Why Games like Call of Duty Are Bad For You, But Games Like RuneScape Are GOOD For you!

what's going on YouTube my name is Batman and I apologize for my absence of late I recently went through a breakup and its aftermath has pre occupied my mind wholly leaving room for little else as I've couched surf to the Golden State as you always do after this sort of thing you think about what went wrong what ought to have been done differently when things ended she said this is about growth we're not growing together anymore I thought what's the point to growth you grow when you go when you go and then guess what you [ __ ] die and all your growth was for nothing so we're not just clinging to what you love and milk it for every last drop while you still can you see my life was pretty good at 18 I was living every eighth-graders fantasy I'd gotten into this program that let me go to the local community college for my senior year the only reason I did it was the scheduling freedom it brought me I only had to take four classes and arrange them so that three days out of the school week I could just stay home I lived in the garage at my grandma's summer home unsupervised most of the time free to get high eat junk food and play black ops all [ __ ] day my girlfriend had double D's in a double zero waste she belongs in a hentai porno and she'd hang out all day too we'd watch Desperate Housewives The Office Colbert Report play reached together pig out on Chipotle and [ __ ] as often as I could coax her into it which was like three times a day on those days I had her all to myself things were good I was happy and his high school graduation in the transition to adulthood approached my singular thought was how do I preserve this life I've stumbled on money but it was a catch-22 if you have to do college and a nine-to-five to get the money then you've abandoned the lifestyle the money was supposed to preserve how do you break the Gordian knot thread the needle I had to somehow get rich without leaving my room for some creative inspiration I down to five shot espresso I need a pot brownie alone in the garage one day my mind raced with a billion ideas dealing drugs selling blood and semen somehow cleanest stock market I knew nothing about and then blow through it all up suffered some paranoid delusions and passed out because the combo was more than I could handle but when I woke up I knew what I had to do YouTube the YouTube gaming community was just blowing up back then everybody in there dog getting in on it you could make money just staying home and playing video games all day I was [ __ ] in back then I followed guys like wings Redemption ex jaws and tmartn they made the [ __ ] look easy fast forward to today xjawz lost his mind wings is clearly suffering from chronic depression and tmartn only seems able to survive because he is a complete psychopath who gets off on flexing for ten year olds I recently read an article that concluded most successful youtubers are burnt-out lonely and depressed I guess it always did seem too good to be true but for a while everything was going great wasn't making a lot of money but enough we did trips to the beach camping and after destiny one dropped and I made like 10 grand in two months [ __ ] on it we did bigger trips la [ __ ] Disneyland twice Coachella I can't tell you how big my hard-on was for myself in the meantime I gave her all the money to handle I didn't want to do [ __ ] bills cooking cleaning grocery shopping hotel reservations passport applications rent payments I [ __ ] with none of it and at 23 I hadn't grown a day since 18 my strategy had worked god help me I had arranged it perfectly my job my girlfriend my whole life built around a single organizing principle don't [ __ ] grow up now considering it might one day wear her down I was Peter Pan it was code name kids next door my idea of a happy life was one where I had zero responsibility got to do whatever I wanted and never had to do anything I didn't want to do and I thought I was terribly clever because everything went according to plan and I only found out too late I was walking into a [ __ ] buzzsaw I'm not the only one to make this kind of mistake far from it turns out my entire generation is notorious for it in books television monologues and op-eds the commentary has concluded kids these days aren't growing up we're not buying cars or houses a quarter of us still live with our parents we're not getting married having kids or even having sex we're opting out of the workforce at higher rates when we do work our managers say we have poor time management where social skills and are frustrated that when we change jobs we ghost our former employer like a bad date we are stuck as they say in permanent adolescence it's one of those rare issues that has found bipartisan consensus from liberal provocateur Bill Maher's snarky blogs to Republican senator who wanted to be present since he was 13 Ben Sasse who wrote an entire book on the subject Millennials themselves have tacitly acknowledged it as well the term adulting has gone viral on Twitter an ironic and self-deprecating bit of slang that's used to describe as significant accomplishments things that used to be mundane chores like doing rent or paying the laundry adulting or lack thereof has reached pandemic levels and now adulting classes have cropped up across the country teaching legal adults how to cook onions do taxes and [ __ ] so you see I'm not responsible for any of my own problems okay as always I'm actually the victim of sociological circumstances beyond my control I get to blame my parents and society for this okay in society includes all of you people so thanks a lot Dick's in reality the causes are as varied as they are complex economists argue our problems are due to our coming-of-age during the Great Recession and that the rising income inequality stagnant wages and widespread unemployment that define the last decade made it extremely difficult for our generation to afford college housing and children especially considering they are much more expensive in real dollar value today than for previous generations unable to acquire these things we never had to adapt to the responsibility that accompanies them meanwhile social scientists are convinced the root of the problems that our brains haven't developed properly due to a combination of overprotective parents participation trophy culture and a lack of free play as children they argue that our parents likely suffering from severe anxiety in their own right thanks to the prevalence of disaster and tragedy porn during the rise of cable television throughout their generation we're too overprotective and shielded us from any negative stimuli and now as adults we suffer from crippling anxiety because our brains never learned how to process fear conflict or setbacks schools and sports teams made sure that every kid no matter how stupid lazy or irresponsible they were got a trophy so we do not understand failure or defeat and are convinced that we are good at everything always ready to cast blame elsewhere when we do come up short somehow our time spent outdoors has plummeted to half of that of our parents and we don't spend nearly as much time engaged in free play that is play with other children unsupervised with no rules an activity that researchers have concluded is imperative to our emotional and neurological development teaching us key social skills like how to interact with others fairly and how to regulate our emotions and impulses without the aid of a teacher or parent to comfort or instruct us thus we are oppressed psychologically and economically we are like a pathetic dandelion struggling to grow between the cracks on a sidewalk the research mentions kids in these strictly controlled environments are much more likely to act out when finally on their own and I can't help but remember that our generation also has a notorious binge drinking problem reading all this about our generation I noticed a fascinating and eerie similarity to an article I read about call of duty PC gamers interview with Red Orchestra - developer John Gibson titled Call of Duty has ruined a generation of gamers I've discussed this article at length before indeed it may perhaps be the most important piece written on gaming in the last decade and coming back to it now I see it in a completely different light it's striking to me how clearly Gibson's dismay with Cod players mirrored the real world's frustration with Millennials generally he discussed how while playtesting Red Orchestra the participants growing frustrated when they did poorly would essentially respond as Gibson summarizes and I quote this game is just too hardcore I'm awesome at Call of Duty so there's something wrong with your game I'm not the problem he goes on to praise Call of Duty for doing what he calls smart business