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Also, Begins has a city that feels like a place; Gotham feels distinct from any actual city on our Earth. In TDK, it feels like Nolan said, "**** it, it's Chicago, all right?" TDK's still a fascinating accomplishment, but as pure entertainment, I think Nolan's first feels like a movie with a beginning, middle, and end.
Zimmer's score seems essentially the same for both movies, and I agree that it's one of his better ones. He gets a bad rap, but he's got some range - contrast 'A League Of Their Own' with 'The Thin Red Line' with 'The Lion King' with 'Gladiator' . . .
It's missing 'Captain America', though for me that's a B-, and 'X-Men2', which I give a strong A-. And 'Mystery Men' was a mess, but a fun mess. I can't give any film that used William H Macy as The Shoveler lower than a C.
Yes on the latter. Loved it, my favorite Stephenson. I do wonder if Cryptonomicon would seem dated upon a re-read.
I recently purchased the group project Stephenson has been working on, The Mongoliad, but haven't started it yet.
The games that are trying to push the boundaries of narration, visual/audio expression, and emotional experience are the ones that are going to pave the way for the medium to evolve into a cluster of entertainment, art, interaction, & emotional resonance that can only be possible through a video game.
Elaborating (only barely) on a previous post of mine, I'd say the "game" part of the genre limits the cluster you speak of for many, many people. One doesn't need to literally, actually, actively compete to experience art and emotional resonance in the majority of other types of media video gaming is looking to compare itself to in these debates. I'm not sure what's going to evolve, what sort of enhanced reality, but a LOT of people don't consider the competition part of gaming worth enduring for whatever payoff will come from the list you give there.
I didn't see either of those films.
I prefer The Dark Knight to Begins because it has a much better villain.
I stand by The Shadow. It has some very nice visuals and an excellent score. At times, it feels like a superhero film Fritz Lang might have made, or maybe a follower of Lang's (despite the videos for "Hungry Like the Wolf" and "Video Killed the Radio Star", Russell Mulcahy isn't, of course, in the Lang class) -- it feels of the time of its setting more than of the time of its making. So I find it to have a certain charm. And a Jim Steinman song over the closing credits!
I rather enjoyed "The Shadow", silly though it may have been. It's a fun movie, even if it's not particularly serious or self-important.
It's interesting to compare it with "The Phantom", a movie from the same era inspired by subject matter from the same era, and yet wound up almost as a parody of itself.
(The Phantom — which I did kind of like — suffered the same fate. When your movie slogan is "SLAM EVIL!", you're not really trying. Young Catherine Zeta Jones sighting in that one, she looked breathtakingly gorgeous.)
Preach on!
==
Look, I understand the argument - video games are an interesting new medium with untapped potential, they become more ingrained in our culture every year, and anyone curious about the development of American culture probably ought to be paying attention to this.
I think Bissell drives at this point with some humility-- as important as games are in the aggregate, it's really difficult to argue that someone is missing some sort of crucial cultural moment by not paying attention to the latest reskinning of Call of Duty. Games are great at some things, but if the level of raw sexism and racism present in some games simply isn't tolerated in other media, let alone in their most celebrated titles.
The simple fact is, as scott pointed out above, that there are more people, across virtually every demographic, playing video games today than there were 5 or ten years ago. My grandmother was beating my scores on Angry Birds after 5 minutes playing, but she's not picking up a controller and headset to play Modern Warfare anytime soon. This does not mean that Angry Birds is not a game, or that its players are less "gamers" than those who play CoD, unless you're using that term as a cudgel to elevate some people's activities while dismissing others.
I just refreshed and saw hokineer's excellent post in #600-- a lot of these issues revolve around how you identify "cultural significance". Does this happen once the work has been authored, even if there's only a small handful of people encountering it, or does the work need wide diffusion before we're ready to say that it's crossed some threshold of significance? Every medium, of course, has faced this challenge.
I don't think I've ever grown to hate a game quite like that one. I was really excited when I started playing it, but it's probably the most disappointing game I've played for the current generation of consoles. When I started, I thought that the graphics were great, the soundtrack was fantastic, and it was fun to drive around the city.
Around halfway through the game, I realized that it never makes sense to drive anywhere (you can let your partner drive from mission to mission, and it just skips the driving time) because if you hit anything, you lose points off your mission score. Also, it takes a long time to drive across the city and it gets really tedious. The real problem, though, is the game really shouldn't be an open sandbox-style game. There is literally nothing to do in the city. You can't go into any buildings. You can't interact with any of the people on the streets. There's hidden stuff to find, but it doesn't do anything. It's all pointless window dressing.
Also, the plot completely (at least for me) goes south around halfway through the game. Starts with fun tutorial missions, then there's some great murder cases. After the first few missions (I don't want to spoil anything), the plot just takes a dramatic nosedive and I wound up hating all the characters in the game. A few hours into it, all the fun missions are over and you just end up in shootout after shootout.
