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On Why Scoring Sucks And Those Who Defend It Are Aspies

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Unread postby icycalm » 18 May 2012 01:03

Also, immersing himself in a fucking shooting game by analyzing its "algebraic structure". How much self-important fuckfaced fagotry that reeks of! As if the "algebraic structure" of a goddamn shoot 'em up was anything more challenging than a 13-year-old could handle. I did graduate-level work on applied mathematics for years. If you are getting your math fix from Raizing the LAST thing you should be bragging about is "algebraic structures".

Weeaboos, lol. I have no problem with them when they are honest and MODEST about their little hobbies. But when they assume an air of self-importance I can't fucking stand it. And he's looking DOWN on people for appreciating the AESTHETICS of ART.

Think about that for a moment.

It's like drinking PISS in order to get your daily intake of WATER.

And then MAKING FUN OF and LOOKING DOWN ON people who drink FROM THE TAP.

There is no exaggeration at all in the title of my essay. I was even being kind to them by implying they are human.
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Unread postby icycalm » 18 May 2012 12:54

Meanwhile, the discussion on TIGSource has some very revealing parts:

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25975.30

The two most revealing so far are a dude claiming that I am wrong because he enjoys watching StarCraft matches as much as Michael Phelps swim, and Derek defending videogames as competition because of the social aspect.

BUT I DID NOT PRAISE WATCHING MICHAEL PHELPS SWIM BUT SWIMMING LIKE HIM. WATCHING SPORTS IS JUST AS DECADENT AND STUPID AS WATCHING VIDEOGAMES.

As for Derek engaging in the most anti-social activity yet invented in order to get his social interaction fix by interacting through a keyboard and screen with utter strangers, all I can say is lol.

We are back to drinking from the toilet in order to get your daily intake of water again.

We are back to subhumans who have experienced the world solely through their bedrooms and whom life passed over entirely.
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Unread postby icycalm » 18 May 2012 13:01

And then a Shmups.com aspie joins in, with the astonishingly insightful rebuttal that I can't possibly be sincere in asking for scoring mechanics to be integrated, because I then wouldn't be able to clear the games since I am not a world-class player.

BUT NOT CLEARING THE GAMES IS PRECISELY WHAT I WANT. FOR WHO WOULD WANT TO CLEAR A GAME EXCEPT SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T ENJOY PLAYING IT?

Not to mention that it is precisely the integration which would motivate me to grapple with these systems, and thus inevitably become at least a bit better at them.

And of course there would be difficulty settings, etc.

But clearing a game has nothing to do with it. Why is that GAME OVER screen so precious to the aspies? Perhaps because, deprived of their scoreboards, they'd then start competing on HOW MANY games they've cleared?

There's no getting anywhere with either aspies, artfags, anti-social shut-in weeaboos, and weaklings in general. As Nietzsche explained "you do not cure astigmatism in the eyes of an invalid with REASONS". The most you can do is explain to people with PERFECT EYESIGHT that they SHOULDN'T be wearing glasses.
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Unread postby icycalm » 18 May 2012 13:16

Also, I love how many people are saying that they wouldn't like many games if the scoring was mandatory. THAT MEANS THOSE SCORING SYSTEMS SUCK. They themselves are telling this to us, and yet are too stupid to realize it.

As for the other stupid rebuttal that is trotted out again and again, that it's best to give the player two or more ways to play the game and let him choose, why stop at two? Why not give him FIVE? Why not make a single game, and then program all the scoring systems ever invented in it, so that the player could simply pick one? Then he would never have to buy any other games. And even better, make players pay you 20 bucks ONCE, and then, whenever you think of a new scoring system, let them automatically download it and add it to the others.

Oh but Notch has already done that. All he has to do is add an STG mode to Minecraft, and Cave's fate will be sealed.
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Unread postby icycalm » 18 May 2012 13:22

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?t ... #msg735274

Udderdude wrote:You'd only end up pissing off both players who play for score, and players who just want to play the game without worrying about advanced mechanics.


What about players who want advanced mechanics but not for the sake of a number but for the sake of an experience?

It is precisely the healthiest group of players that the weaklings never think of.

And it is precisely what Ikeda saw in Ikaruga, etc. etc. But we are back to not having understood the article again.
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Unread postby icycalm » 18 May 2012 16:08

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 42#p798742

TrevHead (TVR) wrote:It's wierd how elistist sentiment on this forum has moved from mainstream credit feeders (which I feel is some truth to it) to 1CCers, I suppose soon everybody who doesnt have a WR under their belt are to be labelled a casual shitplayer :roll:


That's where allowing free reign to the aspies leads. But my theory explains everything and is simple enough. There's nothing "elitist" about it except if you view the entire idea of art criticism and theory "elitist". Credit-feeding destroys immersion by destroying the challenge. Playing for score destroys the immersion by destroying the aesthetics. 1CC play preserves both the challenge and the aesthetics, hence it's the best solution. Simple as that. And both Iuchi and Ikeda agree with me, even if they don't fully realize it yet. But wait until my book is translated in Japanese and I send them a copy.
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Unread postby icycalm » 18 May 2012 16:44

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 77#p798877

Blackbird wrote:Survival play is playing by ignoring the scoring system and concentrating only on progressing as far as you can.

