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The Gamer's Quarter
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disneyland
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Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 131
Location: Shinsei
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 Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 12:14 pm Post subject: |
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| shapermc wrote: | | Mister Toups wrote: | | disneyland wrote: | | Because I'd answer, "Something I want to play." |
What a horrible answer. |
While rude, I partially agree. I have no desire to play Shenmue, but I know it is a good game and respect it on many levels, only one of which is spending money in game to play arcade perfect Space Harrier. |
Absurd. I cannot "respect" a game "on many levels" until I've played the game, on many levels. And that isn't the "Look at me, I'm hardcore" answer, either. It's the way it should be for anyone. Else these fucking experiences would not be made to be interactive. When was the last time you said you respected a film on many levels, without actually having viewed the movie? Right - that would be preposterous. And unlike games, that movie doesn't depend on your minute-by-minute interaction in order to proceed. |
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Shapermc
Hot Sake!
Joined: 14 Oct 2004
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| Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 12:34 pm Post subject: |
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| disneyland wrote: | | Absurd. I cannot "respect" a game "on many levels" until I've played the game, on many levels. And that isn't the "Look at me, I'm hardcore" answer, either. It's the way it should be for anyone. Else these fucking experiences would not be made to be interactive. When was the last time you said you respected a film on many levels, without actually having viewed the movie? Right - that would be preposterous. And unlike games, that movie doesn't depend on your minute-by-minute interaction in order to proceed. |
I watched my wife play though it (as she then did two more timesd) and did tinker with it myself. To say that all RPGs are not good games just because I find them boring and immature is not only a blanket statement, it is flat wrong. I have also studied on many games and come to respect them with out ever playing them. Games are wholly different then film. |
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dhex
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Joined: 13 Dec 2004
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Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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| Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 1:20 pm Post subject: |
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so as to avoid the trap of solipsism, one's personal feelings of the goodness or badness of a game is useful only for that person, in this particular case.
which is the worst part of the whole NGJ thing.
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dessgeega
loves your favorite videogame
Joined: 16 Jun 2005
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Location: bohan
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| Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 1:57 pm Post subject: |
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| dhex wrote: | one's personal feelings of the goodness or badness of a game is useful only for that person, in this particular case.
which is the worst part of the whole NGJ thing. |
but surely we can understand and appreciate the experiences others have had with a game (if conveyed effectively) and use it to frame our own understanding of that game or gaming as a whole? i certainly find a chronicle of a community's reaction to virtual assault in lambdamoo more valuable than a description of how high or low a game's polygon count is.
it's worth mentioning that most of the "new games journalism" i've read and enjoyed wasn't identified as such by the author of the piece itself.
supposedly, "new" games journalism holds that the player is most important, while "old" games journalism insists that the game is most important. i think that the actual most interesting and often-overlooked party is the developer, the design and development team. the most rewarding pieces of games writing i've read have explored what the designers' intentions are in a game, how the concepts of their game devloped through their earlier works or the works of others, what their attitudes and sensibilities are toward design.
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
Joined: 07 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 2:00 pm Post subject: |
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You know what I hate most about writing about games? The words "good" and "bad" are too easy to use. Maybe we can strike them from the record and replace them with "aces" and "pubes," or something equally obnoxious.
At any rate, I think can be easy to tell if a game is aces by watching someone else play it. Go to E3 and you'll see what I mean. At E3 you've got to stand in line for a long time before you get a chance to play. While you're in that line, you're usually watching someone play and trying to process how it's done. When you finally pick up the controller it's rarely a surprise what the game plays like. You almost never pick up the controller to find out that a game is pubes without already knowing it from watching someone else play.
