Historical Revisionism in Video Game and it's consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

[Inec0rn]

Yeah but Dune 2 innovated in a big way, i still play Dune2 every now and then. it's an incredibly good RTS game only marred with the Import building and that most new units flat supersede the previous ones. The music, speech, presentation and gameplay are top notch for 1993. RTS had a decent stream of innovation for a fairly long time, e.g. in the games micro/macro elements, story-telling, scale and scope, the terribly moving base idea, unit complexity. it's only now developers just clone the established patterns and it's stagnating, that's not to say using existing patterns can't work, just we've not seen it be very successful (usually because its half baked or marred by lack of budget).

 

[Nutmeg]

He's obviously responding to HZ being brought up - on his own initiative he cites the other games and wants to emphasize the Mac interface.

Yeah obviously Dune 2's control by mouse, and other aspects of its interface were part of the wider GUIs for personal computing movement which was in its stride at the time, and of course other games also influenced Dune 2, no one denies this.

 

[Falksi]

Looking at the list now and the site's one of those content farms for freelancers. The writer probably doesn't have much interest in RPGs and just searched for popular ones or chose a handful of ones they liked to fire off an article and get £20 or whatever, which you can't fault them for. The editors probably specified games from the last ten years (keeping the "of all time" title because it's better for SEO). I wouldn't take it too seriously, it's just writers making a living and not always getting to write about things they really know or care much about.

Lists like those are why they need calling out though, because new and younger gamers are going to those lists and using them as references.

In the grander scheme of life it's not important in the slightest, but it definitely rots the hobby.

Tbh, I think the Codex should do a few more like it's done the best-ever RPGs lists. I know we're all a bunch of nutcases, but at least some of us have actually played these games and more. Unlike those who write for wank like IGN and Gamerant. The Codex JRPG list is based AF for example, and I've used it a fair few times to both upset the status quo and introduce younger games to some proper JRPGs, not the mainstream normie slop.

 

[Gastrick]

The Codex JRPG list is based AF for example, and I've used it a fair few times to both upset the status quo and introduce younger games to some proper JRPGs, not the mainstream normie slop.

Love to hear this

 

[Nutmeg]

and SEGA decided that programmers won't be graced with interrupt on completed transfer

Wow it's not like games run in a frame by frame loop where they can literally check if something is done very frame!

 

[GamerCat_]

While I was trolling Nutmeg and making him go crazy with being an ignorant turd, I thought a bit more about the title of the thread "Historical Revisionism in Video Game and it's consequences have been a disaster for the human race."

Historical revisionism of video games isn't really a disaster for the human race, because its such an ephemeral hobby with almost no bigger impact beyond being a fun timewaster. You could arguably say written prose or movies have a bigger impact and even those are still just entertainment for the most part.

No, it's a disaster. And part of a bigger disaster. If you actually cared about literature or film (instead they just make you insecure) you would recognise that the same thing is happening everywhere, and video games are the frontline of this issue and may well be where it gets decided.

Some of you might have read my backloggd reviews before I got banned. In my 'Goodbye Volcano High' review I talked about artists with anything of note going on inside them being suppressed. I also said that an authentic 'Goodbye Volcano High' would feel like something written by Hanya Yanagihara. Look at how The Woke treat that woman in her own space.

https://www.pdxmonthly.com/arts-and-culture/2022/01/hanya-yanagihara-to-paradise-book-controversy

The most gleeful takedowns of To Paradise, though, hardly focus on these nuts-and-bolts shortcomings. Instead, they’re laced with schadenfreude: a sense that the empress who gave us A Little Life can finally be seen without her clothes. Take Andrea Long Chu’s deliciously sharp Vulture dressing-down: in it, Chu eloquently chides Yanagihara—a woman—for writing almost exclusively about queer men, and says that she treats her characters with Munchausen-by-proxy, taking twisted maternal pleasure in the suffering she inflicts on them. Take also any number of tweets celebrating Yanagihara’s “dragging,” deeming it well-deserved after she wrote something as “exploitative” as A Little Life.

To which I say: so what? So much of the public distaste aimed at Yanagihara supposes that she’s causing real-world harm—that the characters she “tortures” on the page have actual flesh, that her refusal to soften the gnarliest bits of her imagination is a dangerous moral failing, and that anyone who picks up A Little Life swiftly has their eyes pried open, A Clockwork Orange-style, and is forced to finish it. The most vehement opponents of her success sometimes take a few (completely valid) swipes at her prose, but the force of their objections is almost always ethical. How dare anyone put something like this in the world? How dare it make the Booker shortlist? How dare Dua Lipa call it “the best book I’ve ever read”!

I’m troubled by a book-reading public who would rather kick the weird kid out of school than face her tangled insides. I think it’s useful to have a super-visible novelist who’s uncompromising and jagged and unafraid to be a little disgusting, and the big feelings around Yanagihara bear that out. We don’t want to want darkness, but we do, and when we encounter something forged in a pit of darkness so pitch-black it cracks us open, the result can be scary, and we can feel duped. We scramble for a lifeline, and often, “good taste” is that lifeline. In good taste, we don’t push things quite so far; in good taste, redemption is always on the horizon.

