I know everyone is like wow omg wholesome dad game with all white cast! yay! based!
But I am a father and playing the game makes me profoundly sad. I have real children near the same age and the game nails the mentality so perfectly I feel guilty playing it, like I am cheating on my real family. Maybe in 20 years I'll play through it to reminisce once they are gone. But I can't play it now for more than a couple minutes before feeling disgusting.
No one is realizing how seductive this is. Like porn tricks you into thinking you have endless women and thus defeating your drive to find a real one, Dad-games sap away your energy to have a real family.
I know in the hunter-gatherer sense all videogames are a waste of time and should be avoided, we're all addicts and none of this is healthy. I can't attack anyone for playing this game while I still waste time with other RPGs and shooters. But there's a reason this game came from a country where reclusive shutins are such a problem they have a completely collapsing birthrate.
I don't really get that so maybe it's different from those with kids to those without.
The main consensus I get is that Hugh is a VERY positive male role model, he steps up when he has to, ensures Diana is safe and cared for and takes time to let her play and be hopeful.
I think the main distinction here is unlike the other two of porn and Hunter gather mentality, there has been a MASSIVE drought of positive male role models, especially Fathers. To the point that 'fatherless behaviour' has become a well used phrase.
Games and media like this might feel weird for Fathers like yourself, but those without gives them more of a focus of THAT is what they want it's why there has been A LOT of Anime recently with good father/ positive mid 30s male role models. Might encourage more of them to just try to make a few connections, see if there is a chance to meet a non crazy or at least loyal crazy.
As I look at the detractors of this game and they SPEEDRUN to pedophilia accusations! Like this is kryptonite to the feminists/Far left.
The left is pretty good at finding emotional weak spots in their enemies and hitting them hard, even when their own ideas fail on an intellectual and moral level. The Left, being a feminine worldview, is naturally adept at emotional arguments, so they are skilled at using them against their enemies. Why do you think 'racist!' was such an effective attack for so long? At its core, it's an emotional attack. The accusation is something meant to make the target suddenly feel a spike in negative emotions about their own actions/thoughts/feelings and shut them down, and it worked for a long time. It's becoming thankfully less effective as they've overused it, but the Left has no problem switching to another emotional vector.
Accusations of pedophilia are still one area the right is extremely emotional about and susceptible to. Bring it up in any right leaning space and you'll immediately get the frothy mouthed tirades about woodchippers. We can say the hearts and minds are in the right place from a moral perspective, but that doesn't detract from the important point: pedophilia is an area where the right is still entirely prone to circumventing all logical and rational thought processes and jumping immediately to a heightened negative emotional space. Any accusation short circuits all thought processes and triggers a complete feeling process instead. The perfect state for the left's attacks to be effective. They can't get you by calling you a racist anymore, but call someone a pedophile, and 99% of the right will immediately freeze and fall over themselves to backtrack away from the accusation, precisely as the left intends.
Every leftist emotional accusation and attack is designed to make their target suddenly feel horrible and second guess themselves and their own motivations and behaviors, especially how they will be seen by others, and make them stop what they're doing and deal with the implication and appearance of the attack instead of continuing to oppose the left. Racist doesn't work anymore, but pedophile sure as shit does. Expect a lot more of that in the coming years.
I can imagine only here, it REALLY didn't land well.
From what I see, those trying the pedophilia accusations with this game got looked back at, HARD with many seeing it as a self confession that you see this robot as a little girl and think pedophilia.
The funniest self own has been Hassan Piker right now as he tried to do this and many pointed out he's just mad that his 'secret girlfriend' Valkryae has said MANY times she doesn't want kids, focusing on being materialistic and since she's 34, his bloodline ends with him.
Yeah, as a father, I don't think you're really the target audience for the 'propaganda' aspect of this game. It's intended to ignite fatherly instincts in those who, because of the age we live in, have had them completely suppressed, such that they never even considered the idea of having children (or maybe even decided against it). It's supposed to glorify having a family, hinting at the satisfaction and sense of purpose one can get from it. How often do we hear in media aimed at the youth that children are nothing but a burden that prevents you from doing what you want? This game (and other media with similar messaging like Spy X Family) is supposed to highlight the great, sometimes hidden benefits one can get from family.
