Hokay, so. I haven't posted in well over a month. Sorry about that. Went for a few weeks without interwebs, and past couple of weeks have been a bit crowded. BUT I HAVE RETURNED TO CLAIM WHAT IS MINE.
By that, I mean this blog. It's mine. You can't have it. Dibs.
Anyways, I'm married and loving it! I don't have to drop her off at her parents house anymore! :)
And of course....well...honey, if you're reading this, sorry but I have to. *ahem* .......giggty giggty giggty goo!
So anydangway, games and such. I'm going to make a brief comment on some happenings that have transpired mostly since my last transmission.
1) Infinity Ward - If you don't know what I'm talking about and you're reading a blog about games, welcome to the Internet! There are fun shiny things here! So, I'll skip to my thoughts on the situation. Given what we currently know about what Activision and the former IW heads have done, either one of their respective explanations sound plausible to me. It's not at all hard to imagine Activision making crap up so that they can horde money. Wouldn't be the first time they've been douchebags in the name of making a buck. At the same time, given their situation with Activision before all this, it's possible that the IW heads were shopping around to see if they could get a better deal.
As far as my opinion goes, I don't know who's lying and who's right. But I'll tell you this. I hope West and Zampella win this thing. Because I want Activision to get as big a black eye as possible with this. This guys have been total a-holes to the game industry for the past few years, and I want to see them pay. With the way they've been "exploiting" games (their own term for it) on an excessively regular basis so that they can sacrifice quality to get more money, and also canning promising games just because they don't think they can make a sequel every year...I want to see them hurt. They're hurting the game industry with the way they currently do business, and they need a wake up call. Mind you, EA was the same way not too long ago, but they learned, and have been doing better. Now it's Activision's turn.
2) Roger Ebert - The great critic says that games can never be art. Mind you, the man's never played a video game in his life, but who cares, he's Roger effin' Ebert!
This has pissed off many a gamer. My personal take, I really don't care. I'm sure he's a perfectly intelligent man, and he certainly has seen a lot of art in his life, so I suppose he's a strong voice on the subject. But you know what, given some of his examples, he has no clue how far games have come since chess, so I place no value in what he says.
Here's the thing though, games are a tricky beast. They are different from movies, books, or paintings by virtue of the fact that we as gamers participant in their creation. No two people will have an identical game. Here's what I mean; I just recently beat Borderlands (great game btw). Someone else who played it and beat it didn't play the same game I did. They might have played as a different character, or maybe they did some side quests I didn't do, or maybe it was on a different difficulty level. So we didn't have the same experience. There are some that would say that art must be the same for everyone. Now they can have a different interpretation of the piece, but they were all looking at the same exact thing, not a single difference between them. Games can't always fit that.
Please understand, I'm not saying that's the definitive statement on what is and is not art. It's just one way of looking at it. That's the flip side of the coin. Ultimately, who is to say what is art and what isn't art? The fact that there are many different definitions on what art is suggests to me that there ISN'T a definitive statement on art. But that's just my two cents. Whether or not some critic tells me that what I love is art, I'm going to keeping loving it, and keep playing.
- Marvel
