henke on 7/6/2010 at 16:00

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Seems like gaming shows are mostly hot people reading stuff they have no idea about off of teleprompters or nervours nerds trying to "bring teh funny", and failing. But recently this show called Play Value caught my eye. It's not a Gaming News show but rather 10 minute retrospectives on various aspects of gaming history, delivered by a bunch of enthusiastic nerds who uninhibitedly rattle of their grievances and misty-eyed nostalgia about everything from the PONG controll-scheme to John Romero's haircut.

The episode about the (http://www.onnetworks.com/videos/play-value/sega-dreamcast?autoplay=true) SEGA Dreamcast was especially good. Check it out! :D

henke on 7/6/2010 at 18:14

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When they're not talking about 80s arcades or how various genres got their start, it's pretty console-centric yeah. They did do one episode about (http://www.onnetworks.com/videos/play-value/the-two-johns---from-doom-to-dust?autoplay=true) Carmack and Romero which you might find interesting though*.

Uh... although even that episode touches on Mario.

(coz the two Johns got their start making Mario for the PC)





*or even if you dont like it you at least get to nerdrage a bit about how they talk about Doom when the footage they're showing is CLEARLY ZDOOM D:<

Sulphur on 7/6/2010 at 18:52

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But retrospectives are so... retro. Gaming's all about moving forward, dagnabbit. The lessons of the past remain learned. We've got so much to talk about where the future can take us. Maybe it's entirely speculative, but to me it's infinitely more interesting.

Games moving this business of emulating reality to a level where the physical simulation's at the subatomic level or deeper and we're literally playing god games and creating our own universes the size of actual universes, playing with the power to fuck things up by changing the gravitational constant or rate of entropy or whatever. Disturbing the lives of the little people we've created by jerking them around or causing random acts of nature/destruction/weirdness around them. Simulation at the level of apparent reality for the shallow and callous entertainment of the masses.

That's the sort of thing games journalism should attack, apart from the usual current-day stuff. Stuff on gaming futurism. Reality-based gaming. Gaming journalism with a dash of creative anarchy. Mock articles on gaming in the future. Inspecting the current state of gaming, the evolution of the medium, extrapolating trends to that not-so-distant point in the future where games could possibly take the reality out of reality. Take the speculation to gaming's logical extremes.

So maybe this is a rant about me wanting more speculative fiction crossed with my gaming journalism. But what the hell. We could do with some daring to dream.


Also I want a documentary on a solipsism simulator. Hell holy fuck I might be playing that game right now oh shi

Yakoob on 8/6/2010 at 05:21

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He plays them to torture us.

Duncan on 8/6/2010 at 16:03

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Thanks for the heads up Henke. So many memories (both good and bad) surfaced as a result of seeing the small snippets of games and also some interesting background stuff I was unaware of. It was good to see that after a few episodes they got rid of the "DJ / Guitar Hero Master" chick who tries to convince you she was there in the day even though it was a good decade before she was born, and was clearly only there to provide some female geekage. Uh... anyway, yeah, I enjoyed watching those.