WHY people play video games

why /frog/? Why pay for virtual experience that drains your nerves and health? Its like paying to be jailed at your computer and mining gold, except you do it for "fun".
What makes the games so attractive?

Go back to /v/.

1. Fame
people want to be famous, and the game is an easy path to the spotlights of virtual community and social approval/disapproval.
2. Skills
People believe their game skills translate to some real world benefit or train their mind to be sharper/faster.
3. Virtual property/scores/rewards
people want to have material values, even in virtual worlds. Having some numbers in their account and boosting them is easier than completing real tasks or creating any property.
4. Social bonding
clans, groups, chatting with people and finding a companion in game is often much easier than real life

 When you write a game you have to provide outlets for all of these desires, unless you want the game to be forgotten in the seas of competitors who understand the audience better.

Don't you like fun?

>>4
fun doesn't exist, its an emotional response to rewards in >>3 and not to the game process itself(which is more work-like)
Its not much different from learning a new trick and having satisfaction that you unique enough to know the skill required for the process which soon becomes routine(until you learn the next trick).

>>4
Scheme took all defun out of Lisp!

>>5
So why do you hate fun?

>>5
You have born an adult or what?

>>7
>>8
funmind

Some games are boring, but there are enough fun ones.
The question should be why do we enjoy all kinds of entertainment media. It's either because they tick our reward system in a funny way (or neural structures connected to it), and in more general, we humans (at least I, I can't speak for everyone) enjoy and seek new experiences (curiosity) and various forms of entertainment can feel some of those desires, but unfortunately they can become boring (predictable) and are no longer capable of capturing our attention ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention ), especially if the authors are not being original enough.

I can say for certain most things listed in >>3 are not why I enjoy various forms of entertainment (some including video games), but they may be why some people play MMORPGS (which I find a terrible waste of time, although a handful are better than the others and are tuned enough that someone can still find it 'fun' enough to play (it's still engaging mentally, this can usually only attained by making the game about direct player interaction (simplest would be PvP games, but they shouldn't be about items or grinding, instead should be focused on skill and mental activity - the same reason chess is still popular today))).

Games exists only to provide a consistent hardware benchmarks for general performance needs.

>>10
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism

>>12
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidacticism

>>13
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidacticism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-erotic_asphyxiation

>>14
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-erotic_asphyxiation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_sexual_behaviour#Necrophilia

Go back to reddit you fucking unfunny idiots.

>>16
Reddit is shit.

>>11
I don't really see how video games help you benchmark 'general performance', because last time I checked 'general performance' was google, news and facebook.

>>18
And you can do google, http news and facebook, within the Scheme interpreter of a self built MHz machine with a TCP/IP stack.

>>19
I know, right?
The fun part is that people are buying GHz machines to do this. And it's not only computers - it's mobile phones too. Why the fuck would you need a mobile phone with more than a single fucking core? Phones are for calling not for calculating <insert math heavy calculation here>.

Ok, you know, I know, if anyone doesn't know, let him know.
I also believe that computers are for crunching numbers, proving theorems, and such. It should not have been a mass consumption product, to begin with. I can't tell how sad I feel when I see a computer in some Joe's hands.

>>18-20
Actually, browsing the so-called ``Web 2.0'' puts a rather heavy load onto the computer, thanks to pointless ECMAScript, bloated browsers, and non-tiled background pictures.

>>22
So true