rolling thread of stuff worth reading on videogames

No offence to you personally cozwn, but I could shoot holes in that article all day. Then I noticed it was written by Stephen Fry, who should really know better. His "the Arctic Monkeys are a popular beat combo" shtick is pissing me off. And his deliberate stuffed-shirt use of painfully obscure words like "rorty".

you have hurt me heavy in my heart

The column is called "Dork Talk", but it's written by tweedy men who should be smoking pipes and growing giant vegetables. Worse than Fry is the fucker with two Amstrad PCWs...

With books, I send the manuscript to the publisher and they have to key it into their computer. With journalism, I print out a copy, then fax it.

It makes my blood boil the way he casually makes unnecessary work for other people. In both cases someone has to type the information in again, or in a best case scenario, OCR it and then check it for OCR errors.

And "rorty" means "incorrigible", so why didn't he just say that, instead of trying to show off his big vocabulary AAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!

Anyway, none of this is aimed at you, cozwn

It's just that everyone in England at the moment seems to be either a middle aged person pretending to be a teenager, or a teenager pretending to be a gangsta...

It makes my blood boil the way he casually makes unnecessary work for other people. In both cases someone has to type the information in again, or in a best case scenario, OCR it and then check it for OCR errors.

-- snoball, Sunday, August 31, 2008 2:37 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

oh no somebody has a job!

And that typing/OCRing would be done by an intern who has more than enough work to get on with already. One of the cornerstones of technology is it's ability to reduce the need for repetitive work. This guy's attitude flies in the face of that (or rather, flew, because he replaced the Amstrads with a Mac).

haha, take two

http://infovore.org/talks/if-gamers-ran-the-world/

Tom explains a bit more

the guy behind passage

czn oyu linked page 2 of that article!

passage is that zelda on rails with no enemies and bad graphics innit

That makes it sound better than it is.

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/12/best-of-2008-to.html

Nintendo's little console that could is shattering sales records left and right, and might just move more units in 2008 than any game system in history. Casual hits Wii Play, Mario Kart, and Wii Fit continue to captivate new players. But meanwhile, Nintendo's loyal fans, the ones who stuck with the company through the lean years, are feeling a bit like when you go to high school and your former best geeky friend is suddenly all hot and popular and doesn't talk to you anymore.

^^^^ lol!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/aug/30/nintendo.games

was this written by stephen fry the famous homosexualist actor

^^^ Yes

gaylord british

can somebody make one of them things where you have a picture and then a big equals sign and then another picture, and then another row of the same thing but two different pictures, and it makes a concise argument or something? I'm busy. It should look like this

totally sweet dos bootup screen into command line = ps3 controller with that fucked-up lookin blackberry keyboard addon
old-ass macintosh system <7 black and white GUI = wiimote

except I guess a dos pc was always hella cheaper than the mac so it doesn't hold up

did we ever have an actual console argument thread on here or ILE?

idk! let's make a poll!!!!

or better yet a series of polls a la the gamefaqs CHARACTER BATTLES, we can argue whether goku could beat up sephiroth!!!!

yeah we need to do a SEVENTH GENERATION CONSOLE WARS POLL so we can combine all the truths from the mind

pls do

anyone read this?

not read this, just putting it out there
http://www.chewingpixels.com/?p=1605

the magical wasteland article they (he?) mention really is excellent and i would be interested in what some posters here think (or thought) of it. i'm also really glad he mentions the time extend articles which are a good template for what games reviews (as opposed to criticism) should look like. i was a lot less impressed with the "if gamers rule the world" article which strained so much to make its point it ended up sounding like a jonathan franzen parody.

Some interesting stuff. I suppose every games writer has to overcome some kind of inferiority complex coming from society at large?

What the heck is this?
http://amusement.fr/
http://pingmag.jp/2008/12/15/amusement/

not read this, just putting it out there
http://www.chewingpixels.com/?p=1605

― cozwn, Tuesday, December 16, 2008 11:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

something about the fact that you have to make it through 700 words of meandering philosophizing to get to his list makes me value this dude's judgment a lot less

what, you didnt need ten paragraphs lovingly outlining this guyz movie-selection process?

ya i dont know if i trust that guy's opinion on good writing.

you shd def check out the magical wasteland blog, most stuff on their is pretty decent

man there's this great crazy japanese dude on the eurogamer forums who always posts these massive screeds about jp RPGs. totally tl;dr but I'll gobble this up all day long:

"As long as we're talking about Square Enix's output this generation, I think I'll rank everything they've done:

Egg Monster Heroes - a pleasant B-grade RPG with neither enough depth or a good enough story to be really special, but certainly very fun while you play it.

Children of Mana - still one of my favorite DS action RPGs. I really like making Mana into a dungeon hacking game. The enemy animations are awesome, I love combining magic and weapon attacks to make my own strategies and doing random errands for the villagers to get stronger stuff. The gems system is great, the boss battles are epic and I like the random different requirements for each floor of the dungeon.

Mario Basketball - another fun take on Mario sports, I'm not sure why but the portable versions are always better than the console ones. Since this is Square Enix-made the bonus Square characters are a nice touch and the dribbling with stylus feel was well-used, as well, its got lots of hidden depth and a well-tuned challenge level, but is still easy to play. Another winner.

Final Fantasy III - a superb remake of a classic game. Really nice to have the difficulty kept despite Square Enix's tendency to make games easier in their remakes. Except they really should have kept developing until they could get more than 3 enemies on the screen at a time, as that is the only thing that wasn't as good as the original. Loved the mog mail elements and redone characters. Also has probably the best DS intro movie ever.

Rocket Slime 2 - As the sequel to the incredibly fun original, absolutely nothing is lost, except a great chance to use the stylus. Better yet, the highly unique tank gameplay makes it better than ever. Fantastic humor and charm; its one of the DS's top tier games and its one of the first original games on the system to deserve the title of future classic.

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales - Leave it to Square Enix to be one of the only companies who can follow up on Nintendo's trend of mini-game collections and make an excellent game out of it. From all the loving references to the series, to the absurd character of Mog, the Super Hero, to the great and tricky card game, its a good one. Some of the minigames aren't as good as others, but luckily most of them are pure gold and the game's got a lot more to accomplish than most mini-game collections.

Heroes of Mana - The first in the burgeoning RTS meets SRPG gameplay concepts, despite some control hiccups, this one was great. It really mixed the Mana world concepts with RTS ideas well. Better yet, knowing that AI and control features weren't a match for a typical RTS, its depth was found elsewhere and thus it had a completely different feel than a Western RTS. Also, a really long and involved game.

Front Mission 1st - a port of the PS2 remake with a few more enhancements, I feel like they totally didn't pay attention to the needs of a DS game with this one. The basic game is unchanged in that its a good SRPG and the enhancements make it even better, but a failure to make sure it plays comfortably on the DS means that some of the appeal is harder to get into. Should have had more of a graphical remake as well. So great game at the core, but a lazy job done on this version.

Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings - beside the somewhat iffy way the CG characters were animated, a feeling that it doesn't have enough side content and they could have done more to make gambits more flexible, this game's light-hearted plot was a welcome throwback to the whimsical nature of Final Fantasies of old, and as the second marriage of RTS and RPG gameplay, it surprisingly plays very differently from Heroes of Mana. Overall, a much better spin-off sequel than FFX-2 and still one of the most beautiful games on the system, with an incredible soundtrack.

Dragon Quest & Mario in Itadaki Street Special - Not much to surprise here, as usual, these are great multiplayer and singleplayer board games and this one is yet another well done game in that line, except made again fresh with boards and characters with a Mushroom Kingdom and Dragon Quest theme. This and the PS2 Final Fantasy & Dragon Quest game are probably the highest peak the series has reached. As always, the AI is surprisingly challenging, making for an infinitely replayable singleplayer game on top of the multiplayer.

Dragon Quest Monsters Joker - Mmmm, yummy. What the game loses in random dungeon flexibility and the total uniqueness of the caravan gameplay in the third title it makes up for with impressively 3D environments, great online tournaments and some awesome improvements to the base gameplay. Like Tactics A2, a game that can suck up hundreds of hours if you let it.

Shall We Listen to the Classics on the DS? - Yes, I bought one of Square Enix's ventures into new gaming territory. The idea of this one was that you listened to classical music and learned all about it, with visual aids and quizzes and the like. Except, only a small piece of the whole tune is played with information on how to buy the entire thing. It plays like an elaborate ad and feels like such a cheap ripoff that I feel bad just giving it attention in this paragraph. Since classical music largely in the public domain, why on earth did they do this? Also, since several of Square Enix's composers are famous, why did they not solicit their comments on the music? Koichi Sugiyama's comments especially would have been incredible. While its true that I learned an awful lot about classical music from it, seemed like a wasted opportunity. I want them to make it up by including full tunes and doing a 100 best songs/arrangements of Square Enix game.

Blooming Flowers DS Gardening Life - Now this may not please gardening maniacs or pros, but as a beginner who always wanted to know about this stuff, but never really tried, this is excellent. Thanks to this title, I finally was able to learn all the names of flowers and plants that I could only guess at before, know how to pick flowers and plants to grow in my house that I could afford to keep up and put in the right place and even start an herb garden for cooking (which amazingly, I started due to Cooking Navi, the DS is truly a monster). Excellent, easy to use, very handy and a fantastic introduction to gardening and plant knowledge. Why Square Enix got plants and flowers so very right and not music is beyond me though.

Yosumin - Did you guys know this is probably coming to you in the near future? Be very glad, as this game kicks ass. It's a puzzle game where you select smilie thingies of the same color to make a square and they disappear replaced by random other tiles. The basic rule is that you have to make a certain amount of colors disappear on each stage before time runs out. Play a free version of the game here: http://game.nifty.com/cs/catalog/game_freetitle/free2/cat... Of course as you play, new elements get introduced. The basic strategy of bigger squares netting you more points, but potentially wiping out other colors you could use to make a square is really well balanced and the DS game adds so many ways to play, that it's basically endless. Yosumin is the best puzzle game on the DS, period.

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates - An enormous singleplayer improvement on the Gamecube game and an extremely deep action RPG. Playing dress up with weapons and armor makes for varied replay and the puzzles, environments, enemies and abilities make for a game with a constantly evolving feel. This is where the series started threatening the Tactics games as the best Final Fantasy spin offs.

Final Fantasy Tactics A2 - After the crack cocaine addiction of the first, comes another multi-hundred hour epic. There's just so much friggin detail and so many ideas packed into this one and its so damn well thought out and fun, it will take you ages to plumb all of the jobs, side elements and ways to play it. On the other hand, it just has so much to it, it makes you wonder how they can possibly think of anything new to put in another one. You can make a case of which type of game is better, Advance or the original Tactics, but this one just smacks them both down.

The World Ends With You - 100% fresh, with all sorts of innovative ideas, totally its own identity and a great setting. The only thing really wrong with it is that it can't seem to rise above the types of characters it also wants to criticize and is kind of infected with them. Other than that, its really hard in this day and age to make an RPG that be compared with anything else, but this one achieved that. It may not have sold billions, but it seems to have been influential on the RPG market, as Blazer Drive and Devil Survivor both seem to take after it.

Final Fantasy IV - Voice-acting, new abilities, a more Celtic soundtrack, far better difficulty that brings more of the game's true depth, I remember I used to dream that RPGs would be like this one day. I can't believe it came true. Since the Dragon Quest remakes are ports of already well-done remakes, this stands as Square's best remake on the system. One wishes they kept the bonus dungeons in some form though.

Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen - I'm still pissed that they took out party chat for English players, but the fact that this game received another dose of polish and refinement makes it easily the best version of the game you can play. It helps that its always been better than most RPGs since its release as well.

