Theory

[Molloy]

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/does_anyo ... g_anymore/

Good points well made. I'm afraid as time goes by I am turning into the videogame equivalent of one of those people who think no good music has been released since 1978 or some such arbitrary year. I'm not quite that extreme yet but it's getting there.

My main problem is that games that I grew up playing in the arcades and on the 8 and 16bit consoles are a very different animal than what we have today. New games are by and large much better, but they're also a good 10 times longer. Often it takes a fair amount of time and/or unlocking to get to the meat of the sitaution. Bioshock is indeed an excellent game but after about 8 hours of play my attention started to drift.

The modern games that I still look forward to and really enjoy playing have retro sensibilities. Shooters, fighters and other arcade type games that I can pick up and play for a little while without getting stuck in grinding, leveling adventure nonsense. I also play a huge amount of online multiplayer games. Most of them are designed around 30 or 60 minute sessions that aren't all that demanding of your time.

With the rise of XBLA and other digital download systems I'm starting to see alot more short games. Small independent developers can't build enormous amounts of content so they go with the old school technique of making a small amount of content endlessly replayable. These are broad generalisations but you get the idea. We're also starting to see a shift towards shorter games this generation, around the time the PS2 came on the scene things just got silly. I'm hoping this trend continues.

Pardon if this discussion is offtopic. I just like pontificating. It is incredibly annoying when people dismiss games as shit and can't articulate why they have that perspective. Hence the big rambling post I made.

[taidan]

I know of at least one good source of Bioshock hate, and it drove me away for good. I remember many of these same people at least enjoying the game when it was released. Now it is nothing but vitirol, and as Icy points out, strong words like "travesty".

If you try to point out how the critics all seem to form an agreed, hivemind dislike for the game, they act like it was their opinion from the start. Hipsters are annoying, but even moreso when they shift opinion to match up with the rest of the "cool kids".

Also, I have a bit more trouble taking said Bioshock criticism seriously when some of the same people consider Lost to be an astounding work of fiction.

In general, I feel most people really don't know what they want from new games. Either they come up with nothing, or innovations that are either impossible, or easier said than done. If you suggest they just stick with the old games they know and love, they don't take to it very well.

When it comes to Half Life, my opinion of the game grew even more once I did some research on its artificial intelligence algorithms.

[U-Rat]

I think that it is just a hype tendency to hate newer and especially popular games on forums. Doing so, the dudes want to act like "oooh! look at me! I am a sooooo old school super-dupper hard-core gamer! I am sooooo 1337! ...I am not like you! I know everything in the game history! ...and I tell you that this game sucks ass 'cuz it's not even as good as FFVII!!!".

Most of the time, they even haven't played the game at all (and usually, they have not played FFVII either.. ^^ ).

I believe most of the pricks posting this kind of hate are even not from the old generation of gamers who used to play a very different type of games back in the 90s and even the 80s (so they might find the newer games a bit dissapointing and/or confusing). They are 12~18 yo brainless frustrated kids who just want to play it "I am veteran!" to get attention from others. As they can't do it IRL, they try to do it online...

I just stopped reading most of the game-related forums (and websites in general) and just use lamefaqs for the release dates info. Then I go directly to the shop and try the game to see by myself if I like it or not and to be honest, I don't give a damn that a stupid fat lame kid on forum "hates" it because it's "linear" or whatsoever.

[icycalm]

Now it is nothing but vitirol, and as Icy points out, strong words like "travesty".

I did not write that article. I did, however, just now wrote this one:

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/does_anyo ... g_anymore/

New games are by and large much better, but they're also a good 10 times longer.

Do not confuse length with quality. They have practically nothing to do with each other. A game can require a billion hours to play through and still be awesome. Your problem is not that modern games are better or worse, nor that they are shorter or lengthier. Your problem is that games belonging to the genres you loved are not being made anymore.

When comparing games, make sure you stick within specific genres. Arcade games and turn-based strategy games, for example, cannot possibly be compared in any meaningful way.

[JoshF]

Awesome. :D

It's cool to see some of my phrases turn up since it's the kind of commentary I would write if I was talented enough beyond single paragraphs on forums.

Also, the Shmups guys are at it again!
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=19708

I am astonished that some hardcore types are so willing to throw themselves at the organized crime known as corporate game journalism and ignore all the shit that comes with it if they just got to be on the same team for a day.

[icycalm]

I do steal your way of putting things on occasion. Some of the one-liners you throw around in forum posts are genius. (And in fact I do that all the time with other people too -- I used to have a text document of Ebert quotes which I'd mix and match, sprinkling my reviews with them from time to time.)

re: talent and writing...

I am constantly being surprised at how little actual talent is required for good writing. What people usually call 'talent' is nothing but an overwhelming display of painstakingly honed skill. You should have seen my first attempts at serious extracurricular writing circa summer 2000. They were terrible -- absolutely terrible. The main thing in writing is that you must have something to say. Once you have that, putting it down on paper in an easily, and perhaps enjoyably, digestible manner is pure craft.

The excellent Domination 101 articles which I have just started posting on the frontpage, for example, were not written by a mere Shoryuken fighting game fan. They were written by someone who has actually taught philosophy at university level, who obviously had a whole shitload of writing practice before he started writing them.

So writing is basically a craft. As for the ideas required for good writing, they are a craft also, even though hardly anyone seems to realize it. This craft is called "thinking". The first draft of my arcade culture article was conceived sometime around 2003 if I remember correctly, and was completely worthless. It was called something like "Arcades: The Need to Focus", and in it I expounded the idea that what the arcades need to do is stop employing old-school, last-gen games, but focus on giant cabinet crap like After Burner Climax. The article was terrible, and it was only after practically living in Japanese arcades for three years, and constantly thinking about them, that I was able to see the way out of the swamp of ignorance I formerly inhabited, and understand the real issues involved. After that, putting them down on paper was a mere formality...

