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“I don’t think I like Prestige Games”
- Thread starter Proven
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User Banned (1 Week) - Personal attacks and off-site drama
"grown" is a state of mind. I'm not sure this guy is there yet. There is a very..."interesting" interview he gave a while back that gives an insight to why he rates things the way he does. Paraphrasing here because the interview is very wordy:
Being a member of the games press often requires you are on top of things, able to play both recent and older games with ease. From what I understand, for most of your life, you've consistently had struggles with money, partially due to covering a genetic disorder.
How have you handled all of that, facing those struggles, along with going to college? Not a lot of people would be able to do that.
You feel too much weight is put on graphics?
So you'd argue that the -video- aspect of games is actually not as major a factor by comparison?
They go with what is most immediately accessible and what most casual gamers might think is the answer.
Hmm, what would you say then the games press could benefit most from, in response to the problem you've found?
YIKES.
If there's a better candidate for "has no business writing about games" I've yet to see it. The dude is extremely elitist, has VERY narrow ideas of what makes a decent game, and if a game does not meet that criteria it's written off, and those who like it are written off as "people who don't understand gaming."
That Game You Like doesn't have a good story, you only think it does because good facial animation is tugging at your heartstrings.
Graphics don't matter, they did during the 90s and everyone who still rates graphics as important is wrong.
Red Dead Redemption is a Western only because it SOUNDS like one. Sound Design is the most important thing.
I mean, these are some very bizarre, out there opinions and it's no wonder literally everything Sony makes doesn't fit within his criteria of "what makes a good game" and is instead a "prestige game" for dirty casuals who don't know better.
I feel like so many people hear comments about games being compared to film and just bristle at the idea by default, like it causes a defensive reaction and they must disprove it. Which is fine, I suppose, but it often leads to arguments that sound almost intentionally obtuse, trying to take the comparison as a 1:1 statement. Obviously games, or at least the way we present them currently, can't emulate the pacing and camera language of film, like the way this author compared the convoy scene from Indiana Jones to the train sequence from Uncharted 2 (even though there was probably a better comparison to be made with Uncharted 2's own convoy sequence).
Film has it's own techniques for making action engaging and pushing the narrative forward for the audience, but games often put you in control of the action set pieces because being a part of the action is engaging on a level that film as a passive medium doesn't have, and the "audience" is in control of pushing the narrative forward. Games like Uncharted 2 give you the feel of being playing a movie and being involved, they aren't JUST movies.
I feel like criticizing a series like Uncharted for using tropes and elements of stuff like Indiana Jones comes off somewhat disingenuous when Amy Hennig and Naughty Dog have never shied away from explaining that the series draws so much from those movies but also from the sources that also inspired stuff like Indiana Jones, pulp series like Doc Savage and The Shadow. For anyone familiar with those characters and stories, there are a lot of great nods, homages, Easter eggs, and subversions to be appreciated, while still offering a story and characters that can still be appreciated without that prior knowledge. The games wear their inspiration on their sleeve.
Storytelling is a part of the human experience and has been since we started communicating. If you give someone a medium, they will find a way to tell stories with it, and it will evolve from there. Whether static, visual, aural, or experimental, etc. we always find a way to tell each other stories. Often we retell stories, or revisit themes and premises. Just because film has explored some things pretty thoroughly doesn't mean we can't explore them with the interactivity and combined methods of delivering an experience that games afford us. Romance novels are plentiful and have been since long before film, but that doesn't mean we can't still enjoy a romance movie however subversive or predictable it may be.
Games are a young medium, and deserve the opportunity to experiment with their voice just as much as every other medium did and continues to do. Games can be incredibly varied and, because of advancing technology, have evolved at a rate that outpaces most other visual medium. We're still feeling out the capabilities of interactive media and rapidly exploring ways to deliver their experiences to players/audiences.
