Theory

[Jedah]

LOL! "Smart" spam engines and shit. That's how all this spam is circulated around the world...

[Bradford]

Hi X7, a Mr. Point just called for you, he says he's so sorry to hear that you're missing him so terribly. You two should probably try to get in touch.

[icycalm]

This guy will not leave me alone!

I never said this theory was mine. I learned it in university. It's pretty basic, too, doesn't make me an expert really, everyone with some understanding of linguistics knows about the necessity of consensus for communication.

HE LEARNED IT IN UNIVERSITY!

Here is conclusive proof that Baudrillard knew what he was talking about when he said that the university is dead. NOW IT'S TIME FOR ITS STUDENTS TO FOLLOW IT IN THE GRAVE, BUT WHO WILL RENDER US THIS SERVICE?

[icycalm]

Advance Wars is a tiny little strategy game that came out in September 2001, surprising everyone with its brand of modest but brilliant gameplay.

http://insomnia.ac/reviews/gba/advancewars/review.php

lol, I keep coming across these. I guess I wasn't always clever!

The review needs a total rewrite too.

[ExiledOne]

I came across one in particular which stood out for fairly obvious reasons: The videogame news racket. In the text, Kierkegaard systematically deconstructs the business of VG news as he sees it and, rather maliciously, states that the industry is broken and in dire need of repairs. I’m not usually a fan of disparaging anyone who doesn’t deserve it, but AK really has it coming. He accomplishes little more than proving himself to be a colossal asshole who possesses little understanding of how the larger world of business functions, particularly the business of the Internet. I’m no expert myself, but I know enough to be able to tell when someone is hiding a lack of knowledge behind colorful language.

http://gamesblog.ugo.com/index.php/game ... racket_eh/

[Evo]

From website linked in the article quoted above.

This article about German board games got me thinking: Are German video games generally more rules-based, as opposed to narrative-based, than games from other countries? Are they more purely games, as opposed to interactive entertainment?

http://www.nerve.com/CS/blogs/61fps/archive/2008/09/04/are-german-game-developers-more-strategy-minded.aspx

More gamey games strike again!

[Molloy]

I really hate the term interactive entertainment.

[JoshF]

http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/blog.php?b=3223

Kotaku gets punk'd by Cheap Ass Gamer. Apparently CAG had a contest to see who could come up with a rumor that would get picked up by other blogs.

http://kotaku.com/5052203/what-is-the-xbox-pure

UPDATE: It appears that this rumor story could be CAG throwing their credibility out the window as part of a contest. Kotaku''s decision to run rumors is always based on the credibility of the site and the information contained within it. In the past CAG has proven to be a reliable site, having broken a number of stories through apt reporting. It appears that may no longer be the case.

Anything for a page hit.

[Bigode]

http://www.kottke.org/08/09/ebert-pwns-bad-movie-fan

[icycalm]

Someone emailed me a link to this. I lolled pretty hard with the bolded parts:

Lately I have been reading the forums at insomnia.ac (just reading, not posting. I haven't stooped that low yet), and I have noticed that it seems the more important a specific issue is to each member, the more likely the thread will turn ugly. That's why in forums where I don't post the thing I look for first is a gaming related topic that obviously insults some people who have a certain mindset. Don't get me wrong- I don't want to find people posting things for shock value, or to force a wedge under everyone's nerves, I just love to see debates. It often produces clear images of each person's personality, and if that person is blowing steam without a point, I know what to expect from them from now on, while intelligent posters shine in the dark.

That's why I had field day when I found the "can games be art" thread and the "lol" thread on insomnia. Out of every three people, two of them make the admin look like an idiot, and the third follows him like a duckling. He handles it by banning anyone who brings logic into the conversation, which explains why every other poster on that site has "banned" under their name.

