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Jake

Idle Thumbs 101: Introduction to Video Games

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The themes I liked in Infinite:

  1. There's something dehumanizing about believing you can be absolved of sin, about believing sins can be washed away.  It's much more human to believe sins can't be washed away.
  2. American exceptionalism from the rest of the world; Columbia exceptionalism from the rest of America; Comstock's exceptionalism from the rest of the Universe, etc.

I'm enjoying listening to the Infinite spoiler casts all over the web.  It's fun to be part of the zeitgeist I guess!  

 

My second favorite after Idle Thumbs is the PC Gamer UK one: http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/04/10/pc-gamer-uk-podcast-special-bioshock-infinite-spoilers/ 

 

"Sorry I'm chain-gunning your ghost-mom Elizabeth!"

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EDIT: Also a final thought summary: I think it's totally fair to say "I wish Bioshock Infinite was more", but just say that and accept that it's not and move on. Judge the game for what it's actually trying to be, rather than what you wish it was trying to be? I hope this isn't coming off too mean-like. ):

 

That would make for a very short podcast.

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 ...I should not have to read a breakdown of BioShock's story to enjoy it.

 

:tup:

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EDIT: Also a final thought summary: I think it's totally fair to say "I wish Bioshock Infinite was more", but just say that and accept that it's not and move on. Judge the game for what it's actually trying to be, rather than what you wish it was trying to be? I hope this isn't coming off too mean-like. ):

 

That's weird, though. Why can't we talk about missed opportunities, especially with a game that has so much going on?

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I thing Twig is right in that you should consider a given piece of art on the basis of what it is attempting to do and judge it on that basis. To quote Ebert:

 

 

... the star rating system is relative, not absolute. When you ask a friend if "Hellboy" is any good, you're not asking if it's any good compared to "Mystic River," you're asking if it's any good compared to "The Punisher." And my answer would be, on a scale of one to four, if "Superman" (1978) is four, then "Hellboy" is three and "The Punisher" is two. In the same way, if "American Beauty" gets four stars, then "Leland" clocks in at about two.

 

The problem here is that Bioshock was trying to be more "American Beauty" than "Hellboy". I like dumb shooters just fine, if they succeed as dumb shooters (Just Cause 2, I'm looking at you). Bioshock wasn't trying to be a dumb shooter, in my opinion. It was trying to say something and really failed to do so. I still enjoyed the game, because I enjoyed the art direction and some of the game play (though grew tired of it by the end). But even on its own terms it feels like a failure to me (albeit an interesting failure). 

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I don't even know how much of the story i understood as as soon as the credits rolled I was already reading that story explanation thread on GAF. I think I had it, I don't remember feeling confused. Kinda wish I hadn't now as I killed all the time I may have had pondering instead of snapping straight to the Internets consensus view and understanding of what happened. The fucking hive mind.

Why did that statue change at the beginning?

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That would make for a very short podcast.

I think there's more than enough to talk about outside the context of "I wish this game was what it wasn't", although I am aware that stuff doesn't interest you, for various reasons you expressed in the episode. Also, that's not really what I meant! Your guys' discussion was great and I loved it, even if I didn't completely agree. Talking, discussing, fantastic. But the final judgment, in my opinion, shouldn't be about what the game wasn't trying to do. Judge it for its failures to do what it wanted to do. I uhhh am just repeating myself a lot here. Sorry.

 

Also I realize that obviously we don't all agree on what the game was actually trying to do. So there's that, too. That kind of discussion probably isn't as interesting, anyway. "Hey, no but here's what I think it was trying to do so your whole stance is dumb." That's probably how I sound, isn't it. I'll just stop now. I hate everything.

 

 

That's weird, though. Why can't we talk about missed opportunities, especially with a game that has so much going on?

See above!
 
EDIT: Why is it attributing the second quote to Sean! It won't let me change it! I hate this post editor. D: What am I doing. How computerrrr EDIT AGAIN: Oh now it works? What well okay.

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I just realized I missed like an entire page of posts, sorryyyy.

