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Uncle Wemus posted:What was wrong with the Dice? The faces weren't in the right orientation.
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Sep 19, 2013 19:39
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Check out this piece of poo poo article that dares to suggest that riot grrrl music is lovely.
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Sep 19, 2013 23:46
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TychoCelchuuu posted:Check out this piece of poo poo article that dares to suggest that riot grrrl music is lovely.  Come to think of it I also had absolutely no idea what Riot Grrl was until after I finished the game and saw it being mentioned in the thread a lot. Thought it was a specific band until I actually looked it up, though not knowing about it is a lot more understandable since I was what, 4 years old during its height? I... never said it was bad? Unless you're approving of that fact, maybe? I don't know, I'm confused by that post. VVVV InequalityGodzilla fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Sep 20, 2013 |
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Sep 20, 2013 00:47
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It's fine not to like something, but to say that it's bad full stop is a whole different enchilada. An incorrect enchilada. Linkin Park is bad. Heavens to Betsy not everyone's cup of tea but that doesn't make them bad.
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Sep 20, 2013 01:16
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Wait, so Limp Bizkit isn't bad? What about my favorite butt-rock, can I finally force people to listen to it until they "get" it? Are people finally ready to admit that Journey is the greatest band of all time even if they don't actually like their music? Is the future finally happening?
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Sep 21, 2013 19:25
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So I have a hard time justifying the price point of Gone Home to people. It was so totally worth it for me, but on more of an "I want to support this so so so bad" level. That being said, it hasn't slowed my recommendations down much. If I had expendable income I'd spend way too much of it buying this for people I know would appreciate it. One thing I always think about in regards to this game is the attic. I kept an open mind while playing about whether or not the game would actually turn supernatural at any point, despite the fact that had a ghost actually shown up I would have been mad and it would have ruined the experience. One effect of that is when I saw the attic. It's so strikingly lit and foreboding, and my gut reaction was that I just wasn't ready to go up there yet. And it turns out the game seemed to predict that reaction and had it locked. I loving love that. It knew what it was doing by forcing me to stare in the face what seemed an insurmountable emotional burden (or in my case, kind of shy away from it, because at that point I was afraid of what I'd find up there.) Honestly, the game could have kept the attic unlocked and I wouldn't have gone up until the exact same time you get the key. That journal entry (Sam & Lonnie's last night) indicated to me that it was time. I was ready. That journal had given me such an extreme empathetic emotional reaction that even had there been ghosts, they wouldn't have affected me, I wouldn't have given one piece of poo poo about them, and I knew it was time to ascend. I loving love this game and I can't wait to support anything they do in the future. Gone Home even convinced me to trudge through the hell of Games For Windows Live to finally play Minerva's Den, which was also excellent. I want to have a beer with Fullbright. Hard Clumping fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Sep 22, 2013 |
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Sep 22, 2013 01:08
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TychoCelchuuu posted:Check out this piece of poo poo article that dares to suggest that riot grrrl music is lovely. This is actually one of the better articles about the game and looking back on music you used to listen to as a kid and realising how bad it is or how little it speaks to you now is a pretty common experience. I don't even think that the article calls out riot grrl as "bad music" at least in the way you're implying it does, but I'm certain there are thousands of people who grew up in the 90s and loved riot grrl and don't feel about it the same way now at all. edit: Part of the greatness of the game is that it deals with a lot of universal themes while having a very specific and richly detailed story. Riot Grrl really couldn't have come out of any other time or place and it was a great choice for the game, as it relates to the themes and time period, but not something beyond criticism. BOAT SHOWBOAT fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Sep 22, 2013 |
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Sep 22, 2013 03:35
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I was being sarcastic when it called it a piece of poo poo article - I think it's a perfectly fine article. My point was just that it said this:quote:Gone Home will probably float a lot of boats in the harbors of its target audience, since it deals with themes we can all relate to and have experience with: young love, teenage rebellion, making friends, and realizing how bad your taste in music used to be.
