EternalGamer2

Though I believe I share Patrick's political and social perspectives, I've sometimes been critical of what I've seen as unnecessary grand standing or choir preaching. But when it comes down to it, I'd far rather have someone guilty of that who gives a damn than someone who doesnt.

While I read this post, I literally started crying. Crying about a writer leaving a videogame website. I am cynical bastard and there is probably nobody else leaving any other site that could have ellicted that response.

I'm going to miss the fuck out of you at GB, Patrick. Over the years you became my favorite crew member for both your willingness to fight fights and your intellectual curiosity. I'm going to also deeply miss Bombing The AM, my daily 4 mile walks with my dog will now have a void of videogame chatter I know not how I'll fill.

Deep down despite part of me fearing political grand standing and cultural bifurication, a bigger part of me fears cultural, intellectual,and political complacency. And I fear that is what GB may become without Patrick around to challenge lethargic irony. But I also kind of fear Patrick will go too far in the opposite direction without GB to reign him in just a tad. Patrick challenged the sites homogenity and I appreciate that.

I'll follow where you go, Pat.

@fengshuigod:

This is exactly what I was trying to get at earlier. It really bums me out that people have become so relativistic that they aren't even willing to call out a lack of substance. This is the dark side of post-modern influence on pop-cultural opinion where people adopt The Dude's "that's just like your opinion man" attitude as a non-ironic creed. If there is anyone in society who plays a role to respond to that kind of attitude and who should willing to draw distinctions between cultural productions worthy of attention and shallow ephemera, it's the media critic.

I'm no cultural snob. For example, I largely think Humanism's, and subsequently academia's, attempts to sectioning off capital "L" literature as special cultural artifact and as cultural panacea is pretty much the worst thing to happen to literature. And I think there is room for guilty pleasures of some sort. But there has to be some room left for some lines in the sand to be drawn at least among critics. The philosophy Patrick espouses in this piece that we should all uncritically admire someone who can "play the fame game" and the implicit endorsement of the idea that critics shouldn't be concerned with calling out "empty calories" is one that I find extremely disappointing.

Roger Ebert wrote an amazing essay on this topic called "I'm a Proud Brainiac." It responds to fan reactions to his Transformers Movie Review and elucidates what he feels is his position as a cultural critic. I highly recommend everyone read it. It's a defense of intellectualism and pop culture criticism written in a very workman like language that is incredibly grounded, sincere, and heartfelt.

RIP, Rog, you were one of the good ones. My generation and subsequent seemingly don't have it in them to carry on the good fight. You are painfully missed.

@jumbs: There have but not to the extent it exists today. And I never said anything about her not being a "smart business woman" (though I'm not sure how anyone would know this because I'd be willing to bet anything that someone else, probably a committee of people, are making a lot of the business decisions). This isn't about her or her marketing team's ability to smartly manipulate a system. It is about what is celebrated in American pop-culture and taking issue with WHY it is celebrated.

Patrick's perspective that "empty calories are not the end of the world" is one that I personally strongly disagree with. Not because I entirely disagree with the notion of an occasional guilty pleasure, but because American culture overrun with them. Hell, even our news media has become little more than "guilty pleasure" entertainment where ideological viewpoints are validated through constant ego massage (left or right).

While I don't expect all cultural critics to necessary hold back the ocean with a broom, I'd appreciate it if they didn't just take a laissez faire attitude towards the problem. If this critical attitude doesn't breed political and cultural complacency, it at least is making the decision to make no attempt to stand apart from it. And I find that depressing. Critics should strive to stand apart from it. Elsewise I don't know what makes it worth a damn.

"Two, people are dicks about Kim Kardashian. People really dislike her, and I can't quite figure out why. She's played the celebrity game pretty damn well. If everyone could do it, they would"

I want to address this point because I desperately hope we are not at a point in evolution of pop-culture to where we can no longer object to fame due to a lack of talent and substance. It is really sad to me that in the 21st century people become famous not because of their amazing talent but their amazing talent to "play the celebrity game." People hate Kim Kardashian not because they are misogynistic or because "stop liking what I don't like," but because she is a metonym for bankrupt pop-cultural system that has nothing to say outside of it's product placement.

There is room for cultural critique on the basis of shallowness. I'm not sure what is wrong with that.

I don't have any problem with Kim Kardashian as a person and I think there is no need to lob personal insults at her. But if we lose the ability to criticize cultural productions, even pop-cultural productions, on the basis that they have nothing of value to say, then I don't know what to say.

Eta?

@nmarebfly: She deserves all the hits she gets. The progress she has made in a total natural way just shows how well designed the game really is for those who pay attention and how much it rewards that kind of careful play and observation. As nmarebfly mentioned, she is now up to Anor Londo boss (just about) but here are just a few of the things she found out all by herself w/ no help from anyone:

-read key description after Gargoyeles dropped it and found lower Undeadburg.

-Figured out how to use curse stones by reading the description

-Found her way back to Undead Asylum just by careful observation and exploration in Firelink.

-Found the bondfire at the top of Sen's Fortress the first time she made it to the top.

