I'm With Stupid wrote:

Mazille wrote:The esports thing is getting really big everywhere else too, IWS. I'm not sure about adoring female fans, but in the big tournaments those kids can bag prize money that counts in the millions of Dollars or Euros.

Yeah, but who's watching it? Personally, I can't think of anything more boring than watching someone else play a computer game. Even my friends, in the same room. Obviously it depends on the game, but I just don't think it's a good spectator sport. I think part of it is that when you watch proper sports (or even something like a circus), there's an intuitive knowledge of how difficult it is to do some of the things they do. I don't need to have tried gymnastics to be amazed by it. With computer games, I have no idea whether something is impressive or not, without first needing an intimate knowledge of the physics of the game they happen to be playing. Incidentally, this is not the case with physical games like dancing games, etc. I can be just as impressed by someone who's amazing at Dance Dance Revolution (showing my age) as someone who's good at football.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JzcqALklRs

In principle, esports are no different from any other sport/activity. No doubt, if one does not understand rules and mechanics, if one does not recognize skill or depth, one can hardly enjoy spectating, which is why I do not watch cricket for example. I got used to watching baseball though and I can appreciate it.

So yes and no. What you call "intuitive knowledge" certainly plays huge role and since video games are by their nature virtual - do not necessarily obey/mimic laws of the world as we know it - the lack of such knowledge is limiting factor. On the other hand, there are people who like to watch others playing - be it for exceptional performance or just for fun - and their base is growing. Think of twitchers or youtubers.

I like to watch others playing on occasions. Especially if I can take part, compare results, being ridiculed and praised, have debate, etc. LAN parties FTW! That I need to understand what is going on goes without saying.

VazScep wrote:"Dastardly Achievement: Place a hogtied woman on the train tracks, and witness her death by train."

The woman in question is a carefully modelled female in her underwear propositioning you the whole time for sex.

Almost all modern computer games are fucking retarded. That's why there's a stigma. They need to grow the fuck up, and "gritty violence and tits" isn't a step-up from the adolescence of Duke Nukem (which I fucking loved, btw).

No, she wasn't. And if you look at the game which that achievement relates to, it's not quite as random as you imply.

Beyond that, gaming is too popular these days for there to be a stigma.

Mazille wrote:Well, I guess this is how you fuck up a supposedly humorous homage to early silent films. Stupid and silly, yes, and surely far from what the medium can and has achieved in other games. Play Papers, Please, please (heh) and tell me again how all games are immature and fucking retarded.

I've played several art games, my favourite being Jason Rohrer's Gravitation (Passage didn't really speak to me). Jason Rohrer isn't a retard and doesn't make retarded games, but hardly anyone has heard of him either.

VazScep wrote:

Mazille wrote:Well, I guess this is how you fuck up a supposedly humorous homage to early silent films. Stupid and silly, yes, and surely far from what the medium can and has achieved in other games. Play Papers, Please, please (heh) and tell me again how all games are immature and fucking retarded.

I've played several art games, my favourite being Jason Rohrer's Gravitation (Passage didn't really speak to me). Jason Rohrer isn't a retard and doesn't make retarded games, but hardly anyone has heard of him either.

Perhaps Jason Rohrer is Ingmar Bergman of video games. Why Bergman is known and Rohrer is not is one of the reasons why we are having this discussion.

'Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over.

I often say I’m a video game culture writer, but lately I don’t know exactly what that means. ‘Game culture’ as we know it is kind of embarrassing -- it’s not even culture. It’s buying things, spackling over memes and in-jokes repeatedly, and it’s getting mad on the internet.

It’s young men queuing with plush mushroom hats and backpacks and jutting promo poster rolls. Queuing passionately for hours, at events around the world, to see the things that marketers want them to see. To find out whether they should buy things or not. They don’t know how to dress or behave. Television cameras pan across these listless queues, and often catch the expressions of people who don’t quite know why they themselves are standing there.

