[Virtue]

For us zoomer gentlemen, the name icycalm, brings to mind nothing, we have not been exposed to him in any consequential way, there are no numerous video essays about him, cluttering our youtube homepage, nor is there any thread about him on /lit/ that doesn't have months in between one another. And I think it is a great pity, the current state of affairs. Thus I am here to right this wrong, enlighten the minds of those who are unaware of Icycalm, Alex Kierkegaard.


He knew it all too well, that he would not receive the proper recognition he deserved during his lifetime, isn't that the reason he put this quote from Schopenhauer's "The Art of Literature" between Preface and the Gameplay essay?

Men of great genius, whether their work be in poetry, philosophy or art, stand in all ages like isolated heroes, keeping up singlehanded a desperate struggle against the onslaught of an army of opponents. ... Let the isolated champion achieve what he may: it is slow to be acknowledged; it is late in being appreciated, and then only on the score of authority; it may easily fall into neglect again, at any rate for a while. Ever afresh it finds itself opposed by false, shallow, and insipid ideas, which are better suited to that large majority, and so generally hold the field.

Slow to be acknowledged, and late in being appreciated.

Lord Anthony in his video essay titled "Oriental Gun Fetishism", mentions icycalm and his thoughts on DOOM. And in one of his non edited videos he says this.

How could I describe this project of mine here and my more general internet presence? I might say, I am here to finish what Icycalm and Topdrunkee started.

Then who is Icycalm? PUA, Criminal, Philosopher, video game reviewer and theorist.

But in all of this, he has a claim to be the final one, and also fatal to those who came before him or contemporaneous to him. The title of his book on game is "Endgame The End of PUA Theory", in his Philosophy book Orgy of the Will he is claiming to have reached the end of philosophy, that is to say of thought, in one of his essays about video game Culture he even claims to have reached the end of Videogame(art) theory. Because according to icycalm every single artwork that ever existed has been the subset of video games, therefore the end of videogame theory, would be the end of art theory itself.

icycalm's internet presence could be divided into three categories to make it easier to study it for us. Videogames, the Game and Philosophy, these three overlap with one another greatly, especially videogames and philosophy.

Game
The Forum Hero, Elliot Rodger during his lifetime posted in many forums and many websites, but the one forum he posted on, that concerns us now is Puahate. You probably have heard of the acronym PSL, if you type it into youtube search you will be given videos with titles containing PSLgod, with edits of highly attractive men, videos made by men and for men that are heterosexual. But what PSL stands for is this, Puahate,Sluthate and Lookism. These three were the titles of forums now defunct. But the history of Puahate is intriguing, according to the incelswiki, it was made by a former frustrated follower of a PUA company, site's original focus was to expose the fraudulent practices of PUAs and criticize them, and after the day of retribution the website was closed.

The question must be asked now, why would people despise the PUAs, besides for their fraudulent practices? Wouldn't they be worthy of being despised if their theories were insufficient for getting dates? And even if their theories were sufficient if they target inferior, dysgenic women they are worthy of contempt. These are the reasons to despise PUAs if there are any, fraudulent practices, inferior theories, targeting inferior women. So if there is a proper hatred of PUAs, it is the hatred against the dysgenic, the inferior theories created by the dysgenic, and the inferior theories that lead you to worthless women. See seamaxxing.

Earlier I talked about his claims to being the final of all, the harbinger of end, fatal to those whose theories are insufficient. Appropriately he calls himself The Last Great Pick-up Artist, and his book about PUA is titled Endgame: The End of PUA Theory.

Game is deception. It always has been and it always will be, for the simple reason that women are not very good judges of a man's value. As long as women are sexually independent, therefore, cutting-edge game will hinge around some type of deception; and when women are not independent, as was the case in the vast majority of our species' past, game will vanish.

He is very evil, and his theory on game basically teaches you how to prey on girls. This is a good thing btw, no value judgements. BillyONare posted a thread before, quoting an essay from Heartiste with a picture of Rin Tohsaka, if a person thought Heartiste was a predator, Icycalm has to be the Uberpredator.