You use the optimal weapon for the situation, regardless of whether it is the ideal weapon for score. Perfect example of this is using shot to sweep/kill popcorns more rapidly in Futari Original, regardless of what color the counter is in. Another example would be ignoring proper weapon usage on boss death; glancing at the health bar to determine the timing for weapon switch is a distraction (however small) that could kill you if you're in the middle of dodging a pattern.

Another obvious example is putting distance between yourself and the target when it makes it easier to dodge the bullets. Playing further away in games that utilize point-blanking as a scoring mechanic (Ketsui, etc.) makes it easier to survive in a lot of situations, at the expense of score.

Scoring is about risk versus reward; increasing your risk so your reward (score) is higher. Survival is about minimizing risk. These strategies aren't always mutually exclusive, though; sometimes the optimal way to score in a section is also the optimal way to dodge it.


And these are the games in which the scoring system is fairly well integrated, hence rendering the score (not the system) superfluous -- apart from exhibitionism reasons.

By the way, going back to the TIGS thread, I find it hilarious that Derek is questioning my insights into game design while spending, what, close to half a decade of his life on a platformer with randomized platforms lol. And he's still working on it despite my explanations! (But he's no doubt doing it for the social aspect of mingling with Microsoft employes and "independently" lapping up Bill Gates' money. Between us, I've no doubt that the game is being entirely remade by MS programmers, given how Derek himself can't even get a sprite to jump properly.)
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Unread postby void » 18 May 2012 20:56

Brilliant thread! I've always instinctively disliked scoring and felt uneasy about "cyberathletics" and thought along the same lines (for example, how ugly and distracting medallions, gold, and whatnot are), but never came even close to explaining it as well as you have.
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Unread postby icycalm » 18 May 2012 21:44

Banned for not having read the essay, but still having the gall to post in the thread which discusses it. You don't even seem to be aware that there IS an essay. Good riddance then.

And for the information of those whom your ignorant comments might mislead: there is nothing "distracting" about gold and stuff. As I explained in the essay, THE ENTIRE POINT of this stuff is to "distract" the player, i.e. to catch his attention -- and THAT IS A GOOD THING, as long as the developer is not prepared to give you better aesthetic stimulation (i.e. another stage) as the reward for competent play.
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Unread postby icycalm » 18 May 2012 23:34

To make this a bit clearer, because I didn't phrase it very well in the previous post, and SriK made the same mistake once or twice in that TIGS thread.

The point of playing for survival is NOT to "reward" the player with the next stage. The point is to enhance the effectiveness of EACH MOMENT. Rewards have nothing to do with it, and are indeed, in ANY form, inimical to immersion. Because the reward cheapens the value of each moment, by debasing it to merely a means of achieving SOME OTHER MOMENT.

So, the difference is this: When the aspie improves his skill, AT THE VERY EXACT MOMENT OF IMPROVEMENT, he is in an environment whose aesthetics he has already experienced dozens if not hundreds of times, via credit-feeding and superplays, and knows exactly how the world will react, again through the credit-feeding and superplays, and also the strategy guides.

When the HUMAN, on the other hand, improves his skills, he does so IN A COMPLETELY NEW, FOREIGN ENVIRONMENT (because it is precisely when his skills improve that he gets fed something new by the game), and has NOT THE FAINTEST CLUE of how the world will react. The enjoyment and tension etc. go through the roof at this point. And in a game as tough and merciless -- and also as aesthetically superb -- as Goku Makaimura, for example, my hands are almost trembling every time I make some progress. The aspies know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about all these pleasures.
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Unread postby icycalm » 11 Aug 2012 16:57

First, just to set this matter straight, let me just say that before my essay NO ONE in the videogame industry had objected to the terms "sport" and "athlete" being applied to videogames -- which makes sense considering everyone involved in the videogame industry seems to be either an obese shut-in or a limp-wristed fagot with too litte energy to even google these words and see what they mean.

Moving on from that, here are some objections to my essay, and my answers:

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/05/tech/ ... ?hpt=hp_c3

Let me remind everyone that shooting guns is an Olympic sport. If you don't believe me, just google it, or watch your TV. Yes, shooting guns is an Olympic sport. Are those people athletes? Shooting doesn't require any exercise. In fact, when you shoot, you want to be as still as possible, you don't want to move a muscle because you might miss a shot. So shooters are actually doing the opposite of normal athletes, that is they're not moving. Video games are highly competitive, and competition is the essential foundation of the Olympics. So video gamers should be considered athletes the same as gun shooters.


