The guy does raise a few interesting points, but they're far outweighed by his unwillingness to look at both sides of the issue. When you go into a subject with an outcome in mind, of course you're going to end up at that outcome. He contradicts himself so many times I thought he was doing it on purpose after awhile. There was the Donkey Kong thing with repetition as Game Freak pointed out, but another thing he mentions is twitch game, which he particularly rails on in the section entitled Gamers are Incredibly Stupid. If anything, twitch games are on the decline FROM the "golden age of gaming". Shooters and fighters of yesteryear required extremely fast reaction times (and by shooters I mean top-down shooters, not FPS's), and those genres aren't getting a lot of attention in recent times. He praises Tetris in the opening- apparently he hasn't gotten that far into the game because it requires *insanely* fast reaction time to get those blocks in space. Action/adventure games are on the rise and those require more thinking than twitching.
Unfortunately his misconception that modern gamers are idiots dictates the rest of his article- when you're riding on a false pretense, every conclusion you come to will be wildly off base- he doesn't realize this at all. His section about critics didn't even really pertain to the situation- even if it did, it was basically him going "critics SUXX0RZ". We need a bit more to back up your opinion than that, man.
His section about game designers REALLY pissed me off. The guy basically claims they're not creative anymore and hence games today suck. Does the guy even know what he's talking about? I'm not about to say that all game designers are geniuses, but he'd be a fool to not recognize some of the top people in the industry. Look at Shigeru Miyamoto, look at Will Wright, look at Peter Molyneaux (I doubt he even knows who that is), look at Denis Dyack, look at Hideo Kojima, look at Shinji Mikami- need I go on? These are just a few people who have been innovating and revolutionizing the industry since they broke into it, and the author BLATANTLY disregards them so he can have another section in his little article to bash videogames in.
Now the LAST section is the real clincher, where he really proves his inability to see both sides of the issues. He claims the reason videogames suck now is because of 1) realism and 2) the switch into 3D. Yes, realism and 3D CAN hurt games, or at least hold them from their potential, but to say that this happens to ALL games is ludicrous. You simply can't restrict EVERY game to one type of format and expect the new ideas to go on indefinitely! It just doesn't happen that way- he has to realize that many games benefit from both realism AND 3D. Obviously this guy hasn't played some modern games- some series best installments have been their first forays into 3D (Zelda, Mario, and Metroid, just to name a few). If he had played OoT, SM64, OR Metroid Prime, I think he'd retract every comment he made, no matter how much it'd make him look like a hypocrite (if it's even possible for him to be MORE of one). I think he's crazy, though- he compares this whole thing to silent comedies and how they're funnier than current comedies. Again, OBVIOUSLY this man has skipped over some extremely influential "talkie" comedies- Clerks, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Young Frankenstein, Caddyshack, etc. No doubt old silent comedies were astounding, but don't ignore the good talkie comedies.
I think what this guy's problem is is complexity- old games and silent movies used to be very simple, but since then both industries have gotten much more complicated. I don't know if this guy just can't wrap his brain around too many things at once, or if he's just plain stupid, but complexity is nothing to be afraid of, and many things actually benefit from it. Look at games like Ocarina of Time or Metroid Prime or indeed almost all modern RPG's- these games aren't simple little 30 minute jaunts- they're very complex games that rack the mind with hundreds of things going on at once. He dislikes modern games, it appears, because there's too much to think about, and he uses his little titles and headlines to wrap around his true underlying feeling. In a sentence, he's incredibly biased and narrow minded, filtering out any opinion contrary to his own, which only keeps him on his steady downward spiral.
Here's the funniest thing in his article, though:
"My essay had an inauspicious beginning. At first I was sure it would be published in a magazine, but it was rejected by two print magazines and one on-line magazine. So in August, 2001, I decided I would just post it on my site."
No wonder they turned him down- most respected magazines won’t print close-minded editorials whose only goal is to bash a piece of modern American culture. The guy should've gotten the hint and stopped right there- sometimes persistence will only make people think even less of you. You have to know when to give it up.
Topic: Video Games are Incredibly Stupid! (Read 6395 times)
