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When Videogames Publishers Go 'Street'
Thanks to 1UP/OPM for its article discussing what they describe as the 'thugging' of the videogame industry, referencing games such as Def Jam Fight for NY and Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition. The piece suggests: "Whether it was established franchises morphing into more streetwise versions of their former selves or new franchises emerging wearing their hip-hop influences on their sleeves, it was clear that the urban lifestyle is being embraced by developers and publishers alike." Marc Ecko argues "I think the problem is that the games industry is generationally nostalgic", and Steve Allison of Midway charges: "The guys bitching about this new trend are inching up on 35 years old, and they grew up on old-school gameplay. They're a very vocal bunch, but they're just not the market anymore."
These video games are as much "from the street" as Vanilla Ice was.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Steve Allison of Midway charges: "The guys bitching about this new trend are inching up on 35 years old, and they grew up on old-school gameplay. They're a very vocal bunch, but they're just not the market anymore."
Well, this is likely true, but as one who used to play online shootemups, I can say the trend toward this has been going on for a little while at least. When all the little white kids got their computers around the same time hip-hop started going mainstream, you started seeing comments like "Whasssup Biatch" when someone joined the game or "I'm your pimp daddy" or some other affected effort at manifesting some pathetic street cred. I have sort of expected this sort of thing for a while now, but see it as a continued effort to squeeze some more marketing $$s out of a saturated hip-hop market. Perhaps when NWA or Ice-T was around this would have been interesting but come on now folks, the hip hop scene is dead and has been replaced by the thug-life affected persona that now simply looks and appears absurd. Nowhatimsayin?
So, essentially what Steve Allison from Midway is saying is that Midway has sold out and are adopting the grow the company, mainstream marketing bit. Steve..........Do you know what this means?.............It means that Midway is no longer cool. This of course is the risk companies take when they try to break from their roots and become something they are not, but hey......that's America and at least companies have that option.
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Pong: Snoop Dogg Edition
Dig Dugg 2: The Electric boogaloo
Defender...of Compton
or heck just play Dopewars.
I think this is merely a phase, a cultural identification to a phase of adolescence, where young males feel superior as a method of attracting a mate, and when that fails, they turn to video games and possibly crime (as I think it always does fail most teens today who can't skate like Tony, or roll like Puffy).
Video game designers realize there is a pile of money to be made on criminals, too, because one of their favourite hobbies are console games. I'd wager that most criminals dislike computer games, yet I think with Doom 3 around the corner, this may change.
Thuggin: Spending money like an idiot, drinking to an excess, being only turned on by bimbos with no brains, beating eachother senseless with tire irons or whatever, shooting people you hate, getting shot at by people who hate you, eating only at drive thru, drinking alize and crystal, attending strip clubs like they were the new church, membership at the The Player'S Club, Gucci, bling-bling, busta move on da dance flo, Po Po, bein' Po cuz ya spendt it awl (not the same as Po Po), scrappin, etc.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Isn't it as simple as just ignoring the "street games"? I'm 20, and personally do not subscribe to this ridiculous pop culture street "thang". This fad won't last for many years, so who cares?
the movie You Got Served.
-----.----.-------
I'll
But in five to ten years time we will be in control of the market's purse-strings. Don't ignore us.
Yo momma!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
what does generationally nostalgic mean?
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
This really isn't a big deal. I've been playing games for over twenty years. Games have their phases. A few years ago it was shooters and RPG (FF style games). Now it is the more realistic run around and buy drugs, beat hookers, and kill people. Ultimately, it doesn't make a difference. It is just another phase. We've all been through different phases in our lives. Anyways, the biggest worry to me is that the industry is going away. Sure there are the big upcoming games, but there really hasn't been innovation since the GTA series. Guess I will just have to go back to D&D.
However, as you're all aware, the videogame industry is now outpacing Hollywood, which means geeks are no longer the main target audience. Games have gone mainstream in a horrible way.
Well, horrible for us at least. Which is what I'm getting at. You see, we may look down on this trend, I know I certainly do, but its not really our place to judge the people who they are now targeting.
Every generation has had their share of kids like this, the fad has just been different. Today its hiphop and thug culture. Doesn't make me like these kids any more, but they are certainly entitled to act this way. They're KIDS for fuck sake. Hopefully they'll grow out of it, otherwise, I'm sure with all the guns in the culture, Darwin will take care of the rest.
Fact is, this is only a phase that the games industry is going through, just like all the other ones they've gone through. Who knows what it will be next, but it really is luck that determines if it is compatible with older generations of gamers.
Don't fret though, once the gaming industry becomes more mature, we will start to see more stratification of companies as they target smaller audiences, and inevitably there will be some who choose to target older, more mature gamers.
And yes, Midway has sold out.
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Honestly, does it really matter? A fun game is a fun game is a fun game and people who pander to one style, neglecting gameplay are always going to make shitty games. I think game developers should have to take a sort of Hippocratic Oath, something along the lines of:
First, make it not suck
... that I haven't figured out how to cash in on white kids wishing they were black, yet.
Great
...
As if our video-games didn't have enough mindless violence. Now they'll have this hard core hate that the Hip-Hop preaches like there is no tomorrow.
Think I'm really biased (which I am) or am trolling ? Well apparently Bill Cosby agrees with me
Sunny Dubey
Resident of New York City, lots of mindless hip-hop here
I'm 18, I was playing the old games,I remember pacman on my first console, I remember mario and I remember Sonic.
I'am the key market and I can't stand this "ghetto" crap. Give me greenhill Zone music over some crappy new rapper who acts like he grew up in Iraq rather then got mass produced by a record company.
Games are becomingtoo mainstream so they are dumbing them down and aiming them at people who may as well just buy a CD player and stop butchering something us real gamers adore.
I like muppets.
Hey, I'm a pathetic Tradewars 2000 addict (text based MMTG, www.eisonline.com). Wotthehell do I care about those fools??
