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Wheat Loaf posted:I saw Ready Player One in an airport bookshop today; it had a movie tie-in cover (i.e. photograph of the star) but confusingly, it was in the children's section. Obviously the movie will be a big Spielberg action effects spectacle and kids love that kind of thing, but would anyone who isn't older than 35 or isn't into pop culture nostalgia have any appreciation for loving descriptions of how the hero Kevin Smithed his Bluesmobile with a KITT mainframe until it went faster than a Ghostbusted DeLorean or whatever it is? Listen 80's dads really want their kids to like the exact same things they did okay?
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Feb 3, 2018 23:10
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Augus posted:Listen 80's dads really want their kids to like the exact same things they did okay? Bingo.
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Feb 3, 2018 23:12
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Wheat Loaf posted:I saw Ready Player One in an airport bookshop today; it had a movie tie-in cover (i.e. photograph of the star) but confusingly, it was in the children's section. Obviously the movie will be a big Spielberg action effects spectacle and kids love that kind of thing, but would anyone who isn't older than 35 or isn't into pop culture nostalgia have any appreciation for loving descriptions of how the hero Kevin Smithed his Bluesmobile with a KITT mainframe until it went faster than a Ghostbusted DeLorean or whatever it is? Are you sure it wasn't in the manchildren's section?
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Feb 3, 2018 23:17
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Wheat Loaf posted:I saw Ready Player One in an airport bookshop today; it had a movie tie-in cover (i.e. photograph of the star) but confusingly, it was in the children's section. Obviously the movie will be a big Spielberg action effects spectacle and kids love that kind of thing, but would anyone who isn't older than 35 or isn't into pop culture nostalgia have any appreciation for loving descriptions of how the hero Kevin Smithed his Bluesmobile with a KITT mainframe until it went faster than a Ghostbusted DeLorean or whatever it is? Imagine that you're a 35-year old father to a 12-year-old. You always desperately wanted to be the cool Dad, but your kid rolls his eyes at your hackneyed jokes. You realize your kid has a birthday tomorrow, and you've forgotten to buy a gift. The flight is already boarding. You go to the airport bookstore and skim a variety of children's new releases, when your eyes land on Ready Player One. You think, "this is it! Now he'll understand!" You buy the book, get it gift-wrapped, and run to your flight. The next day, your kid opens the gift, and is extremely disappointed to find a book instead of that XBOX everybody's getting now. You are still the uncool Dad. fin
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Feb 3, 2018 23:19
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I work with dorky Tweens at a board games program and they all fuckin LOVE Ready Player One.
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Feb 3, 2018 23:20
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financially racist posted:sorry, just a cranky environmental scientist who is continually exasperated with the more 'hippy' of my colleagues and sees red whenever people start talking about soy products (or palm oil).
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Feb 3, 2018 23:31
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Augus posted:Listen 80's dads really want their kids to like the exact same things they did okay? I've never stopped to wonder what my dad would think of RPO, seeing as he's a bit of an 80s dad (i.e. he was the age I am now in the late 80s). He probably wouldn't like it because he only likes Bernard Cornwell and Wilbur Smith and the guy who writes the Dirk Pitt novels.
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Feb 4, 2018 00:01
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Noah Gervais just uploaded his next video, a look at the Call of Duty campaigns that have come out since his first video
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Feb 4, 2018 00:33
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RPO is largely really surface level poo poo from the 80s, so most of it is still recognizable to whoever. I'm only 22 but I recognized most of it since it's just lastingly popular pop culture that would be lying around in your family's VHS/DVD collection even if you weren't around for it.
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Feb 4, 2018 01:08
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I mean, if you want '80s nostalgia, but well-written, you can always watch The Americans, or the German variation on that trope, Deutschland 83.
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Feb 4, 2018 01:11
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I haven't read RPO but none of the excerpts I've seen from it make me want to. It's too bad because I normally have a lot of fun with those "everything crossed over with everything" stories like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Anno Dracula. I guess in those cases, Alan Moore and Kim Newman have a reasonably good sense of what makes all the stuff they're referencing or alluding to work and they've put a but of thought into how to integrate it all together, whereas everything I've seen from RPO looks like the author had a checklist of everything he wanted to mention (see: that "and obviously Kevin Smith" list that makes the rounds). Moore and Newman also seem to have much larger reference pools than Ernest Cline.
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Feb 4, 2018 01:19
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Wheat Loaf posted:I haven't read RPO but none of the excerpts I've seen from it make me want to. It's too bad because I normally have a lot of fun with those "everything crossed over with everything" stories like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Anno Dracula. I guess in those cases, Alan Moore and Kim Newman have a reasonably good sense of what makes all the stuff they're referencing or alluding to work and they've put a but of thought into how to integrate it all together, whereas everything I've seen from RPO looks like the author had a checklist of everything he wanted to mention (see: that "and obviously Kevin Smith" list that makes the rounds). If anybody's done a better mashup than Zelazny in A Night in the Lonesome October, I haven't read it.
