Interesting points. I used to think that I should play every game of X franchise. And because the franchise is well known, it must be good right? Gradually, I've learnt to evaluate games, or products in general, as a standalone thing, independent of brand and franchise. Franchises used to be a seal of quality; if the first game was good, it was likely that the same team of people that was responsible for the first game would make the second game, and the second game would likely be good as well. But with how long franchises have gone on for, it's inevitable that the leadership will change. Different people have different priorities. And typically, the people who take over later don't know about the underlying intrinsic value of the franchise (e.g. thematic elements, design choices). Or worse, they don't care about the intrinsic value. So, they think the best course of action is to give what the fans want, which result in milking the same content over and over. And hey, people care a lot about Y social issue, so let's address Y in the next game because the fans will love it! And ultimately, these people care about profits the most, because they just want to do their job. And their job is to generate more profits, not to preserve the integrity of the franchise. Creating often entails copying. For an artist, it may be another artist's style. For a programmer, it's a post on Stack Overflow. But what sets creative people apart from everyone else is that the creative people understand what they're copying. They're not simply copying the entire solution from one problem and expecting it to solve a different problem. What they're really copying is concepts. How it works. Why it works. The issue is that in these longstanding franchises, or rather, these big companies that have been around for way too long, they are simply copying without understanding. They copy obvious game mechanics, without understanding the underlying game balance. They copy obvious social issues, without understanding why people feel so strongly about those issues. They copy the extrinsic elements, and completely miss out on the intrinsic elements tying everything together. It's the difference between a taxidermy and an actual animal. They look similar, but one is completely hollow inside. Looks pretty but completely worthless.
Love the stack overflow comparison! We all copy, but the competent ones understand what they copy and build on it to create. Some greater minds, use the solutions on there just as inspiration to come up with better solutions. The majority just copy without understanding the context/meaning and then complain later on the same thread that the solution didn’t work for them. They’re just lazy wanting the solution handed out - it saves them time, while raking in the cash. Just like AAA games rehashing the same games with remakes + sequels, copying the banal souls-like formula or Ubisoft open-world model resulting in soulless grindy games. Or the template I loathe the most: the “Last of us” template to provide a cinematic/interactive movie experience that people will call art…no matter how shallow/samey the gameplay is. Same shallow RPG mechanics, ceaseless dialog, lame stealth…with politics added for good measure.
@@doofmoney3954 0 Years? It means no copyright, right? If there is no copyright on artistic works, how can the artist reap the rewards by earning money at the period of release?
@razorback9999able copyright itself is something of an aberration in history anyway. Making the terms so long is antithetical to the artistic process as seen over hundreds of years. I think the expectation of income is partly the problem. Although I understand that prior to this you would need to be someone of means or have a wealthy benefactor to pursue art...that said, it has kind of like this now anyway in a lot of medums.
You make some excellent points. One thing that came to mind from your point on fan games is a little arcade history. Back in 1977, Star Wars was huge, but the tech kind of wasn't there for doing a Star Wars game and licensing was expensive for it right off the bat. Exidy made Star Fire, which was essentially a fan-made Star Wars, but it was still its own thing. Star Fire was a pretty popular game circa 1980 and influenced other titles and arcade game design; It was also the first game to use a high score table that players could input their initials on. Several years later, Japanese companies really loved the movie Aliens but licensing wasn't always possible or it was held by someone else. Ergo, Konami created Contra; Taito created Space Gun. Yu Suzuki loved Ferrari, so he made OutRun (although that caused some issues with Ferrari over the license). There's nothing wrong with making a love letter to something, just have some imagination and give your own spin to it instead of regurgitating the same thing with more flare.
For sure, I believe Metroid was also heavily inspired by Alien! So none of these examples would fall into the territory of fangame though, as they were either their own IPs like Contra, or later on they were officially licensed games like Batman Returns by Konami. Licensed games is an interesting subject, but it's different than a fangame, which is unlicensed but not legally different enough to be sold without getting sued. I personally don't mind if an indie game is heavily inspired by another property, as long as it is legally clear and sold as it's own IP, I think that's the key difference.
@@TheElectricUnderground I think the discussion on fangame triggered the thought for me as Yu Suzuki was a huge fan of Ferrari and wanted to make a game that was that love letter to the brand - he just had the backing of Sega to do so but they didn't really get the license like they were supposed to at first. A similar thing happened with the Atari game Shark JAWS, but that was too early to be an unlicensed version of an existing game, so I know what you mean. I suppose bootlegs of Space Invaders/Asteroids/Pac-Man/etc. could be thought of as early fan games, particularly what one could find on PCs back in the 80s.
Glad to see you talking about this issue; I feel one problem that occurred with movies well before video games was just the cost of production. Once Movies became multi-million dollar affairs, they could no longer let one director create their vision; instead everything became by committee. Video games have moved into this territory more recently, and it is always amazing to see either medium still pull off something spectacular instead of being calculated to check off the most boxes and appeal to the largest demographic.
The problem with movies is the producers are so concerned with checking off as many 'woke' boxes as they can instead of concentrating on the source material so they end up releasing a movie that isn't what the fans want so the movie or the TV series tanks, the studio loses millions of dollars and then they can't figure out why. It's the popular saying: get 'woke,' go broke. I don't understand why Hollywood, Netflix, etc don't understand this. Look at Halo, that's going to be the next Cowboy Bebop, and then the producers are going to sit there and scratch their heads while trying to figure out why.
Exactly. And I hope my video communicates that even if you are on board with the particular social issues being laundered into the script, it still is not a good idea because it immediately destroys the creative integrity of the film. I am pretty sure that when it comes to scripts these days, there is a special committee of some kind that will look the script over and actually point out or suggest changes in order to fit a particular social issue. And I think this is going to continue for a long time because I bet there are people whose exact job is doing this stuff. So they need to throw in all kinds of crap to justify their paycheck. I have no direct evidence on if that happens in this manner, but something is certainly going on. And I would complain if this was occurring with religious ideas or anything like that. Like if there was a Christian edit of Dragon Ball Z ha.
I also couldn't understand why they continue to do it when they know they'll lose lots of money (and you can see it even more now, with the latest Disney garbage and whatnot); but I think its something called ESG that provides funding based on how "diverse" and woke you are
@@TheElectricUnderground There has been numerous cases of publishers and studios openly admitting to such committees/advisory boards/advisory companies existing and being used. Worse yet, it's likely part of foreign information attacks targeted towards US and EU citizens. Note how east-Asian games are mostly devoid of stuff like this, although they have their own damaging influences.
There's an old saying of "Last days of Rome" that comes to mind. People stopped creating anew and started dwelling on past creations, the famous play "the senate" which used to be a lighthearted comedy came back and ran as a dramedy. New songs plays and fiction no longer gained appreciable traction so they reran and subverted what came before. The oligarchal triumvirate held more power than ever, even as the empire fell apart, and hordes of foriegners swarmed the borders displacing or subsuming the native culture. Without the culture of creation, nothing new was formed and when Rome ultimately fell, most of what we have of their media is the old stuff, that they themselves clung to in their last days. I don't think it's even controversial to point out the absolute state of the last GDC, the ratio on that opener is hilarious. An art form is cultivated, and you don't grow roses by choking out the seedbed with dandelion and poison oak. I used to manage an extremely popular comic shop for a number of years in my state, it was considered the GOAT. When this mass migration of "talent" came to use comics as a waiting room for hollywood, we had to shift gears into warhammer, boxed games, and card games, because the regulars weren't buying the tentpole series any more. It got so bad that we had to stop buying title bundles from diamond, because THEY knew they got stuck with garbage and cut discounts in bulk if you bought 4 trash books so you could get the good book that actually sold, trying to offload the fiscal loss onto us shops. These bundles were also how you got the alt covers and the promo materials (the stuff your regulars and whales want) so it was basically mandatory. They knew that people didn't want the glut of trash they were supplying, but the ESG cash was what they cared about. The quality was so meanspiritedly low that it actually hurt BACKLOG sales because no one felt like ordering pulls for a series that they were introduced to after it had become so insipid and preachy. This resulted in online subscription services for comics (lmao that stuff is already free online, buyers care about HAVING the books) from the 3 big players, and a unilateral canon reboot to try and stem the bleeding from all 3. Well, it didn't work, diamond went under, marvel crashed and got bought, and dc barely treads water while all the indies were either conglomerated or closed (rip dh and vertigo) We are seeing the exact same pattern again, when the comics people cried foul everyone said "lol nerds" and it happened there first because it is such an isolated and secular media. Movies followed quickly after and now games are on their dying breath. A combination of boosting the incompetent and the disconnected while stifling the creators and bandwagoning against anything this new astroturfed overculture hates has allowed this to happen. And the longer people put up with it, the more stuff you will lose. We don't get new OB64s or FF10s or Xenosagas, or Batriders or Espgaludas or SkyGunners, or Drakengards or ZOEs or MAximos. We get either another 30 year old repackage or a buggy ubishit open world clown fiesta that serves as a 30 hour lecture from dogmatic oversocialized shutins.
Wow this is really interesting to hear about. What's going on in comics is super interesting and I agree parallel to what's happening with video games, probably a few years ahead in terms of running itself into the ground. With a serialized media like a comic book, I could see these issues honestly being even worse because the temptation to just keep rebooting the same content over and over is probably very tempting. Also I could see the temptation to cater to the most common denominator (rather then having distinctive and edgy content) has probably played a factor as well. I could absolutely see that the whole film franchise phenomenon has deeply damaged the quality of the print comics. It's a really interesting topic and one I think I'll bring a guest on to do a podcast with or something.
Oversaturation man. People dont have any reason to play most games beyond a weekend or so. They will be inundated with endless variety, every single day, until they decide to stop gaming. You do not have enough life to even try every game that pops up that looks interesting. You dont have enough life to even try all the games that seem tailored to you. (You really dont have time for any games really at all, but don't tell anyone....)
Exactly my man. It's like a constant diet of candy and soda. I love candy and soda but if that's all the genre becomes people will have to quickly move on. There needs to be more substance to keep people engaged and energized.
I don't know what the video will be about, but I will leave my opinion here. I think one of the reasons videogames nowadays are sucking so badly it's because videogames have been turning into the new Holywood movies. Back when games were just sprites mostly, even the big studios of the time were just a couple dozen people or so. Because of the limitation of production the games had to be "simple" and have non redundant aspects. Now that games are multi millionaire productions, their development takes several years and these games follow meta recipes, because failing to sell a product of such high value could be extremely detrimental to the brand, so games are also being more formulaic than they have ever been, so many games feel the same and barely leave their comfort zone. Some corporations are also using the popularity of videogames to sneak in some political messages and ideas that more than often break the potential creativity or freedom of expression the game originally had, one good example is that we just don't have a new Power Instinct game it's because one of it's characters could be target of cancel culture or censorship (that was the admited reason, that's not speculation).
Triple A games have become worse because the corporations and their investors don't want to take the economical risk of having a game bomb. So they stay inside the cookie cutter border and sell soulless "open world games as a service" to the masses. Indie games however are made by the people with the passion, the vision and the will to risk it with games that improve on old genres or to create something entirely new. The issue with that is that the average triple/double A game consumer thinks that everything that's not a flashy big budget game equals mobile game level shovelware garbage. Unless of course it's a title from a IP already established decades ago like Streets of Rage 4 or the upcoming TMNT: Shredder's Revenge. Or if it get's a lot attention from the big news sources like IGN, Gamespot and so on.
I sort of like your point about fan games and unofficial remix stuff since they often tend to stay within the consistency of the established works, but passion towards the stuff they consumed. Fan games themselves are not quite sustainable since either those choose to embrace the constraints too much, or they decide to flip the table to insert the individuals' ideas and destroy the identity of the original work. I consumed such content on Newgrounds a lot, but cannot deny original works prosper like Alien Hominid from original flash game to console release that formed The Behemoth. As for youtube poops, they seem to be all about turning existing work into stuff so transformed that it resembles nothing like any of the original works and become a mish mash collage, often for disposable entertainment. Creative laundering and derivation is strongly expected in that anarchist media mix art form. I used to be part of youtube poops until I abandoned that due to constraining myself too much from someone else's work. I currently make small games and I at least care about creating something that stand out. Fintail Gladiator, my current solo spare-time game project, is heavily inspired by the arcade video game Joust, but switch away flying birds with lance wielding knights over platforms to swimming fish with sharp tail blades in an underwater environment. It is possible to take inspiration, but really understand who and why it's there and then find a way to distinguish from the inspirations.
Yeah newgrounds is really interesting! I used to go on there a bit back in the day. I think the odd little fangame to try out a design idea or practice is perfectly fine, but I think when people start to scale these up into full grown projects that this becomes an issue. It's basically fanfiction. Right now we are seeing fanfiction being passed off as the real thing when people just come along and buy these old properties. They may own the legal rights of the property, but definitely don't have the artistic authority of the original creators.
@@TheElectricUnderground yeah. Some of us used to do fan fiction from obsession and shove in ideas that we want in there. I outgrew them since I desire creating new works.
@@TheElectricUnderground I've had a chance to watch the video now, and I am pretty impressed with they way you got your points out. It's a subject that I find very interesting myself, as I have seen it happening over many years now. I stick by my original comment, and I think that that is the deep issue, and you point out the very real implications and results of such an issue, which a lot of people are oblivious to. I will genuinely have to watch the video again while making notes, because I think the video is worth discussing in depth.
Most of these issues are symptoms of industry consolidation. Too few studios are chasing the broadest possible market and the sheer volume of content becomes exhausting.
Absolutely! It s like a self enforcing cycle. Laundering shores up profits and minimizes risks. Studios expand and become less and less risk tolerant. Profit becomes more dire. Then studios need to launder more and more. It's like running a credit card to pay off other debts, artistically
I’m pretty late to this video but I have to say these discussions of films and games as a genre have to be my favorites of yours. It’s nice having another perspective that not too many people talk about. It sorta makes me feel justified since people don’t seem to understand why I prefer older media and games compared to the modern stuff out now. Not to say there isn’t good stuff now but it’s harder to find more original quality ideas as you’ve stated and not reboots, remakes, and weird compilations.
Hi my dude! I'm glad you enjoyed the vid, it's one of my favorites as well! I think it's important to try to clearly put these phenomenon into words without getting too mixed up in unrelated details ha.
Your take on fan games is so on point. I never understood why devs would spend time working on a game with IPs that don't belong to them. It will only be met by accolades from mega fans of said IP, or a cease and desist from the IP holder. Like you said, make the game you want and use more of that creativity to build your own world and characters. They might even find by doing this, they're more free to build on the ideas that they are inspired by as a fan. Look at the explosion of Metroidvanias. If all those devs only cared to make a fan game of Castlevania or Metroid, we wouldn't have such a resurgence of an amazing genre. Some devs don't even stray that far from their source material and still strike upon something new and interesting. Great video dude, I like listening to you pontificate on game design.
Exactly my dude! We are of same mind on this point. I honestly feel its more tragic then anything when a dev makes this killer fangame (am2r for example) and then of course it's going to get cease and desisted. You can't even blame nintendo from doing so, what are they going to just allow people to start making games in their ips? it's a really brutal catch 22 where if you want to make a little experimental fangame just to practice and show your friends, I don't think that's a big deal. But if you put so much effort into it that it starts to rival the original IP, of course your gonna get slapped by a C&D and everyone loses. Whereas competing with Nintendo head to head with your own IP is so much more interesting and healthy for everyone in the long run.
Too much money involved. The risk is too high so you get everything converging, picking what is considered the good bits and sticking it together. Too much rides on a 2 month sales window now for games or an opening weekend for a film. Nintendo's games tend to burn longer but even then that's their big franchises like Animal Crossing, Super Mario Kart et al. I enjoy Odyssey and 3D World, but I'm screaming for an F-Zero or Pilotwings game - they obviously don't think the sales would justify the cost. Personally I think the mainstream are getting the games they deserve. One needs to vote with ones wallet and reward new stuff with purchases. Films? I am sick and tired of bloody Batman and Spiderman. Give it a rest. But there are good films out there - you just have to look a bit harder. The whole social activism tick boxing is crushing creativity too. Every time has its trash and it's usually in the majority. It's easy to get disheartened - there's still plenty of good stuff about but it requires more effort now because of the volume of stuff.
I think you are right 100% on the money thing. These games are getting so bloated and expensive that only big sales can justify the cost of production, which means no more alternative ideas or risky ventures. I think the absolute bath that nintendo took during the gamecube days (one of their best times as a studio) changed the company forever honestly. It is crazy how many times they have rebooted batman and spiderman at this point. Honestly I think the reason they do so is because most of their other superheroes don't have the material to work off. So rather then generating something new, they will just need to relaunder and reboot these franchises until they literally crash and stop making money.
Great video. Elden Ring comes to mind, so many aspects of that game are just holdovers from previous titles. The context that justifies their existence is gone, but the things themselves remain. That game made me so bitter on modern FromSoft haha. For something like Sifu posture system I'm not sure I mind, even if it is sorta derivative I view it as experimenting with mechanics from other games, since they at least try to do stuff with it. Overall though I agree.
Hey thanks so much my dude!! Thanks for tuning in! I do actually like sifu, I just felt it s reviews were a little too breezy and didn't dig into it as much as they could
Films peaked in the 1940’s and 50’s during the studio system before television became a strong competitor. Video games peaked in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. It’s sad that we haven’t progressed since then, but at least we can own the masterpieces of the past and enjoy them.
You have a valid point here. It's pretty interesting that a 1:1 remake recently won the Oscar for best movie. I guess companies are trying to reduce the risk by putting in elements that people already know, which in the end leads to a giant hodgepodge of franchises, remakes and adaptations. I think we gonna need a "new Hollywood"-movement for games and a new new Hollywood movement for films. On the other hand I still like all those retro 2D games and the Marvel films.
I agree, I think with both games and films we are going to see a crash of the larger studios (hopefully in the next 10 years) and the smaller studios are going to sweep in with more quality content. At least I hope so
Mechanics of certain popular franchises getting implemented on sort of games are common but why is it getting harder for me to find a game that is similar to a game that I genuinely enjoy?
wooord! on point, excellent video Mark. It's probably been said already in the comments but I'd add that the influence of the cinema industry on game world is also very destructive. it all becomes a numbers-driven mess, even independent music platforms are becoming part of all this consolidation of businesses and industries (Epic buying Bandcamp...)
Thanks so much my dude!! Yes 100% Hollywood's influence on gaming has become a straight-up nightmare. It's like when the drug addicted older brother gets his younger brother hooked on smack and steals his stereo ha, that's how I view the relationship.
these are your best videos imo. i think its a real talent to be able to speak fluidly and support your arguments with concrete examples. I don't agree with everything you said but I sill enjoyed immensely. thank you!
Thank you so much! I'm really glad to hear you enjoy this style of video. It's one thing when I made these more philosophical vids when I had a smaller audience, but I think it's still important to continue to do them as the channel grows, even if they rub some of the newer subs the wrong way or may seem out of nowhere ha. I don't expect every viewer of the channel to agree with me (I am a man of very particular taste ha), but I do hope the vid got some gears spinning and was fun to think about at least. :-)
I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ON THIS! AGGGH. I doubt I could type this out. I think you have a lot of great points. I agree with most of your conclusions but less with some of your reasoning at times.
Yeah I know the feeling ha, trying to communicate some of these ideas via comments and short writing seems so impossible. That's actually why I made the video, so I could convey these concepts without having to write them out in the comments section ha.
I think an other bad aspect of modern game franchises that they always go back to the beginning mechanics/difficulty-wise. for example, they had to make all the first generation god of war games in a way that if someone plays the given 'episode' as his/her first game of the franchise, it has to be easy enough to be enjoyable. I think it would have been really nice to see how far could be the difficulty curve/mechanics comlexity pushed out if all the games start of on a difficulty/mechanics comlexity where the last 'episode' ended.
I love this, yes! And you know what's funny there is only one genre that ever followed through with this idea - shmups. Shmups are the only genre where the devs kept pushing the design and difficulty rather then resetting back like you describe. Mario was doing this until after super mario world, then Nintendo decided to just make it a beginner series from that point forward. And that's the accepted design philosophy now. Just make the same game over and over, with superficial changes and vary the level layouts.