Eat hot photons, sucka!! (hits 'A' key)
[Insert pretentious and semi-clever sig here: ______ ]
ne of the dominating themes at this year's E3 was what many dubbed the "thugging" of the games industry. Alongside the expected and the predictable, the sequels and the remakes, an inordinate amount of emphasis had been placed on urban and hip-hop themes in games. Whether it was established franchises morphing into more streetwise versions of their former selves or new franchises emerging wearing their hip-hop influences on their sleeves, it was clear that the urban lifestyle is being embraced by developers and publishers alike.
"It seems to me that hip-hop is just where the culture is these days," says Marc Ecko, whose Ecko brand name is one of the biggest success stories in urban culture. His fast-growing empire includes everything from shirts, pants, watches, footwear, formalwear, and babywear to his lifestyle magazine Complex, and now, through an agreement with Atari, videogames. "I've been seeing the opportunity for a game that taps into this stuff for the past five years," he tells us. "But I'm an outsider. What business does a guy who makes sweatshirts have making a videogame?"
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas -- The franchise that started it all
Did Grand Theft Auto kick off the whole urban-lifestyle thing in videogames? It's possible. GTA3 was certainly one of the first games to embrace thug culture and exploit it for delicious gameplay purposes. San Andreas is taking the whole concept much, much further. You've no doubt already devoured every scrap of information Rockstar has revealed so far, so let's try to give you something new. The three cities in the game, Los Santos (based on Los Angeles), San Fierro (based on San Francisco), and Las Venturas (based on Las Vegas) are all joined by areas that are, for want of a better word, the "suburbs" of San Andreas. Each of these areas, we're told, is the same size as a gameplay area in GTA3. It seems we can expect Thelma & Louise-style car chases and Dukes of Hazzard-esque shenanigans as we terrorize the sleepy backwaters of the state. So that's three cities, each the size of Vice City, plus other areas the size of GTA3's. That's a damn big game.
Publisher: Rockstar | Developer: Rockstar North | Release: October
Much more savvy about gaming than he initially lets on, Ecko has some pertinent observations for his new peers in the gaming business. "You can think of this urban trend very much like what happened with all the skate games a few years ago," he explains. "There were a lot of failing properties, and ultimately it was the Neversoft guys who won with Tony Hawk. It wasn't just that the game was good or because of Tony; it was because they lived the skate culture, too. They understood what it was that they were doing in the broader sense."
"People want stuff that's aspirational," Eidos President Rob Dyer tells us. His company is definitely aiming to live a thug life in 2004, and many of its upcoming titles are specifically focused on urban themes. "If you look at the games that are successful, they're the ones that tap into something from real life. Hip-hop is an extension of the aspirational lifestyle, and there's definitely a groundswell of games right now that all tap into this culture."
Def Jam Fight for NY -- Rappers hitting each other with furniture
When Def Jam President Kevin Liles declared "gaming and hip-hop go hand in hand," we'd wager that a few of you dismissed it as just another brand guy wanting a piece of our action. Boy, were you wrong. Def Jam Vendetta helped push EA's Big brand in the direction it so desperately needed to go and proved that hip-hop stars punching the bejesus out of each other was what gamers wanted. Fight takes the concept further and blends a variety of fighting styles into a story-driven brawler that sees you encountering 35 well-known hip-hop artists, from Flava Flav to Ludacris. The development team listened to Vendetta criticisms and has addressed just about all of them; it's not just a wrestling game, you can now use weapons such as bottles, bats, or pieces of furniture, and
I like muppets.
Fifteen years down the road, which will stand up better: a game that was released in 2004 that depicts life on the streets in that same year, or a game like the Legend of Zelda, which isn't set in our world?
Goo goo g'joob.
Karma to burn, so I don't mind the hit for speaking the truth:
There is no such thing as "Street" or "Urban". It's "Black".
i don't think its all 35-year-olds. i'm 19 and i think its absolutely retarded that turbo has to be called "juice" in all these retarded ghetto games.
"NBA Nigga Be Ballin' Bling Bling on the Straight-Up Street an' Pimpin aa Bitches 2k4" makes me want to claw my brain out through my nostrils
and then the "audiences" in some of these games doing all their retarded ghetto flailing of arms in their air and stuff. UGH!
i hate what our society is becoming.
Or it could be that even in a well functioning society there exist natural antisocial urges for basic ego satisafication. We bahave well, but is that truely out natural urge? Always?
Quack, quack.
Old fartism is something that only happens to others. It's right there in the definition.
How does rap music and def jam suddenly equal thug?
Urban maybe, if you want to call it Urban culture go ahead, but thug is definately the wrong word and makes the person who posted the article sound like a closet racist.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
...there is alot of social conscious hip hop...of course teenage kids who really need to hear the message think it's corny and won't have it.
So while there is positive hip hop available...it's generally preaching to the converted.
Blar.
And with Arnold as Governor, we have a green light for unlimited violence in the entertainment industry. So there.
My money goes towards other interests than gaming.
I mean come on... Does anyone really think that all the little "nigga" wannabe's are anything other than mass marketed MTV drones?
If everyone that 'talks the talk" also 'walked the walk', than 2/3 of the population would be in prison, or dead. It's a bunch of huff and puff 99% of the time, and it pisses of parents who grew up with Motley Crue and Poison doing the talking for them, so it's inherently the "in" thing.
The only real problem with it is the number of kids it introduces to the concept of "money is for buying bitches, and guns is for talkin" (there, I paraphrased the entire genre for you! Happy? 8).
So while I understand why game manufacturers are going for this target demographic, I don't know if it's neccesarily something I feel is a good thing.
You have to remember that until this generation of parents decide to start being parents, this is the kinda drek which is raising their kids while they're out trying to relive their childhoods themselves.
Personally, I'd rather role play Leisure Suit Larry type characters than Snoop Dogg anyday. There's just something more fun about playing a smarmy cartoon character, and letting my imagination fill in some of the blanks, than playing a life like copy of a real life black pimp.
