A bland malaise, descending
January 5, 2014 11:55 AM Subscribe
Some decent criticism in there of The Last of Us, which I binge-played over the holidays. This in particular gives it more credit than I did, but also has some nice, concise summations of the game's flaws. e.g.:
posted by postcommunism at 1:47 PM on January 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
We are the game’s pistol; we are the game’s lead pipe; we are the game’s smoke bombs and its bow and arrows. But no matter how much it might want to pretend otherwise, we are not its characters.(The exception to that, maybe, being the opening of the Ellie sequence.)
posted by postcommunism at 1:47 PM on January 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
Lord, I'll be happy when anna anthropy goes away. Like, I don't mind that she's not very smart---lots of gaming writers aren't very smart---but the rhetorical force she employs to justify never entertaining a new thought, and the fans she acquires for her epistemic closure, is bone-chilling.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 1:57 PM on January 5, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 1:57 PM on January 5, 2014 [2 favorites]
(TLoU spoilers)
Wait what... reading the comments of that one review I see that I missed a tape recorder on the last level which exonerates Joel? He wasn't lying so much at the end?
Booooo
At least it's less nihilistic that way, though.
posted by postcommunism at 2:04 PM on January 5, 2014
Wait what... reading the comments of that one review I see that I missed a tape recorder on the last level which exonerates Joel? He wasn't lying so much at the end?
Booooo
At least it's less nihilistic that way, though.
posted by postcommunism at 2:04 PM on January 5, 2014
And then I come upon a lavish spread of rotting fruit, fine china. A raven is disturbed from the Dickensian tableside, spores and insects circulate in the silence. As I admire it, a man in a suit and a bowler hat enters. He’s not dressed like a policeman. Who is this person, and what does he do in this place? Oh. He pulls out his gun. I shoot first. It’s the end of a story that never even began.What a wonderfully succinct condensation of the criticism I've lobbed at games over and over again.
posted by byanyothername at 2:23 PM on January 5, 2014
postcommunism: if you look up a transcript of the recording in question (spoilers) that's not what it says at all. It would have been a pretty big gaffe of Naughty Dog to write the story that way.
posted by xdvesper at 4:09 PM on January 5, 2014
posted by xdvesper at 4:09 PM on January 5, 2014
There's a lot of great stuff here, even for this non-gamer. I was particularly taken with Tom Bissell's letter to Niko Bellic, which has so many quotable lines, but I'll restrict myself to just one: "No reader has ever told me he hopes I get cancer in response to a negative book review,"
posted by Ian A.T. at 5:16 PM on January 5, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by Ian A.T. at 5:16 PM on January 5, 2014 [2 favorites]
Like, I don't mind that she's not very smart---lots of gaming writers aren't very smart---but the rhetorical force she employs to justify never entertaining a new thought...
Yeah, I had the exact same reaction to reading her linked piece. The way she combines this muddy, almost incomprehensibly garbled writing with such forceful, self-congratulatory, self-righteous certitude is really far more reminiscent of other kinds of online culture warrior than it is of any kind of serious thinking. If that piece is among the year's best writing in online game criticism, the field (or at least the person making the list) certainly still has some growing up left to do.
posted by RogerB at 5:29 PM on January 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
Yeah, I had the exact same reaction to reading her linked piece. The way she combines this muddy, almost incomprehensibly garbled writing with such forceful, self-congratulatory, self-righteous certitude is really far more reminiscent of other kinds of online culture warrior than it is of any kind of serious thinking. If that piece is among the year's best writing in online game criticism, the field (or at least the person making the list) certainly still has some growing up left to do.
posted by RogerB at 5:29 PM on January 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
Does Twine do INFOCOM-level text adventure or only CYOA-level? Everything I've seen's been CYOA. Regardless, it is bemusing to see the kids these days impressed by the novelty of genres fully established & even old-fashioned when I was a youth, kind of like "Hey guys I invented this form it's called the short story."
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 6:20 PM on January 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 6:20 PM on January 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
Twine does largely CYOA though people have extended it to allow other kinds of interaction. Inform is the most popular system for writing true Infocom-style parser games (which these days can also be played in a browser).
posted by nev at 7:58 PM on January 5, 2014
posted by nev at 7:58 PM on January 5, 2014
I liked the Anna Anthropy piece (and most of the things I've checked out so far under "Culture Blogging;" seriously, there is a wealth of wonderful games writing, here! reading these is going to take forever! thanks!). I don't follow her, so maybe I'm missing something but I don't really understand the criticisms. It's a little rambly and blog-posty, but I got Mattie Brice's name (whose writing looks well worth looking into) out of it and I pretty much agree with her that game culture is gross, but there are interesting things being done with games and it'd be a good thing if we could talk about those without Gross Game Culture around to refocus the discussion on things we want to move game culture away from (anti-intellectualism, misogyny, racism, transphobia, homophobia, fetishizing violence, um...). Which is a bit paradoxical, because it's very rare for any blog or forum or venue for writing and talking about games online to fully escape Gross Game Culture, and the mere presence of GGC is often enough to shift the focus back to the very things it'd be nice to get away from.