Good taste binds us in a cozy, comfortable social contract, and too often, we expect even our art to play by its rules. But where better to feel uncomfortable than in fiction, where our escape hatch is as simple as closing a book? Good taste has its place, and also its limits. We need people willing to play well outside its bounds. When they don’t, we get To Paradise.

Literature is FUCKING UNREADABLE DOGSHIT RIGHT NOW. Hanya Yanagihara wrote one of the most compelling American novels of the century so far. And look at how eager these people are to get at her. Look at what their problems are and how they go about attacking. "Taste" selectively invoked to play cover for what is actually an ethical hysteria prompted by her work simply making people uncomfortable, despite its success and obvious innate appeal. Her work was a bit too real, not in depicting the true workings of the world, but too real an expression of her own idiosyncracies and interests. You can be a large ethnic woman writing the most relentlessly homosexual novels of all time, but there are still lines within that you can cross, and Yanagihara found them. Her novel 'A Little Life' succeeded because it was pure insane woman pathos, just bleeding curiosity, fetishism, and violent insanity streaking across the pages. But it was acclaimed and respected by accident. It was taken as queer fiction. Novels to #Resist Trump to. But the realisation set in over time, even if Yanagihara herself bought in and believes herself she must #Resist, that's not where the novel came from. It's personal. She wrote it for her own gratification. She's not a resistance writer. She's a fujo who can't draw. 'A Little Life' is not spiritually of a kind with Miranda's 'Hamilton', it's of a kind with Omocat's 'Omori'.

I keep saying, Omocat got tenure, she got in before the cultural blast doors hit the floor on her brand of extremity. They know what she is now, but she presents no weakness, and as long as she holds they can't hurt her. She refuses to apologise for being a shotacon, and her work remains fascinating and brilliant. No chink in this chink's armour. Yanagihara though, she's in an industry that leverages more pressure, is less tolerant, more politicised, gives less of a fuck about the art itself than the video games industry somehow. These people were waiting to reject her the moment they saw weakness, a chance. And her next novel, which as Connor says, was weaker because she tried to make herself more conventional, was that opportunity. Libtards have no principles, we all know that. If Omocat's manga were terrible, you know every libtard would suddenly become the most viciously keen-eyed critic, the most ruthless enemy of anything but technical excellence.

THIS is the DISASTER FOR THE HUMAN RACE. It is why film and literature in America resemble bombed out craters more than cultural industry. Video games are definitely the most lively and vital bleeding edge of pop-art, and they are where the fight is going to be decided, where it still can be decided.

These distorted and broken historical narratives and continuities are the source of and cover for the disaster. And that goes largely for the stock appreciation of all this history held by RPGcodex. A failure to recognise or respect the human elements behind notable works that advance culture and technology is how they are able to be discarded. The lack of respect means they are not valued or respected. There is a vacuum where there should be enshrined human excellence. This void is where the human weeds of libtardism occupy and cast down the roots of their corruption.

You people argue about which system had the gigaflops to run Zarblox 2 in 1991 and whether credit (for what?) should actually go to Chronicles of Zarblax 2 for the Atari Cougar rather than Link to the Past, while completely disregarding and being blind to the underlying forces which make all of this possible. Forces which are being killed.

I am the only one in this thread with an actually revisionist perspective, which is that we need a radically reoriented history of video games which is human-centric, and reads them as an art-form. Art-form does not mean something which it's okay to talk about in high school english class, something which has an award show run by a bunch of ugly retarded jews. Art in the sense that we understand that when we are looking at these inherently nice, cool, and interesting things, we are capable of looking at people behind and through them. What needs discussing in relation to Herzog Zwei is not whether or not it was an early manifestation of the eternal world-spirit of "RTS", whether or not the sacred touch landed, or whether or not subsequent games in which you tell things to move around were "COPYING" (this isn't second grade you fucking faggots get a grip), we should be asking "who made Herzog Zwei?" "What was their intention?" "What was their inspiration? What were they trying to realise in video game form?"

This is both not a disgusting inherently pointless waste of time like most video game study, it is also how you will actually learn how cool things are made and be guided towards becoming a cooler person and perhaps more potent creative force force yourself. You will enrich your appreciation of people and their works if you do this. Discussion of the history of video games as mechanical forms simply makes no sense unless you are a technician trying to create the ultimate waste of time through reduction to pure impersonal elements graded by engagement.

Where it matters is for people like us who for one reason or another have taken up gaming as a hobby and made it part of our identity. And the real problem is not revisionism but the short-term memory of gaming as a medium. People reading books trace history back hundreds of years, and movie historians have no issues tracing it back to the beginning of movies in the 20th century, but gaming's attention span for the most part is a mere decade. Stuff I remember from my formative years in the 1990-2000 years, games that were the AAA games of their time and completely shaped genres are completely forgotten by the majority of people playing today. People who grew up with games in 2000-2010 are now ancient history and already called classics.