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Feb 4, 2018 01:21
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Plus Ready Player One has plenty of poo poo from the 60s, 70s, and 90s. That famous godawful list of things the main character studies is full of Monty Python, Neal Gaiman, Harlan Ellison, and lots of other things that have nothing to do with the 80s. I think Superman (the character) is on there.
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Feb 4, 2018 01:22
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Wheat Loaf posted:writes the Dirk Pitt novels. Clive Cussler.
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Feb 4, 2018 02:40
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DoctorWhat posted:I work with dorky Tweens at a board games program and they all fuckin LOVE Ready Player One. I can't say it really surprises me. I went to high school in the late 90s, and there was a similar wave of 60s nostalgia going on then. I knew a bunch of kids my age who, like, totally loved the sixties and the Beatles and Woodstock you know? Meanwhile, all the adults who'd lived through the actual 60s in small town Pennsylvania just rolled their eyes.
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Feb 4, 2018 02:58
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business hammocks posted:Plus Ready Player One has plenty of poo poo from the 60s, 70s, and 90s. That famous godawful list of things the main character studies is full of Monty Python, Neal Gaiman, Harlan Ellison, and lots of other things that have nothing to do with the 80s. I think Superman (the character) is on there. The infamous passage about his spaceship has references to Firefly, from the 00s.
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Feb 4, 2018 03:07
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I mean, if you want '80s nostalgia, but well-written, you can always watch The Americans, or the German variation on that trope, Deutschland 83. As a fan of 80s pop culture, I love everything, the good and the bad. But for quality 80s-ness, why not just watch Die Hard? Or watch Aliens. It's not as good as Alien but it's still quintessential 80s. Scarface maybe.
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Feb 4, 2018 03:10
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I'm actually doing the read-along with 372 Pages' second season for Armada (I'm borrowing the book from my local library because lol fuuuuuck giving Ernest Cline any actual money for this dreck) and holy Christ does it ever find new ways to be bad that even RP1 didn't manage to plumb. In the span of the first 50 pages of the book the main character has preformed the following actions:
I never read RP1 so I can't tell if Cline's prose has improved on a functional level, but from a storytelling perspective, this book is just godawful. Like, the first 15 pages are dedicated to setting up a set of characters in the narrator's immediate vicinity that in a competent book would be the principle cast and crew of whatever Last Starfighter starship he inevitably ends up the captain of. Each one seems to have their own built-in arcs and dynamics... but no they just exist to allow the narrator to contrast himself against and then they disappear into the ether never to be seen again. One character exists specially to inform the audience that the narrator isn't a virgin because he had sex with her before she's ejected from the story by omission. It's really loving gross. The best line of the book so far comes after he describes the alleged pedigree behind the titular game Armada. It's this insane blockbuster game that was somehow made by a collective of real world video game industry titans who would never ever work together, from Chris Roberts to Gabe Newell, to Shigeru Miyamoto (basically just another list of people for him to go "see guys! I know video games!"), to Peter Jackson and James Cameron. And at the end of it, you get this beautiful line: Ernest Cline posted:This plagaristic, Frankenstien-like developmental strategy proved wildly successful. Either Ernest Cline is the most un-self-aware person on the planet, or he knows, man. He knoooooooows</hbomb>.
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Feb 4, 2018 03:10
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NikkolasKing posted:As a fan of 80s pop culture, I love everything, the good and the bad. But for quality 80s-ness, why not just watch Die Hard? Sure it came out in 1990 but it was made in the 80s and is definitely an 80s action movie at heart. Like you said, those are basically '80s movies, not nostalgic works about the '80s. I guess Stranger Things is also of this nature, but I've never watched it. 
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Feb 4, 2018 03:13
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Like you said, those are basically '80s movies, not nostalgic works about the '80s. I guess Stranger Things is also of this nature, but I've never watched it. Oh, I gotcha now We're talking about how like nobody really remembers the 60s, only the caricature of the 60s from popular media. So like we want an 80s caricature nostalgia trip. Can't really help there, I like the genuine article. Lots of genuinely good movies and music from that decade. There's really no reason to indulge in some stylized imitation of the thing.
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Feb 4, 2018 03:17
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NikkolasKing posted:Oh, I gotcha now We're talking about how like nobody really remembers the 60s, only the caricature of the 60s from popular media. So like we want an 80s caricature nostalgia trip. Have you watched The Americans? I don't think it's mere stylized imitation, it's a period piece. Halt and Catch Fire also works for that, now that I think about it. I guess I lost the thread of thought, I mostly really want Season 6 to come out already.
