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Top Ten Topics: Movies!
I did this list in the past. So this new list is going to be movies that have been released since my last list was made.
1. Mad Max: Fury Road
2. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
3. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
4. The LEGO Movie
5. Ex Machina
6. The Dark Knight
7. A Monster Calls
8. Blade Runner 2049
9. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
10. Scott Pilgrim vs the World
Looking at the list I feel like I've overlooked something incredibly obvious. But I did spend a whole twenty minutes on this.
1. Mad Max: Fury Road
2. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
3. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
4. The LEGO Movie
5. Ex Machina
6. The Dark Knight
7. A Monster Calls
8. Blade Runner 2049
9. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
10. Scott Pilgrim vs the World
Looking at the list I feel like I've overlooked something incredibly obvious. But I did spend a whole twenty minutes on this.
Top Games Of the Decade?
So uhm, this list is from a couple of years ago so it doesn't have the last couple of years in it...
So I'll add those years to my list later... maybe.
1. Crusader Kings 2 (2012)
2. Valiant Hearts (2014)
3. Rocket League (2015)
4. Frozen Synapse (2011)
5. Invisible Inc. (2015)
6. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege (2015)
7. Firewatch (2016)
8. Waking Mars (2012)
9. Tales from the Borderlands (2014)
10. Stardew Valley (2016)
I think this list was made in 2016. Meaning it's missing some pretty good games that I've played since then... (Into the Breach)
So I'll add those years to my list later... maybe.
1. Crusader Kings 2 (2012)
2. Valiant Hearts (2014)
3. Rocket League (2015)
4. Frozen Synapse (2011)
5. Invisible Inc. (2015)
6. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege (2015)
7. Firewatch (2016)
8. Waking Mars (2012)
9. Tales from the Borderlands (2014)
10. Stardew Valley (2016)
I think this list was made in 2016. Meaning it's missing some pretty good games that I've played since then... (Into the Breach)
David Cage - Genius Auteur or Insufferably Pretentious Quack?
I think we might have a fundamental disagreement of definitions. Mostly summarized in this line:
I, and I believe a lot of other people too, would definitely put this under the lists of "power fantasies". It is... Essentially about... overcoming... Or something. I think this is sort of what was meant by Cage's comment about how games generally are power fantasies. Because games are nearly always about success. The player doesn't really fail. The characters in the story of the game might fail, but their failure is always the result of the player succeeding.
I mean otherwise it is a game over.
A slightly different discussion probably: This is a difficult pattern to break out of. But I'd love to see more games where failure is not the end. But the mindset of players is often that it's "bullshit" to fail. I fall into that too. An unbeatable boss? Bullshit, there has to be a way to beat it. Save-reload on an unwanted minor failure. But sometimes failure is more interesting than success. That's why in story-based games there's loads of failure in cutscenes even if the players don't fail. (see Tomb Raider 2013, a game where you are amazing at everything until a cutscene happens and you are ambushed by two goons that appeared out of nowhere, after literally killing fifty of them two minutes ago)
Now I don't know how to make games around this innate power fantasy of video games. I too want to succeed in my games and find it frustrating to fail. But I think there's a huge mostly unexplored bit there where it'd be okay for the player to sometimes fail and sometimes succeed.
One example of interesting failure that I quite like is Crusader Kings 2. Where the game is actually quite boring if you succeed a lot. But built into it are a number of crises that can upend things and sometimes it's actually fun to try to maneuver to get those crises triggering. Losing a civil war and breaking a kingdom in two might not sound fun but a lot of interesting will happen as a result of it over keeping the kingdom at peace and prosperity for another hundred years.
What about every survival horror/survival whatever game ever? You kill plenty of stuff in those. But when those games are doing their jobs right, you feel like you're barely surviving, no matter how much firepower you might bring to bear. Doing everything you can to barely survive is again the opposite of a power fantasy.
I, and I believe a lot of other people too, would definitely put this under the lists of "power fantasies". It is... Essentially about... overcoming... Or something. I think this is sort of what was meant by Cage's comment about how games generally are power fantasies. Because games are nearly always about success. The player doesn't really fail. The characters in the story of the game might fail, but their failure is always the result of the player succeeding.
I mean otherwise it is a game over.
