Dan E. Kool
Walking Trash Can Robot
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Post by Dan E. Kool on Aug 19, 2017 8:23:10 GMT
Ah, I see now how we're doing this. OK. Fine by me.
I've tried to keep my responses pretty cool, but there's no use in writing any more if all you're going to say is "You're lost," "You're trolling," "You're batshit crazy." That's really rude, actually. Try to remember that we're talking about video games here, @stratodoofus. Inhale, exhale. Just relax.
If you want to stay ignorant about camp (but honestly, why? lol) then that's on you. Exactly as I predicted, you repeated yourself almost word for word, even on points like TV and HBO which I never even brought up and have nothing to do with anything. So, that's intelligent... Oh, should I explain sarcasm, too?
I wish you had even a single argument that I could respond to, but you don't. I'm not kidding! Look at your last post. Every line follows this formula: Invent Dan E. Kool point, Call it crazy, DON'T give a counter argument (very important!), Repeat. Funny enough, your longest paragraph is just a string of poorly written insults. The surest sign of a lost cause.
Look, you must know you're wrong. Just thank me for teaching you about camp and then we can both move on.
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scipioafricanus
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Sega Does What Nintendon't... except the 32X
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Post by scipioafricanus on Aug 19, 2017 9:40:06 GMT
Ah, I see now how we're doing this. OK. Fine by me. I've tried to keep my responses pretty cool, but there's no use in writing any more if all you're going to say is "You're lost," "You're trolling," "You're batshit crazy." That's really rude, actually. Try to remember that we're talking about video games here, @stratodoofus. Inhale, exhale. Just relax. If you want to stay ignorant about camp (but honestly, why? lol) then that's on you. Exactly as I predicted, you repeated yourself almost word for word, even on points like TV and HBO which I never even brought up and have nothing to do with anything. So, that's intelligent... Oh, should I explain sarcasm, too? I wish you had even a single argument that I could respond to, but you don't. I'm not kidding! Look at your last post. Every line follows this formula: Invent Dan E. Kool point, Call it crazy, DON'T give a counter argument (very important!), Repeat. Funny enough, your longest paragraph is just a string of poorly written insults. The surest sign of a lost cause. Look, you must know you're wrong. Just thank me for teaching you about camp and then we can both move on.
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centipede
CGR Undertow Groupie
It was just one soy latte, I swear!
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Post by centipede on Aug 19, 2017 10:18:56 GMT
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centipede
CGR Undertow Groupie
It was just one soy latte, I swear!
Posts: 2,781
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Post by centipede on Aug 19, 2017 10:26:23 GMT
Now, for a game to be what Dan E describes as adj. "camping", it would probably require a silly storyline, N64 era graphics and maybe a cheaply done soundtrack, right?
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stratogustav
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Post by stratogustav on Aug 19, 2017 14:31:59 GMT
Dan E. Kool again with the camping crap. You are seriosly traumatized with that stuff. I imagine something really bad was done to you during camping if you think it's bad, but that somehow it can be turn around to feel good? Again, you haven't addressed the argument, you just dance around the idea without getting anywhere or giving a straight answer. Acting as if it wasn't even there, but turning your back on it won't even make it dissapear. The truth is just because something purposefully tries to be unrealistic doesn't make it bad. What is so hard to understand? Even a little kid could grasp his mind around such a basic concept. I never said you were batshit crazy, just the point you are trying to make that is outside any logical reasoning. That's why I thought you were trolling. I refuse to believe you are serious when you said such things.
