Theory

[zinger]

Consider, for example ... what would have happened to the Metriod games if, instead of hunting for mechanics-altering and progress-enabling items, you were hunting for boxes with random numbers on them — boxes whose only function would be to increase your score, so that by finding more of them than other players WHO ARE NOT EVEN PRESENT IN THE GAMEWORLD you'd manage to beat their high scores. The entire series' atmosphere would have been instantly wrecked this way — which is the exact opposite to what would happen if pure scoring mechanics in scoring games were replaced with mechanics-altering and progress-enabling mechanics, i.e. with natural mechanics.

This passage rocks. It clears up so much shit for me. No wonder I could never manage to round up a sensible review of some of my favourite games such as Batrider or Garegga.

On the one hand, I love the how the milking aspect of their scoring systems' (which is a major one, if not even the most generous of all of their score sources) are designed. It's by developing techniques to destroy as many parts and projectiles as possible during boss fights that you get to see all of their coolest attacks, and how complex each and every boss design really is. It's also how you really come to push your options managing skills to the max. Especially if you're using the Garegga ships in Batrider (which is necessary for high score play) since their options control system is even more versatile. In short, boss milking unleashes some of these games' most impressive moments.

And then on the other hand... read icycalm's essay. These "secret" frantic action scenes should just have been presented by default. Not only to those obsessed with seing numbers increase or to those who think it makes sense to scrape off all of the color of your enemy's vessel before killing him. I've been revisiting a lot of shooters since I read "On Why Scoring Sucks And Those Who Defend It Are Aspies" (while completely ignoring the scoring), and I haven't enjoyed them this much since before I found the Shmups.com forum. Thanks for successfully diagnosing and treating my Asperger disorder!

[movie]

I also think this essay is fucking brilliant. In particular, the parts in this and the "Why I Am The Best Videogame Player In The World" essay dealing with cyber"athletics" (they call it "eSports") hit me quite hard. Up until now, I have been really into StarCraft: Brood War and its "pro" scene (still playing the game pretty much only because there is a "pro" scene, watching it and so on) but this has opened my eyes to how seriously stupid I have been. Thanks so much.

[icycalm]

It's not so much stupidity but lack of game- and life-experiences. Which I guess are a FORM of stupidity, but not necessarily related to brain power. StarCraft, for example, is such a mediocre RTS, that I cannot even basically think of a SINGLE RTS that came AFTER it which ISN'T more interesting-looking. But if the only RTS you've ever played is StarCraft, and you are not even paying attention to previews, etc. of new RTSes you'd never have a chance to realize this. Same with competing in StarCraft instead of in basketball or surfing or whatever. If you've spent your entire life inside your bedroom you will of course have no idea how much more pleasurable the latter are over the former.

I'll comment on zinger's post later, because I have quite a bit to say on that.

[Agentx]

The example of "Metroid with items that are just for score" made me think of Kirby The Great Cave Offensive. It was filled with hidden treasure items, including the screw ball, but they didn't do anything other than increase your gold score and completion percentage. You didn't even need to get any of them to clear it.

I think that it could've been a far more interesting concept if they'd actually served some purpose within the game where it was advantageous to get them. Like hunting down the abilities in Milky Way wishes expanded the range of powers you could call on at any time.

[icycalm]

I had just typed up like a one-page reply to this thread:

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=37390

explaining exactly what's wrong with this "1-sissy" pseudo-term the aspies are trying to introduce, and just before pressing "Submit" my fingers tripped and I deleted all of it. Can anyone see what's wrong with it? I might retype my post and make it into a frontpage essay later on if I can be bothered to.

[Agentx]

The first thing that comes to mind is that, surely, even the 'average' player who wants to learn something from watching others would learn way more from watching expert players rather than these so called middle-plays. I mean, who's the audience for this? Who wants intentional mediocrity in videos in lieu of something interesting? If you're going to bother watching videos of a game instead of playing it, why would you not be doing it if not to see something to work at?

