Comments on: The Sunday Papers

By: party gowns

party gowns — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 07:27:32 +0000

I wanted to thank you for this great read!!

By: terry

terry — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:00:05 +0000

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

By: malkav11

malkav11 — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 04:37:23 +0000

@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.)

By: CaseytheBrash

CaseytheBrash — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 01:13:53 +0000

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…

By: Will Tomas

Will Tomas — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:51:44 +0000

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?!

By: Will Tomas

Will Tomas — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:49:35 +0000

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.

By: CaseytheBrash

CaseytheBrash — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:52:19 +0000

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…

By: Vinraith

Vinraith — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:15:13 +0000

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.

By: Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:07:41 +0000

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.

By: Will Tomas

Will Tomas — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:33:43 +0000

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.

By: clive dunn

clive dunn — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:00:11 +0000

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”

By: SteveHatesYou

SteveHatesYou — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:16:52 +0000

@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.