Wow what a depressing article for me considering I just lost my job and I was wondering if I should get into what he calls 'art' for a new path in life.
There are too many video games
131–140 of 173 posts
Re: There are too many video games
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
The robots. The concept of UBI is precipitated on the idea that the gains from technological innovation have been unequally distributed since the founding of the country. It has just been getting to the point where it is very evident to many people now. In fact Thomas Paine wrote: "To understand what the state of society ought to be, it is necessary to have some idea of the natural and primitive state of man; such as…
The real secret is to be the guy who can fix the robots - the new blue collar. Doesn't matter which way the world turns out - either way you're living comfortably and coasting below the radar.
Until they build a robot to fix robots. The real secret is to be the guy who designs robots, because robot designer will be the absolute last job to be automated :P
Re: There are too many video games
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're not doing that. The author seems to assume that so many people are creating new art nowadays that the entire rest of civilization is being left to rot, but that's simply untrue, and a false dichotomy. Most artists work crushing hours in sweatshop conditions, or are constantly gigging on the razor's edge of subsistence, with what little value they produce going to expenses or middlemen. Then the internet decides…
Sure, but it damn well "appears" that we are. I think this the fundamental issue that the internet causes. Humans are very well tuned to equate occurance/mention of a thing with prevelence of that thing, so because the internet amplifies provokative thoughts/comments/ideas and buries concensus/1+s/me toos our colletive sensibilities are being thrown completely out of whack. Add in that there's no feedback mechanism t…
This is so true and this story plays out in all kinds of online discourse, especially social media and politics. IMO probably the most difficult problem we face as a society/species at the moment. Creates a lot of opportunity for bad actors to manipulate the narrative and twist reality.
Re: There are too many video games
#134Sensational title with subtext of: practice doing things that are closer to the land, obscured by fewer abstraction layers. That’s my take, anyway.
For those who have a caldera of a story bubbling up, by all means get it out! For those who want to make art for the money/fame/power/etc, maybe don’t? Though I’m not telling anyone what to do directly, I might vote for regulation that supports a living wage for work closer to our basic needs, freeing up more people to be creative for the joy of it and without the pressure of money.
Re: There are too many video games
#135Much of the problem being identified here is not a matter of waste, but rather a question of taste. I read a very good biography of Kafka by Reiner Stach that described how dominant literary culture was in Prague at the time. Writing seemed closer to contemporary athletics. Bankers, businesspeople, and upwardly mobile people often encouraged their kids to be writers first, and practical secondarily. The endpoint for sports is more obvious than the endpoint of writing, or music, and even especially game design, but a culture-wide appreciation and perception of the medium in question could better triage candidates for cultural survival. Does the author of this newsletter also think there are too many pick-up basketball games vis a vis potholes? I agree with others that have made the point that this has more to do with the lower barrier of entry to market.
Our culture is dominated by those entities that can make massive capital investments and industrialize culture. For a variety of complicated reasons, I would point this out as the issue. It is rather the successful entities, and not the apparent failures, that produce the problem of over saturation. I am forgetting the name of the movement, but contemporaneous with Schubert's lifetime, there was a kind of at home arts movement. The bourgeois were still not spending their free time filling potholes, but no one was aspiring to a salaried post in the grand facade of entities with immense capital reserves and an industrialized capacity to influence culture. If we were less atomized and a greater appreciation of our cultural expression was common, I believe it would be easier to come to grips with talent, or our lack thereof. It is no sin to lack talent. It only makes talent all the more incredible.
Re: There are too many video games
#136Assuming the author is primarily directing this sentiment at people attempting to make a living in indie dev, then I agree with them. Or at least with the larger purpose of dissuading people from "following their dreams d'art" as a primary rather than secondary occupation. They should be discouraged. They should live in a world where it is common knowledge that pursuing acting, or film making, or writing, or gamedev as a focal point of their life is really stupid. Because actually accomplishing that is ridiculously bullshit hard, while sinking crippling amounts of time and money into the training is relatively very easy. If you want to spend your life making indie games more than anything else in the whole world and are driven towards it with single-minded intensity then you are unlikely to be dissuaded by everybody telling you it is a bad idea, and thus might also have the drive required to weather the punches.
Re: There are too many video games
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but it damn well "appears" that we are. I think this the fundamental issue that the internet causes. Humans are very well tuned to equate occurance/mention of a thing with prevelence of that thing, so because the internet amplifies provokative thoughts/comments/ideas and buries concensus/1+s/me toos our colletive sensibilities are being thrown completely out of whack. Add in that there's no feedback mechanism t…
This is so true and this story plays out in all kinds of online discourse, especially social media and politics. IMO probably the most difficult problem we face as a society/species at the moment. Creates a lot of opportunity for bad actors to manipulate the narrative and twist reality.
It really does and I agree this is the biggest and most difficult problem we face as a species.
Re: There are too many video games
#138There are too many games that people don't wanna play Maybe stop remaking pixel art platformers over and over again. One look at the itch.io and its very clear what kinda games there are too many of.
Pixel art platformers are easy to make and have the capacity for timeless fun. Try not to be too harsh. My kids drawings are crude but I appreciate them for what they are to me. Games and art I made as a kid and teen were also mostly for fun.
While it did cross over to excessive at some point, I learned and moved on. Now I'm not living the game dev dream of my youth but enjoying an easier life as a boring programmer/manager. And I still enjoy simple and complex games alone and with family.
Re: There are too many video games
#139"Writing a game nobody plays discharges your energy and creates the feeling of achievement, but it's all empty calories and then your car falls into a sinkhole."
I love this quote. However, the correct interpretation is not that too many people are making (or playing) games, but that too few people get any sense of achievement from the stuff they get paid for. My trick is to spend some creative energy on optimsing my shitty job. Then at least I get the sense of achievement AND get the crap work done quicker. (I kid. My job isn't that bad. Mostly.)
Re: There are too many video games
#140The narrow economic point about it being hard to sell a new game might make sense as a warning to new indie developers, but everything else is an unhinged luddite rant against how people want to spend their free time. There is not some pool of labor that would otherwise be fixing infrastructure or building whatever the author happens to think is worthwhile if only it wasn’t being squandered on personal projects. He might as well go on a rant against the number of puzzles or ship in a bottles being built. There will always be tons of bad art and thats absolutely fine.