Nine Inch Heels

I meant how far you can see into the distance, not how much of a chameleon doomguy would be...

The only "resorting to anything" I see right here is you resorting to waving around the victim flag, but for the sake of doing this "discussion thing" properly I'll entertain you once more: So, I have been reading what you wrote carefully, and I'll quote it again for clarity's sake: The highlighted part right there describes antisocial personality disorders pretty damn well, albeit in layman's terms. If you wanted to also include things such as money-grabbing capitalists with no regards for our ecosystem, then you should have done that explicitly, because, for practically the entire time, we've been going back and forth on things like war, and what you believe war says about psychology and human nature. So, anything you keep adding to the topic at hand is going to be viewed through that respective lens, unless you clearly specify what it is that those numbers actually mean and where they are coming from. And it's not that hard. I've clarified where my numbers come from and what they mean multiple times over without feeling like I had to bend over backwards. So, how about instead of complaining that I'm not reading the things you were too lazy to write down, you afford me the courtesy of doing the same legwork that I've been doing so far? Yes. If I'm being thrown into the same basket as a holocaust denier then I tend to take that personally, you mediocre internet troll. I'm still waiting for an apology, by the way... Not that I'm expecting to get one out of you, because that would require practising what you preach for a change. Good, then don't make them personal next time, only to cry foul once the door swings the other way. Translation: "Hee hee hee, I got you good right there for engaging with me again. You gave me another chance, look at you, idiot"

Yeah, not gonna quote the whole paragraph here in the interest of making this look less exhaustive... Anyway, there are things there that I agree with. I am far from the oldest member around, but I am still old enough to have owned an N64 with an original D64 cartridge (around the time the console was more or less on life-support), which I plugged into the kinds of TVs that were commonplace back then, and it didn't do the gameplay any favours at all, in particular in the first 12 or so maps, most of which being "dark tech stuff" from what I remember... I get where people are coming from when they want to create something that's, by design, leaning mostly towards to ambience while sacrificing playability in some places, but I think they really played that card too heavy-handedly for too long... Having said that, it's been a while since I last played it, but I seem to remember that the more difficult levels later in the game, many of which taking place in hell or whatnot, suffered way less from the "too dark to see shit clearly syndrome". One thing worth adding to this, though, would be that they limited FOV range on the console, to compensate, supposedly, for the less than optimal hardware, which added some degree of obfuscation even in otherwise open areas that you would expect to see in their entirety if you played any of the PC Dooms that existed at the time... As for sprites, I think some are better than others, sure, perhaps not the prettiest overall, but neither is OG PC Doom... What irked me the most about them when I played the game was just how different the art-style overall was, and how lacking in faithfulness they were overall. I can't say how I would have felt about them if I had never seen the originals before, but I agree that some of them are probably worth bemoaning for various reasons... Okay this one I had to quote in parts... Not to pull a mean-spirited "gotcha" here, but complaining about a general lack of visual clarity in the game as a whole, and then heralding the "blurry imps" as an example for "cool new stuff" is something I have trouble making much sense of, especially because they also hurled translucent projectiles at the player as far as I remember... So, as for everybody hating PEs and lost souls... I'd say there's a fair bit of projection going on. I'm not the biggest fan of OG lost souls because I think they have too much health to chew through in order to get rid of an annoyance, but in general I think they're alright. As for pain elementals, those are among my favourite monsters, because they prompt players to kill them quickly while leaving everything else alone for the most part, lest you find yourself in a war of attrition. While there is something to be said about the way OG Doom's PEs could be exploited, and how it can add nuances to gameplay that are not possible in D64, I like that they don't let you do that in D64, because it means that even a single PE can deal a lot of damage if left unchecked, and if it ever gets too close, then contact with it could be lethal on the spot - which is pretty much the sort of thing I would expect from a "high priority threat". For the sake of brevity, maps were a mixed bag in any doom ever made until then, so it's kind of preaching to the choir to highlight it as a problem that is somehow something particular to doom64... Would also bet that TNT gets more elbows for one map in particular than doom64 gets for its "meh" ones... Now for inescapable pits and whatnot... Those have always been a part of the doom franchise. I get why some people don't like them, I can see why they would be annoying to deal with for the less tactile player when there isn't any way to save the game prior to any sort of platforming challenge, but I think the issue is a bit overblown. Being close to the end of the map is not supposed to mean that you should get to deal with some gentle fluff exclusively. "The chasm" has only 1 inescapable pit you can fall into as far as I'm aware, and it's right at the end of the map where the tightrope section is. So, in that sense, Doom64 is operating well within in the boundaries of the spirit of the originals, and I can appreciate that...

