Cultural Self-gratification.

[shortylickens]

Actually, its not, its Cultural Masturbation. But we arent allowed to say that in the title.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/art...03-Extra-Punctuation-On-Remakes-and-Nostalgia

Recently I attended Gameconnect Asia-Pacific in Melbourne, a sort of conference and networking opportunity for the Australian games industry. I was part of a panel of game critics discussing why videogames are shit, so basically money for old rope.

Anyway, the discussion turned inevitably to Mario and to New Super Mario Bros Wii. One of the other panelists, Bajo from ABC TV's Good Game series, brought up how he knows people who will buy and play every new Mario game regardless of perceived quality simply because "it's Mario." I responded - in retrospect, a little too hastily - with "yeah, it's like talking to people who believe in God."

The line got a rather nervous laugh, but I stand by the point. Mario to God isn't as huge a leap of logic as you might think. As the movie Fight Club once said, our fathers are our original models for God. Take that principle to a generation of latchkey kids raised by TV and gaming, the original model of God transfers over to escapism. Nintendo becomes our heavenly host. Mario becomes Messiah. Sonic becomes our Judas.

This isn't helped at all by the internet, where a large percentage of discourse consists of elevated versions of playground arguments over whether He-Man was better than Thundercats. International circle-jerk community forums and the ability to download virtually any artifact of modern culture have granted nostalgia an unearned degree of legitimacy. Then we get things like the Transformers movie, and the human race continues to suffer a general decline into apocalyptic horror.

"Given your previously expressed contempt of Nintendo basically doing the same thing over and over, reusing the same characters, and favoring appeals to nostalgia over innovation, what would you do with Mario?"
-Michael B., from email

You know, Nintendo didn't always do the same thing over and over. They've always had a tendency to labor their franchises, but at least for a while they made an effort to move forward with each one. Mario 3 - map screens, raccoon tails and minigames. Super Mario World - Yoshi and secret levels. Yoshi's Island - babysitting, unique painted art style and serious Mode 7 abuse. Mario 64 - first move into full 3D, for better or worse. Mario Sunshine - squirt guns and fruit. Mario Galaxy - superlative 3D platforming with gravity mechanics, and there the series found itself up against a big fucking wall.

I remember saying in my Mario Galaxy review, there's nowhere to go once you've gone into space. Space is a big thing and anything you try after space is just going to be not moving forward but shuffling sideways, if not outright stepping backwards. And it seems Nintendo agreed, and have decided not to let it bother them.

We're living in a rather introspective time for gaming, with the aforementioned trend for nostalgia and both retro and retro-style games available on handhelds or for download onto consoles, and this has brought us to things like New Super Mario Bros Wii, which is a fairly large and bold step backwards. What is the purpose for its existence?
People have hazarded to me that it's a move to introduce the classic Mario to a new audience. If that's the case, it's a pretty stupid way to do it. You know how you introduce classic Mario to a new audience? You make them play classic Mario! Re-release the old NES, SNES and N64 Marios' for DS and Wii. You could even charge money for it and add extra characters or director commentary or - oh yeah, you pretty much already did that. Well, do it some more. And don't make bland 2.5D copies of them with the word "new" in the title as some kind of fabulous defiance of the English language.

You know what this is? This is cultural masturbation. So is making films out of 80s cartoon serials that no one liked except the nostalgia-blinded dipshit internet nerds who have all the disposable income. And remaking those films five years later.

Am I the only one who genuinely worries about how historians from the future will recount the culture of our time? About a hundred years from now, will there be some future version of Time Team, where Tony Robinson IV will unearth an old Mario lunchbox, and then do a voiceover on an animated sequence recreating world 1.1 from Super Mario 1? "Mario was a very popular character invented by Nintendo in the 1980s. After that, Nintendo pretty much just wanked the idea off for the fifty years of what we now call the Great Circle Jerk, before the outbreak of the Apocalypse War, at which point Mario was supplanted in popularity by Baldy The Radiation Victim."

So, in answer to Michael B's question, "what would I do with Mario," I would leave Mario exactly where we left him: doing aeroplane impressions somewhere out in deep space. And hope he can't find the way back.

Wait, didn't I review two games last week? Quick, pick a comment. This one'll do.

