Most Boring Opinions in Geek Culture - Part II

[ninjaRiv]

As much as I hate to agree with number one, Superman is pretty cool when you read enough of the comics. I used to actively avoid Action Comics because of that belief. I wouldn't say I'm a fan still but I'm now looking forward to the new film.

As for the manga being better thing, yeah that's a stupid statement. I totally agree with him on that. You can't class all of a medium like that. You can't say "all of this is better than all of that." I hate having those conversations

Also, I can't stand listening to Japanese voice acting so I prefer dubbed anime.

 

[LobsterFeng]

But...manga can last a really long time. One Piece has been one weekly serialized story since 1997. And from my perspective (currently on Volume 64) the story is only about half way done. And don't even get me started on Naruto. The latest Shinobi World War arc is just so long and bloated that it really just needs to end...like right now. WHY WON'T NARUTO JUST END?!?!

Anyway yeah I've never heard anyone say #3 before and Bob's argument to that was even weirder.

 

[MANIFESTER]

*snip*

Well I suppose I should say welcome to the escapist. Not sure if you are a "long time reader first time writer" or whatever, but I will guess that you have been a long time hater of Moviebob. I do not share your opinion on him apparently, but your welcome to yours. Just wanted to say hi since just you seemed to make your account for the sole purpose of attempting to destroy this post. It has been amusing. So again, Welcome.


I would like Bob to elaborate on #3 at some point. I do not know much about anime outside of what shows on Toonami (e.g. Where young boy/man grows in power over time till he destroys whatever enemy he has), but I am curious as to if that extends to anime outside of my casual viewing.

 

[revjor]

Anything but easy mode usually ruins a game for me. Forch Unleashed for example, I do not want to hit a dude with a lightsaber more than once or twice otherwise I'm using a baton and it looks dumb.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I agree with most of that list, and the spirit of the article, which a few others have failed to grasp entirely.

A few thoughts:

-24: Family Guy sucked after Season 3

As far as I'm concerned, Family Guy sucked from the first episode and didn't stop sucking, (and I saw the damn pilot).
Everything I've seen of the show since then has been tenuous at best, bad comedy at worst.
Agree, disagree. Whatever. I hate that show and I hate how it's written.

-22, 17: Movie Effects
CGI, effects, color correction, etc isn't making movies "worse".
These are techniques in production, and aren't inherently "bad". It's overuse and misuse of those techniques I take issue with.

Like with Shakey-Cam.
I cannot stand most Shakey-Cam, because there are very few instances where it actually works, yet some directors keep using anytime there's action.
(protip: Unless it's from a character's direct first person perspective, or the entire environment is moving violently, most actions scenes SHOULDN'T use it. Don't shoot an action scene only to ruin it by not letting the audience see what the fuck is happening.)

So why do films keep abusing them? I'm guessing it's because most of the audience eats that shit up.

-13 "It's a game, not the SATs. Get over yourself."

Agreed, though I rode the Dark Souls rodeo before, only to be met with logical fallacies and a religious like zeal to protect their sacred idol. Arguing against them even in conceptually is foolish, not because they're right, but because they believe they cannot be wrong.

-1 On Superman..
I find him boring as a character in the same way I find most Greek myths boring.
Sufficed to say, I would have made a poor Helenic citizen, though at least Euripides would have had another fan (his plays were counter-cultural more relevant, and less self-serving. I actually like them.)

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

While I am thoroughly peeved by the near-arrogance Bob boasts with the concept of this list, I can take it with a grain of salt. I think for the most part, Bob takes issue the with hyperbole of what has made the list, not necessarily the essence of the opinion behind it.

Also, whole-heartedly agree with number one.

 

[Lunar Templar]

43. Mass Effect 3's ending was bad.

Seriously, folks, at some point we're going to have to accept that every possible variation on this point has been made. Many times. There's no meat left on the bones.

Because demostrating with objective observation and facts (because one CAN obtain opinions based on facts, did you know that Bro?) that such a pathetic excuse for "artistic integrity" can be harmful for the future of gaming is TRULLY A BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING OPINION!!

