Post by invidninja92 on Oct 14, 2010 14:40:53 GMT
Today, Bennett The Sage of thatguywiththeglasses.com fame decided to post a video of his views on gaming apprently becoming 'stagnant'. To be honest I found the video to be pretty preposterous so I decided to write an e-mail. Sadly I have no idea what his address is, so for now I thought I'd post my views on it here for now. WARNING: This is extremely long.
Hi Bennett,
I know this message is extremely long but I would very much appreciate it if you took your time to read it as a fellow gaming enthusiast.
I recently watched your ‘Words of Wisdom’ video all about your views on the so-called ‘stagnation’ of today’s gaming industry; to say the least I disagreed with many of your points wholeheartedly. Now I’m not going to be discussing your views per se on the 3DS or even that of Microsoft’s and Sony’s new motion controllers as I, as well as yourself am not terribly interested in them at this point in time.
However, what I do have a problem with that I hope to outline to you clearly is your views on gaming in general and how I believe that this observed but decidedly cynical and venomous viewpoint by many internet reviewers and supposed ‘journalists’ is really what is hurting modern gaming. What I mean by this is that for me at the moment, gaming with people like you just does not seem to be about ‘fun’ anymore, instead this enjoyment is replaced by needless nitpicking and quite frankly transparent hypocrisy.
Firstly, I must address something that I am sure someone as intelligent as yourself already knows all too well. Let’s travel back to the early days of gaming, around the time of the Atari 2600 to be precise; now let’s observe the kinds of games commonly released for the system that are considered classics: Space Invaders, Missile Command, Star Raiders, Centipede, Demon Attack, Worm War One, River Raid, I could go on. What about the many more shooter ‘clones’ that have borrowed elements from R-Type? These include Blazeon, Violent Soldier and of course SNK’s Pulstar for instance. Going even further to the 16 bit and even aspects of the 32 bit era, there were numerous copycats of platforming icons such as Mario and Sonic which resulted in awful products like Bubsy and Awesome Possum along with excellent extensions like Konami’s Rocket Knight Adventures. What I am getting at is before people like yourself started doom-mongering over the ‘stagnation’ of modern video-gaming, previous generations of video games had very similar problems and the way you presented your argument makes it seem that modern gaming is the real bastion of unoriginality; We both should know that even the consoles we treasure from our youth were flooded with copycat titles that lacked courage or in your words ‘balls’. This for me was your most hypocritical statement, I know there is a stockpile of FPS’s flooding the market nowadays littered with borrowed mechanics and ideas; but the same can be said for the myriads of space shooters from the halcyon arcade days and even to a certain extent the glut of RPG’s on the Playstation after the success of Final Fantasy VII.
Now I maybe a young gamer about to reach adulthood, the kind of gamer that is looked on with disdain by cranky internet trolls who believe all I care about is whether ‘shit blows up real good’ or whether there are inane zombies to kill. Here is the thing; I have grown up with gaming pretty much all of my life and I have personally come to respect all types of genres of games as well as embrace titles be they innovative or indeed derivative across all platforms. For example I adore the often ignored Valkyria Chronicles as arguably one of the finest role-playing games of the modern era, but on the other hand I appreciate the WWII shooters such as Medal of Honour: Airborne almost if not just as much; here I am setting the example of being able to uphold the new ideas as well as promote the games that while relying on old formulas execute them in my opinion, to an exceptional standard. In fact to put this into perspective, without these two distinctly different games based around the common theme of war in both a faux and semi-realistic depiction of WWII respectively I would never have the full appreciation of 20th century history as well as war fiction such as Cross of Iron as well as Come and See that I do now. That goes to show that some modern games and yes even certain shooters for me, no matter how much they are derived from well worn concepts are just as powerful, enlightening and most of all entertaining as the games people hold as ‘high art’ that just happen to be from other genres like the works of Team Ico.
Put simply, I think your view on gaming stagnation is wrong as it reflects an uncomfortable notion that all games need to be unique as a necessity in order to be enjoyable and the products that just happen to be derivative need to be shunned out of existence. If every single game tried to be ‘unique’, gamers like you would become bored of them just like you are now with the ‘generic’ shooters of this generation. Try to please everybody and you will please no one.