The key point you have been skating around, however, is that (in a totalitarian regime) the authorities make it a point to twist, warp, and redirect cultural attitudes in ways that seem favourable for the ones running the show. So, if you look at WWII and the Third Reich, you can see quite clearly how much propaganda has been run, and how much fear has been induced to prevent those who might object from getting too much in the way of traction. There is a stark difference between a government that only "cuts in to make course corrections" every once in a while when it seems absolutely necessary, and totalitarians who want to dictate the tone and content of public discourse as much as possible. A recent day example would be Erdogan in Turkey, who has put more journalists behind bars than anybody could possibly think is justifiable... Culture, regardless of how deeply rooted in society, is malleable at the very least, and de-constructable at worst. If you play the "control the media, control the mind" game properly, you get to dictate what society likes. You don't get results overnight, and not from one week to the next, but you play that game for long enough, and you play it carefully enough, and you get out of society and culture whatever you so desire. At some point all that's left to do is to stir people up sufficiently, and you'll have them cheering at the prospect of a war against "evil"... The argument based on loyalty vs individualism is sketchy in the context of WWII, or wars in general. Because every power in charge ever made it a point to give every part of society as many reasons as possible to be supportive of the war that was soon to happen. The difference merely lies in how good of a job they did at that. At the bottom line, if anyone of us was born around the time Nazi-Germany started taking shape, the vast majority of us would have been masquerading as supporters of Hitler's cause at the very least, or played along happily while believing in whichever kind of fucked up idea Hitler or Goebbels presented. The important part there, though, is that long before people commit acts of violence against anyone, in this particular case jews, they would have to be subjected to any and all relevant propaganda to a sufficient degree. And propaganda is not a 19th century invention either - town criers for example were one of mankind's first dedicated "propaganda machines". Once you stirred the kind of resentment within the population that you need, you then proceed to push boundaries - one at a time. You normalize hating a minority, you normalize dehumanizing them, your normalize demonizing them, you then normalize imprisoning them, then you proceed to normalize killing them. This process is often called "encroaching" - you push people along a long path one tiny step at a time. Then, you also need to consider things like "emotional numbing". The more often you see something happen, the less susceptible to that stimulus you will become with regards to how impactful (or wrong) it feels. Your values, and your cultural heritage... They're way less solid and unshakable than you might think. I'll go over this briefly. The vast majority of outlets that cover things such as how many "evil" people are among the population will point towards the numbers I have already presented (multiple times). 1% psychopaths, 4 -5% sociopaths. Not 15%. Those are the psychologically correct numbers that you will find almost everywhere. It's the scientific consensus of experts on the subject of human psychology, which is the consensus that matters the most here, because, yes, we are talking about how humans tick. And it's both psychopaths and sociopaths who are known to be lacking in - or incapable of - empathy while nearly everything they do is ultimately self-serving, even if it comes at the expense of others... Even if we were to cast the widest possible net, and look for the percentage of people among the population with just any personality disorder (not just antisocial personality disorders), your maximum estimate is 13%. Not 15%. And that's accounting for personality disorders like borderline as well, for example. At most I will grant you that borderliners have a higher propensity to snap than a healthy human being, but that does not make them "evil" by any stretch of the imagination, most certainly not in the way your cliffnotes seem to define the term "evil". There is no way whatsoever that this 15% estimate, which seems to come from a historian (who is neither a psychologist nor a psychiatrist), survives contact with reality. The numbers you provide defy scientific consensus, and it does not matter that you believe they're psychologically correct, since those numbers are demonstrably false. Anybody can do a quick search on the internet to confirm this, and the confirmation won't come just from wikipedia, but from all sorts of outlets, including but not limited to clinics... ...Which brings me back to what annoys me so much about the way you construct your arguments, which, again boils down to employing surface level observations as a means by which to connect dots arbitrarily and making conclusions you then proceed to present as facts - which then turn out false. You have no idea whatsoever how humans tick. Your anecdotes are irrelevant in the eyes of any scientist ever, and nobody cares if anything written in any history book ever lines up with your own experiences, because that's what called confirmation bias. Your beliefs don't have even remotely the same merit as large-scale studies conducted by professionals.

that's demonstrably false as at least some of the terms put up for discussion are lacking in the sort of utility that a more accurate descriptor could provide... and avoiding terms based on ableism isn't change for the sake of change, it's change in the interest of a minority that needs to deal with a condition that does not discriminate between race, gender, upbringing, or political orientation...

I don't know how to feel about this one... I get where you're coming from, but at the same time I think that the some monster placements are a bit more on the clever side than others, for example if the placement of a monster plays to its strengths vs when it doesn't. Whether or not the term "intelligent" is good to use is probably open to debate, but I'll also have to add that I haven't seen "intelligent placement" in any write up or description of a WAD that I would consider to come from a credible source, and the sources I deem credible usually employ "exacting monster placement" as a descriptor, among other things. Bottom line for me on this one: the term seems too non-descriptive to actually mean anything in particular, so I'm fine with not using it, but I'm not sure it's a problem in particular... Everything is jargon if you are brave enough. I agree that the term means nothing to anybody who hasn't been around the block for some while, but as a technical term it will probably always retain a degree of relevance, in particular for people who use source ports alongside command line arguments. These people may be a minority, but they'll exist as long as speedrunning stays a thing that happens on god's green arse... Can't be helped... Words have different meaning depending on context, and in the context of classic doom this means something very particular... If there was one thing to point out as a downside with regards to this term, it would be that it is a negative term that could be misused in situations where what it means in the context of this game isn't applicable at all, but that's as far as it goes from my POV... Kinda agree on this one, but also have to bemoan the absence of a better alternative that is still as descriptive as the term that's being subjected to scrutiny here... Hard agree on this one... "Cold playthrough" is a decent descriptor that avoids ableism entirely...

