Brother Android and miscellaneous walls of text on games and music technology

[ntom]

wall of text.

I absolutely understand it has it's place in society, and my comment isn't "Death to all the pixel stuff" - there are, truly, some great games of this era and last that whether it was intentional or a limitation, either way, something great came out of it.

The cynical mindset just kind of more comes from the fact that...well I mean, flip through Steam's indie page and many of the developers say something similar along the same lines of "We have a very stylized game with a very unique and original story"
It's not original if everyone else is doing the samething

But, yes, I let the merits of the game mechanics be the real judge of the game itself, not how it looks and not how it sounds (although a good soundset can really make a difference. i.e. Battlefield 4's gun sounds, unrealistic as shit, but are SO incredibly punchy and amazing! Too bad Battlefield 4 - as a game - is a worthless pile of shit that has been buggy since it's release. It might as well just be a paid-for Beta experience...)

Sendy, you should definitely watch some of the Escapist's own "Jimquisition" it's a really entertaining show that talks about the politics in the game industry. It's entertaining and insightful! ...also The Escapist has other good shows too, but that's kind of unrelated...

[Sendy]

Yeah, I can see how people could get cynical to the trend. And there is definitely a bandwagon milking trend going on, I just don't notice it that much as I'm not as much of a gamer as I used to be.

In a way, gamers have never had it so good. For all their charm, the actual games of the 8-bit era were often a bit crappy and underwhelming, mostly because even though their style and gameplay were engaging, lack of memory meant a small gameworld and other limitations in resources (sprites, sound FX, etc) which makes me glad that some modern game designers are going back to that "golden age" and rewriting it in a way - keeping the limitations that they liked while removing the ones that were truely restrictive - sometimes it's great to see a game that looks like it was made on a Commodore 64 with unlimited memory

I'm also a bit defensive about these simpler/retro games, because I really love puzzle games and platformers, and there was a time in the late 90's/early 00's where nobody, NOBODY would even recognize them, make them, or have anything to do with them, because they were "old fashioned". So everything was a bloody 3D shooter or (worse) a 3D platformer. I'm glad as a society we've lost our inhibition to express ourselves through graphics with more apparent technical limitations. Finally the choke-hold of "realism" fetishism has been loosened!

[ntom]

I completely agree, some of the best games were when f**k all graphics couldn't carry the game alone, but instead was based on the limitation of the graphics, and, yes, sadly the memory.
As another pointed out though: The era of [large] pixel games never went away, but with the rise of the internet and the distribution of independently developed games through mediums such as Steam or Mobile app markets (which is a whole different fish to fry), we are seeing them pop up more often.

On the other hand, this also brings up another point, and that is: We are in an age of practically limitless ability for game designers to make anything, but instead we barely get a few notable releases a year that are standout from the AAA world.
To be honest, the only games that REALLY held my attention, immersed me into a world, that I spent hundreds of hours of my life wasted on the game were really only the Elder Scrolls games; well, really just Oblivion and Skyrim - and Pokemon X (I grew up with Pokemon and I'll die with it! /child at heart)
Borderlands 2 actually was a really nice gem in the sea of first person shooters (so was the first one, it was just marred with too many obvious flaws)
Don't get me wrong, there are good games, but I'm talking about games just so outstandingly well done that even the bugs just become interesting quirks of the world you are in (especially in Skyrim......)

Anyways, that's a whole different rant for some other time...
But in short, fingers crossed that this new generation of consoles will breed some new interesting ideas to the games industry. Also with DX12 on the way, hopefully PC ports of said "next gen" games won't be so shitty.

[Sendy]

Well, since the original topic didn't take off (though I'm glad a few people checked out Android's music so job done) the discussion may as well carry on here.

The point you've made about games and our massively powerful technology is something I feel a lot in electronic music. For example, we have near infinite resources, we can choose to spend hours on each bar of music (I sometimes do), we have enough creative decisions that theoretically every electronic track should be it's own genre - but instead we get intensely loop-based music that falls into narrow genres created in a painting-by-numbers approach. It boggles my mind.

