Zachary Amaranth said:
Filtered through what I can do, what I have done, and what I have experienced. I honestly feel that without Freeman's everyman template that would be diminished for enough folks to make my prior statement true. Maybe not ALL THE PEOPLE, but still.
I'm still not entirely convinced that would be the case. I'm of a mind that the story; or rather the events therein; would be just, if not nearly, as compelling as they already are even if the Freeman character was...well...an actual, defined character.
The interactions and experiences wouldn't be nearly as unique or personal for each gamer, but the overall impact of the narrative would be roughly the same.
So I guess, in a way, I
partly agree with your assertion. But only just.
A lot of people on the internet demonstrate a distinct lack of self-awareness. I think it's because libertarians are the new black.
I thought orange was the new black... [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2372162/]
Sensationalism? What do you mean? They're telling it like it is!
...In my mind!
...Which is obviously how it should be!
>.>
While I take your point, my Fox News Bubble comment was more about the way we take comfort in people speaking to things as we believe them, whether right or wrong. I know I'm biased and for the most part try and expose myself to alternate points of view. It's gotten harder since the whole screaming match thing became the default way of communicating, though. While gaming is frequently subject to controversy, the controversy often comes specifically from the fact that gamers (as a whole) can't handle anything that upsets their world-view. Which is very Fox-News-Bubble-esque in its own ways.
The thing is, it's hard not to be controversial in gaming. Giving a game a 90 can get people flaming you for being "teh bias" against a game. What started the Dragon's Crown controversy? Some radical feminazi movement out to destroy games? No, one review that would have been largely ignored if people didn't have a tantrum. And I'm sorry to put it in those terms, but it really came off as a tantrum. One reviewer didn't like my game as much as everyone else. This is the worst first world problem ever!
Same with Anita Sarkeesian. A woman nobody would have even heard of if not for the offense taken that a woman would dare come in and try and...Read off tropes that impact the way games are made and reflect sexism? Like, seriously, this is something we supposedly all "already know." Yet, when someone brings it up, we (again, group we) deny it, and yell, and threaten to rape her.
Her prior videos had almost no fanfare and almost no impact. The biggest difference is that you can now no longer argue her points with her because people were just spamming the comments with hateful shit.
Basically, it seems like half the base jumps to histrionics the minute anything is said. It's like our entire sense of self is based on this fine-tuned notion that gaming as we see it is perfect, because I can't imagine anything else big enough to make that kind of a difference.
Oh, I completely agree. Almost all facets of video gaming; the industry, the community, and even the journalistic side; have devolved into an immature, hyperbolic mess.
If it's not a publisher committing some anti-consumer shenanigans, it's gamers acting like spoiled children. If it's not gamers acting like spoiled children, it's gaming journalists writing inflammatory articles in an attempt to stir up controversy (and subsequently, page hits).
And so on, and so forth.
And I wouldn't argue that. I actually WOULD argue that someone who can make good music despite limitations is better off than someone who needs all sorts of tools to pull it off.
The most memorable music is often the simplest. The Zelda Theme is quite excellent and quite memorable. It's not particularly showy or deep, but it gets the job done and a lot of music is the same. Especially soundtracks.
The flip side is that you're basically composing for piano or a theory class. In fact, chiptunes do make me a touch nostalgic for my days in music theory, where you spend a lot of time doing four-voice compositions that can be very similar. For, uhhh...Obvious reasons. It's not necessarily a hard thing to do, just a hard thing to do well.
Everything from Beethoven to Koji Kondo tends to be stacked based on its hummability.
However, the medium itself is pretty average at best. There's a lot of crap composed within these limitations, which is where I was coming from.
Well, that's true of virtually all mediums and genre's of music, is it not? Almost all forms of music are inundated by average, mediocre examples of the art form.
I'll grant you, a form as limited as chiptunes is likely to have more mediocre examples than more complex compositional forms will. But even so, that doesn't mean there can't be complex chiptunes. Most are not, of course, but that doesn't diminish the few examples we have.
I think we can both agree there are still quite a number of fine musical compositions within the chiptune genre; simple or not. Even if they're surrounded by a lot of drivel.
