Sunday, July 11, 2010

"Original Gamer" SGC interview

So... it's taking some time to organize stuff for a "me at SGC video, so for now here's an interview that got done there - spur of the moment - of yours truly by OriginalGamer.com:


http://original-gamer.com/index.php?action=article&id=1505

27 comments:

Twinmill said...

-Wait-
*rewinds and rewatches*
You [i]like[/i] the rise your audience gives you when you bash certain first person shooters?

And maybe it was contextual, but you like hatemail?

I don't know. I don't read the comments on screwattack and whatever other places there are, but the ones on your blog are usually really insightful. Sure. We're pissed when we write them, but we offer facts at least, and some really, really strong points that have gotten me to change my views even. Then again, the last video has... 80 comments. Which. In my opinion. Is a good thing.

Unknown said...

To respond to something tangential:

If profession wrestling isn't a performance art, what is it? However pissed off theater departments might be (and as an acting student of some kind, I can't comprehend that), it possibly outdo the level of contempt actual wrestlers express if you so much as mention "professional wrestling" as their sport.

Smashmatt202 said...

Personally, I don't like controversy or arguments, or debates...

But I love you're videos, and I love the points you make.

Awesome interview, I like getting to know more about you.

awwnuts07 said...

Cool interview.

counterpoint said...

always good to hear from you, outside of an episode. been following you since around... episode 6 or so, so its nice to have seen you turn into an internet celebrity....

REPTILE 0009 said...

Look Bob, how many times do I have to tell you, first person shooter games are not that generic and bland as you claim? You know, Mario games can be just as generic as first person shooters. The first reason is that they RECYCLE THE SAME STORYLINE IN EVERY GAME IN THE MAIN SERIES!!!!! In fact the guys at Nintendo don't even attempt, they don't even attempt to provide a good story. At least FPS developers try to give a good story(even if they don't always do a good job). Also, all the Mario games all share the same mechanic, you move correctly, do not die. Most high quality FPS games are distinguishable from each other. For example Modern Warfare 2 is a fast-paced run and gun shooter set in the real world. Killzone 2 is a slower paced tactical sci-fi shooter, were taking cover is essential and one false move can get you killed. Halo 3, falls somewhere in the middle. Also there are a lot of shooters that don't use the color brown that much(or don't use it at all). Bioshock, Halo 3, Half-Life 2, Modern Warfare 2, Perfect Dark Zero, Turok, Jurassic: The Hunted, and Battlefield Bad Company 2. As for the characters, Mario games aren't much different. Mario(even though he is the most famous video game character ever) is probably the BLANDEST CHARACTER EVER IN VIDEO GAMES. Even Master Chief has more personality than Mario.
Also, you claim that shooters spawned online douchebags. First off, that is only a very SMALL portion of hardcore gamers. Most of us aren't douchebags. I play regularly on Xbox Live, and I don't encounter that many douchebags. Yet you act like EVERYBODY on Xbox Live is a douchebag. You also say that shooters started the focus on online multiplayer being the primary mode. Well, you apparently don't know that shooters are best played with multiple people. The campaign is usually to train you for the multiplayer. But don't get me wrong, I think everyone would like longer campaigns in shooters. Also, you and I both know, that if Nintendo made the same game as Halo, but replace the Halo characters with Mario characters, we know that you would have been all over it, and loved it, and said it was one of the best games ever made. Come on, you and I both know its true. In conclusion, I really don't like it when you take every chance you get to bash on my favorite genre of video games. How'd you like it if I started bashing on Mario games. Oh yeah, I'll go there, it wouldn't be hard. Could you at least stop bashing on first person shooters, or admit that you're wrong about shooters. Please Respond.

fox said...

Reptile,

Why do you keep watching Bob, if you hate his opinions that much? I mean, the guy is entitled to his point of view on things, he is not making anyone watch his videos. Are you pissed because he is now a nerd celebrity while bashing on fps's (something which I just don't see him doing as much as people say he does, btw)?

Disagreeing, discussing and, in a lesser manner, flaming him for his views is more or less ok. Flat out asking him to change them is not. If you don't like them, go... I dunno, watch reviews on Modern Warfare or something.

