What are some ways immersion can be used to add gameplay depth?
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Immersion
Why am I an Asshole?
How come sometimes your interactions display some serious abrasiveness, bordering on straight-up antagonism, but other times you make me want to puke with your humbleness, modesty, and general submissiveness?
Because I’m an asshole that tries to play honest to the best of my ability?
I want to shake things up, I want to be aggressive and push the border a bit, but I also know that these are just arguments on the net. I’m trying to prove a point honestly. I know where I’m fallible. I know where other possibilities might be true. I have a habit of using weasel words, as defined by wikipedia, in real life all the time whenever someone asks me about something when I can imagine one small exception case where my answer might not be true. “You should do this” “Maybe.” I’ve seen other internet assholes who are completely dogmatic, and I want to know the truth. Dogma and absolute conviction prevents one from growing. I know the limits of my knowledge, I want to own up to my mistakes. I try to take in new evidence and change my beliefs based upon them when it is reasonable, but I also try to defend believing in what I believe. These factors are somewhat contradictory, but I don’t think I’d be where I am if I didn’t have both of these things in my personality. I want to crush people, I want to prove I’m the best, but I also want to learn and grow stronger. Both of these drives are connected for me, and it applies to a lot of stuff I do. One takes aggression, the other requires humility. Sometimes I push it too far on the aggressive side, and I gotta work on it.
When I first started at street fighter, my training partner remarked that the way I played was super split, I’d switch between offense and defense like crazy, going for insane pressure one moment, then backing off and refusing to do anything but capitalize on each little mistake the next, and I’d switch the instant either one of those failed. Dunno how related that is, but it’s a funny story.
re: attitude. Well, what I was referring to was how you get all belligerent when it comes to arguing about games for which you’ve got very passionate opinions, but then you do things like apologizing to a fucking ANON on your blog, an anon who couldn’t muster more than a generic insult (though maybe that is why that person is an anon, because he isn’t capable of amounting to anything greater than subhuman chatter). In the past you’ve chided your readers about using insults and ad hominems, but the problem is that proving you’ve got a point is futile. No one will listen because no one WANTS to listen. Come on man, everyone knows the ultimate use of the internet is to confirm what you already believe! Really, though, there’s no use trying to convince people because the overwhelming majority don’t want to reason, they just want to confirm. Even in history, all ideologies and paradigm shifts even science) were communicated to the masses by demagogues (see: NdT or Dawkins for modern-day examples). But people don’t just want to confirm, they also want to follow. They want to feel like a part of something. I mean, look at how a worthless chump like clam has garnered a following. I mean, yeah, his following baically amounts to a few dozen losers from 4chan, but still. Look at the more popular game pundits. Why is DocSeuss popular in spite of being so wrong about so much? What about the various journalists or dudes like Blow/Fish or CliffyB? Insults are only ad hominem when that’s ALL you’ve got. Using them to compliment your arguments is fine, maybe even essential if you’re going to convince anyone of anything (or at least persuade them to follow a cause, if not convince them of reason). I mean, people are so quick to call you an autist for whatever, but you absolutely refuse to fire away at the concept of immersion. What does that prove? Nothing and your relative popularity reflects this. People appreciate a person whose willing to not just stand for his cause, but all fight and attack for it. Apologizing to anons is not part of that.
lol, you serious? Why are you asking me this anonymously, dude?
I think you’re just trolling at this point. They’re more popular than me because they’ve actively worked to expand their traffic by being on more popular platforms and linking their work elsewhere. I’m not trying at that and, as is typical of me, I’m not going to until I can put my best foot forward.
Think from the perspective of that anon: If I just attack him or dismiss him, what’ll he think? He’s going to dismiss me and that’s one less reader, one less chance for input, one less person. I want to know what his issue is, and attacking him won’t get to that. I want to play to win, not to validate my point. Winning means genuinely convincing people, which is a lot harder and more roundabout than merely proving my point. Winning means saying you’re sorry sometimes. It doesn’t look like winning, it doesn’t look like dominance, but it accomplishes things. It’s seeking power instead of the appearance of power.
Ok, my asks sounded kind of rant-y and demagogue-y, but you should get the point. Apologizing to idiots and being unwilling to add a bit of flair to your writing won’t help you in asserting your dominance and taking down frauds.