First of all, I don't give a crap what retarded decisions the Olympic Committee has made. They think PING-PONG is a sport for fuck's sakes. In the same vein we could make knitting an Olympic sport, or throwing cards in a hat or whatever. This guy got it sort of right:

http://www.learntocounter.com/forums/in ... 9#msg46359

Shoggy wrote:No one should be surprised guns are in the Olympics. Where does this guy think the origins of events such as javelin throwing and archery events are? BECAUSE THEY USED TO BE IMPORTANT WAR AND HUNTING SKILLS. THE OLYMPICS HAS ALWAYS HAD "COMBAT SPORTS" IN IT. We use guns to fight each other, of course they are going to be in the Olympics in some form.


The thing with gun shooting is that it is a borderline sport, because if you keep going in that direction, where are you going to end up? Sidewinder-missile firing? Nuclear-bomb throwing? Guns themselves are the beginning of the end for war, because they trivialize it to the point where even a woman or a cripple, or child-soldiers or whatever, can compete on an almost equal basis, and by the time we get to nukular weapons the only difference between a man and a fagot is the will, the mental capacity to use them. Now, archery is a very physical activity because it takes A LOT of power to draw a really powerful bow. With today's composite bows or whatever archery is no longer so physically demanding, which again shows us how the introduction of technology tends to make many traditional sports... less sporty -- i.e. less of a sport.

So, like I said, gun shooting is a borderline case that proves nothing against my position -- ESPECIALLY the kind of gun shooting going on at the Olympics. If they were firing pump-action shotguns or machineguns or whatever, which require considerably more power, then the situation would have been a bit easier to judge, but in any case, the existence of borderline cases is nothing to be marvelled at and refutes nothing. Sports, like any other category, is ultimately a spectrum and not a matter of binary oppositions. That, however, in no way prevents us from saying that boxing is a sport and chess or knitting are not.

Moving on:

@ the post about esports not being athletes because lack of physicalitly if u look up the origin of the word from greek it has nothing to do with being physical it meant "one who competes for a prize" just saying


Which changes absolutely nothing. The Greeks competed for prizes in drama, music, poetry and anything else you care to mention, that doesn't mean the poets, composers and tragedians were athletes. And even if they WERE called that in the Ancient Greek language (perhaps they were considered athletes, I don't know, I am not a historian), they are most certainly NOT in Modern Greek and English, so that's the end of that. "Athlete" is not an Ancient Greek word, any more than "geisha" is a Japanese word -- these are English words and they have their own meanings. Etymology shows you the history of a word, not its present meaning.

But like I said, I very much doubt that poets, musicians, etc. were called athletes even in ancient Greece, so there's nothing to this argument.

What it comes down to is that the aspies are trying to co-opt a word in order to cover with it their insecurities and complexes, as if that would change anything. Athlete or no athlete you are still an obese shut in memorizing "algebraic structures" in Battle Garegga so you can gain a few points and climb a little scorboard populated by other weaklings with zero aesthetic sense and no life end of story.
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Unread postby icycalm » 28 Sep 2012 18:22

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 83#p838083

Cagar wrote:"The arrange mode is something that’s atypical of the Dodonpachi we know"
Dodongaluda confirmed. Kakusei mode turns your ship into flying element doll.


O. Van Bruce wrote:
Cagar wrote:"The arrange mode is something that’s atypical of the Dodonpachi we know"
Dodongaluda confirmed. Kakusei mode turns your ship into flying element doll.


Image

HOW WOULD THAT EVEN WORK?


moozooh wrote:You chain enemies with your hyper penis laser, the press the kakusei button and absorb bullets with your vagina aura to cash-in.


KAI wrote:
O. Van Bruce wrote:HOW WOULD THAT EVEN WORK?


It will be something like this

Image


Bananamatic wrote:
Cagar wrote:"The arrange mode is something that’s atypical of the Dodonpachi we know"
Dodongaluda confirmed. Kakusei mode turns your ship into flying element doll.

all arranges are shit and this will be no exception
you heard it here first


DrTrouserPlank wrote:I will begrudgingly buy this and probably not play it.


Illyrian wrote:Don't forget to complain about it at as well.


Jeneki wrote:Meh Galuda gold. I DEMAND A SCREEN FULL OF KETSUI 50 CUBES!


KAI wrote:Arrange mode B

Image

Love the new operator.


AweOfShe wrote:I would buy ten copies.


pestro87 wrote:Apart from the Ketsui 50 blocks and Galuda gold, I'm also expecting to see a second Hyper meter that you can trigger while you're on a Hyper à la DaiOuJou X-Mode :P


AntiFritz wrote:
pestro87 wrote:Apart from the Ketsui 50 blocks and Galuda gold, I'm also expecting to see a second Hyper meter that you can trigger while you're on a Hyper à la DaiOuJou X-Mode :P

DOUBLE BREAK


Giest118 wrote:They'll obviously combine every scoring system. EVERY scoring system. The chaining from DFK, the multiplier cash-in from MushiFutari, the gakusei and bullet cancelling from Galuda; ALL OF THEM. The score from each system will be separate, and your total score will be all of the scores multiplied together. Every time the total score counterstops, it resets to zero and you get a counterstop point. If you counterstop the counterstop counter, you get an x16 multiplier to all of your scores and you add a point to your counterstop counter counter. The x16 stacks, meaning that if you counterstop the counterstop counter twice, you get an x256 multiplier. Three times and you get x4096. etc. If you make any mistakes in any of the systems, you lose that multiplier and have to start over again.

