Gamers Thread

[hibernal_dream]

ya, I agree with you

videogames in a 100 years will be what movies/music is today

games already have turned into phallic version of hollywood scenesterism (take one element of a kid's wet dream and blow it out of ridiculous proportions). way too much emphasis on what a game looks like, plays like. we have no hope of an intelligent game being developed because they are now targeted at 12 year olds.

 

[MasterOLightning]

I despise popular culture (just as much as nearly everybody else in here).

Possibly the most hypocritical thing I have ever read, considering how you've professed your love for the poppiest of pop culture mainstream games there are.



Metal Gear Solid 3. Now there's a game.

 

[Pessimism]

Shit, I wish I had access to the consoles some of you have. Right now, I'm just playing Call of Cthulhu : Dark Corners of the Earth and F.E.A.R. for the PC. Sometimes I'll play Warhammer: Dark Crusade, but I'm usually bored as hell playing it anymore.


Oblivion is dead to me, I've utterly conquered it.

 

[Wires & Waves]

way too much emphasis on what a game looks like, plays like

yeah man and whats with all this emphasis on what music sounds like

dont get me wrong, if videogames are art theyre incredibly shitty art but that just sounded stupid

 

[The Heartbreak Kid]

Every game Dave likes is crap. Sorry but thats just life.

 

[s_a_o]

Every game Dave likes is crap. Sorry but thats just life.

 

[Hell Awaits Us All]

games already have turned into phallic version of hollywood scenesterism (take one element of a kid's wet dream and blow it out of ridiculous proportions). way too much emphasis on what a game looks like, plays like. we have no hope of an intelligent game being developed because they are now targeted at 12 year olds.

uh last time I checked gameplay was the most important aspect of making a great game.

and master at this point, I would probably call myself a mainstream gamer, I don't really care though. It's just entertainment for me.

BTW what is so poppy about NCAA 2008? It's the best football series around, and I love playing football (whether it is live or on xbox)

 

[Death Aflame]

dont get me wrong, if videogames are art theyre incredibly shitty art

'cause certain media are inherently more 'artsy' (for lack of a better term) than others right?

Sweeping generalizations about the quality of an entire medium, especially emerging ones, is an outdated argument reminiscent of Matthew Arnold.

 

[Wires & Waves]

'cause certain media are inherently more 'artsy' (for lack of a better term) than others right?

no because every individual videogame is artistically shitty in spite of the medium's potential

 

[Death Aflame]

no because every individual videogame is artistically shitty in spite of the medium's potential

You speak of something being 'artistically shitty' as if the term is easily defined and illustrated. This hides the complexity of attempting to attribute artistic value and worth to a particular object.

Anyways, this debate could go on for eternity and I don't really feel like getting heavily involved in it. So whatever.

 

[CAIRATH]

no because every individual videogame is artistically shitty in spite of the medium's potential

Logically the only way you could make a claim like that is if...

1) there was some kind of objective way to qualify art
2) you had actually played every single game in existence

I'll agree the majority of today's videogames are artistically void (and also don't try to be anything else) but there are games that I would call art. Examples of which would be:

Planescape Torment (probably one of the best story driven RPG games ever)
Silent Hill 2

Both those games are actually quite bad in terms of gameplay (Torment had a horrible interface and SH2 has shitty controls and a shittier combat system) and you can kind of tell the focus went to delivering a good story/atmosphere rather than creating the hippest most high-tech game.

As for the state of the gaming industry today, don't even get me started. It's utterly depressing. Especially as someone who is actually interested in being part of it at some point (or I used to be, and am becoming less and less so). I honestly think the gaming industry was at its peak around 1997 or so and has steadily gone down hill from there due to a variety of factors (the main one being money). Makes me wish I was born 10 years earlier so I could have been part of it during the glory days when games were still being made by independent studios.

What the games industry really needs is something like Miramax Studios. A company that is willing to a produce games that may not end up being top sellers but that appeal to a niche market and that take some risks and try to be innovative here and there. Two of the people that used to be behind Gathering of Developers have kind of started a company for that purpose but it remains to be seen whether that will work out in the end (considering GoD, a similar initiative, went belly-up). For those interested: Gamecock Media Group

 

[Wires & Waves]

how can you claim a game to be a good work of art when it's weak in the area that makes the medium unique?

edit: games havent really gotten any worse, in fact there were probably WAY more shitty games back in the day

 

[CAIRATH]

Yeah, now if only you weren't 5 years old in 1997 you'd actually KNOW instead of having to say "probably" and you'd know that you are wrong. But whatever. There's no point arguing with you really and therefor I won't bother beyond this point.

As for your other comment, if you'd actually played those games you might understand. Stick to arguing about something you actually know something about.

 

[MasterOLightning]

The Metal Gear Solid series probably aspires to be art more than any other games. Or at least art by proxy, as it's really aspiring to be interactive film. I think we're probably 10 years away from games made specifically to be art.


I remember what gaming was like in the mid-90s, at least just by reading about it. My family couldn't afford anything beyond consoles that were a full generation behind. The future of video games was so wide open then. No one knew what the future would hold then. The war between Genesis and SNES had been so exciting, and the PSX, N64, Saturn era had so much promise with the move to 3D. Plus there were all these projects that kept surfacing, like the M2, that just looked like they would be amazing. I could barely wait to get my Game Informer in the mail every month to see what the news was on the new consoles and games and ideas. Unfortunately, a lot of that stuff was vaporware, and bad business decisions really doomed Saturn, and to a lesser extent the N64.

