Quote from: fucked up wastoid on January 28, 2013, 12:07:10 am

the only way to get change is to prove that there's a market for what you're arguing for. create something that's counter to the values espoused by the media and show everybody how profitable it is. 

I'm a little wary of the notion that profit or commercial success is the only way to educate people, tho, because it takes a long time to turn that ship around, and during that time such things might not get a lot of support or public interest (because, all things considered, the most active and profitable demographic is still very much focused on HeAvY and HaRdCoRe XtReMe boob physics—other demographics surely exist but they sorta have to figure out on their own what's out there). I'm not an expert on the gaming industry of course, so what do I know, but it kinda seems to me like this is a very difficult, uphill battle. Not that I'm saying it's a BAD thing, of course, it's very a good thing. (And actually, doing this is one form of the public education that I mentioned.)

 
The idea that people who want those things are the most profitable demographic is somewhat of a myth. Maybe the most active is a fair assessment of that demographic, but the folks who prefer a counter to the ideas fully ingrained in the media most surely outnumber those folks whose higher levels of activity perpetuates the myth that they are the majority or the largest source of profit. The trick is to talk to people who play video games about these very sort of things, by asking about how they feel. Opening a dialogue in this way can get these people, who you might assume would counter or get defensive about what you are teaching, to actually acknowledge that these very issues matter to them in a direct way. 
 
The uphill battle is more based on the idea of creating a new IP, and creating a new IP is hard enough when there is very little to nothing to base it on that has already been proven as an IP that people are clamoring for. The idea of perpetuating those media stereotypes is less about maximizing profit outright, but more of  maximizing of the ratio of profit to thought/effort/risk extended. Sure, challenging those stereotypes CAN make more money, but at least when following/perpetuating those stereotypes do the video game producers KNOW exactly how much return they are going to make off their investment. 
 
The barrier to entry is mostly from the fact that those games following the status quo are still making plenty of money to validate their existence. Even if it is due to nothing more than the general public not having any suitable alternatives being offered. (or much more likely that those alternatives being offered are even more barred due to lack of exposure/advertising/shelf space) I do not disagree that it is indeed an uphill battle. But the thing about going up hills is that once you get to the top, the hardest part is already over. The rest just gets easier and easier, the gravity of the situation does almost all the work for you after that crucial point.

look at tyler perry for instance. everyone likes to laugh at how shitty the madea movies are, but that dude is filthy rich and created a media empire for himself that's completely outside the mainstream establishment. and the secret to his success is because he knew there was an enormous market that was being neglected and that there was a ton of money to be made. granted the madea movies are shit, but they're important in that they blazed that trail and proved there was a market. now the next young black filmmaker who's more talented that perry will have something to aim for, and the status of media created for and by blacks can begin to elevate itself. 

the only thing more horrifying than this example is the fact that i can't think of a better one. like the idea of a counterculture breakthrough is kinda impossible now, and the best we can hope for is TYLER PERRY who manages to be just as repulsive as the mainstream but with slightly different coordinates. jesus christ THIS IS WHERE WE ARE, THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE BECOME. STAY TUNED FOR MY STARTLING ESSAY MADEA: UBERMENSCH FOR THE 21ST CENTURY.
 