That one's free, Cave. You're welcome.


trap15 wrote:Worlds Greatest Scoring System


Indeed it would be. And it's precisely where Cave has been headed since the beginning. Which makes recent rumors that they might give up on shooters altogether a hopeful notion. Better to give up on the artform than crash it headfirst into a brick wall, taking down with you scores of others in the process. They've already infected so many other devs and genres with this autistic nonsense. As much as I love playing their games for survival, perhaps their demise would make some room for a few devs to come in and try to follow the example of Ikaruga.
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Unread postby icycalm » 10 Oct 2012 19:01

Four more observations:

1. "Top players" (i.e. top aspies) are notorious for turning down to the minimum all graphics options in order to gain a tactical advantage. But graphical detail is one of the main methods by which to increase immersion, whilst the aspies would turn multiplayer Crysis into a monochrome vector graphics clickfest if Crytek would allow them to. Hence aspie tactics ("playing to win", as opposed to "playing to be immersed") can once more be seen as inimical to immersion, on top of -- even in pure mechanical terms -- dumbing down the game, since one of the most awesome aspects of Crysis, and Far Cry before it, is that the extreme visual realism of their jungle environments makes enemies hard to discern, forcing you to squint into the distance to make them out, on the one hand, and on the other hand allowing you opportunities to sit tight behind the thick lush foliage and hide. All of this PURELY TACTICAL dimension of the game would go out the window if Crytek allowed you the option of dumbing down the graphics to Star Wars Arcade wireframe shit from 1989 -- hence ANY amount of dumbing down, ANY lowering of the graphical settings from FULL DETAIL will similarly lower this tactical aspect by a corresponding amount.

2. I have sort of explained this in a thread in the Games forum about a shitty XBLIG STG, but can't find the thread right now. Perhaps someone can dig in there and find it for me. What happened basically was that some shitty "indie" dev released a shitty, butt-ugly, Space Invaders-like shitfest on XBLA, and then the game's thread on Shmups consisted basically of the developer posting constant updates no one gave a shit about, except A SINGLE player, who was also the TOP PLAYER IN THE WORLD in this shitty little game NO ONE ELSE PLAYED. Essentially, the player himself could not have possibly been so blind as to think he was actually playing a good, or even a decent game, but the fact no one else in the world was playing it gave him an opportinity to FINALLY be THE BEST IN THE WORLD at something. He wanted for once to feel like Kiken or Plasmo or those guys feel in the high score threads when they post these massive scores and amaze everyone, and when this shitty "indie" developer gave him this opportunity he was happy to put several weeks (or maybe even merely days, I don't know -- so few people were playing this game that you could probably get world-class scores in it in a weekend) of his life into it, instead of in any number of far superior games, just to get this feeling. And of course he managed to delude himself that he was having fun and that the game was awesome. He WAS having fun, there can be no doubt here, but not because the gaming was awesome. On the contrary, he was having fun despite the game sucking balls, but simply because he could write his name on the top slot of a board which didn't even have anything to do with the goddamn game. He was having fun, as I will be explaining, probably in my StarCraft review, because he could make the people on that board under him SAD. You heard it here first folks.

3. I recently read in a New Scientist article (or was it on Economist? I think it was New Scientist -- perhaps someone can find it), that game AI which APPEARS MORE HUMAN THAN HUMANS has now been achieved. This means that players taking part in the test identified CPU opponents more often as human than ACTUAL HUMANS; the simulation appearing more real than reality -- "hyperral" Baudrillard would have called it, but it's not quite (it's merely players being stupid). But anyway, the point here is that this advance throws all "competitive" bullshit out the window (as if single-player games were not "competitive"!) as now not only will there be NO FUNCTIONAL ADVANTAGE AT ALL in prefering human opponents, but there will be a DISadvantage, since the CPU will be MORE HUMAN LOL. But since the aspies play for no other reason than to make their opponent SAD, and since there is wide suspicion on whether or not AIs (or at least current AIs) can "feel sadness", look forward to the aspies frowning on these new AIs and continuing to seek human opponents regardless. Or at least until scientists create AIs that start crying or cursing when they lose, and disguise these AIs as human, so that the aspies will be completely fooled. Once more, you heard it here first.

4. Finally, a follow up from the "Competition and Meaning" thread:

http://culture.vg/forum/topic?p=5969#p5969

walrusdawg wrote:After all, video games are little more than algorithms: You input some numbers, you get some numbers back. Unless you're a numerologist how can you say that is "meaningful"?