One's role-playing, and the other's just envy over an impossibility.
if we are going to focus on the so called "thug" games lets focus on grand theft auto. That was the original thug game.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Why is it every 6.5 days there is a new Slashdot article about the trends in gaming? The trends in gaming depend mostly on the individual likes and dislikes. It's much like the 'Linux revolution'; anytime a company with over 25 employees switches to Linux we hear the chanting from the peanut gallery that Bill Gates is doomed and that the entire world has finally faced the light of open source, blah blah blah. In gaming it's much the same. Someone's got a GTA bug up their ass and now it's all they ever see. A whole dozen games have a "ghetto theme" and now we're lead to beleive that in 6 months no one will want to play Doom3, Half Life 2 or the latest Medal of Honor? Please. That's simply nonsense.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Women prefer the "thug" men over the nice guy weak men. Men who commit crimes successfully almost always have a girlfriend.
You don't have to be a violent criminal, you just need to have a nice car, lots of money, and the tough guy image. You see its all an act just like my name being adolph hitler is a persona, the "thugs" are acting out a persona to get the girls.
Women generally hate nice guys and consider them weak and inferior. Women are attracted to thugs who spend excessive money on them. As much as you say differently, find me a woman who will go on a date with a homeless man with no job. Better yet find me woman period.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
we call those people sociopaths. Al Capone was one.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Really? Really? I've been reading that the gamer demographic keeps getting older. I've even read a little bit of that on Slashdot (although when I searched for it, all I got was a link to an article about women over 40 being a big, growing gamer market -- not quite the article I recall reading). We now have the gamer dad web site, and I'm sure a gamer mom web site either exists or will soon. I'm 33, and over the last 3 years, my income has finally been good enough to allow me to buy a Dreamcast, a PS2, and about $1,000 worth of games. I don't think I'm the only 30-something gamer in existence. I wonder if this guy just doesn't understand the market anymore. It's bigger than he imagines.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Most successful criminals are geeks. Most thugs go do jail. The goal is to be a successful criminal. There is no right and wrong as long as you don't get caught.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
What this really likely means is the video game industry has grown up to the point that it is starting to support leading in multiple market segments simultaneously - much as television and music already do. So while the platform is the same, immersing the viewer into the environment, the layers above the platform are foreign and often antagonistic to one another.
This is an ongoing trend with pop-culture and culture in general. People who were once commonly referred to as "riff-raff", people you tend to see hanging around Greyhound stations (unless they can max out a credit card and get themselves a muscle car). Old gender roles have disappeared. Women are supposed to act like whores and pretend to be just as tough as thuggish, shiftless men. Mutual respect and courtesy is old hat. "Attitude" is in. Perhaps to the people who waste their life away playing video games instead of wasting their life pretending to be a character in a B-movie like "The Fast and the Furious", this is real news. It may also surprise the old shut-ins, shock middle-class parents, and be totally ignored by yuppies living in gated-communities, but the effects on the country will become obvious some 20 years hence.
OK I am 34 and it is fair to say I don't buy a lot of games anymore, but then again I never did. I always preferred games that lasted forever, like the original Civilization. When Doom came along that changed things and I enjoyed it because it's much more fun hunting each other.
Here's my point:
Older games LOOK like games. Suspension of disbelief was not necessary or even possible when dealing with flat-shaded 2D characters. I think back then gameplay testing was more important.. because there wasn't anything else to sweat over! There were no cameras, polygons, or anything just simple fun.
A lot of the games I see today are over-engineered.
Look at this way. Animation technology has come a LONG way, but does the anime industry rely exclusively on 3D computer generated images? Nope. Sure, 2D shaders are applied to some 3D objects then blended in with the 2D animation. And most 2D animation is done on a computer now. BUT it still *feels* like what came before it.
I don't really want a computer simulation of the outside world. I'd rather be out, in it.
The reality of this whole "ghettoization" of the game industry, for lack of a better term, doesn't take away that a good game is a good game.
That's why GTA: SA will probably sell in the millions, while most other ghetto games will be doomed to obscurity. Just like "XTREME 2 TEH MAXXX" marketing doesn't make a product any better than what it is.
I have no problem with games taking on a "street" feel, but I have a problem when games try to sell themselves explicitly on that.
I mean, Hell, how many people bought True Crime: Streets of LA because you can be Snoop Dogg?
My father an artist on the newest Sims title for Consoles (The Urbz) and he's definitely hit this. I've been at his office hearing fifty year old white men talking about "Street cred" and it's quite funny. They're so concerned about making sure that it has a legitimate "Street" feel. I put all that in "quotation marks" as that's how all the executives talk about it. It's quite amusing.
I'm a City Boy, I know what it's about. If you all want to play that game, joy joy for you.
I miss a lot of things about The City, but so much of it I can do without. Most of it has to do with the fact that people are not neighbors anymore. In The City, you don't know who lives next to you and don't care. If someone breaks into your pad and steals everything, the "neighbors" say "well, I heard something, but hey I just turned the music up". Fuck that shit. Where I live, if you drive down the road looking sketchy, phones ring.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
all sports media news and gaming is turning into the same shit. all my niggaz in the hizzouse - Xzibit now sells deodorant
You keep putting out the same fucking thing what do you expect? What the fuck is on tv, nothing same fucking shit fuckheads heheh!
PUt the little cartoon of the black kid as the hero, they fucked over transformers. Shit on most the other nastalgic shit i mean even in the movie industry the only nastalgic shit i've see that was actually worth a fucking damn was CATGIRL!. HALLEY BERRY HELLL FUCKING YEAH SHES CAT WOMAN 2.0 WITH A PASSIOn.
heheh
pz ass holes
As usual, the Simpsons has this trend wrapped up. Remember Poochie the Dog from the The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show?
1) That hip-hop gangstas are invading the game market is but a sign of decadence. Hip-hop peaked culturally three or four years ago. Next stop is throwback jerseys for post-menopausal women and then it's about it.
