Comments on: The Tripartite of Gaming: Theories on an Overlooked Medium

By: M12

M12 — Thu, 21 May 2009 11:57:45 +0000

Yep, Starcraft is a pretty long game to finish. Recently, I've actually found myself even purusing some of the more "childish" games. You know, with bright colours and a happy story. After playing a lot of FPS, I get a bit fatigued over the dark atmosphere, you know? M12s last blog post..Kick the Hax!

By: ETERNAL

ETERNAL — Mon, 18 May 2009 02:21:01 +0000

@ M12: I know what you mean about not having enough time. I like to think I wouldn’t qualify as “older” yet, but I definitely don’t have as much time as I used to, and I find it stressful to put too much effort into learning a hard game. That’s the main reason why I still haven’t beaten StarCraft and yet I have many, many hours spent on Animal Crossing. Of course, my favourite will probably always be the short-but-sweet single player action/adventure/FPS stuff.

@ GNdynames: Fire Emblem is a great game, and it’s also very, very hard. I never played the ones that weren’t officially released in English, but interestingly enough, I found the Wii version to be one of the hardest. Either way, it’s a great series.

By: GNdynames

GNdynames — Fri, 15 May 2009 02:46:43 +0000

Same opinion as Panther. It’s quite hard to find great games these days and, unfortunately, it’s money that makes the world go around. This is pretty much why I’ve given up on gaming, except occasionally going back to older titles such as Fire Emblem (which I’m currently playing).

By: M12

M12 — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:40:01 +0000

An excellent post! Recently, I seem to have lost interest in the "competitive" games that you speak of. You know, as you get older, you don't have time to practice those anymore. So now, I really like the single-player entertainment games. Often, I'm too fatigued after work for arty titles, too... But yeah, overall, any game is good for me XD. M12s last blog post..Sushi (and) train

By: Omisyth

Omisyth — Sat, 09 May 2009 18:56:02 +0000

I don't really have anything to say, but great post. I'd say I was primarily a gmaer that wants to be entertained, but ever since I've gotten Street Fighter IV I've been playing it (and only it) non-stop for 2 months, pwning as many n00bs as I can and getting pwned myself. @Panther I was going to write a vehement reply but Eternal did that for me, and with much more tact than I would have had :P. Omisyths last blog post..Trying My Hand At Fiction: Amensium

By: ETERNAL

ETERNAL — Sat, 09 May 2009 00:53:35 +0000

@ zzeroparticle: I'm usually bad with the gameplay mechanics of RPGs and my plate is more than full at the moment, but that works as a good example. A game like that would be built specifically for people who enjoy dissecting the engine, and not the kind of people who play RPGs for story or who prefer the real-time action RPG systems. And of course, criticism is bound to surface regardless >_> @ Kairu Ishimaru: Come to think of it, you're right about the educational aspect - I remember having to research two myths of different cultures that year in school, and one of the two I picked involved Amaterasu :P @ ghostlightning: Those are often times my favourite kinds of games. Half the time when I play FPS games, I'm in it for the action and the immersion rather than the competition. Gears of War is easily one of my favourite X360 games, maybe one of my overall favourite games, and yet I've hardly touched multiplayer. @ Sorrow-kun: For Galaxy (or most any Mario game), I'd say it's a mix of both. It's a bit trickier for the older games since on one hand they lack in immersion but on the other hand the technology was primitive back then, but for a modern game, it easily captures both audiences. The young gamers and casual gamers will enjoy it for its simple, alluring gameplay, but even the vets will love it for the fact that it's good. It uses everything that makes up a video game - character graphics, backgrounds, music, gameplay, everything - and creates a final product that's hard to criticize. Definitely one of the better games on the Wii. @ Ryan A: True, it's not much of a transgression, but I wouldn't want to bog my readers down with content that doesn't apply to them. Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed the post, and even more glad that a non-gamer can appreciate the potential of the medium ^^ @ Panther: I hope you realized that the font wasn't intentionally like that! It's fixed now, don't worry :P As for your comment, I agree in a general sense, but like you said, it isn't a problem that's unique to gaming. Entertainment as a whole is commercialized, and people will always produce what makes money. Even in a medium as old as literature, I'm pretty sure we still have these problems. I'm not familiar with the publishing industry, but it seems logical to assume that a publisher will sooner take a book that looks like it might have wide appeal over a niche novel that might be good but will remain obscure. It's definitely a problem, but it seems to be a problem that involves society as a whole rather than just the gaming industry. Of course, the lack of attention paid to gaming is part of the reason why it might suffer more than other media, but, for lack of a better phrase, we should also remember that careless generalizations are careless. Certainly not all new games are lacking in quality and passion - it's just that the present industry encourages countless rehashes of old concepts. Yet even today, mediocre games don't usually do as well as good games, as we can see by the millions of obscure platformers/FPSs/JRPGs that no one really knows. I couldn't give any examples because they weren't good enough to get noticed by the public; and the games that were unique or otherwise good, like Nippon Ichi's Disgaea or Little Big Planet, have sold comparatively well. A JRPG like Disgaea will always suffer in terms of sales, of course, but you get the idea. It's understandable that the industry is suffering but it would be careless to assume that the "passion" is dead; it might be less visible than before, but it can't flat out die.