The games industry is also a commercial arts industry like film. We still have indie productions, yes, but it takes capital to make games and there's nothing wrong with playing it safe and trying things that are known to work for other medium in order to make a profit that affords room for further experimentation with each consecutive project. Taste is subjective, yes, and it's perfectly fine to want more from games and not enjoy the games this article mentions. But it feels really closed minded to dismiss the validity of what these games have tried to achieve and the ways that they've each pushed the medium forward just because they retread some familiar territory from a storytelling standpoint while experimenting in so many other ways. Books learned to walk so movies could run, and movies in turn learned to run so interactive media could sprint, the problem is they're still building speed.
Film has it's own techniques for making action engaging and pushing the narrative forward for the audience, but games often put you in control of the action set pieces because being a part of the action is engaging on a level that film as a passive medium doesn't have, and the "audience" is in control of pushing the narrative forward. Games like Uncharted 2 give you the feel of being playing a movie and being involved, they aren't JUST movies.
I feel like criticizing a series like Uncharted for using tropes and elements of stuff like Indiana Jones comes off somewhat disingenuous when Amy Hennig and Naughty Dog have never shied away from explaining that the series draws so much from those movies but also from the sources that also inspired stuff like Indiana Jones, pulp series like Doc Savage and The Shadow. For anyone familiar with those characters and stories, there are a lot of great nods, homages, Easter eggs, and subversions to be appreciated, while still offering a story and characters that can still be appreciated without that prior knowledge. The games wear their inspiration on their sleeve.
Storytelling is a part of the human experience and has been since we started communicating. If you give someone a medium, they will find a way to tell stories with it, and it will evolve from there. Whether static, visual, aural, or experimental, etc. we always find a way to tell each other stories. Often we retell stories, or revisit themes and premises. Just because film has explored some things pretty thoroughly doesn't mean we can't explore them with the interactivity and combined methods of delivering an experience that games afford us. Romance novels are plentiful and have been since long before film, but that doesn't mean we can't still enjoy a romance movie however subversive or predictable it may be.
Games are a young medium, and deserve the opportunity to experiment with their voice just as much as every other medium did and continues to do. Games can be incredibly varied and, because of advancing technology, have evolved at a rate that outpaces most other visual medium. We're still feeling out the capabilities of interactive media and rapidly exploring ways to deliver their experiences to players/audiences.
The games industry is also a commercial arts industry like film. We still have indie productions, yes, but it takes capital to make games and there's nothing wrong with playing it safe and trying things that are known to work for other medium in order to make a profit that affords room for further experimentation with each consecutive project. Taste is subjective, yes, and it's perfectly fine to want more from games and not enjoy the games this article mentions. But it feels really closed minded to dismiss the validity of what these games have tried to achieve and the ways that they've each pushed the medium forward just because they retread some familiar territory from a storytelling standpoint while experimenting in so many other ways. Books learned to walk so movies could run, and movies in turn learned to run so interactive media could sprint, the problem is they're still building speed.
I too am tired of prestige games that get slathered in critical acclaim, despite having stories that are bad knockoffs of hollywood oscar-bait that don't complement the gameplay at all.
I'd really like to see this concept explored by someone who could demonstrate they were doing it in good faith.
I'd really like to see this concept explored by someone who could demonstrate they were doing it in good faith.
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Doc Seuss still having a grudge against Uncharted 2 after a decade is commitment. Remember arguing with him when he was trying to push MW2 as having the better writing that year.
OK, so after reading through a lot of your posts and thinking about mine I'm realizing that I don't agree with really everything he says but I think I was just so taken aback by identifying with some of his points. What that says to me is that I need to start reading other writers who are talking about things at the level of some of his points, and clearly done in a better way with less bias and self aggrandizing. Can you guys recommend some great authors / reads?
I think there's an interesting point there about the critical response to some of these cinematic games, the desperation to frame them as these transcendent experiences that elevate the medium.
That said it's a really muddled write-up, and that's coming from someone with no interest in the "prestige" titles that he mentioned.
That said it's a really muddled write-up, and that's coming from someone with no interest in the "prestige" titles that he mentioned.
Okay, I love The Last of Us for many reasons, but I would agree that it wears its inspirations on its sleeve. However, for this guy to say that it's a bad thing but then go on to say that he liked Until Dawn, well... that's just hypocrisy.