Exactly! :-) Yeah shmups are really pushing it! When I end up putting some time into a game to learn it on some level, then I would enjoy more games that build up on that foundation. Forgot to mention, great video, keep up the good work! :-D
Devs look at median earnings of certain genres (ex: on Steam trends/reports), this influences their design direction. This is why you will often find several competing core-concepts in a game - it's like a shotgun approach. Lets say metroidvania/rougelike and survival are top earners for the last to current year, you will find some of those mechanics/ideas in (a) new game, even if that game is an old IP. This of course creates a dissonance between what "felt right" about x title and what is now pushed to keep up with changing tastes/trends. From a business point it's sensible to appeal to a broader demographic, but in practice, not many older beloved IPs can be overhauled in that manner. And new games have to contend with a deluge of titles already saturating the Steam Dashboard/Core market(s). The most prudent approach (for an upcoming dev/studio) would be to build a community as they're designing the IP, getting players to follow progress through feedback loops such as YT/Discord/Socials. Of course, a lot of people are doing this already, so one would need some dumb luck or a really appealing idea. But there is hope: just look at how small the Five Nights at Freddy's (now franchise) started with that one simple but effective game loop/idea. Good luck Mark, and keep on introspecting - it's important to mull over these kind of ideas and air 'em out in public.
Excellent analysis!! Yes I do think you are right about this is what's going on in the indie space. The steam tag system will reflect this too where you can see devs trying to get their game across as many tags as possible (like youtubers ha). Problem is, that then you get this jumbled mess of a game in the end. I think The Messenger is a perfect case study. The game literally changes into a metroidvania halfway through even though it was sold as an homage to ninja gaiden. That annoys me more and more as time goes on ha.
Look forward to watching this. My general take is that things started becoming super-derivative. Innovations in music and movies, a bit less so with games, seemed to hit a wall late 90's. Think about how much stuff changed from 40's to 90's in all of these areas, and then since 00 on. Then taking it over the edge of cliff boring in recent times is the insufferable wokeness of everything, particularly the highly corporatized "checkbox" design by committee. Where all personality and unique choice is replaced with a template designed by what appears to be a small group of monoculture-thinking HR people (I know that's redundant).
I feel the same way! It's crazy to see how the progress of artistic creativity does seem to have hit a wall around 2010 I would say, and in the past twelve years we've been completely stuck or going backwards, in both games and film. Absolutely I think this committee design has been a problem, but I also think it's because the current gen of active creators just aren't bold themselves and seem very risk adverse. And the risky artists seem to have a tendency to die (a sad but dark truth right now). The only bold people around are older and that's just sad ha.
Thanks my dude! I think this is a lesson that seems to have been forgotten in recent years. I'd say about fifteen years ago sitting and moralizing your film reviews or game reviews (using whatever basis) was seen as cringe as hell. But now it really is the most popular form of review, which I think is a shame. I do think it would be funny to do a parody of this by actually doing a religious based review of Dragon Ball Z where I cite scripture and stuff ha, but I think people are a bit too sensitive right now for me to bother with the drama that might cause ha.
@@TheElectricUnderground that would be hilarious lmao. I grew up in a really religious community right around 9/11 so I totally get where you're coming from. I had a buddy whose parents wouldnt let him watch dbz cuz "its satanic" and I would give him shit all the time by talking about how sick the new episode was. Ah, Goodtimes.
Excellent video.. Never thought about that problem with design flaws in sequalisation before. The power if brand loyalty and nostalgia are very potent forces. The desire for something to be good and recreate and continue a past moment seem to be able to eradicate any objectivity and willingness to detect and acknowledge flaws and the need for something new and to move on. I suffer from this too in the respect that the possibility that a new game in a modern AAA series maybe better than the proceeding one never occurs to me. For example there is no way I'm going to buy an open world game as my mind says they are all boring, the same and expensive!
Yeah I think it s not something that s super obvious at first because it s so subtle, I do think that bad design starts to pile up though so that MegaMan x1 is much better then MegaMan X5 ha
Great video, really loved it, and it really talks about everything I hate with modern mass media. I feel another thing I've seen with games though, is when you have these companies seemingly rob the graves of their dead IPs to pander to nostalgia, bonus points when they change the game genre. Some of my favorite examples are "Left behind", the Front Mission game that went from Strategy RPG, to generic third person shooter. Or the new "Sakura Wars" game, that went from Strategy RPG, to generic one button action RPG. Then once these garbage games with no semblance to their series don't sell, they take that to mean nobody wants these games. My favorite was Sega, which ported one of the worst Super Monkey Ball games, threatened consumers to buy it if they want more games, only for them to then do a basic port of Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2. Really great stuff.
That s exactly right, it s robbing the artistic merits of works of the past and then using that poor ip as a front to conceal the shoddy work of the new material which just banks in the original ips quality to trick customers. Oddly this practice isn t as widely criticized as I think it should be, at least among reviewers
Its all due to money, man... It's all financial. Big studios have to risk more nowadays as game budgets have gone up and thus they only go with whats safe. No more risks. And they certainly won't reduce their budgets and scopes. A lot of IP holders just graft their IP onto existing games and its gross and they wont make new games in the original franchise (look at Contra!) That being said, when it comes to social issues, sometimes you simply cant separate the social commentary from the art as a lot of art is made as social commentary. Hell, look at Jurassic Park and its messaging not just about science unfettered, but how much it talks about women, feminism, and family. It's in and part of the art, not separate from it. Art is culture, culture is art, its hard to separate them from one another. I think its part of the critical discussion but it doesn't have to be -all- of it. The problem nowadays is it can sometimes be the ONLY element discussed when criticizing a piece of media. I believe it should be holistic. And nowadays we've got these committees generating fake "wokeness" for disney's regurgitated remakes and some people cant understand the difference between an artist genuinely expressing a belief and a corporation simply trying to appear to hold certain values when they really, really do not.
I never realized how subversive Westside Story is to the original themes of Romeo and Juliet. The true tragedy of the conflict between the houses is that, at the end of the day, they are one people. What divides them is not culture or language, but an inter-generational grudge. On the other hand, West Side swaps out a constructed barrier for a factual one, but pretends that it can be surmounted as simply, if only we were "enlightened" enough. Great video.
Excellent take, Mark. And if I could give you ten likes I would. Don't let the Culture Police intimidate you from making these very measured and nuanced points about the failings of modernity
Some really good ideas. You are a real thinker. The "problems" with the new West Side Story were all made intentionally to push a particular political narrative. They don't care that they are destroying a once great work of art, in fact they designed it to do so. In that example I wouldn't call it "forgetting the foundation" rather I'd call it destroying the foundation. And it doesn't matter that the changes they've made no longer make sense because the new messaging is now more important than anything else.
Yeah it s laundering at it s worst really, and it s a shame. There has been only one good film adaptation of romeo and Juliet over the years and this one is one of the worst.
I think the parties involved in using established IP’s to push social agendas, need to be quite a bit more selective and much more artful in which IP’s they choose to utilize as the vehicles for the social agenda. If those seeking to utilize established and well loved IP’s (or in a societal context, utilize trusted institutions) had enough patience, enough discretion, and enough discerning respect for either: 1. the trusted institutions 2. The PEOPLE who trust the institutions 3. The established, beloved IP 4. The PEOPLE who love said established IP If those seeking to push the social agenda were significantly more perceptive or self aware or RESPECTFUL TO OTHERS, they would not lose anywhere near as much of their funder’s capital investment and ability to utilize the vehicle long term. It’s collectively, a pigheaded, selfish, stubborn, spiteful, self unaware, and most importantly, Suicidal doctrine of guaranteeing righteous hatred upon ones self. Godspeed to their own collective self destruction 😎
We need more artistic laundering from Cave! It's hard to make unique content whereas expanding a multiverse is the equivalent of hitting the easy button. I wish more people talked about these problems and passed over the trash. Another big difference between now and then is how mainstream a lot of IPs are today. We need more of these videos calling out the crappy media. This can be your metamorphosis into being the AVGN. Oh, wait that's artistic laundering...
Ha you know what s funny is that I am probably more consistently critical than AVGN. The games he critiques are almost always universally bad where I will stick my foot into some big old bees nests at time when it comes to more negative reviews. I do wish that he took his channel in that direction lately, where he is just slamming on a bunch of films and games. That would be fun to watch
OOOOOO one more thing. I'm not sure if it's related to your video, but some games just feel really similar. Now it could be because like you said game design trends, but I'm more talking about game engines. Either 90% of games are made in unreal or unity, the other 10% something else. I felt this most with two rpgs which is smt V and dragon quest 11, the character movement, menu navigation timing, etc ,it just felt really similar. Compare that to back then a lot of games made new engines basically every new game, or at least a lot more than these days. It made them feel different.
Oh that is a really interesting topic! The uniformity of game engines, yeah it's definitely having an effect where things are starting to all look the same and feel the same, code wise.
It s both at once I think. The industry pushes out talented people for a variety of reasons, one being how formulaic it has become and then they also discourage risk and new ideas. Hell this even happens with RUclipsrs these days where I am pretty heavily discouraged from making anything other then shmup reviews XD
I hate to say this because I know so many game developers will spend time and put so much heart and soul into fan games but my thought was always this: there was a team of trained professionals that designed this game or RPG back whenever it was made, and there might be a lot of underlying logic for why they designed this game specifically the way it was. For example Mangs, the cool Fire Emblem youtuber, made a patch for Fire Emblem the Binding Blade where he balanced the characters out, so all characters are viable. But I think this is missing the point. I think some characters were supposed to be broken while others were bad, so that way you would be punished if you let all of your best characters die and you were then forced to use crappy characters. Just one example.
Truth serum right here as always, Mark! Love the mention of the unpredictability in Taxi Driver to illustrate your point. Glad that people (although an extremely tiny number) like you are still around in the West to critique art. How can we improve anything if we don't provide and act on constructive criticism? Anyway, good/objective journalism has been long dead in the West, easily noticed since 2013 or so. I don’t game anymore but I swear to the heavens, every game that’s decent (7/10) these days is labeled an unabashed “masterpiece”, while anything awful is called “mediocre”. (No more gold medals for the ones that truly merit them…everyone now gets a participation medal.) It’s like these "reviewers" exist to check boxes: gain woke points, encourage homogeneity in art, and then the classic: resort to name-calling if the fans hate what they like. Doesn't help that majority of gamers and moviegoers eat what the reviewers serve them unconditionally, going lengths to defend those artistically laundered pieces of work. Japan and Korea still appear to be creating new quality art materials, chiefly with new manga/anime and original movies. I’m not talking about large Japanese video game companies like Capcom, because their greed and refusal to take risks (with the dumb remakes reusing the same RE engine assets ad nauseum) are frustrating af. Your point about Zelda makes me mad, because it’s true. Even the mighty Nintendo doesn’t want to take risks, and new IPs from them are things of the past. Ah, Earthbound/Mother…how breathtakingly quirky games like you are missed!
Damn, Mark, you've read my mind!! Right at the end of the video. I guess it's important to realise that we are all part of the trends/laudry, in a way, and we are to blame as well if we talk mostly about the big franchises, even if it is to complain (or if we do fangames to compete with the official titles). I was seriously going to kindly propose that reflection, based on your last film reviews, but you beat me to it. As a creator of a kind myself, i'm not naive enough to believe we can just talk about whatever we want without proper introduction and context, but it's nice to have a balance. * Interesting perspective on a bunch of things. Always thought it was a bummer that the Joker HAD to be a film about the Joker to get visibility. * One of the things that i like to point out is that social issues can be addressed in a artistic manner if you have the right sensibility to any. thats nothing new and many of the classics knew how to touch on the subject in a way thats fullfilling while also avoiding boring didactism (I grew up on a religious enviroment as well, so i understand where youre coming from with your comparison). I mean, Toni Morrison did it, can huge companies do it as well? Maybe not.
Yes the important destinction that I hope I was able to communicate is that it s not so much about the content of what you are including (though there is something to be said about over saturation of the same thing over and over) but rather the method of delivering the ideas artistically. And right now a popular method is just laundering in ideas to existing works and using them to push your ideas. The west side story example is perfect. Sure there is something to be said about nationalities learning to get along (Dances with Wolves type of stuff) but shoving that into Romeo and Juliet doesn t work and if that s something speilburg wanted to do he would have needed to heavily rewrite the story into something new, rather then shoving it on top of the existing play s plot and structure, because the events don't make sense anymore
@@TheElectricUnderground Yes, it was clear on the video. if it's a difficult task with new works, doing it to redesign material from the past is most certainly a recipe for disaster. Excited for the next reviews.
This notion of repeating something wrong and making it ok is like the basis of all propaganda and how it works psychologically. It’s also a technique used by jazz musicians when they make a mistake.
I do appreciate that, despite what someone might think from the title before clicking, this video is constructive, well thought out, and articulate with good examples.
Oh I have an exact prediction of what will happen. This will continue to get worse and worse until it crashes, then we will see the revival of new ips and fresh ideas. I don't think it will stop until a crash happens though, it will continue to accelerate to that point. Or the larger companies literally buy all the ips (like we are seeing right now) but those IPs can't be mined forever.
For the most part, you pretty much touch on everything I've been thinking about the creative media space for a while, but I think that using AM2R as an example for fangames is a bit off. I agree that if a developer is making a game that is inspired by a well-known franchise, it's a waste for them to throw away the potential of their game by making it a fangame instead of something that can easily be a unique work with a couple of changes. We have plenty of examples of critically acclaimed games that were heavily inspired by others, yet were wildly successful because they did their own thing, such as Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight, and Zero Ranger. That said, I can see why a developer would go the fangame route as well. Sometimes it's done by fresh developers that don't have the experience or skills for making their own assets for their game. Instead they use assets from other games so they can focus on getting experience in developing a game, and sometimes their result just becomes popular enough to draw the attention of the gaming community at large. There's also games like Kaizo Mario, which are essentially rom-hacks. For these developers, the challenge is experimenting with gameplay ideas while working within the limitations of the original game. There are games like I Wanna Be The Guy, which uses the assets of many preexisting franchises for the sake of humor. Which brings me to AM2R. In this case, you have the Metroid franchise that has a couple of very old games (Metroid 1 and 2) that are so old they don't see much play anymore. Nintendo remade the first in the form of Zero Mission, which was an excellent modernization of the game. But Metroid 2 was ignored for years, which caused the community to take the initiative with AM2R (and, as the name of the game implies, several other attempts). I'd argue that this rendition of Metroid 2 was much more loyal to the source material than Nintendo's own attempt in Samus Returns, which is probably a better example of some of the issues that you argue in this video. And remember, AM2R was started almost a decade before we even heard anything about Samus Returns, so fans had no reason to believe Nintendo would ever deliver a proper remake. So when it comes to keeping old franchises alive, or even the old styles of gameplay (see the origins of Sonic Mania and the entire classic Sonic fangame scene), I can't really take fault in fangames. The situation between AM2R and Nintendo was just an unfortunate one, and I can't really fault either party.
Great comment! I think working on fangames is completely fine in a limited context, like romhacks and all that fun stuff. These can be great learning opportunities like you said. And no one sympathizes with being a developer with no access to art assets more than me (that's me ha, with house of bullets). But, I still think that outside of smaller projects and experimentation, large scale fan games should be discouraged. Not in a let s sue you sort of way, but in a "hey bud, this is not a good idea and you could use your talent in your own ip." Like in the case of supporting new devs who don t have resources, I'd say if we had a bigger public library of open assets that would be a much better solution. Because as much as am2r borrows from Metroid, and I love Metroid, that game deserved a future outside of being this grey market hush hush game.
It's funny you mention snk, they've come out and said that they wanna look at doing more cross overs, i've been a huge snk fan for all my life but i can't even stomach them any more now, you only gotta look at the direction they've gone with samurai shodown they remove cool unique characters and replace them with either guests or fan service type characters, look at the roster of that game, there's almost no grappler types no monster character or demons not a single villan!!! like they had in the past no gen an lol but we needed a large breasts female guest even though the game already has fanservice character's in the game!, look at kof 15 they remove characters like chang and choi and chin and yet in there media they are bragging thiis game has the most protags out of any snk game ever yet all the different and unique characters get pushed into the "unpopular" bracket, even though those people that actually play the love that style of character, kof 15 does not have a single character who has not already been in a kof before, nobody from fatal fury garou aof world heros real bout ect ect, so i really get with what you are trying to say
Yeah I mentioned SNK because the quality of their output has taken such a sharp turn that I don't even consider them the same company. The SNK of old went down with King of Fighters 13. People are trying their best to appreciate and defend the new KOF games and the other stuff they are making, but in terms of quality its really a joke compared to the older KOF games and metal slug series. I love SNK but I do think their IPs have been hijacked and fans are struggling to accept that.
This was great to listen to. I think this kind of thing is only possible when you have established "institutions" (IPs, businesses, etc.) that people rely on because it just makes things easier in so many ways. But the result is a lack of dynamism.
It s hilarious how similar the conversations have been over the years. I ve seen things go from being critiqued by religion groups, being accepted by secular society. To that same property being critiqued by secular society and suddenly defended by religious groups, it s pretty damn funny. Twilight is an example of this that s fascinating
@@TheElectricUnderground Ha, yeah. And both mindsets require adherence to doctrine in the absence of tangible proof. Not that I'm knocking christians - as time goes on, it seems their concerns (which I once scoffed at) are proving to have been legitimate. In any case, fine video with some excellent points.
The movie Joker is an example of where "artistic laundering" was a good thing imo. The creator of Joker wanted to do a character study film but he felt that no producers would fund it so he rubbed some DC super heroes on it and pitched it. edit: just saw that you covered the Joker. Oops. Good eye. I used to work in a Casino. People would come in and play slots for 5 hours on high dollar machines and then cash out. They were laundering money. I don't think the casino did anything about it.
Yes I read your mind on the Joker. I don't hold anything against the film as I did enjoy it, but I do think, in an artistic sense, it would have been much better without the Batman IP. Like if the film was more of an homage to taxi driver and the character's future was less certain, I'd be excited to see a sequel. But since I already know all about the joker and what he'll go on to do (be a supervillain clown) a sequel to that film seems honestly silly.
@@TheElectricUnderground A sequel with THAT Joker fighting Batman would be ridiculous. Personally I hope it gets made. At this point the franchise movies are a dumpster fire and I say pour more fuel on. It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better imo. I pretty much checked out after Star Wars episode 8. 10 years ago I got hyped when one of my beloved franchises got a major motion picture release. 1 year ago I felt a sense of dread. Now it's just funny. Whatever, I'm watching Ben Herr this weekend, plenty of old movies.
Nice work with timing the "copy" filter for bonus VHS points. I was expecting Mario to be the one I disagreed most on since the original Mario style is still being maintained in 3D and 2D (well only Makers now), though I agreed that Mario and Kirby probably killed a few potentially good new or alternative IP even if it seems like there was no cost. I think it is a net positive overall... The part I actually felt strongest about was fan games which actually ties into 2D Mario by chance since besides minor bits in Odyssey, it is now only fit for Mario Maker. Nintendo have officially monetised "fan games" if you use the right lense and they aren't even free to be free to take chances like AM2R. I do like it when we have more IP to appreciate like Freedom Planet which could have been just another Sonic fan game but with OCs. Still I appreciate that people practice the craft and prove the worth of these old IP which makes them impossible to ignore and might not align with what they want to make otherwise. Perhaps, we could have a fan game based on something a little more niche to avoid the laundry getting the colour washed out though. I liked your point about mistakes being made twice and how they shouldn't be unquestionable canon.
The Mario series is one that I think is great to discuss because I think it s a less obvious example then something like sonic, because Nintendo are frankly much more skilled at laundering then most other companies (like Disney). They make products that are passible. But just think of the state of the current Mario series, the franchise is running on absolute fumes creatively and I can't remember the last time a really good Mario game was made. Arguably Mario 64 was the last real stand out game in the franchise. And I think I real reason for this is why even bother trying to make a solid Mario platformer, when Nintendo can easily just use the IP as a coating over every other game they make.
@@TheElectricUnderground I think you are spot on with a lot of Mario spinoffs especially since people who liked the creativity in the initial set of Mario Golf and Mario Party games seem to be burned out and disappointed by recent releases- I'm not convinced when it comes to 3D platformers though even if Mario 64 may be a bigger leap than its successors. There are definitely enough people buying Paper Mario that this might not end. No experience with any Mario RPGs, but I've heard that the Paper series peaked on GameCube.