This is just where we fundamentally disagree, I guess.

To me, it's not a matter of "fighting the battle." It's a matter of critiquing the game that exists in front of my face. My criticisms of it are not out of a sense of advocacy; they're a direct result of the experience I had while playing. I'm not going to have an opinion about a game and then say "Well this probably isn't the right time to bring this up;" that would be pointlessly dishonest in my opinion. (Obviously if you don't have those criticisms then it's totally fair not to bring them up.)

I don't often read comic books or sci-fi or fantasy novels, so I don't give a video game a pass because it's like them; but even if I did read those things, I'd like to think I wouldn't make arbitrary distinctions about what's allowed to get a critical pass and what isn't.

The main point where I disagree with you in practice about this specific game (rather than just in a general philosophical way about the role of criticism) is about what Infinite is "trying" to do. I absolutely think it's trying to be more than just another dumb fun video game. To me it feels like a game that's trying to Say Something at every turn (I think Jake felt this way on the cast as well), and say it very loudly, but the thing it's trying to say is, to me, muddled and in some cases actually objectionable.

But again, even if it wasn't "trying" to present a nuanced perspective on American racism and exceptionalism, it still raised the topics--a LOT of them, not just passing references--and so in my opinion it's 100% open for critique on its treatment of those matters.

Yeah, no, I get it. I sorta addressed this in my above post. I feel like that asshole what goes "you're dumb for thinking about it like that". I just... I didn't feel like the game was trying to Say Something. I felt like it COULD have been that game, but it actively chose not to be. Presenting racism as an evil thing isn't really Saying Something, in my book. It's just kind of an obvious fact? The whole Fitzroy arc of Revolutionary to Tyrant is such a typical thing in genre fiction that, again, I'm left feeling like it's just a story element, and not a Something. None of the presented topics are ever addressed. They're just presented. Which is basically the core of your criticisms, if I'm not misunderstanding, where for me, it's the core of my apathy? Apathy's a strong word, but probably the most accurate. I recognize (or, at least, believe) that the game isn't trying to be something special*, and so I accept that and move on.

 

To sum: Yeah, I guess we do fundamentally disagree. Hah. ):

 

Also, just to specifically address this bit: "To me, it's not a matter of 'fighting the battle.'"

 

I didn't mean to accuse anyone specific with that, or even anyone on these forums. It's just kind of a general sentiment on The Internet, and I let my response bleed over into that post. A lot of the complaints I've read seem to be about video games failing to be Better than This, rather than about Bioshock Infinite failing to be better than this. In essence, you are doing the thing that I was asking for: criticizing the game for the game, rather than for video games. Mmm, yep.

 

*I totally expect to be proven wrong in any post-mortem interviews involving anyone who helped design the game!

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Just to counterbalance the haters a bit: I personally don't mind Sean talking DotA now and again.  Enthusiastic stories are a good listen even if I can't understand the specifics.  

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Hot damn, that was not the overall reaction I was expecting to Bioshock Infinite. I listened back to last week's episode to hear the contrast (which is something I enjoy in general, perceptions changing). It sounds like the game has excellent individual pieces to it, but the summation of those pieces results in too much of... everything, I guess. I can't comment on specifics because I haven't played the game (but I didn't mind hearing the spoilers, whatever, the context is generally lost on me).

 

Anyway, Sean mentioned briefly that he's been playing freemium games (or whatever term he used) and wanted to know what extent he's been exploring that design of game. It's something I've found myself engaging a lot over the last few years as a result of my personal circumstances when it comes to making a living, and I value it for two reasons. First, I have content I can digest without paying and I don't feel wrong for not paying (unless something really, really stands out like Cart Life) (oh! On that note I should say it's not just freemium games but games that are free to obtain anyhow, like Spelunky on the PC or whatever else). Second, I feel like I have a lot of perspective on this design of game and the market places surrounding them that a lot of people don't have, and usually they don't have it by choice. So it's interesting arguing against their assumptions with my experiences. What I really like about this approach to games is that it's actually super consumer friendly. You have access to the whole game, and if you want more of it or more options you can put in a varying amount of money. There's zero risk or loss in trying them out, vs. having to buy a game or play a limited demo. Really surprises me when people get hostile toward these kinds of game.

