Most Boring Opinions in Geek Culture - Part II
- Thread starter MovieBob
- Start date
For the most part I agree with you that these arguments get brought up way to much Bob. However on some of them your just dead wrong, also there is nothing wrong with sharing your opinions with others. I don't like it when the same person harps on the same thing over and over, but it's not wrong for several people to come to the same conclusion on a subject and let people know what they think about it. As long as someone can add something new to the discussion then I'm all ears.
Yeah we get that you more then most have to put up with a lot of these arguments day in and day out due to the nature of your job. But you have to remember that it's your job, most of us wouldn't mind putting up with the same arguments over and over if it meant we got to make a living talking about the things we love.
Also coincidentally I just started playing through Sonic 3D Blast before I read this article. And yeah the game is pretty bad so far.
Yeah we get that you more then most have to put up with a lot of these arguments day in and day out due to the nature of your job. But you have to remember that it's your job, most of us wouldn't mind putting up with the same arguments over and over if it meant we got to make a living talking about the things we love.
Also coincidentally I just started playing through Sonic 3D Blast before I read this article. And yeah the game is pretty bad so far.
He did say that he contributed to some of the complains, and he is going to solve that by......complaining even more BUT WITH HARSH WORDS!! THE BASTARD!!hurricanejbb said:
This is the same as people defending a bad movie saying: "They INTENTED to make a So Bad Its Good Movie". Do they realise that it still IS a bad movie, right?
Or like people saying: "This is so oversexualized to the point that it cannot be taken seriously as a sexist treat" that doesnt mean that nobody would masturbate to it.
I really hope that these over 100 comments were all posted ironically.
Look at the title, we werent even supposed to read this article!!
Look at the title, we werent even supposed to read this article!!
I think he's talking about Futurism [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism].maninahat said:
The most important contribution that the movement made to visual language was the idea that you could create an image that communicated dynamic motion, whereas previously artwork had been about rendering static moments in time, like portraits, landscapes or noteworthy events of historic or mythical importance, or iconography, like ancient Egyptian reliefs or early Christian church artwork for example.
Based on his review of The Phantom Menace 3D, I'd say that MovieBob has something against Plinkett. Because all I really got from that review was "I don't like how people are always using Plinkett's reviews to validate their opinions instead of my reviews!"Duffeknol said:
Ummm, I don't think he was just talking about Dark Souls in particular, but in gaming in general. Dark Souls - if you ask me - is an entirely different matter. It's not about the easy mode that's pissed people off. It's the fact that the series might possibly deviate it's original concepts to cash in with the mainstream market. It's like Dragon Age 2's streamlining the game, or Bioshock 2 adding MP. The developer's choices seem to be being made not in favor of what's best for the series, but what's best for their wallets. Originally, they chose to make a hard and brutalizing game. That created a fan base. Now there is word that the series might do a 180, and you can't see why people might get pissed?Atmos Duality said:
Anyways...
Yes! Thank you MovieBob, even though I don't agree with everything you say, thank you for acknowledging that possibly Pierce Brosnan might have been the worse Bond... even though we might not have the same reasons for thinking so...
For me...
James Bond is a product of it's time. The character was created in the 50s (or was it the late 40s), and the problem was when it came time for Pierce Brosnan, the audience and the media's opinion of the character might not resonate well together. Let's face it, James Bond is womanizer and a cold blooded murderer, and in the 90s the producers and directors felt like they needed to change all this. So with Pierce Brosnan, the character was made a lot more emotionally available yet still trying to keep the zany antics of previous installments. Personally, I didn't feel like this worked well; James Bond was never suppose to be grounded in reality or politically correct matters, but they decided to make it so. Pierce Brosnan Bond was a wimpy bond, and everything wrong with Daniel Craig's interpretation is a result of it. My personal list of best to worse Bonds are:
1) Sean Connery
2) Roger Moore
3) Daniel Craig
4) Pierce Brosnan
I place Roger Moore pretty high on the list because even though he was too old and most of the movies sucked at the time, his charm worked well for the character, and still came across as the indifferent killer that Bond is suppose to be. Both Daniel Craig and Pierce have been touchy Bonds, but at least with Daniel I got the sense of the brute and masculine vigor I'd only seen from Sean Connery up till now. Pierce Brosnan was down played way too much, and after seeing other Bond like roles that he had made, I could see it wasn't his fault and had to be the directors and producers (He was more like Bond in his none Bond roles then when he was actually portraying the character, go watch the Tailor of Panama and you'll see what I'm saying).
Where's Dalton or that one guy that made "Her Majesties Secret Service" you ask? Sorry, they either spent too short of time on the role or where completely unbelievable playing the role to care.
