Felipepepe's Videogame History Articles Thread

[newtmonkey]

Majority of game reviewers are just lazy, spoiled, manchildren. I know they also have meetings to attend, have to go get swag from publishers, etc. But come on. Playing games for them is their job—I mean, how long can it possibly take to write what passes for a review these days?
If a game reviewer wants to be taken seriously, he needs to act like an actual professional and sacrifice some nights and weekends to continuing education (i.e. playing and researching old video games).
The fact that anyone has to even suggest just spending 2-3 hours playing the CLASSICS is crazy. People reviewing games professionally should love games enough—or at least be professional enough to care about their career—that they don't need to be told to pick some game considered to be a classic that shaped an entire genre of games, and just dick around in it for a couple hours.
Or how about just look though some old magazines ffs. The entire run of CGW is available in pristine PDFs. That is one of the best educations you can ask for. You can see the computer game industry form right in front of your eyes in those pages. Archive.org has the full run of Zzap64 and Crash for all you need to know about the C64 and Spectrum. It even has tons of console mags filled with pretty pictures that would be easy for even modern game "journalists" to fathom.

 

[Archibald]

I think this is a bit of a dead topic since "game journalism" is slowly dying (not an isolated case either, see legacy media vs alt-media that was one of the focal points during USA's election) due to:

1) Lack of trust since most of them are directly dependable on game publishers giving them something special.
2) People find more value in looking how some retard plays the game on youtube (or some streaming service) than in reading review.
3) Publishers wouldn't mind to cut the middle man and speak directly to their audiences or employ youtubers.

So lets say you wanted to become good "gaming journalist", would you really invest hundreds of hours into building up your knowledge to work in a field that, at best, has limited future? Realistically speaking you could invest all those hours into some other profession and actually get a job that has good pay and provides good career options. So I think that "best people" naturally just don't want to get involved in this. So what we get is bunch of failures doing this "journalism" thing, few decent people and bunch of people who are just winging it while hoping to get some job at one of the studios for whom they write positive "reviews".

And the bigger problem is that business people don't really have any motivation to hire people with deep knowledge or to push their new hires to learn stuff. Logically speaking if you had lots of experience with Fallout 1/2 (and crpg genre in general) then you'd find 3/4 shit and write a bad review. Well after few such bad reviews Zenimax would likely pull ads from your site and not give you early copies anymore which would hit your bottom line. Couple years later and you are probably struggling to keep any of these knowledgeable journalists employed.

So yeah, would be cool if everyone learned some gaming history, but I don't expect that to happen unless something changes in how gaming industry operates.

 

[Neanderthal]

It won't, as you say they've dug their own grave an chucked emsens in by forgettin to put audience first, same as in any other industry. Personally I think one o key moments were when somebody started spouting shit about games not bein interestin to write about, so instead they'd start insertin whatever made up crap they could to generate hits, like mainstream media, an just like them it worked short term an utterly devalued em long term. An ironic thing is that games, their development, history an creators are interestin enough as Felipepe proves every couple weeks or so, they just couldn't be arsed to do the leg work or didn't have passion.

 

[Marten Broadcloak]

And the bigger problem is that business people don't really have any motivation to hire people with deep knowledge or to push their new hires to learn stuff. Logically speaking if you had lots of experience with Fallout 1/2 (and crpg genre in general) then you'd find 3/4 shit and write a bad review. Well after few such bad reviews Zenimax would likely pull ads from your site and not give you early copies anymore which would hit your bottom line. Couple years later and you are probably struggling to keep any of these knowledgeable journalists employed.

That's interesting, but I tend to disagree; the problem lies elsewhere. You don't need to be an expert of the first Deus Ex to realize the last ones are bad role-playing games. The same applies to Fallout. I think there are two issues that prevent, as you said, knowledgeable people to write informed articles: the fact that you can't write a bad review for an AAA+ game on any major gaming website, and also the fact that readers don't care about informed articles. IGN readers don't want to know how Fallout 4 compares to Fallout 2. They want you to tell them how it's a game worth their money (because they will end up buying it anyway).

 

[felipepepe]

IGN readers don't want to know how Fallout 4 compares to Fallout 2. They want you to tell them how it's a game worth their money (because they pre-ordered it already).

Fix'ed.

 

[Archibald]

Well yeah, good chunk of the audience doesn't give a shit. They want to hear how newest AAA+ game of their loved franchise is amazing and they were totally not retarded for pre-ordering it. This makes it difficult to set up some subscription system that, in theory, could allow you some freedom from big publishers/ad clicks.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

If a game reviewer wants to be taken seriously, he needs to act like an actual professional and sacrifice some nights and weekends to continuing education (i.e. playing and researching old video games).

