DUMBASS GAMER QUOTE OF THE SOMETHING

2010-09-03T21:37:00.002-04:00

your missing the point every M rated game that you have ever liked could fairly instantly go away that mean no bioshock, no halflife, no no more heros,no halo and any other games that us older gamers love will end videogames will become toys and not a medium and they may not recover from that.

- Toosoo, Posting on Game Overthinker's Blog

As we all know, games are a medium now. This is indisputable because of the potentials of gameplays and the philosophies of the... yeah. But have they always been? Will they always be? OF COURSE NOT. If minors can't buy M rated games, that means the medium will DEVOLVE BACK INTO TOYS FOR MERE ENTERTAINMENT. We've worked so hard to make video games not entertaining!

And not just new games, either; all your old M-rated games will instantly "go away" regardless of if you are over the age of seventeen or if they exist on this material plane or something. The government can do that!

Fucking christ. And it would be funny if the video he's responding to wasn't ten minutes of goofballery of the very same flavor. Video games suck but they got nothing on the numbskulls playing them.

A response to Anna Anthropy's rant

2010-03-12T12:48:00.008-05:00

Please note that I'm not trying to take potshots, this is nothing personal. If anything, I want to stimulate conversation on the subject, which is probably something Anna would support. If this comes out a little caustic, it's because it's how I write no matter where I am. Starting here, my writings will be in bold. Anna's rant can be found on her blog, Auntie Pixelante.

VIDEOGAMES: A NEW MEDIUM

first of all, the videogame isn’t a medium, it’s a form. it’s a form of games, which have been around for millenia. games are among the oldest cultural artifacts in existence.

Good show. Essentially what a video game is is a simulation, as any video game could ACTUALLY exist in the scope of reality (even the super crazy ones). Video games just simulate a simpler reality where specific things are going on. Otherwise though, you're right, something like chess is really just a ruleset, like any video game.

DIGITAL GAMES AND ANALOG GAMES

we need to stop thinking that digital games are something different and seperate from all the other kinds of games that have been around us forever, like board games and card games and hide and seek. they aren’t. digital game design and non-digital game design have things to say to each other that we need to stop ignoring.

Now when you say "things to say to each other", are you saying that real and virtual games should be influencing each other more? That's pretty much all I've got to figure out here besides what I've communicated in the previous section.

ARTGAMES

the problem with the term “artgame” is that when you declare a single game “art”, you’re drawing a distinction between it and the games that prefigured it. you’re declaring they’re not art. and there’s been art and craft in games for as long as people have been making creative decisions about them.

Solid, as far as I'm concerned. Though I'm starting to think "artgame" doesn't even imply art. Starting to think it just implies that the game is crap.

“INDIE”

i’m uncomfortable with the “indie” label and the scenesterism it seems to engender. one of the things i hate about mainstream games is that its language and culture are designed to exclude people, and what i like about game creation outside the mainstream is that it can potentially include everyone.

I'd go into something about rebelling against scenesterism, but it's probably something I shouldn't bother with. I never saw mainstream gaming as a "culture designed to exclude people". Anyone can pick up Modern Warfare 2 and in a couple of rounds find themselves running with the champs (assuming they're a quick learner). Not to mention that mainstream gaming is shifting towards the PATHETIC casual movement, opening the wonders of gaming to all the sleepy babies and old people who have always wanted to shake a white rod while colors flash onscreen.

OUTSIDE GAMES

there’s a concept in visual art called “outsider art,” a concept in music called “outsider music.” it refers to people who aren’t connected to an artistic field or its body of criticism but who create art anyway, an art that some consider to be more honest, more pure. i think games will come into their own when anyone can make a game as easily as one can type a short story or sing a song.

This implies that whether or not the creator is a hermit has any bearing on whether or not he creates work of genius. And on the subject of game creation utilities, you are generally trading off functionality for the time and effort of learning to code. It's one thing for a newbie, but a person will always get out of game design what they put into it, (just as with any other creative action), so anyone who wants to make this something they DO will want to step up their game from game maker to something more stable. Following your examples: A person can type a short story without learning proper grammar, it will just be shit. A person can sing a song if they're tone deaf and can't play any music, it will just be shit.

GAME MAKING TOOLS

so we need more tools for people who aren’t programmers to make games with. game maker is a start, and it’s brought a lot of people into making games who wouldn’t otherwise be, but we aren’t quite there yet. i want to hear the voices of people who aren’t already entrenched in game culture.

We've heard the voices of people who don't play games. A lazy duck has wandered onto their farmville farm and is looking for a new home.

GET PERSONAL

i want to hear stories that are personal. i’m tired of epics, i’m tired of saving the world and i’m tired of masculine wish-fulfilment fantasies. if i’m tired of that shit, there’s no way it’s going to mean anything to a player.

You just said that games aren't a medium, and here you are insisting that they are. Games aren't a "method of storytelling". They are a possibility space created by interacting rules. And on the subject of masculine wish-fulfillment fantasies: GAMES OF ALL KINDS ARE ESCAPISM. If you want a "story" that isn't about doing anything in particular, read some Murakami novels.

STORYTELLING

storytelling in games does not mean cutscenes, and it does not mean reading pages and pages of static text. we have to learn to tell stories with rules, with design, and with play instead of aping other cultural forms.