[snip]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/2244 ... e_over.php

---

There's a lot of mention, in comments, about Anita Sarkeesian (cross reference to RS thread: Misogyny and video game culture), which is someone, for reasons probably not on-topic(?), largely unknown persona around here but might be of interests to others.

To the point of the rant/article, if I understand it correctly: Was it not inevitable?

tuco wrote:'Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over.

I often say I’m a video game culture writer, but lately I don’t know exactly what that means. ‘Game culture’ as we know it is kind of embarrassing -- it’s not even culture. It’s buying things, spackling over memes and in-jokes repeatedly, and it’s getting mad on the internet.

It’s young men queuing with plush mushroom hats and backpacks and jutting promo poster rolls. Queuing passionately for hours, at events around the world, to see the things that marketers want them to see. To find out whether they should buy things or not. They don’t know how to dress or behave. Television cameras pan across these listless queues, and often catch the expressions of people who don’t quite know why they themselves are standing there.

[snip]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/2244 ... e_over.php

(...)
To the point of the rant/article, if I understand it correctly: Was it not inevitable?

A bit elitist - "I have evolved, but the great unwashed hordes haven't" - but, yes, games are evolving, and if there ever was a homogenous gamer culture, it see more diversity now. The sentiments of the author is still those of those who think the literature they prefer is better than the cheap novels other read, or the art music they listen to is better than the latest hit. And speaking of music: "gamer culture" has manifested itself in at least one way that has gained some appreciation outside of the immediate hobby circles.

tuco wrote:Misogyny and video game culture

Full disclosure: my admittedly ignorant comment about Red Dead Redeption was based on her latest video. I tune out her (IMO, vapid) feminist theorising. The game clips she shows speak for themselves.

I'm not going to go hunting for examples, since I largely gave up on (commercial) games a long time ago. The other day, I saw a trailer for the XBOX 360, all of whose games are adolescent crap about killing the shit out of people. I like the odd bit of adolescent crap, but it is massively overrepresented in video games, and I expect it to be fairly stigmatised by culture critics.

VazScep wrote:

tuco wrote:Misogyny and video game culture

Full disclosure: my admittedly ignorant comment about Red Dead Redeption was based on her latest video. I tune out her (IMO, vapid) feminist theorising. The game clips she shows speak for themselves.

I'm not going to go hunting for examples, since I largely gave up on (commercial) games a long time ago. The other day, I saw a trailer for the XBOX 360, all of whose games are adolescent crap about killing the shit out of people. I like the odd bit of adolescent crap, but it is massively overrepresented in video games, and I expect it to be fairly stigmatised by culture critics.

Nitpick: The trailer you saw was for the Xbox One.

I like to strike a balance between playing the bigger, high-budget budget stuff and the smaller games produced by a few individuals. So, I enjoyed playing Watch Dogs, much as I enjoyed Gone Home. But I think the best games are those which manage to take the enormous budget of the former and combine it with the thoughtfulness of the latter. That's admittedly not as common as it should be, but it's not unheard of. Some games like this which come to mind are Deus Ex (plus Human Revolution), BioShock (plus Infinite) and even Red Dead Redemption. Unfortunately, when they're being advertised on television, they need to make an "impact", and so the subtler parts of them are elided. Take this as an example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvrnUcB8ZJc

Tracer Tong wrote:Nitpick: The trailer you saw was for the Xbox One.

I like to strike a balance between playing the bigger, high-budget budget stuff and the smaller games produced by a few individuals. So, I enjoyed playing Watch Dogs, much as I enjoyed Gone Home. But I think the best games are those which manage to take the enormous budget of the former and combine it with the thoughtfulness of the latter. That's admittedly not as common as it should be, but it's not unheard of. Some games like this which come to mind are Deus Ex (plus Human Revolution), BioShock (plus Infinite) and even Red Dead Redemption.