When taking about game journalists being lazy you are missing the point that if they would take their job seriously and acquired slightly refined taste, they would lose their jobs. They are hired for their averageness and willingness to embrace it. Being critical is completely haram, it is not what average American wants or understands. The whole culture is anti-intellectual, because it improves sales.

 

[felipepepe]

Quick one today, just making an official post about my screenshot gallery (hopefully getting more contirbutions): http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Feli...Resource_Gallery_of_16000_RPG_screenshots.php

Spoiler

TL;DR: I've put together a gallery with over 16,000 .png screenshots of almost 400 CRPGs.

Now for the longer explanation:

One of the core beliefs in creating the CRPG Book Project was to have great screenshots that really sold you on the games, that showed what they were all about - actual gameplay!

Far too often a game gets represented by the same carefully produced PR screenshot, which doesn't really say much besides "muh graphics" or "pre-order plz". Case in point, Oblivion:

Search previews, reviews, retrospective articles and even books and you'll likely find this exact same image. It looks good, is in high-res and saves you the trouble of taking screenshots yourself.

Because getting good images is hard.

You can't (or at least shouldn't) just randomly pick screenshots from Google - and even if you do, some games only have decade-old screenshots from IGN, Gamespy or Gamespot, usually in very low resolution and tainted with those annoying watermarks:

So I slowly took my own screenshots as I worked on the book, trying to capture the essence of each game. Over the course of three years, that became a collection of thousands of images.

I uploaded some of them to MobyGames, which is an amazing resource, but they usually only have a few screenshots of each game, and many are poorly compressed .jpgs. Moreover, it isn't fun to browse it (hopefully we'll improvements with their newly-announced API!).

With that in mind, I've recently began my very own gallery, uploading 10,000+ screenshots I had taken. I then contacted the CRPG Addict, who for the past 7 years has been playing every single CRPG ever released in chronological order, and got authorization to upload thousands of his screenshots as well.

This brings us up to speed:



As of this writing, the gallery now holds over 16,000 screenshots of almost 400 different CRPGs - from latest releases to PLATO games from the 70's - all in .png.

These can be used anywhere freely, no watermarks or whatever attached.

Great for when you want to talk about specific moments or features - like Neverwinter Night 2's amazing trial scene, but can't find a good screenshot and don't want to download the game, start a new save and play for hours and hours just for a single screenshot:

Beats screenshotting Youtube videos too.

But simply browsing the gallery is my favorite part. I love checking each game's inventory screen, battle systems, compare UIs, remember scenes, etc... Hope you all enjoy it as well, that it helps researchers, journalists and game devs - or just gamers looking for something different to play.

Oh, and if anyone wants to share .png screenshots of RPGs, hit me on twitter and I'll gladly upload them.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Game reviewers don't need a knowledge in the history of games in the same way someone who reviews women's romance novels on Goodreads doesn't need to have read Ovid and even Austen. The few times they have to cope with old titles is when they create best of list, but in this case they just can c&p from old ones and randomize places (or the latter can add books they hated in school).

 

[Machocruz]

I'm ok with reviewers not being up on video game history. The problem is that they feel the need to make proclamations that would require one to know that history for such proclamations to be valid, such a "this is the best/innovative/sets a new standard for its genre/etc" yet they haven't played anything before Xbox or whatever. I'd rather them talk about the game in a bubble then, making no comparison to other games at all, making no attempt to hierarchize. If you have a newbs grasp, don't try to talk at an expert's level. Of course they do this to project the illusion of constant progress and improvement, because they'd feel bad acknowledging that the games of their generation are in many ways inferior to those of the past. Every generations wants to believe that their shit is better than the past's.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm ok with reviewers not being up on video game history. The problem is that they feel the need to make proclamations that would require one to know that history for such proclamations to be valid, such a "this is the best/innovative/sets a new standard for its genre/etc" yet they haven't played anything before Xbox or whatever. I'd rather them talk about the game in a bubble then, making no comparison to other games at all, making no attempt to hierarchize. If you have a newbs grasp, don't try to talk at an expert's level. Of course they do this to project the illusion of constant progress and improvement, because they'd feel bad acknowledging that the games of their generation are in many ways inferior to those of the past. Every generations wants to believe that their shit is better than the past's.

I agree with this up to a point. A game reviewer should at least be aware of "the lay of the land" in videogames. The difference between a home computer and a console, the (de facto) standard genres and (maybe)i how they came about, how game design emphasis has changed through the years, etc. A general overview, pretty much like how history, literature and maths is taught in schools nowadays.