by compressing this fill gap with and I quote a whole bunch of randomness a whole bunch of weaponry that doesn't require any skill to get kills random spawns massive cone fire on your weapons lots of devices that can get kills with Sierra skills at all and that watching them play he feels they're poor FPS players saying and I quote it's not that they're incapable of getting good it's that they've never had to they get enough kills and call of duty to feel like they're awesome but they never really had to develop their FPS skills beyond that these complaints were echoed by other shooter developers who openly mocked Cod for its simplicity and hand-holding and promos that went viral online what is Gibson describing here if not a game that hands out participation trophy kills a game that has hindered players growth by shielding them from adversity we know that a little over half of all gamers fall in the Millennial age range and that percentage rises dramatically if you don't count mobile gaming suggesting significant overlap between Millennials and Cod's fanbase and obviously Gibson a Gen X R isn't referring to his own generation being ruined and so without meaning to and years before other researchers had discovered the trend did a [ __ ] game developer basically synthesized the chief sociological issues afflicting Millennials that economists social scientists and US senators are only just freaking out about today but what if he had it backwards what if Call of Duty didn't ruin a generation of gamers but simply cater to him profited off of a malfunction that was already there it's not that crazy when you think about it that our in-game behavior may be reflective of our real-life attitudes what if Cod's success in this phenomenon Gibson has observed are only symptomatic of the much larger endemic problem among today's youth indeed instead of ruining what if call of duty and its ham-fisted pandering has imported the maturity crisis to the gaming industry and worst of all what if in turning out these kinds of products to hundreds of millions of youth over the last 15 years Call of Duty has in fact exacerbated the ongoing real-world maturity crisis in the same way McDonald's exacerbates the obesity epidemic you see what I'm getting at here what if call of duty is to blame for my break unlike other artistic mediums we know that games have a significant measurable effect on our neurology and researchers have found starkly different changes to the brain depending on what kind of game was being played often these changes are very positive and in fact Cod has been observed to help boost memory creativity and problem-solving but there are negative effects as well as I've discussed at length in previous videos dopamine feedback loops dampen amygdala activity affecting our emotional regulation and atrophy of the hippocampus hampering our spatial navigation all three of which are associated with Cod as well people often get bogged down in an argument about whether gaming is good or bad for you but it's a silly discussion it's like asking if food is good or bad for you the reality is there is healthy food and junk food and a spectrum in between some foods are debatable is fat good or bad protein builds muscles but it's also bad for your heart and often foods that are good for some would be bad for others the NFL player needs a very different kind of diet than its grandma does even among professional physicians and dietitians there's constant vigorous debate and analysis about what foods are healthy for whom and in what quantity should this same debate be taking place in the games industry should game developers be scrutinizing the neurological effects of their games the same way food scrutinizes its effects on people's bodies we measure our games value and replayability graphical fidelity immersion narrative poignancy but what if the most important assessment of the game isn't based on its individual features but from how it changes you we know that something once seemingly benign is social media has actually ended up having dramatic psychological and neurological effects on people's mental health so it's easy to see how gaming which many of us engage with more deeply and frequently than social media would be impacting our minds as well this is something that ought to be discussed in every game review but right now is never discussed in any and what might a review of that kind say about cod I know what mine would say that Cod is the McDonald's of gaming popular tasty easily accessible and yes it's better to eat a Big Mac than go hungry but McDonald's isn't very good for you and it's contributed mightily to the ongoing obesity epidemic basically by appealing to our primal craving for salt sugar and fat is cod so different is it not Mick coddled you get it cuz it cuddles I'm an idiot the researchers studying the real-world maturity Christ is often conclude that the problem is in our brains both psychological and neurological the result of years of conditioning by our environment growing up what if call of duty by mimicking the real-world conditions that contributed to this problem contention aliy or otherwise has itself become a part of that environment conditioning us in those same unhealthy ways that stunt our growth because what is traditional Call of Duty multiplayer if not an overprotective parent that goes out of its way to shield its players from any negative stimuli no respawn times death streaks sb mmm which was fair in the same way to be fair to let a varsity football player play on the Freshman team just have a chance at starting a game that's business model relies predominantly on making sure that everyone gets some kills zero recoil no bullet drop or delay a game which introduced us to the noobtube maps so simplistic symmetric and blocky that for a while there it looked like a third grader had made them on minecraft you'll notice that nowadays they've removed assists from Call of Duty and anytime you land at least one bullet they'll just tell you that it was a kill and give you the same amount of points as it was points you can use to get a kill streak reward you don't deserve I got a bunch of gameplay for this video where I thought I went on these epic kill streaks like these brutal you know 15 man kill streaks multi kills and then I go back and I'm watching it in the editor and I'm not showing up in the kill feed for any of the kills and I realized they're not my kills but I totally fell for it this is a game that embodies participation trophy culture I remember transitioning from the most popular shooter pre caught Halo 3 where you only got XP when you won and you can only buy armor with the XP you only got when you want to cut where you got the match bonus as long as you finish where even if you didn't finish most of your matches you'd still rank up and unlock everything pretty effortlessly there was never any penalty for quitting a match to this day there's never been any real penalty for quitting a match whereas in games like Halo 3 you would lose XP and more competitive titles you get banned and caught it was common to see 15th procedures with point 50k DS and worst win loss the care package which might as well be this game's [ __ ] mascot specifically designed to give kids a chance at prizes they otherwise never would have had a shot at kids going 0 and 15 and getting rewarded with the best weapon variant in the game from participation supply crates and a game which offers very little in the way of free play it's a decidedly structured match with no real way to combo with your teammates no sandbox or unstructured activities like you might find in Minecraft Halo Forge rust arc or mmo's Gibson explains that the testers complaints ultimately boiled down to the same thing over and over and over again which was and I quote it doesn't feel like Call of Duty the implication being that to be successful the game would have to cater to this crowd to become more like Cod and it's clear that this was the result in other games focus groups as well because every game released during that time did become more like Call of Duty you know killstreaks and class customization became standard in every shooter you saw every game to this day copying some version of the domination and search-and-destroy game modes it had a clear and demonstrable influence on games like titanfall Crysis 3 and homefront halo the second most popular shooter behind it ended up putting in killstreaks class customization jump packs sprint and 80s to this day the game is designed almost as if in homage to Call of Duty its soldier 76 and overwatch all of this suggesting that Gibson was right the trend was much more widespread than his testers alone it was generational after all who wouldn't want to chase the success of a game that was outselling all its competitors near two-to-one but often their