-Wes
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dhex
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| Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 2:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | (if conveyed effectively) |
yes, there is that, isn't there?
for my purposes, i prefer 7th grade, ice cream, etc. but that's because my purposes are not geared towards buying games as a general rule; i'm really only interested in buying some games, and mostly outdated stock at that.
either way, i enjoy reading prose about games, but i recognize much of it is self-afflicted schlock of the first degree. it's sort of like reading poetry by potheads, in that the "oh, wow man!" factor is given sway over the more pressing question of how does "oh, wow man!" apply to our lives?
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dessgeega
loves your favorite videogame
Joined: 16 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 3:19 pm Post subject: |
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| dhex wrote: | | but that's because my purposes are not geared towards buying games as a general rule; i'm really only interested in buying some games, and mostly outdated stock at that. |
yes, me too. so i generally don't need to read reviews whose self-stated purpose is to help a consumer decide whether or not to buy a contemporary game. so i guess i can't really say whether the mainstream game review is helpful to people or not.
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disneyland
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Joined: 16 Jun 2005
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Location: Shinsei
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| Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 4:34 pm Post subject: |
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| SuperWes wrote: | At E3 you've got to stand in line for a long time before you get a chance to play. While you're in that line, you're usually watching someone play and trying to process how it's done. When you finally pick up the controller it's rarely a surprise what the game plays like. You almost never pick up the controller to find out that a game is [bad] without already knowing it from watching someone else play.
-Wes |
When I'm watching someone play at E3, for me it's just a human running a demo. I'm not obsessing over the process of the gameplay, as demonstrated by the human with the controller. Rather, I'm taking the game in. It's a chance to look at the engine, the colors, listen to the sounds (if that's possible) and so forth. When I finally pick up the controller, I have no idea what the other human was pressing, or what particular input he made at any point. So yeah, how the game plays is a surprise to me as I take control.
Take an action game like Spartan, for example. Watching someone else play, you could easily get the impression it's a mad button mash in the vein of a Dynasty Warriors (like it or not). You could even perpetuate that button mash during your first hands-on. The surprise comes, as you get to grips with the commands, when you see that a game developed by a PC RTS developer actually has really satisfying character control. The dude before you, he didn't convey that understanding of good game control. Now, the next person that comes over to the Spartan station and happens to watch you play--and you're clearly doing quite well using many suitable actions at ideal moments, he has way more to process than you did, initially, by watching the button mashing guy fumbling around. And still, he has no idea whether this action game is fun to control or not, just as you had no idea, until he plays it himself.
That didn't go down smooth. Hopefully there's a point in there. Oh, right:
| Quote: | | You almost never pick up the controller to find out that a game is [pubes] without already knowing it from watching someone else play |
= not accurate by default. The subjectivity of actually playing a game yourself is too precious. |
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
Joined: 07 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 5:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | When I finally pick up the controller, I have no idea what the other human was pressing, or what particular input he made at any point. |
Aha! So you have no gamer's intuition. Gamer's intuition tells me that pressing A makes the character jump and pressing B makes the character attack. If a game has the controls messed up it's easy to notice that just by watching someone. If the fps controls aren't inverted the right way you notice that the player keeps looking down at their feet or up in the sky. Obviously this is an example at the most basic, but watching people play does give a good idea about the nature of a game. I wish it wasn't the case, but it most often is.
Actually, I might even argue that the better a game is, the less different the gameplay is depending on who is playing it. In good games the designers would have made designed the game to provide the optimal experience based on human intuition.
Do this experiment: Play through Seiklus from the beginning for an hour if you've never played it before. Now stop the game, restart it, and let someone else who hasn't been watching you play play the game for an hour. Note the similarities. I played through the first hour by myself one night then I let my girlfriend play it for an hour when she asked about the game that was on the cover of issue 2. While she played I sat completely silent and amazingly enough we both took pretty much the exact same path.
Obviously this won't work for all games and a lot of gaming is based on prior experience with the genre, but I think you'll find that human intuition leads us all down similar paths.
Be honest with yourself, do you think going around and asking everyone where the sailors are in Shenmue is really that different from watching someone else do the same? There's still the same sense of wonder because the possibility for error is just as high, it's just that you're not using the controller yourself.
