Useless gaming news & chatter

[koro]

Roundabout is just a silly little game made, if I recall, by some goons from SA, and a lot (if not all) of the people in the FMV sequences are just goons and people from the community and the periphery.

This is such a weird thing to make such a stink about.

[Rendakor]

At least their marketing knows their audience. Want to sell a game? Get an unrealistically pretty bourgeois red-haired European American female to mug at the camera. Bonus points if she is a cosplayer and has to put up with stereotypical disgusting men who make male gamers feel better about their white-knight selves.

I'm a little cynical today -- it has been more difficult of late to stomach the overt "Pay no attention to the man behind the mirror" disconnection of gamer culture with its "Take nothing seriously!" stance you'd only find in the youth of rich nations. In other news, kids are on lawns in increasing numbers!

The game itself and what it is trying to do with its design seems great and original.

[Maven]

I guess I was expecting a complain about the violence and the blood spatters everywhere, but this? With everything that is out there, literally everything, that is worth making social or political statements about, I can't believe you picked this one game to complain about... anything.

Yeah, fair amount of projection on my part for personal grievances and issues. I'm surprised you had the reaction you did.

Edit: I fell into gaming culture and lifestyle hard for the first 25 years of my life, and I have been trying to dig myself out of that culture and the internalized norms. I don't know how to discuss games anymore, or even how to voice criticism, as if there was a point beyond asking "Is it fun / cool?" and "Why is that?"

[Falconeer]

Yeah, fair amount of projection on my part for personal grievances and issues. I'm surprised you had the reaction you did.

Sorry, Maven. Honest. I just really... didn't see where you were coming from and couldn't understand your post. Didn't mean to be rude or insensitive and that's why I am apologising, I was really confused to the point I figured suspected your post was a subtle attack at me for the things I usually stand for.

[Margalis]

What the fuck is "gaming culture and lifestyle"?

I see so many people talking about gaming culture - WHAT IS GAMING CULTURE? Is it playing Mario Kart 64 in a dorm? Is it going to the arcade? Is it playing Moo2 by yourself along in a dark room? Playing LoL online?

Do gamers really have a shared culture and lifestyle? It doesn't seem so to me.

[Malakili]

That's the kind of trivial dismissal that can be made in a sentence or two, but would take an article to properly answer.

[HaemishM]

You don't need a fucking article. The answer is "NO." The most you need to add to that is "NO, don't be fucking stupid."

[ezrast]

The ability to be effectively explained as a small collection of reductive stereotypes is not a property of most cultures.

The culture that's the most difficult to identify as such is frequently the one you're steeped in, since subcultural differences seem more significant while commonalities are all just "normal."

[Falconeer]

"Geek culture" is a thing, they study, document, and write thesis and books about it in universities. US universities.

[apocrypha]

That doesn't make it a reflection of reality though 

[Malakili]

You don't need a fucking article. The answer is "NO." The most you need to add to that is "NO, don't be fucking stupid."

 

[jakonovski]

We don't need no fancy book learning!

We have wikipedia!

But if you want book learning, Frans Mäyrä is a pretty cool dude.

[Rendakor]

ITT: Some people pretend this is Tumblr.

[jakonovski]

No it isn't, Tumblr has pictures of butts and stuff.

[Malakili]

What is the obsession with tumblr whenever anyone wants to talk about culture or anything remotely related to the humanities?

[Merusk]

It's a lazy way of being dismissive and pretending you can't be categorized.

[Rendakor]

What is the obsession with tumblr whenever anyone wants to talk about culture or anything remotely related to the humanities?

Because that's where people discuss irrelevant nonsense.

[jakonovski]

What is the obsession with tumblr whenever anyone wants to talk about culture or anything remotely related to the humanities?

Because that's where people discuss irrelevant nonsense.

Have you checked the title of this thread?

[Malakili]

What is the obsession with tumblr whenever anyone wants to talk about culture or anything remotely related to the humanities?

Because that's where people discuss irrelevant nonsense.

Oh, you're one of those people.  Ok.

[Merusk]

Because all that's here is erudite, relevant and high-caliber work. Yep.

[HaemishM]

Gaming "culture" MIGHT, and I stress MIGHT, have been something in the "good old days" when gaming was still something of a non-mainstream form of entertainment. You know, when being a gamer meant you "lived in your parent's basement" or "were one of those weird guys that plays with computers." Now? Fuck a bunch of "gaming culture." It's a way for stuck-up nerds to try to make their hobby obsessions into some kind of noble calling or "lifestyle choice" instead of what it is... a bit of "pop culture" that you happen to enjoy. Grandmothers are playing video games on their fucking cell phones, for fuck's sake. Just because you play video games does not mean you are some form of "culture." Do cinema geeks get to claim they are part of "movie culture?"