Videogames
When was Insomnia.ac launched? In 2005 it has been 19 years, a very old website. Culture.vg and its predecessor Insomnia.ac, has within the most important essays written on gaming in human history. These essays made me a hardcore gamer, thanks to these essays, I reflected on the experiences I had while playing videogames, they're I believe, the most valuable essays a gamer can read, most of them are paywalled, but a small portion of them has been archived. The most important of all these essays is Genealogy of Art Games, arguably the most important essay written on Video Games, from the title one is reminded of Friedrich Nietzsche's The Genealogy of Morality, and precisely like that book, it is divided into three essays. But unfortunately the third essay, in detriment to the progress of Human Thought is paywalled, nonetheless you can read the first two essays, and you must read it. The rest of his essays are quite good and insightful too.

VG Culture Volume I
VG Culture Volume II
Genealogy of "Art Games"

These were the only writings of his I could find on videogames, that were not paywalled, besides his reviews, his CULT's loyalty is admirable, although I don't know when he began to charge people for his writings, it is very impressive that there are no leaks of his paywalled writings despite him writing since 2005.

Philosophy
There is already a thread on Orgy of the Will posted by BillyONare, but nothing of much substance has been said about it. Its full title is ORGY OF THE WILL: A PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE, which immediately brings to mind Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil: a Prelude to a Philosophy of The Future. The philosophical influences of Orgy of the Will are obviously Heraclitus, Nietzsche and Baudrillard. We see the same trend of claiming to be the end here too and the claim to be fatal to those who came before him or contemporaneous to him.

"The days of the book-philosopher are over" 
In this work of absolute genius, after two and a half thousand years of progress the path of philosophy arrives at an end, and the intellect at last draws, one by one, its ultimate conclusions. Apocalyptic, uncompromising and merciless, Orgy of the Will constitutes nothing less than a declaration of war on the so-called "human species".

Now DISCUSS!

[anthony]

Excellent, Icycalm discussion.

My particular interest is in Icycalm the media critic. I say media specifically because I think this is where he falls down immediately. You bring up probably the most important thing about the man as a critic in your OP. He saw video games as the peak of media because they can technically do the most. Icycalm I think said many brilliant things about video games on particular points within them. Ideas on competition, representations of sports, bad hack critics, why certain games are fun, but I disagree with a lot of his bigger picture thoughts on what video games are or could be. And I think on some level he might be aware that his thinking is unsatisfying and incomplete here. His own ideas on where and how video games peak over time have shifted more than once, we've gone from arcades, to MMOs, now to online tabletop campaigns.

I think this was somewhat inevitable due to certain key mistakes (or odd calls) made in his development as a thinker. Now I haven't read his work in a while so I don't have quotes. I have my own memories, correct me if I'm wrong anywhere. As I may have said before, I think Icycalm's mistakes are quintessentially Western in the bad way. Everything I say about computer autists being a boring, sterile dead-end in video game creation, Icycalm I think repeats those mistakes just as a thinker and critic. He is seeing what they see. To Icycalm video games are the peak of art because they can most accurately capture (through simulation) the drama of human life through the creation and realisation of increasingly elaborate obstacles and struggles for us to overcome. Icycalm agrees with The Jackal, life is will to power, all creatures exist to discharge their strength. This informs his interest in video games, and is why he's relatively uninterested in media other than video games. I say relatively, because I do remember him talking about appreciating various fine arts in places. Which I think may be a shortcoming of his own theories, that they don't explain this. How serious he is about this other art I can't be sure of, also he may have written more about them somewhere I haven't seen.

Getting on track, the problem with Icycalm, is that his chosen theory for the greatness of video games, that they stimulate our will to power, leaves a giant gaping hole full of all of the other things we're enjoying when we play video games. I do believe that he accurately describes an appeal of video games. But he has more or less decided that this is the appeal. And acts like it more and more over time in his tastes and the choices of games to give his time to. As I believe I said in a video at some point, I'm not even sure if he likes these things, or if he has just convinced himself that he should. Perhaps the theory tail wags the Icycalm dog. I have looked at some of his archived streams, you guys might think I can get boring, I challenge you to watch Icycalm and his retarded slaves (another thing, I have gathered better company than him. Yes I'm talking about you, the one reading this.) playing the latest survivalcraftingvaniabornelite.