The gameplay isn't anything special, either. For the investigative side, the game holds your hand to help you find clues, solve puzzles, and figure out where to go. The interrogation doesn't really matter. Sometimes what your character says doesn't really match up well with the interrogation path you've selected (either because the clue doesn't really match up with what you're saying, or you tell him to go easy on a witness and he starts shouting), but none of it really matters and you'll solve the case no matter what you say. The shoot outs are just about going from one cover point to the next. There's nothing really interesting there, so once the plot stopped being interesting, I couldn't wait for the game to end.
YMMV, there are far more people praising the game than people like me, but I just couldn't get past the fact that almost nothing you do (save getting killed in a shootout) actually impacts the game in any way. The soundtrack is great, and the first couple hours are a lot of fun, but I certainly wouldn't buy it.
Did you make it through all of Baroque Cycle?
Extra Lives is worth snagging. A quick but satisfying read, really similar to his stuff on Grantland (journalism mixed with autobiography mixed with cultural criticism).
Every page. Loved it as well, and it was my favorite until I read Anathem. The latter is just perfectly in my wheelhouse. (His next is rumored to be straight sci-fi, so I wait impatiently.)
Did any of you gamers have thoughts on #602?
Competition doesn't have to be there, only if you want it to be.
A lot of people, including myself at times, enjoy playing competitive shooters or sports games. I personally don't care much for the anonymous online competition, I prefer the person-to-person interaction with a competitive video game as the vehicle, similar to say a game of chess or slow pitch.
But games do not have to be like that. For example, what is competitive about Super Mario Bros? Is it competition against the mythical AI to rescue the princess? Is it the finality of failure? If you wanted to keep playing SMB over and over to try and beat your high score or get all the coins, then yeah then it becomes a game. But there is no reason one has to consume the media that way. At it's core, is SMB any different than Liam Neeson's movie Taken? The difference is in Taken you are told/shown how the protagonist saved his loved one. The events have already transpired and we are just told the story. In SMB, you are the protagonist, building your own story (limited and crudely) of how you saved your loved one. The core narrative is no different, it's just the way the information is presented.
I vastly preferred Heavy Rain to LA Noire. Similar game play idea, but I loved the story in Heavy Rain, where as the story and set up of La Noire completely robbed it of momentum.
I'll go back and give Anathem another crack. The trick with Stephenson is to get past the first 150 pages or so; once he really starts rolling it's hard to put it down.
Haven't tried to re-read Baroque, but after a brief refractory period, it will be more than time...
Man did I hate Cryptonomicon. It's not a style I normally read but it came highly recommended and it didn't do it for me. I never got that "rolling" part you describe. It just felt like it was a chore to get through it.
A:
Iron Man
The Avengers
The Incredibles
Mystery Men
A-
Batman Begins
The Dark Knight
X-Men 2
Spider-Man 2
Super-Man 2
The Watchmen
B+:
X-Men
B:
Spider-Man
Superman
Batman
C+:
Batman Returns
C:
Captain America
Batman and Robin
D:
The Shadow
Fantastic Four
Ghost Rider
F:
Superman III
Spawn
Judge Dredd
Anathem's on my shelf. I've vowed to make it all of the way through Baroque Cycle before I start on it (squarely 1/2 of the way through), but I read so little fiction now. I keep saying that's going to change, and it never does. The stuff I'm reading for my research is starting to overlap with where I am in Baroque Cycle, and I'm encountering some of the major characters in the trilogy as minor players in history I'm writing about, which is pretty fun.
Re: #602-- Once again hokieneer has said this better than I'm going to, but Games Are Not Always Competitive. Here's the typology put forth by Callois, which is pretty much dogma right now in Game Studies. Steve Johnson and James Paul Gee have argued that the fun derived from games is much more about learning systems than it is about "besting" another player (Johnson actually cites his childhood love for Stratomatic). Even ultraviolent games like God of War are as much about world exploration and puzzle solving as they are creative dismemberment (though there's a lot of the latter!). I'm OK with people not playing games, but at the same time, I tend to not like the way people who haven't played games characterize what they don't like about them. And also why I think very accessible writers like Bissell and Johnson provide a nice pathway into games-- I think can provide a way into games for the uninitiated in the same way that a good art critic helps you appreciate what's going on behind the scenes of artwork you might find obtuse on first viewing.
The opening scenes of Heavy Rain, where you chase your child through a crowded mall, only to have them get hit by a car when you catch up to them and call their name is probably the most brutal thing I've seen in a video game. I don't think I've ever reacted so strongly to something in a game (outside of maybe the ending to Earthbound) I could barely keep playing the game after it happened.
ANYWAY, having got bored with Spenser 30 years ago, I recently discovered Lee Child and Carol O'Connell. Anyone else have similar series to recommend?
