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The Errant Signal Thread

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
This guy's shtick is similar to Extra Credits - being the serious artsy/hipsterish game design guru - but he does indepth analysis of individual games instead of short presentations on a general topic.
It's sort of like Extra Credits Meets Spoony (the good old Spoony, not depressed crossover-making costume party Spoony).

http://www.errantsignal.com/blog/

If you're looking for a starting point, check out his criticism of the Half Life franchise.

EDIT: Here's his Youtube channel if you can't stand blip.tv http://www.youtube.com/user/Campster/videos
 

Gragt

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I watched only the HL video you linked and was left unimpressed. His first major point is painfully obvious to anyone with a functionning critical ability and maturity higher than 15 year old. Stating it isn't a problem in itself, but he doesn't go any deeper with it, so merely stating that the HL serie has very little characterisation leaves you with a "duh!" moment. I'm not even sure he goes as far as to say that, given the very careful approach he takes to reassure everyone that the HL serie isn't bad and did great things to advance the medium, but is just "a bit" overrated. Why don the kiddy gloves? Is he afraid that people won't take him seriously if he states things the way they are? If so, I'd say fuck those people, because the dumb and insecure masses shouldn't be the target audience.

Then we have the trite "show, don't tell" statement, which never made much sense except for bad writers who want to teach rich kids how to be bad writers themselves. First, the statement is mostly applied to literature, and easily disproved by reading Moby Dick, which is almost all telling and no showing. Second, I've argued for some time now that film is not just a visual medium but very much grounded in literature where all begins with a script. No script, and you only have random visuals without any meaning. Sure, there are purely visual movies, one of the most obvious exemples being Koyaanisquatsi, but even those follow a script to develop their narrative. Terrence Malick is perhaps the only director to have developped a visual language that uses the images more than the words, but even then this language originates from the script, and the visuals tell much more than what they actually show — The New World is probably the best exemple of it, where Malick only displays very little of the emotions between the main characters to let the viewer complete it. And then, there are movies that show that telling is not only possible in film, but can be a great way to do it, although it likely requires more skill. The dude from the video claims that having two talking heads saying lines in shot, reverse shot, isn't an effective use of the medium, but that's exactly what My Dinner with Andre (co-written and acted by Wallace Shawn, who played Vizzini in The Princess Bride; yes, he is playwright) does while being successful at it. It's an almost 2 hours movie that takes place in a restaurant where two old friends reunite and have a very long conversation. That's it. Only the short opening and ending, centered on the Wallace Shawn character, take place out of the restaurant, and for the rest of the movie the camera is focused on these two people talking. This may sound boring but it's not, and that's mostly due to the great script by Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, and the evocative power of the delivery. Probably the best part is how the movie plays with the viewer's memory, so while the camera never leaves the restaurant, you may likely have the images of Andre's tale of being buried alive simply bloom in your head thanks to the great narration. And before someone claims that this is more theatre than film, it makes use of techniques unique to film, like ellipsis and time compression, though in an invisible way; the conversation between Wally and Andre may last only a couple of hours on film, but many clues in the film will tell you that a greater amount of time passed and the movie silently edited parts of evening. Just something like this can tell you that games as a narrative medium have a lot of ground to cover if they want to catch up, and the general infantility of the developpers and their audience won't help.

I don't criticise him for doing this video, but I do for the lack of depth and the suspicious care to not offend the potential viewers. His failed attempts at wit also do not help much at driving his point. I'm tempted to say that he should check out more adult stuff than kiddy stuff if he's really interested in the growing up of video games, like The Void, but then again I remember once reading the critic of a cookbook by Oscar Wilde and it was that much of a darn good read that a piece on pretty much any subject has the potential to be great and grow past the examined subject. This is not one of these.
 

Gragt

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Yeah, I knew it would be mostly wasted, but maybe at least one will get something out of it.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Gragt said:
Yeah, I knew it would be mostly wasted, but maybe at least one will get something out of it.

Hey, keep it up. Incline of the Codex and all that. :salute:
 

Skittles

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If you don't mind running on a tangent for a minute...
Then we have the trite "show, don't tell" statement, which never made much sense except for bad writers who want to teach rich kids how to be bad writers themselves. First, the statement is mostly applied to literature, and easily disproved by reading Moby Dick, which is almost all telling and no showing.

I don't agree. What's Moby Dick a symbol of?
 

sea

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My copypasted reply to the Half-Life 2 video:

While his critique about Alyx hits home for me (once you notice it it's hard to not feel cynically manipulated by Valve), the rest of it strikes me as underdeveloped, lacking in relevance to his thesis, or just nonsensical.

"Content muncher"? This one I just don't get. Yes, there are games with a lot of filler in them (which itself is tricky to define, as a game without any filler at all would be ten minutes long), but what is the realistic alternative? It's like he entirely disregards the fact that shooting, exploration, puzzling, etc. are all legitimate game mechanics. Those are just as designed as any scripted sequences. Put simply, this man's lack of development experience is really, really showing for him to so blatantly disregard this aspect of the game.