I didn't zero-in on this because it was back in 2008 and I hadn't written the Simulacrum essay yet, in which I finally fully and completely realized what a videogame is, which I defined as a "machine". So yes, videogames are a lot MORE than algorithms (which strictly speaking do not even exist), and the dude's claim is patently absurd. Because you NEITHER input some numbers into a videogame, NOR you get some numbers back, because strictly speaking, once more, NUMBERS DO NOT EVEN EXIST. What you put in is ENERGY, by interacting with the computer's input devices, and what you get back is ONCE MORE ENERGY, though in a variety of different forms (visual, aural, even tactile sometimes) depending on the kind of output devices your computer is hooked up to. And this is where the aburdity of aspie tactics can be seen again. walrusdawg even notes it in his post, and right before he made the mistakes I just explained:

walrusdawg wrote:If videogames are "transcending" anything, then they are transcending dull mathematics and becoming entertainment.


The entire point of videogames is to GET AWAY from numbers, to cover them up and to transfigure them into something higher and more exciting, otherwise you could also have a lot of fun with an Excel sheet -- but here we have the aspies REINTRODUCING numbers on the screen, and Rando enjoying Battle Garegga not for shooting and dodging things, but for exploring the game's "algebraic structure".


So that's all the new thoughts I have for now. FYI the entire contents of this thread will find their way into Videogame Culture: Volume II, either scattered in various other essays (like my posts on genre evolution, aesthetic/mechanical coherence and the like), or, for the bulk of the scoring-centered posts, in an essay titled "Notes on Autist Culture", in the spirit of the "Notes on the Arcade Culture" essay, both of which will tie up loose ends on both these topics. It was basically impossible to include ALL my thoughts on these two topics in one continuous, flowing essay, so I stuck to most of the main points in them and made the essays as enjoyable and readable as I could make them, and left the miscellaneous points to be covered in bullet-point style in the Notes essays.
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Unread postby icycalm » 10 Oct 2012 21:45

Following up on observation 1, it is hilarious to me that the "balance"-obsessed aspies do not decry this practice as balance-skewing. For if one player is playing in wireframe monochrome graphics and the other in Crysis full detail, the former one has a clear advantage. If both are playing in wireframe monochrome there is no balance issue, but in that case why not agree (hardware permitting) to play in Crysis full detail, which would again be perfectly balanced, but where at least the players would enjoy the environment far more? I mean if you are going to drop the detail level just to gain an edge in winning, why not go over to your opponent's home and stab him? You'll win by default and won't even have to bother playing the game! At any rate it's quite amusing I haven't seen this come up as an issue in balance talks.

And this is the article I was talking about (or at any rate another article reporting on the same development):

http://www.popsci.com/technology/articl ... man-humans

Rebecca Boyle wrote:Two virtual gamers have convinced a panel of judges they were more human than the humans they competed with in a first-person shooter game, winning the five-year-old BotPrize and beating the Turing test of machine awareness. The game bots were video game characters controlled by artificially intelligent algorithms.

One was created by computer scientists at the University of Texas at Austin, and the other by a doctoral student from Romania. The bots faced off in a game called "Unreal Tournament 2004,” in which each player tries to eliminate its opponents. Along with normal character-killing weapons, each player also had a “judging gun,” which they used to tag characters as humans or bots. The bot that is judged as the most human-like is the winner. The bots created by the two teams both achieved a humanness rating of 52 percent — way higher than average human players’ humanness rating of 40 percent, according to the BotPrize. The two teams will share the $7,000 first prize from sponsor 2K Games.

Watch below as the UT Austin bot, UT^2, kills a human opponent.
The victory comes during the 100th anniversary year of the birth of Alan Turing, the mathematician and father of computer science, whose “Turing test” is still the definition of machine intelligence. The best measure of artificial intelligence is whether it can fool people into thinking it’s one of us, he said.

Why make machines seem more human? In video games as in real life, humans are unpredictable — we hold grudges, make illogical decisions, make mistakes and learn from them, and so on. Robots don’t do this very well, or very convincingly. The BotPrize is an effort to design algorithms that can do it better. Eventually, video games, helper robots and even training simulators will feel more real, using research like this.


This was basically the only objection to my theory I couldn't fully counter. The "difficulty" one, as I explained, was spurious -- but it is true that going up against human opponents can be more fun, simply because people are more unpredictable than AIs. There's no way I would have played Red Alert 2 back in 2000 as long as I did if I wasn't playing against humans.

But this objection is ultimately a short-sighted one. If I had mentioned it in the article, I would have countered it with the simply rebuttal that "sooner or later we'll have AI that can be equally unpredictable, and then this objection will be moot". I just didn't know how long this might take, and it could have taken years (in fact it depends on the complexity of the game -- it is far more easy to fool a player into thinking he is facing a human opponent in a simple versus FPS like UT2004, compared to, for example, an adventure game with dialogue trees where the "opponent" has to actually reply to you).

And, like I already said, there's always the fact that, however well the AI might PLAY, he still can't trash talk into your ear convincingly, so the only way to fool the player is to not allow him to talk to the AI -- which is a big part of the fun of playing with humans, and which will immediately reveal to the player that he's playing with bots -- whether those bots are on his team, or the other.