It is crazy that we have to rationalise and promote our own survival in this day and age, but it's a consequence of what has been done to us over the last 80 years or so. Personally, I am glad to see the tide turning.
Its more like a siphoning of that desire for a simulation of being a father. Basically promising on satiating the urge without the hardship, which won't actually satiate the desire.
Hard disagree.
What you're arguing is a horseshoe theory-proving variant of "violent videogames are too realistic and will implant violent urges in people".
This is a video game. It's fiction. People, even low IQ people who can't reliably identify that just because they read something in a book or saw it on TV or heard it in a sermon doesn't mean it has any bearing on reality, will still subconsciously understand that this is fake. That this is an artifical depiction of part of the human experience.
This no more "siphons" the desire for fatherhood than does seeing a great father figure in a movie, or reading about one in a book. And there isn't any weight to the "but video games are interactive media" argument here, either. You push buttons on a controller, and the funny man in the screen carries out pre-programmed actions. There is no touch, no smell, no weight or physicality, and frankly not even the full depth of sight or hearing to this play act. You'd get more watching an actual stage play.
Perhaps, perhaps if we had some sort of sensory hijack full-immersion VR technology, you'd be right. "Ideal space isekai slow life with your ultimate elf waifu and robot child-figure VR" would fool the brain and artificially satiate the urge. But we're so far from that that it's not even worth discussing yet.
Nah even movies are simulations and definitely affect and impress upon people emotionally and cognitively. This is psyop 101 stuff
Well, yes, fiction can stain the surface, and even pool in the empty skull crevices of those of small and smooth brains.
But you miss the point. The point is that these surface level manipulations do not, and as they are cannot, overwrite deep seated biological desires and imperatives.
Its why even the staunchest girl-boss strong independent woman feminist ends up with a dozen cats, or why the most accomplished monk takes apprentices. You can't media your way out of your instincts.
You're yapping a lot but its simple: stuff on a screen imitates reality and people integrate it into their worldview.
Sir, if you can't muster a real response, don't open your damned mouth.
Reddit tier response lol.
I'm not entirely sure that's true or will always be true. It was more true of video games 20+ years ago, but as games became more realistic, and continue to do so, I wonder how long that will remain the case.
Fictional experiences do impact the brain. From personal experience, I know I gained actual arachnophobia from watching the movie Arachnophobia when I was a kid, and 30+ years later I am still utterly terrified of spiders, and I can remember being a kid and this not being the case. People seek out thrills from roller coasters, haunted houses, scary movies, etc and the reason why that stuff works at all is because there is a deeper layer of the human brain that doesn't care or know if it's fictional or not. Your conscious brain knows something isn't real, but you can still have emotional reactions triggered by parts of your brain that aren't sophisticated enough to tell the difference. That's a major reason why simulated experiences work to begin with.
It is already demonstrated that fictional experiences, that your consciously know are not real, do still do something in the brain that simulate the effect of it being real. The question is, how long until something like video games, especially with advances in VR, get to a point where those parts of the brain really cannot tell the difference, even if you consciously can, and psychological or emotional damage is done as if it were real. I know we have a kneejerk reaction to the whole video games don't cause violence thing, and that is by and large true and has been true for a long time. But the brain is a tricky thing, and we don't understand how or why a lot of it works the way it does. Subjecting it to experiences that are designed to create emotional or psychological effects may end up having an effect, and it shouldn't be that surprising if it does. Especially as things become more realistic.
The first top-down GTA game certainly did not cause violence or make gamer do things, despite what the Jack Thompsons were claiming at the time. But we are nearing, and have passed in some ways, a point in gaming fidelity where the experiences on screen are almost indistinguishable from a real experience, at least visually. it is not entirely out of the question that can end up having effects on the brain we can't predict yet, doubly so when one of the major points of increasing the visual experience is to deliberately make it seem and feel more real.
