The net is full of this generation Y nonsense. If you are in the happy minority who has never encountered this, Tobold summed it up well. The main point is that the generation born after 1982 are different from the 65-81 generation, named generation X, who are competitive and lone wolves.
This nice generation Y is "lot more social oriented (not unlike baby boomers), cooperative, and prefer games that hand out rewards left and right, and are very forgiving."
I see this nonsense spreading and can't see how intelligent people can fall for it. For God's sake, "generation Y" is simply kids and young adults. Of course they are social and forgiving. Want to laugh your ass off? I found an essay that I wrote for a high-school competition for the theme "a new, better world". I wrote about the necessity of basic income, government funded education and health care. I explained why the people with incomes should support those who "are not there yet".
I was a silly kid, what on Earth did you expect from me? It was obvious for me that everyone want and can work after schooling is complete and unemployed can be nothing else than unlucky.
I can't remember a single essay that would support any form of "the person responsible for himself" idea. Actually my essay was a pretty right-wing as basic income, education and health care is available to everyone in the country, while most essays demanded direct social transfers targeted to the poor or to the Africans or whatever.
Then I grow up, so did my classmates. I work as an engineer, hating tax, spending my free time spreading anti-social ideas. Some of my former classmates turned into welfare leeches, most of them are employed and hate welfare leeches. The girl who won the contest and read up her essay between tears (it was about how could we end the famine of Africa by everyone working 2 months/year for free in the lucky countries) is currently the director of a marketing agency and last time we met she was telling how much money she made on the "morons who buy shit just because my ads tell them that they are losers in life otherwise".
We grow up. "Generation Y" will learn that there is no free lunch. One day they will leave the school and find that the prospective employers don't "hand out rewards left and right, and are very forgiving".
And instead of whining, here comes a praising of Blizzard's new anti-social patch 3.3. You no longer need to even talk to the people around you. Just queue up for the instance, the system will assign you groupmembers, you shall only do your job. If someone doesn't does his, he'll be voted out.
This voting out system will be the most anti-social thing that was ever included to a video game, making Darkfall a "hand out rewards left and right, and are very forgiving" game. Being ganked by a single jerk is one thing. Being told by 4 people that "you suck and we want you out" is very different.
Also, the "people from your ignore list will not be in your random group" will be a great tool to blacklist suckers.
Do you think Blizzard has not planned it without careful research? They never made a bad major move. If I'd have to guess, the next generation will be much less social than ours. The "social" motto of the new generation could be: I want people around me. I don't care who they are as long as they serve me well. If they leave, I don't care, someone else will come.
This nice generation Y is "lot more social oriented (not unlike baby boomers), cooperative, and prefer games that hand out rewards left and right, and are very forgiving."
I see this nonsense spreading and can't see how intelligent people can fall for it. For God's sake, "generation Y" is simply kids and young adults. Of course they are social and forgiving. Want to laugh your ass off? I found an essay that I wrote for a high-school competition for the theme "a new, better world". I wrote about the necessity of basic income, government funded education and health care. I explained why the people with incomes should support those who "are not there yet".
I was a silly kid, what on Earth did you expect from me? It was obvious for me that everyone want and can work after schooling is complete and unemployed can be nothing else than unlucky.
I can't remember a single essay that would support any form of "the person responsible for himself" idea. Actually my essay was a pretty right-wing as basic income, education and health care is available to everyone in the country, while most essays demanded direct social transfers targeted to the poor or to the Africans or whatever.
Then I grow up, so did my classmates. I work as an engineer, hating tax, spending my free time spreading anti-social ideas. Some of my former classmates turned into welfare leeches, most of them are employed and hate welfare leeches. The girl who won the contest and read up her essay between tears (it was about how could we end the famine of Africa by everyone working 2 months/year for free in the lucky countries) is currently the director of a marketing agency and last time we met she was telling how much money she made on the "morons who buy shit just because my ads tell them that they are losers in life otherwise".
We grow up. "Generation Y" will learn that there is no free lunch. One day they will leave the school and find that the prospective employers don't "hand out rewards left and right, and are very forgiving".
And instead of whining, here comes a praising of Blizzard's new anti-social patch 3.3. You no longer need to even talk to the people around you. Just queue up for the instance, the system will assign you groupmembers, you shall only do your job. If someone doesn't does his, he'll be voted out.
