Idle Weekend April 1, 2016: Now We're Let's Playing with Power

[jennegatron]

omg

[Bjorn]

• A car is supposed to drive you places. What is a game supposed to do?

 

I was going to stay out of this, but I do just want to chime in and say how much I actually like this question.  It's an interesting question that lets you ponder your own relationship to games, and think critically and creatively about other people's relationships to games.  I continue to be floored that this is one of your sticking points. 

[tabacco]

Actually it was passive agressive, and twice as cowardly posting this after you ban me from the site.

 

No, you're wrong again.

[Gormongous]

Actually it was passive agressive, and twice as cowardly posting this after you ban me from the site.

 

Don't worry though, I'm not going to bother, though I'm so disapointed you jumped to a conclusion without actually reading what I wrote (Which was always polite and never personal).

 

To quote Raylan Givens: "If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole."

 

You have been perfectly polite. You have also been disrespectful, dismissive, and condescending to people who don't share your assumptions about games. Flaming an admin on an online forum where you have only been a member for a handful of days shows a severe deficiency of character, for which no amount of "politeness" can make up. All that said, I sincerely hope that, given a little bit of time for feelings to cool off, you'll have gotten something useful from this encounter.

[quantum_leopold]

I was just talking with a friend about MGSV and Konami, since I only recently played through it, long after everything was current news. In the context of the game, I feel pretty confident that the game's strong anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist messages probably fell on the wrong side of some executives that couldn't afford to kill the game, because of how much had already been sunk into it, and couldn't get Kojima to censor it. 

 

Do you think that message in MGSV is substantially more pronounced than in the other MGS games? (Not a rhetorical question--I have a vague impression the themes of MGS5 were in many of the preceding games, but I'm not a big MGS guy so I may be wrong) I'd be surprised if anyone at Konami decided to can Kojima for any reason other than "this guy demands a lot of resources, has huge budgets, and makes games that are only modestly profitable, we earn better margins on gyms or pachinko machines or whatever, so why are we bothering with this hassle?" Given all of the weird unrelated markets Konami is involved in, I wonder how many Konami execs have played an MGS game.

[Jutranjo]

I'd give you the benefit of the doubt and spell it out despite you being an asshole.

 

What is a game suppose to do?

 

Pick one or add your own:

 

- Let you download an .exe that does something

- Engage you deeply

- Not engage you too deeply, it's just for fun

- Be awesome

- Have a fail state 

- Let you reload from a fail state

- Keep a high score

- Be fun

 

Which one is it?

[Nappi]

I was going to stay out of this, but I do just want to chime in and say how much I actually like this question. It's an interesting question that lets you ponder your own relationship to games, and think critically and creatively about other people's relationships to games. I continue to be floored that this is one of your sticking points.

Yup, agreed (in a non-trolly, non-ignorant way).

[sclpls]

Epic "nazi mods" rant/meltdown.

[juv3nal]

• A car is supposed to drive you places. What is a game supposed to do?

 

Also, not to beat a dead horse (but I'm a still do it), woefully wrong about cars

a) the car doesn't drive you, you drive it.

if a car is supposed to take you somewhere else, then is a formula 1 race car which runs a circuit and ends up where it began not doing what it's supposed to?

c) public transportation options can sometimes be equally or more cost-effective, convenient, and quick but even when that is the case some people will opt for a car. barring ignorance about these public transport options, there are reasons for that (comfort, class/status, privacy, hauling cargo), it's worth interrogating why if you're going to get at what a car is "supposed to do."

[Wooben]

Does anyone know what the spiderman clause is? i tried googling it but it's just a bunch of videos of spiderman fighting santa. For clarity's sake, no I am not trolling.

[Problem Machine]

Good points! Though I'd argue the first two are semantic quibbles and the third is a secondary function, it still gets to the important point that even for a more purely functional object than a game evaluation of quality can be complex.

 

So let's redefine the functionality more judiciously. Let's start with something like: "a vehicle is an object which you can use to transport yourself at faster speeds than you can normally move". This is a pretty flexible definition, including everything from bicycles to tractor-trailers to space shuttles. We can then build on that by saying "a car is a vehicle that is relatively easy to use, can carry 2-8 people, and is designed to be at home on most common road layouts." This addresses a, but reveals an interesting truth about b, which it barely qualifies for: Formula 1 race cars really are barely cars as we understand them. One might argue a motorcycle is as close to our ideal of a car as an f1 car is.

 

This then brings us to the point that, in addition to the functional conception, we have a whole lot of lesser expectations. We expect cars to look sleek and shiny. We expect them to get a certain amount of gas mileage. We expect them to provide a degree of safety to the driver and passengers if something goes wrong. And, yes, in some cases we expect the name or appearance of the car to have certain communicative power, an association with wealth or power -- or, perhaps more commonly if less ostentatiously, of responsibility and/or efficiency. All of these affect our evaluation of the overall quality of a car, maybe changing a 6 to an 8 or a 9 to a 7, but if it fails by the basic standards we've set for a car, if you can't drive it, then it's going to get a 0 on most evaluations because it doesn't serve the purpose it was created for.

 

Wooben, I assume he meant the whole "with great power comes great responsibility" thing,

[jennegatron]

Yeah Wooben, Uncle Ben tells Peter Parker (Spiderman) that with great power comes great responsibility.

[Wilds]

Do you think that message in MGSV is substantially more pronounced than in the other MGS games? (Not a rhetorical question--I have a vague impression the themes of MGS5 were in many of the preceding games, but I'm not a big MGS guy so I may be wrong) I'd be surprised if anyone at Konami decided to can Kojima for any reason other than "this guy demands a lot of resources, has huge budgets, and makes games that are only modestly profitable, we earn better margins on gyms or pachinko machines or whatever, so why are we bothering with this hassle?" Given all of the weird unrelated markets Konami is involved in, I wonder how many Konami execs have played an MGS game.

Absolutely. Previous games criticized America, warmongering, and escalation for sure, but those aren't things an international corporation (that isn't Halliburton) would necessarily take personally. MGSV talks about cultural imperialism and how globalization is a form of genocide in the name of Capitalism. That'll sting a CEO.

[Nappi]

I obviously have no idea about the mentality of Konami execs, but as a purely financial decision that sounds pretty strange, considering how willing people are to support anti-capitalist messages through entirely capitalists channels (e.g. people buying millions of Rage Against the Machine albums published by a record company owned by Sony). Win-win-win surely?