Anyone here reading culture.vg?

green.pixel · Apr 18, 2012

Davros · Apr 18, 2012

He writes a lot but says very little

Riding on beams of light between the work of art and the eye of its beholder, flickering across the cinematographic canvas, or tearing through integrated circuits and across neural pathways, the simulacrum is an elusive object. It has been variously proclaimed as "demonic", "unreal", "more real than the real", and even "the authentic fake" (Umberto Eco) — and now, finally, courtesy of the hilariously bungled efforts of an idiotic videogame pseudo-theorist — "half-real". Apotheosis of ignorance. Zenith of mendaciousness and stupidity. A perfect case-study of an utter lack of intellectual cleanliness — for if previous attempts to define and describe the simulacrum in terms of existing concepts have been failures, this one is not even an attempt, let alone a failure. To borrow Wolfgang Pauli's expression, "not only is it not right, it's not even wrong!"

green.pixel · Apr 18, 2012

He debunked Juul's arguments in that article.

I have no idea how could someone who teaches at MIT (or anyone who played a single electronic game in his life for that matter) come to the conclusion that the hardware is "unreal".

Davros · Apr 18, 2012

He debunked Juul's arguments

He does, how can you tell ?
95% of his debunking is poking holes in his semantics, If your so clever alex why cant you work out what he's trying to say instead of taking everything he says totally literally

More blathering nonsense

This is rich, this guy is the king of waffle
pseudo intellectual nonsense of the highest order

green.pixel · Apr 18, 2012

Davros said:
He does, how can you tell ?
95% of his debunking is poking holes in his semantics, If your so clever alex why cant you work out what he's trying to say instead of taking everything he says totally literally

There is nothing "half-real" about video games. Such concept is impossible, and not just for video games.

Davros · Apr 19, 2012

it's a figure of speech

green.pixel · Apr 20, 2012

Davros said:
it's a figure of speech

You don't use ambigious terms when trying to create a theory. You fail to give meaning to signs in your propositions. And whether writer intented something or not shouldn't have any say in the matter.

Arthur Schopenhauer said:
Subjectivity, which is an error of style in German literature, is, through the deteriorated condition of literature and neglect of old languages, becoming more common. By subjectivity I mean when a writer thinks it sufficient for himself to know what he means and wants to say, and it is left to the reader to discover what is meant. Without troubling himself about his reader, he writes as if he were holding a monologue; whereas it should be a dialogue, and, moreover, a dialogue in which he must express himself all the more clearly as the questions of the reader cannot be heard. And it is for this very reason that style should not be subjective but objective, and for it to be objective the words must be written in such a way as to directly compel the reader to think precisely the same as the author thought. This will only be the case when the author has borne in mind that thoughts, inasmuch as they follow the law of gravity, pass more easily from head to paper than from paper to head. Therefore the journey from paper to head must be helped by every means at his command. When he does this his words have a purely objective effect, like that of a completed oil painting; while the subjective style is not much more certain in its effect than spots on the wall, and it is only the man whose fantasy is accidentally aroused by them that sees figures; other people only see blurs. The difference referred to applies to every style of writing as a whole, and it is also often met with in particular instances; for example, I read in a book that has just been published: I have not written to increase the number of existing books. This means exactly the opposite of what the writer had in view, and is nonsense into the bargain.

Also:
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit

Davros · Apr 20, 2012

What !!!! the whole blog is ambiguity taken to the extreme

green.pixel · Apr 20, 2012

Davros said:
the whole blog is ambiguity taken to the extreme

Can you point to some examples? I would like to know why are you offended by his writing.

Davros · Apr 20, 2012

the quote in my first post
clear and concise or ambiguous ?

Dominik D · Apr 20, 2012

Davros said:
the quote in my first post
clear and concise or ambiguous ?

Sprinkle that quote with a little bit of "nanomachines" and you approach Kojima level of "makes sense".

green.pixel · Apr 20, 2012

Davros said:
the quote in my first post
clear and concise or ambiguous ?

He wrote that Juul failed to meaningfully define the concepts he's talking about. You say he's "just" attacking his semantics but what else is there?

How the hell can you call the hardware a game runs on "unreal"?

Davros · Apr 20, 2012

I dont, and as far as I can tell neither does juul, but then again why would i even care

green.pixel · Apr 20, 2012

You and I would think that people take their jobs more earnestly.