This voting out system will be the most anti-social thing that was ever included to a video game, making Darkfall a "hand out rewards left and right, and are very forgiving" game. Being ganked by a single jerk is one thing. Being told by 4 people that "you suck and we want you out" is very different.
Also, the "people from your ignore list will not be in your random group" will be a great tool to blacklist suckers.
Do you think Blizzard has not planned it without careful research? They never made a bad major move. If I'd have to guess, the next generation will be much less social than ours. The "social" motto of the new generation could be: I want people around me. I don't care who they are as long as they serve me well. If they leave, I don't care, someone else will come.
33 comments:
It's not about what you can give, but what you can take.
If you can't do the instance and take home your rewards, then giving your all is TOTALLY useless.
The socially popular vote out is also being tied to skill. If you fail, the group decides that you fail. your distinct lack of skill is quickly made to be a social issue.
The next big issue: in the new LFG system, does the person who nominates the failure stay anonymous. For example, will it say "Smeg elects to remove tehpwnwinz from the group, how do you wish to vote" or will it say "tehpwnwinz has been nominated for removal, how do you wish to vote?"
it's going to be great, WoW might actually become good again as the fail is quickly weeded out. I can just see it now "e-strangers dun wun 2 grp wit me! /cancel"
On a side note: definitely real money in flogging stuff to people that they already know/have. in the run up to final exams, I sold pages of "hot exam tips" for a dollar and it's full of tips like "study, read your lecture notes, talk to friends who know the course" etc. etc.
I never thought about it like that, but jeez that is pretty accurate. Considering WoW's tendency to have a high ratio of incompetent to competent players it could devastate the feature or force kids/people to learn their class' roles well enough to perform well.
I'm leaning towards devastating the feature, the ideas of challenge or allowing player self-moderation seem foreign to WoW.
I'm hoping that, following Anon's thoughts above, people will learn to play their classes better after the LFG patch. But then, I'm young and foolish and still have some faith in humanity.
I'm also wondering how many times the media will say to us "the new generation is more social than the old generation" before both generations realize it's not true. But then, it probably won't.
I've never subscribed to the view that since you belong to a certain generation you probably act a certain way. Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y all have their introverts and extroverts.
Trying to leave constructive criticism here; it seems like your blog has drifted WAY off topic. Posts are about elitist jabber and making fun of nubs rather than the auction house insight that we visit your blog for.
Hell, that may be for the better, though, because I'm currently at 88k and rising at around 13k a week since I made hitting the gold cap a goal of mine. But I've been auctioneering since classic wow.
My guess is that people will be too nicey nice to use the vote out feature... "give the poor guy another chance, he's prolly just starting out" when it really should be "boot the tard, he's wiped us three times by pulling before the tank."
Unless it's for four guildies to vote out one random right after the "reins of the extremely rare vanity mount" drop, but before the roll.
"This voting out system will be the most anti-social thing that was ever included to a video game"
Kick-vote systems are not uncommon in FPS games. But then again, compared to (competitive) FPS games, Darkfall does hand out rewards left and right and is very forgiving, so, I guess, you statement still somewhat stands.
You illustrate perfectly how somehow most of us go from being idealistic children with "save the whole world" ideas to desillusionned adults with "as long as I get my fair share" ideas.
A teacher of mine once said that communism is the perfect form of society as long as all people in it are communists (which people aren't, they are capitalists and want maximum profit with minimum effort)
People always try to romanticize the "next generation" idea, like it's a new gift to the world that's going to change everything. It's the same dumb nonsense as astrology. As if a group of kids born in a certain time period has been given specific characteristics. If that were true, wouldn't we skip generations where there are no bankers, or doctors, or animal activists, etc. No, we don't. Every "generation" produces the same crap as the previous one, they're only presented with different possibilities: caused by progress created by the older generation.
If I've had a cellphone, or internet (with IM) when I was a kid, I would probably also have focused more on social possibilities of games. Back then we had to mail our software by regular mail, modems were no option, they were slow as hell. The only way you could play a game with more then one player was to have 2 joysticks and a free seat.
Anyway, like you said: it's kids and they're more social. This reminds me of a quote:
“If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.” - Winston Churchill
The man figured it out in his era, but logic is of course never an option for the dreamers.