@@thelastgogeta Yes Paper Mario is the same story actually! the first paper mario games were clearly the strongest and began life as another series (super mario rpg), but then nintendo took it over because of falling out with square. So in the first paper mario they could basically ride on top of square's initial design but as the series continued and nintendo had to take more creative control over a property that they don't understand that well, the quality dropped. Mario tennis is the same story, the best is the first and then after that nintendo kept compromising the design until it turned into mush.
No kidding ha. I didn't think it would go one for over a decade, that s crazy ha. Who the hell knows, we might be watching super hero films for the next 20 years, I hope not. At least not in this dominant fashion. I liked the 90 s rate of super hero films, they d pop up but not dominate the theater year round
I don't post comments on your videos but this time I had to, I so agree with your point about trend mechanic with modern games, finally someone said it! How many games now use Dark Souls mechanic ? Especially in the indie games scene, they all have a freaking "Estus flask" and "dodge roll" etc, and of course they are all using difficulty as a selling point. No don't get me wrong I have nothing against Souls games I think they are great games but they were so successful that anyone implanted some of the mechanic into their game and it's annoying. Another good point, is all the companies now are pumping out the same games, Capcom is a RE/SF Monster Hunter machine, Sony exclusives are all mostly open world games and so on, no one is willing to take risks anymore with new IP like in the 80s/90s. So anyway, great video !
Damn right my dude! I feel the same way. I hate when I am trying out this new indie game and it just throws in Dark Souls mechanics for the hell of it, just to be trendy or whatever. This issue plagues a lot of indie games in the action genre because they don't know what to do ha. The most popular action game (sort of) is an RPG, Dark Souls. So they start throwing in random rpg elements to games that are much better off without them. If you are gonna go rpg, then you gotta go all the way with the design or, crazy idea, keep the action elements of the game pure to the genre.
I beat it in an hour with no deaths! I have the replay on my computer and am trying to figure out what to do with it ha! So I thought it would make great background footage for now.
Movies-wise. I reckon they gave up bothering to make good films, because they knew what 0ps and Reset they were gonna conduct around this time. Sounds pessimistic I know, but that's my 2 cents😐. Ps. Glad you used the Border Down soundtrack🕹️.
There are some amazing games and music still being made but films are dead to me. YT videos have since replaced them as they are more convenient and more creative.
Absolutely! The underbelly of the indie word in both is thriving, but I m addressing the issues with the mainstream releases mostly in this vid. And I do miss the days of interesting larger studio games at times. Film is in a rough shape. If you are someone who likes to go to the theater on the weekends, it is Rough Times right now
Good is good. Bad is bad. Doesn't matter about age or its political or cultural intentions. A quality movie or video game will stand the test of time. What I like in media for the most part is controversial these days. What I'm supposed to like I don't. I spend time finding things that make sense to me. So Yurukill was a day one for me. G.Rev in my soul. Haven't played it yet at time of this note. Looking forward to your review of Yurukill by the way. Who'd have thought that open world Mario is not that important? I made the mistake of wanting a Cotton game physically and in an official capacity just so I could have a piece of my history. Can't afford Boomerang on Saturn legit so the idea I could afford a semi-legit version officially speaking excited me. Yeah... You know the rest... I literally don't care about the current state of the world in every sense. I'm here for the games. I want to see a good film. I want to play a good game. If the good game sends some kind of political or cultural message in its narrative then no probs, if it's a good game then happy days. If a game is bad then I'll call it a dog and then I'll criticise it. If a bad game has good intentions or has some deep political or cultural meaning then all that is, to me, is a dog with different fleas. Bad is bad. Good is good. These days we live in a bad Demolition Man sequel made real. Stay off socials unless it's to promote your work. I had 1.3k followers on Twitter. Realised it didn't matter and got the hell out of there. At my peak I was tweeting dozens of times daily. I was a part of the problem Twitter now suffers these days. I kinda unplugged myself from the matrix. No presence on Facebook. I've gotta life with a family and a 9-5. My life is boring and I'm so grateful for that lol. Reviewing media is like a asteroid falling into a planet's atmosphere: The harder and deeper you go the more people's attention and understanding crumble away. A friend of mine said to me about reviewing: "If you keep digging for the truth eventually all you get is dirty" - I admire your depth of review and analysis. It becomes niche because you are searching for a truth. I imagine if you did a video with pyrotechnics and the Electric Underground logo in flames with you screaming rather than you talking with no depth I bet you would get a ton of views. "WHOA RAIDEN V BABY - CRAZY GOOD SHIT - 4 OUT OF 5 EXPLOSIONS BOO YAH" Stay true to your vision. Even if the world is on fire. As always much respect on what you are doing. All the best!
What an awesome comment my dude!!! I definitely feel what you mean about great works standing the rest of time. I was recently reading the sun also rises by Hemingway (the blueprint for current writing) and it blew my mind how, even though it was written literally a hundred years ago, it reaches through time in a way that still feels very relevant and modern
Love this video. I sometimes comes back to it 👌. I think the problem is not because compagnies doesn't want to let go of their franchise. I believe it is because the people are eager to pay for those pasted skins. For me the compagnies are only giving what will bring money on their tables and that's fair for me. I think the issues comes from the customers. A parallel would be like in the news. Everybody wants to see shit happens so they show us shit 😁😁 Pretty convinced that if the customers would be more aware of what to put in theirs bodies, the industry would follow accordingly
By the way, did you checked out Fingun? It's like a cute version fo Freedom Finger, where you take out giant girls bosses. I recommend you checking out Fingun on the Nintendo Switch.
Hi Mark... Good Points. In my Opinion, there is an additional Culprit. Let's take a look: MVP = Minimal Viable Products was a Blueprint for Prototyping Products... then once upon a Time came Mr. Monopoly™ aka Ultra-Capitalism and thought: Wait a Minute! Why not sale that as a full fledge Product. As long as a Car has a chassis, 4 wheels (hey guys try 3... oh the Tire industry does not like that? Well it's 4 again), an engine and some seats and whatnot... It's a CAR, let's call it Nikola. And of course other capitalist copy and paste the idea. Now we have food filled with Sugar, instead of Meat. As long as it looks like a sausage, taste like chicken... Striker 1945 as long as it looks like the original, plays like the original... because we use the core of an Open Source Emulation Project (allegedly!!!) or we buy Assets on the Unity / Unreal Market. (allegedly!!!) everything we be fine, and the benjamin's are rolling in. Or let's take a YT Video Assay... transcript it into Text by a Logarithm, Set up a nice Book (fully automated) and sell it on Rocket Man's Marketplace. If we do this with hundreds of YT Content... some money will go our way. In short: MVP can be used in any which way. EA is a prime Example of that strategy. Or Ubirape. As long as the Marketing & Snake Oil Salesman like Mr. Mars charms the Audience. Cheers from Zpring Time in zunny Zermany :-) Be good and well.
Yes exactly, laundering at it's worst. The worst is when devs that shut down open source emulators turn around and then take them for resale ha. Nintendo did this with mario roms and they found the "pirate" header. Thanks so much for tuning in my dude!
yeah, the fan game thing always confused me. can't wait to spend 10 years working on receiving my very own cease and desist letter; autographed by miyamoto! just make your own game and sell it for money. crazy idea.
Yeah I had a lot of controversy when I brought this up in my game dev circles but like.. if you didn't build an IP it doesn't make sense to ride it's success. Just make your own game.
Yeah the absolute best case scenario is what happened with am2r, and I think that s it s tragic what happened with that game honestly. There was also the Chrono trigger sequel that people forever working on to have it shut down as well. Then there s project m ha. It s just not a good road to go down and I think people should be more discouraging of the idea for the poor devs own benefit
One thing about the shmup community is that I don’t see a lot of fan games. There probably definitely is, but damn shmup devs at least have the balls to make a new IP and accept their success or downfall. While other fan game devs have that previous IP popularity, and literally can’t do much with it. I can’t blame them, a lot of them are great but it’s sad to see them not rewarded for their hard work. This goes all out the window if they’re trying to make a profit from it then ehhhhh
@@TheElectricUnderground You say that about Project M, but it is still continuing and has its own many Mugens with EX Remix being the best known ones. If it is the only way to have a competently done Dante, Sub Zero or perhaps Mai Shiranui... I'll take it though it falls closer to being a mod than a fan game which still can involve tons of hours I guess.
@@Mingodough for sure, shmups had so many spiritual sequels and ideas bouncing between companies that this wouldnt even make sense. When a shmup fangame happen, it's usually a Touhou game, and theyre officially allowed to sell it, iirc....
@@TheElectricUnderground Funny thing, Capcom vs SNK got me back into gaming. It had always been a dream of mine, but never thought it would ever happen. Thanks for hyping up Strikers 1945 II It's great. My faves are still Raiden Fighters & Battle Garegga. I love those military themes
movies are in a slump for sure, but video games? elden ring came out 2 months ago and i genuinely hope it shake things up. we've seen the developers scratching their heads over it - maybe some of them will get a clue.
anyhow - some thoughtful points, but i have to disagree: art and politics are not distinct, they're absolutely intertwined. just because you're not interested doesn't mean it isn't so. i would agree that "art by committee" is never good. at that point it becomes art/politics tempered by commerce. and that sucks.
oh jesus christ. that take on romeo and juliet is pitiful, man. again: just because you don't want to think about sociopolitical and class issues doesn't mean things are not about them. you're gonna need to abandon that line of thinking if you want to be taken remotely seriously.
@@zenoslime Like I mention in the video, the view that art and politics are completely interlinked is a political perspective, not an artistic one. I could make the same argument that all art is religious and start parsing out moral lessons and teachings just the same. Art is an expression and politics is an interpretation, they are not directly linked with one another, no matter how many people insist that they are right now. Art can always be divorced from the political origins of it's time and often is. The mere fact that Romeo and Juliet, a story written in 1597 is still being re-interpreted in 2021 is great proof of that. What is the original political message of the 1597 version, as in the time that it was written? It certainly isn't gentrification, a concept that did not exist in 1597. This is what artistic laundering is, having it both ways. If art cannot be divided from politics, then Romeo and Juliet cannot be used as a framework to discuss the social issues of the 20th century right? You don't have to agree with me. But I think it's important to be more open minded to other perspectives than the current practice of just dissecting political talking points out of art. That's extremely easy in my view and I don't really see the value, other than reinforcing a political view. I think it's perfectly fine if that's your goal is and that's what a person is setting out to do, that's an age old practice just like I talked about with religion. But I think the insistence that all art is political is untrue and a handy method of pitting people against each other.
@@TheElectricUnderground in short... romeo and juliet was largely about feudal society and its hierarchies, which is something scholars agree on. feudalism and gentrification may be different concepts, but they're clearly similar enough that we can view modern class disparity through shakespeare's lens - "great proof" that romeo and juliet was indeed political and about far more than a tragedy of star-crossed lovers. politics is in art the same way air is in our lungs, and people are already pitted against each other regardless of what any piece of art says (or avoids commenting upon). the whole 'anti-woke' desire to strip meaning out of things is deeply anti-intellectual and that, to me, is the biggest problem in modern popular art.
Don't agree with the video games mention. Depends what you play, but there are quite a few gems out there from Japanese developers. 13 Sentinels for example is a masterpiece.
Sure there are going to be exceptions to the issue of artistic laundering that I discuss in the vid, I'm not saying all games right now suck outright ha. Funnily enough 13 Sentinels backs up the point I make in the vid, as it avoids all the practices that I say are damaging current game design - it's not a sequel, it's written from the ground up, - it's not trend following and it's mechanics are harmonious with one another.
This might be my favourite video series on your channel. I like how clearly you articulate your points. The analogy “artistic laundering” really works and I for the most part agree with it. However, I would like to add a few counter points of discussion, respectively of course. The carrying over of “mistakes”from one game to the next , believe it or not can be very subjective, what one considers a mistake, another can consider the brilliance or a core element of the series. For example smash melee’s“wave dashing” mechanic wasn’t intended, yet the melee community has shunned the new games specifically because this mechanic was removed from the rest of the series. Now would you praise Nintendo for removing this mechanic? Or criticize them for it? David Jaffe, criticized Metroid Dread saying it’s map design was archaic. He’s been ridiculed ever since. It’s a case by case bases, and your example with Mega Man 2, I agree with by the way. My rhetorical question about this section is, how can a developer remove a historical design choice( mistake or not), without alienating its core fans? Watering down of a game series due to too many sequels I completely agree with, Mario party 11 is a perfect example. However I wouldn’t say the laundering of Mario IP into the sports spin offs is bad, primarily because those games are of pretty high quality within their own right, even without the Mario IP. Mario Strikers, Tennis and Baseball all have competitive scenes because of the deep skill based mechanics. F-Zero and Metroid typically don’t have high enough sales numbers to justify ongoing back to back releases. Trust me I want a new Custom Robo, ain’t gonna happen lol. I also 110% agree that there are too many copies of game designs, the Action RPG genre for sure. In regards to The Joker, i think for the most part the themes with regards to mental illness, and how the mentally I’ll and mental illness is treated in society was a great message. I also specifically like how his illness was directly related to his nervous laugh. IMO it was genius way of tying a real mental illness(which I admit I didn’t know about) to a known character like the Joker. Them laundering these themes through Joker allows the message to reach a wider audience, which isn’t always a bad thing. Lastly, to sum up my last discussion point. If Disney Star Wars is the prime example of the “Artistic laundering” disease, I would say Netflix Cobra Kai is the cure. It respects and even expands on the source material. It even has some anti politically correct messages(respectfully and with taste IMO) which are hilarious. I recommend it if you’ve grown up on Karete Kid. Great video man, keep up the great work. I also enjoyed your The Batman review. And what did you think of the Leonardo Di Caprio version of Romeo and Juliet ?
Oh this is a fantastic point that I think I can clear up. So you are 💯 right that what is considered "bad design" or mistakes is really tough to pin down and not always unintentional. Like I remember there being a trend where life and continue systems were considered "outdated" which I disagree with. So when it comes to laundering, the key isn t so much what the particular choice is, but how it is defended. If the game maker or fan can defend the mechanic in terms of how it influences the design, then I think that s fair enough. The laundering part is just the surface augment that the mechanic is valid just because it has been in past games. That s where the issue comes from because then basically it s this iron armor that devs and fans can cast around poor design. But yes I agree that there are lots of examples of older design choices that are still great even if they don t line up with modern design. Also I dislike all baz lahrmann films. I like Leo in the role, as an idea, but by God luhrmann's film making is so aweful. His great Gatsby was terrible as well
I can't believe I missed this video. The amount of critiques in here that I bitch about on a regular basis can't be overstated! The entire planet needs to see this video. We can't keep rewarding this nonsense with our money! Your money is your vote. If you vote for poop, you get poop! Peter Thiel is one thinker who talks about a general lack of innovation(ie creativity) in our modern times and it truly reverberates across every category. In some industries(especially cryptocurrency/NFT's), it is so profitable and easy to replicate something that the incentive to just sit around and let someone else come up with ideas becomes bigger than creating an idea to begin with! It seems like a microcosm of the modern economy, in which an authoritarian country like China will invest almost exclusively in thievery of innovation in order to offset the lack of innovation from an oppressed population. A trend that seems to continue indefinitely as the western world rewards this activity by pumping investment in and buying products from that country. End rant. Loved your video. So many profound and lucid points!
Yes that is exactly what's going on artistically with this laundering process. Innovation takes risk and real effort, why do that when you can just coat over past success and try and repump it through. Like a vhs you keep making copies of the copies 📼
@@TheElectricUnderground Oh! I meant to also mention that maybe some movie reviews/recommendations are in order? Ironically, Taxi Driver is my default recommendation when anyone asks. It's one of only a few movies I actually own lol. Would love to hear more gems from your point of view. RUclips's "top ten movies" videos seem mostly generic. Hard to find good movies these days.
@@ShamanNoodlesthere’s obvious problems with endless franchise movies for sure but I don’t think it’s that hard to find a good movie as people keep saying. I used to think that too but after 6 months of paying for AMC monthly subscription I’m now in the much better habit of seeing much more of what is released in theaters. They’re not all great but if u simply don’t limit yourself to just seeing franchise blockbusters (and I still watch a few of those in my movie diet too, John Wick 4 etc) you’ll find decent movies worth your time are released every month or two. I’m not saying these other movies are legendary all-timer sleeper gems that need to be evangelized, it’s more about not needing everything to be legendarily good in order to expose yourself to it and develop your sensibilities. I saw Late Night With the Devil recently at 10pm with a friend and we had a blast, regardless of the movies flaws it was definitely trying to make an impression on me now in the moment instead of impressing upon things I already liked That said, I’m only talking about the theater experience, which I value a lot more than I used to. And it’s telling that I only realized good movies are not hard to find, necessarily, once I paid AMC to allow me to watch “free” movies as often as I want by getting their movie pass subscription.
Unpopular opinion here, but I really resonate with what you said about changing genres when it comes to Castlevania games. After Symphony of the Night found out the golden Metroid formula, it was never the same again. I do like metroidvanias as of its original meaning of Castlevania games that play like Metroid, I'm a big fan of Circle of the Moon especially, but I'd rather see what the series could have become if they stuck to its roots. Things were getting more interesting then it just died and became a new thing, never to be Castlevania again but only Metroidvanias, and it's kind of frustrating to me to see it die like that. I just sometimes wish Castlevania and Metroid stayed away from each other and let each other be its own thing. Also like you said, it's fine for a title or two, Castlevania 2 had its problems but I really loved it, the problem for me is having this shift of genre kill what the series once was. I also don't give credit to Castlevania for this whole new spawn of metroidlikes, imo it was only the first to imitate Metroid and the term stayed like that because Castlevania was the cool popular cousin bc people like vampires and gothic fantasy. I just wonder if now we would have more vanialikes or something like that.
I'd like to add something to what you said about the Ghost in the Shell movie (2017) that makes the whole racial debate absurd. In the manga it is said : 1) "[...]the abilities of this woman (these women?) calling herself Major Motoko Kusanagi (it's a false name anyway... Before, she called herself "Commander")" - From chapter 1 2) "If Kusanagi chose the appearance of a mass-produced model [...] it is because she was careful to go unnoticed." - From Chapter 5 3) "We can add options based on a mass-produced model, like for you, Motoko...[...]." - From chapter 5 also So we don't even know neither her real face nor real name. Besides we do see an actress playing Motoko, that's like the whole subject of the movie with the false memories lmao. (PS : I think the movie is ok btw, it kept the tradition to make something different with the franchise, like SAC, 1995/2004 and Arise did from the original manga. Because, to this day, there has been no panel to panel adaptation of it and thank god for that.)
I think there can be value in leveraging "cultural memory" to cut down on exposition, especially in movies. Anything sci-fi or fantasy is going to need quite a bit of exposition and world building to not just come off as generic schlock. That can be difficult with a runtime of an hour and a half (movies have gotten way too long but that's a different conversation). I think Alien and Aliens is a good example, the first movie establishes the "mechanics" of the Xenomorph in a slow paced horror setting which Aliens leverages to make a fast paced action movie. If Aliens needed to re-establish the lore it wouldn't be nearly as good a movie, the pacing would suck. Also, as you have said before, limitation breads creativity. Being locked into certain limitations of the existing universe or characters can lead to better creativity. With that said there's definitely a line between exploring something new within an existing framework and just being a cookie cutter piece of shit that is doing nothing new which is essentially what all the Marvel movies are right now. Being a "Marvel movie" goes far beyond just making use of Marvel characters and lore. It means it's going to be the same old good vs evil action comedy romp we've been watching for the past 15 years or so. Give me a movie about Spider-Man accidentally killing an innocent bystander leading to substance abuse and his marriage to MJ deteriorating and I would watch it in a heartbeat but that doesn't fit within the Marvel cookie cutter. Anyway, I don't disagree with what your saying. I would just say that the root cause is not solely just the reuse of existing ideas but playing it safe while doing so. These ideas aren't being reused because they help realize the artistic vision better than without. They're being reused because that's the safest way to make a bunch of money while upsetting the least amount of people.
I don't necessarily agree. I will tell you that it always feels like things suck when were in them. People look at music from the 70s with rose tinted glasses. This is because the gems maintain their impact while all the trash, of which there was tons, is forgotten. In terms of video games there has always been a sea of garbage in every generation. Trend chasers exist in every medium. Just look at how many vampire novels were made after twilight got popular.
