I've started a Steam curation group for recommending good non-combat games for PC: steamcommunity.com/groups/popdetective#curation

@Uvim_Azua

7 жыл бұрын

How about Stardew Valley?

@stanj85

7 жыл бұрын

I completely agree that not all games have to be combat focused. And though they may not be showcased at E3, Indie games are really where the creativity you're looking for exists. I've had amazingly creative and fun experiences with Indie games. I think that should be promoted.

@bellcitah

7 жыл бұрын

Stardew Valley has combat mechanics, although it's an optional feature. The mines are basically combat, and there's a farm option that allows you to fight at night time. Of course, you can play the game without ever going into combat mechanics, but the game kinda punishes you for that, not unlocking certain features and making certain items harder to get. I like Stardew Valley, but I get why it's not on the list.

@Silverizael

7 жыл бұрын

+Fernando Azua Rivera Unfortunately, it still has the mining section which falls into the kill monsters category.

@PositiveBlackSoul

7 жыл бұрын

This War of Mine: A very bleak game where you have to survive as a group of civilians in a war somewhere in East Europe. While it is possible to engage in combat, that's hardly recommendable. Life is Strange: I guess I'd describe it as College Mystery Drama about friendship? A small game that feels like it has been crafted with a lot of love and eye for small details. Papers, please!: You're controlling passports on the newly opened borders of fictional post soviet state Arstotzka. Crusader Kings II: A Grand Strategy game where war is a gameplay element, but the mechanics are rudimentary. The game is more about properly marrying your offspring to form alliances and diplomatic relations in medieval Europe. Mirror's Edge: Ok, Mirror's Edge has combat, but that's hardly the focus of the game.

I would totally play a game where a post apocalyptic group would have to cooperatively rebuild society.

@d.a.v.i.d2807

3 ай бұрын

So you should play Death Stranding from Hideo Kojima.

@BEATDHAMER

Ай бұрын

With real world physics and consequences that allow for all sorts of creativity.

People could misinterpret this video to say "Violence is killing video games" when in reality the message was "The player does not have to engage in combat in order to make the game engaging." I think an important distinction to be made is that not all games with mechanics rooted in violence are power fantasies, shooters, or even about killing A to get B. Several of the combat focused games in their own right are not combat focused as works of art or stories, but it is the bulk of the mechanics. There is nothing wrong with having games like Call of Duty and Monster Hunter on the market because it is indeed fun to live in a fantasy land without consequences. There is nothing wrong with having games like the Legend of Zelda and Bioshock, which seek more to follow a narrative through gameplay. The issue lies in having a shortage of (AAA) games that are not rooted in harming something to achieve a goal.

As a game designer myself, I completely agree that this industry is painfully limiting itself, and I doubt you'll find many of my colleagues who disagree when you talk to them one-on-one. What I'd like to add, though, is some insider perspective on HOW we got stuck in this rut on a mechanical level. Obviously, you've covered the sociological side, but there's more to it in the case of video games. For one, in the early days of the medium, computing power was scarce and thus limited the kinds of narrative nuance that could be accomplished through the medium. Making a game with such narrative depth meant you were going to be making a text adventure, and not much else. Lord help you trying to fit such a large experience on anything but the largest, most expensive floppy disks, too - such decisions limited your market. If you wanted to make your experience polished mechanically AND fit on a tiny storage medium such as a cartridge, then you needed to front-load your narrative INTO your mechanics. Now if only there were some sort of means of illustrating a story's conflict in a way that is ingrained in people on a biological level... This is where combat entered the picture. It became the norm because it was easy to develop mechanics around, because it was marketable (Particularly it screenshotted well), and because it didn't require much space to illustrate. The earliest pioneers used this, and it became the standard that we're all burdened with today. It became the direction in which the medium developed. It certainly didn't help that post-crash industry leaders specifically only marketed to young, angry boys for a great deal of the 80s and 90s, and only served to further entrench combat as the "default" mechanical state in games. And we're all the poorer for it.

It's not about hugging monsters and having a nice cup of tea. But you know, not all movies are action movies, dammit! We can have story-driven drama games, comedy games, romance games, politics-driven fantasy and sci-fi stories, anything really

You know what's interesting, I've never considered myself a gamer and I realise now that this is the reason why. I vastly prefer non-combat games, like the Sims and Rollercoaster Tycoon. I felt like I couldn't consider myself a gamer because I wasn't playing "real games" i.e. with combat. Thanks for making me realise that.

@MRuby-qb9bd

6 жыл бұрын

Life is Strange is one of my favorite non-combat games. Wish there were more like it!

A small critique: I would argue that you kind of shorthand the contemporary importance of the indie scene that, of course, dont get featured with all the AAA games shown at conventions like E3. There are loads of non-combat games that are played by a whole lot of people, but these games will never be shown at a mainstream gaming convention.

