Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 4909716" data-attributes="member: 59082">A bit more on the blog entry. Overall I enjoyed it, but I think the author is missing something when he basically conflates all forms of geekery as of one essence. In one sense computer games and RPGs are almost diametrically opposed: the former rely upon simulation, the latter imagination; the former are externally derived or stimulated, the latter internally generated(that is, through one's own creative capacity).I don't pretend not to be rather anti-computer games as I see very little, if any, redeeming value beyond the development of certain motor skills and mental processing speed. But at what cost? We really don't know yet, but I can say that every single hardcore computer game player that I've known has been rather unhealthy and unbalanced in a social/lifestyle sense. There are other qualities that I've observed, but won't go into them here.CGs and RPGs are not interchangeable. Yes, they are both within the broad category of geekdom, but so too are crack and chocolate in the broad category of narcotics. But the two stimulate very different aspects of human consciousness. The danger I see is that the more they are seen as part of one continuum, the more RPG designers try to reach out to CGers through use of computer gimmickry, and the more computer games "infect" RPGs. Think of stuff like virtual game tables, or what Wizards talked about designing as part of D&DI but still hasn't emerged (was it the game table? I forget). At some point the two begin to merge, but in so doing that which makes RPGs truly vital is in danger of being lost: the play of human imagination.There's a great Gary Gygax quote in which he mentions kids being asked whether they preferred radio or TV better in terms of stories. One kid said radio, "because the pictures are better." I would agree with this wholeheartedly, that the "pictures" (of human imagination) are better than those of computer simulation, but they are more elusive, they aren't as easy. They aren't a quick fix. The human imagination requires nourishment and development. If you feed it, it will grow. If you starve it, it will die. Filling it with pre-made imagery is akin to starving it (or, perhaps more accurately, it is akin to overloading it and smothering it, even eventually burning it out).The imagery of computer games, on first glance, are amazing, vivid, even occasionally beautiful. But they are skin deep, soul-less. The images of human imagination are subtle, elusive, and vaporous. But they exist within an infinite context, that of the soul itself. So we're talking about something that is soul-less versus something that is the very medium of the soul. That's a pretty big difference.</blockquote>

Verification