Video-Game-King

Vincent Kinian

@Video-Game-King

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Video-Game-King
@Video-Game-King
highimpactsex
@highimpactsex
brlka
@brlka

a language of our own

this is not a hot take (and is maybe an obnoxiously moralizing one), but the older i get the less value i see in dunking on the AAA game industry. at this point i know most of the ways in which it's bad, and i don't think having a nuanced understanding of its badness has really done anything for me other than made me more insufferable to talk to. it's unactionable knowledge; i cannot stop these games from being made. i can only reiterate reasons they are bad. and this is still a form of investing energy into them, which seems foolish given that i don't like them!

on the other hand, when people talk about games outside of the AAA sphere they DO like, this feels both constructive and actionable; their enthusiasm invites me to share in their experience by going and playing the game in question. through the sharing of these experiences, we can create our own culture, situated outside of AAA industry entirely rather than being defined by opposition to it. people are building lovely villages; you don't have to stand on their outskirts looking sadly at the city.

highimpactsex
@highimpactsex

as someone who's been writing about more niche games for years now, i would agree but i want to offer a more cynical take based on my own experiences: people would rather discourse about AAA games and the industry instead of discussing niche games and the people who write about 'em.

there's plenty of reasons why the most shared game writing media is always aaa discourse stuff:

  • SEO
  • people actually know the game, so they can talk about it
  • there's prestige (cultural capital) in discussing what's hip in mainstream spaces

the above points and more create a feedback loop where people only recommend the authors/game articles that are already known. those writing in niche game media spaces are always unknown and hidden from plain sight.

lamentation about the "cultural decadence" of aaa games is great clickbait. writing about some visual novel isn't. that's why mainstream publications like kotaku will never discuss rpg maker games that aren't heavily popular. all we're supposed to do is go into our small blog spaces and youtube channels and hope for the best.

all in all, i already think this constructive culture exists. it's just that it has been beaten up, coughing in blood, and full of disillusioned people like myself wondering what's the point. we'll never get the views some article riffing on the game awards gets.

the marginalization is real and has always been happening.

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brlka
@brlka

this is kind of my point, though; evaluating success in terms of views or mainstream visibility is operating on the terms on the industry, and is inevitably going to result in disappointment and frustration for the reasons you outlined. you can't get the same numbers expressing your love for a niche game as you can dunking on a big one.

the flipside is the smaller audience that does stick around for the niche game is going to be genuinely engaged in a way your average kotaku reader is not. if your goal is to foster human connection rather than do numbers, that's a bigger W imo. if one person goes and plays a game you really liked because you wrote about it, that's a bigger net positive impact on the world than a thousand people hitting the share button, even if the optics of social media would say otherwise

(of course if we're talking about this as an economic reality then yeah it's totally fucked lol. i'm only talking from the perspective of a hobbyist; if writing pays the bills you have no choice but to engage with the industry at large)

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highimpactsex
@highimpactsex

even without the monetary compensation, i think people seriously underestimate how emotionally painful it is to see everyone just talk about clickbait articles. and the W is assuming you already have an audience anyway: i know many writers who frankly don't have a single fan and just quit, despite writing some of the more interesting articles out there.

all i can read is their old articles and wonder who they were.

human connections cannot exist on a social media economy without adhering to some clickbait. we're discoursing about discourses right now and we're less likely to share personal thoughts about game media. they're far more attention-grabbing because they're general and not on a specific obsession the writer has.

sure, there's going to be hobbyists who don't care too much about "the views", but i at least want to spread the word of niche media. i'm friends with developers and i'm a developer myself, so i want to see people talk about them more. unfortunately, there's too many economic and social disincentives to ever talk about them.

the marginalization happens because even hobbyists are "in the industry". the web is atm designed like oligopolies, so everyone goes to a few sites. you may never attract a fan much like how there's many twitch streamers who are streaming to no one at all. writing about niche media is a pretty empty world full of thankless tasks.

