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Tim Rogers

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Tim Rogers

Unread postby icycalm » 20 Dec 2008 00:55

We already have one on Sirlin, and I'll probably start one on Stephen Poole one of these days, so why not one on Tim?

He started writing for Kotaku recently. Nothing really worth reading so far, but here's something worth watching perhaps:

http://kotaku.com/5113998/video-lets-re ... su-with-us

I enjoyed them.
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Unread postby icycalm » 20 Dec 2008 01:03

Okay, this is great:

My guess is that it has something to do with absolute terror — the same business thinking that forces a Japanese man to consider opening a ramen shop next door to another ramen shop — and nowhere else — forces makers of RPGs to write insane English bullshit on the back of the box. Seriously, the back of Tales of Vesperia's box literally lists "Evolved Flex-Range Linear Motion Battle System" as a "feature", right up there with "720p".

In the comments, I want you to do this:

1. Think of a daily task (hygiene / work / study related)
2. Think of a ridiculous battle system name to describe said task
3. Have fun fielding guesses as to the identity of your

I'll go first!

"Propulsive Ejection Natural Intelligent System".


http://kotaku.com/5111388/stale-news-st ... ulous-name

No need to check Kotaku's frontpage for this stuff, just bookmark this for as long as it lasts:

http://kotaku.com/people/108/posts/
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Unread postby JoshF » 20 Dec 2008 01:17

That Famitsu commentary is funny.
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Unread postby icycalm » 20 Dec 2008 01:23

I liked the joke about the the Gundam Musou guide: a huge "square" button in the middle of the page, lol.

He should do this every week. Though I guess it would get old quick.
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Unread postby mees » 20 Dec 2008 09:42

icy, I just want to ask: do you like Tim Rogers or not? I mean it's generally very apparent whether or not you like someone, but with Tim I can't really tell.
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Unread postby Gnarf » 20 Dec 2008 13:32

Let me clear something up here before I proceed any further with the name-calling. I have a lot of respect for Brandon Sheffield, Insert Credit's editor, and his ex-star writers: Tim Rogers and Eric-Jon Waugh. Given a choice between discussing games with them, or with any of the LameSpot/NeoLAF/Euromoron/Skrotaku zombies, I'd take them anytime. I have met Tim several times and I am ready to vouch anytime for his all-around greatness, and I have even at one point acted as contributor to IC's wonderful news coverage. Bottom line is: I love those guys, and wouldn't change them for the world. But loving someone does not preclude pointing out their mistakes and their stupidities. Indeed, we love people in part because of their mistakes and their stupidities (no one loves perfect people -- jealousy sees to that). So there's nothing personal here, is what I am saying. I just call things as I see them. And since the subject of this essay is New Games Journalism (see also: its title), discussing the IC guys must naturally form the greater part of it.


http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_new_games_journalism/
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Unread postby mees » 20 Dec 2008 23:02

Yeah, but that was written a long time ago...
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Unread postby icycalm » 20 Dec 2008 23:39

Tim belongs to an entirely different category of human beings than people like Poole and Sirlin. He is much more intelligent, much more spiritual than they. Poole and Sirlin are average Joes trying to survive in the cutthroat world of intellectual prostitution (i.e. writing as a profession), and are consequently obliged to employ humbug as a matter of course. Tim is also guilty of this sin against the Holy Spirit; but since he has never fully relied on writing to make a living (he's worked plenty of different kinds of jobs), is less guilty of it than they. Moreover, even when he's spinning gigantic essays devoid of any meaning, merely for the sake of writing, he still often manages to amuse and entertain with his quick wit and sharp sense of humor: both qualities which Poole, Sirlin, and all the other average Joes writing about games today utterly lack.

So, yes, of course I like him. But at the same time I can't help but be disappointed in him, because of the lack of progress I perceive in his intellectual development. He is saying more or less the same things today as five years ago. He doesn't seem to be making any effort to get to the bottom of things. He reads a great deal, but apparently random things (Zen philosophy, economics, novels, etc.), with no clear goals and direction in his studies. And of course this is carried over into his writing, enabling him to chatter about anything and everything, but without much to show for it when all is said and done. The reader is entertained while he is reading, but the effect is momentary; a few hours pass and all that's left is merely an impression.

I think Tim's gift for comedy is what prevents his intellectual pursuits from advancing. His unstructured approach to thinking and writing is part of what makes his musings fun to read (at least to those who haven't had much exposure to this kind of writing, and who therefore find it exotic), but randomness in thought is, when all is said and done, a vice.