@PopCultureDetective

6 жыл бұрын

While it's true the indie scene is a more creative space, the numbers for non-combat games are not much better. I ran the numbers for indie games over the past 4 years and found that 75%+ are combat focused.

@greyfox4838

2 ай бұрын

@@PopCultureDetective I'd love to see you revisit this video, violence still reigns supreme, but I feel like the video game scene has improved a lot, and non combat indie games have ballooned in number since then, like Jusant, Outer Wilds, Return of the Obra Dinn or Stray (AAA games are still mostly violent, though a lot have come out that are at least critical or willing to explore the nature of violence in their game, i.e. The Last of Us 2 or Red Dead Redemption 2.)

A game I've always wanted is about a photographer in a war. You're hired to do some promotional photography for a country's military but then you begin to find out about cruelties and war crimes and your goal is to document them. It takes place in a semi open world and all you can "shoot" with is your camera.

Did one of those tweets SERIOUSLY imply that a *Lovecraftian Universe* would be best approached from the barrel end of a gun? The whole point of Lovecraftian fiction is that it's portrays the universe as being absolutely beyond any means of human control or comprehension. The horror from Lovecraft has jack to do with the monsters and more to do with the idea that we aren't so powerful after all and that the universe wasn't made for us. It is absolutely un-lovecraftian to believe you can just kill everyone in Innsmouth and that such an act would change anything

This is why Papers, Please is such a good game. It's not about violence. It's about trying to prevent violence and manage a menial border checkpoint job while trying to keep your family afloat with the horrible wages you receive. Either you let in good people with bad paperwork and risk your family, or be incorruptibly thorough and risk other things.

And now I want to be an intergalactic veterinarian.

This is why i prefer indie games, they are more creative and tries different ways of playing

It remind me of gamers who dismiss games like Animal Crossing or Minecraft or Slime Farm because it's just a list of tasks to do... But every game is just a list of tasks to acomplish. And I don't think it's more interesting because suddenly the tasks include killing. We can no longer separate gaming from killing, it's kinda sad.

Imagine a world-building game set in a post-apocalyptic setting where rebuilding IS an option, but it isn't advertised anywhere, so players have to figure it out for themselves.

Wow I'd love to play a game where you play as the medic in a battle or war. Seems like it'd be a unique experience

So, basically… violence is to the video game industry what romance/sex is to the music industry

Maaan I really want to play a first person paramedic game now

Oh my god thank you. I dislike most combat games but love exploring worlds in games and surviving and crafting and befriending, but there are so few games like this!

I think the biggest thing to take away from this video is that he's not saying video games can't exist that involve combat. Just that variety would be very nice and interesting.

I am actually going to school for game design and this has inspired me to make games and projects that do not revolve around fighting and killing. I agree. We need more constructive games. Not games that purely destroy.

I love that this video isn't anti combat games, it's more pro non combat games. Like we do need more of it. I do like combat games, but non combat games I love too (maybe even more). Phoenix Wright over Call of Duty any day.

I love combat in games, especially when done well, it's a very rewarding and exciting experience. But I completely agree, we need FAR more building games, character-driven story games, puzzle games and all the other types of game. I think games as a whole would be better off with just more variety in general. My favourite games are always ones where you can express some form of creativity, be it in how it's played or the things you make, I think we need loads more of them.

I think combat is not the primary focus of most games, but rather the power fantasy. Even racing and sports games are ultimately power fantasies.

Where's my intergalactic veterinarian game at?

In Reggie's quote I think he's using the word "battle" a little less literally than you were interpreting it.

This sort of reminds me of that TV show about people who's job it is to manage the aftermath of superheroes. I would love to see a game with a similar sort of concept. Like, where you play the diplomat who must deal with each massacre of some other character or who must make people with the other side after needless civilian damage, and just the general aftermath of first person shooter like games.

Portal is such a great non combative game!

Though I love violent videogames, I agree that there is a lack of other forms of interaction. In an interactive medium, kinda ironic.

I think that this is a very well-made and important point, and it’s interesting to look back on! However, I think the biggest problem with this is that the non-violent alternatives actually do exist, just not in the mainstream. The real shame is not that people don’t make non-violent games, it’s that they don’t get the same attention as products that are mass-marketed by big companies to cater to a superficial audience.

This was an interesting idea, and now that I think about it, there absolutely should be more games with no combat. That's what holds many players from playing video games. They just wanna have fun without hurting everyone

I love combat in games, but I definitely want more games with uniquely gamified mechanics that are something other than combat. I have always felt a draw to more variety, but especially when my daughter got old enough to play games with me. She is afraid of conflicts in games so I usually have to fight the enemies for her at this point, she's getting more bold, but I digress. What I want to highlight is how overjoyed she was when she found out she could make friends in Kirby Star Allies. It got me considering how much more there could be with a little creativity

I know this was published years ago but it comes to me at such a perfect time because I’m dabbling in game creation and I want to make the kind of games that subvert the power of violence to solve problems and conflict that will provoke thought.