We actually covered this last week in a thread, I was among several who claimed to have thoroughly enjoyed Anathem. (If there's anything of Stephenson's that could be considered a struggle to "get through" I'd have figured it would be the Baroque Cycle...but paradoxically enough that's the most awesomest of them all.)
EDIT: I see my point was anticipated. To reiterate what I said in the earlier thread...the first 70 pages or so of the Baroque Cycle is a slog, but from there on in it is pure can't put it down gold.
I like that it says, "This is all a whacked-out fairytale, so let's make it that way with the German Expressionism and everything."
There doesn't necessarily need to be competition between players, but there does need to be a challenge of some sort — competition between player and machine, player and puzzle, etc. There's no game without the obstacle.
Callois says otherwise-- see the link I posted above for his taxonomy. This is why, despite Linden's protest, Second Life counts as a game.
This gets the point that earlier responders missed regarding "competition". One needs to compete with the game itself regardless of whether or not there is another human one is playing against. It is the obstacle here that - at least IMO - prevents the non-gaming general public from accepting how encompassing gaming is as a narrative art. I mean, no one needs to care, and you can all call it our loss, which is fine. I think the bewilderment regarding how people don't care to be engaged in that manner is willfully turning a blind eye to this point.
Also, really enjoyed Anathem. The '"concent" is an analogue for "concentration camp" not "convent"' concept was fabulous.
Is this something that Stephenson has commented on? Because I certainly read it as a concentration, but not as anything close to a "concentration camp", so hearing a term that heavily loaded in regards to this particular usage strikes me as a bit odd.
To reiterate what I said in the earlier thread...the first 70 pages or so of the Baroque Cycle is a slog, but from there on in it is pure can't put it down gold.
To be fair, I found a lot more than 70 pages of Quicksilver to be a slog, especially when it came to the dissertations on economic systems. However, after that longer slog, again, it was freaking gold. I rarely re-read anything, but I may do so with that whole Cycle sometimes soon.
This is why, despite Linden's protest, Second Life counts as a game.
Linden can't be the only one protesting this.
Framing them as a narrative art, and locating their value there, misses the point entirely. Bissell, Johnson, ect. are all excellent on these points. Saying "I don't care to be engaged in this way" similarly misses the point. I don't particularly care, in that I don't have of an interest in the general public developing an appreciation for games. I'm much more invested in convincing the specific groups of people I deal with professionally that they have to care, but when I'm making that case I don't care if they actually like them, just that they understand their cultural/political/social/technical/historical/ect relevance. And I think that's pretty much undeniable...
In the way that poker's a sport, sure. If any interactive entertainment can be a game, then, I suppose every form of entertainment falls under "game" or "show". That seems crazy general to me.
Well, you can just disregard Callois if you want, but he makes a really convincing argument that games like make-believe (which fits Second Life fits pretty well into) are, in fact, games. And this is pretty well accepted in the circles of people who study games.
I'd say that "Second Life" players do have an opponent: their actual lives.
Anyone who spends any amount of time on BTF loses the right to advance this sort of criticism :>
If we are grading... Daredevil: B-
Elektra: H.
Dolph Lundgren as "The Punisher"???? DNR.
Best Indy game since Doom: Minecraft. I was completely obsessed with this for about 2 months, but then my son stopped playing and so did I. If I got into the mods, I would probably still be playing, it's not that deep game-play-wise and somewhat easy even in hardest survival mode. But the game world is practically infinite.
I think Planescape: Torment could be considered Art. Possibly the original Half Life, too.
Anathem was excellent, one of my favorite Stephenson novels. The Baroque Cycle had it's head up it's ass too often to be great, while Reamde was disappointing. Still looking forward to his next work.
Heavy Rain bothered me in that the killer was always the same. It would have been far more impressive for the choices you make to have a greater effect upon the outcome (which is the same problem Mass Effect had in the end).
I should have phrased that better, since I didn't mean it necessarily as a criticism. Within the Second Life framework you can play games, or you can socialize (non-gaming), or you can construct your "second life" by participating in social, personal, economic activities. The act of creating that construct that in some ways mimic their real life, but most definitely is not, is the game.
It may seem like semantics to say that Second Life isn't a game but Second Life activities are. I analogize it to Facebook in that Facebook in and of itself is not a game — the act of sharing information, socializing, or communicating is not play — but it creates a framework where it is easy to create and develop social interactive gaming.
Now THAT'S a game!
Planescape is the only game I've played that I could consider art. Still haven't played as good a game since.
I have actually recommended Madden to some of my European friends who wanted to learn about American Football. Yeah, the learning curve is pretty steep, but you will come away with an understanding of the game that is virtually impossible to get by just watching it on TV.