"Icycalm" as he calls himself, sees himself as a philosopher because he has read a couple of old books on the subject. He sees the gaming community as a mindless zombie that desperately needs guidence. See where I'm going with this? He wants to be a teacher. He wants to lead the intellectual crowd, which apparently is anyone who can hold an account on his site for more than a day. In reality, the people that defend him religiously are the antithesis of his kind. They are all folowers, and all the intelligent people are fighting his logic (and being banned for it), and the people who are really smart just avoid his type all together.

http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8172

[apprentice]

That was me. As I explained later on, I was on medication for a recent injury I had. I have negative feelings toward this site, but I had no idea how rediculously stupid I sounded when I posted that topic. I have already asked to have it locked/deleted.

Once again, very sorry for what I wrote.

[Recap]

The internet is amazing!

[Dale]

Once again, very sorry for what I wrote.

What you wrote sounds about right to me.

Icy you stand for a lot good things, have good points and do good reviews. But if you want people to support your causes you can't come off as condescending and cynical and almost every post you make on this and other forums, I really hope you don't treat people this way offline. Sure not every person is as knowledgeable as you at times, but that's no reason to go off on people about Grammar and not having knowledge on philosophy and not knowing certain things about the games or hardware. The people who accepted you on this forum aren't even enough to be called a following. The worst part is you could have so many more people educated if you just showed patience and understanding. You've lost so many great followers of your work because of your meanness. See ya around Icy, maybe in a few years you'll be doing better.

[mees]

Is icy even alive?

[Jedah]

Game Trailers trying to cover a game without knowing its true name:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/41229.html

[adrenalinq]

At first I just wowed when saw Ibara is coming to XBLA and loled after. They even fucked up with release platform!

[Jedah]

Yes it is hilarious. They claim that Cave is releasing Ibara on XBLA by showing a Daioujou X video, which is going to be released in NTSC/JP consoles only via retail. Another proof of how the mass media covers games. Big company paying for coverage: 100 videos of in-studio footage and interviews. Small company: they don't even know the title of the game....

[MAXCHAIN]

http://malstrom.50webs.com/washinghardcore2.htm

[icycalm]

Dumb & Gay:

I think there is a difference between memorizing something and figuring it out, and that difference is the crux of the matter. The problem with pure memorization comes when the player basically has figured something out but just can't get some bit of minutia squared away. Ikaruga, to use your example, i get and would love to just play using the mechanic, but the way the scoring and the stage design match up i feel like mastering the game is synonymous with playing exactly as the level designer intended. At that point, i'm not playing; the developer is, using me as a proxy.

It's also tied to the proportionality of the reward for success vs. the penalty for failure. We hardcore might understand the slog some games can be because we grew up in an era when that's all anyone knew how to make, but a normal person probably isn't going to see the barrel-throwing elephant as a worthwhile task if the penalty for a simple mistake is death, while the reward for success is getting to move a few inches forward before having to do it again. It's this sort of imbalance that often kills the player for a mistake that really isn't worth dying over, sending him back to a point where he has to go through stuff he's already gotten past. When you do that, you're effectively taking the player away from a challenge he may still be interested in and making him do a part he may have already mastered and may not find as interesting anymore. That's where repetition and tedium sets in, and it can erode whatever interest a player might have in that last challenge. Spread out over time, it can erode a player's interest in the game altogether.

So, yeah, figuring out the trick of a room can be engaging. The sticking point is how exacting the implementation of the solution is and what a pain in the ass it is to get the kinks worked out. From there i guess it's reflexes and all that, and therefore difficulty settings. Beyond it all though, it's a question of whether or not it's really worth denying the player the rest of the stage/game over one stupid part. I think that people who don't see how it's worth that get frustrated and quit while, frankly, everyone else simply hasn't thought about it because they're used to it.

http://forums.insertcredit.com/viewtopi ... 314#286314

This is more or less why I don't play videogames anymore.

http://forums.insertcredit.com/viewtopi ... 317#286317

Smart & Manly:

For people who haven't been gaming as long as we have, the difficulty comes from being forced to repeat things when their minds expect more dynamic situations. There's a lot to be said for the human mind expecting complexity and variation where there isn't any to be had. Even the same arpeggio played over and over on a keyboard -- the most linear of instruments -- you're going to fuck it up out of boredom unless you've been conditioned otherwise.

