteem needs. And although I wouldn't place gaming accomplishments as my proudest, I do take some pride in a good k/d rate in Destiny, a platinum trophy in a difficult game, or looking at a Dark Souls disk without crying.
I don't think games can get much higher in the self-actualization and transcendence needs, unless of course your over of games inspires you to create games, detailed mods, maps, or other in-game assets, or create art or writing (or podcasting) around games. In which case, games can facilitate the individual to meet these higher needs.
However, like with all things, games shouldn't be someones only outlet to meet needs. I am prowl of my trophy level, but I am also priud of the wok I do. I like hanging out and playing with GwJers online, but I also like having a beer with IRL friends. Just like everything I have a need to eat, I don't always /pizza, I look to meet my higher-order needs in ways that expand just games.
TL;DR: Maslow's hierarchy is sh*t. But in the few places it isn't sh*t, games can help meet those needs. Just don't only use games to meet those needs.
PS: Corey,
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Oh yeah - this one's for Cory:
You bastard, Tanglebones. :)
ClockworkHouse wrote:Yay! My Sony bone is getting tangled!
thrawn82 wrote:Tanglebones is a better man than I, in tears at my desk.
BOTTLE ROCKETS THREAD OF THE WEEK, 'nuff said.
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Un bon mot ne prouve rien (A witty saying proves nothing). - Voltaire
Shawn - hearing you talk about how EverQuest felt unsatisfactory for meeting your needs was interesting.
Some video games have become what some TV shows, movies, and even comic books are today, which are modern day Legends.
We, as thoughtful people, like to have the classic heroic stories of old re-told and re-imagined through the media we consume.
However MMOs are a different kettle of fish altogether, as they do not have a beginning, middle and end.
They just go on and on, like life itself.
I felt the same hollowness 18 months into my WoW addiction, but could never put my finger on why until this week's topic.
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I don't know much of Maslow's Hierarchy. I recall hearing about it, maybe discussing it in a class for all of five minutes, hearing you guys discuss it and UpToIso's dismantling of it. So I cannot meaningfully contribute in any real way.
However, games as most of us know it are largely about problem solving and overcoming challenges. Sometimes it's against a computer, sometimes it's against another person. Online competition fulfills a lot of the same mental and emotional needs as a sport. Solving a puzzle in Zelda is rewarding in a different way to beating a boss in Zelda, and even solving a puzzle in Zelda is different than completing a test chamber in Portal or beating your high score in Tetris. Similarly, Overwatch is now allowing me to play and chat with GWJers that I haven't played online with for a long time, or have never played online with at all. It is therefore acting as a catalyst for the social.
But I think games can also imitate these needs. The Skinner Box is one of the most obvious ways in which a game can imitate some sense of achievement without actually requiring a challenge to be overcome. Is this actually fulfilling a need? Is it only making you feel like you're fulfilling a need? Is there a difference? While Shawn was down on his use of Everquest in retrospect, it did have him interacting with actual people (including the most adowable wub stowy). But what about dating simulations? Introverts with no charisma or a social life where they are backed into a corner, and seek these dating simulations for self-affirmation because no one else is around to give it.
Whether Maslow's Hierarchy is bullsh*t or not, it's at least an interesting kicking-off point to discuss the design of games and what they're trying to accomplish, and in some ways if that design is even ethical. Just need to be careful that it doesn't come off as elitist.
In regards to VR and violence, honestly, I think video games will be the least of it. Aside from what Shawn said (I saw someone basically using a VR program to do spray painting), Facebook bought Occulus for a reason. They're already working on some virtual reality Second Life akin to what everyone went to in Snow Crash, and that's the tame interpretation of it. Anyone else here read Otherland: City of Golden Shadow? Remember the club that Renie's younger brother went to? Remember what kind of sh*t happened in there that freaked Renie out? I believe one of the sections was styled like a strip show, only the woman was getting cut up and skinned and stuff.
Yeah, violence as a game is not my concern. Kids stumbling upon the Virtual Reality equivalent of 4chan and worse is what I'm not looking forward to.
