rolling thread of stuff worth reading on videogames

tsunami of violence

i want 2 be a games journalist so bad

or at least have sum1 pay me to write abt painscription drug abuse & playing atelier rorona for 80 hours

brother, i have the same dream

http://juxtapixel.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/theyre-just-videogames-right/

yes, it is another mini-autobio entry about what games mean to a man, but i liked this one more than the one about the cokehead. also I can identify really strongly with some bits here, especially delivering passionate monologues to others about games (who do not understand it)

http://botherer.org/2010/03/21/the-observer-the-beguiling-nature-of-videogames/

Saw this linked from gamesetwatch. It's in response to that irritating coke/gta4 Observer piece.

not tremendously insightful, but gently amusing: geoff dyer on gta3 a few years back:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/jul/24/games.shopping1

Time sped by. There was, obviously, a certain amount of maiming and killing going on. At one point, due to a random press of an inadequately understood button, I picked up a knife and slashed a couple of cops. There's no shortage of hookers in San Andreas and I am informed you can score points by having sex and then beating them up instead of paying. Now this, it hardly needs saying, is not nice. Nor is it quite what Matthew Arnold had in mind when he wrote of culture toggling us towards the sweetness and light.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art.html
nothing new here but ebert betrays his lack of interest in supporting his central point by not even taking the time to more clearly understand the games he's dismissing.

yeah, i can't help but feel he's just straight up linkbait trolling here. also from what he writes, i think he is basing his judgment on videos and what other people are saying as opposed to debasing himself by actually, you know, playing a video game

The best thing about his trolling is that it is totally working.

I bet he actually loves videogames.

He does love videogames! He wrote a very positive review to one of those CD-ROM games back in the day.
The central point that validates his position, one that Ebert weirdly is a little ambivalent about, is that games are anti-art by their very nature.

"Braid .... a story told between the games levels, which exhibits prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie."

Ebert OTM

Also, I think Ebert is OTM about the reason for all the video game is art handwringing -- that they're trying to use "art" as legitimization. Why can't peeps just enjoy playing video games without making all kinds of other claims for them?

Lots of games are resembling work more and more, so if they're not getting paid for it, I totally feel their need to legitimize seemingly uncompensated labor.

Toward the end of her presentation, she shows a visual with six circles, which represent, I gather, the components now forming for her brave new world of cinema as art. The circles are labeled: Development, Finance, Publishing, Marketing, Education, and Executive Management. I rest my case.

http://www.clicknothing.com/click_nothing/2010/05/451-weeks.html

kind of interesting but immediately upon finishing it, i wanted to yell at this guy, wait - so why the fuck are you quitting? why write this thing if you're just going to talk around the reasons and "bad habits" that you have developed? what a bizarre semi-inspirational yet passive-aggressive resignation notice, the most eye-rolling bit is the "i have to walk on coals" shit - he's quitting because he job is just too damn good for him to live with

i read that and then realized i had no idea what he had actually said

So I liked a bunch of Extra Lives -- which is the thing worth reading on videogames, not my review of it that I'm linking to right here and hoping the total tackiness of linking to myself will be overlooked since I mentioned it myself: http://popculturecurator.tumblr.com/post/709868739/book-review-extra-lives

is that by the guy who wrote about doing coke while playing GTA? my eyes are already rolling

It was so good! I don't know how/where he wrote about it elsewhere, but that sequence in the book is my favorite.

If anyone wants to pay me to write a book about doing drugs & playing videogames, feel free to contact me.

If you write that book, I will buy a copy. But no advance, I'm afraid.

Also, I will contribute a chapter about my experiences parachuting through snow-capped mountains in Lost Cause 2 while completely stoned with the volume turned down and some dubstep turned up.

Oh my god I checked whether the library had that Bissell book today but finding out that he's the coke Observer gta guy I hate you for recommending it. Is it really a recommendation? I don't actually hate you. But god.

I'm surprised you guys don't like the cocaine piece. Is it just that you feel an article about drugs + video games is inherently self-congratulatory and fratty? Because I find it really open and honest and real. Or did you just think it was poor writing?

An article about drugs is inherently self-congratulatory however honest.

I tried Rainbow Islands on acid once, it was shit.

There is something really cool about seeing the graph paper drawings for planning out Pac-Man.

http://kotaku.com/5569439/secret-pac+man-drawings

So I liked a bunch of Extra Lives -- which is the thing worth reading on videogames, not my review of it that I'm linking to right here and hoping the total tackiness of linking to myself will be overlooked since I mentioned it myself: http://popculturecurator.tumblr.com/post/709868739/book-review-extra-lives

I was high as fuck and blindbought a Kindle copy of this based on your recommendations itt before realizing the author was Captain Cokey McCahzinNico

/wrists

Your narrative about being on drugs and reading books about video games is A++ imo.

Kotaku makes my netbook throw up. It took 5 minutes to load that page.

your netbook is clearly looking out for your best interests

UPDATE ON THAT SHITTY BISSEL BOOK: so far I am guardedly enjoying it?!?? it is as self-serving and self-congratulatory as a post-success Nick Hornby book but since the whole collection is basically attempting to be an aesthetic study of vidya games that is to be expected, and fortunately (and incredibly) he occasionally makes semi-trenchant points. nothing as risible as the GTA essay, although it's looming at the end of the book.

that being said, that essay about Resident Evil can swing from my ballhair. STOP USING THE SECOND FUCKING PERSON, SOME OF US DIDN'T GET TO PLAY VIDEO GAMES WHEN WE WERE BABBYS

Haha!

also did not realize that Bissell was the one behind that CliffyB NYT profile from a few years back; blech on that one too

oh wow, that guy is pretty terrible

TOM SHITTYBISSELL BOOK UPDATE

the Mass Effect essay is maybe the worst thing I've ever read of his, GTA and CliffyB essays included. the correlation between the quality of his writing and his personal affinity for whatever he's writing about is downright Hornbyesque.

downright Hornbyesque.

this is worse than being described as Mcsweeney-ish in my book

The best thing I have read about videogames for ages? http://www.boingboing.net/features/nomenludi.html

whoa

that's for real?

impressed.

great story...

that's for real?

Read further down in the comments. It's fiction.

ah, that's a bit more believable then.

Do you guys read RetroGamer magazine? The magazine is filled with articles very much like that story with maybe a little less fictionalization (though there is always a haze of fiction when dealing with nostalgia) and less drama (though not always -- last issue had an interview with John Romero)

keep meaning to get a sub

uh holy shit like 150 bucks for 13 issues, no.

Ha! Nostalgia is expensive in more ways than one, and one of those ways is money.

(Sometimes I think that if I could get funding to do any phd in the world and did not need a job afterward I would want to do nerd culture 1986-1988? Nostalgia is the wrong word really 'cos I was at, y'know, nursery at the time but it's definitely some kind of yearning?)

why those years specifically? Post-Robocop to pre-Burton Batman?