It is weird how a lot of video game culture sees less violent games like the Sims or Cities Skylines as less serious than pretending to be a space marine. I'd love a version of Civilization where there was an easier option to grow your civilization without violence.

@NickonPlanetRipple

7 жыл бұрын

It's 'cause little kids/preteens think playing violent games makes them magically become an adult faster. It's all to craft an illusion of being grown up to impress their equally misguided friends and peers.

I like combat games as much as anyone but yeah more variety would be nice. Especially in high budget atmospheric games.

This point has been made a lot of times in the past, and it's not as though people aren't listening. Developers, when given some creative freedom, have tried to add non-combat gameplay mechanics to their games over the years. Dialogue, crafting, environmental puzzles etc. (You also mentioned a few in the video). I feel like if anything, more and more people are starting to get this message. Just look at one of the most hyped up games that turned out to flop: No Man's Sky. Lots and lots of people were clearly excited by that, and not because they were looking to kill things. So I think this culture of combat mechanics being the only viable mechanic is starting to shift, just not enough that the biggest publishers are willing to throw massive amounts of investor money into yet.

This almost made me cry because of the realisation that because I'm not a big fan of combat games, which happen to be the most popular genre at the moment, I often get shunned and told I'm 'not a real gamer' because I don't enjoy (nor am I skilled at) titles such as Doom, CS:GO, Six Siege, and all of the other shooty games that take up the majority of online gaming interaction.

Wow. As a game developer this is a problem I had no idea we had. Conflict through combat is just the easiest thing to make. It'd take a lot more effort, ergo money, to make more diplomatic options in games. It's also risky for a AAA developer to do something like that, since 'shoot em ups' are a safe bet for sales almost every time. Doing something like what Undertale did on the scale of a AAA game is too much of a gamble for big publishers, until a trend is set where things like that are proven to be financially successful. A lot of people just don't know that a lot of these good non-combat games exist since they're mostly stuck in the indie scene, and unless they're scouring the latest titles daily like I do they're not likely to have heard about them. It's like a self-fulfilling cycle of monotony, which makes me sad.

I would absolutely play a realistic EMT, Police, or Firefighter game. Multiple ways to stabilize a victim of trauma or violence, de-escalate shitty situations with complex moral dilemmas or domestic violence or even hostages, breach buildings to rescue people rather than just light up the place... maybe even to put out that very light up. Holy shit, someone get on this.

It doesn’t help that people don’t consider non-violent games to even _be_ games...

I was just thinking that a couple of days ago, while looking through my 50+ games, wondering what could give me a chill and relaxed yet fun experience without the constant stress of battle

I recently played a video game (don't remember the title sorry!) which was a cooperative one where players cook meals in a restaurant. You have to chop vegetables, combine ingredients, wash plates, etc. But there are all kinds of obstacles, sometimes the kitchen moves around, and stuff can burn if you leave it too long. It was super fun and a great time with friends. I don't play video games much so I had no idea what an outlier it was. I play a lot of board games and this area has so much innovation and cool new ideas that don't involve combat. (some do of course, Magic is the well known example where you are pretty much fighting / destroying your opponent) But there's everything from managing farms, stopping a plague, providing electricity for towns, even Cold War politics! I think a lot of people like playing both board games and video games so it's not a stretch that they would enjoy this stuff. It could really be inspiration for video game designers!

@dancingfishfilms

6 жыл бұрын

The video game you're describing is Overcooked, it is an absolutely stellar game with friends

I found it funny when people first coined the term "walking simulator" as an insult to those games where all you do is press w. Their logic is that those are not actual "games" because they lack "game-y" mechanics. But tbh, I love walking simulators, and I think that it is the perfect name. When I am playing a game like Firewatch, I don't want to shoot guns, throw grenades, and swing swords and axes. I want to walk and observe.