You know I won't have a bad word said against Deus Ex, but it's still a first-person shooter with a body-count higher than a season of 24. This is fine, and I am not ashamed of my love of Jack Bauer, but if this is the sort of thing that's being held up as an example of thoughtfulness, I can see why there would be stigma attached to it from the perspective of high falutin critics. Bioshock: Infinite might be great, but the fact that they could even compile the trailer you showed makes it clear that we're still pandering to an adolescent demographic. You couldn't make that trailer with a game like "Gone Home."

What are computer games anyway? The kids playing multiplayer Call-of-Duty-4 are basically just playing a competitive sport. That's a huge chunk of today's gaming. With Dota, it's become a spectator sport, with million dollar prizes, celebrity players, adoring fans and professional commentators. Fair play to them! It'll be stigmatised for not being based around physical exertion, but then, darts and snooker get some of that.

Then you have casual games which are competing with crossword puzzles and suduko and which you play on your mobile phone. There's no stigma against these, because no-one thinks of them as anything other than silly distracting puzzles to solve on the bus.

If these become the standard examples of gaming, that'll get rid of the stigma, I reckon. But the games advertising themselves like movies, as if they can slot in easily as another narrative art, they'll be looked at with scrutiny. And when they only seem to imitate action movies, which they overwhelming do, they'll only generate scepticism about their artistic potential. There's a conflict explored by Jonathan Blow (of Braid fame) here.

I still hope it's a problem with the fact that game companies are just way too big to take any risks. I was never able to fathom why, for instance, computer games took so long to hit upon survival horror, and why they insisted on fucking up so badly with nonsense such as "FEAR", a game which breaks the first rule of horror, by making the protagonist the most badass motherfucker on the planet. The complete failure of the games industry to deliver this sort of game had me thinking that there was just something fundamentally impossible about it. But no. Dark Descent demonstrated conclusively that gaming can deliver scares that make any horror movie you care to name about as unnerving as an episode of Sesame Street. Now, they're going to be jumping on the bandwagon.

Unfortunately, when they're being advertised on television, they need to make an "impact", and so the subtler parts of them are elided. Take this as an example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvrnUcB8ZJc

I've seen short youtube reviews that make this game far far more appealing. That said, I wasn't taken by the first one. I was pretty bored after my tenth or twentieth gun fight and gave up.

VazScep wrote:

Tracer Tong wrote:Nitpick: The trailer you saw was for the Xbox One.

I like to strike a balance between playing the bigger, high-budget budget stuff and the smaller games produced by a few individuals. So, I enjoyed playing Watch Dogs, much as I enjoyed Gone Home. But I think the best games are those which manage to take the enormous budget of the former and combine it with the thoughtfulness of the latter. That's admittedly not as common as it should be, but it's not unheard of. Some games like this which come to mind are Deus Ex (plus Human Revolution), BioShock (plus Infinite) and even Red Dead Redemption.

You know I won't have a bad word said against Deus Ex, but it's still a first-person shooter with a body-count higher than a season of 24. This is fine, and I am not ashamed of my love of Jack Bauer, but if this is the sort of thing that's being held up as an example of thoughtfulness, I can see why there would be stigma attached to it from the perspective of high falutin critics.

Er, it is possible to avoid a great many fights in Deus Ex, especially in DX:HR, where there's the "Pacifist" achivement if you have avoided killing anyone save for the half dozen boss fights. My fave weapons are stun guns and tranquilizer darts, if plain old stealth and sneaking don't do the job.

I thought Deus Ex was famous for being a game that it's possible to complete without killing anyone? I didn't manage to do it myself though.

I'm With Stupid wrote:I thought Deus Ex was famous for being a game that it's possible to complete without killing anyone? I didn't manage to do it myself though.

It's called the Pacifist run. I don't think it's technically possible, because you have to kill a guy in a missile silo.

But it's a challenge that players impose on themselves. A challenge I prefer to impose on myself is completing the game using only melee weapons, which requires being quite pacifist anyway. Still, the easiest ways to complete it involve killing most of the bad guys.