That is absolutely true and I do agree with this perspective. But I will say that there are generations of art that are much better then others, depending on the medium and that it's not a linear progression upward. I think until about 2010 games were in a linear progression upward, quality wise and I remember very clearly in the 2000's how it did feel like it was just bad ass release after bad ass release. I do agree that there will always be a sea of low quality stuff out there, and our current sea is massive ha. But I think a concerning sign is the quality of the games that are held up as our current best. I'm not doom and gloom in that this trend will continue forever, I do think we will see a revival in great game design in the next decade or so (hopefully) but right now I think it's safe to say the medium is in a massive slump.
@@TheElectricUnderground you also need to understand, youre an anomaly. Top tier bullet hell gamer. obviously your preference is high intensity high skill Games. But everyone doesn't need or desire that. From my perspective gaming has been awesome. Even from triple A devs. Elden ring, Mario odyssey, Doom eternal, smash ultimate. To me, those have been absolutely incredible experiences and are at the cutting edge of the medium.
Artistic laundering sounds like an oxymoron (may I propose another term--dilution?). The landscape has definitely changed dramatically over the years (bigger budgets, studios, competition, etc.). For me, one of the turning points was when Sega exited the hardware business as a result of shifting consumer preferences. There are audiences (new and old) who don't seem to be as discerning with regards to quality or respect to original (stuff and source material). Reality that many have already pointed out is, so long as money can be made and demand met this trend will only continue. Put another way, unless we see a crash (not unlike what took place in the early 80s with regards to the glut in games) I'm not gonna be optimistic with change happening anytime in the near future. Creative destruction is sometimes what's needed.
Oh I'm really happy to hear that!! This is one of the vids that is near and dear to my little artistic heart since I'm putting my neck on the line a bit more then I would with just a usual game review, but these are topics that come up on the channel that are bit too complicated to explain in the comments section ha. I'm glad you'll check out my poor neglected Batman review, hopefully as I do more film reviews the playlist will be more popular and it can get some backlog views in the future :-)
@@TheElectricUnderground Well I think you articulated your stance perfectly here. We have this topic of conversation at work often really, trying to answer the question, "why does everything suck now?". Everything is way too focused on weird politics instead of story and art now. We just want to be entertained man.
The reason companies tend to stick with the same IP/franchise is to reduce risk and guarantee a certain percentage of sales. The one thing that has held true is that the games these large companies make gets more and more expensive... which means the risks investors take are higher and higher and your goal is now to keep giving them greater returns instead of being solely focused on producing the best product possible. Unless that brand new thing is a hit, you'd have better odds churning out a number of mediocre things that you know will sell a certain amount. All of that is gross and I would argue you are harming your IP and reducing its value over time, but hey short term profits right? =/
Never been a big fan of the series honestly, but I did appreciate it trying to make a western character action game. Now it's given up on even doing that, shame.
No one will probably read this, but I have to disagree with almost everything that was said. People who think video games are worse today either don't play indie games, and/or didn't grow up with older games. There were hundreds of absolute shit, unplayable titles on the NES, SNES, and Genesis. It only seems like games used to be excellent because everyone remembers the landmark games like mario, metroid, and zelda. People think Mega Man 2 is this legendary classic. It was head and shoulders above its peers at the time, but you can't put it up against something like Dead Cells or Hollow Knight in terms of gameplay. People seem to ignore how bad some of these classics really are. Go play the first Sonic game and get back to me. That game actively punishes you for going fast, the entire premise of the series. Bad Ports didn't use to exist? Pac-Man on Atari? Mega Man on Dos? Mario is Missing? Mortal Kombat on SNES? Even Donkey Kong on NES was missing levels. Sequels hide bad design? You mean like having ten mega man games? I agree franchises like Assassin's Creed don't do anything particularly interesting and haven't done so in years, but this is not a new phenomenon. All the original Mortal Kombat games that are horrible 1 player experiences. The same with all the original re-releases of Street Fighter 2. It wasn't until Alpha when single player was actually fun. And Jesus Christ, how many carbon copy beat 'em ups did capcom make? Aren't there like 10 versions of King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown? Sports franchises used to always get noticeably better year to year but now they have the exact same features year to year. Aren't the metal slug games extremely similar to one another, albeit of high quality? How many 194x ex shooters did we really need? I actually agree about injecting trendy mechanics. I watched in horror as everyone jumped on the battle royale model offering nothing new to the genre, and I despise how ubiquitous crafting has become in video games, but this is not a new phenomenon. I want to slap whoever added drowning to platformers. Sonic is about a blue hedgehog who can move at the speed of sound, but they needed to add realism to the game by making him drown? How does that make the game more fun? Or how every shmup for ten years was basically three lives, one hit, weapon powerups, boss fights every level. Then bullet hell was invented and now all bullet hell games have shot, autoshot, slowdown, and grazing. I don't think spreading out an IP hurts a game. Look at Metroid Prime, Smash Bros, Sonic Adventures 2 with the chaos garden, Shovel Knight Dungeon, the original mario parties, mario kart, Sonic racing, final fantasy tactics, final fantasy 14, Persona dancing all night, FFS, didn't street fighter bring in characters from Final Fight? Hyrule Warriors. Sure there are plenty of examples of this being down poorly, but just as many done right. Are fangames still a problem anymore? I feel like that was a thing ten years ago. I don't think reboots and retreading the same material is the problem. Look at how many cowboy movies there used to be. Or how many james bond movies we had and now have. Some people hate the marvel trend but it is making money fist over ass and whenever they try something original like Brightburn or Birds of Prey it rarely does well. I also think you're way off on the social issues. Great movies have always been about social issues. Star Wars is about fascism, Silence of the Lambs is about sexism, Terminator 2/Robocop/Alien/Aliens/Jurassic Park are literally about the dangers of unchecked capitalism. The problem is with people who want to make a movie about a social issue instead of wanting to make a good movie. Too many directors today enter into moviemaking with bad faith (look particular at that atrocious elf movie sarag silverman made. In the artist community, we would say you need vision to create an excellent piece of art. All those movies had a terrific vision, they were high concept, and high concept stories tend to find their roots in real world problems. I think now that we are all more aware of social issues because of smart phones and activism, a certain subset of the population gets upset when they're brought up in movies. I remember people calling Mad Max Fury Road feminist propaganda and trying to boycott it even though it is one of the most brilliantly shot and paced movies I have ever witnessed. Same goes for The Last of Us Part 2. People were writing extremely negative reviews in metacritic before the game even came out because they perceived one of the characters to be transgender because she had muscles, even though it turned out she had muscles because she was military trained. I agree it feels like directors dont seem to have a strong vision for movies anymore. I can't remember the last movie that was legitmately hilarious. Probably tropic thunder. But the reality is, people would rather watch a third iron man movie than watching something original and thought provoking like Deus Ex. Every time a director challenges the tropes of movie making like with the Scott Pilgrim movie, it rarely amounts to a commercial success.
There's a lot of fallacies in your argument. That's why most people skipped it. It's pretty blatant and clear to even the most novice debater fresh out of debate club. Highly recommend looking up fallacies and re-reading your own mess and being honest about it to get a clue.
@@MerlinTheCommenternobody in these comments or even mark himself are making air tight arguments on the senate floor, everyone’s trying to imperfectly get out their feelings on the matter. Let them breathe and percolate some so we can reflect on them beyond the initial catharsis of agreeing with someone tapping into our pent up feelings.
Half made games are life now for over 10 years I have waited a 12 months for most every game that comes out I like... I think Cool the beta versions out !! I wait a full year and that 65 pounds game is now 25 - and fixed and working !! This year I bought Sniper Elite 5 (I know it's not an Arcade Shooter this is too make my point .. Things were missing, the game was a buggy mess .. I said to my son serves me right, Never Again ...back to my year beta wait.. Great for me !! VERY bad for the 65 pounds + day one companys!!
You forgot to mention the most infamous and, to my knowledge, also the most recent laundry of a trendy and flawed game mechanic on Dark Souls (and also "Soul" like ) games: "homing attacks/infinite hurt box" , where most of the time enemy attacks does not "touch" you, yet you get damage? sorry don't know how to better explain it, however is bad game design carried over since the early PS3 games.
I need breaks from gaming at times. I can play games and feel nothing over and over, and it can be a game i loved last week! Whenever i take breaks i usually read manga or watch movies, not marvel ones though because it'll cause the same issue 😂
If you're an anime fan or into retro games or shmups it's probably the best time since the 90s. It only sucks for gaming if you're in the AAA shooters because fortnite ate that market alive. Movies kind of suck because marvel ate the movie world so if you don't really care for marvel movies your Sol. The last couple of Star wars and Star Trek were kind of weak too. The mandalorian was a so-so Western in space and book of boba Fett just dropped the ball and Patrick Stewart is too old for that shit
@@SolCresta3405 are you kidding me? Spy x family, attack on Titan final season, demon Slayer, chainsaw man, Godzilla singular point. Where the heck have you been? I guess if you're so old school you can't stand anything animated after the Dreamcast launch you might have a point but other than that being an anime fan right now rocks. And that's just if you're into the really good stuff. If you like fan service then the sky's the limit
@@jeremygregorio7472 Yes, there are a few good anime out there, but I have an up and down opinion on magical girl anime, harem anime, and isekai anime...
@@SolCresta3405 I so wanted to get another anime like Land of the Lustrous. Isekai this, harem that.... I could go on with this so much copypaste fantasy always being rpg setting.
I agree with many your points of view , but not with the idea that movies and games suck now. Games are much Better nos, specially considering the indie scene (with Cléver ideas) Nostalgia can blind most most people super Mario 3 is a good game , but try to play it on One sitting liike on the 90.also good and bad movies always existed, i don t think movies are worst now. I agree that the Better movies dom t get the same mainstream atention and many of them are not from usa. I liked this vídeo, but i did not like that you mention só much super Heroes and cómics movies (most of them are really crap).
I do agree with this point generally and I am happy to say that there are fantastic games out there (especially in the indie space) if you go digging for them. Hell Fight n' Rage is the greatest beat em up of all time if you ask me. But, as a whole, I think the game and film industries are in a massive slump right now, creatively. And it's not so much the floods of low quality stuff that concerns me, like you say there will always be piles of that stuff, but I'm more concerned with the quality of the "best" stuff right now, especially among western studios. Right now, it feels like great games being produced right now are releases that would have been considered good in the past. Like DMC 5 is a cool game, but it's not this massive leap forward or I don't think it's as good as dmc 3 or 4. I think the industry is in a massive slump right now to where even games that people consider to be great I don't think are pushing the medium forward creatively. I honestly can't even think of a single upcoming game that I'm excited for and am counting down the days to play. The only exception to this is Ninja Gaiden 4. And if that game is bad that will be BRUTAL on my poor jaded heart ha.
Great media comparison! The imitative phenomena themselves are ever present in literature, might very well predate written media (traditional epics), and even have their own lazy commercial historical precedents (Don Quixote unofficial sequel?). See Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree by Gérard Genette. As you argue however, many nowadays seem to think that being superficially! derivative is sufficient justification for lacking both thematic continuity and artistic originality, which is absurd. If anything, positioning a piece of media as derivative should opt to either be an ultra faithful traditional continuation tackling intriguing gaps (convincing! Apocrypha), or to be radicaly and openly! subversive. Trying to do both at the same time by injecting myriad nonsense pushes these works towards unintended satire. They are both a continuation ("traditional") and (mostly in film) a deconstruction, hence a contradiction. It is as if Joyce's Ulysses were marketed as a faithful rendition and replacement of the original. (Mario and the like in unrelated geners is just lazy branding that might be comparable to folklore heroes but I have rambled too much as is...)
oh yes there is definitely a long and important tradition of artists works being inspired by one another and even straight up stealing from one another, like that picasso quote ha. I think the big difference with something like Joyce's Ulysses vs something like The Batman is that: 1 - the source material of the odyssey is so vast and deep that you can't simply pull themes from it directly, because even in doing so you have to make choices on how that is exactly going to work and 2 - Joyce himself had a deep understanding of the elements of that story and was able to harmonize the elements of his story along with them in a beautiful parallel. A modern day example of this is Tarantino and his films. He borrows heavily from the genre films that he likes, and openly so, but the reason why his film making works is that he is breaking these influences down to their elements and then reforming them from the bottom up. In an interview he even said it would be impossible for him to just take someone else's script or story and shoot it. The first thing that he would do is go in and re-write the whole thing.
I think the problem is too many derivative products mass clogging the market. But when I say derivative, I do understand that most stories are derivative. Most products are iterative. The best designs are compromise designs. I'm not blind to that. When I say "derivative," I mean that they're largely copying from other new media, all in a giant circle-jerk. Those marvel comic movies are a great example. Each movie just copies shit from the other ones and from other super hero movies and then there are some quips stolen from Firefly or whatever the fuck because hey, it's joss whedon! Everyone loves joss! 'Member firefly you guys? 'Member Buffy? Well, I'm seeing the same thing happen with games. Last of Us comes out and it's copying from Tomb Raider Reboot and Uncharted and then Last of Us gets copied by God of War 4 but God of War 4 was a big hit so God of War 4 gets copied by Horizon Zero Dawn which also copied Ubisoft open worlds and a techno-future thing that feels like it was pulled out of a movie I can't remember... Then there was Death Stranding, which was praised as a unique work of art game but which functionally is another walking sim like the other games I mentioned, and people liked that so it will probably influence other games down the road... Oh and dark souls was a big hit. Demon's souls was a modest hit but Dark Souls was multiplat and that did really well, then Nioh, Ashen and The Surge and of course every game From has made since Dark Souls has been a "souls" game... And the newest souls game is a (stop me if you've heard this *glances at Horizon and Ubisoft*) open world souls action rpg. I don't even dislike Nioh or The Surge btw. I thought they were pretty good. But there's a trend happening here. Stories are universal and so are certain ideas. The problem I'm seeing in gaming now is that the ideas are becoming increasingly incestuous and limited to only the last ten or so years of gaming. The same shit is being regurgitated over and over within a smaller and smaller intellectual space. The same stories and characters are being iterated and reiterated endlessly.
I'm really glad you brought up derivative because I was going to talk about it in the vid, but since it's pretty complicated I'm saving it for a future vid. Yes I agree that a lot of great art is derivative and in fact it's very difficult to create something great without being derivative in some ways. However, the way that process should work is that the works that you are inspired from should be reverse engineered, where you understand their individual elements and then can use them in new ways and settings. In artistic laundering though, you are just slapping IPs and concepts together without thought or consideration for the art's original compositoin. So we end up with works that either contradict themselves thematically (the batman sort of does this) or drift so far off the original design that it no longer makes sense, like West Side Story 2021. Also there is something to be said from pulling from a really deep source (like Shakespeare) versus a shallow source (like Batman) to begin with.
Your problem with sequels is exactly how I feel about the Mega Man X series in its entirety. I still really enjoy the games but there were problems with the core mechanics as far back as the first game, and 8 games later they never fixed them. I'll give some examples, you can charge your shot but a lv2 still does 1 damage so it's useless and a full charge which takes several seconds only does 2 damage, you're better off just mashing shoot. The bosses have long i-frames so only the first hit of a double charge shot upgrade or zero's slash combos will do damage.
Yes exactly!! And it s interesting because in the megaman games, it almost always the earlier entries into the series that are the better ones. Mega man 2 and Mega man X (1) because they had to focus more on the design essentials. Whereas in the later games they are just skimming off the top of the older games success and not bothering to examine or improve the mistakes. So they end up these messy designs
I feel like X1 is the best X game because none of the others evolved the formula enough to surpass it. Partly because, yeah, they just never fixed anything and kept adding stuff that wasn't needed or wanted, like the nightmare levels. Mega Man Zero (2) is where I believe the X series finally started evolving its gameplay and design.
you make a lot of good points, but i kinda disagree with your opinion about social issues. Social issues can make interesting and good stories as long you explain both sides of the issue and make it entertaining.
Oh it might help if I clarify what i mean. I don't mean that art can't work with social issues included in it (1984 is a masterpiece). What I mean is if you take a property that has it's own identity and themes, like romeo and juliet, and then start stuffing unrelated social issues into it's story. The problem that arises is a confused mess where the original story beats and the new social issue story beats are not in harmony withe one another. Like in the new West Side story the male and female leads have trouble connecting due to differences in culture but this runs completely contrary to the original story of romeo and juliet where it is passionate love at first sight. So the scenes where they are passionately in love with each other seem jarring next to scenes where they can barely relate to each other.
@@MerlinTheCommenter yes, not only they're talentless, they intentionally butcher movies, localization of Japanese games, Western aaa games and comics just to "smash the patriarchy"
@@TheElectricUndergroundis this an issue u find in the old west side story Broadway musical and the 1961 movie? That they introduced this New York City multiethnic neighborhood as a setting, with the story drama that arises from it, to Romeo and Juliet?
Watching the new Fire Emblem announcement in the Nintendo Direct made me come back to this video. I don't think it quite matches up with the examples of artistic laundering (love that term btw) you give here, but it felt very disrespectful to the series and original creators nonetheless.
![It's Time to LEAVE Big Studio Gaming Behind! Escaping the Studio Gaming Cycle! [Uncut]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/P94-kJe8N2U/mqdefault.jpg)
Interesting points. I used to think that I should play every game of X franchise. And because the franchise is well known, it must be good right? Gradually, I've learnt to evaluate games, or products in general, as a standalone thing, independent of brand and franchise. Franchises used to be a seal of quality; if the first game was good, it was likely that the same team of people that was responsible for the first game would make the second game, and the second game would likely be good as well.
But with how long franchises have gone on for, it's inevitable that the leadership will change. Different people have different priorities. And typically, the people who take over later don't know about the underlying intrinsic value of the franchise (e.g. thematic elements, design choices). Or worse, they don't care about the intrinsic value. So, they think the best course of action is to give what the fans want, which result in milking the same content over and over. And hey, people care a lot about Y social issue, so let's address Y in the next game because the fans will love it! And ultimately, these people care about profits the most, because they just want to do their job. And their job is to generate more profits, not to preserve the integrity of the franchise.
Creating often entails copying. For an artist, it may be another artist's style. For a programmer, it's a post on Stack Overflow. But what sets creative people apart from everyone else is that the creative people understand what they're copying. They're not simply copying the entire solution from one problem and expecting it to solve a different problem. What they're really copying is concepts. How it works. Why it works.
The issue is that in these longstanding franchises, or rather, these big companies that have been around for way too long, they are simply copying without understanding. They copy obvious game mechanics, without understanding the underlying game balance. They copy obvious social issues, without understanding why people feel so strongly about those issues. They copy the extrinsic elements, and completely miss out on the intrinsic elements tying everything together. It's the difference between a taxidermy and an actual animal. They look similar, but one is completely hollow inside. Looks pretty but completely worthless.
Your comments are crazy articulate and poetry to my ears (eyes?) Yes, this is exactly what the video is about :-D
The first God Eater game is the game I could think of when I read this.
Love the stack overflow comparison! We all copy, but the competent ones understand what they copy and build on it to create. Some greater minds, use the solutions on there just as inspiration to come up with better solutions.
The majority just copy without understanding the context/meaning and then complain later on the same thread that the solution didn’t work for them. They’re just lazy wanting the solution handed out - it saves them time, while raking in the cash. Just like AAA games rehashing the same games with remakes + sequels, copying the banal souls-like formula or Ubisoft open-world model resulting in soulless grindy games. Or the template I loathe the most: the “Last of us” template to provide a cinematic/interactive movie experience that people will call art…no matter how shallow/samey the gameplay is. Same shallow RPG mechanics, ceaseless dialog, lame stealth…with politics added for good measure.
Intellectual Property is the worst thing to happen to humanity in the modern age
The terms of copyright are too long, it should've been restricted to 20-30 years.
@@razorback9999able 0 Years Preferably. It has a horrendous impact on the market and contradicts property rights
@@doofmoney3954 0 Years? It means no copyright, right? If there is no copyright on artistic works, how can the artist reap the rewards by earning money at the period of release?
@@razorback9999able They already don't. Publishers take the lion's share of the money.
@razorback9999able copyright itself is something of an aberration in history anyway. Making the terms so long is antithetical to the artistic process as seen over hundreds of years. I think the expectation of income is partly the problem. Although I understand that prior to this you would need to be someone of means or have a wealthy benefactor to pursue art...that said, it has kind of like this now anyway in a lot of medums.
