It's true, there are a lot of great pieces of game writing out there that didn't get mentioned. Most of the contributors are designers, though (and often with an interest in academic stuff, whether it's game studies or cog sci), and so many of the choices reflect design interests.
No it is not the least bit prejudiced to insist that all games have to be about having fun. If it ain't fun it ain't a game . Conversely if something is even a little bit fun no matter what it is then it can be a game.
Now this does not mean that games cannot contain other elements in addition to fun but if something does not contain even the tiniest smidgen of fun then it cannot ever, ever be a game.
So it looks like you're denying the possibility of a really bad game that isn't fun at all. Secondly, I can have fun watching a movie, that has no bearing on whether it can be a game. Sure, I can play a drinking game while watching a movie, but this is different from simply watching a movie. Moreover, I can turn completely unfun things that aren't games, into games (this is how people can turn boring, monotonous work into an interesting challenge). Check your ontological assumptions, 'cause they ain't true.
Finally, you just aren't reading carefully. I say that it's a prejudiced view to insist that ALL games have to just be about having fun. I'm talking about the teleology of games, and the highly prejudiced view that games can only be about having fun has already been disproved anyway, by persuasive games such as Gonzalo Frasca's September 12 and Ian Bogost's games designed for political campaigns.
Good to know. And yeah, I figured it had to be done elsewhere, and earlier than even PS4 (which is why I included the "at least"), but I have limited experience and had to settle for a minimal claim.
As the author of the article, I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not against fun games, or games that are merely about having fun in any way.
What I AM against, are people who try to insist that fun is and must be the whole point of making any game in the first place. Some games can just be about having fun, but it's a prejudiced view to insist that ALL of them have to be.
I want a diversity of reasons to make and play games, not just one.
Folks, anyone who tries to insist that opinions are 'just' opinions and that arguing about them is a mistake is just plain wrong, and you should run as fast and as far away from them as you can.
The subjective/objective distinction is one of the most thoroughly abused in both philosophy and everyday life. Heidegger understood this, and developed a phenomenology that avoided the distinction altogether. Much of the debate in moral philosophy is simply the result of getting snagged on just this inability to see anything in between straight-up subjective and straight-up objective. It therefore becomes a 'problem' for moral philosophy to explain whether or not there are really objective moral facts when so much of our moral experience seems subjective.
If you're wondering why I bring up morality, it's because questions of what one should or ought to do are, like videogame reviews, the subject of much controversy. What needs to be understood is why.
Just as we have a moral faculty that allows us to make judgments about right and wrong, we have an aesthetic faculty that allows us to make judgments about good and bad for things like, not just videogames, but books, movies, paintings, music, and so on. And when we announce "this is good" or "this is bad", we are putting forth an opinion about what is, or should be, objectively true. Anyone who insists that all statements of "this is good" really just mean "this is good, in my opinion" or "for me, this is good" is making a mistake. It denies our human nature, our language (or interlocutionary) instinct to justify ourselves in our entirety to others (even the belligerent who tries to argue why he doesn't need to justify himself to others is contradicting himself).
It's true that sometimes a person will say "this is good, in my opinion" or, often on the internet, "this is good, in my humble opinion". Such a person is either convinced of the fantasy that opinions are 'just' opinions (but will inevitably contradict his own position later by expressing a more forceful opinion about something he feels more certain about), or he is anticipating the dangers of insisting what is good to people who may disagree (a long and bitter argument, for instance).
If you're not quite convinced, I only need point out the futility of articles (like the one/.ed) trying to talk (non)sense into people, preventing them from getting emotional about things we value highly. That's why I said you should run as fast and as far away as you can from such a person: ultimately, he's asking you to deny your humanity.
Not to hawk my own wares, but some of you might find my article on Ludonauts interesting, where I talk about two fundamentally different approaches to game design, one of them being precisely the sort that characterizes most MMORPG design, leading players towards game addiction rather than game enjoyment.
Dark Room You are in dark room. There are a couple barrels in one corner. A quickly fading light fixture above provides what little illumination there is. (Aren't the lighting effects fantastic?) You hear a demon slobbering somewhere nearby.
>Shoot demon with handgun
You can't see it! You can't see the demon! You fix your gaze on a very cool dynamic shadow instead, when, all of a sudden, the demon jumps out at you! You have died! Way to go, space marine!
>Exit game
I wouldn't leave if I were you. Work is much worse. (Press Y to quit to DOS.)
>Y
Quitting to DOS...