I've never heard of this 1-sissy term before, but I'm immediately reminded of youtube 'walkthroughs'. These are often, but not always, put up as soon as the game comes out. So that these videos intended to show people how it's done are often their first times through the game, and ultimately they just muddle through the game discovering themselves what to do. Just like anyone else. What's the point then?

I guess I ask a lot of questions but I really don't understand what compels people to make boring videos with no noteworthy attributes. Or why anyone would even want to watch these sorts of things over videos of experts or of specific interesting elements. Or just playing it themselves.

[icycalm]

See, this is what I am talking about. Countless kids like this one have been basically ruined for life by reading my articles and misinterpreting my constant praise of the expert for glorification of aspieism. So he now considers a 1CC "middle-play" (never mind that he's never 1CCed anything in his life, and probably hadn't even HEARD of the term, never mind understood it, before he read my essays a few days ago), and will respect nothing short of the videos of a sperglord. That DJOrwell kid, and his friend, and the Ghetto moron, and most morons who post on the Ghetto, and countless other kids, and even our own Qpo, WHO ARE THEMSELVES BLATANTLY CASUAL (what I call "The New Casuals"), and countless other kids who have less game-experience than what I had 20 YEARS AGO for fuck's sakes, are simply going around mouthing "EXPERT THIS" and "EXPERT THAT" or "MECHANICS THIS" and "MECHANICS THAT" at everything that moves, and no one can stop them. It is fucking disgusting, and there's nothing I can do about it. Every single thing I write is systematically misunderstood and misinterpreted, and finally used for the exact opposite reason that I wrote it, so that in the end there will be automatically just as much ugliness and stupidity created in the world due to my writings as beauty and intelligence, if not in fact more.

In the same way as Canetti understands vengeance, evil too is automatic.

You cannot liberate good without liberating evil. Sometimes evil even quicker than good, as part of the same movement.

He calls it "the intelligence of Evil", but I am going to be calling it "the stupidity of Evil", which is a far more accurate term, as far as I am concerned, because there's nothing intelligent about it, since it is, after all, based on nothing but misunderstandings and misinterpretations, if not automatic reaction and hipsterism, on top of lack of life experiences, ignorance, plain idiocy and weakness.

[icycalm]

In short, if you are a dumb little kid YOU SHOULDN'T be reading my writings, because instead of raising you they are LOWERING you. Little ideas are far more suitable for little people -- better to wield a dagger with some degree of deftness than to be struggling to lift a broadsword and be comically unable to so much as even swing it. You are making yourselves ridiculous by trying to use my ideas, like a fat woman putting on a mini-skirt and smearing her fat ugly face with makeup. Mini-skirts and makeup are for pretty girls only, the ugly ones just make themselves look uglier, by EMPHASIZING their ugliness, get it? Pulchrum est paucorum, beauty is for the few, and how much more so intelligence.

[Worm]

"1-sissy" implies that a superplay 1CC is "manly" in comparison. But pushing buttons in front of a screen isn't manly.

[SriK]

I mean, who's the audience for this? Who wants intentional mediocrity in videos in lieu of something interesting? If you're going to bother watching videos of a game instead of playing it, why would you not be doing it if not to see something to work at?

Did you read the thread? This is what the "1-sissy" thing means:

we also do something we call "1-sissy", which are videos of 1cc which are not superplays but what you'd call middleplays, with comments and tips to clear the game (on normal difficulty of course) easily.

So in other words it's a video of a 1CC that doesn't obsess over score. Doesn't seem "mediocre" to me (a mediocre player wouldn't even be able to clear the games listed in that thread), and if I'm aiming for a 1CC, don't care about score (which is usually the case for me), and don't want to actually play the game for some weird reason, then watching a video of a 1CC which doesn't concern itself with score seems far more practical and interesting than watching a superplay which feels the need to milk every single boss to the last drop. And personally I'd rather clear a lot of awesome games than worry about whether I'm a "sissy" for not caring about getting a top score in everything I play.