You make some excellent points. One thing that came to mind from your point on fan games is a little arcade history.
Back in 1977, Star Wars was huge, but the tech kind of wasn't there for doing a Star Wars game and licensing was expensive for it right off the bat. Exidy made Star Fire, which was essentially a fan-made Star Wars, but it was still its own thing. Star Fire was a pretty popular game circa 1980 and influenced other titles and arcade game design; It was also the first game to use a high score table that players could input their initials on.
Several years later, Japanese companies really loved the movie Aliens but licensing wasn't always possible or it was held by someone else. Ergo, Konami created Contra; Taito created Space Gun.
Yu Suzuki loved Ferrari, so he made OutRun (although that caused some issues with Ferrari over the license).
There's nothing wrong with making a love letter to something, just have some imagination and give your own spin to it instead of regurgitating the same thing with more flare.
For sure, I believe Metroid was also heavily inspired by Alien! So none of these examples would fall into the territory of fangame though, as they were either their own IPs like Contra, or later on they were officially licensed games like Batman Returns by Konami. Licensed games is an interesting subject, but it's different than a fangame, which is unlicensed but not legally different enough to be sold without getting sued. I personally don't mind if an indie game is heavily inspired by another property, as long as it is legally clear and sold as it's own IP, I think that's the key difference.
@@TheElectricUnderground I think the discussion on fangame triggered the thought for me as Yu Suzuki was a huge fan of Ferrari and wanted to make a game that was that love letter to the brand - he just had the backing of Sega to do so but they didn't really get the license like they were supposed to at first. A similar thing happened with the Atari game Shark JAWS, but that was too early to be an unlicensed version of an existing game, so I know what you mean. I suppose bootlegs of Space Invaders/Asteroids/Pac-Man/etc. could be thought of as early fan games, particularly what one could find on PCs back in the 80s.
Glad to see you talking about this issue; I feel one problem that occurred with movies well before video games was just the cost of production. Once Movies became multi-million dollar affairs, they could no longer let one director create their vision; instead everything became by committee. Video games have moved into this territory more recently, and it is always amazing to see either medium still pull off something spectacular instead of being calculated to check off the most boxes and appeal to the largest demographic.
The problem with movies is the producers are so concerned with checking off as many 'woke' boxes as they can instead of concentrating on the source material so they end up releasing a movie that isn't what the fans want so the movie or the TV series tanks, the studio loses millions of dollars and then they can't figure out why. It's the popular saying: get 'woke,' go broke. I don't understand why Hollywood, Netflix, etc don't understand this. Look at Halo, that's going to be the next Cowboy Bebop, and then the producers are going to sit there and scratch their heads while trying to figure out why.
Exactly. And I hope my video communicates that even if you are on board with the particular social issues being laundered into the script, it still is not a good idea because it immediately destroys the creative integrity of the film. I am pretty sure that when it comes to scripts these days, there is a special committee of some kind that will look the script over and actually point out or suggest changes in order to fit a particular social issue. And I think this is going to continue for a long time because I bet there are people whose exact job is doing this stuff. So they need to throw in all kinds of crap to justify their paycheck. I have no direct evidence on if that happens in this manner, but something is certainly going on. And I would complain if this was occurring with religious ideas or anything like that. Like if there was a Christian edit of Dragon Ball Z ha.
I also couldn't understand why they continue to do it when they know they'll lose lots of money (and you can see it even more now, with the latest Disney garbage and whatnot); but I think its something called ESG that provides funding based on how "diverse" and woke you are
@@TheElectricUnderground There has been numerous cases of publishers and studios openly admitting to such committees/advisory boards/advisory companies existing and being used.
Worse yet, it's likely part of foreign information attacks targeted towards US and EU citizens. Note how east-Asian games are mostly devoid of stuff like this, although they have their own damaging influences.
There's an old saying of "Last days of Rome" that comes to mind.
People stopped creating anew and started dwelling on past creations, the famous play "the senate" which used to be a lighthearted comedy came back and ran as a dramedy.
New songs plays and fiction no longer gained appreciable traction so they reran and subverted what came before.
The oligarchal triumvirate held more power than ever, even as the empire fell apart, and hordes of foriegners swarmed the borders displacing or subsuming the native culture.
Without the culture of creation, nothing new was formed and when Rome ultimately fell, most of what we have of their media is the old stuff, that they themselves clung to in their last days.
I don't think it's even controversial to point out the absolute state of the last GDC, the ratio on that opener is hilarious.
An art form is cultivated, and you don't grow roses by choking out the seedbed with dandelion and poison oak.
I used to manage an extremely popular comic shop for a number of years in my state, it was considered the GOAT.
When this mass migration of "talent" came to use comics as a waiting room for hollywood, we had to shift gears into warhammer, boxed games, and card games, because the regulars weren't buying the tentpole series any more.
It got so bad that we had to stop buying title bundles from diamond, because THEY knew they got stuck with garbage and cut discounts in bulk if you bought 4 trash books so you could get the good book that actually sold, trying to offload the fiscal loss onto us shops.
These bundles were also how you got the alt covers and the promo materials (the stuff your regulars and whales want) so it was basically mandatory.
They knew that people didn't want the glut of trash they were supplying, but the ESG cash was what they cared about.
The quality was so meanspiritedly low that it actually hurt BACKLOG sales because no one felt like ordering pulls for a series that they were introduced to after it had become so insipid and preachy.
This resulted in online subscription services for comics (lmao that stuff is already free online, buyers care about HAVING the books) from the 3 big players, and a unilateral canon reboot to try and stem the bleeding from all 3.
Well, it didn't work, diamond went under, marvel crashed and got bought, and dc barely treads water while all the indies were either conglomerated or closed (rip dh and vertigo)
We are seeing the exact same pattern again, when the comics people cried foul everyone said "lol nerds" and it happened there first because it is such an isolated and secular media. Movies followed quickly after and now games are on their dying breath.
A combination of boosting the incompetent and the disconnected while stifling the creators and bandwagoning against anything this new astroturfed overculture hates has allowed this to happen.
And the longer people put up with it, the more stuff you will lose.
We don't get new OB64s or FF10s or Xenosagas, or Batriders or Espgaludas or SkyGunners, or Drakengards or ZOEs or MAximos.
We get either another 30 year old repackage or a buggy ubishit open world clown fiesta that serves as a 30 hour lecture from dogmatic oversocialized shutins.
Wow this is really interesting to hear about. What's going on in comics is super interesting and I agree parallel to what's happening with video games, probably a few years ahead in terms of running itself into the ground. With a serialized media like a comic book, I could see these issues honestly being even worse because the temptation to just keep rebooting the same content over and over is probably very tempting. Also I could see the temptation to cater to the most common denominator (rather then having distinctive and edgy content) has probably played a factor as well. I could absolutely see that the whole film franchise phenomenon has deeply damaged the quality of the print comics. It's a really interesting topic and one I think I'll bring a guest on to do a podcast with or something.
All the kids will eat it up
If it's packaged properly
No kidding! XD
Sad, but true.
Oversaturation man. People dont have any reason to play most games beyond a weekend or so. They will be inundated with endless variety, every single day, until they decide to stop gaming. You do not have enough life to even try every game that pops up that looks interesting. You dont have enough life to even try all the games that seem tailored to you. (You really dont have time for any games really at all, but don't tell anyone....)
Exactly my man. It's like a constant diet of candy and soda. I love candy and soda but if that's all the genre becomes people will have to quickly move on. There needs to be more substance to keep people engaged and energized.
I don't know what the video will be about, but I will leave my opinion here.
I think one of the reasons videogames nowadays are sucking so badly it's because videogames have been turning into the new Holywood movies.
Back when games were just sprites mostly, even the big studios of the time were just a couple dozen people or so. Because of the limitation of production the games had to be "simple" and have non redundant aspects.
Now that games are multi millionaire productions, their development takes several years and these games follow meta recipes, because failing to sell a product of such high value could be extremely detrimental to the brand, so games are also being more formulaic than they have ever been, so many games feel the same and barely leave their comfort zone.
Some corporations are also using the popularity of videogames to sneak in some political messages and ideas that more than often break the potential creativity or freedom of expression the game originally had, one good example is that we just don't have a new Power Instinct game it's because one of it's characters could be target of cancel culture or censorship (that was the admited reason, that's not speculation).
Absolutely!! The shift from smaller, focused, creative studios to these massive piles of teams and committees is one of the main issues for sure
People have a hard time being objective about things they hold in high esteem and don't understand criticism doesn't mean hate.
Very true!!
Triple A games have become worse because the corporations and their investors don't want to take the economical risk of having a game bomb. So they stay inside the cookie cutter border and sell soulless "open world games as a service" to the masses. Indie games however are made by the people with the passion, the vision and the will to risk it with games that improve on old genres or to create something entirely new. The issue with that is that the average triple/double A game consumer thinks that everything that's not a flashy big budget game equals mobile game level shovelware garbage. Unless of course it's a title from a IP already established decades ago like Streets of Rage 4 or the upcoming TMNT: Shredder's Revenge. Or if it get's a lot attention from the big news sources like IGN, Gamespot and so on.
Yes exactly! I talk about these issues in the vid and also some other ones that might be surprising :-)
so capitalism hurts art.
I sort of like your point about fan games and unofficial remix stuff since they often tend to stay within the consistency of the established works, but passion towards the stuff they consumed. Fan games themselves are not quite sustainable since either those choose to embrace the constraints too much, or they decide to flip the table to insert the individuals' ideas and destroy the identity of the original work. I consumed such content on Newgrounds a lot, but cannot deny original works prosper like Alien Hominid from original flash game to console release that formed The Behemoth.
As for youtube poops, they seem to be all about turning existing work into stuff so transformed that it resembles nothing like any of the original works and become a mish mash collage, often for disposable entertainment. Creative laundering and derivation is strongly expected in that anarchist media mix art form.
I used to be part of youtube poops until I abandoned that due to constraining myself too much from someone else's work.
I currently make small games and I at least care about creating something that stand out. Fintail Gladiator, my current solo spare-time game project, is heavily inspired by the arcade video game Joust, but switch away flying birds with lance wielding knights over platforms to swimming fish with sharp tail blades in an underwater environment.
It is possible to take inspiration, but really understand who and why it's there and then find a way to distinguish from the inspirations.
Yeah newgrounds is really interesting! I used to go on there a bit back in the day. I think the odd little fangame to try out a design idea or practice is perfectly fine, but I think when people start to scale these up into full grown projects that this becomes an issue. It's basically fanfiction. Right now we are seeing fanfiction being passed off as the real thing when people just come along and buy these old properties. They may own the legal rights of the property, but definitely don't have the artistic authority of the original creators.
@@TheElectricUnderground yeah. Some of us used to do fan fiction from obsession and shove in ideas that we want in there.
I outgrew them since I desire creating new works.
I'm guessing it's the same thing most things are shit; the profit motive causes anything entertaining or interesting to be about money instead.
That s partly it for sure, though I think the issue runs a bit deeper
@@TheElectricUnderground I've had a chance to watch the video now, and I am pretty impressed with they way you got your points out. It's a subject that I find very interesting myself, as I have seen it happening over many years now. I stick by my original comment, and I think that that is the deep issue, and you point out the very real implications and results of such an issue, which a lot of people are oblivious to. I will genuinely have to watch the video again while making notes, because I think the video is worth discussing in depth.
Most of these issues are symptoms of industry consolidation. Too few studios are chasing the broadest possible market and the sheer volume of content becomes exhausting.
Absolutely! It s like a self enforcing cycle. Laundering shores up profits and minimizes risks. Studios expand and become less and less risk tolerant. Profit becomes more dire. Then studios need to launder more and more. It's like running a credit card to pay off other debts, artistically
I’m pretty late to this video but I have to say these discussions of films and games as a genre have to be my favorites of yours. It’s nice having another perspective that not too many people talk about. It sorta makes me feel justified since people don’t seem to understand why I prefer older media and games compared to the modern stuff out now. Not to say there isn’t good stuff now but it’s harder to find more original quality ideas as you’ve stated and not reboots, remakes, and weird compilations.
Hi my dude! I'm glad you enjoyed the vid, it's one of my favorites as well! I think it's important to try to clearly put these phenomenon into words without getting too mixed up in unrelated details ha.
Your take on fan games is so on point. I never understood why devs would spend time working on a game with IPs that don't belong to them. It will only be met by accolades from mega fans of said IP, or a cease and desist from the IP holder. Like you said, make the game you want and use more of that creativity to build your own world and characters. They might even find by doing this, they're more free to build on the ideas that they are inspired by as a fan. Look at the explosion of Metroidvanias. If all those devs only cared to make a fan game of Castlevania or Metroid, we wouldn't have such a resurgence of an amazing genre. Some devs don't even stray that far from their source material and still strike upon something new and interesting. Great video dude, I like listening to you pontificate on game design.
Exactly my dude! We are of same mind on this point. I honestly feel its more tragic then anything when a dev makes this killer fangame (am2r for example) and then of course it's going to get cease and desisted. You can't even blame nintendo from doing so, what are they going to just allow people to start making games in their ips? it's a really brutal catch 22 where if you want to make a little experimental fangame just to practice and show your friends, I don't think that's a big deal. But if you put so much effort into it that it starts to rival the original IP, of course your gonna get slapped by a C&D and everyone loses. Whereas competing with Nintendo head to head with your own IP is so much more interesting and healthy for everyone in the long run.
They use it to get exposure and hopefully land a job at a real studio once ninendo dmcas them.
Too much money involved. The risk is too high so you get everything converging, picking what is considered the good bits and sticking it together. Too much rides on a 2 month sales window now for games or an opening weekend for a film. Nintendo's games tend to burn longer but even then that's their big franchises like Animal Crossing, Super Mario Kart et al. I enjoy Odyssey and 3D World, but I'm screaming for an F-Zero or Pilotwings game - they obviously don't think the sales would justify the cost. Personally I think the mainstream are getting the games they deserve. One needs to vote with ones wallet and reward new stuff with purchases. Films? I am sick and tired of bloody Batman and Spiderman. Give it a rest. But there are good films out there - you just have to look a bit harder. The whole social activism tick boxing is crushing creativity too. Every time has its trash and it's usually in the majority. It's easy to get disheartened - there's still plenty of good stuff about but it requires more effort now because of the volume of stuff.
I think you are right 100% on the money thing. These games are getting so bloated and expensive that only big sales can justify the cost of production, which means no more alternative ideas or risky ventures. I think the absolute bath that nintendo took during the gamecube days (one of their best times as a studio) changed the company forever honestly. It is crazy how many times they have rebooted batman and spiderman at this point. Honestly I think the reason they do so is because most of their other superheroes don't have the material to work off. So rather then generating something new, they will just need to relaunder and reboot these franchises until they literally crash and stop making money.
Great video. Elden Ring comes to mind, so many aspects of that game are just holdovers from previous titles. The context that justifies their existence is gone, but the things themselves remain. That game made me so bitter on modern FromSoft haha. For something like Sifu posture system I'm not sure I mind, even if it is sorta derivative I view it as experimenting with mechanics from other games, since they at least try to do stuff with it. Overall though I agree.
Hey thanks so much my dude!! Thanks for tuning in! I do actually like sifu, I just felt it s reviews were a little too breezy and didn't dig into it as much as they could
Films peaked in the 1940’s and 50’s during the studio system before television became a strong competitor. Video games peaked in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. It’s sad that we haven’t progressed since then, but at least we can own the masterpieces of the past and enjoy them.
Yeah I m hoping once we put aside our fixation with nostalgia we can move forward with more great games that are great on their own terms
Films peaked in the 70s. Video games peaked in the 2000s.
You have a valid point here. It's pretty interesting that a 1:1 remake recently won the Oscar for best movie. I guess companies are trying to reduce the risk by putting in elements that people already know, which in the end leads to a giant hodgepodge of franchises, remakes and adaptations. I think we gonna need a "new Hollywood"-movement for games and a new new Hollywood movement for films. On the other hand I still like all those retro 2D games and the Marvel films.
I agree, I think with both games and films we are going to see a crash of the larger studios (hopefully in the next 10 years) and the smaller studios are going to sweep in with more quality content. At least I hope so
Mechanics of certain popular franchises getting implemented on sort of games are common but why is it getting harder for me to find a game that is similar to a game that I genuinely enjoy?
wooord! on point, excellent video Mark. It's probably been said already in the comments but I'd add that the influence of the cinema industry on game world is also very destructive. it all becomes a numbers-driven mess, even independent music platforms are becoming part of all this consolidation of businesses and industries (Epic buying Bandcamp...)
Thanks so much my dude!! Yes 100% Hollywood's influence on gaming has become a straight-up nightmare. It's like when the drug addicted older brother gets his younger brother hooked on smack and steals his stereo ha, that's how I view the relationship.
these are your best videos imo. i think its a real talent to be able to speak fluidly and support your arguments with concrete examples. I don't agree with everything you said but I sill enjoyed immensely. thank you!
Thank you so much! I'm really glad to hear you enjoy this style of video. It's one thing when I made these more philosophical vids when I had a smaller audience, but I think it's still important to continue to do them as the channel grows, even if they rub some of the newer subs the wrong way or may seem out of nowhere ha. I don't expect every viewer of the channel to agree with me (I am a man of very particular taste ha), but I do hope the vid got some gears spinning and was fun to think about at least. :-)
I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ON THIS! AGGGH. I doubt I could type this out.
I think you have a lot of great points. I agree with most of your conclusions but less with some of your reasoning at times.
Yeah I know the feeling ha, trying to communicate some of these ideas via comments and short writing seems so impossible. That's actually why I made the video, so I could convey these concepts without having to write them out in the comments section ha.
@@TheElectricUnderground it's funny too because you're approaching all of this so differently than I do, it's fascinating.
I think an other bad aspect of modern game franchises that they always go back to the beginning mechanics/difficulty-wise. for example, they had to make all the first generation god of war games in a way that if someone plays the given 'episode' as his/her first game of the franchise, it has to be easy enough to be enjoyable. I think it would have been really nice to see how far could be the difficulty curve/mechanics comlexity pushed out if all the games start of on a difficulty/mechanics comlexity where the last 'episode' ended.
I love this, yes! And you know what's funny there is only one genre that ever followed through with this idea - shmups. Shmups are the only genre where the devs kept pushing the design and difficulty rather then resetting back like you describe. Mario was doing this until after super mario world, then Nintendo decided to just make it a beginner series from that point forward. And that's the accepted design philosophy now. Just make the same game over and over, with superficial changes and vary the level layouts.
Exactly! :-) Yeah shmups are really pushing it!
When I end up putting some time into a game to learn it on some level, then I would enjoy more games that build up on that foundation.
Forgot to mention, great video, keep up the good work! :-D
Devs look at median earnings of certain genres (ex: on Steam trends/reports), this influences their design direction. This is why you will often find several competing core-concepts in a game - it's like a shotgun approach. Lets say metroidvania/rougelike and survival are top earners for the last to current year, you will find some of those mechanics/ideas in (a) new game, even if that game is an old IP. This of course creates a dissonance between what "felt right" about x title and what is now pushed to keep up with changing tastes/trends.
From a business point it's sensible to appeal to a broader demographic, but in practice, not many older beloved IPs can be overhauled in that manner. And new games have to contend with a deluge of titles already saturating the Steam Dashboard/Core market(s).
The most prudent approach (for an upcoming dev/studio) would be to build a community as they're designing the IP, getting players to follow progress through feedback loops such as YT/Discord/Socials. Of course, a lot of people are doing this already, so one would need some dumb luck or a really appealing idea. But there is hope: just look at how small the Five Nights at Freddy's (now franchise) started with that one simple but effective game loop/idea.
Good luck Mark, and keep on introspecting - it's important to mull over these kind of ideas and air 'em out in public.
Excellent analysis!! Yes I do think you are right about this is what's going on in the indie space. The steam tag system will reflect this too where you can see devs trying to get their game across as many tags as possible (like youtubers ha). Problem is, that then you get this jumbled mess of a game in the end. I think The Messenger is a perfect case study. The game literally changes into a metroidvania halfway through even though it was sold as an homage to ninja gaiden. That annoys me more and more as time goes on ha.
