Gamers, what's wrong with this line?

[joy_of_cooking]

Now here he was, totally burned out by two years of absolute hell, playing <em>WoW</em> and <em>LoL</em> and fucking <em>Minecraft</em> sixteen hours a day instead of making big bucks working the job of his dreams he'd already been hired to do.

The comment I got here was, "As a gamer, this list of games seems off to me."

I'm unfortunately not a gamer, so I'm curious what others think.

For context, this character is supposed to be very smart and hard-working, but also completely burned out. Probably what would appeal to him is a game that rewards enormous time investment, so he can justify how much he's playing it, and also has enough strategy to it to remain engaging that long.

@TheRedChamber

 

[mrs_mackenzie]

In the UK, at least, Minecraft seems to mostly appeal to children and it's marketed that way. I might be wrong, but the other two seem to be "serious" games for adults. Do you think that's it?

 

[SalaciousMonkey22]

I’m not a gamer but I watch a lot on twitch, not sure what their issue is. The closest I could guess is that for the hardcore these are lifestyle games, you probably only play one of them. A LOT. Not dabble in all three. Also WoW might be a bit old. But in Fortnite or Apex Legends or COD maybe?

 

[Erozetta]

Only thing I can see is many gamers who play one of those is likely too involved in it to pick up the others. They could easily devote 16 hours a day to just one of those games.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

The comment I got here was, "As a gamer, this list of games seems off to me."

I'm unfortunately not a gamer, so I'm curious what others think.

For context, this character is supposed to be very smart and hard-working, but also completely burned out. Probably what would appeal to him is a game that rewards enormous time investment, so he can justify how much he's playing it, and also has enough strategy to it to remain engaging that long.

@TheRedChamber

All three are very different kinds of games. Minecraft is mostly for children and teenagers, WoW is old as fuck, and LOL is also something that's usually played by teenagers and young adults. Assuming we are talking about someone 20+ here, some other games would be more likely in general, although Minecraft is the only one really out of place. Also, as @Erozetta said, someone who is obsessive about playing games is likelier to be obsessive about just one or two games. I can vouch for that one-game obsession from my late high school, early uni days

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Yeah, this guy's 22, fresh out of a demanding engineering program, has the fancy chair and the blinky keyboard. What do people like that play? Factorio?

 

[Erozetta]

Minecraft isn't out of place for me, it was the "I need a break from the bullshit," game, but husband and I hosted our own server for it, so no one could fuck up our shit. We just liked building things to relax and it was a Sims replacement because I didn't want to have to go back through the exchange to download all of my favorite stuff again/see what still works/check for updates on broken shit.

Still, splitting time between multiple MMOs means you're never truly putting your all into the characters and there are some hardcore guilds that will kick you if you don't seem devoted enough to optimizing your character with them/aren't focused on perfecting your gameplay.

LoL and WoW have some different mechanics in play and that can cause critical mistakes in raids and such. Both are games where you have to be on the ball and not fucking with switching up gameplay too much or you could fuck everything up for everyone else, not just yourself. Those gamers take it seriously. I did not last because I just don't give a shit about making the most overpowered God character that can smite everything in its path. I create characters and roleplay that character.

Different game, but in City of Heroes, I had a character pair with my husband that we called Pouncy Pirates. We sucked in fights, but we had bunny ears and hopped everywhere. No running allowed, we could only jump to destinations. Another pair was a mechanic and a robot. I had macro commands as the mechanic, husband played the robot and followed the commands. That's the kind of gaming I did. We built characters and played characters. Optimizing stats took all of the fun out of it for me

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Yeah, this guy's 22, fresh out of a demanding engineering program, has the fancy chair and the blinky keyboard. What do people like that play? Factorio?

Elden Ring could be a good guess.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Games with legs that long. GTAV Online, WoW works but ESO/SkyRim might be more current. I personally played SWToR all the way through eight times and then played some of the character classes once or twice more, so there's that.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

Yeah, this guy's 22, fresh out of a demanding engineering program, has the fancy chair and the blinky keyboard. What do people like that play? Factorio?

Satisfactory is the current hit for engineering minded gamers I think.

 

[TheRedChamber]

People above have mostly hit on what I was thinking (I offered to expound more when I did the feedback, but was reaching the end and didn't want to write an essay on it unless it was strictly necessary). Different styles of games, rather than obsessing over one. They're also generally social/multiplayer games which rubs up slightly with the character being a loners (slightly). The character is also portrayed as being someone who pushes themselves - the person saying Elden Ring (or Dark Souls generally) is echoing what I'm thinking but that's me trying to force my will onto the character (my turn in the chain story is coming up...)

 

[Otto26]

If you want just one game that can suck away all his time I suggest Eve Online.

 

[TheLobster]

Satisfactory is the current hit for engineering minded gamers I think.

Dyson Sphere Program is popular, too.

The comment I got here was, "As a gamer, this list of games seems off to me."

It is, but there is also a bigger problem there. You are basically working off of a somewhat outdated stereotype, that there are still scores of young (early 20s) people whose life had been consumed by video games.

While it had been somewhat true a decade or two ago, with WoW being the main culprit, this stereotype of an asocial basement dweller is much less accurate today. The main genre which facilitated this kind of degenerate behavior -- MMORPGs -- are currently way past their heyday. World of Warcraft in particular is no longer a game that's played by many young people (around your character's age), and those who do devote unhealthy amount of time into it are an extremely small minority. They are all in premier guilds who have at least a theoretical chance at competing in world-first races whenever a new raid is released, and for many of them this is actually a sort of day job, or at least a part thereof (since many of them are Twitch streamers). Outside of this small Mythic raiding community, WoW has become a rather casual game; there is no longer any pressure to spend inordinate number of hours on it because the character's progress is soft-reset every two or three months whenever a new patch with a catch-up mechanic drops.

