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Waypoint+ |OT| "Fuck Capitalism, Go Home"
- Thread starter Mezentine
- Start date
is the joyous gamer just a mythological construct to fool us into thinking people have fun while plaing video games
it joy gaming'sloch ness niseag
but to get serious, the pod's talk around difficulty/accessibility was great. i particularly liked rob's(?) point about souls games seemingly being some folks sole source of "difficulty".
it kinda grosses me out how the pushback against accessibility in gaming has quickly become "they're tring to ruin muh games". it's like configurable difficulty has become lost knowledge or something. this and the epic game store stuff make me fear we're heading into another dark age for gaming discourse.
it joy gaming's
but to get serious, the pod's talk around difficulty/accessibility was great. i particularly liked rob's(?) point about souls games seemingly being some folks sole source of "difficulty".
it kinda grosses me out how the pushback against accessibility in gaming has quickly become "they're tring to ruin muh games". it's like configurable difficulty has become lost knowledge or something. this and the epic game store stuff make me fear we're heading into another dark age for gaming discourse.
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I don't know why when people talk about adjustable difficulty, they only talk about making things easier, when there has been many things people have done to make things harder. Are people who do no-leveling runs not respecting the vision of the developer too?
I think you mean Loch Ness monster. Loch Ness isn't mythical, it very much exists 😂
not leveling is a thing you can do in the game. I don't understand what point you're trying to make
The point I'm trying to make is that there's no one vision that's sacrosanct when it comes to playing games. People have always made changes to make their experiences fit their desires, be it making it easier or harder. So why is adding more options to change difficulty suddenly such a controversial thing?
Modifiers/assists are often also used to make games harder. Think XCOM or Halo's Skull system. Or Sekiros own mechanic they mention in the podcast.
Players having more control over variables can be used to make things harder too. It's not just an "easy mode" thing.
Even From doesn't believe in the "one vision, one way to play the game"
there's also honour-based challenges (or just, alternate methods of play), like an ironman mode.
adjustability is core to video games
the whole "from games have one way to play and that's why they're great" is such a twisted reality.
adjustability is core to video games
i completely forgot that ds2 had a hard mode covenant (and then an extra hard 'remaster') until they mentioned the sekiro thing in the pod.
the whole "from games have one way to play and that's why they're great" is such a twisted reality.
niseag it is. but i hold that loch ness is a cooler name for a monster...
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It's not, I'm confident that if FromSoft were to add more ways to customize the experience of their games, that it would be thoughtful and well-received. The Souls games had plenty of ways to do this. Nobody was upset about people being able to summon help for bosses. What's upsetting is people demanding that FromSoft change their games to suit their preferences. I'm not talking about accessibility options, that's not the same thing as the difficulty discussion, much as some people pretend it is so they can have the moral high ground in their stance that FromSoft should make easier games.
I haven't listened to Waypoint's pod yet, but I should hope that they make this distinction.
Also, Sekiro already has (two!) modifiers to make the game harder. But accessibility isn't just a matter of tuning damage variables. That does nothing to make the game easier to play for people with disabilities. This is why the discourse is so maddening to me. Most people have no idea what they're talking about and are conflating two different topics.
But I have zero sympathy for abled people who just want the games to be easier, or to have an easy mode. Everything else in the AAA space is already there for you. Not all art has to be for everyone. Why does no one complain that roguelikes (or lites or whatever) like Spelunky are hard as fuck? Something about a AAA game being hard breaks people's brains, because they're not used to AAA games with high production values not being generic mush that anyone who can hold a controller can finish.
The core problem, I think, is that games are primarily viewed as products, and thus people feel entitled to products they can wholly consume. They're not seen as art made by people who fuckin' well know better than Message Board Joe.
The one thing i understand is that soulsgames have a certain leaderboard aspect to them. Everyone tries to beat a singular challenge and/or help each other accomplish it.
That's not very common nowadays.
And imo, it's a better argument than whatever ramble about "vision".
