"Almost every game pitch I hear has to be like a movie," Jaffe said. "Developers come and say, 'It's like a Tarantino movie' or a 'Spielberg picture.' It makes me frustrated, sad, embarrassed and annoyed that we have to look at other media in order to ape them."
must..resist...King Kong joke...
Despite corny puns, it's utterly true. Though all art forms have to draw on more established ones at the beginning, (movies have long since stopped drawing much from theatre, though that was painfully true in the beginning,) video games do have to learn to draw from their own strengths. As long as they're the reflection of movies, they'll always look bad.
That being said, I have a big beef with this article. He's calling for "Games with Soul," eh? Oh yeah? How so? That's a pretty broad statement, there, feller. And whatever Jaffe meant by it, we can't figure out from this article.
There's an issue - a big issue with console games right now. People are buying less of them, but that started earlier last year. A lot of people who were leery of MMORPGs have started playing it, spending a lot of time on the games.
I know guys who used to buy every console RPG that came out, and finished most of them. They lived for those games. Not anymore.
Instead of spending $40-50 on a game a month, possibly more, they just play WoW or City of Heroes. Someone else said there's 5 million people playing World of Warcraft now. I'm betting some of them were MMORPG players before, but not even the majority of them. If even a million of them are like my friends, that's a million people not buying the newest console games.
Why throw money at a movie-tie-in game that may not suck but probably does, when you don't have to leave your house?
2005 was a great year for games. Civ IV. GTA: San Andreas. Resident Evil 4. Battlefied 2. Ninja Gaiden Black. Jade Empire. Shadow of the Colossus. Dragon Quest VIII...
If I had a dollar for every Solaris admin who bitched to me about what a pain in the ass Linux was to try and figure out, I'd be a rich man. And it sounds like it works the same way from the Linux side.
Yeah, actually.
It seems like just yesterday Sterling was triumphing the Japanese ideal and talking in dark, sinister tones about the fall of America. And now he's discovered multiculturalism and its effect on world culture as if it's some new lily he found in his garden just yesterday.
I don't think you understand, that's the way of things when it comes to writing in genre.
You see, you show up on the scene, and the person who starts being successful is the one who is the most aggressive about self-promoting. They may or may not have talent, but the self-promoting will likely ruffle a few feathers.
Whether or not said aggressive self-promoter has talent, they will be labeled as not having any talent.
Skip ten years. By now this self-promoter has been on the scene for a long time, and new people are starting to come in and be interested in the field. The new people don't have a point of reference, so they assume that when "everyone is talking about Author X because Author X is so talented" that a) everyone actually is talking about author X, and that author x is talented.
Whether or not this author actually has any talent, the author in question will be understood now as being talented. And so it goes.
There is a message in here, somewhere, and not just about Cory Doctorow or China Mievelle or any other 'hot new' writer recently. I just haven't been able to figure out what that message is.
I really wish this whole argument would just die.
From nearly the beginning of American involvement in other nations' politics there has been one driving goal: self interest.
And really, that's how it should be. A nation in the climate of the last several hundred years needs to look out for its own interests because no one else will.
Even in situations where we pride ourselves on going for the greater good, an actual looking at history finds our involvement lacking.
Take World War II. We liberated many from tyrrany, and we are justifiably proud of it. But we left millions more in tyrrany with the dropping of the Iron Curtain, and there's another very important note to remember:
By 1936, it was pretty apparent that Hitler's dictatorship was aggressively going to attack its neighbors and would be a threat to the entire world.
The United States did not join the war in '36. It waited until 1942...when it was attacked by Japan to do anything. That's SIX YEARS of sitting around being neutral. Six years of watching people get gassed, watching country after country get conquered. Ignoring the Rape of Nanking, et cetera.
World War II was about liberating millions from tyrrany, but it was not why we entered the war.
Yet all we hear is self-congratulations about what a great job we did liberating those poor bastards.
Post cold-war, the US put a lot of effort into curbing aggression from the Soviet Union and its allies - which is IMHO extremely admirable, and should be lauded. But in doing it, they propped up any number of vicious, destructive dictatorships all over the world, and it is that reason that began the worldwide distrust of the United States today.
This is just one example of how divided this country is right now. Conservatives wrap themselves in the flag and casually 'forget' that their one-sided philosophies don't match up to, erm, actual history, while Liberals seem to desperately want things like freedom and are too quick to point out every situation where the US acted in its own self-interests and avoided those said one-sided philosophies and ideals out of national pragmatism.
It does tell us that we are a nation of idealists at heart, and that conservatives and liberals are surprisingly similar. They just go about dealing with their ideals in a different way.
Slashdot Mirror
"you have to go to WAR with the Army* you have, and not the Army you want" -Donald Rumsfeld *if by "Army" he meant "Intellectual Property"
*cough*
What do you mean, "nothing says WOW!"?
Okay, okay, bad pun.
