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New Games Journalism
Kotaku has a piece up today mentioning a style of video game editorializing called The New Games Journalism. This piece links to several others. State Wiki has a piece from early this year on what New Games Journalism is, and an examination of its goals. An example of the style is available on the Eve Online site in the PC Gamer article All About Eve. (large pdf) A seminal work referenced when discussing the style is Bow, Nigger, a sharply written and gripping piece about a duel in Jedi Outcast. From the editorial: "For one thing, my screen name has nothing to do with my ethnicity and for another, it's only a game and the fascist doing the typing is probably hundreds of miles away and far beyond anything you could call an actual influence on my life. But still... It's not very nice is it?"
It's blogging.
Um, why not just use gamerankings.com?
Reviews being "bought and paid for" is not the problem. The problem is that game journalism tends to develop bias completely on its own even without bribery. This is kind of inevitable. Games are art and as such quality is subjective. If journalist A honestly thinks Halo sucked and journalists B, C and D think Halo is great, who is to say who is right? These are opinions, not facts, that we are working with here, and so mr. A's review would be just as valid as B, C and D's. However if you are the kind of person who would tend to agree with mr. C's assessment, then mr. A's journalism won't be of much use to you.
did you?
Because this doesn't seem like it responds in any coherent way to the linked piece except that it does involve some sort of word.
"...(hint: Native Americans are not from India, idiots.)..."
Yeah, really. You'd think everyone would know by now that they're of Asian descent.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I'm honored that a professional games journalist would take so much time and effort to write a formal essay which states the obvious fact that something like Penny Arcade casually talking about the games they play is far far more useful to me a consumer than slock ign/gamespy/gamespot reviews.
I never would've figured that out.
Games are art and as such quality is subjective. If journalist A honestly thinks Halo sucked and journalists B, C and D think Halo is great, who is to say who is right?
Which makes game reviews totally different from movie or music reviews.
Oh wait, no... it's exactly the same. There really is nothing new about "game journalism", except that it's typically done by far, far less experienced writers.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Sometimes, words cause the killing, maiming, and screaming to start. It's worth paying attention to those words. The words themselves don't hurt, but the results do.
Call me a baldheaded cracker; I don't care really, because at the end of the day my paleface still gives me (subtle, but noticeable) privileges.
Here's a hint: with most words, context is everything. There are a hundred ways to use the word "right" -- and some of them are threatening.
Damn those pesky terrorists
And of the Eve piece (just finished reading it) is that unlike normal "reviews", you don't wade through "here's how you play, blah, blah, blah, and then you click this".
The author in both pieces inserts just enough information so you get the ghist, and you understand why it's so enjoyable. I read "Bow Nigger" some time ago and nearly fell out of my chair with enjoyment. After reading several reviews of "Jedi Knight II", this was the first piece that made me want to go play it - right now.
Not every game review should be like this - but I'd rather read 100 "Bow Nigger" tales than yet another "Halo 2 rocks because it's pretty!" Tell us why you loved it - and don't bog me down in the details, tell me why you liked it. What part? What scene in the game? Was there a moment that made you go "woah", or was it just the constant puzzle of trying to find the best place to stay alive with the adrenaline pounding in your ears?
Anyway. Just my $0.02.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Dad??
I'm GeorgeWBorscht, and I approved this message.
I never really understood why "Native American" was considered a PC term.
I mean it wasn't America until the West made it America.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
The article isn't about the word "nigger."
I'll post something useful instead of just leaving it at that, so maybe it will be worth your time to read the article:
The author starts by describing a decline in gaming magazines and their sales and speculates on two options for improving profitability. The bean counters (the author thinks) will want to increase profits by cutting costs (labor costs) on the assumption that the actual writing in the magazine is irelevant. The editors should take a different approach, which is to make the magazine better by writing about games in a different way. He uses "Bow, Nigger" as an example of a different and better way of writing about games.
Along the way, the author understands that it's very very simple to write a buying guide and simpler still for a fanboy to do it. It's my opinion that game publishers (the bean counters) wouldn't mind publishing something in which all games are recommended.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
"Make a gesture of mutual respect in a non subservient manner that is not reminiscent of slavery, Jedi of colour."
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
I never really understood why "Native American" was considered a PC term.
I mean it wasn't America until the West made it America.
Would you prefer "stone-age peoples of North America"?
of these assholes in the online gaming world who think that it is cool or funny to call someone a nigger. I'm willing to bet that the majority of these dumbasses are little kids who wouldn't dare say the word in public, or to a black person's face for that matter. In fact, I would bet that you can't get in 1 hour of gaming in any FPS without hearing some kid, who sounds like they haven't even reached puberty yet, saying "hang all niggers, lynch them blah blah blah". It really fucks up the gaming experience.
The percieved anonymity of the internet has allowed cowards and ignorant fucks all over the world to show their true colors. The worst part about it is that your kids, and possibly even your coworkers, are probably some of them! Good to know that we've made such great strides towards eliminating social inequality.
am i the only one here who feels it's horribly inappropriate for the editors to allow the words "Bow, n*****" to be underlined and highlighted in the top article of the front page of slashdot?
I honestly can't believe I'm looking at this
I consider myself to be one of the few real Jedi's on this earth, and using of such a sacred word in such a joking manner offends me greatly.
I will inform the proper authorities promptly
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
I dunno, sounds like something a Drunken Irish Nazi would say.... :)
...as if a 1000 freshman English majors decided they were great writers and started posting the first thing that streamed out of their bong-addled consciousness.
The "New Games Journalism" is ... blogs?
Stictly speaking it isn't PC anymore. Aboriginal is more appropriate. Yes, aboriginal and native mean pretty much the same thing...And because of the location it still ends up being Aboriginal American which completely defeats the purpose...
Yes, I have aboriginal descendents.
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I think the point being made was that no one living here prior to European colonization called the continents of the western hemisphere "America", so it struck that poster as odd that Native American should be considered the politically correct term.
Personally, (and my grandfather was a mix of Cherokee and Sioux) I prefer Native American over "descendents of aboriginal peoples of the western hemisphere", especially since the peoples of the Americas didn't actually have any word denoting the land masses now known as the Americas. Of course, for myself I usually just stick to "mutt" as I'm a major mash-up of Native and European heritage (two tribes and at least 4 European nations).