As for the first point... I'm talking about myself way less than you might imagine... You've been around for long enough to know that I'm a highly disagreeable and combative person. Anybody who's been around for long enough will probably be able to confirm this based on several examples which can not only be found in this thread, but also in my posting history on this site... As for the second point: What my arguments are based on are primarily the findings of other people, who have looked way deeper into the topic that is human nature as I have, because my academic specialization has a strong lean towards concepts like workforce development as well as industrial and organizational aspects... Anything evolutional I am aware of, as well as some other on-the-side-studies such as psychometry are merely a side order... Regardless, even I, as a confrontational and combative person know about fundamental principles I can and should accept as facts. That being for instance the principle of socialization among humans, which occurs despite our potential to commit atrocities when we're being pushed too far - leaving antisocial personality disorders aside here. In layman's terms, the fact that people gather in groups and smaller communities, such as tribes, before they engage in conflicts between tribes is as much a part of human history as all the wars that have happened are. So any claim made solely on the basis that people have always been at war at some point for some reason is inherently biased when that claim is then being employed as evidence to make the case that humans have a desire to kill... And I have gone to some lengths to explain why conflicts between tribes are not a result of mere primal bloodlust, but primarily a result of human propensity to cooperate in social groups paired with a very high degree of territoriality. Not once have I denied that the potential to kill is in all of us, in fact, most people who say they could never kill someone else under any circumstance are entirely oblivious to what's ticking under their own hood. But if the question is whether or not your average and healthy human being has a need to kill others, let alone beat them to the ground, then the answer is plain and simple "no", because that would make living in social groups completely impossible, since the primal drive that we would have to suppress at all times would eventually break loose, at which point there's bloodshed soon to follow... The capacity for violence that we all have can be a virtue, if your life is being threatened, and it has been argued several times that the conflicts between tribes or ancient civilizations may have been an evolutionary engine to further ensure the survival of the fittest... Last I checked, even that claim is still being debated among evolutionary psychologists, and one big part of the reason why debates about it are still happening is the human tendency to gather in groups and live together in communities. These 2 things are at odds with each other. Likewise, and often ignored when people point to the stone age as an example for unbridled savagery, there have been enough archaeological findings of bones that broke once, but then healed, which gives sufficient reason to conclude that even back when mankind was at its most primitive, conflicts often ended once one side asserted their dominance over the other to a sufficient degree. But regardless of whatever happens behind the doors of researchers, one thing I think we can all attest to is that, at some point, we have been aggressive towards someone else in ways we ended up regretting the very next moment. Be it a shouting match, punching or slapping someone in the face, or much worse than that. Regardless of how educated someone may or may not be when it comes to recorded history, you can't just brush these instances away as if they had no implications whatsoever, and ignore any and all psychological realities regarding how people react in extreme situations versus how they react under normal circumstances. What matters is which buttons are being pressed by externalities within a human's brain, because that's what determines the "tone" of the response. Which, again, is what leads to the necessary differentiation between potential and desire. Keen's line of arguing is that we're a species with a history laced with wars and smaller conflicts, therefore we're bloodthirsty savages. Nobody here, not even I, disputes what's written in history books. What's being disputed is the supposed conclusion that's based entirely on a surface-level observation with very little in the way of substance to back it up. And that conclusion, again, confuses potential with desire, never mind confusing people in normal situations with people thrown into the maw of hell itself. Not to mention that this conclusion was made by a hypocrite, who, at the very first contact with me in this thread went on to beat up a straw man not only I pointed out as entirely unjustified - just as an aside... I mean, I've had the questionable privilege of working in the local nightlife early on during my studies, and this is the kind of thing I have actually seen happen. How anybody else responds in that situation is not something I think I could say for sure, but what I can tell you is that I called in security and secured the spiked drink right after... The culprit was then handed over to the authorities, the evidence was secured, and the rest is history... Having said that, I would not have minded punching that guy in the face, because of how prone any sort of rape is to ruin a person's existence, but what made me hesitate was the fact that I was dealing with a criminal whose "threat-level" I was entirely unaware of... It wouldn't help anybody if I got stabbed to death while enforcing a very loose sense of justice like a vigilante... In hindsight there's probably also an argument to be made that it might have gotten me in trouble as well, but that wasn't a thought I had then and there... I honestly don't know what this has to do with this here thread... But I would assume people would shapeshift into all sorts of creatures for all kinds of reasons, be it out of curiosity, or be it for convenience's sake... If I could shapeshift into a large bird and just fly where I wanted to go, I'd definitely do that often, and with impunity...

Yes, which means precisely what I said already. Your argument that "normal people" commit atrocities, therefore committing atrocities is normal human nature, is moot. Because you say there, quite clearly, that the leadership is what makes the big difference.... And that's because the leadership determines the "climate" in any given country, and totalitarian leaderships do way, way more than just that. Hitler was a totalitarian, who surrounded himself with like-minded and influential individuals, and it's that small group of people that ended up being responsible for what happened during WWII. Yes, your average joe is the one who goes to war and does the killing, but it's the leadership that manipulates, misguides, and indoctrinates. Any large scale conflict ever over the last couple centuries started only because a select few people - not representative of the norm - had to throw their tantrums over banalities such as monetary gain, or fear of the unknown - and all that not in the interest - but at the expense of the common folk, who, according to your line of arguing were just as deranged and bloodthirsty as the psychotic despots they had the misfortune to be living under... That's what we're disagreeing on, your assertion that any atrocity like mass-rapes during wars indicate that a normal person, under normal circumstances would act exactly the same is false. Not just according to me, but according to psychologists at large. Nor can I wrap my head around that logic, especially because nobody here has ever said that murdering someone else is "okay" if you feel bad enough after the fact... I challenge you to find me one post, just one single post, where anybody said something that would just vaguely resemble the next straw man you're trying to beat up right there... So let me count real quick: Your first straw man was throwing me in with the holocaust deniers, then you accused me of downplaying the suffering of civilians (which, by the way, I haven't even spoken of once, never mind denied), and with this most recent straw man right here you're at 3 already... Which makes you a less than ideal to person to preach love, peace, and harmony, to say the very least. The argument that has been made - just in case you're as lazy and lacking in attention span as you seem to be - is that the fact that humans have killed each other countless times is not indicative of any presence of "pleasure" that is being derived from the act. -To which your response was that plenty of warriors over the course of history have espoused that they loved it. -To which my response was that those types of people - psychopaths and to an extent sociopaths - are, statistically, not the norm. Psychopaths are 1% of the global population, give or take. Sociopaths are about 4-5% of the global population. Those aren't numbers I made up for fun, that's what scientists have to say on the matter after conducting studies in order to produce statistics with the least possible degree of sample-bias. -You then went on to say that not Hitler himself shot and raped people on the battlefield. -To which my response was that, because of how extreme a battlefield is, humans crack and lose their sense of what's right or wrong in all sorts of ways, rape being one of the many manifestations that can occur when all hell breaks loose between the ears of an otherwise psychologically healthy person... That's no excuse for rape, and much less anything that would even faintly imply that I would condone it, all it means is that humans tend to act in extreme ways when they're being put in extreme situations (by extreme people), because their brain tries to find an outlet, just any outlet possible, to release the tension... Then I suggest that next time you have problems following what's being discussed you ask for clarification instead of throwing me in the same basket as a holocaust denier... Would have spared a lot of pushback that you were absolutely deserving of, may I add...

