/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10486347
pretty sure it was when game devs had a passion for what they were doing. Now its all about that money. AAA shit titles like Call of Duty #89 make more then a box office film... corrupts the industry. micro transactions.. DLCs.. these are not conducive to a great game.. but a lucrative buisness

Soul = I have a vision for something fun that could happen in a video game and I will see to it, regardless of technical boundaries
Lack of soul = given the solution domain, let us find a way to maximize profit based on the demographic

>>10486371
>DLCs.. these are not conducive to a great game.. but a lucrative buisness
Grinding out fighting game single player all night for secret characters and unlockables was pure soul. DLC is pure soulless cocksuckery.

>'That is why the soul is the first grade of actuality of a natural body having life potentially in it. .. It is substance in the sense which corresponds to the definitive formula of a thing's essence. That means that it is 'the essential whatness' of a body of the character just assigned.'
>'Suppose that the eye were an animal-sight would have been its soul, for sight is the substance or essence of the eye which corresponds to the formula, the eye being merely the matter of seeing; when seeing is removed the eye is no longer an eye, except in name-it is no more a real eye than the eye of a statue or of a painted figure.' - Aristotle, On the Soul

soul clunky gamefeel mayor intuitive

Authenticity

And in the context of gaming the desire to produce something that will be meant to be played over something meant to be bought.

>>10486347
"We" don't talk about "soul" on this board. Only (You)r degeneration does.

>>10486347
Soul = We want to make money by making things we love.
Soulless = We want to make money by making things the public love.

OP here

>>10486371
valid point. i think (turbo)capitalism definitely plays a big part in the 'desoulification', if not the major part. back then, programming games and 'gaming' were really special topics, so pretty much only the 'freaks' and 'nerds' who were passionate about it did it. makes sense.

>>10486378
this is it. grinding for the stuff you wanna unlock offline, instead of getting everything via paycheck online.

>>10486398
interesting contribution, thanks for that! i guess it could be really interesting to dive deeper into the connection between philosophy, aesthetics and gaming.

>>10486347
there's no real explanation for the "SOVL", it's just something you either see or you don't
if you don't subconsciously understand the concept of it then you will not comprehend it with any explanation, because there is none

you know how they used AI to convert the graphics for that GTA San Andreas remake? except they manually censored stuff too but didn't bother to fix the errors the "ai assisted" retexturing process introduced?

>>10486347
>we all know that most modern games (from ~ 2007/08 on) lack 'soul'. but why is that?
I wouldn't blame it entirely on this... but to me, a big part of why I can't stand most modern stuff is developers shoving their agendas/politics down our throats whenever they can, it's so baffling.

Yes, video games have always been political, but not ALL video games, and the ones that were, at least the ones that are still well regarded and haven't aged like milk, tackled more philosophy and asked questions instead of "THIS IS WHAT YOUR VIEW SHOULD BE ON CURRENT TOPIC" which gets exhausting real quick. I'm biased, of course, we all are, but I'm not alone in this one.

I mean, I like Spider-Man and his video games, I play them to do super hero stuff, but the new titles have a BLM mural, a BIPOC mission and a black Spider-Man you play with 50% of the time... what the HELL does any of this have to do with Spider-Man? Why am I playing as a black deaf GF without super powers doing grafitti for political stuff on people's walls? It just so ridiculous now.

You also have a major focus on stories, and they usually suck, full of drama and sexuality stuff.

Also, I can't stand how this direction companies are going in, to please the social justice crowd, has made it so most women, at least in western video games, HAVE to be an eye sore... fuck.

I miss when beauty was seen as a good thing, and when characters were allowed to be sexy too.

>>10486347
It is the difference between old Naughty Dog and new Naughty Dog

>>10486347
I'm sure that it just means nostalgia for the times long gone for most people here, even if they don't admit it or even realize it.

