Being a millennial, I was severely addicted to video games when I was younger. Nearly all of my free time during my high school years was spent playing Diablo 2. As I got bored with one game, I would move on to another. Eventually, games as a whole stopped being fun and I stopped playing them. You can't just tell young people to stop playing video games because they'll resist you. They'll say something like, "Who do you think you are, my mother?" The only way they'll break free of that digital addiction is by going through what I went through. They will have to realize on their own that they shouldn't waste their time playing video games.
Attention spans are a different matter, though. Young people don't have the patience to read long form content. I openly admit that the reason why my stories are so short is because my attention span is short. We'll just have to adapt and make content that's short, catchy, and to the point. OrthodoxKyle and Redeemed Zoomer are the two examples that immediately come to my mind. Redeemed Zoomer especially has grown rapidly in less than a year. The young people themselves have recognized this problem and have adapted to it accordingly.
I don't know how to properly end this comment, so all I can really say now is that I enjoyed this article.
Totally agree! A big problem in the RW self-publishing sphere, is that everyone is writing 300ish page novels. That’s the OldPub model. We cannot expect young people to sit down and read something so long! Even I have trouble with it!
There is a push by some for PulpRev (Pulp Revival) — to write short fast-paced stories, as was done in the 1930s-40s for magazine print; as you have done, it sounds.
(Here are some great resources for writing that way and the philosophy behind it — ‘The Pulp Mindset’ by JD Cowan, ‘How to Write Pulp Fiction’ by James Scott Bell, and ‘The Lester Dent Master Plot Formula’)
But I still don’t think this is quite enough. It doesn’t quite capture the zeitgeist of our age or the entertainment consumption habits of most people today (not just zoomers).
So why not use a model conducive to the binge-watching habits of today?
Write short stories (20-24 pages with a conclusion) connected with an overarching plot/through-line that itself is concluded after 8-12 stories (call these episodes). Readers can put it down once a short story is finished, but feel incentivized by the through-line to pick it up again and read the next story — rather than feel exhausted at a 300 page story that seems to never end.
This should also all be available on an app so they can read it on their phone in a format they’re comfortable with anywhere they like.
This is what the old pulps and comic books did. They wrote short, exciting stories and made them available in a cheap, common, and easy to transport medium (magazines). We need to adapt that to the modern times — smartphones and apps.
* Now of course, these stories can, and should, be compiled and printed in a book. But that should be secondary and only for committed fans. And those fans have to first be earned in the digital format.
I totally agree Mr Young. As a Zoomer I don’t have a drivers license, nor really had a proper girlfriend (I’m not kissless/gutless though thanks God!). In fact l, I think if my dad wasn’t a business owner I’d be a total NEET. I totally refuse to work in the rat race for no benefit!!
Thankfully I have something that I can build upon that one day will be mine and a community to live around.
This more than anything else is something we must do on the local level!
Im a tabletop designer and I’m working on RWish content. Hopefully soon I’ll start posting essays about game design. I’m not opposed to vidya, I’d be willing to work on vidyas, but ttrpgs force groups to come together around a table (irl or over virtual space) in a way that can’t be played alone. It requires a small community to play.
The struggle with RW vidya isn’t so much the market is opposed to anything RW, it’s that it won’t appease all the RW groups and so you’ll get infighting over it.
The reality is is that a lack of morals, values, and standards makes you a better consumer. It’s hard to be a creator of who’s anti-consumerist (although that isn’t to say it’s impossible).
Content that has morals and values can easily come off as preachy, which is a criticism of left wing content recently and why it’s been unpopular, so it’s a fine line to walk. If anything to goal should be to create “normal” content (normal=\=normie) but then you run into the derivativeness problem.
"The video games industry is not the way it is because of corrupt game publishers. It is the way it is because of corrupted consumers."
I would say that it's both. Society is corrupted because of both top-down and bottom-up factors.
"Men need a peer group and a way to earn status amongst that peer group. More than that, men need a clear goal that they want to accomplish. "
I agree. And a goal is more fundamental than status. Status is based on comparisons; if one person has more status, then some other people will have less relative to him. But a goal can be accomplished regardless of what other people do.
I would also distinguish between status and respect. The word "respect" is used in a variety of ways, but what I mean is just the acknowledgement that something or someone has value. If you go back before the twenty-first century, a normal man was valued, not because of comparison to other people, but just because of what he could accomplish. Status is a zero-sum game and inherently comparative, whereas respect is not and is more fundamental. You have to accomplish something before you can start comparing how people do it. Actually, I would say that the diminishing of respect and its replacement with status has been a major negative development in this century.