Life is short: void the warranty.
I'm sorry but I disagree. I find it offensive when I see people using labels like "jew" or "nigger", or language such as "rape" online. It's not because I'm black, jewish or a rape victim, it's because this sort of language just isn't necessary.
And it's not about being labelled anything because I get just as offended when I see other people being targeted, it's because that displaying that level of idiocy and bigotry isn't something that 99 percent of the perpetrators would have the balls to do in real life. As the Penny Arcade "shitcock" strip illustrated, the anonymity of a public server just seems to draw a certain amount of sheer stupidity and bring out the moron in otherwise rational people.
I swear, if half these idiots had the faintest idea of what it's like to be sexually assaulted then they'd never use the word rape in jest. If they have the slightest idea of what real violence felt like then they wouldn't think of threatening to track someone down, rape their family in front of their eyes, kill them and then start on you (as one less than well-adjusted young man once did to me) just for besting them in a 1v1 matchup.
Seriously, there are some gamers who are clueless imbeciles when it comes to what they say and do, and it seems to me that the proportion of gamers who you'll come across like that online is far greater than the proportion of people who you'll come across like that in real life.
Frankly, I don't need it: I play games to enjoy myself not to encounter racial hatred. And online gaming doesn't need it either: it's this sort of anti-social behaviour that gets gaming a really bad name.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I've been wondering lately about the state of gaming journalism. As an art form, videogames have only existed for twenty-five years or so, and really it's hard to call anything before the 8-bit era art (there are arguments that could be made about that, whatever doubts I may have as to their veracity, butthey are beside the point I look to make here). Yet for some reason, this is still the best gaming journalism can do, and its best, it must be said, is really, really pathetic.
Compare gaming criticism to music criticism, or better still to film criticism, and you'll see how badly, glaringly we lack. (I say we because I am including myself in the community ostensibly serviced by these publications) While there are magazines and sites such as Harry Knowles' and Entertainment Weekly in the film world who are just as sensationalistic and producer-fellating as anything in the gaming world, there are also thoughtful, interesting critics such as Roger Ebert, Paul Tatara, or David Denby, who bring a level of depth and insight into the collaborative artwork they contemplate.
Meanwhile, the best reviews available for gaming are arguably a paragraph-long offhanded comment in the latest Penny Arcade newspost. Film and Gaming are both business-driven, collaborative art forms that engage more than one of the audience's senses, generate emotional responses, and entertain for long stretches of time. Given these parallels, why is gaming criticism in a rut?
My first partial answer to that question lies in the multi-part review system. If you've read the gaming press, you know the drill. First up is a blurb of hype from the press packet, then comes a bit of discussion on the plot and the game's development process. Then the graphics are reviewed, and perhaps a score is given on graphics. Then the audio is reviewed, and this is scored as well. Next the controls, and finally the gameplay mechanics. Then it's all summarized in a paragraph or two at the end, and an overall score or grade is given to the entire product. This is the review we've been reading for years, just the way we're used to.
This review sucks.
I believe that gaming as an art form has moved beyond the point where it's appropriate to consider a game on its different components separately, and that we've been beyond the era when this would be considered appropriate since the 16-bit era, the launch of the original Playstation at the latest. For those of you keeping score at home, the Playstation turned nine this year. Yet in those nine years, the best gaming criticism can come up with is still the useless crap one can read at IGN.
1995 also marked the birth of one of the great experiments in gaming journalism, the US release of Next Generation magazine. Originally just an overseas port of stories found in the UK magazine Edge, Next Generation took on a life of its own and tried to ride the line between industry hype (the infamous Blasto cover, the year-early favorable Daikatana review) and honest, serious thought given to gaming as hobby and art. It was one of the first attempts to write about gaming from the same place that Rolling Stone in its heyday wrote about music. At its best, it even approached respectability. It was even one of the first magazines with serious on-line content.
It was also, naturally, a gigantic financial failure. By the end of its run, it had been turned into candy-coated hundred pages of glossy toilet paper, no better than Game Informer. The pioneering website was replaced with the dreaded (and thankfully deceased) Daily Radar, a name still spoken in hushed voices lest the ghost of Dan Egger's career somehow rise to haunt us all.
There have been other experiments in gaming journalism (eg. the short-lived but brilliant PCXL, basically Maxim for nerds), but all have fallen by the wayside. In the end, the bullet-point categorized review stands tall above a field of fallen competition.
And as mentioned previously, it sucks. These categorized
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
By "in Russia" do you mean present-day Russia or "in Soviet Russia"? I think well all know what happens if it's the latter...
You make a good point. These days, you can hardly label anyone with any word without being labelled racist. You can call them "Negroes" and get called a racist, yet they have the United Negro College Fund. You can call them "Colored People", but there's the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Even something innocuous as "Black" will get reactions from some people. Now, we're supposed to use "African-Americans", though a lot of people labelled this way have had roots in this country for far longer than most. Not to mention that "African American" treats Africa like some monolithic culture and somehow diminishes the sheer variety of cultures found there. Not to mention that many recent immigrants from Africa are annoyed by that label. So, really, it does depend on context.
Money men didn't get to be money men by making stupid decisions.
If they think that "the quality of writers simply doesn't affect a games magazine sales" maybe it's because the quality of writers simply doesn't affect a games magazine sales.
</devil's advocate>
-- should you believe authority without question?
If Games Journalism is just a job to you, you really shouldn't be doing it. The word should be "vocation".
This quote applies to more than just games journalism. Any of these tossers on /. who have asked, "I'm at A University studying Computer Science - will I get a job?" should be listening up.
People bitch, whine, moan, complain, etc. about how they lost their jobs at the end of the tech bubble, and about how there are no tech jobs available now. I, however, whole-heartedly support the paring down of the industry. In the late 90's, all the news could report on was how much money people were making founding dot-com companies. So, every person out there looking to make a quick buck said, "Hey - I could totally make it selling Vievelflutzers on the Internet." So, millions flocked to Universities, Community Colleges, and Barnes & Noble to get their hands on "Programming for Dummies."