efforts backfire nobody yet realizing that Cod success wasn't because the game itself was good but because its players were bad intellectually stunted by real-world forces beyond any devs understanding and to this day you still see its impact in games like destiny to see if thieves and fallout 76 these games which are obviously brimming with potential and thus get hyped but then are monumental disappointments when they finally release their core failures almost always essentially the result of trying to shelter their player bases these are games that have overprotective developers destiny where they ditch difficulty settings so everybody could feel like a champ where they ditch raid matchmaking an openly said it was so that nobody would get their feelings hurt sea of thieves which had a really great open world PvP system but where there was never any real punishment for death and thus no reward for killing so people got bored fallout 76 where if your base gets wrecked you can instantly respawn it with a blueprint where there's no loot to lose except for some minor scrap materials where they've put in multiplayer that has literally no purpose the devs got on stage and basically said they considered killing other players griefing and that they had implemented strict rules to prevent - included that you aren't allowed to kill anyone basically without their permission and the crowd cheered like a bunch of douchebags like if you can't kill strangers for their stuff in a post-apocalyptic open world PvP environment what the [ __ ] is even the point why put PvP in the game it's like if on the playground they took out every structure that a kid could possibly get hurt on what you'd have left is an empty lot what are these games if not virtual playgrounds with overprotective developers cutting out all the fun stuff leaving us empty virtual Lots every time you see a massively disappointing game like this I think the failure can really be traced back to the real-world maturity crisis imported and exacerbated by Cod this is also why Call of Duty itself has changed so little over the years despite how anxious we all supposedly are for it to do so at a time when its competitors were desperate to be more like it why would it be less like itself game development is perhaps the most democratic art form there is every decision focus group tested and run through the gauntlet of online feedback the truth is this franchise has always been a mirror held up to its fanbase and we don't usually like what we see we didn't want to grow up and they're happy to oblige us so long as they can keep selling us superhero movies and Cod thus the gaming industry has suffered its own maturity crisis and the consequences are abundant our relationship with the Call of Duty franchise is rarely a happy one and gamers did not typically respond positively to those other games that did emulate God indeed those changes often ripped apart entire communities at the scene such as with Halo many of us unwilling to move on and throw in our disposable income at Cod titles would only play for a week probably missed out on other titles who might have enjoyed more and there's a long list of games going back much farther than destiny see if these and fallout 76 they could have been great but sucked because of overprotective devs sheltering immature Minds but worst of all when eventually our collective infatuation with Cod did fizzle after entries like ghosts and infinite warfare with its popularity tanked and reputation in tatters moving on to new games like overwatch siege league or battlefield was all the more difficult for the cod player who starts at a severe disadvantage their growth stunted having to learn concepts and build more thoughtful play styles that the rest of the competition instead games mastered long ago making the transition painful and the inclination to just not even bother that much stronger potentially perpetuating a vicious cycle this reminds me of that article I mentioned which concluded that Millennials are having way less sex than previous generations it also warned the people who haven't lost their virginity by age 25 a tragedy more common than you might think are more likely than not to stay a virgin until they're 40 because they now lack the social skills and drive of many of their sexually active peers the prospect of getting dead-ass now too intimidating or difficult to even bother trying what if there really is a parallel between call of duty and virginity my god and in the real world generally economists worried that this maturity crisis is damaging the economy with reduced labor that are not buying houses and cars is gonna [ __ ] everything up then not having enough children now is gonna screw everyone over when we're older because we're not pumping enough new bodies into the workforce as Gen X and Millennials begin to retire and social scientists are gravely concerned about our collective mental health its Call of Duty's free market right to disrupt conquered or destroy the entire industry for profit if it can but if call of duty has contributed to the real world epidemic does it not have a moral obligation to try harder not to [ __ ] up its customers just as many consumers scrutinize and hold McDonald's or Facebook accountable to a moral obligation not to [ __ ] up their customers because the truth is Cod can keep going on this way and continue to profit off of it because the real world roots of the problem aren't likely to change anytime soon economic inequality is getting worse college more expensive researchers have concluded that regeneration after millennials generation Z is thanks to the prominence of social media spending even less time developing social skills and engaging in free play than ever before and it's hard to imagine that Millennials as a generation now suffering from the highest rates of anxiety ever are gonna somehow be less anxious over their kids safety and general well-being and their parents work which is all to say that things are gonna get a lot worse before they get better these thoughts raced through my mind one night as I sat nearly comatose in the jacuzzi while my 300-pound tinder date bounced up and down the top of him I'd given up on everything I was content to fade out of existence into a fireball of nothingness but with millions of my fellow gamers stuck in the same mud I was possibly veering towards the emotional rue and I had faced an economy teetering on the verge of collapse because millenials had run out of bucks to give in a class of Intelligencia clearly lacking my superior critical thinking skills it dawned on me that I was left with no option I had to get back in the game what would a healthier Call of Duty look like if call of duty was the model that defined this industry in the last decade what would be the best model to defining going forward what game could be the asparagus - Cod's McDonald's what game could inspire McDonald's what asparagus and its Big Macs I thought about what kind of game had real free play where kids interacted with no umpires no parents or teachers a game that entailed real accountability real failure real setbacks the games that simulated perhaps better than any game ever before a real ownership of things you value the responsibility of maintaining and protecting those things the game with real pain and loss in short a game that had everything researchers say we Millennials didn't get enough of if call of duty appeals to the worst Ness what kind of game could bring out the best in us I first discovered runescape on addicting games.com I thought it was pronounced run escape and was expecting some kind of jailbreak game I was very confused for the first few hours of gameplay but i rapidly found myself immersed in the world of Gielinor experiencing all kinds of things that despite the ode to Java graphics were so much more real than anything that was experiencing in real life many things that I don't think I would have otherwise experienced until after high school I played the game every day for four years from age 8 to 12 I lived 30 minutes from my school and had to wait at the local library nearly 4 hours after class every day waiting to get picked up to go home I jerked off two or three times in the public restroom and in the hours in between I'd play runescape at the computer lab where technically games weren't allowed but the librarians didn't mess with me because librarians are always chill as [ __ ] what made runescape so [ __ ] metal was that it had real labor in a real free market economy at age 9 I was learning about things like supply and demand time management and most importantly people labor and runescape consisted of mind-numbingly dull gameplay where you essentially sat and watched your character cut a tree minor rock or fish a stream the process was automatic but you had to remain vigilant because