Gaming World Forums
General Category => Entertainment and Media => Topic started by: Izekeal on May 25, 2010, 06:14:57 am
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Just thought I'd share some articles I've read over the years. Written by the editor at cracked.com
5 Reasons it's Still Not Cool to Admit You're a Gamer (http://www.cracked.com/article/18571_5-reasons-its-still-not-cool-to-admit-youre-gamer)
5 Creepy Ways Video Games are Trying to get you Addicted (http://www.cracked.com/article/18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted)
5 Things the Gaming Industry Will Never Fix (And Why) (http://www.cracked.com/article/17442_5-things-gaming-industry-will-never-fix-and-why)
The 7 Commandments All Video Games Should Obey (http://www.cracked.com/article/16196_the-7-commandments-all-video-games-should-obey)
A Gamer's Manifesto (http://www.cracked.com/article/15748_a-gamers-manifesto) (This one's my favourite)
He's written some other ones as well. Most of what he writes feels like pointless complaining and nagging as he states that he doesn't believe the industry is going to change, but I found the things he talks about to be pretty interesting, both the observations and the trends that he points out. Worth a read when you've got a few minutes.
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i am overwhelmed with the suspicion that these were written by a man who never grew up. while he occasionally writes something that could be casually considered to be true, none of it is remotely insightful. some of the things he says are just plain wrong.
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written by a man who never grew up
I have to agree with this. Specifically in the "5 Reasons it's Still Not Cool to Admit You're a Gamer" he sounds as if he's exactly one of those types of gamers, and he's getting pissed off that people treat him badly. Because that's exactly what they do, complain the shit out of stuff.
I got halfway through the third article before getting annoyed with how ridiculous he was being.
He's trying to say gaming isn't aging very well with the whole forty years old thing, but then he compares it to film. Film and Gaming are two very different mediums, you can't expect gaming to be as good at storytelling as film just because gaming has been around for forty years, that's just nonsense.
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gamesradar writers are better
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i'm not gonna read more than the first one but since when is sakura a "grown woman"? i am pretty sure that she actually IS a schoolgirl hence the outfit. i think he's just confused because SF4 has such weird character models.
the thing is, if he OWNS sf4 shouldn't he kinda know that?????
edit: ahaha he was offended by bayonetta too, where's that article about how bayonetta is pretty pro-feminist when i need it?
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I don't get the whole "he must be a gamer who never grew up" comment. All Cracked writers seem to write the same way, regardless of the topic. It's the way they are, they're a humour site.
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Reading his articles over again did help me understand and accept why there is a tie-in video game for the Prince of Persia movie that was already loosely based on the Prince of Persia video game that came out years before.
It's not like what he has to say is totally worthless just because it seems so obvious after (or before) you've already read it.
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like i said i only read the first article but i can safely say it's entirely worthless because of the way he wrote it
he might have had some points about GAMER STEREOTYPES or w/e if he hadn't gone after some of the dumbest things, it was like that guy who wrote that article about how the problem with japan is that japanese people smoke near their precious cartridges and makes them yellow in used game stores, he writes like a manchild and it's disgusting to read. other people have written about the exact same thing and done a much better job, that means that it's just HIM.
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I don't get the whole "he must be a gamer who never grew up" comment. All Cracked writers seem to write the same way, regardless of the topic. It's the way they are, they're a humour site.
if this is humour stop the world i want to get off
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More like david wang
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Ok, so I'm pretty much not versed at all in video game article sites, which I'm sure is evident by my links to cracked.com if anything else. A few of you have mentioned other sites as having much more valuable reading material and writers who have probably spent more of their life both playing and commenting on video games than Mr Wong.
I wouldn't mind reading some of these other sites as I basically get my current gaming information from one place, shacknews. So if anyone has some suggestions of places to check out, that'd be great. Preferably written.
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Ok, so I'm pretty much not versed at all in video game article sites, which I'm sure is evident by my links to cracked.com if anything else. A few of you have mentioned other sites as having much more valuable reading material and writers who have probably spent more of their life both playing and commenting on video games than Mr Wong.
