The Divide

[Urgh76]

Okay, I'm confused: can someone point me out the two items this comic is lampooning?

It's showing how Web Critics of games and such are almost never actually listened to or considered credible, yet when a gaming magazine posts the same kind of work, they get all the recognition and praise.

Wonderful wonderful work once again Grey

 

[Thisfellow]

For a moment there, I thought that was a giant coffee mug in panel 3.

 

[Darth_Payn]

I think some context would help. Did this strip previously take on the story/gameplay split?

 

[LetalisK]

Okay so this came up on Address the Sess and now here, does someone want to explain to me what this Luddonarrative Dissonance bullshit is?

It's a term people throw around when sounding edified is more important to them than actually getting their meaning across.

Was...was that supposed to be as funny as I took it? Or am I just unedumucated?

 

[Illessa]

Do game journalist get Pulitzer Prizes? Has that ever happened? Who are you people and why are you in my room?

That was my first thought too. We're a loooooong way off the world taking game journalists remotely seriously enough for them to win Pulitzers.

This is where it turns out someone has and I'm just flaunting my ignorance .

The problem is it's really pretentious and there's already a suitable English term for it (gameplay and story segregation, as noted above.) Authors making up pseudo-latin words for things instead of just using English is the thing I most hate about reading 18th and 19th century documents, and it's even more obnoxious now than it was then. I saw one particularly bad example a while back: "cathexis." It was used in some paper someone wrote on ancient Rome. When I went to look it up, first I found the meaning (it means "the process of investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea"), but then I found where it came from. Turns out some d-bag translator made it up instead of just using the German word "besetzung" when he was trying to translate the works of Sigmund Freud and found out that word had no suitable English translation. He made up a word out of wholecloth instead of just using an existing one and inserting a footnote to explain it. Yeah.

The Ludonarrative bit I'll grant you is pointless (personally I quite like it, but I just like "ludic" in general, it's a tasty word). Call it gameplay-story, or gameplay-narrative it works jsut as well.

Segregation vs Dissonance though refer to subtly different things.

Segregation implies seperation, and refers to the game content. The vast majority of games have some element of segregation and it can be an entirely neutral or even a good thing. It just means there are elements involved in the gameplay that aren't involved in the story or vice-versa, can be as simple as "Being in a cutscene" or not tying yourself in knots trying to explain why fighting someone involves completing Match-3 puzzles .

Dissonance on the other hand, implies something noticable, obvious and unpleasant, and refers to the player's experience. It's when something in the story and gameplay is actively contradictory to the point that you notice it and it distracts you or pulls you out of the experience.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Do game journalist get Pulitzer Prizes? Has that ever happened? Who are you people and why are you in my room?

That was my first thought too. We're a loooooong way off the world taking game journalists remotely seriously enough for them to win Pulitzers.

This is where it turns out someone has and I'm just flaunting my ignorance .

The problem is it's really pretentious and there's already a suitable English term for it (gameplay and story segregation, as noted above.) Authors making up pseudo-latin words for things instead of just using English is the thing I most hate about reading 18th and 19th century documents, and it's even more obnoxious now than it was then. I saw one particularly bad example a while back: "cathexis." It was used in some paper someone wrote on ancient Rome. When I went to look it up, first I found the meaning (it means "the process of investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea"), but then I found where it came from. Turns out some d-bag translator made it up instead of just using the German word "besetzung" when he was trying to translate the works of Sigmund Freud and found out that word had no suitable English translation. He made up a word out of wholecloth instead of just using an existing one and inserting a footnote to explain it. Yeah.

The Ludonarrative bit I'll grant you is pointless (personally I quite like it, but I just like "ludic" in general, it's a tasty word). Call it gameplay-story, or gameplay-narrative it works jsut as well.

Segregation vs Dissonance though refer to subtly different things.

Segregation implies seperation, and refers to the game content. The vast majority of games have some element of segregation and it can be an entirely neutral or even a good thing. It just means there are elements involved in the gameplay that aren't involved in the story or vice-versa, can be as simple as "Being in a cutscene" or not tying yourself in knots trying to explain why fighting someone involves completing Match-3 puzzles .

Dissonance on the other hand, implies something noticable, obvious and unpleasant, and refers to the player's experience. It's when something in the story and gameplay is actively contradictory to the point that you notice it and it distracts you or pulls you out of the experience.