Two different ways to look at the same thing, I guess. I don't see it as "memorizing" a stage so much as "figuring it out" (though admittedly there's some memorization in there). Memorizing a stage doesn't necessarily mean being able to finish it, or in the case of score-based games like Ikaruga, play them "properly". You know that elephant is going to be there, and you know he's going to roll something at you that's probably going to drop you into the pit. Whether you find this gleefully challenging or infuriating and pointless depends on the player, but just knowing in advance what's going to happen doesn't automatically mean you're going to clear it. If anything, that's probably the problem right there. A lot of people say "Okay, I see the god damn fucking elephant and I get that I'm supposed to jump over the stupid barrels so he doesn't knock me into the motherfucking pit, can I just move past this so I can keep playing now?". And when the answer is "not until you beat it", they lose interest and go play something more forgiving.

Good example from MM9: In the second bit of Wiley's Castle, there's a room where a large plasma jet fires across the room and will nuke you instantly if you touch it. Eventually you figure out the Rush Coil and good timing is how you get past this; the next room has THREE large plasma jets that all fire arhythmically and are (apparently) impossible to Rush Coil past without getting fried. When I first went into that room, I thought "Okay, there has to actually be a way to do this...But how?" After staring at it for a couple minutes and playing with the room mechanics, I figured it out and got a little charge out of it when my theory worked. I'd figured out what I assume were the designers intentions, or (better!) figured out a way to circumvent them, and thus could move on. I didn't have to memorize the level to figure that part out, but once I knew the "trick" the room stopped being an obstacle and I was able to move on to the next thing.

And I absolutely know people who would have taken one look at that room, maybe tried it a couple times at best, and said "Fuck you, Capcom, this game is bullshit" and never played it again.

Some people (me) find this kind of gaming exciting, and some people find it horrendously boring and/or needlessly masochistic for comparatively little payoff -- see also: becoming good at Fighting Games, JRPG level/stat grinding, learning to play Danmaku titles, getting really good at Counter-Strike, anything involving a Blizzard product on anything besides an extremely casual level, and all the other things that people do in games where other people look at them and go "That looks like a lot of work for something really tedious and pointless".

And I'm like...Yeah? Isn't that almost the whole point? You're playing a videogame. It's not real. At the end of the day, one of the (one of the, not the only) reasons people play games is just to see if they can. There doesn't always have to be any ulterior motive besides that. Games can be productive and have a message and further the medium as art and all the other wankery that gets bandied about. They don't have to, though, really. And really I'd prefer it if some of them -- not all of them, I love me some Killer 7s and Shadow of the Colossusseses and Silent Hill 2s and Cosmology of Kyotos but some of them -- didn't.

I genuinely still like games like Mega Man.

And Bionic Commando Rearmed. Good times.

http://forums.insertcredit.com/viewtopi ... 312#286312

DeusJester, by the way, is the guy who wrote the Deus Ex, Half-Life and Star Ocean 2 reviews on this site, as well as a couple of nice commentaries. I really wish he would write more, but he recently got a job at Namco USA and they won't allow him to review new games. Hopefully he'll eventually come back with a few more reviews of classics.

[JoshF]

i feel like mastering the game is synonymous with playing exactly as the level designer intended. At that point, i'm not playing; the developer is, using me as a proxy.

lol

It's almost like there's some sort of design to the stages.

Also, I like how he's saying the game isn't complex enough while he can't jump a fucking barrel.

A lot of people say "Okay, I see the god damn fucking elephant and I get that I'm supposed to jump over the stupid barrels so he doesn't knock me into the motherfucking pit, can I just move past this so I can keep playing now?". And when the answer is "not until you beat it", they lose interest and go play something more forgiving.

:thumbsup:

[Cpt. Coin-op]

From MAXCHAIN's post: "Washing the Hardcore Away"

What Hardcore Is

But if one scrutinizes social phenomena in detail and the attitudes of gamers as they have been modified by generations, one soon sees how gamers have come to confuse obstacles with sophistication and obstacles with cause.