I see what you are saying, but I don't know if that's what actually happens in reality. Maybe in a few cases, but something tells me if we had a lot of positive depictions of parenthood and male/female relationships in media, it would lead to more family formation, not less.
You're right! I think it is a good way to display good values etc. I just would say its important we start living in reality and not escapism is all. I spent and spend a lot of time still playing video games etc but am really trying to be more present for my family and friends and stop trying to live in eworld.
Lol no. It's very clearly intended to get the Japanese population to have kids
Maybe its just designed to give lonely men a taste of what they crave: a family and love from their child. Idk.
It encourages the user for a short time, but right after turning off the game the desire wears off
kinda like watching Spy X Family, its good propaganda but its not powerful enough to influence blokes or foids to actually make children (which requires hardship, time and money)
I'm just gonna enjoy it, because vidya dad versus real dad is a false choice.
Men aren't women. They can't just spread their legs and make a family happen when they're ready for one. Women control access to a family and most men aren't gonna make it.
Hence the profound sadness this game evokes in me.
Women control sex men control relationships
But you have kids, what about most of us peasants who don't?
Please make an effort. It's very worth it. The mistake is thinking you have to find a good woman, when in reality a strong man can make most any woman good.
I'm going to second this. EXCLUDING mental health issues (you CAN'T fix her bro), most women are malleable if you have strong enough willpower.
Both of you are conveniently forgetting to mention that women come out of high school with triple digit bodycounts these days. You aren't turning a whore into a good woman no matter how strong you are.
And if you did turn a hoe into a housewife, any claims of strength are just cope to rationalize your simpery.
The average woman is not at triple digits, or even double digits, coming out of high school. 100% no. But you still have a point that there are many women that are not "fixable" and trying to do so will send you to divorce rape financial prison. Doesn't matter if you're a "strong guy" or not.
The good news is, I feel like those women are pretty easy to assess after a few conversations.
I feel like you're jumping in on a different branch than we are, but your town is full of whores, sorry bro. However, the rest of the world is not (necessarily) like that and you should get out more.
The very fact that seemingly every woman has been brainwashed by social media is actually a White Pill because it means they can just as easily be influenced by a good man.
I recommend that every man dating insist that any woman he dates completely drops social media so she imprints on the real man in her life instead of the synthetic reality designed to demoralise her.
Hahaha imagine telling a woman to drop her social media for you. Lmaooooo
Yeah, it takes a bit of time but women are biologically driven to conform. Remove the social media and state inputs and women become traditional real quick. I've seen it happen with a number of my strong male friends, the transformation is a little astonishing from left wing to trad wife, but if you aren't a strong male then it aint happening and I've seen that go laughably bad as well.
A lot of willpower comes from leverage. And if youre in America, you don't have any. Your best benefit is to find a virgin to help reduce the risk.
And yes I am aware you need to leave America for that.
Basically women will marry you for status or money or other benefits, or because their friends are married or they want a kid or they want to divorce rape you or they're bored or their family is pressuring them or a bunch of other frivolous reasons.
Guys will end up with a girl for these reasons and later get divorced or have a dead bedroom and scratch their heads and wonder what they did wrong. They don't know any better, and society blames them.
However, a woman will also marry you because you light a fire in her vagina that never goes out even if she has sex with you 1000 times a day. MARRY THAT GIRL. When you are with this girl you know it but unfortunately most men never have a girl like that (or they believe there's something wrong with her for liking them that much--it's scary when you've been mistreated so much) so they don't know any better and they end up with the cold fish wife.
Is your woman unvaxxed good sir?
I don't trust the motivations of O.P. He's equating a game about a child to porn, and asking us for validation, while he's the one choosing to not spend time with his children. Everything about this post and his mannerisms is suspect.
Don't siphon away that desire and energy by imitating family. Similar to porn, harness it to achieve the goal, not tricks and shadows to distract your brain.
I don't know about the word "porn" in discussion of this game lol
I'm not calling it porn. Its a similar effect of escapism and living in eworld instead of real world action and striving.
I know, it's just funny that the word keeps coming up in this post specifically
Bullshit.