The fundamental problem with going off of historical records or even archaeology is that you invariably come to realize that lethal conflict has happened pretty much everywhere humans ever settled down. But attempting to simplify that fact such that the claim ends up becoming that humans these days, in general, enjoy the process of killing is a reach, which is what I've been arguing thus far, and it's gotten me in the same basket as holocaust deniers, so be careful how much time you waste with this guy... Anyway... If there's anything that stands out about humans, in plain numbers, it is that we're the one mammal on the planet that shows the highest propensity to kill its own kind, in fact, by a significant chunk - about 6 to 7 times more likely than your average mammal (2.3% of all human deaths at the hands of another human, roughly). The question then is what this means... Your average and frustrated GenXer will have you believe that's evidence enough to assert that we just fucking love killing each other, but any psychologist worth their salt will tell you that this propensity, that seems so out of line, is the result of 2 main factors: Territoriality and living in social groups... (note the absence of the words blood and thirst) The more pronounced these 2 factors are, the higher the chance of violent conflicts. Humans are, despite what many disgruntled individuals may have you believe, one of the most social species on this planet, and we're also one of the most territorial ones. It's because of those factors that our ancestors from way back when were violent savages, and both the degree of socialization as well as the territoriality are in us... No two ways about it... But the question this thread is revolving around is not if humans have the capacity to kill, or if people ever killed someone else (neither is being put into question)... The question is if humans, by nature, enjoy killing (their own kind), to which most psychologists will respond that people who enjoy killing fall into the psychopath/sociopath categories. Psychopaths are roughly 1% of the world's population, sociopaths are multiple times more common - at 4 to 5 ish %, last I checked. These are the kinds of people who will tell you to your face that they're looking forward to killing someone, or at least they'll tell you that they're not bothered by it. If there's anything that should be disturbing at the bottom line, it would be that one out of 20 people is either a psychopath or a sociopath, and it should come as no surprise that, in particular in medieval times, it was that shade of person who was also likely to join an army (and that's also true these days, efforts against that vary in how successful they are). That's why I've pointed towards the sample-bias earlier. One thing that can be said is that many people enjoy violence when it's (promised to be) non-lethal - or at least when it doesn't mean they might get killed (but perhaps someone else). Kids do their rough and tumble play. People will tell you about some MMA fight they watched that was spectacular for some reason, and they'll consider that experience to be enjoyable, look no further than ancient rome, and you get the gist of it... In fact, look a bit closer, and you'll realize that the vast, vast majority of gladiators who died in the colosseum were forced to fight for their life, and many of them pissed themselves on their way into the arena - they did not like that at all, and if given a choice, nearly all of them would have withdrawn... Anyway, a lot of effort to basically explain why people don't murder for fun as a general rule... Be it fights among ancient tribes, or succession wars, most of the time these occurred because of the 2 factors I mentioned earlier: Territoriality paired with how social our species as a whole is...

Ah yes, standard troll protocol: First you fling shit my way, then you act butt hurt when you get what you bargained for, then yet another straw man to boot, because you know your argument sucks ass, then claiming I'm the one not discussing things in good faith... It's nice when things are that obvious.

