In World of Warcraft, when they first debuted mounts that could carry passengers, I immediately began the grind to get one explicitly so I could go to a low level area and give taxi rides to people who were too low level to have a mount. It's one of my best memories of playing that game. Helping people is inherently satisfying.
Actually one of my earliest Wow memories was a Deathknight carrying us to SFK with the 2 passenger mammoth and path of frost to run across the water. It was so cool that someone would go to the effort to help us like that.
I like to beat Souls games at low levels so that I can go back to earlier areas and help people through difficult boss fights. My Elden Ring character has 500 hours at level 50.
I still remember being annoyed the first flying passenger one required the Refer a Friend system and I couldn't get a new friend to level an alt with me lol.
Damn I had the exact same idea when I was a kid, would spend hours of grinding to get my hands on the sandstone drake just so I could be a taxi to other low-level people.
the universal game language of the "crouch crouch" at another player to communicate friendliness and camaraderie is one of my favorite things about the human existence. Even when we don't have words, we find ways to forge and establish positive relationships with one another. I think its such a beautiful and sweet thing, and it warms my heart every time it happens.
@@transsexual_computer_faery Same in Counter Strike 1.6 when I was young, back in the 00s ! To be fair, I always preferred the self-challenge minigames inside of it (like the "parkour" maps, "kz")
Unless you're playing a fighting game, where it means something entirely different. Though sometimes if someone is AFK at the start of a match and the opponent waits for them to be ready, a quick crouch crouch is a signal that you're present and ready to go.
The range of non-verbal communication in games is something that has always fascinated me. There's something so immensely human about having a silly little charades moment with an enemy player that is real neat.
The first time I noticed this myself was in Left 4 Dead 2. In that game there's something called a mutation, which is basically an alternate game mode with unique rules. One of them is called "healing gnome." In it players constantly lose health, there are no health items but a garden gnome spawns at the beginning of the match that players can hold and it slowly regenerates health. However, you cannot attack while holding it There's also a "shove" action which is used primarily to knock back zombies when they surround you. However in Healing Gnome it became the unspoken action of "I'm low on health, please let me hold the gnome." And for my playthroughs, I always got the gnome when I did this and gave the gnome to whoever asked for it. Also the party protected the person with the gnome, since they couldn't attack on their own
I think there’s an important detail to note with your endgame experimentation: As with life, the odds of getting to the top 2 is not the same for every player. For players who frequently win or come close to doing so, taking a chance to approach a non-threatening player-even giving up the round to them-costs very little. Presented with a novel scenario, _why not_ risk losing one round (out of five to ten that day, dozens of rounds in a week) to satisfy one’s curiosity? On the other hand, I would wager that a player who typically gets knocked out in the first half would rather take the easy victory. …I suppose this could ultimately be construed as a crude metaphor for how financial security influences people’s appetite for risk.
Fascinating then, that the research I've seen shows that those with less tend to be more generous than those with more in real life. So as much as what you said makes sense and absolutely does say something about the influence of financial security, I think it's limited to those who are in (or perceive themselves to be in) a winner take all system. I'd wager the difference is that those with more tend to see the real world that way.
@@quickfrog57 It's very much a cultural phenomenon. Being rich carries with it a certain ideology that most rich people believe in because it directly benefits them and this is thaught from an early age and reinforced at every step of their development. The fact that rich and poor people are very segregated doesn't help either.
In the game Team Fortress 2, pacifists are so common they’ve been called friendlies by the community. Most people let them go around the map unharmed giving out sandwiches and high fiving.
My favourite class is what I like to call the "POW Heavy", where I kill my opponents only with Heavy's High Noon taunt. It works especially well if timed with a "spy" voice command, with the heavy ideally saying something along the lines of "Spy is POW!", "Sniper is POW!", "Engineer is POW!" et cetera.
@@BinaryBoliasthe two things y’all mention are POOTIS POW! Haha! “Poot dispenser here!” Voice line, But interrupt it halfway through with the “pow! Haha!” Voice line/emote after “Poot dis” and that makes the pootis pow! Heavy
Truly! I remember it being frowned upon to shoot them. I also remember making friends with a player or two almost every time I played for around 3 hours.
pacifism is actually very common in pvp shooters, and I couldn't agree more that it says something about human nature. Sometimes it only takes one person acting in a silly manner, emoting, reaching out a hand, for the rest to go "oh, to hell with it". I have personally played a lot of overwatch and team fortress 2, where matches quickly can turn into conga lines and dance parties. A real world example of this it's the Christmas truce of 1914, where british and french soldiers emerged from their trenches to celebrate Christmas. I believe there's something very human about that :)
@@StanNotSoSaint Yeah I've had matches where me and the opponent just waited out the clock to a draw just because one of us on a whim started doing emotes and being silly, and the other followed suit. It's like in those moments, neither of you wants to be the one who ruined the magic, so you both just kinda keep messing around. Seems to be most common in mirror matches (matches where the opponent is playing the same character as you).
Yeah, I tend to come across this a lot in games. There's also a sense, though, that it's just a small break from the game, and we'll often give a couple shots after a bit to signal "okay, I'm going back to the game now. ty for the good time." I think a lot of this discussion around antisocial vs social behaviour in games falls a little flat to me sometimes because the reason I'm playing the game is for that very fast, big brain gameplay and the other gamers I appreciate most are the ones where I can have a long, edge-of-my-seat duel. it's not antisocial, it's the reason we've elected to play the game.
A great book related to this topic is "A Paradise Built in Hell" by Rebecca Solnit. It's about real-life disasters where people in power expected the populace to behave like the kids in "Lord of the Flies," and instead they proved, time and time again, that the instinctive human response to disaster is to help each other. In fact, they often do more to help themselves than the authorities do, who instead try to hide information, preserve their own power, and put their personal interests before the greater good. There's also the Behind the Bastards episode "Elite Panic," which cites the book heavily.
"In fact, they often do more to help themselves than the authorities do, who instead try to hide information, preserve their own power, and put their personal interests before the greater good." Say it with me folks: The only war we fight is a class war.
It makes intuitive sense when you consider that we still exist as a species today. If William Golding’s theory were correct, we would have exterminated ourselves long ago.
I always fondly remember the game "journey" in terms social play. It's pacifist by nature and only centred around puzzles and exploration. After playing it once you have no incentive to do it again, but to guide another new player through their journey. And all that without emotes, no chat, no talking. Truley beautiful.
Oh man I remember when I first played that game it was at a friends place and I didn't even know the playstation was connected to the internet let alone players would spawn into what I thought was a singleplayer game. It didn't stop me making friends with my "robot" buddies, but was definately a mindfuck when I realised at the end that instead of weirdly programmed AI, I had been hanging out with real humans the whole time 😅
it's the same that went on to make Sky: children of the light, wich is basically a much more developed version of it. I made true friends there. It's incredible how much the player mentality changes when the developers give the players different tools to engage.
Idk that game but I played Human Fall Flat and some players who played with me guided me through the levels. Then when I was replaying I guided some players too, it’s really fun
Journey made me cry so badly the first time I played it. I remember hearing from a friend that the game was "really hard" and he had never beaten it. So I started it up one day on his PS3 just to see what it was about. About 1/3 into the game, around the sand bridges I think, I found another player. For the entirety of the rest of the game they were there with me, traveling with me. Then at one point the screen goes dark and you're brought back with flight and this really uplifting music. But I couldn't enjoy any of it cause my friend was gone and I was alone. But as I got to the end of the game, I found them there waiting for me. We walked together into the light. I'll never forget them.
Something similar is happening in the online scene of Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Players can't directly interact with, but are finding ways of helping and guiding each other through the levels and even teaming up to take on them together, at times waiting for those that stayed behind to catch up, etc.
Pro-social dance moves and cute costumes are effectively pay-walled in Fortnite. Free players only get an avatar in an army costume and a much-derided free dance. This means that the many free players would probably have an even harder time being pro-social. Manufactured Discontent by Folding Ideas goes into this more and is a great companion to this essay. Great work!
True, but I'll be honest... A default repeatedly doing the cmfriendly crouches and the default dance is as likely to make a friend in a match as someone with emotes and a cool skin since people may see both as friendly gestures! Heck, maybe defaults have a slightly bigger advantage since they can be seen as new to the game lol
@@NkolaraSometimes it's just people who were in a Invited team that just had another person added and just left with their friend. Other times in garuntee you it's a furry skin lol it's actually really dumb considering it's Fortnite. But you're still right though I know it happens.
@@miamitten1123I'm certainly no social justice warrior, but I feel like his videos should be part of the curriculum. Thinking critically about the media we all consume like water with any sense of the manipulative social narratives at their core is a valuable skill and essential now more than ever.
@@error.delete4945 Don't you think it's weird that some people have turned the idea of fighting for social justice into an insult? It seems lkike the newer version of 'bleeding heart,' where caring about other people is somehow a bad thing.
@@apocalypt_us7941 I think generally we have a culture that increasingly expects caveats and qualifications of credibility and identity in order to express a basic opinion. To the point that thinking critically is lacking, then speaking critically falls on deaf ears if those ears are tuned to receive only the extreme frequencies. SJW like it or not is broadly understood to be an extreme position that infers a political identity and pretension. It's sad that we live in a time where language and meaning have lost all nuance and context without explicit definitions but unfortunately that's how it is. Personally I wouldn't use terms like that towards anybody else, but I'm happy to use it as a point of comparison to not be instantly dismissed by those who would otherwise.
Dude listen. This video almost had me crying. Like this was so unexpectedly beautiful and moving. I had no idea what you meant by "humanity" in Fortnite. I was like "Oh is he gonna be talking about the increase in bots? And like talk about the implication of that maybe idk???" Nah, this was so much more than that. That supercut of all the players that hugged you back ESPECIALLY got to me. And you worded everything so well. This was just so so good man. I don't know what else to say.
I was kind of expecting to see our interaction here. I met a monkey suit player who threw meds at me, we danced and then they Naruto ran away. It was funny and I saved it a couple of years ago. It was still Chapter 2 by the pizza place on that map
@@PopCultureDetective well just wanted to say that it becomes an experience to remember. I used to get nervous playing early on because everyone was so much better. That interaction was so wholesome I did record it and sent it to friends. Always love your videos
This reminds me of one of my favorite things I did when playing World of Warcraft: befriend someone I didn't know in the enemy faction. In the game, there were factions Alliance and Horde, and on the server I was on there were lots of areas where you could attack anyone of the opposite faction. Also, if you said something "out loud" in the game, it would translate that, consistently, into a kind of gibberish for the opposite faction to see. So you could figure out a mapping of short phrases to say a very, very limited amount of comprehensible things to the enemy faction. I played a character that could both heal and had an ability called mind control that let me take control of a character of the opposite faction briefly. I used it to take control of and heal people of the opposite faction. One of my favorite memories from the game was spending a few hours running around doing quests with an orc (Horde) with my human priest (Alliance) after befriending them in that way. We also used the game's system of emoting and some of my short phrases to communicate. It was a blast. I loved this video!
That totally sounds like something I would do. I once had a level 5 Lalafell in FF online and I walked my noob ass all the way to a city that was through areas way above my level, just so I could sit down and wave at people who were confounded by a level 5 in a 20+ level area 😂
The mind control must have come in well after I stopped playing. When I found the other faction couldn't understand me I thought it was so fascinating!