I wouldn't mind reading some of these other sites as I basically get my current gaming information from one place, shacknews. So if anyone has some suggestions of places to check out, that'd be great. Preferably written.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/
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Dr. Wong's 3D Barbecue and Animal Hospital
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yeah there's probably a million better writers out there but there are some good points although some of them are shit I read 5 years ago lol spacemarines but uh even the creator of Dragon Quest admitted he's a gambler and wanted certain elements of the game to resemble that like the hp/mp counters and reminding you how much money you made for each guy you kill (probably the first game resembles this the most) and I do think on some subconscious level games probably do feel like a better use of time than like selling socks or some other random shit job, unless you're a weirdo and really enjoy people putting on new socks and enjoying them. And I might have mentioned it before but there is probably a lot of HORRIBLE things or just things that seem flat-out dumb but are an element of gaming that many of us amateurs miss. Like the part YOU SHOULD FEEL LIKE YOU ARE KILLING SOMETHING maybe not that harsh but there should be a constant feeling of cause and effect if a game is done properly. Like I got angry at my friend who was into Kingdom Hearts at 30 years old or someshit and the whole game was like when things die they make a lot of sparkles SPARKLES MAKE YOU AWARE THAT THERE IS MUCH KILLING GOING ON. But there is really a lot of gameshit that does things exactly like this. So yeah you should be prepared to accept retarded things like this because it probably does result in something crucial to gameplay like 'doing the right things should make some confirmative sort of sound because eventually people will be more at ease navigating the menu because they know by the sound cues what to expect next even if they don't remember the visual layout of the menu' and like I said this probably means something horrible like 'all gamers/human beings are a walking collection of neuroses' but it is a part of gaming that you can not separate from gaming without making it feel inauthentic or something
Even if you don't want to do things like this you should be AWARE of it so you can subvert the usual gaming formula. I thought Yume Nikki was brilliant in its own way because they understood this shit and like you would interact with an object and something strange would happen or only SOMETIMES something would happen or the graphics of an object followed the set videogame rules of THIS THING IMPORTANT but they actually did nothing in a way to create anxiety that only gamer would understand. I would like to see the inverse of this, a fun or at least non-hostile game that reinterprets videogame shit as dream logic like you turn on a sink and the lights go on or off. This is basically what Mario is let me jump on this block and money will come out if only the real world worked like this. I know everybody says Miyamoto is loldrugs but you could almost design one of his games based on this formula I mean the actual results are creative and imaginative but he could be thinking in the exact same pattern the entire time 'just take some real world thing and change random property of it we'll have turtles which are real but they're GIANT turtles'. He is probably a person who plays games in the way he designs his games like most people ask themself what is their favorite color? But he probably asks himself 'what is your favorite number of stairs in a staircase' just completely random mind games with oneself that I think more people should do when they're going for abstract properties like FUN etc.
Anybody ever play Tail of the Sun for the original Playstation? It's this game where you're a caveman and you can just freely roam this world, which is like a usual gripe in RPGs that you can't roam the world right away, you have to get SHIP and AIRSHOIP and whatnot, but this game lets you go wherever and let you see a bunch of exotic 'creatures' and whatnot but it just feels cheap because it's just too much freedom or something. Well there's no story either to make you feel involved. I think it's a game a lot of youguys should play because it basically already did a lot of the stuff you guys might experiment with because you can make your game however you feel like but it might save you the trouble of seeing if some things 'work' or not
Also a lot of this stuff feels incredibly slimy and evil if you dissect it but I always felt games like the SaGa games felt 'cheap' for the sole reason that it hid some of the game mechanics from you - how you 'level up' or whatever, you just seem to gain stats at random and even if you discover what to do there is no idea how much more you have to fight to level up or anything like that. But yeah Warcraft games I will never understand besides like the trash-talking part or whatever but isn't it like an entire game made of combat and leveling up?? This is the exact shit we thought game designers overdid when we were 10 years old why are we fucking regressing as adults (game designers figure out a way so you can actually have TWO battles for every step you take Warcraft fans rejoice and take it up the ass)
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What the fuck, Ragnar...
As far as 'gamers' go that's pretty stereotypical. I mean, I wouldn't say it's uncommon to meet people that fit into that stereotype, but they hardly fit perfectly and most are just pretty average people with no obvious ineptitude when it comes to social interaction. If I tell someone I play a lot of video games I usually get one of two responses: they aren't interested and move away from the topic; or, they ask what games I play because they play quite a bit too. I've never encountered someone who... like... shunned me because I like to play video games and do other 'nerdstuff'.
Nevermind, I can't even think today.
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Anybody ever play Tail of the Sun for the original Playstation? It's this game where you're a caveman and you can just freely roam this world, which is like a usual gripe in RPGs that you can't roam the world right away, you have to get SHIP and AIRSHOIP and whatnot, but this game lets you go wherever and let you see a bunch of exotic 'creatures' and whatnot but it just feels cheap because it's just too much freedom or something. Well there's no story either to make you feel involved. I think it's a game a lot of youguys should play because it basically already did a lot of the stuff you guys might experiment with because you can make your game however you feel like but it might save you the trouble of seeing if some things 'work' or not
I played this and yeah I know what you mean about it feeling cheap. I felt like I had no business playing it because there was nothing at all for me to be doing. I really didn't know if anything would eventually happen so I basically just walked around everywhere until I got stuck in a river and just quit. It was cool as a WEIRD THING TO PLAY I guess but it didn't feel like a game just an activity.
