Norwood Game Commentary and Media Literacy

[Frank]

I might've said something like this in the Gamer Canon thread, or maybe I left it as a draft. I'm not sure.

Before Gamergate, there was a sort of "canon" created by preeminent reviewers - how they became renowned in the first place is anyone's guess - and reinforced in countless forums and chatrooms. There were unquestionable masterpieces and franchises that could do no wrong. People paid attention to reviews even if they had a preconceived notion about the game, and each website had a reputation for how their scores skewed. When someone went against the grain, all fanboy hell was unleashed. If the number 8.8 means anything to you, you'll know what I mean. This might be downstream of general fanboy culture. Reviews added a level of objectivity that one could wave in their opponent's face. I'm sure Norwoods would point to marketing like "Sega does what Nintendon't" the way they point to OWS starting identity politics to split the lower classes for their own benefit, man. This cultural mode started to break down as it became more and more obvious that companies were openly bribing reviewers (lavish "review parties") and their employers (expensive advertising campaigns). This served as a major powder keg for Gamergate. Interestingly, its destruction seemed to coincide, if not drive, a reduction in fanboyism and console warring in general. Other factors were at play, but this culture remains dead and buried as far as I can tell. If any zoomer/alpha engages in "console wars," it is driven by something entirely new.

In the end, Gamergate's greatest ally was not Hulk Hogan, Peter Thiel, one of the "new games journalism" websites, or one of the myriad of e-celebs; it was Valve. All throughout that time, both sides looked to Steam to arrive as reinforcements, but ultimately they did not take an explicit stance. They opted instead to let the heat die down and quietly updated Steam with features designed to address the real concerns. Rather than just mirroring Metacritic scores, they chose aggregation driven by user reviews. They added curators to cut off big media reviewers from driving sentiment, facilitate Youtube reviewers with a database of their recommendations, aid in discovery of niche titles, and centralize game key distribution for reviewers within their ecosystem. They have their own user-driven "awards show" accolades. Updates, news, guides, discussion, screenshots, fanart, even mods; all handled through Steam. Everything that a site like IGN could deliver, Steam replaced with a system driven by gamers and developers. Obviously it's far from perfect, but it feels like a deliberate shot across the bow to the legacy media and publishers. (I believe Epic Games Store's sudden entry into the market with none of these features was them returning fire, but that's another subject entirely.)

So what do you do now if you're legacy games media? You have no control of the culture, you can only leech off it. You can continue trying to clickbait, SEO, copy streamers, pay Youtube for front page priority, but eventually your momentum will run out. Your editors and senior writers are bitter Gen X/Millennial Norwoods who are too old to care about games and are seconds away from staging a labor union LARP. The new employees are equally useless mystery meat zoomer English majors who will work for peanuts but don't know anything about games. One answer: Intellectualize! Politicize! Rationalize! You're the patricians now. The rabble on Steam and Youtube can play with their toys. The new canon is whatever games match your politics or can be reinterpreted to match them. You're here to tell Norwoods that they already experienced serious art, they just don't know it yet! Your website is no longer redundant, the old farts feel like they're doing serious artistic criticism, the kids are happy to pretend to give a shit as long as they get paid minimum wage, and AAA publishers are happy to pander to your politics to drive sales. So saith the Gamer Canon: The Last of Us is the greatest game of all time!

[Guest]

Still the best game in the series though. 3 has better visuals but I have a personal preference for 2's art design and color palette. The story is much better too

I disagree strongly on 2's story being stronger than that of 1 and 3. It frustrates me because I can see how so many come to believe 2 is "the good story one", but they're wrong. 2 seems to have a lot going on at a glance because it's the one that explicitly tells you the most about its characters and their inner lives. This gets it all of the easy high school English brained praise because it's the video game where characters have inner lives and feelings. We know this is true because they say so.

But Silent Hill 1 and 3 were made largely by the same people. Did they start stupid, get smart and nuanced, then get stupid again? I consider all 3 games rather striking, intelligent, interesting, and good. But I consider 1 and 3 stronger than 2 by far. They're the ones where characters have inner lives and feelings and they don't tell you so. Those games are saying something far more specific and doing so expressively rather than explicitly. For all of the memeing about "stupid cult story" Silent Hill 1 and 3 are clearly about something beyond what's actually happening. I can and have written for pages at a time about the creative intentions I can discern behind their appearances. I can't do this for Silent Hill 2. It's a ghost story and PS2 power showcase. It looks and sounds nice. Has some great mood and atmosphere going for it. But I appreciate it more as an interactive music video than a "story" or cerebrally expressive piece of art.

---

I think Kojima is probably just a holdover from the old guard. Perhaps we can look to film to see what's in store for AAA games though. In that case Kojima could be seen as the gaming equivalent of someone like Denis Villeneuve. Both are auteurs who get to work on high-budget projects but ultimately they are the exception to the rule. Death Stranding is like Blade Runner 2049.

But Death Stranding is good.