Yes, repetition is needed - or at least some degree of predictability - if you want the average person to dance to your music, but there's nothing to stop each repetition being slightly varied in ways that are meaningful in the context of the rest of the music. We are effectively gods within the space of the music. We can make any sound and yet it's always THIS kick, THAT pluck, THIS stab, THAT pad.. blah blah. Does anyone honestly think the musican geniuses of the world - our role models - think like that all the time?!

It seems to me that as a medium gets more powerful and limitless, the average creativity level decreases. I don't think this is down to individuals being particularly lazy either (though it certainly is in some cases!), it's just part of the phenomenon of homogenization - as convenience grows, something else must diminish. You have to ask yourself - convenience at what cost?

Now we've got people asking for apps that work out the time signature for music, we've clearly passed over some kind of event horizon (and in case that's lost on anyone, working out a time signature usually only requires (1) a vague understanding of how music works and (2) the ability to count!). Working in a DAW it's even easier, as we don't particularly have to distinguish between technically equivalent time signatures such as 4/4 and 2/4 and 2/2.

[Sendy]

Play Hero Core if you haven't already. It has 2 colour graphics, most of the background is made up of solid white blocks, but a great game with an immersive atmosphere. It's a metroidvania maze shooter with a fairly unique twist on nonlinearity, as you can choose to fight the boss very early on, or wait until you've got all the powerups and the computer monitors, which lets you get the good ending.

Another good retro-style game is Forget Me Not, it's basically pacman on acid and steroids, with explosives.

that shit is hard! i never beat it.

Yeah, it's quite a difficult game, especially the Hard mode campaign. It's pretty much a bullet hell game but with flickscreen instead of auto-scrolling.

Hard, but rewarding.

[ntom]

Now we've got people asking for apps that work out the time signature for music,

It seems to me that as a medium gets more powerful and limitless, the average creativity level decreases. I don't think this is down to individuals being particularly lazy either (though it certainly is in some cases!), it's just part of the phenomenon of homogenization - as convenience grows, something else must diminish. You have to ask yourself - convenience at what cost?

I think this inherently just has to do with the psychology of people and some people's lust for money.
Someone does something original: love it or hate it, it's original enough to become popular, it sells, makes TONS of money, and so others start to hop on this bandwagon. In the case of Music, we get labels like Spinnin that all they want to sign are artists that sound the same, and with huge finances to back the promotion of these artists they are the ones who rise to the top, while those who can actually create something GOOD and original are stuck pulling their own weight.
It's really almost luck, too, because it's not just skill and originality that'll boost something into fame.

This same idea kind of applies to the game industry:
Call of Duty sold - and it made BANK. When other game developers began to publish their own first person shooters, the suits - the investors and the publisher, the only ones concerned about the money, and not the product that makes them money - told these developers, "It needs to be more 'Call of Duty'" - more brown, FPS games with generic guns, face shoved into iron sights the whole time, and, imo, hardly skill based of a game. There is some skill, but a lot of it comes down to luck.

First person shooters aren't bad by any means - just like any EDM genre has it's few shining stones in the rut of shit. They can be immersive experiences, it's just unfortunate the industry took that kind of game then over saturated the market, but I'm happy to see it dying off. I'm happy to see the voice of gamers have been strong enough to influence some of the choices in the AAA development (ie. see Mass Effect 3's ending controversy), and when the voices aren't strong enough, the Indie Devs seem to hear what is being said, and at the rate things are going; soon the AAA industry will loose to the indie devs.

Except mobile....mobile is kind of like the new frontier of gaming. Mobile is so easily accessed by all types of people, core games, or casual, or even non gamers that we all too frequently see developers *cough*EA*cough*Dungeon Keeper*cough* exploit those who haven't been introduced to gaming or are of a more casual market.

[V0RT3X]

interesting music

[GeckoYamori]

Finally the choke-hold of "realism" fetishism has been loosened!

We've also reached a point where the strive for realistic presentations suddenly highlight how little conventional game design makes sense in that context. Uncharted wants to be an Indiana Jones matiné adventure, yet Nathan Drake kills more people in a single Uncharted game than the amount of casualties in all Indiana Jones movies combined. All without giving any second thoughts to the mass murder going on.