Here's how he sounds when he's relatively enthusiastic and switched on.



Now look at him playing a video game. How long can you watch before feeling depressed? Maybe it would be weird to go on theory tangents in the company of others (it's what I personally see as the point of playing a game with other people), but he hardly seems switched on at all. And the game itself is so lame looking. Does this look like The Overman engaging with the ultimate art?

But then, maybe this isn't the ultimate art yet.

I've probably said before. Icycalm has the western autist brain view of video games, even if he reached the position through more elaborate means, they've converged. The more simulation you put in a game the more possibility of mastery and exercise of power it has, so the better it is (in theory, I don't believe any game has scaled this way for detail despite the determination of so many). The logical conclusion of this I believe is to recreate the world on a wire. Icycalm believes that discharging your power against the world is what humanity is built for and finds fulfilling. So the more a game resembles the world, the more fully one can throw their whole selves against it the better it is.

But we of course hit the technical wall, it's hard to simulate an entire world. Icycalm does not go back to the theory drawing board. He doubles down in the lamest way possible. He becomes a tabletop RPG guy. You really can have an entire universe, or even multiple, if you're able to freely summon more details at will from your own mind. Now you could say that there's no meaningful challenge or struggle against your own imagination, but tabletop applies rules to imagination. And so now we've got it solved. Imagine a world. Impose limitations upon action within that world which mirror irl limitations and problem solving capacities as closely as possible, and now you've created a little arena for your own simulated will to power to be discharged over and over again forever. Human entertainment is solved. Video games made all prior media obsolete. With this maybe even video games aren't necessary anymore.

This, I believe, is not good. It's a mistake. And it goes back to that old error. All old media is just subsets of video games, and video games does will to power which is the greatest thing so those parts don't even matter. Icycalm himself (rather amusingly) incorporates multimedia elements into his online tabletop game (just linking the movie 'Aliens' inside his Aliens tabletop game). Why would anybody want to watch Aliens when they could be virtual problem solving? Why do anything but create and then solve the most engrossing and challenging problems possible forever?

This is the rest of why we like video games, and why we liked everything that came before. My own conclusion on why video games are appealing is that, yes, there is the game part. And Icycalm's read is more or less applicable there. It's fun to solve things. Pit yourself against something. But video games are multimedia. They can be expressive works. They can be fine craft. They can be personal. This what I call the multimedia art element, distinct from the game.

Icycalm's theory cannot explain why I enjoyed Evergrace 2. I don't want to play Star Citizen but I played this. The reason I played it is simple. I wanted to hear this in context.



I think Kota Hoshino's music is beautiful and I wanted to see why he was making it, how From attempted to put it to use in something greater. Where in Icycalm's writing is this appeal explained? Elaborated upon? Crystalised into a perfect form we can incorporate into our understanding of art to appreciate it better going forward? As far as I can remember, it's not. And because it's not Icycalm's theories do not lead you to a better appreciation of video games or art. They lead to you paying him to join his online tabletop campaigns. Is this actually fun? It doesn't look fun to me. If any of you understand the appeal you're welcome to try to explain it to me.

I'll call this post here and let someone else weigh in if any of you would like to.

[FlyWithYou]

But then, maybe this isn't the ultimate art yet.

I've probably said before. Icycalm has the western autist brain view of video games, even if he reached the position through more elaborate means, they've converged. The more simulation you put in a game the more possibility of mastery and exercise of power it has, so the better it is (in theory, I don't believe any game has scaled this way for detail despite the determination of so many). The logical conclusion of this I believe is to recreate the world on a wire. Icycalm believes that discharging your power against the world is what humanity is built for and finds fulfilling. So the more a game resembles the world, the more fully one can throw their whole selves against it the better it is.