For context, this character is supposed to be very smart and hard-working, but also completely burned out. Probably what would appeal to him is a game that rewards enormous time investment, so he can justify how much he's playing it, and also has enough strategy to it to remain engaging that long.

Notwithstanding the above, if you want to use a time-consuming video game as a narrative device, to portray this character as having a depressive episode that lasts a few months or so, there are of course some options. Other posters mentioned good candidates in the form of building/simulation games (Factorio, etc.) which greatly appear to all kinds of engineering-oriented minds. It is technically possible to play those games at your own pace, as there is no external social pressure to put in more time like in MMOs, but it's quite easy to get sucked into them regardless.

But if you want something that is both heavy in various kinds of mechanics that a STEM-oriented brain would enjoy solving and rewards investing a ton of time into playing the game itself, the action RPG genre ("Diablo clones") is probably your best bet. I'm thinking mostly about Path of Exile and to a lesser extent Last Epoch. I actually have a few references to the former in one of my stories, and it is precisely to portray one of the minor characters as a stereotypical basement dwelling nerd without making it too obvious. I think it might work in your case, because it's the type of games that can literally be played forever and always feel a sense of progression, even if most people do burn out on them after a few weeks and then drop them for several months (until a new league/season/ladder starts).

 

[TheLobster]

I realized that in my previous post, I dropped a ton of miscellaneous info without any discernible advice, so here's an abridged summary of sorts.

I'd say you have two options.

First, reword your passage to something like this:

Now here he was, totally burned out by two years of absolute hell, playing Factorio all day or pulling off unhealthy all-nighters whenever new league started in Path of Exile, instead of making big bucks working the job of his dreams he'd already been hired to do.

If the reader recognizes those names, you will get a hearty chuckle from him. (Tangentially: do we italicize video game titles? On one hand it'd be consistent with books and movies; on the other hand, would you italicize "knitting" or "gardening"?)

The second option is to mention just WoW and be done with it. This is a site for boomers, by boomers, so you are probably better off trying to square your stories with their hazy memories of the 80s and 90s rather than what the world is actually like these days

 

[Erozetta]

Honestly, the most popular games right now with 20-year-olds would probably be either Genshin Impact or Honkai: Star Rail but neither of those have a truly MMO base game play if that was crucial to the story. They can, however, be played on phones, so appeal to a younger demographic, and they thrive on in-app purchases, so they can sucker you in to feeling like you have to devote more and more time and money into it.

 

[Devinter]

The comment I got here was, "As a gamer, this list of games seems off to me."

I'm unfortunately not a gamer, so I'm curious what others think.

For context, this character is supposed to be very smart and hard-working, but also completely burned out. Probably what would appeal to him is a game that rewards enormous time investment, so he can justify how much he's playing it, and also has enough strategy to it to remain engaging that long.

@TheRedChamber

If this is referring to the character of Zach from our Chain Story, I did drop some line about "Levelling up his Warlock" in the previous part, implying that he was playing some kind of MMORPG like World of Warcraft, or some kind of D&D'esque game. However, it was left intentionally vague, and it was his friend - not confirmed to be as hardcore of a gamer - that dropped the comment, so the accuracy of the line is even debatable.

That being said, I agree that the titles feel a bit dated. Do many people still play all three of the games mentioned? Absolutely. But they're a bit past their prime, and they do feel quite casual - though of course there's still people who take League of Legends and World of Warcraft far too seriously even today, pushing the ranks or attempting to do "world first boss kills".

Excellent suggestions in this thread, in my personal opinion, has been Elden Ring, Factorio, Satisfactory, and perhaps especially Path of Exile. Whenever a new update and "competitive league" for PoE comes out, I have friends that take a week off of work, change their sleeping schedule so they wake up just as the server goes live, and plays for 20+ hours straight during the launch day.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

You could always just make up a game title.

That said the top 2 MMPORGs in 2024 are supposedly WoW and Final Fantasy 14.

https://www.gamesradar.com/best-mmorpg/

WoW has just short of half a million daily players.
https://mmo-population.com/r/wow

 

[mrs_mackenzie]

You could always just make up a game title.

That said the top 2 MMPORGs in 2024 are supposedly WoW and Final Fantasy 14.

https://www.gamesradar.com/best-mmorpg/

WoW has just short of half a million daily players.
https://mmo-population.com/r/wow

Plus, making one up means you can customise it if necessary and don't need to worry about consistency/pedantic reader comments about accuracy.

 

[bumpercars]

I'd agree that these are games with very different vibes, some more conducive to burnout than others.

-WOW is as old as your character, and nostalgia is a big part of keeping it afloat. A young character could burn out on it, but it'd be an unusual choice. Strategy is necessary for some dungeons and endgame content, but people mostly don't play it for the strategic challenge.

-LOL is hypercompetitive and reputedly has a very toxic player base. I could see someone burning out on it. There's a fair bit of strategy involved, I think.

-Minecraft is very chill and creative. It'd be hard to burn out on it unless you're in a weird online community. Here, too, strategy is only necessary if you're playing specialist games or mini games - otherwise it's more akin to a Lego set with a few sharp edges.

I suppose the bottom line here is that almost all of us writers will hit situations where our readers know more than we do about a specific area, and that's okay. We can do lots of research to get every detail right, we can wing it, or we can go somewhere in the middle.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Hey everyone, thanks for the advice. I'm going to go with @mrs_mackenzie 's suggestion (and example, in the first chapter of this chain story) and make up some names.

Now here he was, totally burned out by two years of absolute hell. He could be making big bucks working the job of his dreams. He'd already been hired. Instead, he was playing Means of Production all day and pulling all-nighters every time a new league started in Torment Nexus.