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DOSBox is available for games from that era, and virtual machines aren't that tricky to set up. The harder part is games that relied on central servers for multiplayer.
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May 24, 2016 16:57
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:DOSBox is available for games from that era, and virtual machines aren't that tricky to set up. Yeah, there are good options if you are thinking of computer games. But when it comes to console games, unless your game is emulated, you are out of luck.
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May 24, 2016 17:15
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blackguy32 posted:Yeah, there are good options if you are thinking of computer games. But when it comes to console games, unless your game is emulated, you are out of luck. And emulation is really, really hard to do well, the more stringent your accuracy requirements are. This interview with someone who is dead set on perfectly emulating the SNES is very illuminating in that regard.
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May 24, 2016 17:21
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Absurd Alhazred posted:And emulation is really, really hard to do well, the more stringent your accuracy requirements are. This interview with someone who is dead set on perfectly emulating the SNES is very illuminating in that regard. Eh, hyper puritanism on emulation misses the point because no one is going to claim that watching a DVD movie in the home or 80s show on a modern screen renders the experience false because it's not a theater or doesn't have scanlines and knobs. If you really want to get rigid then every serialized tv show with "next episode" trailers is lost forever, because the waiting teasing, and anticipation were all part of the media experience. Even the removal of commercials changes the beats of a TV show. Anecdotally, Lost is a good example of a show where the rate of episode viewing seems to have dramatic impacts on episode ratings because the huge cliffhanger gaps are eliminated and ABC isn't spending the whole week telling you that you're finally going to learn the secret of the tattoos. Legally game history is a mess but I think a far higher percentage of commercially released games have been appropriately preserved than film. I think everything up through ps1 is completely covered (not sure about DC) and the ps2 gen is definitely covered, although availability is an issue.
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May 24, 2016 17:43
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Re: ME3 - (1 and 2 were legit.)
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May 24, 2016 18:36
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Volcott posted:Re: ME3 - Nobody should be mad at ME3 any more, and especially not that mad. Jesus Christ.
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May 24, 2016 18:37
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Who What Now posted:Nobody should be mad at ME3 any more, and especially not that mad. Jesus Christ. No it's fine. Being super loving mad all the time is good for you.
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May 24, 2016 19:15
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blackguy32 posted:There was quite a bit of debate on it a while back and while I think it does ok as a satire of Call of Duty, but in terms of gameplay and interactivity, it was woefully lacking since you are basically railroaded down a path and the game starts to admonish you for it. Whether or not people agree whether it succeeds at what it's trying to do, the fact that the game attempts to use the very concept of player agency as part of it's narrative in a non fourth wall breaking way is an example of artistic expression unique to this medium. I don't think you have to have the agency to alter the narrative for it to be a uniquely video game experience, the way that the narrative is experienced and your expectations molded by feeding you exactly what you'd expect from a first person shooter is done in a way that couldn't be conveyed through another medium. Or put more succinctly, choice is not the only way player agency can be used to convey an experience unique to video games.
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May 24, 2016 19:17
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Yeah, spec ops turned the "player agency" thing through the fourth wall. You don't have the choice to massacre or not massacre civilians with white phosphorus,you have the choice to massacre the civilians with white phosphorus or stop playing the game. It's an interesting idea, but it's hard to differentiate "making a conscious choice to stop playing the game" and "just stopped playing the game because it really isn't super great"
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May 24, 2016 19:29
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Bushiz posted:Yeah, spec ops turned the "player agency" thing through the fourth wall. You don't have the choice to massacre or not massacre civilians with white phosphorus,you have the choice to massacre the civilians with white phosphorus or stop playing the game. It's an interesting idea, but it's hard to differentiate "making a conscious choice to stop playing the game" and "just stopped playing the game because it really isn't super great" It's also really dumb to have the message be "Well, you can just stop using this product that you paid money for if you want." I respect the hell out of Spec Ops: The Line, I loved that game and the way it turned the narrative on the player. I think it's a dumb sentiment to say "Well, you can just stop playing the game." If you stopped playing the game and never found out about the stuff at the end, the message that the game is trying to send wouldn't work. The story works because you finished it, and you're expecting a boss fight or at least some sort of "At least it was all worth it" cutscene and that's when the game hits you hard. Without the ending, the game loses its impact.