Let me ask you this: In a simplified game where the player watches a movie and has to select between two options to continue the movie down a certain path does moving a cursor and selecting an option yourself make the movie more satisfying than telling someone else which option to select? This is interaction at its most pure and all games move out from this to varying degrees.
-Wes
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Mister Toups
Hates your favorite videogame
Joined: 26 Jan 2005
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Location: Lafayette, LA
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| Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 6:14 pm Post subject: |
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"Something I want to play" is just as bad as saying "it only needs to be fun". I mean, yeah. Obviously. You're not saying andything that we don't already take for granted. I don't have much patience for platitudes.
Gamer's Quarter
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disneyland
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Joined: 16 Jun 2005
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Location: Shinsei
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| Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 6:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Aha! So you have no gamer's intuition. Gamer's intuition tells me that pressing A makes the character jump and pressing B makes the character attack. If a game has the controls messed up it's easy to notice that just by watching someone. |
All depends what system the player uses the most. Can't base general intuition on a standard that fluctuates, like a controller configuration.
| Quote: | | If the fps controls aren't inverted the right way you notice that the player keeps looking down at their feet or up in the sky. Obviously this is an example at the most basic, but watching people play does give a good idea about the nature of a game. |
That would simply tell me that the FPS game being observed has an axis invert option. The very existence of that option implies that different players prefer a specific setting.
| Quote: | | Actually, I might even argue that the better a game is, the less different the gameplay is depending on who is playing it. In good games the designers would have designed the game to provide the optimal experience based on human intuition. |
Human intuition might not tell you that pressing left, down, right + Z triggers Ginjirou's lighting palm strike. Gamer intuition--and 2D fighter familiarity--would, perhaps, inform the player to experiment and find this move. And that's a great game. I don't think someone that started playing games with Halo would possess the "intuition" to have an optimal experience with GH. Pick a genre and pick a common idiosyncracy/distinctive mechanic employed in that genre and you run into the same scenario: good games do not inherently or necessarily speak to immediate, general human intuition.
| Quote: | | Do this experiment: Play through Seiklus from the beginning for an hour if you've never played it before. Now stop the game, restart it, and let someone else who hasn't been watching you play play the game for an hour. Note the similarities. |
As per the Guardian Heroes example, that experiment may be entirely dictated by the genre of the game and its common degree of complexity. I explained the Jaguar Tempest 2000 to a casual PS2-era gamer, and she "got it" in about 10 minutes and then played for over an hour. I explained Saturn Bomberman to 2 "non-gamers" (really, no console ownership, ever) and they were loving it in under half an hour, and a few evenings later - competitive with people who had played it for years. Had I tried to introduce the gameplay of Mr. Ginjirou to Alex or the two gentlemen...well, forget it.
| Quote: | | Be honest with yourself, do you think going around and asking everyone where the sailors are in Shenmue is really that different from watching someone else do the same? There's still the same sense of wonder because the possibility for error is just as high, it's just that you're not using the controller yourself. |
So we can't apply this discussion to all genres or all situations in a game, as you've said. Obviously sometimes it really matters that you're operating the controls yourself.
| Quote: | | Let me ask you this: In a simplified game where the player watches a movie and has to select between two options to continue the movie down a certain path does moving a cursor and selecting an option yourself make the movie more satisfying than telling someone else which option to select? |
I'll decline commentary on the intrinsic interactive credibiltiy of a FMV "game". The satisfaction for either person in the above example, in my estimation, should be elicted by the quality of the film content. |
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dhex
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| Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2005 7:31 am Post subject: |
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9 times out of 10 i can tell a good game from a bad one merely by looking at the boxart typography.
then again, i am some sort of freakin' polymath genius so...ymmv.
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Shapermc
Hot Sake!
