There are big social problems among Millennials and younger (at least in the West); many of them are desperate to participate in their societies meaningfully and be rewarded (individually or collectively) for doing so. The "I want a big picture, a grand goal that we strive towards. Something noble that we yearn for" quote from this article sums that up perfectly.
I, thankfully, have this kind of satisfaction in my life, and it doesn't come from gaming. But most of my friends do not have this, and they desperately look for it in video games. Perhaps even this is the ultimate goal of Meta. I wish my generation and younger the best in their struggles to find meaning in life, and let's hope it's not anything too damaging to themselves or others.
> "I want a big picture, a grand goal that we strive towards. Something noble that we yearn for"
In fact this is not unique to millennials but is an age old struggle of humanity where religion is discovered, abandoned for one reason or another, then rediscovered again once secularism/nihilism doesn't provide the fulfilling sense of purpose everyone yearns for, ad infinitum
This is absurd. Even if climate change is just a feel good farce it would at least help people pretend that they have a goal. Instead we do absolutely nothing, we are scared of losing our jobs and having nothing to do while simultaneously having this mountain of tasks in front of us that we won't even consider touching.
It turns out that people don't just want a "mountain of tasks" to help them "pretend that they have a goal"... that just fuels the feelings of purposelessness. They want their existence and life itself to have meaning and purpose.
That's my conclusion too. Game are, at their core, something close to a real world activity but not the real thing. Even cats play games like that to learn. But current games, that is video games, are most of the time not a substitute where you can experiment with something close to the real thing. They are a form of entertainement. That means that what you accomplish in those games is nothing.
If you want something with stakes in, there are options in games (competitive players are like professional athletes this days for example), but the alternative that makes the most sense is just real life.
There are big social problems among Millennials and younger (at least in the West); many of them are desperate to participate in their societies meaningfully and be rewarded (individually or collectively) for doing so. The "I want a big picture, a grand goal that we strive towards. Something noble that we yearn for" quote from this article sums that up perfectly.
I, thankfully, have this kind of satisfaction in my life, and it doesn't come from gaming. But most of my friends do not have this, and they desperately look for it in video games. Perhaps even this is the ultimate goal of Meta. I wish my generation and younger the best in their struggles to find meaning in life, and let's hope it's not anything too damaging to themselves or others.