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May 24, 2016 19:36
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Bushiz posted:Yeah, spec ops turned the "player agency" thing through the fourth wall. You don't have the choice to massacre or not massacre civilians with white phosphorus,you have the choice to massacre the civilians with white phosphorus or stop playing the game. It's an interesting idea, but it's hard to differentiate "making a conscious choice to stop playing the game" and "just stopped playing the game because it really isn't super great" That's not what I'm talking about, maybe I'm using the term incorrectly but I specifically mentioned choice and agency separately because I was trying to make a point about the fact that a player's "agency" in the sense that they are the ones performing the actions that drive the plot/experiance/whatever instead of being a casual observer can be used to convey an artistic expression unique to the medium in ways besides allowing the player to make choices that impact the narrative. And it's not really the WP scene I'm talking about, it's the way the misdirection of the whole story is a different experience because you are experiencing as an active participant rather then a casual observer like in a movie, and that's why the ending of that game works so well.
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May 24, 2016 19:45
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WampaLord posted:It's also really dumb to have the message be "Well, you can just stop using this product that you paid money for if you want." The writers want you to get to the end; otherwise the game would just be an open-ended series of escalating war crimes. You have the choice to walk away, just like how Walker could have turned around and left Dubai at any one of the many points where it became clear he was in over his head and poo poo was out of control, but you don't, and he doesn't, because you want to follow the thread of the story. Feeling unfairly maligned and put upon for doing a bunch of terrible stuff when your hand was forced and you literally had no choice, feeling like the choice to walk away is a false option, is an essential part of the experience, because this is exactly what Walker is feeling and doing. Think about how many times Walker talks about having had no choice but to do the things he did.
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May 24, 2016 19:59
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I think this is probably germane to the discussion: https://twitter.com/npcdel/status/698008029585801216
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May 24, 2016 20:45
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blackguy32 posted:Yeah, there are good options if you are thinking of computer games. But when it comes to console games, unless your game is emulated, you are out of luck. Everblight posted:I think this is probably germane to the discussion: Incoherence fucked around with this message at 20:52 on May 24, 2016 |
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May 24, 2016 20:48
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Incoherence posted:I think emulation, with appropriate hardware peripherals like controllers, is entirely appropriate as a means of preserving old games. Online games create a much larger problem, since those games rely on a central server or on the metagame that develops between players, and patches mean that you have to choose which of the dozens of possible variations of the game you want to preserve. And even then, a game like World of Warcraft has gone on long enough that player knowledge of its history starts to make it difficult to choose a point in the past to preserve: a WoW 1.12 private server is not at all the same experience as WoW was circa 2006. This would be the case if emulation past the PS1 was worth a drat. Hell, I still don't think they have nailed down N64 emulation yet and I'm not talking about perfect emulation, I am merely talking about having the game running without crashing or having huge graphical glitches.
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May 24, 2016 21:09
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Literally everything falls within a sociopolitical context. You can try to ignore it but every piece of media has implications that can be scrutinized. Some may be relatively benign and not worth too much of a discussion but intention is only a fraction of the equation.
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May 24, 2016 21:14
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HighwireAct posted:You could, but what you'd come out with wouldn't be Gone Home. The game relies on the player inhabiting its space to drive its narrative, and stripping those elements of interactivity and self-pacing from it fundamentally change the experience, probably for the worse. Nah, not really. Gone home is pretty shallow so turning it into a short student film would lose virtually none of its impact.
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May 24, 2016 21:15
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Incoherence posted:I think emulation, with appropriate hardware peripherals like controllers, is entirely appropriate as a means of preserving old games. Online games create a much larger problem, since those games rely on a central server or on the metagame that develops between players, and patches mean that you have to choose which of the dozens of possible variations of the game you want to preserve. And even then, a game like World of Warcraft has gone on long enough that player knowledge of its history starts to make it difficult to choose a point in the past to preserve: a WoW 1.12 private server is not at all the same experience as WoW was circa 2006. Sometimes you want a thought-provoking game. Sometimes you just want to hit skeletons with a mace and watch the bones fly across the room. Rarely, you get both. Those are always nice.