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dark steve
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Joined: 17 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2005 9:39 am Post subject: |
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| "I'm looking for the man who killed my father." |
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Bai
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Joined: 21 Jun 2005
Posts: 24
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| Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2005 9:22 pm Post subject: |
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Well, 'gamer's intuition' is highly subjective and really depends on both people having similar abilities. I'm sure an avid Resident Evil player could make navigating those tight corridors look easy. But someone unused to RE's 'up is forward' dynamic would find it much more difficult and realise that the controls weren't as smooth as they thought. And not everyone plays in the way way with similar priorities. Not everyone, for example, would be interested in Shenmue's Space Harrier mini-game mentioned by shapermc. I understand, shapermc, that you were probably talking about 'intuiting' people with similar abilities, but it's hardly intuition if it only works for certain people in certain circumstances (unless that's what you meant, in which case, forgive me please!).
On a passing note, it's probably easy to invoke gamer's intuition at E3 because everyone there has similar abilities (all being regular game players in the videogame industry) and have similar priorities (to make an accurate judgement within a short space of time) which predispose them to similar paths of action. This could be easily mistaken as universal human behaviour and universal 'human intuition'.
Secondly, I'd like to challenge disneyland's assertion that everyone should play a game on many levels to respect it properly. This demands thoroughness and that only a rigorously explored game deserves a value judgement. It also implies that the 'true' game is a fully (or almost fully) completed one and that a partially completed game produces a partially accurate (and therefore false) judgement. But if a sub-quest (like Space Harrier in Shenmue or Final Fantasy 7's chocobo breeding) is optional it is also unnecessary. Specifically, it is unnecessary to the game's enjoyment. If Space Harrier is optional to Shenmue then the developer has bet on the rest of the game being adequately enjoyable to play without it. Therefore, the accurate valuation of a game by thoroughness is difficult to uphold because the value of available game paths are themselves subject to a value judgement that is encouraged by the game itself. We are encouraged to judge the worth of Shenmue with or without playing Space Harrier.
That's the real catch with options and interactivity: you take what you want and leave the rest (even the fun Space Harrier part) behind and that's fine. A game completed 'on all levels' as being the 'true' game is false because the developer has given us the choice of deciding game truth for ourselves. In other words, a game with optional paths produces multiple play experiences and multiple truths, each as legitimate (and truthful) as the other (again, disneyland, I apologise if by 'on many levels' you didn't mean completing optional stuff...very sorry sir!).
This doesn't even consider that some people leave games unfinished and nonetheless enjoy them that way. There's also an assumption that the more layers you peel away, the better a game gets, which isn't necessarily true. 'New Games Journalism' (as dhex and dessgeega mentioned) and an anecdotal writing style is a tentative advance in this kind of thinking. |
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Mr. Mechanical
Friendly Stranger
Joined: 14 Oct 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2005 9:48 pm Post subject: |
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Why would you assume "on many levels" had anything to do with optional stuff? Far as I can see the optional stuff is still part of the game as a whole, not an entirely new level altogether.
When I see a statement like "on many levels" I tend to think of the technical level(does this game work as a game?), the level behind the game(what was the developer intending to accomplish by making the game like this?), and the psychological/Pongist level(how is this game affecting the people who play it/what is it trying to communicate to me as a player?)
For example, Silent Hill 2 is only competent on the technical level(horrid controls and all that), but it excells in the psychological/Pongist level(it keeps track of the way I'm playing it, which then determines different outcomes in the end/it does everything it can in its power to mess with my head) so I can appreciate it on the level behind the game(the developers were obviously trying something different here and if I take into account that things like the control scheme were maybe intentional then I can safely assume that they accomplished their goals and therefore this a game I can appreciate on many levels). |
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Mister Toups
Hates your favorite videogame
Joined: 26 Jan 2005
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Location: Lafayette, LA
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| Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2005 9:59 pm Post subject: |
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And see -- that's the problem with the definition we have up there. Games as "algorithmic entertainment". They are more than mere systems -- they are communication. And they are unique because the communication happening can happen in so many different ways at once, between so many different parties (particularly if you include multiplayer games).
i prefer a more wholistic approach. Thus my context definition. It's a little slippery, sure, but I think it at least points to the heart of the matter.