 

Though to an extent I can't blame them when Electronic Arts starts to make a mutated form of that design.

 

Side note: When Chris said "Creepy sounds!" I imagined it in text form as "Creepy sounds™!" I really enjoy Chris' ability to dump on things like that.

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Freemium is starting to hit consoles, this trailer came out today. it's a future I have never really imagined, how many console freemium games will we see at E3. I can already see the press conferences "...and it'll be free to play"

If they're smart the next call of duty should be a multiplayer only Freemium title.

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One thing that struck a chord with me was Jake's complaint about audiolog placement in Infinite.  This is a huge problem that I've noticed, not just in Infinite, but in pretty much every game that tries to talk at you while you explore.  It's seriously an epidemic.  There's this narrative that people have built up around the audio log that they're this cool thing that you can listen to while you explore the world at your own pace, but the reality is that in pretty much every game to feature them, trying to move forward at anything resembling a normal pace will inevitably result in the game talking over itself or cutting itself off constantly.  For some reason game designers seem to put no thought at all into the placement and timing of audio messages.

 

You've got some serious nostalgia revisionism going on for the original Bioshock, though.  That game suffered from this problem all the time and was actually the first game to get me to really notice it, leading to the development of my rule for dialogue in games: Whenever I get a message, I immediately halt all forward progress and only move around places I've already been, if at all, until the dialogue is finished.  I never feel like I'm actually wasting time by doing this, because in pretty much every single case, I finish listening and take two steps forward, and sure enough, there's the trigger line for the message from Atlas that would've interrupted the log, or the splicer group that would've made it impossible to hear over their gunfire and combat barks.  I wish I was exaggerating, but that's really how it is.

 

A friend of mine jokingly theorized that this, along with the generally low standards for audio mixing in games, happens because nobody plays with the sound on when testing games.  Having (limited) experience working as a tester for a large publisher myself, I think there might actually be some truth to that, sadly.

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The audiolog problem is definitely worse in Infinite because you have Elizabeth right there most of the game talking to you, but you're right that it is not as if this problem didn't exist in Bioshock. It is also such a weird technique for games to use. Like, it made perfect sense with the fiction of System Shock 2 where the entire crew of the spaceship is dead, but it makes less sense in worlds that are supposed to be populated by the living. They've sort of become the video game equivalent of how like in a TV show or movie any time a character turns on a TV it is always happens to be the news with a breaking story relevant to the plot. It is a bad crutch.

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I thought Minerva's Den did a very good job of accounting for its audio log placement. It struck a nice balance.

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I just realized I missed like an entire page of posts, sorryyyy.

Yeah, no, I get it. I sorta addressed this in my above post. I feel like that asshole what goes "you're dumb for thinking about it like that". I just... I didn't feel like the game was trying to Say Something. I felt like it COULD have been that game, but it actively chose not to be. Presenting racism as an evil thing isn't really Saying Something, in my book. It's just kind of an obvious fact? The whole Fitzroy arc of Revolutionary to Tyrant is such a typical thing in genre fiction that, again, I'm left feeling like it's just a story element, and not a Something. None of the presented topics are ever addressed. They're just presented. Which is basically the core of your criticisms, if I'm not misunderstanding, where for me, it's the core of my apathy? Apathy's a strong word, but probably the most accurate. I recognize (or, at least, believe) that the game isn't trying to be something special*, and so I accept that and move on.

 

If a game (or comic, or movie, etc) doesn't want to Say Something about a subject, it shouldn't bring them up. On the subject of raising these large issues and then not addressing them, I have to go back to one of my favorite quotes from Emily Short about games and meaning:

 

"The trick about working in an artistic medium is that you typically wind up saying something whether you mean to or not. So it’s probably a good idea to go ahead and think about what that is."