Yes, gaming needs more nostalgia. Fucking GENIUS. Why didn't I think of that? Games don't look backwards hard enough yet. We can still go further. Atarivaniabornelikes. Contemplate the ancient forms and you will become highstatuseugenics like FILM.



This is where Hollywood is at. The premise of your post is that this is what cultural health looks like.

Now I am being glib, but we actually have a better example from 2024. There was a brilliant, historically informed but not backwards looking epic released. It was probably my favourite film of the year.



And when I try to look up this film, just to remind you apes it existed, look what I get.

First things first, the internet wants you to know that your friend 'Charlie' thinks that this is embarrassing. The man with wet hair surrounded by bad plastic video game shit, and a giant framed poster for his personal project 'GODSLAP', wants you to know that Francis Ford Coppola's ambitious, technically pioneering passion-project was "embarrassing", and this will only take 20 minutes. Coppola is about to get deconstructed by the creator of 'GODSLAP'. I can't wait to watch this.

One of the few youtubers I actually like, Rick Worley, did a nice video on Megalopolis which was more of a metareview on how people are retarded raped slaves who hate excellence (also what the film is about):



This is, again, our problem in another industry, which should suggest to you that we have a greater problem. A lack of collective appreciation for human elements behind great works. Yanagihara and Coppola are treated the same by the same people. People being incurious ignorant fucks who haven't seen anything older than 30 seconds can only partially explain this. I know infantile oomerwoomerjoomers who only started watching movies last year who didn't carry on like this in response to Coppola's work. It is a spiritual sickness. One which my perspective on history cures. You do not stop being this kind of fuckhead by watching more old movies. I could strap your friend 'Charlie' into the Clockwork Orange chair and make him watch all of Coppola's favourite films and inspirations, do you think that would make him smarter? It wouldn't mean anything to him. Nothing does because he's a stupid fucking faggot who worships the mob (the only reason one would want to be worshipped by them).

The issue isn't revisionism as much as it is short-term memory. People who uphold truth or try to find the real genealogy of games like Nutmeg are the Don Quichotte fighting windmills, forever damned to lose because people don't even remember what happened 10 years ago in gaming, so how can you even argue about the truth when the past is such a void. Sure, all the information is there to some degree on the internet, but nobody really cares for it, for the most part

Let's say you find the perfect genealogy of technical inspiration within this one medium. Then what? Every interesting genealogy is PRIMARILY THINGS OTHER THAN STUPID FUCKING VIDEO GAMES THAT ALREADY EXIST BEFORE THIS ONE IN QUESTION. Killer7 has invisible enemies, who did that first? Two step aiming. Who did that first? How many of these questions until you get it?

The answer is obviously that you NEVER WILL. Because that is NOT HOW IT WAS MADE. Attempting to construct new games primarily out of a weighted consideration of the abstract parts of existing ones considered good is a relatively new neurosis, and one which has TERRIBLE RESULTS. Yes, everyone engages with culture around and behind them, but the discrete continuity of the medium in question treated as though it exists IN A VACCUUM will not inform you accurately on anything. It will most certainly MISLEAD YOU AND CREATE A NARROW, INCORRECT, DEHUMANISED NONSENSE READING OF HISTORY, WHICH IS HOW EVERYONE IN THIS SITE BUT ME CURRENTLY SEES EVERYTHING.

 

[Grauken]

Nobody is reading your wall of text

 

[Angnomynous Wasp Scholar]

Nobody is reading your wall of text

I'll read it if u pay me

 

[Grauken]

Nobody is reading your wall of text

I'll read it if u pay me

I gave you a brofist, all I have

 

[Lucumo]

The one exception is Z, which could be considered a direct successor of Herzog Zwei, a sibling of Dune 2's, although it would have been impossible not to be influenced by Dune 2's successor Command and Conquer by 1996 when Z was released.

IIRC, Z was in development hell, so it took several years for it to come out. That would mean that the influence of a game that came out 11 months prior is highly questionable and, at best, extremely limited.

I re-listened to the podcast where it was mentioned and apparently they started working on it in 1990 (brainstorming, concept and such). They also mention the developer being inspired (apart from Herzog Zwei obviously) by Judge Dredd and Missile Command.

And sure enough, looking with these keywords, I found it on the Fandom page.

Development of Z dates back to early 1991. The concept of the game sterns from the early real-time strategy game Herzog Zwei, which involved controlling a robot general and commanding units. Eric Matthews described Z as "a cross between Herzog Zwei, a block war from Judge Dredd, and the inexorable pressure of Missile Command".

Them citing the source being: ""World War Zed: The Bitmaps vs the Future". The Bitmap Brothers: Universe. p. 284,285"

So yeah, absolute development hell. Would have been interesting, from a historical perspective, if they had released it like three years earlier.

Nobody is reading your wall of text

I read part of it. Apparently it's in the defense of some absolutely degenerate book.

 

[Angnomynous Wasp Scholar]

"who made Herzog Zwei?" "What was their intention?" "What was their inspiration? What were they trying to realise in video game form?"

They didn't speak English so I don't care.

