Copy post — Tela Network

Men and Modern Gaming
Guillermo Pablos Murphy
20 June 2025
Post #21
http://tela.network/forum/21/

(Chatting with a friend:)

Sadly, games are by necessity “un-productive” - you’re not producing anything unless you add a layer of effort on top of it (e.g., making content).

That doesn’t mean gaming is useless. I find its best use is giving us a focus/reason to talk. Men like having something to do when they hang out -  going on a walk, stoking a fire, grilling, or playing a game together. However, most modern videogames want you to have a relationship with the game itself, instead of with the people you play it with. Games are no longer the recurrent “30 seconds of fun” that Bungie devs talked about with Halo. I think at some point devs begun emulating social media and their social validation feedback loops. Games don’t have the same mechanics - no likes and comments - but they give you just the right amount of dopamine to keep you playing. Like with Sean Parker at Facebook: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?”