Look forward to watching this. My general take is that things started becoming super-derivative. Innovations in music and movies, a bit less so with games, seemed to hit a wall late 90's. Think about how much stuff changed from 40's to 90's in all of these areas, and then since 00 on. Then taking it over the edge of cliff boring in recent times is the insufferable wokeness of everything, particularly the highly corporatized "checkbox" design by committee. Where all personality and unique choice is replaced with a template designed by what appears to be a small group of monoculture-thinking HR people (I know that's redundant).
I feel the same way! It's crazy to see how the progress of artistic creativity does seem to have hit a wall around 2010 I would say, and in the past twelve years we've been completely stuck or going backwards, in both games and film. Absolutely I think this committee design has been a problem, but I also think it's because the current gen of active creators just aren't bold themselves and seem very risk adverse. And the risky artists seem to have a tendency to die (a sad but dark truth right now). The only bold people around are older and that's just sad ha.
Yes, and yes AND yes! ....... spot on dood they've been doing this for many years, now. I noticed, also.
Yeah it s a dirty process
@@TheElectricUnderground : Hey are you still making a game? I code, and 3d model and animate, also.
Very based take on separating artistic issues and social issues and looking at artistic works through diff lenses. Excellent video essay
Thanks my dude! I think this is a lesson that seems to have been forgotten in recent years. I'd say about fifteen years ago sitting and moralizing your film reviews or game reviews (using whatever basis) was seen as cringe as hell. But now it really is the most popular form of review, which I think is a shame. I do think it would be funny to do a parody of this by actually doing a religious based review of Dragon Ball Z where I cite scripture and stuff ha, but I think people are a bit too sensitive right now for me to bother with the drama that might cause ha.
@@TheElectricUnderground that would be hilarious lmao. I grew up in a really religious community right around 9/11 so I totally get where you're coming from. I had a buddy whose parents wouldnt let him watch dbz cuz "its satanic" and I would give him shit all the time by talking about how sick the new episode was. Ah, Goodtimes.
Excellent video.. Never thought about that problem with design flaws in sequalisation before. The power if brand loyalty and nostalgia are very potent forces. The desire for something to be good and recreate and continue a past moment seem to be able to eradicate any objectivity and willingness to detect and acknowledge flaws and the need for something new and to move on. I suffer from this too in the respect that the possibility that a new game in a modern AAA series maybe better than the proceeding one never occurs to me. For example there is no way I'm going to buy an open world game as my mind says they are all boring, the same and expensive!
Yeah I think it s not something that s super obvious at first because it s so subtle, I do think that bad design starts to pile up though so that MegaMan x1 is much better then MegaMan X5 ha
Great video, really loved it, and it really talks about everything I hate with modern mass media. I feel another thing I've seen with games though, is when you have these companies seemingly rob the graves of their dead IPs to pander to nostalgia, bonus points when they change the game genre. Some of my favorite examples are "Left behind", the Front Mission game that went from Strategy RPG, to generic third person shooter. Or the new "Sakura Wars" game, that went from Strategy RPG, to generic one button action RPG. Then once these garbage games with no semblance to their series don't sell, they take that to mean nobody wants these games. My favorite was Sega, which ported one of the worst Super Monkey Ball games, threatened consumers to buy it if they want more games, only for them to then do a basic port of Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2.
Really great stuff.
That s exactly right, it s robbing the artistic merits of works of the past and then using that poor ip as a front to conceal the shoddy work of the new material which just banks in the original ips quality to trick customers. Oddly this practice isn t as widely criticized as I think it should be, at least among reviewers
Its all due to money, man... It's all financial. Big studios have to risk more nowadays as game budgets have gone up and thus they only go with whats safe. No more risks. And they certainly won't reduce their budgets and scopes.
A lot of IP holders just graft their IP onto existing games and its gross and they wont make new games in the original franchise (look at Contra!)
That being said, when it comes to social issues, sometimes you simply cant separate the social commentary from the art as a lot of art is made as social commentary. Hell, look at Jurassic Park and its messaging not just about science unfettered, but how much it talks about women, feminism, and family. It's in and part of the art, not separate from it. Art is culture, culture is art, its hard to separate them from one another. I think its part of the critical discussion but it doesn't have to be -all- of it. The problem nowadays is it can sometimes be the ONLY element discussed when criticizing a piece of media. I believe it should be holistic.
And nowadays we've got these committees generating fake "wokeness" for disney's regurgitated remakes and some people cant understand the difference between an artist genuinely expressing a belief and a corporation simply trying to appear to hold certain values when they really, really do not.
I never realized how subversive Westside Story is to the original themes of Romeo and Juliet. The true tragedy of the conflict between the houses is that, at the end of the day, they are one people. What divides them is not culture or language, but an inter-generational grudge. On the other hand, West Side swaps out a constructed barrier for a factual one, but pretends that it can be surmounted as simply, if only we were "enlightened" enough.
Great video.
Excellent take, Mark. And if I could give you ten likes I would. Don't let the Culture Police intimidate you from making these very measured and nuanced points about the failings of modernity
Thank you so much my dude!!! Yes, I am optimistic that this uptight atmosphere online is going to ease soon. Let us hope at least ha.
Some really good ideas. You are a real thinker. The "problems" with the new West Side Story were all made intentionally to push a particular political narrative. They don't care that they are destroying a once great work of art, in fact they designed it to do so. In that example I wouldn't call it "forgetting the foundation" rather I'd call it destroying the foundation. And it doesn't matter that the changes they've made no longer make sense because the new messaging is now more important than anything else.
Yeah it s laundering at it s worst really, and it s a shame. There has been only one good film adaptation of romeo and Juliet over the years and this one is one of the worst.
Hit the nail on head with this video, stuff just ends up a hodgepodge of popular ideas that dont mesh
Thanks so much!! Yeah and it quickie becomes boring as a result
I think the parties involved in using established IP’s to push social agendas, need to be quite a bit more selective and much more artful in which IP’s they choose to utilize as the vehicles for the social agenda.
If those seeking to utilize established and well loved IP’s (or in a societal context, utilize trusted institutions) had enough patience, enough discretion, and enough discerning respect for either:
1. the trusted institutions
2. The PEOPLE who trust the institutions
3. The established, beloved IP
4. The PEOPLE who love said established IP
If those seeking to push the social agenda were significantly more perceptive or self aware or RESPECTFUL TO OTHERS, they would not lose anywhere near as much of their funder’s capital investment and ability to utilize the vehicle long term.
It’s collectively, a pigheaded, selfish, stubborn, spiteful, self unaware, and most importantly, Suicidal doctrine of guaranteeing righteous hatred upon ones self.
Godspeed to their own collective self destruction 😎
Budget ambition and risk too. Budget and risk is too high to deviate
Yep! Playing it safe and keeping it all the same ha
Do you have a video on music?
I should do one at some point!
We need more artistic laundering from Cave! It's hard to make unique content whereas expanding a multiverse is the equivalent of hitting the easy button. I wish more people talked about these problems and passed over the trash. Another big difference between now and then is how mainstream a lot of IPs are today. We need more of these videos calling out the crappy media. This can be your metamorphosis into being the AVGN. Oh, wait that's artistic laundering...
Ha you know what s funny is that I am probably more consistently critical than AVGN. The games he critiques are almost always universally bad where I will stick my foot into some big old bees nests at time when it comes to more negative reviews. I do wish that he took his channel in that direction lately, where he is just slamming on a bunch of films and games. That would be fun to watch
OOOOOO one more thing. I'm not sure if it's related to your video, but some games just feel really similar. Now it could be because like you said game design trends, but I'm more talking about game engines. Either 90% of games are made in unreal or unity, the other 10% something else. I felt this most with two rpgs which is smt V and dragon quest 11, the character movement, menu navigation timing, etc ,it just felt really similar. Compare that to back then a lot of games made new engines basically every new game, or at least a lot more than these days. It made them feel different.
Oh that is a really interesting topic! The uniformity of game engines, yeah it's definitely having an effect where things are starting to all look the same and feel the same, code wise.
its interesting to think does industry (moves and games) lack a talent or just people behind money don't want to risk with new ip and ideas
It s both at once I think. The industry pushes out talented people for a variety of reasons, one being how formulaic it has become and then they also discourage risk and new ideas. Hell this even happens with RUclipsrs these days where I am pretty heavily discouraged from making anything other then shmup reviews XD
I hate to say this because I know so many game developers will spend time and put so much heart and soul into fan games but my thought was always this: there was a team of trained professionals that designed this game or RPG back whenever it was made, and there might be a lot of underlying logic for why they designed this game specifically the way it was. For example Mangs, the cool Fire Emblem youtuber, made a patch for Fire Emblem the Binding Blade where he balanced the characters out, so all characters are viable. But I think this is missing the point. I think some characters were supposed to be broken while others were bad, so that way you would be punished if you let all of your best characters die and you were then forced to use crappy characters. Just one example.
Truth serum right here as always, Mark! Love the mention of the unpredictability in Taxi Driver to illustrate your point.
Glad that people (although an extremely tiny number) like you are still around in the West to critique art. How can we improve anything if we don't provide and act on constructive criticism? Anyway, good/objective journalism has been long dead in the West, easily noticed since 2013 or so. I don’t game anymore but I swear to the heavens, every game that’s decent (7/10) these days is labeled an unabashed “masterpiece”, while anything awful is called “mediocre”. (No more gold medals for the ones that truly merit them…everyone now gets a participation medal.) It’s like these "reviewers" exist to check boxes: gain woke points, encourage homogeneity in art, and then the classic: resort to name-calling if the fans hate what they like. Doesn't help that majority of gamers and moviegoers eat what the reviewers serve them unconditionally, going lengths to defend those artistically laundered pieces of work.
Japan and Korea still appear to be creating new quality art materials, chiefly with new manga/anime and original movies. I’m not talking about large Japanese video game companies like Capcom, because their greed and refusal to take risks (with the dumb remakes reusing the same RE engine assets ad nauseum) are frustrating af. Your point about Zelda makes me mad, because it’s true. Even the mighty Nintendo doesn’t want to take risks, and new IPs from them are things of the past. Ah, Earthbound/Mother…how breathtakingly quirky games like you are missed!
Damn, Mark, you've read my mind!! Right at the end of the video.
I guess it's important to realise that we are all part of the trends/laudry, in a way, and we are to blame as well if we talk mostly about the big franchises, even if it is to complain (or if we do fangames to compete with the official titles). I was seriously going to kindly propose that reflection, based on your last film reviews, but you beat me to it. As a creator of a kind myself, i'm not naive enough to believe we can just talk about whatever we want without proper introduction and context, but it's nice to have a balance.
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Interesting perspective on a bunch of things. Always thought it was a bummer that the Joker HAD to be a film about the Joker to get visibility.
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One of the things that i like to point out is that social issues can be addressed in a artistic manner if you have the right sensibility to any. thats nothing new and many of the classics knew how to touch on the subject in a way thats fullfilling while also avoiding boring didactism (I grew up on a religious enviroment as well, so i understand where youre coming from with your comparison). I mean, Toni Morrison did it, can huge companies do it as well? Maybe not.
Yes the important destinction that I hope I was able to communicate is that it s not so much about the content of what you are including (though there is something to be said about over saturation of the same thing over and over) but rather the method of delivering the ideas artistically. And right now a popular method is just laundering in ideas to existing works and using them to push your ideas. The west side story example is perfect. Sure there is something to be said about nationalities learning to get along (Dances with Wolves type of stuff) but shoving that into Romeo and Juliet doesn t work and if that s something speilburg wanted to do he would have needed to heavily rewrite the story into something new, rather then shoving it on top of the existing play s plot and structure, because the events don't make sense anymore
@@TheElectricUnderground Yes, it was clear on the video. if it's a difficult task with new works, doing it to redesign material from the past is most certainly a recipe for disaster. Excited for the next reviews.
This notion of repeating something wrong and making it ok is like the basis of all propaganda and how it works psychologically. It’s also a technique used by jazz musicians when they make a mistake.
I do appreciate that, despite what someone might think from the title before clicking, this video is constructive, well thought out, and articulate with good examples.
Thanks my dude! I've been thinking about the topics of this video for about a year now, and putting them into a concept was actually pretty tricky!
Another question I got, do you think this issue will get worse after a year? The nostalgia pondering is getting worse, in my opinion.
Oh I have an exact prediction of what will happen. This will continue to get worse and worse until it crashes, then we will see the revival of new ips and fresh ideas. I don't think it will stop until a crash happens though, it will continue to accelerate to that point. Or the larger companies literally buy all the ips (like we are seeing right now) but those IPs can't be mined forever.
People were asking this question 2 hardware generations ago.
It has grown steadily worse, exponentially.
@@doccatface6868 When will we finally crash? I hope it change the trend once it happens
For the most part, you pretty much touch on everything I've been thinking about the creative media space for a while, but I think that using AM2R as an example for fangames is a bit off. I agree that if a developer is making a game that is inspired by a well-known franchise, it's a waste for them to throw away the potential of their game by making it a fangame instead of something that can easily be a unique work with a couple of changes. We have plenty of examples of critically acclaimed games that were heavily inspired by others, yet were wildly successful because they did their own thing, such as Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight, and Zero Ranger.
That said, I can see why a developer would go the fangame route as well. Sometimes it's done by fresh developers that don't have the experience or skills for making their own assets for their game. Instead they use assets from other games so they can focus on getting experience in developing a game, and sometimes their result just becomes popular enough to draw the attention of the gaming community at large.
There's also games like Kaizo Mario, which are essentially rom-hacks. For these developers, the challenge is experimenting with gameplay ideas while working within the limitations of the original game. There are games like I Wanna Be The Guy, which uses the assets of many preexisting franchises for the sake of humor.
Which brings me to AM2R. In this case, you have the Metroid franchise that has a couple of very old games (Metroid 1 and 2) that are so old they don't see much play anymore. Nintendo remade the first in the form of Zero Mission, which was an excellent modernization of the game. But Metroid 2 was ignored for years, which caused the community to take the initiative with AM2R (and, as the name of the game implies, several other attempts). I'd argue that this rendition of Metroid 2 was much more loyal to the source material than Nintendo's own attempt in Samus Returns, which is probably a better example of some of the issues that you argue in this video. And remember, AM2R was started almost a decade before we even heard anything about Samus Returns, so fans had no reason to believe Nintendo would ever deliver a proper remake.
So when it comes to keeping old franchises alive, or even the old styles of gameplay (see the origins of Sonic Mania and the entire classic Sonic fangame scene), I can't really take fault in fangames. The situation between AM2R and Nintendo was just an unfortunate one, and I can't really fault either party.
Great comment! I think working on fangames is completely fine in a limited context, like romhacks and all that fun stuff. These can be great learning opportunities like you said. And no one sympathizes with being a developer with no access to art assets more than me (that's me ha, with house of bullets). But, I still think that outside of smaller projects and experimentation, large scale fan games should be discouraged. Not in a let s sue you sort of way, but in a "hey bud, this is not a good idea and you could use your talent in your own ip." Like in the case of supporting new devs who don t have resources, I'd say if we had a bigger public library of open assets that would be a much better solution. Because as much as am2r borrows from Metroid, and I love Metroid, that game deserved a future outside of being this grey market hush hush game.
It's funny you mention snk, they've come out and said that they wanna look at doing more cross overs, i've been a huge snk fan for all my life but i can't even stomach them any more now, you only gotta look at the direction they've gone with samurai shodown they remove cool unique characters and replace them with either guests or fan service type characters, look at the roster of that game, there's almost no grappler types no monster character or demons not a single villan!!! like they had in the past no gen an lol but we needed a large breasts female guest even though the game already has fanservice character's in the game!, look at kof 15 they remove characters like chang and choi and chin and yet in there media they are bragging thiis game has the most protags out of any snk game ever yet all the different and unique characters get pushed into the "unpopular" bracket, even though those people that actually play the love that style of character, kof 15 does not have a single character who has not already been in a kof before, nobody from fatal fury garou aof world heros real bout ect ect, so i really get with what you are trying to say
I am beyond disappointed in SNK nowadays.
@@ghosttrain42 they broke my heart amigo, but i guess nothing lasts forever
Yeah I mentioned SNK because the quality of their output has taken such a sharp turn that I don't even consider them the same company. The SNK of old went down with King of Fighters 13. People are trying their best to appreciate and defend the new KOF games and the other stuff they are making, but in terms of quality its really a joke compared to the older KOF games and metal slug series. I love SNK but I do think their IPs have been hijacked and fans are struggling to accept that.
let's not forget: the crown prince of saudi arabia pretty much owns snk now. yeah, the guy who had a journalist butchered alive.
This was great to listen to. I think this kind of thing is only possible when you have established "institutions" (IPs, businesses, etc.) that people rely on because it just makes things easier in so many ways. But the result is a lack of dynamism.
Interesting analogy between the activist lens vs the religious lens. Very apt.
It s hilarious how similar the conversations have been over the years. I ve seen things go from being critiqued by religion groups, being accepted by secular society. To that same property being critiqued by secular society and suddenly defended by religious groups, it s pretty damn funny. Twilight is an example of this that s fascinating
@@TheElectricUnderground Ha, yeah. And both mindsets require adherence to doctrine in the absence of tangible proof. Not that I'm knocking christians - as time goes on, it seems their concerns (which I once scoffed at) are proving to have been legitimate.
In any case, fine video with some excellent points.
The movie Joker is an example of where "artistic laundering" was a good thing imo. The creator of Joker wanted to do a character study film but he felt that no producers would fund it so he rubbed some DC super heroes on it and pitched it.
edit: just saw that you covered the Joker. Oops. Good eye.
I used to work in a Casino. People would come in and play slots for 5 hours on high dollar machines and then cash out. They were laundering money. I don't think the casino did anything about it.
If you think in a different way, that is what makes it upsetting. He HAD to do a film about DC Comics universe to get any visibility.
@@heiner5945 Yea that's a bummer but it is what it is. At least artists can bend the rules to produce good stuff.
Yes I read your mind on the Joker. I don't hold anything against the film as I did enjoy it, but I do think, in an artistic sense, it would have been much better without the Batman IP. Like if the film was more of an homage to taxi driver and the character's future was less certain, I'd be excited to see a sequel. But since I already know all about the joker and what he'll go on to do (be a supervillain clown) a sequel to that film seems honestly silly.
@@TheElectricUnderground A sequel with THAT Joker fighting Batman would be ridiculous. Personally I hope it gets made. At this point the franchise movies are a dumpster fire and I say pour more fuel on. It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better imo. I pretty much checked out after Star Wars episode 8. 10 years ago I got hyped when one of my beloved franchises got a major motion picture release. 1 year ago I felt a sense of dread. Now it's just funny. Whatever, I'm watching Ben Herr this weekend, plenty of old movies.
Nice work with timing the "copy" filter for bonus VHS points. I was expecting Mario to be the one I disagreed most on since the original Mario style is still being maintained in 3D and 2D (well only Makers now), though I agreed that Mario and Kirby probably killed a few potentially good new or alternative IP even if it seems like there was no cost. I think it is a net positive overall...
The part I actually felt strongest about was fan games which actually ties into 2D Mario by chance since besides minor bits in Odyssey, it is now only fit for Mario Maker. Nintendo have officially monetised "fan games" if you use the right lense and they aren't even free to be free to take chances like AM2R.
I do like it when we have more IP to appreciate like Freedom Planet which could have been just another Sonic fan game but with OCs. Still I appreciate that people practice the craft and prove the worth of these old IP which makes them impossible to ignore and might not align with what they want to make otherwise. Perhaps, we could have a fan game based on something a little more niche to avoid the laundry getting the colour washed out though.
I liked your point about mistakes being made twice and how they shouldn't be unquestionable canon.
The Mario series is one that I think is great to discuss because I think it s a less obvious example then something like sonic, because Nintendo are frankly much more skilled at laundering then most other companies (like Disney). They make products that are passible. But just think of the state of the current Mario series, the franchise is running on absolute fumes creatively and I can't remember the last time a really good Mario game was made. Arguably Mario 64 was the last real stand out game in the franchise. And I think I real reason for this is why even bother trying to make a solid Mario platformer, when Nintendo can easily just use the IP as a coating over every other game they make.
@@TheElectricUnderground I think you are spot on with a lot of Mario spinoffs especially since people who liked the creativity in the initial set of Mario Golf and Mario Party games seem to be burned out and disappointed by recent releases- I'm not convinced when it comes to 3D platformers though even if Mario 64 may be a bigger leap than its successors.
