Worth Reading: 09/22/2014

Most of that is actually taken from Brutal Doom, a pretty well-established mod. It's easy to get a hold of and use if you've got the Doom 1 and/or 2 iwads. However, the points that pop up aren't a part of regular Brutal Doom and I think the iron sights look different.

@morello: @believer258 Ah, I've certainly heard of Brutal Doom, but mustn't have actually seen much of its footage. I do remember seeing a modified Doom that included the Duke Nukem boot, though.

It's surprising why there's never been any Brutal Doom being played on Giant Bomb at all. I'd love for that to become the latest Breaking @brad (or whatever... the actual names mean very little these days since they're all just Lets Plays') feature in particular, given Brad's previous foray with Doom II.

Jeff actually played a multiplayer Doom server running Brutal Doom on a TNT once.

Huh, was this a segmented TNT with multiple games, or one of the classic 2-hour long streams dedicated to one game sorta deal? I may have to check it out sometime anywhoo.

And keeping it on Doom, @patrickklepek did you ever play the PS1 or N64 versions of Doom? The N64 version is likely more well known for being its own thing that spun off into something more resembling a horror game, but I imagine most wouldn't assume the PS1 version was any different from regular Doom. Though while not as drastic as the N64 reimagining, it had a completely different atmosphere about it courtesy of its much moodier lighting and a soundtrack that trades in its midi metal for something much more ambient and horror-orientated.

It's somewhere in this video.

@kcin: I understand that, but it seems to me like the gameplay is the only thing that *isn't* a parody of the cheap sim genre. Either way, my point is that their choice to model (even just aesthetically) after cheap sims shows the impact those sims have had. I'd also argue that the popularity of the game could be largely attributed to its references to that genre.

I like Worth Reading on Fridays more than Monday. It gave me a bunch of articles to read over the weekend.

@billyok: Completely agreed. What's more, I don't understand how someone who's been so visible for so long, and who has probably had a lot of contact with the gaming public, is surprised when something like this happens, and reacts so indignantly.

I'd say so, even when the game media gets it "right", the fact that there's such shared consensus is disappointing and uninformative. We could really use some diversity of opinion

Judged looked like it has some promise. I'm glad the Kickerstarter is on its way to be successful

As someone actually working in a factory, that quote from the simulation article tells me more about Ian Williams and his life experiences (or lack thereof) than it does about the popularity of those games.

I don't think those games are popular because of some high concept philosophical need to experience "a real job", I think they're popular because it is a well constructed version of a really dull thing. Without any of the negative aspects of those experiences. It's easy to ironically find enjoyment out of that.

What is interesting though, to me, is why the abstraction of an activity into game form turns it into a more attractive activity.

Why does their need to be theories of Destiny's story in terms of it being bad for a reason or all that other stuff? Is it really that impossible to fathom that maybe just maybe the story is just shit and after years of working on it Bungie just has Stockholm syndrome over it?

Just saying.

Agreed!

Not to say this is a new phenomenon or anything, but the age of the retweet has likely only exacerbated this problem even further in recent years. =/

From Ian Williams's "Rise of the Simulations"

'That’s if we work at all. As bad as many of our cities are, the spaces between them are crippled by a calculated abandonment of available work outside of Wal-Mart clerking and fast food assembly. Entire sections of the country are essentially on the dole right up until the time that the same folks who killed the industries that made those towns and small cities livable cut it off. As a culture, we’ve developed an utterly dysfunctional relationship with labor and our expectations of what it should be.'

Finally, someone else who realizes that Wal-Mart will one day turn our towns into Chinese factories where it's laborers work, eat, and sleep all in the same place.

@billyok: I agree with you, it rubbed me the wrong way as well. Of course, it was probably not written by a man in his best state of mind.

Honestly, I really hate Twitter. It seems like other than pithy jokes and self promotion (which it's pretty good for), it's just there to highlight and immortalize irrational reactions and ratchet down the nuance of any topic by several notches. The highlighted tweets are my least favorite part of Worth Reading - they're not, in my opinion, ever "worth reading," pretty much. I mean, what am I supposed to glean out of any of the above? Other than the cute picture of the Metroid mural thing, I don't see the value of any of those.

The "professional" reaction to the game was overwhelmingly positive. If you don't believe me, go look at the reviews. It was the people who didn't play the game for their job who hated it more.

@hellbound: I don't think you can really say the story is shit because there's so little of it... for me that's the biggest fault, they just didn't tell me enough, but I'll say this, it left me interested to learn more at least.

@mavs: That's not the impression I've gotten over the past years.