Keep the dissonance part then, just drop the pseudo-latin. "Gameplay/Story dissonance" works just as well as "gameplay/story segregation," it's the "ludonarrative" part that is downright obnoxious. And It's not like TVTropes is the only place that uses the old term -- it was in use for /years/ before the games as art hipsters started using the newer term.

Edit: Just realized you removed the thing about TV-Tropes before I quoted you. Makes that part of my post look kind of weird XD

 

[Uszi]

It's either supposed to be perspective, or else an ideal dreamworld where the largest Star Bucks size called Doppio Secchio, and it's four gallons of coffee.

 

[Mr Companion]

Does anyone else miss this comic focusing on Erin being crazy?

Well I think Erin's unhinged personality is mostly a trait, not the basis for the story. As for whether I think the comic should go back to being more about Erin's life?
Nope. Strip after strip of some story about a character concocted entirely to parody videogames, undergoing relationship problems because of an invented psychological condition and expecting me to become invested in her well being doesn't work so well. Especially when the story is delivered over the course of weeks with 10 seconds of interaction playing out every strip. I mean, I didn't care too much at the time and kept reading on regardless but it felt a little strange really considering half of Erin's personality is conceived to make her a vehicle for jokes about video games.

Its not like it was terribly badly written or anything it just felt a little indecisive, as if the writer wanted to make a character driven drama where we are treated to in depth psycho-analysis of the protagonist in relation to her interactions with other characters yet made the curious decision to convey this through the medium of a videogame parody webcomic.

Im not trying to be nasty here its just more fun to be able to check the latest Critical Miss and get a satisfying injection of funny instead of reading 10 seconds of a dramatic scene between characters you are not actually supposed to care deeply about in the first place.

Wow this ended up as a big dumb rant, don't I have work to do?

 

[The Random One]

The problem is it's really pretentious and there's already a suitable English term for it (gameplay and story segregation, as noted above.) Authors making up pseudo-latin words for things instead of just using English is the thing I most hate about reading 18th and 19th century documents, and it's even more obnoxious now than it was then. I saw one particularly bad example a while back: "cathexis." It was used in some paper someone wrote on ancient Rome. When I went to look it up, first I found the meaning (it means "the process of investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea"), but then I found where it came from. Turns out some d-bag translator made it up instead of just using the German word "besetzung" when he was trying to translate the works of Sigmund Freud and found out that word had no suitable English translation. He made up a word out of wholecloth instead of just using an existing one and inserting a footnote to explain it. Yeah.

Uh, that's how words are made. You call a television a television because someone used the Greek prefix 'teleos' (distant) and the Latin-through-French word 'vision' (uh, vision) to name it, otherwise you'd call it a 'thing wot you use to see things wot are not there'. And of course later the name stuck because people started using it, but that's how you call something that you invent or discover.

Ludonarrative dissonance may very well be a term that someone used way more syllables than they should, but it's a thing that pops up and up again in games and 'gameplay and story segregation' is even clunkier ("I didn't like this game because of the poor level design and gameplay and story segregation." "So both the level design and the gameplay are poor? What's story segregation?") I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that the dude wot thought it up decided to give it a poor Latin name instead of naming it "Bob's Principle" (if he was named Bob).

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The problem is it's really pretentious and there's already a suitable English term for it (gameplay and story segregation, as noted above.) Authors making up pseudo-latin words for things instead of just using English is the thing I most hate about reading 18th and 19th century documents, and it's even more obnoxious now than it was then. I saw one particularly bad example a while back: "cathexis." It was used in some paper someone wrote on ancient Rome. When I went to look it up, first I found the meaning (it means "the process of investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea"), but then I found where it came from. Turns out some d-bag translator made it up instead of just using the German word "besetzung" when he was trying to translate the works of Sigmund Freud and found out that word had no suitable English translation. He made up a word out of wholecloth instead of just using an existing one and inserting a footnote to explain it. Yeah.

Uh, that's how words are made. You call a television a television because someone used the Greek prefix 'teleos' (distant) and the Latin-through-French word 'vision' (uh, vision) to name it, otherwise you'd call it a 'thing wot you use to see things wot are not there'. And of course later the name stuck because people started using it, but that's how you call something that you invent or discover.