I'd have to read it again to figure out where I got that idea in my head. But my understanding was that, with the original concents, it wasn't exactly voluntary. "You're freakishly smart and we're afraid of you, so if you don't lock yourselves in these things, guns will be involved." Its been a few years, so I could be wrong about the exact details.
Right, that's all I'm really saying. There are people that don't own (or don't watch) television, and there are people that don't have cell phones, but we're a television and cell phone culture. If you don't understand television or cell phones (and I would argue video games as well), you don't really understand Americans.
Sure, I would say this is a problem. I think that baseball is the best and most beautiful sport, but it has been a very difficult one to export, and the learning curve is probably one reason. And I think baseball is an important part of American culture, but I can also forgive an immigrant for not bothering to learn the rules.<I>
Learning the rules is a bit different than having a vague idea about the sport. I'm not saying that octogenarians should know that the new maps dropped a few days ago for Call of Duty, but I do think most people should know that video games are a tremendous market or that millions of American homes have gaming consoles or that people are standing in line overnight to buy certain games the moment they are released.
<I>You argued that grandparents ought to be conversant in the world of video games. I was just noting a real and substantial hurdle to this.
Of course, but we're talking about something that has been relatively mainstream for nearly thirty years. This isn't some brief fad that is a niche interest. At one point, there were more people playing World of Warcraft than there were living in Greece. Avatar broke the $1B mark in ticket sales 17 days after release; Modern Warfare 3 broke $1B in sales 16 days after release (and the 24-hour revenue of $400M was the biggest entertainment release revenue in history).
I guess it was my error to think that the argument for video games as cultural force to be reckoned with was mostly predicated on the biggest, most successful and most commented upon games.
I think you're confusing cause and effect. Call of Duty could never have been that successful twenty years ago. No video game could.
But it's more than that. We make movies about video games, and reference them in popular television shows. We train our military with video games. Engineers are using the Kinect, a device designed specifically for gaming, for a number of non-gaming applications (one amazing example is a piece of software that allows a blind person to navigate a room by wearing a vibrating belt that intensifies the pulse as an obstacle is closer). Marketers all over the world are trying to integrate gaming elements into their advertising.
As a game, I think it was pretty mediocre. As a crude precursor to the sorts of things games might one day be able to do, I think it was remarkable. The facial features just barely missed the far end of the uncanny valley. The city looked perfect: the clothing, the cars, the technology -- nothing seemed out of place to me, and I felt like I really was exploring a different time.
If you removed all of the action scenes from LA Noire, it would have been a better game, and it would have been a pretty good entry point for non-gamers. The combat is fairly weak, but the investigation is the sort of thing that could have very wide appeal. I could see fans of any crime show enjoying that sort of experience.
Pac-Man would like a word with you.
I'm talking specifically about financial success in that part of my post.
As incredible a cultural phenomenon as Pac-Man was, it took a lot longer to become the explosive sensation that it was. It generated $1B in revenue in one year, which is incredible, but even adjusting for inflation, it's nothing compared to 16 days.
That's not counting people that pay an additional $50/year for Xbox live either entirely or primarily for that one series, or the people that paid an extra $50 for the Elite service (over 1.5 million paid subscribers), or the people that purchased the new maps that have been released over the past 6 months.
Pac-Man was more important than Call of Duty, in terms of its cultural impact, to be sure.
NHL '94 might be the greatest sports video game of all time, but it's not in the same class as even a moderately successful AAA title in terms of revenue.
That was my impression of LA Noire. I am a huge fan of crime fiction and drama (and no gamer at all), so simply puzzling out the plot was a draw for me. (And therefore, unlike good cripple hitter, I was not that bothered by the "hand-holding" aspects of the game, such as the different tones that ring when you get near a clue). I did get a heads-up from the person who introduced the game to me that the plot veers much more towards LA Confidential than Dragnet after a while. But hey, I like LA Confidential, too.
Heavy Rain was also intriguing, but more psychological thriller than procedural, so I was somewhat more drawn to LA Noire.
It depends on the player's orientation to the world.
It may seem like semantics to say that Second Life isn't a game but Second Life activities are. I analogize it to Facebook in that Facebook in and of itself is not a game — the act of sharing information, socializing, or communicating is not play — but it creates a framework where it is easy to create and develop social interactive gaming.
Yeah, but the crucial difference, and it is hugely crucial, at least IMO, is that Facebook, for better or for worse, has structures built into the platform to encourage you to adopt a stable identity, as close as possible to your identity IRL. If you don't collapse your Facebook identity onto your real identity, you're not playing by the rules. Second Life contains no such structures or incentives.
I'm surprised Second Life is still around. It made a big splash in the news and there were all sorts of predictions about companies using it for virtual meetings and things like that. But I haven't heard a word about it in years. What do people use it for?