Now you are making me want a game where 100 players are stranded on an island and have to work together to build a big raft to escape a volcano and to feed each other and keep everybody alive along the way. It's like an anti-battle royale. The goal is to get as many people leave the island alive as possible instead of fighting each other. This is one aspect of humanity not yet tapped by the games industry.
Thats just minecraft survival servers, on those there is pvp and competition to some extent but a majority of it is just kids wanting to build a cool house together for the sake of it
I was seriously waiting for you to mention the gas station phenomenon, and I'm so glad you did! It was so much fun to run your own gas station, and it was right around the time when covid hit too, so that extra social interaction was pure gold. This was an awesome video, great job!
In chapter 4 season 1, I would drive a LOT and sometimes....I would offer someone a ride if they were in a firefight. Something just clicks in me to help even if its literally not what im supposed to do. One time, I suddenly discovered the final player was the person I offered a ride to, offered a hug, intending to throw for them, but I didnt realise they had walked into storm to throw for me, until it was too late. Its easily one of my favorite fortnite moments.
I think what makes these peaceful encounters so endearing, and why the non-combat game mode falls flat, is that the players are expected to fight and then go against that expectation. If the players are peaceful in a game that expects them to be peaceful, it just isn't the same.
It is a greater feat yes, but I don't know. As a person with a lot of online friends, I do wish there were more games where you work together and connect than just Minecraft and Stardew Valley. There is intrinsic value to that experience that gets tapped into less cause the norm is to always have combat.
It's always a euphoric moment when you meet a friendly person in one of those games, and it's even more a euphoric moment to see a youtuber attempting with all he's strength to be one. THANK YOU for that video, it was awesome, in every unexpected way
This was quite different from the usual videos, but very enjoyable. One thing I think is worth mentioning is that how players act within a game is highly dependable on the actions (or verbs) a game offers the player. Even if Fortnite is focused on combat, you can still emote in friendly ways, which makes making friends more achievable. I imagine making friends on COD would be nigh impossible. Even on PVE games, if when you meet a monster you can only interact with it by killing it, that is what the player will do
i've been playing this game for over 5 years at this point, and this is a beautiful and surprisingly indepth look at the psyche of a game that incentivizes the opposite of a cooperative environment. aside from playing with randoms in duos, trios or squads, there's not a lot of player to player interaction aside from the usual eliminating and being eliminated, but when you manage to find those very rare moments where, for example, you find a player who isn't very good at the game and manages to somehow get into the final storm circle and you make friends with and just show solidarity, it makes you remember that (mostly) all players are human, living and breathing at the same time as you, and i find that really beautiful. in a world and industry where antisocial behaviors are encouraged by systems put in place by others to maximize profits , finding time to connect and have a silly moment with someone who is alive and in that moment, is an amazing feeling that only just serves as a reminder that people can be great and lovely... it's encouraging. i've never seen a video on this game that i love that is so professional and well researched, the fact you've spent over 4 years just doing all this to find that human spark in a game pretty devoid of it is just incredible. fantastic video! ❤
In classic World of Warcraft I would dress up my orc lad in only boots, a pink shirt, and a pirate hat. I would dance in hostile areas and would usually get opponents to just sit and dance with me.
I have NEVER heard Axolotl pronounced that way, but I looked it up and OMG that is the correct (Mexican Spanish) pronunciation! I can’t believe I both knew axolotls came from Mexico and I also knew how Mexicans pronounce the letter X but I never connected the two.
I am a Fortnite player and this hit hard. Even during squad games players have the choice to abandon you, and often do. I started playing in 2021 to seek friends online. Many other players also wanted this, and I felt as though I was getting somewhere. But someone was always pulling the strings. Now when I log in I am reminded of failed friendships and all I have is the game they make for me. Thanks for your work. This is the first time I've watched one of your videos.
Kind of made me emotional thinking about playing a game where we're good people to each other as a goal. Also, while you weren't commenting on capitalism directly, it does feel like an examination of it in an interesting way
This actually really reminds of my time playing City of Heroes back in the day. There was an area called "The Hollows" that you worked your way through very early on with every character. It covered about levels 4-18. It was a single giant area you would need to traverse slowly on-foot since most of your time there you don't have a travel power yet. It could literally take you 45 minutes to run across the thing while trying to avoid aggressive NPCs. Because the game used an "Instance" system for all the missions (going to a door somewhere on the map and a small private map just for team being created when you click on it) it was pretty common for low level players to get Doors on the far side of the map surrounded by much higher level NPCs that can one-shot you. The Hollows became one of the most hated areas of the game because of this. Until people started helping each other. Much higher level, often max level, players started hanging out in The Hollows for the sole purpose of helping everyone else. People would provide heals, rez, clear out problematic mobs blocking doors, and use group travel powers like group fly and teleport to help people get to where they needed to be quickly. All for nothing more than a thank you and the expectation to pay-it-forward and help someone else later down the line. My server, Infinity, eventual had an entire Super Group, i.e. guild, form around helping in The Hollows, called Paragon City Search and Rescue, that had someone active in The Hollows literally 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The selflessness and kindness I saw and paid-forward in that game are still some of my absolute favorite gaming memories to this day. I can't recall even a single instance of someone using a racist, homophobic, or sexist slur or joke is the about 7 years I played.
@@ich3730 Bragging rights would be great if it was made a big deal. If it's supposed to be near impossible to do, wouldn't it be great to make a big deal about it to the community? I guess that's what I mean. It should be celebrated somehow.
To play devil's advocate, in a multiplayer game, you don't want to excessively encourage achievements/playstyles that are best earned by breaking the game's fundamental rules. Attempting to grind out that achievement would not be fun for most players and playing in a lobby where people are trying to grind it out would not be fun for most players either. It makes sense to _acknowledge_ the neatness of the achievement without outright encouraging it
Journey has always been one of my favourite and fondest video game experiences. Beautiful game, visually and emotionally. I'm not a Fortnite player (not a fan of shooters in general, the only one I play regularly is Splatoon) but the idea of playing as a friendly pacifist appeals to me a lot!
I have stopped playing most online multiplayers because of this very reason, ironically i started to find them very isolating. So I'm really hoping some developers see the value in changing how online games should be. Great video as always.
@@ich3730 I think they mean that for a while now there has been a bit of a focus on competitive style games. Death match, pvp etc etc. Even some typically collaborative games have "events" and game modes and such that encourage players to work against each other. I can 100% see how someone would find that isolating. I personally don't like playing multiplayer games because I don't particularly want other people in my games, but for someone that does just want to play a game with other people you really do have to search out those options because they're not super popular. Particularly if you don't have people to play specifically co-op games with, because that's different in itself. I mean I've played and enjoyed the We Were Here series with my sibling, but I don't know if games like that have online matchmaking, so if you don't have a person to play with you just can't. (But I may be misremembering ofc, it was a little while ago)
The videos of John Green attempting to play Fortnite without shooting first are amazing, highly recommend (and if you only have time to watch one, you should watch Episode 2)
As someone who’s constantly played the game since 2017, I’ve met countless amazing people, even some like me who are too anxious to speak. Whether it’s through things like helping people get their first win, just chilling with enemies in the middle of a match, or even helping someone through tough situations outside the game, it’s all possible. I made great lifelong friends through this game because of this exact idea, that complete strangers could help each other through the most mentally trying times in their lives from a single video game. I’m not saying the game’s fandom is all sunshine and peaches, there are **thousands** of bad apples, but you’ll find the game surprisingly harbours a great amount of bloody amazing people if you open up to them.
I think Mario Wonder did a wonderful job integrating social interaction with strangers into the gameplay, I'm always so happy when I finish a level with someone, I've even seen people wait for each other for a long time.
@@PopCultureDetectiveThis kinda of psuedo-multiplayer of having ghosts of other players in what is otherwise a single player game is pretty common actually. You can find it in the latets Forza Horizon (racing game) or Elden Ring (RPG/action). Probably others too.
@@torb-no Yeah, most From Software games have a combined co-operative/invader system, where you can leave helpful messages for other players, be summoned in to help them with an area/defend them from danger, or conversely try and murder them. There's no voice chat, so you can only communicate with vague gestures, and I've had some of my favourite abstract, brief videogame interactions spring up from those systems. I've also spend many hours during my own playthroughs ignoring my own objectives just to put myself in the summoned role and show players to secrets they might have otherwise missed.
I think another good pro-social game is Don't Starve Together. In that game, having cohorts around you is a sanity boost, which is critical in the game, besides greatly helping collect the resources and build the tools you need to survive.
I always loved your essays but this is on another level. Maybe because the scale felt different (spanning over games, novels, movies, real time events, and include very time costly experiments). I just want to say thank you for this. This was eye-opening, something I rarely (if ever) feel after youtube videos. On a side note, the indie game journey would have also fit nicely in here as you randomly meet other players in the game but without the option to communicate. Yet, friendships are made which can make the ending even more powerful because it feels like you lost a real friend even though you don't know anything about them. In fact, you can end the game questioning if that encounter was a human or a bot at all. Which opens another fascinating argument of what it takes to befriend somebody, or rather, something...
Although not as isolating as a battle royal, I remember purposefully being friendly to enemies when I used to play "Overwatch 1" and especially League of Legends. There's something incredibly rewarding about turning faceless opponents into friends. In LoL in particular, you could always see the moment where a match got reframed from a grind for points and accolades, into playing a sport with this nice person you'd just found. I'm pretty sure I've added as many enemies to my friends list as I did allies, after a game.
Believe me, trying to do this in COD can be really hard. There are less emotes in warzone/codm and there is a lot more of an ingrained mindset for trying to be the best. The kindest thing that has happened to me recently in COD was somebody leaving me grounded as the Desperado (the only BR class you can get downed as a solo with) and kiting a bot toward me before driving off. They were explicitly trying to give me a second chance which was cool, but considering that was like one event in hours of BR it kinda proves my point.
Never played Fortnite, but I can think of some examples of emergent nonviolent interaction between anonymous avatars in a game built exclusively around combat mechanics. I played a lot of online Dark Souls II this past year and there were many instances of friendly, nonlethal interaction depending on circumstances, usually initiated by a combination of avatar gestures and spacing out of weapon reach. Sometimes invaders might instead give gifts, or play along in a nonlethal game of hide-and-seek if the invadee is camouflaged, or even attempt to heal the invadee if they were in a particularly nasty spot already. I found that once I got past the initial rush of the chaos of invasions, I eventually stopped caring about the stakes of the encounter and started reacting more to the behavior of the invadee. Once I invaded another player's game to find the invadee just practicing their jumps off a certain platform with the gliding armor, and without getting a hostile reaction I just decided to spectate and give positive gestures at their impressive leaps.
I've found LOTS of friendly players. From players throwing me Shield Potions (and allowing me to drink them), to players giving me a ride in a vehicle to a safe zone. I tried to do these, but always got k*lled :(
@@PopCultureDetective I always try to finish quests first, then, when I can't do any more quests, I try to win. I'd probably even found you in the battlefield, I remember landing in a mountain, next to another player, they emoted a synch emote, I joined them, and we parted different ways 🤔🤔
This was absolutely hilarious, unexpectedly enlightening, and immensely uplifting. Keep spreading your positive message. It's well received and most certainly necessary. Excellent video!