>>10486347
>we all know that most modern games (from ~ 2007/08 on) lack 'soul'. but why is that?
from 1980s to 2020s, the cost of making vidya skyrocketed. they went from $300k per game to some games reaching $300 million (GTAV, Cyberpunk). 50% of it is graphics / assets, 50% is advertizing like crazy.
developers went from small teams of like-minded nerds to huge corporations of 500+ people that now employ sweatshops, outsourcing and premade asset packs just to make all the assets.
moreover, they can't just target "core" gamers anymore, it's unsustainable to target a minority when they need to sell 1 million copies of a game just to break even. they need to target the lowest common denominator—normies, children, casuals, even non-gamers. they make every decision through focus group testing instead of creativity—they're treating a game like a "product", not "art" anymore.
small devs can't compete. their games will be blown away by bigger games with better graphics, that get advertized to high heavens—this is what sells games today, not ideas, gameplay or "soul". no one's gonna give some "creative" guys millions of dollars. even when they did, they made failed weird games that ended careers. they get pushed to indie and mobile, but it's an even worse race to the bottom.
all this is why games have changed. it's a neverending cycle of "better graphics & bigger games —> higher costs —> more corporate, lowest common denominator —> less soul". the only real hope is that at some point, budgets reach too high for anyone to make AAA games. seeing how long it's taking for GTAV and TES6, maybe it's closer than you might expect.

>>10486347
One big issue is that, back in the Golden years of gaming (80s-Early 2000s), investors and executives largely had no idea what games were. So they were far more willing to invest in just "company making game". To an investor boomer who doesn't understand these newfangled video games, they're willing to invest into really out there shit, like "game where you play as time traveling dolphin". Additionally, the development costs of games, even up to the 3DS, were substantially less than today's for AAA games. Game dev teams were much smaller.

Now, investors know video games so they can make demands about them (less X, more lootboxes, follow these consumer demands, etc). There are loads of committees out there who's sole job is to sanitize and remove soul where ever it is seen.

>>10486347
Games used to be made by people who loved games. Too much money got into the industry, and a lot of people got into it because it became trendy to do so. tl;dr games became too mainstream

>>10486347
People who were good at creating games AND also loved creating games have left the industry.
Seriously. read old interview back in the late 70s to early 90s. Most teams (not the whole dev) were made of 4~6 people, 4 being programmer, 1 doing the art and the last one would do the music. No "game designer" or whatever bullshit they call people now. Yet, they had fun making the kind of game they wanted to make. We would have people saying "when the boss saw we added a secret stage, it was too late to remove it so he just kept it" among other stuff.
Some indie devs do try that, but many of them are infected with modern game design, so the passion is there, but modern game design sucks so the end result is not that good. I don't expect passion from any triple A dev, however. A game that have thousands spent on it is NOT done by passion.

>>10486809
>Some indie devs do try that, but many of them are infected with modern game design, so the passion is there, but modern game design sucks so the end result is not that good.
I don't think that's the case. It's just that people always seem to compare modern indie games of varying quality to what were some of the best mid- or high-budget games of their times and forgot about a lot of shovelware that was also getting released back then but that no one remembers any more because it was so mediocre.

>>10486513
Actually one of the best explanations I’ve ever seen on here. A lot of soul explanations pretend it was never about the money before. It was, but there was still something more. It’s not just in games anymore either, culture in general feels like it’s stagnated aggressively. It’s because design is more by committee than it’s ever been, the money grubbing has always been there but the design control was more in the designers hands.

In 10 years time there'll be no actual discourse on this site, just a succession of monosyllabic Pavlovian responses.
>based
>cringe
>soul
>soulless
>like
>dislike
I don't care if you're being ironic you're a genuine retard if you can't voice your own opinion on your own terms and instead use memewords to express yourself and what you're thinking.

>>10486872
cringe

>>10486872
Soulless

>>10486872
dislike

>>10486872
gay

"muh soul" is a buzzword for nostalgia. I can list some mechanics and hidden details in an RPG that will make people go "ooooh oooh oooh muh soul", and these same people will readily declare that game as soulless if I just namedrop the game instead.

Soul is mostly used in games with a distinct and unique artstyle/look. All these new games look the same and are souless as shit

In spanish we have a similar concept that has been around for longer than the "SOUL" concept.
It's the "Sentir" concept, literally translates to "feeling". It came about in the late 00s or early 10s, from an online sale publication of someone selling an old famiclone, I think from Argentina or Chile, saying "Es de la epoca de sentir" ("It's from the era of feeling"), it was amusing and many people started using it unironically to refer to the pre-2000s era. Similar to the soul concept, the idea is that people stopped actually feeling after a certain point in time.
When people (usually younger ones) ask what is this "feeling" thing all about, the typical answer is, "If you have to ask, you won't get it".

>>10486921
Homogenization of game engines and outsourcing artwork to the same handful of Indian studios is a huge component of this. Check the credits for starfield lmao, it reads like a sign in sheet for the Taj Mahal.