Front Mission 2089: Border of Madness - As a port of the two cellphone games, this is sooo much better handled than Front Mission 1st. Appropriately adapted and enhanced for the DS, the only downer is the lack of original music, as they are all remixes of other Front Mission tunes. Still as a prequel to the first, everything but how the antagonists are drawn is strongly of interest to the Front Mission series' plotline and carried out well. The branching missions and plot lines are as ever, fun to compare and the hugely tweaked gameplay makes it one of the balanced games in the series. Also, its great to also see cameos from Front Mission 2, aka the best game in the series.

Nanashi no Game (The Game with No Name) - Okay, so its controls are little awkward, and the gameplay is super simple, and some of the plot details are "Eh?" worthy and there's too little content. But none of that matters when this game managed to completely frighten me to the bone more so than any console game with far more graphic power at its disposal can. I guess it just shows how incredibly strong Square Enix's graphic designers and scenario writers are that they were able to accomplish this on the weakest hardware of the generation. Also an excellent example of experimenting with the culture of games itself within the game and how to make a truly powerless protagonist without using violence, and using that to make things even scarier. Running away from the threat in this game once unnerved me so badly that I called a friend and asked to stay over at his house for the night.

Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride - Because of the somewhat lower quality music, whether this is the best version of the game is up for debate, but all the other enhancements make its gameplay the best version. One of the greatest RPG stories in the history of the genre just gets even better. As usual, if you've only played the original this is going to seem like such an incredibly thorough remake you won't believe they went through all the effort they did, but even the DS version shows a lot of attention to tweaking the game to be as perfect as it can be.

Sigma Harmonics - The very idea of making murder cases wherein the detective therein can solve them in different ways is fresh. Combining it with an outstanding setting and an interesting RPG part makes it even more so. Though its not as thoroughly thought out as Remnant, Vermilion, Yosumin or World Ends With You, its another great example of what terribly unique things Square Enix comes up with when they birth new franchises.

Chocobo and the Mysterious Dungeon + - I've not finished it yet, but its nice to play the Wii game on the DS where its easier to start and stop, and dare I say it, but the DS's quainter graphics and inability for the story to get in the way as much as the console game make it stronger (not to mention the fact that its got more content). Not nearly as strong a game as Shiren, but definitely the runner-up to the roguelike crown on the DS.

Chrono Trigger DS - I hate it when a classic gets updated and I don't feel everything is an improvement. I've always felt companies should offer a way to play the original in the same package. It's nice to see them listen for once. Because you can play the original in any way you want, you can ignore the albiet nice enhancements and make sure that nothing ruins them. Again, the DS version of a classic turns out to be the definitive one. So that's 4 (definitive: this, FFIV, DQIV & V) vs. 2 (FFIII and Front Mission 1st).

Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume - strategic, typically morbidly fascinating character storyline in Norse mythology trappings with hella unique ideas backing it up. It's 3 for 3 for this series in terms of not being able to tell which one is best and up there in my games of the year for 2008. Probably my favorite brand new DS game that Square Enix has made thus far.

Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions - as much as this has some great enhancements, I can't help but feel the new cutscenes reduce some of the old charm unlike the way it was handled in FFIV. Also the new guest characters break up a little consistency of the world in a game where that's kind of an important thing. Nothing added is really all that necessary and the glitches are little annoying. It's nice to have it portable of course, but of all the ports they've done, this is the only one where I think the original version was unquestionably better. Though I guess its different for the English version, since people can now actually make much more sense of the story due to the cleaned up translation.

Final Fantasy - Yep, I've bought this game a total of five times and I'll probably keep buying it as long as they add new stuff, as the original is still one of my favorites in the whole series. The new dungeon in this one is better balanced than the ones they added before, but it still lowers the game's difficulty too much to make all these changes. The graphics have gotten unbelievably good looking, I can't believe the game has changed so much from the original. At the same time, I can't but feel that it's another case of it just being a different flavor of the original and not the definitive version, mostly because of the lacking challenge now.

Final Fantasy II - On the other hand, this one keeps getting better each time they remake it, its tweaked to play even better. Better yet, the new dungeon that makes more use of the unique keyword and item system is extremely clever and was totally awesome way of getting more use out of that system. Again, the even more vibrant graphics are appreciated. Definitely the definitive version, especially since the Dawn of Souls version finally was the one that brings it up to quality with the rest of the series.

Star Ocean: First Departure - Gorgeous, gorgeous new graphics engine make this game really stand out, but the decision to go 3D on the world map takes a little charm out of the original. Otherwise, the item creation getting beefed up to the standards of the second game and the new playable characters making it a little more in-depth totally improve the game so that it can stand toe-to-toe with the rest of the series now.

Star Ocean: The Second Story - Kind of lazy in comparison to all the other ports and remakes, but the extras are unequivocally good and since the original is one of my all time favorites anyway, and this is the definitive version, *shrugs* its good to play it again and discover once again why I was so hooked to it when it first came out. I love this game's flexibility. I always get addicted to the item creation and bonus bosses for hours.

Dragon Quest & Final Fantasy in Itadaki Street Special - it's basically a way to play the PS2 game on the go and as such, I only bought it for that reason so I could get rid of the PS2 version. If you omit the time I spent playing the PS2 version, which is brilliant, I played the DS one a lot more.

Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth - The basic game is pretty much unchanged, but I don't feel like any of the additions add any real value whatsoever and in a way kind of detract from the original's feel, but only a little bit really. It's basically just as good as the original version, and at the same time, it's Valkyrie Profile, one of the best games ever. More people need to play it and see why. So Square Enix's PSP remake/port grades stand at 3 (definitive: Itadaki Street, Second Story and Final Fantasy II) vs. 4 (other versions might be better: this, First Departure, Final Fantasy and War of the Lions).

Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core - Very addictive to clear out all the missions, the random element to battle keeps the game fresh, a great example of how to design a complex game to be portable and all the Final Fantasy VII cameos and references are very fun. That said, beside some well done references and Zack's characterization culminating in the great, great, GREAT ending, man does the story stink of overthinking some good and bad ideas and mixing it together into third rate anime shlock.

Final Fantasy: Dissidia - When this game wakes up in the morning, it showers itself in AWESOME. When it has to go the bathroom, it shits out pure, unspoiled AWESOME. When it speaks, the whole room shakes in fear at its great and exalted words o' AWESOME. Where it steps, flowers of AWESOME grow. If Final Fantasy: Dissidia looks at you, you will quake in righteous fear at the power of its all-encompassed AWESOME. Yeah, I've only had it for a few hours, but in that little amount of time I must conclude that Square Enix has completely bitch slapped the shit out of fighting game makers for not thinking creatively enough (even though they still make great games, if they thought like this the genre would not be losing popularity on consoles) and has designed the best character compilation fighter ever. The Vs. series and Smash Bros. lie in shame at the feet of this game. I love how even though its based entirely on old IP, it's gameplay is the freshest and most original I've seen for a fighter since the days of the original Smash Bros. and Bushido Blade. Dear God in heaven and alive is this game AWESOME. I've never played characters who play as uniquely as Exdeath, Onion Knight or Kekfa do in any other fighter. You can laugh at Nomura all you like for some of his absurdly bad character designs in comparison to Amano, but with games like Kingdom Hearts, The World Ends With You and this, he truly has inherited the Square and the Enix round of developers ability to bring innovation in the most unlikely ways. I'm not going to be surprised if this turns out to be my all time favorite PSP game or game of the year with more play.

Infinite Undiscovery - Hmmmm, like Radiata Stories, it seems like a game where most of its ideas don't get the chance to shine as much as they could, but its still a great game in spite of that. Even though it may have been their idea to engender roleplaying responses without it, one really wishes for easier and more control of the other characters. Otherwise, it's beautiful, got lots of unique ideas and I'm probably the only person in the world who absolutely loves the main character. I also like the, "Good lord, what have I got myself into?" FFVIII feel of the plot.

The Last Remnant - SaGa team! Already talked about how much I like this game despite the technical flaws in this thread. May the SaGa team live forever, creating games that don't hold you by the hand and play so very differently than other RPGs.

Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and The Tower of Mirrors - I thought this might be the first time ever that a Dragon Quest game, spin off or otherwise, wasn't AAA. Very fortunately, I turned out to be wrong. A wonderful mix of RPG and arcade gameplay that requires the best understanding of both worlds, I hope to see many sequels and games one day take advantage of the beautiful ideas present here. I especially love the great ingenuity of implementing the various shields and how very arcade-game-style high score replayable the game is.

Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon: Maze of Forgotten Time - Great little roguelike with fantasy remixed Final Fantasy music, but the DS game, graphics aside is the better version. Wii betrayal! Duh duh duh! Also, although its at least charming with the classic Final Fantasy characters, everything else is up there with Crisis Core as most pathetically awful plot for Square Enix this generation. What on earth were they thinking with that green haired alien baby...thing?

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King - As I said before, Ring of Fates is where the series started challenging Tactics as the best spin-offs, and here is where that challenge became even stronger. A simulation of what its like to run an RPG kingdom, so very novel and its extremely well made in that the basic idea is taken and run with as far as it can go. Rockman 9 aside, this still feels like the best Wii Ware game yet.

Lord of Vermilion - Card-based arcade RPGs are a dime a dozen these days, especially in a fantasy setting. But leave it to Square Enix to totally knock it out of the park. Moreso than Last Remnant, World Ends With You, Nanashi no Game, Yosumin or Sigma Harmonics, this feels like their most completely well-roundedly accomplished new franchise. Easy to start, easy to play, but hard to master, I'm surprised they struck such a great balance for their second arcade game. One of those arcade games where you wish you could take the cabinet home, it's so pretty and sexy.

Dragon Quest Monsters: Battle Road - Addictive in small doses as a distillation of the Dragon Quest Monsters game, and always fun to see classic monsters rendered so lovingly, but I can't help but feel there's always a more they could do with it.

Final Fantasy IV: The After - I hate to tell you this people, but Before Crisis was a great game, even though it was only on mobile phones. I also hate to tell you that this is a great game too. Again, it's such a better a sequel than FFX-2 in all its unbelievable suck was. It is so much of what you could want with an extended stay in the world of FFIV and is so fun to revisit old areas under new storylines. Lately, it seems like so many RPGs are getting lost in meaningless additions to a battle system, but this game's Chrono Trigger-esque links are a truly meaningful and well-carried out idea. I also like the Shin Megami Tensei use of moon phases, which is especially appropriate considering the plot of the original. It's also really cool to be able to play the middle portion of the game, each character's chapter in order you please like the end of Final Fantasy VI. This is too high profile not to port to the PSP or DS, so hopefully, like Border of Madness, we see that happen. The last chapter is set to be released soon, so I can't wait to see how it ends. :)

Friends of Mana - a kind of low-scale MMO, where you live in one of three Mana villages and work with the villagers by raising pets to do various things to help out the villagers. As you and your friends work together to go on quests and scenarios of varying lengths, the Mana Tree grows, the happiness ranking goes up and more things become available to do. From fall harvesting to playing board games together to fishing to summer and spring events, it's like Animal Crossing meets an RPG with Dark Chronicle-like kitchen sink array of elements to take part in. Better yet, it's been out for nearly 2 years now and Square Enix is still sending new content out for it. Very charming to dip into casually while on a train over the weeks and months, especially because of the warm Mana-esque graphics.

Seiken Densetsu - The original updated in a more conventional manner, unlike Sword of Mana, while I love Sword of Mana for doing all sorts of cool new things with the concept of the original, I feel like losing the old puzzles was kind of a downer as well. So it's nice to have a second version like this that is more faithful to the original, but updates the graphics and music a great amount. I like both remakes for different reasons.