despite the fact there was nothing to click if you didn't click anything for 90 seconds they would Auto log out your character a policy meant to prevent the rampant body that eventually destroyed the game anyways it was the worst of both worlds there was nothing for you to do and yet you couldn't divert your attention to anything else it sucked it was a process that rested somewhere in between detention and house chores I don't know why we all liked that stupid [ __ ] game so much they could have turned skilling into a minigame that mining mechanic and fortnight could have worked great but jagex was a bunch of cooks who wanted to brainwash us for future careers and assembly lines careers that ended up getting wiped out by robots in real life anyways just like they wiped out every entry-level job in runescape the point is everyone understood the real value of money and items in that game measured in how many hours of torturous Minaya labor went into every 300k obsidian shield unsurprisingly tens of thousands of players traded in real world money for a runescape goal feeling the virtual currency was more valuable than the real [ __ ] the labor involved me the virtual items real in a way they've never been for me in other games when you lost that obsidian shield and ruefully recalled the hours of work that went into obtaining it it hurt in a very real visceral way we were all experiencing these things at age 9 the value of labour and currency that I don't think we otherwise would have until our first real life jobs a decade later just like in real life if you were smart you could make a boatload of money without having to do much work though you had to be clever or a risk taker or both trading or merchant as we called it [ __ ] cards that we wore was a mirror of the real world you bought up resources or physical capital when it was in low demand sold it off for a hefty profit when demand rose at age 10 nothing beat the satisfaction of doubling your money on iron ore except for maybe orgasms which I had also recently discovered alternatively you could always make a quick buck as a [ __ ] scammer scamming was rampant to this day scam and lured tutorials with some of the most popular runescape videos on YouTube I fell for every single one at least once hey say your password out loud Jagex bleeps like a cuss word now pretty cool huh hey let me trim your armor for free did you know you can clone all your items by dropping them and pressing alt f4 I'll beat this quest for you just pay me 10k and give me your login I had my goal ability my facing humanity purged early on and in a world of Nigerian Prince's hybrid servers tinder phishing profiles pre-orders cash for gold male enhancement pills college loans destiny 2 and pyramid schemes thank Christ for that I ran my own scams too sometimes when I was still a low-level and always broke at level 10 I would convince level 3s people who had literally just started the game to help me kill this level 11 which luring them with promises of gold potions and glory I'd say I could almost beat her myself I just needed a little help they would come along to the witch's house and al-qahirah the witch was programmed to assault anything below level 5 on sight but at level 10 she left me alone so the stupid level 3 would follow me into the witch's house where they'd get pounced on like the gullible fools they were I would stand motionless as my victim cried for assistance some were stupid enough to try and beat the witch alone the smarter ones realized what was going on and tried to escape out the front door which I had already closed it would promptly click shut again every time they clicked it open sometimes just to be a dick I'd say don't give up you can do it afterwards I would pick their carcass for loot it was never very much just a collection of the starter items you get from tutorial Island I would sell it all and get maybe a hundred gold but the truth is I didn't do it for the loot I did it because it was a rush to know I had manipulated someone outsmarted them and screwed them over because in all of us there's a heart of darkness that enjoys cruelty for no practical reason at all on the playground a friend and I used to feed ants we found to a spider because the brutality amused us this was like that except a million times better I was 9 years old and I did it for the lulz inevitably we children formed factions and made war clans lusting for the kinds of rewards that can only be won in large groups my clan was the rusty spoons of death and named that only narrowly beat out the runner-up cookie eating ponies from hell like all clans we would farm the highest level bosses like the king black dragon her kalphite queen for high-level gear we would play Castle Wars for shits and giggles but like all clans we knew the true glory lay in the wilderness where roving bands of warriors felt wealth and glory by way of player killing the wilderness was RuneScape's PvP there were few rules a massive open world area with rare enemies and resources scattered throughout and the freedom to kill any other players you found you brought the best gear that you were willing to risk losing and killed strangers for their stuff there was no rush quite like the primal satisfaction of looting the equivalent of weeks worth of work off the body of somebody you've slain it was the only time I cried in a video game you learned a lot about yourself out there and even more about others one day me and the boys were out player killing there was a new friend in our group who I had never really cared for he had a bunch of X's and O's in his name which even a no.4 was the sign of a huge [ __ ] the day's killing was done and most people had logged off I always stayed less because despite our clan being a loose group of friends with no hierarchy I was technically the clan leader and thought is my duty to be the last man out X's and O's waited out till the end to when it was just us he suggested we 1v1 just for fun we'll stop if we dip below 10 HP I agreed because you always look like a huge [ __ ] if you turn down a 1v1 and I was clan leader and I couldn't have that but when my HP fell below 10 he didn't stop I said hey what are you doing silence I started using what heels I had left and ran he chased me battering into me with his rune scimitar I just barely escaped into civilized territory with 3 HP and no heels left afterwards I was like what the [ __ ] suddenly after minutes of silence he sprang to life in the chat nothing but lols and I was just playing and could fight but I knew better I had an obsidian shield that everybody wanted the next day I got the clan together for more player killing I didn't invite Bluebird for 20 what introduced us to this X's nosed douche I had a tall task convincing my claim to murder one of their own in cold blood I didn't need blue around to defend the guy and cast doubt on my accusations before I invited X's and O's I sat my squad down and laid out what had happened the day before I told him I wanted to kill this guy and kick him out of the clan there was a lot of skepticism nothing to go on but my word they wanted to at least put it to a vote as was our custom are you sure you weren't just imagining things but I was sure so I threw down the gauntlet [ __ ] the vote I'm gonna kill this guy today if you get in my way I'll kill you too the reality is if not enough came around to my way of seeing things I would likely lose the fight X's and O's was a much higher level in some of the clan Warren did intervened to stop me they made sensible arguments that we can't condemn someone to execution without any evidence besides he seemed like a nice guy they said others said they had my back no matter what and so I was risking a civil war that would tear our clan apart whoever won the fight our membership was sure to drop with friendships destroyed everyone was on edge wondering who would side with who but in the end he played himself he showed up to player kill that day with a new friend a complete stranger who he said wanted to join under normal circumstances this would be considered a huge faux pas you don't go into the Wildey with strangers you have to get to know them first place um Castle Wars and [ __ ] it's worth mentioning this was at a time when high-level clans were having members infiltrate lower-level ones with secondary counts to spy and reveal player killed times and locations setting the higher level clan up for an easy ambush but given what I had said happened the day before the implication was clear to everyone he wasn't able to finish me off solo so now he had brought a friend to get the job done we took him and his friend deep into the woods and whacked him both they both had expensive gear on because they weren't expecting to die afterwards he messaged me what the [ __ ] I said you know that wasn't just playing