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Feb 4, 2018 03:20
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Kim Justice posted:Doubleposting because Gaming Historian has released his long, LONG awaited video on the Story of Tetris. It remains insane to me that we have yet to have a movie about these events. All these crazy stories about the early videogame industry would make amazing comedies, like Universal suing Nintendo over rights they don't own or Atari making up their own competitors so they could maintain market control.
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Feb 4, 2018 03:25
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nine-gear crow posted:I'm actually doing the read-along with 372 Pages' second season for Armada (I'm borrowing the book from my local library because lol fuuuuuck giving Ernest Cline any actual money for this dreck) and holy Christ does it ever find new ways to be bad that even RP1 didn't manage to plumb. Up until you mentioned the TOTALLY NOT A VIRGIN main character thing I literally thought you were talking about ready player one. So I guess that answers whether or not he improved? Because it really sounds like it's just the exact same book sloppily repainted. The only reason I know that's a difference between the two is because the main character in ready player one has a stupid crying meltdown when the only girl character isn't interested in him and asks her if it's because he's a virgin.
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Feb 4, 2018 03:37
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Nuebot posted:Up until you mentioned the TOTALLY NOT A VIRGIN main character thing I literally thought you were talking about ready player one. So I guess that answers whether or not he improved? Because it really sounds like it's just the exact same book sloppily repainted. The only reason I know that's a difference between the two is because the main character in ready player one has a stupid crying meltdown when the only girl character isn't interested in him and asks her if it's because he's a virgin. Oh I was quite... I don't want to say "surprised" at this point but, well, bemused as I quickly figured out that Armada was basically a straight up retread of RP1 with a simultaneously less and more obnoxious coat of paint. But yeah it's basically a 1:1 analog between Wade Watts and Zack Lightman. A teenage kid with a dead father who died in an embarrassing way before he ever got the chance to raise him yet somehow molded him from beyond the grave into an ur-nerd because his love of video games and 80s sci-fi movies was so powerful it had its own gravitational pull, who also has a very limited social circle of alleged friends who he actually doesn't interact with or give a poo poo about and instead focuses on boring his audience with point-by-point lists of things and redundant descriptions. There's even an RP1-esque "Hell of a Rig" moment before the 4th chapter ends. Armada isn't so much a book as it is an insurance scam of some sort...
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Feb 4, 2018 03:50
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I mean, if you want '80s nostalgia, but well-written, you can always watch The Americans, or the German variation on that trope, Deutschland 83. hey is The Americans worth watching? It seems neat but I never bothered
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Feb 4, 2018 06:30
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sexpig by night posted:hey is The Americans worth watching? It seems neat but I never bothered I like it.
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Feb 4, 2018 06:31
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I like it. Cool, I dig spy thrillers and I heard it does a solid job making the ~evil soviets~ humans and all.
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Feb 4, 2018 06:32
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sexpig by night posted:Cool, I dig spy thrillers and I heard it does a solid job making the ~evil soviets~ humans and all. Everybody comes out human.
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Feb 4, 2018 06:35
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nine-gear crow posted:The best line of the book so far comes after he describes the alleged pedigree behind the titular game Armada. It's this insane blockbuster game that was somehow made by a collective of real world video game industry titans who would never ever work together, from Chris Roberts to Gabe Newell, to Shigeru Miyamoto (basically just another list of people for him to go "see guys! I know video games!"), to Peter Jackson and James Cameron. And at the end of it, you get this beautiful line: I dunno, Chris Roberts and Gabe Newell cooperating doesn't seem that far-fetched. They're both big name developers in the US known for their efforts to not actually make games.
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Feb 4, 2018 07:58
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I recently got into a conversation with some IRL friends about Ready Player One, after I saw that another friend was looking forward to the RPO movie on his blog. I groused about some of the hilarious scenes I'd read excerpts of, and someone who read the book brought up that it's intentional that the narrator has this embarrassing inability to process the world without referencing pop culture that's an indictment of the world he lives in. I haven't read RPO myself, so I dunno if that's true or not. Given everything else I heard, I'm assuming that Cline is aware to some degree that there are problems with nerd pathology, but he's either unaware of just how much of a problem he's dealing with or he's too enamored of nerdy indulgence to commit to condemning it. Then there's Armada's existence, which has the exact same oversaturation of references RPO is without the themes of escapism and corporations and whatever else to provide a fig leaf of justification. If anyone here has read the whole book, I'd like to know if there's some half-assed criticisms tossed in there, Sucker Punch style, or if it really is nothing but "isn't this nerd poo poo AWESOME!?"