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Cervantes
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A former Incompetent Evil Commander (XP: 2423)
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Post by Cervantes on Aug 19, 2017 17:23:25 GMT
stratogustav - Dan E. Kool is mostly referring to the very well known 1964's text by Susan Sontag called "Notes on Camp". It's available here.To summarize: she notices that some people grew an appreciation from works that are very naive about their own terrible qualities. This kind of appreciation is what she calls "camp". The problem with defining camp is that it's not a quality of the work in itself, but a way to look at it: what would be seen by most people as just "bad" could suddenly create cult followings. Ed Wood's films are the most famous examples; this "camp" appreciation comes because not only his movies are bad, but mostly because he was really trying his hardest, and he honestly thought he was creating masterpieces because the didn't know any better. That's what makes those movies funny: it's like they think too highly of themselves. For a more game-related movie, think of something like the Super Mario Bros. movie: it was trying to be all avant-garde while being an adaptation of a game about plumbers saving a pricess. This dissonance is funny. "Camping" is when someone tries to replicate that, when, let's say, a good director purposefully makes a terrible movie as a parody of those legitimately camp ones. Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodrigues did that in Grindhouse: the movies have a silly script, actors acting all wooden, "dramatic" scenes that are so ridiculous that they are funny, various continuity errors... But it's all done on purpose, as parody of 70s grindhouse movies. Or like when Tim Burton did Mars Attacks! as a parody of 1950s sci-fi movies. That would be "camping". So, how that would apply to games? The creators of Cosmic Carnage and Virtual Hydlide weren't parodying anything; they were trying their best (the ads for Virtual Hydlide legitimately made it look like an awesome game in the 90s), but everything is so ridiculous that we end up appreciating them for the "wrong" reasons: I don't appreciate Hydlide as an epic medieval quest (as the developers seemingly intended); instead of looking impressed at the FMVs and the "realistic" digitized graphics, I find them funny as hell. I don't play Cosmic Carnage thinking it will compete with Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat; I play for the exaggerated plot, absurd character designs and broken mechanics. Now, see, EDF was created as a parody of those horror/sci-fi movies from the 50s-60s about giant ants, spiders, ridiculous aliens, giants and other things (the same source material taken by Mars Attacks!). So not only the entire premise is based on terrible movies, the gameplay itself had to be severely limited as EDF is a budget series. So, what happens is that the developers aren't trying to do a very well balanced, well written, good looking game with innovative gameplay; they're just making something that works (fighting against huge numbers of enemies) and delivering it on a package that has everything that, in other games, would be signals of bad quality. The result is: a lot of people (most of us included) love EDF, even though we KNOW its individual parts are bad (I listed them in previous posts). We still love it because we know it's supposed to be a ridiculous buggy budget game. About the graphics, I was not saying graphics make a good game, I'm just pointing that great graphics (or more to the point, great art direction) is a sign that the developers tried their best to make every aspect of the game stand out. EDF's graphics look like they came from a terrible early 2000s game, AND THAT WORKS: but only does because everything about EDF has this odd look to it.
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Dan E. Kool
Walking Trash Can Robot
Now With Extra Pulp!
Posts: 3,325
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Post by Dan E. Kool on Aug 19, 2017 18:44:38 GMT
I'd like to know, scipioafricanus , why aren't you quoting stratogustav? Why aren't you two talking about the last page of aggressive language against Dan E. Kool? And it's not over. This is nice. One on three.
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Dan E. Kool
Walking Trash Can Robot
Now With Extra Pulp!
Posts: 3,325
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Post by Dan E. Kool on Aug 19, 2017 19:15:28 GMT
Now, for a game to be what Dan E describes as adj. "camping", it would probably require a silly storyline, N64 era graphics and maybe a cheaply done soundtrack, right? Yeah, sorry. I used the word pretty freely in my earlier posts, but Camping is actually a verb. A synonym might be "parodying" or "lampooning." But "Camping" is different than those two words in that it refers exclusively to camp... Which is its own unique style of humor. I can see why you'd say adjective, though. It is a sort of weird couple of words, when you think about it. The only big distinction between something that is camp vs camping is whether it did what it did on purpose or not. The humor is still essentially the same. A game that did what you mentioned above could definitely be described as campy, so long as the silliness is treated as drop-dead serious at all times. That's the only way it can be camp. That seriousness needs to be all-encompassing, at least artificially. The creator would know it's a joke, the player would probably know, but everything inside that world would have to be serious to the point of overselling or almost cheesiness. It can never be even hinted that anything is done for a laugh, even when it is. That's what separates camp from comedy. So with the N64 graphics - On its own, this probably wouldn't be very campy. For it to be camping, the game would have to draw attention to its limitations by completely ignoring it to the (apparent) detriment of the player. An example might be to use the N64's low draw distance against the player by continuously referring to something amazing off yonder that every NPC claims to see, but the player can't. It would be important that the NPCs do this with total sincerity. They can't give a wink of judge to let the player in on the joke, or the camp dies. I referenced to films earlier only because that's where camp arguably originated. However, I see no reason why a video game can't be just as campy, with suitable substitutes for the medium. So something you might see in a campy movie is an extreme, dramatic close-up or a wonky camera angle. You see this in bad old B-movies all the time. A video game example of this might be, Oh I don't know, maybe filling the screen with a ridiculous amount of characters and dropping the frame rate down to 5fps on a regular basis? For the game to be camping (as opposed to just bad) it would still need to be playable, but this would happen no matter the hardware the player is using - because it's on purpose. It is, in effect, a type of humor. The developer "pretends" they are doing this because the game is just TOO INTENSE, but in actuality it's a kind of in-joke. Yeah, that silliness would extend to the game's storyline as well, so long as the creator writes the story with a kind of tongue-in-cheek seriousness that's never betrayed for the player. A good quote on camp, from Bill Dozier I think, is that it's like playing Alice in Wonderland as if it's Hamlet. That could mean over-dramatic dialogue in an otherwise ridiculous situation, or bad voice acting in a very serious situation, etc.
