Maybe it is a generational difference in perspective here, but I don't understand your point of view for the most part.
Half the internet is Video Game reviews and press!
As for mainstream press, only boomers listen to that, and most current seniors don't play and never will play video games.
From my perspective you are bemoaning the fact that a dying industry that caters exclusively to senior citizens doesn't cover gaming news, and that the few video game "institutions" that try to copy these obsolete ways of doing things are bad and boring.
Yes, but so what?
We don't need institutions telling us what is good.
If you want to celebrate one of your favorite games, instead of watching The Game Awards, watch one of the 10 hour long thesis's uploaded to YT.
I think the uncomfortable truth is that games are just not as socially accepted as other past times despite their popularity. Watching sports or movies are, although they are equally unproductive (maybe even moreso because you have zero influence on the outcome). It’s like porn - a LOT of people consume it, but nobody wants to be publicly associated with it because of the negative consumer stereotypes. You just kind of have to enjoy it in private and toil away in secrecy if you’re a producer.
"Video games make the vast majority of their money from addicted, obsessive whales buying loot boxes and kids who buy DLC with the credit cards they stole from the parents."
As an old fan of Spiderweb since I bought Exile I as shareware, I hate that this is what gaming has come to. I miss the old days when you just bought a game and you were done. You didn't have to keep shelling out so you can finish the game and access all the content.
I understand what you want to say but I disagree with some points. I will write with Google Translate because my main language is Italian:
The video game market has to deal with entertainment and social diffusion that cinema has not had to experience. Even though a lot can be done with video games, the market has acquired very rigid rules on what a video game is and it is difficult to break away from it. it's capitalism, what works works, nobody wanted it, it happened, and rightly so in certain respects, the only way to fight some dynamics of a system is to understand them and not passively suffer them.
Even for video game journalists, it's impossible to do real journalism due to the very nature of entertainment and how algorithms and reader retention work. Newspapers must be active, share, discuss everything that is news and not criticism, and to do so they discuss banal things, making people perceive things that are not important for the nature and evolution of the medium, but for the market of the medium.
It's probably not something done in bad faith, it simply works and those who have had this approach or are predisposed to have it, and having survived it have become the cover and example of gaming journalism, thus becoming a standard and example of normal behavior. It's about social media, entertainment, and how outreach works on the Internet.
-Oscar
Regarding the Oscars, I don't agree that it is something so virtuous. I agree that the gaming sector has various critical issues but the same sector experts have been criticizing the Oscars for years. They are considered useless and mostly commercial or political prizes. They have ignored works from other continents for years, animated films are still separated today as if they were a genre, when in reality it is a technique. it's just show.
-Esports athlete
The best esports athlete is not the same as the best spectator. The best viewer of a video game is the closest thing to a viewer of a movie. When talking about video games we must accept that there is a dynamic not present in films and this is the interaction with the product. It would be limiting to ignore this dynamic, which objectively exists in video games, just because films don't have it. It would be like judging films only for the screenplay because some technical aspects of the films are not in the books. I agree that esports athletes are not an artistic aspect of the work like a director, but they are still something technical. They master the gameplay of a game which is nothing more than one of the technical aspects of a video game. You may or may not like it culturally but on paper it's like this. It's like a photographer who has taken control of a camera that uses a certain lens technology, added with the competitive aspect of challenging other people. Exactly, it's like sport.
But do we actually need global game awards? I mean, I don't feel like I do. What I care about is players' reaction, which I can judge through social media. And maybe about some niche sites awards - it's nice to see our games in GOTY lists on RPGCodex and RPGWatch, because those sites dig RPGs and I respect them. The more popular awards rarely go to games I think actually are great, so I feel no connection to them, neither as a game developer, nor as a gamer.
Recently I completed The Talos Principle 2. I really enjoyed it. Gameplay is like alternating in 20 minute intervals between playing Portal 2 and watching “My Dinner With Andre” and I am that experiences exact target audience The reason I mention it is that Talos 2 is one of the few gaming experiences that deliberately tries to be Middlebrow.
Talos principle 2 isn’t high art or some marvel of game design but it’s an attempt to market to the same demographic that watches Was Anderson movies. When was the last game that tried that? The Witness, maybe? And before that?
Gaming doesn’t have the sort of institutions that honor quality, as you said. And the average gamer isn’t interested in playing a robot that alternates between laser beam puzzles and debating nuclear power. But there is a market for games like that, and that market is underserved.
Now, I don’t want to be TOO defensive of the Video Game Awards, but one bit of credit I do want to offer up is that their nominations for the big categories are generally at least games most people will have heard of. None of this, “Betty Oscarface in Pretentious Artsy Fartsy Drama all of a dozen film nerds have seen” nonsense.
That said, singular names will never mean anything outside of industry fanatics if they never get the opportunity for exposure. There isn’t a molecule of doubt in my being that there are OTHER developers than Kojima who deserve to be name dropped and recognized, and the game awards should be a vehicle for this.
Hopefully Keighley will take to heart the criticism of cutting off the developers so viciously while letting the drivel that was the rest of the show just drone on.
Maybe it is a generational difference in perspective here, but I don't understand your point of view for the most part.
