alt Hacker NewsIt's amazing the degree to which streaming/online communities around video games have destroyed the games themselves. Every update to every game launches a large scale effort to find the "meta" which is then instantly disseminated to the most try-hard assholes on the Internet. Anyone who dares to develop their own strategy/style/loadout is up against hordes of people (a growing proportion every day) who just copy whatever the Youtubers figured out.
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I think Overwatch and League of Legends are the best examples of this effect. Both games are entirely unrecognizable today compared to 2016.
Somehow Starcraft 2 emerged from the other side of esports mostly unscathed, despite being arguably the most significant progenitor of the entire genre.
I think that's a normal evolution of these games? In the end they are cooperative so your teammates depend on you. Although you'll find plenty of people at the top of the ladder spamming werid strategies and being successful.
I wish LLMs played games, I'd never need to see a human again.
You and the parent comment just described academia in a nutshell
Seems people in general have started to project their lifes disappointments, stresses, and greater human needs onto a digital dimension like video games. Growing up they used to be about fun. I have endless memories as a child playing Mario N64 and it not needing to be about playing a particular way; only as a I got older and competition and disappointments being human as an adult added up did I notice this shift you mention in online game communities.
I like to ask now, "have you heard of playing for fun?" It's surprising how little people seem to remember that games are made for fun & learning ("play" as a human construct).
edit: in online games I played growing up too, this negativity/anti-fun change came probably around 2004 with bigger changes in the US political climate as well.
Meta-gaming is a natural progression in all human games. Chess players find "metas" like openings. It's just that video games are too simple and have very restricted meta set.
It's amazing the degree tencent shills have taken action to stop people in the west from enjoying games online. This is not natural and it didn't used to be this way.
> It's amazing the degree to which streaming/online communities around video games have destroyed the games themselves
I think they might destroy the streaming/online communities, but I wouldn't say it destroys the game itself. I play BAR, but never with random strangers, the game works fine, but I also don't participate in any "video game" communities or watch/play with streamers, so what you're saying sounds very foreign to me, and is more about the communities than the games themselves.