Yes, that's the point... You have people like Hitler, who is by all accounts an utter headcase, a xenophobe, germophobe, and delusional to boot, in a position of power, where he gets to make the calls your average joe needs to follow, else they be branded disloyal, imprisoned, or shot in the head on the spot... Then, you throw people like that into a situation where they're bound to go "full tilt", and suddenly your average joe - who would (under normal circumstances) never even consider putting a bullet through anybody's head - goes completely off the rails, due to how extreme the situation he finds himself in is... That is the capacity for violence I was talking about. Whether or not you know somebody who was deranged enough to think that the act of killing someone is pleasurable or not is, by and large, irrelevant, since the supposed evidence you think you have provided is entirely anecdotal. Meanwhile, I'm a psychologist by trade, and have had plenty of clients who served in the army before pursuing a career on the free market, not only because it pays better, but also they hated literally every single second on the battlefields they've been to (with PTSD to hell and back, which sometimes was the least of their worries) - never mind that many of these clients were palmed off to me by a psychotherapist I've had reasonably well-established business ties with. So yes, most everybody who had the misfortune of living in the Third Reich may have turned out a Nazi (although what's been a mask shown in public and what's been going on behind closed doors is a different matter when it comes to dictatorships like that), but the only reason things ever went down the shitter so hard is because a select few people, not your average joe, wound up with more power than any reasonable human being could ever want them to obtain, and then created an atmosphere that resulted in very dangerous dynamics among people... Does this mean that everybody who ever applauded a speech given by Hitler or Goebbels is a bloodthirsty savage while so many of them wouldn't even go near a front line..? I don't think so... When you have no choice but to sing along in the interest of your self-preservation, you fucking sing along whether you like it or not - you do that for long enough, and you start believing the shit that's being preached. That's how this works - it's a select few people channelling the capacity of the individual towards whichever goal they deem worth going after. If anything, this says more about how easily manipulated people can be, and less about how inherently brutal and cruel everybody's daily urges are... Now you're the one going off the rails... I've never said that war was uncommon, I've argued that war was not waged to quench the blood thirst of an inherently violent population, and I've furthermore argued that those who instigate wars are not representative of how most people feel about killing someone - that's a way different thing to talk about. Additionally, I have also argued that a history that is permeated by conflicts all around the world is not reflective, let alone indicative of a desire to kill that you want to make believe all humans have, which would also mean that every living and breathing human ever to walk the surface of this rock would constantly need to suppress their urge to cave someone else's head in with the next best blunt object they can get their hands on. Again, this is not how humans tick... Then allow me to congratulate you for trying to beat up a straw man. And I'll also take the fact that I'm being tossed in the same category as a holocaust denier as an insult that's gonna put you very high on the list of people I'll most likely ignore for an indefinite amount of time going forward. Yes, just your own experience, as in: Anecdotal, therefore irrelevant. Okay, thank you for making my case for me... Not only was he considered extraordinarily cruel even by medieval standards, you also mention right there that he had to pressure his men into being more brutal, ruthless and cruel as they actually were... Which should immediately tell you that my assertion that a few blood thirsty savages, some of whom being in a position of power, are not to be confused with how most people think, act, and feel about literally anything... I really don't care how "many" examples of warriors you think may exist, unless there is a damn good reason to assume that these psychopaths were the majority - and I know what you're going to tell me now, which is gonna be the thousands upon thousands of rapes that committed in a war at some point, and I'll point right back to "people having to cope with more than their psyche can handle in a healthy manner". Also rape is often a manifestation of hatred, and no human being considered healthy and stable by anyone these days would actually find any pleasure in the act (in fact, most people prefer having sex when the desire to engage is mutual in nature ohhhhhhh) Adding to the psychopath point a little more, the percentage of psychopaths among today's population is estimated to be around the 1% margin... One. Percent. So even if those plentiful reports of oh-so-proud warriors exist, what was their percentage of the population back then to begin with? You think anybody is gonna be impressed when you fling numbers around that have been sampled solely from a group comprised only of people willing (or pressured) enough to risk life and limb for rancid food and a shoddy roof over their heads? Sorry, that's not how science works. All I see there is sample bias - which you happen to use to make a case that stood on shaky grounds ever since this thread was a mere 2 pages in length. Anyway... Unless you manage to bring up anything that isn't "carefully curated evidence" I'm done here. As far as I'm concerned that example you brought up of Vlad The Impaler tells me more than clearly that you don't even understand the implications of your own arguments... Not worth my time, especially not after such a straw man. I'm no stranger to playing rough, but I know something is beneath me when I see it...