yesterday and he didn't message again because he knew I knew we were 10 years old afterwards things changed I purged everyone who had been skeptical of me that day from the clan this wasn't the mature right thing to do but they had pissed me off and I was suddenly drunk on power something about rallying this Posse to murder had ignited a fire deep inside me outsmarting that prick I didn't like the satisfaction of hurting him what else could I do things started ramping up then I didn't just want to [ __ ] with friends all day I wanted to put rusty spoons of death on the map I wanted glory and wealth I wanted our sod to become a household name on runescape like Dragon Slayers or zezima which would mean a lot more killing mine is the blood of Vikings and it ran hot through my veins that day and for many days after I was done with democracy not that we'd ever voted on anything terribly important in the past mainly just what activities we wanted to run on any given day but I knew we would be voting on important things in the future and the memory of my clan nearly turning on me in the wild scared the [ __ ] out of me and made me angry my first thought was full-on monarchy but my closest friends and best fighters weren't on board with that threatened to leave because nobody likes to be stripped of power no matter how insignificant once they've had it so instead the new system would be two-tiered a select group of those who approve their loyalty and worth would be Lords who got to vote on things and everybody else who didn't this compromise worked for me I didn't want to lose my friends a time would come when I didn't give a [ __ ] but for now as I'd already kicked out everyone who bucked me earlier I was confident my Lords would be loyalists friends who I was sure I could get to vote my way it's not like they actually wanted to check my power they just wanted to feel important even though I couldn't articulate it I understood this instinctively even back then though I had no idea what an oligarchy was at the time I'd successfully implemented one kinda and like all oligarchies it gradually morphed into merely a front for my autocracy as time went on in our clan memberships swelled new recruits would eventually demand a lordship basically everyone got a for this imaginary incentive structure I remember laughing about it even then how silly this all was and is life so different today I'm not laughing anymore people would flatter bribe go out of their way to somehow prove themselves thirsting for the smallest most insignificant amount of power imaginable but at 10 years old $20 made you rich in a promotion in a runescape clan made you important to get a lordship they'd have to win a vote among current Lords what it basically came down to was a personality contest we thought you were cool you were in there was this one guy though biggest ass kiss ever painfully phony and way too aggressive about being a lord always badgering us about it so one day I said if you pay a tribute to the clan coffers you're in and he did full set of rune Armour thousand you logs and a thousand coal [ __ ] idiot so I said put on your best garb for the swearing in ceremony and then we'll go player killing to celebrate he put on his best gear dragon legs Dragon Sword Berserker helmet Berserker ring amulet of glory we took him out in the wild and killed him he started spamming messages angry and Confused desperate to somehow reverse what had happened and still be a lord deluded enough to ask if this was all just a mistake we all blocked him we actually pulled such a large haul off this game that we started doing it to other new recruits just random dudes we didn't care for one way or another they'd pay us a bunch of good [ __ ] and then we'd kill him and take their other [ __ ] to this day it was the cruelest meanest thing I've ever done and we took so much joy in it eventually we had to stop because word was getting around and recruitments were dropping the important votes mainly revolved around what wars we did and didn't do I wanted to go to war with just about everyone as did many others because war was super-fun a few others were doves they prefer traditional player killing whereas a fat group we could hunt down individuals to kill fights we were guaranteed to win but with loot that wasn't nearly as plentiful combat not nearly as exhilarated a single war could make an entire clan very wealthy or leave them hopelessly impoverished it all came down to risk assessment who had big-ass balls and who didn't nine times out of ten we voted for war because little boys love war but I remember this one time the doves won the vote talking up how strong the proposed enemy clan was that we were sure to lose they brought up past Wars we had lost which we had been confident we would win which was a perfectly reasonable argument but back then I thought it was such a low blow the wars always began as my idea and to have all my friends dissecting my failures humiliated me I had noticed that losing wars bred after they lost a bunch of [ __ ] in a lost war they'd want to go back to just regular player killing no longer having a taste for risk there were plenty of other bloodthirsty kids who could lose nine wars in a row and still fight the tenth foaming at the mouth with a [ __ ] pickaxe and leather but that day the doves used clever words to win the vote it was the first vote I had lost and suddenly this oligarchy seemed like an incredibly bad idea I thought about just doing the war without everyone who had voted against it but we wouldn't be nearly as strong and would probably lose plus those voting against might have quit in protest I had to tell the opposing clan leader the war was off I looked like an idiot so the next time there was a vote I sought to exclude the doves I scheduled a vote for a school night there was no avoiding every dove but I knew the two clever words users were on the east coast three hours ahead of us so I held the vote at 8:00 PST which for 10 year-olds on the East Coast meant bedtime [ __ ] with the doves not there to twist everyone's minds with their talk of caution I won the vote the next day the two doves were pissed but I played it off like an honest mistake and they gave me the benefit of the doubt because just like in real life doves aversion to conflict is paradoxically what makes the ideology so impotent and they showed up for the battle they didn't support because they knew the rules any Klan member who misses a war without a really good excuse is kicked so we went to war and we lost at the next Klan meeting I got an earful everybody was pissed at me Klan membership dropped sharply we had lost most of our wars at this point it occurred to me that the only time my clan had been financially prosperous was when we were scamming and killing our own recruits only one person spoke in my defense that day my queen my lover AK no she made the point that the only way we'd ever get good at wars was if we kept fighting in them to get better and she brought people around with her wily charms Magnum was the only girl in our clan the only girl as far as any of us knew that even played runescape needless to say we were all madly in love with her me most of all we would bend over backwards trying to get her to law because her lulz brightened everyone's day she was one of our best fighters too and she would gossip to me about drama between other clan members who she trusted who she didn't and it would turn me on just to have her whisper in my ear then one day after we finished player killing we were all hanging out in a mess chat we had recently discovered pornographic gifts for ten year olds and Oh for the gift by itself was still a revolutionary bit of Technology and Internet pornography was for us the holy grail of all things good in the world so the combination of these two things was an explosive discovery for whatever reason there were thousands of these porn gifts floating around you could save them to your remote collection and that day we all shared the best of our collections the hottest porn gifts that grossest porn gifts the funniest porn gifts for at least an hour a dozen ten-year-old sharing and critiquing three-second snapshots of naked women double triple or even quadruple our age it was a glorious chat but we were oblivious and silent during all of it was agonal the next day she messaged some of us saying goodbye what why she told us we had creeped her out she didn't feel comfortable hanging out with us anymore she was 10 years old too after all we were ashamed humiliated we lost our favorite person and one of our best fighters to a [ __ ] sex scandal it was the first time I felt something that has become all too familiar over the years peer an adulterated self-hatred it was my darkest hour on runescape because unlike losing a war or an item the shame followed you even after