What was a profound moment that a video game caused you to experience, and why?

The moment that inspired this question:

A long time ago I was playing an MMO called Voyage of the Century Online. A major part of the game was sailing around on a galleon ship and having naval battles in the 1600s.

The game basically allowed you to sail around all of the oceans of the 1600s world and explore. The game was populated with a lot of NPC ships that you could raid and pick up its cargo for loot.

One time, I was sailing around the western coast of Africa and I came across some slavers. This was shocking to me at the time, and I was like “oh, I’m gonna fuck these racist slavers up!”

I proceed to engage the slave ship in battle and win. As I approach the wreckage, I’m bummed out because there wasn’t any loot. Like every ship up until this point had at least some spare cannon balls or treasure, but this one had nothing.

… then it hit me. A slave ship’s cargo would be… people. I sunk this ship and the reason there wasn’t any loot was because I killed the cargo. I felt so bad.

I just sat there for a little while and felt guilty, but I always appreciated that the developers included that detail so I could be humbled in my own self-righteousness. Not all issues can be solved with force.

jwagner7813,

To the Moon.

It’s a short story that’s made into a game. The gameplay piece of it is minimal, but it’s all about the story. I can’t say too much about it buts it’s an absolutely beautiful story with SNES style graphics that reminds me of the movie Arrival.

Had me speechless… Didnt know how to exist for a few after…

Omega_Haxors, (edited )

We all learned life lessons playing Runescape. OK, that one’s a cop out. For me it was Stardew Valley. I completed the game doing the JoJa route and at the end you can use automation to do everything for you. I was just playing the game like I did up to that point, optimizing for maximum efficiency. After setting up a huge plantation of starfruits and junimo huts to harvest them for me after a few harvests of complaining about their dumb AI and other petty things, I had a realization. Oh my god. I was literally going through the exact same thought patterns that actual slavers went through.

oops! I did a slavery in Stardew Valley

Game has never really sit right with me ever since. Game developers, please consider the messages your sending through your mechanics. I don’t mind having little munchkins to help harvest materials for the farm but for the love of god please have them cost a lot to upkeep. I would mod a cost of 100% of the value of the materials harvested because it really isn’t about the money I just need to keep the wine casks full.

Gbagginsthe3rd,

Probably different to most people but I remember the first year of Uni summer holidays I spent playing Fable 3… which ended up being the entire 3mth holiday. I realised in real terms I just moved from one part of the cd to another and hadn’t accomplished anything else with my life in that time, no hobbies, friends or shared experiences.

I packed up my Xbox and refused to play another game for about 10yrs. Now I have a much better balance with games and my life

RagnarokOnline,

moved from one part of the cd to another

Damn. That wisdom hits me a little too hard. Thanks for sharing!

SuddenlyBlowGreen,

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain.

The quarantine mission.

I didn’t have it spolied, and I got really attached to my men.

The beginning was bad enough, but when they started saluting…

Also, Red Dead Redemtion 2, the ending. Man, that sunrise was beautiful…

(If you liked the vibe of RDR2, check out these two songs by the incredible Gavin Dunne.)

TheBlackSwordsman,

The entirety of the last of us parts one and two

HexesofVexes,

I think it was playing Golden Sun 2, when it is revealed that the world is slowly ending and that Saturas and Menardi were trying to save it.

It made me realise that real villains are just people doing what they believe to be right, whose priorities are different than your own. We’re all trying to live a “good” life in the end, and a lot of things are more easily forgiven in that light, but that doesn’t mean we’ll all get along either, because we’re all the villain in someone’s story!

Gestrid,

For me, that moment was in Kingdom Hearts 2. I hadn’t played the first game (or the second game) and didn’t really understand the concept of sequels that continued a story. My parents had gotten me the game probably because it had Disney characters in it. But this moment stuck with me nonetheless.

It was the game’s first boss fight, the Twilight Thorn. Everything leading up to it and the fight itself was just utter cinematography to my young eyes. I wasn’t even able to actually beat the fight (and I was the older brother, so I didn’t have anyone to help). But it stuck with me for years. I ended up getting a PS4, the first console I bought with my own money, for the sole reason of playing the Kingdom Hearts collections.

Scary_le_Poo,
@Scary_le_Poo@beehaw.org avatar

Stray. Honestly the entire game.

I am a cat dad to 3 cats and I rescue anywhere from 1 - 5 alley cats every year. I take them in, clean them up, get them spay/neuter and their vaccines and find them homes.

That game captures cats so incredibly well. The entire game was a pleasure, but there are a few moments that stick out to me.

Spoilers

At the beginning when he falls and is separated from his friends.

The way that the guardians react to him.

The desperation of being so incredibly close to freeing them and so nearly being thwarted.

But most of all, when his friend dies and when the ceiling opens.

And last but not least, at the very end he sniffs the air and smells his friends.

So some god amongst men on YouTube did the painstaking work of figuring out where stray fell, and where he exited and found that stray exited only a 20 second walk from where his home was, and towards his home is the direction he took at the end (but the game doesn’t tell you this).

That game was the most wonderful and amazing experience I have had in a game since I can remember. I cannot recommend it enough.

Scary_le_Poo,
@Scary_le_Poo@beehaw.org avatar

I can’t seem to edit my comment, but I am eternally grateful that I recorded the entire playthrough for myself.

