Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Well, at least D&D has a higher quality of reflexive shitposting when this topic comes up than Games does.

Zachack posted:

I'd use Gone Home and, weirdly similarly, Mass Effect 3 as games that couldn't be replicated as movies or most other media because they rely upon the player unknowingly making decisions on how the narrative presents itself during the focused engagement with the game, and at conclusion present narratives that are somewhat unique to the player and without requiring post-engagement reflection. They're like CYOA books but the choice elements are obfuscated or expanded enough (not referring to Mass Effects obvious choices but some of the longer term decisions that are not obvious until hours later) that the comparison in media breaks down. Gone Home intentionally doesn't require me to engage with all the content to reach the end, allowing for a sort of Fatality of the Author. ME3 is a tougher one but I think similar results arise from the level of obfuscation in outcome.

The closest I've seen in other media is Building Stories by Chris Ware, which is a comic story told over 10 or so other comics of varying shapes and sizes, which all come in a single box (which also contains comic panels) and no instructions on reading order, so how you literally build your story shapes your interpretation of characters and events.

Who What Now posted:

Nobody should be mad at ME3 any more, and especially not that mad. Jesus Christ.

Incoherence posted:

I think emulation, with appropriate hardware peripherals like controllers, is entirely appropriate as a means of preserving old games. Online games create a much larger problem, since those games rely on a central server or on the metagame that develops between players, and patches mean that you have to choose which of the dozens of possible variations of the game you want to preserve. And even then, a game like World of Warcraft has gone on long enough that player knowledge of its history starts to make it difficult to choose a point in the past to preserve: a WoW 1.12 private server is not at all the same experience as WoW was circa 2006.

This always felt like a false dichotomy to me: just because something is not aspiring to be art does not mean it is somehow immune to cultural criticism. People write thinkpieces about the deep implied meaning of a bubbly pop song all the loving time, and no one really bats an eye at it. "The author is not overtly making a political statement in this work" does not imply "this work is apolitical".

Nosfereefer posted:

Panfilo posted:

I'm interested in the attitudes of gamers in terms of exposing their own kids to games. Unlike my own generation, whose parents didn't really know what to make of video games, the next generation will have gamer parents. Their values will reflect their own decisions in what to expose their kids to.

-Will they let their kids play any kind of game they want? Will their bitterness of the hysteria of violent video games create a backlash when their own kids want a game for Christmas?

-Can we trust that their experiences will lead them to be more nuanced and objective about what is/isn't a good influence? If my child is brown, shouldn't it be important he get exposed to positive examples of people of color in video games?

-What kind of opportunities will parents have to use video games as a family experience?

-What kind of dumb hysteria do you think gamer parents will fall under? That kids are too busy playing soccer to worry much about video games? My nephews play video games but any opportunity to kick a real ball at a park and they drop the controllers. I personally don't see this as a bad thing.

Aureliu5 posted:

Hit me really hard in GTA 3: San Andreas actually. After mowing down dozens and dozens of gangsters of all sorts, a semi-cutscene made a huge deal on whether I'd actually be the bad guy evil enough to kill the archnemesis or whether I'd spare his life. In a building full of corpses I'd left lying around. Yeah Rockstar guys, I respect what you are trying to do here, but the form really doesn't follow the function now.