"Yeah, I was unimpressed with the [Left 4 Dead 2] demo, yeah I see that the CORE CORE CORE gameplay is the same. But what more do you want? Don't 99.9% of all sequals share the same gameplay mechanics?"
- A Pious Cultist

Yes, if they're shit. But a sequel will generally also have another 10 hours or so of levels threaded onto a new bit of the story. Story is and remains equally as important as gameplay. Left 4 Dead never really had a story - it had a setting, and strong characters, but it didn't have a plot. Nothing wrong with that, there are plenty of games that get by on pure gameplay, but they don't have the lastability, and they'll never be anything more than a quick bit of fun.

Imagine a grilled sandwich. The gameplay is the bread and the story is the filling. Separate the two elements and they're both still fine to eat alone, they're just not as good as they are together. And after enjoying a lovely grilled cheese sandwich you might try a grilled tuna sandwich, swapping out the cheese for the tuna but using basically the same bread, maybe adding a dash of branston pickle to spice it up, and the second grilled sandwich is just as enriching as the first.

Now imagine you have a piece of buttered toast. Maybe you're hungry but have a bus to catch. It's filling, it does the job, but it's not really something you can sit down and enjoy in the same way as a grilled sandwich. Left 4 Dead is a piece of toast, and that's fine. But Left 4 Dead 2 is just another piece of toast from a different loaf of bread. With a sprig of parsley.

I'd better go now, I'm making myself hungry.

Me?
I gave up the consoles with the N64. The move to 3D did not impress me because gameplay suffered, a LOT!
It took several more generations before gameplay became the focus again but at that point I was much happier with computer games.
As for nostalgia, I dont have it. Not in games or in my personal life or my professional life.

I acknowledge the main reason Super Mario Brothers was fun: I didnt have anything better, and it entertained well enough. It got better with each generation, up to the point that it stopped being about the fun and more about the pretty. Then it wasnt good entertainment anymore.
See also: Star Wars.

And thanks to emulators I can check my nostalgia factor to make sure. The old games that were fun are still fun today. I dont enjoy them as much because I already played the shit out of them and its nothing new.
I admit that moving forward with technology should improve the awesomeness of games, but because of what the average gamer wants I dont have as much fun as I used to. I havent had a chance to get bored and overloaded with the exact same crap over and over again because I dont like what most everyone else is playing. And I dont play one thing constantly until I'm sick of it.
See also: StarCraft and Diablo 2.

BUT, in the case of Baldurs Gate, I could have easily gone a little longer with the exact same thing before I got bored. We really should have had a 3rd game. Neverwinter Nights was NOT an improvement and did not sate my lust for awesome dungeon spelunking. By contrast, Titan Quest was exactly what I needed. I didnt play Diablo 2 so much that I got sick of the idea, and TQ was an improvement in every way.

I thought about posting this in the P&N section, because he touched on some points that apply to culture as a whole.
One could make a weak argument that western culture really hasnt improved much or done a lot of positive change since the 70's or 80's. The internet has enabled us to be more connected sure, but for the most part it allows people to keep doing what they've been doing just in a different manner. Social people still socialize normally but now they can coordinate quicker and easier. Antisocial people still dont socialize normally AND they have a means to let everyone in the world quickly know how & why they are fucked up. Quality of life issues have not been fixed or improved, in fact I think the simple, cheap, easy, constant electronic entertainment really just serves to distract us while our world gets more fucked up every year. Despite having access to a lot more info it seems that education gets a little worse every year, and compared to those that are moving forward we really look like we're behind the times. Kids think less and know less even with the internet.
Or maybe because of it.

/rant

 

[DaveSimmons]

Sturgeon's Rule ("90% of everything is crap") has always applied to culture, popular and otherwise.

The present culture always seems worse than the past's because looking at the past it's natural to focus on the 10% that was worth remembering.

 

[crisium]

Sturgeon's Rule ("90% of everything is crap") has always applied to culture, popular and otherwise.

The present culture always seems worse than the past's because looking at the past it's natural to focus on the 10% that was worth remembering.

Exactly. Every generation has it's top tier of games that are amazing to this day. There was plenty of shovel ware crap on the Genesis and SNES too. That's also my favourite generation, but N64 + PSX had amazing games too. Sometimes they were still 2D (Castlevania Symphony of the Night) sometimes 3D inventions of an old series that transitioned amazingly (Zelda Ocarina of Time). There were many lame attempts at 3D, but you cannot dismiss so many generations and systems as fail.

 

[shortylickens]

Sturgeon's Rule ("90% of everything is crap") has always applied to culture, popular and otherwise.

The present culture always seems worse than the past's because looking at the past it's natural to focus on the 10% that was worth remembering.

Yeah but up until the new millenium did folks have a habit of recycling their culture from the previous generation?

