tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post8662097541972408652..comments2024-03-28T10:18:05.213+00:00Comments on Inventory Full: Flying In Draenor: An Academic QuestionBhagpusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-21620044526010440322015-06-15T17:13:36.169+01:002015-06-15T17:13:36.169+01:00"Players don't have that degree of indivi..."Players don't have that degree of individual agency but they have collective bargaining power on their side and I can think of a number of cases where it was used effectively."<br /><br />Okay I would normally just digest this whole conversation and form a reasonably thought-out post about it but this reference caught my eye and I have to bring it up now before I forget the connection.<br /><br />Bhagpuss expanded the question topic into art generally, but this reference made me wonder if there is not also a parallel with trade unions. After all, one can argue that an employer has the right to dictate their vision of how to do things, but employees are part of the process and should have some say in issues that affect them.Dahakhahttp://starfiredbeef.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-380902838690249412015-06-13T21:37:02.252+01:002015-06-13T21:37:02.252+01:00Thanks! Sometimes I really miss the 1980s...Thanks! Sometimes I really miss the 1980s...Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-90633685268781229792015-06-13T21:34:42.987+01:002015-06-13T21:34:42.987+01:00Yep, I didn't really get very close to address...Yep, I didn't really get very close to addressing the actual question, particularly as it applies to playing MMOs, which is a pity because it's a really interesting one. If it does come up again in Blaugust (if we have a Blaugust this year) maybe I'll try and take it head on. <br /><br />I don't think there's any real way to answer it directly but it deserves a good deal of chewing over. William Goldman said of movie-makers "Nobody knows anything" and after almost twenty years in the book trade I am absolutely convinced the same applies to publishers so there seems to be no reason to assume games developers have any more of a clue about what works and what doesn't than any other part of the entertainment industry. My feeling is that players are at least as likely to push in directions that are in the interest of the long-term health of the game as developers but equally either side is just as likely to pull the whole thing off the rails. <br /><br />It's not as though there was just one position on each side, either. Azuriel's observation on how one senior dev could have changed the entire direction of the game purely by dint of seeing it through the lens of his own experience may seem like an extreme example but over the years I've seen plenty of major changes of emphasis and direction that could be put down to a single dev changing jobs. Players don't have that degree of individual agency but they have collective bargaining power on their side and I can think of a number of cases where it was used effectively. <br /><br />In the end these games are collaborative enterprises at least to some degree. MMORPGs are almost a form of performance art or perhaps an endless rehearsal for a play that never gets a public performance. My strong feeling is that the way they operate, from the always-on nature of the internet that seemed so amazing twenty years ago right through to the Early Access Crowdfunded Build Your Own Game and Pay Us For The Privilege phase we are enjoying right now is just a metaphor for a vast cultural change in Western (and a lot of Eastern) society that will make the 21st century as different from the 20th as the 20th was from the Middle Ages.Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-29377372488646760042015-06-13T19:46:40.270+01:002015-06-13T19:46:40.270+01:00the world in NOT like that.the world in NOT like that.Wilhelm Arcturushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07033496821708933394noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-53368986548355475332015-06-13T19:31:26.683+01:002015-06-13T19:31:26.683+01:00Film has been a few steps down this path already. ...Film has been a few steps down this path already. We had Ted Turner trying to colorize the MGM library back in the 80s, which drew a huge outcry over the sanctity of the original artistic vision from all sort of people, George Lucas included. And then, or course, we had George turn around later and re-mastered some of his own work, telling his fans to piss up a rope because it was his work so his artistic vision was all that mattered, sanctity of the originals be damned.<br /><br />This is the question of the digital age, where works of art are surprisingly malleable. Not only can Blizzard change their world and George Lucas his films, but Amazon can force an update on your Kindle and leave you with a new revision of your ebook whether you like it or not. (Or just remove it.) The moving cursor once having writ moves on... unless you use the backspace key, in which case you can undo the who thing.<br /><br />And yet nobody has really taken the bait when it comes to my question... and this is hardly the first time I have posed it... even you. Even me, really, since I offered up the question in multiple forms but have never bothered to answer it myself. And I will stipulate to not actually having an answer. I tend to be a fatalist and would no more demand a drastic change to a game than I would demand that the Louvre make the Mona Lisa blonde and give her bigger tits. But that doesn't mean I do not have opinions.