Here's the problem with this... Any of these "highlights" that you mention, regardless of how drastic and cruel they were, are only a very small fraction of what has actually happened all around the globe at that time. That's not to say that only ever one war at a time occurred, mind. Even nowadays, with most conflicts happening far away from where most people live, many of which also being "ignored" or omitted by the powers that be, most people live in the relative peace of non-violent conflicts, and I have yet to hear the average citizen say that they can't wait for the next war that's gonna have them running across scorched earth... You look at just the history of monarchies across all countries, and you'll realize that, even though conflicts erupted over seemingly nothing but the bruised ego of someone who just so happened to wear a crown, that all too often, these immensely cruel rulers would also be "headcases" by any modern psychological metric... And then there's also the issue with torture and rape, where, yes, men rape women in wars when insanity takes hold of them, or that rulers all across history have come up with atrocious methods of torture to extract information from prisoners, or just as a general punishment to lower the enemy's morale - but can you honestly tell me that you would enjoy the sight of someone you hate bleed out inside of an iron maiden..? I'd wager the answer to that question is a clear and resounding "no"... At least I would that it is in the interest of your personal mental health... Anyway, when acts of violence and atrocity ever were "fashionable" during any given era, most of the time there wasn't an "average human" being responsible for them, but either an outspoken nutcase, or an overall normal person, who has been driven beyond the limits of what the human psyche is able to cope with in a healthy manner... There is another problem with how that site you provided presents its data: The issue here, the graph that most people will think also matters the most does very little in the way of clarification with regards to what even constitutes "a great power", or how many great powers were involved at any given time - not just hotspots... Which is to say, if the diagram there makes it a point to emphasize situations when several "great powers" were involved in a conflict, and denotes those at the bottom of the graph, but nothing other than that, then there is more than enough reason to assume that most of the time, even across 1500 - 1800, only a few of the great powers that existed have actually been involved in warfare against one another... The next issue I have with this general approach of yours, which, for me, boils down to how a history that is permeated by violent conflicts that happened somewhere on this planet, is that you then go out of your way to make it a point for how bloodthirsty humans supposedly are, while most conflicts, in particular the ones the graph above highlights at the bottom, have been fought for political or economical gain - not for the sport of it, and not because it was so much fun... Moreover, the vast majority of wars ever fought, were declared by someone who was willing to send others to do the killing for them. You would never see someone like Stalin, Mussolini, or Hitler at a battlefront if there was any real danger that they might get their hands dirty or their heads ventilated. The crux at the bottom line is that your argument confuses the capacity for violence with a desire for violence... Another aspect that you don't see on a graph like that, is that the soldiers, knights, etc, who go to the front lines, did it primarily because they think (or are made to think) that the cause they are fighting for is just, or because of the promise of monetary, or societal/political gain (the latter especially true for knights). Very few soldiers, in particular nowadays, are even allowed to serve if, at any point during a rudimentary check up on their mental health, anybody gets the impression that they're psychopaths who cannot be reigned in. And practically no soldier who has ever been in a serious war has ever said that it was so much fun, they just can't wait for the next opportunity to shoot someone in the face. Most soldiers, after having been in a war, are broken and in need of more professional psychiatric attention and/or counselling than any given army's personnel is able to cover, including that of the United States of America, who likes to pride itself publicly with how much they care for their veterans while they send the poor fucks they burn up in a war for profit to EMDR sessions in hopes of letting pseudo-science do the job they couldn't be bothered to make sure they could cover properly in the first place... Then there is a problem with the lethality of wars, which, overall seems to be in decline in the grand scheme of things. It's questionable to point at a war fought centuries ago, to then make the argument that, based on how many died, people are/were bloodthirsty savages, while ignoring the fact that a great many of the lives we would lose to wars these days are being saved due to advances in the medical field. In other words, even a deep flesh-wound could turn out lethal in medieval times, while nowadays people get patched up and deployed again in no time whatsoever. So the per-capita mortality rate of a war that happened centuries ago is not necessarily representative of how bloodthirsty people were on the battlefield, doubly so when you consider that the means of war have changed drastically since then. For instance, the civil war between England the soon-to-be Unites States that was fought with muskets which, if they were on target, tore out so much tissue that a musket ball could rip limbs off someone's body. Compare that to modern rifles and ammunition. Most of what's used in wars nowadays is only ever 100% lethal if the heart or the head are being penetrated - which, admittedly, happens from time to time. Regardless, we haven't become better at living peacefully side by side necessarily, but we for damn sure have become better at "cultivating" a less gruesome type of warfare - because we don't like killing or being killed, let alone up close and personal. The Geneva Convention exists for that reason, among others. Adding to that, there is also the point that causing injuries in wars is often preferred over outright killing someone, because an injury takes an enemy out of the equation while it also ties up resources - which means not killing is often the "better" course of action on a battlefield, both from a strategic and psychological point of view. Then, we look at the most recent developments in the form of combat drones, which further "depersonalizes" the act of killing, because nobody actually likes doing it. Long story short, history of mankind and the psychology of the individual that people think it reflects are not as congruent as it looks on the surface...

More like killing animals for purpose of sustenance has been a necessity back in the stone age (although the degree of said necessity is still open for debate), so therefore it has been wired into virtually any and all cultures imaginable... And it's for that cultural background that killing and eating animals, or killing animals for their fur is still being as widely accepted as it is nowadays, despite the fact that some species are nearly being driven towards extinction in regions where hunting is being done for profits instead of sustenance - not to mention the collateral damage that is caused by mass-breeding and slaughtering livestock that is also being pumped full of antibiotics, which then caused a surge of multi-resistant germs. But I digress... If humans actually had a desire to kill animals, then almost nobody would have pets - be it rabbits, dogs, cats, or nowadays even ducks - so therefore it is highly dubious to argue that people at large have a desire to kill animals, never mind that humans have a history of domesticating - and bonding with - animals, which, over time, has proven to be a highly effective thing to do, be it for the purpose of hunting animals you actually wanted to eat, be it for the purpose of herding sheep (both the wool and the meat being products we've been after for centuries), or be it because bonds between men and animal have helped increase the odds of survival for both, not to mention that pets can make people happy - a great deal, in fact. The utilitarian value of bonding with animals is just as much a part of human history as eating animals is.... So, all things considered, arguing that humans have any inherent urge to kill anything is not only lacking in substantiation, it is furthermore met with plenty of evidence that suggests the opposite. The whole reason we live today, and have something akin to a functional society, however flawed it may be, is that we are descendants of ancestors who were unwilling, - thus unlikely - enough to kill each other, so that the rise of cultures across millennia was even possible to begin with. Humans do not have a history of "killing for fun" (but we do have a history of watching people who are forced to fight each other for the purposes of entertainment, but that's a different story), be it animals or other people - killing was done out of necessity in the vast majority of cases. Nowadays, killing is done primarily in the interest of profit, or for geopolitical gain - not because it's necessarily fun to do, but because people who aren't even going anywhere near a battlefield have this insatiable desire to enrich themselves at the expense of others. Point being, the motivation is greed, and lust for power - not bloodlust, usually anyway.