Secondly, another problem I had with the video was your quite frankly patronising assumptions that the games which are supposedly ‘stagnating’ the market are all identikit ‘clones.’ I am referring to your multiple choice screen grab at the end where you wanted us to identify the FPS pictured. Easily I picked it up as Sniper: Ghost Warrior, yet you protracted this statement by naively assuming that all modern day shooters are indiscernible and that saturation has called this. I will put this frankly and in the least offensive way possible Bennett, I am not the idiot you think I or many other shooter enthusiasts are. Each of these games while based in modern day settings are all made by different developers, on varying budgets and fluctuating time scales. In my humble opinion, any knowledgeable gamer should be able to discern each game clearly, something you appeared to have undermined in a particularly mean-spirited way.
Now before you think I am going to constantly criticise you for your views, I will admit you appear to be someone of a vast amount of gaming knowledge more so than myself given that you are older than I; not to mention that given the content was only 5 minutes long it would have been extremely difficult to reinforce more points that emphasised that maybe modern gaming is not all that much different from our ‘paragons of lost youth’.
I honestly feel though, that more so than certain genres flooding the market with similar titles that gaming’s greatest problem facing it today is the hateful, venomous and cynical spiel brought on to us as an audience who not only wants to appreciate the medium but to just enjoy playing the games. Your one-sided diatribe hidden by eloquent speeches, vocabulary and sweeping generalisations don't make an intellectual discussion. This is why I admire the thoughts of gamers who actually do appreciate and enjoy games in equal measure without hiding behind lofty pretensions like say the AllGenGamers podcast with HappyConsoleGamer and PeteDorr; these are the people who keep me onto a hobby I have cherished since childhood.
For me it's because of cynical reviewers such as Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw and to a certain extent your opinions that for me is taking the fun out of gaming; almost as if you want me as a gamer to feel bad about buying the next wave of shooters instead of the latest indie masterpiece or whatever. Believe me when I say that I welcome innovation in gaming but I also welcome games that borrow ideas successfully. In closing Bennett, I do not believe for one moment that gaming has grown stagnant; if anything I feel more spoiled for choice now than I have ever been and I don't want reviewers spreading such vindictive, cynical statements that threaten to spoil the hobby for me and the millions of other enthusiasts who will most likely never get tired of it.
I hope you reply to this and I look forward to it.
From Oli
here is the link to the review: thatguywiththeglasses.com/bt/the-sage/wow/28167-ep-06-stagnation-of-gaming
Hi Bennett,
I know this message is extremely long but I would very much appreciate it if you took your time to read it as a fellow gaming enthusiast.
I recently watched your ‘Words of Wisdom’ video all about your views on the so-called ‘stagnation’ of today’s gaming industry; to say the least I disagreed with many of your points wholeheartedly. Now I’m not going to be discussing your views per se on the 3DS or even that of Microsoft’s and Sony’s new motion controllers as I, as well as yourself am not terribly interested in them at this point in time.
However, what I do have a problem with that I hope to outline to you clearly is your views on gaming in general and how I believe that this observed but decidedly cynical and venomous viewpoint by many internet reviewers and supposed ‘journalists’ is really what is hurting modern gaming. What I mean by this is that for me at the moment, gaming with people like you just does not seem to be about ‘fun’ anymore, instead this enjoyment is replaced by needless nitpicking and quite frankly transparent hypocrisy.
Firstly, I must address something that I am sure someone as intelligent as yourself already knows all too well. Let’s travel back to the early days of gaming, around the time of the Atari 2600 to be precise; now let’s observe the kinds of games commonly released for the system that are considered classics: Space Invaders, Missile Command, Star Raiders, Centipede, Demon Attack, Worm War One, River Raid, I could go on. What about the many more shooter ‘clones’ that have borrowed elements from R-Type? These include Blazeon, Violent Soldier and of course SNK’s Pulstar for instance. Going even further to the 16 bit and even aspects of the 32 bit era, there were numerous copycats of platforming icons such as Mario and Sonic which resulted in awful products like Bubsy and Awesome Possum along with excellent extensions like Konami’s Rocket Knight Adventures. What I am getting at is before people like yourself started doom-mongering over the ‘stagnation’ of modern video-gaming, previous generations of video games had very similar problems and the way you presented your argument makes it seem that modern gaming is the real bastion of unoriginality; We both should know that even the consoles we treasure from our youth were flooded with copycat titles that lacked courage or in your words ‘balls’. This for me was your most hypocritical statement, I know there is a stockpile of FPS’s flooding the market nowadays littered with borrowed mechanics and ideas; but the same can be said for the myriads of space shooters from the halcyon arcade days and even to a certain extent the glut of RPG’s on the Playstation after the success of Final Fantasy VII.
