What Are Video Games to You? 

I'm sorry for the poor quality! I don't even know how to use a microphone correctly...

I do think many great and memorable games that I've loved have had very good stories. However, gameplay should always come first. Games are supposed to be fun. A story is like graphics, art design, voice acting, etc. These are the toppings on the pizza that can contribute to a unique flavor. But if the dough, sauce, and cheese suck, nobody should buy it!

fun games all the way. i do like a good story game every once and a wile. i agree with you on dark souls but sadly i feel like there is a lot more try hards that do boast about the whole git good sadly. but at the end of the day i dont let that effects how i experience them. if i did let that stuff effects me id be missing out on games that i ended up really enjoying

For me games are my favorite form of entertainment. They're an escape from a long work day. They've also become a way for me to socialize with others as a lot of my old friends don't game anymore. I remember an old co-worker once asked me why I still played games. I asked her what she did to relax at home after work and she said watch reality TV. I asked her how that was any different than me gaming. She agreed. It's a form of entertainment like TV shows, movies, sports, etc.

Man I'm blessed to be paying 40 per workout training session! Mine are focused on building muscle / strength and I've been seeing results. You know, I've thought about what productivity after work means. Sitting down with a book and reading? Studying a language? I can't punish myself for neglecting some type of mental development in the after work hours specifically because my brain is so active during the work day as it is. Also, playing a game or watching a video is not nearly as destructive as say taking drugs or drinking booze. I admire those that can read / study, etc. but my mental respite is also equally important. Video games to me are entertainment, first and foremost. With that can come a good story. A bad story / framework can tank a game so I value it alongside gameplay near equally. I went to the Museum of Ice Cream recently. Their art was delicious :P Video games are what you make them!