This problem is kinda like vicious circle: when developers don't make a lot of non-combat games, the audience interesting in buying games at all begins to consist of people interesting in buying ONLY things that have combat in them. I've seen this example many times, but one I remember even now. It was a comment section dev post of my favorite game - Oxygen Not Included. This game is a survival colony simulator in which combat action (yes, singular) only used as a means to get food from critters, and you can not use it if you don't want to. Main focus of the game is building, logistics and using physics and environment to help make a better and more efficient and long lasting colony. In its first and so far only DLC they added radiation and space exploration. And the mentioned comment was under the roadmap post... and it's basically said that devs should think and prioritize people who "likes base defense, alien visitors/diplomacy, factional warfare, etc". I replied to it by mentioning that there's is a tons of such games already, and that there is a lot of another things dev can do instead which matches the already predetermined tone of the game - like, for example, adding chemical reactions when elements in-world interact with each other, or gravity-manipulation and ability to build space stations. To this that person replied "but i already PAYED for this game where one of its main art was some an astronaut holding a space blaster" (which is untrue - it's a digging tool) and that by not wanting to see non-violent game turn into a violent one I "don't think about the rest of us" and saying that the game "should be catered to my preferences only" which is "entitled bs" (everything in quotation marks is actual quotes). Which is ironic, since that person thought they were entitled to a combat-oriented gameplay in the first place. And to them me (and later - other people who joined the discussion by opposing them) not wanting to see something they were interested in (in another words - simply having different interests) was excluding them and their desires... which is kinda horrifying worldview. And major companies aware of such views an using them to make more money by including the object (combat) such people feel entitled to get pretty much everywhere they can. In other words, it's a supply and demand problem, which I don't really have an idea how to fix without miracle of a big company risking to explore new ways to make money and massively succeeding.

You know, an idea in the vein of what you suggested that I personally love, is the idea of there being some kind of intergalactic swarm of alien locusts, like the Tyranids in Warhammer, or the Zerg in Starcraft. Except, the thing is... It's subverted. Instead of playing soldiers killing these faceless bugs with the cathartic shotgun and blast of blood, you have to support communities and help support the victims of the attacks, almost like a natural disaster. That's my favorite way of handling Gigantic Monstrous Threats in stories I write and tabletop RPGs I run. So like, for example, you might have to say, negotiate with someone who refuses to share his food supplies with the rest of a colony, or it might even turn into a tense game of evacuating people before the locusts come! And if you fail to evacuate in time, then it becomes basically survival horror as you escape through the wilderness surrounding the colonies, desperate to avoid the aliens. Because you are just basically an EMT or well-meaing religious missionary. In addition, people saying "who would want to play a game about an intergalactic veterinarian", are ignoring the plethora of Trauma Center games where you do just that, but with people. Having to figure out alien anatomy based on your existing notes/ideas of how things are built would be a hella interesting game! I'd play that.

This is an older video, but I bet this guy would love Disco Elysium. That game is a work of art.

@PopCultureDetective

Жыл бұрын

Disco Elysium is indeed a great game

@tharwab

Жыл бұрын

@@PopCultureDetective I’d love to hear your thoughts on it sometime in a full format!

This is something I found myself stumbling into while I was considering a different problem I have with gaming. See, I love RPGs, but even though they could be used to tell all kinds of stories in all kinds of genres, it seems like almost all of them take place in sci-fi or fantasy settings. That seemed very weird to me, so as a thought exercise I decided to come up with RPG concepts with minimal to no sci-fi/fantasy elements. Turns out my favorite of the concepts I developed uses non-violent conflict: a put-upon retail worker trying to get through their day-to-day life. Combat is a staple of RPGs, so I couldn't get around that, but a battle system doesn't have to be about physical fighting. It could just as easily be used as a (somewhat abstract) representation of verbal conflicts. In the case of my hypothetical game, random encounters are irate customers, your in-battle skills are primarily conversation options such as "offer to check the backroom", and your protagonist's HP is representative of how much of this bullshit they can emotionally handle. While I'd still totally love to make a game out of this specific idea, I did later learn about an existing RPG called Last Word that uses the same "conversation as combat" premise. Pretty neat!

A game about being an intergalactic veterinarian sounds awesome! As always, great video. Really well thought out and researched. Thanks very much, I will be signing up to your patreon

"Imagine all the stories we're missing out on because game developers insist on building virtual worlds that we experience from behind the barrel of a gun or the blade of a sword." -- what worries me is that it's not just that "game developers insist" but that "game players demand" them. One might argue that the money for violence-focused games vs non-violence matches up with the level of consumer spending for that kind of game... which is perhaps a chicken or the egg problem, but I think speaks to the fact that most of the "non-violent" games are coming with low budgets or from indie devs who are making passion projects before "strike it rich" projects. Anyway, sorry I'm late, but nice video :) Very thoughtful.

I would LOVE more big open world noncombat games, some of my favorite aspects of games are noncombat, settlement building and the feeling of rebuilding the common wealth in fallout 4, acting as an explorer and dimlomat in Mass effect andromeda house building and general exploration in Skyrim. I'm not opposed to combat it can be really fun but it just lazy writing to always have combat as the go to in all games. A noncombat open world fallout style games would be so great, making alliances, securing resources to rebuilt, actually determining the fate of the world and interacting with different characters. It would be cool to also have violence as a possibility but with more impactful consequences. if there was more weight to the decision to use violence that could lead to some really interesting choices.