As a side note: One of my personal favorite videos I've made _is when I played passively_ in Fortnite, I had a whole accidental rescue operation when helicopters came in and found some random kid out in the edges of the map and got the to safety and equipping them with a weapon and healing items. Definitely fun playing medics or rescuers in battlefield based games!
This is one of my favorite things to do in Splatoon!! They call them squid parties! Also signaled with crouching (well, squid-modeing but same thing) and hopping around, love how universal that it lol I love the challenge of trying to get someone to stop their fighting to goof around and then seeing how many people we can get to join us. Sometimes people will take the opportunity for an easy kill, or kind of respectfully paint around the party but take the opportunity to get more turf coverage. But those rare moments when you get a full 8 player squid party going, painting hearts around eachother and everyone jumping into the water right when the timer hits 0, feels so so good and really warms my heart💕
really lovely and thorough video; however one thing i have to say is that there's not only combat and altruism focused games, there's a whole spectrum in-between those extremes, especially manifested through team centered combat games.
Very true. Though as mentioned leveling-up and story progression aren't often tied to pro-social interactions (outside of team combat as you correctly point out).
I am shocked to discover in another comment that the whole point isn't to play in a game with your friends, or to fight as a team with your friends. It's all random. What......what is the point then? I thought kids played this together as a form of socializing.
Oooo I love this!!! I love playing Dead by Daylight and I almost always play surviver. Finding nice killers that let you fix the gens and escape, or carry the last surviver to a gate or hatch is always nice. It's something that reminds you that humans are funny little animals that like playing pretend and are inhetently copoerative, even when its disadventageious
Lovely concept and experiment, though I do have one point I want to add in regards to Lord of the Flies. Golding’s cynicism seems to largely center around children of that era, rather than being about humanity in general. The book is specifically written in response to another novel, “The Coral Tale: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean” which has the same school children stranded on an island premise, but they all have a perfectly fine time (which is also implied by said book to be due to Christianity helping civilize them, which is a whole other can of worms to sort through) which Golding thought was unrealistic. So he arguably overcorrected by writing about kids getting stranded and going absolutely feral, which I personally think can be read as being more of an indictment of the cultural values of that era in specific, rather than being about human nature in general.
This was a wonderful video!! However I will say Lord of the Flies isn't supposed to be representative of all of humanity, it was specifically supposed to deride the social structures and conditioning of boys schools and how that affects them, so honestly it's more similar to Battle Royale than you'd expect. That's why people were so hesitant (before yellowjackets came out) for a "lord of the flies but it's girls" because without the context of who is there and what made them that way, you're just swapping the genders for the sake of it. Luckily Yellowjackets ended up having more depth than that, but I wouldn't say William Golding was wrong, necessarily. Just viewing things through a certain lens.
During 2020 I played a lot of Monster Hunter World, finished the story and eventually crafted a strong end-game armor/weapon set. Most of my time after that was spent observing the game's monsters and environments outside of any forced combat. I also responded to a lot of other players' SOS Flares, something that wasn't introduced before this game. It was awesome to help out a ton of lower rank players, despite the in-game rewards being useless at my rank...and I only got one odd response to my post-game behavior, which was from a random player that said "Why are you doing this? You've already beaten the game". I guess they were wrong.
My favorite social system in a video game is Death Stranding. Players are encouraged to build structures and powerups that, when constructed, will appear in other peoples game world. You can also donate your old gear into common "share lockers" that other players can retrieve. You even get a notification when someone interacts with a structure you've built or uses an item you've contributed. Sadly it is otherwise entirely singleplayer. This video has made me realize there is a real lack of games with more pro-social and cooperative gameplay mechanics, especially ones where you're helping strangers.
I always liked playing the 4 person group royale mode in fortnite because I liked being in a team and the mutual aid. You go out of your way to revive these strangers at times
I appreciate somebody using Battle Royale for a analysis like this. Even though I mainly I consider it one of my favorite films of all time because of the campiness and great violence in the film, I think it's pretty cool and even kina relieving that the characters do try to cooperate and aknowledges how systems of violence force people to resort to violence. You stating this actually kinda reminds me of the live action film "Rikki Oh: Story Of Ricky", a movie mainly known for its over-the-top violence. While it's interesting that the show does show a man using violence to defend himself. It's less because of human nature and more because he is in a oppressive and violent prison industry that obligates him to perform those abilities and uses those to liberate the prisoners who do not want to get involved with that violence. The villains are the wardens and the guardians of the place rather than the prisoners themselves.
I always love your videos, especially these that explore pacifism in games. You're the first person that made me realize how lacking games are when it comes to communal types of playing styles. I wonder, have you ever checked out a game called "One Hour, One Life?" You spend an hour in the game, starting out as a helpless baby who is totally reliant on other live players to raise you and teach you. I've seen countless players go into the game, intent on violence or mischief, but they always end up becoming so intertwined with and attached to the built community that they just stop, point blank. There's also a rumor that the better player you are, the more likely you are to get more kids (i.e. live players) to take care of. It's a game that genuinely makes me cry, especially the one from Call Me Kevin.
@@notexactlysiev Exactly!! And to see Kevin, who usually likes to cause chaos in games, only resort to sometimes being mischievous just because of the love and kindness his "mother" was showing him was so beautiful. That game really is something.
Truly interesting, I've always found it interesting that despite the general lack of/nerfed communicative avenues, players tend to always find other methods of communication. Especially given how universal the idea of repetitive jumping/crouching is. And I'm a strong believer in the idea of human nature being inherently altruistic so it's wonderful to see this.
This video sounded so silly in concept when i first started watching but you’re right… and if people can’t put aside the dopamine and rewards of a video game made to be played for fun what expectations do we set when the rewards for stomping over others is financial in a world where that is the ultimate power. Really thought provoking stuff and I got all the vicarious feel good emotions when you ended up making those friends and truces, shows whats really important. Thank you for this video, didn’t expect fortnite to make me reflect on my own humanity but this was really enjoyable☺️☺️❤️
The players know the violence doesn't literally hurt the other players, and the violence itself is fun, it's like a sport where there is a winner and loser, where both players are developing their skills at the game, but ultimately no one is hurt. The fun is contingent on the violence not being real. In that and the sport sense, the violence is a form of social interaction, like play fighting. Plenty of people who've had fun fighting each other in fighting games, or other shooters like counter strike, add their opponents to their friends list because it was fun to play with them. Not making friends in game, but in real life, with the game as a social context for them to hang out. I wish these aspects were explored in this video.
William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies specifically as a response to the popularity of the novel Coral Island, a book about British boarding school boys who are stranded on a Pacific island until they manage to "civilize" it with the power of Christianity and the obvious superiority of British culture. Golding spent many years teaching at a British boarding school and grew to strongly dislike Coral Island. Those sheltered rich brats weren't going to band together to build a society from scratch; they would turn on each other the moment things got difficult. Instead of pampered upper-class British 6-12 year old strangers who'd never left England before, the shipwrecked Tongan boys had been sailing their entire lives, were 13-19 years old, and were close friends. They were the opposites of the LotF kids in just about every way.
I think a big issue with a lot of current pro-social games is that they often end up being varying degrees of 3D chatrooms. I love playing videogames and I love those games in concept, but I feel there is an untouched middleground between having to find skilled groups of players in mmos for pve group content and chatroom style social games where there is no real challenge to overcome at all. We like doing sports and playing games and we like socializing and roleplaying. I would love more games that find this middle ground between a chatroom and a traditional coop game. What if we had an MMORPG that actively encouraged helping other players on their quests, encouraging people to actually interact with eachother and making friends to face the more challenging parts of the game with? It could even incentivize experienced players to help others who struggle, and roleplaying could be incentivized through a large number of "meaningless" interactibles and minigames in taverns.
There are many aspects of the MMORPG Guild Wars 2 that encourage this: -Anyone can resurrect another player and they get xp for it. People will go out of their way to go rez a dead player. There's a down state before you die which you can rescue other players from. -You can't kill steal or node steal. Everyone gets loot. -"Quests" (events) happen dynamically and anyone can join in on them, and often require multiple people to complete them. There are events that take the cooperation and coordination of the entire map to complete called meta events. -You often see max level players hanging out in new zones helping new players just for fun, handing out bags or other items. -There are tags you can put over your head that anyone can see on the map which indicate to other players that you're there specifically to help new players or are commanding a large group of people and guiding them through an event. The list goes on. It truly creates the friendliest community I've ever seen in an MMO social space.
Star Wars Galaxies used to have a very player-driven society. Doctors, musicians, armorers and weaponsmiths were all players, and cities were player-built. Even now in successor private servers you find people who are building towns and putting gear on the market. It's the closest to what you're describing that I've heard of so far.
I used to play Sea of Thieves as a solo slooper before I stopped because of the annoying pvp aspect. But the best part of the game for me was always finding other players that are just willing to vibe. Sometimes I find these people, I gesture the crouch thingy they'd give me a number of good loot, more often than not, not accepting my own gifts to them before going their merry way. That would without fail always make my night~
You know, the first game I thought if when you mentioned the collaboration bit was sea of thieves. It’s a pirate multiplayer game, and there’s a lot of interactions you can do with real people. Really, it’s just not meant to be played solo, though you can. I don’t think it fits what you where describing, because there is pvp combat and some people are jerks and will just attack you out of nowhere, but similarly there’s a lot of friendly people who stop by to give you things and say hi. Idk, I just remembered it when you where describing a collaborative game. Love this video, very interesting!
I love playing Sea of Thieves, but I think it fits! Pvp games aren't bad and still can be cooperative, while still having epic battles! If I ever need to be on the offensive (like I'm trying to lvl up reapers or smth), I always try to be nice just in case I can make a friend, and if I need to sink them, I try to be nice!
Combat is popular in games because it’s mechanically simple both design wise, tech wise and is simple to grasp for players. The history of shooters espescially is filled with games that was attempt at something else yet pivoted to a PvP shooter. Fortnite kinda included! It was originally a co-operative zombie defense game. Great video though! I’ve had some similar experiences in Halo Infinite myself at times. For example: the game was bugged and I’d lost all my team mates. The opposing team just let me score a couple of flags just to be nice. :)
People have been doing pacifist things in Team Fortress 2 since forever. I have fond memories of dancing in long conga lines with enemies and teammates alike, high fiving and just goofing around. Having emotes like dancing and hugging is a fun way to give players the option to try and break up the normal gameplay loop. Of course someone eventually breaks it up every time, but fun was had either way.
One game that immediately came to mind while listening to your conclusion was death stranding, a game about a post apocalyptic delivery guy on a quest to connect its isolated inhabitants to a network. The thing is that when you bring an area on line in the game world, it also brings it on line for you in the real world, and it's multiplayer mechanics are all about supporting other players, building infrastructure and retrieving lost packages. The result is a game who's theme is finding human connections in this oppressive environment. Personally I'm hyped for the sequel, on which kojima said following the covid 19 pandemic "I also didn't want to predict any more future, so I rewrote it.”