-Found Dusk (character you talk to to access DLC) and has learned about the legend of Aratorias through NPC and item descriptions.

-Found the entrance to and completed the Painted World.

Watching her play as actually taught me a lot of cool touches about the narrative I didn't even know about because she reads all the item descriptions and puts stuff together via thinking out loud about what she knows so far.

Actually ANYBODY who thinks' it's not posible for an average gamer to figure out Dark Souls by themselves should check out Kay Plays Dark Souls. You can gradually see how a totally average player can figure out all those things you thought you had to look up to learn about just by talking to all the NPCs to get advice, reading all the item descriptions, and carefully looking around the levels. She does it all blind and cold, with no advice from anyone ever, not even online soapstones. And she makes good progress each stream.

Kay Plays Dark Souls - Blind Play Through

Dark Souls isn't imposible to uncover, videogame dudes. Unless you think Kay is just way way smarter and better than you at videogames. Then again, maybe she is...

This is a good write up, though I think you focus a bit too much on the intimidation and the challenge of the game and end up selling much of the game's accomplishments short. It's not just that it is challenging. It is also that it has a genuine since of exploratory adventure because it's secrets nor it's narrative framework are not obvious. And this includes everything from mysterious items and character narratives to secret passages and cryptic covenants. Sure, you might not figure it all out yourself, but you don't have to figure out everything to progress either. It's there for you to ponder and discover, alone or with friends.

I also just kind of disagree of how obtuse or hard it is often portrayed. All the game really asks of you in terms of exploration is that you read item descriptions and carefully look around environments to piece things together. Kay Plays Dark Souls is a blind run by an average gamer (actually she describes herself in the first video in much more modest terms) and she's pretty much uncovered all of it's secrets by herself just by smart observation and patient exploration. Again, she does this with no help from anyone. She doesn't even play online and get the soapstone hints. And she does just fine because she pays attention, reads the description of every item she comes across, talks to all NPC characters to mine their information, and explores carefully

I think the main thing I would say that separates Dark Souls is that it demands your full attention in terms of understanding and engaging it's combat, but also in terms of how you explore the world or uncover the narrative. We really do live in a multi-tasking world where most games are afraid to ask too much of us because we are doing fifty other things. Hell, the games themselves are not even confident enough in their ability to be worth our undivided attention so they constantly put big blinking markers showing us where to go because they are too afraid their narrative isn't interesting enough for us to care to listen to it. Or they throw up a bunch of achievements with random challenges because they think their combat systems aren't interesting enough on their own.

We are not used to a game that requires us to pay attention the thing we just picked up or one that does not allow us to get away with button mashing while we daydream about what we should fix for dinner. But Dark Souls forces you to be engaged and that leads to a level of immersion few games can offer. Immersion in a game world is ultimately not about graphics or requiring fast reflexes. It is about creating a world that demands you invest all your mental energy into and rewards that investment. Dark Souls doesn't require lightening fast reflexes or reading intricate FAQs to learn how to mid-max character builds. It just assumes that when you sit down to play a videogame, you actually want to fully invest in playing a motherfucking game, and not halfheartedly go through the motions while you do or think about a thousand other things.

Most games want to engage in small talk with the player while you both sit around and check your social media and drink beer. Dark Souls has the confidence to demand your undivided attention for a real conversation.

It takes some really damn amazing sophistry to claim that selling games for really cheap prices rips people off while selling them at full price and never discounting them is advantageous to consumers.

Some people may buy tons and tons of games they never play but those people clearly have plenty of expendable income and like to support developers. By never putting your games on sale, you are preventing a portion of your audience from ever having the chance to try them out. It's even worse when the only time you discount it is BEFORE the game comes out and thus before consumer have a chance to hear enough impressions to know if it is worth their time and money. By claiming you are only going to discount games before they are released, you are basically trying to force consumers to make uninformed decisions.

Things that cost less give more people the opportunity to buy and enjoy them. This is the most basic of basic economic points. People who only spend $3 on a game rather than $10 have $7 more dollars they can spend on something else: another game, money towards a retirement fund, a donation to charity. If people pay less for something it ALWAYS is an advantage for them. ALWAYS. I really can't believe this argument. It's really and truly absurd.

I'll give Rohrer credit, it takes a really smart person to try to convince people that it is to their advantage to not be able to wait and buy something on sale. If he doesn't want to discount his game or thinks that he can't afford to do so, that's perfectly fine. But to argue that this somehow is advantageous to consumers is just plain dishonest.

@metalbaofu said:

I guess you are right in the sense that it would be unfair to ask them to play games on their personal time just to have something to talk about (but I think it's a pretty weird assumption to make that there is no game they could possibly be interested in playing during that time). As I said earlier in the thread, this is one of the nice thing when the site was a bit more review focused. At least then someone was guaranteed to spend (office?) time to see a game through to completion. As I've said before I don't particularly have an agenda even towards what games/systems they cover in the podcast (I tried to make the example list a bit representative). But admittedly it is hard to have a real conversation when all you do is dabble in a bunch of different games for 10-20 minutes each during quicklooks and never really dig in.