Cheap crappy imitations of game ideas done years ago are somehow the savior of a just order of the game industry where quality would flow in proportion to dollar spent.
"But even if one tried to disentangle the subject of a game's price from the main body of a review, perhaps placing it under a separate "value for money" heading, that effort would still end in failure. For how could a modern action game ever compete in the "value for money" stakes with something like a chess game -- or Sid Meier's Civilization? And what would be the point of us pitting them against each other anyway? Is an hour-long game of basketball more worthwhile than a one-minute long skydive, simply because it lasts longer? Would you like some apples with your oranges, sir? Have you ever had an orgasm? But even if we restrict ourselves to comparing "values for money" in the context of individual genres, we'll still end up praising inferior games and trashing superior ones; we'd still end up talking nonsense, and compelling designers to pad their games with shit in order to make them seem like "better deals" to the poor and the feebleminded. I never tire of bringing up the example of Tomonobu Itagaki, who, in an interview regarding Ninja Gaiden long before its release, stated that if it was up to him he'd have made the game two hours long instead of twenty. Can you even begin to imagine the possibilities of such a design choice? (meaning a two-hour game made with the budget of a twenty-hour one). I certainly can, and no doubt Itagaki, yet half a decade later and still no one has dared explore them!"...
"It is at that point that the issue of "value for money" disappears to be replaced by that of "value for time", even for the feebleminded (for the intelligent person it had always been thus), for when all games cost nothing the only question left to ask is whether any of them are worth anything. This is the timeless, the eternal question -- it is the only question worth answering"
Our almost religious belief in the need to constantly expand is rooted in the needs of our civilization itself. The process of civilization itself requires continual growth and expansion to avoid collapse. If we somehow do manage to reach a stage where we will be able to colonize distant worlds, what will we become? To me, we'll be nothing more than the big bad aliens of so many Sci-Fi novels and shows. Ravagers of planets and stars for the mere purpose of satisfying the requirements of a cultural story that told them that their expansion and growth was the only worthwhile thing in the whole damn universe. That the lives of countless organisms, the webs of countless ecosytems, and the mass and energy of planets and stars themselves are nothing more than to be exploited for our continual expansion. They will not have any sort of meaningful value to us outside their utility as "resources".
To the people who cry "Why are you so misanthropic? Why do you hate humanity so much", I say that a specific branch of our species that developed unsustainable methods of food subsistence (Agriculture), which led to the rise of a cultural complex known as civilization, isn't all of humanity. Our species existed 90,000 years prior without destroying the Earth and without annihilating themselves in countless wars. The groups of people that formed within that time formed an innumerable amount of various tribes with a shocking diversity of sustainable cultures, as opposed to the monoculture that marks today's modern industrial civilization.
The groups that exist today do not live in constant starvation despite being forced into some of the world's worst real estate by the pressures of expanding civilizations. They do not suffer from constant hunger for they are able to find food from hundreds of sources, a feast that would be unthinkable with our dependence on a few primary food crops for which we devastate so much of the Earth to produce and which in of themselves are maladaptive as food sources for our species. They do not suffer from so many of the psychological malasies that wrack the mind of so many from our culture. They do not evaluate their self-worth in terms of what jobs or careers they choose and do not indenture themselves in perpetual slavery like so many in our society do. Their lifestyles do not need to be supported by the agony and suffering of hundreds of millions (aka first world societies). I am not saying that these people yesterday or today lived in paradise but that rather than promoting a culture of endless exploitation and unsustainable expansion, we might do well to look at the habits and behaviors of these currently existing cultures (the ones that are still left), and see how they've managed to live for untold millienia without ruining the land or without having to constantly expand or without enslaving their fellow man.
As a cultural materialist though, I don't believe any change in ideas will prompt our culture to act differently. It'll take a change in the physical reality, that our civilization tries so hard to defy, in order to shake up our culture. If we find a replacable source of energy equal to or more efficient than oil, then our civilization has a chance of existing for a far far longer period of time and will continue carrying out the same cultural directives of expansion and exploitation that it has for the past 10,000 years. If we don't, than our bright blip in the timeline of our species will end and collapse. Billions of people will die but the recurrence of such mass death and destruction that has marked our history will never happen again. Or at least until stocks of oil replenish which could be a couple hundred million years. The point is that I don't fear for the survival of our species. It'll survive either way in some shape or form outside of a cataclysmic event such as a meteor strike. Even if our species perishes then, it'll only leave room open for the introduction of another intelligent species to arise. So even in the event of our species death, I don't worry about the death of a culture of complex symbolic manipulation.