There are definitely enough people buying Paper Mario that this might not end. No experience with any Mario RPGs, but I've heard that the Paper series peaked on GameCube.
@@thelastgogeta Yes Paper Mario is the same story actually! the first paper mario games were clearly the strongest and began life as another series (super mario rpg), but then nintendo took it over because of falling out with square. So in the first paper mario they could basically ride on top of square's initial design but as the series continued and nintendo had to take more creative control over a property that they don't understand that well, the quality dropped. Mario tennis is the same story, the best is the first and then after that nintendo kept compromising the design until it turned into mush.
People also said the super hero movies wouldn’t make it to infinity war with that many movies.
No kidding ha. I didn't think it would go one for over a decade, that s crazy ha. Who the hell knows, we might be watching super hero films for the next 20 years, I hope not. At least not in this dominant fashion. I liked the 90 s rate of super hero films, they d pop up but not dominate the theater year round
@@TheElectricUnderground I’m hoping we go into a kaiju renaissance! I want a lot of good Godzilla and other monster movies 😂
I don't post comments on your videos but this time I had to, I so agree with your point about trend mechanic with modern games, finally someone said it!
How many games now use Dark Souls mechanic ? Especially in the indie games scene, they all have a freaking "Estus flask" and "dodge roll" etc, and of course they are all using difficulty as a selling point.
No don't get me wrong I have nothing against Souls games I think they are great games but they were so successful that anyone implanted some of the mechanic into their game and it's annoying.
Another good point, is all the companies now are pumping out the same games, Capcom is a RE/SF Monster Hunter machine, Sony exclusives are all mostly open world games and so on, no one is willing to take risks anymore with new IP like in the 80s/90s.
So anyway, great video !
Damn right my dude! I feel the same way. I hate when I am trying out this new indie game and it just throws in Dark Souls mechanics for the hell of it, just to be trendy or whatever. This issue plagues a lot of indie games in the action genre because they don't know what to do ha. The most popular action game (sort of) is an RPG, Dark Souls. So they start throwing in random rpg elements to games that are much better off without them. If you are gonna go rpg, then you gotta go all the way with the design or, crazy idea, keep the action elements of the game pure to the genre.
Imma let you finish, but did he casually beat mario 3 in half an hour? Very nice.
I beat it in an hour with no deaths! I have the replay on my computer and am trying to figure out what to do with it ha! So I thought it would make great background footage for now.
Movies-wise. I reckon they gave up bothering to make good films, because they knew what 0ps and Reset they were gonna conduct around this time.
Sounds pessimistic I know, but that's my 2 cents😐.
Ps. Glad you used the Border Down soundtrack🕹️.
I don't know what is going on in Hollywood exactly, but yeah it seems hella shady to say the least. Also can't go wrong with some g. Rev tunes!!
@@TheElectricUnderground Cheers!
Great Channel📺🐢💥.
My dude has a great rationale.
There are some amazing games and music still being made but films are dead to me. YT videos have since replaced them as they are more convenient and more creative.
Absolutely! The underbelly of the indie word in both is thriving, but I m addressing the issues with the mainstream releases mostly in this vid. And I do miss the days of interesting larger studio games at times. Film is in a rough shape. If you are someone who likes to go to the theater on the weekends, it is Rough Times right now
Good is good. Bad is bad. Doesn't matter about age or its political or cultural intentions. A quality movie or video game will stand the test of time.
What I like in media for the most part is controversial these days. What I'm supposed to like I don't. I spend time finding things that make sense to me. So Yurukill was a day one for me. G.Rev in my soul. Haven't played it yet at time of this note. Looking forward to your review of Yurukill by the way.
Who'd have thought that open world Mario is not that important?
I made the mistake of wanting a Cotton game physically and in an official capacity just so I could have a piece of my history. Can't afford Boomerang on Saturn legit so the idea I could afford a semi-legit version officially speaking excited me. Yeah... You know the rest...
I literally don't care about the current state of the world in every sense. I'm here for the games. I want to see a good film. I want to play a good game. If the good game sends some kind of political or cultural message in its narrative then no probs, if it's a good game then happy days. If a game is bad then I'll call it a dog and then I'll criticise it. If a bad game has good intentions or has some deep political or cultural meaning then all that is, to me, is a dog with different fleas. Bad is bad. Good is good.
These days we live in a bad Demolition Man sequel made real.
Stay off socials unless it's to promote your work. I had 1.3k followers on Twitter. Realised it didn't matter and got the hell out of there. At my peak I was tweeting dozens of times daily. I was a part of the problem Twitter now suffers these days. I kinda unplugged myself from the matrix. No presence on Facebook. I've gotta life with a family and a 9-5. My life is boring and I'm so grateful for that lol.
Reviewing media is like a asteroid falling into a planet's atmosphere: The harder and deeper you go the more people's attention and understanding crumble away. A friend of mine said to me about reviewing: "If you keep digging for the truth eventually all you get is dirty" - I admire your depth of review and analysis. It becomes niche because you are searching for a truth.
I imagine if you did a video with pyrotechnics and the Electric Underground logo in flames with you screaming rather than you talking with no depth I bet you would get a ton of views.
"WHOA RAIDEN V BABY - CRAZY GOOD SHIT - 4 OUT OF 5 EXPLOSIONS BOO YAH"
Stay true to your vision. Even if the world is on fire.
As always much respect on what you are doing. All the best!
What an awesome comment my dude!!! I definitely feel what you mean about great works standing the rest of time. I was recently reading the sun also rises by Hemingway (the blueprint for current writing) and it blew my mind how, even though it was written literally a hundred years ago, it reaches through time in a way that still feels very relevant and modern
The disappointment I get when the modern port of Scrimblo Bimblo runs worse than the original
Or when an "HD Remake" looks worse then the original. That's always a bummer ha.
Is the Batman movie review still up? I cannot seem to find it...
Love this video. I sometimes comes back to it 👌.
I think the problem is not because compagnies doesn't want to let go of their franchise. I believe it is because the people are eager to pay for those pasted skins. For me the compagnies are only giving what will bring money on their tables and that's fair for me. I think the issues comes from the customers. A parallel would be like in the news. Everybody wants to see shit happens so they show us shit 😁😁
Pretty convinced that if the customers would be more aware of what to put in theirs bodies, the industry would follow accordingly
Oh I love to hear that!! I m glad I made a vid that you like to revisit :-)
By the way, did you checked out Fingun? It's like a cute version fo Freedom Finger, where you take out giant girls bosses.
I recommend you checking out Fingun on the Nintendo Switch.
Oh cool I haven't heard of it!!
Poor nutrition food? Look no further than McDonalds.
Hi Mark... Good Points. In my Opinion, there is an additional Culprit. Let's take a look: MVP = Minimal Viable Products was a Blueprint for Prototyping Products... then once upon a Time came Mr. Monopoly™ aka Ultra-Capitalism and thought: Wait a Minute! Why not sale that as a full fledge Product. As long as a Car has a chassis, 4 wheels (hey guys try 3... oh the Tire industry does not like that? Well it's 4 again), an engine and some seats and whatnot... It's a CAR, let's call it Nikola. And of course other capitalist copy and paste the idea. Now we have food filled with Sugar, instead of Meat. As long as it looks like a sausage, taste like chicken... Striker 1945 as long as it looks like the original, plays like the original... because we use the core of an Open Source Emulation Project (allegedly!!!) or we buy Assets on the Unity / Unreal Market. (allegedly!!!) everything we be fine, and the benjamin's are rolling in. Or let's take a YT Video Assay... transcript it into Text by a Logarithm, Set up a nice Book (fully automated) and sell it on Rocket Man's Marketplace. If we do this with hundreds of YT Content... some money will go our way. In short: MVP can be used in any which way. EA is a prime Example of that strategy. Or Ubirape. As long as the Marketing & Snake Oil Salesman like Mr. Mars charms the Audience. Cheers from Zpring Time in zunny Zermany :-) Be good and well.
Yes exactly, laundering at it's worst. The worst is when devs that shut down open source emulators turn around and then take them for resale ha. Nintendo did this with mario roms and they found the "pirate" header. Thanks so much for tuning in my dude!
@@TheElectricUnderground My Pleasure Bro.
yeah, the fan game thing always confused me. can't wait to spend 10 years working on receiving my very own cease and desist letter; autographed by miyamoto! just make your own game and sell it for money. crazy idea.
Yeah I had a lot of controversy when I brought this up in my game dev circles but like.. if you didn't build an IP it doesn't make sense to ride it's success. Just make your own game.
Yeah the absolute best case scenario is what happened with am2r, and I think that s it s tragic what happened with that game honestly. There was also the Chrono trigger sequel that people forever working on to have it shut down as well. Then there s project m ha. It s just not a good road to go down and I think people should be more discouraging of the idea for the poor devs own benefit
One thing about the shmup community is that I don’t see a lot of fan games. There probably definitely is, but damn shmup devs at least have the balls to make a new IP and accept their success or downfall. While other fan game devs have that previous IP popularity, and literally can’t do much with it. I can’t blame them, a lot of them are great but it’s sad to see them not rewarded for their hard work. This goes all out the window if they’re trying to make a profit from it then ehhhhh
@@TheElectricUnderground You say that about Project M, but it is still continuing and has its own many Mugens with EX Remix being the best known ones.
If it is the only way to have a competently done Dante, Sub Zero or perhaps Mai Shiranui... I'll take it though it falls closer to being a mod than a fan game which still can involve tons of hours I guess.
@@Mingodough for sure, shmups had so many spiritual sequels and ideas bouncing between companies that this wouldnt even make sense.
When a shmup fangame happen, it's usually a Touhou game, and theyre officially allowed to sell it, iirc....
I agree. Great job at explaining this
Awesome!!! Thanks for tuning in!!? :-D
@@TheElectricUnderground Funny thing, Capcom vs SNK got me back into gaming. It had always been a dream of mine, but never thought it would ever happen.
Thanks for hyping up Strikers 1945 II It's great. My faves are still Raiden Fighters & Battle Garegga. I love those military themes
I await Mark flying in with the hot takes.
Red hot 🔥
movies are in a slump for sure, but video games? elden ring came out 2 months ago and i genuinely hope it shake things up. we've seen the developers scratching their heads over it - maybe some of them will get a clue.
anyhow - some thoughtful points, but i have to disagree: art and politics are not distinct, they're absolutely intertwined. just because you're not interested doesn't mean it isn't so. i would agree that "art by committee" is never good. at that point it becomes art/politics tempered by commerce. and that sucks.
oh jesus christ. that take on romeo and juliet is pitiful, man. again: just because you don't want to think about sociopolitical and class issues doesn't mean things are not about them. you're gonna need to abandon that line of thinking if you want to be taken remotely seriously.
@@zenoslime Like I mention in the video, the view that art and politics are completely interlinked is a political perspective, not an artistic one. I could make the same argument that all art is religious and start parsing out moral lessons and teachings just the same. Art is an expression and politics is an interpretation, they are not directly linked with one another, no matter how many people insist that they are right now. Art can always be divorced from the political origins of it's time and often is. The mere fact that Romeo and Juliet, a story written in 1597 is still being re-interpreted in 2021 is great proof of that. What is the original political message of the 1597 version, as in the time that it was written? It certainly isn't gentrification, a concept that did not exist in 1597. This is what artistic laundering is, having it both ways. If art cannot be divided from politics, then Romeo and Juliet cannot be used as a framework to discuss the social issues of the 20th century right? You don't have to agree with me. But I think it's important to be more open minded to other perspectives than the current practice of just dissecting political talking points out of art. That's extremely easy in my view and I don't really see the value, other than reinforcing a political view. I think it's perfectly fine if that's your goal is and that's what a person is setting out to do, that's an age old practice just like I talked about with religion. But I think the insistence that all art is political is untrue and a handy method of pitting people against each other.
@@TheElectricUnderground well, i typed up a fairly lengthy response to this, but after posting it seems to have vanished in the ether. :/
@@TheElectricUnderground in short... romeo and juliet was largely about feudal society and its hierarchies, which is something scholars agree on. feudalism and gentrification may be different concepts, but they're clearly similar enough that we can view modern class disparity through shakespeare's lens - "great proof" that romeo and juliet was indeed political and about far more than a tragedy of star-crossed lovers. politics is in art the same way air is in our lungs, and people are already pitted against each other regardless of what any piece of art says (or avoids commenting upon). the whole 'anti-woke' desire to strip meaning out of things is deeply anti-intellectual and that, to me, is the biggest problem in modern popular art.
Don't agree with the video games mention. Depends what you play, but there are quite a few gems out there from Japanese developers. 13 Sentinels for example is a masterpiece.
Gotta watch the vid, I have a lot of great examples of issues going on in gaming :-)
@@TheElectricUnderground I completely agree on ģaiming and movies! I would add music too but that was already an issue 20 years ago i think
ugh 13 Sentinels so good
you've missed the point of the video
Sure there are going to be exceptions to the issue of artistic laundering that I discuss in the vid, I'm not saying all games right now suck outright ha. Funnily enough 13 Sentinels backs up the point I make in the vid, as it avoids all the practices that I say are damaging current game design - it's not a sequel, it's written from the ground up, - it's not trend following and it's mechanics are harmonious with one another.
This might be my favourite video series on your channel. I like how clearly you articulate your points. The analogy “artistic laundering” really works and I for the most part agree with it. However, I would like to add a few counter points of discussion, respectively of course.
The carrying over of “mistakes”from one game to the next , believe it or not can be very subjective, what one considers a mistake, another can consider the brilliance or a core element of the series. For example smash melee’s“wave dashing” mechanic wasn’t intended, yet the melee community has shunned the new games specifically because this mechanic was removed from the rest of the series. Now would you praise Nintendo for removing this mechanic? Or criticize them for it?
David Jaffe, criticized Metroid Dread saying it’s map design was archaic. He’s been ridiculed ever since. It’s a case by case bases, and your example with Mega Man 2, I agree with by the way. My rhetorical question about this section is, how can a developer remove a historical design choice( mistake or not), without alienating its core fans?
Watering down of a game series due to too many sequels I completely agree with, Mario party 11 is a perfect example. However I wouldn’t say the laundering of Mario IP into the sports spin offs is bad, primarily because those games are of pretty high quality within their own right, even without the Mario IP. Mario Strikers, Tennis and Baseball all have competitive scenes because of the deep skill based mechanics. F-Zero and Metroid typically don’t have high enough sales numbers to justify ongoing back to back releases. Trust me I want a new Custom Robo, ain’t gonna happen lol. I also 110% agree that there are too many copies of game designs, the Action RPG genre for sure.
In regards to The Joker, i think for the most part the themes with regards to mental illness, and how the mentally I’ll and mental illness is treated in society was a great message. I also specifically like how his illness was directly related to his nervous laugh. IMO it was genius way of tying a real mental illness(which I admit I didn’t know about) to a known character like the Joker. Them laundering these themes through Joker allows the message to reach a wider audience, which isn’t always a bad thing.
Lastly, to sum up my last discussion point. If Disney Star Wars is the prime example of the “Artistic laundering” disease, I would say Netflix Cobra Kai is the cure. It respects and even expands on the source material. It even has some anti politically correct messages(respectfully and with taste IMO) which are hilarious. I recommend it if you’ve grown up on Karete Kid.
Great video man, keep up the great work. I also enjoyed your The Batman review. And what did you think of the Leonardo Di Caprio version of Romeo and Juliet ?
Oh this is a fantastic point that I think I can clear up. So you are 💯 right that what is considered "bad design" or mistakes is really tough to pin down and not always unintentional. Like I remember there being a trend where life and continue systems were considered "outdated" which I disagree with. So when it comes to laundering, the key isn t so much what the particular choice is, but how it is defended. If the game maker or fan can defend the mechanic in terms of how it influences the design, then I think that s fair enough. The laundering part is just the surface augment that the mechanic is valid just because it has been in past games. That s where the issue comes from because then basically it s this iron armor that devs and fans can cast around poor design. But yes I agree that there are lots of examples of older design choices that are still great even if they don t line up with modern design. Also I dislike all baz lahrmann films. I like Leo in the role, as an idea, but by God luhrmann's film making is so aweful. His great Gatsby was terrible as well
I can't believe I missed this video. The amount of critiques in here that I bitch about on a regular basis can't be overstated!
The entire planet needs to see this video. We can't keep rewarding this nonsense with our money! Your money is your vote. If you vote for poop, you get poop!
Peter Thiel is one thinker who talks about a general lack of innovation(ie creativity) in our modern times and it truly reverberates across every category. In some industries(especially cryptocurrency/NFT's), it is so profitable and easy to replicate something that the incentive to just sit around and let someone else come up with ideas becomes bigger than creating an idea to begin with!
It seems like a microcosm of the modern economy, in which an authoritarian country like China will invest almost exclusively in thievery of innovation in order to offset the lack of innovation from an oppressed population. A trend that seems to continue indefinitely as the western world rewards this activity by pumping investment in and buying products from that country.
End rant. Loved your video. So many profound and lucid points!
Yes that is exactly what's going on artistically with this laundering process. Innovation takes risk and real effort, why do that when you can just coat over past success and try and repump it through. Like a vhs you keep making copies of the copies 📼
@@TheElectricUnderground Oh! I meant to also mention that maybe some movie reviews/recommendations are in order?
Ironically, Taxi Driver is my default recommendation when anyone asks. It's one of only a few movies I actually own lol. Would love to hear more gems from your point of view. RUclips's "top ten movies" videos seem mostly generic. Hard to find good movies these days.
@@ShamanNoodlesthere’s obvious problems with endless franchise movies for sure but I don’t think it’s that hard to find a good movie as people keep saying. I used to think that too but after 6 months of paying for AMC monthly subscription I’m now in the much better habit of seeing much more of what is released in theaters. They’re not all great but if u simply don’t limit yourself to just seeing franchise blockbusters (and I still watch a few of those in my movie diet too, John Wick 4 etc) you’ll find decent movies worth your time are released every month or two. I’m not saying these other movies are legendary all-timer sleeper gems that need to be evangelized, it’s more about not needing everything to be legendarily good in order to expose yourself to it and develop your sensibilities. I saw Late Night With the Devil recently at 10pm with a friend and we had a blast, regardless of the movies flaws it was definitely trying to make an impression on me now in the moment instead of impressing upon things I already liked
That said, I’m only talking about the theater experience, which I value a lot more than I used to. And it’s telling that I only realized good movies are not hard to find, necessarily, once I paid AMC to allow me to watch “free” movies as often as I want by getting their movie pass subscription.
Unpopular opinion here, but I really resonate with what you said about changing genres when it comes to Castlevania games. After Symphony of the Night found out the golden Metroid formula, it was never the same again. I do like metroidvanias as of its original meaning of Castlevania games that play like Metroid, I'm a big fan of Circle of the Moon especially, but I'd rather see what the series could have become if they stuck to its roots. Things were getting more interesting then it just died and became a new thing, never to be Castlevania again but only Metroidvanias, and it's kind of frustrating to me to see it die like that. I just sometimes wish Castlevania and Metroid stayed away from each other and let each other be its own thing. Also like you said, it's fine for a title or two, Castlevania 2 had its problems but I really loved it, the problem for me is having this shift of genre kill what the series once was. I also don't give credit to Castlevania for this whole new spawn of metroidlikes, imo it was only the first to imitate Metroid and the term stayed like that because Castlevania was the cool popular cousin bc people like vampires and gothic fantasy. I just wonder if now we would have more vanialikes or something like that.
I'd like to add something to what you said about the Ghost in the Shell movie (2017) that makes the whole racial debate absurd.
In the manga it is said :
1) "[...]the abilities of this woman (these women?) calling herself Major Motoko Kusanagi (it's a false name anyway... Before, she called herself "Commander")" - From chapter 1
2) "If Kusanagi chose the appearance of a mass-produced model [...] it is because she was careful to go unnoticed." - From Chapter 5
3) "We can add options based on a mass-produced model, like for you, Motoko...[...]." - From chapter 5 also
So we don't even know neither her real face nor real name. Besides we do see an actress playing Motoko, that's like the whole subject of the movie with the false memories lmao.