Maybe they did. I remember being a teen in the 90's and it seemed like a lot of folks were into 70's clothes.
Actually, they werent. It was just the bell bottom jeans. And not everyone did that.
And they didnt listen to the music either.
Nevermind, I stick by my original point.

 

[DaveSimmons]

> Yeah but up until the new millenium did folks have a habit of recycling their culture from the previous generation?

Yep, and it started long before that. To Have And Have Not (Bogart, 1944) was remade in 1950 and again in 1956. That's as bad as the upcoming Spider-man re-reboot.

 

[Zenoth]

Exactly. Every generation has it's top tier of games that are amazing to this day. There was plenty of shovel ware crap on the Genesis and SNES too. That's also my favourite generation, but N64 + PSX had amazing games too. Sometimes they were still 2D (Castlevania Symphony of the Night) sometimes 3D inventions of an old series that transitioned amazingly (Zelda Ocarina of Time). There were many lame attempts at 3D, but you cannot dismiss so many generations and systems as fail.

Well said.

Each gaming generations had their jewels and their failures, and when looking back we'll certainly remember the ones we liked and almost forget that there were ever any failures, it reminds me that the victorious writes history, and so did Pong, Pitfall, Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Sonic, Donkey Kong, Solid Snake and so on and so forth, but we barely remember Superman 64 or E.T. The Extraterrestrial, for obvious reasons. It's just history repeating itself. It's not "just now" in our current gaming generation that all of a sudden we see 2D or 2.5D games "coming back", I can clearly remember that on the PSX and PS2 as well as on the Dreamcast and on the XBOX there were clear "attempts" at "going back in time old school style" either for the mere purpose of nourishing nostalgia or for trying to resurrect some "long dying" franchise.

I for one try to appreciate what there is to appreciate for each gaming generations without forgetting (at the best of my ability) the titles I liked "years ago". I still occasionally venture on eBay to buy some NES, SNES, Genesis and PSX games, it happens very rarely I might say, but it does happen, and sometimes when long time friends come home we play some of the games that we "grew up with" in our youth and we honestly do have fun and have some laughs in remembering, but we never start debating about how "better" it would be if today everything could be just like it was back then, we're not that obsessed with "nostalgia", as if it was the only fuel that drives our desire to play "old games", for me games are games whatever their age, it's just a question of mind set and adaptation (especially when it comes to game-play features and graphics with a 5+, 10+ or 15+ years gap between gaming evolutions and revolutions).

In the end however it's a question of personal taste, in my book, more than a question of overall culture, I might be wrong but that's how I perceive it, but I admit that sometimes I do find myself very lucky to have not only "known" but to have actually grown up during the "golden age of video gaming", something that is labeled as such by us, the so called "old school nerds" of that period, but the so called nerds of that period made the culturally recognizable video gaming icons of today live back then, we bought those games, we played them to death, we made them popular more than their very creators would have ever imagined in their wildest of dreams, we made those icons prosper to this day, and that's something that the "new gamers of today", those who never grew up back then will ever be able to understand in general, because they're still thinking that Sony invented Mario and that Solid Snake is the reason why video gaming is so popular.

 

[F1N3ST]

Holy wall of text batman!

 

[Zenoth]

Holy wall of text batman!

What's going on lately with the "wall of text" and "TLDR" comments?

Don't people read anymore? What's their attention span exactly? Imagine what it would be like if they would have to read a book (or if they ever read even a single book in their entire life), if they can't read about six or seven paragraphs... I mean seriously guys, do some efforts and read for a change, reading is good for individuals and societies. If I had their attention span on reading "too much text" I wouldn't have made it out of even primary school, do they even give books to read to students nowadays?

Heh, anyway... it's a good read, if you can make the effort to actually read it.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

games really took an upturn in 2009, IMO

 

[shortylickens]

What's going on lately with the "wall of text" and "TLDR" comments?

Don't people read anymore? What's their attention span exactly? Imagine what it would be like if they would have to read a book (or if they ever read even a single book in their entire life), if they can't read about six or seven paragraphs... I mean seriously guys, do some efforts and read for a change, reading is good for individuals and societies. If I had their attention span on reading "too much text" I wouldn't have made it out of even primary school, do they even give books to read to students nowadays?

Heh, anyway... it's a good read, if you can make the effort to actually read it.

Actually, looking at the responses, no one here read my comments or Yahtzees article.
My point on Yahtzees point was that current generation, (which doesnt have an official name for itself) also has nothing cultural thats just its own.