This objection is similar to something I had seen on the Select Button forums circa 2010, when the first parts of my Genealogy were being published. Someone had said I am full of shit because games can't encompass sculpture, which is three-dimensional, or even paintings in which the paint globules actually rise out of the canvas, etc. And somebody replied to him (this somebody now has an account here, by the way), that it is simply a matter of time until they do. And lo and behold a mere couple of years later everyone has 3D screens, as will the Oculus Rift, if I am not mistaken.

It is merely a matter of people being shortsighted worms who can't see beyond their noses, and trashing theories that are meant to cover centuries with objections that can barely last a few months. Look again at Renegade's objections to my derision of his apotheosizing of button-pressing, and you'll see what I mean. He takes button-pressing as the Alpha and the Omega of videogames; but if you see videogames, not in the narrow context of 30 or 40 years, but in the context of artistic progress over millennia, you shouldn't have much trouble seeing that the button-pressing was never a goal but merely a temporary compromise until we had the means to sidestep it.

But but but. Narrow theories and narrow tastes for narrow creatures, and there's nothing to be done about that.
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Unread postby icycalm » 11 Oct 2012 00:52

Note, by the way, that this is wrong:

Rebecca Boyle wrote:Two virtual gamers have convinced a panel of judges they were more human than the humans they competed with in a first-person shooter game, winning the five-year-old BotPrize and beating the Turing test of machine awareness.


The Turing test will be "beaten" when I can sit down and have an MSN chat with a machine, and through CONVERSATION, be convinced that I am talking to a human. Obviously, when our interaction is limited to shooting each other in some videogame, it is extremely easy to "beat" (i.e. pass) the Turing test -- but that is not what Turing had in mind when he proposed it. This is typical journalist misunderstanding and exaggeration. Moreover, the Turing test has nothing to do with "machine awareness" -- indeed, Turing proposed it EXACTLY BECAUSE we are UTTERLY INCAPABLE of judging whether anything OUTSIDE OF US is "aware" of ANYTHING AT ALL -- but only with tricking the human that the machine is human. The focus of the test, in other words, is the subject, not the object, which is precisely how it should be. The last sentence in that paragraph is also very badly written and betrays how little the writer understands about computer science:

Rebecca Boyle wrote:The game bots were video game characters controlled by artificially intelligent algorithms.


"Artificially intelligent algorithms" lol. Talk about a pleonasm. As if there were any other kinds of algorithms than "artificially intelligent" ones (what would those be like? "Naturally" intelligent algorithms?), or any other kind of artificial intelligence than the algorithmic kind.
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Unread postby icycalm » 07 Dec 2012 08:17

Just noticed this lol:

http://shmups.system11.org/

Hi Scores
A forum for saving and showing off all your hi scores


And since you can save your scores just as well in a text document (and in fact even better that way, since you'll have them all in one place, rather than scattered across dozens of random threads), the only purpose left for the forum is showing off, and icy wins once more.

But what's funny is that, subconsciously at least, the aspies knew this all along. Of what avail then are all the denials? It says it right there in their forum description!
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Unread postby icycalm » 10 Dec 2012 23:06

The Ghetto moron is a little pissed that everyone in his forum has been calling everyone else autistic since they read my article, and since he himself appears to be mentally challenged in some ways (though not by autism -- he's far too stupid to even be autistic), he started a thread to try and explain to them, in his usual slow trailer trash American manner, why they shouldn't use the term. And here's one of his readers destroying his OMG hair-pullingly dumbfuck attempts at reasoning:

http://www.learntocounter.com/forums/in ... 8#msg50868

Q-veta wrote:
MichaelJLowell wrote:First off, if you're using "autistic" as an insult, you're an asshole.


Well that pretty much goes for all insults, that doesn't make me calling him that any less true.

MichaelJLowell wrote:In authoring this site and reading discussion threads on the site, I gather that there are two thought processes for enjoying videogames: One is to view games as an experience and an illusion. The other thought process is to view games as systems. That is to say, aesthetics are secondary, and simply a means to justifying the ones and zeroes that drive the game. To compare it with movies, it's the difference between the guy who simply enjoys watching the movies and the guy who likes learning how all of the special effects are done.


The latter guy doesn't seem to actually enjoy movies and that's fine, but I'd wish he'd be sincere about it.

MichaelJLowell wrote:Apparently, the latter makes you "autistic", and I think that's stupid.


It doesn't make you SHINY PONYTAic if you admit you only care about how the special effects are done or how the game is programmed or whatever. But Evilagram is not claiming that, he claims he likes video games. If he'd want some complex systems to pick apart I would think he would have found something more complex than Super Smash Bros. Melee by now.

MichaelJLowell wrote:I lean somewhere in the middle of those two divergent lines of thought. I haven't given much thought to it, so I don't know which side I lean towards. Probably closer to the "systems" side, but I don't discount the "experience". But here's the problem: None of you do. From what I've been able to see, nobody on this web site even comes close.


Are we pretending that Evilagram hasn't been spouting "FUCK THE EXPERIENCE", "LOL AESTHETICS" and "MUH HEALTH PACKS" for months now?

