Jake

Idle Thumbs 212: DMCA Dad

Recommended Posts

I can't speak for someone else's words but I interpreted it the same as sclpls, which isn't that because games are in their culture infancy they can't provide an interesting or avant garde message, but rather because of how you must at some point actively interact with a game, if you make the themes difficult and also the verbs of the game difficult you may bar a potential audience from ever getting deep enough to explore the theme. It's that games have an added layer of muddling interaction, rather than cultural barriers specifically.

 

 

 

Thank you for Witcher talk. I'm 25+ hours into the witcher, and I had a dream about the witcher, and all I want to hear about and play is the witcher. game is so good.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh man good find, kinda. :)

 

I think i have some of the imagery somewhere, suffice to say it was pretty terrible. 

The main logo was made in MS paint. I did make some of my own GIFs though of the dancing monkeys and stuff, so you know, not all terrible ;)

 

I assumed it was one of the three or four dancing monkey GIFs that were to be found on quite a few Monkey Island fan pages back then – quite cool that you had made your own. As the proud owner of a neon yellow GeoCities site in the early 2000s, that was more effort than I put in.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I assumed it was one of the three or four dancing monkey GIFs that were to be found on quite a few Monkey Island fan pages back then – quite cool that you had made your own. As the proud owner of a neon yellow GeoCities site in the early 2000s, that was more effort than I put in.

I also made my own dancing monkey gifs! They were misaligned and had a little shift at the end to get them back in the start position. It helped identify when it got ripped off later on. I also made a 3d spinning mockup of what the Curse of Monkey Island box might look like, which I remmeber people were really excited about. 3D rotating gifs!!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

because of how you must at some point actively interact with a game, if you make the themes difficult and also the verbs of the game difficult you may bar a potential audience from ever getting deep enough to explore the theme. 

 

I feel like even if no one has successfully pulled it off, there must be some themes where obtuse mechanics are inseparable from the theme that's being explored, a more narrow version of "if I could write an essay about it, I wouldn't have made a game," and maybe in order to get there we need to see a bunch of bad games made where that's not the case (i.e. the obtuse mechanics are just there for no good reason).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think I was wrong from my first listen-through and mostly agree with Sean! I still disagree with the tone of the conversation, but I think I'm in agreement with how everyone thinks about the indie- v alt-game thing.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh man good find, kinda. :)

 

I think i have some of the imagery somewhere, suffice to say it was pretty terrible. 

The main logo was made in MS paint. I did make some of my own GIFs though of the dancing monkeys and stuff, so you know, not all terrible ;)

Was it your website that went on a ramble about the life and times Blackbeard in the middle of talking about Monkey Island or am I thinking of some other Monkey Island page?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Regarding games with strong themes and messages that are still mechanically engaging, I've been thinking for a while now that the first Ace Attorney might have been one of the smartest games of its era. We're still in an awkward adolescent phase where games with very blunt, obvious themes or self-serving metaphors about video games (eg: Bioshock, Spec Ops: The Line) are considered to be high points, and then we have this Japanese GBA game from 2001 about how the Japanese legal system is unjust and horribly skewed in favour of the prosecution. It's obviously not 1:1 because Ace Attorney is entirely scripted events and not systems-focused, but you get what I mean.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Was it your website that went on a ramble about the life and times Blackbeard in the middle of talking about Monkey Island or am I thinking of some other Monkey Island page?

