Moderator: JC Denton
by icycalm » 08 May 2009 18:35
Rat wrote:But then you go and insult arcade games, compare competitive players to Enron criminals, and take shots at Halo. I find your suggestion that Mario creates better human beings to be laughable, but that is a probably a more deep-seated philosophical difference.
I like the layout of your site, though!
Rat wrote:Anyway, of course my GSW comment was reactive–it’s a response. My criticisms are harsh but correct:
You do not understand that expert gamers are the only ones who can offer useful advice about how to improve a series. Who else COULD be qualified? What does it matter if newcomers can’t understand these deeper, more complex games? The old ones haven’t vanished; they can still go play those; they’re not being excluded from anything. Of course it matters to the developers, who want to make money–and this is understandable. But it is an unfortunate financial necessity that games have to retrogress and rehash and simplify in order to expand their audience. It’s not the way to make better games.
You claim that few games have a constant learning curve like Mario 64, but you’re confusing “learning curve” with “variety of actions.” Yes, Mario 64 introduces many new stages and obstacles–unlike, say a fighting game–but the fighting game have much more complex ruleset and greater room for improvement as a result of it.
There is nothing subtle about your Enron/chickens comparison. You make the ridiculous assertion that players want to improve their skill “regardless of whether or not [they] enjoy it,” which shows nothing but ignorance of how competitive players think. I wonder if you think the same about competitive basketball players or Chess players. Could it be that they derive pleasure from MASTERY OF THE GAME, considering that overcoming a CHALLENGE is the entire point of playing a game in the first place? No, they must all be secretly miserable on the inside. Furthermore, you conflate using cheating with programs outside the game with expert knowledge of tricks and exploits within the game. You denigrate all competitors as trash-talking sociopaths-in-training. If you had experience with high-level players in any tournment, you wouldn’t make such absurd claims.
Regardless of your age and the games you may have played, you have nothing but snide for arcade game design (Limited lives? Pah!) and players who would rather improve their skills and avoid filler, instead of backtracking through levels, enjoying the “immersion,” and having to design their own challenges.
You may know a lot about video game history, but your comments about design are way off the mark. Hopefully someone at GSW will read my comment and filter your presentation accordingly.
For starters, you should read this:
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/mini-game ... or_morons/
by icycalm » 10 May 2009 16:29
pence wrote:Don't do it! I got a thread about insomnia locked for starting it with a link.
by icycalm » 20 May 2009 20:22
by icycalm » 24 May 2009 21:40
by icycalm » 31 May 2009 16:20
MrPopo wrote:This guys ego is so big it actually crashed my browser with an out of memory error. Does he seriously compare his video game reviews with the literary reviews of George Orwell? I've seen some "OH MY GOD! WHY CAN'T YOU FOOLS SEE MY GREATNESS!!" Rants before, but this one should win a prize.
by icycalm » 01 Jun 2009 14:25
SheC wrote:Videogame PR and news explained far better and earlier here.
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/the_video ... ws_racket/
Lewis wrote:Only it’s not good at all, is it? It’s immature, overly general, insubstantiated nonsense that tarrs everyone in the press with the same ugly brush. It also, on a basic level, simply regularly lies.
I agree that there is a problem with the current state of reporting within the videogame press. Absolutely. I think it has to acknowledge a real responsibility towards its readership first and foremost, and learn not to play up to the demands of publisher PR. It should certainly be more independent and analytical. But to accuse it - yet again - of corruption is terribly offensive to the people who dedicate their professional lives to this sort of stuff. And to attack reporters on a personal level, which the article does, is the worst possible reporting you can get.
It’s right about having game pages up even if there’s very little information available on the game, I’ll give it that much. I hardly think that’s the biggest problem, though.
EDIT: That guy’s most recent post refers to people who don’t like scores on reviews as “pseudo-intellectuals or artfags.” That’s the level we’re dealing with. Versus Leigh Alexander, one of the most highly respected - for a reason - videogame reporters in the world. Come on.
James T wrote:Oh look, an “is it”…
He has some awful, infantile rhetorical habits, but he’s right. “Accusing it yet again of corruption”? He’s aptly describing the funding model of corporate gaming sites and the shallowness of Kotaku-scale blogs. It’s systemic corruption — it’s market failure, it’s system failure. There’s no “envelopes of cash are being exchanged under a table” here. (And the article’s not reportage. And “the worst possible reporting” is… well, the worst possible reporting is what he’s writing about, not what he’s written).
Lewis wrote:It accuses the press of corruption in a more systemic sense, like you said, but the implications are still there. “The press only care about readership figures and will do anything to increase them” is the basic argument, and it’s not one I like at all.
Lewis wrote:And yeah, probably, what he’s writing about is pretty awful reporting. But he’s assuming that’s widespread, general practice, which from my experience it really, really is not. Even if it was, his infantile, personally-abusive manner immediately turns me against him. Not fond at all.
by Bradford » 01 Jun 2009 22:14
Lewis wrote:to accuse [the games journalism industry] of corruption is terribly offensive to the people who dedicate their professional lives to this sort of stuff.
