Great gaming article

Ross Scott

Ross Scott

Staff member
I came across this article and agree heavily with about 95% of it, especially #3 and #4:

http://www.cracked.com/article_18571_5-reasons-its-still-not-cool-to-admit-youre-gamer.html

I am guilty of #2 insofar as anti-aliasing goes. Also while I don't disagree with it (except for the PC gaming dying part), I do think #1 only tells part of the story.

Even though I like games, I feel like the majority of them are garbage as far as writing goes. For a lot of them, that doesn't matter. I don't need a storyline for a racing game with exotic locales. However it can make the medium hard to defend on any intellectual grounds. A big part of the reason for my interest in older or obscure games is occasionally you have ones that are much more cerebrally oriented than the majority out there since the market wasn't as enormous as it is now, so developers didn't have as many assumptions about the players. I feel like the graphic adventure genre as a whole has a better track record of bucking these trends more than any other, but even then, it's hardly immune and is pretty much a niche genre these days.

 
Ah yeah, I've read this article before. I'm not sure why he said PC gaming is dying so matter-of-factly but, whatever. He made his point.

 
Ah yeah, I've read this article before. I'm not sure why he said PC gaming is dying so matter-of-factly but, whatever. He made his point.
Click to expand...
I figure he walks in a Gamestop, barely sees any PC games. IT MUST BE DYING.
 
I figure he walks in a Gamestop, barely sees any PC games. IT MUST BE DYING.
Click to expand...
He needs to go look at that "Current Players" chart on the Steam store.

And I do agree with his point about most video game plots never going past B-movie material. Only a VERY few developers actually put much though into their game's storyline. *cough* Valve *cough*.

 
Just point by point,

Oh look, there are lonely, anti-social virgins on the internet, lots of them probably. Not much question as to why we can't break the sterotype. I think I get how he feels, he likes something that has negative connotations because of its community. I loved ponies, but god damn if the fanatics didn't take that out of me. People make the gaming equivalent of phone sex, other people pay for it, the community looks bad. People make conventions, people dress up as ponies and scream songs at those conventions, the community looks less respectable. That's too bad, I guess you just have to live with the fact that people you don't like share interests with you. That's not going away, and not something you can really complain about. (Two thirds of online gamers are women)

On the sexualization of video games, that seems more aimed at enticing society as a whole rather than the industry assuming everyone is seventeen. That's more the author wanting to shift blame from his generation. It makes more sense for developers to think "people seem to buy more games when we add lesbian sex" than to make contemptuous age estimates about fans.

I would say that games are to movies as movies are to books. I don't expect the epic of Gilgamesh when I play Half life, nor would it make that much a difference if the story was as amazing as people seem to think it is. Unless someone has an example of success to prove me otherwise, video games and great stories don't seem compatible. "The Great Gatsby Video Game" doesn't have high hopes from this perspective.

For his Alan Wake example, I can see why some people would get upset that a game was a lower resolution than the maximum when that maximum is already inadequate for many. I agree with him somewhat on principal though, people do get too caught up in graphics.

I can agree with him on his last point, not much argument there.

 
I think his last point is awful. I think the whole article is awful. Everything(except arguably the first point) are society problems. They are not specific to gaming. Everyone wants shiny stuff, look at Apple products. Sexualization is still very present in every medium(though admittedly it is a lot more blatant in gaming). If you go out with 100 blu ray DVD's and tell people they can pay what they want most people will take one for a penny. And gosh, Avengers still has a story of a B-movie.

 
Oh look, there are lonely, anti-social virgins on the internet, lots of them probably. Not much question as to why we can't break the sterotype.
Click to expand...
Sorry, I should have clarified, this part of the article I didn't care about either way, though his point about online experiences I think is semi-valid. While I've seen exceptions, in a lot of online games, the degenerate asshole frequency can be very high.
Unless someone has an example of success to prove me otherwise, video games and great stories don't seem compatible.
Click to expand...
I would argue Silent Hill 2, I'd say it's on par to a movie like Jacob's Ladder. Also I don't know if I'd classify them as "great", but I'd say The Black Mirror and Still Life are on par with the maturity level of most mystery movies or books. I haven't finished them, but Culpa Innata and The Longest Journey had promising stories. Also for me personally, I thought Puzzle Agent had a great story and great writing. Easily on par with something like Fargo, just not as violent. I think games with good stories are EASILY compatible, but this seems to be an exceedingly rare event for whatever reason.
Sexualization is still very present in every medium(though admittedly it is a lot more blatant in gaming)
Click to expand...
It's not just blatancy, but frequency. I mean here's a quick question, how many fantasy games have a woman in a combat role portrayed in an armor bikini of some sort? I'd argue the majority of them. I feel like when you have stuff like that that's so blatant, it undercuts the rest of whatever merit the game may have regardless.
And gosh, Avengers still has a story of a B-movie.
Click to expand...
Well yes, that's a COMIC BOOK movie. I haven't seen The Avengers, but I'll go out on a limb and say it's not going to win any awards for best writing. I think that's the point, games very rarely break out past anything with more intellectual merit than that.
 
I can understand where he is coming from with most of his points, but wow, most of his arguments are so weak, I agree that video-games should be compared to movies, and there are way more movies with great stories than games with great stories, so he starts to mention movies like "Gone with the wind", movies that were made while there was no games or games were nothing more than a few squares in a screen, movies that were made in a completely different context of the modern world.