you logged off because it was real to make things worse we eventually ran into a genome again sometime later in the wild someday I will see my ex walking down the street with another man and it will hurt less than when I saw a genome player killing with another clan I didn't notice her at first until one of my clan said hi AG no mole I later kicked him for this because we don't exchange lols with the enemy it wasn't a planned war just two-player killing clans who accidentally ran into each other and a big-ass fight broke out and when I saw her name I was suddenly struck with an unbridled rage brewing the [ __ ] all this pain she had caused me that in the weeks since had never really abated her presence now reopening the wound I wanted to erase her from memory and anywhere else I found her in runescape wars the most common tactic was piling what these days might be called focusing your whole clan goes after one person at a time to remove them from battle as quickly as possible the idea being you chew through the enemy ranks faster than they chew through yours typically you tried to target their DPS and supports who would die fast while avoiding their tanks who are designed to survive a while I didn't know what role a genome was playing that day but I the pile on her first when anyone in our clan died I ordered them to return from spawn as soon as possible which was dishonorable but technically allowed in these spontaneous unofficial fights I would have sacrificed every last gold piece I had that day to make sure we won the fight and we did though it was a tough one we killed her first and she was silent about it until the end when as her character crumpled to the ground she let out a single frowny face in the chat in English I screamed no which a later friend I was extra pounds a no [Music] afterwards we all felt gross about it guys logged off without saying bye nobody even wanting to discuss the war we had just won which was unusual the clan died a whimper of a death after that people stopped showing up to meetings and events our morale was broken mine most of all I stopped hosting meetings and events I left the clan thread on forms died few people messaged me about why the clan wasn't active anymore everyone basically knew it had turned from something fun and light-hearted friends enjoying a video game into something stressful and depressing losing wars losing friends and my quest for power or glory or whatever it was I had lost everything I would play solo from then on these interactions never would have taken place between a bunch of nine and ten-year-olds anywhere else because everywhere else there was an authority figure there to arbitrate fairness and implement control parents teachers coaches daycare providers whoever but in runescape there was only Jagex a handful of neckbeards trying to manage the interactions of hundreds of thousands of children and failing miserably some people read Lord of the Flies we played it I remember tricking this kid at school out of a celebrity Oman card once rarest card in the game at the time I told him I would give him 50 bucks at some later date but he had to give me the card right now so I could win a Pokemon battle later that day with my cousin who would be out of town shortly otherwise it just wouldn't be worth as much to me a week play but we were seven and he fell for it I put him off with excuses and delays indefinitely [ __ ] ratted teacher busted me I was stripped of the car but more tragically I was robbed of a lesson of morality that I had to learn on runescape later when I [ __ ] over someone who'd always had my back Gary my wealthy benefactor and sugar daddy 17 when I was 10 a big brother Gary who had always bought me my stuff back when I got hacked or lost everything in a war Gary who always had some advice or tip on how to level up faster get an item easier Gary who showed me how to delete my internet browser history Gary who one day asked me to farm potato cactus on his account his bank accounts swelling with more in-game wealth and I could even comprehend suddenly I was overcome by greed and envy and I hacked him I stole every item he had and transferred it to my account there have been more dignity in robbing a charity worker I blocked him on everything but he knew my msn account and could have gotten hold of me if he wanted but he didn't he stayed silent let me ghost him because he knew me well enough to know the guilt would destroy me and it did my heart sunk a day at a time I felt terrible and couldn't understand why it was just some guy online it wasn't real he was real just runescape stuff he can get it all back he was like for next outs debts but I think what ate me most was that I had lost somebody I cared about and worse someone who had been kind to me it didn't help that there was a sense of hollowness behind the items and wealth that I felt I didn't really deserve it that I hadn't really earned it I knew I was being a piece of [ __ ] but it's not like anybody ever had to know but then it doesn't matter what anyone else thought it matters that you were able to love yourself and in that moment I realized I couldn't I returned everything and apologized he mocked me for caving like a little [ __ ] and then he told me to keep farming potato cactus we remained friends to this day runescape had been an emotional rollercoaster for me soaring highs and steep lows moments of triumph joy and self-realization moments of lost shame failure and self-discovery many hard lessons learned hours more worth of stories I just don't have time to tell but I knew even then that I would do it all over again when I compared my time on runescape to the only thing I spent more time on in those days school it is like comparing East and West Berlin in the 60s one is filled with color life laughter freedom goddamnit while the other is great bleak subdued and regimented school where they kept us locked in rooms and fences school where we were deprived of our god-given right to explore the world around us at least in runescape we got to explore a world at least in runescape we got to feel what it was to explore school where we weren't allowed to talk to other kids except during an hour of lunch where there wasn't time for play after school because kids had to get home right away for homework in bed time they do this to us and then complain about our social skills school where they sit us in a chair for six hours a day and punished us if we get up without permission and then that confused when there's an obesity epidemic and now an epidemic of sitting which they just found out is is bad for you with smoking so what was the classroom if not institutionalized systemic child abuse and one day we'll look back on a 12 how we look back on electric shock therapy school where if someone so much has caused you a Butthead you tell the teacher and they get punished for their words and this goes on for 20 years and then we're confused about the prevalence of political correctness on campuses school we're an unelected authority figure tells you when you can eat when you can [ __ ] or piss when to stand when to do what work and if you don't do the work you're punished and then we wonder why the public gravitates towards candidates with autocratic tendencies this world we've created is creepy I sometimes can't help but feel that these games we play are more real more natural than the stifling reality we inhabit we flocked to these games like a sad flower that grows towards the ray of light in a dark tomb seeking sustenance for our humanity in a world that treats our lives like products on an assembly line school is the elephant in the room when discussing the maturity crisis it is where every child spends the majority of their waking hours it is the experience that shapes and defines the story our most formative years and yet in all I've read about the problem school has not been brought up once why likely because researchers are looking for something specific to Millennials because they think the problem is specific to Millennials but I'm not sure that it is rather I feel with Millennials the problem is simply hit a critical mass for it to no longer be ignored when in fact this has been going on for quite some time long before we were on the stage billions were being spent every year on big-dick placebo pills and boob jobs there was our boomer president and Gen X presidential candidate who mocked each other's genitals on stage because it's not just Millennials that are stuck in adolescence our response to 9/11 was not the act of an emotionally mature or stable citizenry nor was the 2016 election regardless of its outcome boomers and Gen Xers were born literally the most powerful and wealthy generations of human beings to ever exist in human history they have left us debt and fired they grossly mismanaged the financial system they aided