 

[GamerCat_]

I was going to say, the essential issue of the post is not covered here, but if you say we're not done then sure.

Indeed. With the rest of your post you seem to (understandably) struggle with the phrase "meaningful content".

Since I used it first, and it was vague, I'll specify what I meant hopefully a bit better.

First of all, I hate the word "content", lets replace it with "world geometry" and "opponents".

The game of Zelda is fundamentally a game of moving the character you possess from A to B. You start from A, and you win by getting to B, and you lose by the character you posses dying on the way there. To get to B you first need to go to C, do D, defeat E etc. etc. but the goal is to get to B.

Players can make their own games on top of this and arguably you can say there may be designed sub games or categories of game (e.g. get a particular ending, or collect all the N things, defeat the TLB etc.) within the main A to B game. We can consider these too.

So whether world geometry and the opponents therein are *meaningful* in the context of a game of "get from A to B", refers to how interesting the former is to navigate and the latter is to overcome.

Ah, good, you got back to me. A double-post from me will surely be more valuable than another two pages of posts devoted to debating the veracity of Indian clickfarm bait based on nonsense-criteria "most influential" "sars, the influence, like thomas shelby sigma sars, tate master sarr told me to cultivate influence sar".

Now, as for your post itself. I appreciate the attempt at reasoning this out serious. ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH ICYCALM? I believe he was ultimately wrong about most things, but was very good at thinking things through on his way to wrong answers. He liked reasoning out rules and principles and was quite good at it (just about the only one dealing with video games I'll say that for).

This thought isn't Icycalm, this is my own thinking, that a "game" is any contrived challenge we agree to take seriously, within accepted contrived limits. Try as hard as you can within them. Your definition of sub-games and categories accommodates this quite well. Icycalm for a while was trying to define what a better or worse game was or could be, and concluded something like that a good game is one which brings more out of you. Because as fellow Nietzschean 'The Jackal' told us, living creatures exist to discharge their strength. Why even play video games then? Well Icycalm didn't consider them all a life could or should contain. But he thought they did many things very well. Was particularly enamored with Farcry2 and its brutal "anything goes" approach to survival and overcoming, thematically integrated into the greater work. Loved that sense of "it's all laid out ahead of me and isn't judging, I can do whatever I think of to survive and overcome".

The abstracted game of The Legend of Zelda is decently compelling because it always aspired to simulate a naturalistic experience invoking many faculties at once. You had to figure things out, execute mechanical maneuvers, navigate large and open and small and intricate 2D and 3D spaces, apply different abstract and natural forces to contrived challenges simulated natural and ingenious outcomes to possible actions. Hit the dry thing in your way with a 'FIRE ARROW', the thing is coded to catch fire, burn away, and play a little musical jingle when you do that.

This is what was compelling about the game. Not that we could win by getting to B. I don't think many people are thrilled by the mere fact that they have made a credit sequence start playing. Could just buy a pile of dvds and hit skip if you're into that. Not even getting into the greater aesthetic elements of The Legend of Zelda, it was successful as a collection and sequence of naturalistic problems, obstacles, and solutions. Rather than feeling like any particular rigid form, a "shooter" where you keep clicking heads, "tactics" where it's always time to form up and take our turns, the way you engage with Zelda was super-open and it felt like you could actually think about these situations in a relatively informal way, not leaning too much on received conventions, and thinking about it more like you would a real problem. You'd have people issues and social problems to navigate, then moving across terrain, then actual intentionally constructed in-universe "puzzles".

Do you see where I'm going yet? The success of Breath of the Wild is that it has done away with so much more of the contrivance, and in doing so facilitated a greater degree of naturalistic thinking being enabled and rewarded by players. And that is why it is good in line with the most basic theories we can reach on what meaningful play can constitute.

Now, more specifically, you say that the issues and obstacles, "world geometry" and "opponents" in the context of these games, their meaningfulness has to be judged on how interesting it is to navigate and overcome them. Well, I just wrote above how I would appraise this. That the unique appeal and aim of Zelda was naturalistic thinking and processes. The old "puzzles" were as much a concession as a convention, acknowledgement of the fact they could only make so many natural feeling obstacles in interesting ways. By BotW the underlying systems and mechanics are now sufficiently complex and robust that the entire world can consist of naturalistic geometry and opponents who pose challenges with creative free-form solution potential. You can try to say that this is uninteresting because we can always gravitate towards a relatively easy answer for most of the game, but I would say that for one, the real challenge is finding the easy option, and two that easy things can be compelling. BotW is a game which it is fun to make easy. The game is about discharging strength as well as building it. Wouldn't be fun accruing power if you couldn't become powerful. And it's a rare game in which you can also power up as a navigator, which is very cool and underexplored in the age of the "open world".

You said that the game had a "meaningful" problem in a very definitive way, but I think you meant "interesting" and you were also being very lazy and hadn't thought this through at all.