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Feb 4, 2018 08:42
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https://twitter.com/Hbomberguy/status/960059095410794496
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Feb 4, 2018 08:56
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Solitair posted:I recently got into a conversation with some IRL friends about Ready Player One, after I saw that another friend was looking forward to the RPO movie on his blog. I groused about some of the hilarious scenes I'd read excerpts of, and someone who read the book brought up that it's intentional that the narrator has this embarrassing inability to process the world without referencing pop culture that's an indictment of the world he lives in. I haven't read RPO myself, so I dunno if that's true or not. Given everything else I heard, I'm assuming that Cline is aware to some degree that there are problems with nerd pathology, but he's either unaware of just how much of a problem he's dealing with or he's too enamored of nerdy indulgence to commit to condemning it. Then there's Armada's existence, which has the exact same oversaturation of references RPO is without the themes of escapism and corporations and whatever else to provide a fig leaf of justification. It's the latter. It's entirely the latter.
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Feb 4, 2018 08:56
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Max Wilco posted:I dunno, Chris Roberts and Gabe Newell cooperating doesn't seem that far-fetched. They're both big name developers in the US known for their efforts to not actually make games. Isn't Croberts English? I thought CIG was a British developer/shell company to launder money from morons to fund Sandi's acting career and Ben Lesnick's suicide by cake.
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Feb 4, 2018 09:11
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Solitair posted:I recently got into a conversation with some IRL friends about Ready Player One, after I saw that another friend was looking forward to the RPO movie on his blog. I groused about some of the hilarious scenes I'd read excerpts of, and someone who read the book brought up that it's intentional that the narrator has this embarrassing inability to process the world without referencing pop culture that's an indictment of the world he lives in. I haven't read RPO myself, so I dunno if that's true or not. Given everything else I heard, I'm assuming that Cline is aware to some degree that there are problems with nerd pathology, but he's either unaware of just how much of a problem he's dealing with or he's too enamored of nerdy indulgence to commit to condemning it. Then there's Armada's existence, which has the exact same oversaturation of references RPO is without the themes of escapism and corporations and whatever else to provide a fig leaf of justification. It's 100% the latter. It's written with no self-awareness on display
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Feb 4, 2018 09:23
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Congrats daaawwgg!!
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Feb 4, 2018 12:21
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Arcsquad12 posted:Isn't Croberts English? I thought CIG was a British developer/shell company to launder money from morons to fund Sandi's acting career and Ben Lesnick's suicide by cake. it is possibly only aiding the former now. Ben may have been silently fired.
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Feb 4, 2018 13:48
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All I know about RPO comes from 372pages and general cultural osmosis and Episode 0 of Armada terrifies me when they say Armada is the book no one likes and start reading critical reviews that perfectly fit RPO but end up being about Armada Like jeez how bad can it possibly get Also the Armada audiobook as narrated by internet man desperate for attention and recognition Wil Wheaton has a 5 minute stretch where he does nothing but read out a year and what movies came out that year
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Feb 4, 2018 14:19
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Kim Justice posted:Doubleposting because Gaming Historian has released his long, LONG awaited video on the Story of Tetris. As time goes on the history of this gets more and more detailed and a bit more reasonable to listen to. Like, ELORG's/Belikov's views were actually detailed and actually kind of reasonable other than not paying Pajitov and his colleagues's work and beforehand most history retellings were just "lol Russia doesn't know poo poo about games or technology". Henk Rogers wasn't just "lol Nintendo is there", he was a full fledged known entity that around the time he got in he was already a big deal since The Black Onyx straight up got Japan into RPGs. The whole thing happened during Gorbachev's time, a figure that actively bowed to Maxwell's whims! I really liked to listen to this.
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Feb 4, 2018 14:40
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Like you said, those are basically '80s movies, not nostalgic works about the '80s. I guess Stranger Things is also of this nature, but I've never watched it. Stranger Things is a great sci-fi/mystery/coming of age story. The 80s setting affects the mood and atmosphere, but if you placed the same story, characters and cast and put them in another decade, it wouldn't change too much. The 80s pop culture stuff is more than just window dressing, but there's actual substance to Stranger Things, not just "remember [movie from the 80s]? It was a good movie". I'm not looking forward to Ready Player One, but it was filmed in my part of the country, so I guess I have to see it. If they did it like Guardians of the Galaxy or Deadpool or Scott Pilgrim where the characters grow from shallow pop culture obessives to more rounded, less selfish characters that might work, but Ready Player One seems like the characterisation version of owning a Funko Pop - it shows you like a thing, but not WHY you like a thing.
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Feb 4, 2018 19:02
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financially racist posted:reminder that soy is less efficient than chicken as a food source and also that soybean farming is a rapidly increasing cause of deforestation in the amazon rainforest I am curious about how chicken is more efficient. I have also heard that dairy is really efficient. Is there a source where it lays out your argument?
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