back on topic though, i'm pretty much completely resigned to the fact that the greater thrust of the media is going to remain dull-minded and socially/ethnically/culturally/sexually counterproductive, to the point where i'd even be pretty skeptical of the far-reaching effect of some wonderful messianic media figure who actually wasn't a complete waste, or some mystical positive genre that actually has intrinsically worthwhile things to convey. it has to be a pretty deliberate effort if you want to actively revise the way the media depicts certain concepts, and it's really just not set up for that. the entertainment industry as a whole isn't as much creators as they are selfless parrots, clinging vaguely to the concepts of their predecessors without paying the slightest bit of attention to the ultimate effect of their work. the zombie genre is a decent example of this, i guess. as far as i can tell, george romero is pretty much the main reason why we have that right now, and while his films were a little too silly, maybe got caught up slightly too much in horror genre bullshit, i generally think his movies mean well and have some greater thematic intent. he's got some things to say, and while he has the worst possible way of saying it, the idea of zombies ultimately works as a reasonably effective metaphor, or at the worst an interesting setting to explore other themes. of course virtually everybody else that's come after him just latched brainlessly onto the idea without really paying any attention to the inner narrative of the work, which is what romero's works were really ultimately about. fuck, nobody is even asking WHY everyone is so hopelessly engaged with the zombie theme(imho a reasonably interesting question), they're just churning shit out because there's money there. i could sit all day and come up with examples like this, but this is really the core of the problem: not enough people really seriously give a shit about the meaning and ultimate impact of their work, what they're contributing to the collective fabric of our social consciousness. it wouldn't be enough to have some great, wonderful anti-tyler perry appear and literally bleed sincerity all over our television sets, or even several of these people running parallel, because invariably anyone inspired enough to try going down a similar path would choose to do so on only superficial terms, hit the basic concepts without for a moment considering the underlying themes. you get past all the guns and boobs, and this is really the core of the problem, a stunning lack of thought. unfortunately, you can't really teach that. people need to find that on their own, redefine their own definition of acceptable thought.
 
the greater problems with the media aren't something that could really meaningfully boil over into something that required immediate self-evaluation, so this is something that really needs to happen internally and on some larger scale. it wouldn't be enough for entertainment with a positive message to exist, people need to LEARN FROM IT. that's asking far too much.
 
basically: we're fucked. this is only going to get worse. i'd love to be completely wrong about this, but i just don't see it happening in my lifetime.

Not to sound like a hipster. but I was into zombies before they blew up into popularity.
 
And I know why I like zombies. In fact there are numerous reasons. I think the vast majority of zombie stuff doesn't really focus on the interesting aspects of zombies though. I will give you that.

Yeah, I wasn't attacking the concept. I liked Romero's movies to the point where I could probably say I was INTO ZOMBIES before the topic got out of control in recent years. Actually, if anything, I think by using it there I was kinda suggesting that zombies as a theme has room for interesting stuff, which is probably as close as I can get to actually approving a genre.
 
But yeah, you get my point I think. The media system is engineered to harvest these concepts, but not really explore what's valuable or interesting about them. I wasn't putting a value judgement on it here.

i don't know anything but i feel dubious about any idea of tolerable mass culture that relies on the goodwill of whatever awful mandarin caste is in charge of putting this shit together
 
like you could say SELF-INTEREST / FREEMARKET but i think there are problems with using money as a straight proxy for approval/disapproval/"like"button, how much of this stuff is even based on any kind of knowledge of or interest in what real people might be interested in as opposed to being this selfregarding echochamber bubble thing that jerks around and reacts hysterically whenever it happens to glance off something that might conceivably interest an audience. and which has inherited enough control of production channels to be more or less self-sustaining(??) and to produce an idea of "mainstream" that's self-perpetuating. i actually don't know, i'm just asking. i hope there's some movie person here who can talk about cinema distribution channels or something that probably explains whole history of movie industry a million times better than AUTEURS v THE BUMS. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0898547/ smiles challengingly and informs you that he made 500mill via ape movies last year alone (this purchaseable audiotape tells you how) singlehandedly saves american movie industry.
 
since this is a games thread i might relevently mention that basically the only time i experienced a game's culture (as opposed to just individual games hunkering nervously in wasteland) that seemed relevent or exciting was downloading those huge glorioustrainwrecks compilation things of many games made in an hour or so and just going through a bunch at random, like there was a lot of skeevy gamerjoke stuff but there was also a lot of stuff that was funny or radical or charming and i don't know if they balanced each other out numerically but having them all kind of jostling and contradicting each other on the same plane felt more interesting and productive than what seems to be alternative best case scenario of paying lip service to some awful monolithic shit that's not quite as vile as you expect it to be.

diy...or........die.......................
 
edit: auteurs v the bums wasn't knocking the romero discussion which i think is accurate + good but i know i have a tendency to see things in terms of competing personalities or individual efforts which is probably a bit glib. isn't the whole point of auteur theory that it kind of skips over all of the bulky economic and technical construction that surrounds individual vision of director or equivalent.