Ludonarrative dissonance may very well be a term that someone used way more syllables than they should, but it's a thing that pops up and up again in games and 'gameplay and story segregation' is even clunkier ("I didn't like this game because of the poor level design and gameplay and story segregation." "So both the level design and the gameplay are poor? What's story segregation?") I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that the dude wot thought it up decided to give it a poor Latin name instead of naming it "Bob's Principle" (if he was named Bob).

Quite frankly, Bob's Principle would have been less annoying. I mean, have you ever seen anyone complain about the name "Godwin's Law?" The concept, maybe, but not the name.

Edit: I think I'd find it less annoying if it weren't for the context of "games as art" hipsters trying to prove that they weren't just screwing around with time wasters. The whole business smacks of children trying to prove to their parents that they aren't wasting their time. Gaming will be a mature medium when it doesn't matter that it's a waste of time, just like it doesn't matter that books and movies are, ultimately, time wasters.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

The starbucks and the Macbook made me burst out loud laughing. Well played.

 

[Griffolion]

What's this about? I think I missed this one..

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The problem is it's really pretentious and there's already a suitable English term for it (gameplay and story segregation, as noted above.) Authors making up pseudo-latin words for things instead of just using English is the thing I most hate about reading 18th and 19th century documents, and it's even more obnoxious now than it was then. I saw one particularly bad example a while back: "cathexis." It was used in some paper someone wrote on ancient Rome. When I went to look it up, first I found the meaning (it means "the process of investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea"), but then I found where it came from. Turns out some d-bag translator made it up instead of just using the German word "besetzung" when he was trying to translate the works of Sigmund Freud and found out that word had no suitable English translation. He made up a word out of wholecloth instead of just using an existing one and inserting a footnote to explain it. Yeah.

Uh, that's how words are made. You call a television a television because someone used the Greek prefix 'teleos' (distant) and the Latin-through-French word 'vision' (uh, vision) to name it, otherwise you'd call it a 'thing wot you use to see things wot are not there'. And of course later the name stuck because people started using it, but that's how you call something that you invent or discover.

Ludonarrative dissonance may very well be a term that someone used way more syllables than they should, but it's a thing that pops up and up again in games and 'gameplay and story segregation' is even clunkier ("I didn't like this game because of the poor level design and gameplay and story segregation." "So both the level design and the gameplay are poor? What's story segregation?") I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that the dude wot thought it up decided to give it a poor Latin name instead of naming it "Bob's Principle" (if he was named Bob).

Quite frankly, Bob's Principle would have been less annoying. I mean, have you ever seen anyone complain about the name "Godwin's Law?" The concept, maybe, but not the name.

Edit: I think I'd find it less annoying if it weren't for the context of "games as art" hipsters trying to prove that they weren't just screwing around with time wasters. The whole business smacks of children trying to prove to their parents that they aren't wasting their time. Gaming will be a mature medium when it doesn't matter that it's a waste of time, just like it doesn't matter that books and movies are, ultimately, time wasters.

Problem here is that you're effectively judging a word based solely on how pleasant it sounds, and not on it's functionality and overall use...That's bad, and you should feel bad. =/

Quite the contrary, I find an existing English word with a meaning that is immediately clear to anyone who understands the language to be much more functional than one which requires an exceptionally solid grasp of Latin roots. Words are meant to convey ideas, not keep them locked away behind secret codes.

 

[Skeleon]

Is this about a particular instance that got you miffed? If yes, please provide sources because many of us are not up-to-date on gaming news, especially not in print media. If not... okay. I guess that is annoying for web critics and cartoonists to see happen.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The problem is it's really pretentious and there's already a suitable English term for it (gameplay and story segregation, as noted above.) Authors making up pseudo-latin words for things instead of just using English is the thing I most hate about reading 18th and 19th century documents, and it's even more obnoxious now than it was then. I saw one particularly bad example a while back: "cathexis." It was used in some paper someone wrote on ancient Rome. When I went to look it up, first I found the meaning (it means "the process of investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea"), but then I found where it came from. Turns out some d-bag translator made it up instead of just using the German word "besetzung" when he was trying to translate the works of Sigmund Freud and found out that word had no suitable English translation. He made up a word out of wholecloth instead of just using an existing one and inserting a footnote to explain it. Yeah.

