Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The Sunday Papers

By Kieron Gillen on September 6th, 2009 at 5:20 pm.

Sundays are for… God, this is a Long one. Anyway, Sundays are for heading to the evil South, having lunch, coming back and compiling a hefty list of splendid reading about games and similar things while trying to resist linking to one of the may things which were filling my late-night music listening last night, at least until I started playing AAAaaa(“Snip”-Ed) at 3:30am.

Failed.

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139 Comments »

  1. 06/09/2009 at 17:47 dan- says:

    @ Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2
    Just… what… I mean, what the fuck?

    I’m now going to listen to Napoleon Solo by At The Drive-In at high volume and try and forget what I just read. :/

  2. 06/09/2009 at 17:48 mungobungo says:

    That post on ww1 medic was crap. It didn’t even mention the bugle that pretty much captured the futility of warfare.

  3. 06/09/2009 at 17:52 ChaosSmurf says:

    “Just take it an inch at a time.”

    I do love this site.

    @dan- breast physics are IMPORTANT.

  4. 06/09/2009 at 17:54 Rigley says:

    That Kurt Vonnegut article was great, thanks for posting it.

  5. 06/09/2009 at 18:09 Garg says:

    Er wasn’t it Soren “Civilization 4″ Johnson?

  6. 06/09/2009 at 18:11 Mister Hands says:

    Sweet mercy, I love S-K’s Corin Tucker something fierce. Did you ever see them live, Kieron?

  7. 06/09/2009 at 18:13 Senethro says:

    Sunday papers just get longer and longer!

  8. 06/09/2009 at 18:16 solipsistnation says:

    Maybe if people DID fuck developers every once in a while they wouldn’t find it necessary to spend so much time on ridiculous boob simulations.

  9. 06/09/2009 at 18:23 Dracko says:

    Leigh Alexander needs to fuck off.

  10. 06/09/2009 at 18:27 Kieron Gillen says:

    Mister Hands: Only once, alas.

    KG

  11. 06/09/2009 at 18:35 Mil says:

    Funny that Soren Johnson talks about how cheating in games can turn players off. That’s exactly what happened to me with Civ IV.

    Civilization gives out a progressive series of unit, building, and technology discounts for the AI as the levels increase (as well as penalties at the lowest levels). Because of their incremental nature, these cheats have never earned much ire from the players. Their effect is too small to notice on a turn-by-turn basis, and players who pry into the details usually understand why these bonuses are necessary.

    Yeah, I understand that these bonuses are necessary because the devs made a pretty poor effort with the AI. After release, one guy from the user community was able to use the game’s SDK to create an AI that cheated much less than the original one and was still competitive. And that was just somebody in their own time who happened to care enough to try to fix the game.

    I hate rationalisations like Johnson’s: “oh, users are dumb, they won’t notice the AI cheats if you don’t make it too blatant”. Guess what? You’re underestimating your users and cutting corners and they can tell.

  12. 06/09/2009 at 18:43 Guhndahb says:

    Yes, but is it really such a handicap to be incapable of reading Tom Ewing’s emotional cues?

  13. 06/09/2009 at 18:48 Kieron Gillen says:

    Tom didn’t write the piece.

    KG

  14. 06/09/2009 at 18:49 Lack_26 says:

    There is a sims 4? Bloody ‘ell, that was quick. Also, I really want to have contact lenses that give you a HUD and I really like the idea of having subtitles in real-life. I do like subtitles, make TV so much better.

  15. 06/09/2009 at 18:51 Guhndahb says:

    I know, I was just (unsuccessfully) being a smartass about the way it was worded. :)

  16. 06/09/2009 at 18:51 Sagan says:

    I think Leigh Alexander’s argument is simply wrong. Clearly if you look only at shooting games you will find that they are only about shooting. But there are of course many other genres. Everything from city builders to football games and most of the recent indie games were simply ignored.

    About the metacritic topic: I would really like to see a similar analysis, that focuses only on publishers who care about their metacritic score. Like if you charted all the games by EA, I bet it would look different. The publisher of Terminator Salvation probably doesn’t care about metacritic, because they know that their audience doesn’t read reviews. But the EA audience does.
    And I think that chart would give us a better idea about whether incentives based on metacritic scores are valid or not.

  17. 06/09/2009 at 18:52 Kieron Gillen says:

    Vvvvvvvvvery good.

    Leave me alone and I won’t do this on Sundays again. The member of RPS who’s always hungover does this. For you. *For you*, Guhndahb.

    KG

  18. 06/09/2009 at 18:57 Guhndahb says:

    On the bright side, that does mean you “won” at the game of Saturday Night this week. Grats.

  19. 06/09/2009 at 18:57 Psychopomp says:

    I fucking lol’d at Ninja Gaiden.

    This is it. We’re at the bottom of the waggle hole.

    It can only be up from here.

  20. 06/09/2009 at 18:58 Dracko says:

    Sagan: Surely you don’t expect a game critic to do some research as well as refrain from being a patronising See You Next Tuesday?

  21. 06/09/2009 at 19:03 l1ddl3monkey says:

    Watching The Shock Doctrine now, love that sort of thing.

    On the strength of the few panels shown I want the rest of SUPERGOD. Will be visiting my comic shop tomorrow.

    Ninja Gaiden: This is why non-gamers don’t take gamers seriously.

    Still working through the rest…

  22. 06/09/2009 at 19:05 Alex says:

    At least he didn’t call him Soren “SPORE” Johnson.

  23. 06/09/2009 at 19:08 Dracko says:

    To be honest, we’re talking about Team Ninja here: The people who despite making fairly good games figured best to promote them via individual breast physics and literally sticking the exact same doll face on every single one of their female protagonists. This is pretty much to be expected.

    Or maybe it’s having a laugh at the expense of the Sixaxis?

    lol japan, etc.

  24. 06/09/2009 at 19:09 Polysynchronicity says:

    @Psychopomp: Actually, as I recall, Soul Calibur 4 did it first. So we’ve been at the bottom for quite some time, with no improvement in sight.

  25. 06/09/2009 at 19:14 Kieron Gillen says:

    l1ddl3monkey: It’s actually out in November, but you could totally pre-order it now.

    Dracko/Sagan: Have you actually read the piece or just going on my own paraphrasing thereof? You haven’t. Or if you have, you should read it again.

    KG

  26. 06/09/2009 at 19:19 Dracko says:

    Why read it again when it’s the same old whiny crap?

    Please, do tell what exactly is new or in fact researched in anything she’s said. All I see is Leigh making herself out like the dim-witted fool she is again by berating her audience.

  27. 06/09/2009 at 19:25 Kieron Gillen says:

    It features developers who actually make the violent games we’re talking about agreeing with her, for one – the quote from the Raven developer is amazing. There’s interviews with – what – at least six developers in there, from all over the spectrum.

    In other words, this isn’t about her. She’s done the work. You should read it because you should want to know what Tim Schafer or CliffyB or any of the others say on the topic.

    KG

  28. 06/09/2009 at 19:28 Dracko says:

    Yes, and unsurprisingly enough, those were the good bits.

    She should have just posted the quotes without commentary, really.

    Instead of showing her true colours by revealing she has nothing but contempt for gamers and that she’s dazzled by window dressing without every considering the design and mechanics that go into making certain games the mass-appeal best-sellers that they are.

  29. 06/09/2009 at 19:31 Dolphan says:

    There’s plenty of stuff for feminists to critique in games, though most of it will simply be reflective of the wider culture rather than unique to the medium. This makes articles like that Bioshock critique that completely miss the point all the more depressing. The counter-piece is excellent though.

  30. 06/09/2009 at 19:36 Dracko says:

    Where does it miss the point, pray tell?

  31. 06/09/2009 at 19:46 Robin says:

    Funny how a lot of people who are up in arms about NGS2 SIXAXIS boob-jiggling didn’t make a peep about creepy-as-fuck DOAXBV.

  32. 06/09/2009 at 19:50 ChaosSmurf says:

    @Robin – there are people who are up in arms as opposed to just laughing? Cause that’s all I’ve ever done for either :P

  33. 06/09/2009 at 19:57 Subjective Effect says:

    I just don’t get where Sleater-Kinney come into all this?

  34. 06/09/2009 at 20:06 Heliocentric says:

    Sometimes sunday papers has a bunch of navel gazing which i can hardly stand to finish the article because it feels like having that opinion forced on you without the writer having actually considered alternatives. But this is sunday papers lite, all the high value content less of the self importence (from the writers of the articles, kg clearly still loves himself).

    I guess what i mean is, good haul :)

  35. 06/09/2009 at 20:08 Sagan says:

    @Kieron. I have read the piece. But then I read her commentary about the piece, and I think that influenced my comment much more than the piece itself.

    But after re-reading the piece I still think that she is simply wrong. As I understand it, she argues that there are very few creative games which ultimately don’t count since the derivative games are much more successful. And I think that that is the wrong way to look at it. You have to look at it the other way round: When searching for creativity the mass market stuff doesn’t count. Otherwise you could argue that every form of media suffers from a lack of creativity. Most books and most movies and most of everything is not very creative. Even more so if you look at the bestseller lists.

  36. 06/09/2009 at 20:10 Mo says:

    @Dracko: Most of the article was just quotes and extrapolations from said quotes. Oh, wait, it’s Leigh Alexander so lets just bitch for the sake of bitching, right?

    There’s only one person spouting “the same old whiny crap” over here …

  37. 06/09/2009 at 20:23 Bremze says:

    I’ll have to agree with Sagan here.
    I haven’t played a game where the main character is a space marine since Doom 3 because I was too busy making portals, stacking balls of ink, raging on precious pottery and crashing rockets into mind-controlling brains.