2) As for the over-30 crowd not being the market anymore, I'd like to see the market research. What? No research? Maybe because it's bullshit. Over-30's are the first generation that grew up with videogames. Now they have money to waste and no interest in warez. A small minority in terms of time spent playing, but a huge segment in terms of actual sales.
I resent the 35 year old comment, because I'm 21, and the games I grew up on weren't "streetcore" either. What on earth is the guy talking about? I don't know anyone in the 19-35 year old age range that is hip-hop hardcore. That shit resides in the high schools and malls. I like to refer to it as "mallcore," and it's pushed by Viacom affiliates like MTV controlled by rich executives who laugh at the very culture they propagate onto the kiddies, because it makes them money.
Fuck this rap-wannabe bullshit. It's hysterical. This musical fad is as long-lasting as glam was, disco was before it, and doo-wop was before that. The culture has already saturated itself--it's become the joke that glam was in the early 90s. Every rap video has the same oversaturated high-contrast video filters, the same sports jersey-wearing rappers, the same lyrics. It's around so much because it's extremely easy to produce this music. Just click in some drumbeats with your mouse in a tracking program and have someone write rap lyrics in 5 minutes, featuring today's flavor-of-the-month rapper. Bam, new single.
Midway, and any other companies getting into this, are making a huge mistake and will be laughed at in five years. Meanwhile, I'll play something that doesn't date itself so badly, like Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 (I still play Doom 1 now and then!).
It's from last year, and vol. 1 was from the year before. So this isn't a new phenomena. And for that matter, anyone who has played NBA Street for 5 minutes will tell you it is just an update of NBA Jam.
So, really, this is perhaps a decade-old phenemon now, and we can credit Mark Turmell for it.
Like any other category, there are good and bad "street" games.
BTW, NBA Street Vol. 2 is a great game and it is only $20 now. It is a superb multi-player game. We have frequent 4-player games at work (at the end of the day).
Disco Stu says...Thuggin' ALIVE!
They never go "Magic the Gathering: Street"
That could get real ugly...
I think this is merely a phase, a cultural identification to a phase of adolescence, where young males feel superior as a method of attracting a mate, and when that fails, they turn to video games and possibly crime (as I think it always does fail most teens today who can't skate like Tony, or roll like Puffy).
Just like the "neds" we have in the UK, which are described in detail and have been caught on video.
I'd wager that most criminals dislike computer games
Bootleg copies of video games? That's not exactly new.
Game programmers ain't much better. As someone said this is as real as Vanilla Ice.
As for how effective it is. Well the posts comments on how the 35 yr olds are just a small segment. Perhaps. But so are the 25-35 and 35+ segments. So are all the 0-25 who just don't like rap/hip-hop/streetcred. By focussing on one group that seems to be "in" at the moment you risk alienating all the rest. Just ask MTV.
I used to give this example and while it isn't entirely true anymore it still works. Look at the top ten most successfull films of all time and count the number with "classical" music and those with music that was current at the time.
Each generation needs their own kind of music to be able to rebel against those who came before. Nothing new there and nothing to worry about except that possibly one day we are going to run out of new music but then we can just start again. One day youths on the streetcorner will be grooving to beethoven and old folks passing by will say "shame in our day we listened to real music and what are these kids of today wearing, suit? Tie, a HAT? and look at his pants, they are not even down to the knees!".
Anyway I think that any game that attempts streetcred by including the current "hip" music and street talk is as pretend as a hollywood movie doing the same. You know that is just marketing by some 40yr old in a suit and the only ones stupid enough to think that playing these games gives you real street cred are exactly the people the 40yr old wants to reach. Middle-class white boys who want to show they are hard but still live at home with mommy and get daddy to pay their bills.
Funny how kids always think they are rebbelling by doing exactly what all the other kids are doing. Wouldn't it be a real rebbelion for a kid not to rebel? (I am as anti-social as they come and so the herding instinct is extremely low in me. I don't conform. Ever. Not even by not conforming. Doesn't make me better but it does give me some laughs when I see poor little rich kid gangsta's.)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
you can find Adolf Hitler complaining about racism in an article. And with his first name misspelt, even.
I don't think that Hip Hop is negative. It never was when we were growing up.
Unless things have changed the description of Gangsta Rap and Thug Life would be "hardcore" rap...not hip hop. Let me differentiate.
Hip hop can be negative, but in that vein it usually is meant to motivate you to get by the tough times. Most of it is just for partying or being silly. This might have changed but real hip hop back in the day would be Slick Rick, Erik B and Rakim; etc. Gangsta Rap would be NWA, Public Enemy; etc. Sometimes it's tough to differentiate between the two...I've listened to rap and hip hop since those guys were popular though, so I'd like to think that I have some idea of what I'm talking about. I'm not saying it's my favorite music, especially with all of the thug crap coming out now.
I feel like Mike Bolton from Office Space even talking about it.
-TLAY
Funny how most of the critics of games with an "urban" feel, are the same ones who step up to defend vidgame violence because "it's just fantasy." Many probably also defended pseudo-street games like NARC, Double Dragon etc. back in the day.
A game set in East L.A. (the next GTA, for example) isn't going to send kids running off the join gangs, any less than a tennis game is going to get them to pick up a racket. We're all Walter Mitty when we play games.
And yes, there may be some appeal to a gang market... But like gangsta rap, the majority of the games will be purchased by middle-class white kids in the suburbs.
I hate R&B and Hip Hop. I don't hate them neccessarily because I don't like the music. I hate the CULTURE. Thuggish is a great way to describe it. Crude, vulgar, and mental midget also come to mind.
I have zero interest in playing any "street" themed game, and really think we ought not to be encouraging kids to emulate these morons.
Bull. The blame falls on Parappa the Rappa.
Wait... you mean there's more to life than gold teeth, spinning rims and fat chicks in velvet warm up suits??
I'm a big fan of Rakim, I have all his stuff with Eric B. and I think since.
I didn't know his Muslimness mattered. He rarely mentions it in his songs. If you can't tell, I resent defining a man by his religion.
