Video Game General

[chevalier]

And my reply to a thread that reposted this. I am also screenshotted on 4chan now so you have to treat me like an authority.

Consider your authority respected.

I haven't played Todd's latest masterpiece, so I can't really comment on whether or not the abundance of outsourcing actually did result in significant issues in the game or not. I just find it indicative of the tendency for these games to balloon in "scale" with nothing to really show for it. "We need to spend millions on dozens of external studios to contribute reams of assets when the underlying technology and game is the same one we've been putting out for a decade and a half."

I don't even disagree with you. See the previous posts discussing the Fallout 4 mod that makes everyone white. That doesn't fix the game or make it more interesting - it's still Fallout 4. Even if there were no outsourcing, the game would probably be no better. I just don't support the outsourcing of any aspect of a game to a dreaded foreign contractor. But I don't really like big dev teams in general, as most games don't seem to justify them.

Another funny point - most of the criticisms against the game are due to surface level/hard to quantify things like this. Like Fallout 4, there are complaints against the game's supposed wokeness when even if the game were le freaking based, it wouldn't fix anything.

[Guest]

I don't know the video game and I can believe that it sucks from woke-itis. However, working with so many cooperators seems like it almost inevitably implies a degradation in quality. 80/20 rule means there are only so many inspired intelligent people to make games. Plus, the too-many-cooks and technical debt type heuristics from software engineering probably apply albeit to a lesser degree.
Only almost inevitably, because if one could enthrall all the brains in the third world with a suitably restrictive mechanism it may serve some purpose. In the same way the "wisdom of the crowds" could be teased out of midwits in glowie programs, unreliable sparks of intellect may be malleable into cutting rays for barely-nontrivial problems given proper load balancing and error correction.

It doesn't necessarily follow. As an easy counter-example, FF 7 Remake had a tremendous amount of outsourcing and it did not impact the quality of art negatively. The studio itself was simply not good at those tasks themselves, and so the director sent out work with fairly precise orders. 

Too-many-cooks doesn't apply to the art part at least. Because the grunt artists don't make decisions. They follow a design that the lead has given them. The same would not apply to writing, and having multiple writers is generally a poor idea. Music outsourcing ought to be fine...it just depends on the nature of how it's done. (Ex. Getting a different studio to record a piece versus outsourcing the composition itself.)

As for programming, I don't know.

[Guest]

Past a certain age, a man still playing video games can be a bad thing.

[anthony]

Past a certain age, a man still playing video games can be a bad thing.

Past a certain year of birth, a man still pretending video games are weird is a bad thing.

[Guest]

Past a certain age, a man still playing video games can be a bad thing.

Past a certain year of birth, a man still pretending video games are weird is a bad thing.

They're not weird, in fact they're more accepted than ever. They just get boring, mind numbingly boring. I wish I could enjoy games again, I really mean it, but I can't with the current slop. Thus rejecting video games is my only choice. 

Memes aside, enjoying games isn't bad per se. But discussing them is kind of whack. Vidya talk goes nowhere, there isn't a more subjective field, not books, not movies, not even music. I don't enjoy them anymore, but the person enjoying them, his/her experience is so personal that it serves for nothing to the other. Everyone who rambles about them on forums, imageboards, etc is just masturbating. I don't enjoy watching others masturbate.

[anthony]

Past a certain age, a man still playing video games can be a bad thing.

Past a certain year of birth, a man still pretending video games are weird is a bad thing.

They're not weird, in fact they're more accepted than ever. They just get boring, mind numbingly boring. I wish I could enjoy games again, I really mean it, but I can't with the current slop. Thus rejecting video games is my only choice.

They don't get boring, most are shit and boring, as has always been the case. And the public eye focuses on shit ones. What are you saying. Imagine saying this about movies or literature and think about how people would take what you're saying. You wish you could enjoy these things, but "the current slop" (I hate people who choose to use disgusting words even to make disgusting points) is a problem. This isn't television. You aren't bound to a few channels of incoming signal. It's a library. It only gets bigger every year. You have access to NEARLY EVERY VIDEO GAME EVER MADE but you are choosing to pay attention to three big ones made by retards which are NEW every year. Video games aren't the problem. You are. Your ongoing decision to be retarded is the problem.