Video games? Been going since the 70's, and been a strong part of the youth culture since the 80's. The characters, gameplay modes and other factors are mostly recycled. The only thing that definitely improved was the graphics. But the interaction is pretty much the same. The one and only possible exception to this might be the Guitar Hero games, because those are actually a new way of interacting with the game and your fellow players. But those have been going strong for a while now and are also heavily recycled.

Internet? Not new for this generation of kids. Yes they grew up on it, and I'm sure that influences their view of the world, but aside from being much faster and having more junk on it, its really not much different than when I started using it.

CRAP!
Late for school. Will rant later.

 

[heat901]

Actually, looking at the responses, no one here read my comments or Yahtzees article.
My point on Yahtzees point was that current generation, (which doesnt have an official name for itself) also has nothing cultural thats just its own.

Video games? Been going since the 70's, and been a strong part of the youth culture since the 80's. The characters, gameplay modes and other factors are mostly recycled. The only thing that definitely improved was the graphics. But the interaction is pretty much the same. The one and only possible exception to this might be the Guitar Hero games, because those are actually a new way of interacting with the game and your fellow players. But those have been going strong for a while now and are also heavily recycled.

Internet? Not new for this generation of kids. Yes they grew up on it, and I'm sure that influences their view of the world, but aside from being much faster and having more junk on it, its really not much different than when I started using it.

CRAP!
Late for school. Will rant later.

I'm a fan of Yahtzees and his reviews, also find his view points and yours as right. But he is also very critical when it comes with his reviews and is hard to please when it comes to games. Nothing will happen until the idiots that buy the "marios" stop buying them because they realize its the same as the last five of them. You can exchange "marios" with most any other name of a franchise that has been going on for too long for its own good.

As for L4D2 if you bought it as full price.... I would feel ashamed if I were you, its a good upgrade but its not a new game. L4D should have been what L4D2 is...you can almost see that L4D was just a quick make to see if it was actually going to sell. They probably just got the idea from the zombie mod servers from counterstrike and thought "hey everyone likes killing zombies, why not make a cheap game with not a lot of features see how it sells and go from there?" Do I blame them? Not really, money is money to a business and the only thing that stop them from getting money is you!!! (I got L4D as a gift...though I feel bad the person paid $50 for it)

It reminds me of the certain car manufactors. My brother inlaw buys a chevy truck, the transmission goes at 30,000.... gets replaces on warranty....goes again at 60,000...gets replaces.... goes again....buys the same model truck different year......How many times does it take for a person to get burned before they realize "hey..perhaps I should buy a better quality product from a company that actually makes good products..."

 

[CountZero]

Actually, looking at the responses, no one here read my comments or Yahtzees article.
My point on Yahtzees point was that current generation, (which doesnt have an official name for itself) also has nothing cultural thats just its own.

Video games? Been going since the 70's, and been a strong part of the youth culture since the 80's. The characters, gameplay modes and other factors are mostly recycled. The only thing that definitely improved was the graphics. But the interaction is pretty much the same. The one and only possible exception to this might be the Guitar Hero games, because those are actually a new way of interacting with the game and your fellow players. But those have been going strong for a while now and are also heavily recycled.

Internet? Not new for this generation of kids. Yes they grew up on it, and I'm sure that influences their view of the world, but aside from being much faster and having more junk on it, its really not much different than when I started using it.

CRAP!
Late for school. Will rant later.

I say you are wrong on that front. If anything its very difficult to decide what the current generation will be calling its own in the future.

You mention broad things and claim that can't be it because it is more or less the same as it always was but it isn't the same as it always was.

Video games peaked in popularity, crashed, were revived by nintendo as a kids past time and have emerged as a form of entertainment that rivals movies and television. Not to mention on the interaction front the whole movement control gimmick and the console that went for mass appeal over horsepower.

The internet of today only resembles the internet of the past in that you still 'surf the web' the social networking explosion plus the proliferation of web enabled phones have drastically changed the landscape and the way younger generations view and use the internet. Not to mention the disruptive effect streaming video will possibly have going forward.

Its funny to say that there is no cultural identity today, I thought the exact same thing of the 90s particularly as I finished undergrad in '01 and now when I see a movie set in the 90s it is instantly identifiable. Picturing now what will mark this generation is difficult but in a decade it'll be obvious because that intervening decade will be what decides what gets remembered and what slips away into obscurity.