[icycalm]

Here's another question I saw on /v/ (or /vg/, can't remember exactly where) recently: If he hates scoring systems so much, why does his forum have a high-score board?

This is also related to what I am planning to reply to zinger's opening post.

[icycalm]

And here's a sperglord who, not satisfied with the degradation via scoring evident in so many 2D games, is interested in seeing how many 3D ones have also been messed up by this utterly asinine concept:

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=38586

That Xotic thread got me wondering what other non-shmup games offer the possibility for score play (outside multiplayer kill scores and such). I don't play these genres much, so I could've easily missed something fun.

I know of:

Bulletstorm (PC, PS3, XBox360) - FPS that rewards players with points for performing increasingly ludicrous kills, as Wikipedia puts it.
Resident Evil - RE4 and RE5 have a score-based Mercenaries mode, plus there's RE: The Mercenaries for 3DS that's all about that mode.
The Club (PC, PS3, XBox360) - third-person shooter with lots of short stages, not unlike a caravan game.
Xotic (PC) - FPS with lots of short stages, again sort of Caravan-like.

What else?

He is the admin of Shmups.com, lol. The epitome of manliness of the artform.

[icycalm]

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 78#p796478

Hmm, perhaps it wasn't appropriate to frame it as a gameplay complaint. I stand by what I said about difficulty (though Way of All Flesh would probably be fun on Adept) but when I beat the game it just felt... odd. Partially I just felt kind of depressed when I finished, like I had finally played through all the content (including the extra stages) and there was nothing new, no more huge surprises.

You might ask "Why don't you just start improving your score? It's not logical of you to say that you're done with a game when all you did is ALL it." Well, here's the thing. One of the most disturbing things about shmups to me is how they turn the most over-the-top, crazy setpieces into matters of boring routine. I've played Dragon Blaze for such a long time that I don't even register the fact that I'm shooting a FUCKING DRAGON into the FACE of a giant idol - I just look at the falling coins and try to remember my positioning. That's kind of depressing, huh?

Hellsinker is full of crazy setpieces like this, and as odd as it sounds I don't want to ruin them and take away their novelty by trying to play the game seriously. I beat the score benchmark I wanted to (25000 spirits), saw almost all the secrets, pulled off crazy score stunts, and generally had a good time. If I try to start scoreplaying, I'll be ignoring the whole aesthetic value and atmosphere of that crazy TLB, trying not to focus on the frantic pumping music, just so I can keep shooting at its center.

Now perhaps I'm overthinking this, but I've made up my mind.

You are not "overthinking" anything -- you are not even thinking. You are just copying what you grasped from my essay, and THAT made up your mind.

This guy is a total dumbass who jeers at anyone who even mentions my name. There's no way in hell he thought of 1/100th of that on his own.

You're starting to sound like icycalm, man.

Exactly.

I thought we played shmups for the satisfaction that comes from learning them and getting big scores, not just to fawn over the pretty graphics like a fucking casual.

See how they even take PRIDE in their aspieism?

Heh... I know that feel... It happened to me with Imperishable Night. Everything was about position and bullets in the end.

But isn't that like, just the normal path? I mean, you enjoy the atmosphere and characters and when you are fond enough of the game you start trying to score and forget about the aesthetics? you should enjoy the aesthetics outside of the game and the gaeplay while playing it.

The "normal path", lol. The last line is one of the stupidest things I've ever read about videogames. Someone should make a motivational poster with it, typos and all.

[icycalm]

Give it about a year and everyone on Shmups will be jeering at anyone who says they play for score (all the while laughing away as absurd the allegation that my essay had anything to do with the shift in perspective). It sounds insane I know, but wait and see. Exactly the same thing happened on Select Button (and generally across the internet) with the arcade essay. Before I wrote it you'd be jeered at for 10 pages if you so much as suggested that there was anything wrong with credit-feeding, and now it goes without saying that you shouldn't (all the while, once more, all of them are denying that my essay had anything to do with this 180-degree shift in perspective).