Are you also like this with movies? With that you could at least make the case that you prefer going to the kinoplex or whatever, but even in the cultural backwater where I live it's possible to attend screenings of good older films fairly frequently. Culture is not a television. It's a library. Are you like this with books? Can you only read things which came out in 2023?

Memes aside, enjoying games isn't bad per se. But discussing them is kind of whack. Vidya talk goes nowhere, there isn't a more subjective field, not books, not movies, not even music. I don't enjoy them anymore, but the person enjoying them, his/her experience is so personal that it serves for nothing to the other. Everyone who rambles about them on forums, imageboards, etc is just masturbating. I don't enjoy watching others masturbate.

As for discussion value, you seem to as far as I can tell be operating under the impression that the point of discussion is to solve art and media objectively. You may be new here, as that's basically the opposite of what I say the point of art is when it comes to this in every discussion. The room for someone to make their own view of something is what makes it interesting. It's where the discussion is possible. Where there is objectivity there's no point in discussion.

Also I believe that your idea on video games being the most subjective in this sense is maybe not mistaken, but probably coming from a narrow view of what we can make of more fixed media.

[Guest]

I don't know the video game and I can believe that it sucks from woke-itis. However, working with so many cooperators seems like it almost inevitably implies a degradation in quality. 80/20 rule means there are only so many inspired intelligent people to make games. Plus, the too-many-cooks and technical debt type heuristics from software engineering probably apply albeit to a lesser degree.
Only almost inevitably, because if one could enthrall all the brains in the third world with a suitably restrictive mechanism it may serve some purpose. In the same way the "wisdom of the crowds" could be teased out of midwits in glowie programs, unreliable sparks of intellect may be malleable into cutting rays for barely-nontrivial problems given proper load balancing and error correction.

Consider that anime regularly outsources, but doesn't falter in quality.

The real problem with Starfield is it's unwillingness to do anything interesting, innovate, polish, etc. It's just a very bland game. The hatred of this game is basically just surface-level shitting on bugs and some poor design choices, not this very real issue. Don't believe me? Both new God of War games have the exact same issue, but are praised universally because they do everything OK, and being under anesthesia is essentially what most modern gamers want in their video games. Outsourcing is just a symptom of this problem, it's a way to get "good models" that aren't interesting.

[oyakodon_khan]

Armored Core 6 might be one of the only cases i've ever seen where a franchise has it's control scheme dumbed down when moving to PC, rather than the other way around. 

(Quality of the game notwithstanding. I haven't played too much yet but seems pretty on par with the best entries on the franchise.)

[Guest]

Genshin ended up being rather well-made which goes a long way for explaining it's popularity. A series of fables essentially. Easy to write, easy to read, easy to digest. Slightly difficult when it gets to contracts but...well, most things go in 1 ear and out the other anyhow. I can see how they amassed such a large volume of players out of nowhere. The artwork is a major weakness, as they simply do not have the quality of the better Japanese artists. This being said, the gaming audience at large doesn't seem to have the ability to tell the difference. In this case, they supply all the symbols of "good Japanese art" and I assume that the audience (at large) digests it as such.

The format of "Gacha" is actually quite good for a game like this, as it forces the player to adapt with what he has unless he wishes to spend money. It is not difficult to adapt, and so I don't see it as being particularly predatory. The larger flaw is that MMO-like nature of "limited farm." In a game like this, one would want to farm for long stretches. But here, you only have so long to acquire x or y material. On the other hand, you don't need much of any material. But this does reduce the "lifespan" of the game in comparison to classical grinding RPGs. Probably a necessary adjustment (and so not much of a flaw) for the mobile market.

Professional education has also gone to the mobile market, with even some very "high-end" suppliers putting their stuff in mobile format first and foremost. I don't particularly like it, but it is what it is. I feel digestion is limited on such a device, which inherently has many distractions. I believe modern PC's are the same in this way, they are "locked-in-place phones."

Anyway, it is a strong game. Sometimes the masses are correct. The art is not great, but it is good. The music is not great, but it is good. The format is great in terms of what one can "build" and "build towards." The writing is good, and they probably succeeded largely on the strength of the mascot character.

[anthony]

F-Zero 99 is fantastic (I played X and GX, never had the original) and is a brilliant implementation of "online play" into an existing premise. It works perfectly with what F-Zero always was to me, which was a "racing game" that was actually about violence and personal presence in competition. Every racer always had a distinct machine and portrait so you'd appreciate them as people rather than slightly more present ghosts in what are basically a series of time trials. Making them actual people is brilliant.