=/
A couple of non-arguementitive comments:
#1: When it comes to James Bond, I think it's all whom you grew up with. Connery gets a pass as the first guy who played and defined the character, and of course the guy is a great actor, as a result I don't think his take on the character is ever exposed to the same scrutiny as other Bonds. Saying you like Connery is kind of a safe bet.
When I grew up as a Gen Xer, Roger Moore was James Bond, and pretty much defined the character for me. His chops for the role having come largely from doing the TV show "The Saint" beforehand. Since him pretty much every Bond has been lacking, especially seeing as the movies had been getting slowly, and progressively less campy, which is in part what attracted me to the franchise (though it is good anyway).
Pierce Brosnan and Craig are more popular with Gen Y, which has largely come into it's own.
Timothy Dalton seems to have fallen between the cracks as far as it goes, I think he's probably the most universally agreed upon "bad bond". His only fans really seem to give him points for "at least it's not Roger Moore" whose haters seem to largely think he was too campy (which he was compared to Connery).
#2: I'm one of the few people who will probably tell you that the 90s were probably the best era for comics, but then again they also fit my generation and it's point of view. This will take some boring explaining:
A lot of people who see how dark and edgy these comics are tend to assume they are doing that for their own sake. The truth is that they were written for the "lost generation", my generation, Generation X. Simply put the way how human society works, parents are supposed to be retiring right around the time their children are hitting their stride as adults, taking over most of the power, money, and control of society. Due to medical technology the so called "Baby Boomers", our parents generation, stayed active a lot longer and knew they were going to. As a result the jobs and oppertunities that were supposed to be there were not going to be there. You can't move into a job if the guy doing it is still there. This is also part of why the whole social security collapse was forecast, basically by the time the boomers DID retire, Gen X wouldn't be in a position to pay into social security and keep the system going, and there is some truth to this, as generally speaking the people from my generation have crap jobs.
At any rate this is a sociological fact that everyone saw coming, and there was no real hope for it. This means you had an entire generation of kids growing up knowing that they would amount to absolutly nothing, and never really leave a mark on society. Nothing we were going to do as a generation was going to matter. We're the generation that grew up living in our parent's basements even as young adults, because the jobs we were supposed to get were being done by that generation still with no real need to groom successors yet. Kids with college degrees would wind up out on the street or doing menial labour because the openings just were not there for the number of people out there.
Hence the angst, the emo movement, the slackers (why try, I'm not going anywhere), and pop culture where everything was screwed up. Even as a super hero, your life probably was going to suck, and your powers were going to be as much a danger as a benefit. People were going to die, and nobody cared, heck chances are even if you did the right thing you were going to die and nobody would care (a sort of metaphor for the generation). Bands like Linkin Park with songs like "In The End" kind of summarized the entire thing.
To someone who was lucky (comparitively speaking), or someone who is from Generation Y (our children, the coming generation) it's hard to "get" because everything is relatively more optimistic. You might think school shootings are bad, and they depress people and everything, but understand that's a lot differant from the actual knowlege that your entire life wasn't even going to be a footnote, and neither was that of anyone you knew or anything you did. Even your teachers and such didn't really seem to give much of a crap, because you were "the lost generation". Today Emo/Angst is a parodied joke because people can see ahead and the path is clear, and everyone is relatively optimistic, at least from a sociological perspective. Overly dark and depressing comics and such just seem like a downer, as opposed to the voice of the audience reading them.
At any rate, with the way lifespans are going, expect the whole dark/emo thing to come back big without the parodies. We're going to periodically skip generations, part of Gen Z, and almost all of the Gen after them. I'll be 40 in a few years, right about the time I'm ready to go (60 or 70 maybe) I expect there to be a resurgence of interest in this comics of the 1990s and that's what everything will look like again, because that generation will be right where Gen X was and will empathize.
To be honest, I think it might be painful, but no comics were ever as honest about/to their audience and spoke for how the world was for the youth as the ones from the 90s. That intensity of connection is also why I don't think they resonate well outside of that target audience.
#1: When it comes to James Bond, I think it's all whom you grew up with. Connery gets a pass as the first guy who played and defined the character, and of course the guy is a great actor, as a result I don't think his take on the character is ever exposed to the same scrutiny as other Bonds. Saying you like Connery is kind of a safe bet.
When I grew up as a Gen Xer, Roger Moore was James Bond, and pretty much defined the character for me. His chops for the role having come largely from doing the TV show "The Saint" beforehand. Since him pretty much every Bond has been lacking, especially seeing as the movies had been getting slowly, and progressively less campy, which is in part what attracted me to the franchise (though it is good anyway).