Bottom line is this: comedy is a skill that requires much quick wit and intelligence, and everyone likes a comedian. But philosophy -- which is what in-depth game criticism is, if you look at it closely -- is not and never has been the province of comedians. Hence, barring some kind of life-changing inspiration, Tim's videogame commentary is destined to remain on a relatively shallow level.
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Unread postby icycalm » 20 Dec 2008 23:55

Note that it's almost 2009 and he still hasn't managed to understand the importance of genre in videogames:

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/leave_ran ... e_experts/

Check the Action Button top 25 games list -- you wouldn't be able to come up with a more random and incoherent list if you had a computer generate it for you. The randomness and incoherence of the list is a direct reflection of the randomness and incoherence of Tim's thought.
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Unread postby movie » 04 Mar 2010 01:30

http://kotaku.com/5484581/japan-its-not-funny-anymore

Another incoherent, long-winded essay from Tim Rogers! Surprise, surprise - it has basically nothing to do with video games, despite being on a video game website. He should start a blog.
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Unread postby JoshF » 05 Mar 2010 13:21

http://www.gamengai.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2715

Greatsaintlouis wrote:This is honestly the only reasonably readable thing I think I've ever read by Tim Rogers. The rest of his shtick is indie hipster douchebaggery, ostensibly about games and gaming but which usually turns into 4,000+ word essays about microwaving a vegetarian burrito while talking on the phone about repaying your student loans while Animal Crossing sits on the TV in the background. Self-indulgent and pretentious crap. He can still go to hell for this piece too, though.

The article was littered with his usual rambling asides, name dropping, and sad, sad irony, but halfway through I caught myself thinking, "You've made the novelty of being Whitey in Japan a huge part of your routine for as long as you've been doing it--why the boo-hoo bit now? Buck the fuck up, man!" I mean, I only lived there for a year and ran into some fairly obnoxious stuff on an individual and societal level, but even *I* have more creative things to do than write a 15,000 word whineblog about it. You'd think if it weighed so heavily on him, he wouldn't stick around--there's no shame in leaving a country where being a successful, non-ALT foreigner is an uphill battle.

But maybe that's my knee-jerk reaction just because I really despise the guy and his writing--his writing, in any case. I've never met the dude. He's achieved a sort of minor celebrity in certain Internet circles through essays that all wear the same affected smirk, and it kinda raises my hackles to see a personality like that get all human about what used to be his bread and butter. That article could have been written word for word by GaijinPunch or any of the other Japan-dwelling foreigners and I would have just nodded and said something blandly agreeable, but there's something obscene in seeing it coming from Rogers. Dude seriously rubs me the wrong way, though I'd imagine not many people on this forum would be too familiar with his body of work.
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Unread postby icycalm » 05 Mar 2010 19:24

Greatsaintlouis wrote:but even *I* have more creative things to do than write a 15,000 word whineblog about it.


Greatsaintlouis is not using his brain very much. Tim GOT PAID this time (perhaps even by the word!), so, as far as most people are concerned at least (i.e. everyone but me), he had a good excuse.
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Re: Tim Rogers

Unread postby icycalm » 03 Nov 2021 22:46

Tim made a 10-hour YouTube video on Cyberpunk, and the discussion on it on Insert Credit is fascinating reading. I would never read or watch anything Tim makes these days, but it is indicative of how low he has fallen that even his own erstwhile fans (all of whom are fags, nota bene) can't stand him anymore. So who is watching these videos then? A new generation of fans who are even bigger morons and fags than the old one, of course!

https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/1127- ... 082077/130

JoJoestar wrote:I see a lot of people here meaningfully engaging with Tim’s review in a capacity I can’t conjure for myself and honestly, who the heck am I to tell them wrong? However, this message kind of assumes that what I said is not what I “personally was thinking” while watching Tim’s review or Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. Honestly, I don’t think I’m able of exercising the kind of solipsism you are pointing at. I sincerely don’t have the skills required to surgically extract my impressions of the video from the context it is being published on. This is doubly amusing because at one point of Tim’s review, he himself talks about how you can’t talk about something without acknowledging its context, and of course in this case that includes Tim’s illness and excruciatingly slow and painful production process, among other things such as the state of social media, the general stagnation of public discourse and a long long etcetera.

What I was trying to point at with the Wolf of Wall Street comparison is that when a critically conceived object of media crosses the boundary of being confused with the actual thing it’s trying to criticize, there is a huge problem going on right there. To offer a specific example, if in the lapse of 20 minutes you jump from criticizing the superficiality and banality of the neoliberal sillicon valley mentality to announcing your new Earthbound review with a dramatic shot of your one thousand dollar original Mother 2 jacket… I mean, I don’t know what to tell you, other than that it makes me feel hardcore levels of dissonance right there, rhetorical/performative distance present or not.

Being excessive and loud and over the top has been part of Tim’s presence on the internet since he started writing about videogames and I understand that, I also understand that there is a nuanced and deliberate critical process going on there with how he chooses to present himself in public. I also think that punishing myself with a several hour long maximalist self-referential video essay completely full of “labyrinthine” trains of thought is not something… that I find desirable to do on my limited free time. Just to be clear, I didn’t find this review so much BAD or WRONG as I found it exhausting, bloated, tiresome.

yeso wrote:The constant pre-anticipation and post-reaction to what viewers/readers are thinking combined with unspooling personal anecdotes framed as “personal disclosure” = more triangulation than I’m comfortable doing.