    There are tons of innovative and fun games coming from independent developers, small studios and Eastern European developers. I don’t expect to hear prog rock when I turn on MTV.

  38. 06/09/2009 at 20:28 Baris says:

    Oh god, I couldn’t even get through that full ‘Bioshock is sexist’ article. Which says a lot since I was genuinely interested and curious about it.

  39. 06/09/2009 at 20:33 Jim Rossignol says:

    Arguably there’s always a trash mainstream. You just have to hope that the medium is big enough to support an interesting avant garde too.

  40. 06/09/2009 at 20:38 V. Tchitcherine says:

    Firstly, sincere apologies for the length or unfocused nature of this sprawling comment, originally intended to be a few lines.

    The first Bioshock piece of redundant sophist shlock succumbs to an unfortunately common fallacy that views or opinions expressed within the internal logic and context of a text is self-justifying; by its mere presence, it proves one’s thesis, which -for obvious reasons- is a useful fallacy.

    For instance he cites the numerous attitudes on women espoused by the rather vile men who inhabit Rapture, yet it is wholly representative of the regressive character of society of the time, it is overt and part of the fundamentally anti-human nature of Rapture society, which ironically and hypocritically heralds the achievement and capacity of the individual human.

    All of characters to some degree (with the possible exception of Kyburz, an Australian engineer) are sympathetic monsters. Tenenbaum and Julie Langford (a botanist and defoliant specialist) are probably the most humane of all the characters presented and I don’t believe it is incidental that they are female.

    The argument that Little Sisters are commodities is most true though it overlooks that in an capitalist society all things are commodities with possible modalities if constrained by social or regulatory constrictions.

    Whilst I appreciate the time spent on this sophistry and find some of the arguments somewhat compelling, I think it would be more pertinent to examine the more sophisticated presentation of eventuated organisational structures, from which one infers a great deal more insight and could certainly be written about at length, as it is quite a powerful if at times, unsubtle repudiation of the perversion of Enlightenment principals.

    Though Rapture implodes into chaos and ruin, its critique of Objectivist philosophy is more nuanced and is best typified by examining the very remnants of Rapture, the natural inclination to feudalism, authoritarianism and collapse that I and many others would be believe to be the naturally induced course in an anarcho-capitalist society.

    Philosophers like Rothbard would protest, but one merely has to look at the adumbrated version of capitalism that we live under to see that concentrations of power are magnetic and almost inevitable. Even with the pretence of democracy that one enjoys in a liberal democracy, one has to be intentional ignorant of the dominant and coercive role of concentrated wealth.

    Wilhelm Von Humboldt’s 1792 writing ‘Ideas for an endeavour to define the limits of state action‘ is in my estimation required reading for anyone who wishes to see the base immorality of capitalism, though the modern libertarian or conservative would see themselves as the lineal descendant of his conclusions, the reasoning is more important than the conclusions themselves.

    He states that man’s central characteristic is his freedom to inquire and create and that coercion to do either “does nothing enter into his very being”, that in direction or coercion he replicates with ‘mechanical exactness’ and is thus neither an artist nor exercising human freedom, instead a mere device in the hands of others. Represented in an extreme form as the ‘playable’ protagonist Jack.

    Therefore also ‘the labourer who tends a garden is perhaps in a truer sense its owner than the listless voluptuary who enjoys its fruits’. Jack is more truly the conqueror of Rapture than Fontaine despite having no cognitive freedom. Humboldt quite explicitly argues a strain of anarchist thought that has been reiterated by Kant, Marx, Mill, Chomsky and others and though he is arguing against coercive state institutions, the reasoning is true against the dominant institutions of today.

    Bioshock’s fiction repudiates more primarily -in Levine’s estimation- fundamentalism and dogma, though there is a powerful argument against the modern perversion of classical libertarianism, or either pseudo or total anarcho-capitalism. Andrew Ryan and indeed the whole of rapture praise their own human achievement and capacity as humans to create, to think, to be free of coercion, suggestion or control, indeed one of Ryan’s last messages to you exalts his ultimate power not in weapons but his intellect. Yet there is an underclass within Rapture, ultimately who rebel, part of what Humboldt termed ‘disaffected labour’ for whom such rhetoric is a farce. The option between servitude and starvation is neither free nor fair nor voluntary.

    Whilst economy and labour can be democratised without authoritarianism, it was imposed upon others to serve a more elevated and better class of men who seek their own elevation and not others, Ryan compartmentalises his actions from his rhetoric foisting all manner of abuses and atrocities upon his slipping vision of Rapture, a fundamentally selfish and impossible dream.

    Like objectivism or anarcho-capitalism. I need a cigarette.

  41. 06/09/2009 at 20:38 Mil says:

    Ideological criticism is a blight on the soul of humanity.

  42. 06/09/2009 at 20:39 RogB says:

    That fella talking about Lotus 3 AI saying he thinks they moved into your way… anyone that sees the game for more than 3 seconds can tell the AI consists of:
    move lanes to the left side, then the right, then left again, lather rinse repeat. If they got on your way it was purely accidental.
    This was shit even in its day. Mind you, the presentation and music was good. Patrick Phelan IIRC?

  43. 06/09/2009 at 20:43 Dracko says:

    Sup Mo, I see you didn’t read her SVG defense. Or spot her basic premise.

    When people who are ashamed of videogames dance around their shame, in an attempt to shame others, they’d probably be better off doing something else with their time.

    Or play Space Giraffe.

  44. 06/09/2009 at 20:47 Xercies says:

    Maybe Feminists should be looking more at what Japan is doing i there video games then Bioshock really, but to be honest if a feminist did see Japans culture they would be seething for years and probably would be able to make numerous articles about it. You know thats true.

    Also I agree with Leigh and I said that Gaming has become mega corporation tied, it used to be that you could get some creativity in major selling games but those major selling games weren’t millions of units. No one could ream of that. I do think creativity is dead now for all mediums in the mainstream and that you have to go to indie to find creativity. Which is kind of sad.

    I also agree with ellis, I was very facinated by a load of machines because i watched Thunderbirds.

  45. 06/09/2009 at 20:48 Dracko says:

    Also, applauding V. Tchitcherine.

    And Jim, you’d also have to acknowledge that even the mainstream and the genres it dabbles in still allows for creativity; if not in content then at least in execution (Think of big industry getting – and expanding on – big tech).

  46. 06/09/2009 at 20:50 Dracko says:

    Xercies, exactly how many of the best-selling titles of the day, whether PC or console, are genuinely creatively bankrupt?

  47. 06/09/2009 at 20:59 _Nocturnal says:

    Wow, the fuss.

    Me, I’m just glad the list this sunday is so long. I like long. I’d like even longer.

  48. 06/09/2009 at 21:02 Sagan says:

    Also I think I should point out that I like Leigh’s piece. I like her writing in general. I just think that she is wrong in this. It’s hard to say that on the internet without coming off as if I hated her.

    And yeah, that quote by Manveer Heir is amazing. That guy was recently promoted to lead designer on a new project at Raven, and he has been writing about ethical dilemmas in games. So that could potentially end up very interesting.

  49. 06/09/2009 at 21:07 SteveHatesYou says:

    A counter-point to Leigh’s article (sort of): http://savetherobot.wordpress.com/2008/11/29/games-are-software/

    I don’t entirely agree with that article, but it makes one very important point that I wish people would consider more often: games are software, and more so than any other entertainment medium are limited by technology and the foundation of what has come before them.

    Yeah, it’s a nice idea to say that we should throw out all of our current influences and make something TRULY original, but it usually isn’t feasible. This is a medium where only 20% of the projects started actually make it out the door, due to production difficulties. The fact is, making something original costs much, much more than building off of the technology and methods already available. It’s also a lot more likely to fail.

    Before we can really go hog-wild with creativity, we have a number of production problems that have to be solved: We have to stop introducing new hardware architecture every 5 years. We have to improve our development tools and make them more readily available to new studios and independent developers. We have to improve distribution methods so that smaller developers can find their market. And we have to reduce the diversity of platform hardware and wrest some control away from platform holders like Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft.

    Until that happens, we have to accept that creativity in games, like all other aspects of software, is iterative.

    (I’m sure somebody is going to point out that creativity with game mechanics isn’t the same thing as creativity with aesthetics, and that there are many aspects of a game that aren’t beholden to technology – which is true. But look at the big box office hits for movies and you’re going to see Batman, Transformers, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars… the exact same shit that you see in video games. Leigh’s article is basically saying that the regurgitated influences in video games are down to games being dominated by insular nerd subculture. That’s false. That IS modern, mainstream culture. People looking for more intellectual depth in their entertainment are the minority.

    Games are regurgitating the same tropes because our budgets are high and we need to appeal to that mainstream audience. This goes back to my earlier point – first we need to improve production in order to reduce budgets, and then we can make games that appeal to the other pockets of culture that are looking for something a little bit more. Developers need more space to be creative without losing their fucking shirts).

  50. 06/09/2009 at 21:17 We Fly Spitfires says:

    LOL, awesome intro :)

    I also blame you guys for getting me to reinstall Sins of a Solar Empire… but boy, it’s awesome :)

  51. 06/09/2009 at 21:38 Mo says:

    Dracko, I read them both prior to making my comment. I don’t think her blog post is relevant to the quality of the article. I think the article puts forth issues that are worth thinking about and she clearly did the legwork. Which is not to say I agree with it in its entirety. I don’t, but I still think it’s a well written and well researched article.

  52. 06/09/2009 at 21:51 Joe says:

    “but to be honest if a feminist did see Japans culture they would be seething for years and probably would be able to make numerous articles about it. You know thats true.”

