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Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

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Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#101

Post by thristian »

cookiecaper wrote: post #33
jmoiron wrote: post #24

I'm actually very surprised this ended up here. For those who might not know Tim Rogers, him and a few other college-age gamers started a recently defunct site called 'insert credit' around 8 or 9 years ago to try to apply Hunter S. Thompson style "New Journalism" to video game journalism. Their articles had a high incident of insight to them that was largely the result of repeated deconstruction and re-examination o…

I've always admired the writing on Insert Credit, and I'm sad to learn that they're gone now.

After Insert Credit imploded, the forums moved to selectbutton.net but without any "main content" (the front-page stories are just selected forum threads). Soon afterward, Tim started up actionbutton.net to host game reviews by himself and other like-minded folks; they're generally just as good as the old Insert Credit material, and of course more up-to-date.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#102

Post by [deleted] »

itistoday wrote: post #68
xenophanes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? They have, e.g., 30 eps in a row of goku fighting frieza. it's an extremely slow plot, but every episode follows after the next. (except after a saga ends, then they just do a time skip to the next big fight)

Man does this bring back memories from back when I was still a young hackling... Watching in eager anticipation what will happen next. For four straight episodes it was Goku with his hands in the air constipating, and somehow I loved every minute of it.

[deleted]

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#103

Post by prawn »

intranation wrote: post #48
bh23ha wrote: post #41

This poor person is suffering from culture shock. I'm an immigrant let me explain. Culture shock is not OMG they eat X here. Culture shock develops slowly from the stress of being away from home and living in a strange land. You are long over people eating X or what ever, and then one day you're just sick of it all. Not exactly ALL of it, but you tend to fixate on the defects of the strange place you're in and you're…

Culture shock to me, as someone who has visited 20-ish countries and lived in 2, is more that "things are almost normal and like what you're used to, but just not enough to be comfortable", and as a result you end up perpetually on edge and perpetually adjusting just outside your comfort zone. It's jarring and difficult, a little like the room in Orwell's 1984 where the corners aren't quite straight, and things are j…

A bit like a cultural uncanny valley. Sounds plausible to me.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#104

Post by noilly »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #27
jmillikin wrote: post #10

Long ago, manga aspired to be like Dragon Ball Z: graphically iconic, with a story more coherent than it probably needed to be. Now there's the ADHD-addled Dragon-Ball-Z-inspired One Piece, a manga for the Twitter age if there ever was one. Pop culture was best when you, the reader of this sentence, were 12: http://i46.tinypic.com/1625ims.gif I remember watching DBZ after school, and while it is certainly "graphicall…

Correct or not, your post reminded me of a recent Jon Stewart (Daily Show) deconstruction of Glenn Beck's and Sean Hannity's rant about how great "America used to be". The idea was that your own country is ALWAYS great TO YOU when you're 12.... BECAUSE YOU'RE 12!

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-5-2010/even-be...

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#105

Post by dkarl »

jmillikin wrote: post #10

Long ago, manga aspired to be like Dragon Ball Z: graphically iconic, with a story more coherent than it probably needed to be. Now there's the ADHD-addled Dragon-Ball-Z-inspired One Piece, a manga for the Twitter age if there ever was one. Pop culture was best when you, the reader of this sentence, were 12: http://i46.tinypic.com/1625ims.gif I remember watching DBZ after school, and while it is certainly "graphicall…

I would like to check out some manga to see what it's like. I almost posted a request for manga recommendations on a LibraryThing manga forum, but I decided against it. I tried writing up a description of what I was looking for, but it devolved into rejection of a bunch of anime stereotypes:

- No ordinary schmoes who turn out to have amazing supernatural powers.

- Nothing that revolves around a series of contests with enemies of escalating power.

- No robots or exoskeletons.

- It would be nice if the central character was an adult. An adult whose love interest is not an adolescent.

- While I'm on that topic, nothing that will make people think I'm a pervert if they catch me reading it.

So, while I was wroting this up, I started checking out the lists of mangas that had been previously recommended in the forum, and I started to feel like I was shitting all over everything they loved, so I decided not to post my request. People talk quite a lot about manga being a serious art form for adults. Am I missing something?

