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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   1927 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 22, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Like most men under 40, I enjoy gaming as a way to spend my free time. However, I feel guilty about struggling to enjoy or be successful at gaming 'classics' like Super Mario Bros or Skyrim. My gaming interests are narrow but deep, and I find e-sports games transient and fast-paced games too demanding on my hand-eye coordination.

I really like Quantic Foundry's Gamer Motivation Model. According to my results, the two components of games I really love are what they call "Creativity" and "Immersion." I like playing games that give me the opportunity to enter a different world and role-play as a different person. I also like games which provide opportunities to build and customize things.

Games like Star Wars: The Old Republic, despite flaws, satisfy my desire for a complex storyline, character customization, and player housing. Further, while BioWare games often fulfill me with their strong stories, Bethesda games don't. I find their characters wooden, with bland dialogue and settings.

But I feel like I'm the sort of person who ought to be playing a broader range of games. I have the personality type, and my friends throughout life have always been inveterate gamers.

At times, I feel like a dog eating crumbs that fall from the master's table, satisfied only by limited (and often buggy or underdeveloped) aspects of games which focus on motivations -- like competition, or blowing stuff up -- that are more common among the core gaming demographic.

I suppose my struggle is to identify what is actually valuable to me -- is it to play the 'gaming classics,' or is it to focus on games that satisfy my unique preferences? Can anyone relate to having such unique tastes?

Yeah, I can relate. I am mainly interested in gaming from an aesthetic perspective. I think the switch from prerendered backgrounds to fully 3d environments in JRPGs between the PS1 and PS2 eras killed the genre. The prerendered backgrounds of FF7, 8 and 9 are probably the best art that have ever come out of gaming and 3d environments are extremely ugly in comparison. Prerendered cutscenes are beautifully lit shot and angled by an artist to create an attractive visual, whereas 3d environments have a crappy camera angle pointed at random stuff that doesn't look good.

Similarly I strongly prefer the art and music of SNES era to N64 era. The creativity after N64 era really took a dive, the industry was no longer about innovation but rather the genres became very rote and the industry has become much more bland. I blame this also on Japan's economic stagnation after the 90s, and though American tech companies had plenty of money to pump into gaming they lacked the taste and creativity of Japanese designers in the 90s and early 2000s. I believe creativity in gaming has basically died after We Love Katamari was released.

I took the Gamer Motivation Model you linked to and scored highest on creativity as well. I like games like Animal Crossing and the early Harvest Moon games where you can decorate/arrange things. I also used to spend an embarrassing amount of time on crappy Korean farm sim games on my phone so I could design beautiful towns with their assets. Actually, I would prefer to play a game like Super Mario RPG or Persona 1/2:EP/2:IS which all have really really good art direction, even over games where I can be creative, because it's enjoyable to see the art that other people have made.

You mention games that you don't like in your post but none that you do. Which ones do you like?

3d environments are extremely ugly in comparison.

Uhh.. what ?

The only complaint one can have with them is that they're too laborious or GPU intensive.

There's little question in saying: Baldur's Gate 3 has better graphics than Baldur's Gate 2. Art direction, no, but otherwise.

I have never played either of those games but I just google image searched both of them and I disagree.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53a2f2e5e4b01da0d6aee932/t/54d04cbce4b01a6d6f39e282/1422937279489/?format=1500w

https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/eurogamer_baldur_s_gate_ee_1.png?width=1200&height=1200&fit=bounds&quality=70&format=jpg&auto=webp

https://www.beamdog.com/media/images/1-PC-English.height-1100.jpg

I prefer the above to these:

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/MDMeCbXyQ2EXMjpE25yw3D-1200-80.jpg

https://oyster.ignimgs.com/mediawiki/apis.ign.com/baldurs-gate-3/e/e5/BG3_Combat_Guide_-_Initiative.png

https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1086940/ss_332cd26db210d4b10df744485ecf0a9b3f2e9024.1920x1080.jpg?t=1703250718

The BG3 shots are chaotic and messy and at a random crappy angle. The BG2 shots are organized and clean and easy to look at. I am a designer and prefer the former.

Broadly I don't really like the art styles of either of these games but I have the same opinion of, for example, FF7-8-9 vs FF15/16, or Persona1/2 vs Persona 3/4/5

I am not saying that prerendered background are like, technically better in terms of computer power or technology or something, I'm saying that 3d environments that have random camera angles are less aesthetically appealing than a fixed angle view arranged by an artist.

The BG3 shots are chaotic and messy and at a random crappy angle. The BG2 shots are organized and clean and easy to look at. I am a designer and prefer the former.

That's by choice of the user.

I'm saying that 3d environments that have random camera angles are less aesthetically appealing than a fixed angle view arranged by an artist.

Might be true sometime, especially if camera control is bad. Which isn't really the case in BG3.

BG3 pissed me more due to e.g. kitschy graphical design choices (at times), maps being too small when that wasn't required and especially writing wise.

Not sure if it would change your mind, but I find seeing the gameplay in video footage instead of a screenshot can change how you perceive the graphics, as motion and animation have a huge impact on perception. If you ever pause a video the image never seems "right" and often you get people in strange facial poses/expressions. Or if you ever pause an animation when a character is making a big movement you get some really funky-looking images.

I play Starcraft and I prefer the visuals of Starcraft Broodwar to Starcraft II. The interesting thing about Brood War is that the units pop out to me whether it is on video or a screenshot, but Starcraft II looks much worse as an image than when I view it in a video. So something similar could be happening to BG3.

You can see a similar in Age of Empires series;

Age of Empires 2: https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/813780/ss_e2fc6cfd934c8150cf751955d44deb688ab3c7d0.1920x1080.jpg?t=1702497119

Age of Empires 4: https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1466860/ss_48195285a60c6208f8bd722f74c556b9a224f4b0.1920x1080.jpg?t=1702338967

The units in Age of Empires 2 just seem to pop out more to me.

I am in general agreement with you that things look worse in 3d, but I'm speaking strictly from an RTS gameplay experience where your ability to process visual information in a short amount of time is crucial. For a game like BG3 where the gameplay is turn-based and people are probably playing to immerse themselves in the story, I don't think the 3d art detracts from the gameplay or experience.

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