I’ll apologize all I want. If someone has a problem with my writing, if they think I’m coming off as an asshole, that’s at least partially my fault. Maybe they have a point, maybe I am being an asshole, but they can’t always vocalize that. It’s up to me to figure out how to make my writing work for people, and part of that is working with them even if they’re being a dick to me. I have a very small audience of people who actually like my stuff, then a small audience outside that of people who know of my stuff and reject it. And if their reason for rejecting it is my tone, is my presentation format, that can be fixed.
I’m not here to assert dominance, I’m not here to directly take down frauds (though frauds may be taken down indirectly). That’s not playing to win. That’s not how you actually convince people. I’ll take the submissive angle, I’ll learn from my mistakes, because I want to know the truth and I want to convince people. I know there’s a lot of opposition, I know my ideas and my personality aren’t popular.
The problem with demagogues is they lack the ability to convince people who are opposed to them, and to grow stronger from incorporating feedback. It’s shutting out a large portion of your potential audience if you simply reject people who reject you, as well as shutting out what may be legitimate ideas.
Becoming a stronger person in part means owning up to your faults and not being so willing to push forward that you’re blind to your mistakes. It means considering the other side’s opinions and second guessing your own positions.
That’s been a stumbling block for me as a person. It’s still something I’m not always consistent at, but it’s how I got to where I am. I’m not going to back down from that.
So stick with me, because I’m not going to budge on this issue.
Swapping out Aesthetic Themes
Since you usually say that the theme and story is superfluous in relation to the game, would you say that, while keeping all of the combat systems, we change the theme of the souls games to be, say, My little pony: friendship is magic themed, they would be just as good games?
I actually discussed a sort of joke mod for dark souls of this variety with friends recently, except I said it should be themed like modern warfare with them swinging long barreled guns instead of swords, and stabbing each other with glocks instead of daggers.
I also discussed making a game where the cutscenes were literally cuts of Citizen Kane, or where they would introduce completely nonsensical or contradictory plot points, like alluding to things the player had just done that had never happened, bringing up central elements of the plot that previously did not exist, providing information contradictory to the layout of levels or the events in the stage. Remark on the player’s use of a weapon (recording the actual weapons the player used and always choosing the wrong one, such as saying you used an axe if you used a sword).
I think it would be a cute message. It would show how the game’s narrative isn’t necessarily consistent with events as they play out.
As long as it is clear what the current game state is, and all the elements of the game are consistently and identifiably represented, it does not matter what those elements consist of. If you represent poison (the effect which drains your health slowly over time) consistently as electrical sparks in all of its instances, it doesn’t matter if you name the effect “fred” in-game, players will learn it and remember it (and probably just call it poison), much like they do with poison in every other game its been introduced in. A lot of games name common concepts weird things and are somewhat remembered for it. There’s a TVtropes page for that. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CallAHitPointASmeerp I still call any projectile in a 2d platformer game that moves in an upward arc an “Axe” after Castlevania.
When I first got into Brawl modding, I swapped out EVERYTHING, as many character textures and models as I could. I tried to have every character have at least one new thing to them, and tried to swap out every stage. I’ve done similar things in dark souls, oblivion, and skyrim. I don’t genuinely care.
At most I can say that using the MLP horse models in dark souls would look a bit awkward on the humanoid rigs. Otherwise, as long as everything is clear, it’s the same shit. Otherwise we might well have an existential crisis switching from higher to lower graphics modes and vice versa.
Have you actually watched Citizen Kane? For all you know its plot might perfectly fit a rhythm game.
I have seen Citizen Kane actually. I thought it was a good film, and it’s really obvious how it influenced the medium, even without a background in the topic. Of course I looked up its innovations afterwards, many are less obvious. I thought it would be funny to make a game, like a rhythm game, that blatantly had no relation to CK, but used CK’s footage as cutscenes. You could compare it to the Great Gatsby game someone made in flash. I think the “Citizen Kane of Games” to most people represents the breakout moment when a game will finally show everyone else how to tell stories using games that aren’t stilted and awkward, borrowing from film conventions, in the way that films borrowed from theater conventions originally. I think we’ve already discovered all the techniques for storytelling in games that we’re going to, what other means of conveying information in a game format are there? I think I’ve explained previously why I don’t think gameplay and story will ever be perfectly in sync.
Celia Alexis Wagar's CritPoints 