I Had A Random Thought...

[elmuerte]

maybe if you drill a hole it will get out

[Zeusthecat]

I'm strongly considering it.

[I Saw Dasein]

While everyone is mourning the literal meaning of "literally", I'm still confused about the difference in meanings between "sympathy" and "empathy".

Seems like "sympathy" would be literally translated from its greek roots to "same emotion"; whereas "empathy" would be "inside emotion". I do not enjoy the idea that "sympathy" is merely an attempt to claim you feel the same wa... Oh wait, I get it now.

If empathy is merely the capacity for sympathy, then by saying that you empathize, you are not claiming to know exactly how the person feels, you are just saying that you are capable of how that person feels.

I guess I still don't understand.

Empathy is the capacity for sympathy right? So if you are sympathetic, then empathy is a prerequisite. Why would someone claim that empathy is more appropriate when comforting someone than sympathy? Is it a time-based claim? Is the idea to have felt sympathetic to theoir emotion in the past and now you are empathetic because you don't feel that way now?

I feel like I am not using these words correctly.

Garner sez empathy is the ability to imagine oneself in another person's position and to experience all the sensations connected with it, while sympathy is compassion for or commiseration with another. So like I sympathize with the pains of child birth but do not empathize since I cannot imagine myself in that position and/or experience all sensations connected thereto. 

[tegan]

I'm installing something from a physical CD that I put inside of my computer. so weird.

[SecretAsianMan]

I'm installing something from a physical CD that I put inside of my computer. so weird.

 

The first time I ever felt old was when my younger cousin asked me why his computer had an A: and C: drive but no B: drive and I knew the answer.  And that back when 3.5 inch floppies still existed.

[Dewar]

His machine has an A drive? Is he playing games on some sort of dinosaur?

[Bjorn]

It's strange but I'm experiencing the exact opposite. I just turned 29 and I find with each year my interest in games and the enjoyment I get out of them continues to go up. When I was a teenager I spent more of my time watching tv but as time has gone on I've pretty much stopped consuming any other forms of media and instead spend all of my spare time playing and reading about games. And oddly enough, I can't even think of a game that I've played in the last 15 years that I didn't enjoy.

 

This probably all sounds super obsessive and unhealthy but I guess games still hold that magical allure that they did when I was a little kid. There is always either a mechanic to be learned, a story to experience, a challenge to be had, music to enjoy, or a competition to be had with other people. 

 

I'm in my late 30s now, and quite enjoy video games still.  But I have gone through two very long stretches (one in my mid-20s and one in my early 30s) where I basically quit playing games completely.  I try to have some more moderation now.  I find that if I go for a couple of weeks of not playing anything, my overall enjoyment of games improves.  When my default action most nights is to fire up a game, I begin feeling burned out on them. 

[Dewar]

My enjoyment of games has changed a lot, but mostly in who I'm playing them with. I now value a game that's going to let me play with my small group of friends and build things together much more than I play long single player experiences or online versus other player type games.

[SecretAsianMan]

His machine has an A drive? Is he playing games on some sort of dinosaur?

 

That occured at least 10+ years ago.

[elmuerte]

I still think drive letters are weird.

[Frenetic Pony]

My enjoyment of games has changed a lot, but mostly in who I'm playing them with. I now value a game that's going to let me play with my small group of friends and build things together much more than I play long single player experiences or online versus other player type games.

 

The type of or way you play games can definitely change. I think it's because games, of all types of entertainment, are something always available (unlike a board game) but aren't as repeatable as music or a story based medium. With a story you can go over the same type of thing repeatedly, watch the same tv show or see the same type of movie with explosions and one liners ad infinitum.

 

With games, when you're a kid every experience is a new one. You can sit there for hours and hours, because you've never done X or Y before and doing it for the first time is awesome! But if you grew up playing games you can go and look and say "oh, I've done that before." And just not have fun with them. Being a lot more selective with games seems a definitive thing. And to change how and with who and when you play them also seems like a more common thing. Personally I never really enjoyed highly competitive and, for lack of a better word, "Deep" games when I was a kid. Starcraft was lame.

 

This year I mostly played DOTA, and when I got burned out on that (after learning most everything I could about it) I'm onto Planetary Annihilation. Part of PA is that there is another system to learn and master. Part of it is, it gives me the same feeling I had when I was a kid. I can play around with the system creator, and make planets, and then go into a game where I can nuke those planets, it's friggen awesome! It's not something I could do in any game as a kid, it's actually something new (cough Starcraft, Diablo, etc. Looking at you fuckers). And so the same "whoa that's so cool!" feeling is there. So yeah, I'd definitely say you can get burned out on games while other mediums such as music and movies and books are things you probably aren't going to get "burned out" on. But there are games you'd most certainly enjoy if you try them, but unlike movies the games you like today may have changed in one aspect or other since you were fourteen.

