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Pretentious is defined as "Making claim to or creating an appearance of (often undeserved) importance or distinction".
There is absolutely nothing wrong with games like Braid or Passage, but gamers that play them pull out the pretentious card when they start talking about how these games are "art" or that they are more important than they actually are. They teach us about "life"... that's pretentious garbage. Any game teaches us about life. MAG is a generic shooter and it "teaches" me about teamwork, leadership, working with people from other countries, cultures, and who speak different languages. ANY game can be important... it's all about perception. The thing is that people who play games like Braid or Passage seem to stake a claim that a game they like is more important than other games... that the lessons learned from a game like Passage are more important than the comraderie and the real-world ability to get along with other people in a game like SOCOM. That retro-influenced sprite artwork is somehow better than the artists who create the lifelike world in Call of Duty.
"pretentious" is when people think that something they like is more important than something someone else likes. It's a good word. You actually come across as pretentious when you start talking about CoD being a drug -grindy and fake and that there are people who provide games to us which the creator thinks is "improving the quality of our fucking lives". Yes, claiming any game is improving our lives IS pretentious. CoD simply makes no claim to this (though with the many friendships forged through online play, I'm sure that they could make such a claim).
Pretentious is not recognizing perspective. If people feel they've learned something by playing Passage - fine for them. If other people feel they've learned about themselves by the choices they make in Skyrim - fine for them. If a young boy learns how to get along with his brother and spends time with his sibling, and creates memories for a grown up future by playng Mario Cart - then good for him too. "Importance" is all relative.
You wrote a great blog... but yeah, I'd have to say that there is a faint odor of bullshit (or pretentiousness) here!
... but I still fapped for good writing and thought provoking content. :)
There is absolutely nothing wrong with games like Braid or Passage, but gamers that play them pull out the pretentious card when they start talking about how these games are "art" or that they are more important than they actually are. They teach us about "life"... that's pretentious garbage. Any game teaches us about life. MAG is a generic shooter and it "teaches" me about teamwork, leadership, working with people from other countries, cultures, and who speak different languages. ANY game can be important... it's all about perception. The thing is that people who play games like Braid or Passage seem to stake a claim that a game they like is more important than other games... that the lessons learned from a game like Passage are more important than the comraderie and the real-world ability to get along with other people in a game like SOCOM. That retro-influenced sprite artwork is somehow better than the artists who create the lifelike world in Call of Duty.
"pretentious" is when people think that something they like is more important than something someone else likes. It's a good word. You actually come across as pretentious when you start talking about CoD being a drug -grindy and fake and that there are people who provide games to us which the creator thinks is "improving the quality of our fucking lives". Yes, claiming any game is improving our lives IS pretentious. CoD simply makes no claim to this (though with the many friendships forged through online play, I'm sure that they could make such a claim).
Pretentious is not recognizing perspective. If people feel they've learned something by playing Passage - fine for them. If other people feel they've learned about themselves by the choices they make in Skyrim - fine for them. If a young boy learns how to get along with his brother and spends time with his sibling, and creates memories for a grown up future by playng Mario Cart - then good for him too. "Importance" is all relative.
You wrote a great blog... but yeah, I'd have to say that there is a faint odor of bullshit (or pretentiousness) here!
... but I still fapped for good writing and thought provoking content. :)
@Elsa Thank you for the honest comment and for the fap :). Yeah I was a bit afriad of seeming pretentious and it seems like I wasn't able to get around that. In total I feel like I failed to express myself properly, which is very frustrating, but hopefully I will become a better blogger in the future.
But to come back to your comment, yeah I wasn't sure what pretentious means and there are two reasons for that, first, I'm foreigner, second, I just read a lot of comments like "ohh this dude is pretentious" when there was an article about Jon Blow or something like that, thus I drawed the conclusion that pretentious in regard to video games any game that is in a way meaningful.
I like your definition, but it makes it seem like that it's actually nothing negative. I mean, I think that it's actually very noble to make a game with the goal to improve people's lives and in a positive way I think it's even cute. But yeah it's a matter of perspective... but also I would like to say that I wrote that they're TRYING to give us "food". I should have pointed that out more clearly.
And yeah to an extend what you say about CoD is true. You can really find friends and work in a team etc. But I still fully believe that CoD is a fakey grindy thing. There ar better places to find friends, I think, but yeah what you say is not incorrect, I guess I have to accept the faint odor of bullshit of my writing :D.
Again I like to point out that I think that I don't have succesfully expressed myself here! I'm not sure what to do, maybe a video could illustrate my points better, or I should try to improve my writing...
Anyway I have to think about this a bit more, thank you for the comment!
But to come back to your comment, yeah I wasn't sure what pretentious means and there are two reasons for that, first, I'm foreigner, second, I just read a lot of comments like "ohh this dude is pretentious" when there was an article about Jon Blow or something like that, thus I drawed the conclusion that pretentious in regard to video games any game that is in a way meaningful.
