Moderator: JC Denton
by icycalm » 01 Aug 2013 23:04
by icycalm » 01 Aug 2013 23:21
Surth wrote:Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present Alex Paynegaard. The internet's finest, with the biggest artfagot bodycount ever. Dearest guests, prepare to die.
----
"The artfagot-brigade was closing in. I could hear the sirens. Their wail was a crescendo."
"Collecting evidence had gotten old a few hundred bans back. I was already so far past the point-of-no-return I couldn't remember what it had looked like when I had passed it." -- on banning some random schmoe.
"The word was out. A deadly virus released into the Net's corrupt circulatory system. Something wicked this way comes. Alex Paynegaard at large." -- on the release of orgyofthewill.net
"He was trying to buy more sand for his hour glass. I wasn't selling any." -- on banning some random schmoe.
"Phil Fish turned out to be another cardboard cut-out indiebum. A retard on the take. A cowardly right-hand man fleeing from the scene, leaving his paid thugs to do his dirty work." -- on Phil Fish leaving games.
"In the century of the blind, the one-eyed man was king." -- on Jean Baudrillard.
"Hacking through Fish's computer would have unearthed files of terrible sprite-art, strategies for world domination, bungled code, atrocious concept art, Internet porno, all of the above. Take your pick, I really didn't care anymore. [Shoots the computer, breaking it] I had seen too much of it already." -- On hacking Phil Fish's computer.
"Like always, the dead had all the answers I was missing. It wasn't that they weren't eager to talk; quite the contrary, the dead had plenty to say and once they started, they would never shut up. Their words would keep you awake at night." -- on reading Nietzsche for the first time.
"One thing left to do. I was compelled to give Jesper Juul his theory back. One bungled idea at a time." -- on ripping Jesper Juul's theory a new one.
BUT ALEX PAYNEGAARDS JOURNEY INTO THE NIGHT WILL CONTINUE.
by icycalm » 18 Aug 2013 07:27
by icycalm » 17 Sep 2013 01:14
Trar wrote:do you agree that this song is similar in tone and feel to reading zirbas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpYpDPSyLJQ
by icycalm » 21 Oct 2013 20:22
Anonymous wrote:The probability of a thread or post getting deleted is inversely proportional to its offensiveness/stupidity/general shittiness.
The fastest janitor action I've witnessed is an icycalm thread getting deleted in under 10 minutes, even though it was on-topic and broke no rules. But the daily copypasta troll spam gets left alone.
by icycalm » 25 Oct 2013 15:41
Cassandramewn wrote:lmao an icycalm magic the gathering card now i've seen everything
Luke Plunkett wrote:Gabe Newell, EA And...Kotaku Are Now Magic Card Characters
There's a custom Magic Card collection called The Indie Custom Cube. It features cards representing some of the world's most famous developers, companies, games and other assorted characters, including Gabe Newell, Notch, Electronic Arts, Phil Fish and Charles Barkley.
It is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.
Seems it was playtested during GDC earlier this year, but has just been made available for everyone to try out. In other words, it's not just funny, it actually works.
Some of these, you might not get, as you may not be a struggling independent games developer. Others speak the universal language of lulz.
You can check 'em out (and print them out) at the link below.
Indie Custom Cube [Site, via IndieGames]
by recoil » 25 Oct 2013 19:14
by icycalm » 26 Oct 2013 16:07
CaptPic4rd wrote:He has four books, dozens of reviews, dozens of articles, and he has an eight year old website where hundreds of people pay 40 bucks a year to view his writing and hang out with him. He is not a troll. You have some unfathomable problem with his writing style, I can only assume because his existence threatens you; you were hoping to be the guy that tied game design theory together and now you're faced with a genius that has already done more than you will ever accomplish in the field. You can either man up and learn from him, and become a better person. Or go back under your rock with the other indie game designers and scribble your little writings and slap each other on the back for being so smart and pretend Kierkegaard doesn't exist.
by icycalm » 03 Nov 2013 19:50
by icycalm » 29 Nov 2013 03:45
Anonymous wrote:>>220095923
>someone please post "On the Genealogy of Art Games" by icycalm/Alex Kierkegaard/Anthony Zirbas/whomever
His best article ever written. Way more insight in each single word than in the entire Insert Credit video catalog.
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_the_ge ... art_games/
by icycalm » 12 Dec 2013 08:22
DJ Orwell wrote:>>222253975
In other words, Baudrillard is speaking of games without main menus and without pause screens; traditional games, pre-videogames. The main menus and pause screens are a form of compromise — the pause screen a compromise with interfering reality, the main menu a compromise between the player and the creator's definitive vision of how a game ought be played.