The Tonga story reminds me on the Great Bitter Lake association. A conglomerate of 13 ships being stuck in the Suez Channel during the and in the aftermath of the six day war when the channel became a border river. Instead of parting along eastern and western vessels they formed a quasi micro nation with their own social norms and sharing system. Fascinating part of history
one of the most satisfying elements of being a high level healer in FFXIV for me is that, since your healing ability is proportionate to your level, any shields you put on lower-level players make them effectively invulnerable. ive also had so many cute little interactions after i decided to just make 999 every kind of tea in the game and just randomly hand them out to people; i almost always get a 'thank you!' or emote'd at, and some people even add another foodstuff to the trade so i get something in return. its really sweet! 🥰
After playing Overwatch for years already, it's always fun to initiate a peaceful match where everyone is just emoting by flirting with Mercys as Pharah. I love humanity. We are so silly.
This video made me remember a pretty old game called Endless Forest. It was made by the same team that did The Path (an interesting take on Red Riding Hood). Endless Forest was a multiplayer game where everyone played as those strange deer creatures with human faces. There was no chat, no usernames, just a couple of emotes that you could use. It was MAGICAL, and had truly amazing community
One small complaint though: The boys in The Lord of the Flies do not really turn on each other quickly. For this context and to not drag the tempo of the video I guess one can put it like that but it's hardly accurate. Not only does the setting explain a lot how it got to that, it's not the oh some friends got stranded and turned evil-story people try to boil it down to, but it also took MONTHS. Yes, the book deliberately do not tell you how much time passes, and the island is a tropical one so seasons do not change, but it is mentioned that their hair grew from private school short to "a mop". I'd say a minimum of 3 months. Probably longer. Is that quickly? I dunno.
Yes, there is a time jump, and also, they are British posh children. Any evil they have is not a general statement on the evil of humanity, but on how evil Britain and its colonial empire is.
I’ve just started this, and as someone who has played Fortnite for way too long, I can really tell how much time has been put into this based only on the map.
This was great, I had read about Fortnite players offering taxi rides to others in-game and was wondering when you might mention it. Especially liked the editing!
Just wait until you see friendly players in Team Fortress 2, they're on a whole other level. All it takes is a simple nod with your character saying a voice line and boom, you've got yourself a new friend.
Why does everyone act as if pacifism means "I will never harm another person under any conceivable circumstance"? John Green's definition is perfectly adequate. Pacifism is a broader philosophy of trying to avoid unnecessary violence whenever possible (especially large-scale conflicts like war), not a self-destructively stupid philosophy of rejecting reasonable self-defence and allowing yourself to be killed.
This was an excellent video man. Thank you for all the effort you put into it. I’m a big Dead by Daylight player and some of the most fun moments are the bits of silliness and camaraderie between both aligned and opposing teams. Roleplaying with the map features, doing funny moves with emotes, letting the last survivor out just so both sides can get a win. Humanity is good at heart.
I love encountering bits of humanity in DBD. I wish some people weren't so competitive and obsessive about winning so there could be more chill moments between all the players in a match.
wow I didn't know you're still working on the colonialism in modern board games essay! Super excited for that one, must be a really huge project since it's been so long! Also, a relevant book to this topic is A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. I haven't read it yet, but it is on my reading list. It is about the myth that humans are naturally barbaric rather than altruistic in disaster scenarios.
I honestly love it when I find someone willing to just goof around in Fortnite instead of shooting. I once encountered a Groot that was doing the same missions as me. We found each other a couple times more in the arena until we were shot.
The Endless Forest was my first experience with this sort of non-verbal friend making in a game, it's explicitly designed for that, but was still a unique experience. In another game, Agar io, you have to consume other players to grow. Doing so ends their game, though you could make your way back to the same room. The two forms of communication were body language and splitting yourself apart. The latter was a gameplay tactic, allowing you to escape larger enemies (smaller blobs move faster), but you could also voluntarily give yourself away as a token or to save someone from being eaten. I had a lot of wonderful experiences making friends that way. I think there are many many reasons why there aren't more social first games, for me though, there's a fear of commitment, that I'll make friends and they'll need me to keep playing and with that an aversion to the loss of self direction I have playing alone. In team games (I played MOBAs and Apex Legends) you can still have fun on your own if you get a bad team, but if your style of management or building is at odds with someone in a social game, suddenly the stakes are much higher.
I really miss Free Realms. It was an open-world MMO aimed at tweens where combat was restricted to dungeons and was only against monsters. A lot of the game mechanics didn't require other players, but people acted in social ways anyway. I remember visiting complex mazes people had built, helping friends with tough dungeons, and attending dance parties and such. The aesthetics were similar to Fortnite in many ways. There was a Rickroll boom box that turned everyone in a certain radius into Rick Astley and made them dance. A forum for that game is how I met several of my oldest friends.
I love how the video is all "it's hard to make friends in a match of fortnite", meanwhile i have done this accidentally. Dude obviously didnt have a gun, so i stopped shooting and dropped a shotgun for him. We hung out for the rest of the match.
This reminds me of journey. There was a specific achievement where you needed to get someone to just sit with you at a specific spot in the game it was hard but fun to try to communicate that with no real talking just melody in the game. I also really loved getting the white cloak and leading others through the game. What a beautiful game.
Great video as always! It's always great to see how kind people can be despite being encouraged to do the opposite. Also, as a Mexican I really appreciate that you pronounced "axolotl" correctly!!
This is such a great video! The non-verbal ways of communicating in fortnite, dancing and hugging, really shows you another face of what the game can be. It really highlights the fact that there are people playing it with you, which is easy to forget, and how people can still "play".
The book "The Case Against Competition" by Alfie Kohn is all about this, arguing that comppetition impairs social skills but also lower the bar from a purely objective pov. A surprising amount of experiments have been conducted on children in the field of education sciences
I’ve been getting back into Team Fortress Two recently, and one of the things I love about the game’s community is that there’s a subcommunity of “friendlies” who are dedicated to playing the game exactly this way. They almost always play Heavy, mainly because he has an item called the sandvich that he can throw on the ground and will function as a health pack for a player on either team. But I think it also has something to do with the fact that this massive, not-very-bright russian guy comes across as TF2’s most huggable character when he isn’t holding his minigun. In any case, even though I do come to the game for for the shooting, it always makes me happy to run into one. It’s worth mentioning that this community got so big in TF2 specifically because of certain mechanics in the game itself. In addition to the previously mentioned sandvich, there are also several taunts (the equivalent of fortnite’s emotes) that allow one or more other players to join in, even if they don’t own it themselves, and regardless of whether they’re on the same team. There’s also one of the core game modes, capture the flag, which is… pretty badly designed, honestly. It often wears on for a really long time with neither team making much progress, making it ideal for friendlies- if playing the game as intended isn’t accomplishing anything, why not go friendly and try to have fun that way? Plus, there’s a server-wide text chat and in-game voice lines that everyone can hear, so communication is easier. It’s still very much a competitive game by design, but it’s interesting to see how just a handful of design decisions that unintentionally enabled this playstyle created a whole subculture.
Wow, great video. Super interesting to see how the structure and affordances of Fortnite can be and are co-opted by users to turn into a more social experiences
holy shit i was really expecting you to mention TF2 and the "friendly" phenomenon. this is a really interesting take on it and yeah I wanna see more content talking about this type of player interaction
I feel like a good example of this too is team fortress 2, a team based shooter that is designed for bloody death matches between teams, but more than half the time becomes a friendly gathering place to make jokes and have fun. It’s so popular that it’s kind of considered against an unspoken code to kill the “hoovey” the friendly version of heavy, especially if he offers you a sandwich.
I ADORE this concept about how human nature collides with systems, in particular video game design. It's always been the case that the more tools you give a player to express themselves, the more complex a social language they develop in a game where the only real way to communicate is with a weapon. Add a crouch button, you have a neutral gesture to attempt to communicate Some quirks of animation like swapping weapons or scoping in repeatedly can look funny or similar to real life gestures and they become shorthand for thankyous & acknowledgements Go further with emotes, voice lines & there is no end to the lengths some players will go to socialise and connect in a world where you hold a hammer and everything is a nail. Team Fortress 2's has entire social etiquettes surrounding non-violent players called friendlies and its considered bad manners to kill them Sometimes lost players on Apex Legends will be spared and donated with healing items by passing squads Deep Rock Galactic has zero incentive to have every player reach the end but everyone agrees that "No Dwarf Left behind" and will risk it all to make sure everyone makes it out It's something I've observed in every multiplayer game to some or great extent. Humanity will always poke holes in the systems just so they can say hello
this reminds me of the Just Cause 2 Multiplayer test events! Although it was a mod using the base game of Just Cause 2 which consisted primarily of combat and movement, people found various ways to interact in a more social manner. Many roleplayed as taxi drivers, groups of people took roadtrips together, participated in impromptu races or took part in mass skydiving. All of this happened organically and it was possibly the best online gaming experience I've ever had.
There’s a news story of a ‘real’ lord of the flies. A group of stranded boys helped eachother, found food, made a buddy system, and got rescued Ok I finished the video, you had it in there! Perfect video
In World of Warcraft, when they first debuted mounts that could carry passengers, I immediately began the grind to get one explicitly so I could go to a low level area and give taxi rides to people who were too low level to have a mount. It's one of my best memories of playing that game. Helping people is inherently satisfying.
Actually one of my earliest Wow memories was a Deathknight carrying us to SFK with the 2 passenger mammoth and path of frost to run across the water. It was so cool that someone would go to the effort to help us like that.
I like to beat Souls games at low levels so that I can go back to earlier areas and help people through difficult boss fights. My Elden Ring character has 500 hours at level 50.
Too bad that the sorts of people who liked to camp low level areas to kill quest givers and lowbies far outnumber people like you 😹
I still remember being annoyed the first flying passenger one required the Refer a Friend system and I couldn't get a new friend to level an alt with me lol.
Damn I had the exact same idea when I was a kid, would spend hours of grinding to get my hands on the sandstone drake just so I could be a taxi to other low-level people.
the universal game language of the "crouch crouch" at another player to communicate friendliness and camaraderie is one of my favorite things about the human existence. Even when we don't have words, we find ways to forge and establish positive relationships with one another. I think its such a beautiful and sweet thing, and it warms my heart every time it happens.
i remember doing that in deathmatch games 20 years ago
On Mount&Blade you block up to communicate friendliness.
@@transsexual_computer_faery Same in Counter Strike 1.6 when I was young, back in the 00s ! To be fair, I always preferred the self-challenge minigames inside of it (like the "parkour" maps, "kz")
Unless you're playing a fighting game, where it means something entirely different. Though sometimes if someone is AFK at the start of a match and the opponent waits for them to be ready, a quick crouch crouch is a signal that you're present and ready to go.
“I have no mouth so I must *crouch crouch*”
The range of non-verbal communication in games is something that has always fascinated me. There's something so immensely human about having a silly little charades moment with an enemy player that is real neat.
maybe an "enemy" player, rather ;)
The first time I noticed this myself was in Left 4 Dead 2. In that game there's something called a mutation, which is basically an alternate game mode with unique rules. One of them is called "healing gnome." In it players constantly lose health, there are no health items but a garden gnome spawns at the beginning of the match that players can hold and it slowly regenerates health. However, you cannot attack while holding it
There's also a "shove" action which is used primarily to knock back zombies when they surround you. However in Healing Gnome it became the unspoken action of "I'm low on health, please let me hold the gnome." And for my playthroughs, I always got the gnome when I did this and gave the gnome to whoever asked for it. Also the party protected the person with the gnome, since they couldn't attack on their own
Tf2 and the Hightower friendly party.