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disneyland
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Joined: 16 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 1:38 am Post subject: |
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Agreed. Still, without solid fundamental systems the communication will break down.
Yeah, I know - platitudes...Ok:
If you're able to see those systems for what they are, there's no harm in accepting how they affect the game's ability to communicate to the player. It's not a curse. There are millions of humans on the planet who perceive only the terrain and the crust of the experience. If you interpret what's also happening in the core--and you can understand that it too has a value, technical or otherwise--that's where you apply it to the 'wholistic' approach. And that's where subjectivity creeps into each element (expected or spontaneous) of the game's communication to the player. And so we have everyone reacting to a game on many different levels.
When Mr. Mech said, | Quote: | | For example, Silent Hill 2 is only competent on the technical level(horrid controls and all that), but it excels in the psychological/Pongist level(it keeps track of the way I'm playing it, which then determines different outcomes in the end/it does everything it can in its power to mess with my head) so I can appreciate it on the level behind the game(the developers were obviously trying something different here and if I take into account that things like the control scheme were maybe intentional then I can safely assume that they accomplished their goals and therefore this a game I can appreciate on many levels). |
…I have a very difficult time getting past bad controls, because to me that's integrated into the idea of a game and its developers accomplishing their goals or not. If it was their goal to create this game with bad controls and fantastically brooding and affecting imagery and story...there's still no free pass for the bad controls. On that level, games are still partially "algorithmic entertainment" where film and music are not, and this is because of the sustained relationship between emotion and interactivity. With regards to journalism, it's important to address the quality of that basic interactivity (sensory and physical) and weigh it against the overall experience. No amount of anecdotal orbiting of the issue will sufficiently inform the player of this, and regardless of the feelings that you may have derived from the game's power to communicate its thematic or overall intent, a reader may not be able to relate to that analysis in the same way that they can relate to a description of the shortcomings of, for example, a game's control.
There's obviously room for both: the encompassing beauty and effect of the craft, and the collective immediacy of the technical. Thus, if the tenets of "New Games Journalism" belie the importance of critiquing technical elements, it may be an irresponsible direction - not evolutionary. |
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dessgeega
loves your favorite videogame
Joined: 16 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 1:48 am Post subject: |
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| disneyland wrote: | | If it was their goal to create this game with bad controls and fantastically brooding and affecting imagery and story...there's still no free pass for the bad controls. |
again, the problem with absolute terms like "good" and "bad" is that they flatten our understanding of a game and its intentions. i havn't played silent hill 2, but i assume this is a scenario like that of resident evil, where the designer chose to implement controls that are sluggish to acheive an effect of helplessness and fear. if the design choice is effective, it could hardly be called "bad."
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disneyland
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| Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 2:10 am Post subject: |
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| If a designer intentionally makes one aspect of a game sluggish as a device to achieve an effect, I have every right to determine whether that decision was "good" or "bad" based on how convincingly or appropriately it delivers the intended effect. |
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Mr. Mechanical
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| Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 2:17 am Post subject: |
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I use the term "horrid" out of context here. It's like dessgeega said, they get the job done without haning the player up on them which goes towards instilling that sense of dread. James, the protagonist, isn't a sharpshooter so he isn't going to be the best person to handle a gun, yet he knows how to point and shoot. He's kind of clumsy too, sometimes when he runs he'll trip, usually at the least oppurtune moments where things are getting scary. I place things like control on the technical side, because it's important to let people know how they work. But in this case they also function on another level because they go towards further defining the character. They're hardly "bad" controls, given what the game is trying to do.
| Quote: | | if the tenets of "New Games Journalism" belie the importance of critiquing technical elements |
Hradly. It is the technical element that we touch first when we pick up a game, and it's the technical element that makes the first impression with us. What the game looks like, how it controls, how it's built. There is room for both, sure. However why should there even be both? Why two options, in this supposed games journalism? Is the technical side not simply a jumping off point for discussion and recognition of the encompassing beauty and effect of the craft? Do people still not get that the two go hand in hand?