So, I read it as a frustration that sometimes it feels like the only way to win re: talking about games is to not. But that also we can talk about games in different ways, and just ignore the toxic aspects of the culture in those conversations. Personally, it often feels like games are not worth talking about at all, because the culture is too toxic and too homogenous; but I'm always still really eager to, because there really are so many wonderful possibilities for the medium. Except there are hordes and hordes of people ready to shout you down if you want to talk about What Games Could Be (or, heaven forbid, How or Why Games Should Change) instead of What Games Should Be, so it's rare that I feel like I can ever even get to the Talking About Games stage. (And then there's the ever-present nagging feeling that I've completely outgrown games which, for the most part, appears true, but that's accompanied by an annoyed knowledge that it doesn't have to be.) I think about starting a blog and just disabling comments, but then who's going to read that?
Also: I have said this before in different ways, but it would be really nice if, instead of offering vague caustic opinions that don't really say anything, people could offer criticism that tries to explain what they find objectionable, problematic, unworkable, whatever. I don't know if it's a time issue, or a site culture thing, but a lot of critical comments don't have any actual criticism to them and it's confusing to read because I'm left seeing negative reactions I can't intuitively connect to anything. I know it's easier to just say, "I don't like this," but then I inevitably wonder why.
posted by byanyothername at 10:07 PM on January 5, 2014 [4 favorites]
So, I read it as a frustration that sometimes it feels like the only way to win re: talking about games is to not. But that also we can talk about games in different ways, and just ignore the toxic aspects of the culture in those conversations. Personally, it often feels like games are not worth talking about at all, because the culture is too toxic and too homogenous; but I'm always still really eager to, because there really are so many wonderful possibilities for the medium. Except there are hordes and hordes of people ready to shout you down if you want to talk about What Games Could Be (or, heaven forbid, How or Why Games Should Change) instead of What Games Should Be, so it's rare that I feel like I can ever even get to the Talking About Games stage. (And then there's the ever-present nagging feeling that I've completely outgrown games which, for the most part, appears true, but that's accompanied by an annoyed knowledge that it doesn't have to be.) I think about starting a blog and just disabling comments, but then who's going to read that?
Also: I have said this before in different ways, but it would be really nice if, instead of offering vague caustic opinions that don't really say anything, people could offer criticism that tries to explain what they find objectionable, problematic, unworkable, whatever. I don't know if it's a time issue, or a site culture thing, but a lot of critical comments don't have any actual criticism to them and it's confusing to read because I'm left seeing negative reactions I can't intuitively connect to anything. I know it's easier to just say, "I don't like this," but then I inevitably wonder why.
posted by byanyothername at 10:07 PM on January 5, 2014 [4 favorites]
Yeah, that Anna Anthropy piece is neither muddled nor self-congragulatory, but rather a bog standard plea to her peers to stop wasting time on games that already have the attention of the "mainstream" games press, games we already know are awful and not doing anything interesting and focus instead on more interesting, neglected games as well as to stop worrying about what hostile people think about what is and isn't a game.
It's the sort of piece you could've read in The Comics Journal in 1979.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:18 PM on January 5, 2014 [2 favorites]
It's the sort of piece you could've read in The Comics Journal in 1979.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:18 PM on January 5, 2014 [2 favorites]
I also have to come in on anna anthropy's side. (I think she's technically MeFi's own, but I've forgotten her account name.) While I don't think I agree with everything she says, my disagreements mostly come down to semantics. I can see the mindset that led her to say it, and she has good points. I saw her piece as a refusal to define what she likes about games and put it into any kind of framework, with perhaps a bit of insecurity after a Gears Of War (ugh) developer attacked her work.
Now, I would have responded to that person: sure, it could have. That seeming dismissal means nothing. A couple of days ago here on the blue we had a post about a Japanese man who made beautiful drawings in Excel, and no one dumps on him.
(Disclaimer: I've conversed with her over GTalk a handful of times. She's always been friendly with me.)
posted by JHarris at 1:36 AM on January 6, 2014 [1 favorite]
Now, I would have responded to that person: sure, it could have. That seeming dismissal means nothing. A couple of days ago here on the blue we had a post about a Japanese man who made beautiful drawings in Excel, and no one dumps on him.