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Sep 22, 2013 04:43
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TychoCelchuuu posted:I mean, yes, it's a common experience for people to look back at the music they listened to as a teenager and realize that they don't like it anymore, but that's entirely different from looking back and thinking that you listened to bad music as a teenager. If you listened to Linkin Park, then sure, you listened to bad music as a teenager. If you listened to riot grrrl music as a teenager, maybe you don't like it now, but come on, you weren't listening to bad music full stop. Bad taste in music doesn't mean you listen to bad music. It just means that when you were young, impressionable, and didn't know much about media it's easy to totally love something which is mediocre or overly melodramatic. Children's music isn't bad, but an adult who legitimately loves Raffi probably has bad taste in music. Riot Grrl was specifically by and for young political women at a certain point in time and space. It hasn't gotten any worse over the years, but the core audience has matured and there isn't much new interest in the genre because other forms of music speak more accurately to young political women today.
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Sep 22, 2013 05:43
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I'm by no means a fan of Linkin Park but trying to present someone's music as 'objectively bad' doesn't help your point when you're calling out someone else for what you see as unjustifiable criticism. That's such a throwaway line in the review and 99% of people reading it will get what they're talking about.
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Sep 23, 2013 00:25
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I am sorry I employed on the SomethingAwful.com Internet forums. It has had an unfortunate outcome. I will refrain from doing so in my future posts so as to avoid situations like the one we have found ourselves in.
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Sep 23, 2013 00:45
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0452.
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Sep 26, 2013 05:54
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That is an interesting comparison between the ____shock games and Gone Home, each trusting you to actually explore the game without forcing you down a narrow path to make sure you see everything. However, the "0452" thing is kinda 
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Sep 28, 2013 04:11
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Review by Ian Bogost. Article on the review.
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Sep 29, 2013 16:11
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Fitting that they'd have a spooky boghost review the game.
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Sep 29, 2013 17:13
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FWIW I agree completely with the ghost and that review of the game sums up my thoughts on it more or less perfectly, absent some stuff I would add about the exploration and interactivity that I think are key to the game.
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Sep 29, 2013 17:56
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TychoCelchuuu posted:FWIW I agree completely with the ghost and that review of the game sums up my thoughts on it more or less perfectly, absent some stuff I would add about the exploration and interactivity that I think are key to the game. It's nice that somebody is actually attempting traditional literary criticism. However, I think Ian Bogost is kind of an elitist hack and while I agree that in a better world Gone Home shouldn't be considered so unique and popular media itself has become overly adolescent, I think he's super vague about why he considers the game an artistic failure except to bolster that thesus.
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Sep 29, 2013 18:09
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Gaynor has said his aspirations were closer to My So Called Life than anything else, so saying "this isn't on par with adult literary fiction" may be a little harsh... but I think Bogost's writeup is more interesting and relevant as a lens to view the critical reception and discussion around the game (and all games). It's also generally encouraging to me because it's a reminder that - despite how much I enjoy and respect gone home - there is a ton of headroom left to grow. Games' maturity as a medium is often compared to early comic books ("they were still just wacky entertainment for kids! They hadn't matured!" etc) but maybe comparing games to TV makes more sense. Maybe games now are at where TV was in 1995. TV was hardly an immature medium in 1995. It was in fact mega popular, mainstream, heavily funded and heavily profitable, but also completely defined by its own worn-in, self-set limitations when it came to what was produced. Sitcom, drama, soap opera, prime time action, etc, were basically unchanged formulas for two or more decades. Around the mid '90s we started getting things like Twin Peaks, The X-Files (and even some shows that weren't about creepy lights out in the woods) which didn't set the world on fire but showed that audiences could be hooked and grown based on structural