They shouldn't need to know how many systems used the MSX standard, or what's the difference between a Spectrum +2 or a Spectrum +3, or the post-release version history of Doom. But they should know what MSX actually is, they should know that Spectrum computers "evolved", and about the original Doom and the impact it had upon gaming.

And despite what people say, gaming journalism has been full of hacks and shills for 30 years. It may look like it's dying, but it's been in this dying state for decades. Picture the rotting, fetid corpse of a salesman knocking on your door and trying to sell you something. That's gaming journalism. (Bonus points if you can name the game that starred an undead door-to-door salesman.)

 

[octavius]

The worst ever "gaming journalists" were probably those writing for the old Amiga magazines.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

http://www.pcgamer.com/this-great-gallery-has-more-than-13000-screenshots-of-crpgs/

This great gallery has more than 13,000 screenshots of CRPGs

By Wes Fenlon 8 hours ago

Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Planescape. You name it, it's here.

Do you remember what Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura looks like? What about the original Fallout? For many classic PC games older than 10 or 20 or 30 years, finding decent screenshots online can be all but impossible. Sure, there will be a few, but you'll likely run into the same images over and over, or find a blurry mess of pixels half-obscured by a watermark.

While working on his CRPG book project, Felipe Pepe decided that wouldn't do at all. He started taking fresh .png screenshots of every CRPG he played for the past three years, and recently uploaded the results into a flickr album that now contains more than 13,000 images.

The crpgbook flickr is a treasure trove of screenshots from PC RPGs, often dozens per game showing off combat and dialogue and menus. How many official screenshots are out there of Ultima 4's menus? I'm going with: not very many.

There are close to 400 games in the archive so far, including newer games like The Banner Saga and ancient RPGs like Tunnels of Doom from 1982. There are also screens from a few non-RPGs, like Warcraft Adventures and X-COM: UFO Defense.

If you're looking for images of a specific game or just want to browse through thousands of screenshots, keep the crpgbook flickr in mind.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

God, those opening questions. Of course I remember what Arcanum and Fallout look (and sound) like, I would even if I didn't replay them relatively recently. Their gameplay achievements (and no, I don't consider gameplay=combat) aside both of them succeed in conveying a certain mood through their visuals and sounds/music that is in synergy with their narrative and world design which makes them both memorable lifetime gaming experiences.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

New article: Learning the Video Game Canon - How to deal with over 40 years of backlog?

Nice article and I agree with much of it. This is something I've also brought up before, and that is the fact that modern RPG developers aren't really studying the RPGs of yesteryear as much as they could be. Sure, you can basically just look at other popular games out right now, mash some of their ideas together and call it a day. If your goal is to make a bunch of money that would likely work just fine. But there are so, so, SO many RPGs you can play from years past that have sooooo many unique ideas that could be borrowed or extrapolated in today's games. It's really quite mind-boggling. And it's not just the "big ones", either. You can play any game, literally any one, and learn something from it. Even if you learn what NOT to do, it's a learning process. So all of a sudden you are a sponge absorbing all these things from older games that you can use for a new one, and if you implement some twists on these ideas, well, you'll be considered a genius! You've done something that no one else is really doing at the time. As soon as more RPG game devs figure this out maybe we'll see more of it. Until then I'm kind of just chuckling and whispering to them, "Psst! Check out the first 2 Gothic games!" when they announce their new open-world RPG that looks just like what everyone else is doing today.

 

[joelofdeath]

Those comments tho

If you have played Fallout 4 or Skyrim, there's really not that great of a payoff "research wise" in going back and playing... Morrowind.

 

[Grauken]

Gamasutra has a very specialized audience that combines a certain arrogance with ignorance that sometimes even puts NeoGaf to shame with its amount of stupidity, I always appreciate Felipes articles, but damn is that site not worth them

 

[octavius]

Gamasutra has a very specialized audience that combines a certain arrogance with ignorance that sometimes even puts NeoGaf to shame with its amount of stupidity, I always appreciate Felipes articles, but damn is that site not worth them

I bet it was Gamasutra CRPG Addict refered to in his latest blog entry:

Now, I realize that The Chosen Elite of RPG players have passed down from on high the declaration that Skyrim "sucks," but as I shall never be cool enough to breathe their rarefied air anyway,

EDIT:

 

[Grauken]

He can be an asshole and stupid, but he'll never be as annoying as some of the posters on Gamasutra

 

[tormund]

Eh? If anything, "Chosen elite" of journos and critics thinks that Skyrim is a major classic, so I don't see how that remark could've been aimed at Gamasutra. They likely share his opinion of Skyrim.

When someone like him uses that sort of wording, it can only be aimed at those uppity players who don't know what's good for them...