 

By making this a game so heavily based on societal racism, particularly one character's regret and shame about actions at Wounded Knee, and then totally ignore that in favor of sci-fi shenanigans suggests that it's not really a problem that should be cared about. By claiming that the racist leader of a repressive society is equally evil as the violent revolutionary fighting for her people's freedom because they're both violent, they're saying that the oppressed are just as bad as the oppressors--in addition to being lazy storytelling by leaning on an unfair trope of moral equivalence.

 

I'm sure they absolutely didn't mean to convey those messages, but that's what happens when you bring up big, problematic issues and then don't bother to say something about them.

 

Right now, at the end of the game,

...the "way to make things better" is to go back in time/reality to stop the player from becoming the bad-guy (in a bit of logic that doesn't actually work). Specifically, that's dealing with a white guy's guilt about racism rather than dealing with racism itself. It speaks volumes that this is the solution rather than using that *exact same power* to go back in time and prevent the massacre at Wounded Knee or otherwise take tangible action against the horrors that are supposedly the root cause of the player's anguish.

 

Actually, that could have been an ending or climax that actually followed some logical sense, dealt with the racism issue (in an admittedly ham-handed fashion, but at least in some way), and worked in conjunction with the game's "shoot-man-in-face" gameplay.

 

Anyway, sorry to harp on this, especially since it raises the dread spectre of ludonarrative dissonance, but I spend a lot of time thinking about this, since it's literally my job.

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I thought Minerva's Den did a very good job of accounting for its audio log placement. It struck a nice balance.

That's good to hear.  I haven't played Minerva's Den yet because I got really burned out Bioshock after 2, but I'm sure it'll be a treat when I finally get around to it.

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Good episode!

 

In response to the idea of curated gaming journalism: I'd love to see a decent, accesible gaming interest site with more of a feminist or (especially) queer bent. In general I kind of wish that gaming news sites weren't curated for the kind of people that comment on gaming news sites. A while back I was talking with a friend who works in localization for a major publisher (I won't say who since I don't want to get them in trouble) about sex and gender in video games. I half-jokingly mentioned that I always interpreted a certain pair of female characters in a game that he had worked on as a lesbian couple*. To my surprise, he enthusiastically agreed, and said that the reason he had never mentioned it before is because with the way that gaming press works now, the response would be a blown-up Kotaku headline taking his words out of context and probably getting him fired. I choose to interpret this as a sign that we're probably going to continue to gradually drift toward the "dumb writing about games" singularity until the relationship between developers and journalists in this medium is less based less on mutual animosity, though I have no idea how to solve that problem.

 

 

*I know, I know. Shipping is bad. I can't help it.

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One thing I'll say about our comments on BioShock vs BioShock Infinite:

If BioShock had just come out and we were doing a deep dive analysis of it, there are PLENTY of moment-to-moment nitpicks I could bring up, and have in the past. But at the end of the day, that game was successful for me. I felt that way at the time, not just in retrospect. Despite its issues, it ultimately cohered as a work--at least for me.

If Infinite had gelled as an overall work for me (for us), I think we would have been a lot more forgiving of its various less-consequential weaknesses, even if we still acknowledged them. But it seemed like all of us were left kind of bummed out by it on balance, even though there are ALSO plenty of individual admirable things about it.

Hopefully that makes sense. There's the detailed design critique, and then there's the holistic critique as a work, and they're both valid and have their place. BioShock has gone through its years of design criticism, and for many people (like us on this podcast) it still holds up as a complete work. BioShock Infinite is newly released so it's still going through both of those categories of analysis.

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As an aside: it kind of amazes me that the cast's favorite fight in Infinite was the

siren

. That was by far the most boring fight in the game for me. It takes so goddamn long. Even the first time, I was just annoyed, and not really enjoying it. In contrast, I loved the Handyman fights. Speaking purely from a mechanical perspective, anyway. They weren't as personal, story-wise, sure, but they were a lot more dynamic and mobile and fun and SKYLINES. Although I think the first one doesn't have any skylines, which was annoying. It did have hooks, though! 

