Social Media Paradigm
There are many posts on small web blogs that are about Twitter and how bad it is, because so many bloggers were formerly on the biggest blogging site, Twitter, and they have strong opinions about it. This is not one of those posts. I do not use Twitter, but I am interested in dissecting things like the jackass neutral third party that I am, so I’ll be looking through what social media is today and asking the question of what it’ll be tomorrow, looking through history and trends to land on the obvious conclusion that Tiktok is the next big thing.
Story vs Experience
You know I’ve been thinking through some of my older posts talking about videogames and story and what not, I realize I focus a lot on something that really isn’t the most important thing ever in hindsight which is how “videogames tell story”. That’s great and all, but not all videogames really have a story and I’m basically saying that they should. It might sound silly to say that videogames can’t have a story, but a lot of mediums don’t necessarily tell stories, like painting, music, dance… they tell experiences. Emotions.
Ludonarrative Dissonance Followup
A followup to a post on Ludonarrative Dissonance, where I talked about the concept and two games in particular that suffered heavily from its issues. I pointed out those two in particular because they were so heavily talked about as new paradigms for videogames as a whole, when they were really cheap trash stuck so far in the past that it was unbelivable anyone would praise them without having recieved financial compensation for doing so. However, I am considering that this is a much wider issue than I previously let on.
Thoughts on the Steam Deck
I don’t have a Steam Deck and I’m probably not going to buy one any time soon, but the concept of it is very interesting to me. Being a fan of the Vita, to me the Steam Deck seems like a spiritual successor and one that’s much more designed around the things I liked about the Vita rather than being horribly shitty and locked down without hacking. It’s also facing a real uphill battle by the contradictory nature of its existence.
Making Open Worlds Fun
Around the time RDR2 was popular, it seems there was some breaking point that got reached with open worlds that even the fans couldn’t stand anymore. The games were just too long, too boring, too dull. It felt like the majority of your time was spent on horseback going from place to place doing pointless shit. But what if we lived in a different universe, one where this dumb shit was fun? I dunno, let’s consider how we can make that a reality.
On Consumers Making Art
There is this idea picking up steam, particularly in regards to animation and video games, that the reason for the percieved drop in quality across a medium is as a result of the consumers who have supposedly done nothing in their lives but interact with their medium picking up the tools and creating something that is simply a bastardization of every piece of fiction they’ve seen so far. A lot of god awful remakes that feel like little more than rehashes have only solidified these thoughts. I heartily disagree.
Spec Bullshittery
PC specs have been getting more and more demanding every damn year. It almost seems like every time Nvidia releases their new bullshit graphics card, suddenly every single game has that as the recommended spec and last year’s cards are the minimum. Is it really worth spending hundreds of dollars on the brand new epic gamer hardware every single time a new one gets released? The answer is obviously fucking no but I mean you knew that already.
Startup Pages
Startup pages are the pages that open when you open your web browser, or open a new tab. For most people this is just whatever generic shit the web browser has in mind, typically a search bar on an otherwise empty or ad-filled page, but did you know you with a slight bit of tinkering you can basically just set the startpage to whatever you want? I did, I’ve been doing that for a while and I’m gonna talk about it here.
Steam vs EGS
The war of the vidjergaem selling platforms. One is the old fogie who’s been winning battle after battle against the toughest opponents. One is the newcomer on the block trying out brave new strategies like halving its own cut to raise profits to the developers that choose to stay with them. In the end, only one will survive. Right now, that one that’s going to survive is Steam and in spite of its efforts EGS still barely has any marketshare. Why is this? Let’s find out.
Ludonarrative Dissonance
“Ludonarrative” is pretentious for “Gameplay and story” and dissonance means the two don’t really match together. Like I could be slaughtering people by the thousands and then all of the sudden the videogame tries to make me feel bad about it, and then I just continue slaughtering things by the thousands. Or perhaps you’re playing someone who is portrayed as a righteous hero completely unironically but then the gameplay usually involves you being rewarded for taking as much morally dubious action as possible.