I agree that there is a lot of unfulfilled potential. Even back in 2001, I chose not to major in game design because I already saw the trend, with half the games I was reading about involved a view of two hands holding a weapon. When you look at what people have done with redstone circuitry in Minecraft, it's incredible. My cousins will play such complex mods, you feel like you have to know the actual science behind nuclear-level technology just to craft nuclear technology in the game! Games have a lot of potential to teach real science and math, even if a little combat is sprinkled in, and it could make things easier to learn when centered around a more interesting medium.

So, this was a small point you made, but when you brought up E3's presentation of survival horror games as incredibly violent, but non-combat oriented, that got me to thinking about why these games are that way. I don't have any sort of study to cite on this, but I have a hypothesis that these horror games come from the same place (and reinforce some of the same toxic ideas) as the violent power fantasies. They seem to purport that not having the option to solve problems with violence, being put in a scary situation where it's not possible to "fight back" and murder all the horror away, is in and of itself terrifying. Even with a game like Resident Evil 7, where you *do* have a certain ability to fight, they make the main enemies immortal (most of the time, anyway). So the player's put in a situation where they can use violence over and over and over, but it doesn't make the problem go away... and that's meant to be the most scary, frightening part of the game. I wonder what kind of message that communicates.

@NickonPlanetRipple

7 жыл бұрын

You are right, in a way. Part of why Amensia- The Dark Descent blew up when it did was it came out at a time when the likes of Capcom were pushing this idea that "nobody thinks horror is cool anymore." MANY companies suddenly began marching to this tune because they saw how successful Call of Duty was and they wanted some of that money, producing terrible CoD clones that nobody liked in the vain hopes of riding the coat tails of that series' success at the time. This was an interesting case of gamers actually getting TIRED of generic FPSs with repetitive combat and asking for something else, something different, which helped the indie scene blow up. Then Amnesia came out, and the biggest most commonly heard praise of it I remember hearing was "It makes you feel so helpless." Yes, the idea of being trapped in a dark room or a claustrophobic hallway with a monster that is far stronger than you are and can very easily have its way with you is, in itself, terrifying. People don't like the thought of something like that happening in real life, of not being able to defend themselves from something hostile and get out of that situation. It's a carry over from the monster under our bed or in the closet. Something that's gonna get us when we're not looking. Among the Sleep pushed this extreme to its logical conclusion by making the player a literal baby. You see what the world looks like to the infant in question, how much more amplified things like thunder and lightning feel to them, and how they might interpret things like, say, an abusive mother who gets drunk frequently as a frightening monster in their fantasy world they're living in. But I get what you're saying... that this is a childish fear people need to get over, this idea that there are monsters in this world that are alllwaaaays out to get us, and we better be prepared to drive them back into "the darkness" or other immaterial concepts like that. Because once you can call somebody "the monster" in real life that's out to get you... well then anything you do to them is justified, right? I still appreciate Amnesia and think it's a cool game that holds up to this day, but the hype around it died down long ago. At the time, it was refreshing. Now people seem more content to just shoot shit all the time and are eating these new games up.

Papers, Please

I’m a newer indie game developer, but I’d love to make a game that doesn’t involve combat. I’ve actually been dreaming up a relaxing cartoony fishing game where you sell your fish to buy better gear/boats and you can decorate your house lol. Just an idea at the moment.

@d.a.v.i.d2807

3 ай бұрын

Dave The Diver?

I've been playing games my whole life and the last couple years or so I've hard a very hard time finding the "magic" games used to have. After enough time playing, almost every game seems to boil down into the same feeling. Go here, shoot that, watch this. The same control scheme and a very similar pacing. The last game that really shocked me was Spider-Man because of the amazing feeling of velocity when web swinging, but you do that long enough and that magic goes away too. I am itching for a game that inspires empathy in its interactions. God of War found ways to mix up its pacing so every fight to keep it fresh throughout and that's because they understand design, you can take the same principles of design and attach it to non-violent scenarios made in a way that makes you feel empathy for the subject of the conflict. Like that Intergalactic Ambulance idea in the video, I would LOVE to play a 10-12 hour story about that. The EMT's occupational stresses, the pros and cons, their family on the other side of the galaxy they are constantly separated from; that would be amazing.

This is quite an interesting take, really. As somebody who is very accustomed to the combat of video games and doesn't see it as out-of-the-ordinary, it's my first reaction to say that people 'just don't understand' the appeal. Then I find myself glued to Va-11 Hall-A, a visual novel about bartending, and it has me questioning, "Why don't I play more games like this?" The answer is usually that these games are hard to find. Thanks for making me think!

Glad Life is Strange was in this because the second I read "Unfulfilled Potential of Video Games" I thought Life is Strange. I spent a lot of my youth lamenting that video games never lived up to what I knew they could deliver, something that neither books nor movies or TV shows can and I really, really wanted them to live up to that but I very rarely found one that did... until Life is Strange. To me that game is the living embodiment of video games finally fulfilling that unspoken promise to me. Truthfully it is not the only game that is innovative or breaks new ground or pushes the medium forward, but to me it definitely is the most ambitious and unapologetic one, one that truly dares to ask "why _don't_ we talk about these things, why _don't_ we tell these kinds of stories in video games?" And I love it to bits for that (and for many other things, too).