However, there still isn't a catch-all rubric for these discussions. There is a consumer oriented view and non-consumer oriented view. The technical side and the deeper side which includes the human element, the person or people playing the game, can be applied to both. Not many people are really doing that right now. The only person I can think of who's really trying to do both at once is Kieron Gillen in his work for PC Gamer UK, Mr. New Games Journalism himself.
| Quote: | | If a designer intentionally makes one aspect of a game sluggish as a device to achieve an effect, I have every right to determine whether that decision was "good" or "bad" based on how convincingly or appropriately it delivers the intended effect. |
And how are you going to make that determination without just playing the game yourself? |
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Tablesaw
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| Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 6:41 am Post subject: |
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| Mister Toups wrote: | | And see -- that's the problem with the definition we have up there. Games as "algorithmic entertainment". They are more than mere systems -- they are communication. And they are unique because the communication happening can happen in so many different ways at once, between so many different parties (particularly if you include multiplayer games). |
That's not a valid reason to criticize the definition. The use of a particular definition of "game" doesn't restrict any judgment or discussion of games to that definition. In comparison, a definition (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11 ed.) of a novel is "an invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events." But an analysis of a novel is not limited to those elements.
| disneyland wrote: | | If a designer intentionally makes one aspect of a game sluggish as a device to achieve an effect, I have every right to determine whether that decision was "good" or "bad" based on how convincingly or appropriately it delivers the intended effect. |
But using that language is not going to create a communicative or constructive dialogue. If you determine that the control scheme is "bad," you haven't told us what aspects of the scheme led you to believe it was "bad," whether there were aspects that were "good," whether there were aspects that were ignored, and what the overall affects were, etc. Your assessment is far less important than the process that led up to it, because in a dialogue, opinion is less important than the universally observable facts of the work discussed (or even the instant, personal experiences resulting from the work). Also, "good" and "bad" can imply false objectivity when "this is [good/bad]" is used in place of "I [like/don't like] this."
So, I may think that the control scheme of Silent Hill 2 was bad (and I do), but if I'm in a discussion, I'll say:
"I didn't like the control scheme of SH2; it was too frustrating. Everything moved slowly, and some logically simple tasks (like going into the next room of an apartment without getting stuck in a closet) took far longer than they should have. Even though I was playing at an easy difficulty, I had a hard time reacting to the "horrors" as I would have liked to. I can conceive how the sluggish controls might have been deliberately implemented to supplement the character of the James Sunderland. But I never identified with the character, and the controls just alienated me further. I felt like the game was trying to hamfistedly force me to act more like the character they wanted to portray, which made me more certain that this Sunderland guy was someone I didn't want to spend several more hours on. This alienation became part of a greater apathy toward the game world, which ultimately led me to stop playing and never want to start again."
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Shapermc
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| Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 10:02 am Post subject: |
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I just want to clear something up. Silent Hill 2 has poor combat controls. Your avatar is not supposed to have good combat skills though. On top of that it is still only slightly frustrating to get use to for certain situations. I never died once because of bad control in the game. Games that have "good" control schemes often will lead me to a death because they are overcomplicated or too limited. So the control aspect of it completly out of the question. I have hear people swear up and down that PN03 has the worst control scheme ever, while I thought it was perfect for the type of game that you are playing.