Either that, or you are covering your ass by making sure that the ME3 fiaco doesnt involve you anymore since you defended it just as well as Colin Moriarty did (Protip: You failed just as hard)

http://awtr.ca/long:mass-effect-3-and-the-art-of-criticism-or-why-colin-mor

Just like with Heavens to Metroid, you want to divert the converzation so people dont notice your failures. That would explain why your newer Overthinker episodes are framed in such a way like if you were expecting a new audience, because you knew your fans are loooooooooong gone

I'm kinda with Bob on the whole ME3 ending mess. People really just need to get over it. so a game had a shitty ending, so fucking what. stop acting like this is new or some how worthy of note just cause it was a 3 part game series, cause its not.

Games have had good and bad endings for as long as there have been video games with a plot. ME3's ending is in no way more note worth then Valkyrie Profile's ending A (which was great till i actually killed Loki)

 

[IronMit]

I'm kinda with Bob on the whole ME3 ending mess. People really just need to get over it. so a game had a shitty ending, so fucking what. stop acting like this is new or some how worthy of note just cause it was a 3 part game series, cause its not.

Games have had good and bad endings for as long as there have been video games with a plot. ME3's ending is in no way more note worth then Valkyrie Profile's ending A (which was great till i actually killed Loki)

So is there like a time limit for how long I can complain for?

''stop acting like this is new or some how worthy of note just cause it was a 3 part game series, cause its not.''
The most important part of mass effect is the story (& characters). The plot. The pay off. So the story issue is more worthy here then lets say COD, dishonoured or even Deus ex & skyrim

 

[josemlopes]

23. Isnt Spiderman considered the most relatable character? Nerdy, teenager-ish, poor, good humor, using a complete suit that covers his whole body and face meaning that the viewer can more easily see Spiderman instead of Peter Parker in a suit, etc...

 

[JellySlimerMan]

*snip*

Well I suppose I should say welcome to the escapist. Not sure if you are a "long time reader first time writer" or whatever, but I will guess that you have been a long time hater of Moviebob. I do not share your opinion on him apparently, but your welcome to yours. Just wanted to say hi since just you seemed to make your account for the sole purpose of attempting to destroy this post. It has been amusing. So again, Welcome.


I would like you do elaborate on #3 at some point. I do not know much about anime outside of what shows on Toonami (e.g. Where young boy/man grows in power over time till he destroys whatever enemy he has), but I am curious as to if that extends to anime outside of my casual viewing.

Hi . I already made some post before but still nothing worth mentioning.

It just baffles me how people follow him after all the problems that he just touches in a half assed way. Lets just say that if Heavens to Metroid wasnt a warning sign, then the ME3 videos nailed it. He isnt the overthinker anymore, no longer he tries to take all sides and possibilities of an argument into account anymore. He has become just as lazy and repetitive as the industry he is critising ("He Who Fight Monsters Becomes A Monster Himself" indeed)

He is now......a geek. A geek that gets paid with add revenue and for making sketches that even the AVGN wouldnt even release to inflict upon its fanbase (at least until the movie is finished)

Also: Nº3?? "The manga is superior and blah blah"? What does it have to do with me? i dont remember comenting anythig about manga. But if there is somethign to be said is that there are just like the comic books, with their respective genres and cliches.

That is all.

 

[JellySlimerMan]

Actually that's one of the issues he has to deal with. He's a man in the body of a god so he's not all knowing. His morality and ethics come from being raised as a human. Kingdom Come is a good story to see what happens when superman doesn't know what's right.

And does that comic cover the "WHY" he would do the right thing too? as in, lets say that i know what is "right" but i dont feel like doing so becase humans dont deserve it because they are stupid/flawed/ignorant for me to care.

 

[JellySlimerMan]

I'm kinda with Bob on the whole ME3 ending mess. People really just need to get over it. so a game had a shitty ending, so fucking what. stop acting like this is new or some how worthy of note just cause it was a 3 part game series, cause its not.

Games have had good and bad endings for as long as there have been video games with a plot. ME3's ending is in no way more note worth then Valkyrie Profile's ending A (which was great till i actually killed Loki)

And it WOULD have ended in "just a badly written ending" if it wasnt for the "Artistic Integrity" asspull they made. Think about the repercutions this may have in the future. If more developers use the "Its art, we can do whatever we want. And if you say otherwise, then you are destroying the medium as an entitled ************ you are" then more and more games will end up being poorly designed and cheaply made because of this deluded notion.