I think the problem isn't that there are so many combat games, but that the ONLY way to solve the puzzles in them is through combat. I play WoW, and often I miss different elements that aren't combat-related that could be added to the adventure. Nowadays we have secret puzzles in the game that reward mounts, or pets, and those have become as popular as combat features like dungeons and raids. I always thought that a great adventure had to combine these things, it had to require your character to use its brain, not just its fists.

You can really see the appetite for complex building games with light or negligible combat mechanics in Minecraft. Not in the base game as much, but the mods for Minecraft. Fans add in industrial engineering,, infrastructure tools, magic and much more. Often these are used as ways to automate the players need to kill. With these mods you get to a point where the player no longer engages with combat despite the game offering it. Taking the premise of a Minecraft mod and turning it into a game without combat could be lucrative.

Remember Portal? How successful that was. Honestly love a good combat as much as the next person but you're right, it would be nice to have some variety.

Some of those smaller games are really good, but I think the lack and funding and lack of interest combined work to keep them just that smaller games.

AAA mainstream games are usually boring and uninspired. That's just how industries are. There are plenty of successful conceptual video games, they just aren't at E3.

"Intergalactic veterinarian" is a game I very much would like to play.

@espoppelaars

7 жыл бұрын

Agreed, that sounds amazing

I have stumbled upon this channel a few weeks ago and I love it with all my heart. Please just keep making the quality content that you do so I can love you even more :D

all this stuff is the exact same reason I am not seen as a real gamer for playing mainly Sims, Minecraft, and Stardew Valley

I would love a game where lovecraftian horrors invade your home. You don't know what they want and as an upstanding middle class gentleman, the only mechanic you have to defend yourself is tea and pleasant conversation. (Try not to offend them)

This is actually why I don't play video games often anymore. I've played a few FPS's, and now, I basically feel like I've played them all? It's also why games like Skyrim and Fallout games, to me, play best with Mods that allow you to circumnavigate combat through discussion. Where is the "let's talk about this and not die." Where is the character's sense of self-preservation? A Giant world full of characters...that I'm just meant to kill? That's such bs, where's the Skyrim "talk to dragons and arrange for them to be fed livestock once a week in exchange for protection" option? where's the Fallout 4 storyline where you just talk to people and nobody dies. I think Dishonored actually did some of the better options with this. While Low Chaos/Stealth is the hardest ending to get, it produces the best solution if you kill nobody at all, and instead save everyone from the rat plague. You at least have the option of going through the game without harming a single person directly. One of the reasons I rep the game Firewatch so much is that, I feel it's the blip of the sorts of interactive story games that aren't about murdering people as your first option(i.e. you are a hammer, everything is a nail) and instead actually focus on real, human stories that might end in death, or might not.

aw man now I want to be an intergalactic veterinarian

I was literally thinking Journey, as a game where working together with your partner and going on an adventure and needing someone else to help you along the way, that game has always stuck with me.

I want more combat optional games. I've been playing Fallout: new vegas, and I find it more enjoyable to do the little side quests for all the characters than to kill everyone like I'm a protagonist from a Doom clone.

One of my favorite games is The Stanley Parable, which is literally a walking simulator.

I just want a first person Sims-like rp game ffs

And then, there is Outer Wilds.-

Intergalactic veterinarian is my new fav thing, also cool band name

Incidentally this issue isn’t restricted to big budget AAA titles; a majority of indie games also prioritize combat. I did a quick rundown of the 105 independent games featured in Xbox sizzle reels at E3 over the past 4 years. The results are only very slightly better than the ratios for the industry as a whole. 78 of those 105 games (about 3/4) focus on combat mechanics.

@dantescanline

7 жыл бұрын

Heya, came into the comments here to try and suggest indie games as an alternative. Often what's called 'indie' these days is simply smaller publishers trying to make it big in the industry, mimicking all the problems you mention. I think it's important to make a further distinction between commercial and non-commercial games. There's tons of interesting unique games on sites like itch.io, often offered entirely for free.