Just because you have a tattoo of pixel art Mega Man on your left ass cheek and claim Nintendo as your set does not make you or your particular fascination a part of some exclusive culture. It's special snowflake-ism writ large.

Fuck. Play video games. Enjoy video games. BE YOURSELF. You don't have to identify as part of some social movement or culture to be a goddamn gamer. That shit is getting as bad as the fucking furries were in the early 2k's.

[Malakili]

Gaming "culture" MIGHT, and I stress MIGHT, have been something in the "good old days" when gaming was still something of a non-mainstream form of entertainment. You know, when being a gamer meant you "lived in your parent's basement" or "were one of those weird guys that plays with computers." Now? Fuck a bunch of "gaming culture." It's a way for stuck-up nerds to try to make their hobby obsessions into some kind of noble calling or "lifestyle choice" instead of what it is... a bit of "pop culture" that you happen to enjoy. Grandmothers are playing video games on their fucking cell phones, for fuck's sake. Just because you play video games does not mean you are some form of "culture." Do cinema geeks get to claim they are part of "movie culture?"

Just because you have a tattoo of pixel art Mega Man on your left ass cheek and claim Nintendo as your set does not make you or your particular fascination a part of some exclusive culture. It's special snowflake-ism writ large.

Fuck. Play video games. Enjoy video games. BE YOURSELF. You don't have to identify as part of some social movement or culture to be a goddamn gamer. That shit is getting as bad as the fucking furries were in the early 2k's.

What the hell are you talking about?  I don't think we agree on what culture means.

[HaemishM]

Obviously I object to the labeling of hobbies as some kind of "culture."

[jakonovski]

I don't think gaming is the first hobby to spawn a culture.

edit: also, we have terms like "drug culture", so I don't think it's inviolable as a concept in any way.

[Cyrrex]

Fine.  Define it, then.

Good luck with that.

[Merusk]

Obviously I object to the labeling of hobbies as some kind of "culture."

You'd be wrong.

Football Culture
Golfing Culture
Sports Fan Culture
Renfair Culture
Writing Culture
Programming Culture
Internet Culture

Anything that has customs, terms and events that outsiders wouldn't understand without indoctrination has a culture. Of course gaming has a culture.

[Malakili]

Fine.  Define it, then.

Good luck with that.

Which is exactly the point I made already.  It's trivial to say "define it!" and then raise your arms in triumph when someone isn't able or willing to go into the depth needed to talk about it on an internet forum.  Good rhetorical strategy, I guess. 

Also, Haemish, I think you're confusing social groups and culture.

[Cyrrex]

No, you keep saying it has a culture.  You are unable to define it even remotely.  Could it have many?  Maybe.  But it does not have "a" culture.

This is one of the dumbest lines of discussion we have had around here recently.  Good job.

[jakonovski]

Gamer on gaming forum gets upset at gaming related discussion.

[HaemishM]

No, you keep saying it has a culture.  You are unable to define it even remotely.  Could it have many?  Maybe.  But it does not have "a" culture.

Yeah, this.

Also, I don't think of these things

Football Culture
Golfing Culture
Sports Fan Culture
Renfair Culture
Writing Culture
Programming Culture
Internet Culture

as "cultures." Hobbies, fandoms, incestuous group cuddles, and demographic clusters, but cultures? No. Just no. Calling them cultures is just pseudo-intellectual wankery.

[jakonovski]

It is proper usage of the word though, as far as language goes.

[Falconeer]

It's not pseudo-intellectual wankery, it is Sociology.

[Malakili]

No, you keep saying it has a culture.  You are unable to define it even remotely.  Could it have many?  Maybe.  But it does not have "a" culture.

So does *every* culture.  That's why we have the word sub-culture.

Also, come on.  You're using shitty online rhetorical arguments.  "You're unable to define it remotely." Oh come on.  I already mentioned the problem with that "challenge" more than once.  And the funny thing is, someone already linked to a source that had lots of good information on the concept that I have no interest in summarizing for you.

[Cyrrex]

Can we label your brand of wankery a culture of F13, or is it a subculture?  I am going to go back to my football viewing (sub)culture now, you can continue making up useless bullshit in my absence.

[Malakili]

No, but we can label your (and others') dismissal of the humanities writ large as part of the gaming culture Maven was lamenting in the first place.

But whatever. It's clear you have absolutely no background in this kind of thing and are just talking off the cuff about what sounds right to you. So fine.