Dragon Quest Monster Friends - It's Dragon Quest Tamagotchi! Talk, pet and raise a dozen or so Dragon Quest monsters until they introduce you to your friends and you can then use them to replace your cell phone's convenient features in a Dragon Quest fashion. Ever fancied being woke up by a Dragon alarm in the morning? Well now you can! A must for a Dragon Quest nut like me for the small price. The dialogue is so awesomely funny in this game. (Did you know those lava rock monsters have to be careful of their allergies because if they sneeze, they might blow up? Man, it's gotta be a tough life to be a Dragon Quest monster.)

Crystal Guardians - Though I feel like for once, the graphics effects could be stronger, as you don't really get much of a feel for the difference in technique between the different jobs, this SRPG puzzle game is really cool. You basically pay gil to place different Final Fantasy Tactics jobs on a field with a road on it. Waves of monsters run down the road and based on how you placed your jobs, they will be taken care of or escape and steal crystals. The better you protect crystals the more you get to work with in leveling up your jobs and such. During waves you place new jobs and power them up accordingly to handle the new threat. New elements like special crystals, new jobs and summons appear as new versions of the game get released. Tricky and fun to replay different ones, it's really quite a cool idea and well done for what it is. Again, needs a port to one of the portable systems so everyone can experience it.

Demon Chain - An original puzzle game somewhat like Puzzle Quest. You have a grid of different colored icons and if you match up three icons or three colors, you can make them disappear and affect your abilities, such as powering up two types of skills, recovering HP or damaging the enemy. When you make one set disappear, at the bottom a marker shows a color or icon that if you next make disappear will result in a chain, at the end of chain the power up effects are even stronger. You fight against six opponents until you can reach a new level and then repeat the process. As you go on, you can change costumes for each character which gives them jobs with different skills. Not as deep as it might sound, but well balanced and quite fun.

Hokkaido Serial Killer Crimes: Disappearance in Ohotsk - A remake of the Famicom of one of the adventure games before Yuji Horii got huge with Dragon Quest. Since the original is very old, this complete remaking of the visuals and gameplay take it and make it playable for a new generation. A pretty good adventure game experience somewhat like the Jinguji Saburou games.

Ellark - Due to the destruction of the world below and the lack of precious resources, a floating ark in the sky called Ellark is trying to rebuild the world piece by piece by using magical books to create new worlds. You wake up without your memory wandering which book you came from. You travel from book to book from the ark, carrying out adventures in Dragon Quest RPG fashion, except it's an online RPG (not an MMO) that you play by e-mail by sending in new decisions each week and then preparing for the next week once you get the results. I don't feel like you can do quite enough in each week for the pace of the game, but its an interesting idea with lovely graphics and the little stories are fun to take part in, as is looking at your avatar as you outfit him or her with new armor and such to change their appearance. Reminds me of the old Sword of Hope Gameboy games."

getting to the bottom of that required no less than six page-downs

I know, right? a forum post! crazy!

GameSpot UK: Why are you sick of Katamari Damacy?

Keita Takahashi: Wouldn't you be?

Yesterday As I Was Enjoying The Sonic Demo For The 1,000,000 Time My Picture Started To Go All Black And Grainy I Wasn't Sure Of The Problem So I Went Back To The Dashboard And The Screen Was Fine Apart From My Avatar That Was Also Grainy. So I Decided To Turn Off My Xbox And Switch It Back On. But When I Switched It Back On I Got 1 Red Ring And On The Screen Saying In Loads Of Diffrent Languages System Error.

I Also Got A Code At The Bottom Of The Screen Saying E 74. So I Went To Xbox.com And Went To Find Out What The Problem Was. The Only Help They Could Give Me Was Unplug Everything And Plug It All Back In. So I Did. Same Screen Came Up And I Still Had One Red Ring. It Also Said It Could Be A Problem With A Bit Of Hardware. Customer Support Was No Help The Robot Gave Me The Same Information. But I Found If I Unplug The Wire That Goes 2 The Back Of My TV Then The Red Quadrent Does Not Come Up.

Could This Have Any Thing 2 Do Wif It?

Cheers

man, it must be onerous to feel compelled to capitalize like that. plus you can never get an iphone!

this is some pretty enraging shit: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/lanc01_.html

i mean loldon review of books lol john lanchester lol this isnt a viditorial lol who cares but, i mean seriously: "[Bioshock] was a huge hit, and I have yet to encounter anyone who has ever heard of it." O RLY

"Older media have largely abandoned the idea that difficulty is a virtue; if I had to name one high-cultural notion that had died in my adult lifetime, it would be the idea that difficulty is artistically desirable. It’s a bit of an irony that difficulty thrives in the newest medium of all."

difficulty in meaning, reading or understanding /= difficulty of execution, or playing

btw the mental image of john lanchester hunched over a controller is a bit unbearable

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/07/13/JL_070713111214469_wideweb__300x375.jpg
"fuckin tubular!"

haha I liked that article, I didn't really disagree with anything in it

i agree with some of his assertions and disagree with others but concluding with such a hands-in-pockets, shoulder-shrugging, bet-hedger is pretty lame. "are games art? well, not now, probably, with some exceptions but it's likely they might be, in the future, probably."

and the whole thing is really lazily argued and glib and inept esp when he's talking about games and the way they function. he invokes poole but doesn't really understand him or try considering the ramifications of routine as ritual, for example. i actually think he's right about the second way in which games can become art but that point deserves to be made better, with more clarity and rigour and generosity and less emphasis on mechanics.

the way I read it, his main point was that we at least need to be having the conversation (something that gets brought up every year by different people, but his version was enjoyable enough that I actually read it) and paying attention to some of these questions - he starts off with $$$, which should tell you right away he's not trying to find a big answer in this piece.

i think lanchester tries to tell ppl reading the lrb "hey, video games are a thing now, here's why" and then he tries to answer the "is it art?" qn. and it feels to me like he's doing the former to justify even asking the latter which gets my hackles up, and maybe it shouldn't. but that's such a big, important question to some many ppl in the industry, not just me, that i can't help but feel he's not equipped to answer it.

also the other big flaw, and i think it leads from his relative unfamiliarity with the medium, is that he keeps complaining about sequels and corporations and the money-men and yet gives no indication of playing anything other than "blockbuster" releases himself. its fair play to say that considerations of developers and others aren't important to the end result but lanchester tries to have it both ways here sating "that nothing within a world so fully made by a corporation can be truly creative" and then refusing to engage with the desires motivating "corporate" designers.

ugh i can tl;dr about this for hours but the article bothered me which is probably lame but there it is

i'm such an illiterate

I think that if all those writers (Lanchester, Klosterman, etc) wrote about video games instead of writing about how we should write about video games, then there would no longer be a reason to write about how we should write about video games.

Also, maybe if video games are too hard for the "older generation," then they should just resolve themselves to the fact that they will never totally *get* this new artform. Fuck blaming the medium for their own inabilities. When was the last time a professor blamed Joyce for a student not enjoying Ulysses?

I'm really happy Klosterman's not writing about video games, thanks.

But yeah, I get your point Mordy and I think there will be some worthwhile video game writing anthologies by end of '10.

i thot the article was ok, more interesting ("interesting") for revealing the limitations of the standard boomer literate liberal worldview in assessing what happens in video games. i think the writer gets this but maybe not.

as in, never meeting anyone who's ever heard of bioshock isn't video games' problem it's your problem.

^ OTFM.

Isn't it possible that until recently, there hasn't been that much source material for critical video game writing? At the outset of the century, there were a relative handful of games that could plausibly warrant "serious" critical analysis (Fallout, the rise of MMORPGs, fill in the blank). Now, in the past couple of years alone, we have LittleBigPlanet, Fable 2, Fallout 3, Bioshock, Spore, etc. Point out all of the forward thinking 80s and 90s games that you want, but I think it would be difficult to argue that there aren't more thought provoking games coming out than ever right now. As such, the writing on video games will evolve along with the games themselves. I don't think it's anything we need to advocate for, it'll happen naturally.

I have to disagree with that. The Inform era of gaming had plenty of things worth talking about (A Mind Forever Voyaging never really got its due). And I can't think of a single year where there wasn't a single game worth discussing. Maybe not in the plentiful numbers we have recently (it has definitely been a couple amazing years for gaming), but great source material has always existed.

hay guys i saw someone, somewhere on ilg, mention a distinction btw 'ludic elements' and 'narrative elements'? is there a particular writer who has fleshed this out? if so i'd like to read it.

Emily Short does a lot of writing on that.

i half wrote and then abandoned a post on another thread - i think where we discussed the grammar of fun - about what it was like writing about games in the mid-90s and how much that's changed. the best writing back then was either about games culture or like, nintendo power. most if not all mags followed the formula of this is a game about X similar to games Y and Z and here is where you find the key in the second castle. of course this was time that a 14 y/o could write about japanese imports.

i have a really half-formed theory about how the internet changed the way ppl write about games but its probably not necessary.

Also, though not in videogames, indie-rpgs.com does a similar breakdown into Gamist V. Narrativist functions in second-person gaming.

xp
I don't disagree about the great source material always existing. I only mean that there has to a critical mass of existing worthwhile material before a literature rises up around it. Who knows, I'm rong about pretty much everything these days, but I doubt that book and film criticism/analysis would be as robust as it is today if there were only three or four books or films worth discussing each year.

I hear you. I'm trying to remember where I read the argument that critics create the context of quality source material and not vice-versa. It was a really well put argument... Hmmm. Maybe it was a New Yorker article about book reviewers? From... two years ago, I think?

that's an old argument, Mordy but james wood had something about that in a cormac mccarthy review. don't know if that's what yr thinking of

Lemmi see if I can find it.

I think it wasn't tied to any particular book. And I think it was about how there is a dearth of book criticism being written - and it may have been written around when Sontag died.

yah i found the wood article it wasn't what i was thinking of either. maybe i should just repost this:

Some interesting stuff. I suppose every games writer has to overcome some kind of inferiority complex coming from society at large?

― Nhex, Tuesday, December 16, 2008 9:52 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark

"if I had to name one high-cultural notion that had died in my adult lifetime, it would be the idea that difficulty is artistically desirable" — yeah, wait, what, really? REALLY?

(Seriously: who outside of a few annoying wanker fringe elements ever justified what they're doing by claiming difficulty is their desired effect? Trying to subtly rearrange the history of all cultural thought evah just to justify being artistically conservative is just ... clodlike.) (Maybe I should read the rest of the article, now.)

if my grandma would dare sit down and watch me play a video game... let's just say she is pretty out of it when it comes to video games... if she watched me play bioshock and wasn't apalled by the violence and bloodshed, maybe she would admit that the oldtimey music and plot concept is actually cool. This would last for 2 seconds at most... I have yet to see her take an interest in any of my interests even once in the past 15 years.

but boy she sure likes hugging me and would loves new photos of the grandchildren to put in her picture framss. (yet still she would never care about my interests or video games)

you guys are really being some bitches about that article. he addresses the problem of the difficulty convention really well, I think, and he also sums up the promise of good video games as well as I've ever read it imo -

This sense of agency is the cultural and aesthetic USP of video games. The medium doesn’t have, and probably never will have, a sense of character to match other forms of narrative; however much it develops, it can’t match the inwardness of the novel or the sweep of film. But it does have two great strengths. The first is visual: the best games are already beautiful, and I can see no reason why the look of video games won’t match or surpass that of cinema. The second is to do with this sense of agency, that the game offers a world in which the player is free to act and to choose. It is this which gives the best games their immense involvingness. You are in the game in a way that is curiously similar to the way you are in a novel you are reading – a way that is subtly unlike the sense of absorption in a spectacle which overtakes the viewer in cinema. The interiority of the novel isn’t there, but the sense of having passed into an imagined world is.

