Video games are a fun pastime that many are able to enjoy with their friends, but have you ever thought about what they might be teaching you? Anymore, video games have a competitive feel to them and this causes people to feel the need to trick or “outplay” their opponent on these games. It seems like every game requires some sort of “mind game” to be played to ensure that someone can come out on top at the end of the day. This brings up the question: What are these tricky video games teaching us?
Pretty Sus
Recently, a game has blown up and caused many to emerge and start playing it. This game is called Among Us and it is based on deceit. Among Us is a game with two roles. You are either a crewmate or an imposter. The crewmate’s job is to go around doing their list of tasks to fix the ship and get things on the road. They are also supposed to keep an eye out for suspicious activity and report their findings to discover who the imposters are. An imposter’s job is to try and blend in with the crewmates. The imposters are given a list of fake tasks to do to help them deceive the crewmates. They are all about trying to divert attention away from themselves and turning people on each other. Along with that is the fact that they are picking people off slowly. Crewmates can win if they either finish all of their tasks or guess and vote out the imposters successfully. Imposters can only win by tricking the crewmates into not voting them off and eliminating enough crewmates until there are as few crewmates as imposters. It is an all-out war as people decide who is the right individual to trust. If you even try to point people in a direction, you may get betrayed instantly by getting voted off. It seems it is better to stay quiet than to shine a light on a situation when it comes to this game.
On One Condition…
Mortal Kombat is a fighting game created by NetherRealm studios and has maintained popularity throughout the span of its life. Fighting games seem to be pretty easy to understand on the surface level, but when looking a little deeper, it is plain to see that there is far more to it. The main hidden technique that is not only mischievous but also deceptive is called conditioning. Conditioning is when you perform the same move over and over until you are sure that your opponent will make their moves to counter that specific option. Conditioning can put you at an advantage and can often be used as a way of easily changing what is done to essentially “catch them with their pants down.” This is not the only sneaky technique that is used in not only Mortal Kombat but many other fighting games in the industry.
Another skill used widely amongst fighting games is the basis of move canceling to make your opponent think that you are going to commit to an action, but fake out and use something else entirely. This is what has led to many of these games having the meta term “mind games” involved due to the heavy amount of trickery fused into the overall gameplay experience. With an environment as confusing and hectic as these games, it is hard to trust anything around you.
How Do We Deal With It?
While these may seem like major skills, there are skills taught that were not covered like grieving or trolling. Just from this little bit of information, it is easy to tell that games are pushing further and further into the direction of deception and trickery. The first thing to ask, however, is whether it is actually a bad thing. Will this new mindset and skillset push the future generations into a more advanced stage than what today could ever be? Could these new skills being taught allow them to figure out better means of security and to pick up on clues sooner? It is difficult to make a decision if the ends justify the means, but it might be worth checking out the direction that things go and always watching your back.