Uh, that's how words are made. You call a television a television because someone used the Greek prefix 'teleos' (distant) and the Latin-through-French word 'vision' (uh, vision) to name it, otherwise you'd call it a 'thing wot you use to see things wot are not there'. And of course later the name stuck because people started using it, but that's how you call something that you invent or discover.

Ludonarrative dissonance may very well be a term that someone used way more syllables than they should, but it's a thing that pops up and up again in games and 'gameplay and story segregation' is even clunkier ("I didn't like this game because of the poor level design and gameplay and story segregation." "So both the level design and the gameplay are poor? What's story segregation?") I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that the dude wot thought it up decided to give it a poor Latin name instead of naming it "Bob's Principle" (if he was named Bob).

Quite frankly, Bob's Principle would have been less annoying. I mean, have you ever seen anyone complain about the name "Godwin's Law?" The concept, maybe, but not the name.

Edit: I think I'd find it less annoying if it weren't for the context of "games as art" hipsters trying to prove that they weren't just screwing around with time wasters. The whole business smacks of children trying to prove to their parents that they aren't wasting their time. Gaming will be a mature medium when it doesn't matter that it's a waste of time, just like it doesn't matter that books and movies are, ultimately, time wasters.

Problem here is that you're effectively judging a word based solely on how pleasant it sounds, and not on it's functionality and overall use...That's bad, and you should feel bad. =/

Quite the contrary, I find an existing English word with a meaning that is immediately clear to anyone who understands the language to be much more functional than one which requires an exceptionally solid grasp of Latin roots. Words are meant to convey ideas, not keep them locked away behind secret codes.

If you asked people on the street to define "Dissonance" for you, they probably couldn't do it. There are lots of words in every language that the average person probably doesn't understand that still fill a useful spot in your vocabulary. Hell, i'm willing to bet you didn't know what "Dissonance" was until it was explained to you above, and if you ever come across a word you don't understand? Then ask someone you're talking to, to explain it. And if they can't then hey, that's why baby Jesus invented the dictionary.

It's cute that you think I didn't know what dissonance meant before this thread. Obnoxious, but cute. Regardless, looking this one up in a dictionary won't help because you won't find the word "ludonarrative" in a dictionary, it's a neologism (hey, there's another big word I didn't have to look up) made up by some guy simultaneously trying to look intelligent and to give an air of respectability to gaming. You might find the Latin word "ludo" (or would the actual word be something closer to "ludum?") in a Latin dictionary, and you might find other words with the same root in an English dictionary, but you're not going to find "ludonarrative." "gameplay," "story," and "dissonance" and/or "segregation," on the other hand? They'll be there.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

snip

No, what's cute is that you're attempt at being condescending by referring to my actions as "cute". What's not so cute is the baseless accusation that someone made the word to intentionally sound smart when you really don't know that, maybe this person legitimately believed it was the best way to get the meaning across. It's not like you would know otherwise.

At any rate, your implication seems to be that people can't make up words...Even though people do it all the damn time. It's how languages are built and formed.

"Implosion"? Fuck that, clearly that asshole scientist just wanted to sound smart, let's go with "inward explosion" instead!

Except there's a massive difference between a scientist and a games as art hipster. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the whole kerfuffle over games as art is nothing but a bunch of insecure nerds trying to look mature and failing harder than it should be possible to fail. As C.S. Lewis would say, true maturity comes when you don't care whether people think you look immature or not. Too many gamers are still in that "wanting to appear very grown up" stage.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

snip

No, what's cute is that you're attempt at being condescending by referring to my actions as "cute". What's not so cute is the baseless accusation that someone made the word to intentionally sound smart when you really don't know that, maybe this person legitimately believed it was the best way to get the meaning across. It's not like you would know otherwise.

At any rate, your implication seems to be that people can't make up words...Even though people do it all the damn time. It's how languages are built and formed.

"Implosion"? Fuck that, clearly that asshole scientist just wanted to sound smart, let's go with "inward explosion" instead!

Except there's a massive difference between a scientist and a games as art hipster. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the whole kerfuffle over games as art is nothing but a bunch of insecure nerds trying to look mature and failing harder than it should be possible to fail. As C.S. Lewis would say, true maturity comes when you don't care whether people think you look immature or not. Too many gamers are still in that "wanting to appear very grown up" stage.

So a scientist creates a word to mean something and that's fine

A "Games are art hipster" (As you so eloquently put it) makes a word to mean something and suddenly it's just him trying to look smart? Again, how do you know this? It sounds like you're just making up reasons to ***** and complain about a group of people at this point.