^^^^ completely otm except I dunno if involvingness is a word

having read the whole thing even the bit that annoyed me is more of a gag in context, actually : /

I liked the lanchester article. I didn't agree with everything, but I thought it was a well-considered piece on the whole.

Great series of articles from 1up: they tracked down the composer for Contra, Hidenori Maezawa:

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3172388

I absolutely loved these games soundtracks, anyone else who's an insane nerd over those NES scores must read these now.

I thought this guy's takes on TWEWY, Layton and L4D were pretty spot on.

http://www.hiwiller.com/2009/02/10/best-games-of-2008/

How is there no X-Com thread?

Anyway, here's an interesting read:

http://www.edge-online.com/magazine/the-making-of-x-com-enemy-unknown

Fascinating that the whole strategy element was imagined by the publisher, not the Gallops, so they could create an epic product that would compete with Civilization, and explains why (sadly) it doesn't exist in their later products at all.

Sirlin on subtractive game design. Good article.

http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=459

http://www.google.com/patents?id=aAuzAAAAEBAJ&pg=PA3&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2

really liked that auntie pixelante piece

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_210/6252-Time-to-Move-On

I can't believe that anti-Leigh Alexander bit quoted isn't some kind of over-the-top parody!

That article in general is really problematic. I imagine much of the "new" popularity of games is due to gamers growing up. Not due to games somehow magically finding a new audience.

cool pixelante piece

aw super mario land

so dope

i like his thesis, but there's not much meat there

"In those days it was fairly common for an article in The Escapist to drag on for more than 3,000 words"

gosh, not three thousand words. that's, like, a lot of words.

nhex did you click through to the whole thing? in places it's almost as batshit as that patent doc:

"The solution to the riddle that woman has always been for man is childbirth. The sexes are distinguished by many other minor differences, but this is the most important, the most fundamental one. Thus man's primeval instinct is for war, whilst woman's for childbearing. With this insight in one's mind there's no sexually conditioned problem one cannot solve. The reason, therefore, that men are so easily seduced by virtual worlds whereas women are generally indifferent towards them (and in fact usually fail to even see the point in them), is because man's vital function, war, can be just as easily performed in virtual worlds as in the real one (and in fact even more easily there), whereas woman's vital function, childbirth, cannot be performed in them at all -- thus spoke Zarathustra."

Make childbirth simulators!

now i am on his forum.

"Yes, Schopenhauer is inappropriate, but random modern philosophasters wouldn't be. For your information, it is the anti-racists and the anti-sexists who are the bigots: there is no more racist person than the anti-racist, and no more sexist than the anti-sexist. "

seriously i know this isn't a productive addition but can someone fucking stab this cunt plz

"Another thing I've already talked about here (in the "Icy's Genius" thread). Style is not a "decision". Only someone who has never created anything could think that it is. Style, as Schopenhauer somewhere explains, is a direct reflection of the author's character. And character is NEVER a decision. It is "an order of fate" as Baudrillard would put it. All I did was express myself as genuinely, as honestly, as directly as I could.

Man, it gets tiring having to clear up the same little misunderstandings for people again and again. I live on a planet with 6 billion people, all of whom operate under a number of unfathomably crude and simple-minded assumptions. What is education doing, eh? Still teaching people about "equal rights", "freedom", "justice", "proofs" and other such mythical beasts no doubt."

*ahem*

ohhh ... senpai ...

Yeah, the levels of craziness are just amazing in that one! I just skimmed over that guy's article, didn't even want to look at the rest of the site, once I realized that wow he might be actually serious and this isn't an Onion-style piece. It's like if Dave Sim was into video games.

Pretty much agree with you thomp on Pitt's article, but I guess I appreciate the intent nonetheless - I really am surprised how video games really "returned" to the mainstream in the last couple of years (beyond the typical Madden type stuff during the last gen) with the Wii and DS, with much older and female audiences really catching on - lots of anecdotal evidence for me personally, yet weirdly it seems the 'hardcore' are getting moreso in response to this. Not saying if any of it is good or bad, but most analyses tend to get obnoxiously navel-gazing more than insightful anyway... hrm

The misogyny in the post is pretty horrific. But, that said, he picks targets that really are ripe for ridicule.

mordy if you at his forum where ppl are like "i agree with you that leigh alexander and c. are overhyped and not very good but do you really think calling them a lot of different words for slut is clever?" he is like "you just don't understand how above considerations like that i am and so i am banning you"

i dunno: i quite like the idea of leigh alexander. there aren't really many outlets that would commission her to seriously think through some of her stuff in an organised way, though, is the thing.

nhex when i went to edinburgh with a crowd of ppl i'd known since sixth form earlier this year it was only the girls that brought videogames. (tho one of them was dating a guy that was carrying around what was basically a handbag with the gears of war logo on it, which i don't know what to think.) i guess in terms of ppl i know who at least halfway make a hobby of videogames it's an even split. but it is pretty much only girls i hear saying "oh videogames are lame." (including one person who IS WRITING A POSTGRADUATE THESIS ON THE COMIC BOOK BONE, which i gotta say, the hour i spent trying to beat brigan in odin sphere just now is a more culturally enlightening use of my time or anyone's, wait, i can't remember what my point was

not really something to 'read' but i can't think of a better thread to put it:

http://tasvideos.org/PasswordGenerators.html

i have to admit that i am sort of bored w/the whole hardcore vs. wii grandmas debate at this point - doesnt seem to really be much more to say

not in reference to to what you were saying thomp - i think that the shifts in the male/female divide in gamers is way more interesting

http://kidicarus222.blogspot.com/2009/06/its-secret-to-everybody.html
Shit is RIGOROUS!

jesus christ dude

omg the article is so long, but i will read it all eventually

that thing is depressing

"Final Fantasy VIII uses the series’ rich history of meaningful names to enhance the game’s plot."

Also warning - that article has a sort of crazy amount of spoilers for Mother 3 and many many other games.

holy shit

Does anyone have Martin Amis's book on Space Invaders to scan in?
I haven't read Martin Amis but I enjoy making fun of him and that Space Invaders book looks like a goldmine.

he wrote a BOOK on space invaders? like a 33 1/3?

hey u know what, someone should do a 33 1/3 series but on video games!

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

would read

haha i would feel sickened by the idea but mainly because i feel i would do it better than whoever ended up writing them : /

nunez you may have seen these?

http://www.martinamisweb.com/commentary_files/ma_space_invaders.pdf
http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-09-20/books/their-back-pages/

tbh i think reading the whole thing would make me like him, at least a little: his new maps of hell mb

Iwata Asks for Punchout http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/punchout/vol1_page1.jsp

Oh whoops didn't realize this link had already been posted (or even that there was an ignored Punch Out thread)

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/the-edge-of-reason?page=1

the tale of an acclaimed iPhone game and how it's been hogtied by the actions of an unconscionable douchelord

geez that sounds awful....

What an asshole.

This NYTimes article on Beatles Rock Band is EPIC:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/magazine/16beatles-t.html

terrible title and probably could've been edited down a couple pages, but interesting

followed by bleep blorp buzz! video games, not just for nerds anymore

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_214/6358-Artificial-Thrills

I think the subject matter of that article is absolutely worth examining, but I can't feel everytime I read one that covers these games they fall pretty short of achieving real insight into those games, the communities around them, etc. I mean it's a pretty diehard subculture that goes through the trouble of hacking these games, making story and interface translations and so on... but of course these dudes are just pervs so why look too deeply, right? That one above kind of tries, a little...

Interview: Stardock's Wardell On Matchmaking Out The 'Jerks'

Stardock trying some kind of social data/preference gathering for matchmaking in their Impulse service. Pretty good idea, I think - SFIV and GFWL would be helped greatly by this kind of thing, as it is you can just submit good/bad reports, preferring/avoiding players, but it's pretty blunt, lacking useful nuance. Of course, it's just as possible the griefers could hijack and ruin the system, or people simply being dishonest or unintentionally misusing the system. Worth a try, though.

ilg favourite leigh alexander used to write a regular column about japanese sex games

Stardock trying some kind of social data/preference gathering for matchmaking in their Impulse service

ok in context i thought you meant, like, actual matchmaking. like qiran.com or something

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_222/6614-Not-That-Theres-Anything-Wrong-With-That

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4151/valves_writers_and_the_creative_.php

admit i like this because primarily because i support the workplace ideas

http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2009/11/5/making-games-faster.html

They said that if you see your time as an unending ocean ("hey, I'll be here for another 15 hours anyway today, and again tomorrow"), then it doesn't even phase you if the solution to a problem would take 5 hours of menial labor from you. But when your time is limited, you think about alternate solutions, or question the framing of the problem that is leading to the tedious work.

i look at life this way - it is an unending ocean, so everything takes forever and hence nothing is ever finished

New blog I found about minority gaming: http://borderhouseblog.com/

I actually love the idea.

if only Token Minorities was still updating

accessibility article. i tht v interesting.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/26386/Analysis_Game_Design_Accessibility_Matters.php

some good points. i like the point about positive permanence. for me one benefit of that is not having to run menial tasks over and over again every time u die, which doesn't make the game more challenging- just more boring

two words of rebuttal: -YOU DIED-

REAL DEMON'S SOULS IGNORES THIS ARTICLE.

That was interesting but I hate the canonization of Canabalt as some sort of golden model of game design :(

it's getting coint and plick love...

I love it! I even included it in my best of 2009 ballot.

ditto

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/01/npd-analysis-how-to-sell-a-wii-game/

More boring industry numbers, I know

Miss those old insanely long, nostalgia-drenched write-ups of FF games by Tim Rogers?

http://socksmakepeoplesexy.net/index.php?a=patff

I admit, I read the ones for IV and VI.

The Decade That Was: Influential Faces

OK I know nobody reads this thread - and as far I can tell there's no "serious games" etc. thread, but the video lecture by Jesse Schell here is awesome. The second half in particular is fascinating and terrifying, you gotta watch it. (The Sirlin text is pretty ignorable and not a particularly good summation.)

http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2010/2/22/external-rewards-and-jesse-schells-amazing-lecture.html

interesting so far!

yeah, everyone here should watch that video

He sounds like Mitch Hedberg.

http://www.call-to-adventure.com/?p=704

i liked this but it also made me a little sad. probably full of untruths passed off as truths but i'll leave that to the aspie rubes to pick apart.

How many of you are still playing Portal? How many of you still love your girlfriends? And now how many of you are ready to admit to yourselves, in a whisper, that you’re liars?

o_0

man, i can just barely read that; it's so thick with HEAVY MEANING and counterintuitive points that i don't agree with/sympathize with at all

I mean: "What is it about gaming — the compulsive, strung-out bender sessions — that makes it so humiliating? Could it be that I was pressing buttons to make scantily clad women and heaving, hormonal man-beasts pummel each other over and over again? Was it the number of hours that I spent playing that was so shameful? Starting at 8:00pm and then fighting till 4:00am? Is it the compulsion?"

uh, i'm totally happy telling people i spent all night playing whatever i played if i did; you're a gaming journalist and you feel weird about it? maybe time for more meds?

self hate is the ugliest of ugly

remind me how watching tv all night is any less depressing than playing games. or reading L. Ron Hubbard. or playing d&d. or riding a stationary bike.
you're not watching porn or eating tubs of ice cream or cutting yourself; you are engaging in an activity that pacifies your heart. just keep swimming

wait swimming what? am I doing it wrong

joeks

gotta think I cda learned sanskrit w/all those self-hate-filled 700 hrs of SFIV tho ;_;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmyUkm2qlhA

That article makes me glad I haven't yet started a gaming blog to pour out my depression to the world. Self-hate is for your self!

and c'mon Cozen, if there was something more enjoyable and fulfilling than FADCing into Ultra a thousand times you probably would have or will pursue it

Okay, let's go back to that Jesse Schell presentation that Nhex was talking about here:
http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2010/2/22/external-rewards-and-jesse-schells-amazing-lecture.html

Where he posits a strange future where you "Get Points" at work by getting your reports done and becoming more adept at the programs you use.