The caged lion doesn't hunt
Modern society abuses people to the point of not wanting to have kids. Games like Pragmata ignite that desire/instinct again. It's one of the few things today that PROMOTE having kids and you think that's bad?
I'm sorry but if playing a game with an fictional artificial child feels like cheating on your own kids then something is seriously wrong with you. You might as well never read, watch or play any story ever again.
Japan's "birthrate collapse" is mostly a (((media))) fabrication. Yes, (((feminism))) has largely taken over there and been supplanting the proper traditional values where women were expected to be subservient to men, but that's just one aspect of the trouble with (((foreign))) influence in Japan. The thing is the hooknoses need some excuse to bring in their black and brown hordes and "cultural enrichment" won't work in a culture that most people are already extremely fond of.
Birthrate plummeted right after the occupation has begun
Yep and now Japan has roughly the same fertility rate as countries like Spain, Poland, and Italy. The only difference is that Japan has much higher % of births in wedlock. So that basically means that Japan doesn't have a birth crisis, it has a marriage crisis. What is holding women back from marrying? Having an education and a career.
Feminism destroys nations which is why the jews promote it
Beate Sirota Gordon, every time
One thing you're missing: this game is only 12 hours long. It's not going to scratch the itch of fatherhood like an endless live service game might. It's only going to stoke a fire in some men and women.
I scoff at the people who discount this sort of influence. Video games are now every bit as culturally relevant as movies and books. A game that shows young men and women even a small slice of a healthy family dynamic is a good thing.
The more important question is, how does this game affect women?
Women are heavily, heavily propagandized to not want children. And women are 100% of the birthdate bottleneck - meaning, you double the number of men who want children or you could halve the number of men who want children, either way there’d be no change in the number of children.
So, if the game deprograms a few women, that’s a net positive regardless of what it does to men.
By and large, it won't affect them at all because women don't play video games. It's still true, even if one can find a few twitch thot outliers or uwu thirst trap gamer girls. Women's 'video games' are candy crush or whatever the modern version is on their phones. The number of women who actually boot up a multi-hour long PC or even console game is barely a fraction of a fraction of the percent of gamers. Not enough to matter.
The game isn't a gacha game about effete male topless kpop stars, so it isn't going to see nearly as many women as one might expect. Of the 5% or so of gamers who are women that aren't cell phone gacha-and-idle-game players, it's probably too small a sample size, and they tend to veer towards more masculine pursuits, so they'd likely be impacted similarly to men.
As I'm playing it, I find myself constantly at odds with Hugh's attitude and mood. He just watched his whole team die and spends the whole game giggling and playing with a little girl like nothing happened. She's not helping him through trauma, she's just helping him fight.
As far as kids go, she's great. She doesn't nag, complain, or whine. She's always upbeat and optimistic. She's grateful and happy for everything she gets. She's helpful and doesn't get in the way. It's easy to find a little kid endearing when they're flawless.
I just feel like the game goes out of its way to ignore the situation on the Cradle. There are zero traces of the crew. No blood, no bodies, not even coffee cups or half eaten snacks laying around. I'm not saying the game needs to be Dead Space (Dad Space) but a few reminders of what's at stake wouldn't go amiss.
Dad Space lol
A lot of men are never going to get to experience being a dad, ever, so games like this can help cope with that I guess.
Someone explain to me having emotions from game. I play a game, I finish it I'm done. I don't have emotional breakdowns because I have daughters. They'd rightfully kick me in the balls and call me a pussy.
Have you ever had an emotional reaction to a piece of art before? A painting? A classical music piece? A really good book? A movie?
Most people have. Most men have. That's why men are history's most renowned authors and poets. All of the The Great painters and composers are men. Some of the most long lasting and famous art in history, made nearly exclusively by men, is designed to evoke an emotional reaction in the audience. Do you not feel somber when listening to Beethoven's String Quartet No. 14? Did you feel nothing when Tolkien wrote "And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns, in dark Mindolluin's sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the north wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last."? Most men do. If you don't feel anything from art, that doesn't make you more manly.