and abetted our slide towards oligarchy blithely participated in environmental catastrophe and have gotten us involved in three wars which after costing us dearly in blood and treasure we have nothing to show for Millennials we'll spend the rest of our lives cleaning up their mess their failures environmentally economically geopolitically emotionally and they should hope we succeed in this because if we fail there won't be many generations after ours and despite having everything every poll tells us our parents and grandparents are on average bitter and angry if these morons are what counts for adults and perhaps the entire concept is grossly overrated what if it is not our path towards adulthood that is defunct but our entire definition of what maturity is that our so-called intellectual elite so unquestionably accepts that a person's maturity is defined predominantly by whether or not they own cars is itself an indictment of how immature the entire nation has become there is in fact a growing movement and body of evidence to support the practice of unschool unschoolers argue that children learn best when left to their own devices to engage in self-directed unstructured at educational activities pursuing their passions personal interests play and social interaction it's essentially a form of homeschooling the advocates free play as a primary educational method imagine if your entire school day had been one long recess they further posit that the present K through 12 system is at the root of the mental health crises afflicting young people today but the epidemics of depression anxiety burnout and suicide can be traced to a rigid inflexible education system that when accounting for homework typically pushes children and teenagers well past the 40 hours of labor a week that is considered the max safe limit for even adults mental health indeed it is no coincidence that the highest rates of these mental health problems are recorded on college campuses there is unsurprisingly debate on the subject a relatively young and not thoroughly researched system many parents understandably feel uneasy about simply relinquishing control and letting the kids run wild but if there is a salient argument in its defense it's that today economists and social scientists have reached uniform consensus the kids aren't getting enough of the exact things that unschoolers are advocating for and are suffering from the exact problems unschoolers are trying to fix given this it seems clear that a discussion over incorporating in at least a measure of unschooling into into traditional educational curriculum is warranted after all it's apparent something needs to be done differently and we could not possibly do worse than we are now indeed politicians on both sides of the aisle have agreed for decades that the present education system is in dire need of reform it's just that they can rarely find consensus on what that reform should look like in many solutions they have tried ended up sucking eggs could unschooling be the answer and what my unschooling educational system looked like more recess shorter school weeks or perhaps runescape unschoolers stress it's imperative that parents and educators provide a measure of support to students ie you can't just leave them alone in an empty room all day they need access to books the internet playgrounds sports social interaction and various other resources tools and outlets to pursue their interests an environment that is unstructured but still substantive and when they describe unschooling methods and what an unschooled students pursuit of knowledge looks like it sounds so identical to my experiences on runescape and other games unschooling students learned through their natural life experiences an exploration of activities initiated by the children themselves believing that the more personal learning is more meaningful well understood and therefore useful it is to the child at the end of my time on runescape I felt I understood the real world a little better the dark sides of man the nuances of supply and demand bad investments learning the toil of saving up for something the satisfaction of finally getting it the gut punch and losing it some government even some parliamentary tactics with the bedtime stuff building consensus reading people weighing their interest against your own and sniffing out ulterior motives learning about myself my weaknesses my strengths how powerful that urge for glory and wealth is how it can drive you how we can destroy you and once you've felt it you recognize it in others and you start to see how [ __ ] wild the world is because you realize that people running it or just looking to make a name for themselves and you know just how far they'll go to do it it was a deeper learning distinct from the classroom where I undoubtedly had memorized more factoids and bits of information but none of which I can recall now that most people can't recall now according to the research the full CEO of Riot Games who got in trouble for grabbing people's balls and farting and girls faces at work I never would have made that mistake because I learned the [ __ ] with a gnome when I was 10 we have required reading in schools and plenty of educational films but what if we had required game II recently runescape was released on iOS and it also remains free and easily accessible in just about any computer with internet access it would cost schools nothing and I think every fifth grader in America should be required to play it and many other games but only the right kind of games a properly done game can be the ultimate free play activity a master playground it can provide tools resources and challenges that would be extremely difficult to replicate in the real world allowing you to access tests and explore parts of yourself the human condition in life that you otherwise couldn't I think of players pursuing their passions and interests and the incredible things they eventually accomplished in games like Minecraft where they've built one-to-one replicas of the USS Enterprise in New York City the absurd amount of strategy coordination spy craft and political intrigue behind those massive thousand on thousand player space battles and games like EVE Online I think of the extreme labor long term planning time management and group effort behind the colossal bases and fights in a game like rust I think about the lessons learned how much people must have grown in pursuit of those things in their magnificent conflict with other aspiring Minds surely such things would compare favorably to whatever the scientists say we're supposed to be learning on just regular playgrounds doing make-believe in both high school and community college I took semester long classes called groups you did a bunch of random projects and you were supposed to learn about working with others you know it's the [ __ ] where you all anonymously evaluate each other at projects in but these were easy courses that everyone took with their friends basically just to [ __ ] off everyone would agree to do the one simple job I'll get some cardboard and spray painted black okay I'll print out some articles and planets well P do I know for a fact I learned more about working in a group from games like overwatch than I ever did from those classes which were much more expensive for myself or the state than the games you learn how to force yourself to get along with people you don't like it for no other reason than to win you learn viscerally that getting pissed off at one another and abusing your teammates never helps anything you learned that if you refuse to be a team player pull your own weight you'll develop a reputation and people won't want to play with you anymore I sometimes wonder if we'd be better to just have a whole class play overwatch for every semester everyone who reaches GM gets an A if you don't make Diamond do you get a [ __ ] ass I think of gamers writ large I think of twitch YouTube and MLG these overlapping billion-dollar industries that didn't exist ten years ago that have all spawned from kids doing free play in their bedrooms and now they're turning out millionaires and the owner of the Patriots is buying MLG teams millions of young people making a livelihood off this [ __ ] but there was no degree for no formal training or education I think of how fast new industries are cropping up how so much of the big stuff today couldn't have been taught in schools because it didn't exist when we were kids I think of what future industries will crop up and how that [ __ ] isn't being taught today John Holt widely regarded as the father of the unschooling method is quoted as saying since we can't know what knowledge will be most seeded in the future it's senseless to try and teach it in advance instead we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever must be learned his