    Ugh, try again and think first. Half a second’s research will, I’m sure, provide you with copious feminist writing on Japan, though I doubt you’ll bother to read it. And get off your high horse. Japan is no more or less sexist than anywhere else in the world. Seriously.

    Also, I highly recommend you watch the documentary of The Shock Doctrine, if you’re a fan of logic-challenged “progressive” propaganda. Klein’s whole thesis – drawing a connection (whether causal or illustrative is never explained) between electroshock therapy and foreign policy – is so utterly illiterate as to be laughable. When she’s not straight up lying, she’s drawing braindead connections between unrelated events (i.e. Thatcher started the Falklands war to push through monetarist policies at home) and performing character assassinations on dead thinkers (i.e. Milton Friedman, who was an academic economist, not the fucking Lord of Darkness). Nothing more than a chirpy airhead with a Cliff’s Notes on Marx and Engels. Honestly, every time she smiles I feel a nosebleed coming on.

  53. 06/09/2009 at 22:05 Turin Turambar says:

    “And get off your high horse. Japan is no more or less sexist than anywhere else in the world. Seriously.”

    XD XD XD

  54. 06/09/2009 at 22:12 Joe says:

    @ Turin

    Argument > mockery. If you’re going to diss an entire country, please back it up.

  55. 06/09/2009 at 22:18 Joe says:

    (I’m presuming those XDs were meant in mockery rather than agreement. Smileys can be awful hard to read.)

  56. 06/09/2009 at 22:23 clive dunn says:

    What a lovely treat, haven’t seen Walt Simonson work since i used to buy Thor back in the day. Love this keen eyed comment from Daily Scans…
    “For those who don’t recognize it, the narration of that Batman two-pager was the novel that Snoopy was perpetually trying to write in Peanuts. He would constantly start with the same few lines, and the version up there is the most complete I ever saw it. Brilliant!”
    That’s the most awesome factoid of the year!

  57. 06/09/2009 at 22:35 Kieron Gillen says:

    Joe: “whether causal or illustrative is never explained”

    Metaphor. They don’t need sign posts, though it was funny in one of my phonogram back-up strips when I did exactly that.

    (I think she lays it on a bit thick with the electroshock parallels. It’s the least interesting part of the analysis of the last 30 years of world politics. I don’t need comparison to ECT to not think – say – Chile was a good idea.)

    Regarding our beloved Maggie, I can’t believe you’ve never heard the idea that the Falklands was a shameless vote winning war. She was enormously unpopular before she went into the war, and came out of it as Her. It was talked around at the time and ever since. I mean, she wasn’t unpopular before the war because she had a funny voice. She was unpopular because of *what she did*.

    Where Klein is putting her focus is on *why* she was unpopular and putting it in the larger context of Democracy’s relationship with free markets – as in, Democracy has had to be circumvented or tricked to get any large scale free-market reforms through, because in a free vote, people pretty much always tell them to fuck off.

    That part of the case, I think she made pretty well.

    Oh – and you seriously arguing all countries are equally sexist? Even I’m not nihilistic to try that one.

    Dracko: I think you’re being unfair judging Leigh’s commentary on why she was doing something than the actual piece itself. We – by humans – are driven to do things for a load of reasons. A lot of them – and I thought you may get this one – is *total hate*.

    Chatting to Spector, I’m reminded about him talking about one of the things in Deus Ex was how he disagreed with Thief. As in, that’s not the way to do it – he believed in a maximalist approach would be better. If he’d done a post stating that Thief was wrong, you could have hung him up for that too. The theories are antagonistically opposed but the two end products are fine things in and of themselves. Thief and Deus Ex come from people who believed in different fundamentally things.

    Point being: Leigh is frustrated by what she sees as a tiny number of influences on games. To try and ferment the debate, she goes out and gets a half-dozen of really interesting people to talk about the issue. That’s totally how it should be, and whether I agree with someone or not, I’ll be in their corner. Her work is her work. Her blog is her blog.

    V. Tchitcherine: I love it when people do that sort of stuff in the comments. Go have a cigarette.

    KG

  58. 06/09/2009 at 22:50 CMaster says:

    On the gaming tending to be all “bang bang bang bang” – in the fictional world where I’m a game designer/studio head, I’ve long thought I’d have the rule – “there’s always another solution other than shooting someone”. It won’t always be non-violent, but I really think that almost all games need a bit more agency on the part of the player than just aligning the crosshairs.

  59. 06/09/2009 at 22:55 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:

    Putting aside any bias for or against Leigh Alexander, I’m always up for reading whatever it is Tim Schafer has to say.

    And it would be nice to see more mainstream games pull primary inspiration outside of other games, TV, movies, comics, and geek media.

    On sexist Japan: Oh boy. That one’s a doozy. Let’s just say that it could be worse but it could also be so much better.

  60. 06/09/2009 at 22:57 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:

    Whoops, wish I could EDIT this in:

    @CMaster There are games that do that and those games are always interesting. (Shin Megami Tensei: You can talk to the monsters!) It’d be nice to see more Deus Ex approaches to problems, less Wolfenstein. Not saying that shooting isn’t fun, mind.

  61. 06/09/2009 at 22:58 Turin Turambar says:

    Real comment: not every country and culture is exactly the same in planet Earth. There are tons of reasons of past culture, of history, and customs, of how society evolved that explains why every culture/country has ther own little quirks, and differences between them.

    Japan, given its history from… the past 500 years, it’s still a conservative society, where sexism it’s more prevalent than in other countries. Of course the globalization is changing that, bit a bit, but it’s something that changes slowly, with new generations. And when i say sexism, i could say discrimination against foreigners, or the importance of pride and honor, or the hardon for sacrifice, pure will, and hard work.

    It’s a different society than say… Spain, where i live. Here we are not so sexist, but still are a bit behind the times in racial discrimination (we were a totally homogenous nation a few decades ago). And hard work? what’s that?

  62. 06/09/2009 at 23:14 Joe says:

    @ Kieron

    “Oh – and you seriously arguing all countries are equally sexist? Even I’m not nihilistic to try that one.”

    No, I put it badly. Rather, there’s nothing specifically sinister about Japan that makes it a sinkhole of bigotry, as people seem to think. Strip away the lazy cliches about panty vending machines, and the situation with sexism has roughly the same parameters as anywhere else. In short: Japan isn’t special.

    What Klein calls subverting democracy, I call politics. There’s as much cynical vote winning on the left as on the right, and the whole strategy of exploiting a crisis to seize power is, lest we forget, textbook Marxism. At no point does Klein actually attempt to argue down “free market fundamentalism” on the basis of an honest argument: one imagines that doing so would be beyond her attention span.

  63. 06/09/2009 at 23:23 Dracko says:

    And her perception is laughably flawed. The fact that it’s given credence speaks poorly to games criticism and its audience.

    But that’s okay: She hates both the medium and the message, and anyone who cares to observe and interact with either too.

  64. 06/09/2009 at 23:36 Mil says:

    @Turin:

    Please don’t perpetuate myths about Spain being a place where people don’t work hard. Look at this graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yearly_working_time_2004.jpg

    The average yearly working time in Spain is higher than Canada’s or Great Britain’s, and much higher than Germany’s, France’s, Sweden’s or the Netherlands’.

    Spain’s problem isn’t that people don’t work hard, it’s that all that work is inefficient because the retarded management culture doesn’t place any value on efficiency. Which is why the thinking qualified Spanish worker would do well to consider moving abroad, as I did.

  65. 06/09/2009 at 23:40 Marshall says:

    Not much relevance to sexism, but I have to say that in comparison with the subtle and sublime Alice & Kev, the Sims 3: Gordon Brown bit feels really forced and flat.

    And I’m for once, I’m pretty sure I’m not just misunderstanding British politics and/or humor. In fact, I think I’ve gotten a pretty good grasp on the latter at least.

  66. 06/09/2009 at 23:45 James G says:

    I think a large number of the issues I had with the first feminist analysis of Bioshock were based in my general discomfort for any such ‘readings.’ It seemed that it used a lot of apparently established symbolism* without fully considering it within context. I’m especially confused at their assigning the first person perspective ‘maleness’ as this would seem somewhat necessary to the medium. Similarly, my practical mind makes it difficult for me to accept symbolism in what to me seem to be clear game-play decisions (Ie. Keeping you isolated from Tenenbaum)

    But the biggest issue I have with the article is the reluctance to clearly separate innate ‘anti-feminist’ stuff, from the representation of such. I’d have no trouble with the argument that Rapture was a sexist place, but I don’t think this means that that attitude transfers to the game itself. (For example, I’ve seen lots of feminist praise of Mad Men.)

    In terms of a feminist analysis of computer game characters though, I’ve always felt Jahiera (particularly in BGII) would be interesting to consider. The character herself has quite an interesting dichotomy between stereotypically male and female elements, something that I can’t help feel is represented right down to her dual-class nature. However I shan’t be the one to attempt to do this, as I don’t have the toolset, and would invariably end up falling down all the same holes that can’t help but annoy me when other people try this.

    * Most of which I’m unfamiliar with, being a biologist by trade the literature analysis side of things somewhat left me behind at GCSE. In the past I’ve discovered that many of my issues with such things are mainly rooted in my misunderstanding, and no doubt some of the remaining ones are.

  67. 06/09/2009 at 23:52 Baris says:

    V. Tchitcherine: Thank you!

    It’s everything I was too lazy/not talented enough to express.

  68. 06/09/2009 at 23:53 anotherman7 says:

    The colonies? We did win, you limey prick |:<
    God knows how our right wing manages to get everyone to battle against their own self interest. The things that people say in this country are indeed surreal sometime and watching the news is a fucking trip. Oh well, I just hope I can quit smoking before I get emphysema. Also, I love these things, thanks a bunch.

