Category: Games

Why I prefer games to movies (and TV)

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These days, when I want to either relax or be entertained, movies and TV shows are not what I prefer. While I like movies more than TV shows, I don’t hate either one. It’s just that in order of preference, I much prefer a game to a movie. I have come to a few conclusions as to why. The main reason is that games offer a deeper experience than movies. A deeper experience. Not a richer experience, nor a more emotionally powerful experience, but a deeper experience. Passive visual media is a shallow, often overwhelming approach to communication where all…

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Localization and (Bad) Writing – Unicorn Overlord

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The venerable and beloved Vanillaware just released a brand-new fantasy tactics RPG in their characteristic painted anime aesthetic and it has what is possibly the best name in the history of anything, ever: UNICORN OVERLORD. The gameplay and art are top-notch and perhaps the best the company has ever produced. But I haven’t bought the game. The reason: the translation. Or rather, “localization,” but that word is not robust enough to describe what John Riesenbach and his company 8-4 has done to what should have been the biggest breakout of the TRPG genre. What they actually did is replace the…

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Beyond Profits, The Corporate Period in the Arts, part 7

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Some interesting effects occur when a company grows large and powerful or even hegemonic in a given market. You can expect it to exploit the lack of competition and raise prices for consumers, and perhaps also exploit labor with low wages if it is the sole employer in a given labor specialty or geographic location. This inverse is called a monopsony, a single-buyer situation. However, for the purposes of the arts, the corporation becomes not just an economic force but a cultural force, and that draws certain people to it as well as allows for an approach to production that…

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The Corporate Period in the Arts, part 5 – The Corporate IP Death Cycle

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The Corporate I.P. Death Cycle The decline of creative industries has given rise to what I call the “Corporate I.P. Death Cycle,” wherein corporations routinely resurrect their nostalgic franchise properties to return them to relevance and profitability. I.P., in this case, means “Intellectual Property” and composes the copyrighted works and rights to derivative works, as well as trademarks. Like real property, intellectual property is expected to generate a return in the form of rents or other products for sale. A movie or similar entertainment product is not viewed by the corporation that produced it as a work of art existing…

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The Corporate Period in the Arts, part 4 – Cultural Ground Zero

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Cultural Ground Zero If you aren’t familiar with the concept of cultural ground zero (a term I owe to authors JD Cowan and Brian Niemeier), it is the idea that the major entertainment industries reached a zenith, and after this, quality began to decrease, and all trends lost their forward momentum. The exact year is 1997, in case you were wondering, though the video game industry continued to progress for another ten years on the back of new technology and industry growth, reaching its own ground zero in 2007. For most media, 1997 was the last year consumers could reasonably…

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The Corporate Period in the Arts, part 2

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Hyperdrive Media The model which defines the corporate period could not function without two important factors. First, the model requires the ability to legally collectivize resources and use them as if they belonged to a single person. This is the concept of the corporation, with “corporate” meaning body, as in the company acts like a person and can own property like a person without being “a” person. The other critical ingredient is mass media, which allows the distribution of a media product to large numbers of people while maintaining a low cost to the end consumer. The technological revolutions of…

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Why World of Warcraft’s Writing is So Bad

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“Because the writers suck.” That’s the simplest answer. It’s a correct answer, in my opinion, but even a great writer would have a hard time working within the framework of modern WoW to produce a good story, much less good dialogue, quest text, etc. World of Warcraft was never known for having exceptional writing, but the past versions of the game were quite sharp and effective, producing long-lasting memories of characters, places, and events, while newer expansions have produced a grey blur of forgettable babble from interchangeable blobs of characters. But why? The emphasis on how the game is played,…

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Metaverse Sucks… and you will use it

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Meta has ascended to memehood, and the Metaverse officially sucks, but not for the obvious reasons. And the reality is far more dystopian than you might think. What once was Facebook, now oddly rebranded to a word that describes nothing in particular, wants you to get online and get social, but this time… VIRTUAL. They even stripped the once cool-sounding “Oculus” of its name. I haven’t “explored” the metaverse as of yet (no meta headset and no extra 1,500 dollars to buy one, and if I did have the money, there are better things), but early reports are that it…

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The Best Time to Collect Gaming Hardware (and software)

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I just bought a PS VR in 2022. I paid under 100 dollars for it, and it came with 2 move controllers. It was, in fact, the same package Sony still sells on their website for 350 dollars. It was a deal, I have to say, because it’s a great piece of tech and the exclusives for it are unique and fun, and though it was a used piece of equipment, it was barely touched. I like to collect unique tech, especially gaming tech when I can, and timing can make that a whole lot easier when it comes to…

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Shadow Warrior 3: Modern games, epitomized

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Shadow Warrior 3 is a game that epitomizes everything, both good and bad, about modern games. It’s a beautiful-looking game, full of color and a complex Asian-inspired aesthetic, and it runs extremely well for all its fidelity, maintaining a smooth 60fps on the PS5 during all but the most chaotic, explosive moments. The gameplay is simple and repetitive but plenty of fun, consisting of platforming sections in between arena-like areas where the player must slay hordes of demons using a vast variety of weapons, abilities, and environmental hazards. It’s a far cry from the 3D-Realms Shadow Warrior of the 90s,…

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