and content choices different than the medium's norm (eg, in the case of the x-files: an ongoing multi season arc defined by both character and plotting). Looking at television now, it's kind of shocking to look back at what was great TV 20-25 years ago, and just like with games that is a trajectory I hope continues. It doesn't seem like there was ever a specific huge television revolution,* just audiences and creators discovering over time that they had seriously self-limited and that their medium was capable of a way wider band of content and experiences than they had been giving it credit for for years. * the growth of TV in the 00s and 10s has also not eliminated traditional tv content. You can still watch laugh track sitcoms, daytime soaps, cheesy procedurals, etc, to your hearts content, but also you can watch The Wire or Girls or whatever else. ja2ke fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 18:31
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Al! posted:It's nice that somebody is actually attempting traditional literary criticism. However, I think Ian Bogost is kind of an elitist hack and while I agree that in a better world Gone Home shouldn't be considered so unique and popular media itself has become overly adolescent, I think he's super vague about why he considers the game an artistic failure except to bolster that thesus. quote:And you know, that’s not bad! Hughes’s movies and Blume’s books have a place in the world, and that place is not necessarily better or worse than Jim Jarmusch films or Roberto Bolaño novels. But it is different, and that difference makes a difference. I also said that Bogost captures everything I'd say about Gone Home except some stuff about exploration and interactivity, but I was lying. There's one more thing I would say, and it's where I disagree with Jake: I don't think games "aren't there yet." I don't think games are where TV was 20-25 years ago. Games are there, or at least tremendously close. It's just that very few games are there, or close. howling dogs, Cart Life, Thirty Flights of Loving, Limits & Demonstrations, Kentucky Route Zero, and some others I'm forgetting are there, narratively. You can show them to real people who have never played a video game and (assuming they can get into the game - for people who didn't grow up playing at least a few games, even simple things can be relatively obtuse) the reaction isn't going to be "well, that was a pretty good interactive touching young adult novel" Hell, games like STALKER, Far Cry 2, and so on, for all their schlocky or anodyne stories, reach moments of real brilliance in ways that only games can, and I think the things those games touch are the sorts of things the best games will always touch and that it's tough to see us moving past, just like the sorts of things movies like M do are things that movies are never going to do better. I think (like Bogost seems to think) that Gone Home's real triumph, above and beyond being a great entry into the immersive sim exploration genre, above and beyond its touching (but not groundbreaking) story, its great voice acting, its wonderful soundtrack, and its demonstration that a small team can relatively quickly make a great game and that AAA is not the solution to everything, is that it's the mainstreamiest "good" game we've had in a long time (and unfortunately perhaps for a long time). The last thing that got anywhere near this much buzz was Dear Esther and that certainly didn't get a writeup on the front page of The New York Time's art section or in the LA Review of Books. Gone Home is the spearhead for games as what they can be (and what they sometimes are) and although maybe it would be nice if it were as good as howling dogs I think there's nothing wrong with it being as good as it is. Especially because that's the level of narrative Gaynor and Co. were aiming for. (Although incidentally I think The Walking Dead serves a similar role. Being genre fiction holds it back, I guess - you automatically lose "serious" points or "respectability" points or whatever, but The Walking Dead is another spearhead for games as moving, emotional, well-told narratives that can be interesting in ways that don't just appeal to nerds. But then again zombies.) TychoCelchuuu fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 20:27
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I appreciate Bogost's perspective, but I don't share his idea that literary criticism is scaffolded such that reading a lot of Tolstoy precludes you from empathizing with the characters and events in, say, Die Hard. Really, I often find whether or not I ~like~ something viscerally to be the least interesting thing about analysis. Much of the discussion around Gone Home reminds me a whole lot of Riven, a game that will be 16 years old this October and doesn't receive the same kind of attention for advancing games as a narrative art that I think it perhaps deserves. The solitary atmosphere, the piecing together of the story through visual artifacts and player interpretation, and the seamless integration of puzzle-based gameplay with the world itself were all so far ahead of its time and haven't really been replicated to quite the same degree in any Myst or adventure game thereafter. I see Gone Home's unique contribution as taking those elements and projecting them back to the mundane.