But we of course hit the technical wall, it's hard to simulate an entire world. Icycalm does not go back to the theory drawing board. He doubles down in the lamest way possible. He becomes a tabletop RPG guy. You really can have an entire universe, or even multiple, if you're able to freely summon more details at will from your own mind. Now you could say that there's no meaningful challenge or struggle against your own imagination, but tabletop applies rules to imagination. And so now we've got it solved. Imagine a world. Impose limitations upon action within that world which mirror irl limitations and problem solving capacities as closely as possible, and now you've created a little arena for your own simulated will to power to be discharged over and over again forever. Human entertainment is solved. Video games made all prior media obsolete. With this maybe even video games aren't necessary anymore.

Rules don't lead to struggle necessarily. I'm remembering what Anthony said in his guns video about how a 'power fantasy'-ish way of seeing guns leads to games with reload animations where it looks like the guy is trying to slam the magazine in as hard as he can, lol. Ungraceful. When you're playing a good game, you're not struggling against its rules. It's a pleasure to know and work them.

[Virtue]

Here are the insomnia reviews of Icycalm, which I didn't post on the OP, check them out, and find a game you like. And see what his taste in games is actually like.

The chart and the essay on it

Essay on Scoring

The Artfag test

Brief reviews

Video Game Art Volume I

[Virtue]

Please actually read his stuff and quote him. This is embarrassing.

[anthony]

Here are the insomnia reviews of Icycalm, which I didn't post on the OP, check them out, and find a game you like. And see what his taste in games is actually like.

The chart and the essay on it

Essay on Scoring

The Artfag test

Brief reviews

Video Game Art Volume I

I'll reply to some specific reviews later in how I think they reflect particulars of the Insomnia/Cult myopia and failings. Right now I'm playing Dead Space and enjoying myself. Will clear some time probably later tonight to do this. I'll add to your list of important Icycalm lore, his top 100 games list.

https://culture.vg/forum/topic?t=4048

Helpfully, this thread is made up of several posts made over time, and you can see him reacting to new things and trends, commenting a bit as he goes. Pair this thread with Icycalm's past writings, details like the prominence of arcade and arcade-style games in his old collections of reviews and titles he praises. You can see his sensibilities changing over time. Also this list is just pretty cool and interesting. A lot of my favourite games are high up there.

[Svevlad]

There's an icycalm thread already, buried somewhere.

I've read some of his posts at the time, but I just find the man very grating and pompous. I also found a post where he sperged and ranted how Greeks and Albanians have absolutely no similarities whatsoever, which was pretty funny to read

[ourokouros]

There's an icycalm thread already, buried somewhere.

I've read some of his posts at the time, but I just find the man very grating and pompous. I also found a post where he sperged and ranted how Greeks and Albanians have absolutely no similarities whatsoever, which was pretty funny to read

Nothing like a good ol' balkanic spergout to keep you amused for the rest of the day

[anthony]

Okay I'm back, sorry about forgetting the post I owed you (there are a lot of posts I owe this place).

Please actually read his stuff and quote him. This is embarrassing.

Shut the fuck up, nigger. How about you actually quote someone and address what they're saying?

How I think I was going to frame this was in response to a couple of things that were linked in Virtue's post. Here we go, it's coming back to me now. Or at least I have something to say about this.



This is very much what I see as the Icycalm error in one image. And he's written about what he meant by this so it's probably the best place to speak about his work and beliefs as a whole and in general without misrepresenting him or getting too abstract. As he puts it himself in the Patreon post about this, it's "the end of videogame (and art) theory".



The point can be made readily within the first version, but is probably more apparent here. He does actually even acknowledge the line I'm thinking along in his piece, so our disagreement is arguably one of judgements of many particular works, than how we should think of them in general.

My disagreement goes; his measure of quality here is depth/complexity, how much there is to be appreciated. He acknowledges himself that within forms and mediums and genres there is variation, the best music has more to offer than the worst video games.

