THOUGHT: What makes a game "hip?" Do you even refer to something a hipster likes as "hip", or is that a dated term? I have no idea. The more active I am in the world of the internet (cue fog machine) the more I realize how disjointed I am from it. Obviously I play video games on a regular basis, but I find the most enjoyable ones are the ones everyone likes. It sounds like a no-brainer I think, but apparently that simple ideology excludes me from ever being a hipster. Now, games are different than music. It's possible to like a band no one else does and define yourself, as the article states, "by what you are not." One can balk in the face of popular culture and choose to only listen to the unlistenable, but to what gain? To be "cool"? That attitude bothers me. What's wrong with liking something because you like something, not because other people don't?
"That speaker system is boss!"
Here's how it applies to video games. The best ones are the ones that had the most creative, talented team of developers creating it with the largest amount of support in the form of money and time from a successful company. Occasionally it is possible to create something without a lot of people and a big budget. Some games spring to mind, such has Braid, but, let's be honest, that doesn't happen as often as a bigger game is successful.
I'm pretty much in the same boat as you. I'm not usually the one who goes off and chooses the "least popular" because I want to be that "trend setter" like a hipster would want to be.
ReplyDeleteI don't think you could of hit it on the head any harder tahn you did when you stated that the best games are the ones with the most creative developers and the most money to produce the game.
Good write up!
While it's true that many games are over-hyped, this doesn't happen too often. Most of the time, if a game has an enormous following prior to release, it'll be good. In gaming, you're an idiot to avoid the bandwagon. Jump on I say.
ReplyDeleteGentlemen, I point you in the direction of Daikatana.
ReplyDeleteI think the fear is that if enough gamer's gravitate towards a particular game, then the elements that define that game - the violence, themes, whatever - will become more pervasive in upcoming games. The fear here, I think, is one of conformity and potential uniformity. Not to jump back onto the slippery slope I was riding in class or anything, just tossing that out there.
As kind of an aside, mass-audiences generally don't go in for music, literature or film that would be considered "art." I throw quotations around art because it's an impossible to define term, and any attempts to do so are either problematic or controversial. For example, I'm not sure that 'Iron Man' could be considered art (although the hyper-real violence and space-leaping whatnots are a certain sort of art), but you'd be hard-pressed to show that a film like 'The Fountain' or 'Anamorph' isn't art - they each hold themselves to higher standards of quality and narrative. Yet films like 'Iron Man' are released far more frequently than films like 'Anamorph' are, simply because they're worth far more money.
How this functions in gaming I'll leave open, both because I don't have an argument formalized and I'm not sure I want to jump into that debate just yet.