Why is casual racism/sexism more accepted in video games than other forms of media (these days)?

maybe the deepest game would be one you lose every time

in the rough mental schemata i've built gaming in general as associated w/ game theory as the kind of deep truth / philosophical deep structure. also there's a lot of writing about how games access 'playing' as like a fundamental, primordial human drive. this is stuff i used to think about a lot in undergrad (and read about a lot - there is some decent academic work in the field lately) but haven't really dealt w/ as of late.

maybe the deepest game would be one you lose every time

oh so Dark Souls or Ninja Gaiden

nethack

ha yeah, that or Tetris

sure there are indie games that deliberately do that kind of thing but feel like they fail as games

yup

in the same way that most people won't ride for clumsy didacticism in other artforms

i'm not sure what you're responding to now, NV, but like tetris + super hexagon are to me the purest distillation of video games and also the most personally satisfying. my proudest (llol) gaming accomplishment of the last year or so was "beating" super hexagon.

in the rough mental schemata i've built gaming in general as associated w/ game theory as the kind of deep truth / philosophical deep structure. also there's a lot of writing about how games access 'playing' as like a fundamental, primordial human drive. this is stuff i used to think about a lot in undergrad (and read about a lot - there is some decent academic work in the field lately) but haven't really dealt w/ as of late.

― Mordy, Monday, September 8, 2014 1:34 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sure games activate deep human things but do they have anything to say about it or are they just pushing yr buttons over and over

spelunky

sorry for obscurity Mordy i was contemplating those kind of "art" games that deliberately subvert ludic pleasure to make some comment on something, maybe on play itself

like some feted but ultimately kinda shitty IF has done

we've definitely done some "games as art" threads elsewhere btw just in case anybody is unhappy about derail

i'd want to talk about specific IF (or other) games just bc i think some are tremendous works (galatea, slouching towards bedlam, varicella) and some even celebrated works (photopia, curses) are kinda meh.

but yeah, i find games that don't actually let you play very dissatisfying - whether they're Uncharted cut-scene on-rails games, or Gone Home

Photopia is def one i think is a tawdry thing that fails as game whereas yeah your a-list certainly is more successful as playable games that want to create an aesthetic experience

Conversation has suddenly sped up so I'm probably skipping a lot of other points here, but re: i do think the losing/winning binary game aspect tends to hit a different part of the mind - a lot of games don't use this binary. If you want examples try any sandbox game, and a bunch of IF only counts as having a win condition if you consider yourself as having "won" a book or film when you get to the end of it.

you can be an enthusiast (and even a creator) of something in a field without proclaiming an identity around it.
douglas adams probably didn't even have "IF pioneer" on his tombstone.

yeah but is it good as a game xp

douglas adams' IF games are nigh unplayable ime lol, but i'd be surprised if he didn't (and if ppl like adam cadre, emily short, etc don't) see their identities as being somewhat intertwined w/ the games that they design.

And yes, games with non-binary conditions can be fucking awesome as games. I don't even get how this is up for discussion, really.

When I think of depth in gaming what comes to mind are certain puzzlers and platformers where one needs to spend a lot of time (or a lot of deaths) experimenting within a geometrical structure and learning its complexities. That to me is when gaming feels deep, when it succeeds in facilitating deep immersion in something highly abstract. I don't know if this counts as 'deep truth' - it's truth as pertaining to some tiny pocket of the universe defined by fixed rules and starting conditions.

i'm reading this old interview about the hitchhiker's text game he co-wrote and he definitely comes across as more "#1 beatles fan" than "IF dude" even while being pretty excited about the medium
("this is the first game that lies to you!")

And yes, games with non-binary conditions can be fucking awesome as games. I don't even get how this is up for discussion, really.