[Molloy]

Nice followup article. There are two main issues as I see it.

1) Like you say the main websites aren't actually writing critiques of the games. They either judge them for something they aren't with the completely wrong criteria (e.g. arcade game being short and 'poor value for money') or just try and guage popular opinion so they get a 'safe' score that few people are going to object to.

2) You have forum impressions or 'user review score' averages. The main problem with this is the kind of people who go to the effort of rating a game or writing a few paragraphs about it are the people with polarised opinions. If you look at an Amazon product review or even a Youtube comment all the views expressed are in very strong positive or negative extremes. The people who tend to have a more measured and balanced opinion aren't going to go to the effort to search out a forum or website and express themselves because they haven't had a very strong reaction to the title either way. It's also much harder to express an opinion that isn't black and white.

[Molloy]

New games are by and large much better, but they're also a good 10 times longer.

Do not confuse length with quality. They have practically nothing to do with each other. A game can require a billion hours to play through and still be awesome. Your problem is not that modern games are better or worse, nor that they are shorter or lengthier. Your problem is that games belonging to the genres you loved are not being made anymore.

When comparing games, make sure you stick within specific genres. Arcade games and turn-based strategy games, for example, cannot possibly be compared in any meaningful way.

I'm not tryin to compare Super Mario Brothers to Final Fantasy 12 here. Disgaea and Shining Force 1 are broadly in the same genre but the former is 80 hours while the latter could be managed in 6 or 7. There has been a trend across every genre (although often by diluting the genre with adventure and RPG elements - e.g. hub worlds in action platformers).

The kind of thing I'm a fan of is prevalent in most online games. You take a very indepth RTS game like Supreme Commander and they've been tweaking it for ages to try and get the average game length down to 30 minutes. If matches go on for more than an hour or so people get tired. Most FPS games have a very small number of maps that are endlessly replayable in short 30 minute rounds.

I'd just like to see more of this sort of philosophy seeping into the singleplayer experience. Most of the games they're making at the moment are very scripted and full of filler. If you have a poor multiplayer map it just gets gets voted off or taken out of rotation. Length shouldn't have a bearing on quality but if the playerbase is demanding 100 hours of content then it's going to have to have a bearing on it. The developers aren't going to create 500 hours of content and throw out the 400 hours that didn't end up being satisfying.

[icycalm]

2) You have forum impressions or 'user review score' averages. The main problem with this is the kind of people who go to the effort of rating a game or writing a few paragraphs about it are the people with polarised opinions. If you look at an Amazon product review or even a Youtube comment all the views expressed are in very strong positive or negative extremes. The people who tend to have a more measured and balanced opinion aren't going to go to the effort to search out a forum or website and express themselves because they haven't had a very strong reaction to the title either way. It's also much harder to express an opinion that isn't black and white.

Impressions/reviews by random people on the internet are not the solution here. They are not what I am asking for with my article. What I am asking for with my article is for critics to step forward, and they, in the words of Lester Bangs, must be "honest" and "unmerciful". And by "honest" here Bangs doesn't mean just "truthful" -- that goes without saying. He is talking about intellectual honesty (which is the same thing as Nietzsche's intellectual conscience), the kind of honesty that objects whenever you are tempted to gloss over faults, question marks or inconsistencies in order to produce a more tidy piece of writing -- the kind of honesty that leads you to become unmerciful.

And that's not all that's required of critics either. The other thing that's required is expertise.

Honesty, unmercifulness, and expertise. Those are the three qualities that all good critics have possessed. So yeah. Forumroids and blogoroids lol.


As for your other comments re: length in videogames, I repeat that you are not going to arrive at a worthwhile conclusion on the subject by talking about games wholesale. The examples you brought up are very specific. Half-hour-long online RTS battles are just as valid as 100-hour-long offline single-player RTS campaigns. Whether you prefer one over the other, or would like to see more games follow the shorter-length philosophy is personal preference. For myself, I've always preferred longer games to shorter ones. My no.1 game of all time is Civilization, and I always wished that a single game lasted a year instead of a week.

With electronic games, because they have such a wide range, you have to be very specific when directing criticism. If you want to discuss length in games you have to start as many threads in this forum as there are genres. And this discussion is anyway off-topic in this thread...

[walrusdawg]

I tend to lean more closely to Mr. Kierkegaard's camp on this one. I see on these internets a whole lot of praise leveled at most mass market modern games, and that's okay. But it's when someone comes along and challenges the mighty horde's judgement and says "hey maybe BioShock or New Super Mario Brothers or Okami has some small (or huge) shortcomings", and the mob unleashes their rabid fury like these games are suddenly sacrosanct , it makes me realize a few things. Most people reviewing(or defending, or criticizing) video games today are either a.) Posers b.) Liars c.) Cowards or d.) Completely fucking retarded. It is, I believe, a genuine mob mentality.

I try to stay rational, and could talk for hours about the good points of games I dislike, and hours about the bad points of games I love. Two examples, I loved Okami but could ramble about how much it sucked for days. And as for BioShock, I could rattle off the good things it did while still remembering everything it underachieved, failed to deliver, and did incredibly poorly. And as a response to Mr. Warner, the game was not a travesty, the hive-mind critical response to it was an abomination.

A good third article would be: "Does anyone think about things anymore?" Humans are extremely binary in their opinions and it disgusts me.