Made a new Gamasutra article: The danger of letting the gaming industry curate its own history

[Infinitron]

 

[SCO]

ignored

 

[agris]

ignored

Ironically, I mostly agreed with the first part.

This is the core of my complaints / peeves regarding PoE and Diablo 3 - in the course of the development of both games, the lead designers rejected tried-and-tested techniques just because they knew better. Here are a few examples from Diablo 3: At release, the game, as far as I remember, had no mass identify. How dumb can you get? The unique items were basically buffed up rares. It took them 3 years to make the uniques truly unique. These are basic things that D2 and other games had figured out before.

 

[SCO]

It's probably a alt. Although the codex attracts edgy 'conservative' dumbfucks like shit does flies so maybe not.

There a anti-vaxx thread on science for you man.

 

[felipepepe]

The Acknowledgment session of the book will have a huge THANK YOU to all pirates out there, cause you can bet it would be impossible to talk about olden RPGs otherwise. That, and to all the devs that released their source code or mad the game freeware, like Dungeons of Daggorrath and, yes, even Bethesda - although I'm 100% sure they deeply regret it.

 

[agris]

It's probably a alt. Although the codex attracts edgy 'conservative' dumbfucks like shit does flies so maybe not.

There a anti-vaxx thread on science for you man.

This is why I stay out of the non-gaming forums. It's not good for my heart.

 

[rado907]

I'm tempted to make a reply, in which I explain what things like concomitant, science, and progress mean - but you are right, no need to mix gaming with off-topic stuff.

Let's leave it at this: I'm glad agris and I agree about advertisement; and we can probably agree that many people don't bother with older games/movies/books on the assumption that, like iPhones, games/movies/books are always getting better, and nothing from a few years ago is worth bothering with. That's my main point.

 

[Delterius]

The Acknowledgment session of the book will have a huge THANK YOU to all pirates out there, cause you can bet it would be impossible to talk about olden RPGs otherwise. That, and to all the devs that released their source code or mad the game freeware, like Dungeons of Daggorrath and, yes, even Bethesda - although I'm 100% sure they deeply regret it.

Are you sure you can weather the bad press? Piracy is one of those things you can't portray in a positive light, even if you do so rationally and with a great deal of resignation.

 

[felipepepe]

[Marketing] Bad press is better than no press.

If nothing else works, sending a press release praising all pirates and thanking them for the completion of the book is a viable approach. With almost 600 games on my Steam account + dozens on GOG and physical copies, I think I can shrug off any accusation of being a cheap pirate. Besides, I'm not admitting to pirating a single game - I'm just tipping my fedora.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Shame that it'll be the heresy accusations that'll get you burned at the stake.

 

[pippin]

To be fair, I'd say it's the contrary of what rado says, and only in the video game industry new means better for the mainstream press, because video games were made possible because of hardware, unlike music or acting, in which hardware gave new options and platforms. There are many other variables to take in consideration, like the baby boomers and the fact that retro, nostalgia and vintage are actual market spaces which are very profitable. Like any other form of hegemony, the fashion market is not a rigid construct, but a malleable entity which adapts new forms of standards and "subversive" aspects. Any new way of expression will be absorbed, not "defeated", and if it doesn't it will disappear. This creates a problem, however, because this applies to many forms of art and video games aren't art.

The Acknowledgment session of the book will have a huge THANK YOU to all pirates out there, cause you can bet it would be impossible to talk about olden RPGs otherwise. That, and to all the devs that released their source code or mad the game freeware, like Dungeons of Daggorrath and, yes, even Bethesda - although I'm 100% sure they deeply regret it.

Don't know if they regret it, but they still sell a package with 5 games, in which 2 of them are free and others, like Battlespire and Redguard, are absent. The Anthology was a commercial effort, however, and I don't really know if they do want to preserve their older games.

 

[tuluse]

There is a cult tv show called Mystery Science Theater 3000 in the US. Because of stupid reasons, for a long time it was off the air and impossible to buy. The creators always said "keep circulating the tapes" ie keep passing and coping recorded shows.