C:\doom3>cd..
AH HAHAHA! Yet another slobbering demon awaits! This one forces you to "know" him, in the biblical sense.
Well, everyone's been waiting for a public domain cache of virtual goods. As someone mentioned to me not too long ago, artists are generally pretty stingy with their work. There's not exactly an equivalent for the open-source programmer in the artists' world.
As for cache for cash models, I think you're also going to run into some problems given that so many games have to tailor the art to their peculiar aesthetics. A shotgun approach to design (e.g. here's the sci-fi chairs, here's the fantasy chairs, etc.) won't work without diverse enough demand, something that's less of a problem in Real Life because people, or households, determine the supply of buyers (meaning there's a lot), whereas the number of games is much less. If we had more games set in more mundane settings (like The Sims), it wouldn't be a bad idea. Ikea might be able to make some dough by selling virtual versions of their furniture.
Finally, even in Real Life, you still need skilled labor to design the chair. It's the unskilled labor that simply mass produces it. Reproduction is trivial enough with software. But having unskilled labor come up with good designs? That'd be a feat, and Real Life would be all over that.
EA's creative direction is permanently stuck on a scale from mediocre to abominable. An analogy with the Borg would be apt: they assimilate gaming's most creative forces in order to gain control of their valuable assets, after which the identity/and/ creativity of those forces are wholly subsumed, dispersed, dispensed with.
Desert Strike was originally made by EA, and its generic nature is completely typical of their product. That it's getting a remake comes as no surprise. Syndicate, on the other hand, was essential Bullfrog, whose distinctive charms and talents as a game company are no longer with us thanks to EA. I would neither count on EA to make anything that could actually live up to the series' good name (in fact, I'd sooner count on them willfully desecrating it in their $$$ hopes of appealing to the everyman), nor would I count on them tackling the richness of content that is Syndicate: they'd be too damn intimidated.
Slashdot Mirror
that the Unreal 3 engine was for next-generation games only?
It's true, there are a lot of great pieces of game writing out there that didn't get mentioned. Most of the contributors are designers, though (and often with an interest in academic stuff, whether it's game studies or cog sci), and so many of the choices reflect design interests.
Wow. Four wheels?! What'll Segway think of next? Before you know it they'll have invented the horse.
No it is not the least bit prejudiced to insist that all games have to be about having fun. If it ain't fun it ain't a game . Conversely if something is even a little bit fun no matter what it is then it can be a game .
Now this does not mean that games cannot contain other elements in addition to fun but if something does not contain even the tiniest smidgen of fun then it cannot ever, ever be a game.
So it looks like you're denying the possibility of a really bad game that isn't fun at all. Secondly, I can have fun watching a movie, that has no bearing on whether it can be a game. Sure, I can play a drinking game while watching a movie, but this is different from simply watching a movie. Moreover, I can turn completely unfun things that aren't games, into games (this is how people can turn boring, monotonous work into an interesting challenge). Check your ontological assumptions, 'cause they ain't true.
Finally, you just aren't reading carefully. I say that it's a prejudiced view to insist that ALL games have to just be about having fun. I'm talking about the teleology of games, and the highly prejudiced view that games can only be about having fun has already been disproved anyway, by persuasive games such as Gonzalo Frasca's September 12 and Ian Bogost's games designed for political campaigns.
Good to know. And yeah, I figured it had to be done elsewhere, and earlier than even PS4 (which is why I included the "at least"), but I have limited experience and had to settle for a minimal claim.
As the author of the article, I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not against fun games, or games that are merely about having fun in any way.
What I AM against, are people who try to insist that fun is and must be the whole point of making any game in the first place. Some games can just be about having fun, but it's a prejudiced view to insist that ALL of them have to be.
I want a diversity of reasons to make and play games, not just one.
Folks, anyone who tries to insist that opinions are 'just' opinions and that arguing about them is a mistake is just plain wrong, and you should run as fast and as far away from them as you can.
/.ed) trying to talk (non)sense into people, preventing them from getting emotional about things we value highly. That's why I said you should run as fast and as far away as you can from such a person: ultimately, he's asking you to deny your humanity.
The subjective/objective distinction is one of the most thoroughly abused in both philosophy and everyday life. Heidegger understood this, and developed a phenomenology that avoided the distinction altogether. Much of the debate in moral philosophy is simply the result of getting snagged on just this inability to see anything in between straight-up subjective and straight-up objective. It therefore becomes a 'problem' for moral philosophy to explain whether or not there are really objective moral facts when so much of our moral experience seems subjective.