Also note that, as regards the LEFT side of the ART graph (the second graph above), primitive VIDEOGAME genres should go THERE, but I have not put them in because I still need to bang out a couple of essays to explain the "Tree of Art" theory (think Tree of Life and biological DNA versus artistic DNA which is artistic conventions: need yet ANOTHER essay to explain why conventions are GOOD and not BAD, as "indie" pseuds want you to believe). Plus it would make the graph even more complex than it already is, and far harder to grasp. In a nutshell though, primitive videogame genres (like for example Super Mario Brothers or Metal Gear Solid) are LOWER than MOST primitive artforms. Higher than cave paintings, but lower than most novels: certainly the great novels. It is only really with something like Civilization (4X), Dune II (RTS) and Grand Theft Auto III (open-world) that videogames finally begin challenging primitive artforms. Before that, even the best of the best videogames were still pitiful compared to Requiem in D minor, K. 626, or In Search of Lost Time, or Heat.

Unfortunately the in-depth review of Metal Gear Solid isn't accessible via archive. But I do have some CULT reviews up, Icycalm's and others. And I believe that they are mostly very myopic, bad, and confused, for reasons already pointed out in this thread by me and others (rip elhanan's post). He refers to specific games as "genres" here, which is very stupid, and illuminating I believe. As Icycalm himself says he's thinking in types and sets. He sees video games as classes of experience. That's why things like these graphs make sense to him. Even though they really shouldn't as even his own commentary raises serious issues.

Super Mario Brothers is the interactive equivalent of cave paintings: interactive cave paintings, that's what 2D action games are, and that's why lit crit people are making fun of games like that: and they are right. And that's why people who defend Super Mario Brothers or its gross "indie" knockoffs as "culturally relevant" art are in essence mentally stunted, and why Ebert called these games' artistic value as "on the level of a wordy fortune cookie".

At any rate, that is the theory. There is also the competing theory that all videogames, genres, artforms, individuals, races, DNAs and philosophies are "equal". So you have that option too anon. It's your choice.

I am not aware of any other choices. All other purported choices seem to me half-assed variations of "equality". So, in my mind, if you're gonna go retard, why not go full-retard and pick full equality?

That's my thinking. But I've always been an all-in kinda guy, so maybe you'll disagree.

All video games are not equal. But in the sense that Icycalm talks about genre and sees genre he is himself applying equality where there is none. This isn't me contriving a problem out of a quirk of writing or presentation. A recurring weakness in the reviews written by him and his disciples is genrebrain, tail wagging the dog, believing that categories they created to appraise things are now rules that should dictate form. If you've seen me argue with oldfaggots about Quake and Halo (as I did on RPGcodex and elsewhere), it's that category of error. What is his problem with Metal Gear Solid? I don't know since I can't read the piece, but I wouldn't be surprised to see him compare it to Splinter Cell like Razorf◌̈rklift over on youtube.

Icycalm has little respect or time for distinctions within forms (whether a work of a given type receives a good or bad review will almost entirely hinge on whether or not it resembles his ideal of what this form should be, which is always mechanically informed), and I believe that this makes him a terrible judge of how much there is to appreciate within any given work. His scale for measuring the "quality" of a given form/medium is clearly informed by his own taste and preference, which is his belief that video games simulating conflict and will to power are the most compelling thing man can create. So the closer we get to that, the more quality there is and the harder these works are to appreciate. He uses Halo as the posterboy for first person shooter, Halo: CE is consistently very high in his lists of greatest games of all time. But do you think that he really appreciates Halo fully? Has he grasped everything that's going on inside it? Or does he just like that a series of relatively open-ended battlefields is a good way to exercise power virtually, a kind of primitive grasping for the appeal 'Life is Medieval' perfected? Halo itself of course is trying to explicitly do this. Like Metal Gear Solid it is using a limited form to present commentary on this idea of total conflict and freedom. The limitation of form framed by context which makes the full intention clear being a better way than trying to build a complete world on a wire to conquer via full simulation of a world. Icycalm himself interestingly says here that genre and conventions are good rather than bad (I didn't know he said that, I came to the conclusion independently), this strikes me as somewhat bizarre considering how little respect he shows for convention outside of arcades (which he seems to have eventually grown tired of).

