Three Steps to Success: Summary
July 6th, 2008
With these topics discussed it’s time for me to tease out some conclusions. Basically I wrote the past three articles to analyze what I see as our most significant issues holding our industry back from going to the next step. These are by no means guaranteed solutions but rather a few suggestions of my own that I think if adopted will do some good.
Implications with Classification of Hardcore and Casual
When using the terms hardcore and casual in reference to games we need to ensure that we recognize that they are just loose terms to roughly describe a set of games or players. Caution needs to be taken to not use them in a polarizing or overly definitive manner.
Fanboys and How to Deal With Them
The only way in which we can defeat fanboys is to embrace them and take on board their enthusiasm. Attempting to prove their interests invalid is unfair and not the kind of culture that we should be encouraging. Players should not feel pressured by others if they have a strong interest in a particular game, console, company or brand.
Game Reviews: Critique, Subjectivity and a 10 Point Scale
The checkbox way of analyzing games has to go, in favour of describing your personal reaction to the experiences within the game through critique. Subjectivity, much like fanboys should be embraced and we need to reform to a 10 point scale in order to alleviate ourselves of the petty arguments generated over a bloated grading system.
Implications with Classification of Hardcore and Casual
June 29th, 2008
Language is particularly interesting in that it is a vehicle for natural selection; language allows us to classify objects into groups. This simple convenience makes comprehending the environment we live in a much easier task. Unfortunately such a process is usually held in our subconscious and as such we are unaware of how dangerous it can be if we take control ourselves to simplify complex issues with this form of categorization. What this means is that every time we categorize something, (particularly new, foreign and/or complex) we run the risk of allowing this simple convenience to short sight crucial properties and implications as to what it is we are defining. Being in our subconscious, we don’t realize our own shortsightedness which turns simple, necessary categorization into flawed error.
This concept can be applied to language within our own sub-culture (video games). Several pieces of language fall victims to such short sightedness, simply put, we need a re-thinking of such vocabulary. But before I get to that lets take a step back and put this language under the microscope.
Read the rest of this entry »
Three Steps to Success: Introduction
June 27th, 2008
Several times already I have attempted to pull apart and logically analyze various issues of interest regarding the evolutionary growth of our medium (video games). In the majority of cases though this has resulted in some awkward, inconclusive answers. While many of my ideas come inspired from favourite bloggers of mine, I always seem to draw blanks when it comes to logically grounding my ideas.
After some further thought and collaborative thinking with others I finally think that I have it packed down. So I would like to put forth my ideas in a new “mini series” of posts, sorting out one issue after the other.
As I said in this post; I feel that the video game industry is currently moving through very prosperous times. Yet despite our success, more needs to be done to main and extend this golden age into the coming decades.
For us to become fully recognized and taken seriously by mainstream global media . To get there we don’t just need to change, we need to reform and remodel our opinions towards crucial themes and issues holding us back. This selection of posts intends to break down those issues and suggest some conclusions which we can adopt. Here is the list and order of posts:
Introduction
Implications with Classification of Hardcore and Casual
Fanboys and How to Deal With Them
Game Reviews: Critique, Subjectivity and a 10 Point Scale
Summary
Welcome to Daniel Primed, my self-titled games analysis blog and the online supplement to Adventures in Games Analysis.
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