When you took Ryu to the arcade to play Space Harrier etc there's a well-established if indirect teasing of the fourth wall. After spending in-game money to beat your in-game (in-game) high score, you begin to ask yourself what on earth you are doing.
When Ryu gets the job as the forklift driver this same question leads directly to a beautifully uncomfortable awareness of your self, and of your quest, and of Ryu's.
I don't like the way this writer put it, but the forklifts were at least evolutionary.
They follow a path set by some early 80s job-simulator games[1], but perhaps most memorably by 1995's unreleased Desert Bus by Penn & Teller for the 3DO [2].
It requires intense focus. A single mistake 15 minutes into a course will result in a game over (small mistakes like going out of the lane or forgetting to signal the next stop will deduct points, but if you even tap another car then that's it). You have to find the perfect level of pressure to apply to the analog trigger to get the bus at the correct speed. I find it meditative in a way that resembles when I work on something that requires very precise and fine movement, like soldering or fine woodworking. A course might take 20 minutes to complete, but time seems to pass in an instant, and when it's done I feel incredibly relaxed.
Speaking of Morrowind, one of the things I liked in the extremely long oral history just published the other day ( https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/27/18281082/elder-scrolls-mor... ) was that the Vivec sermons, among other things, are all conflicting and rival accounts because the dev team itself was internally divided and rooting for particular factions:
"It’s never dogmatic. We would tell the stories basically from a character’s point of view, and we were always very careful that anything that was presented was told from that specific viewpoint. So you had conflicting notions of what went on in the world: “What happened to the Dwemer?” Well, one group says this; another says that. “What happened in Red Mountain?”
What was great about that is you would actually have factions develop on the design team: “Vivec and his buddies were actually the bad guys, and they usurped their power.” And, you know, “Dagoth Ur — our main villain — he was the victim in all this.” You had the room to do that back-and-forth. So, whenever we would present any history, it was never quite like, “Well, the dwarves disappeared because of the following reasons.” Each race has their version. What’s the truth?
I was wracking my brain trying to think of early '80s job-simulator games, mostly because there aren't many at all. I'm not sure that I'd class Trashman, Paperboy or Tapper (fond of all 3 btw) as job-simulators. Other than driving and flightsims, I can't think of any from the early '80s :) Late '80s perhaps.
Right, the 3 you mention are largely mechanically identical to shooters.
Earliest thing I can think of that is even close is Alter Ego which was '86, though I'm sure there are some job-simulator games in basic code in a magazine somewhere.
Somewhat off-topic, but searching for something older than Alter Ego turned up "Little Computer People" which Wikipedia lists as the Ur-example of "life simulation" and looks a lot like "The Sims" but on the C64.
Yeah, the 3 mentioned are listed in the link in the article. Agree about Little Computer People. As a speccy owner, I can vaguely remember being envious at the time!
Star Trader from '74 seems to be the inspiration for Trade Wars and Drugwars of '84―they're essentially ‘grind simulators’ with the player looking at sheets of numbers for a lot of the time. However, the apex of popularity of such games was likely in the early-mid 90s when office drones apparently sought to get their minds off the grind with a different grind, and countless knock-offs appeared for DOS.
Still, this ‘spreadsheet’ gameplay is rather different from box stacking. Some Game & Watch titles might be closer.
Loved Trade Wars, it feels like at least once or twice a year I'll find a BBS that has it installed and play around.
Aurora 4X is definitely a descendant of this spreadsheet simulator genre. That's a great game, but I wish there was more variety in the genre for wanna-be beancounters.
Huh, Lemonade Stand does look closer to the static reports of Drugwars clones.
However, Chris Sherrick apparently specifically modeled Trade Wars on Star Trader—according to Wikipedia. And, if those Realm Elites are anything like the other Elite, they should also involve travel like Star Trader and unlike, fittingly, the Stand.
Over time I conflate the concepts found in games like Skool Daze, Make a Chip, My Name is Uncle Groucho, Software Star, Grand National and suchlike that brought together semi-prosaic simulation tasks with a startling self-awareness.
