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Just sum up what he says, his style is too annoying for 20 min and I hate his avatar. He needs to sound much more twinkish for that avatar.
Modern Gaming Sucks!!! Or Does It?
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Okay those are subjective gripes. And...?
I will say I don't care much for the late 2000s YouTube critic intermission / explosions. I never care too much for them, but you can kind of tell where he started from. I think he started from the early 2010s, but he still fits into that circle. Kamen I don't subscribe to for a reason, but he does have some good articles. Though I am wary of who he hangs out with or has as colleagues. Just A Robot is one of his so-called YouTube colleagues. That guy is trouble and unfortunately fell into the "everything is woke" grifting nonsense. He was decent for a time, but at some point around the pandemic he fell into that trap, and I want nothing to do with him. If Kamen starts doing that too, then his ass can be booted to the Moon next.
I will say something about Kamen's commentary on gaming journalism. While YT critics and Twitch streamers are better by comparison, they can still fall into that same trap of circle jerk, throwing politics unrelated to the game(s) at hand, just being offended by something really dumb, overreacting on minor or non-issues, and the usual click baiting nonsense.
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Wait, how much of the vid does he spend whining about other youtube critics? Why would you link this?
None, if you're referring to Kamen. He talks about gaming journalism and how certain people overreact to them. He's got time stamps in the sliding bar. 13:30 is where he goes on about the journalism.
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I can tell you all the problems with games journalism. Its incestuous since the primary advertisers for those sites are also the companies that the journalists are covering and thus they have a bit too much sway with their dollars. And that games journalists tend to be fans and fans can be the best and worst. Every other issue is an issue with any kind of journalism. There, I did it in 2.5 sentences.
I'm sure somebody will appreciate shortening the time to explain things, but he wasn't just talking about journalism in his 20 minute video. I just checked the journalism section: it's only about 3 and a half to 4 minutes long. He really didn't stretch much. I don't see what the big deal is.
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He has an annoying style and its probably the usual whining about "games not being as good as they used to be" kinda thing, which only makes any sense if you look at the aa-aaa space since we don't get much experimentation in those spaces and there is so much monetization of every little thing.
He's not wrong. It sucks when the truth hurts, but it is true. I know there are good AAA games out there, but he mainly talks about the monetization schemes and bad DLCs, or how many $60-70 games are at usually broken/glitchy at launch. The price hike from a lot of first party companies and third party companies Not all of them, but there are a lot of them, and that is a few too many. I'm not sure if you seen the whole video or not, but he doesn't go on about how everything was perfect back then. Kamen points out the flaws from the old eras as well, and he even admitted that he appreciates when a patch happens. Though he prefers a patch if it's something fixed immediately or a company goes out of their way to make things right and not just put it a patch as an afterthought, neglectfulness, fix it later mentality, or out of laziness. I don't know everything about Kamen, nor am I that invested in the guy, yet I can't help but feel you're looking for something that's not there. I know you said it his voice annoys you, but that's subjective. His voice doesn't annoy me, and I've heard so much worse on YouTube.
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Its not that its wrong, its just that its the same ol same ol. Its nothing new added, chances are this thread has some variation of it on each page. They put the past in this glowing light of the past being filtered to its best and the present has only the biggest of big games being focused on. It usually ignores all the games in the past that did have really bad bugs and forgets that indies are the biggest they have ever been.
My point about his voice as that it has a huge mismatch with his twink avatar, his style is a combination of how he talks, his editing and just how adhd his vid seems.
And until people in this industry learn, be they publisher, developer, or consumer, the same thing will happen again and again. I just happened to catch the video pop up on my recommendation feed and it's related to this topic, so I put the video on this thread.
Who is they in this case? Like I said before, Kamen has no problem acknowledging the bad or buggy games that released before the HD era and Xbox live. Indies and lower budget games, Kamen highly recommended going to them. Since they keep the spirit of gamin alive, without the predatory practices you would see in most larger games nowadays. Indies aren't perfect either, and have some of their own screw-ups, but trying way more than most major publishers and developers.