(I believe you meant both respect and status in the above quote, so this isn't meant to quibble with your language, just to use it as a jumping off point to comment on an issue).
Though video games do become tiresome after a while too (at least for certain kinds of people). I can't speak for the younger cohorts of my generation that have only ever known a world with and through smart devices but I know a decent number of people that have left them behind by now. It's important not to shun people who have fallen into this hole though. Aside from the benefits garnered by playing the right games with the right people, too high a hurdle, given an earnest effort to lead one's life into a positive direction, will detract from the attractiveness of the group.
Reduced attention spans are a real problem though, just like the steadily increasing extent to which devices become mandatory in daily life. From restaurant menus to public transport tickets. Even if shrugging off these digital shackles is an honest goal (as it is for some people I know) it becomes less feasible every day. I think you are very right in recognizing that we create our own evolutionary hurdles. I often think about the short paper "Runaway consumerism explains the Fermi Paradox" by Geoffrey Miller in this context. Sometimes ideas tend to coalesce.
Lastly I want to caution against excessive drive towards total originality. In cultural matters repetition is, in my opinion, essential both for reaching new people and for internal cohesion and clarity. Besides every serious attempt at tackling a topic will include certain new nuances/additions.
I enjoyed this very much. It was insightful and got my mind whirring on the problem you've described. I'm an ex-gamer, and cannot pretend that I don't often miss it as a more satisfying and romantic place than almost all of the places I traverse "IRL". Basically anywhere that is not family, friends or woodland compares badly to Dark Forces: Jedi Knight.
A RW Game development studio is actually in the cards.
The biggest issue is that the current market for video games is incredibly corrupted that RW game ideas are either going to be left as niche/bare compared to the addicting overstimulation coming from Time-Waster 2, electric boogaloo or they will have to impose their own set of damage in hopes of some greater cultural correction.
Both can be argued for pragmatically, but I dislike the idea of relegating our best as niche or poison. It cannot be the only strategy.
Dave Greene’s Bones idea or the eastern idea of taking a bunch of different poisons and using them to cancel out their negatives would be my personal suggestion.
A lot of thought provoking comments in the post. I'm from one of those older cohorts, Gen X (later Xer, Gen Y cusp, I use Brian Niemeier's taxonomy), so I concur with you on your points about video games. I think a lot of my generation came to accept them as part of an art form, or at least a potential art form, and JRPGs were a big part of that push. The part about family cultural isolation is real - my 9 year old daughter lives in a youth culture environment that my wife and I do our best to curate, stay ahead of, and engage with her on good influences versus bad, but more so about good art versus bad art. The only way I'm finding to genuinely reach her is to invest the time, and time doing slower things, like reading old books together, even poetry, and to stick with it as intentionally and often as possible. Same with music, same with TV, etc. She's not a fan of video games, in some ways that's a relief. I've found the best way I can engage with her, is through faith (we don't skip Mass, period), but also not treating her like she's dumb. I bring that up I guess because I think mutual respect might be the opening salvo needed between generations, based on the inherent dignity of the human person (sorry to get Catholic on everyone). Look, I want to help. My generation has spent too long sulking in the corner listening to The Cure on our Sony Walkman.
There are some intriguing points you've made, namely how the youth has gone into video games simply because games provide them with a sense of agency that they cannot get in real life. However, I think you're laying too much blame at the feet of games -- if it wasn't games, it would be the TV screen; if isn't TV, it would be books, etc. Humanity has always sought solace in such things, and to think as if all of this would simply vanish if games were not there feels rather naive.
I also want to push back on the notion that games as a whole have gotten worse over time. Sure, the big publishers have given into greed and made all kinds of games designed to extract every single cent out of you. However, you still have other companies -- Nintendo, Capcom, Larian Studios, Insomniac, FromSoft, etc. Factor in other things like the rise of indie games, the increasing ease of getting into games, the massive library of games from three to four decades ago, all at your fingertips -- I'd say that there is no better time to get into games.
Finally, I think you're generalizing zoomers too much. Perhaps I'm wrong here, and the statistics are right -- but every time I'm around the young ones, I honestly don't think they're that different compared to us. They mostly behave and act the same way. They still read and are capable of thinking critically. They can watch older movies just fine; in fact, many of them still love them.
Technology aside, I don't really think the world's changed. I just think we have.