By: Saki 5 | hontou ni sou omou?

Saki 5 | hontou ni sou omou? — Thu, 07 May 2009 06:48:18 +0000

[...] in days before everyone had laptops. All for the sake of Starcraft. Ah sweet memories are made of these. When is Starcraft 2 going to be released [...]

By: Panther

Panther — Thu, 07 May 2009 04:38:52 +0000

Though I would agree with most of your opinions in this post, especially since I have been a competitive fighting gamer and also dabbled into other genres you mentioned, including Final Fantasy series, RTS competitively, and etc., the thing is the “goal” part you mentioned.

It would be naive to believe that many games’ creators (or their producers/developers, whichever you prefer) set 0ut nowadays to make a “great” game – why make “great” games when “good” ones sell? Games nowadays are just rehashed examples of previous “classics” or “standard games” in the “genre”. Gaming and the industry that comes with it is no longer a passion – it is a business. It ultimately comes down to what makes money for the producers and developers, not what was originally intended when the first peeps sat down over a drink and a small table and planned out what would become one of the best RPG franchises in history, D&D.

Nowadays, games no longer have the “passion” element in them, which is why the older (or more classic) gamers return to the older games to relive the fun times as well as the subconscious reliving of the passion that they felt back when they first played the game. Kids these days only look at the graphics – if it explodes bigger, better, then it is a “good” game. If it has gore and blood in it, even better. Unfortunately, the general mass media, and the masses, no longer have (and probably never had) an eye for these things – to them, gaming is nothing more than a creative form of leisure and what they want is something that pleases the eye and something that does not engage them in further stress than they already most likely are in. Entertainment itself has become a business…oh wait, that is nothing new. And now the sheep are being shepherded by the sheepdog that is the gaming industry.

PS: Your comments’ font is so damn bloody small, I had a hard time reading the others’ comments. :(

Panthers last blog post..The Rest of Spring’s Impressions

By: Ryan A

Ryan A — Thu, 07 May 2009 04:23:48 +0000

yes, I have no way of justifying this post and claiming its relevance to anime

Does a post really need/em> to be anime? Anime-centric should suffice, in terms of blog definition. Anibloggers post about all kinds of mediums anyway. ^^ It’s good!

I like to classify entertainment as the simple feeling of fun that one derives from any particular activity

Well, sometimes we cry, which may not be fun.

In any case, I’m not a gamer, but I do believe video games are a fully fledged medium in which expression and emotion can be conveyed. We are human and we can understand what we experience through games or other various media. ^^

Cheers.

By: Sorrow-kun

Sorrow-kun — Thu, 07 May 2009 03:28:24 +0000

Writing a post without at least one picture of an anime girl just isn’t my thing.

OMG Micaiah. Good choice.

As a simplistic way to categorize the different ways in which people enjoy different titles, I think this works quite well, and the analogues between gaming and anime are quite clear. It’s something I’ve never bothered to stop and think about, since I’ve always just considered it a simple matter of taste, but I think you make a good point. How would you categorize Super Mario Galaxy (which is easily the best game I’ve played in the last two generations, IMO)? A mix of “art” and “entertainment”? Would you say that one dominates over the other?