I wish someone would catalogue these things. Like driving up and honking at ppl in gta
I loved Journey so much for its social mechanics, especially the simplified communications (aka "the chirp")
I think there’s an important detail to note with your endgame experimentation: As with life, the odds of getting to the top 2 is not the same for every player. For players who frequently win or come close to doing so, taking a chance to approach a non-threatening player-even giving up the round to them-costs very little. Presented with a novel scenario, _why not_ risk losing one round (out of five to ten that day, dozens of rounds in a week) to satisfy one’s curiosity? On the other hand, I would wager that a player who typically gets knocked out in the first half would rather take the easy victory.
…I suppose this could ultimately be construed as a crude metaphor for how financial security influences people’s appetite for risk.
Oof... I hate that you are right.
See also: the most elite and truly frighteningly skilled martial artists i have met are also the most chill and oddly gentle people I have met.
Argument for income equality and UBI.
Fascinating then, that the research I've seen shows that those with less tend to be more generous than those with more in real life. So as much as what you said makes sense and absolutely does say something about the influence of financial security, I think it's limited to those who are in (or perceive themselves to be in) a winner take all system. I'd wager the difference is that those with more tend to see the real world that way.
@@quickfrog57 It's very much a cultural phenomenon. Being rich carries with it a certain ideology that most rich people believe in because it directly benefits them and this is thaught from an early age and reinforced at every step of their development. The fact that rich and poor people are very segregated doesn't help either.
In the game Team Fortress 2, pacifists are so common they’ve been called friendlies by the community. Most people let them go around the map unharmed giving out sandwiches and high fiving.
Yeah! They're called "Pootis" ("Put dispenser here").
My favourite class is what I like to call the "POW Heavy", where I kill my opponents only with Heavy's High Noon taunt.
It works especially well if timed with a "spy" voice command, with the heavy ideally saying something along the lines of "Spy is POW!", "Sniper is POW!", "Engineer is POW!" et cetera.
@@BinaryBoliasthe two things y’all mention are POOTIS POW! Haha!
“Poot dispenser here!” Voice line, But interrupt it halfway through with the “pow! Haha!” Voice line/emote after “Poot dis” and that makes the pootis pow! Heavy
Truly! I remember it being frowned upon to shoot them. I also remember making friends with a player or two almost every time I played for around 3 hours.
If this video was about TF2, all he would have needed was to find a game on Hightower
pacifism is actually very common in pvp shooters, and I couldn't agree more that it says something about human nature. Sometimes it only takes one person acting in a silly manner, emoting, reaching out a hand, for the rest to go "oh, to hell with it". I have personally played a lot of overwatch and team fortress 2, where matches quickly can turn into conga lines and dance parties. A real world example of this it's the Christmas truce of 1914, where british and french soldiers emerged from their trenches to celebrate Christmas. I believe there's something very human about that :)
While not common, it can be found even in fighting games!
@@StanNotSoSaint Yeah I've had matches where me and the opponent just waited out the clock to a draw just because one of us on a whim started doing emotes and being silly, and the other followed suit. It's like in those moments, neither of you wants to be the one who ruined the magic, so you both just kinda keep messing around. Seems to be most common in mirror matches (matches where the opponent is playing the same character as you).
Remember the mei lines with her hop emote? I miss those days...
Yeah, I tend to come across this a lot in games. There's also a sense, though, that it's just a small break from the game, and we'll often give a couple shots after a bit to signal "okay, I'm going back to the game now. ty for the good time."
I think a lot of this discussion around antisocial vs social behaviour in games falls a little flat to me sometimes because the reason I'm playing the game is for that very fast, big brain gameplay and the other gamers I appreciate most are the ones where I can have a long, edge-of-my-seat duel. it's not antisocial, it's the reason we've elected to play the game.
@@trs4184This is a fantastic point.
A great book related to this topic is "A Paradise Built in Hell" by Rebecca Solnit. It's about real-life disasters where people in power expected the populace to behave like the kids in "Lord of the Flies," and instead they proved, time and time again, that the instinctive human response to disaster is to help each other. In fact, they often do more to help themselves than the authorities do, who instead try to hide information, preserve their own power, and put their personal interests before the greater good. There's also the Behind the Bastards episode "Elite Panic," which cites the book heavily.
I adore Behind the Bastards. I'm looking that up
reminds me of The Good Place
"In fact, they often do more to help themselves than the authorities do, who instead try to hide information, preserve their own power, and put their personal interests before the greater good."
Say it with me folks: The only war we fight is a class war.
It makes intuitive sense when you consider that we still exist as a species today. If William Golding’s theory were correct, we would have exterminated ourselves long ago.
I always fondly remember the game "journey" in terms social play. It's pacifist by nature and only centred around puzzles and exploration. After playing it once you have no incentive to do it again, but to guide another new player through their journey. And all that without emotes, no chat, no talking. Truley beautiful.
Oh man I remember when I first played that game it was at a friends place and I didn't even know the playstation was connected to the internet let alone players would spawn into what I thought was a singleplayer game. It didn't stop me making friends with my "robot" buddies, but was definately a mindfuck when I realised at the end that instead of weirdly programmed AI, I had been hanging out with real humans the whole time 😅
Well, technically you can talk with the melody
it's the same that went on to make Sky: children of the light, wich is basically a much more developed version of it.
I made true friends there. It's incredible how much the player mentality changes when the developers give the players different tools to engage.
Idk that game but I played Human Fall Flat and some players who played with me guided me through the levels. Then when I was replaying I guided some players too, it’s really fun
Journey made me cry so badly the first time I played it. I remember hearing from a friend that the game was "really hard" and he had never beaten it. So I started it up one day on his PS3 just to see what it was about. About 1/3 into the game, around the sand bridges I think, I found another player. For the entirety of the rest of the game they were there with me, traveling with me. Then at one point the screen goes dark and you're brought back with flight and this really uplifting music. But I couldn't enjoy any of it cause my friend was gone and I was alone. But as I got to the end of the game, I found them there waiting for me. We walked together into the light. I'll never forget them.
Something similar is happening in the online scene of Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Players can't directly interact with, but are finding ways of helping and guiding each other through the levels and even teaming up to take on them together, at times waiting for those that stayed behind to catch up, etc.
Wonder is sitting next to my Switch waiting for me to finish this video. It's all I'll be doing tomorrow!
Pro-social dance moves and cute costumes are effectively pay-walled in Fortnite. Free players only get an avatar in an army costume and a much-derided free dance. This means that the many free players would probably have an even harder time being pro-social. Manufactured Discontent by Folding Ideas goes into this more and is a great companion to this essay. Great work!
A very good point!
True, but I'll be honest...
A default repeatedly doing the cmfriendly crouches and the default dance is as likely to make a friend in a match as someone with emotes and a cool skin since people may see both as friendly gestures! Heck, maybe defaults have a slightly bigger advantage since they can be seen as new to the game lol
People will leave your team if you don’t have a skin I couldn’t believe it but it happened two matches in a row 😂
you earn vbucks for free by playing, and emotes are the cheapest things to buy in the game
@@NkolaraSometimes it's just people who were in a Invited team that just had another person added and just left with their friend. Other times in garuntee you it's a furry skin lol it's actually really dumb considering it's Fortnite. But you're still right though I know it happens.
I didn’t expect this video to become one of the most fascinating discussions on the human condition. Well done!
You must be new. He’s BEEN doing this for years podre.
@@miamitten1123I'm certainly no social justice warrior, but I feel like his videos should be part of the curriculum. Thinking critically about the media we all consume like water with any sense of the manipulative social narratives at their core is a valuable skill and essential now more than ever.
I did, but I was still impressed
@@error.delete4945 Don't you think it's weird that some people have turned the idea of fighting for social justice into an insult? It seems lkike the newer version of 'bleeding heart,' where caring about other people is somehow a bad thing.
@@apocalypt_us7941 I think generally we have a culture that increasingly expects caveats and qualifications of credibility and identity in order to express a basic opinion. To the point that thinking critically is lacking, then speaking critically falls on deaf ears if those ears are tuned to receive only the extreme frequencies. SJW like it or not is broadly understood to be an extreme position that infers a political identity and pretension. It's sad that we live in a time where language and meaning have lost all nuance and context without explicit definitions but unfortunately that's how it is. Personally I wouldn't use terms like that towards anybody else, but I'm happy to use it as a point of comparison to not be instantly dismissed by those who would otherwise.
Dude listen. This video almost had me crying. Like this was so unexpectedly beautiful and moving. I had no idea what you meant by "humanity" in Fortnite. I was like "Oh is he gonna be talking about the increase in bots? And like talk about the implication of that maybe idk???"
Nah, this was so much more than that. That supercut of all the players that hugged you back ESPECIALLY got to me. And you worded everything so well. This was just so so good man. I don't know what else to say.
Crying as typing 🤙🏼
It's strange how this feels like some sort of nature or cultural documentary
Yup
I mean, it does literally speak on culture and human connection.
I was kind of expecting to see our interaction here. I met a monkey suit player who threw meds at me, we danced and then they Naruto ran away.
It was funny and I saved it a couple of years ago. It was still Chapter 2 by the pizza place on that map
Hey, might have been. Early on in my experiments I didn't always remember to hit record.
@@PopCultureDetective well just wanted to say that it becomes an experience to remember. I used to get nervous playing early on because everyone was so much better. That interaction was so wholesome I did record it and sent it to friends. Always love your videos
@@ReacherFN if you recorded, perhaps their username is on there to see who you played with?
@@TheNicolexoxo sadly I didn’t eliminate or anything like that so I can’t see the username. And didn’t record the replay to check.
@@ReacherFN you still play these days?
This reminds me of one of my favorite things I did when playing World of Warcraft: befriend someone I didn't know in the enemy faction. In the game, there were factions Alliance and Horde, and on the server I was on there were lots of areas where you could attack anyone of the opposite faction. Also, if you said something "out loud" in the game, it would translate that, consistently, into a kind of gibberish for the opposite faction to see. So you could figure out a mapping of short phrases to say a very, very limited amount of comprehensible things to the enemy faction.
I played a character that could both heal and had an ability called mind control that let me take control of a character of the opposite faction briefly. I used it to take control of and heal people of the opposite faction. One of my favorite memories from the game was spending a few hours running around doing quests with an orc (Horde) with my human priest (Alliance) after befriending them in that way. We also used the game's system of emoting and some of my short phrases to communicate. It was a blast.
I loved this video!
That totally sounds like something I would do. I once had a level 5 Lalafell in FF online and I walked my noob ass all the way to a city that was through areas way above my level, just so I could sit down and wave at people who were confounded by a level 5 in a 20+ level area 😂
B d b ee oo d a p!
The mind control must have come in well after I stopped playing. When I found the other faction couldn't understand me I thought it was so fascinating!
If you haven't seen Griffin McElroy's video series 'World of Peacecraft' it's definitely worth a watch
How did you manage to heal them if you directly controlled them? Or another player of your faction must heal them while they're mind controlled?
Now you are making me want a game where 100 players are stranded on an island and have to work together to build a big raft to escape a volcano and to feed each other and keep everybody alive along the way. It's like an anti-battle royale. The goal is to get as many people leave the island alive as possible instead of fighting each other. This is one aspect of humanity not yet tapped by the games industry.