Gordon as Mary Sue. Yes, he is. He's a nerd who becomes a badass in the face of a crisis and ends up saving humanity (sort of). In 1997, this shit was pretty radical to see in a game, and today is still largely the stuff of JPRGs. My issue is that this is held up as being a bad thing... because it isn't really. Just as stereotypical characters have a place, so too does a Mary Sue character. Valve executes it well and it works well for the game. The fact is that games have a different set of rules to play by than other media. You simply can't transplant one character idea, especially for a protagonist, into a game and have it necessarily work... and even if you pull it off, you may not end up with the desired effect.

Gameplay changes every few hours? First of all, he's trivializing some of the most expertly done pacing I've seen in a videogame. Second of all, what's the problem? What is wrong with gameplay variety? What is wrong with introducing and using different mechanics? This seems like less a valid criticism and more like pointing out an obvious fact in the game. Just because you draw attention to it does not make it a problem. This is the equivalent of pointing out Mario gives the player a new power-up or level every X minutes - yes, it's true, but it's a strength of the game and one of the reasons players enjoy it!

Theme-park rides: so are most shooters. Part of this is Valve's older-school design mentality of "give the player a bunch of stuff to do/shoot at/activate and eventually the way forward will open" that was present even in the earliest shooters. There's nothing really wrong with it... and even still, I'm not sure why "turn valve to make fire go away" is supposed to be so mystifying. If there's a problem here, he drastically overstates it in order to make his point.

Closure... I agree, it sucks, but I don't think Half-Life was ever designed with closure in mind. It's the adventure that matters, not the destination, and frankly anything Valve does would never be able to live up to what fans have concocted. The mystery is always more interesting than the truth.

tl;dr version: this guy has some decent observations, but many are critical for the sake of being critical, and not very well thought out. As I said, this feels like your typical case of "liberal arts major who likes to talk about narrative but has no real understanding of game design or mechanics" - like Extra Credits with a bit more pretense and without the input from someone who has actually made videogames before and thus knows what the hell he is taking about. I still think this critique is valuable - and it's been successful in spawning discussion, so a victory there - but something about it just strikes me as underdeveloped. If you're going to present your video as an in-depth critique, referencing RedLetterMedia and giving a shout-out to TV Tropes should not be the most you can bring to the table.
 

Gragt

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I don't agree. What's Moby Dick a symbol of?

I'm not really sure of what you're asking. All I meant was that the "show, don't tell" rule is stupid, whatever the medium, and in litterature, the field where it is most repeated, the best exemple against that is Moby Dick, a book that is almost all telling and no showing.
 

Bluebottle

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Not bad. Liked the GTAIV review the best, which seemed to pretty much echo my own feelings about the title. I came down on the other side of the fence to him, though. I found the narrative, which was interesting and at time quite touching, was hampered by the idiotic tiresome 6th form satire, and crazy mechanics (which I've done to death in previous GTA games), not the other way around.
 
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Gee, another one...
Stop talking bout video games, start talking about greedy publishers and brain-dead developers. And start spitting them in the face!
Hey mister crappy developer, right here! *HHHHHHHHHHHHphew*, no no, don't cover your face! *HrrrHrrrHrrrrrr-phew*
 

Cowboy Moment

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Not too bad, truly. I think the GTA4 piece comes off as the best one, because it's a good case study of what he likes talking about the most - the cohesion (or lack thereof) between gameplay and narrative. He talks about the same thing in the video about adaptations, essentially.

However, I think he's ultimately a more reasonable version of those games-as-art fags. It seems like what he's ultimately concerned about is not whether the actual gameplay is any good, but how it follows a specific theme along with the presentation. So he doesn't care, for instance, whether AvP (the 2010 version) is a good shooter, but whether classical shooter mechanics make sense for a game in that franchise (they don't, which he does point out). Besides, he doesn't understand the gameplay of the original DX, and claims that DX:HR is better, because everything is more polished. So while it's nice to have someone champion "games as an art form" without being a pretentious retard about it, I do feel like we would rage if he ever tries to discuss a proper RPG.

Although, he does get KKKs for having a clip of a bear killing a Dragon as his short Skyrim interlude.
 

Skittles

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I'm not really sure of what you're asking. All I meant was that the "show, don't tell" rule is stupid, whatever the medium, and in litterature, the field where it is most repeated, the best exemple against that is Moby Dick, a book that is almost all telling and no showing.

Oh, I fully admit this is tangential, not a rebuttal of your actual point. I just think that Moby Dick is not at all the strong example you think it is. If it were, I think you could state pretty concisely what Moby Dick was about on a non-plot level. Why there was so much shit in that book, in other words.

I think somebody like Thomas Hardy produced much better examples than Melville, but then again, I also think he's an awful hack, so...
 

grotsnik

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All I meant was that the "show, don't tell" rule is stupid, whatever the medium, and in litterature, the field where it is most repeated, the best exemple against that is Moby Dick, a book that is almost all telling and no showing.