Varangian wrote:Er, it is possible to avoid a great many fights in Deus Ex, especially in DX:HR, where there's the "Pacifist" achivement if you have avoided killing anyone save for the half dozen boss fights. My fave weapons are stun guns and tranquilizer darts, if plain old stealth and sneaking don't do the job.

I can probably get through the first episode of Doom with 1% kills. You're missing the point.

VazScep wrote:

Varangian wrote:Er, it is possible to avoid a great many fights in Deus Ex, especially in DX:HR, where there's the "Pacifist" achivement if you have avoided killing anyone save for the half dozen boss fights. My fave weapons are stun guns and tranquilizer darts, if plain old stealth and sneaking don't do the job.

I can probably get through the first episode of Doom with 1% kills. You're missing the point.

And I just pointed out that it is quite possible to finish DX:HR with a bodycount lower than a "24" episode. But, yes, as I enjoy stealth games, I find the lack of options in many shooters to limit my enjoyment. They aren't called "shooters" for nothing, though...

This is why video gamers are stigmatised ...

Hundreds of AAA and independent video game developers and publishers are signing an open letter to the gaming community to end hateful speech, harassment and make the community a more inclusive place to occupy.

From the letter.

We believe that everyone, no matter what gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or religion has the right to play games, criticize games and make games without getting harassed or threatened. It is the diversity of our community that allows games to flourish.

If you see threats of violence or harm in comments on Steam, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook or reddit, please take a minute to report them on the respective sites.

If you see hateful, harassing speech, take a public stand against it and make the gaming community a more enjoyable space to be in.

From the comment section.

Due to the tone of comments posted thus far, we've opted to close the thread for the time being. Please be respectful of one another.

http://ie.ign.com/articles/2014/09/02/h ... h-the-hate

Too many fucking arseholes in the gaming community. I know they're the vocal minority, but they really make gamers look like trash.

At least in online games, you can mute them.

The way I see it, Bioshock was only spiritual successor of System Shock because times have changed.

System Shock 2 was released around the same time as Counter-Strike was. In that time it took a night to download demo as 150Mb was just huge. In that time market was not saturated and marketing was not sophisticated. It was time of Jagged Alliance, Unreal, Baldurs Gate, Homeworld, The Longest Journey or Thief. It was time of discovering and setting standards for genres. In that time running 2 Voodoo cards at 1024 x 748 was not pixel hunting but technological wonder. It was time of geeks.

The problem with releasing "artistic" games is the same problem "artistic" movies have. If nobody will play it, little does it matter how "artistic" it is. As the market grows and as mainstream games follow the same formula as mainstream anything, I am lead to believe that there is room for diversification, room for artists to make art and living at the same time. In other words, times are not only different than before, times are better in my opinion - Indies, kickstarters or bunch of friends making a mobile game are the proof.

Even back in 99 System Shock 2 was highly acclaimed by critics but sales did not follow.

Animavore wrote:This is why video gamers are stigmatised ...

Hundreds of AAA and independent video game developers and publishers are signing an open letter to the gaming community to end hateful speech, harassment and make the community a more inclusive place to occupy.

From the letter.

We believe that everyone, no matter what gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or religion has the right to play games, criticize games and make games without getting harassed or threatened. It is the diversity of our community that allows games to flourish.

If you see threats of violence or harm in comments on Steam, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook or reddit, please take a minute to report them on the respective sites.

If you see hateful, harassing speech, take a public stand against it and make the gaming community a more enjoyable space to be in.

From the comment section.

Due to the tone of comments posted thus far, we've opted to close the thread for the time being. Please be respectful of one another.

http://ie.ign.com/articles/2014/09/02/h ... h-the-hate

Too many fucking arseholes in the gaming community. I know they're the vocal minority, but they really make gamers look like trash.

Shall I understand it that for example here there is less assholes, there is less hateful or harassing speech? Because I would say here is more.

Admittedly:

If you see threats of violence or harm in comments on Steam, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook or reddit, please take a minute to report them on the respective sites. - https://medium.com/@andreaszecher/open- ... 4511032e8a

besides refusing to report, I rarely read/see such comments.