I'd absolutely play that game
Thats just minecraft survival servers, on those there is pvp and competition to some extent but a majority of it is just kids wanting to build a cool house together for the sake of it
Which is what happened in the *real* Lord of the Flies. Look it up.
Whoops never mind. He mentioned it.
That would be really awesome.
I was seriously waiting for you to mention the gas station phenomenon, and I'm so glad you did! It was so much fun to run your own gas station, and it was right around the time when covid hit too, so that extra social interaction was pure gold. This was an awesome video, great job!
In chapter 4 season 1, I would drive a LOT and sometimes....I would offer someone a ride if they were in a firefight.
Something just clicks in me to help even if its literally not what im supposed to do.
One time, I suddenly discovered the final player was the person I offered a ride to, offered a hug, intending to throw for them, but I didnt realise they had walked into storm to throw for me, until it was too late. Its easily one of my favorite fortnite moments.
I think what makes these peaceful encounters so endearing, and why the non-combat game mode falls flat, is that the players are expected to fight and then go against that expectation. If the players are peaceful in a game that expects them to be peaceful, it just isn't the same.
It is a greater feat yes, but I don't know. As a person with a lot of online friends, I do wish there were more games where you work together and connect than just Minecraft and Stardew Valley. There is intrinsic value to that experience that gets tapped into less cause the norm is to always have combat.
It's always a euphoric moment when you meet a friendly person in one of those games, and it's even more a euphoric moment to see a youtuber attempting with all he's strength to be one. THANK YOU for that video, it was awesome, in every unexpected way
This was quite different from the usual videos, but very enjoyable. One thing I think is worth mentioning is that how players act within a game is highly dependable on the actions (or verbs) a game offers the player. Even if Fortnite is focused on combat, you can still emote in friendly ways, which makes making friends more achievable. I imagine making friends on COD would be nigh impossible. Even on PVE games, if when you meet a monster you can only interact with it by killing it, that is what the player will do
i think the crouch is the universal peace sign, so I think it could also work in COD
i've been playing this game for over 5 years at this point, and this is a beautiful and surprisingly indepth look at the psyche of a game that incentivizes the opposite of a cooperative environment. aside from playing with randoms in duos, trios or squads, there's not a lot of player to player interaction aside from the usual eliminating and being eliminated, but when you manage to find those very rare moments where, for example, you find a player who isn't very good at the game and manages to somehow get into the final storm circle and you make friends with and just show solidarity, it makes you remember that (mostly) all players are human, living and breathing at the same time as you, and i find that really beautiful.
in a world and industry where antisocial behaviors are encouraged by systems put in place by others to maximize profits , finding time to connect and have a silly moment with someone who is alive and in that moment, is an amazing feeling that only just serves as a reminder that people can be great and lovely... it's encouraging.
i've never seen a video on this game that i love that is so professional and well researched, the fact you've spent over 4 years just doing all this to find that human spark in a game pretty devoid of it is just incredible. fantastic video! ❤
Reporting you for teaming
In classic World of Warcraft I would dress up my orc lad in only boots, a pink shirt, and a pirate hat. I would dance in hostile areas and would usually get opponents to just sit and dance with me.
I have NEVER heard Axolotl pronounced that way, but I looked it up and OMG that is the correct (Mexican Spanish) pronunciation! I can’t believe I both knew axolotls came from Mexico and I also knew how Mexicans pronounce the letter X but I never connected the two.
I am a Fortnite player and this hit hard. Even during squad games players have the choice to abandon you, and often do. I started playing in 2021 to seek friends online. Many other players also wanted this, and I felt as though I was getting somewhere.
But someone was always pulling the strings.
Now when I log in I am reminded of failed friendships and all I have is the game they make for me.
Thanks for your work. This is the first time I've watched one of your videos.
Kind of made me emotional thinking about playing a game where we're good people to each other as a goal. Also, while you weren't commenting on capitalism directly, it does feel like an examination of it in an interesting way
This actually really reminds of my time playing City of Heroes back in the day. There was an area called "The Hollows" that you worked your way through very early on with every character. It covered about levels 4-18. It was a single giant area you would need to traverse slowly on-foot since most of your time there you don't have a travel power yet. It could literally take you 45 minutes to run across the thing while trying to avoid aggressive NPCs. Because the game used an "Instance" system for all the missions (going to a door somewhere on the map and a small private map just for team being created when you click on it) it was pretty common for low level players to get Doors on the far side of the map surrounded by much higher level NPCs that can one-shot you. The Hollows became one of the most hated areas of the game because of this. Until people started helping each other. Much higher level, often max level, players started hanging out in The Hollows for the sole purpose of helping everyone else. People would provide heals, rez, clear out problematic mobs blocking doors, and use group travel powers like group fly and teleport to help people get to where they needed to be quickly. All for nothing more than a thank you and the expectation to pay-it-forward and help someone else later down the line. My server, Infinity, eventual had an entire Super Group, i.e. guild, form around helping in The Hollows, called Paragon City Search and Rescue, that had someone active in The Hollows literally 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The selflessness and kindness I saw and paid-forward in that game are still some of my absolute favorite gaming memories to this day. I can't recall even a single instance of someone using a racist, homophobic, or sexist slur or joke is the about 7 years I played.
I can't believe after all that work, it was only worth 700XP. That should be a huge deal. You should be on some leaderboard somewhere or something.
Are the bragging rights not enough?numba go UP ooga booga? You really need 6 trillion XP?
@@ich3730 Bragging rights would be great if it was made a big deal. If it's supposed to be near impossible to do, wouldn't it be great to make a big deal about it to the community? I guess that's what I mean. It should be celebrated somehow.
@@ich3730 That is a racist term against indigenous people.
To play devil's advocate, in a multiplayer game, you don't want to excessively encourage achievements/playstyles that are best earned by breaking the game's fundamental rules. Attempting to grind out that achievement would not be fun for most players and playing in a lobby where people are trying to grind it out would not be fun for most players either. It makes sense to _acknowledge_ the neatness of the achievement without outright encouraging it
Journey has always been one of my favourite and fondest video game experiences. Beautiful game, visually and emotionally.
I'm not a Fortnite player (not a fan of shooters in general, the only one I play regularly is Splatoon) but the idea of playing as a friendly pacifist appeals to me a lot!
I have stopped playing most online multiplayers because of this very reason, ironically i started to find them very isolating. So I'm really hoping some developers see the value in changing how online games should be.
Great video as always.
Care to explain how modern games make people feel isolated? The Trend Shows the opposite, community is on the forefront of every New release.
@@ich3730 I think they mean that for a while now there has been a bit of a focus on competitive style games. Death match, pvp etc etc. Even some typically collaborative games have "events" and game modes and such that encourage players to work against each other. I can 100% see how someone would find that isolating. I personally don't like playing multiplayer games because I don't particularly want other people in my games, but for someone that does just want to play a game with other people you really do have to search out those options because they're not super popular.
Particularly if you don't have people to play specifically co-op games with, because that's different in itself. I mean I've played and enjoyed the We Were Here series with my sibling, but I don't know if games like that have online matchmaking, so if you don't have a person to play with you just can't. (But I may be misremembering ofc, it was a little while ago)
The videos of John Green attempting to play Fortnite without shooting first are amazing, highly recommend (and if you only have time to watch one, you should watch Episode 2)
Yes, it's so lovely. Especially because he's also definitely not a competent player. Which as an incompetent gamer myself, feels very relatable.
FIrst thing I thought of with this, haha - it's so hilarious!
+
Came here to mention this! I loved John Green's pacifist Fortnite runs!
As someone who’s constantly played the game since 2017, I’ve met countless amazing people, even some like me who are too anxious to speak.
Whether it’s through things like helping people get their first win, just chilling with enemies in the middle of a match, or even helping someone through tough situations outside the game, it’s all possible.
I made great lifelong friends through this game because of this exact idea, that complete strangers could help each other through the most mentally trying times in their lives from a single video game.
I’m not saying the game’s fandom is all sunshine and peaches, there are **thousands** of bad apples, but you’ll find the game surprisingly harbours a great amount of bloody amazing people if you open up to them.
I think Mario Wonder did a wonderful job integrating social interaction with strangers into the gameplay, I'm always so happy when I finish a level with someone, I've even seen people wait for each other for a long time.
I haven't played it yet but it's been sitting in my Switch waiting for me to finish this video.
@@PopCultureDetectiveThis kinda of psuedo-multiplayer of having ghosts of other players in what is otherwise a single player game is pretty common actually. You can find it in the latets Forza Horizon (racing game) or Elden Ring (RPG/action). Probably others too.
@@torb-no Yeah, most From Software games have a combined co-operative/invader system, where you can leave helpful messages for other players, be summoned in to help them with an area/defend them from danger, or conversely try and murder them. There's no voice chat, so you can only communicate with vague gestures, and I've had some of my favourite abstract, brief videogame interactions spring up from those systems. I've also spend many hours during my own playthroughs ignoring my own objectives just to put myself in the summoned role and show players to secrets they might have otherwise missed.
I think another good pro-social game is Don't Starve Together. In that game, having cohorts around you is a sanity boost, which is critical in the game, besides greatly helping collect the resources and build the tools you need to survive.
I always loved your essays but this is on another level. Maybe because the scale felt different (spanning over games, novels, movies, real time events, and include very time costly experiments). I just want to say thank you for this. This was eye-opening, something I rarely (if ever) feel after youtube videos.
On a side note, the indie game journey would have also fit nicely in here as you randomly meet other players in the game but without the option to communicate. Yet, friendships are made which can make the ending even more powerful because it feels like you lost a real friend even though you don't know anything about them. In fact, you can end the game questioning if that encounter was a human or a bot at all. Which opens another fascinating argument of what it takes to befriend somebody, or rather, something...
Although not as isolating as a battle royal, I remember purposefully being friendly to enemies when I used to play "Overwatch 1" and especially League of Legends.
There's something incredibly rewarding about turning faceless opponents into friends. In LoL in particular, you could always see the moment where a match got reframed from a grind for points and accolades, into playing a sport with this nice person you'd just found. I'm pretty sure I've added as many enemies to my friends list as I did allies, after a game.
Believe me, trying to do this in COD can be really hard. There are less emotes in warzone/codm and there is a lot more of an ingrained mindset for trying to be the best. The kindest thing that has happened to me recently in COD was somebody leaving me grounded as the Desperado (the only BR class you can get downed as a solo with) and kiting a bot toward me before driving off. They were explicitly trying to give me a second chance which was cool, but considering that was like one event in hours of BR it kinda proves my point.
I should probably go to bed but this looks so interesting
literally me at 5 am
fr@@IvanMosquito
Get out of my head
Same!!!!!
present.
Never played Fortnite, but I can think of some examples of emergent nonviolent interaction between anonymous avatars in a game built exclusively around combat mechanics. I played a lot of online Dark Souls II this past year and there were many instances of friendly, nonlethal interaction depending on circumstances, usually initiated by a combination of avatar gestures and spacing out of weapon reach. Sometimes invaders might instead give gifts, or play along in a nonlethal game of hide-and-seek if the invadee is camouflaged, or even attempt to heal the invadee if they were in a particularly nasty spot already. I found that once I got past the initial rush of the chaos of invasions, I eventually stopped caring about the stakes of the encounter and started reacting more to the behavior of the invadee. Once I invaded another player's game to find the invadee just practicing their jumps off a certain platform with the gliding armor, and without getting a hostile reaction I just decided to spectate and give positive gestures at their impressive leaps.