'Show, don't tell' isn't meant to be taken as a universal rule of writing in that way, though; it's so often used as a guideline for inexperienced/young/terrible writers just because it's a relatively common mistake to write something fucking awful like, say, 'It was a sunny day. Mary felt very frightened', bluntly stating an experience/sensation/emotion in a dull, unevocative way instead of trying to find different, more creative ways of expressing it. It's a bit like getting a first-time painter to study paintings of fruit because at their level it's helpful for them to have a set method to work to; I don't think anyone with a jot of brain would claim that all great literature 'shows' and doesn't 'tell', because that's, as you say, completely ridiculous. The problem's really more that the phrase gets repeated too damn often, and as general advice instead of in response to a particular problem of style.
 

thesoup

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I'm really sick of everyone saying that worn out phrase ("show, don't tell") and everyone nodding in agreement because that's so deep. It's become a buzzword like "immersion".
"Shadow of the Collossus is a great game with deep narrative because it shows, and doesn't tell. It uses the full potential of the medium and conveys the narrative in subtle and rich ways.". No. Fuck you. Relying only on visuals is the same as fucking them up. Visuals are only one variable in the whole equation and if you don't use other methods of conveying a narrative, you're limiting yourself and not using the full potential of the medium.
Like grotsnik said, the method should be reserved only for the inexperienced and untalented like Bethesda, Bioware and every Japanese dev ever.
 

Skittles

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How about "don't treat the player like a retard?" Any objections to that?
 

Damned Registrations

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This is an aspect of gaming I remember thinking about back when I first started playing games, you'd think we'd have better terminology for stuff like this by now. I mean fuck, I can't be the only one that leaned and jumped and twitched while playing mario brothers can I? Thats not shit you'd do if you were consciously thinking about the controls. In fact, I kind of miss being so drawn into a game like that. I probably still do that somewhat, but definitely not to the same extent at all.
 
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I remember myself leaning around in my chair as I leaned left, right or forth in Thief. Then realising how silly I was being.

Somewhat relevant, a researcher studying the effects of play in our brains.

 

Destroid

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I nearly fell out of my chair once in the asteroid field stage of Rebel Assault.

And decline for showing a picture of an xbox controller instead of a mouse and keyboard for an interface device.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
http://www.errantsignal.com/blog/?p=246



Chris Franklin said:
Ah, Doom.

Really, this video turned out to be more trivia-focused than I had really intended it to be. Which is sort of a shame – around halfway through editing it (after writing, shooting, and gathering tons of video and audio clips) I had a few additional thoughts.

First of all: colored keys, man. They were an awful McGuffin when every level had you looking for the same damned cards/skulls over and over. But at the same time, they drove gameplay forward mechanically – you were always in pursuit of a specific goal, be it a key or a door or an exit. It was the use of discreet, ludic indicators of progress that gave the gameplay context and purpose. We don’t have much of in the way of that sort of motivation in first person shooters anymore – we’ve shifted almost exclusively to narrative contextualization in order to press the game forward. And it’s not that that’s a bad thing, necessarily – I just think it’s silly to be over reliant on a single technique as a motivator for the player when we have other gameplay driven alternatives available to us.

Mind you, I’m not calling for a return of three primary colored keys. But too often in modern first person shooters I find myself placed in a tunnel lined with enemies and am told “Your character really wants to go to the other end of this tunnel – better get going!” I’d like to see attempts made to make progression not just narrative driven but somehow gameplay driven as well – especially in first person games where, if you’re not actively roleplaying, it’s nigh impossible to get any emotional involvement in the protagonist. “Master Chief really wants to save Cortana” doesn’t necessarily mean the player will find any inherent delight in chasing after Cortana. Ludic goals are goals that are intrinsically interesting to players- they require no narrative buy-in. We don’t see them enough.

I called the level design “playful” in the video, and I think that encapsulates what I think levels are lacking these days. Not in the “fun, cutesy” sense, but in the sense of design that provides players with a space to traverse that plays off of, inverts, or generally forces the player to explore the mechanics they’ve been provided. I’ve walked down too many hallways with a few offshoot rooms and a few too many boxy warehouses with crates for cover. Give me giant, hand-shaped levels or gimmick levels where only one type of ammunition or power up is available; give me levels that toy with my expectations of how mechanics are applied. It’s actually something Half-Life 2 did really well – the entire Ravenholm section was made scary in party by simply reducing the amount of health and ammunition available to the player any given time.
 

Luzur

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An old, zealous Doom player died and went to heaven. He met st. Peter in front of the gates who stopped him and said:
- Even though you were a decent person your whole life, I can't let you in.
- Why?
- Because you turned into a mindless killer whenever you played Doom. However I can grant your 3 wishes before sending you to hell.
- Ok, My wishes are:
1. IDKFA
2. IDDQD
- And the third one?
- Don't need it, Drop me in.
 

DraQ

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:salute:
An old, zealous Doom player died and went to heaven. He met st. Peter in front of the gates who stopped him and said:
- Even though you were a decent person your whole life, I can't let you in.
- Why?
- Because you turned into a mindless killer whenever you played Doom. However I can grant your 3 wishes before sending you to hell.
- Ok, My wishes are:
1. IDKFA
2. IDDQD
- And the third one?
- Don't need it, Drop me in.
:lol:
 

Metro

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I really like this guy -- refreshing change to the gimmicky douche bags that proliferate YouTube.
 

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