What Games Are Like For Someone Who Doesn't Play Games
What Games Are Like For Someone Who Doesn't Play Games on HackerTube: recommended by 4 Hacker News commenters across 4 separate months, 2019–2023.
Razbuten has his wife, who has never played games, try a sampling of titles and shows where she struggles. It highlights unspoken game conventions that experienced players take for granted.
What HN commenters said
8 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
zjpSep 2023Recommends
I agree, for most people the system is a bootloader for Chrome. But this article is about one guy's disappointment he can't hold the whole system in his head anymore, and I'm just saying the user never cared about that in the first place. But also, if you've only used one operating system, there hasn't been any need to generalize what you've learned from that system interaction wise. We had to learn a bunch of computing conventions. Eventually you learn things like "most command line tools have -v,--verbose". Grandpa doesn't think computers work this way, he thinks Windows works this way and how should he know how Linux works. 'What games are like for someone who doesn't play games' is a pretty good video about a similar thing. It's easy for you, you know computing vernacular. ▶ this video
in “Linux becoming a Windows / OS X clone” · View on HN
newswasboringJun 2022Recommends
I don't know man, I downloaded Cup Head because it looked cute and it has been kicking my ass since like a month. I know it is one of those notoriously hard games but I think the point stands. I think games have moved away from precision challenges to more abstract ideas. Like Doki Doki Literature Club, I have no f'ing clue whatever that is all about but I am experiencing it. Challenge for me comes from the fact that it relies on peoples knowledge of tropes to enable different story progressions. I don't have that because last game I played was in like 2009. Another game I am having trouble with is watch dogs 2. I know, AAA game, made for less than pro gamers. But again, they are relying on my knowledge of AAA games for conveyance. I regularly have moments where I am thinking, what do I do? where do I go? Now I have played GTA vice city, so open world is not an alien concept. But the scale of it all, its just magnificently complex. Edit: I occurs to me all this can just be the fact that I suck at video games. But I used to be good at them, that's the point. Edit 2: This video explains my feelings better than me ▶ this video
in “Life is not short” · View on HN
vinkelhakeJun 2021Recommends
This guy[1] put his non game playing wife in front of a bunch of games, one of them being SMB. He noted that she never learned how to sprint, and that the game doesn't tell you how to do it either. If you can't figure it out on your own, you have to be told about it, or read the manual. NES games (and other games of that era) were in general pretty bad at tutorials. Players back then were expected to figure things out for themselves, mostly by trial and error. The video has a bunch of other interesting observations. A common theme is that games often assume that the player has some base understanding of game play that might not always be there. [1] - ▶ this video
in “The UX of video game tutorials” · View on HN
gundmcApr 2020Recommends
I really recommend clicking through and watching the referenced embedded video that forms the basis for this article. It's very well done and much more substantive than this summary. ▶ this video
in “An analysis of unclear lessons in video games (2019)” · View on HN
rilezgApr 2022Cites it
This reminded me of the youtube video 'What Games Are Like For Someone Who Doesn't Play Games', specifically the section 'Thinking Games Would Be Cooler' (begins at 14:43): ▶ this video I think games both appeal and do not appeal (to different people, or the same person at different times in life, respectively) because of the limitations of what the game allows you to do. It can be empowering to feel like you understand the world of the game you are playing, or disempowering to have to follow the arbitrary rules created by the developer.
in “Video games are kinda boring” · View on HN
rgoulterMar 2022Cites it
> And what does scene construction, story arc and so on mean when you can do anything ? I'm reminded of this video, where a game-playing husband discusses his non-gaming wife's attempts to play games. ▶ this video Part of the problem his wife ran into was that she lacked the 'literacy' for games that her husband (who had played games growing up) had, and so wasn't able to perform basic interactions which he had experience with. I think deep discussions about a topic require familiarity with the basics. - What kind of discussion can you hope to have or appreciate if you don't share fundamental understanding? You can probably ask what they found fun, or what's cool about it. > what does story arc mean when you can do anything? You might be able to appreciate Liana Kerzner's Lady Bits series. e.g. in this video, she discusses what 'agency' means in terms of games. She considers that there's the player's agency, the writer's agency, and the (diagetec?) agency of the characters in the story. [link]
in “Ask HN: Best video games to expand teenage minds?” · View on HN
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throw149102Aug 2020Cites it
Adding onto this, imagine how you would feel if someone said "There are 3 billion Spanish speakers worldwide" But then you learned that only 500 million were really fluent, and the rest ranged from broken Spanish that was enough to get by in a Spanish speaking country to people who were forced to take a Spanish class in highschool and never used it again. I think this concept of "fluency" in games is probably a more useful metric. The question is, if I dump you in front of a game that you've never played before, but it conforms to the language of video game design, how quickly can you beat it? I would imagine that someone who only played Candy Crush would not understand how to move their camera around in a 3D environment, for example.[1] You could extend the metaphor further, for example Spanish is spoken in many different ways around the globe, and therefore some people who speak one dialect of Spanish can't understand another dialect of Spanish. The same could be true for games, and we would need to classify and understand these dialects. [1] ▶ this video Interesting video talking about what games are like for a non-gamer, shows an example of not understanding how to move the camera and the player at the same time.
in “Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports” · View on HN
savanalyOct 2019Cites it
The funny thing is that even the easiest games are surprisingly difficult, even insurmountable, for otherwise capable humans who have not been "trained" on what to expect and learned domain knowledge through trial and error. See [0]. [0] ▶ this video
in “Machines Beat Humans on a Reading Test” · View on HN