Well, guess what. Programming is not for dummies. It never has been. Programming is a science and an art, and there is no way that you can do it properly without enjoying doing it. You have to enjoy spending hours racking your brain about organizing data structures, communicating with collegues about new ideas, and researching what other people have already done. It's a difficult field, and if you're just there because your buddy told you that you could make millions, you have no choice of making it.
Go figure out what you like doing, and do it. Don't try to do my job half-assed.
Well, we're all good then, since India is in Asia :)
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
it wouldn't produce unbiased or universally applicable reviews any significantly more often than advertising-based sources do.
I think the advertising complaints are due to a few standout crappy sites. Gamespy and IGN are completely, 100%, worthless shills. I have never once visited their sites without regretting it. Penny Arcade is advertising supported, and I find every single one of their articles to be worth reading. But when people are complaining about advertiser bias, they're talking about IGN and not Penny Arcade.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
At the bottom is GameSpy, which is now a malware distributor.
"Next Generation" was worth reading, in its day.
I'm Black, and I could careless what you call me. Just have the constitution to know that ignorance and anger exists everywhere. If people react rufely, thats their problem it's a more of a reflection about how they feel about themselves than anything. It's not your problem to worry about what "label" to use to refer to an ethnic group.
This isn't journalism. It's blogging.
I'm not sure I understand the point you're trying to make. Journalism entails the publishing of facts and opinions to a wide audience. Blogging does the same thing. Just because the "journalist" is trained and being paid in no way makes that piece of writing any more valuable than the amateur blogger. Writing is writing, and the source should not matter, only the quality of the content and the effect it has on the audience.
The "Bow, Nigger" article is fabulous. It does a good job of providing some insight into the game, is funny at the same time, and also tackles some of the more pressing issues in online gaming (cheating, harrassment, etc). By labelling it as "blogging" and refusing to call it "journalism" by your standards, are you trying to devalue it? Would you not go and see an indie band because they burned their CD's at home, and aren't played on the radio? Are they not still considered musicians?
I'm tired of people being so down on blogging. Writing is writing, and it makes no difference whatsoever in what forum it's being presented. Please start judging it by its quality, and not its source. That's what art is all about.
Do you think it just might be possible that one could read or write about video games for a purpose beyond simple consumer awareness?
When your local university has classes on film criticism, do you mock them because they're considering greater questions than whether or not "Blade: Trinity" is worth seeing this week at the multiplex?
Get over yourself, for a minute. As surprising as it must be, it's possible to have thoughts about the video game experience beyond "should I buy this or not?"
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
True enough, but is this really happening? Or are you just getting worked up at the thought of it happening? And why is that, anyway?
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
I am offended by people calling it the "western hemisphere"! This is true only because the evil British overlords have defined where East and West begin and end (Greenwich, England).
I have a right to my viewpoint as to which hemisphere I live in!
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
I always enjoy when someone calls a black guy "African American" even when it's clear they're not American in any way.
I know this is sad, but I even remember a Cosby Show episode where they did that, about some leader of another country.
Essentially, it seems like the author feels uncomfortable writing traditional game reviews, and rather than fine-tune his approach, he'd rather meander off in a radical direction to feel 'innovative' and 'fresh'.
Sure, some of his thoughts are agreeable -- the games journalism industry is rather stagnant right now. But! It's NOT because of the formula; that has been developed, tweaked and matured over many years. It's absurd to throw it out in favour of a wacky, unproven writing style that -- while entertaining -- doesn't get much 'meat' across.
Here I'll point to some legendary game review writers such as Jonathan Nash and Zy Nicholson. These guys had it spot on -- punchy, funny copy, asides aplenty, but incredible detail, depth and ability to make you 'feel' the game (as this article suggests).
They didn't achieve this through radical changes -- just superb quality writing. Suggesting we discard a profession that has grown steadily and absorbed so many ideas over the years, and replace it with something untested, is crazy. It's much like the push to atonality in early 1900s music; felt good, but where are we now? Not listening to Stockhausen, that's for sure...
(As Slashdot readers we're going to have a totally different perspective to the vast majority of game mag buyers, as we're into tech, computers and geeky stuff, and like our news and reviews up to the minute.)
Everything someone says is merely a "word". It's the idea behind the words that bothers people... If someone makes fun of me, obviously I don't care about the word either. What bothers me is the idea the person is expessing, for instance if they're implying I'm a less "valid" person than he/she or someone else is... It's the whole feeling of someone else indicating to you that they feel you are "below" them in some manner, and the feeling that someone else is hostile towards you when you don't feel you deserve it.
"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" is probably the most misguided defensive statement I've ever heard, seeing as how it's an outright lie, as evidenced by the extremely noticable reactions essentially all people have to insults/taunting etc.
Yes, it does.
For instance, at work, if some money goes missing from the drawer, I'm not the first person they suspect.
People don't lock their car doors when I walk down the sidewalk. When I drive a nice car, I don't get pulled over on suspicion of having stolen it, or on suspicion of nothing at all.
When I do get hired for a job, there's no sneaking suspcion on my or anyone else's part that the color of my skin, and not the legitimacy or quality of my experience, was the deciding factor.
Not to mention the amazing perks I'm likely to get should I find myself in the criminal justice system; for instance, a considerably lesser likelyhood of getting the death penalty, or of serving any time at all, especially for drugs.
See, that's what "white privledge" means - all those things that are so great, yet so transparent that you forget that not everyone benefits from them. These are things that you shouldn't have to be white to have, I agree. But to simply dismiss the leigions of minorities who lack these privledges every day, on the basis of some hypothetical reverse discrimination that I doubt has actually ever occured for you, isn't quite racist - it's just stupid.
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
It happens. More so in the mid-90s when everyone was going apeshit over "political correctness."
Hadda post anonymously because of some retarded limit on /.
Best game journalism comes from ebgames.com and amazon.com review posts. These are people who buy the game or tell you straight dirt or what sucks or broke.
Their messages are short to the point, and they review it for the love/hate of the product for no money. The reviews come from people of all backgrounds, sex, diversity, age etc. What journalism is more pure than that?
Calling Native Americans, such, always seemed like a slap to the face to me. Like, "Yeah, you were here first but, y'know, we're here now. How aboput we work something out where you can borrow your own land?"
are a fucking idiot. Learn to type. He's not whining about anything you fucking moron. God, I don't even think there's enough insults to cover the bounds of your stupidity.