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May 24, 2016 21:17
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blackguy32 posted:On another note, that I find intriguing with this topic, is how little options there are to play past games if you ever wanted to. I can probably find most VHS movies on DVD at the very least nowadays, but with video games, if you want to play anything obscure on a previous console, you are out of luck unless you dig out the original hardware. Add to that that hardware stops being produced over time, and you might be out of luck if you want to play a certain game. I dunno. There used to be movies that were very difficult to find home video releases of. There used to be TV shows that would never have received a complete VHS release. It's not that astonishing to me that there's some games that will be difficult to re-experience. HighwireAct posted:If games exist in this limbo between form and function, between art and product, where does that leave critical discourse? How can we embrace the "in-between"-ness of video games in our criticism of them? I really don't think that however we categorize or label games is particularly important to critical discourse. A game is "just a game" in the same sense that a film is just a series of photographic exposures. Sometimes there's much to be said about it - like Journey, or 2001 - and sometimes there's not a whole lot to be said about it - like Tetris, or a series of photographs of the Moon. If it's worthy of discussion, people will probably discuss it (and if they aren't, congrats, you get to be the first to start the conversation!); if it's not, people won't, or they will and it will be readily apparent that it's silly and unimportant. I'm sure someone can cloud-gaze their way into several pages of blather about the deeper meaning of Hexxagon, but I probably won't find it terribly compelling. If the discussion is interesting or informative, it was worth having; if it's not, it'll probably stop by itself. There's no need to decide or justify the discussion by attempting to prove its worthiness.
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May 24, 2016 21:21
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[fair enough]
Nosfereefer fucked around with this message at 14:48 on May 25, 2016 |
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May 24, 2016 21:48
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blackguy32 posted:This would be the case if emulation past the PS1 was worth a drat. Hell, I still don't think they have nailed down N64 emulation yet and I'm not talking about perfect emulation, I am merely talking about having the game running without crashing or having huge graphical glitches. AFAIK the Wii and PS2 have fine emulation, the N64 is emulated but requires per game tweaking (with some working fine from scratch), and everything besides the PS3, Vita, and WiiU have been emulated by the companies that control the hardware. The point is that availability has little to do with hardware ceasing to exist.
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May 24, 2016 21:52
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(Fine, no skeletons.) Volcott fucked around with this message at 22:03 on May 24, 2016 |
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May 24, 2016 21:58
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Everblight posted:I think this is probably germane to the discussion: Please take this kind of posting out of D&D, thanks.
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May 24, 2016 22:01
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Much like movies aren't just the acting, but also the cinematography, the music, the props, etc. games are made of multiple parts: gameplay, story, level deign, music, etc. And If eel like they are worth discussing and analyzing. Sure, not everyone wants to read Supermechangodzilla's take on Super Mario Sunshine as a capitalist nightmare, but just don't read it if you're not interested. I mean, look at this super long video on Metal Gear Solid 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-2YuPGYabw
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May 25, 2016 01:34
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Read Homo Ludens by Huizinga and realize everything's a game if it's a cultural activity. Then read Man, Play, and Games and by Caillois if you want to use more words. This is my suggestion if you want to know how to talk about games.