― emil.y, Monday, September 8, 2014 1:55 PM (52 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well no one seems to play them for one thing

oops! sorry, i thought for a second we were talking about scott adams. yes, i'm sure douglas adams mostly thought of himself as a fiction author, surely

its ok to identify as a 'gamer', but if your whole identity is based around being a 'gamer' and the subculture that goes around it then it becomes a problem, like a steady diet of pizza and nothing else. e.g. just reading about 'swatting', where live streamers are pranked by calling in a SWAT team on them. what other subculture would come up with such idiocy?

this is the guy w/ the unplayable IF games:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams_(game_designer)

i don't think Scott Adams is more unplayable than most of the IF of his era - i.e. stupidly hard to the point of guessing/cheating

But then, I think arguing the point that "not all games have win conditions" in this context is accepting the idea that "win conditions lead to games being more consumerist than other artforms", as these seem to be the two ideas that lagoon is connecting here. To me that sentence is obviously ridiculous to the point that it sounds like *I* am being ridiculous by framing that as the claim, but I think it's on lagoon to clarify this.

Multiple xposts again.

well no one seems to play them for one thing

― lag∞n, Monday, September 8, 2014 6:56 PM (3 minutes ago)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft#Reception

win condition = game
no win condition = toy

is how i break it down sort of

Heyo can I get a Wittgenstein all up in this thread?

plz

minecraft has zombies that kill u also u have to get resources in order to build yr stuff, i mean maybe its not exactly a binary and i agree that its different in a lot of it is about the joy of building but it def has a lot of conventional game stuff in there too

Heyo can I get a Wittgenstein all up in this thread?

― emil.y, Monday, September 8, 2014 2:03 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh jeez

honestly, not finding the "gamer's not a label/identity/enthusiasm/fandom worth using and defending" track to be very convincing or useful. i play games a lot, i love games a lot, i am a gamer. it matters to me

why does it matter what cld possibly matter about a game

its by definition inconsiquental

What could possibly matter about paintings or songs or novels or sports or films or fashion? I don't know. Nothing. They are non-functional artefacts of culture. They are things that human beings do or create or discuss to fill in time before they die.

suspect you dont believe that

i don't mind conventional game stuff & binary endings at all. i like driving things, shooting guns, leveling up, unlocking shit. these are things the medium does really well. i just don't want to talk to other people who REALLY like doing those things. my taste in games is probably dialed way more toward marquee shooters than the average ILGer. what happened to cozen anyway? that guy had some kind of savant talent for fps, weren't his k/ds always around 3 or something? he wasn't a creepy fuckface as far as i could tell.

we need some post-indie gaming. games as NOT ART. poptimist gaming (even tho there's not much reason at all for optimism about the pop side of gaming.)

i hate to reduce the discussion here but bigging up the art side and the egghead side of games can't be solution to how toxic the hardcore subculture is. i think the casual bullshit side of it needs to be celebrated too.

i like bubble gum but there's no bubble gum fan culture to speak of, and frankly it's quite nice that way (except people are inexplicably buying less bubble gum each year and now it's hard to find bubble gum)

http://ignatz.brinkster.net/cimages/joyce.gif

the casual bullshit aspect prob represents a deeper more earnest attempt at finding meaning in games than games as art does

I am glad Mordy took my ridiculous gaming zionist simile in the spirit it was intended

On a note related to this thread, I was shopping at Target over the weekend and there was a shelf of Doritos in the Xbox games section, right underneath a shelf of games.

it's okay to take your time gaming seriously, but taking yourself as a player of games seriously is indicative of not having much else in your life that needs or merits serious attention. this is why i wouldn't come w/in a mile of self-applying the "gamer" tag. i still feel a little pang of guilt for the time sunk. time is finite. have any of the precious indie games explored that profound reality?? our boy mr. mountain goats just came out w/ a novel, you know? the fuck did i do? i tuned up a bunch of really hot cars in Forza 4 this weekend (among other things, but you get me...)

idk goole, I don't think "gamers" are any weirder than people who are obsessed with the NFL or w/e, with the diff that video games are at least participatory

lagoon's just trolling now as usual

i think the casual bullshit side of it needs to be celebrated too

i've never more intensely experienced the void + emptiness of my life as when i hit /played in WoW