If you're wondering why I bring up morality, it's because questions of what one should or ought to do are, like videogame reviews, the subject of much controversy. What needs to be understood is why.
Just as we have a moral faculty that allows us to make judgments about right and wrong, we have an aesthetic faculty that allows us to make judgments about good and bad for things like, not just videogames, but books, movies, paintings, music, and so on. And when we announce "this is good" or "this is bad", we are putting forth an opinion about what is, or should be, objectively true. Anyone who insists that all statements of "this is good" really just mean "this is good, in my opinion" or "for me, this is good" is making a mistake. It denies our human nature, our language (or interlocutionary) instinct to justify ourselves in our entirety to others (even the belligerent who tries to argue why he doesn't need to justify himself to others is contradicting himself).
It's true that sometimes a person will say "this is good, in my opinion" or, often on the internet, "this is good, in my humble opinion". Such a person is either convinced of the fantasy that opinions are 'just' opinions (but will inevitably contradict his own position later by expressing a more forceful opinion about something he feels more certain about), or he is anticipating the dangers of insisting what is good to people who may disagree (a long and bitter argument, for instance).
If you're not quite convinced, I only need point out the futility of articles (like the one
All I have to say is, those Gap-inspired character designs look LAME.
it makes me want to invent the stylus all over again.
Not to hawk my own wares, but some of you might find my article on Ludonauts interesting, where I talk about two fundamentally different approaches to game design, one of them being precisely the sort that characterizes most MMORPG design, leading players towards game addiction rather than game enjoyment.
I like this version better:
..
Dark Room
You are in dark room. There are a couple barrels in one corner. A quickly fading light fixture above provides what little illumination there is. (Aren't the lighting effects fantastic?) You hear a demon slobbering somewhere nearby.
>Shoot demon with handgun
You can't see it! You can't see the demon! You fix your gaze on a very cool dynamic shadow instead, when, all of a sudden, the demon jumps out at you! You have died! Way to go, space marine!
>Exit game
I wouldn't leave if I were you. Work is much worse. (Press Y to quit to DOS.)
>Y
Quitting to DOS...
C:\doom3>cd
AH HAHAHA! Yet another slobbering demon awaits! This one forces you to "know" him, in the biblical sense.
the camp at Michigan State University.
Well, everyone's been waiting for a public domain cache of virtual goods. As someone mentioned to me not too long ago, artists are generally pretty stingy with their work. There's not exactly an equivalent for the open-source programmer in the artists' world.
As for cache for cash models, I think you're also going to run into some problems given that so many games have to tailor the art to their peculiar aesthetics. A shotgun approach to design (e.g. here's the sci-fi chairs, here's the fantasy chairs, etc.) won't work without diverse enough demand, something that's less of a problem in Real Life because people, or households, determine the supply of buyers (meaning there's a lot), whereas the number of games is much less. If we had more games set in more mundane settings (like The Sims), it wouldn't be a bad idea. Ikea might be able to make some dough by selling virtual versions of their furniture.
Finally, even in Real Life, you still need skilled labor to design the chair. It's the unskilled labor that simply mass produces it. Reproduction is trivial enough with software. But having unskilled labor come up with good designs? That'd be a feat, and Real Life would be all over that.
That's interesting. I can't think of a game remotely like DS in setting or mechanics appearing before it. Choplifter maybe, at a stretch.
Raid on Bungling Bay comes to mind. I'm sure there are more (and better matches) besides that, though.
You do realise of course that the majority of Bullfrog's games (including Syndicate) were funded and published by EA, yes?
Yes, and EA funded some good stuff on the Origin front, too. Doesn't change the fact that they eventually killed them.
EA's creative direction is permanently stuck on a scale from mediocre to abominable. An analogy with the Borg would be apt: they assimilate gaming's most creative forces in order to gain control of their valuable assets, after which the identity /and/ creativity of those forces are wholly subsumed, dispersed, dispensed with.
Desert Strike was originally made by EA, and its generic nature is completely typical of their product. That it's getting a remake comes as no surprise. Syndicate, on the other hand, was essential Bullfrog, whose distinctive charms and talents as a game company are no longer with us thanks to EA. I would neither count on EA to make anything that could actually live up to the series' good name (in fact, I'd sooner count on them willfully desecrating it in their $$$ hopes of appealing to the everyman), nor would I count on them tackling the richness of content that is Syndicate: they'd be too damn intimidated.