MichaelJLowell wrote:Everybody here values "games as experience" and "games as systems" to some degree, they just differ on how much, and nobody here reflects the fringe by any stretch.


Evilagram has outright said he only cares about the systems numerous times. He stated that he wouldn't mind playing a game that only has wireframes if the mechanics are good enough. I think he may have said the same thing about a game with only colored hitboxes but I'm not sure about that one, I don't remember every conversation in the IRC channel.

MichaelJLowell wrote:I think it's particularly stupid to get worked up about it because, with little differences, we all seem to like the same games and I don't think anyone here is split on any particular game.


Actually the important thing is WHY we like the games. You can see this in the Dark Souls thread if you compare duderino's post to Evilagram's. Evilagram only seems to care about the combat and equipment and whatever moves you can do in PvP. And if he only cares about those things he could play something that does it better.

MichaelJLowell wrote:2) The "pro-gaming" audience, who are completely disconnected from the effect and impact of aesthetics on the videogame experience because they solely look at games as an outlet for competitive urges. Games are readily and summarily dismissed if they are "non-competitive", "not balanced", or "lack a decent-sized community", because they are not interested in playing the best games, but in competing against large talent pools and becoming the best. As demonstrated through games like StarCraft II, Quake III Arena, and Unreal Tournament, players often play these games on the lowest graphical settings in order to enhance the visual fidelity of critical targets.


This is pretty much Evilagram.

MichaelJLowell wrote:Right now, I would think most of you agree that the content on this web site is generally disinterested in those mindsets or outright hostile to them. At the end of the day, I am "someplace in the middle", and so are the rest of you. If you think Evilagram's approach is somehow dirty or wrong, I suggest you go read TeamLiquid for a week or two. I mean, holy shit. I've seen threads asking how to train at the game, I've seen threads asking how to maintain interest in the game, and I've seen threads which are outright hostile to just about any aesthetic decision that does not "make targets clearer" or whatever. But nobody here has even gotten to close to that.


Just because TeamLiquid is worse does not make Evilagram good. The only difference is that he's sperging over more games instead of just one.

MichaelJLowell wrote:The primary reason that I take offense to the use of the term "autism" to describe someone who obsesses over minute details in the videogames is that you are pretty much shitting over the entire history of good videogame design, which is the history of people obsessing over minute details in the process of programming videogames. "Oh, but those people are making the games, they're not just studying them in order to become better at them. They're doing something meaningful" Which would, of course, be an argument that "autism" is okay, so long as you're putting it towards something "valid". (Like, what, you think people didn't study games before they started making them?) Of course, if you've read the stuff on my web site, you would know my answer to that: "Who gives a crap?"


Yes those people are making games and that's hard and I respect that. Evilagram is just dissecting everything in minute detail (meaning HOW MANY FRAMES DOES THIS ACTION TAKE and whatnot) because he enjoys that because he's aut­istic. The only suggestion on game design I've seen from him is "MUH HEALTH PACKS". Obsessing over every little detail because you want your game to be as good as possible and obsessing over every little detail because you have autism are different things. Again if you want to obsess over something why not obsess over something more challenging and not Melee or Dark Souls etc (I'm not just speaking about games).

MichaelJLowell wrote:That's been the narrative of this web site. I don't care how you spend your free time, so long as you're 1) trying to learn new things, 2) keeping an open mind, and 3) not directly harming people by choosing your lifestyle. (And don't get into any pedantic nonsense that these people are harming you by being an intellectual and moral drain on society. That would hardly be exclusive to videogames.) In the course of providing feedback for discussion on this web site, you are completely entitled to say that you disagree and why. But "I study game mechanics" is not "autism", and it's hardly a philosophy that I would reject.


Who do you think is keeping an open mind? The people who want cool and complex mechanics that go along with a beautiful looking game or the people who say "FUCK AESTHETICS, THIS GAME DOESN'T HAVE ENOUGH NUMBERS IN IT"?


Note that this Q-veta is a massive aspie too. Here he is saying Far Cry is shit because there was a bug in it, for example:

http://culture.vg/forum/topic?p=17896#p17896

And he loves to tell everyone how he S-ranks everything and that Gun Valkyrie, which he learned of from me, is shit because it's easy if you spend a year of your life on it instead of the two three evenings it normally takes to clear it.

What basically happens over there is that every time I check the place everyone is trying to parse something I said six months before, while simultaneously trying to seem as if they never heard of me and made it up themselves. At the same time everyone bungles everything I've said to varying degrees, and it's due to these timing and "teething" problems that controversy arises among them. Not everyone is quite on the same (bungled) icycalm page at the same time, you see, and they need pages and pages of retarded shit to solve their retarded intepretations, and finally arrive at the subhuman's favorite theory of the world: that all lifeforms are equal and different strokes for different folks.