>>10486347
>Soul vs Soulless
It's a meme created at the launch of the switch version of Link's Awakening referring to his Link's soulless eyes and should not be taken seriously. Y'all need to be questioning how much influence this stupid fucking website has over you.

>>10486939
slop post

>>10486939
>Y'all

>>10486942
NTA but
>live in Texas, work in oil
>have to resist instinct to say yall online now because people mistake me for some Portland zoomer faggot

Grim, it’s necessary to retake the word though

>>10486347
Define soulless game.

Soul = Having a vivid imagination but lacking the talent to properly express it, like a child's drawing.
Soulless = Having no imagination and no talent, just a pawn producing/replicating what they like/have already seen.
Basically the difference between grassroots and astroturfed.

>>10486958
The ones you like, since you made this post that’s all I need to know

>>10486845
>I don't think that's the case
A lot of indie game is metroidvania. Another problem is that whenever one single indie game makes success, we have 300 indie games clone following them. For many indie game, the only different between them and the triple A games is the lack of money, because the shitty game design is there, the wish to make big money instead of great game is there, etc.

>>10486963
Name a soulless game.

>>10486972
Your favourite game

>>10486973
I have no favorite game. Your breath smells like fart though.

>>10486976
Your mother has questionable taste in silverware

>>10486872
based take

>>10486347
Nothing, it's a meaningless buzzword used by 2016 to present day newfags who want to infect board culture with their brand of safe pretentious faggotry. A good game is a good game for various reasons, can't be generalized with muh soul/soulless.

You should have a filter for these words btw
>>10486872
Unironically based.

>>10486378
>Grinding out fighting game single player all night for secret characters
Man, unlocking all characters in Tekken 3 was the shit.

>What does 'soul' mean in gaming
Nothing, it's a shitty /v/ meme that went on for too long.

"Soul" is easily described:

Games with soul: a product that is mainly made by passionate people with the main intent of producing an expression of THEIR art - making a game they themselves desire / want / always wanted to make WITHOUT too much external influence.

A lot of legendary games from the golden age of gaming (beginning: after the videogame crash, peaking at the 90's and ending with the begin of the PS3/XBOX360 Era) are made this way.

Soulless game: a product that is mainly made by people with the main intent of producing a product to make money - a game they themselves don't desire / want / always wanted to make whose design is HEAVILY or MOSTLY influenced by external factors like trends, marketing practices (often involving exploitation practices like DLC, mircortransactions, subscriptions, etc.).

That's why a soulless game can NEVER be art, more often than not simply SUCKS, because it wasn't made "free".

Good thing is there are SO MANY great and soulful games out there (mostly games which are considered "retro" these days) to last anyone DECADES.

My advice: just grab a free CRT, get the original systems and a flashcart and enjoy the golden age of gaming. Gaming will never be as good as this again.

>>10486872
Cringe take, disliked.

>what does 'soul' mean
Soul is when a game sidesteps technological limitations and sparks your imagination to the point where you go "oh, that's neat" involuntarily.
In pic related, as well as most retro games that feature real-time reflections, the devs basically duplicate all elements being shown on-screen and flip them upside-down as to achieve that reflection effect. Real polygons and textures. That's neat, especially for a 5th gen console game.
Observe the ruins that are half-buried into the ice at the edges of the level, remnants of an ancient civilization that's been gone for so long that the ice grew to almost completely hide it. That's neat.
Notice that Crash himself has different animations when sliding on the ice when compared to snow, and how it's animated in a way that it shows his character's personality. It's not just the same running animation as normal terrain except with more slippery momentum. That's neat.
If you stay still for long enough, Aku Aku will slowly turn to look at you through the screen, wondering why you're not playing the game, and crash will exhale and start looking around waiting for something to happen. That's neat.
None of these details impact to the gameplay at all, but they're there because the devs wanted to put them there. Effort beyond the basic gameplay necessities. It's neat. It's soul.

>>10486347

>>10486347

it's a certain aesthetic. it can't be faked or forced.

>>10486872
>>10486896
>>10486998
>>10487269
>>10487370
Basically, this.

>>10486725
>Why am I playing as a black deaf GF without super powers doing grafitti for political stuff on people's walls?
God, that was really awful.
I really want to like the game for the stuff I truly enjoyed, but all of these experiences retrospectively sour the entire thing for me. Meaning, I'm left with mostly mixed feelings and that's a shame.