[nasenmann]

That's true.

Even a while back...I remember losing interest in the old Mafia game because the amount of people you kill reaches FPS standards at some point. It didn't work too well with the backstory of the morally conflicted protagonist.
It is a game about murderers of course, but you don't watch a Godfather movie to see Schwarzenegger-like death counts.

GTA naturally has that problem, but i guess few people mind as it's all over the top satire and stuffs. I do mind, somewhat. GTA IV was realistic enough story and graphics wise to actually make me drive carefully

[GeckoYamori]

The new Tomb Raider is even worse, given their push to humanize Lara Croft and make her a more believable character. There is one scene where she's forced to kill someone to survive which is supposed to be some traumatic event, but right after that she's practically Rambo.

[nasenmann]

funny innit? finally the processing power needed to make everything look like a cutscene has arrived, yet the gap between cutscenes and gameplay is as big as ever.

[ntom]

It's called Ludocolo Discobiscuits - the seperation of story and gameplay:


Although I think Uncharted is a bad example, but Tomb Raider is a good example - where there is the dramatic exposition on her first kill, so she proceeds to ram climbing picks brutally into everyone else's knees and skulls.

If I say anything it's all going to be what is said in the above video. No point in reiterating.

[ntom]

Ludocolo
++

[JoeCat]

TY Sendy - love the uber-geeks like Brother Android ("I'm going to make a space-story-fantasy-chip-tune album-with-one-minute-tracks-about-satellite-construction, 'cause I can, dammit!").

ntom - I'm 51 and playing Pokemon Y (my 18 year-old daughter is playing X). Living and dying with it My sons and I still play WOW lol.

It is a great time for gamers (buying old Zelda and Castlevania games instantly from the e-store on the 3DS and saving any place in-game? - priceless.). But I don't miss the old game mechanics or even (some) of the graphics. I do, however, long for more chip tune in the newer games.

I think some of the indie lo-res (and sometimes chip tune) trend comes about because we've reached a point where the games no longer take you out of reality - uber-realistic 3-D graphics and cinematic music becomes more like film (or even life) interaction even in Fantasy/Sci-Fi genres- which is great and has its place, but there's something reducing a game to its elements that makes you focus on creativity, etc., and I think a lot of the indie games capture that. Tons of crap too, but what bubbles up tot the top can be awesomely original (not you, Flappy...) Same with electronic music, chip tune, and even EDM.

FPS's are more sport then "game", and popular music can hardly be original or escapist anymore - it's everywhere. When the Foo Fighters are playing over the PA at Chili's, it's hard even for better artists to sit outside the mainstream and still connect to more than a few people. Indy games and chip-tune are trendy, but still give you a sense of disconnect with the mainstream.

And I'm rambling 'cause it's nice not to be discussing politics on FB...

[ntom]

ntom - I'm 51 and playing Pokemon Y (my 18 year-old daughter is playing X). Living and dying with it My sons and I still play WOW lol.

I got a Skarmory, a Glaceon, a Mismagius, a (mega) Garchomp, a Meloetta, and a Valcorona ready to open a can of Whoop Ass on someone

Pokemon X & Y, in my humble opinion, was THE BEST game release of 2013: It was not only a relief to finally see the main line pokemon games step out of the pixels, but the subtle but very important adjustments to the extremely deep and adictive battle mechanics stepped the game up 100%, then the fact the designers decided to take their time with the designs of the creatures of the world meant we got (albiet a smaller) an outstanding line up of incredibly interesting and new creatures! Many complain about the few number of pokemon in the new games, but I personally appreciate. percentage wise, this generation of pokemon has more designs I can appreciate than any generation before it (even the first gen which I grew up with....ah...Missing No. and the elusive Mew under the truck near the S.S. Anne)

FPS's are more sport then "game", and popular music can hardly be original or escapist anymore - it's everywhere. When the Foo Fighters are playing over the PA at Chili's, it's hard even for better artists to sit outside the mainstream and still connect to more than a few people. Indy games and chip-tune are trendy, but still give you a sense of disconnect with the mainstream.