Lewis wrote:And yeah, probably, what he’s writing about is pretty awful reporting. But he’s assuming that’s widespread, general practice, which from my experience it really, really is not. Even if it was, his infantile, personally-abusive manner immediately turns me against him.
by icycalm » 04 Jun 2009 19:20
but I will say that I lean towards the idea that the self is vague in space and time
The idea of an online identity isn't new, of course, but it's philosophical implications have never been fully spelled out in realtion to Personal Identity, as far as I'm aware.
After all, the blog is mine and no one is telling me I have to write it in any specific way. Still, I realize now that some people actually, occasionally read it, and on those grounds I feel I have some sort of obligation to my fellow humans to make it more coherent than I ordinarily make it.
An ad hominem battle almost never gets people anywhere.
At first I thought that Alex Kierkegaard (AK) might be able to teach me something, but after reading his article on games and art I realize that he simply didn't do his research.
It's not my intention to denigrate what others have done or written (despite the fact that AK specifically attacked what I'd written),
but I'm assuming Insomnia has a decent amount of readers. And if those readers haven't studied enough philosophy to understand AK's philosophical blunders concerning games and art, then I'm here to set them straight.
Here's just one example of a game journalist who fatuously praised AK. The journalist, Cole Stryker, even titled his article "People Who Get It." Now this is what scares me, and this is the main reason I'm writing this. AK's games and art article would have been ripped apart had he turned it in to any philosophy teacher, but it's apparently praiseworthy by an uninformed game journalist.
Again, I'm not attacking the journalist, I'm not attacking AK. I'm just writing this in the hopes that someone out there will be led to this blog, hopefully emerging with a deeper appreciation of the issues surrounding games and art.
AK makes heavy use of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus in AK's games and art article on Insomnia, quoting from it heavily. AK's main point seems to be that to ask whether games are art doesn't make sense. As he puts it: "The question 'Can games be art?' is nonsensical, and therefore any answer one might come up with for it will also be nonsensical. Put another way: the question is not a question and the answer is not an answer." AK goes on to discuss Wittgenstein himself:
"Now I have explained here the problem with the word 'art' in very plain and crude terms, but those of you who are still puzzled by it should realize that for many centuries it used to be a philosophical problem of the first order, until it was effectively dealt with by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, one of the most important philosophical works of the twentieth century..."
Anyone who's studied Wittgenstein in detail, or anyone who respects the philosophical tradition, will see problems with this right away. To say that Wittgenstein "solved" the problems with the term "art" is to ignore the natural disagreements among philosophers and to ignore Wittgenstein's own thoughts on the Tractatus later on in his life.
In his introduction to Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein writes "I have been forced to admit grave mistakes in what I wrote in that first book" (p. vi).
What AK doesn't appreciate about the Tractatus is that Wittgenstein was not just trying to condemn aesthetics and claims about "art" as nonsense; he was trying to condemn all of philosophy!
As Bertrand Russell notes in his original introduction: "The inexpressible contains, according to Mr. Wittgenstein, the whole of logic and philosophy" (p. XXXII).
What's worse, trying to discuss Wittgenstein's theory at all is meaningless according to the theory.
As Russell notes: "... the things that have to be said in leading the reader to understand Mr. Wittgenstein's theory are all of them things which that theory itself condemns as meaningless" (p. XXIII).
So, this is exactly what a clever philosophy professor would have written on AK's article had he turned it in as an assignment: "99% of this paper is nonsensical." Why? Because, according to Wittgenstein's theory, writing about why nonsensical things are nonsensical is itself nonsensical! And this is just what AK has done.
Furthermore, it might be worthwhile for AK to note that postmodernist writers like Jean Baudrillard take the cake for nonsensibility in a Wittgensteinian sense
My advice for AK is to take a look at Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. In my view, it's a much more mature and practical book than the Tractatus.
Moreover, one postmodernist (Lyotard) even uses Wittgenstein's idea of a "language game" (discussed in Philosophical Investigations) as a springboard for postmodernist thought.
I haven't really studied Wittgenstein since my undergrad days and delving into his ideas again makes me realize why I found him so interesting then and now.
Also, despite the philosophical problems, AK has brought back to my consciousness one of my own criticisms of aesthetics when I first began to study it: what's the damn point? Why worry about whether this or that is or isn't art? What is art?
by icycalm » 04 Jun 2009 19:37
by icycalm » 08 Jun 2009 00:29
by icycalm » 09 Jun 2009 18:33
by icycalm » 11 Jun 2009 19:47
by icycalm » 12 Jun 2009 23:32
by icycalm » 13 Jun 2009 00:02
Anonymous wrote:And I don't hate you at all, I simply love video games.
Anonymous wrote:In any event, Alex Kierkegaard is the future of video-game philosophy, theory, and discussion, and if you can't see that then you don't deserve to.
Pseudo-philosopher wrote:So what am I saying? I'm saying, research things for yourself! When AK interprets Wittgenstein or Baudrillard, CHECK TO SEE IF HIS INTERPRETATION IS CORRECT. Check the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, check with other philosophers, read Wittgenstein or Baudrillard, have a discussion about it with friends!