So here I am downloading this now:
http://www.officelabs.com/ribbonhero

the singularity is coming!

I liked that Schell lecture, too.

I've played it for like three people now; i think he's spot fucking on

Yeah, it's got that McLuhan insight but the tone is tailored well to his audience.

UGH HATE

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/toddler-dies-mistaking-gun-wii-controller/story?id=10056190

Cheyenne Alexis McKeehan of Norene, Tenn., shot herself Sunday night after her stepfather left his loaded Smith & Wesson handgun out on a table, Wilson County Sheriff Terry Ashe said.

...

"The unfortunate thing is that this Nintendo game called Wii had what looks like a solid black, basically automatic-looking type mechanism that operates the game," he said.

NO YOU FARTKNUCKLE THE UNFORTUNATE THING IS THE FUCKING DIPSHIT OF A DAD LEFT A LOADED HANDGUN ON A TABLE WITHIN EASY REACH OF A TODDLER

How many of you are still playing Portal? How many of you still love your girlfriends? And now how many of you are ready to admit to yourselves, in a whisper, that you’re liars you've already GISed my name to see if i am hot or secret fattey?

how i would have ended that article

wtf @ that article dyao posted

That sheriff is like the dumbest person on Earth

If this leads to the Wii being banned I'm all for it.

i can't find the Black Isle alumni thread, but here's an interview with Obsidian's Chris Avellone done by sometime ILG-er Chris Dahlen:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/avc-at-gdc-10-an-interview-with-alpha-protocol-cre,39091/

worth watching, not reading but clever
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIZVCCJxIQ4

neato

anyone got a list of these BRUTAL & FILTHY games so we can poll them?
http://www.complex.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/tracychriscover_large.jpg

(pause)

Brian Ashcraft: Child Porn Advocate

jeez that article links to some deeply heinous shit

lol @ child porn advocate

guy's a sleaze. i know i've posted this x times before, but nearly every story he posts is about some creepy underage-looking model/popstar/videogame character. also, he can't write, which doesn't distinguish him from the rest of kotaku.

Cannabalt is an adult’s game. It embarrasses no one.

That article is ugh, but this is a really good summary of my instinctive dislike for that game!

gonna play the devil's advocate here and say i'm more disturbed that you can jail people for drawing gross cartoons than that there are people out there jerking off to said cartoons. i mean they're drawings, that's really nothing compared to, you know, the actually horrifying practices of child pornography that they are equating it with

but of course, to defend this stance means you have to go in with the pedos :( and brian ashcraft

xp haha, what do you mean?

xp haha, what do you mean?

Well, the whole article touched on something that I've been thinking about for a while. My issue isn't so much with Canabalt (which I played a few times and enjoyed) but with the reviews of it I read, and with its presence on game of the year lists etc. So much of what I read was about how easily non-gamers were converted to playing it, how smooth and non-cheesy and, well, grown-up it seemed, in theme and execution, how easy it was to learn...

I feel the same way about 'Passage' which I actually found v. affecting! It's just that I'm very conscious that Canabalt is 'showing' what 'Passage' is to 'talking about' - something that you use when justifying your hobby to people who don't share it. And while I understand that, for me, that's not gaming. That's the gateway drug to gaming, but it shouldn't ever be confused with the end product. The end product is that really deep engagement with ruleset, that staying-up-until-five-playing-Civilisation feeling, Braid with its stupid adolescent writing and really hard, unforgiving, honest, satisfying puzzles, Ninja Gaiden, Madden played on hardest with all its stupid unrealistic aspects and ai glitches and needless intricacies. If you've only got an hour a day to play games that's cool, I'm in the same boat! But don't tell me that Canabalt is the deepest pleasure the medium can give.

I sound like table-is-the-table on the gay thread!

re: the Ashcraft article, I'm as staunch a 1st-amendmentist as they come and I actually completely agree with Ashcraft's position in this circumstance. on the other hand it's the most gut-bustingly hilarious gaming blog tard revalation since Tim Rogers spent a few paragraphs talking about "hypothetically" wanting to s3X0r his sister in the middle of a review of like Gears of War or something.

re: Canabalt, I think a lot of the problematic writing stems from the fact that it was one of the titles that helped define and/or legitimize the iPhone as a gaming platform in a lot of people's mind (it certainly did for me, anyway). I still think it's a masterpiece (and still play the hell out of it), but every time I've tried to harangue someone into checking it out I end up explaining the whole experience to them and I completely see how that would sap the fun right out of any game experience - imo that moment when you suddenly fully comprehend the totality of a game's mechanics is (or should be) every bit as significantly impactful as a plot twist like who Keyser Soze is or w/e, and blowing that reveal for people is kind of a dick move.

Actually the more I think about that article the more stimulating I find it! Like: there really *is* something important to me in the idea of games being to some degree shameful - after writing that post I had a craving that's lasted all day to just say fuck it and play a videogame all night but I have too much stuff lined up tomorrow that I actually enjoy to just write the whole day off - to a degree it *is* a preserve of the unhappy and that is part of its texture. It's the feeling too, that people were talking about on the chatroulette thread, a nostalgia for 'the old weird internet' we grew up with, that wasn't safe at all but offered possibilities that the modern me-and-my-friends facebook net seems to lack. Like: maybe one day all games will be accessible to the people they want to reach but at that point they won't be for *me* anymore? idk idk.

Is there a specific term for "i resent the successful rise to acceptability of this particular type of otherness i have a sentimental attachment to"? Because it is a common feeling!

in music it's called "hipsterism"

haha! that's pretty otm

this feature is the inverse of the thread title: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/mar/21/tom-bissell-video-game-cocaine-addiction

ugh why did i read that

that is the worst thing I've read since Tim Rogers review of Braid

Worth watching, if only for the horrible UK tabloid hackery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryH2WemACIM

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/03/22/the-alan-titchmarsh-show-on-videogames/

tsunami of violence

i want 2 be a games journalist so bad

or at least have sum1 pay me to write abt painscription drug abuse & playing atelier rorona for 80 hours

brother, i have the same dream

http://juxtapixel.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/theyre-just-videogames-right/

yes, it is another mini-autobio entry about what games mean to a man, but i liked this one more than the one about the cokehead. also I can identify really strongly with some bits here, especially delivering passionate monologues to others about games (who do not understand it)

http://botherer.org/2010/03/21/the-observer-the-beguiling-nature-of-videogames/

Saw this linked from gamesetwatch. It's in response to that irritating coke/gta4 Observer piece.

not tremendously insightful, but gently amusing: geoff dyer on gta3 a few years back:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/jul/24/games.shopping1

Time sped by. There was, obviously, a certain amount of maiming and killing going on. At one point, due to a random press of an inadequately understood button, I picked up a knife and slashed a couple of cops. There's no shortage of hookers in San Andreas and I am informed you can score points by having sex and then beating them up instead of paying. Now this, it hardly needs saying, is not nice. Nor is it quite what Matthew Arnold had in mind when he wrote of culture toggling us towards the sweetness and light.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art.html
nothing new here but ebert betrays his lack of interest in supporting his central point by not even taking the time to more clearly understand the games he's dismissing.

yeah, i can't help but feel he's just straight up linkbait trolling here. also from what he writes, i think he is basing his judgment on videos and what other people are saying as opposed to debasing himself by actually, you know, playing a video game

The best thing about his trolling is that it is totally working.

I bet he actually loves videogames.

He does love videogames! He wrote a very positive review to one of those CD-ROM games back in the day.
The central point that validates his position, one that Ebert weirdly is a little ambivalent about, is that games are anti-art by their very nature.

"Braid .... a story told between the games levels, which exhibits prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie."

Ebert OTM

Also, I think Ebert is OTM about the reason for all the video game is art handwringing -- that they're trying to use "art" as legitimization. Why can't peeps just enjoy playing video games without making all kinds of other claims for them?

Lots of games are resembling work more and more, so if they're not getting paid for it, I totally feel their need to legitimize seemingly uncompensated labor.

Toward the end of her presentation, she shows a visual with six circles, which represent, I gather, the components now forming for her brave new world of cinema as art. The circles are labeled: Development, Finance, Publishing, Marketing, Education, and Executive Management. I rest my case.

http://www.clicknothing.com/click_nothing/2010/05/451-weeks.html

kind of interesting but immediately upon finishing it, i wanted to yell at this guy, wait - so why the fuck are you quitting? why write this thing if you're just going to talk around the reasons and "bad habits" that you have developed? what a bizarre semi-inspirational yet passive-aggressive resignation notice, the most eye-rolling bit is the "i have to walk on coals" shit - he's quitting because he job is just too damn good for him to live with

i read that and then realized i had no idea what he had actually said

So I liked a bunch of Extra Lives -- which is the thing worth reading on videogames, not my review of it that I'm linking to right here and hoping the total tackiness of linking to myself will be overlooked since I mentioned it myself: http://popculturecurator.tumblr.com/post/709868739/book-review-extra-lives

is that by the guy who wrote about doing coke while playing GTA? my eyes are already rolling

It was so good! I don't know how/where he wrote about it elsewhere, but that sequence in the book is my favorite.

If anyone wants to pay me to write a book about doing drugs & playing videogames, feel free to contact me.

If you write that book, I will buy a copy. But no advance, I'm afraid.

Also, I will contribute a chapter about my experiences parachuting through snow-capped mountains in Lost Cause 2 while completely stoned with the volume turned down and some dubstep turned up.

Oh my god I checked whether the library had that Bissell book today but finding out that he's the coke Observer gta guy I hate you for recommending it. Is it really a recommendation? I don't actually hate you. But god.

I'm surprised you guys don't like the cocaine piece. Is it just that you feel an article about drugs + video games is inherently self-congratulatory and fratty? Because I find it really open and honest and real. Or did you just think it was poor writing?

An article about drugs is inherently self-congratulatory however honest.

I tried Rainbow Islands on acid once, it was shit.

There is something really cool about seeing the graph paper drawings for planning out Pac-Man.

http://kotaku.com/5569439/secret-pac+man-drawings

So I liked a bunch of Extra Lives -- which is the thing worth reading on videogames, not my review of it that I'm linking to right here and hoping the total tackiness of linking to myself will be overlooked since I mentioned it myself: http://popculturecurator.tumblr.com/post/709868739/book-review-extra-lives

I was high as fuck and blindbought a Kindle copy of this based on your recommendations itt before realizing the author was Captain Cokey McCahzinNico

/wrists

Your narrative about being on drugs and reading books about video games is A++ imo.

Kotaku makes my netbook throw up. It took 5 minutes to load that page.

your netbook is clearly looking out for your best interests

UPDATE ON THAT SHITTY BISSEL BOOK: so far I am guardedly enjoying it?!?? it is as self-serving and self-congratulatory as a post-success Nick Hornby book but since the whole collection is basically attempting to be an aesthetic study of vidya games that is to be expected, and fortunately (and incredibly) he occasionally makes semi-trenchant points. nothing as risible as the GTA essay, although it's looming at the end of the book.

that being said, that essay about Resident Evil can swing from my ballhair. STOP USING THE SECOND FUCKING PERSON, SOME OF US DIDN'T GET TO PLAY VIDEO GAMES WHEN WE WERE BABBYS

Haha!

also did not realize that Bissell was the one behind that CliffyB NYT profile from a few years back; blech on that one too

oh wow, that guy is pretty terrible

TOM SHITTYBISSELL BOOK UPDATE

the Mass Effect essay is maybe the worst thing I've ever read of his, GTA and CliffyB essays included. the correlation between the quality of his writing and his personal affinity for whatever he's writing about is downright Hornbyesque.

downright Hornbyesque.

this is worse than being described as Mcsweeney-ish in my book

The best thing I have read about videogames for ages? http://www.boingboing.net/features/nomenludi.html

whoa

that's for real?

impressed.

great story...

that's for real?