It's worth pointing out that SL didn't aspire to be what it became-- it was built originally as the graphical component to a VR interface they were designing, then they realized the visual component was actually pretty good, while the bulky physical interface they built for it wasn't. At that point, it was a nice sandbox for people to experiment with 3-d design-- the interface is relatively simple, it takes almost no programming skills, ect. People slowly started to flock to it, and then businesses put money into it, and it was being transformed into a big marketing space. It was imagined as "Web 3.0"-- the manifestation of visions of cyberspace pt forth by people like Gibson and Stephenson. The crowds never came, though. Now, there's still a pretty vibrant culture there, a lot of it non-US and non-English speaking, but for the most part marketers have given up on it. Which is not a bad thing. FWIW, they maintain a really stable currency, and have a vested interest in keeping it that way, so that users continue to invest in the world. I don't know much about the health of the userbase or economy today, but it's far from dead.
I played the loving hell out of that game. As the Habs. It's my old shame, given that I was born in Buffalo and then lived 30 minutes from the Whalers and 90 from the Bruins, but I was only 12! Denis Savard! JJ Daignault! Guy Carbonneau! Eric Desjardins! And most of all Patrick Roy! That game pretty much taught me how to mispronounce French names.
NHL94 could never have been as successful revenue wise as today's modern AAA games simply due to the number of people buying games. The market is just so much bigger.
Is there an oversized, high quality paperback version of Anathem out there? I took the trade paperback on holiday, and loved what I read, but pages kept falling out. All I can seem to find is the trade paperback or the massive hardcover.
i would guess i've seen 95% of the movies mentioned and can't remember almost any details about them except for stuff like danny devito's penguin was the best cartoon villain EVAH and that i don't remember horror movies because i don't usually watch them.
i'm always surprised how much dialog from various tv/movies yall can quote.
i'm relieved to find out i'm not the only person on this planet who hates reality anything and refuses to watch it. but i bet i'm the only woman who feels that way - won't watch lifetime or E or anything on oxygen except for snapped (killer chicks)
as for video games
several problems
i cannot do kind of game where i have to use more than 1 control or have sound on at the same time - too much stimulus and lousy hand coordination. plus i get bored easily and it kind of feels like skool where it is complicated and you have to first know all this stuff and these rules and remember them all
only thing i can watch and concentrate on for a long time is baseball and that is because of inning breaks i would guess
Huh. That's the opposite of my experience. I loved the Daniel Waterhouse stuff and was really annoyed when he was dropped in favor of Jack.
Also, saw Avengers last night; enjoyed it immensely but I'm not ready to declare it best superhero movie ever. Though it's probably the best multiple-hero movie ever. A ton of great, funny one-liners too (no surprise with Whedon writing it).
Well, I guess I'm really up the creek, then... :-)
That's not what I said. I said "understand."
If you know absolutely nothing about television or cell phones or video games, you're just completely out of touch with the mainstream.
I think remembering quotes relies heavily on movies as a communal experience. The quotes you end up remembering are the ones that you say to your friends as you walk out of the theatre...and then again at random intervals over the next few months until it's locked in permanently.
Unless it's the Big Lebowski or Princess Bride, in which case the quotes are memorable because of the 18-odd viewings.
It's sad how much I'm the opposite to this. To quote Principal Skinner I love situations in which I can "get all the fun of sitting still, being quiet, writing down numbers, paying attention". I have a few friends for whom sitting through an entire movie in one go is impossible, while I find it very hard to multi-task and watch a movie while having a conversation. So we have a system of compromise where we take breaks periodically and make a cup of tea or something.
I'm actually taking a teaching workshop at the moment and one of the things they really push are ways of teaching that aren't simply sitting quietly and listening to someone talk for a couple hours. Which I find weird, that's the whole fun of school!
I find the wide varieties within humans endlessly fascinating.
Sounds like you have the mass-market paperback, actually. Those are the cheap, stubby paperbacks, while the larger format with nicer paper is the trade version. And there is one for Anathem.
I disagree, I've had that problem with trade paperbacks as well. I don't think it's the format, I think it's just who made the damned thing. Sample size, of course.
After the break, a discussion of deckled edges and foxing.
Define understand. To Lassus - you've jumped on me before because you thought I was bragging when I said I don't watch TV. I'm not; I'm just explaining, in the context of the discussion of the thread. I wouldn't bring it up otherwise.
1) I had cable for several years, but cancelled it because I hardly ever watched anything except sports and "Doctor Who". If there's something I want to watch that I can't get on-line, I just have my Dad record it. With the exception of "Doctor Who" and various Masterpiece Theater serials, I don't follow any current entertainment (i.e. not news or sports) TV shows. I don't have any interest in reality shows or game shows or cop shows or situation comedies. I don't have any interest in the type of music performed on "American Idol". I know who Simon Cowell is; I know who Snooki is; I just don't think I'd find watching those people entertaining. I do like watching old episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer".