And the whole thing about he being biased towards Mario as proof of his narrow mind is completely off base. Bob said several times that his love for Mario is more or less a case of conscious fanboyism, largely associated with nostalgia factor and nice memories of his youth. He never claimed that Mario games are objectvely better then every other game, he couldn't do that and expect to be taken seriously: comparing games is not an exact science unless they are obviously similar. Bob only ever said that Mario games (and Nintendo in general) represent something that he sees as precious and rare in the current state of the gaming industry. I fail to see how that is a blunt worship of the Nintendo God and a Cruzade against the fps's infidels, really.

If Bob has any talent, it's his ability to put his thoughs in a very precise way. He hardly ever says something vague, he hardly ever gives you space to reinterpret his sentences.

I have an easier time agreeing with you on the whole "online douchbags thing". I do think The Game Overthinker has made some extremely insensitive, overly harsh and prejudicial statements concerning certain gamers. I do think that, for a men who takes pride in being "mildly mannered" and talking beautifully, that's a big fault. I do think that he considers himself some kind of behavioral role model for nerds and gamers alike. And I do think that, in this regard, Bob should be considered self important and pedantic.

But I do NOT think anyone has the right to DEMAND that he changes the way he thinks and talks. If you don't like the videos, do as I do and stop watching them for a while.

REPTILE 0009 said...

Caio
I'm sure that Bob demanded that hardcore gamers change their ways and stop bashing casual gamers, several times in fact. He judges first person shooters just as harshly as he claims hardcore gamers judged kinect, or casual gamers. Yeah and you know, I grew up playing shooters. So I don't like it when Bob bashes my childhood memories. Also,the guy dresses as Mario for Halloween!!! If that doesn't make him a fan-boy of Mario, I don't what will. I have a problem with Bob saying that all shooters are brown. Thats simply not true. Please refer to my list of shooters that rarely use the color brown. In conclusion Bob had demanded hardcore gamers to change their opinions, just as I demanded he change his opinion.

Raenir Salazar said...

Someone has to offer a constructively critical opinion sometimes, Bob makes great videos but it is getting disconcerting how far hes willing to go to bash certain FPS games because apparantly it gets people pissed off...

So okay, I think the argument is he wants more creative FPS's, Portal, Deus Ex, Bioshock, etc and is tired of Modern Warfare etc and other generic WWII shooters.

However...

Raenir Salazar said...

Oh and yeah, Ebert didn't actually admit he was wrong, he said more or less "I still think I was right but it was wrong of me to bring it up" that is petulance and condenscending, not humbly retracting his opinion.

Unknown said...

I'm not ashamed. I STILL like Dragonball Z! When I watch any other drawn-out Shounen fighting anime I always get a sense of, "I might as well be watching Dragonball Z."

Twinmill said...

Reptile, I agree with you all the way, but it's almost pointless to ask Bob for a response. I'd hate to say that, but this quote says it for me: "FPS stuff comes up... because it gets a rise out of people." --Bob.

Basically, we've been trolled, lol. Now, yeah, I think his views are alittle wack, and if anything, I think Yahtzee has a much better perspective on things, probably because he's just bitter all around unless a game does what it's trying to do well. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed what I played from Super Mario Galaxy, but after that, I went back to something I found much more fun. For me. I didn't go "oh this game sucks when a free game's more enjoyable." And I won't claim Battlefield BC2 to be the most compelling game out there just because the characters in it are fun, and funny. Which nullifies pretty much everything Bob said about first person shooters having flat characters. Sargent Johnson isn't Cloud from Final Fantasy, but maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it's nice to keep in mind that not everything is an angsty serious deathmarch, and it took a black Gunny to show the audience that while avoiding a lawsuit.

Bob,
you might not take this seriously, and you may just be trolling when harping on FPS', which is fine, but the reason people react in such a volatile fashion when you do so is simply because the majority of the gaming median, and therefore, the majority of your fanbase takes serious offense after extended bashings, and here's my trolling, that have the same creativity that goes into a new Mario game, of first person shooters.

You have a good thought process, and your videos have bucketloads of good insight, but it's hitting a point where the fanboyism and rudeness is not only taking away from the quality of your videos (it used to add to the quality for the first few times lol), but is threatening to outweigh, for most of us, me included, the reasons we have to even watch your videos.

REPTILE 0009 said...

The thing that annoys me about Bob, is that he always harshly judges hardcore gamers, and the games they play. I know some very nice people(including myself) who are hardcore gamers and play regularly on Xbox Live, and yet Bob constantly says that everyone who plays on Xbox Live is a douchebag. Also I do agree that the same of amount of creativity goes into new Mario games as new first person shooters. Yet what makes Mario games any better? I also feel that he is wrong when he says all shooters are brown. I know alot of shooters that use a WIDE variety of colors. Examples include Battlefield Bad Company 2, Halo 3, Modern Warfare 2, Bioshock, and Half-Life 2.