  69. 07/09/2009 at 00:03 ars says:

    from the piece on Generation Y:

    “Mr. Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, is the author of “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.”"

    The sky is falling. Bleh.

  70. 07/09/2009 at 00:03 Will Tomas says:

    I think that Leigh Alexander’s article strikes me rather as a similar view to that held by a large number of filk critics that Jaws and Star Wars collectively destroyed creativity in Hollywood – that, essentially, by creating the idea of the blockbuster, they led the mainstream of Hollywood away from the artier areas that 1970s Hollywood had happily been exploring (and investing large amounts of money in) to an endless repetitive cycle of films only interested in explosions and cheap thrills.

    Which is, to a point, true – they did change cinema in that way, and allowed for people like Michael Bay to become exceedingly wealthy, but the point that gets somewhat ignored is that Michael Bay, Bruchheimer, and (for that matter) Cliffy B media all sell. They make bucketloads of money. Now, you can argue that this is because the majority people are undemanding and want little more from their entertainment than cheap thrills and things going bang.

    But there’s a divide here between those who only flit through various media as a diversion from their main activity in life, and those for whom those media are their main activity in life. Usain Bolt was interviewed at the recent world championships and he said that his main way of relaxing is to play Pro Evo and Call of Duty. He’s got a lot to be thinking about and working on in his day job to be caring too much about being challenged by his main source of fun. Most people are like this – they aren’t looking to be challenged.

    Point being, film critics and game critics, like Leigh, cannot help but be dissatisfied by the mainstream of their selected media because it does consume their lives and so they want more from it – they want to be challenged, and to experience new things. Usain Bolt gets that in his day job, he doesn’t need it from games. People who invest in games for their livelihood do, since unless someone is entirely without drive or intellectual interest then they will be perennially unsatisfied by it. Case in point is Mark Kermode (prominent British film critic) threatening to quit his radio show if he saw five films this year worse than Bride Wars – because at that point it wouldn’t be worth carrying on.

    All of which is an exceedingly long way of saying that I get where Leigh is coming from, and I don’t think that it means she in any way hates games or gamers, just that since she is looking for a degree of fulfillment from them, she is asking for something from them that most other people are not demanding – and so not supporting that demand with sales. Her error is perhaps in assuming that all other people should demand the same things from games as she does.

  71. 07/09/2009 at 00:06 Will Tomas says:

    A secondary point, about the poll she mentions from Kotaku where only 12% of people said they had ‘many’ interests away from games…

    Well if that isn’t the definition of a site, topic, and poll which would only be of interest to a very small number of videogames hobbyists, I don’t know what is.

    In other words, her blog is a bit like Shatner telling the Trekkies to ‘Get a life!’

  72. 07/09/2009 at 00:08 Mad Doc MacRae says:

    I liked Leigh’s hair better straightened.

  73. 07/09/2009 at 00:13 Baris says:

    I really wish Leigh would read this comments thread and reply to it, or at least acknowledge it.

    I wonder if semi-mainstream critics like her actually read intellectual criticism of their work and take it into account, or if years learning to ignore unintelligent hatred of their work has made it impossible for them to take criticism from laymen (is that spelt right?) seriously.

    Help me out here RPS writers: would you go to, lets say Joystiq, and actually pick through the comments there on a post related to your work? Or would you dismiss it completely and rely only on communities that have an established level of intelligence (Escapist, RPS, etc.)?

  74. 07/09/2009 at 00:15 Sunjammer says:

    I suppose it’s a dubious privilege to be aware of how hilariously inept Tecmo is at handling their female characters. Project Zero; Bleak, pitch-black survival horror games.. With unlockable swimsuit costumes. Every fighting game they have done features titties flying every which way. This new sixaxis blehbleh just confirms reality for me. It doesn’t shock me, but it sure is disappointing.

    The reason is of course that Tecmo are damn good developers. The NG series is absolute cream of the crop in its genre, so seeing them take huge dumps on their own work like this is just incredibly sad.

  75. 07/09/2009 at 00:19 Mo says:

    I agree that “normal” people don’t want to be challenged by video games (in fact, I’d go as far as saying that videogames are challenging at all is a barrier to mainstream audiences, but that’s another rant). However, I do believe that mainstream audiences would be more receptive to different forms of interaction in videogames. And I think that’s what Leigh is getting at.

    Let me put it like this: the last two *major* mainstream hits in my mind have been Guitar Hero/Rock Band, and Wii Sports. Both have zero of the “bang bang”, and both are very forgiving games. But both have a reasonable amount of depth, enough to keep us gamers entertained. We need more of that. We need less of “bang bang”.

  76. 07/09/2009 at 00:21 Sunjammer says:

    About Leigh’s piece; I’ll be first in line to say games today don’t “get me” the same way they used to, but i’ll also be first in line to say “hey, welcome to the mainstream”. Attacking games as a whole in this way is just another facet of the immaturity of the games media; We haven’t become aware yet of how bloody big this thing currently is.

    If you want to have a lark, go check out paperback books and their sales, then check the thematics. Kiss kiss, bang bang.

    For further lols, observe hollywood. Kiss kiss, bang bang.

    Hell, go take a look at MUSIC. Kiss kiss, bang bang.

    We love our violence, we love our romance, because we love extremes; They free us from the daily drudge.

    Saying OMG HEY LOOK TOO MANY GAMES ARE ABOUT PEWPEW strikes me as blindly ignorant. You are free to buy and play thematically richer, smaller indie titles, just as much as you can do the same for unknown, thematically richer bands, or low budget, low distro thematically richer films.

    The public at large want fast food, and that’s a fact of human existence since we were still flinging poo at one another. Whining about that is straight up geek elitism, and it makes everyone look bad.

  77. 07/09/2009 at 00:22 David says:

    That WSJ article, Why Gen-Y Johnny Can’t Read Nonverbal Cues, is baseless.

    The link between non-verbal comprehension and an increase in text-based communication is neither explained or supported, only assumed.

    What’s worse is the author’s claim that this assumption can’t be tested:

    Nobody knows the extent of the problem. It is too early to assess the effect of digital habits, and the tools change so quickly that research can’t keep up with them. By the time investigators design a study, secure funding, collect results and publish them, the technology has changed and the study is outdated.

    Of course you can examine non-verbal comprehension on a population of people, and to state otherwise demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of science.

  78. 07/09/2009 at 00:44 Leigh Alexander says:

    Yeah, I read it; choosing a response at random to address.

    “…the regurgitated influences in video games are down to games being dominated by insular nerd subculture. That’s false. That IS modern, mainstream culture.”

    That’s not my opinion. Our (gamers’) unwillingness and inability to acknowledge this — perhaps those of us passionate enough to discuss in a thread like this are too proximal to be objective — is one of my biggest frustrations, as someone who loves games.

    We can agree to disagree, then. A difference of opinion does not necessitate that one of us is wholly right while the other isn’t.

    “People looking for more intellectual depth in their entertainment are the minority.”

    With that, I agree (and I said as much in my article). I would like that to change, and that’s what motivates me to write. But even failing change, I’d rather write for an interested minority than for a majority to whom I can’t relate, so that’s what I focus on.

    But yeah, I do read the criticism of my work and pay attention to all of it, and incorporate it when it resonates with me. In this particular case, obviously if I didn’t believe in the validity of my own standpoint, I wouldn’t have accorded the attention to writing it, so generally what -I- see is a defensive rationalization from a community who simply doesn’t want to be criticized.

    Of course, it would be equally valid for someone to say the same of me here, so yeah. Agree to disagree, as I said.

    Where my eyebrows raise is when a dispute of a point I’ve made turns into an attack against me — if you believe I’m incorrect, let me be incorrect, but then why is it a personal affront to you? If I’m the sort of writer whose articles can draw virulent criticism from people who’ve never even read them, it tells me I might be onto something.

    I don’t think that as a critic I’m doing anyone a favor by embracing the cultural status quo without question. I’d rather say things people don’t like to hear than keep saying the same things, is all.

  79. 07/09/2009 at 00:45 Sunjammer says:

    About Tecmo/Japan-related sexism, i guess this makes me odd, but i rather mind purely sexualised women in games as less offensive than adding needless sexual overtones. DOAXBVB (great acronym) sure is creepy, but it doesn’t offend me beyond its immaturity. It’s simply too ridiculous to worry about.

    I totally applaud Japan’s relationship with sexuality in video games, which i find far more honest and down to earth than the fraidy-cat puritan west, which readily pairs brooding, troubled, “strong” women with giant titties and pretends the latter isn’t there. Yes games like Rapelay are obscene and ridiculous, but they are also nearly impossible to take seriously, being no worse than sex games produced in the west (Germany and Spain i’m looking at you). I mean christ, anyone who has ever had anything resembling a sexual relationship knows how out of this world space-age batshit insane hentai media is; It has little or nothing to do with reality, physically or otherwise.

    Feminists become more troubled by “stealthy” poor depictions of women, because they appear to sneak under the radar. Often the small things in dialog and action are indicative of much worse tendencies than a few art directors’ idealized depictions of women.

    Speaking of women, everyone should replay Freedom Force this week, because it’s bloody good and keeps women equally ridiculous to men at all times, crazy costumes and all. Party time!

  80. 07/09/2009 at 00:49 cowthief skank says:

    Dracko, you did make one good point: even with a lack of creativity in subject matter (ie the mainstream being predominantly about shooting) there is still a reasonable amount of creativity in execution.

    However, I am unsure how well this compares with other forms of media. Mainstream films are not predominantly about shooting; there are those romance type things, too. So action, or sop. And things with humour too. Mainstream games seem to boil down to “blow stuff up”. But then I guess we get into the argument about what constitutes genre.