2) I don't have anything against cell phones. I just don't have one or know how to use one. I did actually buy one several years ago, but did not understand how to turn it on or how to activate it, despite trying to understand the directions, so I just gave up. There have been several times when I have needed to make an emergency call on a borrowed cell phone, and I've had to have the owner turn it on and dial the number because I don't understand how to do that. If I had a cell phone and someone called me, I wouldn't know how to turn the machine on to answer. I'm sure that if someone sat down with me and went through the steps, showing me how to use it, I could understand how to use it.
3) I know that you need a special machine to play video games, and that you use a controller, but I've never actually used one of them, and wouldn't know how to. There seems to be something called Kinetic I've seen on TV ads that has the game mimic the movements of your body, but how it works I don't know. I've played Microsoft Flight Simulator using the keyboard on my computer, but gave up after a while because I just couldn't master the multi-inputs required. Aside from that, I know little about video games. I know that games such as "Doom", "Call of Duty", and "Rock Band" exist, but not much more than that.
I'm not a Ludditte. I have a Facebook account and use that often.
But as far as TV or video games go, I'd rather spend my evenings listening to a baseball game on the radio and building a model airplane or reading a book. (Not on a Kindle - I don't have one of those either). Does that make me a bad person?
How are you completely out of touch with mainstream America if you know nothing about video games? Despite what TV tells you not everybody talks about Kim Kardashian all of the time.
If I did this, I definitely apologize. I try to only jump on people when they imply that no television is better than any television, which I think is an attitude worthy of scorn due primarily to the very, very good things you can find on it. With the onset of TV on the internet, having a television - especially if your viewing is limited, and mine is - is far less important every week.
Ditto for the cell phone point. I've barely ever even touched one. I'm not that interested in communicating with people except in writing, which is why I spend a lot of time online. (No, texting isn't writing. It's typing ... with your thumb. Christ.)
Gaming I've already held forth on. It's just not in my genes, or something. People here (& elsewhere) who are pretending it's some special, essential manifestation of the modern soul or something need to get a grip. I mean, I could say the same thing about, I dunno, zombie movies or the comics series Hack/Slash. I'd also be full of ####.
Otherwise ...
And this would be a bad thing? Have you seen the mainstream lately? I've never been particularly in touch with the mainstream, except when professionally necessary. That's why god made subcultures, son.
(Which probably sounds elitist but isn't meant to be, really. Some of us are just out of step with the world, to borrow from a non-mainstream band about 30 years ago.)
But not the best animated penguin villain.
This fact seems to support the idea that you might be living in a cave, not disprove it. But at least your cave has electricity.
Using your examples, I would say that you certainly understand video games (I'm not suggesting that you're some barbarian because you called the Kinect the "Kinetic"; that's very close and you get the general idea) and television. I expect that you're familiar with the idea that there are portable phones that not only make phonecalls but also connect folks to the internet or allow text messaging. That's understanding in the way I'm using it.
How are you completely out of touch with mainstream America if you know nothing about video games? Despite what TV tells you not everybody talks about Kim Kardashian all of the time.
That's far too narrow. If you don't have a vague sense that there are people who are popular because they are manufactured celebrities, then I do think you're pretty much living on an island.
I'm saying at this point being entirely ignorant of video games is like being entirely ignorant of modern movies or modern television or rock music. We've got a whole generation (perhaps two generations) that simply thinks differently because of the adaptation of a number of technologies, and video games are a huge piece of that change.
And this would be a bad thing? Have you seen the mainstream lately?
I think it's a bad thing for me. I don't like feeling disconnected from society, but even more importantly, I don't like missing out on cool stuff. It's part of why I tried to watch soccer multiple times. How can I know that I really wouldn't enjoy it if I didn't learn something about it?
I have no problem with people that don't share my opinion on the matter. My enjoyment of video games doesn't depend on your enjoyment of them, although I like them enough to strongly recommend them.
It's very much like sports. Every once in a while, I meet someone who has absolutely no interest in any sporting event. I can understand someone not liking an individual sport, but having no interest in any of them? I suppose there are people out there that genuinely have put in enough effort to know that sports don't interest them, but I don't really "get" those people.
The Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald is fantastic.
Why does it matter who is or isn't famous at the moment? Is that walk you talk about at the dinner table every single night?
Thanks - no hard feelings at all.
I understand Stephenson has done many books since then but the most recent one I read was Cryptonomicon. Which was great. That and Snow Crash are two of my favorite books ever.
I can't believe there's a Neal Stephenson, video game, and comic book movie thread that I haven't noticed. Concerning video games, I was very disappointed to discover today that The Last Guardian has been surrounded by so many problems that it's looking like it might not ever come out. I was prepared to buy a PS3 just so I could play it.