Being a millennial, I was severely addicted to video games when I was younger. Nearly all of my free time during my high school years was spent playing Diablo 2. As I got bored with one game, I would move on to another. Eventually, games as a whole stopped being fun and I stopped playing them. You can't just tell young people to stop playing video games because they'll resist you. They'll say something like, "Who do you think you are, my mother?" The only way they'll break free of that digital addiction is by going through what I went through. They will have to realize on their own that they shouldn't waste their time playing video games.
Attention spans are a different matter, though. Young people don't have the patience to read long form content. I openly admit that the reason why my stories are so short is because my attention span is short. We'll just have to adapt and make content that's short, catchy, and to the point. OrthodoxKyle and Redeemed Zoomer are the two examples that immediately come to my mind. Redeemed Zoomer especially has grown rapidly in less than a year. The young people themselves have recognized this problem and have adapted to it accordingly.
I don't know how to properly end this comment, so all I can really say now is that I enjoyed this article.
Totally agree! A big problem in the RW self-publishing sphere, is that everyone is writing 300ish page novels. That’s the OldPub model. We cannot expect young people to sit down and read something so long! Even I have trouble with it!
There is a push by some for PulpRev (Pulp Revival) — to write short fast-paced stories, as was done in the 1930s-40s for magazine print; as you have done, it sounds.
(Here are some great resources for writing that way and the philosophy behind it — ‘The Pulp Mindset’ by JD Cowan, ‘How to Write Pulp Fiction’ by James Scott Bell, and ‘The Lester Dent Master Plot Formula’)
But I still don’t think this is quite enough. It doesn’t quite capture the zeitgeist of our age or the entertainment consumption habits of most people today (not just zoomers).
So why not use a model conducive to the binge-watching habits of today?
Write short stories (20-24 pages with a conclusion) connected with an overarching plot/through-line that itself is concluded after 8-12 stories (call these episodes). Readers can put it down once a short story is finished, but feel incentivized by the through-line to pick it up again and read the next story — rather than feel exhausted at a 300 page story that seems to never end.
This should also all be available on an app so they can read it on their phone in a format they’re comfortable with anywhere they like.
This is what the old pulps and comic books did. They wrote short, exciting stories and made them available in a cheap, common, and easy to transport medium (magazines). We need to adapt that to the modern times — smartphones and apps.
* Now of course, these stories can, and should, be compiled and printed in a book. But that should be secondary and only for committed fans. And those fans have to first be earned in the digital format.
Well done! One of the saving graces of the ongoing collapse will be the art which aligns with Christ.
I totally agree Mr Young. As a Zoomer I don’t have a drivers license, nor really had a proper girlfriend (I’m not kissless/gutless though thanks God!). In fact l, I think if my dad wasn’t a business owner I’d be a total NEET. I totally refuse to work in the rat race for no benefit!!
Thankfully I have something that I can build upon that one day will be mine and a community to live around.
This more than anything else is something we must do on the local level!
Im a tabletop designer and I’m working on RWish content. Hopefully soon I’ll start posting essays about game design. I’m not opposed to vidya, I’d be willing to work on vidyas, but ttrpgs force groups to come together around a table (irl or over virtual space) in a way that can’t be played alone. It requires a small community to play.
The struggle with RW vidya isn’t so much the market is opposed to anything RW, it’s that it won’t appease all the RW groups and so you’ll get infighting over it.
The reality is is that a lack of morals, values, and standards makes you a better consumer. It’s hard to be a creator of who’s anti-consumerist (although that isn’t to say it’s impossible).
Content that has morals and values can easily come off as preachy, which is a criticism of left wing content recently and why it’s been unpopular, so it’s a fine line to walk. If anything to goal should be to create “normal” content (normal=\=normie) but then you run into the derivativeness problem.
This is why we need to make the real world like a video-game i.e. we need to re-establish feudalism.
Thought-provoking essay.
"The video games industry is not the way it is because of corrupt game publishers. It is the way it is because of corrupted consumers."
I would say that it's both. Society is corrupted because of both top-down and bottom-up factors.
"Men need a peer group and a way to earn status amongst that peer group. More than that, men need a clear goal that they want to accomplish. "
I agree. And a goal is more fundamental than status. Status is based on comparisons; if one person has more status, then some other people will have less relative to him. But a goal can be accomplished regardless of what other people do.
I would also distinguish between status and respect. The word "respect" is used in a variety of ways, but what I mean is just the acknowledgement that something or someone has value. If you go back before the twenty-first century, a normal man was valued, not because of comparison to other people, but just because of what he could accomplish. Status is a zero-sum game and inherently comparative, whereas respect is not and is more fundamental. You have to accomplish something before you can start comparing how people do it. Actually, I would say that the diminishing of respect and its replacement with status has been a major negative development in this century.