Wooly was pretty spot on in just about all of his post.
I do however have one issue with your statement.
I think that the entire point of referring to each generation as a different species(X,Y and Z) doesn not necessarily refer to the infants characteristics at their birth but more so to their possibilities while growing up. Generation X did not have easy access to internet, IM, cellphones etcetera, and played the majority of their games by themselves the product was "X". I grew up(I'm from 1987) right in the middle of cellphones being available to everyone, games being more social and all the other things you seem to be relating to Generation Y.
Yet I still don't feel like I'm really a "Y". the first half of my youth was spent with no internet, and when ISDN finally got introduced in Denmark we didn't use it for gaming. It wasn't untill the beginning of the new millenium(99-01) that "social" gaming really started.
I wonder what would happen if there was an over 30 WoW server?
How do you think it would affect the server economy and game play?
Clint Hocking's conclusions were all derived from the study of videogames *created* by different generational groups.
His other generalisations about the groups (their experiences as sculpted by world events - WW2, Cold War etc) were interesting but not the main point of the lecture.
If _you_ were correct the games developed by different age groups would be the same, as most devs are (and have always been) young males aged 16-40 or so. There would be no significant punishment/reward difference between a game made in 1980 and 2009 because *all* young people are social, lazy, etc.
His point is that games ARE significantly different today because gamers want easier challenges, more rewards, more co-operative experiences and less competitive ones. The evidence bears his conclusions out as they relate to game development.
It's not about a generation difference, it's about environment and upbringing. The gen x that the video tobold watched is talking about were raised by their mothers, with no real father figure. Their a bunch of wusses who can't fight, but want to.
They want to be the bad ass, the lone wolf.
The social people that the video attributes to gen y, is actually the millenium generation. The ones being born right now, are going to be the social people.
Gen Y is a bunch of people raised like gen x, but who want to be social, but have to take their meds to be able to handle "other" people.
Like I said, it's not because of the generation or the time they are born, it's because of the social environment they are born into.
Even Gevlon must admit that his social envirnment influenced him to be who he is.
umm. I don't think you realize the impact the millennium generation and the internet has had on gen y.
Take a management class you find out quickly if you have a gen y in your group.
I'm a sterotypical gen x, gen y are almost as annyoning as the baby boomers are. Its like 2 extremes in leadership style.
gen y is too collaborative, and the boomers are too athoritative.
And us gen xers don't trust.
@Lite
I don't really think we're disagreeing, unless I'm missing your point. It was more or less my point that we're no different per generation. The difference lies in the options we are given.
That fact that you don't feel like you belong to a certain generation, as defined by some people as "Y", just proves that there is not really such a thing. It's the looking at the actions of your generation as a whole (so on average) that might give the impression of a characteristics that are specific to them, but to me that's just a plain product of progress. People, and especially the young, are likely to follow the latest developments, and turning it into a trend if they like it.
Older generations see these differences compared to their youth and just feel the need to label it. It's the natural habit of people to label as much as they can, because then you can apply rules to it, and that just makes life easier to understand/handle. But in this case, as with many, they're just fooling themselves again. Because making these generalizations is nothing different then generating prejudices: you belong to group defined by rules X so we expect Y from you and treat you like that, while feeling justified to do so.
a) Generations are not only referring to WHEN they were born but also to WHERE they were born... Frankly, I'm born in the time interval u assigned for the Generation Y and I am so fucking antisocial I even scare myself sometimes.
b) As some posters said here, the events you have lived influence your personality. Therefore there should be common traits for people who lived in the same context.
c) I do believe Gevlon has a point when saying that the young generation hasnt yet known the difficulties of life. Any idealist loses a part of his enthusiasm when confrunted with reality.
d) How old are you Gevlon?
"The only way you could play a game with more then one player was to have 2 joysticks and a free seat."
i'n my day the only way to play with more then one player was to play one "flipper" each.
Wow gevlon, you know your blog is always good to read to. see how I used to think. Before I started to actually critically analyze the world around me. You seem to think that the best option available is to just follow the flow of society (move from liberal as a child to conservative as an adult) and the political parties support this division. However this leads to an unending cycle where you are in the same strata as you parents. The conservative right has damned themselves to extinction. If you don't cater to entice the new voters they become entrenched in their voting habits. This is one of the major reasons the Republicans are having issues in the states.