[clyde]

It's interesting that you bring up taste in movies and music changing. My taste in those has changed extremely over time.So i guess I should expect the same from my taste in games.

[Frenetic Pony]

It's interesting that you bring up taste in movies and music changing. My taste in those has changed extremely over time.So i guess I should expect the same from my taste in games.

 

I'm not saying it can't happen in different ways. But really, you often hear about people getting burned out on games. But in my experience most people that liked explosions in movies when they were fifteen still like explosions when they're fifty.

 

And it's not even so much that your taste in games might change. But that you might get burned out on those types of games, because those types of games haven't changed appreciably in a decade or even a decade and a half now.

 

For example, while I loved realtime strategy games for a while (though not competitively at all, as I noted) I got burned out on them. I loved Command and Conquer, and Total Annihilation, and etc. But then they just stopped changing at all for years and years and over a decade. The last one I enjoyed before PA and DOTA was Company of Heroes, because that was at least somewhat different. Then I spent the intervening what, seven years till 2013 not playing a single one. They were all the same, been there done that. But now Planetary Annihilation is played out on spherical planets, and has all this weird cool stuff, and I enjoy it again.

 

It actually reminds me of yesterday's Idle Thumbs. All of them talking about how Zelda and Mario are cool again because for the love of Odin they've finally god damned changed at all for the first time in over a decade. That's what I'm getting at. You get burned out on games because they don't change, and can then assume you just don't like games because "you're older" or whatever. It's happened to me as well altogether at times.

[syntheticgerbil]

It's strange but I'm experiencing the exact opposite. I just turned 29 and I find with each year my interest in games and the enjoyment I get out of them continues to go up. When I was a teenager I spent more of my time watching tv but as time has gone on I've pretty much stopped consuming any other forms of media and instead spend all of my spare time playing and reading about games. And oddly enough, I can't even think of a game that I've played in the last 15 years that I didn't enjoy.

Yeah I feel similar. I don't know if it's because I've done work for more than a few games since graduating, but I doubt it because all of that stuff has pretty much increased my hatred for games (or the industry). I think a lot of it is I know how derive some enjoyment out of almost any game even if it's not the best game I've ever played. I think it's because when my knowledge of games expands, there's a lot more to appreciate in historical context, conception, and interesting game mechanics, even if there are failures in some of those aspects. Probably Idlethumbs has had the most with me caring about video games more since I kind of stopped playing them much at all before joining these forums in 2004 and then members started to mention many interesting things about games I've never heard about and doing all sorts of cool write ups. Then you get the podcast with Jake, Nick, Steve, Chris, and Sean and they are all just brilliant and addictive to listen to, even though what they play almost never overlaps what I'm playing currently.

[SecretAsianMan]

I had an idea for a couple of movies last night.  They would all tell the same story, but each movie would follow the perspective of a different character.  You release them all at the same time with the same name so that different people see the same story in different ways, kind of like how Clue's original theatre release had different areas show different endings.

[Dewar]

So I'm on the phone with my bank and then I suddenly couldn't recall my account number or social security number. I'm sure it's just because I'm really tired, but I always worried that maybe there's something wrong up there, like when people who have strokes get aphasia.

[SecretAsianMan]

That periodically happens to me with my phone.  I will suddenly forget the lock pattern and screw it up a couple times, even though I've done it hundreds of time before, sometimes even just minutes ago.

[clyde]

I don't know my age or my zip-code.

[tegan]

I don't know my age or my zip-code.

I spent most of the last year having to remind myself that I was 22, not 23.

[elmuerte]

I've been stuck in that for almost 10 years

[TychoCelchuuu]

There's still a twinge of weirdness for me every time someone on the Internet (outside of like, reddit or YouTube or whatever) mentions their age and they're younger than me.

[elmuerte]

Especially when those younger people are already more successful than me.

[osmosisch]

In a couple of years, people born in the Distant Future (The Year 2000) will be allowed to drive.

[toblix]

Especially when those younger people are already more successful than me.

 

That metric is terrible, and you should try to stop using it.

[dibs]

Ur butt is terrible, and you should try to stop using it.