You have no idea what happens when I'm actually in the mood to write something substantial... or perhaps you do, because you've seen something I put in the editing tutorials subforum.... usually that's more like what happens when I sit down and feel like putting letters on the screen... :P

That's kind of what my wall of text tried to explain... But perhaps it's time you took a nap... ;-)

There is a lot of conflation and confusion happening with some of these ideas people have... No human who would be considered healthy experiences an actual desire to kill anything. People might get frustrated to the point where they utter such (oh, hey there, catharsis theory), but in the vast majority of cases, that's also where it ends. That said, if you tried to kill me, or a family member, you can bet any sum of money you want that I'll do what I can to erase you from existence. Which is to say that, usually, the stimulus that causes a feeling of anger and rage needs to be incredibly intense to reach a threshold that makes killing seem like a viable and desirable option... Humans have the capacity to want to kill, and possibly follow through, but they don't have an internal urge to do so that would somehow have to be suppressed 24/7. (If you have that urge, however, go get help immediately)... Where the waters become murky is this idea of "competition"... Because competition, and being competitive to some extent, was an evolutionary engine that weeded out those unfit for survival. The stronger male gets the women, thus creating progeny while the weak ones could not, or at least less so. It's for that reason that people like to argue that the urge to "kill" is in us, even though the competition over somebody else's favour has taken on myriad different shapes over the course of time... Furthermore, this competitive spirit, if you want to call it that, also served the purposes of establishing rudimentary hierarchies within tribes, where the most able ones made the important calls, while the losers had to follow suit. Having said that, there was no value in killing your competitor as long as you were able to establish yourself as the victor, and got what you wanted. In fact, if every conflict between people in the stone age ended with the death of another person, our evolution might have taken a vastly different course. Even animals are like that while they're still cubs, they act out their predatory behaviour in a playful way within the herd, rather than killing for the fun of it, and humans are no different in that regard... Now here's where it gets really iffy... What if I told you that anybody who's ever shoved a BFG up a cyberdemons's ass knows that it doesn't make them a hit with the ladies and gentlemen they're interested in..? What benefit is there to being a more capable player at the bottom line? You don't get more dick, or more pussy, or ass, or all at the same time, and your boss isn't gonna hand you a promotion because you beat some level in cuphead either..? So why do we do it..? Yes, our brains are wired to play games, but only because there was a utilitarian value to it for millennia, but we're not hardwired to kill unless we're being pushed to the limit of our composure... Butt: Scott Bigby Ph.D. pointed out that gaming caters to certain psychological needs people have, and broke those needs down into 3 main categories: -competence (the idea of having mastered something and deriving a sense of happiness - if not self-respect - from that) -autonomy (the need to experience what it's like to have a particular degree of control over something one does, as well as being somewhat independent) -relatedness (the desire to matter to others, which, strangely, can also be satisfied to a slight degree by an NPC) Note that none of these criteria necessarily involve killing something, and many gamers out there, or people who play any sort of game in the first place, don't require for there to be an overt expression of violence... Look at people who play chess... It checks the boxes for competence and autonomy, play it with somebody else and you have all three criteria met, no blood, no gore, not even SFX were required... So no, we don't play games because we have an inherent desire to kill that somehow needed to be satisfied (because holy motherfucker of christ do I have bad news for you if you thought that was why, because both mankind and chess are way older than classic doom, and if we needed to satiate our bloodthirst regularly we wouldn't even be having this conversation today). Quick EDIT: I will concede that chess was made to have pieces that resemble "military assets" to a degree, and you could argue that that is enough of an expression of violence, but when you look at who played chess in the past, you'll notice that the game had a pull that was irrespective of how the pieces looked...

I agree that the idea of getting rid of bobby kotick sounds nice... And you know what else sounds nice? Reviving some old franchises.... You know what I don't like? When big business is being made to sound nice and totally in the interest of the consumer. Makes me suspicious... Remember what blizzard did when they got exposed for all the shit behind their closed doors..? They announced Overwatch 2. You see where I'm coming from..? Plus... Bobby remains at the helm until the deal closes in 2023 as far as I am aware, and what happens after that remains to be seen... Chances are he'll be discarded like the dirty and smelly cloth that he is, sacrificed for PR reasons, but only time will tell... Not to mention that there's no telling who is about to fill the vacuum when bobby hangs his coat...

Catharsis means different things depending on where you're coming from... This idea that is "guiding an audience through intense emotions to provide some relief" is one Aristotle came up with way back when, so that's already debatable in value, not only because Aristotle knew less about psychology than anybody with a bachelor these days, but also because a significant chunk of the emotions that are being released after a play have also been induced or at least provoked by it, but without actually addressing the root-cause of the problem... Then there's catharsis theory, which has been used in the early days of psychology for therapeutic reasons... That one did not entail subjecting the patient to additional stressors, but rather making them perform "some act of aggression" (be it screaming, breaking something, etc) to release emotional pressure.... And then there's also the part of therapy where the idea of catharsis is, more specifically, to re-live experiences and their respective emotions in order to express them while going under the assumption that it solves the problem... All things considered, the net-value of catharsis (theory) is dubious (yes, something has been "released", but at what cost? was it really overall a positive experience?), as many studies suggested that "catharsis", as per any definition you want, does not deliver long-term results as far as for example a reduction of future aggression is to be considered... As such, the therapeutic value is often considered to be based on "pseudo-science" rather than being based on anything that resembles measurable metrics. The fact that bottling everything up is unhealthy is also not something that grants any additional credibility to catharsis (theory) from a therapeutic point of view, because "doing the exact opposite of thing that makes you feel bad" is not good enough to even be considered a rule of thumb for mental health... Going back to video games, the benefits of subjecting oneself to stressors not related to the issue one actually may have are not of any measurable therapeutic long-term value, and the short-term relief people experience sometimes is a band aid at the best of times, or the gateway-drug to becoming a video-game addict in the worst case... So any arguments made in favour of gaming-induced catharsis, and how beneficial it might be, are thus far unsubstantiated as far as I am aware... EDIT: That's not to say that I think catharsis does not take place at all, or that it doesn't "feel good" the moment it actually occurs (the release of tension, not the induction thereof!), but it is a way less significant deal than some people make it out to be...

