For example, I am terrible at Super Meat Boy, but just playing it has really improved how I play platformers and games that need faster imputs overall.
Multiplayer games taught me that I generally dislike other people.
I’ve been on a decade long hiatus from multiplayer aspect of games - aside from games I was with people I knew in RL.
I only occasionally get a twinge for the comraderie of some epic raid in an MMO, or tight unspoken squad tactics where everyone just does their job as expected (not necessarily well lol) and came out on top.
But really, I don’t have the time to commit to either of those.
Then I hear about my friend in GW2 (RL friend) who is going through some toxic guild BS and I don’t miss it.
I tried DOTA once. Once was enough.
I can play on my own time, and I can play with friends, but god help me I HATE playing on the server’s time. I can kinda do it with Pokemon Go, but that’s one you can play as casually or as hardcore as you like since you’re mostly playing for yourself after a point.
Sorry in advance to people who hate talking about it but Dark Souls is a very paradoxical experience It can:
- Help you learn patience and awareness
- Help you learn not to stress over losses
- Help you learn that people have different experiences of enjoyment and understand your scope of interest in games.
I think that only works if you already have that in the first place though (and you already have enough mechanical skill to get anywhere in those games fast enough to get hooked)
Have made the mistake of introducing people who don’t really play videogames to games like Celeste before thinking it’ll help them improve but it only ends in frustration
Those first two are so true. I got around to Elden Ring recently, and I realized that losses I’ve taken and not sweated and how meticulously and carefully I approach each situation have been influenced by all the games that came before. I’m (relatively) kicking the crap out of it because I know how to play Souls games now because the series has been teaching me these exact things all along. I’ve offed quite a few bosses first try, and damn it feels good. It’s such a great series for giving you a sense of power through perseverance and awareness, rather than just grinding up the XP to trivialize everything like most other RPGs. Miyazaki really did strike gold with the formula. I hope there are way more Souls games coming in the future.
I failed hard at DS then, except for the last item on your list. I remember a friend who was really into it recommended it so much. I found it so ridiculously difficult I lost interest too quickly. But, I don’t have a problem if others enjoy it
Maybe give it another try sometime, I had the same initial reaction years ago, finally gave it a bigger shot after reading some basic tips and tricks, they’re such good and rewarding games imo
I was also going to say dark souls. It made me better at accepting loss in games.
Though I do think it’s interesting how some people thrive on challenge and getting their ass kicked until they triumph, and some people just aren’t here for that. If the game is hard they just don’t want to fuck with it.
Bethesda games taught me to save at every opportunity
On the other hand, that taught me to use more than just quicksave. Too many instances of saving just before I die, setting me back hours.
quicksave
Literally every couple steps.
I’m surprised not to see more people mention From Software games. Going all the way back to demon’s souls they consistently teach you how to understand the tools at your disposal, the challenge that you currently face, and how to use the former to overcome the latter. I learned how to “read” opponents to find and exploit vulnerabilities while playing dark souls way back, and that general approach is consistently useful in all sorts of other games. There are lots of other translatable skills involved, of course, like timing and resource management.
Yeah I agree,
Other games mentioned in this thread involve a lot more manual introspection to get better at, otherwise you’re at risk of just repeating the same mistakes again and again without realising.
In the Souls games you simply cannot progress without learning and becoming better.
There’s always that special moment when you dip your toes into NG+ and overcome bosses first try that would have taken you dozens of attempts beforehand
getting incredibly good at Quake back in the day made me good at basically any first person shooter game that you put in front of me
Also, the first time using a mouse for look/steer-ing. Before that (e.g. Doom 1/2 etc.) you just used the arrow keys.
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Celeste was the first “hard” game I played that I actually ended up 100%ing. It’s so fun and makes me try harder on other games too
I was also going to say Celeste! I feel like it also improved my attitude towards games in general- taught me to be persistent but forgiving of myself when I’d fail
Sekiro
Many games come down to finding some unbreakable combo of buttons or abilities and when you have that figured out you steamroll the game. To successfully finish Sekiro, you must be patient. Learn when to let your enemy attack, so that they leave themselves open or provide you with a chance to parry.
There’s no leveling up to get so strong you can thrash any boss, like in other souls games. You just have to learn the game mechanics and get good.
Sekiro really is the “Get Gud” of FromSoft games
Eve Online taught me that math + leadership are effective ways to win. Also the importance of thinking strategically and weighing risks.
World of Warcraft taught me that many people are willing to craft items all day, if it earns more in-game gold than actually doing anything fun in the game (actually in hindsight this was true of Eve, and real life for that matter). I sort of… ran an exploitative in-game sweatshop producing things for the in-game markets (e.g. not involving real money or anything that violated the rules of the game).
These two groups of realizations made me pretty good at online games for a little while! My gaming hobby came to an abrupt end when I realized I could just… start a company IRL and be paid non-virtual money.