Some people call this "Battle Royale". Whatever. But that meme has inspired me to reinstall Player Unknown's Battlegrounds for the first time in years to see what's going on there. Probably an army of chinese people cheating but we'll see.

[anthony]

Update: I came 30th and killed 3 people. The first one immediately after landing was particularly neat. Thought I picked a nice out of the way place. Someone else did too. Landed as fast as I could and found a shotgun. Loaded it while running to where I thought they want and blasted them away the moment I saw them. Then kind of moved around with a scoped rifle and picked off a couple of people before getting taken out as I approached the late game tight circle. Almost got the person who got me, then watched how the endgame played out. Game has a nice spectator feature. This is a really nice "pure game" format. The aesthetics have taken a hit since it became so asian. Guns and clothes no longer feel mean and utilitarian. Half of the players look like K-Pop acts carrying weird nu-guns I've never seen before with retarded neon green skins. I remember when the game started it was people dressed poor eastern euros, and clothes were on the ground like purely aesthetic powerups. Finding leather coats was always fun. And the guns were very basic. A couple of each type, simple and recognisable. Felt nice.

Still the core premise hasn't been compromised and this is probably a better game you can play indefinitely than some junk like Counter Strike. Felt like I was actually thinking rather than going through motions. Will probably play a couple more rounds.

[Lohengrin]

F-Zero 99 is fantastic (I played X and GX, never had the original) and is a brilliant implementation of "online play" into an existing premise. It works perfectly with what F-Zero always was to me, which was a "racing game" that was actually about violence and personal presence in competition. Every racer always had a distinct machine and portrait so you'd appreciate them as people rather than slightly more present ghosts in what are basically a series of time trials. Making them actual people is brilliant.

F-Zero has always appealed to me for this reason, gladiatorial racing, where combatants race at speeds of almost thousands of kilometres, or megametres rather, impending death looming over them as they race to the finish.  Life or death, do I want to stay safe in my current position and be patient, or do I risk spending boost power advancing past the competition and leave my car open to be trashed?  Your life hangs by a thread, so much quick thinking involved, immeasurably so with 99, a remix of the SNES original with more than three times the traditional standard of 30 racers.  The original is so impressive, these are some of the most Aryan video games.

[Video: https://youtu.be/OF1SpvKRMD0]

"What if we took Formula 1 races and made everyone twice as fast and deadlier?" Granted, once you're attuned then your only real threat is the second or possibly third car, of the other three cars you didn't select.  I chose this video in particular because at least you see a glimpse of the other racers.  X and onwards made everyone else more of a threat, in addition to cars and characters of their own, but the original is still so cool.  Look at how fast and fluid this all is, for a SNES launch title in 1990.  Everyone and their mother was still playing on their dinky little 8-bit consoles, Outrun, or Ridge Racer when this blew everyone's minds.  So much activity going on-screen.

[Video: https://youtu.be/HqFyzRNv72s]

So how would F-Zero 99 rectify the original's issue of on-screen combatants like X and GX? Of course, as stated previously and in its name, multiply the amount by 3.3!  Make them all humans. 

[Video: https://youtu.be/LyK-qwEnd04]

Holy shit, 98 other racers.  It's not an exaggeration, this actually looks like a Formula 1 race on crack.  Look at how much action is happening on-screen, all the chaos for you to wade through and tame.  Again, all they had to do was increase the amount of combatant racers, that's it, it's largely the same as the original, and I still love that game.  No elaborate musings on "gameplay" bullshit or whatever I presume, it just connected like that.  And the end result is cool, like all video games should be.  I surmised at one point that Nintendo's only course of action for F-Zero was to make an online multiplayer game that still retains the intensity and violence these are known for and they did exactly that.

[PIGSAW]

Past a certain age, a man still playing video games can be a bad thing.

Past a certain year of birth, a man still pretending video games are weird is a bad thing.

They're not weird, in fact they're more accepted than ever. They just get boring, mind numbingly boring. I wish I could enjoy games again, I really mean it, but I can't with the current slop. Thus rejecting video games is my only choice.

