Bioshock sounded a bit interesting, among the general dullness, and even though i must say i’m really tired of FPSs.

Still, the gamers community seems to really seriously enjoy overhypes.. i guess at least they have something to get excited about :p

I find the whole thing repulsively ugly but I would still like to see what they did in terms of creating a living environment. Sadly, the game will probably be way too hard to allow us to do that. Not to mention makes us sick to the stomache with its first person camera madness.

I really enjoy what you do here, and I respect you rather a lot. But sometimes, your simmering antagonism is a little offensive. Maybe I’m reading a little more in than I should, maybe I’m a little defensive. But here, you promote exactly the same value judgments you so resist when attached to your work. That anyone can be a “gamer,” that the term is meaningless, that there can be all sorts of things in that space. Forgive me if I’m less than eloquent. My first language is C, not English.

So you like Bioshock? Good for you! ;)

I find games like this, and the accompanying teams of hysteric fan-boy journalists tiresome and not very helpful.

Fat things like that fill up the space that you refer to all to quickly. With lots of the same. Doom 3, Half Life 2, Halo, Bioshock. It’s always the same thing. If you like it, good for you. But I don’t.

That’s certainly fine, but there are certainly other things in that space. Games like Sam and Max come to mind, or Contact, or perhaps more relevant to the discussion, the upcoming Haze. I just find it interesting because Bioshock was originally intended as something of a philosophical meditation in the same vein as Atlas Shrugged. I wonder how else you could talk about that except from the first person and with a gun in one hand? ::sardonic::

What do you mean by “that space”?

I’m not familiar with Atlas Shrugged. But I’m not familiar with Bioshock either. My criticsim is more for the “journalism” surrounding that game.

As for narative or philosophy, I’d like to refer to a very pertinent remark made by Jason Della Rocca recently, pointing out one of the more serious reasons why traditional challenge/reward structures in games are incapable of expressing meaningful ideas.

When I say space, I refer to reward-driven and nominally goal based games. Della Rocca’s point is definitely pertinent and I’m sure he’s smarter than me, but I know a lot of people who went through games like Knights of the Old Republic as steadfastly good characters simply because they enjoyed it. A lot of times, the narrative we desire is a reward we optimize for. Not trying to be heated. I suppose I am being a bother. Would you prefer to continue this by e-mail?

The thing I really hate about that game (having looked at the website) is the style and the heavy-handed “criticism”. I thought we left the faux-Art Deco look back in the nineties on interactive CD-ROMs? Why don’t they make a FPS where you have to shoot down speech balloons that say things like “THE OPTIMISM OF THE TWENTIES WAS BOUND TO RUN OUT SOMETIME” and “SHAME ABOUT THAT WWII THING”

[...] veux voir ça! Je m’apprêtais donc à l’installer ce soir quand je suis tombé sur un commentaire du créateur du jeu à propos de BioShock. Je n’ai pas encore vu BioShock mais le dédain que [...]