To be honest, if voting with your wallet did work (which I honestly don't think it will) and a game's sales abruptly plummeted because it, say, came bundled with a bikini torso, I honestly wonder if the game company would even understand that that's why it happened.  They'd probably just go "GUESS PEOPLE DON'T WANT ZOMBIE GAMES ANYMORE/MAYBE OUR GAMEPLAY WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH"

surprised and beaming developers of The New Metroid Game accept "goty" award from all major institutions for Not Having A Bit Where You Mash X To Avoid Being Penetrated By A Slobbering Dinosaur, attribute success to improved bloom lighting.

the invisible gamepad of the market............

oh no voting with your wallet doesn't work at all, that's economics undergrad bullshit. I think what wastoid was saying is that if you prove there's a market for it, the game publishers and marketers, who are otherwise isolated in their superstitious fantasy world, will latch onto the idea and be willing to fund projects like it.
 
that's already visible in the direction some publishers have been taking in recent years of funding and publishing indie-like games, like bastion. that is what tends to happen in our society, tho game publishers seem to be particularly superstitious and unwilling to explore anything that doesn't appeal to horny escapism
 
like I said earlier, the target market is gonna change what it wants before the publishers ever change what they're doing. so yeah, it's kinda hopeless/no easy answer in sight. but I do think you can spread ideas in more ways than just personally educating people

someone ran a kickstarter for it and it made a LOTTA DOUGH $$$
 
also yea, after youtube and so on it's a lot harder to say there's something inherently more progressive or m powering about User Generated Content as a mass phenomenon, but i do think it makes it easier to build kind of smaller microscenes, communities, support networks etc that arguably are more effective at getting people together and encouraging them to think and do shit than watching some big summer event movie that has a critique embedded in it somewhere (bioshock...).
you probably won't change the mind of samu3lth3g33k and similar because the community thing cuts both ways but idk what could or if it's even worth doing it on those terms. being a ""devils advocate"" for new ideas in vidcon circles versus trying to set up something which doesn't even bother with that kind of toxic scene in favour of addressing and consolidating some of the actuall people who are affected by this stuff or have an interest in it, who are probably the most likely ones to do something about it or to get fucked over by being isolated in a vacuum of brochat. building structures for people to consolidate views and discuss shit and make their own things and figure out what they think by doing so. the other side of ron paul kickstarter videogames is like the billion and one queer twine games that came out over the last few months and they kick the shit out of fuckin gay planet so i think that's worth something...

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diy...or........die.......................

 
 
will democratizing control of media really solve all problems though? most people are awful and stupid and they create awful shit and/or want to push awful agendas just as eagerly as media corporations do. look at youtube. 90% of it is Epic Bacon Fail Zombie Ninja Carl Sagan Gets Hit In Dong videos. look at indie games. someone created a ron paul platformer game. bad as mainstream games are at least no publisher alive would bank on a ron paul game. not that i'm arguing against taking control of the media away from corporations. i'm just saying that alone wouldn't fix all the problems. 

yeah basically fixing the focus of the game industry doesn't change the fact that the game industry is just supporting attitudes the general society has.  what needs to be fixed is people's attitudes, not video games.  but of course, pointing out problematic attitudes in media that people consume is a good way of getting their attention and getting them to start thinking that way.

i don't know anything but i feel dubious about any idea of tolerable mass culture that relies on the goodwill of whatever awful mandarin caste is in charge of putting this shit together

yeah, i don't think that'd be a sensible reaction to this situation either. it should be outside of the realm of artists and the media creators to have the role of weaving the fabric of society, and i guess the hope would be that without the perpetual bombardment of negative stereotypes from the current mainstream, you'd also begin to see a society that did not identify so profoundly with the media. but that's a totally unrealistic expectation, and in the meantime i guess you just hope that art doesn't take it upon itself to try fighting fire with fire, abandoning artistic endeavor in favor of empty propaganda out of a need to combat all the negative cultural stereotypes the mainstream imposes.

dietcoke's plan to save videogames: destroy capitalism
 
hundley is right tho, shit's so irreparably fucked in the media and it's going to continually get worse and worse