(Now, before you mod me a troll, remember, I'm only saying what everyone else was thinking.)
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
Insert Credit is one game site I hit up consistently. They frequently look at Japanese releases and what's going to be coming here stateside. Katamari Damacy is one of those bizarre, fiendishly successful titles which showed up on IC's radar first in the Western gaming-news scene.
The other site that really interests me is Tetsuya Mizuguchi's personal blog. It is like a glimpse into the life and mind of a game designer -- not just any designer mind you but the genius behind Rez. So hearing what he has to say on games and the Japanese techno-culture is interesting if only for the context it lends.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
This is from Family Guy. This is from memory, so it might be off a bit:
Jim: What did you just say? That's OUR word! You don't have any right to use it!
Peter: I'm sorry! I thought that was your name!
A few seconds pass.
Peter: Can you please pass the oar, N-Word Jim?
Jim: Certainly.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
There have been plenty of isntances reported where an author reviewed his own book multiple times. I seriously doubt that game companies don't have people (officially or unofficially) doing this.
Besides, that's not jounalism.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
Excellent post, I can't understand the large amount of negativity towards these two articles, they are very well written and truly give you a different perspective on the game that one cannot find in any game magazine.
Best. Webhost. Ever. Dreamhost.
It's the same thing. They were exploited and they couldn't just leave and find a better life. They were "attached" to the person (pomeschik) who exploited them, and sold and bought like property.
Umm ... if your point about Mario and Zelda is that people really liked them and so they still get attention and sequels ... how is that different from Gran Turismo and Tekken? I mean, there are a lot of people who are excited about GT4 and Tekken 5. There are people who aren't. Same goes for Mario and Zelda games. Seems like you should maybe pick different examples.
Why can't we just all be "Americans"?
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
Not really.
I'm a native American, meaning I was born on one of the American continents. I'm not an aboriginal American, however, as my ancestors relatively recently (in the grand scheme of human history) came over from Europe.
So I think Aboriginal American is more correct.
Well, gamespy was the only site I could find that gave Jak 2 a negative review. I wish to God I had listened to the lone dissenting voice in that case. I got about 55% through the game, and just walked away from it. I realized that some programmer or another over at Naughty Dog HATES the customers, and put in some of the most vindictive restart points in the history of platformers. Sending me back 20 minutes in the game isn't a fun challenge, folks. It's annoying. And don't get me started on having to slog through the aircar traffic jam where just farting the the general direction one of the bad guys got you surrounded by and endless supply of guards with guns blazing.
--- Ban humanity.
The answer is:
You're Both Losers
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
Did you know that in Russia they still call the African dark skinned people "Negroes"?
... or something like that?
In Soviet Russia, negroes call YOU!!!
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Are you serious? Take a look at the number of reviews posted by fanboys on EB and Amazon.com -- people who post a 5-star review of a product that hasn't even shipped yet, people who post a 5-star review solely to cancel out someone else's 3-star review, and so on.
On many review sites, voting becomes an act of advocacy, which basically means that everyone's shouting at each other. I'd rather read a few professional reviews than a thousand shouted blurbs.
For more information, click here.
Um, what? There are plenty of metrics on which computer games may be evaluated that aren't subjective.
Your example of Halo is well-taken. I bought Halo for the PC and, overall, I would rate it as an average game. Why? Because its technical execution on the PC was quite flawed. Despite having a dual-1GHz Pentium 3 system with half a gig of RAM and an nVidia GeForce 5900, the framerate and responsiveness of the game was chunky as all hell. It's not like the geometry was all that complex, or that the machine was a slouch.
Are the graphics smooth? Are the controls responsive? Is the network play (if present) smooth and tolerant of dropped or delayed packets? Does it require unusual system specs? Does it benefit from custom peripherals (e.g. joystick, steering wheel, gaming pad, etc.)? Does it demand you place the CD in the drive to play it? Does it require you to install invasive spyware and provide personally identifiable information before the game will deign to run? These are all objective criteria, and are crucial for evaluating the purchase of a $50.00 product.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Except he has actually captured the one thing a demo can't. The emotional aspect of becoming a part of a game. Why do you need a reviewer to explain the graphics, the controls, the endlessly pedantic list of details that would be answered with a ten minute download and 2 minutes of gameplay? This is like asking someone to describe a picture when they could just print the damn thing. I want to know the things you can only know after tens of hours of obsessive and total devotion to a gameworld. I want to know how it is going to feel. I want a small hint at who I will be in this game. I want to know what it will mean to me.
Besides being a gripping read, Bow, Nigger conveyed to me exactly the information that would help me make a good choice buying this game. Specifically, I buy a game if I think that it will have a long life on my hard drive, and that means multiplayer. Through the course of the interesting narrative, the author touched on the mechanics of the game and the quality of the effects. But, more importantly, he conveyed the intangibles that are absent in any standard game review I've seen before. After reading the story I felt a sense of how the game actually plays, as well as a sense of its online community.
I'm searching now, in another window, for a copy of JKII on ebay, since I passed over this title when it was released.
So where did this alternative meaning of "rape" come from? It came from people actually using violent sexual behaviour - the traditional meaning of the word "rape" - to describe how they beat someone. It's not "a good word to show that something was done forcefully", it's using violent language to project violent imagery.
There are a hundred better ways to describe beating someone in a game - "total domination", "whooping someone's ass", etc - and a fair proportion of those wouldn't be to everyone's liking but "rape" is hardly a word that's a readily acceptable alternative to 99 percent of the population, and definitely not to 50 percent.
Is it any wonder that gamers get easily stereotyped as mal-adjusted geeks with poor social skills when language as colourful as "rape" is considered a harmless part of their lexicon? Come on, would you use it to describe to your girlfriend, wife, mother or grandmother how effectively you won a game? I don't think so, and I think you know why.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
That's called restitution, dude. (Yeah, ok mods, I've taken the bait of a troll.) While it may be unfair in most applications, and almost always a bureaucratic bungle, quota programs are an attempt to address the ongoing, unfinished results of centuries of abuse. You are obviously just too ideologically mired (or just plain parochial) to see how skin privilege actually works on the grand scale. Every time I've been to the USA, I'm struck by how in-your-face this residual madness is.