As to the complexity of his rhymes, his rhymes aren't all that complex any more. If you ask me, Digital Underground completely buried Rakim on the complexity level with their "Sex Packets" album and ensuing EP. I would say that both "Nuttin Nis Funky" and "Freaks of the Industry" great exceed Rakim's work in complexity. Also check out some of Del the Funkee Homosapien's work for work that exceeds Rakim also.
Now, as to cadence and style, Rakim has an incredible style. He is perhaps the best there, superceding the original vanguard for style, LL Cool J.
I really don't know what it is about my generation which whines so fucking much. The old games, for the most part, got really boring really quickly. Pac Man? Donkey Kong? Even in 1982, I thought they were pointlessly repetitive.
When you use those games as a benchmark, increasing complexity and increasing immersiveness is only a good thing. I'd much rather spend a boring Sunday being a faux-thug in GTA and driving around an enourmous simulated city than chasing some goddamn blue ghost for the five billionth time.
And its good games can touch on elements of popular culture, even the parts which appeal to silly wannabe-badasses. Games are nothing but about escapism and sometimes its good to let one's inner bitchmaker loose in the privacy of one's suburban home where no embarassment will result. Its certainly better than acting out on these things in public.
Shit.
Steve Allison of Midway charges: "The guys bitching about this new trend are inching up on 35 years old, and they grew up on old-school gameplay. They're a very vocal bunch, but they're just not the market anymore."
I just turned 30 and I spend more on games now than I ever did as a kid. I was part of the first mainstream videogame generation and most of us have a lot more disposable income these days. And we still play games, even though some of us are married and/or have families.
It's incredibly stupid to dismiss us like that, but it's something I see over and over again. Games aren't maturing as my generation does, and although I spend a lot on games, I find the number of games that truly excite me anymore to be slim. My feeling is that a lot of this is due to the immaturity of many game developers, who think it's more important to have big-breasted polygons than a good storyline or gameplay. The other problem is arrogant and uninformed attitudes like this guy at Midway, which is very prevalent at the superpublishers which control the industry. I don't believe that the traditional business philosophy that the 12-18 market spends the most translates to the games market. From just personal experience I haven't seen the usual dropoff. What is needed is more independent studios again who have the creative integrity to concentrate on quality, which is what the 25-35 segment is begging for and not getting often.
Oh, and by the way Midway guy, 95% of the games your company has put out are trash.
Market.
While the PC has certainly bloomed into a mainstream gaming platform, the number of console gamers are still larger. The industry has been quite aware of a single fact. More Black Americans own gaming consoles than PCs. A large segment of the console gaming market, are the black audiences who usually buy more sports titles than others. Thats why you have games like NBA Street, NFL Street.
Also i know of several developers that have been approached by very successful rappers/producers, and so forth looking to get into the game industry. They'll fund games, lend talent, music and marketing power.
There is a movement towards black culture in gaming because there is a huge market for it among whites, and even more among blacks.
Games are just like hollywood these days. They go for markets.
Frankly i wish they would make PC games like they used to, New ideas, new concepts. Interplay's Castles 2 etc. Something other than a freaking 3d FPS.
"urban lifestyle"???
Fucking whores!
Get ready for rain. Get ready for REAL hip hop. Sellouts up to the wall, Gangsta idiots down the drain.
Hip hop is struggle, and it's far from over. It hasn't even begun.
Way to lump it all together.
There is plenty of good hip hop out there (and even some that play instruments), you just have to look for it.
And just moving the dial will not (usually) find it.
Thuggin: Spending money like an idiot, drinking to an excess, being only turned on by bimbos with no brains, beating eachother senseless with tire irons or whatever, shooting people you hate, getting shot at by people who hate you, eating only at drive thru, drinking alize and crystal, attending strip clubs like they were the new church, membership at the The Player'S Club, Gucci, bling-bling, busta move on da dance flo, Po Po, bein' Po cuz ya spendt it awl (not the same as Po Po), scrappin, etc.
Sounds more like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas than anything else. All for ~$50, once it's released....... and when it comes down to it, I'd rather play the (video) game than pose in the lifestyle.
Women prefer the "thug" men over the nice guy weak men.
Ah, no no no!
Don't ever think that! I'll leave aside the issue of generalising what three billion women want (makes about as much sense as me saying that all men want 'x'). But nice does not mean weak. Yes, weakness is rarely a trait that turns a woman on, but 'niceness' which I take to mean consideration for others is not the same.
If someone is only nice because they are afraid to upset someone, then are they really nice? I wouldn't think so. But a man who will stand up for you, protect you? Now that would be nice.
Some women will go for the badguys, but not many. Badguys in real-life are not like bad-guys in the movies. Do you really think most women want a life filled with violence and aggression? I promise you they don't.
Of course a certain amount of unpredictability is exciting. Everyone is attracted to someone who does the things that we wish we could do but can't. But I think that's really different to what you mean.
And in case you think all this has been meant in a physical sense, well yes it sort of was, but women can want a trophy boyfriend (the car, the clothes, the muscles) just like men want trophy girlfriends. But don't forget that not all men want that. (Relationships like this rarely last.) The other side of the gender-divide is not that different.
find me a woman who will go on a date with a homeless man with no job. Better yet find me woman period.
You're probably limited to other homeless women at the moment. It's not that a woman would or would not like you, but is she willing to make the sacrifices for you that dating a homeless man would involve (housing you, feeding you, driving you places)? When you're back on your feet then a woman is no longer having to make big lifestyle changes to accomodate you and you'll be a better prospect.
But it has nothing to do with you not being a "thug."
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
It's simple really. Rap (lets ignore the commercialized bastard bullshit for a second - I know it's hard because it's everywhere haha) is about *lyrics*. Ideally the lyrics should be good, ie. make sense or even contain wisdom, and be delivered with good flow.
The music is secondary, if not irrelevant. That's why it's often very minimalistic. Some people actually think non-minimalistic music is pretentious and useless distraction from what it's about - lyrics.