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May 25, 2016 02:39
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Absurd Alhazred posted:And emulation is really, really hard to do well, the more stringent your accuracy requirements are. This interview with someone who is dead set on perfectly emulating the SNES is very illuminating in that regard. http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=428897#428897 blackguy32 posted:This would be the case if emulation past the PS1 was worth a drat. Hell, I still don't think they have nailed down N64 emulation yet and I'm not talking about perfect emulation, I am merely talking about having the game running without crashing or having huge graphical glitches. There are also new challenges, like the fact that Moore's Law isn't really yielding improvements in the form of single-core clock speed increases any more, so it's becoming much less viable to deal with ISA differences by just having a faster CPU eat the overhead, which will become a much more apparent problem if new consoles come out that don't use the x64 ISA. A big problem in general is that console manufacturers are completely opposed to games for their consoles running on other hardware. It directly undermines the business model, and more recently, they've gone beyond relying on emulation difficulty to deploying increasingly-elaborate copy protection schemes to thwart it. Hardware encryption modules are really going to hurt things, because it'll go from "well, we have this program, we just have to figure out how to make it run" to not even having the program. The industry basically has no motivation to preserve its history except under lock and key, and plenty of motivation to burn it, which is depressing. Tuxedo Catfish posted:The harder part is games that relied on central servers for multiplayer. Anyway, I'm wondering if talking about "games" as a monolithic medium makes sense in the first place. What's unique about games isn't just that they're interactive, but that they're software. Movies, films, books, plays, and songs are all created for predefined forms of presentation, but by being software, games have vastly more control over how they're experienced and have already split into vastly different experiences because of it. How much do Gone Home, Madden, Rez, and Skyrim really have in common with each other? Does it even make sense to talk about them as being the same kind of experience? I think it might make more sense to view video games not as a single form, but as a platform that allows very disparate forms to be created within it. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 04:42 on May 25, 2016 |
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May 25, 2016 03:25
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OneEightHundred posted:Playerbase depletion is a bigger problem for multiplayer, especially if you want to play mods or custom maps. From the perspective of actually playing them for fun, sure, but I'm talking about preservation. All you have to do to play something with no active playerbase (but all the necessary infrastructure still in place) is gather up enough like-minded friends. But if the game wasn't designed for players to run their own servers, and matchmaking or even certain parts of the game's content have to come from the central server, you're back to emulation again.
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May 25, 2016 03:57
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:From the perspective of actually playing them for fun, sure, but I'm talking about preservation. All you have to do to play something with no active playerbase (but all the necessary infrastructure still in place) is gather up enough like-minded friends. But if the game wasn't designed for players to run their own servers, and matchmaking or even certain parts of the game's content have to come from the central server, you're back to emulation again. In the case of stuff like dead MMOs, and other games with only first-party hosting, yeah, you're completely right.
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May 25, 2016 04:39
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MonsieurChoc posted:Much like movies aren't just the acting, but also the cinematography, the music, the props, etc. games are made of multiple parts: gameplay, story, level deign, music, etc. And If eel like they are worth discussing and analyzing. Sure, not everyone wants to read Supermechangodzilla's take on Super Mario Sunshine as a capitalist nightmare, but just don't read it if you're not interested.
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May 25, 2016 04:50
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Please take this kind of posting out of D&D, thanks. Yeah hitting skeletons with a mace is really against the spirit of D&D
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May 25, 2016 06:15
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OneEightHundred posted:The industry basically has no motivation to preserve its history except under lock and key, and plenty of motivation to burn it, which is depressing. Anyway, tangentially got me thinking to how Modern Games and Modern Consoles serve as platforms or services that are always evolving. Say you want to preserve the 360. Do you recreate the Bladez UI? The NXE UI? Do you preserve the SFV 1.0 release with the hosed up Player 2 boob physics, or the SFV final release with the polished netcode + input delay fix. Do you bother with the DLC characters? Basically a person could touch the same game at different points in their release and find a different playing product in their hands. That was way less prevalent before we could handily patch out problems, necessitation a whole new fabrication of Discs or Cartridges. It's kind of an interesting problem.