Really fun to watch people go through ancient interviews or do selective quoting (yeah, I see your "look, he hates on sony games!!!" post where you ignored me saying I disliked bioshock, bioshock infinite, red dead redemption, grand theft auto iv, max payne 3, and so on).
So.
Let me shut this down real quick.
If I hated Sony games, why did I write a whole lot more praising one single Sony exclusive this year?
Could it possibly be that
1) you don't appreciate sony games that much; you just like one specific kind of sony game and associate t hat with the brand
2) i actually fucking love a lot of sony games, I just don't like the Naughty Dog approach?
I think it would be more apt to characterize me as someone who doesn't like Neil Druckmann's games than someone who dislikes Sony.
Sure, I have issues with The Corporation of Sony, but... really? You're just gonna pretend I don't actually love Sony games, when I have like 12,000 words of me praising the shit out of Days Gone just months ago? When I talked about a certain STYLE of game, without singling out any one specific publisher or developer?
Hell, when you read the article, did you see the part where I said that I thought the PlayStation exclusive game Shadow of the Colossus deserved the praise it got?
Nah, the people whining "doc just hates sony" are either malicious or stupid.
EDIT: really fun that resetera can't handle medium links lol
So.
Let me shut this down real quick.
If I hated Sony games, why did I write a whole lot more praising one single Sony exclusive this year?
Could it possibly be that
1) you don't appreciate sony games that much; you just like one specific kind of sony game and associate t hat with the brand
2) i actually fucking love a lot of sony games, I just don't like the Naughty Dog approach?
I think it would be more apt to characterize me as someone who doesn't like Neil Druckmann's games than someone who dislikes Sony.
Sure, I have issues with The Corporation of Sony, but... really? You're just gonna pretend I don't actually love Sony games, when I have like 12,000 words of me praising the shit out of Days Gone just months ago? When I talked about a certain STYLE of game, without singling out any one specific publisher or developer?
Hell, when you read the article, did you see the part where I said that I thought the PlayStation exclusive game Shadow of the Colossus deserved the praise it got?
Nah, the people whining "doc just hates sony" are either malicious or stupid.
EDIT: really fun that resetera can't handle medium links lol
Oh god, wish someone could find the clip of the Infamous E3 presentation where Nate is really intense and going on about terrorism. It was unintentionally hilarious.
The youtuber Mathewmatosis is excellent, touches on some Seus's "points" in his Last of us and God of War critiques but in far more eloquent manner.
I honestly just play games to share with the developers the thing they made. So it's never really about what i want or what i care about...
That's a really interesting point - the commercialism of games and their industrial production really do place many of them in a similar spot to animation and film. Industrial, commercial art is tough to wrestle with from a critical perspective.
I don't think the criticism came from a bias from the forum in any way. You can pinpoint many inaccuracies in the article, and if you think a bit you can see the arguments uses to criticize a game are not the same used to defend one.
You have every reason to feel the way you do, but if I were to give a take based on the article's problems, I would say to not hold everything under an umbrella and disregard or praise it. Not every "prestige" game is a snooze fest, not every "heart poured" game is a masterpiece. If you want to really find why AAA titles don't like you, go beyond looking at their budget and more into what ticks your boxes.
you more or less got it.
the problem is basically twofold
problem #1: you have people who praise certain games or call themselves fans because of the belief that liking Important Art will make people take them and their hobby seriously
problem #2: you have people who look at something that's doing a cargo cult approach to narrative and going "ah, yes, this is the best thing. nothing can be better." There's a refusal to, like... try? To embrace the medium? To fall in love with a billion things?
So, I was trying to stay awake yesterday, and I figured I'd try to tease out this thread I'd been picking at, and this is what I came up with. It kept me up for like, idk, a couple hours maybe? So it did what I needed it to.
