Psychological therapy through video games (not just serious games)

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Re: Psychological therapy through video games (not just serious games)




by Christophe » 06/01/21, 18:04

Interesting article on the creation of current video games: https://www.clubic.com/mag/jeux-video/a ... orme-.html

Video games: why have day one patches become the norm?

This routine, you know it well. In a hurry to throw yourself headlong into the game you have been waiting for for months, you lengthen the pace in the hope of arriving home as soon as possible and introducing the saving disc into your console. When suddenly, your hopes are showered by downloading an update that can sometimes reach tens of gigabytes. A day one patch. Again.

This practice has unfortunately become the norm in the video game industry. A fortiori since the advent of game consoles permanently connected to the Internet. But if this process is relatively painless for players lucky enough to be connected to fiber, it annoys those less well off in terms of connection.

More generally, the patch day one method questions what the publishers consider to be the acceptable state of marketing of a game. When you leave a store with a game under your arm, don't you think? not entitled to wait for it to be completed; in optimal condition?

This is precisely what most critics of this approach regret. But it would be simplistic to view the day one patch as the whim of finicky developers. You might as well write it down: given the commercial issues that the video game industry supports today, it is quite simply impossible to do without it.

It was better before ?

To understand how we got to having to download such large patches today, you obviously have to take a look in the rearview mirror.

It is not uncommon for some people to be surprised that games released 20 or 30 years ago did not need this kind of process when they were released. All you had to do was slip the CD-ROM into the drive and let the magic work. But there are several things to keep in mind to make sure that we are comparing things that can be compared.

First, video games dating from the last century were infinitely less complex than they are today. 3D didn't make its appearance until the mid-90s, and even a game as technically ambitious as The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind - and its 24 square kilometer play area - only weighed a tiny gigabyte on hard drives. of the time (the game was released in 2).

Next, we are talking about a time (the early 2000s), when only 361 million people have Internet access. Access whose limitations are well remembered by the oldest. The players of the time, infinitely fewer in number than today, are not necessarily among the lucky ones. Developers therefore have no choice but to deliver a “perfect” game; free of bugs and on which nothing should be added a posteriori.

Finally, we must realize that at the time the video game industry was very far from being as heavy as it is today. In 2000, the world market represented a little less than 40 billion dollars, against 179,7 billion dollars in 2020. It goes without saying that the financial stakes were lower at the time. Remember that video games are today the most lucrative cultural industry in the world.

And this status is obviously accompanied by a certain pressure from investors, for whom playing a good game is less important than putting it in a certain financial calendar.

Designing a video game is always a gamble

It is not the independent developers who will contradict us here: designing a video game is a gamble. Whether your name is Eric Barone and funneling your energy for five years to make Stardew Valley out of your savings, or Microsoft, ready to stretch nearly $ 500 million to give Halo a worthy sequel on next-gen consoles.

In the latter case, the stakes are perhaps even greater. The reason ? The greater the number of people involved in a project, the greater the consequences of a possible failure.

And we may have deep pockets, the budget allocated to a video game is not stretchy at will. Sooner or later, producers and investors will have to be guaranteed a return on their investment. And it unfortunately happens that it is more economically interesting for them to push a game that is not finished to release than to delay its marketing.

Because the postponement of an exit is not trivial either. This means salaries to pay over a longer period, overtime to cover, or even marketing costs to extend. Also, for some studios (each case is of course different), the dilemma can be reduced to releasing an unfinished game but generating income, or delaying the release of the game and thus losing the confidence of investors.

The famous stage of certification

You might be wondering what all of this has to do with sauerkraut. But we had to go through that to give you an overall picture which, you will see, will take shape in a few moments.

It will not have escaped your notice that, for more than 10 years, few titles have been released on one platform. Even rarer are those that are only available on PC. It must be said that it would be daring to say the least to do without a potential market of more than 200 million souls. The problem is that it is not enough to put yourself on your 31st, go knocking at a console with your mouth in your heart and submit your desire to distribute your game on his machine.

In order for a game to be released for console release, it must first pass the certification stage. A step which, when it is validated, most of the time gives the green light to the pressing of the famous “Gold” version of a game - one which is ready to be burned on the Blu-ray and marketed.