I would say this is the main reaction to the game. People who actually played the entire game seem to like it, but most people burned out on XIII long before the best parts because of its pacing problems. That leads to a lot of people having under-informed opinions of XIII, but feeling like they know all they need to know about the game. I played 20 hours of XIII and found all but the last few boss fights I played to be incredibly tedious. I could see that the game was about to open up, but I lost interest and other games came out.

@patrickklepek@zombiepie Thanks for the shout out in Worth Reading again!

I wonder if anybody has done a study on the effect of the retweet on public discourse. I feel like it has had a whole host of very unintended side effects.

But yeah I suspect you're right.

When it comes to the reception of Destiny and how it relates to Final Fantasy XIII, I see them quite similar; in that the only possible response to the wealth of criticism directed at them is just "no, but I like it though." It seems like everyone trying to defend Destiny tries to evaluate this game in some sort of vacuum.

I just finished listening to the most recent episode of the Superbestfriendcast and during their short conversation about Destiny, Liam claimed he really liked the multiplayer, to which Pat more or less responded "Really? I didn't like it at all."

"Why? It's really good."

"I just don't like it; Halo's is way better."

"Oh, well yeah."

There's the dividing line in how you can deal with Destiny. And that's similarly the dividing line in how well you can deal with modern Final Fantasy. Willing to evaluate this game in a vacuum, comparing it to no other games that exist? Then Destiny is technically proficient and competent and there's plenty of time you can spend with it. Comparing it to any other games that exist, or that developers prior work? You're going to be let down.

That, and like I said, the only possible response to the criticism I've seen of Destiny so far is "But I'm still spending a lot of time playing it, I like it, I dunno." Pages could be written about Destiny's shortcomings, pages and pages have been written about FFXIII's, but the only response you can really have to that is "Yeah, sure, but it's real to me dammit." And that's okay. I don't fault you for that. Everyone's allowed to enjoy Destiny and any other game for what it is. Just be willing to understand other people do not feel this way, and it's not because of "age" or "nostalgia" or "selective memories" because the arguments are right there, elaborately constructed, comprehensive, lengthy, and frequent. You like something that didn't set the world on fire and that's fine.

Talking about things worth reading: https://medium.com/@oliverbcampbell/when-a-black-game-journalist-spoke-up-on-gamergate-a1f36421022

@LunarJetman: Thanks for posting that - it was super interesting.

No one cares what Wil Wheaton has to say about anything.

@patrickklepek - I found the following an absolutely fascinating take on Internet celebrity (and Phil Fish). Totally worth a watch:

http://youtu.be/PmTUW-owa2wdd

Another quite interesting piece: https://medium.com/@ryansmithwriter/a-weird-insider-culture-d1c3cc644c29

That's really not accurate, though. It's possible to acknowledge flaws, but those flaws don't affect everyone in the same way. And that people don't articulate a proper response to the criticism isn't an indication that there's no proper response to give. If a person speaks of Destiny's multiplayer positively and another person says "Halo's was better," if the first person truly enjoys Destiny's multiplayer, then he or she should be able to articulate why that's the case, even in the context of other games. It's not only possible to enjoy these games, but to analyze and evaluate these games positively outside of a vacuum. "X" being better doesn't mean that "Y" isn't good, or worthy, or worthwhile.

"In the article I mentioned above, Petit mentions that Destiny has a lot of the same trappings as Star Wars. At the heart of this similarity is something we could call 'the evocation effect.' The perfect illustration of this effect is the Mos Eisley cantina scene from Star Wars. Luke Skywalker walks in, the camera cuts around the room and shows you lots of different kinds of characters, and then time goes on. The film tells you nothing about them, but they are intended to evoke a world beyond the camera. “Dang!” you’re meant to think, “I bet they all have stories!”

Well, I guess Petit has NO CLUE how 'the evocation effect' works, because the characters in the main story of Star War : A new Hope DO HAVE A DAMN STORY. It does not matter that that the bar patrons have no story; because Han, Luke and Obi Wan do have a story and Han even manages at his own story through aside dialogue with Chewbacca, and what he does say to Obi Wan.

Don't let Petit fool the gaming community with that terrible answer,because the Bungie team fucked up - PERIOD. Bungie knows they screwed up, or if they don't they are self deluded about how story telling works.

Purrsonally, I think Bungie could have done a much better job with Destiny's story, but they didn't try and instead used the lame excuse that it was an MMO so it didn't necessarily need the quality story, when in reality it did.

Busy work schedule the past couple of weeks left zero time for Worth Reading these past two weeks. Nice to be able to come back and catch up finally.