>>10486794
you seem to be ignoring the fact that children were always the target audience for all videogames, and things were better then, because they had to actually make them fun
now they target 40 year old virgins who think your game is deep if it consists of 100 hours of cutscenes of a strönk und independent wahman beating the shit out of bald men

>>10486872
Faggot

>>10486347
Soul means that the game isn't generic and has its own style, look, mechanics, etc.

>>10487305
this. only literal children think that artistic spirit is not a genuine thing. the reason is that said creative intent has been diluted so heavily by corporate incentives and large overbearing teams. the spirit is constantly ground down until it can no longer be seen. why do you think a game like pizza tower is actually good? because the artist actually got to see their vision through. there was no external influence. no meddling. games are now a culture of pure consumption and not one of creative nature.

For me soul exists in a games implied atmosphere. There have to be limits on what you can show the player and you only have a finite space to convey a world born from your imagination.

There are only two kinds of games
Those with soul
And DAS SEELENLOS PRODUKT

>>10486802
I’ve heard this exact same explanation for how the music industry changed as well, comparing how things were in the 60s-70s to now. I’m not knowledgeable enough to judge it but I’d bet investor involvement is a major factor.

>>10488195
>why do you think a game like pizza tower is actually good
I know why YOU think that, it's because it's a rip-off of a good game which is exactly why it has no soul. Fake retro indie games are about the most soulless thing you can find

>>10486516
>the connection between philosophy, aesthetics and gaming.
Aristotle meant that the soul is the function of the body and the mind. Without soul, these are empty of meaning and action. In a game that translates to the visual, mechanics and story functions being cohesive and inventive. Videogames nowadays are visually bland in their shitty photographic realism, mechanically bland by being stuck in the mid 00s, and have rancid stories infected by distraction propaganda that passes as politics nowadays.
Soul is also only possible through the optimization of resources, because that inherent elegance amidst the inhospitability of the universe is what makes these organic vessels so comfortable and endearing to rhe soul that chooses to unhabit them. Nature is great at that oprimization, so its creations are full of soul. Retro videogames were like that too. 100KB was more than enough to create a life-changing experience for a child. Nowadays videogames are obese and tumorous wit their pointless GigaBytes, uodates, DRM, etc. It's data upon data of junk. The fun per Byte ratio is almost zero. This revolts the soul. It's a landscape as empty as the void places in the Universe, which souls run away from.

>>10487370
>zoomers

It's literally the opposite as proven on this site; /vr/ is an oldfag board (those that are still left after the rule change anyway) and ascribing "soul" to inanimate things or using it to describe fucking toys that were made for the sole purpose of profit, is tacky as fuck. /vr/ in general is hesitant or just straight up hostile to this bullshit "soul" meme.

The soul is our eternal spirit and video game retards started using it to describe games, then retards picked up on it and use it for literally anything as a byword for "thing that I like and/or have nostalgia for" example
>on /tv/ for those Raimi spiderman movies or older South Park episodes
>on /ck/ for older fast food chains like how McDonalds buildings used to look like a fucking circus tent
>on /v/ for any video game older than 10 years or so

The people that use this term are 20 - 40 year olds with the mentality of children who think that superhero movies and fast food embody "soul".
It's borderline sacrilegious.

Soul means passion.
You can tell when developers are waiting for the next pay check or are genuinely excited to build they game you're playing.

What are some soulless retro games?

>>10486872
>this is the 10th reply
This is a "put me in the screencap" moment.

>>10486794
>they're treating a game like a "product", not "art" anymore.
To me this is what the soul really is in a game, and nowadays most of the games are just a digital product to sell and not an art to show the world by having a cost like a painting in a museum would have to see it.
Heck, even indie games are almost always going for the next Hollow Knight metroidvania, the Rogue Legacy/Risk of Rain/Vampire Survivors roguelike, the "roguelike cardgame" which i don't even know who's the game to inspire it. A it's not even /vr/ and i'm sorry for this, but Lethal Company really reminds me of an old game you would buy or download just to have a dumb fun for a few hours playing and that's it, no movielike cutscene, no preachy story with a good side and a bad side, liberty to let the player do what they want and you can always download a mod to play in any way you want because the developer won't take them down like companies Take2 do with big games.

... But on the otherside, maybe the games haven't lost their souls and we just aren't the costumers anymore for anything except the nostalgiabait 2d pixelart inspired by Final Fantasy indie game you can find on Steam or Epic.