I found the game extremely interesting, that's why I was able to play it for dozens of hours. I thought you might have a lot more to say on "meaningful" which is why I got us started on Icycalm, that's there to pick up if you have more to say. If you don't that's rather disappointing. We could go so much further, discussing why people bother with games at all, whether it's possible for them to even have "meaning". And if so, how? But if "meaningful" just means "I liked it", well, I hope above I've demonstrated that I have thought more than anybody else here about why Breath of the Wild might be likeable.

 

[Machocruz]

Now, as for your post itself. I appreciate the attempt at reasoning this out serious. ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH ICYCALM?

Who I think of when I read your posts. Sure you're not him? It's ok to come out, Codex only hates actual fags. Either way, he and his contributors over at Insomnia.ac (which I learned about here) had some compelling points, and often correct ones, back when everyone was parroting the stock gamejourno and Reddit memes even more than they do now. I have several bookmarks on my old laptop of articles/essays I consider the definitive public takes on their respective topics.

 

[tommy heavenly6]

This is what was compelling about the game. Not that we could win by getting to B. I don't think many people are thrilled by the mere fact that they have made a credit sequence start playing. Could just buy a pile of dvds and hit skip if you're into that. Not even getting into the greater aesthetic elements of The Legend of Zelda, it was successful as a collection and sequence of naturalistic problems, obstacles, and solutions. Rather than feeling like any particular rigid form, a "shooter" where you keep clicking heads, "tactics" where it's always time to form up and take our turns, the way you engage with Zelda was super-open and it felt like you could actually think about these situations in a relatively informal way, not leaning too much on received conventions, and thinking about it more like you would a real problem. You'd have people issues and social problems to navigate, then moving across terrain, then actual intentionally constructed in-universe "puzzles".

Do you see where I'm going yet? The success of Breath of the Wild is that it has done away with so much more of the contrivance, and in doing so facilitated a greater degree of naturalistic thinking being enabled and rewarded by players. And that is why it is good in line with the most basic theories we can reach on what meaningful play can constitute.

Now, more specifically, you say that the issues and obstacles, "world geometry" and "opponents" in the context of these games, their meaningfulness has to be judged on how interesting it is to navigate and overcome them. Well, I just wrote above how I would appraise this. That the unique appeal and aim of Zelda was naturalistic thinking and processes. The old "puzzles" were as much a concession as a convention, acknowledgement of the fact they could only make so many natural feeling obstacles in interesting ways. By BotW the underlying systems and mechanics are now sufficiently complex and robust that the entire world can consist of naturalistic geometry and opponents who pose challenges with creative free-form solution potential. You can try to say that this is uninteresting because we can always gravitate towards a relatively easy answer for most of the game, but I would say that for one, the real challenge is finding the easy option, and two that easy things can be compelling. BotW is a game which it is fun to make easy. The game is about discharging strength as well as building it. Wouldn't be fun accruing power if you couldn't become powerful. And it's a rare game in which you can also power up as a navigator, which is very cool and underexplored in the age of the "open world".

I'm an ESL so bear with me: what do you mean by 'naturalistic'? what people refer to as 'emergent gameplay'? or is it something else? as opposed to unnaturalistic problem solving, which is...?

Also, have you played Zelda TikTok known as TotK according to some? what were your thoughts on it?

 

[Nutmeg]

Back to RTS HISTORY.

Before HERZOG ZWEI met MAC GUIS and gave birth to DUNE Ⅱ, East met West in a late FAMICOM title FROM EAST-WEST HYBRID HUMAN HENK ROGERS' POST COMMUNIST PILLAGING SPECIALIST SHOP: BULLET PROOF SOFTWARE.

Just look at that handsome DEVIL.

Not only did he scam a naive Soviet man from the proceeds of one of the most valuable gaming IPs, he also published the REVISIONIST'S FAVORITE "FIRST" JARPIG, if you'd have never heard of it before, you'll have heard of it here, on the PC MASTER RACIST KKKODEX.

The late Famicom title I mentioned earlier before I got distracted by HENK ROGERS? Battle Storm from 1991:



Translated by none other than the codex's own translation crew agentorange and Helly and MrRichard999 (RIP). Very ESSENTIAL game IN THE SENSE OF ESSENCE -- Single screen, arcade immediate, versus. RTS engagement.

 

[Nutmeg]

we should be asking "who made Herzog Zwei?" "What was their intention?" "What was their inspiration? What were they trying to realise in video game form?"

I will get to this in a subsequent post, stay tuned!

 

[Nutmeg]

This is what was compelling about the game. Not that we could win by getting to B. I don't think many people are thrilled by the mere fact that they have made a credit sequence start playing. Could just buy a pile of dvds and hit skip if you're into that.

Correct, if A to B games are simply about teleporting to B there would be nothing to them. What makes them interesting as games are the rules of navigation and all the decisions the player needs to make within that ruleset to get to B.

By BotW the underlying systems and mechanics are now sufficiently complex and robust that the entire world can consist of naturalistic geometry and opponents who pose challenges with creative free-form solution potential. You can try to say that this is uninteresting because we can always gravitate towards a relatively easy answer for most of the game, but I would say that for one, the real challenge is finding the easy option, and two that easy things can be compelling

Correct in general, incorrect in the specifics. BotW is let down by the fact that the easy option is always the same -- circumnavigate. Hence why the "content" (ugh) is "meaningless" in the context of the A to B game -- you can literally just go around it, skip it entirely. The game gives exactly 0 shits if you glided around the hobgoblin fort, or raided it for pretend play purposes.