 

[Zenoth]

I for one question the very necessity for each "generations" to have their own video gaming cultural identity. There were icons of gaming in the '70's, '80's and '90's, and it started to fade away in the 2000's, so what? Some people say that nostalgic gamers live in the past and just can't move on, yet younger gamers would like to see their own culturally recognizable icons for this new decade and beyond? And then what will happen to those gamers when they get to 30 years-old? Well, they will help history repeat itself by saying that their days of "golden gaming" were the best and that they're gone. It's just a repeating cycle of events that started very recently in human history (referring to video gaming in general, let's say it started in the '70's or so), it's still very fresh in everyone's memory and the first video gaming generation from the '70's is still alive today and talking about it, but who knows what discussions we'll have about video games in 30 years from now when the "oldest" gamers will be those who grew up with the PS2, GameCube and XBOX instead of Atari and the 8-Bit gaming era.

I for one take gaming for what it is and I'm not even "looking for" cultural impact, I'm just "living it" because it's there, not because I want it, the same thing applies for icons recognition, even if there is such a thing for a lot of gamers, the impact of games fell on myself, and what I "absorbed" didn't influence my immediate entourage, except perhaps for Mario and Nintendo as a company... the "inventor" (even if it isn't the case) of video games as a whole (they simply helped popularize and democratize video games, to a large extent), maybe thanks to over-used television ads back then, who knows, I can remember my parents referring to any video gaming consoles as "Nintendos", and any 2D platformers I was playing as "Marios", it was part of a language, and so part of a culture, yes, and I cannot deny it, but for myself the impact of gaming when I grew up and to this day is exactly the same, it hasn't changed, it wasn't always better back then, and it's not always better now, we had garbage games back in the days, we still do now, and it may seem that almost everything we have is recycled, but it was recycled already years ago.

As for technological improvements, evolutions and revolutions, each decades had their own, and we still do now, I guess right now that physics and 3D gaming is just starting to mature, it will be part of our regular gaming experience in perhaps a decade from now and the 2010's will be recognized culturally to have been the decade of a new start at least in terms of technologies used for video games, but not necessarily in terms of originality, simply because "lack of" originality dates as far back as the Atari days, not just now. I'm just trying to understand, as a whole, what exactly do younger gamers want now in "their gaming age" that we older gamers "had in our gaming age" (or we didn't have) and culture(s), do they want a "new Mario" (I.E a new mascot)? What is the cultural identity that is apparently wanted or missing? Aren't gamers happy? If not, then why would new cultural icons help games be or gamers feel better in any way, shape or form? I think it's just illusions and disillusions on the gamer's end, they are naive in thinking that if the 2000's and this new decade had their own significant impact in societies with their own identities and icons would make gaming better as a whole.

 

[JoshGuru7]

The Daily Show sums it up here: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/01/simpler-times.html

I recommend thoroughly examining any argument that comes to the conclusion that things aren't as good as they used to be. This isn't because that conclusion is impossible but it is improbable due to two factors:

1) As Dave alludes to, people tend to remember the good and forget the bad. If you ask me to name a few games from the early 90's I might start with Tie-Fighter, Diablo, Lords of the Realm 2 and Day of the Tentacle. If you ask me about current games, I'll list the last four I played (Defense Grid, Bayonetta, Dirt 2, Darksiders). The classics hold their own pretty well until you realize that I self-selected a few favorite titles from a period of 4 years and a more representative list would have been 3D World Boxing, Rise of the Dragon, Sea Rogue and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. The newer games start to look a lot better.

2) Further working against your argument are the steady improvements we have made in technology, labor efficiency, and standards of living that have increasingly allowed more energy to be devoted to arts and entertainment. The average lifespan worldwide increased by 30 years during the 20th century and the gross domestic product in the US increased 30-fold. Measuring the increase in access to the arts is difficult but I would estimate it to be much higher than 30 fold.

On a less analytical note I think yahtzee's stuff is pretty funny but it's easy to picture him as Jeff, the Simpsons Comic Book Guy. I can't help but feel that his critique on modern culture appears to be cribbed directly from the character and it would certainly sound better voiced by Hank Azaria. It doesn't take much to see why so many kids loved transformers (hint: Optimus Prime was a semi-truck that transformed into a robot with a sword) and it's entirely reasonable to make movies based on IPs that are well loved. Furthermore, 150k of 180k imdb votes scored Transformers a 7 or better indicating that it was well received by the majority. Extrapolating your own personal discrepancy with the majority to a greater failing of culture or society is both a time honored tradition and also stupid.