I've found LOTS of friendly players.
From players throwing me Shield Potions (and allowing me to drink them), to players giving me a ride in a vehicle to a safe zone.
I tried to do these, but always got k*lled :(
It just takes a LOT of patience.
@@PopCultureDetective
I always try to finish quests first, then, when I can't do any more quests, I try to win.
I'd probably even found you in the battlefield, I remember landing in a mountain, next to another player, they emoted a synch emote, I joined them, and we parted different ways 🤔🤔
@@PopCultureDetective
The whole taxi RP sounds fun 🥰
This was absolutely hilarious, unexpectedly enlightening, and immensely uplifting. Keep spreading your positive message. It's well received and most certainly necessary. Excellent video!
As a side note: One of my personal favorite videos I've made _is when I played passively_ in Fortnite, I had a whole accidental rescue operation when helicopters came in and found some random kid out in the edges of the map and got the to safety and equipping them with a weapon and healing items. Definitely fun playing medics or rescuers in battlefield based games!
This is one of my favorite things to do in Splatoon!! They call them squid parties! Also signaled with crouching (well, squid-modeing but same thing) and hopping around, love how universal that it lol
I love the challenge of trying to get someone to stop their fighting to goof around and then seeing how many people we can get to join us. Sometimes people will take the opportunity for an easy kill, or kind of respectfully paint around the party but take the opportunity to get more turf coverage. But those rare moments when you get a full 8 player squid party going, painting hearts around eachother and everyone jumping into the water right when the timer hits 0, feels so so good and really warms my heart💕
really lovely and thorough video; however one thing i have to say is that there's not only combat and altruism focused games, there's a whole spectrum in-between those extremes, especially manifested through team centered combat games.
Very true. Though as mentioned leveling-up and story progression aren't often tied to pro-social interactions (outside of team combat as you correctly point out).
Kind of wild that this is my actual first exposure to Fortnite gameplay.
I wish I could say that.
I am shocked to discover in another comment that the whole point isn't to play in a game with your friends, or to fight as a team with your friends. It's all random. What......what is the point then? I thought kids played this together as a form of socializing.
Oooo I love this!!! I love playing Dead by Daylight and I almost always play surviver. Finding nice killers that let you fix the gens and escape, or carry the last surviver to a gate or hatch is always nice.
It's something that reminds you that humans are funny little animals that like playing pretend and are inhetently copoerative, even when its disadventageious
Lovely concept and experiment, though I do have one point I want to add in regards to Lord of the Flies. Golding’s cynicism seems to largely center around children of that era, rather than being about humanity in general. The book is specifically written in response to another novel, “The Coral Tale: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean” which has the same school children stranded on an island premise, but they all have a perfectly fine time (which is also implied by said book to be due to Christianity helping civilize them, which is a whole other can of worms to sort through) which Golding thought was unrealistic. So he arguably overcorrected by writing about kids getting stranded and going absolutely feral, which I personally think can be read as being more of an indictment of the cultural values of that era in specific, rather than being about human nature in general.
"By acting as a carebear on the battlefield." SIR. You never cease to AMAZE ME with your content. It tickles the unexpected.
This was a wonderful video!! However I will say Lord of the Flies isn't supposed to be representative of all of humanity, it was specifically supposed to deride the social structures and conditioning of boys schools and how that affects them, so honestly it's more similar to Battle Royale than you'd expect. That's why people were so hesitant (before yellowjackets came out) for a "lord of the flies but it's girls" because without the context of who is there and what made them that way, you're just swapping the genders for the sake of it. Luckily Yellowjackets ended up having more depth than that, but I wouldn't say William Golding was wrong, necessarily. Just viewing things through a certain lens.
During 2020 I played a lot of Monster Hunter World, finished the story and eventually crafted a strong end-game armor/weapon set. Most of my time after that was spent observing the game's monsters and environments outside of any forced combat. I also responded to a lot of other players' SOS Flares, something that wasn't introduced before this game. It was awesome to help out a ton of lower rank players, despite the in-game rewards being useless at my rank...and I only got one odd response to my post-game behavior, which was from a random player that said "Why are you doing this? You've already beaten the game". I guess they were wrong.
Yes!! Helping people in Monster hunter games is truly amazing, especially considering just how challenging they can be!!
My favorite social system in a video game is Death Stranding. Players are encouraged to build structures and powerups that, when constructed, will appear in other peoples game world. You can also donate your old gear into common "share lockers" that other players can retrieve. You even get a notification when someone interacts with a structure you've built or uses an item you've contributed.
Sadly it is otherwise entirely singleplayer.
This video has made me realize there is a real lack of games with more pro-social and cooperative gameplay mechanics, especially ones where you're helping strangers.
I always liked playing the 4 person group royale mode in fortnite because I liked being in a team and the mutual aid. You go out of your way to revive these strangers at times
I appreciate somebody using Battle Royale for a analysis like this. Even though I mainly I consider it one of my favorite films of all time because of the campiness and great violence in the film, I think it's pretty cool and even kina relieving that the characters do try to cooperate and aknowledges how systems of violence force people to resort to violence.
You stating this actually kinda reminds me of the live action film "Rikki Oh: Story Of Ricky", a movie mainly known for its over-the-top violence. While it's interesting that the show does show a man using violence to defend himself. It's less because of human nature and more because he is in a oppressive and violent prison industry that obligates him to perform those abilities and uses those to liberate the prisoners who do not want to get involved with that violence. The villains are the wardens and the guardians of the place rather than the prisoners themselves.
I always love your videos, especially these that explore pacifism in games. You're the first person that made me realize how lacking games are when it comes to communal types of playing styles.
I wonder, have you ever checked out a game called "One Hour, One Life?" You spend an hour in the game, starting out as a helpless baby who is totally reliant on other live players to raise you and teach you. I've seen countless players go into the game, intent on violence or mischief, but they always end up becoming so intertwined with and attached to the built community that they just stop, point blank. There's also a rumor that the better player you are, the more likely you are to get more kids (i.e. live players) to take care of. It's a game that genuinely makes me cry, especially the one from Call Me Kevin.
I haven't tired One Hour, One Life but I'll add it to my list.
That video by Call Me Kevin is also exactly what I was thinking of! It's such a simple and yet beautiful story.
@@notexactlysiev Exactly!! And to see Kevin, who usually likes to cause chaos in games, only resort to sometimes being mischievous just because of the love and kindness his "mother" was showing him was so beautiful. That game really is something.
That player who took care of Kevin was simply an Angel
Truly interesting, I've always found it interesting that despite the general lack of/nerfed communicative avenues, players tend to always find other methods of communication. Especially given how universal the idea of repetitive jumping/crouching is.
And I'm a strong believer in the idea of human nature being inherently altruistic so it's wonderful to see this.
Gotta say, I wasn’t expecting this to be a premise of a video from this channel. I’m still here for carebear play in Fortnite though
This video sounded so silly in concept when i first started watching but you’re right… and if people can’t put aside the dopamine and rewards of a video game made to be played for fun what expectations do we set when the rewards for stomping over others is financial in a world where that is the ultimate power. Really thought provoking stuff and I got all the vicarious feel good emotions when you ended up making those friends and truces, shows whats really important. Thank you for this video, didn’t expect fortnite to make me reflect on my own humanity but this was really enjoyable☺️☺️❤️
I've read quotes about "Lord of the Flies" from the author and the novel was about upper class people in particular
The players know the violence doesn't literally hurt the other players, and the violence itself is fun, it's like a sport where there is a winner and loser, where both players are developing their skills at the game, but ultimately no one is hurt. The fun is contingent on the violence not being real. In that and the sport sense, the violence is a form of social interaction, like play fighting. Plenty of people who've had fun fighting each other in fighting games, or other shooters like counter strike, add their opponents to their friends list because it was fun to play with them. Not making friends in game, but in real life, with the game as a social context for them to hang out. I wish these aspects were explored in this video.
William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies specifically as a response to the popularity of the novel Coral Island, a book about British boarding school boys who are stranded on a Pacific island until they manage to "civilize" it with the power of Christianity and the obvious superiority of British culture.
Golding spent many years teaching at a British boarding school and grew to strongly dislike Coral Island. Those sheltered rich brats weren't going to band together to build a society from scratch; they would turn on each other the moment things got difficult.
Instead of pampered upper-class British 6-12 year old strangers who'd never left England before, the shipwrecked Tongan boys had been sailing their entire lives, were 13-19 years old, and were close friends. They were the opposites of the LotF kids in just about every way.
I think a big issue with a lot of current pro-social games is that they often end up being varying degrees of 3D chatrooms. I love playing videogames and I love those games in concept, but I feel there is an untouched middleground between having to find skilled groups of players in mmos for pve group content and chatroom style social games where there is no real challenge to overcome at all.
We like doing sports and playing games and we like socializing and roleplaying. I would love more games that find this middle ground between a chatroom and a traditional coop game.
What if we had an MMORPG that actively encouraged helping other players on their quests, encouraging people to actually interact with eachother and making friends to face the more challenging parts of the game with? It could even incentivize experienced players to help others who struggle, and roleplaying could be incentivized through a large number of "meaningless" interactibles and minigames in taverns.
There are many aspects of the MMORPG Guild Wars 2 that encourage this:
-Anyone can resurrect another player and they get xp for it. People will go out of their way to go rez a dead player. There's a down state before you die which you can rescue other players from.
-You can't kill steal or node steal. Everyone gets loot.
-"Quests" (events) happen dynamically and anyone can join in on them, and often require multiple people to complete them. There are events that take the cooperation and coordination of the entire map to complete called meta events.
-You often see max level players hanging out in new zones helping new players just for fun, handing out bags or other items.
-There are tags you can put over your head that anyone can see on the map which indicate to other players that you're there specifically to help new players or are commanding a large group of people and guiding them through an event.
The list goes on. It truly creates the friendliest community I've ever seen in an MMO social space.
Star Wars Galaxies used to have a very player-driven society. Doctors, musicians, armorers and weaponsmiths were all players, and cities were player-built. Even now in successor private servers you find people who are building towns and putting gear on the market. It's the closest to what you're describing that I've heard of so far.
I used to play Sea of Thieves as a solo slooper before I stopped because of the annoying pvp aspect. But the best part of the game for me was always finding other players that are just willing to vibe. Sometimes I find these people, I gesture the crouch thingy they'd give me a number of good loot, more often than not, not accepting my own gifts to them before going their merry way. That would without fail always make my night~
We need a Sea of Thieves type game with ships that is completely co op.
You know, the first game I thought if when you mentioned the collaboration bit was sea of thieves. It’s a pirate multiplayer game, and there’s a lot of interactions you can do with real people. Really, it’s just not meant to be played solo, though you can. I don’t think it fits what you where describing, because there is pvp combat and some people are jerks and will just attack you out of nowhere, but similarly there’s a lot of friendly people who stop by to give you things and say hi. Idk, I just remembered it when you where describing a collaborative game. Love this video, very interesting!
I love playing Sea of Thieves, but I think it fits! Pvp games aren't bad and still can be cooperative, while still having epic battles! If I ever need to be on the offensive (like I'm trying to lvl up reapers or smth), I always try to be nice just in case I can make a friend, and if I need to sink them, I try to be nice!