DJ Orwell wrote:>>222254829
Baudrillard is dead, idiot.
Nonetheless more alive than you could ever be.
DJ Orwell wrote:"The gamer thus plays for the charm of the game, its seductiveness, and as such embraces repeatedly the catastrophe of losing the game."
I love how a sociology professor is more of an eloquent and articulate hardcore gamer than any of the retards who spend their entire daily existences on /v/.
Most "gamers" today cannot fathom "embracing repeatedly the catastrophe of losing the game", and hence the profusion of credit-feeding and easier-than-easy modes.
by icycalm » 21 Dec 2013 13:47
Herr Surth wrote:A sketch of digital demonstrations through the lens of gift exchange.
[...] But first, we must theorize the concept of demonstrations and protests. How does a protest function, how does it 'work'? I will briefly outline a sketch of a theory of demonstration on the basis of gift exchange.
Protest and demonstration can be understood most easily through the concept of gift exchange in Bataille's anthropology, as appropriated by Baudrillard in Symbolic Exchange and Death1: Aristocracy – power –, it is argued therein, shows itself through expenditure, through waste, through excess. It must be noted that, while Symbolic Exchange and Death constructs most explicitly on the basis of Bataille, on the whole Nietzsche is a more sustained and permanent influence on the thought of Baudrillard; and indeed, traces of Nietzsche's thought can be found within this analysis of aristocracy – which Nietzsche sees as [...] (Albert Camus, a keen reader of Nietzsche, though much more of a moralist than either Baudrillard or Nietzsche, notes that the latter's concept of aristocracy is one of duty, not of privilege – i.e. one of giving, not of taking.)
Power, so says the hypothesis, shows itself through expenditure and waste. Expenditure and waste has to be seen as a sign – a sign that signifies identity. "I am the kind of person who can afford to be wasteful." Wasting money for a useless gadget points to the fact that one has so much more money to spend.
Protests and demonstrations, then, are never principally a demonstration for or against something – they are a demonstration of – of power. The demonstrating masses communicate an identity: "We are the kind of people who are willing to 'waste' our time [and, if the opposing regime uses violence, willing to waste our lives] here on the streets." This signifier, suspended invisibly in the air, is supposed to say that We have so much more time [so many more lives] to spend – violently if necessary. The masses signify that they are willing to 'storm the palace' without actually storming the palace. Give in, or else... One can, indeed, read the nuclear bombs dropped upon Japan during the Second World War in much of the same way, as Dr. Gerry Coulter has, noting that the Allied represented themselves as the greater evil.2 We are the kind of people who are willing to lay waste to your cities, the Allied signified. Surrender, or else...
The total and utter failure of most contemporary protests can now be dissected; it comes down to two simple reasons.
One, many demonstrations explicitly disavow violence, as e.g. the Occupy movement does, thereby removing any trace of the threat. The signifier is devoid of meaning, a free-floating sign. It is still there – the people are occupying the street – but that which is supposed to be signified – the possibility of action, of violence, the self-identification of someone who is willing to be violent – is stricken. "We are the ones who are willing to waste our time." Okay, then what? I am not saying that the Occupy movement should have been violent – but it certainly should have signified a willingness to be. Instead, there was no threat at all. Give in, or we will vote for Obama again? Who will feel threatened by that?
Two, an obvious point: Demonstrations within the digital simply are not wasteful enough. The price to pay for a digital protest is about two seconds of your time. Within the digital, then, the whole logic of the gift is rendered impossible. Buying you a DVD set for your birthday feels meaningful because it is implied that I spent money on it, that I wasted for you. Copying the data onto your computer results in no loss for me and hence doesn't feel as purposeful. (And therefore the mixtape, the personalized curation of art so as to say: I did not spend money on this music, but I did spend time handcrafting this selection.) But within the digital process, no time is consumed, and so the "efficiency" of a digitally-networked protest is paradoxically the cause of the protest's ineffectiveness.
1 See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/baudrillard/#2
2 "Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you," then, does not mean that one should avoid battling monsters at all costs, but that one should first be willing to become the bigger monster.
Herr Surth wrote:Short thought of the day: on themes
This misconception continues to puzzle me: that when talking about movies, or literature, or video games – Art, in short – a work is often said to deal with a certain theme or topic. But there is a difference between merely evoking or referencing a theme and actually dealing with, that is, having to say something about it. My issue, to be perfectly clear, is not with the word theme, but with potential verbs preceding it: For a work of Art to have, to possess a theme, it is enough to show, to reference. For a work of Art to deal with or to explore a theme, it needs to do more than that.