A slightly different discussion probably: This is a difficult pattern to break out of. But I'd love to see more games where failure is not the end. But the mindset of players is often that it's "bullshit" to fail. I fall into that too. An unbeatable boss? Bullshit, there has to be a way to beat it. Save-reload on an unwanted minor failure. But sometimes failure is more interesting than success. That's why in story-based games there's loads of failure in cutscenes even if the players don't fail. (see Tomb Raider 2013, a game where you are amazing at everything until a cutscene happens and you are ambushed by two goons that appeared out of nowhere, after literally killing fifty of them two minutes ago)
Now I don't know how to make games around this innate power fantasy of video games. I too want to succeed in my games and find it frustrating to fail. But I think there's a huge mostly unexplored bit there where it'd be okay for the player to sometimes fail and sometimes succeed.
One example of interesting failure that I quite like is Crusader Kings 2. Where the game is actually quite boring if you succeed a lot. But built into it are a number of crises that can upend things and sometimes it's actually fun to try to maneuver to get those crises triggering. Losing a civil war and breaking a kingdom in two might not sound fun but a lot of interesting will happen as a result of it over keeping the kingdom at peace and prosperity for another hundred years.
Top Ten Topic: New Characters in Super Smash Bros.
Top Ten Topic: Card Games
I'm going to make a top 10 card games that have come out since this list was made.
Possibly making it easier.
Or probably not.
10. Resident Evil the Deckbuilding Game
This is a game we played a lot with my sister it was done during the full on deckbuilding craze and I don't really know if it's better or worse than the majority but we had a lot of fun with it and deckbuilding is always fun.
9. Warhammer 40,000: Conquest
This was a living card game that died out when Fantasy Flight lost the 40k license. Probably a good thing for me since I bought most of the card packs and hardly ever played the game itself. Except for the base game. Which is very good and some day I'll go deep into all those extra card packs I got and actually deckbuild and play around with this game.
8. Port Royal
A seemingly simple push-your-luck card game, that still ends up being insanely good. I've heard it's even better with an expansion that I have not tried. That basically the base game is trash compared to it. But the base game is already so good!
7. Blood Bowl: Team Manager
This is a game I haven't played as much as maybe I'd like. It has some deckbuilding elements but mostly it's about playing matchup with the players you have. It does share some similarities to Conquest, but it is probably slightly easier to grok, with fewer moving parts.
6. Star Realms
A game that I got from a Humble Bundle of all things. It's a fun light deckbuilding (again) game where it has that thing where just as you're getting an engine going the game is over and you want to play again. It has loads of expansions but I have none of them.
5. Resistance: Avalon
A game where the cards... Well. They just say who you are and then it's all social deduction after that. This one has almost been overplayed over the years (though not so much the last year or so). But it's always an exciting Werewolf-style game without player elimination.
4. Libertalia
This wonderful pirate-themed game of bluffing and doublebluffing. As everyone sits with the same cards on their hand and it's all about outsmarting the opponent as to when one plays them.
3. Splendor
I mean the best part of the game is the hefty poker chips and not the cards at all. But it's still basically a card game. Simple casual fun that is just about playable at almost any time.
2. 7 Wonders
An often played game that when everyone knows the rules basically runs like clockwork and a session can be done in twenty minutes. Though sometimes the scoring takes up most of the playing time. Still just the sheer amount of strategies available and then the second-guessing strategies one the initial ones don't work out.
And that's without all the expansions. I've played with some of them a couple of times, but even the base game still delivers.
1. Love Letter
This is quite the microgame. Only a handful of cards but almost infinite replayability and it's also so short that anyone can jump in and jump out at any time. The only limiter is the four-player maximum player count, but it's not such a big deal for a game that I've played an insane amount of times with many different people. Since teaching the rules basically takes a minute.
There are probably some other awesome card games from recent years I've played too. But I might mostly not remember them because they've only been played once. Or maybe I'm not comfortable rating them because I've only played them once. All of the ones on the list have at least been played multiple, multiple times.
Possibly making it easier.
Or probably not.
10. Resident Evil the Deckbuilding Game
This is a game we played a lot with my sister it was done during the full on deckbuilding craze and I don't really know if it's better or worse than the majority but we had a lot of fun with it and deckbuilding is always fun.
9. Warhammer 40,000: Conquest
This was a living card game that died out when Fantasy Flight lost the 40k license. Probably a good thing for me since I bought most of the card packs and hardly ever played the game itself. Except for the base game. Which is very good and some day I'll go deep into all those extra card packs I got and actually deckbuild and play around with this game.
