june gloom on 4/9/2011 at 22:41
I'm not sure if we've had a thread like this in the past- at least, not within the last year or so.
That said, since any thread with over 50 replies is a megathread, and since megathreads are almost as bad as me in destroying TTLG, might as well start a new one!
Okay, okay, jokes aside, I read sites like Ars Technica a lot and there's often some great articles. So in the spirit of Rock Paper Shotgun's Sunday Papers feature, and since we all have a wide range of sources for the things we read, it might be worthwhile to have a place to share these.
(
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/09/gaming-everything-is-amazing-and-no-one-is-happy.ars) How about this one to start?
I completely agree with it, of course, but as everyone knows, I tend to look past a game's flaws and just enjoy myself; it takes something frustratingly bullshit to get me to quit, like horrible balancing or certain old-school RPG elements taken to cartoonish extremes. More to the point, I don't let my memories of how much I enjoyed old games get in the way of enjoying new games.
This post was initially much longer because I'm typing it in between editing stories and each time my train of thought gets derailed and refueled, so I'll just leave it here.
henke on 5/9/2011 at 05:23
I've had the feeling that we're in some kind of gaming golden age right now. Though of course it's hard to judge it properly until some time has gone by.
heywood on 5/9/2011 at 08:17
The author needs to get a thicker skin instead of whinging about user comments.
I don't agree that this is the golden age of video games, and he doesn't say much to back that up. The only positive points he makes are about availability & price. What about innovation, challenge, and fun? The pace of innovation just seems to be slowing down compared to 5 years ago, and really slowing down compared to the PC gaming boom 10-15 years ago. Games are becoming ever more cinematic, but I think the industry is in a rut creatively. Hence all the sequels and copypasta titles.
He also complains about actual criticism not being accepted by his audience, but then he flames others for offering actual criticism of DX:HR. That seems hypocritical. And I'm not convinced that gamers are more negative now than they used to be. The market has always been full of mediocre games, and even the good ones are not universally praised. I remember Gamespot's review of DX had about as many negative words as positive, and a lot of people didn't like the game. DX:HR is getting more praise today than DX did back in the day.
PS. This should be in Gen Gaming.
henke on 5/9/2011 at 09:13
Quote Posted by heywood
the industry is in a rut creatively.
Who's "the industry"? EA Games, or that guy who makes games in his bedroom and sells them through Steam/XBLA/AppStore? It's way easier for people to get their games out there and make money of them nowadays than it's ever been and that's why we are getting more innovative games than ever before.
As for the user comments I don't think that's something unique to games. The internet is getting crowded and people find that they have to whine much louder to get any attention. Same reason as some people seem to class everything as either "fantastic" or "utter shit", with little space between. Hey, if you want people to pay attention but don't have anything interesting to say you better say it with conviction at least!
heywood on 5/9/2011 at 10:03
Quote Posted by henke
Who's "the industry"? EA Games, or that guy who makes games in his bedroom and sells them through Steam/XBLA/AppStore? It's way easier for people to get their games out there and make money of them nowadays than it's ever been and that's why we are getting more innovative games than ever before.
Definitely the major game studios are in a creative rut - probably the result of ever increasing game budgets and industry consolidation.
As far as indie developers go, I don't see much in the way of innovation but maybe I'm just missing all the gems. For every Minecraft it seems like there's 99 copypasta sidescrollers. Reminds me of when I was in my teens and used to write games for my C64. They were either simple copies of arcade games or stuff only I could appreciate. I don't think much has changed.
Quote:
As for the user comments I don't think that's something unique to games. The internet is getting crowded and people find that they have to whine much louder to get any attention. Same reason as some people seem to class everything as either "fantastic" or "utter shit", with little space between. Hey, if you want people to pay attention but don't have anything interesting to say you better say it with conviction at least!
Yeah, totally agree.
Sulphur on 5/9/2011 at 10:21
Ars has some pretty damn good all-round reading, which tend to be much better written than the gaming articles. Much of that, of course, has to do with the fact that they're experts in the fields they're writing about, be it the sciences, or the current legal tussles, or a review of Mac OS X: Chakat, or the implications of a paradigm shift in a programming language.
With entertainment you can't really have a rigorous, studied approach to every new development, or call in an 'expert' for comments on every one of them. It's not like gaming and games criticism, and even entertainment media as a whole, can accrete an aura of srs bsns like the above fields. So the credulity of a piece on, say, the economics of MMO microtransactions, is always less than one written by an economist on the current woes on Wall Street.
Entertainment's a mostly subjective thing, in the end. Articles end up being mostly either speculation or statement of opinion coupled with a nominal amount of observation, and audiences segregate into three camps: we like what you say, we think you're wrong, or 'meh, whatever'.