Pierce Brosnan and Craig are more popular with Gen Y, which has largely come into it's own.
Timothy Dalton seems to have fallen between the cracks as far as it goes, I think he's probably the most universally agreed upon "bad bond". His only fans really seem to give him points for "at least it's not Roger Moore" whose haters seem to largely think he was too campy (which he was compared to Connery).
#2: I'm one of the few people who will probably tell you that the 90s were probably the best era for comics, but then again they also fit my generation and it's point of view. This will take some boring explaining:
A lot of people who see how dark and edgy these comics are tend to assume they are doing that for their own sake. The truth is that they were written for the "lost generation", my generation, Generation X. Simply put the way how human society works, parents are supposed to be retiring right around the time their children are hitting their stride as adults, taking over most of the power, money, and control of society. Due to medical technology the so called "Baby Boomers", our parents generation, stayed active a lot longer and knew they were going to. As a result the jobs and oppertunities that were supposed to be there were not going to be there. You can't move into a job if the guy doing it is still there. This is also part of why the whole social security collapse was forecast, basically by the time the boomers DID retire, Gen X wouldn't be in a position to pay into social security and keep the system going, and there is some truth to this, as generally speaking the people from my generation have crap jobs.
At any rate this is a sociological fact that everyone saw coming, and there was no real hope for it. This means you had an entire generation of kids growing up knowing that they would amount to absolutly nothing, and never really leave a mark on society. Nothing we were going to do as a generation was going to matter. We're the generation that grew up living in our parent's basements even as young adults, because the jobs we were supposed to get were being done by that generation still with no real need to groom successors yet. Kids with college degrees would wind up out on the street or doing menial labour because the openings just were not there for the number of people out there.
Hence the angst, the emo movement, the slackers (why try, I'm not going anywhere), and pop culture where everything was screwed up. Even as a super hero, your life probably was going to suck, and your powers were going to be as much a danger as a benefit. People were going to die, and nobody cared, heck chances are even if you did the right thing you were going to die and nobody would care (a sort of metaphor for the generation). Bands like Linkin Park with songs like "In The End" kind of summarized the entire thing.
To someone who was lucky (comparitively speaking), or someone who is from Generation Y (our children, the coming generation) it's hard to "get" because everything is relatively more optimistic. You might think school shootings are bad, and they depress people and everything, but understand that's a lot differant from the actual knowlege that your entire life wasn't even going to be a footnote, and neither was that of anyone you knew or anything you did. Even your teachers and such didn't really seem to give much of a crap, because you were "the lost generation". Today Emo/Angst is a parodied joke because people can see ahead and the path is clear, and everyone is relatively optimistic, at least from a sociological perspective. Overly dark and depressing comics and such just seem like a downer, as opposed to the voice of the audience reading them.
At any rate, with the way lifespans are going, expect the whole dark/emo thing to come back big without the parodies. We're going to periodically skip generations, part of Gen Z, and almost all of the Gen after them. I'll be 40 in a few years, right about the time I'm ready to go (60 or 70 maybe) I expect there to be a resurgence of interest in this comics of the 1990s and that's what everything will look like again, because that generation will be right where Gen X was and will empathize.
To be honest, I think it might be painful, but no comics were ever as honest about/to their audience and spoke for how the world was for the youth as the ones from the 90s. That intensity of connection is also why I don't think they resonate well outside of that target audience.
13. Casual gamers have ruined gaming.
ill comment anyway. casual gamers havent ruined gaming. game companies pandering out for casual gamers and going from their niche market full of fans to casual market just because "its on the rise" has ruined gaming companies. not all companies went there, and i respect them to sticking to their fans. and i realize the need for new IP experiments, but that does not mean going from harcore RTS to farmville like in a day.
ill comment anyway. casual gamers havent ruined gaming. game companies pandering out for casual gamers and going from their niche market full of fans to casual market just because "its on the rise" has ruined gaming companies. not all companies went there, and i respect them to sticking to their fans. and i realize the need for new IP experiments, but that does not mean going from harcore RTS to farmville like in a day.
Well the issue as I see it is greed, pure and simple. Companies are not content to make a fair profit for a good product, they want the most monsterous profits possible for the least amount of effort. Some will argue that business has always been this way, but truthfully I don't think it has been as bad, within so many differant industries. When it comes to gaming I think a lot of people can actually see the change in attitude, espcially if they have been following gaming and the companies/creators for a couple of decades.Strazdas said:
A recent example I think would be Funcom. "The Secret World" launched earlier this year, and was heavily promoted as a niche game, aimed at a crowd of fairly hardcore, mature gamers. It was going to include some adult elements, and a pretty hard core difficulty curve. A lot of people were drawn to this game because it wasn't a game that was making pretensions of being a WoW-killer or trying to cater to a mainstream audience. I supported it early on with a lifetime membership because I liked their attitude.