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Sep 29, 2013 21:20
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As a narrative, Gone Home isn't that sophisticated. As part of the medium, it is essential. I believe it is necessary in developing gaming as an art. Most games that exist, and that do well, have a narrative that is so totally divorced from the mechanics. You could cut and paste them around without too much problem, or just ignore the mechanics completely and just experience the story (Mass Effect is a good example). Gaming as a whole needs to move past that, and the method Gone Home uses is one way of doing that. We've had games that create a narrative through play (Procedural Narrative: Dwarf Fortress), and games that use mechanics that are designed to complement a specific narrative (Mechanic/Narrative Synthesis: Hotline Miami and Papers Please). Gone Home reduces the mechanics to its bare essentials to give a set experience that they wanted. You don't have an inventory system or any real puzzles because that doesn't add to the core experience, which is the sense of exploration or discovery (Hence the analogy Errant Signal used of an archaeological dig). Heck, most of the narrative presented in Gone Home is never explicitly elaborated on or shown in any other way - it exists only in the players head. The audio diaries you hear were necessary to add an emotional connection to the main story arc, but the stronger example to me was the one focused on the father, because I think it was the experience the developers were trying to create in its purest form.
rudatron fucked around with this message at 09:25 on Sep 30, 2013 |
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Sep 30, 2013 09:20
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ja2ke posted:Around the mid '90s we started getting things like Twin Peaks TychoCelchuuu posted:As Jake points out, Gone Home is the sort of game that hopefully we will look back on one day and say "wow, it's shocking that we considered Gone Home a great game in 2013." I'm not really sure there's much to date Gone Home, tbh. It's deliberately retro in terms of storyline, but not growing up in the context it depicts doesn't affect enjoyment of the game. The game's core strengths of writing and voice acting are unlikely to be completely outdated. Even in games in 20 years are uniformly thought provoking, character driven, artistically presented studies of human life, the role of games like Gone Home in the early stages of that would still be respected even if its achievements are outshone. (Lol j/k games will always be mostly stupid.)
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Sep 30, 2013 10:28
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I think the point is that, yes, the game's core strength of writing will be outdated. We praise Gone Home because it did something new, and managed to be competent at telling a story. We're just starting to see these spaces being explored. Something better will come along. To use Jake's Analogy: This is 1993 and we're just now seeing the X-Files of video games ("The X-Files of Video Games" - Gone Home Box Quote). The Wire of video games is what people of the future will compare it to.
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Sep 30, 2013 13:49
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PopMatters podcast on Gone Home.
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Oct 8, 2013 07:17
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Fullbright on what they are doing next.
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Oct 10, 2013 14:39
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Re: the supernatural stuff. The only really creepy part was that crucifix blowing out the light. You think for half a second that there's some legitimacy to the whole ghost-hunting thing, but then the player has exactly the kind of reaction Katie would have: we know the wiring is lovely in this hundred year old mansion -- probably because of all these old bootlegger passageways -- so we just laugh it off. I was legitimately scared to go into that attic, if only because I expected to find Sam lying up there with her face completely blue with that diary next to her. I was relieved with what happened, but then I realized that Lonnie has gone AWOL and Sam is a college dropout and neither of their futures are going to look promising. I'd expect them to come in from the cold after running away, but Lonnie is AWOL. Even remaining in the country is a no-go. Sam hitting it off with Lonnie's family was never brought up again, so I expect they'll be heading to Mexico if Katie chooses not to call the cops and have them stopped. I was more hopeful with Jan and Terry. Couples counseling is usually shorthand for divorce, but there's definite signs of improvement. Then again, I'm not sure. The way their room was tossed could have been Sam grabbing some money, or it could have been them having an argument while packing. I do think that Terry starting to write while Jan tends to her plants is at least room to grow on. Also, how many copies of Algebra for Beginners can one house have?