Read further down in the comments. It's fiction.

ah, that's a bit more believable then.

Do you guys read RetroGamer magazine? The magazine is filled with articles very much like that story with maybe a little less fictionalization (though there is always a haze of fiction when dealing with nostalgia) and less drama (though not always -- last issue had an interview with John Romero)

keep meaning to get a sub

uh holy shit like 150 bucks for 13 issues, no.

Ha! Nostalgia is expensive in more ways than one, and one of those ways is money.

(Sometimes I think that if I could get funding to do any phd in the world and did not need a job afterward I would want to do nerd culture 1986-1988? Nostalgia is the wrong word really 'cos I was at, y'know, nursery at the time but it's definitely some kind of yearning?)

why those years specifically? Post-Robocop to pre-Burton Batman?

finally done with this shitass book, and here is what I've learned:

- many people in the game industry got their start by making mods with the Unreal Engine
- stories in games are inferior to those in movies
- "ludonarrative"
- Jonathan Blow is apparently the voice of reason within the game industry (LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL)
- Resident Evil made it okay for games to have stupid stories
- Tom Bissell should be dropped from a great height
- Kindle offers a "read the first chapter for free" feature which I really need to start taking advantage of before blindly buying shit while stoned

in summary, it was exponentially more fun to hate on this book than to actually read it

how does this guy's war journalism compare?

Haha, thank you for blogging.

why those years specifically? Post-Robocop to pre-Burton Batman?

So I have this series of six very small books, published 1988, in a series called 'Oss The Quick'. They're basically CYOA books for a very young audience (I'd say mid-ability eight-year-olds or bright 7s) that are, well, they're AD&D. Monsters are called things like 'The Nasty'. It's not actually possible to lose in most of them. But they star a rogue, a fighter and a magic user, and the setting is pure generic Gygax, through a kid-friendly sensibility. You even get a character sheet!

Anyway why I like them so much is that they were published by Oxford University Press! I'm not really sure why! I get the idea that there was a moment somewhere in these years when it seemed like geeks would surely inherit the earth but no-one quite knew in what aspect, whether computers would turn out to be the important thing or whether it would be painting lead figures, when the world seemed to be seeing and laying approving eyes for the first time on this new and multiplying sect.

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=dcbooks;cc=dcbooks;rgn=div2;view=toc;idno=5682627.0001.001;node=5682627.0001.001:2.1
^full version of This Gaming Life available online

Stack Exchange, but for gamers...
http://gaming.stackexchange.com

pc zone comes to an end
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10641398

I didn't know that it had hailed from Zero in 1992 though.

Ah, lost count of the number of floppies in my box (/mrcursor) that were reformatted PC Zone cover disks.

Er, was it three?

Three issues in, the decision was taken to give away a free CD Rom every issue, full of game demos.

Main PC Zone memory was buying the issue with the Quake demo/shareware/whatever it was while on holiday. Holiday was then mostly ruined cos I just wanted to get home again to play it.

hahaha

heh, sounds like good times

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2010/video-games-atari-macintosh-pc-computer/

leigh alexander is writing about every video game console she has ever owned

and for some reason doing so in the style of tao lin?

<< Previous Next >>

these scare quotes are killing me, but she hasn't made a diversion yet about what her dude-bro is texting her, so it reads pretty purged of Tao Lin

oh man fuck this

'feels like' either the HROisms get pretty 'unbearable' by page 3, or I'm grumpy at being reminded that for Americans the 80s were a giant gulf between Atari and the NES filled only by playing Solitaire on $1200 monochrome Macs, which they somehow find more pleasingly retro than our European plasticky 8-bit micros for $300 with a joystick, a bucket of garishly coloured games, and the secret knowledge of '10 PRINT "HI" 20 GOTO 10'

(returns to trying, failing to derive some extra hilarity from knowing someone male with the same name as the author)

unreadable

I like this

first intro to ‘indie games’, via a CD entitled ’99 Shareware/Freeware titles’ all of which involved clicking + various degrees of ‘broken-ness’. A game entitled ‘Pencils’ taught me the concept of the Egyptian sphinx in merely one example wherein things that

but not to the end of the sentence, so I cut it off.

minus the quotes

I guess I like the idea of shareware games being broken, because they are unless you pay for them. She doesn't even mean that, does she?

Anna Anthropy needs to write a book.

Oh man, I thought the "Part 1 of 4" at the top referred to the pages 1-5 linked at the bottom (never was good at maths), but there is a sequel, and another, and presumably another is due

so is carles tao lin?

http://nplusonemag.com/cave-painting

Not saying I love this but it's worth reading.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19video-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

long nyt magazine article on the use of games and game design in education. thought it was p interesting/worth thinking about:

Game design is the platform that we can hook them into because this is where they live. Video games are more important to them than film, than broadcast television, than journalism. This is their medium. Games are this generation’s rock and roll.

^ I haven't read this but I've thought about it and this needs to be done, especially with gamemaker and klik n play so cheap and easy to use.

good god what the hell is wrong with this leigh alexander person, its all babelfishy and idiotic wtf

no comment

good god what the hell is wrong with this leigh alexander person, its all babelfishy and idiotic wtf

this is the new articulation fwiw no ppl that right short stories in this 'voice' alla time. p sure ilx poster 'thomp' knows more about the avant origins of this style but its ~everywhere~ now

also how many times can one person use "bro" in an essay before someone hunts them down

http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/nsmb/vol1_page1.jsp

omg that's amazing. one of the best 'process' interviews i've ever read.

Slate video game club kinda awful this year. New Yorker has a big-ass (14 page) Miyamoto profile this week.

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2010/video-games-atari-macintosh-pc-computer/

leigh alexander is writing about every video game console she has ever owned

and for some reason doing so in the style of tao lin?

― thomp, Tuesday, August 31, 2010 12:43 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark

"stuff worth reading"

Miyamoto profile:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/20/101220fa_fact_paumgarten

new jane mcgonigal book comes out tomorrow

http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Broken-Games-Better-Change/dp/1594202850/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

http://cruiseelroy.net/2008/05/irregular-meter/

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/32828/Behind_The_Scenes_Microsofts_Attempt_To_Woo_Conan_OBrien_For_Xbox_Live.php

Microsoft has been busy speaking with several media companies about acquiring content for a pay-television subscription service that would stream through the Xbox 360 dashboard. It's possible the service could launch this holiday season, but that's dependent upon the company locking in a sufficient number of partners and development running on schedule.

Last November, Reuters reported the company was discussing a number of options, including creating a "virtual cable operator" to be delivered online or using the 360 to authenticate cable subscribers to watch shows - similar to its current deal with AT&T's Uverse. Another option could be creating additional individual content channels for providers, as the company has done with ESPN.

"You meet with these guys and they show you all this stuff that they're developing and it's mind blowing," said Ross. "I think it's coming and it's big. It's just that we weren't in a position at that point to figure out what it was."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-02-21-the-boy-who-stole-half-life-2-article

interview with the guy who made the waiting for godot game
http://therumpus.net/2011/03/the-rumpus-interview-with-mike-rosenthal/

Rumpus link. Instant ignore.

idgi

http://www.nomorelost.org/2011/03/25/straight-male-gamer-told-to-get-over-it-by-bioware/

remember Tom Bissell and his shitty ramblings about doing lines and playing GTA4? well:

http://www.gamestop.com/xbox-360/games/gears-of-war-3-epic-edition/90535

Art and Design of Gears of War by Tom Bissell

I remember that book. Dude's drug-induces paeans made me wanna punch him

whats funny or 'funny' is that he wrote a very long profile of cliffy b & the last modern warfare game for the newyorker

argh GEARS of war

According to zadie smith, in the 90s Tom bissell was responsible for rehabilitating or even establishing the outstanding literary reputations of Paula fox and Richard Yates. You still suck, Tom bissell.

Anna anthropy's book is gonna come out soon and it's probably gonna be great.

http://waxy.org/2011/06/kind_of_screwed/

On pixel art fair use. BS lawsuit, IMO

the one thing that sort of tips me in favor of the photo guy was that they
had gone to the trouble of clearing the music, which was certainly transformed
much more than the photo was.

No nah, all did they were cover versions, which you don't even need a real license for (i.e. you don't need permission from the song owners). Sure you technically need get a mechanical license, but as long as you send checks at the compulsory rate you're pretty much in the clear.

what i mean is the fact that they even bothered to get a mechanical license (though it seems from his post like they may have even secured further permission of some sort), but not for the cover photo, makes me more sympathetic to the photo guy. that, plus their charging of money for it, but I'm not sure what to think about that part. I doubt The Advantage is paying royalties to DuckTales composer/programmer #3, or whomever, and I'm cool with that.

Love reading Sulla's games:http://garath.net/Sullla/civ4MP.html

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/the-edge-of-reason?page=1

the tale of an acclaimed iPhone game and how it's been hogtied by the actions of an unconscionable douchelord

Only just got round to reading this one. Holy shit.

I'm sure this guy Langdell has always been a total chancer. The Edge's catalogue was full of games that were either mediocre or just plain awful(the screenshots in that article speak for themselves), and clearly most were rushed out to make a quick buck with little regard to quality control. The worst was probably Warlock, a game so lousy it had to be given away free in early Atari ST bundles.

Also I was wondering if Langdell had ever tried to sue Edge Magazine, but it turns out he was recently sued by them, for using their logo without permission. Haha.

xp I only knew his tutorials before now but wow -- reading these games are really amazing. In the middle of reading RBPB2.

love this article.
http://insertcredit.com/2011/07/11/the-world-warrior/

+1

+2

stuff worth hearing about videogames?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uKl3xeBVY4

http://pastebin.com/W7fiktcb

haha i new you would be the one who posted that

http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=1228

Some mainstream games for you ilg people who pay more than $15 for games.

http://kotaku.com/5829606/ive-played-deus-ex-she-hasnt-now-were-playing-it-together

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation/9087-Extra-Punctuation-Why-No-Couples-in-Games

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/killscreen/17-everybodys-doing-it-how-playing-legend-of-zelda-ocarina-of-time-as-a-30-year-old-reveals-its-magical-adolescence-of/

pretty rmde @ the repeated sex bit tho

pitchfork does games now?

bissell now in new yorker o_O

oh god

Shadow of the Colossus is the Wilco of video games tbf

lol

Bioshock would fit the bill better.