Good video! Though I have some thoughts: Chris Franklin over on Errant Signal did a video essay a while ago probing at why this might not simply be a lack of imagination, per se, but rather the limitation of the medium of computer games itself. I recommend a watch of that Violence in Video Games essay, but in short, he chalks it up to how the computer hardware itself drives much of the violent combat trope in video games: 1. Because computers as they exist now are totally logical machines, they bias towards extremely formal, strict rulesets 2. Because computers bias towards extremely formal, strict rulesets, there is less ability to work with fuzzy human logic and more with strict mathematics like formal rules in Chess or physics simulations 3. Because there is a bias towards strict logic and maths, games about simulating physical space are far more common (and spatial simulations of all kinds are far more accessible and makes computer graphics look hella cool versus something more abstract and back-endy) 4. Because most video games are about interactions in physical spaces, there is a bias towards conflict being based around that physical space, and thus, physical conflict is a commonality In essence, he sums it up as "because of the hardware we run video games on, it is much easier to make a game where you bludgeon a man to death rather than shake his hand and get to know him", which I think raises some really big questions in the field of "the medium is the message". Of course he points out that he does wish there were more games that weren't about just blowing up people's heads, but given how predisposed our gaming hardware is to creating simulations of spaces, his proposed solution is to make games where the spatial interaction is inherently meaningful, and not simply distance to be covered to shoot the next army of zombies over.

Its a good video and I agree with it almost entirely, but there's a big reason behind this that you don't touch upon. Ease of development. Its easy to set This Weapon Deducts 12 Points and This Enemy Has 100 Points, Get It To 0 To Win. Its very difficult to GAMIFY conversation. This doesn't excuse this generic approach to game development, of course, but I think it at least deserves a mention.

@dizzyc3093

7 жыл бұрын

I'd agree, except that conversation has been gamified quite a lot in recent years - just very seldom as a core mechanic. It's easy to turn into a mechanic, but it takes a lot of writing (and accounting for VA, animation, etc., potentially a lot of money/development time) to make it a particularly deep core mechanic. (Though it can be done. I'd argue many, many, many more people remember the dialog choices they made in Mass Effect rather than the combat choices.) That's why other paradigms - like Jonathan says, exploration, construction, community development, mysteries - are probably more feasible as "deep" core mechanics for big, AAA games development.

I agree with you in principle, but I think you put a bit too much emphasis on the story side of things, the most important part of a game to me is the primary gameplay loop, and in games where you play as a person (not as a city etc) compelling gameplay loops can be difficult to find, especially ones that don't get boring and can be used in multiple games. Combat is easy to understand and easy to implement. So while I think other gameplay loops can be interesting, I think they will always be the niche of the passion project, and the small time developer, the turn around time for big name publishing demands the quick easy solution.

@awesome_by_default

2 ай бұрын

That's my biggest complaint about this video. Not every game needs an enthralling or interesting story. It all depends on what the devs intent is with their game. Does a game like Minecraft need a multi-layered story with several characters and back-stories? No. Does a game like Mass Effect have it's story suffer due to the violence? Absolutely not.

wreck-it ralph said it well: *we've only been plugged in a week, and everyday it's climb the building, fight bugs; climb the building, fight more bugs!*

My dream game is one that tricks you into thinking it's like all the others before revealing that all those mindless monsters and enemies you killed weren't mindless. Those enemies could've been saved. You didn't have to kill any of them. Then it'd let you try again. Like a groundhog day scenario where you can undo your mistakes and try and save everyone and prevent all the tragedy you observed and contributed to. It could be really fun to have the player go against a version of themselves, trying to prevent and undo their own sins by manipulating events in a non-violent way. The protagonist and player character of part 1 becomes the antagonist and an NPC of the part 2. Maybe with time traveling or something of the sorts.

@rickyangulo4516

2 жыл бұрын

U described undertale verbatim

Yeah, as much as I love those violence driven games - the elder scrolls, witcher and dragon age titles being personal favourites in the RPG genre, the best part of them for me is never the combat. The exploration of the ES games and the character development and moral choices of witcher and DA. And holy shit that court intrigue quest in DA: Inquisition is the most fun I've ever had in a single quest - with the combat being the worst part in it. The focus on violence in just very limiting, as fun as it can be.

If you haven't played Wandersong, I highly, highly recommend it. It's basically a "save the world" story, but the main character is a bard, and the main mechanic is singing instead of fighting. It's a really heartwarming game and the art is adorable, 10/10 would recommend.

When they shut down Star Wars Galaxies, reason being "players can't get enough pew pew here", they were shutting down a sandboxed world, where you could spend years making friends, furniture, dancing, exploring and being mayor to your own player founded city. That was the end of the non-combar fest gaming era. It's not going to come back, until real VR is as widespread as DVDs.

Video game idea: a war game but the goal is to win the war or de-esculate the war and bring peace with as few casualties as possible

Id get HOOKED on a gameplay about having tea with monsters and learning about their life and helping them through life problems and quests, building a mutually beneficial friendship. Honestly I'm perplexed as to why that doesn't exist, if it does PLZZZ TELL ME I WILL PAY HUNDREDS TO SUPPORT AN INDUSTRY LIKE THAT!

@birdpaladin9332

7 жыл бұрын

Lissa Lev, try "Undertale" on the PC, available on Steam. You don't have tea but you can either build friendships or create enemies with monsters.