I still think people being abel to tinker with their games is the better approach. But i'm also used to PC games where that is a lot more common.
That's not very common nowadays.
And imo, it's a better argument than whatever ramble about "vision".
I still think people being abel to tinker with their games is the better approach. But i'm also used to PC games where that is a lot more common.
Oh I agree, out of context "Loch Ness" sounds much cooler than "Nessie." Loch Ness isn't even our nicest Loch, should probably just rename it and call the monster that tbh.
I think you mean "soul source of difficulty."
People do this all the time.
I dunno, the problem with this discourse and the Waypoint coverage of it is right here. Everybody's just staking their positions and there's so little argument. Even on this page, most of the "responses" are against things nobody here said. So instead of discussing the issue, we're discussing a (usually made up) discussion.
I remember Ben Pack was tweeting thru the "Bad Take" the other day and Patrick's whole response was "nah." But then Patrick wrote an article where he put a bunch of words in unspecified mouths and cast a bunch of aspersions. It's all ranks-closing discourse and no substance.
The "accessibility" angle has been so frustrating. The whole thing keeps feeling like sham justification, some way to create stakes and proclaim this a justice issue. But is it even? I wish Waypoint did the work to, like, interview disabled people about their experience with Sekiro, find the places where they hit walls, that kind of thing.
You can beat a lot of Sekiro enemies with two buttons and no sticks — just run up to him and then alternate blocks and slashes. I've found that constraining myself to cleanly executing basic moves is often the best strategy. But some enemies do require dodging and jumping and blocking and item use. So some challenges are manual dexterity, but some are raw reaction time. You'd have to implement different accessibility options to compensate for different disabilities. I'd really like Waypoint to get to the meat of that and talk to some players and designers instead of posturing around the discourse.
100%
there's also people defending review bombing and other toxic behavior, but I guess that fits into the larger EGS "discourse"
I feel like that was a (maybe unintentional) dig at gaming press. Every time a From game comes out...
patrick's self-righteousness on Twitter is getting kinda...a lot. really enjoy his work but may need to unfollow him on there
Probably some of the few English language ads for people in Norway from the ad group giving Vice ads.
the problem is that largely people don't make long reasoned articles about the discourse in the manner of, say, dueling scientific journals in the 70s or whatever. Mostly what they do is tweet hot takes (or longform youtube videos that are still garbage to fucking react to) and then discuss reactions to the hot takes, or to a hypothetical thesis constructed out of the hot takes, etc.
What i'm saying is, we need dueling academic journals of games discourse let's fucking go
What i'm saying is, we need dueling academic journals of games discourse let's fucking go
I've seen multiple tweets from game developers and designers to this effect:
and I gotta say, I normally bristle at sentiments like these—they're usually variants of "PC gone too far" alarmism, I think—but in this case I really feel it. Maybe I'm just aging into sneaky conservatism, but this particular public conversation has really frequently tipped into a kind of ascribing of intent that seems like anathema to the nuance that it warrants. Patrick's presence in this has summed that up a few times over—the flip "nah" to Ben, his suggestion that Sekiro just have endless revives as if that's a one-and-done solution, and, in particular, the bizarre "if cheating is a crime, then LOCK ME UP" martyrdom from his article.
the conversation about how to provide for audiences that are historically underserved and underconsidered in the manufacture of 'user experiences' is inherently affinity-based. 'accessibility' is incredibly broad and collects a whole lot of incredibly heterogeneous groups under its umbrella—a huge source of the nuance in this conversation, from the design-side, is that 'accessibility' is not going to mean one thing for all people, and that actually addressing it is more complicated than just 'adding endless revives' to a game. what would that do for colorblind people? for people who have muscular disorders that prevent them from engaging with the game as-is, regardless of how many lives they have? or for people who struggle with harder games because they have been—for cultural reasons, for economic reasons, for social reasons—been unable to spend the time with games necessary to develop the physical and perceptual vocabulary that almost all modern games (to some degree) take for granted in their audiences? even though these audiences are advocating for the same thing, broadly, their actual individual concerns are discrete from one another, and there is no panacea for the problems that games present them with.