Twinmill said...

I was actually saying that his creativity in his insults was actually equivelent to that of the Mario games, which though was largely sarcastic, was partially true: it may have been inventive at the start, but, with few exception, little has changed since then meaning it's becoming gear grindingly frustrating to sit through.

Though...
I totally agree that Mario isn't more inventive than most FPS'. You could nark those games for using brown too much, but that means I have equal ground in narking Mario for using high contrasting colors too much. If they wanted to spice things up, maybe they should try adding alittle 'brown' to the next Super Mario. God knows it'll be as rediculous as the next Gears in Mario-scheme. Not because high contrast is worse than brown, they're both as bad, but because Gears was meant to be brown and Mario was meant to be seizuretastic, and not in a Touhou-way. Seriously though. While a first person shooter with pretty and unintrusive colors might help the genre, a platformer that's unafraid to take itself seriously might too. What's that I hear? Some already have? The same can be said for FPS' too. I really think gameplay mechanics would help the next generation games much more than a change in graphics style anyway.

REPTILE 0009 said...

I do think that Mario games and side scrollers in general, are pretty generic once you think about it. The Mega Man games, for example are essentially the same game aside from the levels. Also, how many shitty Mario games have been made? Quite alot. At least there's never been a shitty Halo, Call of Duty, or Battlefield game.

REPTILE 0009 said...

Also, about your complaints about how games use all the buttons on the controller. Well I'm here to inform you that in Gears of War 3, there is a new "Beast Mode", where you can play as various Locust monsters. And some of them use very FEW buttons. Tickers use ONE button(well, technically two, but they both do the same thing). Wretches use TWO buttons. In other words, their controls are simple enough to map to a fucking NES controller!!!

Mr. R said...

Spot on, Bob. God, I just re-watched the "Mississippi Pwning" vid on youtube and while many of the responses were pretty good pieces of analysis or self-reflection. I did notice what you mentioned re: the whole knee-jerk "I'm not racist!!! YOU’RE THE RACISTS!!! LIBERAL PUSSY! blah blah"

See, I dunno if this is in fact K.K.K. level racism but it definitely is insensitive, trite and hackneyed. People who are proclaiming, "White people today don't see minorities in different terms" (youtube) are either lying or are so inundated with an underlying upbringing with race being an undertone that they don't even know they are being racist. Race isn't so much left out of education or upbringing because we have "Come so far", it's because it is an overall bad spot on America's invincible historical persona and a lot of people don't want to admit these thigs got so bad. In your vid on comics code authority, there actually was a comic that tried to follow the tentants of the code but it got rejected because it had a black protagonist!


I live and teach in Philadelphia and I have a predominantly African American class roster. When we talk about race in America, THEY certainly see how their skin color dictates different responses from those of white skin tone. One student even asked me, "why are white people scared of us? every time I'm going somewhere white people get all quiet and try to get away from me." This is a 15 year old kid too. This "we dealt with civil rights in the 60's so GET OVER IT" argument, I find, I usually propagated by conservative whites who would love to push a controversial issue regarding people other than them into the past. "God, we had a women's,gay, *insert topic* rights movement, get over it feminists!" The mentality being, Obama got elected, or one rich black man was able to achieve the presidential office (meanwhile in the face of racist opposition calling him everything from communist to Hitler to sambo...cough cough Palin)so therefore blacks no longer have a right to say things aren't good for them anymore. I'm not for forced multiculturalism (which in an of itself, an agenda to broaden consumer markets to non-whites by making them act white while throwin a black or Asian person into an ad campaign...notice it's usually a group of 3-4 whites with maybe one or two token characters put into the mix) but there certainly needs to be a true look inside what it means to draw up perameters for hero and villain. This parallels the whole "Black Hawk Down" mentality that depicted the entire nation of Somalia as drug-addicted, savage, maniacs. Who would ever view a continent plagued with disease and hardships in a sympathetic light when our media centers generalize the entire place as evil and animal-like?

RE5, if not insultingly racist by actualizing the "spear-chucker" portrait of a poor African, (which I think it is) is absolutely drawing a picture of paternalism... the white western authority figure to come in and police the dark continent. The automaton, monosyllabic children need the white paternal figure to step in and make things right, yet again...Rudyard Kipling would be proud.