    Re The Shock Doctrine: there was an article in the Independent the other day in which it was claimed that Klein had actually fallen out with the producer of the film when she saw his work. She was supposed to narrate it but did not like what he had done. Or something. I could be wrong, it is late.

  81. 07/09/2009 at 00:51 Will Tomas says:

    I agree with both Mo and Sunjammer’s points, but I think there is an element within this about who the audience for the Kotaku piece actually is.

    It’s the Gaming Geeks of the unfortunately-titled book mentioned by Kieron in the article. It’s people who do define themselves by the Xbox or PS3 that they own, and who thought that the across the board 7/10s for Wii Sports was not only overrating it but that the score actually mattered.

    In this case, the article is trying to make the point that that audience (the hormonal teenage boy one, let’s be honest) is being pandered to too much by developers, and that they should perhaps step outside of that comfort zone more than they do. Given the audience for Kotaku then it’s also suggesting by inference that gamers like that should also try new things out too – that the developers they like/may have heard of/may be interested in aren’t just interested by narrow choices of stuff (Blade Runner, etc.) but take wide influences and are more broadly interested in things outside of those areas too. And I think it’s hoping that the audience will too.

    This, to me, doesn’t imply hatred of gamers, merely a hope that they might find some enjoyment in unfamiliar areas. After all, Ridley Scott made Thema and Louise and Matchstick Men as well as Blade Runner and Alien…

    In other news, Kurt Vonnegut was a legend. RIP.

  82. 07/09/2009 at 00:52 Helm says:

    I’m always late for the commentary on the sunday papers soe I usually don’t get much in reply but I still sometimes feel compelled to state an opinion. Because these things interest me a lot. Here I go.

    In this case the article by L. Alexander: what it’s touching on is very complicated. To understand why power fantasies (male or not) fuel the mainstream of the popular arts (which they do, I think also) we’d have to understand what are the primary drives of humanity, society and the individual. That is not only difficult but uncomfortable when one inches towards the core of it. Power fantasies don’t just drive art, they drive life. What are the atavist urges and how are they served in a modern context? What are we repressing and pretending we don’t feel? What are we symbolically expressing when we blow up alien heads and what when we save the world?

    It’s a huge complicated discussion that should very well happen again and again, in the context of videogames like in any other humanist field, but surely the answer is not to tell gamers – or humans in general – to get a life. This sort of transferred self-loathing doesn’t serve to move anyone closer to their truth. Better to equip people to accept what life they have, and then understand it.

    I’m not disagreeing with her on the face of it: yes, most mainstream games serve base purposes and yes, this will keep on happening as long as it’s marketable. But I am not so sure that there should be contrarian, completely external and ideological pressures to change this because the state of the industry paints us slightly-more-intellectual-types in an unpleasant light. Videogame art (like all art) in informed, and reflective of, the society that feeds it. You do not change the art to change the society, it’s the other way around. If the themata of modern video games reflect unflatteringly on us as gamers and humans, we should be spending more time scrutinizing the reflection and less trying to find ways to warp the mirror so as to achieve some ultimately fake but more favorable persona.

  83. 07/09/2009 at 00:53 Dolphan says:

    @Baris: She often seems to respond to comments on her own blog. I think it would be a rather big ask to expect anyone to spend their time trawling through comments on blogs that have linked to them.

    @Dracko: For all your pontificating, you’re framing your own approach to a debate by throwing insults. It doesn’t take a genius to see that pretty much any point of view on any issue has plenty of arrogant critics (especially on the net) willing to deride it as ‘laughable’ etc. Unless you’re utterly convinced that you’re that much brighter and have that much better a line on reality than all the idiots out there who wouldn’t hesitate to scoff and pour scorn on any of your views, you might want to consider a little humility.

    I don’t particularly agree with Leigh. I think she tends to fall short on some issues because she seems to have something of a console bias, and the diversity she seems to want has always been more prevalent on PC. But I understand where her frustrations come from. A great deal of the resources, time and energy put into making games are focused on output that is, in the end, pretty childish. I’m not suggesting creative, innovative ideas aren’t found in big-budget mainstream games or anything like that (CoD4 did some excellent things with storytelling) – but the medium has a lot of potential, and games that really show that, like Ico, are comparatively rare.

    The sticking point for me is that I doubt that games really differ all that much from other media in that respect At least films, music, and comics anyway – books might be an exception, but it may just be that the ‘artier’ side gets more exposure there. By-the-numbers romances and thrillers probably make up a huge proportion of book sales, though I don’t know any figures so I could be completely wrong. Anyway, I suspect that the effect is skewed for critics. Consumers get to pick and choose. Critics can’t ignore what they don’t like in the same way. Since critics are consumers outside their own medium, its easy for them to think there’s more of a difference between their own medium and others than there actually is – which I think may have happened to Leigh in this case.

    I should make it clear that I don’t have any problem with non-’arty’ (I wish I could think of better terms here) games, books, films etc. I love blowing stuff up. Or watching stuff get blown up. But that’s entirely compatible with being frustrated about there not being more of the other stuff. And in any of those media, it’s up for debate what the proportions should be. It’s clearly subjective. It’s worth talking about. But it’s not worth pouring bile on those who disagree. If you’re not interested in considering someone else’s view, why get involved in the discussion in the first place?

  84. 07/09/2009 at 00:57 Dolphan says:

    Wow, lot of stuff came up while I was writing that. Kudos to Leigh for replying, even if it made the first bit of my post obsolete :p

  85. 07/09/2009 at 00:58 Sunjammer says:

    Leigh, i’m not impressed with the notion that merely questioning a culture is enough to incite change. I’ll bet you’ll have a hard time finding any informed “gamer” (though i hate that term passionately) willing to argue that the current mainstream games market is sufficiently varied and rich in content and subject matter. If your goal is to make a difference, then the whole article becomes almost entirely futile. We KNOW this is what the mainstream is, and we KNOW its sad that we have to dig through so much poo to find the gems. You are literally preaching to the choir. If your goal was to influence the status quo, you would necessarily need to reach out to the mainstream. Instead, you huddle up with your buddies and make inoffensive commentary that everyone can agree on.

  86. 07/09/2009 at 01:02 jarvoll says:

    People: the suffix -oid means “resembles but is qualitatively not”, not “small version of”. Thus, a humanoid is something that resembles a human, but is not, in fact, one. It follows then, that clive dunn ought to have used “factlet”, since the quote he posted was actually fact, merely smaller or less significant than most facts, and not “factoid”, which would imply that the quote resembled a fact, but was really not one.

  87. 07/09/2009 at 01:28 CaseytheBrash says:

    Why does Sleater Kinney scare you? Local band where I’m at they do ok. More of a studio band I think, which is odd for “punk.”

  88. 07/09/2009 at 01:56 MD says:

    If I’m the sort of writer whose articles can draw virulent criticism from people who’ve never even read them, it tells me I might be onto something.

    This sounds like a slight variation on the old ‘pissing people off = successful art/journalism/whatever’ line. Which is ridiculous. You can annoy someone just as effectively by following them around repeating everything they say, or pinching them, as you can with a cutting witticism at their expense; you can draw ire and vitriol with worthless pot-stirring just as effectively as with incisive criticism.

  89. 07/09/2009 at 02:10 jarvoll says:

    Also, that correlational “study” of metacritic rating and sales was irritatingly free of any statistics whatsoever. Where’s Pearson’s coefficient? There’s no point having a pretty graph and some nice ideas; one needs maths to know if one’s ideas have any merit. Of course, any half-trained scientist could look at that graph and deduce that r would be very low, but it is always necessary to know HOW low before drawing any conclusions. Thankfully, the author draws what is likely the correct conclusion (i.e. there is no relationship to speak of between MC score and sales), but not without first misleading readers with a title that implies causation, which could never be determined with a purely correlational methodology. Also, “data” is plural.

  90. 07/09/2009 at 02:22 Lyndon says:

    That gen y article rubbed me the wrong way. Allow me to quote from it.

    “Nobody knows the extent of the problem”

    No shit pilgrim that’s because you’re not basing this wild speculation on anything even approaching empirical evidence. You just sat down and thought “Man I hate these young people, they’re so rude, what could be causing it? Must be that new fangled social networking.”

    Cause youngsters were never rude before? Dude is a freaking English professor for heaven’s sake. If I need help decoding James Joyce novels I’ll go to him but he should really leave this sort of thing to the social sciences.

  91. 07/09/2009 at 02:28 Andy`` says:

    I could have completely misinterpreted Leigh’s entire article, which is highly likely at the moment… Despite all the mistakes and the controversy, the one thing I took away from Ms. Alexander’s article there was that she identified an important thing and forgot to properly stress the point: mainstream games aren’t thematically interesting enough. She praises all these games with weird styles and settings, and those that inject some social commentary, and complains about games with limited sources of inspiration. She even has Schafer talk about themes and inspirations and then gets completely sidetracked, because the easiest examples to hold up as mainstream games all happen to be digital testosterone shots, usually with shooting, and she starts talking about how that’s all getting a bit tiresome now but doesn’t appear to expand on the point further than “fewer shootybangs please”.

    Maybe if we stopped talking about them so much they would go away, but I don’t care about the power fantasies, I care about the art: so maybe we should probably start injecting those power fantasies with art (themes, style, social commentary), talk about them more than other games and sabotage the whole deal. Less rocking the boat, more poisoning the well, forcing change to happen slowly and comfortably. Maybe that’s already happening, but who am I to say, and who am I to say if anyone’s doing enough? I’m no social engineering master. No, I’m not talking about “games as art”, that’s another topic entirely.