I think there's like, one specific type of game that I don't really gel with, and that's, as some people have said, oscar bait games. I called them prestige games because games don't have oscar awards, and 'prestige tv' is the term we use for things like breaking bad and game of thrones. Since we see a lot of game devs hiring prestige tv actors (destiny hired peter dinklage from GoT and lance reddick from the wire, for instance), it feels like an apt comparison. I think some people are confusing 'prestige tv' with 'prestigious tv,' and while there's crossover, there's some prestige tv that sucks (hi, walking dead)
when you sit down and talk with AAA developers about why they're doing what they're doing, a lot of them are actually just going "i saw this on tv and i really wanted to make that myself so I did." And that's not really a bad thing, but the intersection between that motivation and the critical response fascinates me.
The obsession over God of War's one take thing, with people arguing this elevated the game... like, no one even paid attention when Dead Space and Dead Space 2 did it, right? Why do people do that? It's like they don't notice until marketers tell them to. That frustration was what really got me wanting to write about this.
Stealth and being low on resources actually made it more tolerable. I like stealth games. There are just much better ones than TLoU.
I'm glad someone finally put this out there because it is so true.
If the only thing a game does well is emulate stories and themes we've seen before but the gameplay takes a backseat then what is the point of playing it. The narrative isn't a driving force because all it does is ape what has come before it.
Making a game more"cinematic" takes away from the actually onus of playing a game.
I generally have zero interest in big Sony first party games because they are chasing the prestige of transcending "games" and being recognized as true art.
Gameplay is what separates games as a medium from film so why is everything so dead set on being a film, films we have seen before.
If you like those games thats fine, but when someone doesn't enjoy those experiences they aren't wrong.
If the only thing a game does well is emulate stories and themes we've seen before but the gameplay takes a backseat then what is the point of playing it. The narrative isn't a driving force because all it does is ape what has come before it.
Making a game more"cinematic" takes away from the actually onus of playing a game.
I generally have zero interest in big Sony first party games because they are chasing the prestige of transcending "games" and being recognized as true art.
Gameplay is what separates games as a medium from film so why is everything so dead set on being a film, films we have seen before.
If you like those games thats fine, but when someone doesn't enjoy those experiences they aren't wrong.
whaaaat? then what's the point of signing up for the Resetera Important Member Pass
Once again man, I like you, I think your opinions are a little archaic, and find the dismissive nature of "if it isn't challenging then it's a walking simulator" pretentious and no longer relevant to the medium.
But to get a whole thread seems a bit masturbatory.
But to get a whole thread seems a bit masturbatory.
but i made an award winning walking simulator... tim rogers roasted it for kotaku and vice said it might be the most important first person game of 2018...
why would I say walking sims aren't relevant to the medium?
I mean, yes, I did write an article talking about why walking sims SUCKED, but I then went on to say "but they're getting better, and here's the games that do that," and listed really cool games like EDITH FINCH, which I adore, and then made my own to contribute to what I saw as making walking sims better (for me, fucking with the rules of dialog systems and nonverbal storytelling without the standard 'notes everywhere' approach)
Maybe he shouldn't have written a whole long-ass article that boils down to "my opinion is more correct than yours" then.
I
I hear you're a developer but ehat have you actually made? What's the title?
They made that one after the Prominent Member pass leaked.
Like... you know Doc ain't praising games for their mechanical complexity and difficulty? They made Paratopic, a horror "walking simulator"?
I edited my post a bit for clarity
but uh
I'm not going to seriously argue that my opinion is more valid than any other member's here, but I dunno, I feel like resetera posts threads of developer blog posts occasionally, and I am a game developer, and I posted a blog post??
I'm really frustrated that people are actively ignoring all the praise I've given sony games so they can persist in some weird vendetta against me. The facts just don't back them up.
I want to make a tongue in cheek joke about the number of Vitas I own right now, but I feel like people would take it seriously. Because who else would own 8 vitas...
What those games do is quite different from each other, so that opinion is not as incongruent as it might first seem. I think the first step to understanding what the author likes and dislikes in gaming is recognizing the difference between those games.
I mean, I'm a developer as well, and I used to write for Time Magazine. I just think it's a dangerous platform to preach from.I edited my post a bit for clarity
but uh
I'm not going to seriously argue that my opinion is more valid than any other member's here, but I dunno, I feel like resetera posts threads of developer blog posts occasionally, and I am a game developer, and I posted a blog post??