And I'm rambling 'cause it's nice not to be discussing politics on FB...

To be honest, I love games more than every, which is partly why I am so cynical about a lot of things too; look, it would be a lye if I said I don't play for graphics. I optimize the f**k out of my PC to run games at the highest resolution with the best settings, I love games that create worlds that are astounding, that live and breathe creativity.
And you know what? Here's one for controversy's sake. Thank god no one on KVR is a hardcore gamer otherwise this would start a flame war:
The new Devil May Cry (Devil May Cry: DMC) is just this: A world, beautifully and immersively crafted. Seriously, this game's level design oozes pure creativity. You fight inside the "cyber world" of a News station that is a parody of Fox News Network. Like, you use all the pretty news graphics and stuff as platforms to reach the boss.
My words don't do it justice, just watch:


[QUICK EDIT:]
Per the video above, just noticed they did some editing on it...cutting out...some of the cinematics...like the super-super short cinematics, which is weird.... Not that it's a big deal, I just wanted to clear that up.
[/QUICK EDIT]

Secondly: Chiptune may be a good way to help immerse you into a world by seperating you from the one you are in, but it doesn't HAVE to be that way. Noisia and Combichrist both did the music for the game and, just like the level design, it oozes creativity. On the surface, it's nothing spectacular, but it in combination with the style of game; it fits so perfectly.

Bioshock Infinite almost makes my list here in one of the top games of last year, but, no. In fact, I thought it was an outstanding disappointment with dated gameplay mechanics, a nonsensical story, a miscommunicated relationship between Booker and Elizabeth (I didn't get the feeling of daughter and father, it got a more romantic feeling, imo), and way too much riding on the coat tails of previous games of the franchise such as the use of Vigors and (as mentioned in the Jimquisition episode I linked) the fact you scrounge through trash. Why? Because it made it a Bioshock game. Because the previous Bioshock games had Plasmids (which are the same as Vigors) but instead that was all relevent to Bioshock because you were in a distopian city, destroyed by people's lust to inject themselves with the DNA mutating drug of Adam to use more Plasmids. The city was in ruin and to survive the only way to be on the same playing field as the creeps of the city was to splice with Adam yourself, and to eat from garbage cans and the remains of bars and all that. It made sense there. In Infinite, it didn't.
The only thing I thought was good in infinite was the world. It was very realized, and I think is a prime example of what can be done in the modern game industry.


As for FPS games: The "modern, realistic shooter" subgenre of the FPS world has become a sort of sport. As I said above: it takes some skill, but is primarily luck based: who sees who first, who shoots who first.
These games have dropped the necessity for a single player story and just become a multiplayer game, which actually might be a good think. More time of the devs working on the multiplay gameplay then them split up. Still, most of these games are garbage.
However, once again, not all FPS games are. Borderlands is great; a cross between some RPG elements with FPS shooting is great. A standout and stylish art direction, good humor, and the game never takes itself too seriously.
the Halo games 1 through 3 and ODST were great, too. Their gunplay mechanics were simple, but effective. The art style was colourful, and once again, the game never took itself too seriously - well, except ODST, ODST is kind of an anomaly in the Halo Franchise.
The Master Chef...*ahem* sorry, I mean "Master Chief" had about as much character as a brick, but yet was still appealing of a character. As one person mentioned that always made me laugh, "Master Chief always seemed to be the end result of two writers fighting over whether they wanted Master Chief to be self aware like Duke Nukem or to be a silent protagonist"
....of course, since Microsoft's main cash grab for the 360 is the Master Chef himself, and Bungie, the developer wanted to move on, Halo got moved to a different Studio and they had since made it rather boring. Also, the AI character, Cortana became the biggest step backwards to the video game feminist movement since Princess Peach, literally saying, "Chief, when you get back to Earth you're just going to find a different AI to replace me"................wow....................
**side note, With Siri on Apple devices, and Google Voice on Android, Microsoft will be implementing their own smart voice system and will be naming it "Cortana".

Anyways, that's enough rambling.