because of this, 'accessibility' necessitates nuance to be addressed or applied in any substantial way. this is something that i see a lot of people acknowledging in these conversations, and, to be honest, they're usually people with a horse in the race—disability advocates who understand how much and how little 'accessibility' can be, media scholars who have a critical understanding of the origin and effect of 'accessibility' as a political exigency, and game designers who have confronted problems of accessibility in the course of their work.
and then, in the middle, there's a lot of people who either see (A) people asking for 'accessibility measures' as entitled, whiny gamers or (B) people expressing any nuanced thinking as 'gatekeepers' or 'elitists' who are needlessly denying disabled people tools they need out of (as Patrick implies at the end of his piece) emotional immaturity. there are a lot of people that i'm dismayed to see in that group, and i can absolutely understand why game designers who are having complicated, productive conversations in their own communities might not be particularly motivated to bring those conversations into public. i think that's a pretty bad sign for the community and for the future of 'accessibility' in games—both in how it's realized in games and in how it's perceived by audiences
and I gotta say, I normally bristle at sentiments like these—they're usually variants of "PC gone too far" alarmism, I think—but in this case I really feel it. Maybe I'm just aging into sneaky conservatism, but this particular public conversation has really frequently tipped into a kind of ascribing of intent that seems like anathema to the nuance that it warrants. Patrick's presence in this has summed that up a few times over—the flip "nah" to Ben, his suggestion that Sekiro just have endless revives as if that's a one-and-done solution, and, in particular, the bizarre "if cheating is a crime, then LOCK ME UP" martyrdom from his article.
the conversation about how to provide for audiences that are historically underserved and underconsidered in the manufacture of 'user experiences' is inherently affinity-based. 'accessibility' is incredibly broad and collects a whole lot of incredibly heterogeneous groups under its umbrella—a huge source of the nuance in this conversation, from the design-side, is that 'accessibility' is not going to mean one thing for all people, and that actually addressing it is more complicated than just 'adding endless revives' to a game. what would that do for colorblind people? for people who have muscular disorders that prevent them from engaging with the game as-is, regardless of how many lives they have? or for people who struggle with harder games because they have been—for cultural reasons, for economic reasons, for social reasons—been unable to spend the time with games necessary to develop the physical and perceptual vocabulary that almost all modern games (to some degree) take for granted in their audiences? even though these audiences are advocating for the same thing, broadly, their actual individual concerns are discrete from one another, and there is no panacea for the problems that games present them with.
because of this, 'accessibility' necessitates nuance to be addressed or applied in any substantial way. this is something that i see a lot of people acknowledging in these conversations, and, to be honest, they're usually people with a horse in the race—disability advocates who understand how much and how little 'accessibility' can be, media scholars who have a critical understanding of the origin and effect of 'accessibility' as a political exigency, and game designers who have confronted problems of accessibility in the course of their work.
and then, in the middle, there's a lot of people who either see (A) people asking for 'accessibility measures' as entitled, whiny gamers or (B) people expressing any nuanced thinking as 'gatekeepers' or 'elitists' who are needlessly denying disabled people tools they need out of (as Patrick implies at the end of his piece) emotional immaturity. there are a lot of people that i'm dismayed to see in that group, and i can absolutely understand why game designers who are having complicated, productive conversations in their own communities might not be particularly motivated to bring those conversations into public. i think that's a pretty bad sign for the community and for the future of 'accessibility' in games—both in how it's realized in games and in how it's perceived by audiences
Basically that dude was (to my understanding) just trying to make some point about journalists not literally using the job title "games journalist". Like if I'm following what I saw earlier, he meant literally just that exact term and wasn't saying people aren't real journalists/reporters.
But like... you're just kinda throwing that thought out there in a pretty unclear way, where people with ill intent are absolutely gonna read that as mocking journalists and spread it around, and the people who they target are obviously gonna look at it skeptically as well. Cause it's pretty easy and reasonable to read it as something like "nobody actually calls themselves journalists, that's laughable" or along those lines.