They don't get boring, most are shit and boring, as has always been the case. And the public eye focuses on shit ones. What are you saying. Imagine saying this about movies or literature and think about how people would take what you're saying. You wish you could enjoy these things, but "the current slop" (I hate people who choose to use disgusting words even to make disgusting points) is a problem. This isn't television. You aren't bound to a few channels of incoming signal. It's a library. It only gets bigger every year. You have access to NEARLY EVERY VIDEO GAME EVER MADE but you are choosing to pay attention to three big ones made by retards which are NEW every year. Video games aren't the problem. You are. Your ongoing decision to be retarded is the problem.

Are you also like this with movies? With that you could at least make the case that you prefer going to the kinoplex or whatever, but even in the cultural backwater where I live it's possible to attend screenings of good older films fairly frequently. Culture is not a television. It's a library. Are you like this with books? Can you only read things which came out in 2023? [...]

Thank Hitler you cut down this moronic POPULAR "opinion" (general consensus). God, do I get SICK of people espousing this complete RETARDATION. HURR "I just don't like 'em like I used to!" DURR— uh, okay first off, fix your shitty fucking life. Video games are luxury items— if you're living in squalor it's going to impact your ability to interact with fine things.
How many times does this need to be repeated? Forever, apparently.

On the subject of "slop", I agree that this is a negative aesthetic creep— one which I am all too guilty of allowing in.
What would you suggest we use to refer to ZOGshit or similar? "Slop" obviously gains traction because of the desire to externalize internal disgust impulse onto the things— to make others feel it.
There's benefit in this, but I agree that "using disgusting words even to make a disgusting point" is probably a net negative.

Memes aside, enjoying games isn't bad per se. But discussing them is kind of whack. Vidya talk goes nowhere, there isn't a more subjective field, not books, not movies, not even music. I don't enjoy them anymore, but the person enjoying them, his/her experience is so personal that it serves for nothing to the other. Everyone who rambles about them on forums, imageboards, etc is just masturbating. I don't enjoy watching others masturbate.

As for discussion value, you seem to as far as I can tell be operating under the impression that the point of discussion is to solve art and media objectively. You may be new here, as that's basically the opposite of what I say the point of art is when it comes to this in every discussion. The room for someone to make their own view of something is what makes it interesting. It's where the discussion is possible. Where there is objectivity there's no point in discussion.

Also I believe that your idea on video games being the most subjective in this sense is maybe not mistaken, but probably coming from a narrow view of what we can make of more fixed media.

Again, thank you for cutting down this dumbfuck "RATIONALIST" 4Mex homogenized "opinion".

Guest you are retarded, what you seek is to shave off the edges of everything, so your "opinions" are completely frictionless.

[skorr]

I have been playing and greatly enjoying Deus Ex. Just finishing up the Hong Kong mission but I can tell that it will certainly be one of my favorite games, if not my absolute favorite.

The gameplay is fun, but the only comment I will make is that I greatly enjoy how JC can just do whatever he wants in a narrative sense with few repercussions. For instance, it was a blast killing Anne Navarre and getting the whole thing wiped off of UNATCO records. 

But the setting and atmosphere is what really makes it amazing. You have everything scary people thought about the government back in the late 90s rolled up into this beautiful package. UFOs and gray aliens, artificial vaccines for artificial viruses, mole people, FEMA...

I will create a thread after I finish the game, probably.

[anthony]

I have been playing and greatly enjoying Deus Ex. Just finishing up the Hong Kong mission but I can tell that it will certainly be one of my favorite games, if not my absolute favorite.

The gameplay is fun, but the only comment I will make is that I greatly enjoy how JC can just do whatever he wants in a narrative sense with few repercussions. For instance, it was a blast killing Anne Navarre and getting the whole thing wiped off of UNATCO records. 

But the setting and atmosphere is what really makes it amazing. You have everything scary people thought about the government back in the late 90s rolled up into this beautiful package. UFOs and gray aliens, artificial vaccines for artificial viruses, mole people, FEMA...

I will create a thread after I finish the game, probably.

The conspiracy culture aspect is very cool. And something I'm broadly looking into at the moment. Might make a "conspiracy culture" thread down the line after I look at a few more things.

[Lohengrin]

...

The conspiracy culture aspect is very cool. And something I'm broadly looking into at the moment. Might make a "conspiracy culture" thread down the line after I look at a few more things.