You may say that the fact the outrage happened is proof that the industry wont try to do it again.......are you sure about that? think about it, the industry as a whole got away with things like DLC that its already on the disc, having the game ending to be DLC that you have to buy (*COUGH*AZURA'S WRATH*COUGH*), Anti Piracy measures that affect the honest buyers rather than the pirates themselves, Always online Single Player (If Origin doesnt like you, then say goodbye to your single player games that could have just worked fine if they removed this stupid limitation), Microsoft filing a patent to dictate how many people can watch of play something, aaaaaaaand of course, who could have forgotten this:


I mean come on man, if the consumers didnt ***** about all those before, then they will just accept this new bullshi...I MEAN "Artistic Integrity" thingy. We got away before and we WILL now.

This ME3 fiasco is a historical event that SHOULD have been studied more closely. Questions like this should have been asnwered:
1)How can a 15 minute ending can be art when only 2 writers of the team did it without their input? the opinion of the rest doesnt matter? isnt everything else art too?? i thought that art is the sum of all their parts working together in harmony to elevate the work to something greater than THAT very sum of its part. Instead we got another case of Ludonarrative Dissonance like in Bioshock 1.

2)Why Bob tries to use outdated terms of art (like Colin did) like "the storyteller tells, the audience receives and that is it" when games are supposed to be a interactive media and the audience is the final piece of this elaborate clockwork to elevate the work to art form?

3)If the artist can do whatever he/she wants because "Its art, dont question it" why would she/he want to sabotage its own work?? Isnt the work supposed to make everything work together to elevate it?

4)Why every single game "journalist" is accusing the gamers of ruining art when its clear that the artists dont even have a choice from the very beginning? Its the Executives's Will that dictate them to use the most profitable stories and gameplays, because for them it isnt art, its a product for mass appeal (and it shows). Why are we responsible for putting this zombie to rest by shooting it with critisism?

5)Why people (and some authors) think that leaving everything without answers is a good way to make art? if critical questions that are nessesary to understand the plot progression are missing, then how do they expect the audience to just forger it or make their own answers?

6)Why people think that sacrificing the intelligence of your characters for the sake of symbolism is STILL a good way to tell a story?? (its also related to Prometheus, who conveniently was released quite close to ME3)

7)Why writers cover their own mistakes by saying things like "Well, this FAMOUS AUTHOR did it and i dont see YOU bitching about it. My work was inspired by it, so if I suck then HE sucks too. Do you have the balls to back up your statement?? i dont think so"?? Are their secretly Dada members? they want to destroy all art by making a terrible work that wants to take everything with it to the abyssm??

Instead we got nothing worthwhile from this conflict of interest. Only the constant shouting of everyone saying that we are entitled and our "opinions" are just that, opinions. (Again, one can have opinions based on facts. Fire Burns, water is wet, and bad writting is bullshit)

 

[shteev]

Well everyone seems to enjoy arguing about the separate points in the article, so maybe I'm in the minority, but I thought it was a pretty terrible article. Yes, these are opinions you hear over and over again, and a lot of them are really boring, and so naturally, an article restating them all came across as really boring.

 

[JellySlimerMan]

I think it's safe to say that the Anti-Thinker is his own character at this point, and this was mostly just an amusing little callback. In fact, if you look closely, you'll see every villian in TGO being a different archetype of gamer culture.

AntiThinker: Dudebro Crowd
PyroThinker and Cryothinker: JRPG Fans
NecroThinker: Golden-Age Nostalgia blinded gamers (of which Bob is one of)
RoboThinker: XBox Live/Steam Trolls
Jack Leiberson: You KNOW he's going to be a play on Joe Liberman and Jack Thompson

Fact of the matter is Bob has opinions about gaming. And his opinions are not identical to what the Rights-Obsessed/Piracy Loving/Tantrum throwing internet majority of gamers hold. Muffin.