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May 25, 2016 06:31
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VICE Gaming is quickly becoming a go-to resource for sophisticated gaming and cultural analysis: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/a-look-at-the-brexit-debate-through-the-filter-of-mass-effect-909
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May 25, 2016 13:21
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Incoherence posted:People write thinkpieces about the deep implied meaning of a bubbly pop song all the loving time, and no one really bats an eye at it. I would just like to say that i bat the hell out of my eyes at it
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May 25, 2016 22:55
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Ddraig posted:Gamers are indeed terrible. They rallied against Ebert with his "video games are not art" spiel, as they totes are art guys this old dude doesn't know what the the gently caress he's saying Maybe some people find some games art, and others find different games as not art? A big issue with game reviews is that it seems like people expect every game to cater to their ideas of what a game "should" be. Some games are mindless fun with a challenge, other games are telling a story and have no lose condition. Both can exist and both are 100% fine. Helsing posted:
This also requires a lot of investment because each game is going to differ in how it presents those mechanics, maybe even in some very subtle ways that won't become apparent until you've spent a significant amount of time playing them. Also the audience that is look for that is much smaller, and much harder to talk to. Luckilly the internet is a big place, and for games like Civilization you an find a few blogs/forums that focus only on those types of games. ate shit on live tv fucked around with this message at 05:34 on May 26, 2016 |
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May 26, 2016 05:31
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I'm interested in the attitudes of gamers in terms of exposing their own kids to games. Unlike my own generation, whose parents didn't really know what to make of video games, the next generation will have gamer parents. Their values will reflect their own decisions in what to expose their kids to. -Will they let their kids play any kind of game they want? Will their bitterness of the hysteria of violent video games create a backlash when their own kids want a game for Christmas? -Can we trust that their experiences will lead them to be more nuanced and objective about what is/isn't a good influence? If my child is brown, shouldn't it be important he get exposed to positive examples of people of color in video games? -What kind of opportunities will parents have to use video games as a family experience? -What kind of dumb hysteria do you think gamer parents will fall under? That kids are too busy playing soccer to worry much about video games? My nephews play video games but any opportunity to kick a real ball at a park and they drop the controllers. I personally don't see this as a bad thing.
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May 26, 2016 06:20
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Panfilo posted:I'm interested in the attitudes of gamers in terms of exposing their own kids to games. Unlike my own generation, whose parents didn't really know what to make of video games, the next generation will have gamer parents. Their values will reflect their own decisions in what to expose their kids to. It would be nice if people actually followed the ESRB/PEGI age guidelines and didn't let their 10 year olds play Murderboner V: Barbed Shaft Edition.
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May 26, 2016 06:29
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Volcott posted:It would be nice if people actually followed the ESRB/PEGI age guidelines and didn't let their 10 year olds play Murderboner V: Barbed Shaft Edition. But how else will I be able to teach my kid the harsh reality of life without throwing them out the window?
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May 26, 2016 13:27
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Everblight posted:I think this is probably germane to the discussion: Ddraig posted:Gamers are indeed terrible. They rallied against Ebert with his "video games are not art" spiel, as they totes are art guys this old dude doesn't know what the the gently caress he's saying It's been mentioned before, but I think the group of gamers that want games to be seen as art are not the group of gamers who are angry about the "critical eye" that some put on it.
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May 26, 2016 14:50
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Volcott posted:It would be nice if people actually followed the ESRB/PEGI age guidelines and didn't let their 10 year olds play Murderboner V: Barbed Shaft Edition. I was at my in laws and my nephews were playing Grand Theft Auto Chinatown. Admittedly, while I haven't followed the GTA series in the past couple years, I told my wife privately I wasn't sure if a game like Grand Theft Auto was terribly appropriate for a 7 year old to be playing (not sure if the 'run the hooker over to get your money back' trope is still relevant). I enjoy rediculous, over the top violent games as much as the next nerd but the idea of little kids playing it definitely gives me pause. I feel that if I had kids the context of the game would be very important to me and I wouldn't want to either be so permissive or oppressive as to bring about Bigoted Sexist Turbonerd gen 2.0
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May 26, 2016 15:46
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Panfilo posted:I was at my in laws and my nephews were playing Grand Theft Auto Chinatown. Admittedly, while I haven't followed the GTA series in the past couple years, I told my wife privately I wasn't sure if a game like Grand Theft Auto was terribly appropriate for a 7 year old to be playing (not sure if the 'run the hooker over to get your money back' trope is still relevant). I remember when I was like 14 or so, playing Dynasty Warriors 3, where you can cut down literally hundreds if not thousands of random soldiers, and suddenly pondering exactly how hosed up something like that would be to live out for real. Like, even if it's just a game and not real, if it WAS real you'd just be running around creating a tidal wave of grief, on account of all these guys you're just casually killing off presumably having families and friends. The game didn't appeal to me too much after that. Of course, years later I found myself playing games like Prototype and Bloodborne which are incredibly violent and gory but that's different. I've never had that visceral of an experience from any movie or book and it wasn't even an intentional message. Kit Walker fucked around with this message at 18:16 on May 26, 2016 |
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May 26, 2016 18:12
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