Fun is kind of a buzzword that doesn't have any inherent meaning. Saying that people play games for fun doesn't properly answer the question. I think it would be better to use the word "dopamine" instead of fun since it's actually factually correct, people absolutely do play games for dopamine but there's more to it than that obviously, which leads to the whole rewarding elements topic. I think it's pretty naive of you to say that people don't play games like Dark Souls for ego boosting because they absolutely do and the game is clearly marketed around its difficulty, I mean there's literally a "Prepare To Die" edition. Sure you could make the argument that it's based on the theme of death that the game has but let's be honest here, what it really means is "prepare to get your ass handed to you by our difficult game" it's attracting a demographic that absolutely exists, I have personally met these people who play videogames for ego boosting, perhaps you're not one of them but you can't really speak for everyone. Sure there will be people who play souls games for different reasons but the reason why the genre has mass appeal is due to it being a "hard" game and that is what brought about the core interest. It's like saying that people play fighting games for the single player, yeah sure there's a minority that do but the core demographic only buy the game to play online and rarely even touch the single player content. Those players are what fuels these games financially and keep them alive, they are the core demographic for fighting games, everyone else who plays them is an outsider. The same is true for Souls games, they are for people who want to struggle through an experience to feel that dopamine rush that inflates their ego when they get over it because struggle is the ultimate investment of dopamine because when you struggle, it makes the dopamine gained from it upon winning much greater than if it were easy because the game has conditioned you to believe that your victory matters more by making that victory more of a rarity when in actuality it's no different than killing a footsoldier in Dynasty Warriors 7. Now there are people who play soulsborne games after the popularity of the core demographic built up the hype and those people came for the "hard game" and stayed for the artistic value and the troll game design... uh I mean that shit they call level design that is totally not someone sadistically dropping boulders on player's hand to make them feel stupid so that they can mock the player (kinda sick of this in games). I suppose some people enjoy surprises and those people are the same people who enjoy troll game design, being kept in suspense and not knowing whether that treasure chest will eat them or not when they try to open it. I am the opposite, I hate that, tell me everything, don't surprise me, don't shock me, tell me the rules, tell me what to expect and let me go and do it without any interferance. That's why I don't play Soulsborne games. I can't speak for why I play them though I only make assumptions based on what other people have said before, I don't think that they are the most artistically impressive games out there personally but some people do, fair enough, though that goes against the argument you make that games aren't art. This brings me to the next point. It's impossible to say that games aren't art unless they are literally purely abstract and even then, whether it is intended or not it can be percieved as such. The problem is not games being an art form, it's that game developers seem to think that games only need to be art and that they should only be designed artistically when they forget that videogames are not designed artistically, they are engineered pragmatically. Because game developers fail to separate the art from the abstract, that's why you get all the games you bring up like The Last Of Us and Heavy Rain because game developers are dumber than bricks when it comes to making videogames nowadays but I'll be damned if I could program or make assets as well as they can, which is why I'm not doing it, because trying to program anything is literally rocket science to me but some of these game developers have programming and artistic skill but don't have a clue how to properly design games. That's why modern gaming sucks. Sure not everyone is like that but there's a lot of dumb people and people who just play it safe nowadays, following a tired formula because it's easier than actually designing something. However to say that games aren't art is false as far as I'm concerned because even if games aren't supposed to be designed artistically, they can still function in ways that bring about artistic design... for better or for worse. It's a topic that I am torn on, trying to connect gameplay and narrative together. I've seen it done horribly but I've also seen it done well, though at the same time, even when it is done well, any attempts to do so come at a cost and the game is harmed by it because it makes the abstract experience feel miserable even though it's trying to push for some artistic meaning. I think if game developers are going to go this route, they're taking a risk and they really have to make it count, 9 times out of 10, it doesn't work for me, it only ever worked once for me and even then, I criticize that moment to this day, even though it did have a huge impact on me personally and really tied in thematically to the game well. For that reason I cannot say that games aren't art because ultimately while at their core they may not be, they can still be used to achieve it universally when you consider everything that goes into a game besides gameplay, though I will agree that gameplay is better off not influencing other artistic aspects and should stay separate. Artistic aspects on the other hand absolutely should influence and be built around the gameplay. That I will agree with despite the one exception to the rule actually working for me because even though it worked for me, it won't for everyone. So basically, while games are art, they shouldn't be treated as art is what I'm getting at. Game developers need to stop looking at games the same way they do films, books and other media and treat them as a form of engineering as opposed to an art form. Game developers should never be artists, they should be problem solvers, they should be engineers. Artistic skill is important but not for the core of a game, you can outsource that. I cannot however say that games aren't art because of what I have experienced, not trying to claim that videogames are the pinnacle or art or anything or that the games I have experienced are particularly profound but I can't pass that stuff off as not being art because that's just incorrect. If there is a formula there for art, it's an art form and there are formulas to be found there. As for what I seek from games? Well my rewarding elements video pretty much covered that. Why do I play videogames? Well I find that it's the same reason why I enjoy watching wrestling. The art of crafting illusions is what I gravitate towards and that is why I san safely say that videogames are an art form because they are at the end of the day and illusion that pulls you in to something that feels larger than life. As a kid, it was easy to get drawn in by it but as an adult, I'm more fascinated by the craft. There's also the interest of problem solving and analyzing how games have grown and how they develop systems to bring about new and better functionality to create improved games. Like if you ask me what I would ultimately rate games on it would simply be on how well they craft an illusion as well as how well it all functions. Does it have any interesting ideas and are the executed well? If they have the former but not the latter, are there games that did execute them well? Maybe a follow up? Why aren't other game developers taking it upon themselves to fix these problems? That should be the burning desire of every game developer, instead they just want to create their own fantasy and encourage other people to pay for it. That's not how it works. Then you have the AAA games which are all soulless manufactured slop, they aren't even designed, they're just factory produced regurgitated formulas with a new coat of paint and some pretentious artist who may or may not have a political agenda pushed wirh their game. It's hard to even look at those kind of games anymore from a design standpoint because they aren't really designed. So that just leaves us with indies and well, some do it well, others don't and it comes down to what it is that they're trying to make, their fantasy or something that fills people's needs and wants. If the former, they suck, if the latter, they have a chance to be good. Indie devs need to be more pragmatic and less artsy if they want to be taken seriously. As for my channel, well originally it was made as an extention for my blog to add videos to it, then I made video reviews to see if they would get more engagement. Now my channel is currently going through an identity crisis where I feel that my reviews just aren't worth doing anymore and that not enough people care about them to justify the workload, so now I'm trying to find other avenues because like you, I want to be more productive with gaming but I suppose part of that is to compensate with the fact that I have no social life and videogames have pretty much been my life since 6 years old so it's very hard to drop it when there's been nothing else that has captured my interest as much as gaming because it's all I really have and with that being said, life would be enpty and miserable without gaming for me, especially given my mental disability and gaming being an isolated hobby that I can feel a sense of agency without having to deal with the daunting taks of dealing with social environments in the real world which is exhausting for me and stressful.