Forbes Magazine posted:

Penn Jillette often says things I agree with, and occasionally says things I disagree with. For most people who watch Penn & Teller’s Bullsh*t this is probably a fairly universal experience. I’m not as libertarian as Jillette, but I still think he says a lot of things that need saying. For instance, in this Game Informer interview about the show they did on video game violence, Penn says:

You know, when I was 15, 16, 17-years-old, I spent five hours a day juggling, and I probably spent six hours a day seriously listening to music. And if I were 16 now, I would put that time into playing video games.

The thing that old people don’t understand is – you know if you’ve never heard Bob Dylan, and someone listened to him for 15 minutes, you’re not going to get it. You are just not going to understand. You have to put in hours and hours to start to understand the form, and the same thing is true for gaming. You’re not going to just look at a first-person shooter where you are killing zombies and understand the nuances.

There is this tremendous amount of arrogance and hubris, where somebody can look at something for five minutes and dismiss it. Whether you talk about gaming or 20th century classical music, you can’t do it in five minutes. You can’t listen to The Rite of Spring once and understand what Stravinsky was all about. It seems like you should at least have the grace to say you don’t know, instead of saying that what other people are doing is wrong.

The cliché of the nerdy kid who doesn’t go outside and just plays games is completely untrue. And it’s also true for the nerdy kid who studies comic books and turns into this genius, and it is also true for the nerdy kid who listens to every nerdy thing that Led Zeppelin put out. That kind of obsession in a 16-year-old is not ugly. It’s beautiful. That kind of obsession is going to lead to a sophisticated 30-year-old who has a background in that artform. It just seems so simple, and yet I’m constantly in these big arguments with people on the computer who are talking about, “I would never let my kid do this and this in a video game.” And these are adults who when they were children were dropping acid and going to see the Grateful Dead.

I mean, the Grateful Dead is provably s***ty music. It’s impossible – it’s theoretically impossible to make a video game as bad as the Grateful Dead. I throw that out there as a challenge.
You know, when I was 15, 16, 17-years-old, I spent five hours a day juggling, and I probably spent six hours a day seriously listening to music. And if I were 16 now, I would put that time into playing video games.

The thing that old people don’t understand is – you know if you’ve never heard Bob Dylan, and someone listened to him for 15 minutes, you’re not going to get it. You are just not going to understand. You have to put in hours and hours to start to understand the form, and the same thing is true for gaming. You’re not going to just look at a first-person shooter where you are killing zombies and understand the nuances.

There is this tremendous amount of arrogance and hubris, where somebody can look at something for five minutes and dismiss it. Whether you talk about gaming or 20th century classical music, you can’t do it in five minutes. You can’t listen to The Rite of Spring once and understand what Stravinsky was all about. It seems like you should at least have the grace to say you don’t know, instead of saying that what other people are doing is wrong.

The cliché of the nerdy kid who doesn’t go outside and just plays games is completely untrue. And it’s also true for the nerdy kid who studies comic books and turns into this genius, and it is also true for the nerdy kid who listens to every nerdy thing that Led Zeppelin put out. That kind of obsession in a 16-year-old is not ugly. It’s beautiful. That kind of obsession is going to lead to a sophisticated 30-year-old who has a background in that artform. It just seems so simple, and yet I’m constantly in these big arguments with people on the computer who are talking about, “I would never let my kid do this and this in a video game.” And these are adults who when they were children were dropping acid and going to see the Grateful Dead.

I mean, the Grateful Dead is provably s***ty music. It’s impossible – it’s theoretically impossible to make a video game as bad as the Grateful Dead. I throw that out there as a challenge.

will one day humanity produce a revolutionary work of art in video game form? what say you, rhizzoners

Meursault posted:

Playing video games is pretty much the worst thing you can do to yourself

Whatever, I’m getting sick of this taste hierarchy of shallow aesthetic differences as if it’s something that actually matters.

Reading a book, playing sport, playing video games, having promiscuous sex: All these things are fundamentally the same in the cosmic scheme of things, they’re activities that we undertake once our food/health/shelter requirements are fulfilled in the hope they will bring us some sort of satisfaction or, perhaps naively, enlightenment.

Who cares about these tribes and their petty little quirks of the human condition. Jocks vs Nerds might make for a breezy 90 minutes of screwball comedy but I’m baffled that serious, mature people are so invested in it.

One Love, mangs. How about some humility and empathy instead of spite and culture wars? You’ll be a happier person.

stegosaurus posted:

some of my friends from high school are now writing poetry about mass effect and wikipedia and getting into tumblr (I mis-typed that as 'rumblr,' f*ck yeah) arguments about ludology and narrativity. and they played video games all the time as teens. meanwhile, I was a pious presbyterian and never masturbated and played games only occasionally and never the shit ones like smash brothers. and here we are.

i masturbated and played video games all throughout my teens and here i am

WeedSmoker420 posted:

What's shit about Smash Brothers. It was fun. Was fun against your religion

yeah i still occasionally pull out the old luigi uppercut for a game with friends

and i play each new gta for a little while, it's therapeutic

Transient_Grace posted:

Anyone up for a game of FIFA2012 aka The Best Game

vJvEgNeU4kQ

tpaine posted:

Impper posted:

i think anyone can plainly sense that, generally, there is only death and squalor in video games, baseless, aimless obsession, an overflow of sensation accompanying a void of feeling; nobody has ever emerged from a ten hour video game session feeling invigorated

here's a real tpaine fact for ya: when i first got ff8, i sat there and played the card game for at least 8 hours. it may have been 10.

Zell LOVES hot dogs, michael or whatever, he loves em! I know what you sayin Heyyyyyy I'm the fonzz haha

Impper posted:

i think anyone can plainly sense that, generally, there is only death and squalor in video games, baseless, aimless obsession, an overflow of sensation accompanying a void of feeling; nobody has ever emerged from a ten hour video game session feeling invigorated

This is not true for me and many people I know. I have had countless powerful emotional experiences while playing games.

You neglect the multiplayer element, for one thing. Playing with friends and defeating a challenging new enemy, or winning in a PvP encounter, can be enormously satisfying. Or seeing someone's huge artistic creation in Minecraft.

I also like the story of these games, silly as they may be. The final battle and cinematic of Diablo 3 felt morally charged, though you'd probably have to be into the semi-Christian mythos to appreciate it.

You can deny my experiences but you'll be doing just that. It won't convince me that these experiences were not real, or that the medium cannot create such experiences.

Edited by WeedSmoker420 (June 27, 2012 10:54:44)

shennong posted:

dwarf fortress is more of an attempt to create an artist than it is a work of art itself imo