Half the internet is Video Game reviews and press!
As for mainstream press, only boomers listen to that, and most current seniors don't play and never will play video games.
From my perspective you are bemoaning the fact that a dying industry that caters exclusively to senior citizens doesn't cover gaming news, and that the few video game "institutions" that try to copy these obsolete ways of doing things are bad and boring.
Yes, but so what?
We don't need institutions telling us what is good.
If you want to celebrate one of your favorite games, instead of watching The Game Awards, watch one of the 10 hour long thesis's uploaded to YT.
I think the uncomfortable truth is that games are just not as socially accepted as other past times despite their popularity. Watching sports or movies are, although they are equally unproductive (maybe even moreso because you have zero influence on the outcome). It’s like porn - a LOT of people consume it, but nobody wants to be publicly associated with it because of the negative consumer stereotypes. You just kind of have to enjoy it in private and toil away in secrecy if you’re a producer.
"Video games make the vast majority of their money from addicted, obsessive whales buying loot boxes and kids who buy DLC with the credit cards they stole from the parents."
As an old fan of Spiderweb since I bought Exile I as shareware, I hate that this is what gaming has come to. I miss the old days when you just bought a game and you were done. You didn't have to keep shelling out so you can finish the game and access all the content.
Good blog post. I'm just impressed you managed to watch that show, I could never make it through this drivel.
I understand what you want to say but I disagree with some points. I will write with Google Translate because my main language is Italian:
The video game market has to deal with entertainment and social diffusion that cinema has not had to experience. Even though a lot can be done with video games, the market has acquired very rigid rules on what a video game is and it is difficult to break away from it. it's capitalism, what works works, nobody wanted it, it happened, and rightly so in certain respects, the only way to fight some dynamics of a system is to understand them and not passively suffer them.
Even for video game journalists, it's impossible to do real journalism due to the very nature of entertainment and how algorithms and reader retention work. Newspapers must be active, share, discuss everything that is news and not criticism, and to do so they discuss banal things, making people perceive things that are not important for the nature and evolution of the medium, but for the market of the medium.
It's probably not something done in bad faith, it simply works and those who have had this approach or are predisposed to have it, and having survived it have become the cover and example of gaming journalism, thus becoming a standard and example of normal behavior. It's about social media, entertainment, and how outreach works on the Internet.
-Oscar
Regarding the Oscars, I don't agree that it is something so virtuous. I agree that the gaming sector has various critical issues but the same sector experts have been criticizing the Oscars for years. They are considered useless and mostly commercial or political prizes. They have ignored works from other continents for years, animated films are still separated today as if they were a genre, when in reality it is a technique. it's just show.
-Esports athlete
The best esports athlete is not the same as the best spectator. The best viewer of a video game is the closest thing to a viewer of a movie. When talking about video games we must accept that there is a dynamic not present in films and this is the interaction with the product. It would be limiting to ignore this dynamic, which objectively exists in video games, just because films don't have it. It would be like judging films only for the screenplay because some technical aspects of the films are not in the books. I agree that esports athletes are not an artistic aspect of the work like a director, but they are still something technical. They master the gameplay of a game which is nothing more than one of the technical aspects of a video game. You may or may not like it culturally but on paper it's like this. It's like a photographer who has taken control of a camera that uses a certain lens technology, added with the competitive aspect of challenging other people. Exactly, it's like sport.
But do we actually need global game awards? I mean, I don't feel like I do. What I care about is players' reaction, which I can judge through social media. And maybe about some niche sites awards - it's nice to see our games in GOTY lists on RPGCodex and RPGWatch, because those sites dig RPGs and I respect them. The more popular awards rarely go to games I think actually are great, so I feel no connection to them, neither as a game developer, nor as a gamer.
Recently I completed The Talos Principle 2. I really enjoyed it. Gameplay is like alternating in 20 minute intervals between playing Portal 2 and watching “My Dinner With Andre” and I am that experiences exact target audience The reason I mention it is that Talos 2 is one of the few gaming experiences that deliberately tries to be Middlebrow.
Talos principle 2 isn’t high art or some marvel of game design but it’s an attempt to market to the same demographic that watches Was Anderson movies. When was the last game that tried that? The Witness, maybe? And before that?
Gaming doesn’t have the sort of institutions that honor quality, as you said. And the average gamer isn’t interested in playing a robot that alternates between laser beam puzzles and debating nuclear power. But there is a market for games like that, and that market is underserved.
Now, I don’t want to be TOO defensive of the Video Game Awards, but one bit of credit I do want to offer up is that their nominations for the big categories are generally at least games most people will have heard of. None of this, “Betty Oscarface in Pretentious Artsy Fartsy Drama all of a dozen film nerds have seen” nonsense.
That said, singular names will never mean anything outside of industry fanatics if they never get the opportunity for exposure. There isn’t a molecule of doubt in my being that there are OTHER developers than Kojima who deserve to be name dropped and recognized, and the game awards should be a vehicle for this.
Hopefully Keighley will take to heart the criticism of cutting off the developers so viciously while letting the drivel that was the rest of the show just drone on.
Or, at least get better drivel next time.