Now I maybe a young gamer about to reach adulthood, the kind of gamer that is looked on with disdain by cranky internet trolls who believe all I care about is whether ‘shit blows up real good’ or whether there are inane zombies to kill. Here is the thing; I have grown up with gaming pretty much all of my life and I have personally come to respect all types of genres of games as well as embrace titles be they innovative or indeed derivative across all platforms. For example I adore the often ignored Valkyria Chronicles as arguably one of the finest role-playing games of the modern era, but on the other hand I appreciate the WWII shooters such as Medal of Honour: Airborne almost if not just as much; here I am setting the example of being able to uphold the new ideas as well as promote the games that while relying on old formulas execute them in my opinion, to an exceptional standard. In fact to put this into perspective, without these two distinctly different games based around the common theme of war in both a faux and semi-realistic depiction of WWII respectively I would never have the full appreciation of 20th century history as well as war fiction such as Cross of Iron as well as Come and See that I do now. That goes to show that some modern games and yes even certain shooters for me, no matter how much they are derived from well worn concepts are just as powerful, enlightening and most of all entertaining as the games people hold as ‘high art’ that just happen to be from other genres like the works of Team Ico.
Put simply, I think your view on gaming stagnation is wrong as it reflects an uncomfortable notion that all games need to be unique as a necessity in order to be enjoyable and the products that just happen to be derivative need to be shunned out of existence. If every single game tried to be ‘unique’, gamers like you would become bored of them just like you are now with the ‘generic’ shooters of this generation. Try to please everybody and you will please no one.
Secondly, another problem I had with the video was your quite frankly patronising assumptions that the games which are supposedly ‘stagnating’ the market are all identikit ‘clones.’ I am referring to your multiple choice screen grab at the end where you wanted us to identify the FPS pictured. Easily I picked it up as Sniper: Ghost Warrior, yet you protracted this statement by naively assuming that all modern day shooters are indiscernible and that saturation has called this. I will put this frankly and in the least offensive way possible Bennett, I am not the idiot you think I or many other shooter enthusiasts are. Each of these games while based in modern day settings are all made by different developers, on varying budgets and fluctuating time scales. In my humble opinion, any knowledgeable gamer should be able to discern each game clearly, something you appeared to have undermined in a particularly mean-spirited way.
Now before you think I am going to constantly criticise you for your views, I will admit you appear to be someone of a vast amount of gaming knowledge more so than myself given that you are older than I; not to mention that given the content was only 5 minutes long it would have been extremely difficult to reinforce more points that emphasised that maybe modern gaming is not all that much different from our ‘paragons of lost youth’.
I honestly feel though, that more so than certain genres flooding the market with similar titles that gaming’s greatest problem facing it today is the hateful, venomous and cynical spiel brought on to us as an audience who not only wants to appreciate the medium but to just enjoy playing the games. Your one-sided diatribe hidden by eloquent speeches, vocabulary and sweeping generalisations don't make an intellectual discussion. This is why I admire the thoughts of gamers who actually do appreciate and enjoy games in equal measure without hiding behind lofty pretensions like say the AllGenGamers podcast with HappyConsoleGamer and PeteDorr; these are the people who keep me onto a hobby I have cherished since childhood.
For me it's because of cynical reviewers such as Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw and to a certain extent your opinions that for me is taking the fun out of gaming; almost as if you want me as a gamer to feel bad about buying the next wave of shooters instead of the latest indie masterpiece or whatever. Believe me when I say that I welcome innovation in gaming but I also welcome games that borrow ideas successfully. In closing Bennett, I do not believe for one moment that gaming has grown stagnant; if anything I feel more spoiled for choice now than I have ever been and I don't want reviewers spreading such vindictive, cynical statements that threaten to spoil the hobby for me and the millions of other enthusiasts who will most likely never get tired of it.
I hope you reply to this and I look forward to it.
From Oli
here is the link to the review: thatguywiththeglasses.com/bt/the-sage/wow/28167-ep-06-stagnation-of-gaming