Or watch the pseudo-hardcores in The Ghetto and how they treat cyber"athletes" as the artform's greatest experts, and SC and CS as the pinnacles of the art. Give it a few months and they'll be saying the exact opposite. In fact they sort of already are, in one or two threads that I recently saw.

And wait until my reviews of Tetris, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Golden Eye, A Link to the Past, Diablo, etc. come out. I am going to bring all their statues crashing down around their heads and watch them dance around as they try to avoid getting hit by the flying rubble.

It's not the fact that I can press a button and make the world turn around at my whim that I find ridiculous and repulsive, but the utterly comical behavior of those who hate me for whatever absurd reason, but who STILL adopt as many of my ideas as they can grasp while DENYING that they have done so. The amount of ill will that this betrays is simply staggering.

[SriK]

you should enjoy the aesthetics outside of the game and the gaeplay while playing it

So wtf does this dude do, print out screenshots of the game onto posters and stick them onto the wall while playing?

[icycalm]

"You should play the game for the gameplay" basically means "you should play the game to play the game".

Deep, man.

"We don't play for the graphics, but for the mechanics", means that you would still be willing to wiggle the stick around even if there was no screen involved.

Any way you look at it we still end up with autism.

[icycalm]

I've been reading zinger's thread on Shmups and I am really losing what last few shreds of respect I had for anyone involved with videogames. Even Rando disappointed me, and he's by no means a loser shut-in fuckface. But he is autistic to a degree, and there's no denying this any more. Recap can't get that videogames did not peak with Super Mario World, and I've got a huge backlog of pages linking to this site even the best of which are basically dumb and worthless. You really do deserve Tim Rogers and Leigh Alexander and Yahtzee and Jim Sterling and the artfags and the stick-wiggling and mouse-clicking pseudo-athlete poser aspies. This entire culture, after all, came from inside of you. Because it certainly had nothing to do with me! None of this shit existed when I was growing up. Hell, none of this shit existed a mere 10 years ago! It's insane how quickly videogames turned from a garden of Eden to a fucking weed-infested swamp. But it's the same with Twitter and the rest of them. The internet is to blame for a great amount of this. It's not that aspies did not exist while I was growing up, it's just that, due to the lack of internet, THEY DID NOT GET TO COMMUNICATE THEIR EXISTENCE. So we simply never heard anything of them (because they never leave their rooms, you understand). It's exactly the same with Twitter. You think the incomprehensible idiocy on display there did not exist, for example, in the Middle Ages? You think the peasants back then discussed anything more important than what you see on Twitter every day? It's just that the kings and the noblemen lived in their mansions, and never EVER came in contact with the peasants, except when the latter were serving their dinner or whatever, and they knew very well to keep their mouths shut because they knew what happened to those who didn't.

The aspies are even beginning to make me feel disgusted with the games themselves. Just think about it for a moment. Imagine there is a restaurant that serves some of the best food in town, with only a little snag: all the customers are lepers. Wouldn't you begin to feel disgusted about even the food after a while, merely by association? (by associating the restaurant with leprosy). Basically I've just realized that everyone who buys and plays these games besides me is a fuckfaced autistic loser shut-in. And yeah, Recap also thinks scoring sucks, but he also thinks that philosophy and women and any artform besides Japanese 2D games, and the entire world outside his bedroom sucks, so his understanding of this one single point is not exactly a consolation. Isn't there A SINGLE COMPLETE HUMAN BEING among you? Is the entire fucking world full of fucking cripples?

And then I've got a bunch of casual kids nodding their heads and mindlessly repeating "icycalm is right", while obviously having no feel at all, no connection at all with the culture and with all the experiences and feelings I am relating. These kids ultimately depress me just as much as the aspies! When even someone as intelligent as Josh can be full of shit sometimes (see "I need a mouse and keyboard to enjoy an FPS because I am cool like that"), it is perhaps time to realize that I am basically talking to the wind. Meanwhile, everyone outside my window thinks that Francois Hollande beating Nicholas Sarkozy by a couple of fucking percentage points on some popularity poll is A GREAT VICTORY BROUGHT FORTH BY DESTINY, and that some squares or paint splotches on a canvas are worth 30 million dollars and videogames are for kids. I really am the last man.

