No spoilers
Loothound:
I'd like to kick things off today by pointing out that The Atlantic recently published an article titled "Easy Mode is Actually for Adults." Very worthwhile read.
Also, 40m headshot kill trophy achieved. When I heard the ding, literally jumped out of my chair.
Feminina:
Woohoo!!!! We're so close...
I must read that article immediately.
Loothound:
It's not anything that you wouldn't expect, but it's a good read. I would also recommend following the link in the article that goes to a Washington Post article titled "Video Games Keep Getting Longer, It's All About Time and Money." Key quote from that article:
"Now we have games where the studios realize it's less about the game, from a creative vision," Plante said. "And more of a: 'How do we, as a company, control your time?' "
A familiar argument, to be sure, but reading it in The Washington Post gives it a different flavor.
Butch:
I'm just happy we've gotten to a point where the Atlantic and the Post have articles about games that aren't "Games: Making people fat and stupid. Ban them?"
But I'd be thin and smart cuz Mrs. McP worked late again last night so I had to drive Nugget to the gym (yes, a member of my family actually goes to a gym) and get Junior at work so I STILL haven't finished that side quest, let alone the game.
Oh, and Meatball has a fever.
Grumble.
Loothound:
I'm kind of dazed by the thought of a McPunch at the gym. Now you need to get easy for pre-workout drinks, after workout shakes, whey protein, and the whole biz. Just don't let him start using the creatine yet. He's too young for that.
Butch:
The first time I saw someone in my family tree in a jersey with a number and our family name on the back that wasn't a Halloween costume, I felt the universe get slightly out of whack.
You haven't seen him in a while, but he's getting rather large.
Where'd he get those genes?
Feminina:
It remains to be seen if there are jerseys in our future.
But as for the article, I'm with him on the idea that there are different ways to experience games and there's no shame in putting them on easy if that's what makes them something you have the time and energy to play. I tend to like a bit more challenge, so normal is usually fine, but if it's not fun that way (and yet I still think there's some fun to be gained), then I've got nothing against easy. I didn't grow up in the dank caves of the arcades like this guy, but I did use to have more time and patience for redoing things over and over until I got them right – Ezio's perfect races were worth working on. Nowadays I'm just not into that...I don't have enough game time to spare.
Loothound:
Yeah, I don't know how much fun I'd have playing games if there weren't SOME challenge, but then I did grow up in the dank, cutthroat caves of 1980s video game arcades. Honestly, whatever people enjoy. If it's basically just a TV show with options, that's a valid way to spend your leisure time. Kind of like a video version of one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books they had when we were kids.
Butch:
I totally don't have anything against easy, especially in boss fights. Boss fights were originally invented to make very short games longer. The original Super Mario for the NES is only 75 minutes long if you play it through without dying. To justify the price tag, to give you hours and hours of playtime, they had to kill you (not just Mario, all games) and make you do it again and again. What better way to extend game life than to make you do ALL of it again by killing you at the end?
Thus, end game boss.
Nowadays, we don't need to be sent back to the beginnings of levels to make a 75 minute game worth it. Games are already hours and hours long. The boss fight is a relic.
Now, I get the "But big climax!" argument. Big fights at the end of movies are certainly a thing. But so many boss fights are boring as fuck, and there's no frustration like spending fifteen minutes chipping away and running in circles only to die and have to chip and run all over again. That isn't an exciting climax. That's substituting an exciting climax with frustration.
That shit's getting turned down to easy every time.
It is whatever people enjoy. I was thinking yesterday that, while you two like more challenge than I do, something even less likely than kids in jerseys is you guys saying "You know what we should play next? Dark Souls. That sounds fun."
Not that I knock people who like those things, but we are not those people.
Feminina:
It is kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure, or, as mentioned in the article, sometimes people don't want even that much challenge and prefer to watch someone else play in a livestream. Which...I don't really get, in the sense that I can't imagine wanting to actually do it, but I suppose I get in theory, if you just enjoy the action/visuals/story of a game but don't really enjoy or have time to play it yourself. I mean, whatever works.
And yeah, no Dark Souls for me. I get, again in theory, that for some people the enjoyment really comes from battling against the game itself!--but that's not me. I concur that while a big fight makes sense as the climax of the action, a big fight that drags on and on just kills momentum.
Butch:
BOY do I not get watching. My kids know more about Five Nights at Freddy's than can possibly be known despite never having even touched any of the games themselves. I ask, "Why not just, you know, play it instead?" and they just shrug.
Go figure.
Feminina:
Same.
Although I think we probably wouldn't encourage them to actually play it at this point...they seem to have moved on to other things at the moment anyway.
Loothound:
"But playing is HARD and frustrating. I can just watch someone else who's better at it do it. Plus they say really funny things while they play."
Feminina:
"Such funny things! And they shriek with excitement at everything, and laugh hysterically at their own jokes, in loud voices that are not at all annoying for my parents to the point that they have to go to another room or be driven mad!"