You don't have equality in the 'States, despite half-witted quota programs, and you won't for a long time. It isn't as simple as the "Sneetches."
Damn those pesky terrorists
It's a little different from "J. Random Yahoo" when it's someone you see every day or very often (such as a classmate in school, or a family member).
Why do I care what other people think? Because they're just that: other people. People with feelings and thoughts similar to my own. People who are part of my community, my culture, and the same world in which I live.
Disregarding what other people say only increases the excessively apparent amount of disenfranchisement and alienation people experience in regards to the people around them. Acting like other peoples' opinions are completely meaningless is a selfish, childish position to hold and the fact that you hold it with such strength makes it fairly ironic that you try to criticize me, calling me "sad" or "pathetic".
Most of us learn around the age of two or three to respect the thoughts/feelings of others. Looks like you didn't though. Here's some advice: don't take your cynical antisocial angst out upon the people around you. If you don't care about what anyone else thinks, they won't care about what you think, either. And don't even suggest that you don't care about that. You depend on other people just as much as anyone else.
A fairly common cross-cultural legend on the continent commonly called it "Turtle Island." That name is now in vogue in the aborignal community, at least in Canada.
Damn those pesky terrorists
I think it's not so much that these guys are talking about "the way it is", as the biases are very obvious in both contexts - on both the Daily Show, and Penny Arcade, you know where the authors are coming from and so you can take that point of mental origin into account when reading what they have to say.
With a supposed "unbiased" source of news or game reviews, it's harder to know which way the books have been cooked, so to speak - and thus the information you derive from that source can be off because you are not able to account for the bias that is really there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yeah, we're polite while we're saying racist things, eh?
When I first got to Ontario I couldn't believe that I was actually seeing little black sambo lawn ornaments. I mean, WTF?
Segregation and racist epithets up here generally are designed for those who were here first. When the architects of Apartheid wanted prior art, they came to Canada and looked at the reservation system.
Damn those pesky terrorists
I think one of the things that differentiates movie and music reviews from game reviews is that the craft of reviewing movies and music is predicated on there being something other than stylistic differences to review.
Video games are art, but in most respects the vast majority of video games radically favor style over substance. A FPS game is not making a statement about anything. It has no opinion. It can be stylistically amazing and very exciting to play, but there is no statement that can be reviewed.
Now think about music. You may not like Public Enemy, but they obviously are putting out a message that you can at list critique. Britney Spears is generally panned by critics because she is not really making any artistic statement. She's a prime example of style over substance.
First Person Shooters currently rule the roost in video games. What is the message of Halo 2 or Killzone? In many ways they all share the same message, which is that killing huge numbers of living opponents is a good thing. How much more can you say about the message behind such a game?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
While I don't disagree on the anti-social behavior conclusion, I am curious to know if you really think that the people you describe as idiots online and rational in real life actually are rational?
To me anyways, it seems like these people would [and do] continue with their lack of empathy whenever there's no consiquence for doing so. The internet provides such a lack of consiquence, as does certain other 'asshat heavy' areas like freeways and sporting events.
Once again imo, it doesn't matter if people can behave politely in real life if they still hold such prejudices.
A less experienced writer is no less qualified to give you a useful opinion or list of facts about a game.
I find that "well experienced writers" simply do not give you the information necessary to decide on the purchase of the item in question. They tend to polish their text and method of conveyance so much that the purported reason for their writing of the article borders on invisible. That and they tend to spend too much effort/time glorifying or destroying a particularly small point of the game instead of covering it completely.
This happened to the athlete, Kriss Akabusi. After winning a race in the USA, he was interviewed by a news reporter:
"So, Kriss, what does this mean to you as an African-American?" ..."
"I'm not American, I'm British"
"Yes, but as a British African-American
"I'm not African. I'm not American. I'm British."
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
The important thing to remember about these slurs is that they're just words. Words mean different things to different people. The intent behind the words is much, much more important than the word itself. "Nigger" can be a terrible racial slur, or part of a friendly greeting. I have heard it used both ways. Personally I do not use the word - it doesn't make sense to me as an insult (seeing as I don't hate people of African descent) , and as a white male, I would probably be putting myself in physical danger if I ever tried to use it the friendly way some African-Americans do.
Maybe I don't know about this kind of thing because I'm a white American middle-class male, and we all know that if you're part of this privileged group, you're virtually untouchable. So I guess you can disregard everything I just wrote. Sorry for wasting your time.
The world can be wrong today for once.
I find it mildly ironic that people are in uproar over words being used to describe one form of violence spoiling their online gaming - i.e. mimicking in gory detail and with anatomical precision the mass slaughter of one team of guys by another team.
Games are all about trivialising violence, and you're usually playing the part of a killer or dictator or some other nasty type. It's a slightly odd double standard.
(Not that I'm defending the moronic racist/sexist/homophobic/xenophobic gibberish I come across in my regular counterstrike sessions)
I had mod points.
>The second traditional reason is that they're mostly - and
>there's exceptions, clearly - hugely better written.
Did anyone else find this sentence hilarious? This guy's writing is terrible. If I were editing I'd delete half his sentences as utterly useless and have to clean up shitty sentences like the one quoted above. "mostly...hugely," my god. It's clear he is used to writing as much as possible no matter how bad it makes his writing. Makes sense for someone involved in journalism, I suppose. I'm glad internet reviews don't pull shit like that as much.
However happy I am with the contetion that games magazines are going down hill, I'm not sure that the State Wiki article really solves the problem: namely, print media is trying just as hard to come to terms with the fact of the internet. If what makes the distinction between good and bad journalism is its similarity to the specialised press, then its really about professionalism. And as far as I'm aware, the author of "Bow, Nigger" is not a professional journalist. Therefore, in meiner Meinung, the point should surely be that as we become aware of the increasing diversity and (often) prolificacy of sources of journalism--across all genres--we're going to keep finding great writing like this around, and a lot of bad writing. But people are becoming as skilfull with their own filtering out of this information as any aggregator, using various tools and reading techniques. I think it calls for celebration of this, rather than industry-specific worrying.