<br /><br />Then again, we are in this great age of "interaction" where everything has to have a comment thread so that the consumers can interact with the artist, for whatever value of art you pick. (I'd love to see the Louvre put a comment box under the Mona Lisa. Can you imagine? "It's so small!" "Nice tits" "What about the poor?") Blizzard has forums, they say they like feedback, well this is what they got; flying must be in Draenor regardless of what you think would be "best" for the game.<br /><br />It reminds me of an incident at my own alma mater where a student in the art department made a life size male, positioned so as to sit in a chair. His idea was to put it in locations around campus so that people could "interact" with it. However, it was made of a light weight material and some guys from a fraternity "interacted" with it by taking it and sticking it in the frat house, dressing it up, and a list of other indignities. <br /><br />This, of course, made the front page of the school paper, leading with a tirade from the artists about how dare they do this horrible thing to art. And all I could think was how he said he wanted people to interact with it, and that was what happened. It turned out he wanted people to interact in the way he thought they should. The world is like that.<br /><br />But, despite not having an answer, I still think it is a good, or at least interesting, discussion to have. We regularly end up in discussions about forced grouping or PvP done right or welfare epics or whether or not simply buying a game entitles you to access all the content on your own terms, which all seem to stem from this same pool. Even the progression server idea, nostalgia or no, asserts that, while there might not be a "right" way to play, a definitive artistic vision, that there are alternative ways to present the same content. Wilhelm Arcturushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07033496821708933394noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-10893731856446282002015-06-13T18:08:44.823+01:002015-06-13T18:08:44.823+01:00"literally impossible to do anything in uniro..."literally impossible to do anything in unironically". I really enjoyed this article, thanks for posting. Once, when I was in high school I did an essay comparing the queen is dead and husker du's xen arcade, and your post ramps up nostalgia for those days. Thanks!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08417654520922506553noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-35102348612361165312015-06-13T17:11:18.944+01:002015-06-13T17:11:18.944+01:00It was an odd post to do in some ways. I started o...It was an odd post to do in some ways. I started off replying to Wilhelm's thread and it became obvious I had too much to say for a comment. I wanted to get into the Intentional Fallacy thing but I realized I wasn't 100% up to speed with it myself even though I reference it all the time. I started researching it and found it was related to New Criticism, which I should have known but didn't, and then I started digging into it and this is where we ended up...<br /><br />I'm never sure about links - partly I think it's a good use of the technology to link to things rather than explaining them in the post itself but then I think that if people were that interested they could just google the names/terms anyway and I worry that people will feel somehow obligated to click through and read a load of stuff that goes into waaaaay more detail than they need to know. Personally I rarely click through links when I read unless I am very puzzled by something but I know other people are more diligent.<br /><br />In the end, though, I put more in than I usually would because I only skim-read some of the stuff and I'd like to go back and read it properly myself later so the links are kind of bookmarks for me. If nothing else I hope a few people might watch the Dolly Mixture clip - they're probably my favorite band of all time, even now. I used to keep a website up about them back in the 1990s before everything like that moved to MySpace and blogs...Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-87893063842403356492015-06-13T16:55:35.166+01:002015-06-13T16:55:35.166+01:00Thanks! When the real A.I.s arrive I hope they'...Thanks! When the real A.I.s arrive I hope they're just as friendly!Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-62107926592023221252015-06-13T15:51:36.076+01:002015-06-13T15:51:36.076+01:00This was a long read for me with a lot of referenc...This was a long read for me with a lot of references I vaguely got or missed completely. I do agree with you though. MMOs are strange because there's an artistic vision, a business motive, and a consumer fanbase that wants the best product for their individual tastes.<br /><br />To me, I just find it strange that they wanted to overhaul what has been in the game for so long, especially when it has become a big part of the game overall!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00289459451344261371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-42350513340893826682015-06-13T14:42:50.349+01:002015-06-13T14:42:50.349+01:00Never commented before, though been reading your b...Never commented before, though been reading your blog for a while. Just wanted to say fantastic post, indeed there have been a ridiculous stream of fantastic posts recently. <br /><br />Sorry my comment reads like a spam bot comment, perhaps I have just failed some sort of self imposed turing test. Anyway, keep up the great work.Hoofnoreply@blogger.com