Of course, whether a work of Art needs to deal with – or even evoke – a certain theme in the first place, this is too rarely questioned. The joy of aesthetics, it seems, has been lost in our desperate, futile search for meaning.
by icycalm » 04 Jan 2014 22:33
by icycalm » 29 Jan 2014 10:08
justjustin wrote:Sure, if this game is as ambitious and extreme as his videogame theory I'd love to play this game someday.
His videogame theory is very forward-thinking and broadened my understanding of them. It was in his writing that I first encountered the idea that all videogames are simulation-- virtual microcosms based on our mathematical understanding and observation of our world-- and that their primary purpose is not necessarily fun or challenge but immersion, which can happen any number of ways. Like any other art, videogames are abstractions of reality. Sounds like a versatile theory to me.
He's the guy on a crusade to tear down the wall between mechanics and aesthetics; "gameplay," story and graphics-- there's no real barrier between them. Even cutscenes and QTEs, the long-standing whipping boy of videogames, are not something to be vilified by their nature. Story or loss of interactivity does not necessarily detract from the experience. Graphics are inseparable from the mechanics they simulate. He theories in practice give every game the benefit of the doubt.
I don't know why some people think his ideas about videogames are narrow. They strike me as very open minded and are valuable to grasp if you like to think about the nature of videogames. His ideas about what makes a game art are liberating and practical; not entrenched in hidden meaning, budget, theme or artists' identities/authority.
Whether or not you disagree with these ideas, you'll have at least stretched your thinking and left your comfort zone to get where he's coming from. As with all extreme ideas, they take a great deal of empathy to comprehend. Consequently, his ideas are hard to take out of context.
It would be great if he could help develop a game that represents his fundamental ideas about games, and it doesn't surprise me that he lists Far Cry 2 and Deus Ex as influences.
by icycalm » 01 Feb 2014 20:31
Teufel_in_Blau wrote:I will not white knight for him. Icy is using a replay from zakk in his Ketsui review. I still have it on my HDD because it is so awesome. Not a perfect 1cc but you could see how he fought during this run. Made me fall in love with Ketsui (thanks, zakk). Anyway, did you read the thread? He was attacked and laughed at from the very beginning. I think he really lost it when some people that he actually liked started making fun of him. I'm sorry, but all I see is somebody that got gangbanged and snapped.
/e
The Ketsui thing looks now out of place. I meant that he wouldn't have used his replay and upload it to his side if he didn't like zakk. I think he really liked this forum but he didn't got that out of it what he expected and went crazy. There was probably a lot more shit going on in his personal life too but whatever.
by icycalm » 02 Feb 2014 21:50
BareknuckleRoo wrote:And then Gus counterstopped & 1cc'd Futari Ultra on a non-tated CRT with a 360 pad.
ArrogantBastard wrote:MrMonkeyMan 2-ALL'ed Ketsui on Saturn pad and 14" CRT if I remember correctly.
Ruldra wrote:And Prometheus 2-ALL'ed DDP on a keyboard. However, they are all exceptions that prove the rule, of course :roll:
That's an incredibly convenient way to never be wrong about anything. Whenever you're proven wrong, just say it's the exception to the rule.
icycalm wrote:Ghegs wrote:SnapDragon, the guy who won the official US Ikaruga competition used a bog-standard GameCube pad. Boggles the mind, but it's proof that your controller is less important than how comfortable you are with it.
I think you have it the other way around. An exception doesn't prove that the rule is wrong -- it proves that it's correct. Perhaps SnapDragon should go into the Guinness Book of Records, along with all the other exceptions.
by icycalm » 04 Feb 2014 00:37
Valkyrie-Favor wrote:culture.vg organizes its latest content by category on the left, with a small column for moneymakers (books) on the right. Below that are pictures that just fill up space - games the writers are now playing, apparently. The real draw here is the top bar, emphasizing the timelessness, organization, and cohesion of icycalm's articles. Rather than reporting on random games past and present, he wants you to grok his approach to game criticism. There's even a "read.me" pull down menu indicating where to start before you peruse the rest of the site!
by icycalm » 04 Feb 2014 06:01
by icycalm » 04 Feb 2014 17:35
by icycalm » 04 Feb 2014 20:31
by icycalm » 04 Feb 2014 23:51
DMC wrote:Simple advice to any writer: Temporarily shift to times new roman font, 12pts, double space, regular margins. If a paragraph exceeds a full page it is probably too long and should be shortened. Icycalms' are 3 pages.
by icycalm » 05 Feb 2014 23:05
austere wrote:I really wish he'd stop being an asshole