However, players have a lot of misconceptions about certification. A fortiori since the Cyberpunk 2077 textbook case, whose PS4 and Xbox One versions are barely playable. This is because certification should not be confused with Quality Assurance (QA). The purpose of the QA department of a video game studio is to thoroughly inspect a game for bugs or malfunctions, then to get the word out to the developers so that it can be fixed. Certification, as we will see, has little to do with it.

This step should be seen as an exam. The game is presented to console manufacturers in a state that the publisher considers to be "final", or in any case sufficiently correct for it to be marketed, and it must comply point by point with the specifications set by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. A set of specifications whose requirements vary for each manufacturer - Microsoft, for example, wants the Xbox menu to be accessible from any screen in the game; Nintendo, he refuses that certain swear words are included in the subtitles.

To summarize, therefore:

Fill out a complex form and join a queue
Upon obtaining a date, prepare a build of the game that can be considered not only marketable, but also taking into account the specific requirements of each manufacturer
Fingers crossed for certification to be granted. Because otherwise, you will have to start the whole process again once the game gets under way. Including waiting his turn in the queue before being able to submit his game to the builder.

In an exciting article detailing the game certification process, developer Rami Ismail (Nuclear Throne) suggests that we visualize “cert”, as he calls it, as “a gigantic book of checkboxes”.

These are not only very numerous, they can vary depending on the country in which the game is going to be launched. "Some are very sensible (eg the game should not crash), others are reasonable (if you stay on the main game menu for 24 hours, is the game still running?) And others still may seem obscene (if you quickly plug in and unplug a controller, does the game know what to do?) ”, explains the developer with humor tinged with experience.

You will understand by reading these few examples: the certification process is not a proper playtest. It could be roughly summed up as an aggregate of technical conditions that a game must meet in order to be able to be launched on a console. The most important of them being not to break said console, of course. Note, however, that the certification only concerns console versions of a game. Steam, GOG, Humble and other Epic Games leave the publisher full responsibility for what they publish on their online stores.

This is a process described as very bureaucratic. The content of the game is never questioned. Also, and in view of the waiting times which can lengthen before being able to actually submit their game for certification, the editors do not hesitate to send builds very early in order to have time to get up to standards before the release date of a game. Cyberpunk 2077, again, had notably obtained its “Gold” certification last October. Or a little more than two months before it is put on the shelves.

However, Rami Ismail tells us that because of all these certification delays that must be taken into account, “a“ Gold ”build dates from around 1 to 3 months before the game is released”. You read that correctly: in the case of the CD Projekt RED game, the version officially approved by Sony and Microsoft could therefore date from the end of the summer.

Of the sad need for day one patches

This version is the one that console players have discovered if they have not connected their PlayStation or Xbox to the Internet and thus prevented the download of the day one patch of more than 40 GB. It is also the one to which were entitled to journalists under embargo during their test, before the famous patch was delivered to them in advance.

On the menu ? Bugs galore, strawberry optimization, and dildos all over the place. Well.

All this to say that between the time a game is submitted for certification and the time it actually hits the shelves, it is obvious that the developers continue to whip to polish their copy. So many changes that are compiled in a patch which, depending on the size of the task, can reach a certain weight.

The most infuriating in history? Patches must also go through the certification box before getting the green light from console manufacturers and being deployed. This explains, in particular, why certain patches are released more quickly on PC than on home machines.

A situation as irritating for gamers as it is frustrating for developers who have sweated blood and water for years to bring their game to life.

The day one patches would then only be a symptom of an industry whose appetite is only growing, forgetting in passing to be clear about the actual deadlines for the development of a game. type of mechanisms and all the deadlines that it imposes which encourages certain studios to practice the crunch, which we spoke to you in detail in a dedicated file.
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Re: Psychological therapy through video games (not just serious games)




by Christophe » 26/01/21, 17:34

Brainstrom is on its way !!



Brainstrom is it or rather it was that ...



If a film deserves a remake, it's him!

There is a bicycle lying in it :)
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Re: Psychological therapy through video games (not just serious games)




by Christophe » 13/05/21, 11:47

An AI transforms (in real time?) The rendering of video games ... application on GTA 5 ...

They say it's more realistic but less beautiful ...