I think I've gotten away from my major points. If you're right and the world is becoming more anti-social, then we will see major changes in the strata that exists within WoW (for instance). However, I predict that we'll see no change that it will be very rare to have someone voted out (about as rare as it is now for the group leader to kick someone).
I do think it will help relieve some of your anti-social anxiety (which I find hilarious as ASPD has no feelings of anxiety) in that if you think someone's not pulling their weight you can vote to kick them. I don't think you'll get most of the kicks you vote for(assuming it's completely a PUG and thatyou have no prior SOCIAL relationship with the persons involved) and that you'll only get the vote-kicks that occur when the group cannot complete a dungeon (even carrying a member or two).
A good example would be my tank, a guildie healer and a friend dps carrying 2 other dps though timed h cos. We all knew the other 2 weren't carrying their weight. But it wasn't anywhere near the point of "we can't do this," and so we did it and the dk that did less dps than my tank got the Drake. I didn't care, as I (the healer and the good dps) had the Drake since before naxx was on farm. So did I loose anything by carrying them? Maybe a touch of time, but I would have lost more by replacing them(the badge from the infinite corrupter).
P.S. sorry about the book, but I am bored in organic chemistry.
Are generations used for anything other than as marketing tool to target age groups with specific characteristics?
i wish blizzard adds a function in which if one person get's voted out of a group he becomes black listed and can't pug anymore that would be amazing
I honestly have to say I agree with you 100% here Gev.
Personally I remember being 21 very well; I had a well paying job I was lucky to find. I worked very hard there to build my reputation and eventually ended up in a position that allowed me to hire some friends.
That backfired on my over the course of a few jobs as I watched my friends turn into leeches and slackers in jobs I had been kind enough to provide for them. My reputation and career suffered because I wanted to help out my friends.
As a 31 year old I tend to only keep people around me that I feel can pull their own weight in life.
After the Gen Y kids spent 10 years in the real world that feeling of "share the love" will probably die out in the majority of these people since they'll actually have negative experiences with M&S. I had to work very hard to rebuild the damage done to my career by hiring friends that turned into leeches.
Its pretty simple, like you said, generation "y" is more social because they're generally younger and have not faced much of the real world.
We'll see if they're so kind and caring in 10 years when they have kids, mortgages, etc.
@last Anonymous
Believe me, the voting mechanism doesn't have to be a blessing. If you've played games like left4dead, which has exactly that mechanism, you'll know that there's a good chance it will support idiots more then good players.
You know why?
Because idiots are in the majority, and voting is democracy.
You wouldn't believe how often people vote "yes" when a vote is cast. Most people think that those voterequests are "legit", that it's always the good guys getting rid of the bad guys. Also, saying No means having a bit of backbone, even when it's anonymous, people act instinctively way to often, and believe the one with the big mouth. Besides, yes is just easy, just say yes, no drama, no need to explain yourself. And the painful reality is that it's usually assholes starting the votes on good players. And there are plenty of reasons. Just some examples:
1. Similar gear type/class: could be a risk to getting loot.
2. Mr. Know it all thinks he knows the tactics best, and casts vote to get rid of whoever dares to oppose.
3. Mr. Healer blamer, who thinks that he should be able stand in the green stuff whenever he feels like it, and that's not his fault when he dies.
4. Miss. Shitty tank that can't hold aggro and blames the good dps for grabbing aggro, or low dps, or the healer for not being able to keep his pve geared ass alive.
5. A random dick for the fun of it. They're from different servers, why care, let's have fun and piss people off. Just think how much fun he'll have when he knows the person will be blacklisted because of that. He'll piss his pants.
Ok, I can go on for a while, but I hope the idea gets across. Better prepare yourself to be votekicked by morons a few times. It's way to easy with people you'll never see again anyway.
I saw this coming, Blizz is moving to a two-tier caste system of gameplay: the casuals and the elites. This is a good thing imo, it keeps them separated. Icecrown with it's 20% reduction to tank avoidance will mostly weed out the bad tanks, and badge instance drop changes will keep casuals happy. Blizz finally saw the popular tagline: "it might be YOUR $15 but it is OUR $60 and we say you suck!"
What Wooly says is true.
I'm afraid that the new vote-kick feature will see a LOT of misuse.
