my goal was more the talking-about-games part and less the talking-about-talking-about-games
Doom, yes
Yeah, Doom is probably it. Doom is The Video Game.
platformer excess:
hero core, megaman zero, super metroid, splatterhouse 2, donkey kong country, super mario world, strider, contra hard corps, ranger x, dynamite headdy and gunstar heroes
Survival The Horror:
resident evil, silent hill,
My Canon is games I played before I was thirteen. So, Doom, Quake, Fallout, Riven, Arcanum, SMB3
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let me revitalize this a little bit: out of the 2D Sonic series, which of these do you think are essential? should we keep one of the later entries without the earlier, or should we include multiple examples to show the development of the form?
Sonic 1
Sonic 2
Sonic CD
Sonic 3 & Knuckles
Sonic 4 Eps I & II (doubt anyone will cape for this)
Sonic Mania (upcoming, but letâs predict)
And for mario, we could do the same thing:
Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. 2 (US)
Super Mario Bros. 2 (J)
Super Mario Bros. 3
Super Mario World
If I had to guess, I would say hivemind would agree upon the following:
- Super Mario Bros.
- Super Mario Bros. 3
- Sonic CD
- Sonic 3 & Knuckles
I think it probably makes sense to look at a particular series or franchise the same way we would look at works by a particular author. so we can track the evolution of style, but the product should theoretically also stand alone.
As a current games academic, the idea of âcanon-buildingâ is generally viewed as out-of-date and undesirable, but we do spend a lot of time worrying about what we should teach in terms of culture and history. You want students to develop broad knowledge (so they have a broad designersâ palette and be literate in critical discussions) but also you want them to develop a unique sense of taste (so their work will not be generic). Those things are broadly at odds.
Often weâll deliberately shoot for a blend (so, maybe you get them to play Jet Set Willy over Donkey Kong, or Battle Isle over Advance Wars)
But in my experience, the general rule is you can have a set reading list for developing literacy, but you need to have personalized reading lists (âmixtapesâ) for developing taste. Which is hard.
I like the idea of comparison pairs! I curate two arcade cabs at NYU and I often try to set up two contrasting games in the same week. Sometimes itâs a narrow contrast (KOF '94 vs KOF '96, or Rampart w/ joysticks vs. Rampart w/trackballs) sometimes wider - this week Iâm thinking Q-Bert vs. Crystal Castles
I spend a lot of time doing the former and 0 doing the latter, fwiw⌠a lot of videogame professors make games instead of writing research papers.
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to be honest I think that in some way the differences between all genesis sonics would appear negligible from the perspective of academic ( and historical) distance, hence sonic 1 is the only game in the series worthy of entry in the canon.
just to clarify, to me a canon means iconic exemplarsâŚsonic 1 clearly set all of the characteristically âsonicâ ness of the whole series, leaving consideration of the rest of the games of interest only to future game academics with very particular interests.
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I think that more fun than trying to select a game out of a category or series that best represents that category or series, might be creating an âinfluence tree.â This could include sequels in a single series but also points at which genres came to be. Maybe more of an annotated chart than an academic paper.
Especially enlightening could be the integration of statements of direct influence by creators, where available. The structure could also attempt to note where particular elements seem to have originated and where they cross-pollinated, even if such an attempt might be imperfect. Outliers could also be emphasized, such as where a design appears to have been totally original and come out of nowhere. Obviously influences for things in video games are not confined to other video games, and things such as Miyamoto working in his garden and then coming up with Pikmin would also be good information to include.
Iâm kind of picturing something vaguely similar to the Oxford English Dictionary, which describes word origins, where things first seem to have appeared, and so on. Probably totally unrealistic, but nice to think about.
Incidentally, the first thing I ever read about video games that struck me as thoughtful was Andrew Vestalâs history of console RPGs at videogames.com years ago. I remember being impressed that he even mentioned Aristotle. (Actually, that might have been his history of Final Fantasy article.)
Yes I was thinking something the same. Not even just genres necessarily but also threads of theme and tone that have been developed by developers riffing off of each other and trying to chase trends and gamersâ taste.
I would be really interested to see something like an influence tree that you describe related to Deus Ex.
This gets real nasty real fast. I made this a few years ago just to chart out some of our whyâs, andâŚ
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Seems like some kind of backwards-wiki would make it possible to make a tree like this? Like, if every listing for a game had all of its influences listed, but none of the things that it influenced?
Yeah, probably implemented through a tagging system?
Iâve become obsessed with managing complex data through tags systems and most-specific selection after watching Elan Ruskinâs dialogue picker talk. I just built this for a loot system to generate loot with the traits of the enemy you killed and I really want to get my short-form narrative game running like this.
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this rules
danke