The game industry has been utterly boring and predictable this decade. This is especially evidenced by the dreadful PS3 strategy.

 

[Wires & Waves]

Yeah, now if only you weren't 5 years old in 1997 you'd actually KNOW instead of having to say "probably" and you'd know that you are wrong. But whatever. There's no point arguing with you really and therefor I won't bother beyond this point.

As for your other comment, if you'd actually played those games you might understand. Stick to arguing about something you actually know something about.

actually i was 10 in 1997 so yes i do remember. seriously this rose-tinted glasses bullshit that pervades among you faggot gaming elitists is pathetic, games on the whole are no better or worse than they were 10 years ago

p.s. i have played planescape: torment. it's basically the highest achievement of choose-your-own-adventure fiction, but it's hardly utilizing the potential of the videogame medium to its fullest potential.

 

[Astrum]

Metal Gear Solid 3. Now there's a game.

And the first and second ones. I have beaten each of them many, many times on each difficulty. I'm a bit of a fanatic, I guess. Favorite game series of all time, easily.

 

[CAIRATH]

seriously this rose-tinted glasses bullshit that pervades among you faggot gaming elitists is pathetic, games on the whole are no better or worse than they were 10 years ago

Yes they are but you simply lack the perspective to see it. I've been playing games since 1990, have spent a good amount of time doing amateur game development (mainly Quake 3 mods and such) and know a few people who work in the gaming industry. I have more than enough perspective to judge the changes that the gaming industry has undergone in the past decade and a half and there is definitely a tipping point where it went downhill and it has continued to do so. Where that point is exactly is up for debate but it's there.

And it mainly has to do with money. Nowadays games are multi-million dollar projects whereas 10-15 years ago it was much easier for newcomers and small independent studios to enter the market and be able to develop their own ideas without close scrutiny and interference from large publishing houses. Today nearly ever development studio is literally owned by the big players (EA, Vivendi, Activision) and due to the large amount of time and money that games cost to make there is little room for experimentation because the companies that pay the bills won't take those risks.

To sum it up: nowadays major game design decisions are no longer made just by game designers, but by the people holding the briefcase with money. People who care about little more than whether the game will sell well and whether the development process hits its milestones when it's supposed to (regardless of whether that is infact humanly possible).

I'm not making those claims as a "faggot elitist gamer" (whatever the fuck that is, I am absolutely not an elitist gamer but you can call me a faggot if it makes you feel better) but as someone who has followed the industry for a long time actually knows people working in it.

 

[Cythraul]

Who the fuck gives a rat's ass about how artistically viable video games are?

 

[MasterOLightning]

@Cairath
The barriers to entry in the video game market are indeed way to high right now. To launch a console is a billion dollar investment. To produce games costs a ton, as you said, which is why every game coming out right now is another Socom/Ghost Recon/Medal of Honor. Of course, when barriers to entry are too low, like in the early 90s for PC games, the signal to noise ratio becomes about 1 in 20, or worse. In the NES days too, there were a ton of bad, unplayable games. Nowadays quality control is a bit better, and there are fewer games that are total shit, but a ton that are moderately fun and just okay.

On another note, are you familiar with any of the academic work on games and learning? It's very interesting. The primary researchers are David Shaffer and James Gee. They have books out, but there are also some pdfs floating around that largely sum up what they have to say. Essentially, they argue that what makes a game good is that it is very good at teaching you how to play it. The ramifications for education are intriguing because games can be so good at teaching you how to do something very difficult and frustrating. Gamers always clamor for games that are longer, harder, and more frustrating, but in schools kids go for the opposite.

 

[CAIRATH]

Of course, when barriers to entry are too low, like in the early 90s for PC games, the signal to noise ratio becomes about 1 in 20, or worse. In the NES days too, there were a ton of bad, unplayable games. Nowadays quality control is a bit better, and there are fewer games that are total shit, but a ton that are moderately fun and just okay.

That is true, but I much prefer the former situation to the latter. It's easy to just ignore the shitty games and play the really good ones. When the industry is mainly pumping out games that are only "okay" at best (and I still think there are loads of shitty ones actually, granted not as shitty as some of those "oh god I cannot get past the first level this is so frustrating" NES games) there is nothing you as a consumer can really do about it. It's the same with music really. The barrier to start your own band and record your own independently released CD is not that high. As a result there are a fuckton of utterly horrible albums outthere. But there are also plenty of gems. Which is a much better situation than simply having lots of by-the-numbers music that is merely "okay" with no real experimentation and nothing that makes it stand out in any way (good or bad).

On another note, are you familiar with any of the academic work on games and learning? It's very interesting. The primary researchers are David Shaffer and James Gee. They have books out, but there are also some pdfs floating around that largely sum up what they have to say. Essentially, they argue that what makes a game good is that it is very good at teaching you how to play it. The ramifications for education are intriguing because games can be so good at teaching you how to do something very difficult and frustrating. Gamers always clamor for games that are longer, harder, and more frustrating, but in schools kids go for the opposite.

I am not, actually. I'm a programmer so most of the gaming related books I've read dealt with game programming specifically. Though I actually find the game design side of it more interesting really (what makes a good game is a tricky question), I simply haven't really come across any books that deal with that specifically and I guess it's also something that didn't seem as directly applicable to me, considering I still don't work in the games industry so I have nothing to really do with that knowledge. But I will check that out. It sounds interesting.