NathHaw

On the Giant Bomb subreddit, somebody started a topic about what game it was during the 2018 GotY discussion that made Vinny get choked up. It was Florence. I had never played that game, but somebody in one of the posts recommended a video "let's play" of it.

This is coming from not having physically played Florence myself, but I have played games that it reminded me of it, e.g., Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Games like these show us how the medium can be so different and excel in areas like tactile response, an area where movies lack. When we see in Florence how putting puzzle pieces of a moment in the game together that are trying to slowly drift apart as something in the game is coming undone can make the player feel invested in a way that a movie could not exactly replicate. As that was happening, I realized that this is one of those things that sets games apart and makes me appreciate when somebody does something very cool and pretty unusual with the medium. That was just one small example of what Florence did to create an experience that deserves to be praised.

Twitch is a very big medium made of many types of people including the ones who don't like drama. I can watch someone play FFIV or Tactics, and it's very low key then immediately switch over to people around a table playing a board game. You make it what it is, but I agree in that Twitch has allowed many people to use it to their own detriment.

@bisonhero: When I sometimes think about how grown up gaming is as a whole, I often think about the voice-over delivery for even many of the "mature" games. I am sure that delivery often has to do with how voice acting is a small field and how the characters and monsters in games can be voiced only so many ways, which requires vocal gymnastics to a probably significant degree, but these voices frequently sound like they belong in a child's program.

From villains in the Arkham games to Barret in FFVII Remake (appreciated the Red XIII voicing for the most part though), they sound ridiculous so often -- and have for so long -- that I think we don't even notice really how strange it is; people who don't play a lot of games or people who only notice them casually at a Walmart probably don't see them on the same level as movies as a whole in part because they aren't.

@hermes: Jason and Leigh have not yet played the game, but Jason did say he is eager to.

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I still see some people thinking Jeff was basically comparing the quality of TLoU2 to Schindler's List. I think he was just saying that the game is like the movie in that it has a different goal than most games or movies, which is to make you feel something other than good/fun. Jeff was not getting all that excited as everybody keeps saying. Excited? Sure, a little, I guess -- but he wasn't just talking nonsense, saying the game was as narratively good or important (or anything like that) as Schindler's List.

edit: But really, if your tweet caused this much confusion, it's best to just delete it, which he did, rather than have to defend it over and over from misunderstanding.

I pretty much get what you mean, but this part about "among peers" does actually seem to be what is in contention. The most unoriginal tweet of the last few days in the video games twitterverse maybe goes to some version of: LOL TLoU2 is just a zombie video game and not Schindler's List.

Incidentally, this might be true that they are not on the same level. I am not arguing that either way. I just think that some video game industry peers still don't view the biggest, highest rated releases as an art as legitimate as movies (again, not saying they should have or need to).

@plan6: It's possible they really were offended by his coverage so much so that they can't even hide it. They sometimes let it boil over and respond to him on twitter, calling him things like "mean" for example. Another word one of them wrote in all caps was part of some phrase similar to "write the WHOLE story." Seems they think he was unfair, and it's caused at least some of them to show their disapproval.

I think there is a chance that Jason meant the tweet to be a little more easy going initially -- not totally but somewhat, especially in consideration of his first response to Jeff, which seemed like he mostly wanted Jeff to know some people might take issue with Jeff's tweet. It seemed to escalate a bit more when Jeff implied by tweet that Jason was doing it because of "manufactured outrage," which Jason said pissed him off. Then Jason tweeted that Jeff should have just called him an SJW, which seemed to target Jeff with a whole bunch of other implications.

Sometimes I wonder how much of this is a case of "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions." Some devs probably are being exploited and overworked, but I imagine in some cases developers understand the working conditions they will have to endure and readily agreed to it in order to work for whatever company hired them.

It makes me also think about how change in this area could lead to smaller increases in wages overtime from companies in order to compensate for the projection of potential crunch and the prediction of public relations that might arise, i.e., the company knows it will have to give more money or time off for the crunch, so they just will pay less to begin with.

Wizardry VII is one of my favorite games of all time, and I really like Wizardry 8 as well. I would love for another one to come along that could stand up to its predecessors. In the meantime, I still play new "blobbers" whenever one is released that catches my eye, which seems to be a little more often following Legend of Grimrock. I still prefer turn-based combat though even though I'm thankful LoG game helped bring in new fans to the genre.

Nice write-up.