TLL was way ahead of its time, IMHO. Fast forward 10 years and Desert Strike is a hit on the Megadrive! I can vaguely remember proper flightsims on the Speccy (one required a lens-lock! remember those?) :) This is going to bug me now - I'm going to be sat here all evening trying to think up games from back in the day!
Loved the virtual flaneur aspect of this game, just wandering around the neighborhood, checking out shops, buying things, talking to people, heading home in the evening were so enjoyable.
My Summer Car is the only modern game that comes to mind that captures the same kind of experience for me, if anyone has any other suggestions I'd love to hear them.
"Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor" had this for me. It also made me feel like I was getting good at just finding my way around the city. Knowing alleyway shortcuts, where different shops are, or where to find a cheap meal.
Plus each day of the week has its own different mood / street festivals / music. Lots to love in that game.
Talking to various inhabitants of the city was like 80% of the magic, for me. In fact, I usually made it a point to try to exhaust the population's dialogue options before the next "stage" of the game, which would cause their dialogue to change.
It really did establish a strong sense of place. And it was a somewhat unique place, too - a "boring" and unremarkable suburb. Many (most?) of us grew up someplace similar, but few games are set in such places because of the lack of coolness.
Also: I can't look at a retail display of TVs without thinking of that game and hearing the department store jingle!
To my eye, Fallout New Vegas, had some of the most immersive open world experience. Walking alone through the streats, or even in the scrub lands late in the night, it almost feels if you are really there.
Sometimes, rarely, you can get a similar vibe from Witcher 3 as well, but that game is a chore to play.
I have still never gotten Fallout NV to run without crashing catastrophically less than 2 hours in. I've tried different machines (laptop vs. custom desktop) and several mods to fix this, but when I realized I had sunk 4 hours into it already and it was looking like an all day project I walked away and haven't come back since.
It's one of my bigger gaming disappointments, honestly, especially after constantly reading how much everyone loves it years later. I keep hoping for a remaster or something so I can run it without buying new hardware which may or may not work and/or tinkering for hours.
This doesn't help you but the PS3 version was a pretty great game - I don't remember it crashing constantly. I was sad that it would/could? not get the mod support the PC version got that I kept reading about online, but apparently that was a tradeoff.
I hate the story with a passion, but Red Dead Redemption 2 has a great rural world to run around in. Talking to people does get pretty repetitive after a while.
One of my favourite games growing up. I was disappointed when the sequel became an Xbox exclusive in the west. I imported the Japanese copy of Shenmue II and played it on my Dreamcast. Fortunately there were English subtitles.
I of course picked up the Shenmue 1+2 remaster on PS4, and have backed the kickstarter for the third (coming out this August!). You can bet the third will have forklifts!
1+2 don't really hold up that well today, but like many fans, I bought this purely for nostalgic reasons.
If I were to bet, I'd say Shenmue 3 will get metacritic scores in the 70s. It feels like an impossible task honestly. How to update the game for 2019 whilst also pleasing die-hard fans.
What do you mean? Shenmue II was released in Europe with Japanese audio and subtitles even (which is the best kind of release, in my opinion).
I also think that both games hold up very well today. Played them for the first time around seven years ago and was blown away. Personally, I prefer the first one because it has a more concentrated setting as well as a nostalgic atmosphere. Despite being rather familiar with games in general, I haven't encountered anything comparable.
I was too stupid to do drive the forklift when I played this as a kid. Maybe I was missing something obvious but I recall getting stuck in the game and just doing my forklift job so poorly that I was not allowed to advance for months of in game time.
I recall the controls took some getting used to. I believe the left/right controls actually started movement of a slow turning wheel on the forklift that moved at a constant rate that then turned the wheels, as opposed to direct/real-time input like racing games.
I barely remember the forklifting... All I seem to remember is everyone saying "Oh, hello Ryo" and talking about "that day, when the snow turned to rain"
The idea of a game playing the player is also explored in Spec Ops: The Line where (according to the developers) a valid response to the atrocities in the game is to simply stop playing the game, giving up before completing it.
Oh man, Spec Ops is one of my top games, but I've only played it once. Same feeling as watching Requiem for a Dream--once is enough. It's difficult to recommend it to people without giving away the experience of walking in to it thinking "it's just another mideast shooter".