There is one issue that it's impossible to get around. The fact that women worth having a family with functionally don't exist. There simply aren't enough of them to even be a rounding error in the western female population. We can talk about how White men 'should' have kids and families all day, but until we deal with the fact that it takes a woman worth marrying who can be a good wife and mother who will stay loyal in order to do that, and those women are essentially extinct at scale, what 'should' happen is not going to happen.
The default 'it's men's responsibility/fault for being man children playing video games instead of having families' cope always sidesteps this core issue and it is impossible to make an real progress on fixing the issue unless we're willing to confront that en masse.
I'm not saying it's easy but you only have one life, and the future belongs to those who show up for it.
The majority of women do not have beliefs or opinions, they are just conforming to the dominant force in their lives. Be that force and you can have the type of woman you want.
Still I fully understand why so many men are opting out, I do not blame them at all.
That's good you had the reaction you did. It means the game did its job as a positive piece of propaganda.
Perhaps, if the visceral reaction within you was to spend more time with your kids, there will be a similar impetus in the young lads to start a family or seek the means to do so.
For those of us too old to start a family, it at least gives hope for the next generation that they may take the necessary steps to do so.
Also, props to Japan for infusing this kind of messaging in their media recently. I randomly picked a Japanese sci-fi thriller to watch called Exit 8, which is pretty much a Japanese version of the Backrooms (and it's done really, really, really well) set in a subway station. The liminal space concept is executed superbly here.
But what really caught me off-guard was how the story was about the importance of fatherhood, for men to take responsibility, and to lead women and protect their children. It's a shockingly pro-father, pro-responsibility message -- the ending actually brought a smile to my face, as it was basically telling young lads "Take charge, be responsible, be a man, be a father".
I think if we see what some are endearingly calling "Dadslop" make a comeback in media, mayhaps we'll see it subconsciously kickstart the innate drive men have to be fathers and protectors once more. Something that has been unduly suppressed and beaten out of majority men in the West (and even in the East) quite aggressively since the 1960s.
This is a great perspective. My eternal naiveté wants to suggest that this doesn't have to be pernicious. It could just be creatives expressing the feeling you're describing to share with others. You'd think I'd learn by now.
Never heard of it but you definitely have touched on media replacing the real thing. Porn is a huge issue with this, I guess a longing people have being channeled into a surrogate for the real thing, relationships, connections, family, sex, excitement, everything. Its sad and I think why people are so depressed and listless is they have an imitation that scratches a superficial itch of the real thing.
It's always bittersweet for me whenever Diane does something cute that my kids also do. I completely know what you mean.
What's the rundown of the story/gameplay?
Space engineer teams up with robot girl on the moon to fight evil AI
People are reading WAY too much into what is, in essence, a pretty straightforward video game.
It's kind of psychopathic. Just enjoy the fucking vidya.
I don't really get how anyone who has had kids or dealt with them could see games like this and find any parallel to the real thing. They can be fun and fulfilling, but they are selfish little narcists at their natural stage. Unless disciplined to understand the feelings of others, no they are not fun to be around. They are screaming little monsters with limitless stores of energy. I have yet to see a single game that truly sticks to how it really is. The Boy 1.0 in God of War was close... but not quite close enough. If he acted like a real child, there's no world where there wouldn't be a mini game where you're smacking that kid at least once for exp orbs.. because it's fucking Kratos. sorry, I went on a bit of a tangent.
My point is porn gives men the satisfaction of sex, skipping over the whole thing about having to learn to live with a woman. It's work. A lot of work.
And games like this is just the same crap. The fantasy of fatherhood, but absolutely no work in where it counts. Empty calories. And so many guys and gals fall for it. Especially those on the spectrum
I guess I don't know what point I am trying to make, because I am pretty much agreeing with OP, but I don't think he should feel any guilt for playing the game. He got the real world experience. He's been through the trenches. Just learn to kick back and learn to enjoy things. It's a concept so easily lost the older one gets. You know you're eating garbage, but if it makes you happy and if done in moderation, there's really no harm.