‘Hardcore’ is, today, said to be those who enjoy epic, long games encased in a digital graphical and musical orchestrations of delight. But this was not who ‘hardcore’ gamers were fifteen years ago who enjoyed shorter, harder, arcade style gaming while the new gamers enjoyed easier, story based, epics. And this was not the case twenty two years ago when gamers preferred the keyboard input and massive scope of computer games over the harder, shorter burst style of the new consoles coming out. It would appear that the definition of ‘hardcore’ changes with the times.

But there is a definition of hardcore that is universal: gamers who prefer the obstacles to remain. This definition would include current ‘hardcore’ gamers as well as Space War! fans distressed at seeing the game escape the universities.

The people who are opposed to eliminating additional obstacles are those who have spent the time and effort surmounting the prior ones. Along their intense focus of surmounting those obstacles, they become confused that the obstacles were the point in the first place! For new games, they demand more obstacles to be placed in their path. In time, the gamer becomes twisted to think gaming is nothing but surmounting obstacles. The ‘hardcore’ gamer will then begin to label these obstacles as ‘art’. When an obstacle is removed to allow growth, the ‘hardcore’ player perceives that some art of gaming is removed. Using my wealthy analogy, it would be as if the Government removed legal obstacles and the wealthy crying out that the ‘art’ of becoming rich is being lost.

Oh, mamma mia.

Hardcore Player-

This is the self-described word for the traditional market (rejecting outsider words such as ‘obsessed’ or ‘freaks’ for ‘hardcore’ sounds like they have mastered a physical sport). Similar to ‘casual player’, the hardcore is a perspective that is a moving target. Once upon a time, The Legend of Zelda was considered a hardcore game. Now, it is considered a casual game.

In my articles, the Hardcore Player is used as the gaming elitists who believe software such as Brain Age or Wii Fit will destroy gaming, surround themselves with black electronics, and confuse the home theater experience with the gaming experience. Often, I will interrupt my merry text to say (for the hardcore, this means X,Y, and Z). The elitists have difficulty understanding some basic concepts so we must be helpful and place notes for them. The ‘hardcore gamer’ is best illustrated as a stuck up who stares at paintings everyone hates, holds a wine glass with the pinky finger sticking out, sips his red wine, and says, “Ahh, have you noticed the way the quality of paint meshes with the material? My goodness! What fine art this is!”

When I use ‘hardcore player’, I do not mean the player who likes Western games or someone who prefers a more PC experience from their console gaming. I mean the gaming snob.

Casual Player-

He does not exist. This is a made-up word from traditional users to describe the downmarket products (which they believe are stupid and retarded). The so-called “Casual Player” is just a moving target that depends on whatever the perspective of the downmarket is at the time. In the NES days, the ‘casual player’ played Tiger Electronic games. Today, the ‘casual player’ plays Wii Sports. Often, the casual games of yesterday can become the ‘hardcore games’ of tomorrow and vice versa. It depends on which way the pendulum is moving.

I can see where his business degree comes in, but clearly this man does not play games.

Ludology- This is the science of games from different standpoints including engineering or humanitarian or social.

When the Ludology section fills up is when Malstrom retires.

He even has a picture of fucking Sherlock Holmes next to his own entry in his "glossary."

[JoshF]

Anxiously awaiting his next article in defense of Britney Spears and Epic Movie.

[icycalm]

The ridiculous thing with this Jon R. guy is that he is whining about ACTION GAMES requiring REFLEXES from the player in order to allow him to move forward. But that's how action games work! That's why we call them action games! Has he not heard of adventure games, where absolutely no reflexes are necessary? Or of turn-based strategy games? Or of pure (i.e. with no action elements) puzzle games? What a fucking dumbass.

As for the other article... :(

[Evo]

I see it as he wants to be an Action Gamer - it is the in thing, but it is just too hard.

But instead of finding cool games in a style that he likes or just practicing and learning to get better, he complains that they are too hard, and should be more accessible...

[Evo]

I wonder how long until this becomes a tabloid issue ...


A Canadian boy who ran away from home after his father took away his Xbox game console has been found dead in a cornfield, local media said.