One thing that kinda sucks about modern gaming is the pace of modern society and instant gratification factor has led to a fast food appetite for consuming games -
That's always kind of been there even before the internet. You won't believe the nine people who had got lost somewhere in the navigation was easy or they overlooked something. I usually don't have to look up guys, but I'm not afraid to if it's something really frustrating or the game is not telling me. I really don't care either way. What somebody does on their personal time or gratification is all on them. It's their copy of the game, they can play however they want. They can literally looking at entire guide while playing, and I wouldn't give a damn.
As for as what sucks in modern gaming right now, the only look out for the AI grifters. This isn't just a gaming thing, but a voice acting thing, movie thing, and regular acting. The executive class are off with another scam and we (they specifically) are in another Gold Rush.
I'm not at all sure it's that gaming has got worse, I suspect a lot of it is just that we got older. Part, I suspect, is also standard anti-corporate cynicism, as gaming has gone from shed-at-the-bottom-of-the-garden outfits to middle-size companies to massive global corporations, and with it more perception of impersonal, capitalist rip-off.
You know from moment one of this video the argument breaks down because I can clearly remember old games with insane grinds, stupidly obtuse puzzles, ridiculous difficulty, all designed to not only waste our time but to also increase the lifespan of the game itself which may or may not have been very long. So to point the finger at modern games like it's a new concept is just a stupid take from the get-go. Video Games by nature are wasting time, the trade off is having fun with a game is not a waste of time so though it's technically a waste of time regardless, having fun isn't a waste so it sort of balances out.
As for the open world section of the game the problem is ultimately everyone finds different things fun. People love Breath of the Wild, but I hated it. I love Witcher 3 but others on this forum hated it. Which one is the better game? To me it's the Witcher without contest, but that isn't as black and white as people are too different for that to ever be the case. So the problem isn't open world games, in fact I don't think there are any problems with open world games. Open World has almost just become a genre in and of itself and you either like what these games can offer or you don't, but that doesn't make them problems. There are also levels to the quality of the open worlds just like there are differences in the quality behind every game. Any genre is going to have it's good examples and it's bad examples, but that doesn't mean the genre itself is a problem.
He talks about how Elden Ring wasted his time because he spent 25 hours exploring areas just because, that's not the game's fault that's him trying to be a completionist. Sometimes you have to consider that the way YOU play games might be hurting your enjoyment of them. One of the key things with most open worlds is that the vast majority of the content is optional to the player. If you want a more streamlined journey through the game you can do that in most open worlds, but the option to do extra things or just dick about is always there. GTA games are a good example of this, the game is based around the missions you do to progress the overall story and reach the end. In fact in GTA the open world serves very little purpose except to fuck around in, and who among us hasn't said "fuck it" and just gone on a rampage for the hell of it? That's the true nature of what the open world game is, fuck around if you want and when you're done continue the actual game. If you fuck around too much and get bored of the fucking around, only to continue to fuck around then you only have yourself to blame. That's not the game's problem, it's yours.
It also really missed the point on where the money goes from MTX’s. Like he’s naive enough to overtly imply the actual developers are getting the proceeds.
I feel like he doesn't really know what he is talking about and just made a video with a clickbait hot topic title. There are shitloads of "gaming sucks!" videos so it's just a trend that doesn't really hold any water imo.
Cheap shot towards someone who has to play the games in their entirety in order to make their videos.
Not sure that applies to a channel that also has videos like "Video Games are the Apex of Storytelling" and "The Games Everyone Should Experience For the First Time" (although a different criticism would apply).CriticalGaming said:
Look, I disagree with that guy. "Unique", "interesting" and "awesome" are all subjective metrics that depend very heavily on personal experience and taste. At the end of the day, whatever a game wastes your time or not depends on why you are playing the game instead of doing something else in the first place (and the answer to that question is more personal diverse than most people care to think about).
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Depends on your talking about, but I don't bother with most of those videos either to begin with. I don't need a 35 minutes or 2 hour break down to know why or what's the problem with modern gaming. It sure as hell ain't Elden Ring that is the problem.
While you have your points too, I'm never touching a video like that. I could already tell from the click bait screenshot and title that is going to be a hot mess. Not worth my time. Got actual games to play.
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I wasn't trying to attack him like that. It was more meant to be a general "you" not specifically him. Though I also don't see anything on his channel to suggest he needs to 100% anything he plays tbh.