 

The monkey island site was pretty short-lived, so it was unlikely mine. I turned the focus to all LucasArts games and created mixnmojo.com instead. It's highly likely that the site in question was part of the mojo hosted sites network though, and maybe still is :)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This may indeed be my skewed impression but during the last two episodes as Danielle tries to impart and explain her enthusiasm for the Witcher 3, reaction of the rest of the cast has been to go off riffing on jokes and puns and assorted digressions and somehow never get to talking about Wild Hunt all that much. That may be more common than not on Idle Thumbs but for some reason I felt a particular reluctance or disinterest in discussing.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The monkey island site was pretty short-lived, so it was unlikely mine. I turned the focus to all LucasArts games and created mixnmojo.com instead. It's highly likely that the site in question was part of the mojo hosted sites network though, and maybe still is :)

Hah, okay, I was thinking maybe it was the same because it was one long page of text on possibly Geocities with screenshots and probably some dancing monkey gifs. Also I think it had a MIDI song playing in the background.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hah, okay, I was thinking maybe it was the same because it was one long page of text on possibly Geocities with screenshots and probably some dancing monkey gifs. Also I think it had a MIDI song playing in the background.

 

You just described every single Monkey Island website from the 90's :)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Ah, yes, Brothers: A Tale of Two Kitties. I didn't like that video game.

 

I'm with you, one of the few people who really didn't like that game (given that it got such universal praise).  Besides the design elements you mentioned, the entire thing felt really manipulative, like the point of it was the twist, not a natural exploration of a story of two brothers.  I was also incredibly frustrated that all the female characters in the game were dead, evil or damseled.  That's something I wrote about in the forums here.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You just described every single Monkey Island website from the 90's :)

 

I think that's just every webpage from the 90s, to be honest. All the sites about Final Fantasy were like that, too.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Count me on the "I dislike Brothers" bandwagon. Everything about that game is so contrived and cloying and video gamey. Putting their emotional gut punch after a fight with a giant spider boss just made me roll my eyes.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I thought Brothers was lovely. It gave me several powerful emotional experiences, and the whale-jumping part and the Giant's battlefield are some of my favourite Video game 'levels' of all time just on atmosphere. There's also such a wealth of little touches to give character to each brother that really resonated with me, as well as the development of the younger one's character over time.

I agree it has its problems, especially its treatment of women. The tragic moment was also dragged out a bit too much for my liking.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I generally enjoyed Brothers, disliked the female representation and was pretty unengaged with the emotion of it. But I thought the basic and plain level design was fine as just a nice space to walk through and the whole climax was a solid demonstration of mechanics as story even if it didn't hook me.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I liked the giant battlefield from a raw aesthetic sense (which I think I mentioned), but the puzzles with pushing a giant arm to chop off another giant arm were so fucking goofy and video gamey I just started cracking up halfway through it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

By the end of 2013 Giant Bomb could only find 4 games better than Brothers.

 

I agree that it was gamey as hell, but I enjoyed the new gameplay mechanics even though the puzzles were rote. The settings were pretty as well. However, the ending did totally fall flat for me. The ideas for the returning brother were sound and well presented, but the prelude to that moment was just so limp that it failed to have any impact on me. Basically, everything about that spider lady was ill-conceived.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I love the idea of Brothers. The game itself not so much, for reasons already covered here.

I think the reason it gets such praise is because it's a really polished game with the kind of personal, almost mythical story that you don't see much in such a well put together package. It deserves praise for what it tried to do, but just as much deserves criticism for the ways it could be better. Sadly, I don't think it got much of that criticism.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I generally enjoyed Brothers, disliked the female representation and was pretty unengaged with the emotion of it. But I thought the basic and plain level design was fine as just a nice space to walk through and the whole climax was a solid demonstration of mechanics as story even if it didn't hook me.

This is almost exactly how I feel about it as well. The environments are impossibly pretty, even the standard fantasy village is well realized. The mechanics are functional but maybe not as interesting as the control scheme would suggest. And then the characters are the most generic younger/older brother combo you could imagine.

 

You mean to tell me the younger brother is energetic and easily distracted and likes joking around? And the older brother is serious and protective? And one of them dies at the end because this is the sort of story where a character dies at the end? Because that would make it SAD?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The problem I have with saying the world is well-realized, though, is that most of the obstacles make ZERO sense within the context of a lived-in world. It's so obviously contrived to provide an obstacle course for exactly two characters that it undermines the reality of the space at every moment.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now