Zero Punctuation

Hmm, okay.

I don't really see how he alluded to anything greater than "there will be more indie developers soon." Did anyone else get his point? He talked about the way things currently are, with industry alongside creativity, and then went into how things will be and said there's no reason that commercial and creative interests can't get along. Buh? So what changed?
 
I assume he is responding to a general indie-versus-corporate attitude thats pretty prevalent on the internet right now.
 
I disagree with Yahtzee on Bulletstorm. Just because People Can Fly made Painkiller play like Doom doesn't mean Builletstorm has to play like Doom, as well.

Notice how I didn't say "Doom too" ?
 
Again, not bad, but it wasn't really about female characters. Anything he said in there could just as easily be applied to male characters, too.

Except the fertility thing, but his ideas on how to exploit that are kind of crap if you think about them.
 
They never seem to go into a much detail as I would like, but because they run about 7 min they are limited. Send them an email if you think they could improve.

I love EC they really demonstrate the artistic potential and value of video games. As much as I like their videos these are more introductions to the topics they are covering. I'm sure a personal conversation would get a lot more interesting.

That being said they do do a great job on some topics (like story structure) but when it comes to sex, gender, or characters those topics are too complicated and deep to really explore the subject in 7 min.
 
Bad^Hat said:
Again, not bad, but it wasn't really about female characters. Anything he said in there could just as easily be applied to male characters, too.
Click to expand...

Exactly my thoughts as well. When the video started, I was expecting the argument to be "To make a good female character, you just make a good character." That should have been the main talking point. Also the discussion implies that female characters tend to be bad disproportionately to their male counterparts, which I also disagree with. Almost all male characters in almost all games are just as shitty as almost all female characters in almost all games.
 
They did make the point that to make a good female character you just need to make a good character. But what they were focusing on ideas on approaching female characters with specific regard to gender, gender roles, and how those inform upon the character and society. If they had just said "Make a good character" it would have been a cop-out because gender does have an effect on characters, and the EC guys made the point that the specifics of being Female have typically been treated very poorly by the gaming industry. They will probably release a "Male Character" episode at some point.

Just thinking about their idea for a game about Maternal Sacrifice gets me thinking. Imagine if Frictional made their next survival horror about a mother trying to save her children from something.... What if Daniel was a girl in Amnesia and had kids..... o_0

The did not have the time to go into very many specifics about pressures unique to female characters, but the laid the foundation to start a conversation it the topic. And that is what Extra Credits is about.

I'd love to have a conversation with these guys.
 
Here's what I'm taking issue with, right here:

E17O1.png


Except they're not. They could very well do an episode about fleshing out male characters, but I don't see how it would differ greatly. They specify at the start that certain characters are written well irrespective of their gender, and that's not what they wish to cover. So when it comes time to choose a female character who exemplifies this, who do they pick? ****ing Samus, only about the most gender neutral heroine in gaming history (before Other M). Spot on, guys.

Mostly though, they just talk about societal pressures while saying "female characters" and "women" a lot, as though to ignore the fact that this applies to men in much the same way. Of course, you could easily argue that societal pressures are more relevant to women if you're drawing upon topical themes, but as he pointed out it doesn't have to be topical if you're creating a fictional universe with a different social paradigm. This would be forgivable if they went into specifics at all, but the motherhood thing was an example of genetic differences, and like I said the example was pretty poor at reinforcing their point. A mother protecting her children in a war-torn country? Try to think about that from a gameplay perspective for a second. Thematically it's powerful, but making it work well in a game would have little to do with writing, which is what the lecture was meant to be about.

lord_raken said:
Just thinking about their idea for a game about Maternal Sacrifice gets me thinking. Imagine if Frictional made their next survival horror about a mother trying to save her children from something.... What if Daniel was a girl in Amnesia and had kids..... o_0
Click to expand...

What if indeed.

Hint: she'd still have amnesia. :p

Edit: Really not trying to take a giant shit on the video, honestly. Ignoring the female distinction (as they might as well have), it's a pretty decent primer on character development that many game writers/developers could do well to consider.
 
Does that mean that the game is good if you are well... gay?
 