But like... you're just kinda throwing that thought out there in a pretty unclear way, where people with ill intent are absolutely gonna read that as mocking journalists and spread it around, and the people who they target are obviously gonna look at it skeptically as well. Cause it's pretty easy and reasonable to read it as something like "nobody actually calls themselves journalists, that's laughable" or along those lines.
Yeah. He clarified in the replies that he was just playing some semantics game. "Are you a games journalist if you review a game on Monday and a movie on Tuesday?"
It was just... a pointless exercise by him. Boneheaded, but totally not worth trotting out the Good Tweet over.
It was a silly thing to tweet regardless, plus I think some of the dumb shit being tweeted around the whole Sekiro discussion this past week had some folks automatically assuming the worst about anything mentioning "games journalism."
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Because of the P&P cast I decided to give it a read for the first time...
I feel like when I tried to play Sekiro and got to the first boss. I keep banging my head against a wall trying to wrap my head around the writing. I'm finding to so impenetrable lmao. Like a sentence goes on forever and I keep having trouble keeping track of the names and who is being referred to by the pro nouns.
Also a real hard swing after literally going from Pet Semetary to this.
I feel like when I tried to play Sekiro and got to the first boss. I keep banging my head against a wall trying to wrap my head around the writing. I'm finding to so impenetrable lmao. Like a sentence goes on forever and I keep having trouble keeping track of the names and who is being referred to by the pro nouns.
Also a real hard swing after literally going from Pet Semetary to this.
Goddamn how are they still not done with pride and prejudice.
Also not a fan of them eliminating the regular poddies for the extra ones.
Also not a fan of them eliminating the regular poddies for the extra ones.
This whole thing is definitely lacking game dev input, it would have been a great opportunity to get that. Didn't really like his article either, he was arguing against internet mob counterpoints that are easy to attack. Not sure how that helps anyone.
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This was a good thread from an actual dev, who echoed what I think is the most important thing in this whole kerfuffle: accessibility and difficulty are totally separate discussions. https://twitter.com/terrycavanagh/status/1115222285311463424
I think Derek Yu said some smart stuff too but I'd have to dig more to find it and I'm working (technically)
I think Derek Yu said some smart stuff too but I'd have to dig more to find it and I'm working (technically)
In my experience usually when people say a game is too hard in these contexts the implicit meaning is "too hard FOR ME therefore I don't play these games", and not "these games are too hard and they should make them more according to my specifications/add an easy mode", which is much more common around FromSoft games, for reasons I said in my last post.
FromSoft games are the most well-known/popular hard games hence why this difficulty debate tends to focus on those games.
from software bullshit gets clicks and listens. zeitgeist around it has people itchin to hitch a ride
not pointing out waypoint specifically. EVERYONE is all about this but isn't seeing the forest for the trees.
I mean, there is some of this, in that this is now an expected conversation when a From game comes out.
But also, from what I've seen, Sekiro is the game that people who actually need these options are choosing to discuss as well. So I don't think it's a matter of just it being what gets attention, or at least it's partially because those people are trying to make use of that attention to actually discuss it more seriously.
In other news, Natalie wrote a Falcon Age review (her first one on the site): https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/bj9gqv/falcon-age-review
Rob seems to have missed the cute gifs on twitter I've been seeing for a year:
I love the tech and animation work here. I'd really like to try this with Move controllers but not $450 CAD worth.
Rob seems to have missed the cute gifs on twitter I've been seeing for a year:
I love the tech and animation work here. I'd really like to try this with Move controllers but not $450 CAD worth.
I been meaning to ask, what has Waypoint's general opinion on Red Dead Redemption 2 been
what has Austin's opinion been on it, i know he was somewhat of a big RDR fan. Did he not like RDR 2?
what has Austin's opinion been on it, i know he was somewhat of a big RDR fan. Did he not like RDR 2?