 

I have a lot of things to say about Bioshock Infinite in response to the 'cast but I'm at work so I wonder if I'll ever remember to actually type any of it up. X:

 

I was thinking the same thing. That encounter was a crash course on why FPS games should never have boss battles. I think the combat, for the most part, is rather under-appreciated, actually. Once I understood how to use the skylines, tears, and the vigors, I had a sense of control over the battlefield stronger than in almost any other shooter I've played.  I actually thought the part that Jake thought was the worst to be one of the best, because at that point, I had such a grasp of the combat systems that the enemies were like toys for me to break in whatever matter that entertained me. I still have to agree that Bioshock Infinite contains a really excessive amount of combat, to the point that I felt tired after a multiple hour session.

 

 

Jake's mention of Blizzard Battle Chests amused me more than it should, "Battle Chest" is just a wonderful, hilarious phrase, I guess.

 

I own the Diablo 2 Battle Chest, bought it last October in an actual retail store (it was really weird buying a physical PC game period, never mind one that's more than ten years old) because I had never played a Diablo game.

My favorite part is that most of the box is taken up by a strategy guide. A totally useless strategy guide that's a million patches out of date. In fact, the games are pre-patched to a few versions behind the latest, so it's not even relevant to the game that comes on the discs.

 

By making this a game so heavily based on societal racism, particularly one character's regret and shame about actions at Wounded Knee, and then totally ignore that in favor of sci-fi shenanigans suggests that it's not really a problem that should be cared about. By claiming that the racist leader of a repressive society is equally evil as the violent revolutionary fighting for her people's freedom because they're both violent, they're saying that the oppressed are just as bad as the oppressors--in addition to being lazy storytelling by leaning on an unfair trope of moral equivalence.

 

I don't disagree that the game could have done more to explore racism, but I think it's a little extreme to say that the game's even suggesting "racism is not a problem worth caring about", just because the science fiction elements are more central to the plot.

 

I completely agree to your point about Comstock and the revolutionaries. Even while playing the game, it felt like a desperate attempt at creating a morally ambiguous conflict.

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If a game (or comic, or movie, etc) doesn't want to Say Something about a subject, it shouldn't bring them up.

Completely disagree! I don't really have anything else to say; I just... I just don't agree with this at all. (Speaking completely outside the context of Bioshock Infinite.) If nothing else, it sets a context for the world. Maybe it's too overzealous about it, maybe it's not zealous enough, maybe maybe whatever. There are always flaws to find in everything. That's a separate argument, though. I just really, really disagree with what you are saying here.

 

The Emily Short quote is true, though. You should definitely think about what you're doing. But that doesn't mean you should get rid of something just because you don't want to address it. Maybe after thinking about it you dial it back or present it in a different way. Back in the context of Bioshock Infinite, I can totally empathize with the argument that Infinite faked people out with its presentation of products, and maybe it shouldn't have been so crazy about it in the beginning. Buuut well.

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Ever since the Weinhandler talk from the first expansion PAX, that german voice you guys spontaneously come to is just the funniest thing ever to me.

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In response to the idea of curated gaming journalism: I'd love to see a decent, accesible gaming interest site with more of a feminist or (especially) queer bent. In general I kind of wish that gaming news sites weren't curated for the kind of people that comment on gaming news sites.

Yes, absolutely! That would be such a wonderful thing, considering how a lot of mainstream gaming news sites are essentially curated towards straight males.

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In response to the idea of curated gaming journalism: I'd love to see a decent, accesible gaming interest site with more of a feminist or (especially) queer bent.

http://borderhouseblog.com/ ?

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In response to the idea of curated gaming journalism: I'd love to see a decent, accesible gaming interest site with more of a feminist or (especially) queer bent.

Even though it might not be the bend you are looking for and I'm sure everybody knows them, I just want to mention that I really like how RPS is taking a stand lately. They don't tire criticizing or ridiculing stupid video-games-and-women-bullshit and they are very open about their position in this regard: Misogyny, Sexism, And Why RPS Isn’t Shutting Up. Oh, and they feature Cara Ellison, who recently asked some poor Crytek-guy whether he's into BDSM.

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