I like your definition, but it makes it seem like that it's actually nothing negative. I mean, I think that it's actually very noble to make a game with the goal to improve people's lives and in a positive way I think it's even cute. But yeah it's a matter of perspective... but also I would like to say that I wrote that they're TRYING to give us "food". I should have pointed that out more clearly.
And yeah to an extend what you say about CoD is true. You can really find friends and work in a team etc. But I still fully believe that CoD is a fakey grindy thing. There ar better places to find friends, I think, but yeah what you say is not incorrect, I guess I have to accept the faint odor of bullshit of my writing :D.
Again I like to point out that I think that I don't have succesfully expressed myself here! I'm not sure what to do, maybe a video could illustrate my points better, or I should try to improve my writing...
Anyway I have to think about this a bit more, thank you for the comment!
This is turning into an interesting discussion... but I think your blog might have been better if you hadn't compared these games to other games (like CoD). When people start putting down another game, it often detracts from the message. If games like Passage and Braid are good, then they should be good without any comparisons to other games. The minute comparisons are made, pretention seems to arise because inevitably it comes out as "my games are better". The minute that pretentiousness arises (a judgement of important) then it circles back to perspective.
The biggest question I would ask would be WHY do you consider Braid or Passage to be a good game - but without comparing them to other games. That's probably harder to do than it sounds. :)
The biggest question I would ask would be WHY do you consider Braid or Passage to be a good game - but without comparing them to other games. That's probably harder to do than it sounds. :)
Well, I think you're right. I shouldn't have made these comparisements, but I wanted to give examples for games that I think are food and for games that I think are drugs. It might sound dramatic but I'm quite serious here.
Hmm why I consider Braid or Passage to be a good game. Excellent question, and without comparing them to other games, again you're right I shouldn't have done this, but again I feel like that they're games out there that are bad, but I should have made seperate blog posts about the "drug" kind of games and the "food" kind of games, without comparing anyone of them directly. That would have been better, that is true.
I think I can answer this question in this comment, I like Braid and Passage alot, because I feel a sense of awe when playing these games and for me they are very exciting, they go into a direction that I think is immensely interesting and important. Also I love how much Jon Blow and Jason Rohrer care about their work and thus how much they care about the players. So that's why I love these games in a nutshell, I could write a lot more and perhabs I will.
Thank you ver very much I believe you just improved my blogging by explaining to me what pretentious means and how to avoid it :D. Thank you!
Hmm why I consider Braid or Passage to be a good game. Excellent question, and without comparing them to other games, again you're right I shouldn't have done this, but again I feel like that they're games out there that are bad, but I should have made seperate blog posts about the "drug" kind of games and the "food" kind of games, without comparing anyone of them directly. That would have been better, that is true.
I think I can answer this question in this comment, I like Braid and Passage alot, because I feel a sense of awe when playing these games and for me they are very exciting, they go into a direction that I think is immensely interesting and important. Also I love how much Jon Blow and Jason Rohrer care about their work and thus how much they care about the players. So that's why I love these games in a nutshell, I could write a lot more and perhabs I will.
Thank you ver very much I believe you just improved my blogging by explaining to me what pretentious means and how to avoid it :D. Thank you!
Sorry for doublepost, but I've got a little question. Isn't direct comparisement and critique sometimes necessary?
... I think in some ways it's just lazy rather than necessary... and again, when comparisons arise it inevitably boils down to "my preference is better than yours" which just detracts from the intent.
It IS hard to discuss a game without making comparisons, but if comparisons or references are made, it seems lazy to simply say the usual things like "mindless shooter" or open world game with no meaningful story. If comparisons are made, possibly they should be of a more positive nature that don't evoke the defensive posture that most people immediately take when a game they happen to like is attacked, and let's be real... every game will have it's fans even if it's a game we personally detest, there will be someone out there who adores it! By trying to use positive references instead of negative, possibly the message about the games would be more relevant.
Meh... I don't know, but I do know that I've yet to see a compelling argument to play Passage. Talking about how it isn't CoD actually hurts the argument because I DID feel a sense of awe when playing the original Modern Warfare single player game. There is a portion of the game where you play as a sniper and you're told by the AI in the game to face down in the dirt. If you look up... because that's natural for a gamer, you get spotted and shot. It was HARD to look down into the dirt and to listen to the enemy walking past. It wasn't natural for a gamer and I thought that the devs did an excellent job of playing with how gamers think. They penalized us for thinking it was a game and we didn't actually have to follow the direction to look down.
The death scene was also awe inspiring, and again because it played with gamer's perceptions of what a game is. Your helicopter crashes and you can slowly move your character forward in a crawl... you assume that like many shooter games, you'll gradually recover and soon be running through the town shooting bad guys... but no, the screen fades to black and your character is listed simply as KIA. Killed in action - you died. It was surprising, shocking - very ungamelike - and yet it was a subtle reminder that in real war, people do die.
Again... it's all about perception. Making negative game comparisons sidetracks a discussion on why a game is good... moments from the game should speak to other gamers. I hope at some point to read something about why I should play Passage, but so far I've not been swayed by arguments about what the game isn't.
