On Cynicism and Disillusionment Towards Gaming
Once or twice a year, mired in the repetitive, cynical profiteering rubbish that seems to constitute so very much of videogaming as a whole, I ask myself that question [why do we bother?]. Cast a relatively neutral eye over our industry - an eye like my aunt's - and it can be difficult to see why anyone takes us seriously. Games are pointless, meaningless and ridiculous; men shooting other men in virtual space in an enormous variety of ways; the eternal quest for the next meaningless shiny thing, or higher number; a sea of sheer, mindless drivel punctuated by the occasional example of something more worthwhile, so infrequent as to be irrelevant.
MacDonald goes on to explain this mindset typically passes once "the next exemplary title arrives to remind us why we love games in the first place," noting last year's Okami (PS2) from Clover Studio as one such game.
Being quite familiar with a constantly shifting view of gaming, I can certainly relate to MacDonald on this matter. For instance, I recently found my interest in gaming renewed thanks to High Impact Games' Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters (PSP), the technical prowess and playability of which led me to pick up a number of other top-notch PSP games I had overlooked.
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Once or twice a year, mired in the repetitive, cynical profiteering rubbish that seems to constitute so very much of videogaming as a whole, I ask myself that question [why do we bother?]. Cast a relatively neutral eye over our industry - an eye like my aunt's - and it can be difficult to see why anyone takes us seriously. Games are pointless, meaningless and ridiculous; men shooting other men in virtual space in an enormous variety of ways; the eternal quest for the next meaningless shiny thing, or higher number; a sea of sheer, mindless drivel punctuated by the occasional example of something more worthwhile, so infrequent as to be irrelevant.
What? I don't undestand a damn thing she said here. What a bloated, self-indulgent writing style - pure crap.-
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There is POV confusion between the first and second sentences. In the first the author is speaking about the problems she is seeing with the industry, but in the second I cannot figure out if she is still expanding on her views or views of a non-gamer like her aunt.
If it's from her aunt's, then it makes perfect sense tbh. -
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I kinda agree. Abuse of thesauri is a grave offense and can be obnoxious, but this woman does nothing of the sort.
You've had Remo here for, what? A year and a half now? He not only uses big words, but uses them comfortably. And Steve and Maarten are not retarded either. Jason Bergman is also quite erudite and I am not familiar with anyone else who's written for this site in the past.
It is high time you stop these pointless knee-jerk reactions to people with vocabularies. Not all people who talk in big words are full of hot air.
TL;DR: Sometimes I think you're a bunch of stupid assholes, but I tried to be patient and understanding in the long version above.-
To be fair, I thought her writing was a little over-complex in places. Not terribly, or enough to really detract from the article, but still a bit over-complex. That's saying something coming from me.
That said, I wasn't really satisfied with the way she ended the article. It really felt like she basically said "We should take games seriously because they're a new art form and, you know, we should take that seriously."
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It's not so much that she uses big words, but rather her sentences are way too long. Long sentences that are full of conjunctions and clauses tend to be hard to read. They also tend to sound pompous. Heck, the last sentence in the example paragraph had 52 words! It could easily be broken up in to at least 3 separate sentences.
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