[Pedants and insufferable nerds call to arms] How would you define "gamer"

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > [Pedants and insufferable nerds call to arms] How would you define "gamer"

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Gamers are the kind of people who can't handle provocative articles about their particular hobby or games within it.

Honestly the hyper-critical stuff is a lot more entertaining to read than someone gushing over whichever game came out this week. Stellaris! It's the best! Immersion! Narrative! Buzzwords!

# ¿ Jun 9, 2016 11:31

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 19:21

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

I would say SMAC is very dated and hackneyed in terms of its writing- just a bunch of ideological caricatures duking it out with civ2 mechanics but AMPED UP.

I would say Deidre, for example, is straight out of the 90s. Also its fans are insufferable retards who want strategy games to be dumb narrative poo poo instead of mechanically strong games like civ4.

There's still game reviews out there and you can always hit up metacritic if you want that. The existence of other kinds of articles doesn't really prohibit standard x/10 x/5 reviews.

Panzeh fucked around with this message at 12:04 on Jun 10, 2016

# ¿ Jun 10, 2016 12:00

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Craptacular! posted:

Well that's certainly preferable to "what if I could talk to the monsters in Doom, what would they tell me?" Yet my favorite YouTuber is Errant Signal, who makes analytical thoughtpieces like this. And I can't stand most of the written/blog-format stuff people cite as garbage gaming journalism.

There's a couple factors going on here: one is that the best YouTubers are under no obligation to make a video unless they have something to say. The ones that are ultra popular and make huge amounts of cash on YouTube views are under more pressure and perhaps have less to do, but most of those people are running Minecraft channels. Bloggers have to write articles constantly. The other is by making that much content they're inevitably going to reveal too much of their approach to games, or their political philosophy, or something that breaks with the reader's credo having to make what is basically a daily newspaper. They're going to get attacked for articles like "An Ode to Pikachu's rear end" as though they had to write to meet some kind of content quota and it was a slow news day. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but the pressure to deliver more persists.

It was easier to simply publish a magazine once a month, even the ones that were over 90 pages like mid-90s EGM were mostly ads. The need for space meant at least some stupid ideas got shelved. Now, they're published.

"What if I could talk to the monsters in doom" is probably going to result in a more entertaining article than "WOW STELLARIS BEST GAME EVER PARADOX YOU ARE THE BEST".

# ¿ Jun 11, 2016 14:25

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

bloodysabbath posted:

Not if what you want from game journalism is reliable, down the middle of the plate buying advice, because these things are expensive products first and foremost at the end of the day.

Game journalists are a lot of things, but I don't think "entertaining" is one of them.

You can pretty much watch guys on youtube play games who can match pretty much any conceivable preference for that kind of thing.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2016 16:43

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

bloodysabbath posted:

I know you have a weird hard on towards attacking and stereotyping gamers for some reason, but this is very false. Gamers were loving pissed when Jeff got fired and overwhelmingly supported his new independent venture. It eventually got big enough that the new parent company of the site that fired him made amends and bought his new site.

It's definitely possible to review a video game without getting into your pet personal issues much in the same way it's very much possible and desirable to review an iPhone without getting into your thoughts on how Foxconn is evil, or to review a meal at a restaurant without going on a rant about how you think the tipping system/GMOs/the contractor who built the place is bullshit. I know this is a very strange concept for some, but it is very possible to compartmentalize one thing from another. People do it all the time as part of being a functioning human being, as the alternative is ending up a Glenn Beck/Josh McIntosh "It's all CONNECTED" lunatic.

I also love how some seem to think there's no middle ground between "Nintendo Power" and "I don't care if this game is fun, the politics hurt my fee-fees, 2/10."

It seems like that kind of stuff still exists, it has in fact improved significantly since now you can literally just watch someone you like play a game on youtube to see if you like it which is almost always going to be better than someone writing a review somewhere.

It kinda makes sense for written criticism to move toward analytical/etc. because it's significantly harder to do that in video form.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2016 00:30

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 19:21

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Craptacular! posted:

The streaming stuff is big, but it exists largely because games don't have the copyright vigilance that movie studios have, and like a movie a lot of people would like to go in blind in terms of the experience but also would like to know if the product is technically broken in some way. In other words, "but spoilers!"

Something like this that wouldn't spoil a game would be a paragraph at most and probably not that helpful because everyone's machine is different.

It's a lot like asking a random person "is this game fun?"

# ¿ Jun 16, 2016 12:27

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > [Pedants and insufferable nerds call to arms] How would you define "gamer"