I just finally beat Yakuza 1 earlier today, enjoyed it, gonna be trying to get through the three other games within a period of two weeks.

I only really got into the core gameplay of 1 though, i.e. I didn't bother with the dating hostesses stuff and such, couldn't really get into it, but I enjoyed the story, fighting and side-quests.
 
i was hoping for him to more thoroughly thrash it tbh =/

I HATED yakuza 3 with a damned vengeance! :flame:
 
AHA-Lambda said:
i was hoping for him to more thoroughly thrash it tbh =/

I HATED yakuza 3 with a damned vengeance! :flame:
Click to expand...
Why exactly? I mean, did you like the previous two titles and if so why didn't you like the third?
 
nah it was the only one i played, i'll just copypasta my rant from the rate games topic

Yakuza 3:

OK i haven't finished this yet but i've played most of it and i WILL finish it cos i am a stubborn fool in all honesty but anyway.....this is one of the worst games i have ever played in my life.

For me it defines why i can't stand jrpgs and why people criticise the japanese game industry in general. I got this game after hearing the positive word of mouth, interesting premise and it didn't seem to be an rpg at all and it isn't but it takes alot of jrpg traits into its design nonetheless and if i had known that i wouldn't have bothered.

The game is ****ing SLOW!!!! I have finished about 3/4 of the game and more than half of that i have been playing ****ing daddy day care at an orphanage that makes the pacing of the final RDR missions look like a hollywood action film!

I have:
set up play wrestling matches
solved the mysterious case of the missing pocket money
helped a kid with his girl trouble woes
got a kid to come home after running away
find a stray dog that was then taken in as the family pet
went shopping for dinner
and bloody more!!

and everything is wrapped in some sort of overly saccharine backdrop for it all and everything just reeks of some bloody japanese family drama than a damned game about yakuza.

Plus in a game where high quality produced cutscenes are abound the presence of text boxes is a cardinal sin! I also find random encounters to be a cardinal sin of game design aswell personally so that doesn't help things

The game does have some high points of its story but then again so did alpha protocol i still didn't like it =/

PS: for a game series praised for great writing it should not be so ham fisted in its exposition and I should not be able to guess some of the plot twists!! :flame::flame::flame:

1) a man who looks like your dead father appears and turns out to be his identical twin...but he's not his twin he's his younger brother but is still identical nonetheless O___o thats just lazy writing and even cloning a character comes off as more credible ffs

2) when the idea of a traitor is brought up i guessed who it was instantly cos of every other candidate is moustache twirlingly evil in a japanese way like a fat angry sumo wrestler and a japanese ray liotta knock off

3) it does that really stupid jrpg thing where the enemy you think is the big bad isn't the big bad and was just working with the real big bad and it come out of nowhere. There are 2 main antagonists in the game and out of nowhere and with no explanation its just stated that they are working together :|

Tho for all that there are some good points and where rikiya dies is probably the best part of the game and is actually really touching ;(

The actual gameplay of the game is just satisfying enough with some moves that have a good feel to them as you land each blow but it just turns to button mashing really in the end; bayonetta this is not but not that it had to be either :| Also an open world game like this should be more intuitive in its exploration, why on earth cant i use waypoints on the map? Why is everything always described as being on alleys or intersections of different boulevards and streets; just show me the damn place on the map!

**** this **** but i need to see how this crap will end unfortunately. If they took the best parts of this and just made it a movie it would be much better in all honesty. I need to play a good game

*looks at starcraft 2 icon on desktop* ;(

EDIT:

ok i've finished it now and i admit it ended on a highnote and it did have a good cliffhanger ending (none of that **** that passes for cliffhangers nowadays in mw2 and halo 2) but some of it still confused me:

1) its awfully convenient that the mystery bad guy was another bad guy already working with the cia but if he was with the cia he should have known about the plan to smoke his organisation out with the military base deal.

2) Mine was described as the traitor in the tojo clan but why was hamzaki not considered a traitor aswell? He did the same thing as mine independently from him but done the same thing!

EDIT 2:

scrap that after the credits its just resolved the cliffhanger killing the dramatic tension pretty much....sigh :|
good ending but they should have left it for yakuza 4 =/
Click to expand...
 
