Ceremony
blahem
- Jun 8, 2012
- 113,169
- 15,342
I read something in the poll on here to decide on the best game of 2007 which almost annoyed me more than the fact that BioShock is going to finish behind an alien f***ing simulator and the 4000th Mario game. Someone who said they'd never played it, but that it was "too late" to go back to it.
Several things struck me about this.
First was that it reminded me of an internet comment around the time I finished Dead Space (in 2014) saying it "looked really good for an old game," which made me very sad because I remember downloading and playing the demo for it when it came out. Although a late adopter of the 8th generation of consoles I consider the jump from the PS2 to PS3 to be a much bigger departure from 1 to 2 or 3 to 4, so to have BioShock described in such a fashion seems really jarring to me, if only for the reason that the past ~twelve years of video games sits in my estimation largely as a single entity.
The second which can be drawn from the first is that if I consider 2006-2018 to be the same thing - largely because I'm still playing PS+ backlog titles from across that time period - then I'm surprised that someone could consider a game from just ten years ago to be too far gone to be worth their attention.
The third which can be drawn from the second is that as part of the games industry's last great attempt to remain profitable at the AAA level all three BioShock games have been collected and had some extra starfish thrown at them, re-mastered and re-released as the BioShock Collection in September 2016
The fourth is that this is a critically and widely acclaimed game which is still readily available to be played.
The fifth is that this is f***ing BioShock and that whatever misgivings you have about playing something which to me is still current-gen and still, crucially, current, are patently wrong and should go away.
But, all of these are things which face a creative medium which has seen unprecedented growth compared to other formats of narrative delivery which have established and maintained/enhanced their popularity in wider pop-culture. Films and novels have been written about different things throughout the centuries but the basic premise hasn't evolved much, outside of films adding colours and words and the myriad changes to languages which books have been printed in over the past four centuries.
The passage of time hasn't adversely affected these fields. People still read and study novels and poetry from the 1700s. Film critics will still watch Citizen Kane and say it's the best film ever made, mostly because they didn't see all of it through Simpsons homages first.
Yet we haven't reached a half-century of video games as home entertainment being a thing and it's a format maintained by an industry which has to be so predicated on money because of production costs and exposure that it can't do anything to maintain any legacy it creates. We've gone from 2D side-scrolling Mario to VR headsets within 40 years and multi-billion dollar companies which can only remain such if there's new games and new hardware for people to keep buying.
I've posted at length before about games which should be remembered not being so I won't repeat it here, but am I over-reacting to someone saying they don't want to play my favourite game because they feel it's too late? Is this a common feeling among the video game player? Is this something which will fundamentally undermine video games' ability to create legitimate works of art, no matter how many Classic SNESes Nintendo bring out?
PS - I forget who it was who said this in that thread, but feel free to name and shame yourself here. Then go and play BioShock.
Several things struck me about this.
First was that it reminded me of an internet comment around the time I finished Dead Space (in 2014) saying it "looked really good for an old game," which made me very sad because I remember downloading and playing the demo for it when it came out. Although a late adopter of the 8th generation of consoles I consider the jump from the PS2 to PS3 to be a much bigger departure from 1 to 2 or 3 to 4, so to have BioShock described in such a fashion seems really jarring to me, if only for the reason that the past ~twelve years of video games sits in my estimation largely as a single entity.
The second which can be drawn from the first is that if I consider 2006-2018 to be the same thing - largely because I'm still playing PS+ backlog titles from across that time period - then I'm surprised that someone could consider a game from just ten years ago to be too far gone to be worth their attention.
The third which can be drawn from the second is that as part of the games industry's last great attempt to remain profitable at the AAA level all three BioShock games have been collected and had some extra starfish thrown at them, re-mastered and re-released as the BioShock Collection in September 2016
The fourth is that this is a critically and widely acclaimed game which is still readily available to be played.
The fifth is that this is f***ing BioShock and that whatever misgivings you have about playing something which to me is still current-gen and still, crucially, current, are patently wrong and should go away.
But, all of these are things which face a creative medium which has seen unprecedented growth compared to other formats of narrative delivery which have established and maintained/enhanced their popularity in wider pop-culture. Films and novels have been written about different things throughout the centuries but the basic premise hasn't evolved much, outside of films adding colours and words and the myriad changes to languages which books have been printed in over the past four centuries.
The passage of time hasn't adversely affected these fields. People still read and study novels and poetry from the 1700s. Film critics will still watch Citizen Kane and say it's the best film ever made, mostly because they didn't see all of it through Simpsons homages first.
Yet we haven't reached a half-century of video games as home entertainment being a thing and it's a format maintained by an industry which has to be so predicated on money because of production costs and exposure that it can't do anything to maintain any legacy it creates. We've gone from 2D side-scrolling Mario to VR headsets within 40 years and multi-billion dollar companies which can only remain such if there's new games and new hardware for people to keep buying.
I've posted at length before about games which should be remembered not being so I won't repeat it here, but am I over-reacting to someone saying they don't want to play my favourite game because they feel it's too late? Is this a common feeling among the video game player? Is this something which will fundamentally undermine video games' ability to create legitimate works of art, no matter how many Classic SNESes Nintendo bring out?
PS - I forget who it was who said this in that thread, but feel free to name and shame yourself here. Then go and play BioShock.