Growing up I always thought video games were boring because they all seemed the same to me. Some of the ideas you said like having a video game where you play roles like veterinarian or farmer make me so excited because that would open a whole new world of games - and would attract so many types of customers like me! The gaming industry needs to realize there are people out here, which is clear in this comment section, who would love to partake in the gaming world if only they catered to gamers who weren't satisfied with just combat.

Imagine if nearly all movies were action flicks. But people like those tweeters you showed are doing a real disservice to themselves, because even if you're very interested in violence there's so much left to explore beyond shooting people in the head with guns. Survival horror is the obvious example, but there are a lot more possibilities. Papers, Please, for one, was popular because you were doing bureaucratic violence: your decisions determined whether people lived or died.

Intergalactic wildlife ecologist

The scenes from Journey totally got me, I love that game. There are so many really good non-combat, even non-violent games. Those might not grant the immediate excitement of combat action, but they stay with you for long after you played them, because they deliver a carefully constructed and lasting emotional impact instead gunfire and explosions. And by the way, all the ideas you mentioned, I would definitely play those.

When they give you a gun they hide the lack of options you can have, if you remove it , you have to find a way to communicate with the virtual world..

SO TRUE!!! I wish there were more games like Life is Strange, Journey, Flower, Firewatch, Abzu..... please make more developers! Its like if the film industry ONLY had action films, or novels were only about violence. So many stories can be told without a gun.

Very interesting. I don't want them to make less action games but rather more that aren't. I want a superhero game where you don't fight but save people

Those comments that say things like "What do you want? Monsters hugging each other" is a prime example loaded language and logical fallacy that are employed to trick the poster's own logic. First of all, they presuppose that games must have monsters. Secondly, they proposed a false dichotomy that the only other way of dealing with monster is by being physical intimate and cheesy. Thirdly, they argue in circular logic (misplacing cause and effect): they argue that you must have violence and conflict in game to justify why most games are the same, but failing to see that is precisely the problem you are addressing.

In the last few years the gaming industry have been doing more expensive games with the advance of technology, and it has been really hard to market non-combat games with trailers and presentations, the risk of failure to the big companies is too much to try to explore other types of gaming, that is why we are not seeing big point-and-click adventures, collect-a-ton or puzzle games. we depend of the indie developer to keep playing and exploring these genres, and keep making games that aren't centered in combat like Tacoma, Journey, Tacoma, That Dragon Cancer, The beginners Guide, Papers Please, Firewatch, Va-11 Hall-A, 2064: Read Only Memories, Bit.Trip Runner, Refunct, Her Story, Huniepop, Life is Strange, Long Live the queen, Night in the Woods, Orwell, Octodad, 1979 The Revolution: Black Friday, Thomas was Alone and VVVVVV

@NickonPlanetRipple

7 жыл бұрын

Indeed. Nobody wants to be the first to make a risky new property that doesn't play by the AAA game industry's rules and potentially fails to catch on. One or two flops is enough to kill many companies nowadays because the games are so stupidly, needlessly expensive to make, but they make them that way because being able to show off your fancy graphics in trailers and reviews is "so vital" or whatever. But then they need to pander to the lowest common denominator to make the money back, and this unsustainable cycle continues.

I’m gonna be real, I don’t mind violence in games. For example, Doom Eternal was one of the best experiences I’ve had with a game ever. However, I’ve been trying to get my gf into video games and she really doesn’t care for violence (the only game she has had a connection with so far is stardew valley). She asked me why so many games had violence and fighting in them, and I didn’t have an answer, so I actively sought out this video (or at least videos like this) to try and find an answer. So far, all I can say is that it’s fun.

I miss Animal Crossing

The last guardian is a beautiful, captivating non combat game, just for people looking for tips! And mirror's edge is also non-combat focused I would say, even though it has some violence.

There are plenty of games I love that include a lot of combat, but I totally get where you're coming from. There definitely needs to be more variety in gameplay than what we've been seeing

you hit the nail on the head on why I don't play many video games any more. when I look at a new first person shooter, I see the same damn game. over and over and over and over. just monotonous as hell. I'd like to see a detective game where the powers of reason were central - la noire is a good example, but it could be so much more than that - where you interview people, follow plot threads and make timelines. or perhaps a true cold-war spy game where the mechanics were focused on deception, analysis and subterfuge to keep your cover and not be blown. I'm reading the spy who came in from the cold and it would be just fascinating to have a video game adaptation of this. frankly, I'm much more into boardgames now because of the shite they are putting out in the video game world, and i'm much happier because of it. there they can't simply rely on bigger better effects (shiny trinkets) to make sales.

3:32 Of course there's no imagination. Its the AAA game industry, after all.

tbh life is strange is one of my favorite video games of all time, and there's no "combat" (even though, yet people die/can get shot, ect.) rarely do video games affect me as deeply as lis did, and I really wish there were more games like it (that aren't super dark and gritty and intentionally frightening)