Combat is popular in games because it’s mechanically simple both design wise, tech wise and is simple to grasp for players.
The history of shooters espescially is filled with games that was attempt at something else yet pivoted to a PvP shooter. Fortnite kinda included! It was originally a co-operative zombie defense game.
Great video though! I’ve had some similar experiences in Halo Infinite myself at times. For example: the game was bugged and I’d lost all my team mates. The opposing team just let me score a couple of flags just to be nice. :)
People have been doing pacifist things in Team Fortress 2 since forever. I have fond memories of dancing in long conga lines with enemies and teammates alike, high fiving and just goofing around. Having emotes like dancing and hugging is a fun way to give players the option to try and break up the normal gameplay loop. Of course someone eventually breaks it up every time, but fun was had either way.
One game that immediately came to mind while listening to your conclusion was death stranding, a game about a post apocalyptic delivery guy on a quest to connect its isolated inhabitants to a network.
The thing is that when you bring an area on line in the game world, it also brings it on line for you in the real world, and it's multiplayer mechanics are all about supporting other players, building infrastructure and retrieving lost packages.
The result is a game who's theme is finding human connections in this oppressive environment.
Personally I'm hyped for the sequel, on which kojima said following the covid 19 pandemic "I also didn't want to predict any more future, so I rewrote it.”
My gf won a match being a pacifist a while ago.
Calling the island “remote” is a understatement, the island is stranded in outer space so yeah
The Tonga story reminds me on the Great Bitter Lake association. A conglomerate of 13 ships being stuck in the Suez Channel during the and in the aftermath of the six day war when the channel became a border river. Instead of parting along eastern and western vessels they formed a quasi micro nation with their own social norms and sharing system. Fascinating part of history
one of the most satisfying elements of being a high level healer in FFXIV for me is that, since your healing ability is proportionate to your level, any shields you put on lower-level players make them effectively invulnerable.
ive also had so many cute little interactions after i decided to just make 999 every kind of tea in the game and just randomly hand them out to people; i almost always get a 'thank you!' or emote'd at, and some people even add another foodstuff to the trade so i get something in return. its really sweet! 🥰
After playing Overwatch for years already, it's always fun to initiate a peaceful match where everyone is just emoting by flirting with Mercys as Pharah. I love humanity. We are so silly.
This video made me remember a pretty old game called Endless Forest. It was made by the same team that did The Path (an interesting take on Red Riding Hood).
Endless Forest was a multiplayer game where everyone played as those strange deer creatures with human faces. There was no chat, no usernames, just a couple of emotes that you could use.
It was MAGICAL, and had truly amazing community
One small complaint though: The boys in The Lord of the Flies do not really turn on each other quickly. For this context and to not drag the tempo of the video I guess one can put it like that but it's hardly accurate. Not only does the setting explain a lot how it got to that, it's not the oh some friends got stranded and turned evil-story people try to boil it down to, but it also took MONTHS. Yes, the book deliberately do not tell you how much time passes, and the island is a tropical one so seasons do not change, but it is mentioned that their hair grew from private school short to "a mop". I'd say a minimum of 3 months. Probably longer. Is that quickly? I dunno.
Yes, there is a time jump, and also, they are British posh children. Any evil they have is not a general statement on the evil of humanity, but on how evil Britain and its colonial empire is.
I’ve just started this, and as someone who has played Fortnite for way too long, I can really tell how much time has been put into this based only on the map.
This was great, I had read about Fortnite players offering taxi rides to others in-game and was wondering when you might mention it. Especially liked the editing!
I watched you _”Sexual Assault On Men”_ Great work! Now I binge watch your social commentary......and here’s a new one to watch/learn from 🥳
Just wait until you see friendly players in Team Fortress 2, they're on a whole other level. All it takes is a simple nod with your character saying a voice line and boom, you've got yourself a new friend.
Why does everyone act as if pacifism means "I will never harm another person under any conceivable circumstance"? John Green's definition is perfectly adequate. Pacifism is a broader philosophy of trying to avoid unnecessary violence whenever possible (especially large-scale conflicts like war), not a self-destructively stupid philosophy of rejecting reasonable self-defence and allowing yourself to be killed.
This was an excellent video man. Thank you for all the effort you put into it. I’m a big Dead by Daylight player and some of the most fun moments are the bits of silliness and camaraderie between both aligned and opposing teams. Roleplaying with the map features, doing funny moves with emotes, letting the last survivor out just so both sides can get a win. Humanity is good at heart.
I love encountering bits of humanity in DBD. I wish some people weren't so competitive and obsessive about winning so there could be more chill moments between all the players in a match.
wow I didn't know you're still working on the colonialism in modern board games essay! Super excited for that one, must be a really huge project since it's been so long! Also, a relevant book to this topic is A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. I haven't read it yet, but it is on my reading list. It is about the myth that humans are naturally barbaric rather than altruistic in disaster scenarios.
24:18 Very rare example of a native english speaker saying "axolotl" the way Nahua folk actually want them too.
Thanks for this great video! I even convinced my Fortnite loving tween to sit and watch it with me. He stayed til the end- that’s a real feat😅
I honestly love it when I find someone willing to just goof around in Fortnite instead of shooting. I once encountered a Groot that was doing the same missions as me. We found each other a couple times more in the arena until we were shot.
The Endless Forest was my first experience with this sort of non-verbal friend making in a game, it's explicitly designed for that, but was still a unique experience. In another game, Agar io, you have to consume other players to grow. Doing so ends their game, though you could make your way back to the same room. The two forms of communication were body language and splitting yourself apart. The latter was a gameplay tactic, allowing you to escape larger enemies (smaller blobs move faster), but you could also voluntarily give yourself away as a token or to save someone from being eaten. I had a lot of wonderful experiences making friends that way.
I think there are many many reasons why there aren't more social first games, for me though, there's a fear of commitment, that I'll make friends and they'll need me to keep playing and with that an aversion to the loss of self direction I have playing alone. In team games (I played MOBAs and Apex Legends) you can still have fun on your own if you get a bad team, but if your style of management or building is at odds with someone in a social game, suddenly the stakes are much higher.
I came to mention the Endless Forest. Glad someone else remembers that fascinating game!
I really miss Free Realms. It was an open-world MMO aimed at tweens where combat was restricted to dungeons and was only against monsters. A lot of the game mechanics didn't require other players, but people acted in social ways anyway. I remember visiting complex mazes people had built, helping friends with tough dungeons, and attending dance parties and such. The aesthetics were similar to Fortnite in many ways. There was a Rickroll boom box that turned everyone in a certain radius into Rick Astley and made them dance. A forum for that game is how I met several of my oldest friends.
I love how the video is all "it's hard to make friends in a match of fortnite", meanwhile i have done this accidentally. Dude obviously didnt have a gun, so i stopped shooting and dropped a shotgun for him. We hung out for the rest of the match.
This reminds me of journey. There was a specific achievement where you needed to get someone to just sit with you at a specific spot in the game it was hard but fun to try to communicate that with no real talking just melody in the game. I also really loved getting the white cloak and leading others through the game. What a beautiful game.
Great video as always! It's always great to see how kind people can be despite being encouraged to do the opposite. Also, as a Mexican I really appreciate that you pronounced "axolotl" correctly!!
I remember a glad message I got from someone for not immediately shooting them and dancing, I remember that more than any win I’ve ever had.
Thank you for making Humanist content mate.
This is such a great video!
The non-verbal ways of communicating in fortnite, dancing and hugging, really shows you another face of what the game can be.
It really highlights the fact that there are people playing it with you, which is easy to forget, and how people can still "play".
The book "The Case Against Competition" by Alfie Kohn is all about this, arguing that comppetition impairs social skills but also lower the bar from a purely objective pov.
A surprising amount of experiments have been conducted on children in the field of education sciences
Dude made an entire video on TF2 hoovies
I’ve been getting back into Team Fortress Two recently, and one of the things I love about the game’s community is that there’s a subcommunity of “friendlies” who are dedicated to playing the game exactly this way. They almost always play Heavy, mainly because he has an item called the sandvich that he can throw on the ground and will function as a health pack for a player on either team. But I think it also has something to do with the fact that this massive, not-very-bright russian guy comes across as TF2’s most huggable character when he isn’t holding his minigun. In any case, even though I do come to the game for for the shooting, it always makes me happy to run into one.
It’s worth mentioning that this community got so big in TF2 specifically because of certain mechanics in the game itself. In addition to the previously mentioned sandvich, there are also several taunts (the equivalent of fortnite’s emotes) that allow one or more other players to join in, even if they don’t own it themselves, and regardless of whether they’re on the same team. There’s also one of the core game modes, capture the flag, which is… pretty badly designed, honestly. It often wears on for a really long time with neither team making much progress, making it ideal for friendlies- if playing the game as intended isn’t accomplishing anything, why not go friendly and try to have fun that way? Plus, there’s a server-wide text chat and in-game voice lines that everyone can hear, so communication is easier. It’s still very much a competitive game by design, but it’s interesting to see how just a handful of design decisions that unintentionally enabled this playstyle created a whole subculture.
Wow, great video. Super interesting to see how the structure and affordances of Fortnite can be and are co-opted by users to turn into a more social experiences
holy shit i was really expecting you to mention TF2 and the "friendly" phenomenon. this is a really interesting take on it and yeah I wanna see more content talking about this type of player interaction
I feel like a good example of this too is team fortress 2, a team based shooter that is designed for bloody death matches between teams, but more than half the time becomes a friendly gathering place to make jokes and have fun. It’s so popular that it’s kind of considered against an unspoken code to kill the “hoovey” the friendly version of heavy, especially if he offers you a sandwich.
I ADORE this concept about how human nature collides with systems, in particular video game design.
It's always been the case that the more tools you give a player to express themselves, the more complex a social language they develop in a game where the only real way to communicate is with a weapon.
Add a crouch button, you have a neutral gesture to attempt to communicate
Some quirks of animation like swapping weapons or scoping in repeatedly can look funny or similar to real life gestures and they become shorthand for thankyous & acknowledgements
Go further with emotes, voice lines & there is no end to the lengths some players will go to socialise and connect in a world where you hold a hammer and everything is a nail.
Team Fortress 2's has entire social etiquettes surrounding non-violent players called friendlies and its considered bad manners to kill them
Sometimes lost players on Apex Legends will be spared and donated with healing items by passing squads
Deep Rock Galactic has zero incentive to have every player reach the end but everyone agrees that "No Dwarf Left behind" and will risk it all to make sure everyone makes it out
It's something I've observed in every multiplayer game to some or great extent.
Humanity will always poke holes in the systems just so they can say hello
this reminds me of the Just Cause 2 Multiplayer test events! Although it was a mod using the base game of Just Cause 2 which consisted primarily of combat and movement, people found various ways to interact in a more social manner. Many roleplayed as taxi drivers, groups of people took roadtrips together, participated in impromptu races or took part in mass skydiving. All of this happened organically and it was possibly the best online gaming experience I've ever had.
There’s a news story of a ‘real’ lord of the flies.
A group of stranded boys helped eachother, found food, made a buddy system, and got rescued
Ok I finished the video, you had it in there! Perfect video
100%! Keep watching, that's included near the end!
Loved seeing “Humankind” get a shoutout! The more people reading that book, the more we will progress as a society