Archetipes are missing. Let me fill the gaps in painful detail:

Spoiler

*The person who looks at Shadow Complex with tears on his eyes because he loves the game, but if he PAYS for it, the developer is going to use the founding on making anti-gay rights propaganda. So the person has to download it ilegaly knowing that the franchize will not move foward if he doesnt pay, but at least some people that he doesnt know will be happy.

*The person that can no longer pick up a game from the store and play it ASAP, nor enjoy games anymore because it HAS to: carefully research the game press, pre-release,how many promises are going to be broken by the developers THEMSELVES and not the marketing department, reviews that ARENT bombarded with a suspicious ammount of the game adverticing, how much of the ACTUAL game is in the disc that it paid and how many DLC he is going to pay next just to get the ending of a story, survive the journey to BUY the game while avoiding religious and feminist protesters because the word "*****" was used on the trailer and one of the Protagonist is a woman taking orders from a man (regardless of the context), and surf the forums detailing the problems that the game has and that whatever innovation was brough here, was already done before..........just for that person to be called "An entitled hedonistic piece of shit, who is the cancer that is destroying games as art"

*The person who withnessed the fall of Bullfrog and the Ultima series and many innocents more in the hands in Electronic Arts. And yet, when its absolutely clear that they see games as products before they are even CONSIDERED art, people STILL think that the Mass Effect 3 ending fiasco its the fault of the gamers and not the executives that pulled the strings AGAIN.

*The person who cant give a honest opinion about the boot babes without being labeled as sexist. Even if the intention was to ilustrate how OBVIOUS it is that the exec of the game are pulling a Turd Polishing tecnique for mass appeal to avoid using that same money on the ACTUAL GAME.

*The person who watches in horror on how the last 10 years of gaming history remain forgotten. Where developers still think that pulling something as magnifiently done as a final boss in Planescape Torment is "so video-gamey", and still being lauded as the ONLY people who bring innovation to the industry even if it was done already.

*The person who sees the "artistic integrity" as a cheap device for future lazy developers to excuse their lack of creativity and humility in admitid that they are just in for the money. Thus with that excuse on the table, developers can never be criticized for their faults because they expect the audience to shut down their brains and enjoy the madness. Because after all its just a game, right? there is no objective analizis because everything is subjective. And for that, you can enjoy our crap along with other mastepieces like Birth of a Nation, Mein Kampf, Twilight and Jack & Jill.
If the audience is too stupid to care about the effort that an artist has to offer, then why they should even TRY to elevate the medium as an art form? Doesnt that hurt the medium even MORE if the audience were the problem? as some people have said?

He doesnt care (anymore) to show the broken and nihilistic side of gaming. The people who at this point SHOULD have abandon all hope that the industry could have been redeemed. He shows caricatures, footnotes of something that he barely understand (sort of like the killers Leopold & Loeb abused the "Will to Power" described by Nietszche without knowing exactly what in the fuck he was talking) and makes fun of their pain.

But hey, at least you will get a good laught at those wacky sketches, right???........ right??

 

[xPixelatedx]

I think the reason why people won't (and shouldn't) "shut up about it already" is because they shouldn't. Don't you remember the lecture about history class? We learn history so we aren't doomed to repeat it. The longer people discuss many of these debacles, the more likely we are going to learn to not create them again. The star-wars prequels, for example, have become quite the cautionary tale about overdoing capitalism and killing the soul of your franchise for personal gain. Money is good, but is it worth your soul? Respect? These are questions every has to ask themselves.

 

[JellySlimerMan]

I think the reason why people won't (and shouldn't) "shut up about it already" is because they shouldn't. Don't you remember the lecture about history class? We learn history so we aren't doomed to repeat it. The longer people discuss many of these debacles, the more likely we are going to learn to not create them again. The star-wars prequels, for example, have become quite the cautionary tale about overdoing capitalism and killing the soul of your franchise for personal gain. Money is good, but is it worth your soul? Respect? These are questions every has to ask themselves.

Even if i am a firm believer that people learn from their mistakes so they can repeat it with utmost precition (because i am a cynical bastard) i will make a monument of you in Minecraft for generations to come, because common sense is worth preserving.

Any specific image you want me to make there when i have the time?