[Image: https://i.ibb.co/RTBLw7g/1571760087850.jpg]

Imagine Deus Ex (a Deus Exvania?) were it to be made with the past 20 years of conspiracy theories after The X-Files.  Q, Alex Jones, David Dees, Space Nazis, They Live Lizards, Gangstalking, Epstein, Coronavirus, Hyperborea, everything.  The conspiracies were always one of my favourite aspects that Deus Ex captured and utilised, I am begrieved that much of its recent attention has been on that nigger from the start talking about taxing corporations.  For me, it was always that everything you know is wrong, and it's time to take action into your own hands to understand the world.  JC Denton is so awesome.

[anthony]

Something I've been discussing with people is how the 90s conspiracy culture was such a complete aesthetic, or at least looks like one in retrospect. The X-Files seems like it was able to emerge naturally from what was already there and fill the shoes. The tastes and inclinations of actual conspiracy theorists (typical 90s conspiracy theorists are even regularly somewhat lionised in The X-Files, get to be friends with Moulder, etc) were able to combine with the genuine concerns of the time (rather mild because 90s), the things which actually were popularly talked about underground (urban legends and UFOs, safe but intriguing stuff), and the tone of the 90s (beginnings of darkness and moodiness creeping back into popular culture, early high tech fascinations that were not yet zogged).

It makes for a very complete look and feel that could pretty much spin itself out entirely due to some happy coincidences of circumstances.

Conspiracy culture today is... different.

Far more severe, far more high stakes, more people in deeper and all connected to stuff that's far more visceral and real. No longer weird long haired nerds watching the skies. Now it's fat boomers on facebook talking about the need to execute democrats to shut down the adrenochrome farms, and democrats talking on twitter about how we need to execute the facebook boomers to stop them being concerned about things which aren't even real. 90s conspiracy culture was very libertarian. Things looked stable enough that those who knew a bit more about what was going on could still believe they could politely excuse themselves from dysfunction and decay. And still thought it was possible to goodwill and hardwork our way out of most problems. But by now, we know what most of the smart libertarians have been forced to turn to.

This new age of conspiracy is not fun or cool. It's very tedious, ugly, miserable, and everything that emerges from it is ugly. What does conspiracy culture of today actually look like if we try to represent it on screen. I mean the actual look. The 90s was light and mist spilling through open doors at night, lights in the skies, spooky pine forests, serious looking men in dark suits. It's cool, and nice. But today we don't really have either.

You could make something of it. But it wouldn't be nice. It'd probably have to look like Inland Empire to be true to the times.

Last thought, and to bring it back to video games. My absolute favourite conspiracy game to come out recently (of not many) is The X-Com Files, the mod for the original X-Com. It beautifully captures the tone of The X-Files and 90s conspiracy culture and realises them in a unique way. X-Com was always about exploration of the unknown, through direct engagement in combat, among many other ways you engage with its world. Modding x-com is more than re-skinning the aliens. You really have to build each entity as a complete piece of the world with pages of data, imagery, statistics on function, and then you viscerally engage with it in fights to the death, among other things. The game has a more exploratory/investigation oriented approach and tone than just about anything else I've played. It's a brilliant way of engaging with the premise.

[Image: https://i.ibb.co/D1RhYkk/screen025.png]

[Image: https://i.ibb.co/zX7vYwf/htgRTsV.png]

[Image: https://i.ibb.co/WvHjTNJ/LnOUeq5.png]

Very recent production, still being worked on but was basically done a couple of years ago. Point being I love this game, it's a brilliant idea. And it understood that to be cool and interesting and fun it had to be specifically 90s culture, rather than general conspiracies. On one level this is a nice nod to the original game, which was set in the late 90s to 2000s, as was The X-Files, but nothing beyond this era is incorporated. There is no Jeffrey Epstein level. There is no adrenochrome. There is no great replacement or trannies on tv. Despite being about ostensibly horrible things, it is a nostalgic work. 

[skorr]

...

The conspiracy culture aspect is very cool. And something I'm broadly looking into at the moment. Might make a "conspiracy culture" thread down the line after I look at a few more things.

Imagine Deus Ex (a Deus Exvania?) were it to be made with the past 20 years of conspiracy theories after The X-Files. 