    I also found it a bit ironic that the developer-chatsies in that article that didn’t feel fake were the ones talking about the past and the present, and anyone talking about The Future Of Gaming started to feel contrived and, somehow, wrong. These future predicting humans are also the ones apparently making derivative rubbish, and the ones with all the money to spend. Says something about their thinking maybe, or maybe it’s a huge coincidence.

  92. 07/09/2009 at 02:32 SteveHatesYou says:

    “That’s not my opinion. Our (gamers’) unwillingness and inability to acknowledge this — perhaps those of us passionate enough to discuss in a thread like this are too proximal to be objective — is one of my biggest frustrations, as someone who loves games.”

    I do think I’m looking at this objectively – I see the same derivation in the top-sellers of every form of entertainment. I see the same complaints about every medium. These problems are not unique to video games or to people who play them, it’s endemic in mainstream Western culture, which video games are very much a part of.

    However, other mediums are able to cheaply produce content for people with more specialized interests – for those who want something more original, who want intellectually stimulating entertainment. That’s not true in video games. We’ve only recently started to grow an independent market, and it still has a long way to go.

    “Where my eyebrows raise is when a dispute of a point I’ve made turns into an attack against me — if you believe I’m incorrect, let me be incorrect, but then why is it a personal affront to you? If I’m the sort of writer whose articles can draw virulent criticism from people who’ve never even read them, it tells me I might be onto something.”

    I’m not sure if you’re addressing me here, but you did quote my post. Nothing I wrote was intended to be a personal attack against you.

  93. 07/09/2009 at 02:38 drewski says:

    I ran out of ability to pay attention about halfway down the thread, but V. Tchitcherine – your post was worth reading that far by itself, never mind the articles.

  94. 07/09/2009 at 03:20 shitflap says:

    I’m really quite saddened by the fact that there were not more comments on “The Shock Doctirine”, I found it to be an incredibly facinating documentary, especially seeing how international free market economics is not in my interests. The “Shock” part probably should have been left to be dealt with in a more heavy-handed way in the book, Americans who read seem to love that kind of stuff, or at least need some kind of underlying theme shoved down their throats every few minutes. ^^
    My hat off to you, Mr Gillen for bringing this to my attention.

  95. 07/09/2009 at 03:36 Leigh Alexander says:

    @Dolphan — your assertion of a console bias on my part is fair, although I think it’s my right to specialize in some platforms and not others. I’ll admit, though, that I’m sometimes guilty of generalizing when I ought to specify.

    @Sunjammer — if I were preaching to the choir, then everyone would just be nodding along with me, not arguing. Also, who are these buddies with whom I huddle up? It’d be great if I had some people like that to take some of these arrows for me.

    Still, though, the bit about making inoffensive commentary that everyone can agree on? One of, if not the largest of my weaknesses as a writer. You’re right; I’m workin’ on it.

    @MD who decides between incisive criticism and worthless pot-stirring? Genuine question.

    I am still not sure whether your collective responses indicate that I’m being perceived as impotently agreeable — “preaching to the choir” — or whether you think I’ve been ignorantly divisive, but I’m happy to get your feedback. It’s really refreshing to have people challenge me, because too often a lot of my readership lets me squeak by on personal goodwill. I appreciate it.

    Exce-e-e-pt —

    @Dracko — “hates both the medium and the message” ? To borrow your word, that assertion is “laughable.” I love games and everyone in and around them, except for, to be blunt, people like you who are so unhealthfully attached as to become unhinged and personally affronted over articles about video games. When I say “get a life,” I’m talking to you.

    Yeah, your sort, I do hate, honestly, and if there is resentment between the lines of my work, it’s the cringing in me, the spiritual curling-away that I feel knowing that no matter how hard I work — work I do out of love and fellowship, believe it or not — there will be people like you leaving the sort of comment more appropriately directed toward someone who’d threatened your family.

    I must take care every day to remember that your sort is an outlier, and not the whole of the community I believe in.

  96. 07/09/2009 at 03:57 David says:

    @Leigh

    “I am still not sure whether your collective responses indicate that I’m being perceived as impotently agreeable — “preaching to the choir” — or whether you think I’ve been ignorantly divisive, but I’m happy to get your feedback.”

    I get the impression that the reaction to your agreeable-ness stems from the Kotaku piece, while the anger and defensiveness is a reaction to the SVG piece about your reasons for writing it (“We need a freakin’ life, guys!”).

    Rightly or wrongly, I don’t think it’s surprising that people would connect (and perhaps draw different conclusions) based on the relationship of these two articles.

  97. 07/09/2009 at 04:07 Leigh Alexander says:

    @David — oh, I see. It’s funny; I wasn’t aware at the time I jotted out the blog post that the tone was as hostile as it seems to be in hindsight.

  98. 07/09/2009 at 04:11 Krondonian says:

    Like shitflap (never envisioned writing that before), I don’t know a damn thing about economics. The whole shock treatment angle seemed a bit over-the-top, but the privatisation of the military in America it highlights is just crazy. Thanks for that one.

    On the topic of mainstream games’ lack of creativity and general bang banginess, I think about Valve. Leigh’s article mentions Portal, quite rightly, as an exception to the general feeling of the article. Yet look at Team Fortress 2 and it’s incredibly refreshing visual art style* or Half-Life 2′s advancement of realistic characterisation. This is from a fabulously successful company. The recently linked video where Gabe talks to some deaf folk and talks about getting signing in a future Half-Life further increases my respect for the company as leaders in the advancement of games as a medium. Now of course there are others beside, but they’re one strong argument for mainstream innovation and creativity.

  99. 07/09/2009 at 04:14 Krondonian says:

    Um, it’s late. The first paragraph is referring to the Shock Doctrine and the * after TF2 was juts going to point out that I know the influence of TF2′s characters was from 50′s (I think) illustration, so that may well play into Leigh’s point.

  100. 07/09/2009 at 04:17 Vinraith says:

    I’ve never thought about it before, but pieces like Leigh’s make me sincerely wonder how unusual I am in what I’m looking for from computer games. I don’t really care about diversity of influence or quality of story telling in games, because I don’t associate them with other forms of media. I grew up on board games, war games, pen and paper role-playing, miniatures games and the like. What I want out of my PC games is that experience, absent the need to find a group of people to play with.

    Frankly, I’ve always been of the opinion that games are lousy story telling devices, because the more story they tell the less they’re a game. Pre-planned plot precludes player choice, and I’m far more interested in a sense of freedom, meaningful decision making, and the ability to create my own story than I am in living someone else’s story. That’s what movies and books are for, to my thinking. Games are about interactivity.

  101. 07/09/2009 at 04:34 john t says:

    Is it just me or did the author of that Bioshock piece entirely miss the fact that Rapture is supposed to be A Bad Thing?

  102. 07/09/2009 at 04:56 Rohit says:

    “Her in-advance anti-defensiveness-defensiveness is a bit shitty, however.”

    Thank you.

  103. 07/09/2009 at 06:51 MD says:

    who decides between incisive criticism and worthless pot-stirring? Genuine question.

    I can’t answer that in a very useful way of course, except to say that while it’s ultimately a subjective judgment we each have to make for ourselves, some pieces of work can, to the extent that we can be ‘objective’ about this sort of thing, be more convincingly argued to fall into one category than the other.

    I should clarify that I wasn’t intending to take one side or another on the worth of your writing (though in context it probably looked like I was implying that yours falls into the rubbish category — sorry about that), just pointing out that ‘getting a reaction’ shouldn’t be seen as the mark of succesful writing. It can be a mark of great writing or terrible writing, and almost anything in between. All I wanted to say was that proof that people care, and your work doesn’t fall into the ‘blandly inoffensive’ or ‘nobody cares about the subject matter’ categories, doesn’t equate to proof that you’ve done a good job. It’s a bit of a bugbear of mine really.

  104. 07/09/2009 at 06:54 MD says:

    (So basically, my post wasn’t a semi-veiled criticism of your writing in general or the piece in question, just a genuine disagreement with the specific sentence I quoted.)

  105. 07/09/2009 at 06:55 Mo says:

    On an aside: I love the word bugbear, it’s such a fluffy word.

  106. 07/09/2009 at 07:13 malkav11 says:

    I think gaming has issues breaking away from the beaten path not only because of things like production costs, but also because it is being treated as a disposable medium. There have been some commendable moves in the direction of making older games available in the last couple of years, and I’d like to see that go further. But that’s quite recent, and somewhat counterbalanced by the trend of attaching DRM that deliberately interferes with the longevity of a game, and the rush to make MMOs that cease to be playable when the servers inevitably shut down. The heavy emphasis on things selling now now now and the first couple of weeks being so critical means that more experimental works often don’t have the chance to find their audience and draw new aficionados by word of mouth. The “cult” game barely even exists.

  107. 07/09/2009 at 07:32 Jayt says:

    What large medium doesn’t have a shit mainstream. Movies, books, music, gaming, the list goes on.

    This will never change.

  108. 07/09/2009 at 07:37 Sunjammer says:

    Leigh, WE are the buddies! :D Isn’t it obvious? The arguing here is divided into the camps of yawning peers that agree that “yeah, it’s boring out there in the mainstream”, and the fervent defensive ones that try to make sure you remember all the indie weird stuff you can find regardless of the mainstream. Personally i’ve got a foot in either camp, which can be a bit schizo. However nobody will disagree that the mainstream is flat, which seems to be the basic theme, unless i’m reading it wrong.

  109. 07/09/2009 at 07:47 TeeJay says:

    My problem with the Leigh Alexander article is that it doesn’t seem to contain a coherent or consistent argument and it chickens out of naming concrete examples of the kind of games it is bemoaning.

    One minute it is criticising the “sameness” of games (be this ‘theme’, characters, structure, gameplay experience), the next asking if they are “relevant art”, then whether they contain ‘stereotypes’ and/or ‘male power fantasies’ etc. These are all different issues.