Mr. R said...

@ Reptile -
Coming as a somewhat FPS fan:
Master Chief is the poor man's Boba Fett.
FPS games have no story and the ones that attempt it are laughable shit that are recycled from 20+ year old sci-fi novels.
Bob doesn't mean literal brown, just boring earth tone, repetitiveness, like some washed out "realistic" and "serious" color pallate.
Everyone on xlive is a doushebag. I ended my account because of it. Whether it was "Homo this, N-that, singing, screaming." It was horrible.
FPS fans are the the genre specific equivalent to console fanboys. No where else do you find this kind of adamant loyalty. I never see people on the soapbox about RTS, Adventure or sports gaming, yet as sure as PS3 owners will reaffirm their undending inferiority complex, Halo, COD and Gears fans will be the first to cry when someone calls their genre dare-i-say-it unoriginal. Gears is groundbreaking? No, man. SPLATTERHOUSE was groundbreaking! :)

toosoo said...

I dont like many first person shooters and its mostly for the reason he says he doesnt like them.Its because i want to be the characters intuition and not the character themselves in my case its easier for me to get into a game when the character i am has a little personality of their own like raz in psychonauts or ammy in okami or travis touchdown in no more heros i dont want to be me when i play a videogame i want to be someone else and you got to admit that there are way to many first person shooters compared to nice third person games i mean ido have some exceptions i love half-life that game is awsome but then again im not me im gordon freeman a physicist who was in a catastropic science experiment that cause aliens to be teleported to earth or in left 4 dead im a francis,zoey,or one of the other characters and i have to survive zombies attacking me in every direction i am not me and thats how i like my videogames the reason he says everythings brown is that hes not talking about the good games(least not most of them) hes talking about the bad ones or the over rated halo games(their not the best thing since sliced bread but they arnt bad either)but fps games to the point where some developers are tired of them heck i rember hearing one developer has complain "you dont want to know how many games ive been told to go make a shooter" theres a guy on youtube named kirithem(daniel floyd) who talks about this in his first video called "videogames and storytelling" which has the full qute and he has a pretty intresting view on videogames

Twinmill said...

My god, it's almost useless trying to defend shooters at this point. I'll be the first to admit that the whole America vs Russia or Taliban does get old. Not all FPS' are like that, however. We get that. At least I sure hope we do. And while I sure wish developers focused on story just alittle bit more, I know the reason why I buy such games: the gameplay.

My point is, you can't just ignorantly say that the first person shooters these days that do concentrate on story simply steal it from somewhere in culture and that it's so wrong that they do. Oh, they do, but not more than anyone else. Do you honestly, and I mean honestly think that Heinlein made up the entire story, premise, and every little bit of detail in Starship Troopers when he wrote it? No. I'm not saying he stood there piecing together a Frankenstein of other scifi novels at the time. I'm saying that unless he grew up in a cave, away from society, his novel's not original. Though, it's definitely more original than the modern vampire-fics. Or not. In the '40s-'50s, there was this huge alien freakout due to constant UFO sightings that sent America's public into a mass obsession with flying saucers and the end of the world.

See, a teacher of mine said something I'll never forget-- he preaches it, in fact. I don't like it, and I wish it wasn't true, but: "good writers steal."
...Consciously or not.

Mr. R said...

@Twinmill

Starship Troopers came right to my mind too! haha.
See, but what he did was created a pretty deep piece of work touching on cultural differences, military romanticism, etc.
It seems AAA games (Not made by Valve) seem to have the game idea made already and they are like "shit, what about the story? Eh, just throw some StarShip Trooperey in"


I was just screwin around too. I enjoy a shooter but I just get sick of how stock it gets. (moreso than it seems any other medium) For every Half Life, there is 20 Fall of Libertys. Whereas those have strangled the market so much that there really can't be a flood of playformers, rpg's etc so when they actually get green lighted they tend to have a bit more originality or polish to them.

I just am really getting a major chip against Modern Warfare, Halo, Gears crowds just in the repetitiveness, the hype and the caliber of assholes I know who play it and dub themselves hardcore gamers. You could spend 100+ hours on FFIII but nope, some dick who cheaply "pwns noobz" is gonna tell me how much more of a gamer he is... I don't really give a shit but the very fact that they are putting me in a forum where I have to defend something so stupid is what really pisses me off.