With that in mind, (
http://gamasutra.com) Gamasutra/(
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/) Gamesetwatch have some pretty interesting articles even if their writing quality tends to vary quite a bit. Gamesetwatch's indie focus and articles used to be thought-provoking, though now they've gone the Kotaku/RPS newswall way, it's hard to find any. (
http://grandtextauto.org/) Grand Text Auto usually has some great pieces on the craft and science of game narrative and development, though that's almost always with a literary bent and a not always fuzzy undertone of pretentiousness, of course.
And speaking of RPS's Sunday Papers, this one article they linked to from PC Gamer about (
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/09/04/dont-quit-how-to-save-adventures-225/) saving the adventure game genre is a great read.
dexterward on 5/9/2011 at 12:04
Quote Posted by heywood
I don't agree that this is the golden age of video games, and he doesn't say much to back that up
This and pretty much the rest from heywood`s posts.
C`mon Ars, you can do better than that - clear flamebait with the length of a modern PC Gamer "review". Ok it`s the Opposable Thumbs section which maybe is supposed to do just that, but still it`s about as serious an opinion as Mystic Meg`s from The Sun.
On the other hand there seems to be some new (?) trend going on, automatically branding anyone who dares to complain about new games with "you`re stuck in the 90`s" label. Regardless of the fact if the culprit actually is into retro gaming or not.
Availability - the one thing I disagree with heywood on, for the simple fact that NOT everyone has access to broadband. Coverage ain`t shit (nevermind it still doesn`t count in about half of the world) - you still need a credit card and ability to go on a min 12 month contract. For youngsters or people like me with transient lifestyle it`s a big block.
Golden Age? Yeah, that dirty Nineties. Every year some amazing breakthrough, not only on PC but consoles too. (Isn`t that also the time a certain code shop known for inventing the stealth genre operated?)
Matthew on 5/9/2011 at 17:01
The Golden Age died when Ultimate Play The Game got taken over.
SubJeff on 5/9/2011 at 18:32
I kind of feel the same a Matthew, sort of. The Golden Age of Gaming, for people my age, was back in the day. I feel it was really early on, pre-PC gaming as we know it when it was Spectrums, C64s and then later Amigas and Atari STs. The protracted birth of gaming, if you will.
This current phase where we're reaching high power, near photo-realistic graphics and motion controls feels like a Renaissance of sorts. We've almost reached the power to create anything we can think of, on a screen (there'll be a Second Renaissance when proper VR appears), and so now it's just about the innovation that is realised as finished products.
Technical steps like digital distribution are less important than what is being distributed imho.
And yes, there is too much copy'n'paste. Aren't we bored of MP FPSs yet?
Renzatic on 5/9/2011 at 19:56
Most of what he said was very very very true, or at least as far as whiny gamer types go. Want an example? I'll give you the hot topic o' the day here: Deus Ex.
I started semi-frequenting forums about the time the original DX came out. This was around the time of Daikatana, when Ion Storm had to prove itself to an audience of people who were crushed by that game, and demanded satisfaction. DX was their only hope of redeeming themselves to such an audience. I remember people on the DX Eidos forum bitching that the game was going to be shit, IS had already horribly disappointed them once already, and weren't willing to give them a second chance. Of course there were people doing the cautious optimism thing, but you know, they were just fanboys and appeasers.
Then the DX demo came out. And you know what? it sucked. "The game looks too bland", they screamed. "The demo mission is too simple", they whined. "The game runs like shit", they wailed. All these things were pretty much true, by the way. The graphics were pretty blase even by turn of the century standards, Liberty Island was kind of boring, seeming to sacrifice detail for pure open space, and it did run like crap. You were lucky to get 20 FPS down an empty hallway when DX first came out, and that was only if you were playing in 16BPP 640x480.
Even I was disappointed by it. It took me a good two or three playthroughs before I started thinking it might end up being alright if things improved later on in the game. I wasn't expecting much, though.
Hopes were crushed. Preorders? Oh, they were cancelled. The dev team were called idiots. The game was an obvious cash-in! Warren Spector was such a goddamn fuckup, and fuck him, blah blah blah. The forum was alive with anger.
Now here we are, 10 years later, and DX is considered one of the greatest games of all time. It's a shining beacon of how much better things were back when, and how everything sucks these days in comparison. Game devs don't care anymore! It's all about making a quick buck for them, appealing to the lowest common denominator! I mean look at Deus Ex! A game like that could never come out these days!
And now here we are, seeing people bitch about how shitty DX:HR is in comparison to the original DX. In another 10 years, it'll be considered a classic just like DX, and people will be using it as an example of how much better things were back when. The hardcore gamer types are never happy, and videogame history is cyclical. Things now aren't much different than they were in '99.
