Author: harold

I don’t particularly like candies and never did so right from the start, I’m not that much into this game everybody was talking about yesterday.

Second, grind. Grind. Grind. “but wait, it gets better!” NO SHIT. Your insatiable brain and the effortless action of waiting and clicking a box make it OK, I guess. I don’t have an insatiable appetite for meaningless rewards you get with no skills. I don’t like starting all over in games but I don’t like either when there’s pretty much nothing to do.

Third the traditional, heroic fantasy quest with goblins and dragons. Please kill me. I still have the tab open but I’ll probably not play this game anymore. How come you get excited with that, I don’t know.

I don’t get how game designers and game journalists don’t see how a grinding fest with themes that are aimed at the same sugar-addicted, roleplaying culture can be just that, and nothing else. Looking at my Twitter feed it looked like this game was like the new MinecraftTA6 or some shit.

And what about this game culture where you either praise something or you quietly shut up because Game Intelligentsia Police? How can we move forward?

In other news like I said earlier this year we’ll see weird successes you don’t even understand how it happened, like Starbound getting $1 million in pre-order or Monaco breaking even before launch. Let that sink in.

It’s frustrating to see something in your mind without being able to express it properly.

I tweeted that melodies are like the QTEs of music and now I’m in trouble, trying to explain how or from what point of view.

I thought about this analogy because melodies are traditionally what people listening to music, play with. By playing with the music while listening to it I mean letting your mind decipher and enjoy it. Usually, melody is the first thing we get our brains on. People need to be able to connect to a song and for non musicians, non rhythmic people it happens with the melody (and yes, it’s totally a social construct from Great Westernia; melody isn’t that big in Africa for instance).

So, playing with the melody. You just have to follow a series of tones (hence the QTE reference). It’s the easiest way to make that music playing your own. It’s like you are creating a path at the same time that the engine -the body of the music, chords, rhythm, texture- creates this space for you.

If you can harmonize over music instead of following the lead, it means that you virtualize and play in a wider space than when singing a melody. Same way, if you can improvise notes in between a soft melody, it’s more interesting and playful than exclusively follow even a complex series of notes. Same with rhythm that you have to feel and keep, a slightly more complex task than following a melody.

So I thought about melody as a series of QTE, kind of a cool thing to do on top of all the rest of the music’s mechanics. I heard that it’s a game in bars and it’s called karaoke.

With music like jazz though, where there’s virtually no melody, creating one is no QTE anymore.

I’m interested in expression, freedom and creating a space for them. God I’m a sucker for those.

Speaking of racism,

that’s what i find so fucking offensive about bioshock infinite, is that it makes black people props in a storyline in which white people get to revise white history through all kinds of fanciful sci fi wizardry in order to make themselves feel better while STILL excluding and marginalizing black people, and we’re supposed to be happy about it.

Fuck no, we’re not. Great article, you can feel the anger at the end.

To see people like Cliff Bleszinski claim it to be “true art” really goes to show how much the violent, racist oppression of other people sidelined for the sake of white-centric science fiction is nothing but entertainment to the white-dominated games subculture.

(via Jeff Kunzler)

It’s so embarrassing. Maybe it’s anecdotal but making music for games, I’m never saying the letters “R&B” because culturally I’ve seen white people go nuts and angry just by saying those words, like saying “rock” would make you think that this entire genre fucking sucks to oblivion and that really, you’re right. Meanwhile J-pop -popular in the games subculture- is Asian R&B but then, it’s different.

A shame.

Regardless of racism, Bioshock has flaws even in its core mechanics as Jonathan describes it perfectly:

You need to read the next one from bottom to top, though sorry.

How do you call a situation where a game is full of flaws but is widely acclaimed as what the game industry can really do? Shit.

Jaw-dropping graphics don’t fucking cut it and never will. And you game journalists I don’t even, ugh.

Speaking of players,

Well, they don’t disappoint.

Everything kind of started with Raph’s letter to Leigh, but it’s a debate that’s been on for a while. What games are. Robert Yang answered some stuff and then Tadhg Kelly wrote some stuff and by stuff I mean high intellectual shit with strong arguments in favor of “both parties”. And then it blew up on Twitter, I can’t find the storify, whatever.

My first feeling is that it’s funny how we can’t be satisfy with loose notions. It’s OK if we just have a vague definition of what games are, let’s just make them. Or like Ian Bogost said ask ourselves what they can do, what they’re good at, what hasn’t been done with them.

But I’m avoiding the debate this way though.

I don’t care about labels but I certainly enjoyed Raph’s work dissecting in a very accessible way “some” of the things that matter with games. Eye-opening, like having a microscope and see atoms of fun.

I personally love systems and simulations and feel that people need more of that, that is what I kind of want to bring to the table, and it’s totally connected to the kind of life I had. It’s pretty simple, at the end.

Little story: I played Anna’s Triad game. The theme is fresh. The sound is great, it’s original whimsical and cute. I’m playing, failing over and over. But it’s a game, it’s a system with rules.

To win, I stripped the game off its graphics and mentally brute force positions while in the shower. Somehow the story I could imagine about these three characters when I was moving them around was blocking me from pure puzzle solving. Anyway, I had already enjoyed the game before winning.

What does it say? I don’t know that was my take on it, some people will hate it some will find it challenging. Sometimes the challenge itself will not matter.

Players will always enjoy any kind of (nicely done) games, don’t worry.