But you can find plenty of good rappers jamming with good musicians. I have a Lauryn Hill bootleg lying around that's simply great. The music is of course a bit "repetitious" - it HAS to be, otherwise it wouldn't work and get in the way - but it's still very well done. But yeah, unless you like loops or lyrics hip will not make you happy. It's not supposed to.
Don't be so quick to say that this style of music is a trend or "easy to make". If you listen to artists such as Eyedea, Aesop Rock, or Sage Francis I'll bet that your perspective of hip hop will change.
As many of you have voiced, I do not enjoy listening to rhymes about bitches, blunts, and body bags, but I respect the fact that by doing so they're making more than (most likely) any of us ever will. It's natural for corporations to cash in on the "street" style, respect it or not.
${1} is ${2}! Youth is being corrupted! We should ${3}
...) ...) ...)
Where:
$1 is in (music, movies, games, websites, theater,
$2 is in (violent, sexual, political, heretical,
$3 is in (ban it, regulate it, age restrict it, burn them at the stake, make him drink hemlock,
The Roots.
Get over yourself.
"Steve Allison of Midway charges: "The guys bitching about this new trend are inching up on 35 years old, and they grew up on old-school gameplay. They're a very vocal bunch, but they're just not the market anymore."
OK, so let me get this straight. When I get older there won't be games made for me? Maybe I should just give up gaming along with all the other kids who grew up playing video games and haven't stopped since.
That's just plain ignorance. But hey, if you want to drop a market that actually *has* money to buy games for, then go ahead and spew nonsense like that. Don't come crying to my crib though. Biatch.
Jill Scott/Musiq/Amel Larrieux (girl from Groove Theory)/The Roots as was already posted/Black Eyed Peas/Dead Prez etc etc etc.
Also there are cases where you won't see a rapper playing an instrument on stage but it doesn't mean they can't play a musical instrument. A very good example of this are The Neptunes (they just don't do hiphop) and other producers in the music industry that also release albums. As for track laying, it has always been computer generated.
It's a shame that you speak on something with authority; yet do not know what you speak of. If you don't know just say so and inquire. You might learn something new without someone having to end with a wise ass remark as such.
It is like people wanting to break traditions, except people been doing it so much that breaking traditions has become a tradition so the real way to break tradition is to stop breaking them.
If you can't get your head around this kinda logic I think you are still one of those kids who think they are rebelling by buying music targgetted at them by big companies to get the kids pocket money. Anyone who listens plays these games and think they are a rebel is in fact being a good little consumer. If a music style is popular enough to be used in mainstream media then it has become mainstream and anyone listening it is a member of the herd. There are no rebels in a herd just mindless cattle following where the cowboy (company executive) wants them to go. The real rebels have already moved on.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I wouldn't give any game that's sold on its 'street' credentials the time of day. I have never, and will never, have any aspirations toward being a playa. (And before you ask, GTA:SA will, like the previous GTA games, be *parodying* its milieu, not glorifying it. So that's all right.)
You must think in Russian.
... people in their 30's are the ones buying the majority of the games. So how's this dweeb come up with this?
It just so happens that HipHop music is more "real" and so thugs listen to it because they can relate to it. These people arent following the trend, Thugs existed before people started creating music and products to sell to them. Most poor people are thugs in fact.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Whites have been living the thug lifestyle before some black person came up with the idea to profit off of it and glamourize it. In fact most people in this country act just like that. Most men just want to have sex with as many girls as possible, drive a nice car with rims, and smoke some weed. Our parents did this stuff before rap existed.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Good, now I guess I'll just download all my games from now on. It shouldn't hurt them at all, since I'm not the target market. Good luck with your teeny boppers, video game guru's.
I've got 101 mod points and you can't have them!
"Some women will go for the badguys, but not many. Badguys in real-life are not like bad-guys in the movies. Do you really think most women want a life filled with violence and aggression? I promise you they don't. " Did I say you had to be violent? You just have to seem like a bad guy. Being violent is only one way to be a bad guy, you can also be an asshole to people, you can not take her shit and raise your voice at her when she gives you too much lip, you can be firm in your decisions. Generally women prefer guys who are hard. Sensitive guys are exploited by women and used. If you are sensitive the last thing you ever want to do is let a woman know, because she will manipulate the hell out of your emotions. " If someone is only nice because they are afraid to upset someone, then are they really nice? I wouldn't think so. But a man who will stand up for you, protect you? Now that would be nice." Being nice does not get girls. Girls don't even pay attention to that. The girls who do pay attention to the nice guys only do so to exploit these guys. This is from my personal experiences. " And in case you think all this has been meant in a physical sense, well yes it sort of was, but women can want a trophy boyfriend (the car, the clothes, the muscles) just like men want trophy girlfriends. But don't forget that not all men want that. (Relationships like this rarely last.) The other side of the gender-divide is not that different." The chance of finding love in this world are extremely slim. Better to have a trophy fake gf than nothing at all. I'm not saying I want a trophy at all, but why choose nothing when I can have a trophy? " You're probably limited to other homeless women at the moment. It's not that a woman would or would not like you, but is she willing to make the sacrifices for you that dating a homeless man would involve (housing you, feeding you, driving you places)? When you're back on your feet then a woman is no longer having to make big lifestyle changes to accomodate you and you'll be a better prospect. " I'm not actually homeless but I do not have a job. You see, women don't give a shit about personality, or looks even, women judge a man by his job and based on rumors spread by other womens and other bullshit. The truth is theres no way to earn love, you have to be lucky and win the lottery. Thug's are just playing the thug card, they know they arent going to find love easily so why not get laid and treat women like sex objects? or at least the women who wish to be treated that way, the ones who fall for thugs deserve what they get. Do I feel sorry for a girl who gets her ass beat up by the thug who beats people up all the time? No. Do I care when some girl marries a rich guy for his money and then gets treated like shit ? Thats what these people are looking for, if they were looking for love they'd change their priorities. Being a thug is about getting laid, not finding love. You act like a thug and macho just long enough to get girl X into your bed and then you can never talk to her again and she might never know you have a sensitive side or emotions at all. This is how it should be.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
It's 2004, so if yo games don't have street cred, some punk will pop a cap in yo ass.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
The people promoting and producing all this hip-hop and rap crap should be put up against a wall and shot for polluting our culture with this garbage.