And sure easy things can be compelling, but in order to do so they must still be "clever" and have variety in lieu of challenge, or have some kind of aesthetic or toy merit, the latter two not the least bit lacking in Breath of the Wild, which is why I played it for 50 hours or so when I could have completed it in perhaps 1/10th that time.

 

[Nutmeg]

GamerCat_ do you want to know what a single player game densely packed with meaning is? Any arcade scoring shmup. Here are the two I've been playing the most recently





Everything in these games has meaning. Every enemy spawn point, flight path, behavior, every grouping, every firing pattern, even every bit of background scenery contributes. 15 minutes to 1 hour of pure meaning as measured and defined by the game's own terms -- asking the player to score as high as they can.

 

[GamerCat_]

Now, as for your post itself. I appreciate the attempt at reasoning this out serious. ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH ICYCALM?

Who I think of when I read your posts. Sure you're not him? It's ok to come out, Codex only hates actual fags. Either way, he and his contributors over at Insomnia.ac (which I learned about here) had some compelling points, and often correct ones, back when everyone was parroting the stock gamejourno and Reddit memes even more than they do now. I have several bookmarks on my old laptop of articles/essays I consider the definitive public takes on their respective topics.

There was maybe one passable guest contributor for Insomnia. I think Icycalm's greatest failing was that he couldn't find interesting people to save his life. He built a following, but those people sucked. But did that render his ideas stagnant, or was it because his ideas were sterile, stagnant, and wrong already that he could only draw in boring losers? The man himself of course was interesting and I think correct in thinking through a lot of individual issues. But I'm on record in various places refuting his conclusions and disagreeing with him on fundamentals. I'm team Topdrunkee thy ILLnifique in the most important division in gaming history.



If you know the context I think this might be the greatest video on the internet. At the very least it's a high point of gaming culture for the privileged few who know.

Beyond verbosity (even then, we both aren't really excessive, we have a lot to say) we don't have a lot in common in thinking or conclusions. The closest I come to following and reproducing Icycalmian thought is in talking about "gameplay" in abstract, as I am above. I don't like doing this (where I disagree with Icycalm is that I believe it is unhelpful and wrong to), but if a discussion takes that kind of direction, if we are comparing games in the abstract, Icycalm was good at talking about that. Where we split is that he believed it was correct and proper to do so at all times, which left him helpless in explaining the appeal of many things, and drew him into playing garbage games out of fidelity to his ill-conceived master-theories.

Breath of the Wild was good. Even Icycalm agreed. He lamented that Nintendo won't develop for PC. I'm not saying this is innate to working for PC, but Nintendo always work to some kind of finished standard, with finished forms and technologies, any new thing they do they do to completion. Hard limits of consoles that aren't insane bleeding edge supercomputers don't bother them because they're always going to draw lines somewhere comfortably within the realm of the possible. What they can ace exactly as they mean to. A guy like Icycalm will never get this. Guys like him are why every epic concept epic scale western PC game is in foreverdev chasing the promises of its steam about section, working in more layers of non-robust systems to multiply the complexity because THINK OF WHAT IT COULD DO (if it actually worked and was ever finished).

We both liked Breath of the Wild, but had such different reactions. It's brilliant because it's such a big game that does everything with such a brilliant level of finish. To put it in moronic gamer terms, there isn't an ounce of jank. Some quirks and eccentricities exist, but there's never a sense you're actually going to break something.

This is what was compelling about the game. Not that we could win by getting to B. I don't think many people are thrilled by the mere fact that they have made a credit sequence start playing. Could just buy a pile of dvds and hit skip if you're into that.

Correct, if A to B games are simply about teleporting to B there would be nothing to them. What makes them interesting as games are the rules of navigation and all the decisions the player needs to make within that ruleset to get to B.

AS GAMES. Key thing you've said here. As I said above, I don't believe in appraising games merely "as games". Choosing to view a game just as a game to the disregard of the rest of the experience, in some more than others, but always in my opinion, is choosing to play a certain kind of subgame. You are experiencing the game one of many possible ways.

I am very sympathetic to your characterisation of overly complex games with unnecessary mechanics that can be avoided or dealt with shallowly as larping platforms. But they're larping platforms for a very specific reason, because the game is all there is, and if you aren't trying to win that, you're basically convincing yourself you're trying to win it by still just hammering at the contrived problem in another way. Win fight by hitting or doing elaborate fireball blasts, whatever. You're still playing sewer rat punch adventure 3 on the terms of a combat challenge.