If gamers are the only kind of people that is dumb enough to suck up games with terrible stories, why we still have plenty blockbusters in the movie industry with a story that is as bad as DNF story? Say, Transformers (1,2 and 3), Fast and Furious 2 and 3 (1,4 and 5 were a little better).

Its simple, its because there is a huge audience made of action junkies, horny teenagers and people who love Family Guy "comedy".

I do agree that there is a big nitpicking on graphics when it comes to gaming, but when several 60$ games got a terrible story and a overused gameplay, we kinda earn the right to demand graphical perfection if nothing else.

The fact that this guy thinks PC gaming is diying due to piracy made he lose almost all his credibility with me, as a matter of fact, i recall buying around 100 pirated games for consoles, I barely have 5 pirated games in the PC, why? Because at the time i used to buy pirated games, I was a complete fool when it came to technology, Physical copies would have some hard taxes and would eventually break, consoles offered no customer support whatsoever, and almost all games were mainly single player only and i was unaware of how much effort was put into these games, basically, i was a fool to the gaming universe. Im not saying that the fact pirating the PC is nowadays way more temptig than to buy a pirated game for one of the modern console has not affected the PC gaming, but the PC gaming is quickly adapting to resist the piracy.

Why do you think VALVe haven't launched a single-player only game since 2007? Because they know single-player games are the main target of piracy, so instead of getting profit on the game itself, VALVe offers support the pirate community will never be able to offer: Constant updates, easy access to multiplayer, technical support, etc. And all of this come for free, people willingly pay an extra buck on in-game items (see tf2), and refusing to do so does not affect your gaming experience, you still can play the games as well as anyone else. All of this opposed to the consoles 60$ "sequels".

I am not proud of being a gamer, but im not ashamed of it, it is just a part of who I am; this entire article seems to be all about making gamers feel bad about themselves, and what is the point of that? Giving a reality check to the ones that are really guilty of most of the flaws he called? I really hope so, because i dont any other point in this article (besides the one already mentioned) that isnt pressing people into giving up on gaming.

 
Its simple, its because there is a huge audience made of action junkies, horny teenagers and people who love Family Guy "comedy".
Click to expand...
You always have the lowest common denominator stuff in any medium, I have no problem with that. The difference here is that when it comes to games and writing, that's almost ALL you have. I mean how many movies come out each year that have very good or great writing? A dozen or more? In the gaming world, how many games come out each year that have really great writing? 0-2? If there are more, you REALLY have to search for them. I feel like in movies you'll constantly have ones that are really thought provoking and provide really interesting and new ideas about people, humanity, the world, new concepts, etc. In games, I run across ones like that maybe every few years. If you don't count games in the graphic adventure genre, then the ratio gets really anemic.
I realize this is a bit of a nebulous statement however, so here's something more concrete. Many movies you need to be of a certain maturity level to fully appreciate. I don't mean violence or sex, but just being able to understand or relate in terms of life experience (or even brain development). Some movies you simply need to be an adult to fully appreciate, others you're missing nothing if you see them at 13 years old. To pick a few random examples, I'd say the movies Pi, The Informant, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, and Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind are all movies that if I had seen them at 13 years old, I don't think I would enjoy or understand them as much than if I had when I was older. They simply deal with more complex themes and are aimed at adults. Alternately, I think a movie like Jurassic Park, Back to The Future, etc. can be enjoyed equally by a 13 year old as an adult. They're great movies, but they don't require very challenging issues intellectually or deeper themes other than what you're presented with. I feel like with VERY few exceptions, the game industry has almost entirely the latter kind of content. If you ignore sex and violence, I feel the vast majority of games are written to be understood in their entirety by an audience no more mature than 13 year olds. In many cases, I would go so far as to say they're more on the level of Saturday morning cartoons. I personally find this frustrating that the ratio is so poor on what I consider actual adult content in games, which is why I really agreed with the author's point in this case.

And yeah, on the piracy issue, I felt like his statement was very one-sided. I felt like it was accurate, but not giving the full picture either. I would comment more on that, but that's kind of a separate rant in itself.

 
You always have the lowest common denominator stuff in any medium, I have no problem with that. The difference here is that when it comes to games and writing, that's almost ALL you have. I mean how many movies come out each year that have very good or great writing? A dozen or more? In the gaming world, how many games come out each year that have really great writing? 0-2? If there are more, you REALLY have to search for them. I feel like in movies you'll constantly have ones that are really thought provoking and provide really interesting and new ideas about people, humanity, the world, new concepts, etc. In games, I maybe run across ones like that maybe every few years.
Click to expand...
That's because it's so much harder to tell a convincing story in an interactive environment, not to mention the fact that good writing never seems to generate the word-of-mouth that it does for movies. Look throughout the past few years and have a look at games praised for their story: you have Mass Effect, a space opera with story on par with Star Trek, Metal Gear Solid, an incredibly confusing spy story that's more cutscene than game, Bioshock, Portal and GTA: San Andreas of all games.

I haven't experienced a single game that has story as compelling or engaging as child's books such as David Copperfield or the Coral Island, for a game to be as well written as something like Nineteen Eighty-Four or Lord of the Flies seems nigh impossible. At a stretch I'd say games like Grim Fandango and Portal are as well written as any comedy movie, but complex themes are almost always handled ham-fistedly in every case, games like Silent Hill 2 being extremely few and far between.

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top