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Oct 13, 2013 22:05
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Lonnie isn't AWOL. For the most part if you just ditch the bus to basic they write you off and don't let you enlist again, it happens a lot and it wouldn't be a "big deal".
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Oct 13, 2013 22:17
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Steve Gaynor, one of the main developers of this game, has started up Tone Control, a podcast where he talks with other game developers.
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Oct 15, 2013 19:07
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TychoCelchuuu posted:Steve Gaynor, one of the main developers of this game, has started up Tone Control, a podcast where he talks with other game developers.
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Oct 16, 2013 01:47
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Um, in an hour (8 PM PST) Steve Gaynor will talk about Gone Home at Reed College in Psych building 105. Open to the public. I wish I could go!
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Oct 16, 2013 02:53
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This game mysteriously downloaded ~300 megs just now. Then less mysteriously it turns out they added dev commentary to the game!
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Oct 22, 2013 18:25
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Gone Home's also 50% off for a bit here.
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Oct 22, 2013 20:22
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I'll tell you what the real horror was: walking around a perfect simulation of the 90's!
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Oct 22, 2013 23:11
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quote:Chris Remo’s original score (affectionately known as the GH:OST, or Gone Home Original SoundTrack) I love how far they've taken this Ghost Game joke.
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Oct 23, 2013 03:28
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TychoCelchuuu posted:This game mysteriously downloaded ~300 megs just now. Then less mysteriously it turns out they added dev commentary to the game! One of the developers was hinting that they'd recorded some commentary, glad to see that it's made it in. Do they do commentary track nodes like in Half-Life or will you trigger it by examining specific objects? I kinda hope it's the latter.
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Oct 23, 2013 05:14
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Jet Jaguar posted:One of the developers was hinting that they'd recorded some commentary, glad to see that it's made it in. A hovering Fullbright logo... disc... thing is visible as you walk around. They're located near some critical items scattered throughout the game, or at least near something of interest. A few are hidden inside drawers, but it is pretty easy to get them all. With that said, I probably missed one due to an unfortunate interruption. edit: So I played through the game with commentary activated. This being my third run now, I believe. Anyhow, I got all the way down to the basement, following the traditional path through the house, and bam: Crash. Turns out another patch was being pushed through. I was so engrossed in the narrative -- despite knowing it inside and out -- that I hadn't saved. Lost everything. What did I do? Play through the drat thing again. I don't think I'll ever tire of the voice acting in this game. hojusimpson fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Oct 23, 2013 |
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Oct 23, 2013 06:37
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Sarah practically sobs her way though the last couple commentary nodes, that got totally intense @_@ Have any other non-valve games done commentary like this? It's really fascinating.
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Oct 23, 2013 09:33
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_jink posted:Sarah practically sobs her way though the last couple commentary nodes, that got totally intense @_@ I'd kill for one for the Stanley Parable, even though they'd probably just use it to dick around with the player. Speaking of which! I don't have a screenshot handy, but one of Sam and Lonnie's letters appears as an easter egg in the Stanley Parable. Games where you wander around trying to piece the story together got to stick together. 
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Oct 23, 2013 12:09
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_jink posted:Have any other non-valve games done commentary like this? It's really fascinating. The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay was the first game I've seen to have commentary in-game. It's pretty goddamn interesting too. e: and I'm pretty sure that predates what Valve did with The Lost Coast and Episode 1
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Oct 23, 2013 14:15
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Wandering Knitter posted:I'd kill for one for the Stanley Parable, even though they'd probably just use it to dick around with the player. Oh wow, I missed that (I'm still missing a ton of stuff that's hidden in the Stanley Parable). It's crazy, between this game and The Stanley Parable I've gotten more actual joy and delight from games than I've had in a long, long time. I don't know why they seem to make so many people so cranky.
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