What makes cRPGs unique is, in my opinion, how overwhelmingly ugly and pointless they are. Without the alleged complexity of their dicenigger combat systems where is the justification in the work? Is there an aesthetically justified crpg? I played Fallout and like a lot that it has going on, but disagree with pretty much every serious point of praise in gamer culture on where its merit lies. It's the old CG imagery and concept art, and the kind of weird dusty 90s sci-fi aesthetics. Lumpy, ugly, retarded, sounding like a ripoff of certain aphex twin ambient works, the broad concepts which you can imbibe pretty much fine through the wiki or fallout bible as well as is presented in-game. I kind of like old Fallout in the same way I like Warhammer. I'm a secondary. It's a work justified by its secondary elements. I don't give a shit about the clicking, dice, builds, inventories, etc. The fact they're there and realised in some particular detail gives a nice weight and justification to elements of the world, an odd obtuse logic to be engaged with which compliments the mysterious eerie rust and dust over evil weird science premise.

I'll play Fallout because it feels like a roughly appropriate way to engage with and take in all of that. But all my life the dice, menus, inventories, all of that to engage with swords and elves buttfantasy genreshit struck me as terribly incongruous and weird. On top of the inherent unpleasantness of the aesthetic premises.

By BotW the underlying systems and mechanics are now sufficiently complex and robust that the entire world can consist of naturalistic geometry and opponents who pose challenges with creative free-form solution potential. You can try to say that this is uninteresting because we can always gravitate towards a relatively easy answer for most of the game, but I would say that for one, the real challenge is finding the easy option, and two that easy things can be compelling

Correct in general, incorrect in the specifics. BotW is let down by the fact that the easy option is always the same -- circumnavigate. Hence why the "content" (ugh) is "meaningless" in the context of the A to B game -- you can literally just go around it, skip it entirely. The game gives exactly 0 shits if you glided around the hobgoblin fort, or raided it for pretend play purposes.

You emphasise circumnavigation so much one could get the wrong impression of what the game is about. The game is not about circumnavigation. It's about navigation. Going to things and places. It's not something mongoloids on youtube have found a way to quantify yet, but the process of deciding where to go and what to do in a system and world that will facilitate anything, is extremely compelling. There is a broad "B" looming over the horizon, but it does not compel you. It's a looming justification for anything you can do.

Meaningless in a context we don't have to lock ourselves into. Which way is the enemy base? DOWN!

And sure easy things can be compelling, but in order to do so they must still be "clever" and have variety in lieu of challenge, or have some kind of aesthetic or toy merit, the latter two not the least bit lacking in Breath of the Wild, which is why I played it for 50 hours or so when I could have completed it in perhaps 1/10th that time.

You played this game for 50 hours and believe it lacked "meaningful content". I think you primarily have vocabulary issues is what we need to deal with here.

It's interesting that you consign "meaning" to this hard "A to B" factor, and rate everything else secondary. That's the bias it seems reasonable to assume given how you've approached this. Do you feel like you're being insincere when you do anything in a video game that isn't hard pursuit of winning? There's something to be said for games that are able to make that specific activity compelling. But I believe there's just as much to be said for a game that can make you want to do otherwise or any other thing and make that compelling.

Again, Breath of the Wild is the GTA3 trilogy of its time. It made going anywhere and doing anything a massively compelling prospect again AFTER the run of widespread GTA3 imitators had incorporated that into their premises for so long people considered the idea sterile and exhausted. That's a goddamn miracle and goes to show how most people think about video games is completely wrong and worthless. Lots of rape victims convinced themselves it couldn't be fun because it's an ubisoftvaniabornelike now. I suspect most of those Burger Analogy Americans just didn't own their own Switch and were trying to deal with that. Ubisoft never succeeded in creating a compelling world. They just put things far apart. Even with Farcry2, which is one of my favourite games. In fact, in that one the fact things are merely far apart with little of interest in between is an aesthetically deliberate decision. Burger Humans failed to understand and wanted a flag and perk points to pop up after they cleared a crossroads. Fucking animals.

 

[Azdul]

and SEGA decided that programmers won't be graced with interrupt on completed transfer

Wow it's not like games run in a frame by frame loop where they can literally check if something is done very frame!

You don't do I/O in vertical blank interrupt handler / main game loop.

The thread that does I/O is waken up when device completed DMA transfer. Or by system timer programmed to trigger interrupt every X miliseconds - if device is called SEGA CD.

CD has seek time of at least 100 ms - going up to seconds for slightly scratched disks. Without clever device controller and clever programming it offers much worse experience than games using cartridges.

 

[Gastrick]

The Legend of Zelda, it was successful as a collection and sequence of naturalistic problems, obstacles, and solutions

Shooting an arrow in the direction of a heavenly body millions of kilometers away to have it transform into a fire arrow is hardly naturalistic

Not even getting into the greater aesthetic elements of The Legend of Zelda, it was successful as a collection and sequence of naturalistic problems, obstacles, and solutions. Rather than feeling like any particular rigid form, a "shooter" where you keep clicking heads, "tactics" where it's always time to form up and take our turns, the way you engage with Zelda was super-open

These are no immersive sims and most solutions that would work in reality do nothing here outside of the single one chosen by the devs, at least for the pre-Breath of the Wild games. If navigating the over-world presents any issues, it means you're not stocking up non-sliding and stamina potions properly.