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#106

Post by derefr »

ramchip wrote: post #89
andrewljohnson wrote: post #49

Someone should turn on the Patio11 signal and summon him to comment on this. 00000 0000000 000P11000 0000000 00000

You know, he's not the only HN reader in Japan... ;) I'm not sure what needs commenting. The article is quite in-depth and mostly fits with my experience. I can add an anecdote, perhaps, on this part: The Japanese are so serious about work that even work-related parties are mandatory. If you don't go to a company party, you're not part of the team. If you're not part of the team, it's possible you're not actually wor…

For some reason, I'm getting an (obviously wrong) impression from this conversation that the only type of work you can get in Japan comes in the form of big-business cubicle farms. patio11's input would be interesting here because he's getting by without working at one of these.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#107

Post by jmoiron »

thristian wrote: post #101
cookiecaper wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always admired the writing on Insert Credit, and I'm sad to learn that they're gone now.

After Insert Credit imploded, the forums moved to selectbutton.net but without any "main content" (the front-page stories are just selected forum threads). Soon afterward, Tim started up actionbutton.net to host game reviews by himself and other like-minded folks; they're generally just as good as the old Insert Credit material, and of course more up-to-date.

I've found actionbutton to be a step below the old reviews, perhaps for similar reasons that Tim now finds his honeymoon in Japan souring. The reviews there tend to be a lot more about being entertaining than enlightening, and their stated goal of having the average score being 1/4 stars has been thrown to the wayside. I also don't really play games anymore.

There are a few potentially "important" things that I hope escapes IC and its graduates and becomes more mainstream. Reviews that explain the context of their creation, and reviews that examine the philosophy of the game design. Unfortunately these are hard, require work, and don't look any better on the glossy page. Some examples:

Rogers wrote a fantastic review[1] of Romancing Saga: Minstrel Song that starts off by chronicling the entire career of its designer (Kawazu) and reviewing some of his earlier games with depth and insight. There are clear patterns evident in his early games, which are then used to give context to and explain the current game under review.

The second is probably my favorite video game review, which is of Windwaker by Eric-Jon Rossel Waugh[2]. EJRW is a better and more insightful (but less colorful) writer than Rogers, but perhaps not as colorful. He made an old forum post I distinctly remember lamenting the laziness of linear game design, which is something of a cliche. When challenged for an alternative, he backed it up with a very interesting review of the use of "danger" rather than contrivances like keys or inventory items as a limit on exploration in Dragon Quest/The Legend of Zelda.

As for this particular posting of Tim's, I don't really have much more to comment. Like I said in my original comment, it's classic Tim Rogers, and it's hard to explain what "classic Tim Rogers" is without just pointing people to another 15-20 articles similar in construction and content. It feels odd to write about it in a familiar tone since I was largely a lurker at IC (as I am here).

[1] http://www.largeprimenumbers.com/article.php?sid=saga

[2] http://www.insertcredit.com/reviews/windwaker/windwaker1.htm...

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#109

Post by patio11 »

derefr wrote: post #106
ramchip wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, he's not the only HN reader in Japan... ;) I'm not sure what needs commenting. The article is quite in-depth and mostly fits with my experience. I can add an anecdote, perhaps, on this part: The Japanese are so serious about work that even work-related parties are mandatory. If you don't go to a company party, you're not part of the team. If you're not part of the team, it's possible you're not actually wor…

For some reason, I'm getting an (obviously wrong) impression from this conversation that the only type of work you can get in Japan comes in the form of big-business cubicle farms. patio11's input would be interesting here because he's getting by without working at one of these.

Big-business cubicle farms and salarymanhood are only about a third of the Japanese economy/labor force. Wave me down someday when I have more free time and I'll gladly talk about this, or you can just look out your door in the US at someone working and ask "Do they have that sort of job in Japan?" and I'll tell you, right now, the answer is yes. We have people selling food out of carts, bored DMV clerks who punch out at 5:00, part-time English teachers, retirees who run cafes, quirky musicians who made stuff for the App Store (my town has multiple App Store millionaires), and folks working at the 7-11.

That said, I think you may have gotten the wrong impression about what I do for a day job. For about three of the last five years, and continuing through the end of this month, I've had a job that virtually defines Japanese salarymanhood, making Big Freaking Enterprise Web Apps for a multi-national with thousands of employees that is listed on the stock exchange.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#110

Post by ramchip »

techiferous wrote: post #100
GFischer wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what if you're tired and irritated... of your home country? I'm in my own mini-crisis myself, and I don't know what to do (emigrating is a bit drastic, but I'm considering it).

Start your own micronation! :)

"We're wheat-profitable!"
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