Why Arcade Culture Is Definitively... The Best?
Sometimes unfairly ignored (partly because it lacks a public RSS feed!), Alex Kierkegaard's Insomnia.ac blends reviews of new Japanese arcade machines with direct, sometimes caustic editorials on a variety of gaming subjects, and Alex pinged me to point out his relatively recent editorial on 'Arcade Culture', which starts out with a Baudrillard quote and spirals rapidly off from there.
Now, remember, Alex lives in Japan, where the arcade scene is still putting out a fair amount of new titles, and his opening gambit is provocative, to say the least: "The starting point of this essay then -- and make of it what you will -- is the observation that games released in the arcades are of a much higher quality, on average, than games released for the home console market."
He continues: "In other words, if you decided to walk into an arcade today blindfolded, and spend the evening playing the first game you bumped into (having taken off the blindfold first, yeah), chances are you'd have a lot more fun than if you spent the same amount of time playing something picked at random off the shelves of your local game retailer."
Even if he does needlessly trash the rest of the game biz, Kierkegaard's slightly crazed views seem almost Utopian: "So this is how the arcades work: a highly competitive and transparent environment, experienced players, no magazines, no clueless reviewers, practically non-existent marketing budgets -- and what do you get? Good games and players who are capable of appreciating them."
Well, here's the problem, in my view - a lot of new arcade games, particularly Japanese fighting games and shooters, are tuned for the ultra-hardcore gamer. The game developers and distributors are interested in extracting tens of dollars each from a few punters, not a couple of bucks each from lots of punters. This means that the arcade scene is, and will remain, gloriously insular. So it's a niche of a niche - albeit one that produces some genuinely interesting and complex gameplay. But that doesn't make it any better than casual DS games or XBLA titles or, say, Halo 3 - just different.
Comments
"The starting point of this essay then -- and make of it what you will -- is the observation that games released in the arcades are of a much higher quality, on average, than games released for the home console market."
DISPUTE!
They're of higher quality if you count that generally making the same kinds of games over and over AND OVER again counts as anything like "quality."
Although I dunno, it's possible that Japan has more variety in arcade releases than the U.S., where "arcade" has come to mean either light-gun game, driving game, or dancing game.
Posted by: John H. | September 9, 2007 11:29 AM
"But that doesn't make it any better than casual DS games or XBLA titles or, say, Halo 3 - just different."
It does make it better for the people who enjoy those types of games though.
If you are really into games what does a casual DS game do for you? If you have a few who love something a lot, or a lot of people who find something a passable entertainment medium, which one will probably be more appreciated as time goes on?
People might like the Sims and still think it was a fun game in 10 years, and there will be a lot of people who think this way. But they will have moved on to the newest digital distraction anyway.
Here is a worthless comparison: Citizen Kane vs the myriad of far more successful financially/commercially but completely forgotten films of that era(early 40s).
I don't see anyone saying how much they want to go back and watch Abbott and Costello films of that era.
What is the use of creating something if it is completely disposable? Thats the difference between arcade games and the majority of other games. Arcade shit is worth going back and appreciating in higher quantities;]
Posted by: Red_venom | September 9, 2007 5:34 PM
I don't really have much interest in a site that has an entire article dedicated to whining about how Americans don't like him using the Japanese names of games that have English titles. He comes off as a pretentious ass, and I'm pretty sure that's what he really is.
Posted by: Orpheus | September 9, 2007 7:26 PM
It should be noted that his articles have drawn complaints on various forums for containing misinformation, misinterpretations, opinions disguised as facts, and his general excessively antagonistic tone.
It can sometimes be more entertaining tracking down where he has posted his articles on forums (and some have been posted on a good number of different forums) and reading the resulting threads to catch the problems in it and to see how he responds to less accepting crowds. He works much better when he is preaching to the choir, which are those that already believe his message or at least want to believe it.
Posted by: Baines | September 9, 2007 8:57 PM