comments were echoed by celebrated authors and businessmen such as Peter Drucker who said the most important skill in the 21st century will be learning new skills everything else will become obsolete over time and Alvin Toffler who said the illiterate of the 21st century are not those who cannot read or write but those who cannot learn unlearn and relearn and who is better equipped for such a century than the gamer the gamer who must learned new characters habits mechanics and rules in each new game they play who must learned to adapt the mind to a game like siege and then overwatch and in rocket League and in battlefield and then Red Dead and so on and so forth for every new game they play the intricate diversity the complexity of each of those games the differences between characters like Reaper and Zenyatta and overwatch ash and Montaigne and siege the bomber and the medic and battlefield so many obstacles so many challenges every game are constantly striving to learn new things often in fierce contention with other gamers pushing one another to new limits each time starting over as a noob only to attain mastery yet again some of us doing it with a dozen games a year every year just as they say everyone will have to in real life with the barrage of new subjects and challenges that await us in this lifetime this century where the law of accelerating returns stipulates that we will see relative to human history 20,000 years worth of technological progress in our lifetimes that gaming could be a platform for growth and education isn't a new concept it was first introduced to us in the sick ass book and later on so so movie Ender's Game but even before that astronauts and Air Force pilots were playing flight simulation video games to prepare for the real thing just like nowadays we all play a lot of battle royale to prepare for life after the 2020 election video games are the future of human education of human evolution I had a dream last night of the be Dobbs Academy each class a different game students given a clear but difficult objective to complete in order to pass in no instruction on how first period is runescape where you don't pass til you've amassed 10 million gold after the sixth grade this class switches to EVE Online second period is Ark survival for you and your group must tame a Titanosaurus third period is overwatch where you must hit GM fourth period is blackout where your squad must amass 100 wins fifth period is minecraft where in a given period you must build the greatest structure you possibly can and you were graded on just how good the instructor thinks it is sixth period of Story games kotor skyrim last of us cael's Ville Walking Dead every semester a whole new set of classes relying on new games pushing students to learn and adapt the mind on a neurological level to new challenges new obstacles neuroplasticity neuro fluidity exposure adaption kill kill kill I am not kidding about any of this it's not a joke this is the future and I'll do it myself if I have to I think of the fact that researchers have concluded decisively that gamers perform better than their non gaming peers by almost every available measurement of mental faculty but obviously the gamer has not been immune to the maturity crisis for Millennials problems generally but then the gamer was still subject to the same forces that caused the [ __ ] whether it was school overprotective parents participation trophy culture bad luck economically though I suspect the real issue is the gamers potential that gaming's potential has been held back by one of our own there are good schools that educate and then there are for-profit schools that rob and confuse just as you can be taught productive things like math you can be taught super counterproductive things like the world was created in seven days or white supremacy or sex ed that's meant to scare instead of informed there's educational reading like Ron chernow is Hamilton their [ __ ] rating like mine comp there is information and there is misinformation their educational films like and then there's pornography that only fries the dopamine circuits and gives young men deeply flawed impressions of what real sex ought to look like there are games like runescape EVE Online rust minecraft and then there are games like cod destiny and fallout 76 it took me about two months to realize that cod wasn't only giving a full kills points for my cysts but that they were counting my assistants kills on the actual scoreboard this might make sense in a game like overwatch or even blackout but in the multiplayer with time to kill faster than half a second it's absurd I only realized in the end because I kept noticing these matches where every single player in the lobby was going positive and I didn't understand how that was even possible and then it hit me it was all [ __ ] as usual before then I'd really thought I'd hit some new plane of cod ability I was dropping these absurdly high kill games 50 60 80 kills breaking 100 kills on Nuketown every time I was like wow I guess after 10 years I really in the [ __ ] master whoo boy did I feel dumb when I realized it was all a lie and how many other players are confused on the same point falsely believing they're doing really well when they're not and even those that figure it out they might not see that Scorza legitimately as I do if by the game's own rules they are doing well then they are and who can fault them for reaching such a conclusion Cod's Menace its financial success is in its ilusory tactics how many players will simply refuse to move on to trying a new game when with such ease they can achieve such success in their game plan caught and thus instead of growing and seizing all that the medium has to offer so many get hooked on this hamster wheel of a game that offer so very little in the way of personal growth you can advance to 75 levels but you aren't gonna play the game in a notably different way at max prestige than you did at level 1 the guns are so very similar with so low recoil in such low time to kill such small uniform Maps don't get me wrong there's fun to be had you know smoke a bowl put on the Spotify app just run around almost on autopilot and join the instant gratification like eating the whole bag of [ __ ] Doritos but in today's multiplayer half the maps are the same ones I was playing when I was 16 in 2011 this isn't growth the guns are all the same as they were back then to in operation if not aesthetics it does not push the mind to new limits it does not require intellectual effort and that is of course a part of its appeal the new blackout mode is an exception I like blackout it's longer time to kill edition of standard gun mechanics like bullet drop and complex map make it challenging and rewarding in a way that the traditional multiplayer isn't perhaps this is more to do with the battle royale mode which I have yet to see an unpopular version of in conjunction with the zombies extinction dead up spec ops third-person tactical modes past camp and multiplayer iterations it's a testament to how versatile this franchise can be making it all the more depressing to think how little novelty there has been in the last decade unsurprisingly the newest thing in cod and the most challenging thing in cod is also the most popular mode in cod right now this game grew this year and we liked it gamers have instinctively saw it growth in the industry it's behind the constant thirst for DLC for new games new updates it's why games like fortnight have made a killing with development and marketing emphasis on a living world constantly evolving changing growing with you live events unique experiences new memories and Cod has always had the illusion of new every year a new game that is the same game robbing players of growth robbing the industry of growth Call of Duty which spent much of the last decade is the poster boy for gaming to the outside world our most popular financially successful title is that what shows the least the worst gaming has to offer gaming cannot fulfill its destinies mankind's greatest art medium mankind's primary educational platform until this industry looks less like Cod and more like runescape

Channel: BDobbinsFTW

Views: 1,477,522

Rating: 4.7744632 out of 5

Keywords: call of duty, modern warfare, black ops 5, runescape, black ops 4

Id: 1ebhepOmWws

Length: 54min 2sec (3242 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 27 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/geileskarnigel]

jesus christ that video is good

[u/Sidekick_Jim]

I want him to talk about his most recent video, the social/economic critique

[u/rtkr]

bdobbins has maybe the highest quality content of any youtuber in the gaming realm, so well spoken and his cadence makes for amazing story telling

[u/cordellsl]

i've always loved this video so much. He'd be a great guest