I did'nt understand everything : Mrgreen:
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Re: Psychological therapy through video games (not just serious games)




by Christophe » 16/07/22, 16:40

I've known this for a long time...no need for a randomized double-blind study...

Video games would improve decision-making ability and speed

(...)

By analyzing more deeply the brain of regular gamers, previous studies incriminate war games in particular, which would be responsible for the atrophy of certain regions such as the hippocampus (responsible for memory and spatial coordination). In this study, the researchers would have detected decreases in gray matter in “big players”.

When we play a war game indeed, we would tend to solicit more the striatum, to acquire the good reflexes. However, as the hippocampus is less used and less stimulated, it can eventually atrophy over time. According to the researchers, these results show that in the long term, video games could cause serious or moderate mental illnesses such as schizophrenia or depression.

However, other studies have also shown that video games would be beneficial for cognitive systems related to visual attention and short-term memory. The new study, led by Georgia State University, used functional MRI to observe the effects of video games on brain activity during decision-making.

As the practice of video games requires rapid analysis of incoming sensory information and the repeated taking of precise and rapid decisions, it is interesting to be able to observe live brain activity at these precise moments.

"Video games are played by the overwhelming majority of our young people for more than three hours a week, but the beneficial effects on decision-making abilities and the brain are not exactly known," says Mukesh Dhamala, lead author. study and associate professor at the University of Georgia Institute of Neuroscience.

(...)


https://trustmyscience.com/jeux-videos- ... -decision/

The proof I "quickly" fired ABC, a good decision! : Mrgreen:
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Macro
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Re: Psychological therapy through video games (not just serious games)




by Macro » 17/07/22, 11:28

Christophe wrote:I've known this for a long time...no need for a randomized double-blind study...

Video games would improve decision-making ability and speed

(...)

By analyzing more deeply the brain of regular gamers, previous studies incriminate war games in particular, which would be responsible for the atrophy of certain regions such as the hippocampus (responsible for memory and spatial coordination). In this study, the researchers would have detected decreases in gray matter in “big players”.

When we play a war game indeed, we would tend to solicit more the striatum, to acquire the good reflexes. However, as the hippocampus is less used and less stimulated, it can eventually atrophy over time. According to the researchers, these results show that in the long term, video games could cause serious or moderate mental illnesses such as schizophrenia or depression.

However, other studies have also shown that video games would be beneficial for cognitive systems related to visual attention and short-term memory. The new study, led by Georgia State University, used functional MRI to observe the effects of video games on brain activity during decision-making.

As the practice of video games requires rapid analysis of incoming sensory information and the repeated taking of precise and rapid decisions, it is interesting to be able to observe live brain activity at these precise moments.

"Video games are played by the overwhelming majority of our young people for more than three hours a week, but the beneficial effects on decision-making abilities and the brain are not exactly known," says Mukesh Dhamala, lead author. study and associate professor at the University of Georgia Institute of Neuroscience.

(...)


https://trustmyscience.com/jeux-videos- ... -decision/

The proof I "quickly" fired ABC, a good decision! : Mrgreen:


Damn...How long would it have taken if you hadn't been a regular gamer? : Mrgreen:
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The only thing safe in the future. It is that there may chance that it conforms to our expectations ...
Christophe
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Re: Psychological therapy through video games (not just serious games)




by Christophe » 17/07/22, 14:19

Yes I admit !! But I have an excuse, I spend more time "playing" with you on this forum only in games : Mrgreen:
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Re: Psychological therapy through video games (not just serious games)




by Macro » 17/07/22, 15:53

Excuse not acceptable ... with the skill level of gamers in this forum...You should be a very fine trigger and kill Lucky Luke even before he draws ...
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Re: Psychological therapy through video games (not just serious games)




by Christophe » 17/07/22, 16:08

Who is Lucky Luke? : Mrgreen:

I know Duke Nukem though...
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Re: Psychological therapy through video games (not just serious games)




by Christophe » 21/04/23, 09:09

I put that there...it's not a go pro, it's the next generation of video games...now couple this visual to ChatGPT or other and the matrix (at least sensory) will not be very far away... . : Shock: : Shock: : Shock:

Unrecord is a bodycam FPS video game under development at the French studio DRAMA, which has just unveiled the first images of the gameplay on YouTube. Looking at the trailer, one could believe in an interactive film, so much the images seem real.

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