I babbled didn't I? Still... I'm enjoying this discussion.
It IS hard to discuss a game without making comparisons, but if comparisons or references are made, it seems lazy to simply say the usual things like "mindless shooter" or open world game with no meaningful story. If comparisons are made, possibly they should be of a more positive nature that don't evoke the defensive posture that most people immediately take when a game they happen to like is attacked, and let's be real... every game will have it's fans even if it's a game we personally detest, there will be someone out there who adores it! By trying to use positive references instead of negative, possibly the message about the games would be more relevant.
Meh... I don't know, but I do know that I've yet to see a compelling argument to play Passage. Talking about how it isn't CoD actually hurts the argument because I DID feel a sense of awe when playing the original Modern Warfare single player game. There is a portion of the game where you play as a sniper and you're told by the AI in the game to face down in the dirt. If you look up... because that's natural for a gamer, you get spotted and shot. It was HARD to look down into the dirt and to listen to the enemy walking past. It wasn't natural for a gamer and I thought that the devs did an excellent job of playing with how gamers think. They penalized us for thinking it was a game and we didn't actually have to follow the direction to look down.
The death scene was also awe inspiring, and again because it played with gamer's perceptions of what a game is. Your helicopter crashes and you can slowly move your character forward in a crawl... you assume that like many shooter games, you'll gradually recover and soon be running through the town shooting bad guys... but no, the screen fades to black and your character is listed simply as KIA. Killed in action - you died. It was surprising, shocking - very ungamelike - and yet it was a subtle reminder that in real war, people do die.
Again... it's all about perception. Making negative game comparisons sidetracks a discussion on why a game is good... moments from the game should speak to other gamers. I hope at some point to read something about why I should play Passage, but so far I've not been swayed by arguments about what the game isn't.
I babbled didn't I? Still... I'm enjoying this discussion.
Hm yes you could be right, it is sort of lazy to just point at a game and say : "This game is bad, Game X is way better because of reason Y" etc. But what if there is a game with really cheap and bad design practices, and if you strip it down to its core, it will become very uninteresting very quickly. I think there are some games that are so questionable in their design that players have to be aware of that, I think. And criticising a game while staying positive is I guess pretty hard, but perhabs not impossible.
Well, I already mentioned that you don't have to like any of Rohrer's games. He knows himself that Passage is just an abstract little experiment. He also admited that he sort of failed, because a lot of people where just walking to the left for 5 minutes without realising that you are able to walk down and so on. I think just in general what he is trying to do is very interesting and I'm gald that we have someone like him. I especially like his talk called "Beyond Singleplayer" that you can watch on vimeo, there he makes some very interesting points about singleplayer games, multiplayer games, games struggeling with cultural acceptance etc. He asks the question wether video games potential is actually to be found in the multiplayer instead of the singleplayer. This guy just does some pretty interesting stuff, but I can see why some people don't like his stuff.
I can agree with you on CoD, the singleplayer of mw1 hase some very unusual and interesting scenes in it (I love the level that takes place in tschernobyl).
When I was criticising the game, I was actually refering to the multiplayer, you know with the leveling up system and so on. I think that this is pretty bad. I can't say much about the singleplayer experiences of the other CoD (blops, mw 2 etc.) because I haven't played them, but I assume that the multiplayer is pretty much the same. For me the multiplayer in CoD is just pointless and sort of empty, I should have clarified that I was refering to the multiplayer, the singleplayer is a topic of it's own.
Well I hope I was able to give you an argument to play Passage, if that convincing let me know.
No I don't think you're babbling and yes this discussion is interesting.
Well, I already mentioned that you don't have to like any of Rohrer's games. He knows himself that Passage is just an abstract little experiment. He also admited that he sort of failed, because a lot of people where just walking to the left for 5 minutes without realising that you are able to walk down and so on. I think just in general what he is trying to do is very interesting and I'm gald that we have someone like him. I especially like his talk called "Beyond Singleplayer" that you can watch on vimeo, there he makes some very interesting points about singleplayer games, multiplayer games, games struggeling with cultural acceptance etc. He asks the question wether video games potential is actually to be found in the multiplayer instead of the singleplayer. This guy just does some pretty interesting stuff, but I can see why some people don't like his stuff.
I can agree with you on CoD, the singleplayer of mw1 hase some very unusual and interesting scenes in it (I love the level that takes place in tschernobyl).
When I was criticising the game, I was actually refering to the multiplayer, you know with the leveling up system and so on. I think that this is pretty bad. I can't say much about the singleplayer experiences of the other CoD (blops, mw 2 etc.) because I haven't played them, but I assume that the multiplayer is pretty much the same. For me the multiplayer in CoD is just pointless and sort of empty, I should have clarified that I was refering to the multiplayer, the singleplayer is a topic of it's own.
Well I hope I was able to give you an argument to play Passage, if that convincing let me know.
No I don't think you're babbling and yes this discussion is interesting.