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paragraphs ragnar
David Wong is pretty good, it's obviously just humour and I enjoy his articles (although the 5 reasons it's still not cool thing is pretty bs). I think he mainly gets a pass for John Dies At The End though.
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He used paragraphs. That's what they look like in a book : )
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paragraphs ragnar
summary I think a lot of gaming is about doing unfair assholish things and treating the player like an idiot. Like making the player get a ship then airship probably feels super-shitty actually sitting down and coding the game that way but if it serves its purpose of ACCOMPLISHMENT or whatever that's good. Like in that Tail of the Sun game I don't even know if any of your tribe could die this would add some incentive to hunting for food or whatever. Or just if you gained any new SKILLS in that game it would be good I think you got pointier spear I dunno And sound effects and flashy shit and general pavlovian stuff may feel like it's demeaning but probably good in the context of when the game gets harder and lets you think 27 steps ahead if you want like that "!" sound in Metal Gear it's obvious you'll be in some deep shit soon and should hide or something. I think every culture on earth would know what that sound means even if they understand nothing else that's going on in the game
Edit: Of course this shouldn't mean hours of tutorials really if the guy in a fighting game gets PROGRESSIVELY LOUDER and more japananens shit is said it can be taken to mean you've performed a better special move and really integrates into the actual gameplay a lot better than that training room from FF6 etc.
Edit: Some of this shit would apply more if the audience included little kids but even first-person shooters and stuff have little signals so you know if a guy is dead or just stunned etc etc. esp. Metal Gear like I was saying
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how abstract, ragnar.
You could probably write a book on this abstract game stuff. I wonder what goes on in your head sometimes.
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http://designreboot.blogspot.com/
I recently found this one in a link from Yahtzee's column, both are pretty decent.
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how abstract, ragnar.
You could probably write a book on this abstract game stuff. I wonder what goes on in your head sometimes.
I didn't think it was that abstract just like the game should never intrude in such a way like forcing them to read long instructions etc. and by having complete freedom in a game the limitations are more obvious... or something - the second part also kind of made Pilotwings 64 unsatisfactory to me. Like when you have this huge scale model of the united states and can freely jetpack around it and realize all you can really do with it is... crash into it. So kind of a 'tip of the iceberg' feel should be in good games too imo
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Alot of my enjoyment playing games comes from me associating elements of games with other things. Most of the time this is totally arbitrary and has nothing to do with anything! Here's an example: I play Earthbound regularly over a period of weeks, and while playing it I happen to be eating the same kind of food pretty often, so I begin to associate the two of them with each other and even when one is absent I start thinking about it and how much fun it is when I am doing both at the same time. For some reason the combination of the two becomes a single activity which is alot more fun than either of them alone.
It's not just food, it can be anything - I remember I was playing a demo of mirror's edge, like nearly two years ago, and in the background in the room my brother was watching an episode of Dexter. That episode of Dexter sucked, but I conflate the environments in the game with the environments in my head and for some reason I get a kick out of this? Maybe it was just the general atmosphere of the day, details I have forgotten, that added up to create this very appealling space in my mind that I even now sometimes go back to a little.
I remember when I was playing Silent Hill 2, I liked to play it in the afternoon and close my curtains over so the room was pretty dark although it was still day. I liked the atmosphere of playing this creepy game where the world was just a bit off while creating a similar kind of atmosphere in my room. It's daytime everywhere else...but not in here...That's a bit more of a direct association since it actually has something to do with the game rather than just being a random element that happened to be in my environment, but what I am saying is that alot of the time how much I enjoy playing a game has as much to do with my mind latching on to things in the real world and how they alter the experience as it does the actual game itself.
I think things like this are why I will continue to play games that have loads of bad qualities if they just remind me of something I like, or even just remind me of uh anything at all. I seem to get a kick out of being reminded of things. It's the same thing with movies sometimes. Alot of the time the content of the thing isn't as important as what the content points to in your mind, whether this is intended or not.
I'm not saying a bad game which reminds me of nice stuff I like is preferrable to a good game with no associations. I've got the brains to pick the better things and start making my associations with those things, most of the time, but judging things as being bad or good only really works as a kind of objective thing for me. To an extent - there is stuff that I won't put up with, but like say I played Dragon Quest VII the other day. This game is really kind of crappy so far - the sexism is just irritating with women being nothing but housewives, and it's kind of boring but at the same time I was kind of enjoying wandering around looking at the houses and hearing the music and stuff. It's good and bad, I'm enjoying it and I'm hating it. I have a line for crap I don't want to do anymore, and that game didn't seem to cross it.
I guess I am saying that associations will make me tolerate things I am not strictly enjoying for much longer periods of time than I would otherwise. Whether that's a good thing or bad thing I don't even know - it seems kind of obvious that it is bad, but how can I know this because maybe thoughts arise while I am making these associations that will lead me on to better things that I wouldn't have discovered or done if I hadn't had those thoughts? Who knows? It's all meaningless.