There is very little of me wandering around pointlessly, which is really nice.

twitch.tv/videos/1889711712

ianovic69,
@ianovic69@feddit.uk avatar

This is a great question, lots of interesting replies.

There’s so many points for me that were also turning points for gaming. Watching the pixels move on the TV because they were being told to by the console, from the original Pong, to Atari 2600 Space Invaders, were all events that left an impression. Playing a Williams licenced Defender on an Atari 400, and Donkey Kong.

I grew up with all this, it was part of my childhood.

Then, one day, some friends got a Playstation, the original. I went round and they were playing Die Hard. They had the gun controller that came with it. I watched for a bit and I couldn’t keep up, things happening so quickly it looked so intense and sort of real. It was fascinating but also terrifying.

Then it was my turn, I said no it’s not for me I can’t do that. Go on they said and pushed the gun at me. Alright, but I’ll be shit.

Some time passed and I found myself moving through an airport, my friends barking as each baddie appeared and going silent as I popped them and moved on. Slick, efficient, deadly.

I stopped and held the gun loosely, they turned protesting in dismay. I was shaking and sweating, I couldn’t go on. Something changed that day, I knew games were different now. There was no going back, from now on I would always be a First Person Shooter.

Lettuceeatlettuce,
@Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml avatar

Two come to mind. The first was when I was about 6 years old and walked in on my older brother playing Sim City 2000 on our family computer. It was the first time I had seen a video game of any kind. Before that, I thought computers were just boring machines for doing adult work. Seeing him playing a game on there changed my life, I’ve been a PC gamer ever since.

The second was when I beat Super Mario Bros on GameBoy. It was the first game I’ve ever beat fully and it was an incredible feeling. Took me almost a year to do, incredible grind at that age.

Devi,

I had that feeling when I beat snake, it took me so long and when I did it I was both ecstatic and devestated.

griD,

There was nothing quite as intense as a ServerSmash in Planetside 2. Which means ~800 people doing joint ops on a single map and everything is highly coordinated.
I think blob fights in EVE are even larger, but this was a first person shooter and also rather arcadey, not a thousand spreadsheets fighting at a server tick rate of 1 ^^

Parellius,

God, Planetside and Planetside 2 in their prime were my absolute jam. I was a reasonably active participant in an outfit called Libertas de Dominitas on Werner and even went to an outfit meetup in Manchester. There’s never been anything else that quite comes close to Planetside.

CarbonScored, (edited )
@CarbonScored@hexbear.net avatar

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura still remains my favourite to this day.

The world’s setting is centred around how capitalism and industry affects society, how it pushed aside feudalism, how racism remains endemic and easily seen as normal, how history is swept away to hide attitudes, all sorts of complex things. Early on in the story, you get involved with a strike by exploited half-orcs and the wealthy factory owner who would rather they all died. Thinking back, it was a big part of how young me started to realise industrial relations are fucked up in capitalism.

One moment (of the many cool things) that really hit me, is that there’s an entire sub-plot across the whole continent that’s never explicitly mentioned, but is entirely noticeable if you actually pay attention and listen, not to the quest-givers or the industrial leaders, but to the servants of the powerful men you meet. If you’re lucky, near the end, you suddenly realise you just… swept all these weird characters and remarks under the rug as you had ‘important’ people to talk to. I had relegated servants and whole in-game races to an ‘unimportant’ role, when actually their stories are key to a whole second sub-plot of their own that affects everything in the world.

I know a lot of that behaviour is because I’m playing to typical game design, but, I dunno, having a real moment where you think back and realise you’ve been ignoring what should have been an obvious pattern of so many exploited people, and I just glossed over it 'til that moment, it affected me.

triclops6,

That dragon, cancer.

A linear story about having a child and loving him and knowing you will lose him to a cancer he is too young to fend off. Based on the devs son.

Utterly heartbreaking, makes you hug your kids.

axzxc1236,

When I started playing Horizon zero dawn, for first dozen hours I was in the state that fears the machines and sneaks everywhere.

Aloy’s voice still terrifies me, I wish there was an option to turn off her random monologues.

FitzNuggly,

HZD hit different for me too. I think because it’s actually fairly believable that humanity could create something that would wipe us all out.

The emotional struggles she had as she learned avout herself and the treatment and trauma of her childhood had a lump in my throat like nothing else ever did.

Theharpyeagle,

Playing Outer Wilds, spoilers ahead:

::: Minor Outer Wilds spoilers I was trying to see how far into space I could get before the time loop restarted. As I flew away, I aimed my signalscope back towards the solar system and listened to all the instruments play together. Then when the supernova hit, one by one, the instruments were silenced. :::

That game is full of so many great moments of discovery and realization in that game, I wish I could play it for the first time again.

apprehensively_human,

spoilerA conscious observer has entered the eye. I wonder what happens now.

spoilerTalking to all the travelers at the end of the universe where time may not exist, getting them to start playing their music together. I cried.

Theharpyeagle,

::: spoiler Same! It’s such a bittersweet ending after the slow realization through the game that there’s nothing you can do about the death of the universe. Having everyone back together one last time before the birth of a whole new world is so incredible. I was also pretty giddy when I finally got to meet a Nomai. :::

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