8. Port Royal
A seemingly simple push-your-luck card game, that still ends up being insanely good. I've heard it's even better with an expansion that I have not tried. That basically the base game is trash compared to it. But the base game is already so good!
7. Blood Bowl: Team Manager
This is a game I haven't played as much as maybe I'd like. It has some deckbuilding elements but mostly it's about playing matchup with the players you have. It does share some similarities to Conquest, but it is probably slightly easier to grok, with fewer moving parts.
6. Star Realms
A game that I got from a Humble Bundle of all things. It's a fun light deckbuilding (again) game where it has that thing where just as you're getting an engine going the game is over and you want to play again. It has loads of expansions but I have none of them.
5. Resistance: Avalon
A game where the cards... Well. They just say who you are and then it's all social deduction after that. This one has almost been overplayed over the years (though not so much the last year or so). But it's always an exciting Werewolf-style game without player elimination.
4. Libertalia
This wonderful pirate-themed game of bluffing and doublebluffing. As everyone sits with the same cards on their hand and it's all about outsmarting the opponent as to when one plays them.
3. Splendor
I mean the best part of the game is the hefty poker chips and not the cards at all. But it's still basically a card game. Simple casual fun that is just about playable at almost any time.
2. 7 Wonders
An often played game that when everyone knows the rules basically runs like clockwork and a session can be done in twenty minutes. Though sometimes the scoring takes up most of the playing time. Still just the sheer amount of strategies available and then the second-guessing strategies one the initial ones don't work out.
And that's without all the expansions. I've played with some of them a couple of times, but even the base game still delivers.
1. Love Letter
This is quite the microgame. Only a handful of cards but almost infinite replayability and it's also so short that anyone can jump in and jump out at any time. The only limiter is the four-player maximum player count, but it's not such a big deal for a game that I've played an insane amount of times with many different people. Since teaching the rules basically takes a minute.
There are probably some other awesome card games from recent years I've played too. But I might mostly not remember them because they've only been played once. Or maybe I'm not comfortable rating them because I've only played them once. All of the ones on the list have at least been played multiple, multiple times.
Top Ten Topic: Superhero Movies
This list is the best because who would have believed that there would have been more superhero movies since this topic was created than there had been before this topic was created?
Remember the Top Ten Topics? I do.
David Cage - Genius Auteur or Insufferably Pretentious Quack?
author=StormCrowUsing GTA as an example of "not a power fantasy" is a really weird choice I have to admit. GTA games are like... the definition of gaming's power fantasy...Shinan, have you played GTA V? You play as a black youth who is trapped in a ghetto with crime as his only way out, a washed up bankrobber with a terrible loveless marriage that's actively falling apart and spoiled rotten children that don't love him, and a polymorphously perverted sexual deviant methhead sociopath that I can't imagine many people can relate to, let alone like. Oh, and your introduction to that third character, Trevor? It's watching helplessly as he brutally murders one of the protagonists from the previous game, a once likable and noble biker dude now turned into a wasted wreck from the crystal.
What about that is empowering to you? Nothing about that feels particularly empowering to me. Yes at any point in the mid-late game you can just walk out into the street start shooting shit up with an assault rifle, a rocket launcher, whatever, but I seem to recall these rampages usually ending with my being shot down in the streets like a dog by agents of the police-military-industrial complex. Sure, the heists are way fun and you can pull off some pretty amazing heists in the game (sometimes you even get to actually keep the money!), but if anything, well, I'd call that perhaps a competence fantasy. It's more about making a clever plan and executing it correctly, like the A-Team. When I think power fantasy, I think Superman, not the A-Team.
The Just Cause franchise is perhaps the purest power fantasy that can be found in games. It's gotta be up there.
You fall into the trap of buying what the game is telling you rather than what the game is actually selling. This is similar to saying Ghost Recon: Wildlands isn't an imperialist power fantasy because the characters occasionally banter about how terrible it is and "maybe we're the baddies?" or how Battlefield games aren't all about glorifying war because there are some quotes about the horrors of war in the loading screens occasionally.
The word has got bad mojo these days but it's
ludonarrative dissonance.
Which is especially funny after all the people talking about how games and movies are different media and shouldn't try to be each other.
