Theory

[icycalm]

Great essay by the Ghetto moron:

http://www.learntocounter.com/why-expan ... or-to-dlc/

First piece of writing by him that I read all the way through. Amazing analysis, extremely thorough covering all the angles, and for the most part extremely well written too. I am astounded. With a couple of minor edits it would have looked perfect on my frontpage. E.g.:

The ideal goal of an expansion pack is to obsolete your predecessor.

The ideal goal of an expansion pack is to render its predecessor obsolete.

Etc. It is ridiculous that he talks of his generally wretched writing as "long-form criticism" when he can't even use such simple words as obsolete correctly. Then again, THIS essay IS proper "long-form criticism" so whatever.

On the subject matter, the reason I haven't thought about this issue at all is that I've never bought a DLC and didn't plan to do so before seeing the ones for MGR, so I never had an opportunity to think about them. And now I won't have to, since the Ghetto moron has done all my thinking for me lol.

It makes me wonder if anything else he's written is on the same level...

[icycalm]

Okay yeah, now this starts making sense:

http://www.learntocounter.com/forums/in ... 5#msg68365

And I would like to extend a special thanks to Biolithic, weaselboy, Proto, Cynical, Shoggy, and Pretzel for helping me get some of my shit in order with this one. Whenever something comes too easy to me, I usually end up fucking something up, and the original definition was a little bit too sidetracked. But I'm prepared to defend this one to the death.

I am sure they wrote his article for him. This is how the pattern goes: he scribbles some rubbish (2 stars for Mirror's Edge, 3 for Super Meat Boy, cellphone games more damaging to the artform than "indie" and "art" tripe, etc. etc.), then I or someone else calls him out on his shit, and then he rewrites the article by plagiarizing the dressing down you gave him. Usually this only happens with one or two people per article, but in this case he had no fewer than SIX people doing his thinking for him. Still an achievement to get such high quality analysis out of them (considering also that his forum is full of morons), and compile it into something so highly readable, but as far as I am concerned the ideas -- which is what counts -- aren't his.

[icycalm]

Hahaha. This will make him hit the roof. I just realized that, despite the fact the DLC model is inferior to expansion packs, the ultimate expansion pack would neverthless be a DLC. Can anyone figure this out before I put it in an article?

The entire subject is important enough that I might end up sticking it in VGCULTUREII.

[icycalm]

The other game design model promotes a culture in which the amount of content—rather than the arrangement, craft, and design of the content—is the driving force of intrigue.

The "driving force of intrigue".

If only the internet inbreds could see that it is precisely the stuff that they scribble which they intend to make them seem something more than internet inbreds that IDENTIFIES them as internet inbreds. If he didn't litter his scribblings with ludicrous phrases such as this I would have had no way of knowing that he is an internet inbred. I would still have been able to tell that he knows jack shit about games, but he might still have been an educated, adult, well-adjusted individual for all I'd have known. Now there's no chance.