 

[Nutmeg]

You don't do I/O in vertical blank interrupt handler / main game loop.

The thread that does I/O is waken up when device completed DMA transfer. Or by system timer programmed to trigger interrupt every X miliseconds - if device is called SEGA CD.

What are you talking about? These old consoles didn't have operating systems or threading libraries out of the box and no one bothered to roll their own pre-emptive multi-tasking system (even if the times interrupt facilities were the for it) because it would achieve what exactly? Games are fine single threaded and, at the beginning of the loop, polling for input.

And you just wrote there was no I/O interrupt for the CD and that it had to be polled. So which is it? Can you at least be consistent?

 

[Inec0rn]

I couldn't be bothering replying as the posts describe what i meant when i first mentioned botw. My simplistic takes on open-world games. I think the vast majority of gamers fall into a magical fantasy world with their imagination when they play open-world games, they really feel like they are living in a magical woodland / setting that the game world is set it. Unfortunately a minority of gamers (like myself) are very mechanics (and i guess story) focused so what I see is:

100x minigolf games when i want to be playing an action oriented hack and slash.
100x tower/flag climbs offering no challenge where i press a button.
100x shitty racing games, where if i wanted to race i would go buy a good racing sim.
100x delivery quests that yield piss rewards and take hours, i'd get a job at fedex if i wanted to do this.
100x bowling or pipeline or other shitty minigame i really really do not want to play, again said rewards are meh.
Crafting - can't forget pointlessly collecting 300 items to craft other shit that's overall not that important to beating the game.
Traversal - I must waste 100's of hours walking/climbing/parasailing from A > B, it's the aTmoSpHeres (because they are living in a make believe fantasy imagination land in their head).

Then the other side-effect is that the dev team no longer need to spend much time or effort on a mainline story, I've heard botw can be beaten in <1 hour or something if you just go to the end. In most openworld games the main line story is absolutely terrible and less than 10 hours content beause they count on the gamer being content playing fantasy imagination land in their head doing menial chores in the open world.

It's funny, linear games are now considered taboo as the overwhelming majority want the above design over and over again, but the absolute peak of this game design is when an incredibly strong linear story underpins the game world. Witcher 3 is one of the few examples of a good open world game - because it has an incredible well crafted, around 50h linear, cinematic story wrapped in the boring open-world ? system. I actually did really enjoy that game on release but I reckon I spent maybe 4-5 hours total on the open-world garbage before realising it was totally unnecessary. Cyberpunk faltered in a big way because on release they had most the linear campaign content done but hadn't come close to matching the open-world banal content, people wanted GTA in a cyberpunk city and were disappointed.

Elden Ring is also a better example as there is a clear linear path gated with Bosses underpinning the game world, although im tipping fans of soulslike prefer bloodborn, dark souls etc that are more linear in design (and i would agree they are better games).

It's interesting to me that most AAA's pumping out slop havn't really understood why Witcher 3 was so popular and why their new games are massively underperforming. How did Starfield, FF rebirth, ubisoft starwars, well any ubisoft ship without any decent mainline linear story to them? It's the sole differentiator in Witcher 3 that made the game successful?

 

[Nutmeg]

There's something to be said for games that are able to make that specific activity compelling. But I believe there's just as much to be said for a game that can make you want to do otherwise or any other thing and make that compelling.

Yes we can say the former is a good game and the latter is a good toy box.

Some people value the former more, others the latter, and then there's audio-visual appeal and social aspects if looking wholistically.

My own preferences I hear no one ask? To grab my attention, audio-visual appeal or a recommendation from someone whose taste I trust. First few minutes? How well it handles and ideally the game hooks me but I have some patience. After the first hour? I will be looking for game. "Wow this controls great, and it looks like a Miyazaki film", I said to myself while playing BotW, "but where is the game? Is it over there?" well after looking for the game for a while and realizing there is none to be had except to go to the tower and kill Ganon that's exactly what I did (and that game is actually more fun and challenging the more you ignore the rest of the simulation).

 

[Azdul]

You don't do I/O in vertical blank interrupt handler / main game loop.

The thread that does I/O is waken up when device completed DMA transfer. Or by system timer programmed to trigger interrupt every X miliseconds - if device is called SEGA CD.

What are you talking about? These old consoles didn't have operating systems or threading libraries out of the box and no one bothered to roll their own pre-emptive multi-tasking system (even if the times interrupt facilities were the for it) because it would achieve what exactly? Games are fine single threaded and, at the beginning of the loop, polling for input.

And you just wrote there was no I/O interrupt for the CD and that it had to be polled. So which is it? Can you at least be consistent?

Sega CD added another 68000 to one 68000 and Z80 already existing in base Genesis / Megadrive console.

But even on much less complicated machines with one CPU you don't write a game as one giant loop that waits for vertical sync. Especially if you want the same gameplay in PAL territories, music having correct tempo or intelligent computer opponents.

Unless it is Atari 2600, there is no video menory, single channel audio and processor is racing the beam painting the screen.