When "The Secret World" launched the massive QQing was immediate. It turns out they were lying and all of their hype about a niche game and all of that was just marketing, they were expecting this blockbuster success. Much like they expected Age Of Conan to be when it launched. Needless to say their quirky, mature, modern fantasy/horror game didn't suck in the masses so it was a failure. Layoffs hit, the game went free to play, and while it's been slowly expanding, the future of the game is in doubt. Apparently Funcom wants to move from MMOs to more casual products, I think I read something (maybe on The Escapist) about them picking up a Lego liscence for quick cash.
It basically goes to show that nobody is willing to accept what is simply a decent success, and make their profits slowly. Claiming that is simply another marketing tool nowadays. You either play big, or you don't play at all. The money isn't rolling in like planned, quick make your MMO a FTP cash vampire, a couple of titles don't break sales expectations, terminate the company and layoff the staff.
I think it's the casuals that brought in these expectations, due to things like Farmville, and franchises like "Call OF Duty" (which is a casual game, despite pretensions of it being hardcore, it just caters to a differant style of casuals than Farmville). No niche game is ever going to perform as well as one you can get just about anyone playing with minimal effort, all those rude kids in CoD are paying customers, as are a lot of those "cow clickers" when they grow impatient.
This is how I see things at any rate. The casuals aren't a blight just because they want simpler games and things that are approchable. They are a blight because that's all anyone wants to make because of the potential profit. Arguements about how "why hate the casuals, if there are games made for everyone" when really, that's increasingly not the case since nobody is content with a niche game, for a niche audience, and simply making a decent profit. That might be how business has always been as some will say, but if that's true it still brings it right back down onto the casuals for creating the problem that is moving business on to cater to them esclusively. For the moment Funcom, a fairly serious MMO developer, has gone casual simply because there isn't enough money in developing serious MMOs. They aren't likely to have another epic MMO ready in a few years from the sound of things, and this general trend exists for a lot fo companies, the developers aiming at serious gamers are disappearing, and those who were concerned called this trend a long time away, it just didn't seem to be as big a deal until it started to get closer.
I also don't think "Indie" games are the answer, to be blunt there is only so much that can be done with an indie budget and skill level. Your serious gamer wants his AAA technology, bells, and whistles combined with his demands for deep, smart, gameplay that is likely to make a casual go into brain aneurisms. Some indie developer coughing out a solid little RPG with his modest abillities does not equal say "Dragon Age: Origins", "Skyrim", or what games like "Wizardry" and "Ultima" were to their platforms when they were new (OMG, I'll need a 386 to play Ultima 7!). Likewise on an MMO scale unreasonable expectations for fast returns means that rapidly we're going to see nothing but Pay 2 Win cash vampires that are far more modest than "The Secret World" in their basic content, never mind approaching what we saw attempted wiht "ToR" or what WoW turned into, all because nobody is willing to accept anything but mountains of cash at their feet, right then and there, which catering to casuals can get them.
Nah, he's praised them for being highly entertaining and really informative. He's just not very fond of the fact that everyone that hates the prequels always just refers to Plinkett blindly instead of thinking for themselves.LobsterFeng said:
Still, his inclusion of 16 on this list is simply wrong. It IS a really boring, tired argument, but Plinkett made it incredibly funny and interesting again.
Interesting, I have heard the various arguments about the incarnations of Bond but as a fan of the series I have never subscribed to any of them. I have all of the movies (except the first Casino Royale) on my shelf and while I believe that Sean Connery defined the character for me I think that each movie has to be viewed through the lens of the era in which it was created. Judging a fifty year old movie based on current standards of film-making and characterization is kinda silly.
I don't know, Bob, I think we're starting to pass an event horizon on some of these gripes, wherein the people whining about the people whining about them are actually more passe and annoying than the people who were originally whining about them, to be honest. "Complaining about people complaining about Star Wars prequels" is definitely in that category by now. "Complaining about people complaining about ME3" types have been just as shrill and nonsensical, if not moreso, than the original complainants from the very beginning.
I don't know what's funnier, the guy who created an account solely to bash this article, or the person calling Bob a hypocrite when the beginning of the article clearly states he is guilty of many of these opinions. It's such a shame that hostility can have so much more effort put into it instead of constructive criticism.