Wrong, the definition of rape as forcible sexual assault came from the "pillaging" definition, because usually, when a city or village was pillaged by Romans, barbarians, etc., survivors were often abducted and sold into slavery. This was referred to as rape. Now, the modern definition likely arises from the fact that many of those slaves were taken for sexual purposes, but the original definition is still valid.
Grandmaster of the Revolutionary Order of the Forty-Two Fish
I run into online gaming trash talkers all the time. I asked one of them why they trash talk like that. He said it wasn't personal, just something he did that got him psyched up or some bs.
Maybe I'm being overly harsh, but I couldn't get myself interested in this article. I read (well, skimmed) it. I got the "intellectual masturbation article" vibe: Writers using big words and abstract ideas to explain their grand unified verbal prurience theory, that sort of thing. Reminds me a bit of Jon Katz, actually. I mentally tuned out 1.5 paragraphs in, right after he talked about lusting after barmaids and "discussing the various challenges facing the geek nation." He might have an interesting perspective or two in there, but it's obscured by overeducated, pretentious English major-style verbiage and geek sentimentality. Stupid big words make head hurt. Me go now.
The problem is that you take yourself and language too seriously. I assume that you're probably over 30 now, and you consider being a P.C. conservative a mark of professionalism and adulthood.
The juvenile language used on gameservers is just colorful fun; It's not a serious insult. The funny thing is that I tend be way more "offensive" on servers that have automatic censorship filters in place. I consider censorship to enforce disneyesque worldviews like yours way fvcking more offensive than being called a gay nigger or a dumb cunt.
Power to the Peaceful
Come on, be fair, in the modern usage of the word what springs to mind? And ask 100 or 1,000 people to define it, what do you think they'll be describing?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
To stress AB's anonymous coward post, both stories linked were sold to magazines.
The manifesto wasn't, because it was a blog post. If I knew it would have been read by as many people as it had, perhaps I'd have - oh, I don't know - proofread it.
KG
I hate censorship as much as anyone else here on Slashdot but what I'm not talking about censorship, I'm talking about respect for other people.
Would you walk up to some random guy in the street and call him "nigger" or "jew"? If you were playing pool against some guy you'd just met in a bar and you totally outclassed him would you tell him that you've just "raped" him? No? Why not? Is it perhaps because such language would be offensive and inappropriate?
The fact that he's two foot away from you and could easily take a swing at your head factors into the equation just a little bit too, doesn't it? It's a lot riskier situation than doing the same thing online when you're hiding behind the anonymity of the Internet, isn't it?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
"When racist wanker you are, swift justice you will have."
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
That killing "living opponents" in a virtual world is better than killing an opponent in the real world? Or what does is say about society as a whole that killing is so much fun? Where is Master Chief's motivation coming from?
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
No more than you should sue someone who kills you in a PVP game for murder. However, if the *player* in a PVP game says, "I'm going to kill YOU, Mister Player who lives at ," then I think you could take legal remedy.
Fantasy is often about racial conflict - it may be a way we can talk about and address racial conflict in a safer way, through analogy (I think Tolkein's racial essentialism is a big problem, for example.) It's totally appropriate to "play that out," as long as the translation is distant enough... if an elf referred to an orc using language associated with white racism against black people, I'd think a line had been crossed. The Drakthrone case is perfectly acceptable, and rather interesting.
No, you can do more. You can reply with something like,
You'd be surprised how many people in a game will chime in and back you up, but who didn't bother to say anything about it. Well, okay, maybe you wouldn't be surprised, but I sometimes am.
Then frag the hell out of them.
Well, Mr. Coward, a little homework into what it's like having your traditions stripped from you, your land and livelihood robbed, your language denied, your worth measured in either death or ducats, and the nature of culture (hint: it isn't individual, it's multigenerational), and you might begin to be able to answer your own question. It isn't the past keeping people down, it's the ongoing fruits of past policy. Try googling for 'effect s of slavery' and 'residential schools' for a start.
For what it's worth, I know millionaire lawyer First Nations people ('Indian' to Americans) and federal politicians from the Black community, and of course successful immigrants. They all acknowledge their own hard work, as well as noting the ongoing institutional violence directed at some of their communities and residual damage that hasn't healed yet from three generations back. Part of their hard work was in overcoming those obstacles, not just in entrepeneurship.
The myth of the american melting pot leads to a blindness about the nature of cultural transmission.
Damn those pesky terrorists
That machine was a slouch in the CPU area. Barely faster than an Xbox CPU, but with all that 'wonderful' Windows overhead. Halo1 may not have a lot of geometry, but it features tons of shader effects, large environments, advanced AI, and bump maps on everything. (Not a lot of PC games have done some of this stuff prior to Halo, so drivers and everything simply weren't tuned for the game's requirements, which just exasperated performance issues.) Gearbox should have certainly done a better job on the port, but your machine had a pretty big weakness. :D
And a problem with your criteria is this - most games sold today exceed your requirements (ex: see most console games). Where do we go from there? Meeting a technical level is great and important, but ideally most games are going to achieve that. We need to be able to go further...
Disregarding that, I do agree a similar review check should be made on all software (especially for framerate, being relatively bug-free, and controls). But I think we should treat it as a basic requirement - it shouldn't factor into the game's 'important' score like it does now ("One star off for a bad framerate!"). It should just be a separate score, a simple yes or no. Then the game's content should be reviewed separately.
Right now if a game has a good story, or fun multiplayer, or some other really positive factor it can somehow outweigh basic unacceptable faults like a crappy framerate. That isn't right - devs need to be held to a certain level of expected technical quality. We don't really see films released that are unintentionally lit incorrectly, right? It needs to be that if a game can't work correctly, it completely fails some kind of very important criteria. No amount of quality in the rest of it should let it avoid that mark of shame.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
how to start an "intellectual" revolution:
1) pick some asinine subject, such as game journalism.
2) write about this subject as if it is the most important subject ever examined by anyone in the history of the world. use lots of obscure vocabulary to camoflauge your lack of substance. if you do not have a thesaurus, you can always just make up words by taking old words and adding latin prefices and suffices, such as neo-, meta-, and intra-.
3) get all your buddies to do the same.
4) start referencing each other's work as "seminal", "groundbreaking", etc.