 

[Severian Silk]

I'm ok with reviewers not being up on video game history. The problem is that they feel the need to make proclamations that would require one to know that history for such proclamations to be valid, such a "this is the best/innovative/sets a new standard for its genre/etc" yet they haven't played anything before Xbox or whatever. I'd rather them talk about the game in a bubble then, making no comparison to other games at all, making no attempt to hierarchize. If you have a newbs grasp, don't try to talk at an expert's level. Of course they do this to project the illusion of constant progress and improvement, because they'd feel bad acknowledging that the games of their generation are in many ways inferior to those of the past. Every generations wants to believe that their shit is better than the past's.

I agree with this up to a point. A game reviewer should at least be aware of "the lay of the land" in videogames. The difference between a home computer and a console, the (de facto) standard genres and (maybe)i how they came about, how game design emphasis has changed through the years, etc. A general overview, pretty much like how history, literature and maths is taught in schools nowadays.

They shouldn't need to know how many systems used the MSX standard, or what's the difference between a Spectrum +2 or a Spectrum +3, or the post-release version history of Doom. But they should know what MSX actually is, they should know that Spectrum computers "evolved", and about the original Doom and the impact it had upon gaming.

And despite what people say, gaming journalism has been full of hacks and shills for 30 years. It may look like it's dying, but it's been in this dying state for decades. Picture the rotting, fetid corpse of a salesman knocking on your door and trying to sell you something. That's gaming journalism. (Bonus points if you can name the game that starred an undead door-to-door salesman.)

Game reviewers shouldn't have to do anything that Frito-Lay and Pepsi don't pay them to do.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Quick one today, just making an official post about my screenshot gallery (hopefully getting more contirbutions): http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Feli...Resource_Gallery_of_16000_RPG_screenshots.php

Spoiler

TL;DR: I've put together a gallery with over 16,000 .png screenshots of almost 400 CRPGs.

Now for the longer explanation:

One of the core beliefs in creating the CRPG Book Project was to have great screenshots that really sold you on the games, that showed what they were all about - actual gameplay!

Far too often a game gets represented by the same carefully produced PR screenshot, which doesn't really say much besides "muh graphics" or "pre-order plz". Case in point, Oblivion:

Search previews, reviews, retrospective articles and even books and you'll likely find this exact same image. It looks good, is in high-res and saves you the trouble of taking screenshots yourself.

Because getting good images is hard.

You can't (or at least shouldn't) just randomly pick screenshots from Google - and even if you do, some games only have decade-old screenshots from IGN, Gamespy or Gamespot, usually in very low resolution and tainted with those annoying watermarks:

So I slowly took my own screenshots as I worked on the book, trying to capture the essence of each game. Over the course of three years, that became a collection of thousands of images.

I uploaded some of them to MobyGames, which is an amazing resource, but they usually only have a few screenshots of each game, and many are poorly compressed .jpgs. Moreover, it isn't fun to browse it (hopefully we'll improvements with their newly-announced API!).

With that in mind, I've recently began my very own gallery, uploading 10,000+ screenshots I had taken. I then contacted the CRPG Addict, who for the past 7 years has been playing every single CRPG ever released in chronological order, and got authorization to upload thousands of his screenshots as well.

This brings us up to speed:



As of this writing, the gallery now holds over 16,000 screenshots of almost 400 different CRPGs - from latest releases to PLATO games from the 70's - all in .png.

These can be used anywhere freely, no watermarks or whatever attached.

Great for when you want to talk about specific moments or features - like Neverwinter Night 2's amazing trial scene, but can't find a good screenshot and don't want to download the game, start a new save and play for hours and hours just for a single screenshot:

Beats screenshotting Youtube videos too.

But simply browsing the gallery is my favorite part. I love checking each game's inventory screen, battle systems, compare UIs, remember scenes, etc... Hope you all enjoy it as well, that it helps researchers, journalists and game devs - or just gamers looking for something different to play.

Oh, and if anyone wants to share .png screenshots of RPGs, hit me on twitter and I'll gladly upload them.

No ultima underworld 2 pics?

 

[Severian Silk]

Why are there all these screenshots of old games? Don't games from before ~2000 mostly suck?

 

[felipepepe]

Gamasutra is cool for the exposition, and they at least used to get some amazing post-mortens and interviews.

The problem is that there's a vocal group of small indie devs and game dev students writing "How my game does X right" to promote themselves, which makes hard to spot the good content.

No ultima underworld 2 pics?

Yeah, there's a bunch of games I still need to quickly boot to grab screenshots....

 

[Archibald]

At least they aren't publishing articles about how gamers are dead anymore, or I haven't noticed them.