ORIGINAL: Zap
+1. Went into a Mcdonalds the other day. The cashiers where told in front of customers "you must to say hello to everyone that comes in the door" seen this in other places too. Just give my what I order I don't want a relationship with Mcdonalds.
It's basically a form of primitive manipulation. It's purpose is to make people feel feelings associated with friends towards the company. It's pretty sick.
ORIGINAL: Rtwfreak
Yep this ^ is very true. In Walgreens or example the cashier at the front of the store must greet every customer that comes in the store with a Welcome to Walgreens and then do it again when they are leaving Thankyou for shopping at Walgreens all the while they are cashing other customers out and they also must answer all phone calls and at minimum wage it's god awful pitiful because they use young college kids or old ladies and forced customer service like that I do not like and I voice my opinion to the manager. Let them be customer friendly of their own accord that's the best type not fake or false courtesy.
Additionally, such workplaces are favouring dishonest and manipulative employees.
ORIGINAL: terje439
2. I notice this the most with MMOs. I remember when I first starting playing MMOs, my game of choice was StarWarsGalaxies. A game that was hard to learn, but that just made it the more rewarding when you mastered something. Then came the kids. The "instant gratification"-generation. And the game had to change to keep them as customers, and it all went downhill. Since those days, I have yet to find (well with the exception of the games offered here that is) a really challenging game (remember the days of the C64???). Now it is all about getting rewards from the first press of a button.
So, in some ways, I do miss the "good old days", but in other matters, I wish those "good old days" would be gone [;)]
Tejre
I think that it all started when there started to be massive feedback on internet forums and from spying programs in games. One of the things they learned is that most of people never finishes their games.
Also, at that time a lot of psychological manipulation started being used - addiction-based gameplay, achievements, DLCs, etc.
ORIGINAL: Josh
I'll never forget how the suits utterly destroyed a game like Baldur's Gate, turned it into a fast hack and slash game for kiddies, where graphics were everything and the story wasn't.
I didn't know that the suits destroyed Baldur's Gate. I thought that it was mediocre because lack of talent of the Bioware team, not because of interference. Somehow, guys from Black Isle studios still managed to squeeze more roleplaying into a jump for the cash hack and slash game like Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale 2 than Bioware into its "full" cRPGs.
Not to mention that suits somehow managed to not turn Fallout, Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment into fast hack and slash games for kiddies.
ORIGINAL: Rtwfreak
I mean the gas station attendant that used to wash your windshield and check the air in your tires and check your oil level is practically gone. It also was a job as a youngster I wanted cause it looked like "FUN"!
Just one question: How many of you just walk for "FUN" anymore and not for some medically good for you or your health?
Maybe two questions: How many of you ride a bicycle anymore just for the "FUN" of it and not for the calorie burning exercise?
I mean when we were kids this is what we did for "FUN" walk places and/or ride a bicycle, not for exercise or health reasons.
How many of you are "couch/chair potatoes" now? hehe
I usually walk about two hours a day when doing groceries. Generally, I dislike going out without going to buy something or get something. It leaves too much time to think and feel bad about the conclusions of the thinking (it would be nice to be go out and evaluate reality and think "healthy world" and feel good about the world, sadly and disgustingly world insists on being sick).
Focus, is what staves off the suffering, what allows to forget about hordes of ideological enemies and forces of evil - reading about tactics, military history, how things could realistically work in science fiction, working on mods, reading a good novel, getting lost in enjoyable conversation - good, healthy stuff or at least when not trying to forget, actively debating, preventing the enemy from prevailing, from spreading their ideology, not just impotently repeating arguments within ones head without a keyboard to speak.
I have never found any job fun. Just hours upon hours of mental torture and reduction to being an automaton that performs some banal activities and has tons of time to wonder why one is earning 2$ per hour when some other people do identical job and earn much more. Why is my work treated as worse as theirs? This question is always plaguing me when working somewhere and I can't find an acceptable answer based on one's essential qualities - I can't find any inferiority in the quality of work that I perform - it must be some kind of a swindle. Sick world.
One thing that I regret is that I can't get drawn in into stuff like programming or graphics design or some other thing useful for making bigger money the way I get into modding or collecting information about things that interest me. Sadly, these are things where it's impossible to get anywhere without being obsessed about that stuff.