But Halo, do you think he really got it? Icycalm is a self proclaimed genius who sees things others don't when he looks at video games. Did he recognise the subtext of Halo? Does he understand it as an expressive work? Does he understand that it was created to express certain ideas? Or is he just an autist with a set theory and will to power hammer seeing nails everywhere?

"Appreciated by most" is the problematic wording. If he means genres in general being appreciated, even then I disagree. I believe it was in my last post on RPGcodex where I wrote about how innovations in form which solidify into genre are often far more complex and purposeful than the refiners and setters that follow them. And I would say that true appreciation of a genre's appeal and strength would be understanding how to use it well. Not simply being able to have fun with its lowest common denominator oriented bastardisations. I personally would go as far as to say that if you can't understand Halo: CE like I do, you don't appreciate "FPS".

Remember the graph shows GENRE POTENTIAL, not what games ACTUALLY EXIST. The pictures are illustrative, to help people who struggle with abstraction. None of the genres toward the right of the graph are fully formed yet, whereas most of the ones on the left ARE. That's also why the ones on the right are on the right: because they have massively greater amounts of POTENTIAL.

I consider art to be human. It's expression. There is no final artwork to be made. I know Icycalm would disagree. I also know that to Icycalm the final video game would just be a new recreation of reality, the final most open arena for the exercise of power and potential for human action using all faculties. The world made to please Icycalm would just be a never-ending succession of people recreating existence to fight boredom.

I disagree very strongly with the idea of hard limits on how interesting someone can be within a given form. Or even that forms can really be surpassed. Life is Feudal is fun as far as it provides interesting opportunities to interact with people. Icycalm would say it would be the same if they were humanlike NPCs, great, create real artificial intelligence to play a game with you can you can be stimulated forever. Another way of saying that people are infinitely interesting. In addition to playing Life is Feudal with you, people can also create art. What would I rather do? Play Life is Feudal with Ryukishi07, or read Umineko?

When you see a genre on the graph, that doesn't mean that ALL the games in the genre are situated there. That'd be an enormously simple way for the graph to work. Reality isn't simple.
So technically Minecraft is a survival-building game if you enable the "game" mode it has or whatever. But Mushihime-sama is still a million times better than it. So here's how it works.

Each genre point on the graph shows the PEAK, the CEILING of each genre, not every last game in the genre, including the "indie" abortions lol.
Get it?

So for example, AoE2 is by no means on the right side of the graph, just because it says "RTS" there. GTA3 is so much better than AoE2 that the latter is trash compared to it. Unplayable. But Planetary Annihilation is way better than GTA3. AoE2 is on the LEFT side of the graph. It's below even FPS and TPS and RPG and many others despite being nominally RTS (which it isn't really, it's basically RTT due to the tiny scale).

Think of each genre having a long tail that stretches all the way back to the BEGINNING of the graph: to the far-left corner of it, since any genre can have a particular example of it that's so botched it's worse than Spacewar (all "indie" games fall in this category). The actual genre label in the graph is the absolute peak that a genre can reach before it hits its ceiling which it can only break through by adding MOAR elements/complexity to it and thereby transforming itself into a HIGHER genre.

As a general, rough rule, a higher genre includes ALL the complexity of lower ones. So for example you can race cars or play basketball or even arcade games in some open-world games (or in Shenmue, which is proto-open-world). You can build an arcade cabinet in Rust already and just stay home playing low-IQ videogames all day.

Yes, Icycalm obviously understands variation within genre, but only to an extent, in a completely Icycalm way. Every genre contains within it a striving towards becoming Life is Feudal. The more it resembles Life is Feudal the closer it is to the peak of its class, before it adds so many Life is Feudal features that it leaves that class. I would say that every genre has the capacity to stretch infinitely rightward solely (as in sufficiently) on the factor of human expression. Umineko is more interesting to me than Life is Feudal. And it's basically a book. There are books I would rather and do read than play Life is Feudal or Atlas or even Tarkov.



I'll leave it here for now. There's potentially much more to say. If I fit into the class of person preaching equality between games I don't feel refuted by this Icycalm post.