I think if you phrased your thank you the right way, most people wouldn't care that much.

 

[NotAGolfer]

So being aware of what the developers who came before you had to deal with is also important. Sure, it's possible that you will be the one to come up with a brilliant solution to a previously insurmountable problem. Most likely, you'll realize that those "morons" actually put far more thought into a solution than you did.

This is the core of my complaints / peeves regarding PoE and Diablo 3 - in the course of the development of both games, the lead designers rejected tried-and-tested techniques just because they knew better. Here are a few examples from Diablo 3: At release, the game, as far as I remember, had no mass identify. How dumb can you get? The unique items were basically buffed up rares. It took them 3 years to make the uniques truly unique. These are basic things that D2 and other games had figured out before.

But the problem that the article quoted in the first post broaches highlights one of the untested assumptions of our time - namely, that we live in an age of virulent, unreconstructed, uncontrollable, and all-conquering loosely-defined progress. The idea - and many people believe in it - is that EVERYTHING about our age is better than before, and than EVERYTHING from even 10 years ago is "old" and inferior to what we have now.
Of course, this sentiment is obviously untrue in any context sufficiently far removed from, say, iPhones. Yeah, recent times have indeed seen progress in wireless communications. So what?

If you ask around, you'll find that many people feel that movies from 15 years ago, such as Fight Club and the Matrix, are "old." Movies from the 1940s do not even enter into consideration. They are black-and-white, old, and clearly inferior to modern cinematic masterpieces such as "Iron-Man" and "Batman." The fact that the fundamentals of cinema have hardly changed since about 1935 does not register.
I would draw a similar comparison to books, expect that nowadays reading itself seems to have become a reactionary (?) mode of the transmission of information. Nowadays one soaks info by watching the movie, or, at worst, laboring through 500-600 words of Wikipedia.
In gaming, significant progress has been made in terms of graphics; and that's about it. Ultima VII and the original XCOM are far more complex than most modern games - but people don't know that, because they refuse to even play those titles. Loom is in a class of its own, and it's a, what, 1990 title?

The cult of progress has taken over the entire culture in the West. The fact that notions such as "same-sex marriage" have never been regarded as anything but absurd, and are seen as demented monstrosities by most of the world, does not register with many people in the West. They are told that SSM is normal and good by the TV, and that's that.

Three big drivers of the cult of progress are: the cult of science, its concomitant utopianism, and the rise of the advertisement industry. The core dogma of the cult of science is that science will figure everything out, and bring about heaven on Earth. Science thus defined is implicitly progressive; and, moreover, reforms aiming to bring about utopia must also be intrinsically progressive. On the other hand, one of the main function of the advertisement industry is to convince one to throw away one's slightly aged goods, and acquire this year's versions of the same goods, in order to cope with the problem of "overproduction" and to maintain the "consumer economy."

tl;dr

 

[Unkillable Cat]

You should - he's not talking out of his ass.

 

[NotAGolfer]

You make that sound like it's a good thing.
If it was his ass that would be redeeming in a way. But these farts came out of his thick skull.

 

[Mangoose]

ignored

Surprise

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Shame that it'll be the heresy accusations that'll get you burned at the stake.

"Felipe Pepe encourages players to literally and actually retroactively remove food from the mouth of starving indie developers, only to flaunt his privilege by owning 'thousands of [AAA] games' himself. It comes off as no surprise that such a despicable human being would hail from infamous hive of villainy known as RPG Codex, where transsexuals are viewed as mere sex objects and the theory of Neanderthal racial supremacy is still held in high regard. Buying his book is supporting the Fourth Reich."

 

[felipepepe]

Cue in a Tim Schafer testimonial of how I'm a jerk.

 

[Ninjerk]

Cue in a Tim Schafer testimonial of how I'm a jerk.

Don't forget about Jeff Vogel