I don't think we have to pretend; I'm not sure it's essential, in that it would be technically plausible to go through your life without actively listening to a song, actively reading a book, or actively watching a movie. But videogames are clearly uniquely of the last 2-3 decades, which is something that can be said of very few art-forms. They have rocketed in popularity from mockable niche just 10-15 years ago to the mainstream. And they have generated some simply astonishing material over that time, along with an awful, awful, mound of crud.
Games are a fundamental thing that humans do; look at the website we're using to discuss this. We make games out of everything - 'Chore Hero', or whatever the app is called, is definitely not a new idea! What's interesting about video games, as a supplement to existing media, is that they uniquely support both incredibly structured and incredibly open expressions of very, very complex concepts in game form, between people all around the world.
And what I love, personally, about videogames is the way in which they offer both escapism and constructive story-telling within incredibly immersive environments - but the immersion is not directly related to the complexity or sophistication of the technology. Not at all. SimCity and the 'management' games of my youth are charming and immersive despite being very primitive - in the same way that Marx Brothers movies are simultaneously old, ramshackle, and hilarious.
Neil Gaiman has a line that I like when I'm pissed off at other people: “Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.” What I think videogames offer, in an incredibly egalitarian way that most other forms of gaming don't, is the opportunity for everyone to express and explore those worlds.
TL, DR: I think you're wrong. Games may not be essential, as you yourself demonstrate, but I'm pretty sure they are special.
The quick save/load function is almost always in operation in my nightmares. Usually if I'm in a life-threatening situation I assess all my options, make a choice, act it out, and when I end up dying I'm spawned back at the option assessing point again. It can be frustrating but by the end of the nightmare I've usually moved my quick save point up quite a bit as I work out the proper choices. It does take a bit of the sting out of dying, knowing you can load up and try again. Hopefully this doesn't give me a false sense of security when I'm presented with a difficult choice in real life.
Hilariously, I think exactly the opposite is true. That games are essential, but not particularly special.
I think along these lines part of the reason is is difficult for me to specifically consider video games special to the culture is that they are simply an evolution of previous games and things will continue to further games. The game's the thing?
I think it's the interactivity that's the thing. Pretty much everyone experiences the same movie, the same book, the same music. How they experience it is of course dramatically different, and the way in which they process those experiences is again different, but the fundamental content remains the same.
With games . . . no. And particularly with video games, which can be emergent in incredibly interesting ways. Much is made of the number of variations in board position in Chess or Go, and rightly so. More recent 'real-world' game designs have variance too. But to choose a few random examples, Minecraft, EVE Online, Skyrim, and even Grand Theft Auto allow an unbelievable variety of experiences right out of the box (well, EVE mixes in a few hundred thousand other people).
No-one else can play the same game of EVE as you, or Skyrim, or SimCity, or X-Com: Enemy Unknown. It's actively impossible. And I think that leads to fascinating variety. One thing I've noticed is that, whereas a lot of art discussion online tends to be confrontational/argumentative ("your taste in music sucks!" "Adam Sandler is funnier than Sacha Baron Cohen!"), a lot more of discussion around games is co-operative/constructive. "How do I do this?" "Did you see this cool thing?" "What's the best way to excel?" And best of all: "Here's an addition I've made to this game - would you like to try it?"
It's (EDIT: not a fundamentally different way of interacting, but it is an unusual way for us to experience art). And we're still, arguably, in its infancy, as long as we can dump so many of our obsessions around frame rate and resolutions. Game development needs to be deeper and wider, not more and more HD. But that's a different rant.
Depending on the game this could be the big one. I know at least for the Civ games the modding community is part of what makes the game great.
I do think the games people play, (or the food they eat, or their humour) are great ways to get to know a people. They are sort of like the defensive statistics of history. Due to our sources and the nature of the activities studying them only ever provides an incomplete picture of a society, but their everyday-ness provides such valuable information.
My Sabres' line of LaFontaine, Mogilney, and Hawerchuck would wipe the floor with anyone -- my defensemen sucked, but Hasek in net, baby...
I thought this review by Kirk Hamilton did a nice job of illustrating those same faults. Worth a read, if you've never seen it.
I assume that such individuals were utterly disconnected with the American psyche circa 1990, or whenever.
(Makes me wonder if any self-obsessed individuals ever deluded themselves into thinking that.)
My favourite teams to play as - Jets (pure speed on the forward line), Capitals (Iafrate and Hatcher both deadly power shots), Nordiques, Flames. My brother always played as Chicago...god I hated Jeremy Roenick.
My brother and I ran an NHL94 league, every team played a home and home against every other team. For injuries a die was rolled to see how many games the player would miss and the guy who hit him would be a suspension for the same length +1. I forget why but one game we recorded and did the radio commentary as we played. Someone went down for a massive 25 games or so and we went to the replay to see who delivered the hit. All I remember on the tape was..."who did it....RAY FERRARO!!!!" (which for some reason was astounding).