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This was a great episode. Whether or not Maslow's Hierarchy is garbage or not, the idea of figuring out what needs a game is trying to or capable of fulfilling is interesting. I feel like it's something that critiques of games dance around but never try to nail down. I'm going to be looking at game criticism more attentively to see when they do and don't discuss what it actually gives the player, because I'm pretty sure that's how I've unconsciously evaluated if I want to play game or not.
I think the example of Don't Starve is an interesting one. Thematically, the way Julian talked about it, it's at the base level of Maslow's pyramid. But for the player the need being fulfilled is probably about mastery of the system rather than satisfying the need for the thing that's being simulated. That implies that these ideas work on two levels that weren't teased apart in the discussion: what the game mechanics simulate and what overall needs the game's design fulfills in the player.
As someone that has spent a lot of time thinking about and discussing games criticism, I have to say this is a very daunting task. It's an idea much more suited for a niche site that is dedicated to this idea. For example, D.A.G.E.R. System is all about rating games based on their accessibility to disabled players. For example, due to the customization options available, a player with cerebral palsy was able to snipe for the first time. Now imagine being a critic for a website where that makes up roughly 1% of your readership, if that, and you yourself don't suffer any of the handicaps but are being told to evaluate a game's accessibility.
For such criticism, you'd need a group of people that are familiar enough with this corner of academic study to first create categories of needs to be evaluated, and then you have to ask yourself if you assume most of your readership is middle class or if you're going to have to go between lower and middle class players. Even if you just choose middle class, you're assuming everyone in the middle class has the same needs. I, as a single male, have different needs than Certis, a married male, who has different needs than my buddy Stephen, who is married and just had his third kid. And the three of us are roughly in the same age range (plus or minus, what, 7 years?)
Granted, I think players can draw their own conclusions from the right kinds of analytical criticism in terms of needs fulfilled. If a woman that had not played Metroid: Other M watched my video analysis on the game and got to the point where I said the story isn't about Samus but about Adam, I think she could draw enough conclusions as to what that game would serve her narratively (sorry to toot my own horn but it's the best thing that came to mind).
I agree, though, that studying this sort of thing can encourage developers and critics alike to think harder about game design.
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That's an important point ccesarano, I hadn't thought of it that way. But I also think that no reviewer can encompass all things to all people anyway, so they should be up front about their experience being their experience, and you can judge from there. Perhaps the framing is less "here's what needs this game can satisfy" and more "here's what needs this game satisfied for me." I was mainly thinking of trying to make that idea concrete more than making any critic a universal arbiter.
Do...Do I sound like Julian or something?
Sincerely,
Another Guy
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Ha ha, I have this image in my head now of Corey refreshing this thread every few seconds, just praying that Starman replies to say Corey's not the one that sounds like Julian.
Un bon mot ne prouve rien (A witty saying proves nothing). - Voltaire
I'm baffled by this, none of the folks on the show, and specifically this show sound alike to my ear, and North American accents are far from my norm.
Total War Warhammer sounds pretty rad, but my gaming budget is tapped out, im also on the fence of playing Banner Saga 2 (as I loved the first one). Hopefully someone on the show might be reviewing it in eps to come...? I'm partly torn because I wont be able to bring my previous save with me and wonder what options I have if that is the case.
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It took me two or three episodes to distinguish Julian and Korey. There is a similarity to the timbre of their voices.
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I'm trying to remember back when I was new to listening to the podcast, because I think the only difficulty I had was sussing out which Sheawn was which. They all have different mannerisms and types of voices, though, or at least different ways of speaking.
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Whoa now.
"$10 - Exclusive Sean-cam where he just shakes his head, over and over." From Pyro's Kickstarter, "Endless Pit of Human Misery Livestream"
Ah, the joys of homonym-prone names. (Homonames?)
If I had a nickel for every piece of mail I've gotten addressed to "Gregg" or "Craig" or "Patrick" (long story) I'd have a cool sawbuck.
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Un bon mot ne prouve rien (A witty saying proves nothing). - Voltaire
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"$10 - Exclusive Sean-cam where he just shakes his head, over and over." From Pyro's Kickstarter, "Endless Pit of Human Misery Livestream"