Since I don't want to doublepost I'll also throw in some cents at this:
Anyway, yeah, I think one of the more confounding things about Cage is this weird obsession he has with pixel counts or polygon counts or whatever, seeing them as being the ultimate be-all end-all of whether or not players can empathize with characters (it obviously isn't, I have been empathizing with characters since at least the 16 bit era). Considering his reputation as "the story guy", this myopic focus on technology is really weird. Speaking as a writer, he could probably improve the degree to which players engage with his characters more by getting better at writing than a strategy of "MOAR POLYGONS! MOAR PIXELS!".This is a pet peeve of mine. The anti-technology thing. Where somehow making something better somehow makes it worse. In fact the thing that makes Cage stand out from other people doing the same things he does is the fact that the games are sometimes also pushing other boundaries. (well maybe not completely, but at least they are up there)
I know we're a community of 2d pixel people, but there's no denying that there are a lot of moods and atmospheres and thus also stories that can be told through more advanced technologies. Physics models that nowadays allow characters to have proper hair blowing in the wind (and also allow for wind). Lighting models that allow real-time reflective surfaces that react to changes in the environment. All of these can be used to create great experiences. Since visuals are as much part of the storytelling.
Like I know it is pretentious and esoteric as fuck but what I think Cage might be going for (and I know that a lot of indie devs are going for) are certain feelings as done through gameplay. So say you want to evoke the feeling of sand falling through your fingers. A mood can be evoked by that, but how do you turn it into gameplay. Cage maybe thinks that the way to do it is to use the most advanced physics model, in combination with some button prompts and haptic feedback that are supposed to replicate that feeling. There are many different approaches. An indie trying to replicate that same feeling might do it another way, with sound, or text, or zooming into an individual grain of sand as it tumbles down.
There are many approaches. But the good thing is that people are trying to do these things. And not just trying to blow up the next building in a spectacular fashion. (Though to be clear, real time destruction physics are also awesome, and might even be the foundation of that grain of sand physics in a different game :))
This got very long. For a defense of a game designer whose games I've never played.
David Cage - Genius Auteur or Insufferably Pretentious Quack?
Okay so I've never played a David Cage game but I have a feeling that they aren't trying to be movies because they are all about the interactivity.
I think I heard some story that one of his games has this long sequence where you are brushing your teeth and eating breakfast and has to press a button each spoonful or each brushstroke or something. (Something that is there to evoke a distinctly different feel than what you'd get from a movie.)
The pitch to Cage games have always been intriguing to me, so it's always sad when it seems they don't live up to them. The pitch I heard for Fahrenheit was the bit where you'd play as two characters with two completely different motivations. So the player could hide a body and then also play as the person looking for the body (and having hidden it obviously knowing where it was). So it was player choice about what would happen, where to play into the narrative they wanted to create, play with situations and characters.
That stuff is great stuff. You create a story with branching narratives, optional bits. A true RPG experience basically.
The problem is I've heard that in the end all the games railroad you into a single path anyway. (which on one hand is understandable, but if a game is sold on player choice or branching narratives it'd be nice if it actually had some of that)
So yeah I think the concepts put forth by Cage are interesting and some of them are explored in other games. And things like "narrative games shouldn't really have game overs" I feel shouldn't be that controversial. Adventure games stopped having game overs because game overs in those games (that were incredibly story-based) were really stupid.
I think I heard some story that one of his games has this long sequence where you are brushing your teeth and eating breakfast and has to press a button each spoonful or each brushstroke or something. (Something that is there to evoke a distinctly different feel than what you'd get from a movie.)
The pitch to Cage games have always been intriguing to me, so it's always sad when it seems they don't live up to them. The pitch I heard for Fahrenheit was the bit where you'd play as two characters with two completely different motivations. So the player could hide a body and then also play as the person looking for the body (and having hidden it obviously knowing where it was). So it was player choice about what would happen, where to play into the narrative they wanted to create, play with situations and characters.
That stuff is great stuff. You create a story with branching narratives, optional bits. A true RPG experience basically.
The problem is I've heard that in the end all the games railroad you into a single path anyway. (which on one hand is understandable, but if a game is sold on player choice or branching narratives it'd be nice if it actually had some of that)
So yeah I think the concepts put forth by Cage are interesting and some of them are explored in other games. And things like "narrative games shouldn't really have game overs" I feel shouldn't be that controversial. Adventure games stopped having game overs because game overs in those games (that were incredibly story-based) were really stupid.
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