A lot of people hated the forklift segment. “Why am I coming home from my job to relax by doing another job?” was a common refrain.
The article is a stretch, but is is downright mundane compared to the explanations of game designs I’ve heard straight from the mouth of Japan’s rockstar designers who made them. They enjoy wearing sunglasses and black leather jackets and getting extremely abstract about game design.
That was the problem. The game's lead, Yu Suzuki, was not primarily a game designer. He was known to push ahead games with revolutionary graphics, see Space Harrier and Virtua Fighter. But he was nowhere near as good at game design as Miyamoto or Naka.
I loved Shenmue for the immersive experience which was unchallenged at the time. It was the first of its kind, and for a long time no other open world game paid as much attention to detail. But its traditional gameplay mechanics were weak.
I think the design is pretty great, we have a virtual fighter combat system with training, (and many hardcore fighter game fans appreciate Virtua fighters mechanics) we have an arcade with actual games from the era, we have a gacha system. But the point wasn't to make an arcade, the point was to create something like a real world where you can walk around and explore. It's not about dopamine hits.
I think one famous mechanic besides 3d fighters that Yu made, was the arcade that has a vehicle you ride on.
Well the forklift part only happens for a very short window, so it sounds like those people didn't really play through it. The point was Ryo needed to raise money after a thing happens.
Hating the forklifts is not the point of the piece. Ignore that if it bothers you, and continue reading for an insightful take on how narrative and gameplay interact in a game you played.
A ton of other people hated it though. Is there a reason people hate Kotaku so much? It's always seemed like a pretty normal game site to me except for the fact it leans a little more liberal on social issues.
Social issues definitely seem like part of it now, but Kotaku was disliked in hardcore communities well before Gamergate or any of that other nonsense. My recollections of late-2000s Kotaku are similar to how I feel today about a lot of tech publications where personal expertise in their subject area makes it painfully obvious that they don't really know what they're talking about.
When you spend hundreds to thousands of hours mastering a game and immersing yourself in the culture surrounding it, an article on "your" game, unless it's written by someone as keyed-in to the meta as you are, is likely to come off as a series of poorly informed hot takes. In other words, generalist journalists frequently have a hard time developing the level of experience in a particular area necessary to write about it in such a way that's not laughable to the "experts". This effect is particularly bad in video games, where the amount of rabbit holes you can pour yourself into is practically uncountable. Everyone's an expert on something, and it only takes one crappy article on your pet game to destroy your confidence in anything that outlet produces, even if you lack the experience to see the lie in each and every piece.
> When you spend hundreds to thousands of hours mastering a game and immersing yourself in the culture surrounding it, an article on "your" game, unless it's written by someone as keyed-in to the meta as you are, is likely to come off as a series of poorly informed hot takes. In other words, generalist journalists frequently have a hard time developing the level of experience in a particular area necessary to write about it in such a way that's not laughable to the "experts".
An alternate way to say this is that these communities are incredibly insular, and the most active participants work hard to keep them that way by using their status in the group to set themselves up as gatekeepers, policing the bounds of acceptable opinion. Perspectives that differ from that of the in-group threaten their status, so they react against them violently in order to signal to the group that they're still in charge, nothing to see here, move along.
These gatekeepers also often see their "elite" status in the group as a fundamental part of their self-worth, so they interpret challenges to their ideas as attacks on them personally, and respond in kind. And it doesn't help either that gaming communities tend to disproportionately attract teenagers and young adults, who are right at that moment in life when their passions tend to run hottest.
I think the author of this piece clearly considers Shenmue one of "their" games. I don't think we're seeing the result of an outsider, but quite the opposite. Someone who has analyzed this game this deeply is clearly enmeshed in it. Rather, I think we're seeing two effects:
1. When someone loves a game, I think they have a tendency to over-estimate how disliked some of the more unusual aspects of it are.
2. When someone loves a game, and they point out that most people don't like some aspect of that game, other people who also love that game group themselves into "most people" and then disagree with the author.
What I think is more important is that whether or not the forklifts were hated is not the point. The author's point is that the forklifts were an integral part of the narrative experience of the game, as they contrasted player experience with that of the main character. Focusing on a throw-away "so-and-so is hated" is silly.