Butch:
Oh god the laughter. I want to go into the TV, shake them all and scream "That's not funny!"
Fuck, I want to say "You didn't even SAY anything! What are you even laughing ABOUT???"
Feminina:
Although, I mean...what is sports, but wanting to watch people who are good at a thing you're interested in but probably not very good at yourself? What is professional music? What even is art?
The desire to experience a thing even though you can't make it happen yourself is probably universal.
I just don't happen to find this particular manifestation of it personally compelling. At all.
Butch:
Sports, music and movies do not often have people laughing like hyenas at nothing over said sports, music and movies.
Big difference.
What's interesting is I've never seen my kids laugh at it. The people making it are laughing. No one else is laughing.
Feminina:
I think one could argue it's not really a big difference at all.
We could say that playing video games for YouTube is a performance, and as such it has developed certain conventions, including laughing hysterically at yourself.
To pick something relevant to our current game, Noh theater is also a performance, and it has developed certain conventions, including stylized masks and gestures.
One may not enjoy the conventions (I certainly do not in the case of YouTube gamers – I've never seen Noh theater), but they're still part of the performance.
Butch:
Hmm. Fair. There do seem to be rather fixed conventions.
Like that noise. That...I don't know how to describe it, that quick "vweep" noise that they ALL use when something is supposed to be surprising. You know the one.
I also hate that.
Loothound:
Oh, our kids definitely laugh hysterically at the antics and buffoonery. Sometimes I'm afraid that our youngest will hurt himself bouncing around with the giggles.
Good point that conventions play into it, and I tend to think of the laughter like the laugh track in a TV show. It's a form of signaling. Like the zwoopy sound effects. The thing that always annoys me is the way they edit these things (mostly talking about the YouTube versions here). So…fucking…busy. Regular view, zoom, now I'm upside down, now I'm super saturated, now my vice goes all dubstep. Argh! I know a designer who has a side gig as a Twitch streamer who explained to me that it's a specific thing they do to keep people paying attention. That you have to have something different happen every 10 seconds or so or people will get bored and look for something else.
Just another episode of Short Attention Span Theatre…
Butch:
If your shit is so boring you need tricks to get people to pay attention to it, then maybe you should make your shit better, right youtube? RIGHT?
Guess not.
There is some good stuff. Nugget found this guy that does long videos (like, 45 minutes) doing deep dives into the history of major corporations. It's pretty neat.
But that is a rarity, for sure.
Loothound:
There absolutely IS some fantastic stuff on YouTube, etc. It's just that it can be hard to find amidst all of the drek. Plus, I still get really icked out by the way that algorithms decide what you might want to watch. Nevertheless, there's stuff on YouTube that I love that wouldn't exist if not for YouTube. See, the sword has two edges…
Also, the need for all that zazz and editing is more an indictment of people's attention spans that it necessarily is of the content. There's plenty of interesting stuff on there that you need to just sit through, because they're not going to try to wow you with dazzle. All that glitters isn't gold, but in this case not all gold glitters, either.
Feminina:
Zazz! Zork! Kapowza!
There are just so many more things people could be doing. In the old days, people would sit through a 4-hour movie, or before movies they'd just go listen to someone talk for a couple of hours, because what else was going on? This is entertainment, in the sense that it's not the same thing we'd be doing at home.
Now, there are options. So very many options.
Though also in the old days you'd go out for a nice bear-baiting or a public execution when the opportunity arose, so it wasn't that people didn't like excitement.
I didn't say zork.
Loothound:
Better not say Zork. That's a good way to get eaten by a grue.
Sorry, that is an absolutely ancient joke. It is all entertainment, and it's hard to say that one form of being entertained is more or less worthy than another. If the goal is to be entertained, and you're being entertained, then WIN. That being said, some forms of entertainment can enhance your life as a whole (hiking=fun and wholesome outdoorsiness and health), degrade your life as a whole (heroin=do I really need to spell it out), and everything in between. What you spend your time doing has an effect on your overall self, so I think that it's fair be a little judgemental to the value of our entertainment choices. Overdoing it can lead to a bit of hysteria, though, so…
WHAT IN THE WORLD CAN THAT BE?!?
Feminina:
Wait, tell me more about the heroin? I feel like there's a valid discussion to be had here about the ways it might enhance my life.
Loothound:
For more information, check out the film Trainspotting. Or, if you prefer the version that skips the fun hijinks and skips straight to making you feel like a cinderblock is repeatedly smashing into your stomach, Requiem for a Dream. Then we'll talk.
Butch:
You made the grue joke so I didn't have to.
Now to eat "the lunch" with the nasty knife.
Youtube isn't JUST entertainment. It's my go to for home repair videos! And...um...
Other stuff. I'm sure.
Loothound:
Troubleshooting computer fuck ups. That, too. Adobe software is so janky these days I feel like I'm constantly looking up things like "hey, how come this operation I've been doing I've been doing for 15 years isn't working?" The answer is usually some variation of "yeah they changed it so it's easier to figure out but now it doesn't work as well."
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