Tuxedo Catfish posted:

I'm just generally disappointed in any first- or third-person action game that doesn't let you jump at the press of a button, honestly.

Palpek posted:

Wow, somebody finally played through Beyond Two Souls and made notes.

quote:

Many of the games in the book are sequels—The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Diablo III, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. The ones that aren’t are such thorough mimic jobs that they make the distinction between original and serial meaningless. Stardew Valley, for instance, is an elaborate attempt to make an updated version of Harvest Moon, a popular series of chibi-farming games. “I just wanted to play another game that was exactly like the first two Harvest Moons, but just with different people and a different map,” developer Eric Barone says. The developers of Shovel Knight began with the idea to emulate an entire company instead of a single game. “I remember saying, ‘I got into the industry to make Nintendo games. Let’s make a Nintendo game,” designer Dave D’Angelo says.

There’s an impression of insularity and self-reference in all of these stories. Each account is wreathed in the essential tautology of fan thinking. Video games are important because people care about them, and people care about them because they’re important. It’s lava levels and nostalgia all the way down. This is an echo of the circular dynamic between consumption and creation that Roland Barthes described in Criticism and Truth: “How many writers have written, only because they have read? How many critics have read only in order to write?” One could say, the reason fans play video games is so they’ll be better equipped to make them one day. And when one crosses the border from fan to designer, they’re often motivated, Barone admits, to make games for an audience of their imagined former selves.

quote:

In these times, the most important task of game journalism isn’t to serve a public interest but to ensure that fans can continue to identify some version of themselves in the games they have played, and ensure future releases will allow them access to even deeper levels of self-expression and understanding. In playing the next game, owning the newest console, having an opinion on the latest patch, we feel like we can become stabler versions of ourselves, all at the cost of clearing out space—both mental and financial—for open-ended consumption of a form without any purpose beyond this increasingly tautological pleasure. This process is necessarily dehumanizing. Games matter because you are here to play them, and you remain here to play them because they matter.

Maybe this is why, with video games, we break from the tradition of identifying people with particular pastimes as lovers—bibliophile, cinephile, audiophile. To love video games is to become not a ludophile but a gamer, a claim on identity rather than a statement of personal interest. Every fact or feeling in our lives that doesn’t relate to games is an extraneous detail, so much so that it can feel like one’s whole life might be beside the point.

quote:

In playing the next game, owning the newest console, having an opinion on the latest patch, we feel like we can become stabler versions of ourselves, all at the cost of clearing out space—both mental and financial—for open-ended consumption of a form without any purpose beyond this increasingly tautological pleasure. This process is necessarily dehumanizing. Games matter because you are here to play them, and you remain here to play them because they matter.

thehoodie posted:

Has this article been posted here yet?.

CharlieFoxtrot posted:

The New Inquiry is a publication of radical cultural critique and aimed at people who are immersed in critical theory -- not saying that makes them better or worse but it's for a specific audience and even though I tend to agree with them in the broad strokes I find their contributors to be relentlessly cynical and actually enervating to read. Like the thesis of the article is basically a straight line from things you'd find in what's called the Frankfurt School, and this is basically using the idea of the "culture industry" which they discussed. The main thing it boils down to is the idea that mass consumer culture both homogenizes people and depoliticizes them by distracting them and making them invest tons of emotional energy in things that are ultimately meaningless while they remain politically oppressed and economically exploited.

quote:

Michael Thomsen is a writer in New York. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Slate, the New Republic, and the Washington Post.

thehoodie posted:

even though that is obviously the critique he is trying to make by condemning the working conditions of the game development industry.

Jay Rust posted:

I loaded up RimWorld for the first time in ages, and was enjoying all of the new content the last few patches brought in. Then I ran into a colonist with a weird and spiteful backstory description that is 100% the product of some backer’s fetish and I don’t want to play anymore

Stallion Cabana posted:

I've been playing Slay the Spire and it is amazingly fun. I have a bad problem with it where once I decide on a deck strategy from my first couple of packs I just stick to it even though I ignore really good cards because they don't fit my synergy, which often makes me lose, but once I get a streamlined, short deck that does exactly what I want I can cleave through everything.

Internet Kraken posted:

You can't say that and not share what it was.

Ciaphas posted:

i'm seeing a lot of people talk about this game all of a sudden, what's the hype

Jay Rust posted:

A vatgrown slave girl who got sold into sex slavery, the description also makes sure to tell us that she was too weak to fight back

There are few backstories like this. Another is about a music idol who becomes her dad’s sexual companion after her mother dies, then later becomes a renowned prostitute? Like, does your game about building wind turbines, hunting sloths and growing rice need this?

The White Dragon posted:

if he's criticizing working conditions then why is he quoting developers who cooked their games in their garages on their own time? if this is really the case then he's a disingenuous pig in human skin

nachos posted:

lmao at trying to play fighting games on that switch d pad

oddium posted:

i dunno does the game about men being binary gay or straight but all women being a little bicurious need that

Expect My Mom posted:

I'd be that dad if I were born when Breakout came out

I love Breakout

Internet Kraken posted:

Rimworld should just take a page from Dwarf Fortress and have everything about the characters be proceduraly generated, including their sexual orientation.

Motto posted:

I mean, it's true that videogames are by definition commercialized timewasters with a segment of consumers that strongly and sometimes violently identify by them.

FirstAidKite posted:

glam rock hamhock posted:

I like the part where he disparages binder games for having influences. Certainly you can't make something original if it's influenced by something else. Other industries are nothing but entirely new ideas made in a vacuum.

Ms Adequate posted:

Even that much is kind of bollocks because we know full well that humans need entertainment and diversion to stay sane. Sure there's people like goons who get really really into gaming but that's a choice we make, regular folks aren't shorting society of their contributions by loving around Fus Ro Dah-ing people off Valtheim Towers, they're taking care of themselves so that they can contribute to society. On top of which I kind of think the titanic structural elements that have made the world the hosed-up place it is aren't going to suddenly be vastly more vulnerable because we stop video gamesing.* Nothing he said is unique to video games, he's just singling them out because it's still easier than making the case against movies and novels these days.

* Unless it turns out global capital has an obvious glowing red weak spot or something.