On one hand, I understand what you're saying. For example, I'm a big fan of Evangelion, and there's a decent amount of meta context to be aware about when going into that series.
On the other hand, I think we need fresh (and even naive) looks at these older works. Shenmue, Evangelion, etc -- they should be continually reevaluated and challenged. That's the difference between a living fandom and an echo chamber of folks smelling their own farts.
Oh, sure, I didn't mean to critique this article in particular. I thought it was actually somewhat interesting and went off on some fun mental tangents around how the form of the creative medium can influence the message, the obvious example being the interplay of mechanical difficulty and narrative in Fromsoft games. Stuff like this definitely benefits from a fresh perspective. Nobody needs another self-referential addition to the homoerotic subtexts in Madoka fandom wiki page.
Where I and others have had problems in the past tends to be around content that's less interpretive, like this, and more factual, like "a window into competitive play in ___ MMO", where, if you're a competitive player of ___ MMO, the gaps in understanding are on display front and center.
I mean I game a lot and overall their quality seems pretty average compared to other sites. Other sites have the same issues but don't get near the same amount of hate.
I get thinking it's quality is middling but I've ran into a lot of opinions that go beyond that quite frequently.
their media group was purchased in 2016 for $136 million and was sold recently for less than $50 million. in 2017 they generated $80 million in revenue at only a $20 million dollar loss.
Kotaku is very partisan in its Nintendo fanboyism. In their view Nintendo can't do anything wrong, where as the slightest hint of a mistake from Valve or Sega or others, they pounce upon with extreme outrage. Also they kind of patronizingly fetishize Japanese gaming culture, over others. They'll have pages and pages of articles about even the most obscure Pokemon game releases, while they give lesser coverage of a Total War game.
Note to mention the click-bait and hyperbole laden writing style.
And Kotaku has a weird focus on things like "cosplay", which as I perceive isn't really a part of gaming culture, for example I don't see any other gaming press making that conflation.
> the recent outcry from game journalists to add an easy mode to Sekiro to allow them to "experience" the game when for a From Software game, the difficulty IS the game experience.
Based on what I read on Kotaku (and elsewhere) about Sekiro and the difficulty issue, this is an incredible mischaracterization of the truth (with a healthy dose of opinion) and, for me, enough to disqualify the rest of your comment from serious consideration.
This made me think on a tangent, on whether divulging spoilers for an interactive experience have a heavier "stigma" than for books or movies. Five or 10 years from now, or even a month from now, I can't imagine being offended if someone were to spoil who dies in "Avengers: Infinity War", or the 3rd season of GoT. Whereas a video game is much more inherently about the "journey" -- e.g. you have to do some work to get to the end. I think I'd be annoyed if people were just spoiling "The Last of Us" 10 years after its release (which is likely to be after its sequel is released).
That said, I don't think I'll ever find time to play the original Shenmue. But hearing more details about why it has cultivated such a fond following makes me very interested in playing its Kickstarted sequel.
Unlike other mediums, the number of people who play games has grown exponentially over those 20 years.
I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of people who play games now have never experienced Shenmue even though it was a blockbuster title on the 9 million Dreamcasts that shipped worldwide.
And you're not only spoiling the 20 year old version, you're also spoiling the HD remaster that can be bought right now on PC.
This kind of knee jerk anti journalist gamer bile is getting old. Respond to the points the article actually made. There's nothing inherently wrong with this kind of criticism.
When you took Ryu to the arcade to play Space Harrier etc there's a well-established if indirect teasing of the fourth wall. After spending in-game money to beat your in-game (in-game) high score, you begin to ask yourself what on earth you are doing.
When Ryu gets the job as the forklift driver this same question leads directly to a beautifully uncomfortable awareness of your self, and of your quest, and of Ryu's.
I don't like the way this writer put it, but the forklifts were at least evolutionary.
They follow a path set by some early 80s job-simulator games[1], but perhaps most memorably by 1995's unreleased Desert Bus by Penn & Teller for the 3DO [2].
[1] https://www.digitiser2000.com/main-page/10-mundane-jobs-that... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_%26_Teller%27s_Smoke_and_...