Comments on: The RPS Electronic Wireless Show Episode 10

By: maybenexttime

maybenexttime — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:50:13 +0000

@wiper: Yeah, I realised soon after I posted it that that sentence was meaningless. Probably a better way of putting it would be to say that something about the sound and feel of the word always makes me feel awkward when I say it, like I’m talking nonsense or horribly mispronouncing it and everyone else knows. I get a similar feeling with ‘trait’.

Possibly that’s just me.

By: Muzman

Muzman — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 07:04:18 +0000

Trope remains acceptable. Ignore Walker.

Lying. Wrong tone of voice.

By: wiper

wiper — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:59:46 +0000

a made up word

The concept of a non-made-up word intrigues me (actually, the origins of language intrigue me. I mean, how? Speech is the most amazing thing. But yeah, outside of that -) as it suggests that most words simply spring into existence, with a few silly made-up words like trope there to make up the numbers.

By: maybenexttime

maybenexttime — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:25:56 +0000

Trope sounds too much like a made up word for my tastes. It’s a useful word, but I always wince slightly when I use it. Never feels quite right.

On to slightly more gaming-related things: I think the interesting thing about the Creature Creator in Spore is how bloody difficult it is to make something rubbish. It’s easy to be unimaginative, but the amount of charm the editor injects into the creations means that once you see something moving around, it’s almost always pretty cool.

By: Kadayi

Kadayi — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:16:46 +0000

2 podcasts in barely a week? Surely you are spoiling us Ambassador!!

Both deeply satisfying and highly amusing to hear of the patching of Eve further to the Goonswarm-BoB affair, given the sheer abundance of people in the original thread talking utter bollocks about how ‘realistic’ it all was. Fully vindicated, lovely (curls up in front of the fire).

Regarding User Generated Content, agree that by far the bulk of what gets made is unimaginative poorly conceived tripe on the whole. However invariably a small percentage of people do have the time and patience to take a tool set and run with it and end up creating genuinely fantastic, innovative and original content with them, even if beforehand they wouldn’t have marked themselves out as particularly creative, which makes the whole thing worthwhile. The problem as rightly pointed out is being able to make it that much easier for browsers to separate the wheat from the chaff with ease, and that more than anything is something developers need to focus on, especially when it comes to fast delivery both in search results, but also in display.

I’m good with Trope, I think it serves a good role in pointing out some of the bad habits game designers have fallen into.

By: Pace

Pace — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:43:20 +0000

I also think the word ‘trope’ can go fuck itself right out the window.

By: qrter

qrter — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:38:42 +0000

Look at Kieron’s fear! Without his silly words he’d fall to pieces.

Ouch!

By: John Walker

John Walker — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:30:43 +0000

Look at Kieron’s fear! Without his silly words he’d fall to pieces.

ForTheLulz: Then you should enormously appreciate the rough list of topics discussed in the post above!

By: Gap Gen

Gap Gen — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:09:11 +0000

I think a polytrope is a perfectly valid term used by physicists to describe the tendency to put parrots in videogames.

By: Dinger

Dinger — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 10:50:46 +0000

Just some clarifications here: the “hick” in “hick accent” stands for “Hyper-Intellectual Critical Kandor”, and — under Hex’s perspicuous direction — we sought to capture the essence of a group just as likely to diss on the use of the perfectly good (if rather hellenicizing) monosyllable “trope” as to dissertate on the essentialist fallacy inherent in the shared experience approach to videogames and blogs or podcasts dedicated thereto.

How much glory victory merits may be open to question, given that the recognition occurred shortly after a discussion in which the Balnean duo opined that user-generated content was “crap”, and then emphasized their stercorous judgment by announcing that the prize was “shit.”

Still, congratulations to Hex, who put in a lot of time and effort in motivating, arranging and mixing the piece: all the positive credit goes to him. And congrats to all the other who submitted for their fine work.

I still say we’re a disturbed lot.

By: wiper

wiper — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:40:40 +0000

Yeah, I was fucking shocked at Walker’s hating on Trope. It was in the title of my master’s thesis, after all, which proves it’s not a slightly-pretentious literary term! Um.

Though to be fair, it’s a misused one – we need more gaming discussion on tropes taking the full, ‘tropes used as metaphors thanks to their repeated use’ angle, which might be difficult until games developers actually start, well, using the tropes of the medium/genres as metaphors. Only then will the truly pretentious games journalism begin. Hopefully it’s a way off before gaming’s Ulysses, though.

By: Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 08:45:15 +0000

Trope remains acceptable. Ignore Walker.