Interesting Links for 08-02-2023

[andrewducker]

1. This pretty much sums up how I feel about computer games that prioritise narrative over, well, being a game

(tags:games narrative writing design video )

2. As kids become teens, mom's voice matters less to their brains

(tags:teenagers voice psychology children )

3. Nintendo Switch Surpasses PS4 and Game Boy to Become 3rd Best Selling Console of All Time

(tags:Nintendo consoles )

4. What Happened On The Day the Dinosaurs Died?

(tags:video dinosaurs apocalypse )

5. I think Atari might have overestimated the level of nostalgia people have for their consoles

(tags:games nostalgia history technology consoles money )

6. Noting a chain of evidence for the next time someone claims that JK Rowling isn't transphobic

(tags:LGBT transgender bigotry jkrowling )

7. Google advertises its AI - which manages to get facts wrong *in the advert*

(tags:ai OhForFucksSake google )

Comments

No 1.

[channelpenguin]

Since I don't play games, I can't really comment on that aspect. But as 1. A reader, putting in tedious move by move details of the "game mechanics" bored me to tears (I think they call it "hard magic systems". I mean what Brandon Sanderson does. God it's dull)
2. A movie watcher, having the thing be mostly action scenes with WAY too many fast moving things in oversharp detail and NO real story or character also bugs me.

Re: No 1.

[mellowtigger]

I was on the verge of writing about the active-vs-passive consumer in movies or video games, and why they should have different goals. The linked video does a much better job of it than I could, although it doesn't explicitly boil it down that succinctly.

And I totally agree about the too-much-stuff problem in action flicks. It was one of the Transformers movies where I literally couldn't even tell you what I was seeing on screen, because the battle scene was too much and too fast in my field of vision. I couldn't register anything.

Re: No 1.

[andrewducker]

Totally agreed.

For action movies I vastly prefer ones where the actors can actually fight, and it's shot stably, from a distance, so you can see what's going on.

Re: No 1.

[calimac]

Sometimes it's better not to see what's going on. Too many of the fight scenes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer fell into two categories: 1) the massive fight scenes, which were choreographed and staged to look more like a game of rugby than a fight; 2) the Buffy vs. A Lot of Bad Guys scenes, in which the bad guys were contractually obligated to attack her only one at a time, so that she could defeat them. Only if the plot required her to lose the fight could they all pile in at once.