Actually Gevlon, there's a bit of strange truth to the generations issue.
To give you a personal example, I was born in Jan, 1981 and I've personally seem a really strange difference between my graduating class and the next couple years after it. Whether this is something that was burned into them due to changes in the school system, or some major change in the social climate at the time, a lot of the people only a few years younger than me have a humongous sense of entitlement. They feel they shouldn't have to work to be compensated, they feel that there's such a thing as 'good enough'.
To give you an idea how I identify with this, I've worked a few years in the hotel industry as an audit, and worked as upper management for a large company... People younger than me have this sense that they can come to work, put in the minimum amount of effort possible, and go home. People in my generation (as a pretty broad generalization) and people a few years older than me feel that we should do the best job possible. If there's something wrong with how we're working, or there's a more efficient method, we'll try to learn and change to adapt. If someone isn't doing their job many of us feel its unjust.
I'm usually a pretty serious skeptic of bullshit ideas, but this isn't a large gap, only a year or two seems to make a HUGE difference in how these two "generations" carry themselves.
Let's be blunt: the whole GenX/Y thing is a bunch of crap. The boomers, who have annointed themselves the best of all because they went to Woodstock before selling out for as much as possible, decided to label their children a bunch of lazy slackers who would never amount to anything. They didn't 'get' what we were doing for days on end in front of our computers. We mostly went on to become wealthier and more successful than our parents, not to mention the multiple degrees, workaholism, etc. Yeah, I'm bitter. Whatever.
Then our kids come along and they are the new hope, just a wonderful crowd of social creatures who collaborate, etc. Or rather, are a bunch of spolied brats who have always gotten whatever they wanted.
In any case, it's crap! We make of the world what we can, and having our parents, or the media, or whoever try to typecast us because they are too stupid to think is offensive.
We all pigeonhole people in one way or another, but doing so to an entire generation is ridiculous. But I suppose there are lots of hacks who wouldn't have jobs if they couldn't write books and go on Oprah to talk about some crap they just made up, all to be consumed by small brained people with nothing better to do.
Snarl.
Just compare what was considered conservative in 1960 to what is conservative in 2010.
To be a lifetime liberal you must be one of 2 things wealthy or poor.
the 60-somethings to 80-somethings are the baby Boomers not Gen X.
Sorry, baby boomers were the generation born after World War II - 1946 to 1965. Generation X is the generation after that - mid-60s to early 80s.
"It was obvious for me that everyone want and can work after schooling is complete and unemployed can be nothing else than unlucky."
I know that this may be way off-topic, but I can't help myself asking.
The reason welfares is there is because the numbers of jobs available are always lower than the population, someone will be unemployed, always, even in the perfect world that everyone has the same level of skill and intelligence (in the case, the perfect scenario would be that everyone work for a while, then be unemployed for a while and so on). In real world, however, there are difference in skill between everyone, so someone will have to be unemployed permanently (or a very long time). So from one's POV, an unemployed guy could have the same skill as the employed guy, and just being unemployed because the job slots is full, he doesn't have to choose.
But .. wait, you always have a choice, right? Also, why would I care about them, it wont affect me by any chance! So, let's remove welfares. These people will have to make a choice: either to get more skill (which is hardly possible), or, to become thief, smuggler, or Somalian pirate. So, does that affect employed people ? It does. Now, let's say 90% of the population are employed (90% is a made up numbers, I dont know the exact one), even if all the remaining 10% become thief, it wouldnt affect too much. However, as the population continue to increase, and the jobs available continue to decrease, thank to automation, there will be someday, says 50% of the population is unemployed and have to become thief, it will affect the employd people. I can't imagine living in a world that half my neighbors trying to break into my house everynight.
It would be great to see what do you think about it. (I could have missed a post of you explaining about it though, in which case I'd glad to see a link for it).
PS: I could even go further and say that they (the unskilled) don't have a choice because one can't choose the level of intelligence and education that one got.
1) I really saw this change happen with my wife; when we first started dating she was still in college and was pretty liberal; she thought the government should provide cars and houses and all that crap. Now that she's been working and holding a job, she hates the welfare leeches. :)
2) Jeanie, if 50% of my neighbors tried to rob my house each night, I would have 50% less neighbors, and would be giving some business to the guns & ammo industry.
Hmm, are u a libertarian?
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