Meanwhile if you follow this shit conspiring behind the underhandedness between Activision and Infinity Ward or that shithead from Epic games heckling an idie dev while he was giving a talk this week? This type of "fuck anyone who isn't or doesn't make macho bullshit games like us" mentality is what truly is hurting the market. Jack Thompson will always be on the outside bitching about something, but the fact that there truly are anti-gamers who stand against everything that built gaming to where it is, within the developers ranks who all talk, think and act like David Jaffe who wants every game to have tits, bloods and dudes chopping of a head or a set of hands shooting interchangable Aliens/Nazis/Monsters. I know Kratos breaks my topic but I'll save the problems I have with his male desctructo/mastubatory fantasies he realizes for another day or maybe my own blog.

REPTILE 0009 said...

Oh yeah, well platform games are just as generic as fps's. For every Super Mario Bros there's about a hundred bland "clones" of it. I swear to god, I'm sick of Bob constantly blaming first person shooters for everything that is wrong with the world, and then turning around and kissing Mario's ass for the hundredth time.

REPTILE 0009 said...

Killzone 3, and Gears of War 3, seem to be trying to fix the problems that Bob constantly bitches about on fps games. The developers of Killzone 3 actually hired an external writer to focus on writing the story. And Gears of War 3 has not one, but TWO playable female protagonists. And they aren't sexually exploitive? For a videogame this is HUGE advanced.

Twinmill said...

Mr. R, I respect your opinions and personally, you alot more for backing them up.

While I still disagree that the stories in shooters are bland, I've only played a few of them, the most colorful of which being Battlefield... story wise that is. S4League still takes the cake for being the most seizure inducing, and it also has the most elitism. I will say that I see another genre of games to be, with the awesome exceptions of course, just as bland as shooters. RPGs. Not just any RPGs: MuMORPuGers. MMOs suffer from the same issue shooters do with most people methinks: Sure, the backstory could stretch ten novels, but it doesn't matter if the base premise is the same, boring fantasy without something outrageously different to separate it from the other 200 or so games in the pack.

The other two topics, I really can't argue against. I don't have an Xbox live, and while I've seen and heard nasty stuff on there... well, I'll leave it at that: I've seen it, but haven't experienced it. I can't argue with the stuff going on on the inside either-- I knew about Activision-Infinity ward, but just brushed it off as Activision's common evil. I will say that Kratos, and his series in general shouldn't be harped on that much either. I don't think the problem is having *some* violent, extremely masculine AAA titles here and there... the problem starts when everyone copies them. It's starting to get past that point however, and excessively violent games are starting to see a significant decline in popularity... even if shooters still sell extremely well, the knockoffs sure don't and that's what matters. What I'm starting to fear is that the industry is getting the wrong message and we'll see almost no AAA titles like Gears anymore. It probably sounds great on paper, but with the next trend, they'll be the games you get flamed for defending... god knows it already is happening in some places. Then again, that's the nature of trends.

And with that being said... I honestly don't think I'm that much of a core gamer anymore. Maybe a couple years ago when I'd easily put 16 hour days into WoW. But now? No... I'm lucky if I make it past the two hour mark before I either take a break or ragequit.

Anyway, it's 4 AM and this post is too long to proofread.

REPTILE 0009 said...

I do agree with The WebcomiCritic that the Overthinker harshly judges hardcore gamers, and the games they play. i'm sick of him constantly stating that all shooters are the same. Sure they share alot in common, so do platformers, RPG's, racing games, fighting games, and RTS's, the games in their genres have alot in common. And just because we are hardcore gamers, doesn't mean we consider stylization to be gay. Team Fortress 2 is stylized, and yet alot of hardcore gamers like to play it.

REPTILE 0009 said...

I'm pretty sure that Halo Reach WILL be the game of the year for 2010. Halo Reach has Forge World. Forge World IS Reach's ultimate trump card. If you don't believe me, then go this link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N1Yo0hjXh8

Johnny Niska said...

I'm pretty sure I so far haven't seen bob say that ALL shooters are the same, or that EVERYONE who uses xbl is an asshole, just that a lot of them are.

Also, I love how you guys seem to define "military shooters" as "games hardcores play".

I'm a hardcore gamer if you ever saw one. Played a bunch of games including Call of Duty 4 on PC with a clan, and I must say that military shooters are far down on my list of favourite genres.