More to the point, Kojima is old, and even in Japan older guys tend to lead. But they still have a culture of appointing leaders to projects. They aren't Hollywood. I don't think they'll just give up on letting individuals influence projects the moment the current generation of biggest names is completely dead. Even within relatively pipelined projects (By Japanese standards) it's still possible to identify guiding personalities at the top. When people get mad at Japanese games they tend to be able to name a particular person. This is almost never true of western games because there is no person with any notable responsibility. It's like getting mad at the DMV.

Japan is a very auteur-driven country compared to it's modern peers, and this is one of the major things that makes it so appealing for the right. It is probably one of the only places in the world where talent, and not much else, drives. Every major Japanese industry has it's big guys; video games have Miyamoto, Kojima and ZUN, anime has/had Anno, Kon, and Takemoto, and film has Hamaguchi, Miike, and Koreeda. No matter what you really think about these people, it's completely undeniable that compared to the American homogenization of talent, Japan is driven more by individuals who uplift their team to create greatness or work alone.
This also makes criticism more legible and understandable for works made by these people, because you can individually interface with the ideas that the creator has put out, and unlike in the West where the ideas get muddled somewhere along the way due to cooperation between tens with their own interpretations of the corporate-decided theme sheet. It's why most critiques of American vidya boil down to "this "work" (hate this term by the way, really atomizes the unique piece of art) critiques capitalism" or "this is antiracist" or some crap like that; the creators may all have added nuanced ideas that a inquisitive mind can see, but they were muddled down so they become nearly impossible to understand.

[anthony]

Japan is a very auteur-driven country compared to it's modern peers, and this is one of the major things that makes it so appealing for the right. It is probably one of the only places in the world where talent, and not much else, drives. Every major Japanese industry has it's big guys; video games have Miyamoto, Kojima and ZUN, anime has/had Anno, Kon, and Takemoto, and film has Hamaguchi, Miike, and Koreeda. No matter what you really think about these people, it's completely undeniable that compared to the American homogenization of talent, Japan is driven more by individuals who uplift their team to create greatness or work alone.
This also makes criticism more legible and understandable for works made by these people, because you can individually interface with the ideas that the creator has put out, and unlike in the West where the ideas get muddled somewhere along the way due to cooperation between tens with their own interpretations of the corporate-decided theme sheet. It's why most critiques of American vidya boil down to "this "work" (hate this term by the way, really atomizes the unique piece of art) critiques capitalism" or "this is antiracist" or some crap like that; the creators may all have added nuanced ideas that a inquisitive mind can see, but they were muddled down so they become nearly impossible to understand.

Yes, yes, you get it. It's a distinctly rightward phenomena. The Japanese are not afraid of this final faith in one man's arbitrary judgment. They aren't a perfect total auteur industry, nobody could run one, but compared to what western art and popular media have become they might as well be. Clint Hocking and Hideo Kojima I believe are artists of potentially equal ingenuity and depth of vision. Kojima has had decades of relative freedom to helm increasingly strange, idiosyncratic, and expensive projects. His relations with his bosses haven't been perfect, but he's gotten a lot of games made, and he seems mostly happy with all of them. Clint Hocking on the other hand was allowed to make two medium-defining games for Ubisoft, then shuffled around behind the scenes at different developers and studios for a decade unable to find satisfying work before coming back to Ubisoft being placed in charge of pipelined installments of established franchises which were never good, only able to exercise very limited control. More like assembly work than creation.



Look at this. It's heartbreaking. Parallels to the politics of our respective societies also come quite easily. Looking into Assassin's Creed Infinity I found this.

Following another round of sexual misconduct allegations and internal investigation across Ubisoft in 2020 and 2021, which saw the departure of many top-level executives as well as attrition from its studios, Ubisoft opted to merge operations of the Montreal and Quebec studios under one administrative body in April 2021, with Quebec taking the lead on the Assassin's Creed series. This led to a collaboration to develop the most ambitious game in the series yet, a live-service title codenamed Assassin's Creed Infinity.[103] Infinity will be similar to Fortnite and Grand Theft Auto Online in that it will be more of a service, rather than a game, intended to be an entry point for future Assassin's Creed titles for players as well as to simplify the development of these games across Ubisoft's studios.[104][103][105]

Studios gutted by the vicious free exercise of arbitrary will by bored feral women kept on retainer for appearances, will now be put towards turning existing IPs into gacha-MMOs for children and poor stupid people. This is what Clint Hocking is overseeing now.

[Guest]

Studios gutted by the vicious free exercise of arbitrary will by bored feral women kept on retainer for appearances, will now be put towards turning existing IPs into gacha-MMOs for children and poor stupid people. This is what Clint Hocking is overseeing now.

I call that: Nietzschean boss babes exerting their will-to-power, unconstrained by conventional morality. Grab that settlement money queens!

[BillyONare]

This is the endgame of liberalism and extreme Nietzschean materialism…

[Guest]

But Death Stranding is good.

I cannot say whether it is good or not, but it clearly is not a video game.

[anthony]

But Death Stranding is good.

I cannot say whether it is good or not, but it clearly is not a video game.

Arguably quite true, in the sense that it's not trying to do much "game stuff", as I described in that thread about open world games. It could be described in a lot of different ways. I like 'multimedia software'. Or 'expressive multimedia software'.