I'm really frustrated that people are actively ignoring all the praise I've given sony games so they can persist in some weird vendetta against me. The facts just don't back them up.
I want to make a tongue in cheek joke about the number of Vitas I own right now, but I feel like people would take it seriously. Because who else would own 8 vitas...
Now I have to go through years of old forum postings to see how I got along with DocSeuss, is he a friend or is this the time to get my boot in!
But seriously, many of these AAA games do kind of have this 'Oscar-bait' feeling to them, like TLoU. But they can still be great games.
But seriously, many of these AAA games do kind of have this 'Oscar-bait' feeling to them, like TLoU. But they can still be great games.
It's literally: I don't like games that feel self-important when they aren't really doing anything spectacular. I loved Crackdown 3 because I get to be Terry Crews throwing cars into an evil megacorporation's plans. Like... if you wanted to know if I felt a game did a good job being really sincere and emotional, I'd actually point you at Days Gone. I think that's one of the better narratives in games right now. It's very strong character work in a way we don't normally see.
I think the self-important branding of games like God of War sucks. I mean... did you know, before they wrote God of War, the team that wrote it wrote... get this, Lost Planet 3? And it was actually REALLY good? And nobody paid attention to it because it was Lost Planet 3, but they're all paying attention to God of War because it's God of War.
And that's frustrating, right? The same writers! The same level of skill! But one game is a big exclusive with huge marketing and the other was not.
It feels like the standard is based on the perception of importance rather than the quality of the work. Crackdown 3 isn't serious, therefore, to many people, it must be bad. I fell in love with it because it was the first game I'd played that actually used lock-on in a really interesting way since like Metroid Prime 3 and it knew it was a video game-ass video game and wasn't afraid of that.
I'm not trying to say I speak for all developers. I literally titled the piece "i don't think i like prestige games" because I was blogging about a personal problem I was trying to resolve. I didn't market this article or anything, I just tweeted it, saw my phone blow up, and then retweeted it the next day. I have no idea why so many people are quote tweeting it and being all "I don't agree with all of it but it's really interesting," but it is making me super happy.
Anyways, I read through the thing like an hour ago and found myself agreeing with some (not all, mind) of the opinions presented in the article. It certainly makes some points I'd not considered or even noticed beforehand, like the 3 branches of skill trees, like what the fuck is up with that?
Anyways, good read.
Anyways, good read.
I don't think there's anything complex about TLoU's story. It's a simple, tropey story, just really well executed and with great characters.
But that doesn't make it "Oscar bait" either, unless you consider stuff like The Walking Dead to be Oscar bait too.
Do i need to shoot a movie to understand cinema? Do i need to play the piano to enjoy music? Do i need to write a novel to appreciate a book?
Is art and media purely an inbred exercise for creators to fellate each other and for everyone else to be too dumb and/or ignorant to understand it?
This is what happens when you get too high on your own self importance.
I mean, no 1 dimensional characters? Is anything outside of "save the princess" oscar bait these days?
Y'all trying to discredit a person based on what kind of fanboy you think they are, past interviews or their game taste is bad. Just, plain bad. And it's especially frustrating in this case, because the article itself gives more than enough room for you to criticize. I tried and did it myself! It's not a very good piece in my opinion.
But not because the author is supposed to be a Sony Fanboy or "Walking Sim Hater" or whatever else. It's silly to concentrate on that and you deserve to get dunked on by him for that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But not because the author is supposed to be a Sony Fanboy or "Walking Sim Hater" or whatever else. It's silly to concentrate on that and you deserve to get dunked on by him for that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
movies about complex social issues that are boiled down to simplified ideas are oscar bait, like green book's "wow, white people, we solved racism! gosh"
dammit, someone criticizing in good faith? i'm ~so~ disappointed
(no, seriously, I missed your criticisms, I'll go look for them if you want to chat? a friend yesterday was like 'man u seem really angery in this piece' and yeah, it actually does seem pretty angry, so if that was your criticism, i totally get you)
The frustration about God of War being the GOTY last year? I guess it was the same frustration you felt when you realized Uncharted 2 was the GOTY in 2009. History repeats itself.
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