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Dan E. Kool
Walking Trash Can Robot
Now With Extra Pulp!
Posts: 3,325
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Post by Dan E. Kool on Aug 19, 2017 19:32:53 GMT
Dan E. Kool again with the camping crap. You are seriosly traumatized with that stuff. I imagine something really bad was done to you during camping if you think it's bad, but that somehow it can be turn around to feel good? Do new concepts frighten you, @stratodoofus? Or are you just projecting again? Not at all. I've defined my position very clearly: I said EDF was camping and I defined what that meant. I did so here, here, and here. So find me a kid that can explain it to me, because you're doing terrible. The funny thing is, never in my posts did I ever say that being unrealistic was bad - or even campy, for that matter. But since you're so hung up on it, do me a favor. Go back a page and find the moment I said anything even close to that. Link to it. I feel the same way about you, at this point.
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scipioafricanus
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Post by scipioafricanus on Aug 19, 2017 21:00:07 GMT
I'd like to know, scipioafricanus , why aren't you quoting stratogustav? Why aren't you two talking about the last page of aggressive language against Dan E. Kool? And it's not over. This is nice. One on three. Cus yours was the last post...
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billspreston
Cheru Wing
I wrote Max Reebo's first 3 hits
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Post by billspreston on Aug 19, 2017 21:19:11 GMT
Now I wanna hear about the tent story.
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Dan E. Kool
Walking Trash Can Robot
Now With Extra Pulp!
Posts: 3,325
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Post by Dan E. Kool on Aug 19, 2017 23:13:02 GMT
I'd like to know, scipioafricanus , why aren't you quoting stratogustav? Why aren't you two talking about the last page of aggressive language against Dan E. Kool? And it's not over. This is nice. One on three. Cus yours was the last post...[Liberal memes] So when I write a high energy post, you and the other fake posters reply with outrage right away. But when your friend stratogustav wrongly suggests that Dan E. Kool was molested by Smokey the bear at summer camp on a warm August night, that's OK? Where was the outrage then? Witch hunt!
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scipioafricanus
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Sega Does What Nintendon't... except the 32X
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Post by scipioafricanus on Aug 19, 2017 23:38:40 GMT
Cus yours was the last post...[Liberal memes] So when I write a high energy post, you and the other fake posters reply with outrage right away. But when your friend stratogustav wrongly suggests that Dan E. Kool was molested by Smokey the bear at summer camp on a warm August night, that's OK? Where was the outrage then? Witch hunt! Whoa whoa whoa... It isn't molestation if you thought it was a "furry" at the time.
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stratogustav
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Post by stratogustav on Aug 19, 2017 23:53:50 GMT
Hahaha, you are funny Dan E. Kool I can't deny that coolness, but I can deny that you are being reasonable when you suggest that something done intentionally succeeds at being good. It can't be bad not only because it succeeds at what it wants to do but because what it wants to do isn't bad in the first place. Cervantes nice share, I appreciate you finding that article. However just like the article shares light on different likings. I also disagree with your idea that the elements in EDF and musuo games are bad for the reasons I already stated before. Budget means nothing, graphical realism means nothing, a bizarre plot means nothing, when it comes to good or bad. If one assumes those things are bad by nature that would mean that by that defintion the opposite is good, that high budget, realistic graphics, and a realistic plot is good. That is exactly the type of thinking that needs to be eradicated from the industry. Those are the exact assumptions publishers take advantage to sell crappy games and steal money from people by selling them bad games that "look good", but aren't.
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Cervantes
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Post by Cervantes on Aug 20, 2017 0:36:50 GMT
stratogustav - Sontag's essay really defines camp as a way to enjoy/appreciate things, not as a definition of things themselves, so the very definition of camp is subjective. You just see EDF as being a series of good games; I see EDF as games that are good because they homage things that you usually find in bad games - so we both enjoy EDF, but we do appreciate it differently. And I do certainly agree that "good parts" don't necessarily make a good game - that's what I think of Bioshock; I can't put my finger on a single flaw in it (great writing, graphics, level design etc.), and yet I don't have any desire of playing it again. Technically perfect, yet boring to me. Dan E. Kool - Your example of a framerate drop as a joke reminded me of a section in Ninja Gaiden 2 (360 version). The game always control the enemy encounters so the framerate is kept close to 60, but then you come to a part near the end of the game that Ryu gets to some stairs and the game suddenly decides to throw such a ridiculously high number of enemies that the framerate gets on single digits, and it goes on and on for a long time. The section looks entirely intentional, and was certainly done as a joke - the scene is so absurd that the console can barely keep up with it. Itagaki wasn't worried about making a reasonable challenge at that point, he certainly was doing it as a joke. And it works: I've seen a lot of comments about this scene being funny and memorable.
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