Given the previous topics on the blog, it should come as no surprise that I own videogame consoles. Several, in fact. Xbox360, a PS3, and even a PSP. I don't have any games for that one, I simply like the fact that it will, if I should feel so inclined, allow me connect it to the PS3 and play wichever game is running on the PS3, on the PSP. I can not for the life of me see how that could ever be even remotely practial, but I do like the geek-factor. Yes, I suppose I am a geek.
What is perhaps a bit more surpising, given my apparent interests, is that I am married. To a woman. Who's not a geek. I am married to a real, live, non-geeky woman, who cares about non-geeky stuff. Such as what colour things are. If I should phone home one day with news of a recent purchase of, say, a car, her first response would be "oh, god..". This would be muttered. I would not, at this time, offer up more information, as "oh god" is not a question, and the muttering does not invite to share my excitement about said purchase. So there would, very likely, be Awkward Silence. The very next response would in all likelyhood be "what colour is it?"
I think this is a key difference between men and women, the properties of objects which they care about. (This, and the ability to laugh at Monty Python. Ofcourse, I am stereotyping here, but I am allowed to. It's my blog, and the Internets are well suited for this sort of thing. ) Now, speaking for myself, I would not inquire about the colour of anything unless this information would be of importance in actually locating this thing. I would, for instance, ask about the colour of my wifes new car if I had never seen it before, and was looking for it. Me, and most men I know, would rather inquire about things like horsepower, the number of doors, engine size and fuel, properties which concern the utility of whichever object is in question. Women seem to favour estethics. Nothing wrong with that, I like things that look good, but I can't help feeling that any object you bring into your existence should serve some purpose.
This also extends to the topic of the post, videogames. I don't know where to begin.. Most videogames annoy me to an extent hardly experienced by mankind before. The level of annoyance in Stalin when Hitler crossed the border into mother Russia, for instance, would be relatively minor in comparison. I quite often ask myself what these people are thinking of. So I think I shall start a list, right here, of Stupid Stuff to do in videogames. Lets start with cutscenes.
Cutscenes, for the uninitiated, are the short movieclips between gameplay. Some times they are there to convey information of importance to the gameplay, but most of the time it's there, as far as I can work out, for two reasons: 1) To show off how good they are at making things look exciting, and (far worse) 2) to fill up the time with nonsens so they can say "20 hours of gameplay", when there is in fact 2 hours of gameplay and 18 hours of mindless drivel.
I have in my flat the following devices which will let me watch moving pictures: 4 laptops. 1 PS3. 1 Xbox360. 1 PSP. 2 TV's. 1 DVDplayer. 1 PVR. Any one of these devices will show me movies and TV 24/7. So why, my dear game-studio exec, do you think I purchase a $60 game? To watch movies? The answer, as the more perceptive of you may suspect, is no.
Are all gamestudio exec's failed Hollywood directors? Are they like the security-guards on the subway, who failed to get in to police academy or the army, and now has to settle for some low-end job? Are they constantly thinking about that fantastic movie-deal they'll get, just as soon as they're discovered, by someone who buys videogames to watch movies?
Cut-scenes annoy me. The only thing that annoys me more than cut-scenes, are cut-scenes that can not be skipped! Yes, they do this. They make you watch stuff you do not really care about. There is no fast-forward, because they've gone to the trouble of making this, and you're going to watch it, dammit!
There really is no excuse for "non-skippable cutscenes". I am playing a game. You may think the game is so subtle that there's no WAY anyone could play it without the crucial information conveyed in the cutscenes. You'd be wrong. 99% of the time, it's like this: if it moves, shoot it. End of story. If there really is important information to be conveyed, there are other ways to accomplish that besides forcing me to watch it played out on screen. Text springs to mind. Text has worked for millennia. I predict a bright future for it.
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