In the process you sometimes get some of the destroying some others, and this is what we saw above -- just keep in mind that those others can and often are destroyed by yet others -- and every single one of the botched little abortions of sad shut-in googling fuckfaces is destroyed by me.
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Unread postby icycalm » 11 Dec 2012 03:39

Stop the presses! New gaming study says that if you play for score your father probably waited too long to make you:

Dr Stefansson’s work adds to an existing body of research on the effect of paternal age. Previous studies have linked older fathers with higher rates of schizophrenia and autism in their offspring. In April three teams of researchers identified specific mutations that increase the chance of autism; all three observed that the risk of such mutations in a child rose with his father’s age at conception.


http://www.economist.com/node/21560836

The solution to playing for score therefore is not to read icycalm essays, which have been proven ineffective in curing autism, but to ensure that fathers have children as early as possible.

This study also explains the absurd phenomenon of people parroting icycalm's ideas while pretending to have never heard of or disagree with him (the "schizophrenia" comment). Under the intense conflicting strains of 1. Wanting to parrot the latest cool ideas in order to not seem like a moron, and 2. Hating icycalm for shitting all over everything you've done and loved in your miserable little life so far, the subhuman's personality fractures in two, with one part parroting his ideas and gaining the prestige, and the second one pretending that none of this has happened lol.

So thanks to hard-working scientists once again for clearing all this up, and remember kids: have children early to avoid them being as fuckfaced as you are.
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Unread postby icycalm » 15 Dec 2012 09:37

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ead_module

A troubled 20-year-old loner with a history of autistic behavior is the monster behind a horrific shooting at a Connecticut elementary school that left 26 people, including 20 children, dead on on Friday. After missing on the 21st child and having to reload, witnesses heard the youth mumble under his breath, "Darn, I broke my chain, time for a restart!", and shoot himself in the head.


If I were a US legislator I'd be placing tracking devices on every Shmups.com forum member right about now...
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Unread postby icycalm » 21 Feb 2013 03:58

http://archive.foolz.us/jp/thread/10510834/#10510978

Anonymous wrote:I had never been to system11 much until recently, but I started browsing around there more after reading icycalm's article on why playing for score is shit and it was pretty amusing how those people fall right into the categories he talks about. Really a shitty place.
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Unread postby ksevcov » 21 Mar 2013 06:45

http://www.vg247.com/2013/03/18/game-ob ... -suggests/

The gunman responsible for the Sandy Hook school shooting was so obsessed with video games, that he created a score sheet filled with the names of past serial killers in an attempt to out-score’ them. That’s the claim of a new report by the New York Daily Times.

Investigators researching the killer’s motives are said to have found a seven foot long, four foot wide spreadsheet filled with the kill tallies of past serial killers, the site suggests.

The details on the alleged sheet suggests the shooter placed extensive research into the study, and the New York Daily Times states quite explicitly that the document was a score sheet, as backed up by an unnamed ‘law enforcement veteran’.

The anonymous source supposedly said, “We were told (the shooter) had around 500 people on this sheet. Names and the number of people killed and the weapons that were used, even the precise make and model of the weapons. It had to have taken years. It sounded like a doctoral thesis, that was the quality of the research.”

The source then continued, “They don’t believe this was just a spreadsheet. They believe it was a score sheet. This was the work of a video gamer, and that it was his intent to put his own name at the very top of that list.
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Unread postby icycalm » 21 Mar 2013 19:53

I rest my case.
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Unread postby zinger » 15 Apr 2013 20:50

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-qFAtk ... 6DCA3E5208

Hiroyuki Maruyama (G.rev) wrote:In a good shooter, you shoot, you kill the enemy and he disappears in a good explosion. Yes, that's what's good! It might seem obvious like that, but that's what a good shooter is.
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Unread postby icycalm » 15 Apr 2013 23:42

He forgot the dodging. Obviously, in shooting games shooting comes first, but in the danmaku subgenre dodging is at least as important, and sometimes perhaps even more so. DDG: dodging games.
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Unread postby icycalm » 23 Apr 2013 22:41

Turnus linked this in the Gears Judgment thread [ > ], but it deserves to be noted here as well:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013- ... le-can-fly

Adrian Chmielarz wrote:I definitely didn't want the player to get bonuses for performing heroic - for performing actions that are actually really stupid on the battlefield. Because finishing an enemy that you can just spend one bullet on him and he's done, or doing this elaborate whatever when bullets are still firing, that's just no to me.

I wouldn't have any headshot bonuses counting towards the three-star ratings; the executions wouldn't count towards the rating; and all these things that are in a really weird way Bulletstormy - I wouldn't want Bulletstorm in Gears. It was supposed to be, in my vision, a really dark fight for survival.

The reward for the headshot was supposed to be intrinsic not extrinsic. The reward was supposed to be, because the ammo was scarce, OK I only used one bullet instead of three. That was your reward in my version.


"Intrinsic" and "extrinsic" are wrong words to use here, and he should consider buying a dictionary for his native language, but the message is clear, and it's the same that I have noted in my essay and earlier in this thread. The score fucks up a game's atmosphere, and the higher immersion the game, the more it fucks it up. The purpose of every mechanic is to take you deeper into the game (i.e. revealing to you more aesthetics), and not out of it (i.e. leading to a scoreboard outside the game).
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