Comments on: Wot I Think: Replay

By: TeeJay

TeeJay — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:24:56 +0000

We’re not completely stuck with things if we start promoting different labels in a consistent manner.

ELSPA (the UK “computer and video games industry” trade body) were originally “European Leisure Software Publishers Association” then “Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association” and soon to be “UK Interactive Entertainment Association”. They have some reason to use these instead of “video games”.

Recently RPS had three articles about the “Immersive Sim”.

Mobygames and the Wikipedia have ongoing discussions about how to structure and organise their genre heirarchies and games databases. example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Grand_Theft_Auto_clone (is “Grand Theft Auto clone” a distinctive ‘genre’).

Discussions that start with “can interactive software be art” or “does using software make people more ” may well progress differently than if you included the word “game”, just as the words ‘interactive’, ‘entertainment’ and ‘software’ can suggest more things to include and exclude before a discussion even begins.

Is out concept of genre in popular culture being changed by search results based on “keywords” and “tag-clouds”. The term “world music” was deliberately invented and marketed in the 1980s so that record shops could create a separate shelf for consumers. High street book shops still need fairly well defined categories to order books their shelves whereas Amazon presents me with “Customers who viewed this also viewed” and offers multiple routes to the same book.

The meaning of “indie” and “casual” as a genres (eg on Steam) are still emerging and evolving.

By: Tristan Donovan

Tristan Donovan — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:13:58 +0000

A Kindle version on its way! Should be available in a few weeks – don’t have an exact date unfortunately

By: Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 11:50:53 +0000

The French section is just splendid. It’s stuff I kind of abstractly knew, but the specifics are wonderful.

By: Simonkey75

Simonkey75 — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 07:37:38 +0000

That was always the problem listening to Retronauts from 1up – something I did purely due to the paucity of retro gaming podcasts around at the time – for professional game journalists (and Jeremy Parish is no moron) their lack of knowledge beyond US/Japan NES to Genesis to Snes to Playstation lineage was astonishing. They could work themselves up to orgasm about some rare and frankly unplayable JRPG but the Commodore 64 episode was just embarassing – they literally knew nothing about it, apart from “Erm, it was popular in Europe”.

By: Scandalon

Scandalon — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:40:06 +0000

That was supposed to be a quote. I’m in Eastern Europe just for referance.

By: Scandalon

Scandalon — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:38:51 +0000

I’m in Eastern Europe just for referance.

And that’s it, exactly. If you are a (North?) American male between a certain age (say, 25-35. ish) then if you didn’t have an NES, you had a Genesis, or at least 9/10 of the rest of your friends/schoolmates/peers did. That’s a large part of what you did when you spent the night at a friend’s house or had an overnight birthday: After the swimming/trampoline/running around outside, you’a rent a movie that the parents might watch with you, and you’d rent a game along side it and stay up all night trying to beat it. Hopefully it was something good (Contra!) or at least different and more complex (Strider!) But even it weren’t, we’d barely know the difference. (Tiger Heli!))

By: Marar

Marar — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:36:43 +0000

“I chided them whenever they roll out a “everyone played Mario” riff… but that’s all I could do, because there wasn’t anything I could point them at”

Funny you should mention this… I never played Mario, in fact, most of the people I know never had. When I was young I had a Spectrum, then I moved on to a Pentium 1 and in the PC camp I stayed, never had a SNES, Sega, etc., and neither did most of the people I know. I’m in Eastern Europe just for referance.

I did however play most of the console stuff eventually many many years later via the miracle of emulation.

By: phuzz

phuzz — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:40:58 +0000

Question, do RPS’ers pronounce it Id (to rhyme with lid), or EyeDee software?

(From reading an About file from Doom or something, I seem to remember that the name refers to the psychological concept, the id, and the ego and super ego [I think], and so is pronounced Id, but what do I know eh? EH?)

By: phlebas

phlebas — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:23:08 +0000

I’m about a hundred pages in so far and enjoying it, though the focus is mostly more on industry than medium so far – hoping it swings the other way later.

By: Clovis

Clovis — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:50:01 +0000

Oh boy! Fancy RPS highlighted comments are back! Now I can scroll past the comments of all the other losers!

By: oceanclub

oceanclub — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 10:12:55 +0000

“But I’m afraid it’s the ’speed’ thing that makes me feel uncomfortable. ”

Er, jigsaw puzzle competitions are based on speed, but it doesn’t stop the jigsaw being a puzzle.

Problem: You’re thinking too much. Solution: Have a beer.

By: Cunzy1 1

Cunzy1 1 — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 10:11:31 +0000

There are shit loads of video game books out all of a sudden. I remember doing an Amazon search a couple of years ago and only getting Trigger Happy, Julian Dibbell’s rape book and that awful one by the Triforce that missed out a bunch of games cause they couldn’t get the rights to reproduce stuff.

Just saying.