GDC 09: Game Critics Rant at the Industry

[Black Dragon37]

http://uk.ps2.ign.com/articles/967/967360p1.html

There are a couple rants in there, but my favourite (because it's wrong on so many levels) is this one:

This year's rant, "Burned by Friendly Fire: Game Critics Rant," turned the mic over to game journalists instead of developers. Heather Chaplin, author of Smartbomb offered tough words for the gaming industry. "I've been covering the games industry for eight years, mainly for mainstream outlets, and I often find myself acting as a translator," Chaplin said.

Chaplin wondered how it is that videogames remain so focused on violence and zombie gore. "The excuse is that the videogame industry is only thirty-five years old," said Chaplin. "But after thirty-five years rock & roll had Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Clash. After thirty-five years film had Fritz Lang, film noire, and was a few years away from Citizen Kane." Chaplin blamed the inability of the medium to move beyond male-centric power fantasies as a direct result of developer heterogeny and immaturity.

"It's not that the medium is in its adolescence, it's that you're a bunch of ****ing adolescents," she said. "It's even worse because you're technically supposed to be adults." Chaplin traced the paucity of more mature content in games to four basic ideas that frighten men the most: responsibility, introspection, intimacy, and intellectual discovery. She described game developers in terms of neoteny, an idea from developmental biology that describes adults of a species who have juvenile traits. This can be seen in mature Chihuahuas, which resemble infant and fetal wolves. Chaplin closed by challenging the audience, "What do you want to be, a Chihuahua or a wolf?"

David Jaffe even voiced his opinion over this.

What do guys think?

[masteratt]

She was just probably on her period or something.

/jokes.

I can't argue this because....Well it doesn't make any sense, she is not the only one who said this so why exactly are we debating this based on what she said?
We've been making a case similar and beyond in our forums for months now so I don't want to repeat the whole discussion.
Been there, done that sistah!

And I'm sorry to say this but I gotta ask why are we still listening to David Jaffe?
Has he even done anything since Calling All Cars? He should work on games instead of voicing his loud opinion on everything.

Anyway to add something: Discussions like this, IF taken seriously by the right people, can lead to improvement....As she said 35 years is not a lot and you can't compare gaming industry with others, it's a different ball game in a completely different world.
Give it time girl!

Other than that, this'll be old news before anyone understands why it was news in the first place.

[jaxmkii]

dingos ate my baby...

[SadPanda]

Like the basketball court across the street this argument is long worn out. Sure it has its point of relevancy, but given what really sells these days... maybe we should be moving beyond flash and "hidden mystery" titles for the PC and mini games for the Wii.

[Segitz]

Saying that we don't get "sophisticated games" after 35 years is pure bull... I've played sophisticated games on my freaking Amiga nearly 20 years ago. I mean, games like Monkey Island surely aren't "dumb zombie shooters".

Yeah, many MANY games are pure dumb shooters and whatnot, but so are movies, back then and even more so now!

The more interesting point to gaming is, you can get into gaming without ANY cash (browser games) and get famous, whereas you need boatloads of cash to do this with either music or film... there is no way for a person to enter those tight lines. This industry is TOTALLY different than what we experience with the movie and music business. It started slowly and rose to fame to a mass experience in less than 30 years. All the people in the business don't know what the hell they are doing, as there is no precedent. This is what crippled the industry before the NES hit (well, it was Bushnells decision to sell Atari to Warner, which he later regretted, as Warner didn't know what they were doing either).

Soon, everyone on earth will be a gamer or know a gamer (30 to 40 years from now when all the old people are gone, that never knew a NES in their lives )