G.B.: I remain almost entirely a PC gamer. It helps a lot. Like, hey, THIEF 2014 going for $60? Naaah, I got it for $7 a few months before release. Alien: Isolation cost me a dollar. Part of it is about being smart.
G.B.: Oh, absolutely. A while ago, some people at Insomniac researched game reviews to discover that the thing everyone talked about the most in reviews was graphics. Graphics are the single most important factor as to whether or not people like a game, according to most game reviews. Well, most reviews are actually wrong, as weird as that sounds. This is controversial opinion time.
Basically, nobody talks about sound in reviews. Framerate didn't get discussed unless it was super bad. A game's review score is primarily contingent on the game's presentation.
You can look at reviews and go "yeah, everyone talks about graphics," but I've seen plenty of games with great graphics fall by the wayside. Far more consistent is great sound design. I don't think I've ever seen a game with bad sound design win the kind of GOTY accolades that Red Dead Redemption or Half-Life 2 did, and both of them have incredible soundscapes.
People will tell you "Red Dead Redemption just feels like a Western," but what they really mean is that it's presented like a Western, and that's heavily done by using sound effects directly from Westerns
G.B.: Thinking with the "gameplay/story/visuals" paradigm isn't very helpful. It's how games were reviewed in the '80s and '90s because:
I think this taught us how to think about games, so you've got an awful lot of people discussing them purely on the terms of what we see in review score breakdowns. People end up reaching to explain why a thing does or doesn't work and they're often wrong about it.
- A -- Games were still in their formative years
- B -- Games writing was still developing its vocabulary.
Like, hey, That Popular Game You Like doesn't have a great story. Honestly, it's pretty dumb. But... it does have incredible facial animation, and it does its best to put that facial animation in your face.
Using really expressive, sympathetic characters goes a long way towards impacting our feelings, so the game in question gives us really strong feelings, despite having a really stupid story with a ton of plot holes. But most people don't think to write about facial animation as a component of storytelling.
G.B.: They are the average users. That sounds elitist, I know, but there's not really any other way to say it. Most people who write about games are people who grew up having fun playing console games and now they like writing about why they enjoy them. Most of the people who actually know how games work got jobs making games.
G.B.: Playing more PC games. Seriously....Tinkering is implicit in PC gaming. The more you tinker, the more you understand. You'll never really understand games if all you do is play them and write value judgments at the end.
So a game that Era will love?I read this yesterday and the prose makes it so easy to imagine the writer smelling his own farts as he writes each line.
It's a game made by Sony or has Sony marketing associated with it.
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.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?
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.
Holy shit. Some of you guys getting all bristly. I mean this is a fan boy forum, and I get it - but wow. I thought the article was intelligently written, thoughtful, and engaging from start to finish. I've never heard of the author and I agree with him in almost every point. I find myself enjoying janky, buggy games where the developers pour their heart and soul into their work, but polish not so much. A lot of triple AAA games have bored me lately (GoW, Last of Us,etc) and I didn't know why.
After reading this article I understand why I got bored so quickly. I've been playing games for a long time, and all this derivation leaves me with the feeling like I've done this many times before. I'm currently playing Minecraft again because I can get in there, create and fuck around, and be entertained by the unexpected. Sometimes I do like a sweeping, story driven "prestige" game, but I really really have to be in the mood for it or I just won't finish it. I'm tired of being lead around by the nose through set pieces that show off new techy pixel lights that I'm supposed to love due to marketing.
It's a quality writeup, and I think meandering style works for the subject.
Basically, prestige games are large-budget exercises in giving their audience things that they've seen before. Usually, they're packaged well, but empty when it comes to new ideas. Doc's complaint, it seems to me, is that there is a particular variety of games that are mere repackaging of successes from other media, and that are provided accolades in return. It's a valid complaint when compared to how much the medium of games actually allows people to express.
Anyway, folks should check the article for its argument before raising their hackles over the concept. Look to see what he's calling "prestige games" before you sling accusations of elitism. Doc is no snob - the article celebrates Halo, Gears of War, and a bunch of others, and he's a big fan of Destiny, besides. Snobbery isn't the point - a complaint about repackaged media, and their celebrated reception, is.
\TLoU you can play in normal difficulty and find enough resources not to keep it all stealthy if you'd like.
\
Please don't do this, I like Doc, don't agree with him, but his opinion isn't greater than the average poster.
free burger king tacos every thursdaywhaaaat? then what's the point of signing up for the Resetera Important Member Pass
Woah, there's an important member pass?!?!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.
Maybe he shouldn't have written a whole long-ass article that boils down to "my opinion is more correct than yours" then.Please don't do this, I like Doc, don't agree with him, but his opinion isn't greater than the average poster.
someone made a thread about my boner two weeks ago
I hear you're a developer but ehat have you actually made? What's the title?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...
:(
Im sure it's a great boner
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"?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.
I
I hear you're a developer but ehat have you actually made? What's the title?
God of War and Uncharted are bad, but fucking Crackdown 3 is great. I don't even know what to say to that.
Somebody... else?
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...
Yeah no. We see you.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
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.
Don't think complex stories are "Oscar bait."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!
But seriously, many of these AAA games do kind of have this 'Oscar-bait' feeling to them, like TLoU.
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.
G.B.: Playing more PC games. Seriously....Tinkering is implicit in PC gaming. The more you tinker, the more you understand. You'll never really understand games if all you do is play them and write value judgments at the end.
I mean, no 1 dimensional characters? Is anything outside of "save the princess" oscar bait these days?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.
Edith Finch is pretty dope indeed.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)
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)_/¯
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.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.