[Sketch]

Is there a topic discussing this already? Are we allowed to make topics about IC articles?

Anyway, just thought I'd say this piece by Brendan Lee is quite possibly the best games related piece of writing I've read in months... At least, since that Fire Engine story which spoke the truth about games journalism.

Raw linkage, because I'm too lazy to code it properly:
http://www.insertcredit.com/features/kane/

I loved this article, because it summed up what I've been thinking for a long time, but in a more concise way than I've managed to convey.

Not the whole "are games art?" nonsense. But why I don't get a buzz out of gaming like I used to. Why, despite owning dozens of recent triple-A titles, I've not finished any of them, and honestly can't be bothered to play them. I dip in for 10 minutes, get a buzz, and then leave...

I almost wish there were videogames which reveal all of their consumeable content in 10 minutes or less (and this content can be wholly consumed in the same time).

I ordered Gurumin recently, and this article made me think, will I bother completing that? Will I enjoy it to the fullest? Or because I have a disposable income, will I discard after a few hours and wait for the next game? I seem to spend more time talking about or reading about games than actually playing them.

But yeah, utterly brilliant article. Perfect. It really sums things up. The whole, there are two types of gamer: Those who look to the past saying it was better before, and those looking to the future, saying gaming can only get better... But no one is really satisfied in the NOW. And indie gamers; the whole poetry slam analogy thing can't really be bettered.

[Levi]

This was a really smart, concise article. A tad myopic, but well reasoned.

[kthorjensen]

In five years the "industry" is going to be so different it'll be almost pathetic. It's all going to be casual/downloadable.

ETA: with the exception of 5-8 AAA studios, much like the film industry now.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

That was a great article that just further confirms my worst fears about videogames in general.

I think I'm going to pick up a new hobby.
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[Deets]

[kthorjensen]

Sounds good to me too, why do you think I work for a casual games studio?
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[Maztorre]

This is pretty great, Brendan. Cheers for pointing out the elephant in the room where nobody even tries. Refreshingly bleak!

[DJ]

I can't help but feel like part of this is the normal "I liked games as a kid and now I don't; I can't really reconcile this with myself" stuff that gets brought up a lot. I liked the article, but I don't really agree with the viewpoint.

There's been plenty of amazing modern games; if the whole concept is simply not doing it for you anymore, don't play games anymore, that's all. If you don't like modern stuff at all -- if gaming has lost its shine for you in the here and now and you're just running on a good supply of nostalgia fumes at this point -- then there isn't going to be a single Citizen Kane game that will somehow make it all okay. Not because one can't (or hasn't already) been made, but because on a personal level you're no longer affected by it.

Because as far as really amazing modern-day games go, I'd say there's been been a lot of those all over the place in recent years. Gaming's better than its ever been. If nothing clicks anymore, the problem isn't the fans or the industry or anything else like that.

It's you.

That said, the viewpoint expressed in the article is a pretty god damn common one, and it was well expressed, so fair enough. It's just not a viewpoint I personally can really get behind.
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[Deets]

Yeah, I definitely agree with you, DJ.

[Cossix]

This is hard to phrase properly...

It seems like maybe Brendan is chasing a high perhaps? If you're playing games for nostolgia you're never going to be happy! There are plenty of good titles out that have come out recently and honestly a lot of older games just aren't really holding up in the face of them. Sure sometimes these really neat games don't do too well, but fuck, a lot of times really really good MOVIES or BOOKS don't do well either. It's kind of systemic to the entire entertainment industry! Much like the rest of the entertainment industry, a lot of stuff that is actually good does well too.

Sure there hasn't been a Citizen Kane in the video game world, but we have had a Half-Life 2 and a Gears of War and a lot of other things that are simultaneously interesting and tell at least decent stories AND play well.

Also I don't really think the rest of the entertainment industry necessarily needs to get involved in the video game creation process. It's happened a few times already and it's not been overly interesting (so far anyways, maybe Lost Oddesey will change this?), but you know people other than like computer scientists should be involved in the creation of worlds (not that these people are incapable of doing this sort of thing!). I'm fucking THRILLED that we are moving away from the whole 17-year old saving the world sort of thing in video games. I really feel like the story-telling in video games is kind of being driven by action games at this point and not really so much in RPGs which are so far beyond derivative almost at this point (there are exceptions!) that it must be almost impossible to make one that doesn't involve saving the world without your fanbase getting pissed at you.

Maybe what you are looking for is a short like, 2-4 hour game with a really really good story? I would pay for such a thing as well, but I doubt it would be much of a commercial success! The RPG and some other genres have kind of caused people to expect to have like EIGHT HUNDRED HOURS OF EPIC GAMEPLAY which has bled into the industry all over the place (people complaining that Crackdown is too short? It's almost perfect! Make short games with replayability!).

God this is probably the longest forum post I've ever made and it's probably really inconsistent and ADD or whatever. This sort of thing just bothers me though!

[Shapermc]

I think that many of these comments are missing the point.

The point isn't that the feeling is gone. The point actually happens somewhere around the paragraph starting with "Those industry jokes I mentioned -- Takeshi, Desert Bus -- are not fun games."

The part about "the feeling is gone" is just a red herring. The industry is aping "the feeling" and it just needs to grow the fuck up.