As yeso pointed out here in this message, it’s not that I don’t understand or share Tim Rogers’ aspirations on this long winded video essay, it’s that simply put, it’s more labor than I feel comfortable doing for any piece of entertainment/media. And that is honestly all there is to it. I think I see all the points being made on the video and agree with a sizeable amount of them, but the route taken to articulate those points is not… good enough for me. While I see “the point” of the whole season and understand the choices that were made, I did have to cut through a lot of noise to get to that point. I also understand that cutting through that noise was part of the point being made and I still don’t find it desirable/meaningful enough.

Mirroring Tim’s rhetoric, for me the Bottom Line would be: Tim Rogers’ Cyberpunk 2077 review is a parody/critique of the archetypical poisonous swamp area in videogames, which is, in itself, a poisonous swamp area… in video essay format.

Then again, Metroid Prime 2 is a videogame where at least half of its spaces are complete poisonous swamp areas and I quite like that videogame. I didn’t like Tim’s review as much as Metroid Prime 2, though, but I see what he was trying to go for, so take all this post as you will.


https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/1127- ... 082077/131

2501 wrote:
baftaboo wrote:I would be a fool not to be envious and resentful of this state of affairs, even before Tim coyly and a little dubiously indicates that he can stomach a greater quantity AND quality of trash than me; is smarter than me; works harder than I do or could; uses fewer drugs in a less self-stupefying manner than I use; and has a more singular and totalizing insight to express than I have.

I say this not because I dislike Tim’s videos or Tim himself but because, well, it’s the truth, and because I think I detect in the way some of the haters talk about Tim’s patreon, his possible arrogance, etc. the unappetizing whiff of a similar concealed envy and resentment. I want to lay it all out there on their behalf lol


I mean, is it really so surprising that when someone aggressively (or passive-aggressively) presents themselves in a way meant to assert their superiority to others, some people are going to find that grating? It’s obviously a provocation; envy and resentment (or adoration and awe?) are the desired responses. If anything I’m surprised more people don’t find it offputtingly obnoxious.

As for the deeper observations about simulacra and cultural decay under late capitalism and so on - I think as is often the case with Tim, he expresses these ideas in a very clever (albeit long-winded) way, but what he mostly brings to the table is 1) the novelty of the delivery mechanism and the facile cleverness of the form (a dense, tricky weave of structural gimmicks, cryptic metaphors, “spontaneous” anecdotes, and obsessive cataloguings of seemingly trivial details, all tied around a review of a piece of media - media for which more intellectually serious cultural assessment is a relatively new phenomenon) and 2) the Tim Persona itself. The raw philosophical ideas themselves have been expressed more concisely, coherently and (in my opinion) poignantly elsewhere; but maybe not in relation to video games, and certainly not in relation to Internet Personality Tim Rogers. (This isn’t really a knock; this is just me saying that the two subjects about which Tim tends to exhibit the most penetrating thought behind the presentational novelty are video games and himself.)

So, by their nature, most of the discourse these videos inspire is about video games and/or about Tim. The question then becomes whether you, the audience member, are willing to sit through the intentionally polarizing presentation to get at the ideas he’s trying to express. Here is where I think it’s completely valid to argue that what he’s trying to express, however clever and complex his mode of expression is, simply isn’t substantial enough to justify dedicating one’s time and attention to what is still, at the end of the day, a 10-hour dissection of a mediocre video game. That’s a huge commitment to ask of your audience, and so much of what they’re getting for the trouble is recursive navel-gazing about Internet Personality Tim Rogers, deftly woven around the theme and seductively yet confrontationally presented in a way that feels like you simply have to engage with it. But… what if you don’t? Time is precious, and why should we dedicate over half a day’s waking hours to attaining greater psychological understanding of an internet celebrity we don’t even know, in relation to a video game we don’t even like? Well, maybe because he presents the image of this imperiously judgmental, nigh-superhuman character whose goading inaccessibility all but demands our fascination? Is it really any wonder that Tim and his Patreon donors might have a bit of an unhealthy codependency?

I’m belting out all this probably-harsh critique while genuinely believing that the Cyberpunk video is a more holistically effective and carefully composed piece of work than most of the other Season 1 vids. But is there a conceivable version of this thing that makes its essential points, and even indulges its free-associative style, while being more respectful of its audience - their time, their investment, their boundaries? How could there not be? F for Fake isn’t even 90 minutes, you know!!


https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/1127- ... 082077/132

2501 wrote:
JoJoestar wrote:To offer a specific example, if in the lapse of 20 minutes you jump from criticizing the superficiality and banality of the neoliberal sillicon valley mentality to announcing your new Earthbound review with a dramatic shot of your one thousand dollar original Mother 2 jacket… I mean, I don’t know what to tell you, other than that it makes me feel hardcore levels of dissonance right there, rhetorical/performative distance present or not.


This is a really good and representative example of something that if we’re meant to take it at face value is simply ridiculous/gross, and if we’re meant to take it ironically is just nihilistic and self-nullifying, i.e. gross in a different way. Irony doesn’t save it.


The above has ALWAYS been true of Tim's flailing attempts at art criticism, it's just that the fags are catching up to it NOW because apparently, going by their descriptions of this abominable video, he has now gone full retard with it.
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