Idle Thumbs 94: Readers Like You

[Jake]

Yeah unfortunately games, particularly AAA games, tend to be really good at undermining themselves in this respect. This is I think because they're developed in the mindset of 'best practices', IE what works well for whatever genre they are developing in, rather than a mindset of 'what are we trying to achieve with this game?' TBH this thesis is what like half of my blog posts end up boiling down to.

 

Also, to be fair Jake, the way Hotline Miami and Cart Life handle this is super super smart, so it's probably a bit unfair to make that comparison. AAA developers just don't have the same resources as indies-- when it comes to self-consistency, since they don't have a self to be consistent to.

Sure, both Cart Life and Hotline Miami are pretty minimal in their presentation, but I think that's also okay. Making specific choices about what you include in your work is not unique to indie games... creators in most other mediums employ that all the time, it's just uncommon in AAA games. (and AAA films)

[chummer]

Also also, since I'm sleepy and rambling and have used the term 'AAA' twice in this post already, Chris's rant a few months ago has made me super self-conscious about using terms such as 'AAA', 'IP', and 'title'. I tend to avoid using them now in my writing in favor of other descriptors if I can think of anything that fits, but it's still that really conscious self-editing process.

Maybe high-resource production and low-resource production instead of AAA and Indie?

 

I think Chris' complaint was specifically about enthusiasts readily using the business nomenclature, which he thought was gross.

[Problem Machine]

Sure, both Cart Life and Hotline Miami are pretty minimal in their presentation, but I think that's also okay. Making specific choices about what you include in your work is not unique to indie games... creators in most other mediums employ that all the time, it's just uncommon in AAA games. (and AAA films)

 

Did I imply that I thought that was a problem? I didn't mean to. And-- well, I know you've gotten a lot into the comparisons between AAA games and AAA films in the podcast, but suffice it to say there tends to be a lot more under that umbrella when it comes to films. I mean, there's obviously the huge big budget action movies which are the most ready comparison, but there are a lot of films with nearly as high budgets that are much more strongly authored by a particular person. Most of Tim Burton's work, for example.

 

I suspect that the games industry's particular fixation on basically checklists that comprise the correct way to do a genre is a hold-over from its software engineering roots, but that's probably a research paper and probably one I don't want to write.

 

Maybe high-resource production and low-resource production instead of AAA and Indie?

 

I think Chris' complaint was specifically about enthusiasts readily using the business nomenclature, which he thought was gross.

 

I usually fall back on 'large budget'. Same thing really. If it was just AAA I'd have probably stuck with it, but his reasoning on why IP in particular was a gross term for lots of people to be using resonated very strongly with me, and so I avoid all of them as best as I can now. It's generally preferable to use the phrases with the least possible baggage, I think.

[Henroid]

I'm disappointed that I can't find video of drunk guy who fights for montage winners.

[schepton]

So it was true.

[malkav11]

I have a friend who's very involved in the "gray market" for films that have seen no efforts to be released or preserved. Beyond films that interest no one at the moment and thus die a quiet death on a hard drive somewhere, there is a definite issue of companies that own the rights to films that they have no intention of publishing, but are fully willing to spend thousands of dollars fighting illegal distribution of anyway, just in case they decide the market is ready after several decades biding their time or whatever. It's an extraordinarily frustrating situation that almost totally relies on passionate people operating outside the law for conservation purposes, just like a lot of software pirates acting as "archivists". It's not really surprising, though. If there's one thing the capitalist system doesn't provide for, it's posterity.

 

Until GoG came along, there were a lot of similar situations with video games. The games were out of print, not being sold in any sort of meaningful sense, but the ESA or individual companies would come along and shut down any attempts to make them available in an archival role. My feeling is that this is one of many signs that American (and presumably other countries') intellectual property laws are deeply broken. I am absolutely behind the original intent of these systems, and 100% support creators being enabled to profit off their works and have at least some level of control over how they are used and distributed...but I do think it should be implicit that you must make those works -available- to be used and distributed if you're going to maintain that control and profit stream. (It should probably also expire at some point, and so on.)

 

I do think that the United States gets shit on a lot for its lack of high speed penetration across the country but then compare the US to a country like South Korea. The fact of the matter is that there is just way more ground to cover where as some countries like South Korea or Japan have the benefit of high density populations in a much smaller footprint.Of course this doesn't excuse the fact that the US Telcoms drag their feet for upgrading infrastructure and look to nickel and dime consumers as much as possible (on top of the issues raised in the podcast in regards to content creators being providers). I do have friends and family that live in more rural areas of America though and something like an always on DRM situation can really screw them over though.

 

Yeah, there are definitely logistical issues with the size and population distribution of the US that aren't present in a lot of the countries with better internet. And my understanding is that infrastructure replacement in much of Europe and Japan post-WWII meant that those countries have started from a more modern telecommunications infrastructure than a lot of US cities. But still, we could be in a far better place than we are if the internet providers had any incentive to improve their networks, provide unlimited data, or lower their prices.