hilarious dating website messages

[metasynthie]

So, I still have an account on various online dating websites, as I'm sure many of you do as well. Occasionally I get messages from random queermos who I don't find particularly interesting or attractive. And very occasionally I get a hilarious message like this, from a nerdy-looking dyke with close-cropped hair and glasses

Comments

[ariellabella]

this would be an amazing reply to that ad reply. i mean, really.

also: i love it when you write about video games.

i am interested in how you think about this as it relates to other non-japanese RPGs. i admit that i do not understand some of the finer differentiations between, say, rpg and "first-person shooter in a mystical world" -- maybe that is part of my confusion. but then i think of earthbound as the best RPG ever made

[metasynthie]

Sadly I think I deleted the message so I can't reply now. But I'm glad to have a kickoff point for a little analysis. As for some of your questions

[ariellabella]

i fucking love it! i get what you mean abt the difference -- in one, *you* get better; in the other, the character gets better and your improvements are only strategy or deployment or what have you.

this is really interesting. how would you fit, like, bioshock in this framework?

also every time i think about earthbound i get excited inside. especially the ending and how you beat the game -- fucking genius. fucking genius!

[metasynthie]

Yeah well in THEORY you get better at aiming and getting behind cover and finding advantageous sniping positions and whatnot. In reality, I am just never all that good at that kind of thing.

Bioshock is basically a first-person shooter, but it's one of the hybrids that has some RPG-like elements, following on its spiritual antecedent, System Shock. Your character doesn't have stats that go up, other than your stores of health, ammo, and "magic ammo" that makes the various special powers run. You just get more choices, more weapons, more health and ammo over time. In this sense it's not that different than a lot of action games (like say, Metroid). There is some resource management (don't run out of ammo!) and some customization (which power / weapon will you use?) but it's not quite as complex as the number juggling / leveling-up / equipment customization of an RPG.

T

[miraclejackson]

You should just replay with "Sorry, don't like cube tits."

[tonyinabag]

don't forget about the (SPOILER!) omg they killed off a playable character!{/SPOILER) factor too! ha.

[metasynthie]

Yeah, I never understood why that was such a big deal. But I guess for a lot of younger gamers at the time, they had never experienced the idea that a playable character could die and not come back. Shocker!! I was 21 at the time, quite a bit older than a lot of teenager FF7 fans, which may be part of why I was like "oh, they killed the girl in the pink dress, what a tearjerker."

[tonyinabag]

i hadn't seen any of the FF games until angi moved in with me and i would sit and watch her play. of course she spent most of the time playing FFVIII and playing triple triad for hours. haha. as the co-pilot for gaming (looking up where to go, etc) the whole gamegamegame CUTSCENE! gamegamegame aspect was great. but it is kind of amazing how OOC some of the cutscenes in games have gotten since FFVII (see: Xenosaga 1 and 2).

[metasynthie]

Yes, it's "would you like a little bit of game with your sub-par 3D anime?"

[paulfear]

this would have been funnier had it occurred in person.

i wonder if there ever will be a game masterpiece since the different experiences of the players will make it different. plus its a game so its primary objective should be how fun it is or its entertainment value. not sure, the interactivity of it all makes it a difficult thing to think about when you are not fully awake.

[metasynthie]

I dunno, you could say the same thing about film. Everyone experiences and interprets all kinds of media in different ways, which is why tastes differ. Film and television by many people as media whose primary objective is entertainment value, as are other media like comic books, but many people in the audience have grown to be aware that there's potential for more than just simple fun in those media.

Games are still lagging a bit behind, but digital games are just a few decades old compared to comics & films century or more, plus the interactivity does pose its own challenges. I know what you mean by the interactivity and player choices making for very different experiences, but believe me, the length and breadth of how different those experiences are is defined entirely by the designers of the game, just as with any media. It's just that we let you range around a little bit more, but you're still playing (mostly) in our constraints.

Ian Bogost (author of Persuasive Games and the Water Cooler Games blog) has a very hardline

[paulfear]

i think games tend to be more interactive and involving with their experiences than movies or books do.

that almost makes it sound like gamers are nothing more than rats in a maze striving for the cheese filled exit. might be accurate, but i guess it also depends on the genre of the game as well.

[mistressbation]

I had been getting really disinterested in any new JRPGs until Persona 3, which was fantastic, and the first game I've completely finished in years. (I'm really hoping that Persona 4 actually does come stateside, and preferably not on PS3, since I don't have that.) It was perfect- grind until you get bored of that, then run around trying to get chicks to bone you until you get tired of that.

But lately I find myself playing old games rather than new ones- Lunar SSS is a classic, and why bother playing some new thing that is essentially the same and hasn't much improved on the genre since 1992? Shit, there have been very very few RPGs better than Chrono Trigger, and that came out fifteen years ago.

I've been considering getting a DS mostly just for TWEWY, since it sounds amazing. Square/Enix doing something innovative in the least is something to be seen these days.

[madletters]

Regarding P4 in the States:

http://www.atlus.com/persona4/

And Chrono Trigger just got announced for the DS. Is the industry good to you or what?

T

[miraclejackson]

TWEWY is fantastic, the best thing the company's done in years.

[metasynthie]

Completely agree with lostbirdfound about TWEWY. To continue the silly literature metaphors, if early RPGs are like Beowulf, then TWEWY is like a dense, baroque 18th century court drama. At first you're like, what the hell is this shit, I don't have time for this! I barely even made it past the first week, because I found the story cheesy and the game kind of difficult and awkward to play. But then it sort of unfolded into another layer of depth and I was like... ohhhhhh. Whoa. Dude. That cheesy story is just the outermost peel. And it kept on going, etc. It's a good game.