5) give your revolution a name. it doesn't matter what you call it, as long it emphasizes NEWNESS. the people that came before you are the old way. you are the new enlightenment. you are breaking out of the shackles your predecessors have placed on you.
6) give your group of intellectuals a name, such as the "frankfurt school" or the "new games journalists".
7) accessorize your garb with a pipe, beret, or bow tie.
8) this is the most important step. target naive young intellectuals who have yet to develop strong critical thinking skills. impress them with your fancy-pants vocabulary and high-stepping style. indoctrinate them into your cult. they will worship you.
9) post it to slashdot.
thanks for clearing that up, jackass.
The idiotic screen name of the other person
When I've written about online encounters (and even real life ones on occasion) I generally change the names to protect the innocent (myself... I don't want StupidGuy to come looking for me). So I really wouldn't take this as a reason for disbelief.
Even if it does stretch the truth a little... it's possible that something like this could happen. The value of the piece is that it delivers a concept of what the game is like from an emotional point of view rather than a 'five out of ten' approach. And if the piece honestly reflects the writers feelings, isn't that better than a stale Gamespy review?
did anybody else notice that these "new games journalists" were just writing about their game experiences as if they were really happening? how is that a revolution in journalism?
i also noticed several examples of poor writing style, including sentence clutter and the abundant use of passive voice.
by the way, that was directed at the anonymous coward who was trying to clear the good name of fascism by disassociating it with racism.
I would ask a slightly different question, which is this: What does it say about our society that it is so difficult for anyone to make money selling games that don't involve killing or exploitation? Is it that game designers can't think outside the violence paradigm, or that most attempts to do so make less money? Either way, The Sims and Myst are the exceptions that prove the rule.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
When your local university has classes on film criticism, do you mock them because they're considering greater questions than whether or not "Blade: Trinity" is worth seeing this week at the multiplex?
Firstly, I don't remember mocking anyone. It was not intended as a sarcastic, biting comment, it was just my thoughts on the matter.
That being said, if I went to a class on film criticism, I'm sure they would do more than simplytalking about conveying the personal experience you have when watching a film. That might be a valid part of it, but surely you need to deconstruct the film at least a little.
He describes a purely personal experience from a purely personal perspective, which makes for great reading, but not for a good review.
Bear in mind, I am criticising the article from the point of view of a review, and from that point of view only.
The paradigm for this might be the indispensible Internet movie database (imdb.com). Here everyone reviews. No, not everyone's opinion will matter to you, but somewhere in the mix you'll find the voices that you do rate, do follow. And beyond their utilitarian value, these sites are fascinating extended conversations, much like Slashdot.
There is specialized knowledge in every field, and there might be a very small handful of professional game journalists somewhere whose knowledge is useful in reviewing a game. If you find members of that tiny fraternity, read them. I've neither cared for the insights nor the style of a single reviewer in a gaming magazine to notice any names; there don't seem to be any gaming Roger Eberts or Anthony Lanes (probably because if you can write as well as either man, you aren't going to work for Ziff Davis describing the latest Madden sequel, are you?). In fact, the free subscription to Electronic Gaming Monthly that I found (through cheapassgamer.com, if anyone else wishes one) has only delivered such a noisy piece of hysterically-written shit that each month it goes into the recycling, unread.
Do we need full-time reviewers to sit about churning out more hype-laden press releases in disguise? Why, when we can quite readily find gamers who have delivered their opinions free of the taint of sponsorship and ad-revenue--gamers whose opinions are far more immediate, un-mediated by corporate duty or stylistic one-upmanship, and arguably more worthwhile than the stuff you have to pay for.
You have to remember that this guy is writing in the context of the British games magazine market. The style of writing in many of the magazines is a cross between Viz, FHM and the Sun ('Adult' cartoons with fart and dick jokes, Playboy with more articles and tabloid crap for non-Brits).
Given that background, I can see why he would want to spark a revolution in games writing.
Great article - one has to wonder what "wanker" was like on the other end... I suspect he was just like this:
http://www.pwned.nl/
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Well I must have missed something, because I thought the entire purpose of the article was alternatives to traditional reviewing style.
No, it was to point out that the term "video game journalism" has other meanings besides "holiday shopping guide." Which apparently still hasn't occured to you.
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
Lose the personal attacks huh? I told you how I interperated the comment/article. No need to snipe away at me because you saw it differently.
Disregarding what other people say only increases the excessively apparent amount of disenfranchisement and alienation people experience in regards to the people around them.
And we shouldn't alienate racists? We should accept racism?
Acting like other peoples' opinions are completely meaningless is a selfish, childish position to hold and the fact that you hold it with such strength makes it fairly ironic that you try to criticize me, calling me "sad" or "pathetic".
Perhaps it is selfish, in the sense that it's selfish to refuse to subject yourself to the feelings of others. If someone expresses racist views, is that really someone whose views and opinions you should take seriously?
Most of us learn around the age of two or three to respect the thoughts/feelings of others.
That's because two and three year olds need to be controlled by others at all times. Adults have freedom, children can't. I can see why you have problems if you insist on always respecting the thoughts and feelings of others. Racist thoughts and feelings deserve no respect.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
"Racist thoughts and feelings deserve no respect."
The thing is, those thoughts need to be acknowledged and understood, and [you/whoever] don't seem to be grasping that important fact.
The thing is, those thoughts need to be acknowledged and understood, and [you/whoever] don't seem to be grasping that important fact.
We have to acknowledge that they exist, but we don't have to respect them like you're suggesting. We don't have to take them seriously enough to be offended by them. It might be worth someone's time (certainly not mine) to study how a potentially useful and productive human being turns into a racist piece of shit, but that's about the extent of it.
And we don't have to respect people (such as racists) as human beings when they regularly refuse to act like human beings.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Hmmm, so I'm moderated down as Overrated? And that's the second one too. Probably some right-wing looser probably had nothing better to do than downgrade an statement he disagreed with. Such is the way with a public anything these days.
I never did anything that I need to be punished for. Why am I forced to make restitution for anything? That's silly.
(Yeah, ok mods, I've taken the bait of a troll.)