>>10486347
Soul, in relation to gaming, describes how a game was clearly a passion project for all involved and where the limitations of that time period were overcame via artistic and creative ideas. The sole purpose of something with soul is to impress the sensations of the player, every play through.

>>10486347
It's just creative vision.

It's gone because game dev teams are 500 people, and they cost so much to make that risk is off the table.

Creatives being allowed to do what they want, with minimal corporate meddling.

>>10486872
And no one cares about your tantrum

>>10488963
But why are they 500 people? Thyre not making the Titanic

https://butterflyfun.tripod.com/

>>10486845
modindies make me believe the soul meme. A lot of shovelware was trashy but definitely a lot less streamlined than indie. I wonder if I'd liked them more if I was a zoomer and it could be me but since we're at it even if they're alright mechanically they feel methodically manufactured philosophical zombies passing as retro games cuz pixels.
The indie term is itself a marketing gig seeing how often it appears in headlines to tell you to advertise that it's better than AA so you should buy it. If someone calls it a random game they found then it's soul if they call it indie then I wonder if I'm talking to a salesman.

>>10486978
Damn anon, don't you think you crossed the line with that one?

>>10486347
There are two main issues. One is that we'll never get soul back in corporate studios because that's not how capitalism works. Once the old guard who started a company leave, theyre replaced by middle managers promoted or high-powered outsiders, who don't have the same (if any) principles. This has happened in every artform.

But the suits aren't the only problem. There's a massive, unseen problem with creative people in general. Which is that, as society has become more sedentary and shut-in, they are increasingly lacking in diverse influences and real-world experiences. All of the most talented and iconic game devs were artists who were inspired by books, movies, art, their childhood, their jobs, people they knew, etc. Nowadays, society is more sedentary and shut-in, and many devs basically only play video games and only take inspiration from them. So you have a closed system, which as time goes on gets less and less creative because it's just feeding back into itself rather than taking on outside influences. The end result is simulacra - layers of representations of representations, straying increasingly further from human reality.

>>10489301
I agree

>>10486872
>being so old you can't cope with evolving language, and now you think everyone else is dumb
Sad to see it.

>>10489301
Damn so its over for me? I can't make stuff

>>10488172
>you seem to be ignoring the fact that children were always the target audience for all videogames, and things were better then, because they had to actually make them fun
Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite and FNAF were made for children. They're still cancer, perhaps more than AAA games.
>now they target 40 year old virgins
I don't think that's the case. I think most of AAA games are targeted at your typical young adults, 18-34, or maybe even younger than that. though I checked Skyrim, TLOU2, GoW, and they're all rated M by ESRB, GTA is too obviously.

>>10488819
>even indie games are almost always going for the next Hollow Knight metroidvania, the Rogue Legacy/Risk of Rain/Vampire Survivors roguelike, the "roguelike cardgame" which i don't even know who's the game to inspire it.
someone once explained that indie devs are often literally looking to make a quick buck. like, you have a single coder who wants cash. they get an artist to draw cheap "pixel art" sprites and put up a quick game that they can sell to earn a quick buck. they only want to maximize sales, so they just copy whatever is trendy and checks all the boxes, #pixelart #metroidvania #roguelike etc.
obviously, they don't care about games "being art". their only goal is to make money with their coding skills. for them it's just a piece of code they sell. it's like stock music or video footage—it's made with a single purpose of being sold, it's devoid of artistic value.

>>10486872
>hold on bro, let me concoct some new terms to express myself for (you)

>>10486931
Sounds a bit like vinyl enthusiasts and "warmth." We're all beating around some kind of bush.

>>10488785
LJN games.

>>10488785
Every single game that no one can no longer name.

>>10486347
Methinks when people say that something has "soul" they mean lack of restrictions, which is increasingly rare now. Everyone on the modern internet has inherent fear of being "cringe" or any other variation of it. I dunno if it's related to how normalfags see themselves on the internet or the decades of fearmongering (be it legacy media or online "bullying" stories from 00s-mid 10s). Also, people barely spend time alone with themselves, not engaging with any form of media. Both of these lead to people being more willing to adopt prefab ideas rather than sticking to their own.
Another issue is that every medium of information exchange either gets pruned or sanitized to death for a myriad of reasons. But the problem is not that there's no solutions (self-hosting is still an option too), it's that nobody is willing to use them because of the cancerous mentality of net users composed of lazines (aka using the same 5 slop sites and never branching out) and constant clout-chasing. Thus most people choose to sanitize their ideas accordingly.
This is why media from the past feels less devoid of emotion, some of it may be shit but at least there's amusement in how goofy or bizarre it is, modern media is sterile on arrival.