    It collapses discussion of big-selling shooters, Wii-fit games and all-and-any-other-genre into one big sludge, but even when generalising the author can’t seem to decide what they are saying:

    “What’s wrong with more of the same, if that’s what people seem to want? Keeping to the familiar can cap games’ commercial potential…”

    and then seconds later:

    “…numbers that challenge the assertion that musclemen chainsawing aliens in a sci-fi warzone is a concept with limited appeal.”

    There is discussion about the importance of “culturally significant games” and “games from getting the respect they deserve alongside other media” … but is this really what gamers care about? Surely primarily they want fun games that they enjoy playing. Maybe it’s the games journalists that want ‘respect’ and to feel ‘culturally significant’? Artists who want to experiment with ‘games as art’ seem to do this already without caring greatly whether they are released commercially. Sure – some game developers slip social comments and other ideas into games, but they often seem far less hung up about the whole issue than some journalists do.

    This comment in particular seems very weak:

    “The commercial nature of the games biz may constrain the risk inherent in breaking new ground, but that’s not a sufficient excuse – all art is commercial.”

    All art is commercial? No it isn’t, nor does it cost millions. I’ll quote this last bit:

    “Consumer demand has the largest influence over the games that hit the market. So, if games are limited, it also suggests that the legions of fervent gamers, bloggers and enthusiast writers who devote endless words to their desire for culturally significant games are simply paying lip service to an ideal they won’t back up with their wallets … The same games keep getting made largely because that’s all the core audience is interested in. So maybe it’s gamers, not game developers, who need to get a life.”

    Sorry but is a naive analysis of market mechanisms. If full-length games could be made and distributed as easily as someone knocking up an mp3 and sticking it on their myspace page then maybe there would be a classic ‘efficient market’ in games…

    …you would also have a diverse range of tastes, ranging from (to use a music parallel again) mainstream pop o obscure indie, from african folk to classical orchestras etc etc…

    In reality full-length ‘first-person-style’ games take significant resouces to produce from scratch and so only a limited number are produced. There isn’t a ‘perfect market’ where supply and demand are instantly and perfectly matched – there is actually a lot of second-guessing and pre-filtering going on producing a relative handful, not thousands, of games per year.

    Moreover, even if you just look at FPS games over the last five to ten years, there have been lots of imaginative and ‘different’ games that have been deemed awful by reviewers and gamers – mainly because despite having novel ideas they have failed to realise them, either technically, artistically or in terms of creating a playable and enjoyable game.

  110. 07/09/2009 at 08:05 TeeJay says:

    … ie: business/economic issues and technical issues play a far bigger role than they do for other media.

    Also, I was happy to play Halflife in ’98, HL2 in ’04, then ep1 and ep2. I will be happy to play Ep3 and HL3 when they come out. This isn’t a “problem”. I would happily play the next Hitman, Deus Ex, NOLF, Thief, Max Payne, STALKER or Fallout game and I doesn’t bother me that they are ‘just sequels’ (and hence ‘less original’). There is always the risk that they will be dumbed-down or otherwise screwed up and I am open to any new game that is good. Why make a such an issue about new IP? Why be bothered about inventing a new genre to replace FPS-ers when so many people still nejoy FPS games? There is still a lot of scope to improve and refine the FPS genre, with only a few games managing to hit the top levels of quality and many more failing in various ways.

  111. 07/09/2009 at 08:17 Jim Rossignol says:

    malkav11 makes an interesting point, and it’s one of the reasons why we wanted to run a PC site specifically: there’s a huge back-catalogue of games, and plenty of inventiveness across the years. The console companies are only just beginning to realise that the past twenty years of games still contains things worth playing, whereas the PC has always been adapted to access its heritage.

    Games as novum is great, but it’s creatively exhausting, and it’s one of the reasons why a rehash-with-better-tech has become the norm.

  112. 07/09/2009 at 08:23 Mo says:

    @TeeJay: “so many people” don’t enjoy FPS games. Our tiny gaming niche enjoys FPS games. That “shooting” is the only action a player can perform in the majority of mainstream games is a big reason why games aren’t appealing to more people.

  113. 07/09/2009 at 08:36 Lyndon says:

    @TeeJay: All art is commercial. I happen to have a good friend who is an emerging fine artist. No shit while preparing for his first gallery exhibition out of art school he did a painting that happened to contain a naked lady. When the galley owner saw it his reaction was “Paint more of those, naked women sell”. My friend didn’t really want to and even found the suggestion slightly creepy but as a new artist working with an established gallery owner he ended up painting more naked ladies.

    See every artist needs to earn enough to eat. Most artist’s work sells in the thousands of dollars range, it has to because of the amount of time they cost to create. Pay two grand for a painting and the artist is still making a shitty wage as far a $ per hour goes.

    Do you know many people willing to fork out that kind of scratch for a painting? Most emerging artists don’t. That’s where the gallery owners come in, they know the potential buyers, they can get them to the exhibition. So in exchange for providing the audience they not only take a percentage of a show’s earnings but often put presure on the artist to deliver what they believe will sell.

  114. 07/09/2009 at 08:36 Kieron Gillen says:

    Have to run off, more later, quickies:

    Just to stress, the Gen-Y article was linked for eyerolling scaremongering. Amused me to see them go after something else other than games.

    Casey: I love Sleater Kinney. Sympathy scares me because sympathy is scary song.

    KG

  115. 07/09/2009 at 08:44 Kieron Gillen says:

    Actually, before I go, a handful of perennials on the mainstream=shit position.

    1) Any world where the Beatles are the most popular band of all time… well, the rule doesn’t hold. Good stuff sells. Moreso: I tend to think good stuff sells best when a medium is at its most vital. You look back historically, and some of the greatest works of literature sold phenonemally when they were released. Byron was a superstar in poetry’s heyday.

    2) That there is pap which is popular in any medium doesn’t have anything to do with Leigh’s main point. She argues that there’s far too much of one sort of pap. This isn’t like movies, which do a variety of pap genres taking from a lot of sources. This is more like American comic books, where there’s a predominance of a single genre. Games isn’t as much of a monoculture as the latter, or as wide as the former. She’d like to see more pushed towards it rather than moving towards the latter. As much as beautiful work is done in comics – both inside that dominant genre and outside of it – they’re still kicking against a general societal perception.

    3) Believing to be good is to be obscure is as self-defeating myth as have ever been created. It will ruin you.

    KG

  116. 07/09/2009 at 08:54 Jim Rossignol says:

    “you’d also have to acknowledge that even the mainstream and the genres it dabbles in still allows for creativity”

    Absolutely. In fact, I’d go as far as saying that many creative advances in games are dependent on the mainstream, precisely because many types of games require huge amounts of money to be made.

  117. 07/09/2009 at 09:15 Eli Just says:

    My problem with the Leigh article was that it seemed very one sided, but at the same time totally schizophrenic. She keeps coming in from different angles, but all of them end up being the same and she lays out her views so strongly that they overpower anything her interviewees have to say. Also, I feel like she’s saying that as of now, we are advancing only incrementally and that it would be best to scrap every aspect of the current “shallow, limiting archetypes”. I think the article she should have written would outline various efforts to break the status quo by indie studios and then show some examples of this new fresh influence showing itself in big budget industry games, and compare this to the perceived lack of innovation from other developers. Also, I feel like she really chews out CliffyB. That guy has a gun with a chainsaw on it. Watch out.

  118. 07/09/2009 at 09:45 Cooper says:

    Must. Resist. Urge. To. Scrape. All. 2008. Sales. Data. From. VGCHartz. And. Produce. Larger. Sample. Size. And. Put. Data. Through. More. Involved. Statistical. Models.

    Seriously. If there was a magic button to produce tab delimited data for 1st 10 week sales in 2008 I’d happily match that up with metacritic and throw out some lovely confidence intervals for you all…

    I guess this kind of horriffic, disgusting urge is what happens when a statistician finds himself neck deep in continental post-structuralist and post-phenomenological philosophy. All hail the aporia.

    Someone needs to put Derrida into a comic…

  119. 07/09/2009 at 09:50 Cooper says:

    Sorry, I forgot about Google.
    http://chickitychina.com/comics/independent-comics-critiques/action-philosophers-5-hate-the-french-review/

    This proves that, on occasion, the world is indeed made of win.

  120. 07/09/2009 at 09:59 jarvoll says:

    Forbidden
    You don’t have permission to access /comics/independent-comics-critiques/action-philosophers-5-hate-the-french-review/ on this server.

    :\

    Not all art is commercial. I have a painting my grandfather did about 15 years ago hanging on my wall, for which he didn’t charge a cent. Whoops, an exception! SweepingStatementFail. Try again please. Perhaps “all professional art is commercial”? Nah, that’s just saying “all artists that get paid for it, get paid for it.”

  121. 07/09/2009 at 10:21 DMJ says:

    I have nothing really to add here, apart from the fact that V. Tchitcherine’s post is the sort of thing which normally goes in the top of The Sunday Papers.

  122. 07/09/2009 at 11:06 Gap Gen says:

    The Metacritic article could do with a follow-up with some more cunning analysis. Its current conclusion “critically acclaimed != commercial success” is something we’ve known for ages, although perhaps not stated explicitly in the form of a Metacritic analysis. I’m not sure what you’d have to do to model the commercial success of a game, though. It’s probably not that simple, and relies on complicated, human things.