If the response is "they're just vidyagaems man, you are taking it way too seriosly", then yeah lol, industry and we customers along with it are fucked.

Dominik D · Apr 20, 2012

He's nitpicking and makes fun of Juul but at the same time he's making the same mistakes himself. A simple example would be argumentum ad ignorantiam where he concludes that lack of evidence for Juul knowing Wittgenstein's work is an evidence of him not knowing about it. He's smart, he does not state it explicitly lowering his guard: he joins it with petitio principii simply asking reader to consider this extremely important gap in Juul's knowledge (after all intelligent reader would SURELY agree with all of the statements about Juul, right? -- appeal to flattery). This whole thing in itself is argumentum ad verecundiam, after all nobody serious would tackle the problem without knowing the authority of Wittgenstein!

There are more fallacies (ad hominems one could count in hundreds) and foul statements in his text than actual "essence" or message. It's all a dirty text aimed at luring readers so they join his side, accepting the "truths" without deeper thought. After all someone who's writing like him surely knows what he's saying, right? It's all very well done and I get why people would sip his words as if they were pure ambrosia. Guy's pretty good at rhetorics, but that's about it. Reading his stuff hurts my brain, so I'm not going to spend any more time on going through his crap. If I ever become a politician, I'll re-read his stuff and learn from him though. ;>

green.pixel · Apr 20, 2012

I would really like to see someone write criticism of his books.

We need factual criticism of games and an industry brimming with an absurd ammount of hype, sway and gullible and easily marketible consumer drones.

Davros · Apr 20, 2012

What Dominik D said, its just I was to lazy to type it all

Alexko · Apr 20, 2012

green.pixel said:
http://culture.vg/praise-for-insomnia.html

Alex Kierkegaard (that's his pseuodonym I think) writes some terrific stuff about various gaming topics. There's also quite a few essays by some great thinkers.

Among other stuff:
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/the_videogame_news_racket/
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/beyond_the_videogame_news_racket/
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_role-playing_games/
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/how_good_exactly_is_perfect/
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/basic_instincts/
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_new_games_journalism/
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/casual_reviews_are_for_no_one/
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/does_anyone_hate_anything_anymore/
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/the_simulacrum_is_true/
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_emergent_game_behavior_and_other_miracles/

And finally this:
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_the_genealogy_of_art_games/

There is no one around writing about games on that level.

I think he is one of the very very few people who even tried to look at games in any serious fashion and establish a body of criticism based on solid principles.

What do folks around here think?

Honestly, I tried reading some of it, but the bright white text on a black background was generating such ridiculously high persistence of vision that I had to give up before poking my eyes out.

Dominik D · Apr 20, 2012

green.pixel said:
We need factual criticism of games and an industry brimming with an absurd ammount of hype, sway and gullible and easily marketible consumer drones.

Cut it out, seriously. You sound like a complete buffoon using phrases like "factual criticism". What do you want people to criticize? What "facts" do you want people to debunk? Are there any things in this industry that are taken for granted, really? With crowdsourcing, free to play and dozes more disruptive ideas in the marketplace, we're as far as we've ever been from having the illusion of understanding this industry. And the very last thing we need is some dude with vocabulary (*ekhm*) brimming with weasel words and fallacies to proclaim the REAL truth. Blah.

green.pixel · Apr 20, 2012

Dominik D said:
Cut it out, seriously. You sound like a complete buffoon using phrases like "factual criticism". What do you want people to criticize? What "facts" do you want people to debunk? Are there any things in this industry that are taken for granted, really? .

The purpose of games criticism should be to rank games in terms of quality/complexity of the work. How would you define what is "a good" or "a better game" in genres? How would you approach criticism of other artforms, say paintings? Do you really think that a garbage of "modern art" like this can lead to the same aesthetic enjoyment as anything from here and value judgements should be equal? "It's all subjectivë" and "everything is equal" types of defence mechanisms make no goddamn sense, we won't get anywhere thinking that way.

You cannot put the on the same level Lemmings and Angry Birds, Q3A and MW2, SimCity and Farmville, Fallout and Fable, Vanquish and Uncharted, etc.

Though, it probably wouldn't change a thing when it comes to allocation of development resources in bigger budget projects.