>>10486347
Soul is subjective and it is a spectrum rather than a binary condition. One game can have more soul to you than another game can have soul to someone else.

Soul/Soulless has something to do with how cynical the work is relative to other things in is field. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism_(philosophy)

Every video game is made to make money. Not every video game is made equal. What's more, the goal of any video game for the consumer is to have fun playing it. Graphics and sound are part of the experience too, so the relative quality of aesthetics matters too.

A mediocre game from an older generation might be soulless when measured against its generational peers but it could have more Soul than a game of a different generation because the conditions of what constitute a good game can change over time. This includes a lowering of standards.

Aesthetic value has a limit. A good looking game can have glitches, poor controls, a bad story, be full of DLC, etc. An earlier game with poorer graphics but which avoids anything listed there, even by comparison, could be said to have more Soul even if it was a more cynical (i.e. soulless) product than another game by contrast.

kind of late but anyways.
I think "soul" is much like art—it's about personal expression; expression of passion, ideas, imagination, even sexual desires—anything. it's about making something you think is cool, as opposed as treating games like products and game making as your day job.
early RPG devs had passion for DnD. the creator of pokemon carried his idea for years just to make his game. kojima worked on boring games for years to get to be a director he wanted. Akiman expressed his passion for female thighs with chun-li; similarly, picrel was one of SNK artists' "dream girl". Doom and Quake were an expression of passion for metal and horror. their works in turn inspired countless others.
in a way, these games were all made by "nerds"—DnD, DBZ, Alien, etc. nerds. people passionate about stuff. they just wanted to live their idea.
I think this is why Japanese games still have soul. It's not really "thing / thing, Japan". they're just nerdy and passionate about stuff. from trains to battle ships to food to nature. and it's contagious, though you'd never think you'd be interested in fucking battleships. if you're obsessed about these things in the West, you'd be called an autist. you take food and nature photos only to post on social media as a status symbol. I think it also relates to how Japanese are more imaginative. it's not surprising too that the West considers half of Japan gay. to them, imagination is gay and for children (so double gay).
lastly, Japanese find aesthetics in things, it's just in their culture. They find it in calligraphy, clouds, blossoming trees, sea, and more. but hardly anyone does this in the West anymore, it's considered autistic and old-fashioned and gay. the only acceptable thing they care about in the West today is wow factor. all art in the West is reduced to a blockbuster appeal—epic scale, realism, guns, sex and explosions.
is it any wonder why an ideal Western game is hyperrealistic dull FPS with dull generic protag?

>>10487897
>God, that was really awful.
Indeed, and there was tons more where that came from, they really dropped the ball.

>I really want to like the game for the stuff I truly enjoyed, but all of these experiences retrospectively sour the entire thing for me. Meaning, I'm left with mostly mixed feelings and that's a shame.
Indeed, on paper it had everything to be the absolute best Spider-Man video game of all time, it plays really well and looks great in motion, but then there's all of the pandering in the side missions that feel like a waste of time and it's too "In your face" with the developers not even trying to be subtle in the stuff they're pushing, Black Cat appears for a single scene only to reveal she's a lesbian, Peter apologizes for the whole plot even when he's right and spends the entire final act talking about how much of a better Spider-Man the diversity hire is, and trying to make it up to MJ when she's the one in the wrong, also she's naggy and ugly as hell, which is clearly for agenda reasons too.

It feels like it was made by people that actively despise old Spider-Man fans. It's made with the new MCU crowd, and modern comic fans, in mind, and the state of both of these industries is quite dire.