Bioshock is the Kid A of video games.

in short -- do not want

more than a little wankery, but it had its moments i thought.

http://killscreendaily.com/

^ they're just irregularly poaching a writer from killscreen btw--i dig killscreen

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/09/04/dont-quit-how-to-save-adventures-225/

yet another article about what's up with adventure games these days, but this one is actually good

ha, clever.
http://killscreendaily.com/articles/reviews/infinity-blade

"I insert the game card, gently, into the slot of my Aqua Blue system. As I walk over to a red chaise lounge the system slips out of my fumbling hands, falling onto the carpet. I flashback to my first kiss, in my parent’s garage—It gets betterthe more you do it, she told me—and with that in mind, I begin my quest."
aaaaaand i stopped reading there

gonna have to live through a lot more shitty games writing before the field matures... sigh

that said, maybe there's some kind of history to this sort of pap that i'm not getting, like cherished jazz reviews or some shit, i don't know

i think the history of this particular pap is early p4k writing

^

they even use the fonts pfork used to use

not reading, but this is awesome:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WPZbwDHz-0

A+ would watch again

The pastebin bit has somegood points

That was awesome, ZS

http://www.joystickdivision.com/2011/09/videogames_are_awesome_because.php

(I am not Gus Mastrapa)

http://killscreendaily.com/articles/everybodys-doing-it

the conclusion more belongs in a games o_O thread though, if there is one

haha we talked about that terrible piece in the p4k thread

there was much o_Oing

well why in the hell were you talking about videogames or indeed anything in a pitchfork thread

i think about 60% of that piece is pretty smart, anyway! it's just the rest of it is very much smdh or o_o or other territory better expressed by internet shorthand than by actual words

also talked abt it upthread

yeah i really cant see anything of value in that piece

i got sucked into the p4k thread bcuz they/we were talking about n+1

omg that last graf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO1OV5B_JDw

http://twitter.com/#!/leighalexander/status/113783739447902208

The pastebin bit has somegood points

― Blind Diode Jefferson (kingfish), Friday, September 9, 2011 1:14 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark

yeah, i consider it the final word on DNF

i'm seriously so fucking sick of every 'serious' (seriously gay lol) games writer who has Important Things To Say About Zelda/Mario. i have more respect for paid IGN shills than these dipshits revisiting the same shiggy suckfest over and over

i dont think there's ever been a games journalist who had anything of value to say about games. 99% of the time actual devs are the only people worth listening to (most of them are morons too obv, but thats still where you find the real shit) - JE Sawyer's formspring is worth a thousand leigh alexanders

hmmmmm

yeah yeah

dont give me the LAmp treatment pal!!!

lol

well i think, i suppose fairly self-interestedly although the amount of paid writing i do about videogames atp is essentially zero blah blah blah anyway, that the sort of big picture, look-at-the-culture, how are games experienced writing that non-developers like to produce has a fair bit of value, and that while the sort of near-adult 'what do i get from gaming' think pieces tend towards the solipsistic and the tedious there needs to be space for those type of questions

i would rather read a quartertothree game journal these days than another think piece about 'video games + art' or 'is [blank] the next braid'

i see what you're saying & it comes down to what you find interesting - im predisposed to a fascination with nuts and bolts discussions of How Things Work more than i am in, i dunno, narratives about how things make you feel - but to me the questions that accompany discussion about game programming & design are so vast and interesting that i dont even see the point in tepid distractions like wondering what Modern Warfare 2 says about our culture. to me its like the difference between jaws and kornheiser - one guy wants to educate you on the game, the other doesnt care about the game and just wants to talk about his made-up storylines. the latter approach has value in that some people enjoy it, but it means nothing to me

didnt know you did any games writin m8 :0

sure, i like How Things Work pieces as well but i think, at least in larger sense its impossible to talk about the mechanical or formal aspects of video games w/o thinking/discussing how 'we' xp them, what the consumer is getting out of them, 'what the mean to the player' all those cliches!

i mean i could v. happily never suffer through another 'are games art: y/n?' piece again but i reading about how other people xp'd a game does give me a some insight into ~how it works~ on a design level. good games criticism is really about thinking processes, which i think lends itself well to a written narrative.

'how we experience games' is important but again its something that devs tend to have a more interesting, more informed perspective on, one thats totally wrapped up in their development experience. when i want the perspective of people who only play games, i just talk to other gamers.

developers are never going to really xp a game the same way a player would, both have necessary and potentially interesting things to say about how a game works

i mean, you like what you like, im not really interested in convincing you otherwise, but i am interested in staking out space for writers/critics to work their way through the xp of gaming, or their reaction to a game. like that zelda piece is really terrible and ok partly im bitter that they rejected my piece on sakura wars but i dont think its a priori illegitimate

one thing we mb do agree on is that i think the type of writing im defending reaches too quickly for metaphor as a way of explaining/obscuring the actual process stuff that is imo 'important'

zap! clang! bang! video games aren't just for kids anymore!

hmmmmm

bjorksclovetofu

didnt know you did any games writin m8 :0
― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Wednesday, September 14, 2011 3:05 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lamp short for leigh alexander my pseudonym

first of all,

hmmmmm

― Lamp, Wednesday, September 14, 2011 4:39 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

http://bossip.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/yung-humma-e1312834671395.jpg?w=600

second, w/r/t the actual conversation at hand, people writing about their experiences with games can be incredibly useful when I'm trying to determine whether I want to play a game; I've probably wasted a shitty used car's worth of money in my life on the sheer basis of reading someone describe a really satisfying time they had with a game and gone AW I WANT THAT.

however when that tactic is applied to cultural criticism I would rather inject diarrhea directly into my eyeballs than read it, typically because the writers involved can't imagine any sort of strange paralell universe where experiences/conclusions other than theirs might actually have some sort of value or relevance. they also only ever seem to approach the issue from a self-centered humanist perspective ("let me tell you about how this made me feel") rather than bring any discipline to the table; one reason why I like Sean Malstrom so much despite his shameful Palin-boner is the fact that at least he's looking at the experience of playing games in another context (specifically the business context). people tend to come up with better points when they have to prove they're experts on two things instead of just one, imo.

I feel like I could write a pretty enjoyable "gamer perspective only" piece with agreeable but self-centered, humanist points. Is there any respectable gamer sites that offer freelance writers a chance to make their front page? I'm thinking that I could write a better article than a lot of stuff that ends up in 1up's features section

i also look better than ron jeremy but for some reason no one wants me to film porn

I was going to make a ron jeremy did 9/11 joke but I don't want the cap'n to post a smearogram about that

I just read walkthroughs.

I have no idea if a gamer article of mine would be under appreciated. I never tried submitting one anywhere.

still holding out hope for quality

there are a lot of good blogs out there imo (as we discussed in that link thread)

I think I'll go home and write a feature article for 1up and see what happens. I'm thinking that my topic will be along the lines of "best old school multiplayer games"

http://www.pippinbarr.com/inininoutoutout/?p=2550

(i've lost interest in writing an article. maybe some other time)

http://news.yahoo.com/online-gamers-crack-aids-enzyme-puzzle-175427367.html

this was pretty good, about applying basic film making ruless to cut scenes
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/09/videogame-cutscenes/?pid=1986&viewall=true

i was hoping that would have the kind of insights you actually need to go to film school to get tbh

cut scenes are long and boring

there, now you don't need to read the article

i hate how final fantasy cutscenes always have the camera tilting and swooping around

mordy that is unfairly reductive

point 1 cut scenes are long and boring
point 2 cut scenes are long and boring
point 3 cut scenes are long and boring
point 4 cut scenes are long and boring
point 5 there is a cut scene in mass effect ii that breaks the 180 degree rule

there you go

http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-ghost-story/

really curious admittedly how accurate the math in this is, since i have no clue

also, since I don't play The Sims Online I didn't know about the gameplay "advance" in that game, so it was interesting to me

I finally got around to watching Codes of Honor - loved it

i was hoping that would have the kind of insights you actually need to go to film school to get tbh

― thomp, Tuesday, September 20, 2011 12:35 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark

hah, those insights dont exist

glad it only took you a week to annotate my joke ade

that looks pissier than i have any justification for being, sorry

pfft i didnt see it until now

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/mf_chainworld/all/1

from :D to ¯\(°_0)/¯ in four easy pages

nutty

what a shit ending to a great story

the av club podcast (lol) has a segment this week abt videogame reviewing that, while not partic groundbreaking, is sort of interesting. the frustration and bitterness in john teti's voice is p heartbreaking, oddly

i keep thinking about how i'd run a videogame publication/site. with, like, a manifesto, and pretty strict firewalling b/w advertisers and contents.

http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=1319#comments

Article is good. Comments are pretty good too.

s1ocki we should talk more about that idea at some point.

Has Teti posted on here? I know at least one AV Club game reviewer has been on here.

In Brazilian arcades we used to tape over the lifebars on Street Fighter II, to great effect.

s1ocki we should talk more about that idea at some point.

― Alderaan Duran (Will M.), Thursday, November 17, 2011 3:19 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

yes!

will and i talked about this IRL the other day.

(for those of you following along at home.)

I would contribute fwiw

xpost forks yeah I really want to try a fighting game without visible health bars too. That sounds terrifying and fun.

^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushido_Blade_%28video_game%29

buuuuuuushido

god i loved that game

that's like 30% of what made bushido work.
you could still signal visually how damaged the character was.
Or make them less reactive.
Both of which bushido did.

that intellivision post reminded me how awesome Air Fortress is, and now i'm watching youtube videos of some annoying dude going through all of Air Fortress (i think as a kid i used to just play the first three fortresses over and over)

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201202/burning-man-sam-brown-jay-kirk-gq-february-2012?printable=true

good read!

concur

definitely, that was one of the more interesting things i've read in forever

ketamine dreamz

uh, "forever" was supposed to be "a while"

that Dirty Bathroom game in the sidebar would fuck me up

http://www.themillions.com/2012/02/the-arcades-project-martin-amis-guide-to-classic-video-games.html

wow

:-) that just looks amazing.

Here's a report with some gameplay vid of SnowWorld from about 4 years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNIqyyypojg

I'm curious how they've been able to update & re-EQ the game's therapeutic abilities in the interim. This looks like a project you could easily crowdsource art assets and gameplay contributions for.

I think it's really great how they're doing this, but I have to admit when I first saw the pictures of these various demos I was thinking, what is this, 1997? You can crap out better engines now in Flash or Unity or whatever.

it's so weird that it's paul simon

i don't know whether military funding and crowdsourcing really go together. i dunno either if VR 3d uses the same sort of assets as regular 3d, come to think

that thing about martin amis' video game book is 1) omg holy shit and 2) really good! this isn't actually about video games but "the scrupulous, almost paranoiac abstention from banality at the level of the sentence" is a totally accurate bit of criticism of martin amis

also omg holy shit that book, complete YES with obligatory hitch anecdote

re that piece on Amis, the LRB are pushing their review of the book (+ an intro to RPGs) from 1982:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v04/n24/tom-shippey/vidkids

last week's sunday papers at rps was full of pretty good stuff, i'm noticing

bets on whether this is real plz:

http://www.mediumdifficulty.com/2012/03/01/call-of-apathy-violent-young-men-and-our-place-in-war/

I am a private military contractor, and I have an issue with the depiction of war in videogames — or more specifically, the soldiers in those games.

When I say soldier, let me be clear that I am talking about the Infantryman and the Special Forces operator, as I have next to no knowledge about anything outside of this relatively small percentile of service personnel.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of games featuring the military focus on these frontline combat troops in “realistic” action. And that’s where we get problems.

Imagine a war game where you could only move at a slow walking pace. Imagine Skyrim when your inventory is too full, except you can’t drop any of it. This war game has a prone button like Call of Duty, but your character takes 2-3 seconds to change position. Every time you press it, the animation gets slower because your character becomes more and more tired.

