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

5 Creepy Ways Video Games are Trying to get you Addicted

5 Things the Gaming Industry Will Never Fix (And Why)

The 7 Commandments All Video Games Should Obey

A Gamer's 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.

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.

gamesradar writers are better

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

More like david wang

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.

Dr. Wong's 3D Barbecue and Animal Hospital

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)

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.

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.

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.

He used paragraphs. That's what they look like in a book : )

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

how abstract, ragnar.

You could probably write a book on this abstract game stuff. I wonder what goes on in your head sometimes.