checked into my hotel tonight and um

Thinking about the common response media criticism that "art's effect on the audience is subjective and down to individual preference". It tends to be a means of arguing that we shouldn't make declaratives saying people who like something or wrong or that less work like it should be made. thread 🧵

After years of consideration I feel confident saying that I think SUPER MARIO BROS is a substantially better game than SUPER MARIO BROS 3

A lot of people take performance eval in games too seriously. When it's being judgemental or insulting/mocking they feel like it's judging them as a person because the games don't convey that it's a type of play, or roleplay. Silly example but it's easy to see if you reframe the judgement as kink

circa-1990s reviews asking why Panzer Dragoon can't fly in 360-degrees always stick in my mind as the most heinous example of this

The background on this waterfall, from the game's director Takatsuna Senba (the whole interview is pretty great stuff: web.archive.org/web/20191230...)

It's rare that I feel like such an outlier as I do when discussing remakes, and truthfully that goes double for gaming remakes and the general "remake culture" framing of discussion. There is no "remake culture", It's all just part of the same mainstream AAA design impulses.

Well this is the 'expose to oxygen' part, to try and find the biggest outliers in the actual proc-gen department. "Tends toward low contrast" is probably fairer, but I'm obviously not even 100% sure if that's true.

Which like the idea in the feely parts of my brain is like.. Low contrast isn't BAD, in art, or design or whatever. But you think about a minecraft world and it is very big, varied, but always weirdly samey. Non-procgen example, some puzzle games have very "low contrast" levels...

Also to throw out another random thought I had during the podcast that I didn't manage to get out, but when we were talking about proc-gen content vs handcrafted, a phrase that popped into my head is "proc-gen is low contrast content" and now I need to expose that phrase to oxygen

It’s incredible how it took me literally decades to realize that once you remove the whiff of financial exploitation from classically-designed arcade games (i.e. free credits, any costs paid up-front for all future play) they address virtually every major issue I have with most video game design.

One interesting thing about having FFS just two months away is that I have just a small amount of annoyance at every event that I go to or plan between now and then, because I wish I was going with the face I’m going to have.

I tend to prefer games that aim to invoke a range of positive AND negative emotions over dopamine factories but a lot of people don't entertain the idea that not all games want to make you happy (or take all your money)

Might have to finally rank Melee over Super Metroid on my favorite games list, albeit I’ve put many hundreds more hours into the former and its community But i love my girlfriend even more and getting to experience a major with her is fulfilling in ways I don’t know how to describe.

“They just don’t see what RapMonster sees”

Well, the end of HOW WOULD LUBITSCH DO IT arrives today with our episode on CLUNY BROWN (1946). It's a bittersweet one only in the sense that there's nothing left to cover - this has been among the more rewarding adventures of my life thus far!

Obviously FURIOSA is going to call forward to FURY ROAD in numerous ways, but I noticed this and it makes me REALLY excited to explore their intertextual relationship.

George Miller and Nico Lathouris were writing FURIOSA before production ever began on FURY ROAD. Here are some images from the FURY ROAD script circa the 2000s and the first FURIOSA trailer that provide an indication of how tightly interwoven their development wound up being.

i spend a considerable amount of social energy not talking about furiosa, my labour is unseen

It's finally here! Our episode on TROUBLE IN PARADISE with @willaross.bsky.social is out now on a podcast app near you:

The Furiosa trailer's CGI looks bad the same way that Hitchcock's rear projection looks bad (it doesn't).

I think everyone should just hold off putting out movies for the next year or so, give us a chance to catch up

A very thoughtful Osage perspective on KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON here. newlinesmag.com/essays/the-m...

Went on the Hit Factory podcast to discuss STREET FIGHTER: THE MOVIE! Come listen if you're into Jean-Claude Van Damme exegesis. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

Doing the thing everyone says is toxic and depressing and fries all critical thought and existing on social media again. I watched Friday the 13th IV: Jason Lives last night. Unlike the first five I feel pretty solid saying that it was good.

I'm using this now