Storytelling in games doesn't happen until after you've finished the game and have gone to tell your friends how sick your combo was on verse 4. Just like in real life, when you walk to the grocery store, there is no story being told until you write about it on twitter. Games are about the player accomplishing actions, not the game designer communicating some "meaning". If you can't wrap your head around that you're never going to make a game as good as Jill Off again.

THE NEW ARCADE

when the paradigm of games shifted from the arcade to the home machine, what we largely lost was the videogame as a social experience. i think we need to examine how we can use social spaces like galleries as avenues for games as events, instead of assuming our players have no friends and would prefer to experience games at home, alone.

I agree, somewhat. If you're trying to keep hipsterism out of gaming, though, I wouldn't recommend galleries. You know there's still some arcades out there? I'm probably going to to one this weekend. Not talking Dave and Busters here, they have 3rd strike. Similarly, I go to Otakon every year over the summer, and my favorite part is probably the game room where we can play fighting games with like-minded nerds and talk Touhou while waiting for our chance to play the latest Cave STG ports.

Also you really shouldn't ignore that games are increasingly multiplayer. Just because Xbox Live is full of squealing children doesn't mean that online gaming services such as Steam have no merit. There's nothing more therapeutic than kicking back with my bros for some TF2. And when me and my real life friends get together, you bet we're playing all our favorite games together and discussing our tactics and strategies, just like we do when we post on /v/ or chat on IM. Being able to spend time with my friends and meet new people through gaming is still probably the most rewarding part of the hobby, and though the stereotype is that gamers stay cooped up inside all the time it's very rarely the case.

THE ENTHUSIAST PRESS

the mainstream games press is owned by the mainstream games industry. they’re pets. agreed. they’re given generous gifts and spend most of their time rewriting the press releases they’re handed. but what’s poisonous about the enthusiast press is that the model of writing they promote is:

THE REVIEW

the consumer review’s goal is to tell me whether or not i should buy a product, not to help me to better understand a work. a review isn’t criticism, and criticism is what videogames desperately need. it’s more valuable to be able to say “this game expresses this idea” than it is to say “this game has EYE-POPPING VISUALS.” we need to develop a critical vocabulary to talk about our games.

You are right. If you don't mind my namedropping, Icycalm has pretty much been over this ad nauseum. Dunno if it's something we need to focus on fixing, though, it's pretty much fixing itself. The community (or at least, the hopefully non-retarded community that is listening to all this) is only really a few steps away from realizing that forums have the same stupid children in them that write paid reviews, only they do it for FREE and with no paid bias.

THE LANGUAGE OF GAMES

the other poisonous thing about the enthusiast press is the language it passes on to its readers, which is a language of marketers. games even outside the mainstream have a language which is intended not to communicate but to establish boundaries, to determine whether the listener is in on the joke. stop saying “EPIC.” stop saying “WIN.” stop saying “FAIL.”

EPIC, WIN, and FAIL have nothing to do with the fucking enthusiast press. All those words came from the internet and were lifted by the media as an attempt to connect to "nerd culture". Anyone old enough to recognize this is as sick of them as you are, but get your facts straight. You're preaching to a demographic of twelve-year-olds that can't hear you.

DESIGN TALK

i went to a game design school and one of the MANY problems i observed was that no one knew how to teach game design. we need to figure out how to talk about game design and level design if we don’t want to be endlessly re-solving the same problems.

All you have to do to undersatand game design is play video games, realize what was fun about them, and realize what was not fun about them. This isn't rocket science.

80+ HOURS OF GAMEPLAY

the eighty-hour game is a dead end. a game that requires that much content requires a huge budget, and that means the game won’t make any money unless it’s a huge hit. which means games are designed to be all things to all people. and that leads to…

To interject here, summer blockbuster games are being made, and they probably will keep being made as long as money is in them. All that matters is that we recognize them for what they are. Not to mention 80 hour games usually aren't 80 hour games. They're usually heavily padded with cinema, text, and grinding. Fuck that. I've put more than 80 hours into Monster Hunter, Bayonetta, and likely countless other games. They didn't need ridiculous budgets, they just had to be good enough to last me more than fifteen minutes without boring me to death. It's a problem of filling the games with useless tripe that nobody cares about.

CLUTTER

big-budget games have so many competing ideas that it’s impossible for any of them to come through clearly. games need to be designed by designers, not by marketers.

Preaching to the choir. Activision insists on ruining everything it touches. Most devs aren't like this, though, and if a game is a success, it most definitely isn't like this.

ACHIEVEMENTS

generally, achievements are used to artificially draw out the game. many contemporary games have little or no respect for the player’s time, and that’s something we need to change if we want people to play games who aren’t privileged kids with too much leisure time, and i think games deserve a more diverse audience.

You're implying that anyone over the age of twelve cares about achievements. What achievements usually do is congratulate the player for doing shit he normally would do anyway. What achievements should do is congratulate the player for being creative with their trick runs. But assuming that anyone's going to care about the achievements for a game that isn't already good is not giving the game community enough credit.

REDDER

and to conclude, my new game, REDDER, went online today. it’s at newgrounds.com and i know some of you have laptops with wifi. you could be playing it right now. do it.

Cool story.

THANK YOU

welcome.

Nickel Sandwich

DUMBASS GAMER QUOTE OF THE SOMETHING

A response to Anna Anthropy's rant