I got off track. All I wanted to say was that out of all of the Silent Hill games I could probably count the ammount of deaths on one had that resulted from control. I can't even begin to count the ammount of deaths in the first half of RE1 that I had becuase of control. Silent Hill is aiming at something else and compensated for sub-par control. |
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disneyland
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| Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 11:47 am Post subject: |
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| Tablesaw wrote: |
| disneyland wrote: | | If a designer intentionally makes one aspect of a game sluggish as a device to achieve an effect, I have every right to determine whether that decision was "good" or "bad" based on how convincingly or appropriately it delivers the intended effect. |
But using that language is not going to create a communicative or constructive dialogue. If you determine that the control scheme is "bad," you haven't told us what aspects of the scheme led you to believe it was "bad," whether there were aspects that were "good," whether there were aspects that were ignored, and what the overall affects were, etc. |
See bold. That's where the dialogue would exist. Obviously you can't just leave it at "good" or "bad", or "I like this" or "I don't like this", or some kind of similar global over-simplification. As you offered:
"I didn't like the control scheme of SH2; it was too frustrating. Everything moved slowly, and some logically simple tasks (like going into the next room of an apartment without getting stuck in a closet) took far longer than they should have. Even though I was playing at an easy difficulty, I had a hard time reacting to the "horrors" as I would have liked to. I can conceive how the sluggish controls might have been deliberately implemented to supplement the character of the James Sunderland. But I never identified with the character, and the controls just alienated me further. I felt like the game was trying to hamfistedly force me to act more like the character they wanted to portray, which made me more certain that this Sunderland guy was someone I didn't want to spend several more hours on. This alienation became part of a greater apathy toward the game world, which ultimately led me to stop playing and never want to start again."
That's an excellent combination, and it demonstrates how you can open a particular area of discussion with a sharp stated summary when there's a very good chance an average player would contend with the same early observation. I might say it made me feel like I should stop playing and never start again, but if I'm to advocate or discourage a person spend money on the game--and, ultimately, that's the deal--I have to get over myself and explore how the greater part of the experience plays out. Maybe I'm just too traditional. I honestly feel that you owe it to the person depleting their bank account to be as accurate as possible on a level they can relate to. Granted, it's good to expose people to other ways of interpreting games, but there is an important place for discussing how it looks, how it controls, and how it's built -- just as film review will invariably discuss actors' performances, cinematography, set design and special effects. People can relate to these observations and we don't have to compartmentalize them so much as give them clear distinction so they can be used as a foundation to understand the reviewer's emotional response.
| Quote: | | Is the technical side not simply a jumping off point for discussion and recognition of the encompassing beauty and effect of the craft? Do people still not get that the two go hand in hand? |
So is it just a jumping off point, or do they go hand in hand? |
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Mr. Mechanical
Friendly Stranger
Joined: 14 Oct 2004
Posts: 1276
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| Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 5:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Both. In most instances you wouldn't get one without the other. |
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Mister Toups
Hates your favorite videogame
Joined: 26 Jan 2005
Posts: 1693
Location: Lafayette, LA
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| Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 8:34 pm Post subject: |
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Can we stop debating irrelevant details and talk about something interesting?
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where were you when nana komatsu got a wii? |
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dark steve
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Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 1110
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| Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 8:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Well how 'bout those sox? |
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
Joined: 07 Dec 2004
Posts: 3725
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| Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 8:09 am Post subject: |
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Sorry, that originally said something else. But I have strickened it from our forums as a test. Wonder if anyone will notice...
-Wes
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dark steve
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Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 1110
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| Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 1:29 pm Post subject: |
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| So then we can't talk about the sox? |
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Shapermc
Hot Sake!
Joined: 14 Oct 2004
Posts: 6279
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| Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 1:55 pm Post subject: |
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| dark steve wrote: | | So then we can't talk about the sox? |
Which ones? White or Red? |
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dark steve
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Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 1110
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| Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 2:01 pm Post subject: |
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| The team on Jesus' side |
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Shapermc
Hot Sake!
Joined: 14 Oct 2004
Posts: 6279
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| Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 2:56 pm Post subject: |
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So the blue jays or the devil rays? |
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