I can agree with a lot of what you've written there, especially since I am not a big JRPG fan myself.

I do however still think Yakuza 1 was a good game, sure it was fairly simplistic and such, but I still definitely enjoyed playing through and am looking forward to moving on to Yakuza 2 today.

P.S. I really really liked Alpha Protocol.:p
 
Portal 2.

Kind of agree with him, but not really in a negative way. I quite enjoyed the spectacle and (IMO) refined humour of #2.
 
I definitely agree that the #1 problem with Portal 1 was the fanbase. Stfu, it's just a bloody cake and cube.
 
Its kinda like how he LOVES the first silent hill (I think its the first) and so every other SH games just falls short.

He came out and said that if it were not for Portal 1 he'd be salivating for weeks over Portal 2.

But I expected more praise. I guess it was the shift from short and sweet puzzle game with a sadistic robot to full length story driven Valve title that has puzzles instead of bad guys to shoot.

I kinda think Portal 2 was an improvement, but I do agree that GLaDOS' humor wasn't quite as disturbingly dark as the first game.
 
It's funny, but it'll never live up to Portal 1 because it came first.
THE PUNCHLINE IS THAT IT'S ZERO PUNCTUATION THAT I'M ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT DERP
 
I can't say i disagree with him. I LOOOOOVVVED portal 2 but given the pedestal portal 1 is on for me its very small flaws shine far brighter now for me. Still bloody loved it mind, its very close to the first for me.
 
lord_raken said:
Its kinda like how he LOVES the first silent hill (I think its the first) and so every other SH games just falls short.
Click to expand...
Actually it's Silent Hill 2 he loves and general consensus is that is probably the best one.

Anyway, I think his complaint about it not being possible to live up to what Portal 1 was is complete and utter bollocks. Portal is not some sort of holy relic and it is not blasphemy to say that the sequel might be better (I certainly think is it).

His complaint about there being a lot more story is a valid if you just wanted it to be white rooms and humour (we had that already, it was called Portal, apparently it can never be as good as the first game because it won't be new any more but changing the formula is bad) but don't impose your taste on everyone. He says it's like a box of cherries in sawdust which would be a fair analogy if everyone disliked plot in their puzzle games as much as he does. Fair enough it might be like cherries in raspberry juice and you might hate raspberries, but lots of people like them.
 
ríomhaire said:
Actually it's Silent Hill 2 he loves and general consensus is that is probably the best one.

Anyway, I think his complaint about it not being possible to live up to what Portal 1 was is complete and utter bollocks. Portal is not some sort of holy relic and it is not blasphemy to say that the sequel might be better (I certainly think is it).

His complaint about there being a lot more story is a valid if you just wanted it to be white rooms and humour (we had that already, it was called Portal, apparently it can never be as good as the first game because it won't be new any more but changing the formula is bad) but don't impose your taste on everyone. He says it's like a box of cherries in sawdust which would be a fair analogy if everyone disliked plot in their puzzle games as much as he does. Fair enough it might be like cherries in raspberry juice and you might hate raspberries, but lots of people like them.
Click to expand...

I think you should email this to him. Well put. I agree.
 
His choices for reviews are all over the place.
 
Acepilotf14 said:
His choices for reviews are all over the place.
Click to expand...

Living for too long in a place like Australia tends to destabilize a person's psyche.

That's my explanation for his choices being all over the place, anyway.
 
Well there goes any hope of him doing a (legitimate) Brink review...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

MFL
Fascinating look at the ongoing psychological evolution of flat hieirarchies.
Replies
2
Views
2K
Tollbooth Willie
Tollbooth Willie
B
Marc Laidlaw releases Half-Life 2: Episode Three's plot
Replies
32
Views
39K
BabyHeadCrab
BabyHeadCrab
Omnomnick
Dota 2 Weekly Patch - 19/04/13: The Skywrath Mage
Replies
0
Views
6K
Omnomnick
Omnomnick
morgs
TTT Fanfic - The Island
Replies
8
Views
2K
Krynn72
Krynn72
Combine Hybrid
Zero Puntuation: Infamous
Replies
14
Views
1K
Dekstar
Dekstar
Back
Top