Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

That read like a mental health test.

That's because it is.... Hence all the questions about how gaming ruins your supposed 'life' :s

People meme on the whole video games addiction thing, but it’s not supposed to say that video games are bad for you at all. That’s just how people like to spin it to push their anti-video game agenda.

It’s supposed to help people who genuinely suffer from harmful addictions to video games that severely impair their lives as a whole.

Edit: It’s a mental health condition so it takes time to diagnose and falls under a broader scope than most things. People be like “oh I play video games 9 hours a day and am fat but I’m super social, I’m a video game addict, am I an addict”. As if mental conditions such as these can be so easily diagnosed especially by a doctor. It largely also falls under the impact of how people misunderstand or downplay possible mental health

@Ralizah LOL, I still don't understand the overall bias against video games in media. It makes no sense compared to the rest of media. Though I am still convinced it has to do more with the personality of the typical gamer than playing games directly. Got to admit, there's something "off" about the typical gamer. Even as a gamer, I don't really want to associate or be associated with gamers.....

@-Green- Of course the "mental health" medical industry is kind of a joke as well though. They discuss behaviors as though they are genetic defects or a virus attacking the body, when the behaviors are primarily induced environmentally, and would not exist an another environment. "Mental health" tries to classify the brain's reaction to the external stimulus around it in the terms of physical medicine, and tries to "treat" it accordingly rather than merely understanding the brain's reaction to what is around it, and the fact that the broken, fast, contradictory world of today is going to "break" the "normal" process of most brains.

@NEStalgia I actually agree, my main point was more or less people shouldn’t try to so simply downplay addictions. People change slowly, but feeling like you’re understood and accepting possible problems is the first step to bring about possible positive change, imo.

The mental health medical industry is very largely neglectful in how it approaches helping others, sadly. Many of them will just try to medically treat you, throwing medication and overwhelming people with treatments. Likely making things worse. There’s a lack of awareness and care much of the time.

@-Green- Yeah, it’s the whole “Teach someone to fish” thing. Cognitive awareness and coping skills are much more beneficial than just handing over medication alone. If two people don’t have the same tools in their box, you can’t expect them to both approach a leaky faucet the most competent way. But if they’re both taught how to recognize the leak, decide what tools are needed, and how to combat the leak, you’ll have a better outcome for the long term than just handing someone duct tape. It doesn’t need to be more complex than that.

6/20. What a weird exam. Honestly it was nice how few of the questions applied to me I guess?

@BruceCM I know it is. It read far too much like my screening for MADD.

In fact the questions are identical.

@-Green- Addictions are serious, of course, and video game addiction can absolutely be a thing. The problem is that the WHO's wholesale creation of a new disorder for this is... controversial, to say the least, within the mental health field.

If you're interested in some of the academic objections, this briefly summarizes some of the big ones: https://akademiai.com/doi/full/10.1556/2006.5.2016.088

@Ralizah It's always good to see how I feel about the whole subject put into far more elegant and comprehensive words than I ever could have put together.

7/20. Most points in simply enjoying gaming which is true. The questions weren't what I expected. Half of them were about playing games online and other half about life in general. I rarely play games online and I'm enjoying my life so filling the survey just felt pointless. They should have had a question about spending habits.

@Ralizah I woudn't trust the WHO to figure out how to put a bandage on a paper cut. A bunch of politicians in scrubs is every bit as bad an idea as it sounds. Meanwhile they can stand around debating on classifications of virulent pathogens as they ravage population centers, and pat themselves on the back for successfully identifying a 10 year plan.

If the WHO were in charge of medicine in the 14th century, the entire human race would have been wiped out by 1345.

I'll take it later, but the WHO is the same organization who classified trans people as mentally ill, which I found really bad. So I'm skeptical about video game addiction actually as that and not just as addiction to entertainment like movies and stuff.

Very off-topic, but I'm loving Xenoblade 2's battle system compared to its predecessors. Simple UI but still plenty of depth to keep you on your toes. And whoever is in charge of music knocked it out of the park, and I'm barely past the 2nd chapter. Hard to imagine there's even more in the Torna expansion

So I tried picking up TWEWY again......I want to love that game so much. Everything about it feels, sounds, looks like an Atlus game. It's so odd that it's S-E. But those (#%@# controls!! Why do they have to be so, so so bad? I find it best to just ignore half the pins, take only swiping pins, go with single joycon mode and just randomly waggle and mash A....seems to work better than actually trying. Somehow in my docked setup the joycon drops out all the time. And handheld with the touch screen....just no. So the game is only really playable in "tabletop" mode to me. Ugh!

So, do people like time their gaming sessions, or how do they expect me to give them how many hours I play (accurately).

It did go in circles a bit with the online stuff too.

@Morpheel I just guesstimated from memory. I don't think it's important to get the time you spent playing dead on. They're likely more interested in ranges of play time. I put 24 hours because, well, I spend around 2 - 3 hours playing Mon - Sat, and then a good 5 to 6 hours on Saturday, between Smash with friends, playing with my nephew at our slumber parties, and, of course, making headway in my "main" game (which, atm, is DDS on the PS2).

@NEStalgia TWEWY on Switch seriously looks like a cheap mobile game. I think it's a bad fit for the platform. If I ever end up playing it, it'll be the original NDS version.

@Morpheel I suppose there's the system play logs...except mine are always ridiculously bloated because i'll just leave it on pause for hours at a time. I'll end up with like 78 hours on a game that I'm thinking "hmm, I'm pretty sure I played maybe 20-35...."

OTOH that pretty much confirms not an addict, so....yay?

@Ralizah It looks fine. The story is cool. The controls are just the most obnoxiously frustrating game controls I've played since the mandatory-waggle games on Wii. Technically if it looks like a cheap mobile game overall, the DS version was just a cheap mobile precursor to begin with.

The VN aspects are great....and combat can be fun...when it works...which is rare. The minigames are better than the combat. And pin grinding sucks with controls like that.

Dont know if this the right place to ask, was the kingdom battle season pass ever on sale?

@NEStalgia
Ease up on the motion.

The game responds well if you press and hold the ZR for a split second before moving the cursor via motion. Once I learned how to manage the input recognition, everything clicked.

You just have to toy around for 5 or 10 minutes practicing. If you try to swipe right away it doesnt work half the time. Press, hold, then swipe.

And handheld works great with the touch btw.