It’s only polite to share.

http://www.elderscrolls.com/downloads/downloads_games.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdLVLPoRXR4

Perhaps a future Bethesda® Softworks LLC (a ZeniMax Media Company) title will incorporate some Project Natal user interfacing for its 360 incarnation. Then it will create cognitive dissonance in the minds of truly intellectual gamers, because wow is that bringing us greater immersion or is it just furthering the infantilizationist agenda which Bethesda® Softworks LLC (a ZeniMax Media Company) have already begun compromising themselves for?

Will videogames ever be valid again?

Not the most reliable source I know, but wiki says that the predecessors of tabletop RPGs have been invented in the 60s, and the first commercial one has been released in ‘74, which makes videogames roughly as old or older (Space War in ‘61 and the release of the first home console in ‘72). Though I’m not sure what you mean with “modern” videogames.

About the drives:

“Gamism is the desire for [...] successful realization of one’s goals within the framework of the rules”

I think that in the end, this is the only drive (the one drive to rule them all.. yeah that was lame), as it seems to encompass all the others. If your goal is to beat your adversary, to tell a dramatic story, or to find a goal to begin with, you’re always driven by your desire to reach what you’re aiming for, and therefore always driven by “gamism”.

“Narrativism concerns the process of using the framework of the game to tell your story and create dramatically interesting scenarios;”

Your adversary here is (besides the game’s framework) your own imagination and “sensibilities for dramatic staging”. You’re telling your story by playing the game in such a way, as to create dramatically interesting scenarios. Like holding back against an inferior opponent in a fighting game, to fake the tension of a more evened out match.

I suppose we don’t see this as a specifically stated goal in videogames, because they’re not good at quantifying our performance as “scenario editors”. To appreciate a dramatic scene is harder than registering a headshot. This stuff just works better with an intelligent human being in the role of the game master.

“Simulationism follows the desire for realism, verisimilitude, and a rejection of concessions to Game or Story that would breach those ideals.”

If you’d want to use these terms for video games, I’d maybe suggest calling this “toyism” instead, because every videogame simulates something (Daggerfall a fantasy world, Tetris the falling of blocks) and the term might be misleading.

But anyway, I think “Simulationism” drives us to set up our own rules, when we see the game’s framework as inconsistent or incomplete, therefore using it in unintended ways and hereby creating our own games, just like a toy can be used to play a myriad of different things. Maybe speedruns in videogames could be seen as an example of this.

“… the concrete, tactile aspects of gameplay and the rules governing the world’s response to player actions. This allows the term mechanics to mark the line between self and other—the behavior of the player and the behavior of the game— …”

Don’t we already call this the “controls”?

How the game controls or is controlled, i.e. how you can move something on the screen. To use one of your examples: how you move your party around the map in a JRPG, but not the battle transition (which is instantly apparant when you use the word “controls” instead of “mechanics”). You’re stripped from your ability to control the game, as long as the transition is taking place.

I therefore don’t think that it would be a good idea to redefine “mechanics”, even more so as it’s already widely used to just mean “how something works” in a game, for example the “scoring mechanics” in a shooter.

That’s not really the thing to take away from this. This knowledge was already there. Inside you.

A consideration, though: Daggerfall, my very favorite DOS game and still on the top 10 overall, was rife with unfinished ideas, unrealized potential and unpolished content. I still love it so much that I’m converting an old computer into a DOSbox with this specific game in mind. You know… eventually. But even with all its flaws, it’s still a favorite of mine. Is it because video games a decade later should be held to a higher standard of overall quality? Perhaps. Is it because such games are strongly laced with the pant-tightening aphrodisiac of nostalgia? Perhaps. I can’t put my finger on the exact reasons why some unpolished 90’s games are more acceptable. I do have a theory.

The DOS prompt. Seriously. Nowadays, if a game crashes, you’re given some happy little window with a happy little Windows tone, right in front of your Kim Kardashian wallpaper and your music folder and your MikeDrunkAtChurchLOL.jpg. You’re back safe, at home. And being inconvenienced in your own home? The NERVE. An inexcusable effrontery. But when Daggerfall crashes at two in the morning? And you’re given a black DOS void with a line of unintelligible hex code, and two or three random MIDI notes looping into eternity? Shit gets ominous. Shit gets real.

I’ll say something equally obvious: No matter how things “should” be, there are and will continue to be unbearably shitty games that people develop, release, buy, play and ENJOY, and consequently the statement is of about as much use as saying “I should be 3 inches taller.” The line suggests a certain idealism that I honestly feel a little bad about, because it must make it hard to wrangle enjoyment out of noticeably flawed games – which are, of course, most games.

I don’t look at a game I’m playing and work my way down from perfection, ticking off the shit it gets wrong, that deviates from the game I feel it should be. I look for some aspect of it to grab me – to make me feel like I’m not wasting my time even as I know that by definition I’m wasting my time.

I’m easy to please, it would seem: some games grab harder than others (Fallout 3 did), and some don’t grab at all, but most do on some level. Then it just becomes about whether or not what the game got wrong is enough to break the hold of what it got right. The ones that do, or the ones that come close enough that I’m annoyed I spent my money on them, those are the bad games. The ones that keep that grip the whole way through are praise-worthy, and the ones that tighten it along the way are the fucking superheroes.

But this is clearly a circular argument of “I say something’s good so it’s good,” and by now I’m fully off the original point. In any case, I don’t want to pester anyone about Fallout 3 being a good game if they think it’s not; not when I actually agree with the points they’re making against it.

Maybe this was just some diluded nerd rage: I like the game and feel the need to white knight for it. (Plus I’m currently playing Rogue Galaxy, an RPG that’s so much worse than Fallout 3 that it’s making me view it all the more favorably.)

Perhaps I feel the need to defend the validity of my own tastes in the face of a dude on the internet I played L4D with a few times and who called me an idiot last night and that’s not COOL, brah.

Think of it as a little slice of Gamespot here on the blog. I’ve heard a little bit at a time is actually good for you. Like iron.