[icycalm]

Back on topic, and I'll give you a little taste of the game guides essay.

Practically everyone who plays for score regularly reads strategy guides. In fact most people read them before they've even played the game. What does that say about these games, and the people who play them?

It says that discovering these mechanics is not fun. It says that THEY CAN'T BE ARSED TO DISCOVER THEM.

But the designers have put these mechanics, tricks, etc. into the game for the player to discover them. Not for him to go on an online message board and get them from others who've discovered them.

So if the players themselves are PRACTICALLY TELLING US that discovering these mechanics is not fun, why on earth are they so obsessed with getting them from others?

QED.

Or do you still seriously need me to answer this?

[icycalm]

And of course, in order for these guides to exist, it means someone at some point wrote them. And in order to write these guides there must, of course, be at least one person per game who actually DISCOVERED these mechanics on his own. So who is that person then?

Simple.

The most autistic aspie.

[icycalm]

Take your pick:

http://shmups.system11.org/viewforum.php?f=5

[icycalm]

In short, a mechanic's purpose is to DRAW YOU DEEPER INTO THE GAME'S WORLD. If instead it SENDS YOU OUTSIDE OF IT, it is a BAD MECHANIC. End of story.

[icycalm]

And look at the complete dominance of Ketsui here so far:

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=41399

Who told them that Ketsui's scoring system was the best (at least among Cave's shooters at the time)?

I did. And they are even using my exact reasoning.

And in the other thread they are going off on me for being a "bad player who knows nothing".

[icycalm]

Thread on Shmups locked. From email discussion with austere:

LOL, it's not a matter of reputation because I don't give a fuck what the monkeys think about me -- or you for that matter (and I've proven that by destroying GaijinPunch, who is utterly worshiped over there). It's a matter of hygiene that you described perfectly with the leper/restaurant analogy. We have to defeat them is through numbers, and it's really the lack of it that opens the door to the autists vomiting over the thread and each other until it gets locked.

Link me where you destroyed GaijinPunch. I'd love to see that.

Enjoy http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 94#p685094

There may be more (before), but it concludes with him using the age old defeat sign off "I'm drunk".

You know what's hilarious?

That all these clowns are trying to figure out international politics, WHILE THEY CAN'T EVEN GRASP SOME SIMPLE EXPLANATIONS ABOUT HOW SCORING WORKS IN GODDAMN VIDYAGEAMS.

[icycalm]

And here is the thread, which I asked zinger to make:

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=41394

And of course user "100BilWarrior" is me. SriK made the account and the motivational posters, and I made the posts, so everything this dude says can be taken as 100% correct interpretation of the essay. Now I am going to watch a movie with Robert De Niro that I hope is good, and tomorrow, if all goes well, I'll move on, perhaps with a groundbreaking Pong review, while the rest of the world tries to catch up with me.

[icycalm]

Okay, it's time to get around to answering zinger's opening post. The Pong review is three-quarters done but it doesn't look I'll be able to finish it today, so I am going to switch gears and tackle this in-between cooking some pasta and other stuff. It will be stream-of-consciousness and probably broken up among several posts as I eat, etc., but I am sure most people will get the gist of it.

First off, you need to understand why these comments did not go in the essay. They did not go in the essay because the purpose of the essay was to DESTROY scoring (and also, by extension, the cyber"athletics" and second-loop, alternate mode, newgame+ fagotries to which it ultimately leads), consequently anything that could DETRACT from this goal had to be cut. Even the last couple of paragraphs on the positive effects of cerebral genres were shoehorned in at the last moment and with some hesitation, because I didn't want to give anyone who wanted to defend scoring anything to hold on to, or ammunition to use against me.

(Pasta-cooking break.)