I've discussed this with some of you, but if I could make a video game it would be a Q-flavored Deus Ex sort of game. You'd do things like raid the DC adrenochrome tunnels, get into a shootout underneath (not) Tony Podesta's house, break into the Federal Reserve, decode numerical messages using gematria, visit GITMO, maybe even go beyond the ice wall, etc. There would be a ton of potential I think.

[Bransle]

Conspiracy culture today is... different.

Far more severe, far more high stakes, more people in deeper and all connected to stuff that's far more visceral and real. No longer weird long haired nerds watching the skies. Now it's fat boomers on facebook talking about the need to execute democrats to shut down the adrenochrome farms, and democrats talking on twitter about how we need to execute the facebook boomers to stop them being concerned about things which aren't even real. 90s conspiracy culture was very libertarian. Things looked stable enough that those who knew a bit more about what was going on could still believe they could politely excuse themselves from dysfunction and decay. And still thought it was possible to goodwill and hardwork our way out of most problems. But by now, we know what most of the smart libertarians have been forced to turn to.

This new age of conspiracy is not fun or cool. It's very tedious, ugly, miserable, and everything that emerges from it is ugly. What does conspiracy culture of today actually look like if we try to represent it on screen. I mean the actual look. The 90s was light and mist spilling through open doors at night, lights in the skies, spooky pine forests, serious looking men in dark suits. It's cool, and nice. But today we don't really have either.

You are confusing "conspiracy culture" with conspiracy-influenced culture. The fundamental difference with the 90s is that conspiracies, and general mistrust on the american institutions, weren't as taboo in popular media as they're now. So a fair amount of television, videogames, and other forms of entertainment appeared wearing a clear influence of this "subculture"; but these were by men on the outside looking in, and taking out, this subculture. I would wager nobody who wrote The X-Files believed that extraterrestrial beings were walking among us, nor anyone working on Deus Ex believed that Majestic 12 literally governed the world. It may be that most of them were skeptical towards truth as was told in television - but they were still working for what amounted to "television". This civility was to be expected of them - and it is entertainment, after all.

Let's take a look at actual "conspiracy culture" , would you use "soft" to describe this? Would you call it fun? Or, dare I say, cool?

[Image: https://i.ibb.co/6XFYK2W/mqdefault.jpg]

[Image: https://i.ibb.co/J7zNWC4/Floating-Up-1.jpg]

[Image: https://i.ibb.co/Q9LPWHM/david-huggins-l...aucers.jpg]

This is art by a man who believes in alien influence on this planet to the point he believes that he lost his virginity to an alien. It's as far away as lack of severity as one can get: the grays are as alluring as they are terrifying - and we are at their mercy. The key to understand "conspiracy culture" is, for me, the belief of the unavoidably upcoming Apocalypse, with every piece of media born from it as a prophecy, or a warning. Conspiracy art is visionary, it's about Revelation of the sense of the world, a final judgement, and the effective end of history. There's no stakes higher than these. And to what point were people willing to act according to them? 

[Video: https://youtu.be/AqSZhwu1Rwo]

Can it get more "miserable" than Marshall Applewhite fixating his eyes upon you and convincing you to commit suicide? 

I don't think modern conspiracy culture has changed. I don't think the 90s, as a whole, did it better, and certainly not mainstream culture - just that entertainment media moved out of them certainly out of terror. But conspiracies should be terrifying: you should be in horror and awe at the end of the world. It's not nice, but it never really was. Maybe the 90s had an innocence to them that blinded them to what was self-evident, was that the case? But can that be said to be a sign of a "nicer" time?

And yet, I believe, it's still "beautiful" - or, rather, sublime. I love this sentence, my favorite header of a news article in history. If after pondering it over and over again it doesn't disprove that the aesthetic power of "conspiracy culture" beyond mere fanciness has been lost, I don't know what could. 

[Image: https://i.ibb.co/rHqW4T2/vaxxedpilot.png]
The sheer "innocence" of it, of serenity as the noise and destruction of Retribution surrounds you, this smile... could this come from a place that is very tedious, ugly, miserable, and from which, everything that emerges from it is ugly?

[oyakodon_khan]

"Lies of P" What is this, a game about being offered a glass of lemonade by an 8 year old girl?
Haha just kidding of course, that would be a ridiculous premise for a video game. haha.