mid-fight save = scumming pre-fight/post-fight save = good not having to save at all to beat a map eventually = ideal

Most psychological studies ever conducted to check if "stimulus X" causes "response Y" are done after all participants have been checked for their mental health, with those who don't register as "healthy" and "stable" being ruled out before anything in the way of tests even begin. This is common practice, because if you want to find out how most people respond to something, you have to operate under the assumption that most people are also not psychopaths... And if you wanted to find out how psychopaths respond, then you'd be testing psychopaths primarily, not your average joe... Some video games are literally designed to "scare" players, and cause at least a mild stress response, and while that is something some people are looking for in their spare time, it doesn't mean that the person's response to a stressor in that moment "feels good" - at the very least not entirely. You may feel different/better/whatever, after watching for example a horror movie, because of the adrenaline responses you experienced, but that doesn't mean that the body and the brain are actually "wanting" to get these buttons pressed. The reason you have an adrenaline response in the first place is because your brain tells your body to be ready for a possible "emergency" (even if watching a movie poses no actual threat to your life, same as playing a video game)... Arguments made in favour of "beating the odds" are shaky, and often made by those who look at the outcome only, while disregarding what happened on the way to that outcome. Gratification is not a "newtonean" phenomenon where more stress equals a proportionally higher degree of "satisfaction", having beaten a tough section in a video game can also just result in a feeling of relief that it's finally over, rather than providing a psychological response that "offsets" the experienced frustration entirely... If you're looking for extreme examples, look at speedrunners... You get hours/days/months worth of salt for a high that's gonna last less than 2 hours sometimes before the magic wears off... You look at the outcome, and think to yourself "yeah, totally worth it", even the person doing the speedrun sees it that way in that moment, but that's because of a "that was then, but this is now" kind of perspective that is actually built into most people's minds as a protective mechanism to keep people "functional" despite their hardships... That sort of "hardwired ignorance" was an evolutional necessity, and without it we might not even exist today... But regardless of how much your mind may be playing tricks on you, it doesn't change how the mind and the body respond to stress in that moment, and how long-term stress can have negative consequences, even on a perfectly healthy person... Concerns regarding how "healthy" some person's "gaming habits" may or may not be are not relevant to this discussion, because video-game addiction is a different topic altogether, which has nothing to do with the kinds of "triggers" that Gez pointed out, and it also has nothing to do with what the OP is looking to discuss... If you ever feel the urge to educate yourself: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00967/full https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-018-0031-7

The problem here is that whether or not it actually feels "good" is very different question, and it's still quite debatable as to what the answer to that question is, because contradicting studies on that subject exist... With one study pointing towards adrenaline responses, which induce a "mild high" paired with a dopamine response, other studies suggest that fighting or shooting games induce negative emotions, such as anger... So there's no clear-cut answer at the moment... Furthermore, the difference between kids having a blast while doing their rough-and-tumble plays and somebody pointing their cursor at something on a screen while sitting in a comfy chair are two vastly different, and impossible to compare situations with regards to psychological and also physical "stimuli"...

Because many games make it a guilt-free, and sometimes even "morally just" kind of experience - and that's on top of the fact that you know that all you really did is just shifting a bunch of 1s and 0s around... From a slightly deeper psychological POV there's also an argument to be made that it is a cathartic experience to have an outlet for pent up frustration that may or may not be somewhat realistic...

Doesn't really matter, the bottom line is most likely gonna be that bobby has to relinquish his crown, and he'll also get paid for it, rather than being prompted to do anything in the way of reparations at his own expense... The moral of the story: Crime is worth it, if you're at the top of the food-chain already...

Who wouldn't love a "get out of jail card" when it's also gonna come packed with a 7 to 8 digits pay check to boot..?

Not to cut in here too much, but you kinda, sorta, ish should care what types of douchebags make the games they expect you to pay good money for - not because of some sense of doing what's ethical or whatever - although that approach is certainly valid - but... ..The reason why you should care at least a little bit is that drunk workers, who are busy going after somebody else at their work place instead of having their mind focused on their work, are more likely to produce "faulty" products. Moreover, it takes them longer to finish the product in question while their per-hour-pay remains constant. In other words, if nothing else, this means that you get less value for your money, and I don't see why you should be okay with that. What I also don't understand is why you're so upset... I still have copies of starcraft + broodwar as well as diablo 2 + Lord of Destruction on CD, and if I can be bothered to break out my external CD/DVD drive, I still play those games, because they're fun, and they are remnants of an era during which Blizzard was still "just blizzard" for the most part, and the fish wasn't rotting at the head... I don't feel bad about enjoying those games that I've paid money for already anyway, but me personally, I'm not going to pick up anything new that is made by a company whose higher ups (as in those who get the biggest chunk of the money I'd lay down), haven't even the slightest concept of basic human dignity. Having said that, if you want to keep buying what they sell, that's your choice, and I don't think anybody would actually, genuinely condemn you for it.. It doesn't make a difference at the bottom line anyway... Anybody who believes their couple hundred bucks they may or may not spend on games makes a difference in the world is delusional when it comes to multi-million, or rather multi-billion companies like that anyway... The only way any money would be able to make any difference, however little it may be, is if somebody was a somewhat big shareholder who can throw a bit of weight around, and even then, if that supposed shareholder existed, the outcome could still be entirely marginal regardless...