I actually like the idea of drawing a sharp line between 'video games' which are explicitly trying to be 'games', by which I mean contrived challenges to be dealt with for their own sake, generally iterating upon an established design, and ones which are not trying to be games, by which I mean expressive works which happen to be running as software on a games machine and sold next to games. The latter can incorporate any number of elements from the former, but I would say that the former is defined by its lack of distinct elements from the latter. This line can only be so sharp, but that doesn't mean we can't try. Many great works are obviously both.

[Moyai]

Are there any actually good video essayists?

[Guest]

American Krogan, E;R, Crowbcat (although he doesn't do commentary) off the top of my head.

[Datacop]

Are there any actually good video essayists?

No

[Svevlad]

American Krogan, E;R, Crowbcat (although he doesn't do commentary) off the top of my head.

I find E;R utterly insufferable - someone who acts superior, but very clearly is not actually.

[Guest]

His fascination with the avatar cartoon is something I doesn't understand, but he's clearly on our side, and his videos ridicule the general decline of value in cinematography. I sincerely recommend everyone to familiarize themselves with American Krogan's work; he is an open advocate for white people, his commentary is level-headed and very well researched, and it goes way beyond video games. Had almost half a million subscribers on youtube before his channel was shoahed.

[Guest]

I looked up American Krogan and he's making genderswap mods for Fallout 4. Not sure what's more pathetic, trying to change that piece of shit or recommending this retard to others.

[anthony]

I looked up American Krogan and he's making genderswap mods for Fallout 4. Not sure what's more pathetic, trying to change that piece of shit or recommending this retard to others.

Adjacent issue to norwood game commentary. The knight and warehouse castes.

Shit metal music. Metal t-shirts. Warhammer ("which is NOT about FUCKING fascism"). Angry about the influence of SJWs on media because he only consumes hot off the presses mass marketed shit. Watches youtubers who react to SJW influence over Marvel Comics. Would adore Horizon: Zero Dawn if it starred a man (basically what Days Gone is, that game gets endless threads on /v/ about how SJWs and SOYBOYS couldn't handle it). Probably still bought Horizon and played it to completion.

The type really deserves its own proper look at some point.

[JohnnyRomero]

I looked up American Krogan and he's making genderswap mods for Fallout 4. Not sure what's more pathetic, trying to change that piece of shit or recommending this retard to others.

Adjacent issue to norwood game commentary. The knight and warehouse castes.

Shit metal music. Metal t-shirts. Warhammer ("which is NOT about FUCKING fascism"). Angry about the influence of SJWs on media because he only consumes hot off the presses mass marketed shit. Watches youtubers who react to SJW influence over Marvel Comics. Would adore Horizon: Zero Dawn if it starred a man (basically what Days Gone is, that game gets endless threads on /v/ about how SJWs and SOYBOYS couldn't handle it). Probably still bought Horizon and played it to completion.

The type really deserves its own proper look at some point.

This guy seems, in my experience, to be almost always fat, and usually grows a beard and gets tattoos to cope with a "Viking" or "big bear!" image. Sam Hyde discuss this once, the "big guy" cope.

[Guest]

Gamergate was the first revolt against wokeness and the entry point to the alt/dissident right

[anthony]

Gamergate was the first revolt against wokeness and the entry point to the alt/dissident right

Also essential to note that it was where the sense for art informing politics was strongest. We knew our own by taste and it was all intuition. And this was the best way to do it. Now the thing is corrupted by tasteless grifters who tell you that you can own the SJWs by watching Commando. Gamergate was living vital popular art culture suddenly becoming aware of anti-art subversives of all kinds all around us. There was a great energy to this but unfortunately the movement was naive and lacked the language skills to articulate what was going on, so as things developed they lost all the energy and allowed themselves to be distracted, diverted, and mostly defeated.

I think art is our side's greatest strength, even popular art. The only reason this isn't obvious is because art discourse is run by corrupt art-hating reactionary morons (as gamergate knew but couldn't articulate well) and most people aren't sharp enough to put things together themselves. And sadly nobody has really done solid work rallying the people on this point. And for want of real leadership people watch Critical Drinker.

[Guest]

I looked up American Krogan and he's making genderswap mods for Fallout 4. Not sure what's more pathetic, trying to change that piece of shit or recommending this retard to others.

I genuinely don't see the problem. The game is shit, but it's popular, and the mod is high quality, including professional voice acting. It's basically an effortpost.

[anthony]

I looked up American Krogan and he's making genderswap mods for Fallout 4. Not sure what's more pathetic, trying to change that piece of shit or recommending this retard to others.

I genuinely don't see the problem. The game is shit, but it's popular, and the mod is high quality, including professional voice acting. It's basically an effortpost.

Fallout 4 is not where effort belongs.

[Guest]

Many people understimate the importance of Gamergate and its importance and influence on shaping the online Dissident Right as we know it today

https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/413497443/

https://img.4plebs.org/boards/pol/image/...247336.jpg
https://img.4plebs.org/boards/pol/image/...940229.jpg