Nope, not a troll. Trolls post A.C.. I'm just someone with something to talk about who is not afraid of avoiding a "taboo" subject. It's not a fair situation, and I won't pretend that it is by keeping quiet.
While it may be unfair in most applications, and almost always a bureaucratic bungle, quota programs are an attempt to address the ongoing, unfinished results of centuries of abuse.
Again, I didn't do the abuse, why am I paying for it? It's time to level the playing field. You can't create equality while legislating perks for ANYONE.
You are obviously just too ideologically mired (or just plain parochial) to see how skin privilege actually works on the grand scale.
No, and no. I just don't think it is fair to slight againt anyone. Hey, white folks are people too. Don't we deserve a fair shake at things? Don't we deserve the same rights as anyone else? Does my white skin make me inferior? Then why don't I have the same rights as anyone else?
Every time I've been to the USA, I'm struck by how in-your-face this residual madness is.Go walk around a minority community and see how you are treated, then come back here and tell me that the in-your-face madness is one sided.
You don't have equality in the 'States, despite half-witted quota programs, and you won't for a long time. It isn't as simple as the "Sneetches."
I agree, but all these laws do is reinforce the schism. Make everyone truly equal under the law, and the social aspects of it all will work itself out in time.
Murphy was an optimist.
The problem wasn't what's happened in the past, the problem is that history is now a crutch to avoid doing what everyone else has to do to survive.
Murphy was an optimist.
Good point. You could use native vs. aboriginal to speak about individual vs ancestors. The problem word though is American. Since aboriginals were here before it was America there is debate about whether it's an appropriate term.
(Sponsored by cheeseSource for President 2012)
You can see those "sambo" lawn statues all over the USA as well.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
America is just a name for the Continent(s). They're aboriginal to this continent. I don't see what the problem is. They aren't called Native/Aboriginal Citizens of the United States, but Americans, meaning aboriginal/native to the continent. What would you prefer them to be called, "Aborigines of That Large Landmass in the Western Hemisphere Across the Atlantic from Europe that Was Inhabitied only by Said Aborigines Until 1492"? I don't think all the tribes that lived here had one name for the whole landmass, did they?
I don't go for the whole politically correct thing and don't have any sort of moral objection to calling them "injuns", but I think aborigines is just more accurate.
Wow. Just... wow.
Damn those pesky terrorists
It isn't about you, it's about this entity called society, which is the aggregate of its citizens' behaviour over time. Your interaction with society involves this interaction with the continuity of society's history; every time you walk into a Carnegie library, you're interacting with the continuing legacy of robber-baron philanthropy, with all its mixed bag of ongoing historical implications. In the same way that our children et. al will have to deal with our toxic dumps, we have to deal with our toxic socological remnants.
Saying 'why should I pay taxes / be inconvenienced / be refused access in order to clean up that problem' doesn't make the problem go away. The half-life of oppression is probably greater than an order of two generations.
I didn't do the abuse, why am I paying for it? It's time to level the playing field. You can't create equality while legislating perks for ANYONE.
This IS about levelling the playing field. The economic effects of years of prejudice continues. Levelling the playing field without filling in the holes isn't effective. I think that one of the issues here is that the ideological emphasis on individualism obscures the actual workings of collective behaviour. Think of the social security crisis, and how people are looking forward to how unfair it will be to those paying in to the system in 30 years. Another issue is the North American cultural denial of the existence of class, which leads people to seek other explanations for their troubles.
Go walk around a minority community and see how you are treated, then come back here and tell me that the in-your-face madness is one sided.
That's what I meant. My first visit to Chicago was stunning: I thought such segregation was limited to places like Johannesburg. Sure it goes both ways. You want people to be happy and patient with the situation?
all these laws do is reinforce the schism. Make everyone truly equal under the law, and the social aspects of it all will work itself out in time.
I agree that they probably do reinforce schisms, given the general ignorance about how the present includes past effects. Making everyone truly equal--even defining what is equal--is much more complicated than you suggest. Legislation like that generally ignores structural problems and focuses on specific documentable behaviours by individuals. Do you think that structural problems will naturally self-correct in a reasonable period of time? Then again, you seem to be ignoring (or denying) those structural issues.
Don't we deserve the same rights as anyone else?
The issue, here, is that you have more rights (in practice, if not in legislation). If economic benefit doesn't accrue, why bother investing or saving? The benefits derived from treaty-breaking expropriation of land is evident in real-estate speculation, for instance, and people are looking at how some corporations still exist that benefitted directly from slavery. (If you think that corporate law isn't fundamentally flawed, and that in fact yes, they should be given the rights of an individual with none of the responsibilities, they why yes, there are still 'people' around who directly stole labour through slavery--implicating the shareholders.)
Education isn't working very quickly, so the government decided to be a vanguard and lead the way. I'm not defending their boneheaded execution of a solution, but I am defending the attempt to fill in huge holes in the playing field.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Oh, I agree that we all take personal responsibility, and cultures and subcultures take collective responsibility, in order to improve things. No kidding!
However, stating that that's all they really have holding them back is just ignoring enormous social problems that are "overdetermined"--that is, they are shored up from many angles and processes--and doomed to failure. At worst, it is a form of "blaming the victim." "If she didn't dress purty, she wouldn't get raped" just doesn't fly anymore, unless you're advocating Taliban values.
The problem wasn't what's happened in the past, the problem is that history is now a crutch to avoid doing what everyone else has to do to survive.
This is a half-truth. Crutch to some, yeah, no doubts. History isn't just the past, however. What do they teach people in high school history these days? Isn't it obvious that history is an ongoing process? Social systems are complex, like fluid dynamics. Drop a pebble in: the mineral is on the bottom, but the pond continues to respond. Remnants of old processes persist, and a drop of water can't do much about it. Past atrocities don't just stop--I have friends with murdered parents. You tell them to ignore its effects on their upbringing. I have friends who've lost everything to fraud and are left with burdensome debts. You tell them to not go bankrupt. I have friends who were sexually abused as children--tell them to ignore that and see what happens.
Generally, all those success-story exceptions you might come across will tell you that they had to work harder than the competition to get accepted, sometimes MUCH harder. The individual can overcome, but society is an aggregate, and greater (or, well, lesser) than the sum of its parts. Both levels must be addressed.
Damn those pesky terrorists