Every mission is set in the same level. They each take 12 hours to complete.

this would be good if the person had actually read kristeva

http://www.slowdown.vg/2012/03/03/isaac-and-the-grotesque-body-horrors/

this is like 2000 words on the game design possibilities of the medusa heads in castlevania and is just great

http://kotaku.com/5888474/the-perfect-moves-of-a-video-game-bad-guy

this blog actually seems to be getting academic writing about games right, which surely not:

http://www.playthepast.org/?p=2509

I was v excited for how a cultural studies interpretation of a 20y/o game with examination of source code was going to be the best article ever, until it turned out that the author has either never programmed in his life or is being extremely disingenuous

leaving aside my geekier reservations, you might as well ask "why do the ghosts in Pac-man move in set patterns and eat Pac-men instead of dots, what do these assumptions say about the developer" and, yes, examining the cultural value of those assumptions is all very well, but also, good luck programming a playable game on a 16k arcade board without making any assumptions

haha yeah

i kind of want to give them the benefit of the doubt, if there's more coming. i think the construction of 'politics' (or w/e) in sid meiers games is kind of interesting, and okay there's a schoolboy error there but it's a good start. i dunno, a lot of the other stuff on the blog seems like that too ... good start, now say something

i should write up my thing about why adorno's analysis of jazz music is exactly like multiplay first person shoot em ups no i shouldn't

yes, you should! but I might need a few drinks to get through it

(btw it wasn't just the "schoolboy error" that everyone else has pointed out in the comments, although that was a red flag, but also, among other even more pedantic or handwavily longwinded thoughts:

- author identifies that there are 30 code blocks which are only run if the character is or is not "native", lists screenshots of results of this search, but doesn't actually say what any of these code blocks does - they may just change the random name selection or the sprite displayed. I'm sure there's stuff in some of them which would further support the thesis, but the fact that he doesn't go into any of them or even acknowledge there is anything more to go into adds to the suspicion that he's no idea what any of it does

- where is this source code from? Is it the original code? Is it tidied from the output of decompiling the executable, in which case the variable names are not original and the internal logic may be slightly different due to compiler optimisations? Or is it just a remake by some guy on the internet? We can still analyse the latter, but if this is in preparation for a "book chapter", the real book needs to be more specific

see, I said they were geeky)

but, I read it all and will probably read more of their articles now, so...

thanks thomp... the medusa head one especially is killin it

yeah, ditto!

yea medusa one is excellent!

surprising that castlevania 3 didnt do much of note with the heads. iirc the level design was quite good. but I'll take this guy's word for it.

Not sure the right thread for this. Was reading through the radian games blog and saw this:

"This interview from Kill Screen makes me sound depressed, which is not true (the vast majority of the time). The interviewer asked a lot more questions than is shown, so when I give too much information about having to cut back or things like that, it was because he kept asking for more specifics. This interview from DIYGamer is a lot more accurate about how I’m feeling these days. I’d describe my current status as “uncertain”."

(http://radiangames.com/blog/?p=997)

So I read the kill screen interview and sure enough it seems like it's really a pretty one-sided cut compared to the other interview or other things on the developer's blog. Really more related to "what's wrong with kill screen" and a "state of videogame crit" discussion but the c&p thread is well beyond that now.

Missing that ! means 'not,' is a really very basic programming error that undermines the author's entire authority...

w/r/t colonization: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Cities_of_Gold_(game)

also yeah, the ability of folks to actually carefully read code in the broader context of how it's written and what it means and not just in isolation for what it sounds like it might mean is the stumbling block of much of critical code studies at the moment. I don't think the notion is doomed, but I have yet to see it executed well.

I feel like unless it becomes architectural/linguistic studies of code (which exist already), it's always going to be limited to either a) finding how coders described sections of the code in comments/names of functions and show how that's "problematic" (ie: Natives as a variable) or b) just extracting things without context because they sound interesting. I could see a really interesting, maybe super-Levi-Straussian structural analysis of code develop, but aren't the really serious questions about code mostly already covered by computer science + game theory + stuff? And the things this guy wants to study (broad identity studies w/ a nod towards critical theory/cont. phil) he would probably be better served writing about the game on a game level. Anything embedded in the code is going to occur on the surface too. You don't need to open up the code to realize that you aren't given the choice to play as the natives in the game. Going through the code to show how even if you hack the game, there still aren't sufficient options for the natives is just redundant.

but I have yet to see it executed well.

i don't think it's redundant - the screenshot of the empty town it creates manifests something interesting you couldn't get at in other ways. and i think there's stuff that (if you had code-literate ppl doing this) it would make more sense to get from the code, like e.g. how the AI makes decisions about native behaviour, than to observe and reverse-engineer the design principles. (a couple things i read about how the alien team thinks on the worryingly comprehensive x-com wiki made me go 'huuuuh'. i'm not sure x-com is as interesting to deconstruct for 'meaning' though.)

man, nothin on rps this sunday worth reading at all. fu british games journalism

some likeminded bros of mine have started some pretty cool gaming blogs

crystalprisonzone.blogspot.com
gamefeel.tumblr.com/
pldevelopment.blogspot.com
gamergoku.blogspot.com
shutupandgame.blogspot.com
finalbrutalweapon.blogspot.com

they're mostly coming from anti-narratologist POVs

looking forward to exploring that list

who are these ppl and why didn't they start one nonbuttugly blog

why do that when you can start an ironic webring

http://crystalprisonzone.blogspot.com/2012/03/bioware-day-one-dlc-developed.html

i guess this is an example of 'critical code studies' that tells us something we couldn't know without looking at the code

xpost do they actually have little webring .gifs and stuff that i missed bcz they totally should

if 'critical code studies' consists of uncovering whether companies are lying about dlc ripping you off or not, i'm not interested in the field.

like, this isn't critical code studies. it's consumer watchdogism bolstered by code analysis.

i'm sorry i just thought it would be a thing to say that would make me sound clever

they're mostly coming from anti-narratologist POVs

huh

aka privileging gamism + ludic components over story/narrative (if i understand it correctly)

i should start a blog, about videogames

haha tim rogers first game is out

I have it. It's kind of fun but I got bored of it pretty fast.

i would like to blog about video games however i am terrible at updating blogs bc i lose interest and never update it.

i would like to blog about video games on someone else's blog. i think this would be ideal.

yeah blogs require too much dedication for me (ie. a nonzero amount). i'll stick to postin'

those dudes seem to be at abt the same level of discourse as ILG, they should post here instead, that would require the less effort of not typing a different address in my web browser

god, chrome has the eight most frequently visited sites and i only even use about five of those, what happened to the internet

lol i wouldnt inflict ILG on them. they all post on another board im on, u should join it instead

cruel!

lol ade. what is this other forum?

http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2012/03/13/bioware-plays-the-gay-card/

one of the reasons i love tom chick

g1

lol ade. what is this other forum?

Permalink
― bosomy English rose (thomp), Tuesday, 13 March 2012 15:14 (2 days ago)

hope this hasn't already been posted: http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-ghost-story/

ah, nhex posted it back in november. still a great read.

http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2012/03/24/the-official-journey-review-faq/

my fave part: had no idea Chick was a Harvard divinity student who learned Hebrew

ha for a mo I thought you meant Jack Chick lol

well, he does clarify that in the article

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7793059/john-burgeson-ibm-computer-start-baseball-video-games

nice story!

i like this one too, even if it's a bit bloggy:

http://insertcredit.com/2012/04/09/playing-to-win-at-life/

more worth seeing than reading but:
http://www.campbellwhyte.com/8-bit-dreams/8-bit-requim-for-a-dreams/
he's selling originals for fifty bucks, i'm tempted by a few of these
http://www.etsy.com/listing/79423771/adventures-of-lolo-original-nes?ref=v1_other_2

some of those are pretty neat. i would certainly not pay money for them

i suppose i wouldn't either but i'd entertain the idea

i guess what i'm saying is, don't do it man :P

heh, okay

i often feel the past couple years have been a futile waste of time but then i read a sentence like "i spent a year and a half playing starcraft 2" and momentarily feel better about myself

I bet you guys are real excited to read another long feature about JBlow, the game industry's "most cerebral developer":

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/the-most-dangerous-gamer/8928/

stopped here:

“It just drives home how fictional money is,” Blow said, squinting against the unseasonably bright December sun. “One day I’m looking at my bank account and there’s not much money, and the next day there’s a large number in there and I’m rich. In both cases, it’s a fictional number on the computer screen, and the only reason that I’m rich is because somebody typed a number into my bank account.” For the world’s most existentially obsessed game developer, coming into seven figures just provided another opportunity to ponder the nature of meaning in the universe.

jesus christ STFU

tell you what, let me hold six of those figures and then call me back about existential meaning

nothing jblow says there is as bad as whoever wrote it

^^^^^^^^^^

Yeah, the bit where he tries to make out that games were wall-to-wall Call of Duty and nothing else before Braid came along is the worst.

What I got from that article is that one of the philosophical changes made by fictional money is that it will cause some journalists to cast you as the next Howard Roark rather than say "Dude has autism-spectum disorder".

the atlantic's such a good magazine, why would they have published this laughable profile?

this bugged me the most but it's my problem really

This means, somewhat incredibly, that Blow doesn’t believe in even trying to communicate a game’s central message in words; the medium itself, he argues, is the message.

YOU DON'T SAY

i wonder what the odds are that the profiler thought "the medium is the message" was an original blow nugget

jotted it down in excitement w/ a little arrow pointing to it: "somewhat incredible!"

although since most professional editors get paid by the inserted adverb (bonus pay if what it's modifying is already an adverb) i'd say chances are good the first draft called that insight straight-up incredible

although since most professional editors get paid by the inserted adverb

lol i wish. in fact, reading this i just thought if i'd been editing it, i'd have given up halfway through as a bad job. such a credulous interviewer, such a douchebag interviewee, such a bad combination. and i enjoyed Braid, kinda.

lol at little arrow saying "somewhat incredible"

not even gonna read that sigh

i like how the guy's next game is myst.

what an asshole/also what a terrible article/also like the worst issue of the atlantic i've ever read--did yall see the piece about how qaddafi's son was sad when his dad died and the reader is supposed to give a shit? or the kanye thing? tho the br meyers takedown of chad harbach was good.

His face, bounded by a closely cropped widow’s peak on top and a clenched jaw on the bottom

Friendship with Blow requires patience for his rigid, often puzzling personal codes. He enjoys talking, but abhors idle conversation and is intensely private.

what a deep and paradoxical fellow!

fuck braid

coming close to that opinion without ever actually having played it.

nah, braid was cool. soulja boy nailed it.

braid was gorgeous and inventive and fun but of course every think piece about how paradigm-shifting it was concentrates on the parts before each level where you read some coy prose about being a sad boy, because obviously that's where the Art is

nah fuck braid, any game that relies that much on hushed artifice and a busted prince of persia gameplay mechanic is just as phony and overblown as modern warfare 3 but way less honest.

i don't even like braid that much but whaaaa?

braid is great, jblow sucks

i always walked past the books without reading them

"he enjoys talking, but abhors listening"

"he enjoys blazers, but abhors long pants"

ignore the overblown plot and braid is a very sweet game; preferred limbo where shit was less spelled out if more tim burtony

interview made me want to replay infocom's trinity tho, maybe i could get somewhere in it now that i'm not 11

i like how the guy's next game is myst.

― adam, Wednesday, 18 April 2012 15:21 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol first thing i thought when i read about it

I liked Braid until it got too hard for me (about 10 minutes in as I am totally uncoordinated) but that article seriously made me regret giving him any of his giant pile of money which he feels such ostentatious indifference towards

(didn't buy it full price, but then I bought it on its own and bought some bundle with it in, so I guess I gave him money twice)

At some point, Steam holiday sales will deliver them all to me anyway

http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2012/04/dissident-designer.html

blow currently responsible for reinventing: myst, marshall mcluhan, sturgeon's law, the wheel...

wish Michael Abbott wrote more often

since there isn't a "rolling thread of furniture worth buying on videogames"

http://www.gizmag.com/nintendo-controller-coffee-table/22224/

ha, and it actually works!

http://images.gizmag.com/inline/nes-table-3.jpg

although admittedly, that looks like the kind of activity that you hype up all day but only end up doing for about 3 minutes.