Or maybe I've just been active in the community for a while and know the sort of person who goes crazy over the term? Pray tell how my assessment of the "games as art" debate is inaccurate. There's a certain class of gamer who has a persecution complex about their hobby. That class is the one that is most gung ho about games being art. Why is that?

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

snip

No, what's cute is that you're attempt at being condescending by referring to my actions as "cute". What's not so cute is the baseless accusation that someone made the word to intentionally sound smart when you really don't know that, maybe this person legitimately believed it was the best way to get the meaning across. It's not like you would know otherwise.

At any rate, your implication seems to be that people can't make up words...Even though people do it all the damn time. It's how languages are built and formed.

"Implosion"? Fuck that, clearly that asshole scientist just wanted to sound smart, let's go with "inward explosion" instead!

Except there's a massive difference between a scientist and a games as art hipster. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the whole kerfuffle over games as art is nothing but a bunch of insecure nerds trying to look mature and failing harder than it should be possible to fail. As C.S. Lewis would say, true maturity comes when you don't care whether people think you look immature or not. Too many gamers are still in that "wanting to appear very grown up" stage.

So a scientist creates a word to mean something and that's fine

A "Games are art hipster" (As you so eloquently put it) makes a word to mean something and suddenly it's just him trying to look smart? Again, how do you know this? It sounds like you're just making up reasons to ***** and complain about a group of people at this point.

Or maybe I've just been active in the community for a while and know the sort of person who goes crazy over the term? Pray tell how my assessment of the "games as art" debate is inaccurate. There's a certain class of gamer who has a persecution complex about their hobby. That class is the one that is most gung ho about games being art. Why is that?

Okay first off I want you to back up and read your last two posts again. Do you not see them for the broad generalizations that they are?

Secondly, how exactly does this tie in to "Ludonarrative Dissonance" Not being a good word to use? It contains the same number of syllables as "Story and Game play dissonance" and does not carry the chance of people confusing it with "Story and game play segregation"

Thirdly, so what if some people feel smarter for saying it? Some people also feel smarter because they read Atlas Shrugged. Does that mean Objectivitism is just a hokey political philosophy for people who want to look smarter than they are?

No, Objectivism is a hokey political "philosophy" for selfish assholes, but that's another story entirely.

As for how "ludonarrative dissonance" ties into the games as art debate, it's kind of central to it. It's a name for a concept which is important to the idea of dissecting games the way one would film or literature, but it's a newer and more obtuse term than the old "gameplay and story segregation" term, which as I've said many times, conveys the same idea in a simpler manner. The people who picked up on it, by and large, are huge on the idea of games as art. And sure, what I said is a generalization. It's just one that holds true pretty much without exception. Can you honestly say that it's not a term that wouldn't appeal to the kind of people I described?

Ultimately, the debate boils down to whether we should use a simple word that does the job perfectly, or a fancier word that does the same job, but in a harder to understand manner, which some people might take as sounding smarter. It's Hemingway vs. Faulkner, and I've always been on Hemingway's side in that debate.

 

[Requia]

Does anyone else miss this comic focusing on Erin being crazy?

No, but I miss when it had a focus on ludonarrative dissonance.

Who is this journalist that's getting all the praise?

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

As for how "ludonarrative dissonance" ties into the games as art debate, it's kind of central to it. It's a name for a concept which is important to the idea of dissecting games the way one would film or literature, but it's a newer and more obtuse term than the old "gameplay and story segregation" term, which as I've said many times, conveys the same idea in a simpler manner.

And it has already been explained to you why they do not convey the same idea.

Story and game play segregation is when the story is kept separate from the game play, usually manifesting in only being told through cut scenes (to get an idea of this, go play any of the Ratchet and Clank games.)

Ludonarrative dissonance is when the themes of the narrative and the way the game is played directly contradict one another. Basically MLP fighting games. The theme is "Friendship is magic" The game play is "Clobber everyone who isn't you".

Except that's not how the term is actually used. In actual use, it's identical to Ludonarrative Dissonance. Besides, I'd be fine if people were arguing we should call it "gameplay and story dissonance." It's the "ludonarrative" part that I take issue with. Does the phrase "sesquipedalian loquaciousness" mean anything to you?