61–70 of 126 posts
Rule #1 of blogging: if you mention your company or service, it should be a link. I don't have hard data, but I think the need for googling "spry fox" (or guessing the url, spryfox.com) lowers the number of people who go on to the OP's site by a full order of magnitude. Good post otherwise.
When I was a kid I hated the Xbox, hated Halo, and hated how it seemed to create a new model for playing games. It was released when I was in middle school, and I remember there being a sudden and abrupt shift in what kind of gaming mentality there was. Prior to the Xbox, console games were largely focused on lush, whimsical landscapes with mechanics that required some puzzling to figure out. At least, the games that…
"When Halo came out"? As opposed to the endless steam of first person shooters that came before it that were even more straightforward, simplistic, and violence-driven? Blaming Microsoft for this is insane. There is virtually no difference between Wolfenstein and Doom on the one hand, and Halo and Gears of War on the other - except for better graphics. If you think this is a trend of the past decade, then you either…
Those are innovations that sparked hundreds (thousands?) of copy cats. Not saying Wolfenstein/Doom didn't have a ton of innovations as well, but I think it's safe to say Halo took things to a completely new level.
As usual, it is per definition very bad for men (white men) to have something - a club, a community - of their own.
The entire point of this rant was that the author did not feel welcome in this "club, community" and didn't like what it entails. I can sympathize with that somewhat, and I bet you can too.
When I was a kid I hated the Xbox, hated Halo, and hated how it seemed to create a new model for playing games. It was released when I was in middle school, and I remember there being a sudden and abrupt shift in what kind of gaming mentality there was. Prior to the Xbox, console games were largely focused on lush, whimsical landscapes with mechanics that required some puzzling to figure out. At least, the games that…
"Halo brought PC FPS culture to consoles and into every living room"
Before Halo the same level of vitriolic competitiveness existed, it was just exclusive to the PC gamers playing FPSs. These gamers who were in desperate need of having someone to let out some agression and play "Alph-male" a role many of them didn't get to dabble with during their daily lives.
As usual, it is per definition very bad for men (white men) to have something - a club, a community - of their own.
If that's what you're getting from this article, you either have very strange ways of reading the same text I did, or you are a fool. The entire point of this rant was that the author did not feel welcome in this "club, community" and didn't like what it entails. I can sympathize with that somewhat, and I bet you can too.
When I was a kid I hated the Xbox, hated Halo, and hated how it seemed to create a new model for playing games. It was released when I was in middle school, and I remember there being a sudden and abrupt shift in what kind of gaming mentality there was. Prior to the Xbox, console games were largely focused on lush, whimsical landscapes with mechanics that required some puzzling to figure out. At least, the games that…
What you're lamenting is not the change in gaming, but the passing of your youth. Games aren't less whimsical and more realistic, you are. Childish preoccupations have been replaced by adult concerns and to an extent you mourn that.
My son's 17 so let me look through some of his old PS2 games... Kingdom Hearts, Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Daxter, Rayman, Tak - I think those all epitomize the type of game you are referencing, you just stopped playing that type of game because you grew out of them. Also, if you'd tried to play those games there would likely be plenty of peer pressure to keep you away, teenage boys are good at peer pressure like that.
I sympathize a lot with what was written. I grew up on the Nintendo consoles (my father got an NES from my mom for their first anniversary, which was less than a year before I was born). I really enjoyed playing games straight through my N64 I had as a young teen. But games after that lost a lot of appeal. At the time I thought it was because I was growing up and just wasn't into it any more. Sure, I used to think sp…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wolfenstein and Doom were simple, playful, colorful. Even as game devices became more powerful, there was a playfulness to FPSes that you can see in titles like Perfect Dark and the Unreal series. One of Halo's major innovations was that it removed the health bar. In a shooter like Doom or Goldeneye, you have let's say 100 HP, and different weapons deal a different amount of damage. It's just like any fighting game w…
> Wolfenstein and Doom were simple, playful, colorful. You were in middle school when Halo came out, so I can be fairly certain you were too young to remember Wolfenstein and Doom being released. And you're completely wrong. Those games were not simple and playful and colorful. They were gory, and violent, and brutal and complex. I had to play them when my parents weren't paying attention because of the excessive gor…
What would really be helpful is a sales chart for FPS games between 1990 and present, but I'm not sure where we could go to obtain such information. I suspect that there would be a burst in the popularity in FPS games from niche to mainstream status around the release of either halo, counterstrike, call of duty 4, or one of the quakes, but I'm not sure which one.