I will agree with pretty much everything from there on, whole heartedly. The only problem with is that there are people making games like Bruised, but they are getting completly ignored and most aren't even getting brought out as public releases.

Next week, I say pay attention to the Serious Games Summit at GDC and see what they show there.
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[Cossix]

[luvcraft]

I lost interest halfway through the article, but forced myself to keep reading, but then I gave up completely about two-thirds of the way through.

I liked Brendan's previous article about the idolm@ster (btw I cry when I masturbate), though.

I'm gonna agree with all the previous posters who said that this article is just about Brendan's discovering that he isn't as interested in video games now that he's a twenty-something as he was when he was ten. No more, no less.

Addressing the title of the article rather than its content: There is no Citizen Kane of books. There is no Citizen Kane of music. There is no Citizen Kane of graphic novels. There is no Citizen Kane of sculpture. There is no Citizen Kane of painting. There is no Citizen Kane of fashion design. There is no Citizen Kane of theater. There is no Citizen Kane of television. There is ONLY a Citizen Kane of movies. So why, for fuck's sake, should anyone expect a Citizen Kane of video games?
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[Shapermc]

I'll just say that while, in a general sense, I agree with a lot of the article, it's much more pessimistic than I would have written it.

I'll also say to: "How did we get the Digital Devil Saga game," that DDS is fairly formulaic.
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The bad sleep well at The Gamer's Quarter

[Shapermc]

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Shapermc]

I think you just ruined a joke.
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The bad sleep well at The Gamer's Quarter

[extrabastardformula]

Painting Dig Dug isn't about trying to remember. It's about the fun of painting using the shared experience of Dig Dug to make other people notice. I could grafitti any generic mascot inflating a bagel on a brick wall, but it would lack the connection of Dig Dug with his neon orange caption of "DA BAGEL WHORES"

[Cossix]

[Mr. Mechanical]

[luvcraft]

[Adilegian]

[SplashBeats]

Vision, that avatar & sig . . .

I'm speechless.

[ajutla]

The significance of Citizen Kane is that it communicates something that could not be communicated nearly as effectively within any other medium, using narrative techniques that are inherent and specific to film to do this. In a historic sense, it's an early technical accomplishment that you can point to and say "this is why film exists; this is how to use 'cinema.'"

In this context I think someone could make a pretty convincing case for Half-Life 2 as the Citizen Kane of videogames.

[luvcraft]

[Sketch]

I've never actually seen Citizen Kane... Does this make me an uncultured heathen?

[DJ]

[luvcraft]

[Adilegian]

[ajutla]

SELECTBUTTON.NET
This isn't mere misanthropy, but a sincere elitism.

[luvcraft]

[haze]

[special blend]

I liked the article mostly because of the 24 Hour Party People reference.

THUMB UP
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[icycalm]

I agree with my good friend DeusJester here.

Brendan Lee needs to stop playing the idolmaster and start hanging out with me in Akihabara. He needs to play GG Accent Core and Senko no Ronde in the arcades, and Gears of War co-op on a gigantic screen and 4-player Culdcept Saga matches on Xbox Live.

Brendan is not a "new games journalist", so I will spare him my anti-NGJ rhetoric, but yeah. NGJ people suck and know next to nothing about videogames. So if any of them are reading this right now please put down the thesaurus and go play some games. Your writing will be all the better for it.

[aerisdead]

person stating their interpretation of demarcation in this thread again

it is a shame because they ruined their post at the last second with it ;_;
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"Did you read that mr. ignorant new games journalist? YOU JUST DON'T FUCKING GET IT. "
-Alex Kierkegaard, better known as "Pikachu", irrationally responding to the wonderful gentleman who wrote the post you just read.

[Leau]

This whole article stinks of.... depression more than anything else. Well the obvious: Spending evenings alone sitting at home getting pickled and staring out the window. And the main hallmark of depression is and has always been losing interest in activities that used to be enjoyable. Lee's got that. I mean... who is this guy? Is he still around?



Oh and I agree wholeheartedly with DeusJester...

[Marshmallow]

[Mr Mustache]

[gutstank]

what if... the idea of art was approached as a meaningless distraction to the real point of anything... there are OBJECTS and some of them were made by people and some of them are worth discussing, and some aren't...

imagine if you didn't have sex because you were worried about the color of your condom... that's what "are games art?" feels like...

games have not had a citizen kane, and movies have not had a resident evil 4...

games will evolve just fine without a bunch of academics throwing in spanners by worrying far too much... we've got all these great new games, and all the old ones are being preserved... it's a golden era, and it can only get better as saturn emulation improves and the first workable PS2 emulators begin to emerge...

i looked at the article... individal parts scanned really well but as a whole it felt like a lot of pointless, unstructured fretting... felt like it was in danger of ending with a conclusion, but instead it just sort of ended... if he's just playing grinding games, of course he's obsessed!

he needs to take 12 weeks off games, completely... no games at all... dude just sounds miserable and depressed...

I suppose idol games will do that to you... me, i'm excited about super mario galaxy (first 5-Dish platformer? you have flat planes curved by a sort of videogame spacetime, all interconnected) or resident evil 5... games never die, but gamers do... sad

[Adilegian]

[luvcraft]