But I'm a gamer and a recluse! hehehe I hardly ever go out, except to go to work. My girlfriend plays games more than me actually. She's been playing WoW for years and more recently Rift....

One of the comments on your friend's article brings up a very good point:


Graham Linehan, the writer of Father Ted and The IT Crowd, says roughly the same thing in this clip from Charlie Brooker's GamesWipe, which was a one-off programme all about videogames made for the BBC in the same vein as his Screen Wipe and News Wipe shows. You can start watching the whole thing here, and bloody well should. Be aware that it contains a brief clip of Glenn Beck, whose face some viewers may find offensive.

I think for the most part it's true that games try to emulate films too much rather than explore the possibilities of the medium, but it's not always the case.
He touched on games and movie makers not reading books anymore, the first thing that popped into my head was Max Payne, and the bizarre dream sequences you play , something that you might expect in a book, but probably wouldn't get in a film.
He also mentioned Driver, the next game in that series sees you "mindjack" other drivers at will, again, not something you're likely to see in film.
This isn't to say he's wrong, just that games can and have gone further than films are generally willing to go, theres also more tolerance for unique or odd visual styles in game than film, eg. the forthcoming El Shaddai:The Ascension of the Metatron imo

K... I quickly read through the topic but, I still don't get what is meant with "looked down" (english lacking maybe?)

What they're saying is gaming & gamers still have bad stereotypes.

One thing I am surprised didn't make the Cracked article's list: Parents & school guidance councilors discouraging gaming careers because they believe such things don't exist. Not many schools keep brochures handy for Digipen and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of talented kids go off to community colleges or technical schools not knowing things like that exist in this day & age.

As far as gaming and movies go, I always saw that as the negative side of the advent of the next-gen consoles (360, PS3, Wii). Video games are basically interactive movies, which is kind of cool, but sort of defeats the purpose of gameplay. You remember in older games when you'd play through the game on this huge ass world map, and you get story scenes throughout, but the game only had so many FMVs that you just couldn't wait to see again when you replayed the game later (if the gameplay gives the game enough credit to replay in the future)? But now that recent games have ever-so-glorious graphics, every story scene is a cutscene, and it's worse when the game is so linear. Your not even playing for the actual game anymore: just to watch a movie.

And with Youtube around, you don't even have to bother buying the console, let alone the game.

Of course, I'm not saying that prior to high-definition graphics in video games, the sole reason to continue playing the game was to watch pretty cutscenes - those were more likes treats for getting so far in the game and to test out the developer's skills. But come on: video games are practically parallel realities that you can engage yourself in, put yourself in the characters' shoes and fight bad guys or hit-and-run hookers. Nowadays, it seems that the you're not really playing the game, more like the game is just playing itself and you're just there to adjust the presets and watch what goes on (Gambit system, anyone?).

Gaming is still getting to grips with its own narrative language. While it allows for elements of cinema (powerful visual scenes) and literature (sweeping storylines), the element of interaction is a troublesome wildcard that either overshadows all others or gets buried by them. The tropes and techniques of movie making, literature, comic books, music, art and even the basic theory of gaming have been formulated and formalised over decades or centuries. Video games incorporate elements of art, music, film etc, yet its biggest challenge is wedding the mechanics of play to the mechanics of narrative in a seamless way.

Few games even come close to striking the perfect balance between narrative and gameplay, and even fewer still manage to hit near the mark. Games like Half Life 2 and Bioshock blend the narrative as seamlessly with the action as possible, though not perfectly, and immerse you in the story without taking you out of the gameplay much. Compare and contrast those to something like Metal Gear Solid 4 or Devil May Cry 4 (two perfect examples of games perhaps too heavily-influenced by film), where you spend more time twiddling your thumbs in boredom during interminable long cutscenes than twiddling them to kill people.


BM, you need to watch more David Lynch movies.


The problem is stuff like Digipen is not widely known about outside of gaming culture, so if you want to get into game development you're undoubtedly a pretty enthusiastic gamer already. Practical coding isn't the only avenue into the industry nowadays either as there's always a demand for artists and sound engineers. I don't know for sure, but I bet more art and sound engineering courses tout info about careers in the gaming industry than similar courses for straight up programming.

I'm a gamer, though I mainly do only MMOs anymore. I kind of agree with Spielberg's assessment of video games:




EDIT: Apparently, Spielberg never played Phantasy Star IV. I bawled my eyes out when Alys died after her heroic battle with Zio.

High-five, fellow Phantasy Star IV fan! That scene had a million times more pathos than Aeris' overrated death scene in Final Fantasy VII, and I'll Megid anyone who says otherwise.

Hell yes! All hail Chaz Ashley!

Red Dead Redemption had me in tears at the end, what a brilliant game!

I love gaming. There are five or six people in my college who are my friends and also love gaming. However, online gaming is where you find the sex starved , immature, offensive people that bring down the image of gamers everywhere. I play Aion, which is a little like WoW. Most of the time, it's challenging, interesting, and fun. The graphics and environments are beautifully rendered. But there are people in the chatroom whose stupididty is incredible. I have seen people shamelessly displaying their voyeurism, pornography, daterape, and neo nazism. They harass other players, calling them n*gger, wh*re, sl*t, c*nt-every curseword or slur, you can see it in Aion's chatroom one day or another. Sometimes they spam the chat with 'whip my hair' lyrics, talk about killing their children, or write graphic sexual descriptions. This in a game rated teen. You can hide the chat, but then you don't get to see the dungeon grind group ads, or the locations posted for enemy race players or special monsters. These two features become almost essential in later levels of game play. It took months to get just one of the spammers banned. The low opinion of gamers is perpetuated by these kinds of people, who use gaming as a place to act out their immature, sexual, or violent fantasies. Maybe an intellignece test should be instituted- but would that loose a bunch of perverts on the streets? Who knows......sorry for rant

Sounds like the kind of users you see on Xbox Live.

I've played WoW, STO and several other MMOs off and on for years, and I've never seen behavior like that before (except for - and I hate to harp on 'em, but it's true! - Xbox Live).

That's a shame....I've played many MMOs over the years starting with Ultima On-line but I have to be honest, I've never seen anything like what you described. Most recently I've played the Rift Beta and people seem pretty cool. Also I've been playing Star Trek On-line which seems to cater to older players and have had a good time there...

I saw plenty of bad behaviour on WoW in the time I played it. Nothing over-the-top racist or grotesquely offensive mind you, what with Blizzard being quite strict on that sort of thing, but I'd wager there are just as many morons in WoW as there are on Xbox Live. I never saw as much of it on the Horde side of things though; and no I'm not being a "FOR THE HORDE!" fanboy here either. The Alliance does have more than it's fair share of cretins and weirdos. The things I saw in Stormwind and *shudder* Goldshire...


I have many fond memories of Ultima Online. Its skill-based character progression was still better than the standard level-based system every other MMO on the planet uses.