"Almost every game pitch I hear has to be like a movie," Jaffe said. "Developers come and say, 'It's like a Tarantino movie' or a 'Spielberg picture.' It makes me frustrated, sad, embarrassed and annoyed that we have to look at other media in order to ape them."
must..resist...King Kong joke...
Despite corny puns, it's utterly true. Though all art forms have to draw on more established ones at the beginning, (movies have long since stopped drawing much from theatre, though that was painfully true in the beginning,) video games do have to learn to draw from their own strengths. As long as they're the reflection of movies, they'll always look bad.
That being said, I have a big beef with this article. He's calling for "Games with Soul," eh? Oh yeah? How so? That's a pretty broad statement, there, feller. And whatever Jaffe meant by it, we can't figure out from this article.
That would be AWESOME!
The same thing happened to me. I'm baffled as to why this is news. Nullsoft, like practically any company out there, released code with bugs in it.
As soon as the code was found, a patch was released and the company prompted casual users to download the update.
What exactly is the big deal here?
I think you are right, but for the wrong reasons.
...
There's an issue - a big issue with console games right now. People are buying less of them, but that started earlier last year. A lot of people who were leery of MMORPGs have started playing it, spending a lot of time on the games.
I know guys who used to buy every console RPG that came out, and finished most of them. They lived for those games. Not anymore.
Instead of spending $40-50 on a game a month, possibly more, they just play WoW or City of Heroes. Someone else said there's 5 million people playing World of Warcraft now. I'm betting some of them were MMORPG players before, but not even the majority of them. If even a million of them are like my friends, that's a million people not buying the newest console games.
Why throw money at a movie-tie-in game that may not suck but probably does, when you don't have to leave your house?
2005 was a great year for games. Civ IV. GTA: San Andreas. Resident Evil 4. Battlefied 2. Ninja Gaiden Black. Jade Empire. Shadow of the Colossus. Dragon Quest VIII
Profanity? Wow, that's fucking serious. Heh, sometimes the old jokes are the best. :)
If I had a dollar for every Solaris admin who bitched to me about what a pain in the ass Linux was to try and figure out, I'd be a rich man. And it sounds like it works the same way from the Linux side.
And the dirty secret is, they're both right.
Yeah, actually. It seems like just yesterday Sterling was triumphing the Japanese ideal and talking in dark, sinister tones about the fall of America. And now he's discovered multiculturalism and its effect on world culture as if it's some new lily he found in his garden just yesterday.
I don't think you understand, that's the way of things when it comes to writing in genre. You see, you show up on the scene, and the person who starts being successful is the one who is the most aggressive about self-promoting. They may or may not have talent, but the self-promoting will likely ruffle a few feathers. Whether or not said aggressive self-promoter has talent, they will be labeled as not having any talent. Skip ten years. By now this self-promoter has been on the scene for a long time, and new people are starting to come in and be interested in the field. The new people don't have a point of reference, so they assume that when "everyone is talking about Author X because Author X is so talented" that a) everyone actually is talking about author X, and that author x is talented. Whether or not this author actually has any talent, the author in question will be understood now as being talented. And so it goes. There is a message in here, somewhere, and not just about Cory Doctorow or China Mievelle or any other 'hot new' writer recently. I just haven't been able to figure out what that message is.
I really wish this whole argument would just die. From nearly the beginning of American involvement in other nations' politics there has been one driving goal: self interest. And really, that's how it should be. A nation in the climate of the last several hundred years needs to look out for its own interests because no one else will. Even in situations where we pride ourselves on going for the greater good, an actual looking at history finds our involvement lacking. Take World War II. We liberated many from tyrrany, and we are justifiably proud of it. But we left millions more in tyrrany with the dropping of the Iron Curtain, and there's another very important note to remember: By 1936, it was pretty apparent that Hitler's dictatorship was aggressively going to attack its neighbors and would be a threat to the entire world. The United States did not join the war in '36. It waited until 1942...when it was attacked by Japan to do anything. That's SIX YEARS of sitting around being neutral. Six years of watching people get gassed, watching country after country get conquered. Ignoring the Rape of Nanking, et cetera. World War II was about liberating millions from tyrrany, but it was not why we entered the war. Yet all we hear is self-congratulations about what a great job we did liberating those poor bastards. Post cold-war, the US put a lot of effort into curbing aggression from the Soviet Union and its allies - which is IMHO extremely admirable, and should be lauded. But in doing it, they propped up any number of vicious, destructive dictatorships all over the world, and it is that reason that began the worldwide distrust of the United States today. This is just one example of how divided this country is right now. Conservatives wrap themselves in the flag and casually 'forget' that their one-sided philosophies don't match up to, erm, actual history, while Liberals seem to desperately want things like freedom and are too quick to point out every situation where the US acted in its own self-interests and avoided those said one-sided philosophies and ideals out of national pragmatism. It does tell us that we are a nation of idealists at heart, and that conservatives and liberals are surprisingly similar. They just go about dealing with their ideals in a different way.