  123. 07/09/2009 at 13:11 JuJuCam says:

    It’s interesting to me that alongside the Leigh Alexander article decrying the sameness of games is posted a concise and clear overview of Kurt Vonnegut’s analysis of dramatic narratives. I’d argue that modern games have leaned toward shootybang violence simply because it’s a quick and dirty way to get an intense dramatic rise out of game players (whether or not they define themselves as “gamers”). Broadly, the basic objective of every game ever made is to shift the status of the gameworld to some ideal status quo. Even if it’s a sort of rolling short term objective to simply return to a status in which you aren’t being attacked. The desire to defend oneself from a hostile enemy is primal and immediate, you don’t need to define their character or yours or what the specific conflict is between yourselves, it’s simply a case of them wanting you dead and you wanting to stop them from succeeding. Of course, games that do define those traits in interesting ways are applauded and rightly so.

    We lose the “Kiss kiss” in games because it’s difficult to translate romance to some sort of immediate action. Nor should it be easy – cheap romance is unfulfilling, in real life or in a game or in art. Indeed, it’s not even an immediate need for most people, and no shorthand for love akin to pulling a trigger exists in our cultural heritage. If you don’t stop an enemy from shooting at you, you will die. If you don’t get to tumble with a romantic interest, better luck next time. How would you even go about constructing a gameplay mechanism around such a nebulous affair? Now try and give it the adrenaline pumping immediacy of a gunfight.

  124. 07/09/2009 at 13:44 Helm says:

    The statement ‘all art is commercial’ does more than assert that there was a monetary exchange involved somewhere in the process of some piece of art coming into existence or prominence. It is misleading to suggest ‘that’s just that’, because it really also implies a judgment of the intention of the artist, meaning “all artists are marketers” which really isn’t the case.

    You can sell a piece of art to make a living where the intention behind the art is as far away as possible from commercial concerns, or even set against commercial concerns. We are living in a capitalist world, but that doesn’t mean we are obliged (as artists or human beings) to adopt their standard of commercialization in all aspects of our lives. Not everything involving an exchange of one thing for another is capitalist commerce. Exchanges that aim towards the maximization of profit are very different to some writer slaving for months over a book and then having it published and getting like, 300 dollars for royalties. Different intentions.

    Which isn’t to say that most mainstream games aren’t marketed very hard so as to maximize the companies’ profits, but let’s not generalize, please.

  125. 07/09/2009 at 14:06 mister k says:

    “Must. Resist. Urge. To. Scrape. All. 2008. Sales. Data. From. VGCHartz. And. Produce. Larger. Sample. Size. And. Put. Data. Through. More. Involved. Statistical. Models.”

    I know what you mean, I really want to get data together- was really tempted after the whole piracy hurting data thing.

    The problem with metacritic score*n=sales is that the model is likely to be more complicated than that, so we might get

    meta*a+advertising*b+meta*advertising*c+drm*d+release*e+price*d+platform*f

    effectively you really, really need to do a linear regression and consider far more factors before you can talk convincingly about any trend in the data. Looking at that graph theres actually what looks to me like a fairly convincing trend, with a reasonable amount of noise. Almost certainly the majority of that noise is going to be caused by these unconsidered factors. Once they have been included I think you will actually see a reasonable trend. I’d also be surprised if big companies don’t already do this. This is why everyone should hire statisticians, by the way!

  126. 07/09/2009 at 14:42 CaseytheBrash says:

    Gillen: Heaven’s to Betsy is ok if you dig S-K. Also, I’ve enjoyed Quasi live a few times (Drummer and her husband from S-K). What i really want is some Bratmobile right about now…

    P.S. My brother used to think S-K sounded like a goat being murdered by some sort of Lovecraftian beastie.

  127. 07/09/2009 at 17:11 Kieron Gillen says:

    Your brother is weak.

    KG

  128. 07/09/2009 at 18:16 SteveHatesYou says:

    @Kieron:

    I don’t think the issue is with mainstream being shit. It’s that if a product is tailored to appeal to a mainstream market, it’s going to naturally be derivative.

    It’s the “like x but with y” problem… if you’re trying to pitch a game to a publisher, and convince them to give you $30 million for development, they usually expect you to be able to point to some similar, preexisting product that was successful. They’re businessmen, not artists, and they want you to prove that you can make them a profit.

    Of course creatively fantastic stuff can break out into the mainstream, but first it needs a space in which it can be developed with minimal risk. It doesn’t take any significant cost for a band to play music and get people to listen to it. It took Jonathon Blow three years and $180,000 to make Braid.

  129. 07/09/2009 at 20:00 clive dunn says:

    err, i really don’t want to get involved but plenty of people thought the Beatles were shit at the time, (my best friends dad would spit on the floor everytime he heard them). And for that matter a lot of Byron’s (probably just jealous) contemporaries thought he was a steaming pile of populist shite.
    As i keep telling people, to quote Bob Dylan, “the truth is a lie”

  130. 07/09/2009 at 21:33 Will Tomas says:

    As a Beatles fan verging on anorak I agree with your point, Kieron, but actually it’s worth remembering that it wasn’t all hailing the masters at the time. When they went (even) more creative than before and changed what they were doing they weren’t as astoundingly popular as they had been during the mop-top years, and it took a (small) degree of hindsight for their experiments to be as popular as they were critically acclaimed.

    After all, Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane never made it to number 1, being kept off the top spot by the endlessly revolutionary creative force that was Englebert Humperdink.

    Point being, they may have created several new mainstreams by what they did, but when it was all spangly and new it wasn’t as universal in appeal as it has since become.

  131. 07/09/2009 at 23:07 Kieron Gillen says:

    Will: Let’s also be fair. They definitely won the war against Humperdink – which is, really, what we’re talking about. And – y’know – Number 2 is still not exactly buried in obscurity.

    (I’m not actually the biggest fan of the Beatles, but it seems to be neither here nor there when the counter part is The Mainstream Is Trash. Which can only be argued by myopic snobs who believe the mainstream is trash because people like it rather than its own quality. )

    I’m clearly influenced by the generation I grew up in on this, despite where it lead. Ian Brown’s line back in 89 about it not being enough to hate at number 1 – you’ve got to get up and stamp them down always struck a chord.

    KG

  132. 07/09/2009 at 23:15 Vinraith says:

    Like others above, I’m sorely tempted to perform a statistical analysis on this subject, but just can’t be bothered. My instinct tells me there’s precious little correlation, one way or the other, between popularity and quality. There are some enormously popular things that are great, and some that are shit. There are some obscure, unpopular things that are excellent, and some that are unpopular for good reason. I don’t really know what to check to make the comparison, either, because it’s not like average critical opinion necessarily correlates that well to game quality either. Ultimately, I would hope that something that is critically acclaimed has a better-than-not chance of being good, and I would hope that something that sells really well has a better-than-not chance of being good, but especially on that second one I honestly don’t know.

  133. 07/09/2009 at 23:52 CaseytheBrash says:

    KG,

    His Kung Fu is weak, he’s got good taste except he avoids punk. He’s more New Order poppish, not quasi-lesbian riot grrl punk. Didn’t DIY kill punk anyways? Well if that didn’t Greenday did, and it’s mounted the corpse…

  134. 08/09/2009 at 01:49 Will Tomas says:

    I certainly agree about winning the war, but I suppose what I meant was that the really great and innovative stuff doesn’t always sell as well as competition that are really good but more generic. It’s degrees of quality here, but I think that from an accountant’s point of view, if you have a choice between putting the money behind the generic that sells really well and the less-generic thing that comes in second place, it’s going to give you something to think about.

    Or, in counterpoint to the Beatles and the mainstream, Dan Brown’s sequel to The Da Vinci Code is about to have the largest print run of any novel, ever. Including Harry Potter.

    Does this mean I think that all mainstream is shit? Clearly not, but things like that do suggest that there is a large number of people that actively want things that are undemanding.

    In other news, congrats KG on the burgeoning comics stuff – I had no idea about Thor, and huge congrats are due for that. As someone involved in the dearly departed DFC I know a small amount about how tough an industry it can be sometimes, but also what a hell of a lot of fun it can be too.

  135. 08/09/2009 at 01:51 Will Tomas says:

    On punk, surely the most punk thing of the last 20 years was John Lydon doing the Country Life advert? If the idea is to piss as many people off as possible…

    That said, I still can’t believe Iggy Pop is advertising life insurance. He can’t need the money?!

  136. 08/09/2009 at 02:13 CaseytheBrash says:

    I think Iggy Pop is doing Life Insurance ads as sort of a joke on all of humanity, is he still alive even? I mean technically, he looks a bit like lukewarm death on a stick. I think he is mocking us, the undead do what they must…

  137. 08/09/2009 at 05:37 malkav11 says:

    @Jim Rossignol – while it’s true that PCs have been capable of reaching into the PC back catalog more readily than consoles until recently, the back catalog games themselves have been if anything -less- readily available, at least through legitimate channels. It doesn’t matter if you are functionally capable of playing a game if you can’t get it. And I think that all sectors of the industry are figuring out that older games are still worth something at around the same time, in that respect.

    @JuJuCam – I agree that romance is trickier to handle in games. It does get touched on, occasionally. I most commonly see it in RPGs, where, especially in the Bioware model, there’s often at least one romanceable NPC, though there’s little actual gameplay attached to those. And of course hentai games. Insofar as they can be connected to actual romance. (But I’ll say that even though they’re mostly porn, they do usually make you work at getting into bed with the various women at least a -little- bit. And there are nonpornographic dating sims, mostly in Japan.)

  138. 10/09/2009 at 20:00 terry says:

    Lotus 3 had rubbish music and partially because of the track editor seemed to play very blandly compared to Lotus 2. Come to think of it, Jaguar XJ220 had better music (chiptune A-team theme!) and played better than either. So you can put that in your pipeand smoke it, Mr Spelunky-on-Wheels >:O

  139. 09/08/2010 at 08:27 party gowns says:

    I wanted to thank you for this great read!!

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