this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Is that the goal? I want more from my games than just poking my brain. I sometimes play games that challenge my reactions, sometimes ones that challenge my thinking. Superhot and Braid provided interesting time-related puzzles. Portal had some good lateral thinking puzzles.
I'm not exactly playing educational games, but when I played Assassin's Creed games, the historical bits I found interesting were things I could learn more about outside the game. When I played Hearts of Iron 4, it was global politics around the time of WWII. Uboat and other sub games taught me a bit about submarine tactics in WWII. Oxygen not included taught me things I didn't know about thermodynamics and materials, even if it is extremely simplified. Age of Empires and Total War were gateways to learn about medieval styles of warfare.
Even Sea of Thieves, which involves incredibly simplified sailing was what prompted me to learn about how square-masted sailing ships actually worked.
And, of course, all the flight simulators I've played over the years has taught me a lot about how to actually fly planes.
To me, if all you're getting from a game is a bit of dopamine hits, you're really missing out. It's like watching the same movie over and over, or reading the same book over and over.
Dopamine is simply a motivator idk why yall see it as a drug, the way your last sentence is phrases, any action you derive joy from is because you get dopamine from it, if the game bores you dont play it, is what im saying. Id get the sunk cost fallacy where id say I need to spend at least an hour a dollar for the game to be worth it, better off just not playing it if you dont like it, your time is always more valuable
Poking my brain gives me dopamine, I enjoy start and puzzle games that stress me out because of the dopamine, its the main driver, elden ring was pain and stress (my first dark souls) but the most dopamine ive ever gotten from a video game