BULLSHIT. The reason that "they're not the market" is because YOU'RE NOT PUSHING THE TITLES THAT APPEAL TO THEM!
I'm 18. I'm not an "old guy" who remembers the glory days of bloops and bleeps. But my first console was a NES, and I've owned almost every system since then (other than the real bombs...Sega CD, Jaguar, etc.)
Hey Steve: if you fucking asshats were to push a game like Psy Ops half as much as you push shit like (sport related term)z (insert year), then people would buy it! It's marketing! Enough zombifyed consumer-minded Americans will buy whatever you tell them to if you push it enough!
That goes for the entire industry too, not just Midway - if they pushed great titles like Prince of Persia HALF as much as the shit laden rehashes like Madden 2021, they would sell! Take out ads before movies, like you do with the shitty film tie ins! Take out ads on MTV and during football games, etc. It's not that they're not pushing it because it's not selling, it's that it's not selling because they aren't pushing it!
Its just another example of the hip-hopification of our society.
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
Games that are well written will always sell and most of the times, sell well. Blizzard doesn't need to have Jay Z or what not "puttin' a cap in dem mofos" along side you and offering hip urban commentary as you play Diablo to sell more than a million copies.
Midway seems to have chosen to rely on cheap marketing schemes to sell their products instead of producing quality. In essence, although its redundant at this point, selling out.
"Real gamers" are not fading out of the picture. Hell, I'm eighteen myself. The whole idea of professional gaming, while still fledgling in North America, is taking off. While not always the most mature crowd, look at Counterstrike players. Serious gaming (unlike BSD, kidding) is not dying.
Sick.
Meh.
Street music? Streets are just roads, right?
For an even better mindfuck, take advantage of the fact that most rap lyrics are in iambic pentameter. Start a backbeat, put it on loop, and see how far you can get through Macbeth (or any other Shakespearian play) before you collapse in hysterics.
Because it'd be really useful right about now...
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Rap sold out, then sold out again, and has reached the magic "100,000 sellouts" number.
The thing about thug rap is that it is based on urban poverty. The things that it glorifies are basically the pursuit of monetary success at any price. And you can see it in the icons of thug rap style - gold teeth, big gold rings, cadilac symbols for neclaces, fancy clothes, expensive shoes, cadilac escalades... it's all about conspicuous consumption.
So when THE MAN approaches THE RAP THUG and waves a big stack of green under his nose what happens? THE THUG SELLS OUT! Of course he does! There are of course exceptions, but the POINT of the pop-thug-rap icon is to sell out and make a big pile of money. Then you have money that is power that is what the thug has been thirsting after.
And, incidentally,
"Country sold out, but no one bought."
Country Music is what you get when Bluegrass sells out.
wedding hazelnuts!
Once I set up my video motion detection cameras and starting getting some clear shots of the numerous folks running and selling drugs on my street, I at least got a good laugh out of it.
Guess what they're wearing? Khaki slacks, soft collar shirts, penny loafers.. they dress just like yuppie businessmen.. they have the same primitivist hangup over status as the people they are emulating too.
So, yeah, from the perspective of the drug infested ghetto I live in, I'd have to say that the MTV gangsta has seperated from reality.. a big joke.
When rims, women, etc, are used almost entirely for the purpose of establishing a [fantasy] sense of superiority in your subgroup, it is essentially in the same primate vein as the 'thug' image.
Maybe some people are deflected by the strong practical pressure against applying interpersonal violence yet still play the same game, just sticking to less socially expensive tactics.
If we are going to make any further ethical (and consequently social, economic, and personal) progress that benefits most everyone, we're going to have to identify this primate impulse and fight it. Sadly, economics might be working against the chance of this just right now.
Sure, there are bound to be some people out there who just happen to like skinny rubber tires and shiny wheels for their personal aesthetic enjoyment only, but we won't know who they are until cool suddenly reverses polarity back to big tires, tiny rims, or whatever.
The kids who are listening to the latest popular music are followers just like their parents are. They are following a different style of music but they are just as much part of the mainstream. The explorers are to far ahead. They are the ones experimenting with new types of music to far ahead to be followed. Some of it will get picked up by the mainstream, some will not.
You still seem not to understand a basic simple rule of the human tribe. There are very few rebels because being a rebel is about being alone and the human herding instinct is too strong in many of us. How can you be a rebel if you are doing exactly the same as your parents? Rebelling is doing something different. If the majorirty of childeren truly rebelled then why does nothing ever change?
But you need us arrogant assholes just as I need cattle like you. Of course the funny thing about cattle is that it never realises it can be as blindy arrogant as us pompous assholes. That is why I am laughing at you. I see you stampeding straight into the slaughter house. Have fun being a good little rebel on the human production line. You are doing exactly what the world demands of you.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
This character apparently thinks the rest of the world is the same as the USA. *RRRRT* wrong. For example in Europe, societies are organized much different.
So bringing that 'hiphop culture' (which is btw not hiphop culture, at least not the hiphop culture I grew up with like the jungle brothers, 3rd base..) to the games is perhaps wise for the USA market, but the rest of the world will simply not understand it.
