Chopper wrote: ↑July 21st, 2019, 8:49 am
I hate how COD and Sports Games are used as a way to dismiss a whole swathe of gamer culture - both have massive and vibrant communities in their own right.
Fair point, but I wasn't trying to dismiss their entire fanbases. I was only using them as examples of games that do have massive casual followings, because that's what sales figures and player data indicate. I have no doubt that they have plenty of more dedicated players, but you also can't deny the sheer number of people who are buying every new iteration sight unseen because they assume that it will automatically be superior to the last one or because they want to keep their kids quiet over the holidays.
It's this default assumption of "XX 2019 > XX 2018" that I take issue with, not so much the games themselves.
Chopper wrote: ↑July 21st, 2019, 8:49 am
Beethoven's 5th being performed on NES-equivalent technology
I know you're joking, but I think there is an interesting point to be made here. I will admit that much of the issues I've expressed here can be traced back to gaming's very specific combination of art and technology. Because yes, obviously technology improves over time. Comparing, say,
The Witcher 3 with
Ocarina of Time is gonna make it very obvious which one is the technologically superior title of the two. And there is nothing wrong with pointing that out and appreciating the audiovisual luxury of modern production values.
The problem is when that same rhetoric is being applied to the artistic side of games or as a way to evaluate design choices that aren't a matter of technological advancement. That's where I think a lot of gaming criticism takes a wrong turn and allows recency bias to creep in.
Chopper wrote: ↑July 21st, 2019, 8:49 am
I lean that way for most cuture though. If you compare
The daVinci Code to
Ulysses, one has brought pleasure to millions, and the other has brought pleasure to thousands. What's best - reaching millions of new and old readers, or catering to the rarefied tastes of the 'elites'? I know which one I enjoyed more.
Again, fair point. But the thing is that those two books aren't at odds with one another. They may have different target audiences, but both are freely available, equally affordable, and the less approachable one is regularly being celebrated as one of the best examples of its craft instead of being smeared for the level of reader investment it requires. People just read the one they prefer and everybody is happy and gets along in the end.
Ulysses is a very interesting choice in terms of an elitist novel that is difficult to enjoy and/or recommend despite its pedigree. Now please compare and contrast the tone and content of
the first Ulysses review I found with those of
the MGS HD Collection review by IGN. Both reviews are of similar lengths, so I think that's a fair comparison. See what I mean? The first one shortly acknowledges the works's inherent hurdle but primarily focuses on the merits of its prose, plot, structure, etc... Whereas the second one is
dripping with recency bias, reads almost like an apology letter by way of obsessing about the technical side of things and barely touches upon the games' main selling point (story) beyond the most superficial of observations. One is a critique, the other is a lowest-common-denominator's buying guide.
Let me put it this way: If the gaming cultural landscape mirrored the literary cultural landscape in terms of logistics, availability, criticism, civility, etc... then believe me, I would be a hell of a lot less salty about everything.
Chopper wrote: ↑July 21st, 2019, 8:49 am
I can't see it changing much.
Well, me neither. Like you said, it is what it is. But the reason I'm critical of this rampant recency bias is because I see it lay the groundwork for a number of other issues. Most of the problems affecting our medium (creative impoverishment in the AAA sphere, dubious business practices, appalling preservation / archiving standards, to name but a few) can be traced back to the player base's inertia and reluctance to care about anything beyond the latest and shiniest being brought to them on a conveyor belt. Nothing ever exists in a vacuum and I think there is a very unhealthy feedback loop at play here.
Alex79uk wrote: ↑July 21st, 2019, 10:14 am
Surely that argument only works if the latest versions of consoles are exactly the same as the last? People wouldn't trade in a piano every few years because a piano built 200 years ago is virtually identical, technologically speaking, to a piano built today.
Okay well, let me rephrase it as "you don't see many musicians talking about trading in their violin for a piano every five years." I believe that analogy should work better, no? And the reason you don't see that is because they respect their art form to a much higher degree than we do, as a whole. They manage to look past the price tag and don't regularly trample all over things out of some blatant sense of stinginess and entitlement. That's my point.
Alex79uk wrote: ↑July 21st, 2019, 10:14 am
No, you can't be so dismissive of huge groups of people because they don't have the exact same ideals as you. For most gamers, money is a huge factor.
Money is a factor when it comes to any hobby and, if anything, gaming has one of the most lenient "price-per-hour of entertainment" ratio out there. It can be a surprisingly cheap endeavor if you include second-hand price deflation, digital sales and console bundles. And yet, video game players spend more time than other communities obsessing about getting the most bang for their buck and I firmly believe that the reason for this are the aforementioned recency bias and a general unwillingness to differentiate between quality and quantity.
Alex79uk wrote: ↑July 21st, 2019, 10:14 am
Just because people don't have the capacity or inclination to deeply analyse and critique certain aspects of games doesn't mean they don't appreciate them.
Oh, I don't doubt that many people "appreciate" plenty of different things for all sorts of reasons. But the word I used was "
respect". I stand by that. The video game community at large is constantly showing utter disrespect towards the medium they profess to love, certainly more so than any other similar community I'm aware of.
Don't just take my word for it, btw. Go spend half an hour on the music forum I linked to yesterday if you don't believe me. Pay attention to the way they phrase things. Pay attention to what they're saying and what they're not saying. And then go to any gaming forum of your choice. It's night and day.
Alex79uk wrote: ↑July 21st, 2019, 10:14 am
But how a game plays now, compared to modern games,
is relevant to the discussion. I remember before you used an argument with Resident Evil saying if tank controls were fine back then, they're still fine now. I think tank controls are fine, but that's irrelevant. For many people not used to them or didn't play the games back in the day, then that will be a hurdle to overcome. If you're discussing a game, I believe it can only ever be reviewed or assessed relative to the present day.
Well, I completely disagree with that last sentence. But I also completely understand what you're saying. I think we're just looking at the same subject through two opposite lenses, really. I get the impression that you're viewing video game conversations as being primarily about people's experience and interaction with the material, whereas I'm much more interested in dissecting and criticizing the material itself.
In practice it means that for you, the hurdle you've just described should be part and parcel of the conversation because it is in fact something that will impact many people's experience. I on the other hand think that the onus of dealing with such hurdles should be on the players themselves and that focusing on this type of stuff only ever leads to stacking the deck unfairly against older / atypical works and to a rampant homogenization of the medium.
Looking at it from that perspective, I think we're both right. I'm willing to admit that my approach can be cold and off-putting. And I hope you won't take it the wrong way if I point out that your approach indirectly leads to numerous babies being thrown out with the bathwater.
Alex79uk wrote: ↑July 21st, 2019, 10:14 am
The phrase 'by modern standards' does come up quite frequently in film or television discussion, and I don't understand why it shouldn't be.
The reason that phrasing is problematic is because it's only ever being used to compare older titles unfavorably to newer ones. 90% of the time that the phrase is being used, it's to establish the older game's inferiority: "Game X
doesn't live up to modern standards". The remaining 10%, it's to reluctantly establish some sort of parity: "Surprisingly enough, Game X does
hold up to modern standards". But you will never, ever hear it being used as a positive in the form of: "Game X
surpasses modern standards". That just doesn't happen. You know why? Because the assumption that modern games are fundamentally superior to older ones by default is completely baked into the cultural context these discussions take place in. According to that premise, the very best an older game can hope for is to be viewed as the basic equivalent of a modern one. And like Michiel pointed out, nobody ever even thinks of judging modern games by "classic standards".
It's not the words themselves that are the problem. It's the way people use them which betrays their innate bias.