(I believe you meant both respect and status in the above quote, so this isn't meant to quibble with your language, just to use it as a jumping off point to comment on an issue).
Though video games do become tiresome after a while too (at least for certain kinds of people). I can't speak for the younger cohorts of my generation that have only ever known a world with and through smart devices but I know a decent number of people that have left them behind by now. It's important not to shun people who have fallen into this hole though. Aside from the benefits garnered by playing the right games with the right people, too high a hurdle, given an earnest effort to lead one's life into a positive direction, will detract from the attractiveness of the group.
Reduced attention spans are a real problem though, just like the steadily increasing extent to which devices become mandatory in daily life. From restaurant menus to public transport tickets. Even if shrugging off these digital shackles is an honest goal (as it is for some people I know) it becomes less feasible every day. I think you are very right in recognizing that we create our own evolutionary hurdles. I often think about the short paper "Runaway consumerism explains the Fermi Paradox" by Geoffrey Miller in this context. Sometimes ideas tend to coalesce.
Lastly I want to caution against excessive drive towards total originality. In cultural matters repetition is, in my opinion, essential both for reaching new people and for internal cohesion and clarity. Besides every serious attempt at tackling a topic will include certain new nuances/additions.
Hard agree.
I enjoyed this very much. It was insightful and got my mind whirring on the problem you've described. I'm an ex-gamer, and cannot pretend that I don't often miss it as a more satisfying and romantic place than almost all of the places I traverse "IRL". Basically anywhere that is not family, friends or woodland compares badly to Dark Forces: Jedi Knight.
A RW Game development studio is actually in the cards.
The biggest issue is that the current market for video games is incredibly corrupted that RW game ideas are either going to be left as niche/bare compared to the addicting overstimulation coming from Time-Waster 2, electric boogaloo or they will have to impose their own set of damage in hopes of some greater cultural correction.
Both can be argued for pragmatically, but I dislike the idea of relegating our best as niche or poison. It cannot be the only strategy.
Dave Greene’s Bones idea or the eastern idea of taking a bunch of different poisons and using them to cancel out their negatives would be my personal suggestion.
A lot of thought provoking comments in the post. I'm from one of those older cohorts, Gen X (later Xer, Gen Y cusp, I use Brian Niemeier's taxonomy), so I concur with you on your points about video games. I think a lot of my generation came to accept them as part of an art form, or at least a potential art form, and JRPGs were a big part of that push. The part about family cultural isolation is real - my 9 year old daughter lives in a youth culture environment that my wife and I do our best to curate, stay ahead of, and engage with her on good influences versus bad, but more so about good art versus bad art. The only way I'm finding to genuinely reach her is to invest the time, and time doing slower things, like reading old books together, even poetry, and to stick with it as intentionally and often as possible. Same with music, same with TV, etc. She's not a fan of video games, in some ways that's a relief. I've found the best way I can engage with her, is through faith (we don't skip Mass, period), but also not treating her like she's dumb. I bring that up I guess because I think mutual respect might be the opening salvo needed between generations, based on the inherent dignity of the human person (sorry to get Catholic on everyone). Look, I want to help. My generation has spent too long sulking in the corner listening to The Cure on our Sony Walkman.
There are some intriguing points you've made, namely how the youth has gone into video games simply because games provide them with a sense of agency that they cannot get in real life. However, I think you're laying too much blame at the feet of games -- if it wasn't games, it would be the TV screen; if isn't TV, it would be books, etc. Humanity has always sought solace in such things, and to think as if all of this would simply vanish if games were not there feels rather naive.
I also want to push back on the notion that games as a whole have gotten worse over time. Sure, the big publishers have given into greed and made all kinds of games designed to extract every single cent out of you. However, you still have other companies -- Nintendo, Capcom, Larian Studios, Insomniac, FromSoft, etc. Factor in other things like the rise of indie games, the increasing ease of getting into games, the massive library of games from three to four decades ago, all at your fingertips -- I'd say that there is no better time to get into games.
Finally, I think you're generalizing zoomers too much. Perhaps I'm wrong here, and the statistics are right -- but every time I'm around the young ones, I honestly don't think they're that different compared to us. They mostly behave and act the same way. They still read and are capable of thinking critically. They can watch older movies just fine; in fact, many of them still love them.
Technology aside, I don't really think the world's changed. I just think we have.