FM4 Extra Lives: Performance in Games

Higher, faster, farther, or just relaxed? In games, the bandwidth of the performance spectrum is very high, but many PC games want more from us, not less. In a new edition of pop culture games Talk FM4 Extraleben, we talk about what that’s doing for us and what alternatives there are to it.

Written by Robert Glachtner

Computer games are a kind of haven, a haven from everyday life and crises, with plenty of opportunity and agency. In games, we can bring wonderful worlds to life and become a hero or heroine who can really make a difference. But of course computer games can also reflect our daily lives and our merits.

But no matter what we do in matches, we always want to be motivated and keep going. This works through good narration and successful plays, but above all through objectives and challenges. However, these challenges always require us to perform: we have to master something or at least be good enough to move forward. In a new issue of Pop Culture Gaming Party FM4 Extraleben, we talk about what it’s doing for us and how intertwined performance and computer game culture are with Michaela Pichler, Rainer Sigl, and Robert Glashüttner.

Competition and ambition

After all, most games are designed in such a way that they require certain actions and achievements from us so that we can see new levels, new content, new areas, new characters, etc. in the game at all. In addition, many games are designed for us to be particularly good at and act quickly, skillfully and tactically. This stimulates our ambition and then of course our pride and exposes us to competition with other players. How good is that and how do we deal with it?

Economic freedom

Am anderen Ende des Leistungsspektrum steht das genaue Gegenteil, und das gibt es in Games naturlich auch: Computerspiele, die nichts von uns wollen, die keine Ziele und Zahlen vorgeben, sondern uns einfach nur in ihre Welt werfen und uns sein und tun lassen, was We want. Enjoying a laissez-faire is something we tend to underestimate in games – although there are some games that allow it, like The Ramp, Townscaper, and to some extent the young classic Minecraft.

FM4 extra life on performance in games

Michaela, Reiner and Robert talk about these and other obsessive aspects, dodging, and what goes with it, in a new edition of FM4 Extraleben, air nights from Wednesday to Thursday from 0 am to 1 am and then in FM4 Game Podcast.