Other fun elements from that game
- Mike Hough on Quebec could score after the whistle had gone (Me or my brother did that about four times with him)
- We also had the SAHL (Stuffed Animal Hockey League) which I believe is in it's 13th or 14th season if it should ever be picked up again. Populated by all of our stuffed animals, when a player got traded he'd become the closest numbered player on his new team. The season cup is the Goug Dilmour Trophy, which is a giant plastic Nerd (the candy kind) duct taped to a plastic cylinder of some kind.
- We also had to institute the rule of no cheap goals for any league play (ie, no walking out across the slot and slapping it home). Being a gentleman I extended this rule to friendlies as well, but one time a friend of mine was gloating a bit too much about beating me, so I offered a re-match where I played as the Senators and he could pick any time he liked and let the cheap goals fly. I think the score was 11-0 in the 2nd before we decided to stop. One of the very few "competitive jackass" moments in my life.
My family's trivial pursuit game dates from the late 70s/early 80s, (which gives a bit of a home field advantage: who's scored the most points all time in the NHL? Why, Gordie Howe of course!) so it doesn't help me much with 1990.
I'm starting to scare myself.
Next up: Super Capers. Added to Netflix queue: Griff the Invisible.
I wonder too. But, more to the point, I wonder how many people with the means to do so have never played any board game whatsoever - chess, go, Monopoly, Life, and so on. I'm not comfortable arguing that such people would be "utterly disconnected", but I'd be happy to claim they had a small, and easily-fixed hole in a long list of experiences that many of their peers find interesting and intellectually/emotionally stimulating.
Seems a shame to pass up such an opportunity so casually. But then, I've never driven a car, so I'm a fine one to talk.
In a sense the one great truth about "truth" (as it were) is that each of our individual "knowledges" are products of the accidents of history that brought Trivial Pursuit into our lives at the time they did. Or in my case, a product of my cheap parents not bothering to get a new version for thirty years.
Roenick carries the puck into the corner. Pivots. Spins. Cuts across the front of the net and . . . goal.
You could score with the move with pretty much anybody, but Roenick was totally unstoppable.
So there's more of us!
Though to be fair I've never driven, not because I don't think it would be fun, but because I'm absolutely sure that if I did I would kill someone. Not driving is my gift to humanity.
Yes that's the definition of the "cheap goal" I mentioned in my post. Despicable, ungentlemanly play. It's no coincidence Roenick is the best at it.
In my mind most satisfying goals in NHL94
1. Clean break-away where you pull the goalie to one side then flip it back the other way (bonus points for doing this at such great speed that you don't actually shoot it, just have the puck continue into the net after you slam into the goalie and fall down...though only if the goalie's already been thoroughly beaten. Inteference is bad form.)
2. One-timer. Ohhhh NHL94, God bless your one-timers
3. Al Iafrate slap-shot from the middle of the ice at the blue-line. No movement to open up a side of the net, just straight and hard through the 5-hole so that it looks like it literally passed through the body of the goalie.
And for kicks, scoring with the goalie...always fun.
I have that too. Two or three times a year, I have nightmares in which I'm driving a car. I don't think I ever hurt anyone in these episodes, but - because of that fear - I always (dream)drive slowly and cautiously enough as to provoke anger and ridicule from those around me. Which, as I'm British, is almost as bad as hitting and killing someone.
If anyone created a virtual driving simulator in which you could, repeatedly and with great graphic detail, drive over and hurt an avatar of Jeremy Clarkson, I think that would be the only way in which I potentially could become a less safe driver.
What the ####?
Now I'm just embarrassed for the entire community.
I too have nightmares about driving...weird. I was once kicked off of a Go-Kart track for driving too slow.
Be grateful. More road for the rest of you.
The idea that any such individual can post even half-heartheadedly, though, about anyone else being disconnected with mainstream life, or whatever, just boggles the ####### mind.
(Far more understandable, though, for someone in Britain. Or, I suppose, NYC.)
Meh. I'll learn one day, when I need it, or when the lure of cool things I can only see by car gets too strong. My wife moved over from the US (Alaska, then New Mexico), and was quite worried that she was going to miss driving her Jeep around. 2.5 years later, when one of her family asked whether we have a car, she could only laugh. She refuses to drive in Europe, after experiencing a rental car trip in the French Alps, and seeing London roads. And a car would have negative utility for us in London.
On a good day, I jog faster than the traffic on Blackheath. Occasionally I smirk, I must admit. (They're all driving to the **** park, too . . .)
EDIT - my point: I highly doubt I'll go through my whole life without learning to drive; the utility's just too high in some of the places I want to spend time. Just in no rush.
I drive every day, and have for many years. 98% of the time it's not fun, and I'm blessed with non-gridlock traffic all the time. I just don't particularly enjoy driving.
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