(Disclaimer: I've conversed with her over GTalk a handful of times. She's always been friendly with me.)
posted by JHarris at 1:36 AM on January 6, 2014 [1 favorite]
(I myself could probably have put that better, really.)
posted by JHarris at 1:37 AM on January 6, 2014
posted by JHarris at 1:37 AM on January 6, 2014
Does Twine do INFOCOM-level text adventure or only CYOA-level?
Surprising things can be done with it, if someone has enough time/energy/patience/knowhow. It supports variables, conditionals and the generation of random numbers. Someone who's seriously programming-phobic might use it as an avenue to realize a vision, without realizing that he's programming by another name.
posted by JHarris at 1:40 AM on January 6, 2014
Surprising things can be done with it, if someone has enough time/energy/patience/knowhow. It supports variables, conditionals and the generation of random numbers. Someone who's seriously programming-phobic might use it as an avenue to realize a vision, without realizing that he's programming by another name.
posted by JHarris at 1:40 AM on January 6, 2014
I am a little sorry, reading through this list, that there wasn't more discussion of XCOM: Enemy Within. First because it was awesome, but second because it's a kind of pure gaming that I think is both more relevant to the medium, and more difficult/rewarding to write about than, say, Dishonored.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 10:36 AM on January 6, 2014
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 10:36 AM on January 6, 2014
One of the comments on Anna Anthropy's article says,
Extra Credits did a video on "What is a game?" where their answer boiled down to, "It doesn't really matter. Make what you what to make." But of course the comments still filled up with heated debate, my favourite of which was the guy who insisted that selling Dear Esther as a game should be against the law because that is false advertising.
I like the "Impressionist Gameplay" as a neat perspective I'll think about more. The one about Duke Nukem and "videogamey" design is good, too. ( I might argue that games often still have "videogamey" conventions, it's just a slightly different list of conventions from what it was. )
posted by RobotHero at 12:27 PM on January 6, 2014 [1 favorite]
"Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll let you get back to making your Powerpoint presentations (because they sure aren’t games) and I’m going to get back to playing and enjoying the greatness that is GTAV, which is, of course, an ACTUAL game."Which helps me sympathize with her.
Extra Credits did a video on "What is a game?" where their answer boiled down to, "It doesn't really matter. Make what you what to make." But of course the comments still filled up with heated debate, my favourite of which was the guy who insisted that selling Dear Esther as a game should be against the law because that is false advertising.
I like the "Impressionist Gameplay" as a neat perspective I'll think about more. The one about Duke Nukem and "videogamey" design is good, too. ( I might argue that games often still have "videogamey" conventions, it's just a slightly different list of conventions from what it was. )
posted by RobotHero at 12:27 PM on January 6, 2014 [1 favorite]
That Impressionist Gameplay has good points, and notices some unstated things that I've noticed for awhile and puts words to them, which is always nice, but it still annoys me tremendously by saying the human brain is or does this or that, which is a terrifically annoying cliche.
For example, referring to the compression of experience that allows Skyrim, among other things, to present what would be a small town in real life as a capital city:
It all kind of hangs together because our brains aren’t great at processing long-term experiences at that same immediate level
No, it hangs together because it's the best Bethesda can do given that people don't have lives to devote to playing a game. If Skyrim were the size of Greenland, and if traveling across it tool realistic amounts of time, then people would have to devote larger portions of their attention and time to playing it, which we're not going to do because we have other things we need to do with our lives. The limiting factor is less "the human brain" as the relative unimportance of playing a game.
I seem to remember that Bethesda once tried having more realistic scales, back in Daggerfall, which despite playing on much inferior hardware to what we have now used procedural generation techniques to present a truly vast world. For some reason, they don't do that much anymore. I personally think that approach isn't necessarily a bad one, but the game has to make allowances for the fact that most people are unwilling to devote their lives to an entertainment.
posted by JHarris at 6:04 AM on January 8, 2014
For example, referring to the compression of experience that allows Skyrim, among other things, to present what would be a small town in real life as a capital city:
It all kind of hangs together because our brains aren’t great at processing long-term experiences at that same immediate level
No, it hangs together because it's the best Bethesda can do given that people don't have lives to devote to playing a game. If Skyrim were the size of Greenland, and if traveling across it tool realistic amounts of time, then people would have to devote larger portions of their attention and time to playing it, which we're not going to do because we have other things we need to do with our lives. The limiting factor is less "the human brain" as the relative unimportance of playing a game.
I seem to remember that Bethesda once tried having more realistic scales, back in Daggerfall, which despite playing on much inferior hardware to what we have now used procedural generation techniques to present a truly vast world. For some reason, they don't do that much anymore. I personally think that approach isn't necessarily a bad one, but the game has to make allowances for the fact that most people are unwilling to devote their lives to an entertainment.
posted by JHarris at 6:04 AM on January 8, 2014
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posted by Jairus at 1:20 PM on January 5, 2014