3 ms·

Not "fantasy," as in magic and dragons and such. Fantasy, as in whimsy, as in unqualified wonder. Too many games, shows, and movies these days feel compelled

Not "fantasy," as in magic and dragons and such. Fantasy, as in whimsy, as in unqualified wonder. Too many games, shows, and movies these days feel compelled to explain why things are the way they are.

dale_glass 3y ago
I don't do that much gaming lately, but there's plenty of that sort of thing. Mario, Zelda, there's a new Monkey Island, Sam and Max had a series of games, Lucky's Tale, etc. Maybe they're not the most popular games, but there's no lack of those.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 3y ago
I think this is mostly survivorship bias. We remember the interesting stuff and forget about the 90% of crap, while we experience current crap in real time. There are some really stellar games that inspired and shaped the industry, a few odd-balls that hold up surprisingly well but everyone seems to have forgotten about, and then there's a huge wasteland of <insert puzzle or arcade game>-clones.
- sumtechguy 3y ago
  If you go grab something like eXoDOS or eXoWin you will quickly find out how true your statement is. Think that collection has something like 7k titles in it. But only maybe 100-200 are worth actually playing for very long. Think archive.org has an online version of it. That can be randomly broken as some games require particular versions of dosbox to work correctly and archive org only uses one. The full exodos install has whatever is needed to make it work. Also at this point we have a 'language' of how to play most of these types of games. During that period they were trying to figure out what that 'language' was. So playability can be very challenging at times. That can include visual cues, graphical expectations, sound, and controls.
seventhtiger 3y ago
"Lore" has infested all of nerd media. You'd think it would make stories richer, but it has such a shaping effect on story that they all feel the same. Every character has a background, every history has a history, politics, different timelines, multiverse and alternate dimensions, hard magic, aliens, etc. etc. Somehow every story from comics books to video games fall into the lore trap and comes out looking like a kitchen sink of tropes.
- pjc50 3y ago
  God yes. The demand for "consistency" is absolutely crippling. It prevents true fantasy and wonder from being built at all because critics dismantle the illusion looking for "gotchas".

dale_glass 3y ago

I don't do that much gaming lately, but there's plenty of that sort of thing. Mario, Zelda, there's a new Monkey Island, Sam and Max had a series of games, Lucky's Tale, etc. Maybe they're not the most popular games, but there's no lack of those.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 3y ago

I think this is mostly survivorship bias. We remember the interesting stuff and forget about the 90% of crap, while we experience current crap in real time. There are some really stellar games that inspired and shaped the industry, a few odd-balls that hold up surprisingly well but everyone seems to have forgotten about, and then there's a huge wasteland of <insert puzzle or arcade game>-clones.

sumtechguy 3y ago
If you go grab something like eXoDOS or eXoWin you will quickly find out how true your statement is. Think that collection has something like 7k titles in it. But only maybe 100-200 are worth actually playing for very long. Think archive.org has an online version of it. That can be randomly broken as some games require particular versions of dosbox to work correctly and archive org only uses one. The full exodos install has whatever is needed to make it work. Also at this point we have a 'language' of how to play most of these types of games. During that period they were trying to figure out what that 'language' was. So playability can be very challenging at times. That can include visual cues, graphical expectations, sound, and controls.

seventhtiger 3y ago

"Lore" has infested all of nerd media. You'd think it would make stories richer, but it has such a shaping effect on story that they all feel the same. Every character has a background, every history has a history, politics, different timelines, multiverse and alternate dimensions, hard magic, aliens, etc. etc. Somehow every story from comics books to video games fall into the lore trap and comes out looking like a kitchen sink of tropes.

pjc50 3y ago
God yes. The demand for "consistency" is absolutely crippling. It prevents true fantasy and wonder from being built at all because critics dismantle the illusion looking for "gotchas".