Fluidk

If social issues are considered politics, then everything is political.

As a lifelong gamer since the 80s, games have not gotten more political. But they absolutely have gotten more policed in terms of what you “cannot” do and say.

I am, and will always be, of the belief that the solution to all the problems in media is to have more creators making things. Anything you don’t like about gaming will be watered down when we have enough games to express the variety of opinions that exist in the world. This is how it has always worked with books. We need as many games as we have books.

As someone who doesn’t like AAA games or what Sony has done to the marketplace with trailer-driven hype machines, I think Gamepass is the savior of the industry. Just like Netflix, niche genres will get more attention because the platform wants breadth.

I find all the current hype over aphantasia to be fascinating. I am solidly in the “not” catagory. I have a very vivid minds eye and so I ALWAYS want things to be left up to my imagination. I used to look down on people who didn’t , but the talk about people who literally CANT imagine things makes me understand a whole lot more and see how it’s useful for other people.

For instance, I HATE voice acting in games. I can read at least 3x faster and the voices in my head are usually much better than the voices in the game. But if you can’t do that, I understand how the drama of the voiceovers could add something to a game.

Persona;ly I think it depends on what you think a “fighting game” is. As someone who grew up playing almost every fighter on snes and ps1, the hey-day, it’s been dead for decades. The decision to cater to “hardcore fighting game fans” at the expense of the stuff that mattered to me like new characters and storylines meant the genre left me behind.

And, yes, I do think that the era of the “hardcore fighting game” might be slipping since it’s harder to recruit people into the ultra technical scene.

But there is also no such thing as a genre dying. All it takes is one game to land and suddenly people will be saying it’s “relevant again!!” Or whatever bullshit they say.

Sierra

Lucasarts

Bullfrog

Origen systems

Squaresoft

Single Trac

Planet Moon

@topcyclist: I used to like paying attention to cheat codes in the nes and snes era, but I complete;y lost any interest over time. It occurred to me that it’s because games aren’t challenging anymore. As such, the idea of “cheats” becomes somewhat meaningless. Like, with “recharging health” and whatnot, every game is basically nothing BUT cheats these days.

@kaname: I think maybe a lot of the back pain is due to how much sitting we do as a culture.

I’m currently on a journey toward realizing just how much the average American is destroying their body. Our bodies were made to move. In every direction. So if you ARENT, you’re basically mistreating your body. It’s not a matter of not being a “jock”, it’s killing yourself. Specifically, your body was made to squat. Squatting should be as comfortable as standing or sitting. It is in other cultures. But Americans are so into “efficiency” and “economy” that we put everything at counter level so that you have to move as little as possible to do anything. I even saw a new pair of shoes that self-tied, promising that “you never need to bend over again”.

If you have ANY trouble bending over or squatting, that’s your body already giving you the warning cry for help.

@bigsocrates: it’s not a money thing. It’s a direction thing. There are other, CHEAPER ways to do the graphics in BD and have it look better. Like, for instance, using the concept art in character portraits like the old days.

The game just looks goofy and it was a decision. I Am Setsuna got to the point where I didn’t see it as much, so I may get used to it here. But yeah, the style is painful.

If it’s not illegal, it’s not a story in my opinion.

The original Fallout 2 had a “child killer” perk that featured Vault boy kicking a pregnant woman in her belly. They didn’t ship it with the graphic, but the perk remained. As did killing kids.

The constant investigation of all people affiliated with a game and the determining that they must be “righteous” or the games industry will blacklist them is troubling in the extreme.

If you don’t like what a game is doing, just do t play it. If so,etching criminal happens, like child porn, call the authorities. Otherwise... what’s the story here?

@bigsocrates: I think you are misunderstanding me. I never said anything about how LONG you played a game. I’m talking about the focus of a game. And yes, I suppose length extends from that.

Grand Theft Auto changed the gaming landscape because Grand Theft Auto 3 was a phenomenal game in which almost every aspect was bad. The shooting in gta3 was bad. The punching in gta3 was bad. The driving in gta3 was bad. The racing was bad. Etc. but the combined total of ALL of those things together was outstanding. And, thus, the games industry was forever changed and the open-world model of quantity over quality was born. “Who cares if any one thing is fun? Just make sure they always have icons on the map that they can do at any time!”

In the NES era, you didn’t race, boat, fly, fight, and everything else in the same game. You had a game for each of those.

I always say that games in the NES era were much better. This is false, of course, but it’s also true, in a way, because a game showed you EXACTLY what it was in the first 5 seconds of play. If a game wasn’t any good... you just didn’t PLAY it. There was no, “let’s play this for 15 hours and see if it gets better”. In almost every game, what you were doing in minute 1 is the same thing you are doing in minute 81. If you do t like it, dont play it.

That’s just more... honest to me. I don’t know why we discourage that.