Games are not about power, though, Alrik - even the shooters. They are about relieving frustration. After annoying or depressing events in your life, it's great to unwind by taking out all that frustration on pixel-people who, not being real, can never be harmed by it.
I disagree.
Meanwhile I do agree that some games are good for, as you put it, "relieving frustration",
I do believe, hoewever, that some games re indeed out power. Remember the Dragon Age and Dragon Age 2 marketing campaigns ? The favourite advertising saying for DA2 was : "Rise to power !" This was uttered so many imes ... mentioned so oten ... It's hard to believe that RPGs which do indeed often depict a "Hero's Journey" (in the Wikipedia as the "Monomyth", really strange word) and are about nothing but character progression, that RPGs would be rather about "releasing/relieving frustration".
Take the NLT, for example. Turn-based combat. How should frutration be relieved by a game that's so much focused on Miromanagement and on turn-based combat ?
Shooters, yes, maybe. However, what happens if a person becomes accustiomed to this way of relieving frustration ? o much that it "unlearns" oher ways ?
Another thing is that "adrenaline addiction" thing which I believe does exist. A friend of mine from my current TDE p&p group working at the police (funnily 3/4 of my current TDE p&p group consists of persons working at the police !
) recently said that it really exists.
A few weeks ago there was a smalkl discussion here in the forums about this thing, andthis is my reply there :
http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=459661#Post459661The complte discussion there :
http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=459608#Post459608