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I read "A Gamer's Manifesto" (well, kind of skimmed through it) but I'm not really very impressed by what he writes. He's very keen on declaring one particular opinion to be the obvious and objective truth.
Like for example he says CPU racing game opponents should never "cheat" by moving faster than the player can, but them doing so is simply arcade style as opposed to the realistic racing that you find in Formula 1 games or Gran Turismo.
He also writes the following: "If pretty graphics are king, it's time to remember what pretty graphics are for: immersion." This isn't always true. Actually, he was trying to make the point that games shouldn't have invisible boundaries because they make the graphics seem useless since you can never immerse yourself anyway if you can't do absolutely everything. Again, that's an opinion, and I guess he likes sandbox games, but he's trying to make it seem as if this is some obvious shortcoming of video game design.
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lol I hate to bring up GHANA POSTERS again but like aside from being kind of violent/macabre at times they really, I think they activated the same part of my brain when I was a gamer in my early days. And all of the movies they're depicting are horrible 80's action movies and shit, and when it comes down to it I think most nintendo games are some sort of horrible 80's movie/pulpy fantasy/sci-fi novel converted to pixels. But both manage to have this feel like each and every game/poster is unique to some degree (aside from those African movies where some obvious tropes emerge LASER EYES etc.) They both have this completely utterly unfiltered feel to them not in the sense of lol Nintendo games can have boobies because they're unfiltered, but like they don't pay any creed to what looks polished or if it's like Superman the game it looks so out of the Superman universe it's not even funny. Half the time I didn't even know what the graphics were trying to depict (I thought the third character in Dragon Warrior II was OLDMAN for the longest time because long white dress looked like long white beard and maybe I thought wizards had to be old dudes I dunno). But yeah even now I'll be looking at Nintendo games I never played and it's still like they just totally winged it with the graphics even with a lot of the major/licensed games and each one is just like this unique experience. Probably if all Nintendo games looked weird but the same it'd be fucking annoying too. But I'm awaiting a commercial game that really tries to look as whacked out as some of the old games rather than retro so coool. But I think the gaming industry has been assimilated too much into the movie/anime/toy industry that it's no longer this separate entity and it's just a mindless extension of those three things
Edit: I think independent gaming is still kind of like this, like if you guys didn't have internet and nobody in real life cared about your stuff would you still make games just to make them?? Because probably a lot of early games were like this I imagine there was no guarantee that it would really sell at all (this is kind of an aside btw not exactly related)
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gah let me see if I can summarize all this:
1. Don't worry about making a game fun, fun is too abstract an idea, concentrate on making it not feel 'cheap' first because even some of the best games were full of repetition and other officially unfun things but they probably didn't feel cheap or we wouldn't have played them. Game music in particular is about repeating elements without feeling cheap like PHILIP GLASS or someone like that
2. I don't know what this says about gamers it's not necessarily a good thing
3. Individually games probably weren't that creative but pretty much every other one felt unique. Even shit like sports games. Add some bit that the mind likes situations it perceives as something new over pretty but banal graphics
4. I dunno about immersion but I think pretty graphics stand in the way of COMPLETENESS - like a rpg village with 3 houses would look progressively weirder and less acceptable as the graphics get better, maybe
5. Videogames were a different form of media back then like I dunno I would compare them to PULP NOVELS more readily than compare them to movies back then. Now they're just kind of lumped in with all other media
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edit: ahaha he was offended by bayonetta too, where's that article about how bayonetta is pretty pro-feminist when i need it?
You ask and I provide: http://www.gamepro.com/article/features/213466/bayonetta-empowering-or-exploitative/
Seriously, there's a bunch of awesome and smart people writing about videogames on the internet but you won't find them on big websites (there's a few exceptions and some of their texts ends up on those websites from time to time). You need to search for them a bit (start there: http://www.critical-distance.com/) but it's a shame places like Craked or Destructoid, which is the TMZ of the videogame world, gets all the traffic.
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You ask and I provide: http://www.gamepro.com/article/features/213466/bayonetta-empowering-or-exploitative/
Seriously, there's a bunch of awesome and smart people writing about videogames on the internet but you won't find them on big websites (there's a few exceptions and some of their texts ends up on those websites from time to time). You need to search for them a bit (start there: http://www.critical-distance.com/) but it's a shame places like Craked or Destructoid, which is the TMZ of the videogame world, gets all the traffic.
that was the one, there was actually another (or two???) bayonetta-is-good-for-women article somewhere. that's the one i remembered though.
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I refuse to believe Bayonetta is a real game
I haven't played it therefore it doesn't exist
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I refuse to believe Bayonetta is a real game
I haven't played it therefore it doesn't exist
Count yourself lucky that it is so much easier to do that with games than it is with movies.
Trust me on this, I've tried.
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it's all gone david wong