Oh, and btw, the biggest game market is still Japan, and sorry to say it, but with a few exceptions (id software, valve) the best game studio's are still located in Japan.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Having controversial content in a video game is nothing new.. hell.. it is, sometimes, what makes them worth playing. Hello, I am 28 years old.. and I am a game addict...... It all started when I was five or six, but I cannot be sure, because I have no sense of time. The first game that I remember, I don't even know the name of. It was on the Atari.. each player was a tank (really just a 3x3 square with two pixels hanging out in the middle, as the cannon - maybe it was six pixels, then two, then a few to be the cannon, I don't remember). I think that you could manipulate a setting in the game, or on the console itself that would allow your tank to move around. There was also an option to allow the bullet, a single square pixel, to either bounce off the side of the screen or "wrap" around. It has been so long, I honestly don't remember; wtf was my point again? Oh, yeah... I have a feeling that whoever wrote the original comment was trolling for a response of some kind....... so I will just shut up, b/c I forgot what I was going to say in the first place.......
You see, women don't give a shit about personality, or looks even, women judge a man by his job and based on rumors spread by other womens and other bullshit.
You have a dark dark view of women. Do you really think women are so evil and heartless? And how much respect do you think a woman gets if she marries a guy she doesn't like (your 'no personality, no looks') because of his job. We have a words for women like that, gold-digger is the politest of them. You don't seem to realize that this sort of behaviour is as hated by women as by men (more, actually).
Anyway, I've written this reply more for the benefit of anyone else out there who might read this thread and pick up your bitter view of women. You really need to spend some more time just being friends with a few girls so that you can learn how women really think. I think your view has been twisted by being unable to find a girl who'll give you what you want.
Hard to believe, but men and women are not seperate species and we all have a lot of the same needs and wants.
Being friends with a girl will not help you get into bed with her and maybe you thought that it would, but it wont do you any harm either. You don't want a boyfriend who's a puppy-dog but you do want to be treated right.
Anyway, if this sounds a little harsher than I normally am, your comment sounds pretty unpleasant to me:
Do I feel sorry for a girl who gets her ass beat up by the thug who beats people up all the time? No.
I repeat to any lonely men reading this, Strong good, Bully bad. And I don't mean muscles, I mean a bit of integrity and some personal pride. Nice does not mean weak, and not all (very few) women are impressed by a loud mouth and a mid-life-crisis-mobile. Sure a fat wallet (with accompanying presents) is nice, who said everyone's a saint? But if a man thinks that's the first thing a woman wants then he's got a sad sad view on the world.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
The first "adult" or "mature" PC game I played was "Leather Godesses of Phobos".. but living in the US, and also being as young as I was, I'm sure that wasn't the first? This topic made me wonder about that (I'll probably be hitting google in a minute)......
After a good night of sleep, or something like it, I finally remember my point. My point was that whomever wrote the comment about "30+" people is.. well... full of shit. I do not know the correct psychological term for it "blame-shifting" or something like that; it is, more or less, wreckless finger-pointing.... If a game is good, it will stand on its own merits. Perhaps this was a frustrated game developer speaking, I don't know. I only know that the actual CONTENT of games has been lacking for the most part, but not TOTALLY. GTA is not only a great game for the fun-fuck-everyone-up factor, but also because it has content and allows the player to "explore". It brings me back to the time when there were games like Leisure Suit Larry and Space Quest. Yes, I know that's not a very adequate comparison b/c in those days you were a bit limited to where you could explore.. but, they sure were fun. The world is full of critics, and opinions, and it should be. However, on a serious note, if one is going to critique peoples on a personal level, based on the games they play.. I would think that they should be able to tell me why playing a game where "pretend" to decapitate human beings or "pretend" to outrun the police is any worse than "Space Invaders" where your whole objective is to kill all the aliens. Sure the graphics were not as great, but that is the yardstick of civilization, now isn't it? Your fucking video card. Yeah, the second my peoples want to go for a vacation, though, we get the long end of uncle sam's hospitality up our asses....... oh, wait... I'm getting off the subject again....
That's it! I'm calling Bill Cosby!
Hey, just saying thanks for introducing me to this group. I've downloaded a couple of their songs from their site and I'm definitely buying the album soon as I can.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
With artists like Rahzel who can beatbox and drop the chorus simultaniously, few could deny posession of musical skill born of years of focused practice. With artists like Rob Smith and the X-ecutioners, who recently scratched alongside the late Charlie Parker on Cheers (X-ecutioners Style) you can see that the turntable is a viable musical instrument, in the hands of a talented artist.
I'd also submit that the result is a way of judging the talent of the artist. It's not ultimately about the ability to depress this combination or that combination of keys while maintaining breath control. It's about the note. While the flute sounds like the flute and can't be replaced, with technology comes innovation. The flute might gain better seals, better plating and perhaps a lower price. The electronic forms, still in their infancy, will gain more from the technology surrounding the days of their invention. The early electronic keyboards had less advanced sound rendering ability than the ringer in today's cellular phone. Regardless of the source of the sound, be it sample, scratch, beatbox, real instrument or computer-modeled, Hip-Hop artists today are creating sounds that are undeniably music, and possessed of the power to entertain and emote.... What more would you want from a musician? Grunge is not a predessor to Hip-Hop, as you claim.
Simple rule of thumb: No guitarist, No solos, it sucks. Covers numetal, pop, rap, country, $MTV_VOMITED_GENRE.
And I'm talking solos ala Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, Chuck Schuldiner ( Death ), Dave Suzuki ( Vital Remains ) etc etc, not the one string, one note 'solo' like the fat fuck from Evanescence likes to play.
So here I sit listening to my yodelling CDs. Frank Ifield will never sell out! :-)
Hey, I see lots of young guys "walking the walk" where I live. It usually makes it look like someone has shagged them rotten the night before... or perhaps "Preparation H" has hired rap stars for endorsements?
Well "ska" is a sort of reggae/rap hybrid. I saw "Apache Indian" last night at a free concert and they were pretty good. Lots of words rapping (not that I could make most of them out!) and an 8 piece band (tablas, sax, trombone, keyboard, drums, guitars).
This is the average gamer let's not forget. So, because we can only age 1 year every year, this means that there are more gamers entering the market. If the average age is going up by approx 5 years per every year, this means that more and more pensioners are entering the gaming market, not more youth. If these games are truly targeting the 'mass market' then we have some really odd pensioners.