(PS : I think the movie is ok btw, it kept the tradition to make something different with the franchise, like SAC, 1995/2004 and Arise did from the original manga. Because, to this day, there has been no panel to panel adaptation of it and thank god for that.)
I think there can be value in leveraging "cultural memory" to cut down on exposition, especially in movies. Anything sci-fi or fantasy is going to need quite a bit of exposition and world building to not just come off as generic schlock. That can be difficult with a runtime of an hour and a half (movies have gotten way too long but that's a different conversation). I think Alien and Aliens is a good example, the first movie establishes the "mechanics" of the Xenomorph in a slow paced horror setting which Aliens leverages to make a fast paced action movie. If Aliens needed to re-establish the lore it wouldn't be nearly as good a movie, the pacing would suck. Also, as you have said before, limitation breads creativity. Being locked into certain limitations of the existing universe or characters can lead to better creativity.
With that said there's definitely a line between exploring something new within an existing framework and just being a cookie cutter piece of shit that is doing nothing new which is essentially what all the Marvel movies are right now. Being a "Marvel movie" goes far beyond just making use of Marvel characters and lore. It means it's going to be the same old good vs evil action comedy romp we've been watching for the past 15 years or so. Give me a movie about Spider-Man accidentally killing an innocent bystander leading to substance abuse and his marriage to MJ deteriorating and I would watch it in a heartbeat but that doesn't fit within the Marvel cookie cutter.
Anyway, I don't disagree with what your saying. I would just say that the root cause is not solely just the reuse of existing ideas but playing it safe while doing so. These ideas aren't being reused because they help realize the artistic vision better than without. They're being reused because that's the safest way to make a bunch of money while upsetting the least amount of people.
I don't necessarily agree. I will tell you that it always feels like things suck when were in them. People look at music from the 70s with rose tinted glasses. This is because the gems maintain their impact while all the trash, of which there was tons, is forgotten. In terms of video games there has always been a sea of garbage in every generation. Trend chasers exist in every medium. Just look at how many vampire novels were made after twilight got popular.
That is absolutely true and I do agree with this perspective. But I will say that there are generations of art that are much better then others, depending on the medium and that it's not a linear progression upward. I think until about 2010 games were in a linear progression upward, quality wise and I remember very clearly in the 2000's how it did feel like it was just bad ass release after bad ass release. I do agree that there will always be a sea of low quality stuff out there, and our current sea is massive ha. But I think a concerning sign is the quality of the games that are held up as our current best. I'm not doom and gloom in that this trend will continue forever, I do think we will see a revival in great game design in the next decade or so (hopefully) but right now I think it's safe to say the medium is in a massive slump.
@@TheElectricUnderground you also need to understand, youre an anomaly. Top tier bullet hell gamer. obviously your preference is high intensity high skill Games. But everyone doesn't need or desire that. From my perspective gaming has been awesome. Even from triple A devs. Elden ring, Mario odyssey, Doom eternal, smash ultimate. To me, those have been absolutely incredible experiences and are at the cutting edge of the medium.
"Trend following game mechanic" is how we got shmups
That s how we get euroshmup, no doubt about it :-)
@@TheElectricUnderground touche'
This is a great video.
Thank you so much my dude!
Artistic laundering sounds like an oxymoron (may I propose another term--dilution?). The landscape has definitely changed dramatically over the years (bigger budgets, studios, competition, etc.). For me, one of the turning points was when Sega exited the hardware business as a result of shifting consumer preferences. There are audiences (new and old) who don't seem to be as discerning with regards to quality or respect to original (stuff and source material). Reality that many have already pointed out is, so long as money can be made and demand met this trend will only continue.
Put another way, unless we see a crash (not unlike what took place in the early 80s with regards to the glut in games) I'm not gonna be optimistic with change happening anytime in the near future. Creative destruction is sometimes what's needed.
Damn this video is EXCELLENT my man! Keep up the good work, now I have to go back and watch your Batman review!
Oh I'm really happy to hear that!! This is one of the vids that is near and dear to my little artistic heart since I'm putting my neck on the line a bit more then I would with just a usual game review, but these are topics that come up on the channel that are bit too complicated to explain in the comments section ha. I'm glad you'll check out my poor neglected Batman review, hopefully as I do more film reviews the playlist will be more popular and it can get some backlog views in the future :-)
@@TheElectricUnderground Well I think you articulated your stance perfectly here. We have this topic of conversation at work often really, trying to answer the question, "why does everything suck now?".
Everything is way too focused on weird politics instead of story and art now. We just want to be entertained man.
The reason companies tend to stick with the same IP/franchise is to reduce risk and guarantee a certain percentage of sales. The one thing that has held true is that the games these large companies make gets more and more expensive... which means the risks investors take are higher and higher and your goal is now to keep giving them greater returns instead of being solely focused on producing the best product possible. Unless that brand new thing is a hit, you'd have better odds churning out a number of mediocre things that you know will sell a certain amount. All of that is gross and I would argue you are harming your IP and reducing its value over time, but hey short term profits right? =/
My last big question about this topic that many people will be mad at me... Do you think Guilty Gear StrIVe is a result of "artistic laundering"?
Strive is an interesting case. No I don t think it is artistic laundering but it is an unfortunate creative direction, that s for sure
The god of war stuff looks good but never played ... it does well critically ...
Never been a big fan of the series honestly, but I did appreciate it trying to make a western character action game. Now it's given up on even doing that, shame.
No one will probably read this, but I have to disagree with almost everything that was said. People who think video games are worse today either don't play indie games, and/or didn't grow up with older games. There were hundreds of absolute shit, unplayable titles on the NES, SNES, and Genesis. It only seems like games used to be excellent because everyone remembers the landmark games like mario, metroid, and zelda. People think Mega Man 2 is this legendary classic. It was head and shoulders above its peers at the time, but you can't put it up against something like Dead Cells or Hollow Knight in terms of gameplay. People seem to ignore how bad some of these classics really are. Go play the first Sonic game and get back to me. That game actively punishes you for going fast, the entire premise of the series.
Bad Ports didn't use to exist? Pac-Man on Atari? Mega Man on Dos? Mario is Missing? Mortal Kombat on SNES? Even Donkey Kong on NES was missing levels.
Sequels hide bad design? You mean like having ten mega man games? I agree franchises like Assassin's Creed don't do anything particularly interesting and haven't done so in years, but this is not a new phenomenon. All the original Mortal Kombat games that are horrible 1 player experiences. The same with all the original re-releases of Street Fighter 2. It wasn't until Alpha when single player was actually fun. And Jesus Christ, how many carbon copy beat 'em ups did capcom make? Aren't there like 10 versions of King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown? Sports franchises used to always get noticeably better year to year but now they have the exact same features year to year. Aren't the metal slug games extremely similar to one another, albeit of high quality? How many 194x ex shooters did we really need?
I actually agree about injecting trendy mechanics. I watched in horror as everyone jumped on the battle royale model offering nothing new to the genre, and I despise how ubiquitous crafting has become in video games, but this is not a new phenomenon. I want to slap whoever added drowning to platformers. Sonic is about a blue hedgehog who can move at the speed of sound, but they needed to add realism to the game by making him drown? How does that make the game more fun? Or how every shmup for ten years was basically three lives, one hit, weapon powerups, boss fights every level. Then bullet hell was invented and now all bullet hell games have shot, autoshot, slowdown, and grazing.
I don't think spreading out an IP hurts a game. Look at Metroid Prime, Smash Bros, Sonic Adventures 2 with the chaos garden, Shovel Knight Dungeon, the original mario parties, mario kart, Sonic racing, final fantasy tactics, final fantasy 14, Persona dancing all night, FFS, didn't street fighter bring in characters from Final Fight? Hyrule Warriors. Sure there are plenty of examples of this being down poorly, but just as many done right.
Are fangames still a problem anymore? I feel like that was a thing ten years ago.
I don't think reboots and retreading the same material is the problem. Look at how many cowboy movies there used to be. Or how many james bond movies we had and now have. Some people hate the marvel trend but it is making money fist over ass and whenever they try something original like Brightburn or Birds of Prey it rarely does well.
I also think you're way off on the social issues. Great movies have always been about social issues. Star Wars is about fascism, Silence of the Lambs is about sexism, Terminator 2/Robocop/Alien/Aliens/Jurassic Park are literally about the dangers of unchecked capitalism. The problem is with people who want to make a movie about a social issue instead of wanting to make a good movie. Too many directors today enter into moviemaking with bad faith (look particular at that atrocious elf movie sarag silverman made. In the artist community, we would say you need vision to create an excellent piece of art. All those movies had a terrific vision, they were high concept, and high concept stories tend to find their roots in real world problems. I think now that we are all more aware of social issues because of smart phones and activism, a certain subset of the population gets upset when they're brought up in movies. I remember people calling Mad Max Fury Road feminist propaganda and trying to boycott it even though it is one of the most brilliantly shot and paced movies I have ever witnessed. Same goes for The Last of Us Part 2. People were writing extremely negative reviews in metacritic before the game even came out because they perceived one of the characters to be transgender because she had muscles, even though it turned out she had muscles because she was military trained.
I agree it feels like directors dont seem to have a strong vision for movies anymore. I can't remember the last movie that was legitmately hilarious. Probably tropic thunder. But the reality is, people would rather watch a third iron man movie than watching something original and thought provoking like Deus Ex. Every time a director challenges the tropes of movie making like with the Scott Pilgrim movie, it rarely amounts to a commercial success.
There's a lot of fallacies in your argument. That's why most people skipped it. It's pretty blatant and clear to even the most novice debater fresh out of debate club. Highly recommend looking up fallacies and re-reading your own mess and being honest about it to get a clue.
@@MerlinTheCommenternobody in these comments or even mark himself are making air tight arguments on the senate floor, everyone’s trying to imperfectly get out their feelings on the matter. Let them breathe and percolate some so we can reflect on them beyond the initial catharsis of agreeing with someone tapping into our pent up feelings.
Half made games are life now for over 10 years I have waited a 12 months for most every game that comes out I like... I think Cool the beta versions out !! I wait a full year and that 65 pounds game is now 25 - and fixed and working !! This year I bought Sniper Elite 5 (I know it's not an Arcade Shooter this is too make my point .. Things were missing, the game was a buggy mess .. I said to my son serves me right, Never Again ...back to my year beta wait.. Great for me !! VERY bad for the 65 pounds + day one companys!!
You forgot to mention the most infamous and, to my knowledge, also the most recent laundry of a trendy and flawed game mechanic on Dark Souls (and also "Soul" like ) games: "homing attacks/infinite hurt box" , where most of the time enemy attacks does not "touch" you, yet you get damage? sorry don't know how to better explain it, however is bad game design carried over since the early PS3 games.
I need breaks from gaming at times. I can play games and feel nothing over and over, and it can be a game i loved last week! Whenever i take breaks i usually read manga or watch movies, not marvel ones though because it'll cause the same issue 😂
Exactly ha! I d love to learn more about the non industry side of comic books in the future
Also, on a much less important or significant level…. Imagine if Sebastian Garcia & Arc Sys artists made a God of War 2d beat em up lol 🤙🏽
If you're an anime fan or into retro games or shmups it's probably the best time since the 90s. It only sucks for gaming if you're in the AAA shooters because fortnite ate that market alive. Movies kind of suck because marvel ate the movie world so if you don't really care for marvel movies your Sol. The last couple of Star wars and Star Trek were kind of weak too. The mandalorian was a so-so Western in space and book of boba Fett just dropped the ball and Patrick Stewart is too old for that shit
To be honest, anime is no better either...
@@SolCresta3405 are you kidding me? Spy x family, attack on Titan final season, demon Slayer, chainsaw man, Godzilla singular point. Where the heck have you been?
I guess if you're so old school you can't stand anything animated after the Dreamcast launch you might have a point but other than that being an anime fan right now rocks.
And that's just if you're into the really good stuff. If you like fan service then the sky's the limit
@@jeremygregorio7472 Yes, there are a few good anime out there, but I have an up and down opinion on magical girl anime, harem anime, and isekai anime...
@@SolCresta3405 I so wanted to get another anime like Land of the Lustrous. Isekai this, harem that.... I could go on with this so much copypaste fantasy always being rpg setting.
@@jeremygregorio7472 ahh Spy X Family. That show got my respect. I know that the series will go long but the show is pretty adorable.
I agree with many your points of view , but not with the idea that movies and games suck now. Games are much Better nos, specially considering the indie scene (with Cléver ideas) Nostalgia can blind most most people super Mario 3 is a good game , but try to play it on One sitting liike on the 90.also good and bad movies always existed, i don t think movies are worst now. I agree that the Better movies dom t get the same mainstream atention and many of them are not from usa. I liked this vídeo, but i did not like that you mention só much super Heroes and cómics movies (most of them are really crap).
I do agree with this point generally and I am happy to say that there are fantastic games out there (especially in the indie space) if you go digging for them. Hell Fight n' Rage is the greatest beat em up of all time if you ask me. But, as a whole, I think the game and film industries are in a massive slump right now, creatively. And it's not so much the floods of low quality stuff that concerns me, like you say there will always be piles of that stuff, but I'm more concerned with the quality of the "best" stuff right now, especially among western studios. Right now, it feels like great games being produced right now are releases that would have been considered good in the past. Like DMC 5 is a cool game, but it's not this massive leap forward or I don't think it's as good as dmc 3 or 4. I think the industry is in a massive slump right now to where even games that people consider to be great I don't think are pushing the medium forward creatively. I honestly can't even think of a single upcoming game that I'm excited for and am counting down the days to play. The only exception to this is Ninja Gaiden 4. And if that game is bad that will be BRUTAL on my poor jaded heart ha.
Great media comparison! The imitative phenomena themselves are ever present in literature, might very well predate written media (traditional epics), and even have their own lazy commercial historical precedents (Don Quixote unofficial sequel?). See
Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree by Gérard Genette.
As you argue however, many nowadays seem to think that being superficially! derivative is sufficient justification for lacking both thematic continuity and artistic originality, which is absurd. If anything, positioning a piece of media as derivative should opt to either be an ultra faithful traditional continuation tackling intriguing gaps (convincing! Apocrypha), or to be radicaly and openly! subversive. Trying to do both at the same time by injecting myriad nonsense pushes these works towards unintended satire. They are both a continuation ("traditional") and (mostly in film) a deconstruction, hence a contradiction. It is as if Joyce's Ulysses were marketed as a faithful rendition and replacement of the original. (Mario and the like in unrelated geners is just lazy branding that might be comparable to folklore heroes but I have rambled too much as is...)
oh yes there is definitely a long and important tradition of artists works being inspired by one another and even straight up stealing from one another, like that picasso quote ha. I think the big difference with something like Joyce's Ulysses vs something like The Batman is that: 1 - the source material of the odyssey is so vast and deep that you can't simply pull themes from it directly, because even in doing so you have to make choices on how that is exactly going to work and 2 - Joyce himself had a deep understanding of the elements of that story and was able to harmonize the elements of his story along with them in a beautiful parallel. A modern day example of this is Tarantino and his films. He borrows heavily from the genre films that he likes, and openly so, but the reason why his film making works is that he is breaking these influences down to their elements and then reforming them from the bottom up. In an interview he even said it would be impossible for him to just take someone else's script or story and shoot it. The first thing that he would do is go in and re-write the whole thing.
I think the problem is too many derivative products mass clogging the market. But when I say derivative, I do understand that most stories are derivative. Most products are iterative. The best designs are compromise designs. I'm not blind to that. When I say "derivative," I mean that they're largely copying from other new media, all in a giant circle-jerk. Those marvel comic movies are a great example. Each movie just copies shit from the other ones and from other super hero movies and then there are some quips stolen from Firefly or whatever the fuck because hey, it's joss whedon! Everyone loves joss! 'Member firefly you guys? 'Member Buffy?
Well, I'm seeing the same thing happen with games. Last of Us comes out and it's copying from Tomb Raider Reboot and Uncharted and then Last of Us gets copied by God of War 4 but God of War 4 was a big hit so God of War 4 gets copied by Horizon Zero Dawn which also copied Ubisoft open worlds and a techno-future thing that feels like it was pulled out of a movie I can't remember... Then there was Death Stranding, which was praised as a unique work of art game but which functionally is another walking sim like the other games I mentioned, and people liked that so it will probably influence other games down the road...
Oh and dark souls was a big hit. Demon's souls was a modest hit but Dark Souls was multiplat and that did really well, then Nioh, Ashen and The Surge and of course every game From has made since Dark Souls has been a "souls" game... And the newest souls game is a (stop me if you've heard this *glances at Horizon and Ubisoft*) open world souls action rpg. I don't even dislike Nioh or The Surge btw. I thought they were pretty good. But there's a trend happening here.
Stories are universal and so are certain ideas. The problem I'm seeing in gaming now is that the ideas are becoming increasingly incestuous and limited to only the last ten or so years of gaming. The same shit is being regurgitated over and over within a smaller and smaller intellectual space. The same stories and characters are being iterated and reiterated endlessly.
I'm really glad you brought up derivative because I was going to talk about it in the vid, but since it's pretty complicated I'm saving it for a future vid. Yes I agree that a lot of great art is derivative and in fact it's very difficult to create something great without being derivative in some ways. However, the way that process should work is that the works that you are inspired from should be reverse engineered, where you understand their individual elements and then can use them in new ways and settings. In artistic laundering though, you are just slapping IPs and concepts together without thought or consideration for the art's original compositoin. So we end up with works that either contradict themselves thematically (the batman sort of does this) or drift so far off the original design that it no longer makes sense, like West Side Story 2021. Also there is something to be said from pulling from a really deep source (like Shakespeare) versus a shallow source (like Batman) to begin with.
Good stuff👍 A lot of great points!
Thanks so much my dude!!
social messaging plz stop trying to push it down my throat :(
exactly! let us breathe a little!
Your problem with sequels is exactly how I feel about the Mega Man X series in its entirety. I still really enjoy the games but there were problems with the core mechanics as far back as the first game, and 8 games later they never fixed them.
I'll give some examples, you can charge your shot but a lv2 still does 1 damage so it's useless and a full charge which takes several seconds only does 2 damage, you're better off just mashing shoot. The bosses have long i-frames so only the first hit of a double charge shot upgrade or zero's slash combos will do damage.
Yes exactly!! And it s interesting because in the megaman games, it almost always the earlier entries into the series that are the better ones. Mega man 2 and Mega man X (1) because they had to focus more on the design essentials. Whereas in the later games they are just skimming off the top of the older games success and not bothering to examine or improve the mistakes. So they end up these messy designs
@@TheElectricUnderground To further prove that point they fixed it in the sequel. Then 3 and 4 come out and it's the same problem again.
I feel like X1 is the best X game because none of the others evolved the formula enough to surpass it. Partly because, yeah, they just never fixed anything and kept adding stuff that wasn't needed or wanted, like the nightmare levels. Mega Man Zero (2) is where I believe the X series finally started evolving its gameplay and design.
you make a lot of good points, but i kinda disagree with your opinion about social issues. Social issues can make interesting and good stories as long you explain both sides of the issue and make it entertaining.
Oh it might help if I clarify what i mean. I don't mean that art can't work with social issues included in it (1984 is a masterpiece). What I mean is if you take a property that has it's own identity and themes, like romeo and juliet, and then start stuffing unrelated social issues into it's story. The problem that arises is a confused mess where the original story beats and the new social issue story beats are not in harmony withe one another. Like in the new West Side story the male and female leads have trouble connecting due to differences in culture but this runs completely contrary to the original story of romeo and juliet where it is passionate love at first sight. So the scenes where they are passionately in love with each other seem jarring next to scenes where they can barely relate to each other.
The problem is it's talentless people who attempt it and it shows. Metal Slug is a parody but it's political. No one complains about it.
@@MerlinTheCommenter yes, not only they're talentless, they intentionally butcher movies, localization of Japanese games, Western aaa games and comics just to "smash the patriarchy"
@@TheElectricUndergroundis this an issue u find in the old west side story Broadway musical and the 1961 movie? That they introduced this New York City multiethnic neighborhood as a setting, with the story drama that arises from it, to Romeo and Juliet?
you know what movie rules? romeo + juliet . they should have made a west side story that looks like that
Watching the new Fire Emblem announcement in the Nintendo Direct made me come back to this video. I don't think it quite matches up with the examples of artistic laundering (love that term btw) you give here, but it felt very disrespectful to the series and original creators nonetheless.