so i disagree if it is even possible to consider this a "net positive". sure, the articles stay around but the writers and developers don't. they are helpful and may construct new subcultures, but the situation has always been dire (i'm one of the few bloggers from the 2010s left doing visual novels). there's already spaces where no one is writing about it anymore (the history of english rpg maker games is very fragmented). so unless there's a revolution in how the internet and game writing work, i feel like saying this is "enthusiasm" is not at all representative.

it's bleak. indie games and their writers are just marginalized from the getgo. to modify Critical Distance's slogan, people know where the good writing in mainstream games is but not the good writing in indie games. the latter is always hidden, even if readers want to know more about said indie games.

while i appreciate the small following i have reading my stuff, i seriously believe even my position sucks. i'm collaborating with a now decently sized youtuber who complains about how terrible the content "moderation" system is to her when she just wants to make videos on visual novels. hobbyists with even lesser fans are suffering far more. it's clearly systemic and sometimes when you're the individual who's conscious about how fucked you are in it, you might want to give up and not care if the ten people who enjoy your content like it.

it's already tough enough to write. it's even worse when the world is hostile to you.

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umbrellaterms
@umbrellaterms

This is somewhat tangential to the main point, but on "there's already spaces where no one is writing about it anymore (the history of english rpg maker games is very fragmented)", I'd recommend indiehellzone.com who covers a lot of English RPG Maker games(I liked their series of posts covering IGMC entries  https://indiehellzone.com/2022/08/11/highlights-from-igmc-rebirth-1/ and their RPG Maker Iceberg Visibility posts https://indiehellzone.com/2021/12/06/rpg-maker-visibility-iceberg-part-1/ ) in addition to other indie games. Doesn't mean the history isn't fragmented though.

On the main point, the main thing I've done and was helpful to me is support/share the work of people who are doing the work you want to see. This also includes actively searching out new people before they become the deserted blogs/channels. Admittedly it's harder on here where you only have tags and what people you follow share, but I've still found new writers this way. This was the only way that I got any kind of engagement, because people liked my work and would recommend it to others. It's what kept me going for as long as I did since it was engagement with stuff I wanted to cover, even if the financial support/views weren't the same as much bigger channels/sites.

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highimpactsex
@highimpactsex

yeah, i'm mostly offering a sobering view of what's happening here right now. there's definitely people like us writing about and i know we're "important" in terms of archival efforts, but all we have is each other. and there's going to be people who will not be able to handle it and must leave.

which is why you have histories that are this fragmented. i sometimes think on my end, i'll need to get oral histories of flash game communities and the visual novel fan translation scenes. otherwise, we would just lose that crucial piece of history altogether.

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laleyou
@laleyou

mostly a shot in the dark but well.. in the extent this doesn't make sense, can see economically an issue in the going out to 'make a town' but where that place only has one export. it's inevitably going to be a lot more spindly than with like several types of media, where it involves more spheres..

okay i thought about it more and isnt clickbait just the 1st 1st step of getting some person in the targeted context? all the things like potential probing their interest in your other stuff and etc next step? not sure why nothing like that was mentioned, it seems if there is no 'right place to clickbait' as i may have initially said, presumably there are a range of ways for the different people to be tested if would more involve

so like sharing things, playing things, surely it can be understood how they can hold some weight. .

okay well about the being shared.. i mean i think i was focusing on attracting people in that idea of a separate area.. yea the otherwise seems like trying to chain react dissolve a city. i guess it is the city still working against any weight? the extent time and dilution does..

well in no need to teach what someone is currently in as bad, in the extent there are places that can broaden horizons, well in what extent work can exist making places.. it makes sense if you are in a place with someone to give your socialization about it ,i don't know i am starting to see what can comprise the marginalizing. scurrying for what i had though i mean like a town it could more so look like brandishing the any weight really as an export, by if it can cash it in, and the what using that to unrelative expand a space.

that is unrelated and a different type of work though.. call it for some reason pinging it with this. and scene

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