So, you learned how to open a sweat shop? XD
Yes, I suppose so! Technically with child labor too!
We just call them factories here though, not sweat shops. They have varying levels of working conditions, and child labor has been more or less eliminated.
Some are awful, and others are quite OK! I’ve personally had worse jobs than the OK ones. Some have integrated housing too, I knew someone that designed it. The ones they designed looked quite reasonable, at least – I’ve unambiguously lived worse places. You won’t save much money working for an OK sweatshop, but you will accumulate a small pension, eat, have a place to live, and get 2 weeks vacation a year (usually accompanied with a bonus equal to a month’s pay). Most people I know see them as a sort of always-available job that’s the closest thing we have to a social net right now.
I run a small tech company though, not a sweat shop. Just recently, an opportunity to help open one did come up though!
A client is looking at setting up backoffice work in the countryside, so far it looks like we’ll be able to offer decent working conditions and wages. I’m slowly building the management software – fewer managers means we can pay workers better as well as be more profitable. If it works out, it would probably pay about double the regional minimum wage, which amounts to a decent job, certainly better than a lot of people have currently.
It’s not perfect, but it’s progress. There’s still a hundred ways it can go wrong and fail. So far we only have 10 staff, but it’s going steady.
For about 3 years though, I earned less running my company than the workers in the worst sweatshops. Even with all my video game experience! That was hard. Still, video games were my first experiences with management, accounting, economics and so on. It was better than nothing.
Anyway that’s a slice of life for you, fresh from Southeast Asia.
That’s wholesome AF! Wishing you all the best in your endeavors <3
Thanks! The truth is, such plans rarely work out. My life is a series of hundreds of such schemes, most result in nothing (or less). Only as handful work. Only a handful have to.
…but just like in video games, you can just try again and again.
Try, fail, endure, try something new.
Its a good attitude, and shows a lot of personal strength, which, like I said, is wholesome AF :)
Hollow Knight 100%. Its also my favorite game.
Counter Strike: raw aim, how to outsmart opponents, perfect practice makes perfect and if you put enough hours into anything and do it correctly/good, then you can get good at almost anything.
Path of Exile: Taught me about being efficient. If you’re repeating the same action 10,000 times, if you can cut even 1 second off each time you do that action, it adds up over time to a significant amount. And then you can try and cut another 2 seconds off…then another second.
It took me 1038 hours to get out of silver in csgo. It took me 10hrs to get to DMG, one day something just clicked.
Knowing the maps puts you at such an advantage, those hours add up
Rocket League. If I can reach my fast moving targets without having to adjust pitch, roll, yaw, and thrust, all at once, from a third-person view, there’s just no challenge.
I came here to say this! No other game has given me that incremental improvement feeling from practice like Rocket League. It’s the closest game I’ve found to a real life sport.
When I was a kid it took me 2-3 weeks to beat the Flight School mission series in GTA: San Andreas, and although I hated nearly every minute of it I did become a better video game flier.
Dude fuck that mission. The draw distance made it nearly impossible because power lines would appear right in front of me
Battlefield 3 was my flight teacher. I could whip any chopper around after playing that game.
Dark Souls, don’t give up skeleton, rethink your strategy and learn what’s being thrown at you, you’ll get through it.
With all due respect, while I loved the setting if Dark Souls, after I played 50 hours, I got not a tiny bit better and still kept dying at any point and never being able to beat bosses. I had a friend who had 1000s of dark souls hours tell me hints but it didn’t help . At the end I was so demotivated that I just quit playing.
I still feel bad, I’d love to experience that game, but it was beyond frustrating to me.
Not every game is for everyone, and that’s okay!
I bought demons souls, could hardly pass the first level, and put it down.
I bought dark souls when it came out, and again, played a bit, didn’t get it, and put it on the shelf.
Dark souls 2, bloodborne, and darks souls 3, all the same story. I knew they were amazing games, I just didn’t get it.
Then on some reddit post someone talked about summoning a player to help, and the summon charged into the boss fight naked with only a katana like a freaking jedi.
Every time I had played the games, I was slow, with heavy armour, hiding behind a shield.
I put in dark souls 3, and went super light weight with a fast sword, and something just clicked.
Dark souls 2, it was the twin blade, dark souls one, a katana.
While I haven’t platinumed them all like my girlfriend has, I have beaten all the main souls games except bloodborn and Sekiro with a variety of builds.
Elden Ring was the first one we both got to play new together, and our first play through was one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had.
I highly suggest going back to dark souls one and trying out the different styles. Magic, pyromancy, heavy weapons, fast and light, etc.
There is a really good chance one style will click, and the whole series of amazing games will open up for you.
Gta vice city as I learned how to type properly as I couldn’t figure out how to pause the game to type aspirin with 1 finger. Does that count?