Slashdot Mirror
Cheap crappy imitations of game ideas done years ago are somehow the savior of a just order of the game industry where quality would flow in proportion to dollar spent.
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_value_for_money/
"But even if one tried to disentangle the subject of a game's price from the main body of a review, perhaps placing it under a separate "value for money" heading, that effort would still end in failure. For how could a modern action game ever compete in the "value for money" stakes with something like a chess game -- or Sid Meier's Civilization? And what would be the point of us pitting them against each other anyway? Is an hour-long game of basketball more worthwhile than a one-minute long skydive, simply because it lasts longer? Would you like some apples with your oranges, sir? Have you ever had an orgasm? But even if we restrict ourselves to comparing "values for money" in the context of individual genres, we'll still end up praising inferior games and trashing superior ones; we'd still end up talking nonsense, and compelling designers to pad their games with shit in order to make them seem like "better deals" to the poor and the feebleminded. I never tire of bringing up the example of Tomonobu Itagaki, who, in an interview regarding Ninja Gaiden long before its release, stated that if it was up to him he'd have made the game two hours long instead of twenty. Can you even begin to imagine the possibilities of such a design choice? (meaning a two-hour game made with the budget of a twenty-hour one). I certainly can, and no doubt Itagaki, yet half a decade later and still no one has dared explore them!" ...
"It is at that point that the issue of "value for money" disappears to be replaced by that of "value for time", even for the feebleminded (for the intelligent person it had always been thus), for when all games cost nothing the only question left to ask is whether any of them are worth anything. This is the timeless, the eternal question -- it is the only question worth answering"
Our almost religious belief in the need to constantly expand is rooted in the needs of our civilization itself. The process of civilization itself requires continual growth and expansion to avoid collapse. If we somehow do manage to reach a stage where we will be able to colonize distant worlds, what will we become? To me, we'll be nothing more than the big bad aliens of so many Sci-Fi novels and shows. Ravagers of planets and stars for the mere purpose of satisfying the requirements of a cultural story that told them that their expansion and growth was the only worthwhile thing in the whole damn universe. That the lives of countless organisms, the webs of countless ecosytems, and the mass and energy of planets and stars themselves are nothing more than to be exploited for our continual expansion. They will not have any sort of meaningful value to us outside their utility as "resources".
To the people who cry "Why are you so misanthropic? Why do you hate humanity so much", I say that a specific branch of our species that developed unsustainable methods of food subsistence (Agriculture), which led to the rise of a cultural complex known as civilization, isn't all of humanity. Our species existed 90,000 years prior without destroying the Earth and without annihilating themselves in countless wars. The groups of people that formed within that time formed an innumerable amount of various tribes with a shocking diversity of sustainable cultures, as opposed to the monoculture that marks today's modern industrial civilization.
The groups that exist today do not live in constant starvation despite being forced into some of the world's worst real estate by the pressures of expanding civilizations. They do not suffer from constant hunger for they are able to find food from hundreds of sources, a feast that would be unthinkable with our dependence on a few primary food crops for which we devastate so much of the Earth to produce and which in of themselves are maladaptive as food sources for our species. They do not suffer from so many of the psychological malasies that wrack the mind of so many from our culture. They do not evaluate their self-worth in terms of what jobs or careers they choose and do not indenture themselves in perpetual slavery like so many in our society do. Their lifestyles do not need to be supported by the agony and suffering of hundreds of millions (aka first world societies). I am not saying that these people yesterday or today lived in paradise but that rather than promoting a culture of endless exploitation and unsustainable expansion, we might do well to look at the habits and behaviors of these currently existing cultures (the ones that are still left), and see how they've managed to live for untold millienia without ruining the land or without having to constantly expand or without enslaving their fellow man.
As a cultural materialist though, I don't believe any change in ideas will prompt our culture to act differently. It'll take a change in the physical reality, that our civilization tries so hard to defy, in order to shake up our culture. If we find a replacable source of energy equal to or more efficient than oil, then our civilization has a chance of existing for a far far longer period of time and will continue carrying out the same cultural directives of expansion and exploitation that it has for the past 10,000 years. If we don't, than our bright blip in the timeline of our species will end and collapse. Billions of people will die but the recurrence of such mass death and destruction that has marked our history will never happen again. Or at least until stocks of oil replenish which could be a couple hundred million years. The point is that I don't fear for the survival of our species. It'll survive either way in some shape or form outside of a cataclysmic event such as a meteor strike. Even if our species perishes then, it'll only leave room open for the introduction of another intelligent species to arise. So even in the event of our species death, I don't worry about the death of a culture of complex symbolic manipulation.