>>10489795
(cont.)
I think in general the West and the world by extension has become anti-art and anti-soul. you see this everywhere, not just games. we've replaced classical architecture with grey boxes. we replaced millenia-old culinary tradition with goyslop. where you had classical, jazz, or at least rock that explored guitar sounds, you now have music devoid of melody that is all about ass, guns and crack. people virtually stopped reading anyways, so not much to say about books beside Harry Potter, Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey, showing they are just fantasy for women who touch themselves. movies obviously boiled down to blockbusters and capeshit. even anime, despite being Japanese, got reduced to sex appeal moeshit that is quite literally devoid of plot or anything but girls.
oh, and it's getting worse—as traditional mediums die, zoomer culture gives you a glimpse of what's next. V-tubers, tik toks, gacha etc. are some next stage, where art had eroded to the point that it's devoid of form, shape or anything but surface level brain rot appeal.
we live in the decade of capeshit, tiktok, goyslop, mumble rap, gacha and endlessly scrolling social media. the market gave people the vote, and the world voted for the slop. the slop is the final stage of culture for us, because it reflects the consumer perfectly. it's just as devoid of artistic sensibilities, imagination, passion and ultimately soul as your average person. it's driven entirely by primitive rat-like instincts—sex, hype, trends, wow factor, attention seeking, etc.. people normalized and encouraged this crap; they proclaimed art old, autistic and gay, and threw it away on the garbage pile of history. we live in the void it created; the only thing left is rat pressing the lever. it's some 1960s antiutopia that came true—slowly, unnoticeably, but inevitably, as the rule of the majority came to decide everything, and no one did anything. few complained, it's just a normal thing at this point.

>>10489795
>>10489830

>>10489830
>t. schizo rant

>>10489879
>>10489890
see, that's exactly the exact kind of single cell response I expected. "durr schizo tism", "dur, japan good west bad". you're the kind of brainlet who's proud about it. you're that kind of American baboon who proudly exclaims "didn't read!!!" when he sees something longer than a tweet. you're the kind of monkey modern games are made for, so why are you on /vr/? nu Zelda just came out, it's right up your alley. I also suggest you go scroll more on your phone, watch some tiktoks, and have some goyslop while you're at it.

>>10489795
>>10489830
One of the more realist rants I've read about the topic... maybe this makes me sound like an old man, but it really feels like it's all going wrong in recent years, and there isn't much hope at all...

I especially hate how the west is handling things, it feels like video games specifically are now made by people who hate video games and the culture around it, people that are bitter and just want to make us miserable. It's also a pain how much there seems to be a movement against beauty, like things are ugly on purpose, mostly women, which the east handles a lot better too.

>>10489908
Very hard to refute "it's not Thing, Japan" when the same paragraph is sucking off the nips in the same broad strokes.
Trains/ships/calligraphy/etc. are considered as autistic in Japan.

>>10489795
how can tell how healthy our community has gotten when vidya or movie related discussions went from showing your diy sepiroth cosplay costume and sword to *ff7s main message was about being anti capitalist rebel* or bayonneta is secretly into scissoring or some shit like that

>>10489946
you can tell**

>>10489908
i did actually read your garbage motherfucker and it was /pol/slop buzzwords to the max. you had nothing of value in that word salad other than misplaced ego and false allegories.

>>10489908
it says more than anyone critiquing you is automatically filthy "must be playing the nu zelda" and not merely calling out your incredibly binary way of thinking.

>>10489936
I didn't say "thing Japan is better". my point was about having sense of aesthetics, imagination, passion for things. these things simply eroded in the West—and btw, most of the AAA slop is made in the West, yet most of the /vr/ core came from Japan. and no, it's not about West being bad and Japan being good—Japan has a shitload of problems on its own. West used to have all these things, it simply lost them. not completely, mind you—people still care about good food outside of America (see: Italy), we still have great books being written, movies being made. but these are a diminishing breed, and it's clear that we lost something and replaced with dumbed down pop culture and slop. we started with Greek culture, we had classical literature, music, architecture; yet we ended with cardboard houses, twerking, shitty rap and electronic music, capeshit, AAA slop, microwave meals, and so on.
>Trains/ships/calligraphy/etc. are considered as autistic in Japan.
yes, yet it's way more prevalent still than in the west. watching and celebrating cherry blossom isn't autistic. having summer festivals with fireworks in yukata isn't autistic.
going back to calligraphy—still it has a special place in general. there's a reason it's hanged on walls. and what do they hang on the walls in the West, live love laugh?
my point is about appreciation of beauty, in small things. Japan has a lot of it, from bonsai to food to shrines to trees. do we have this in the West? maybe, but too little. soul is often about the details and small things.

>>10489959
the point went completely over your head then, congrats. you hadn't made a single argument btw
>>10489962
yeah, "t. schizo rant" is a valid constructive criticism with great arguments, I shouldn't have responded with a snarky joke. I just showed my biased thinking replying to an unbiased, objective response "t. schizo rant". I'm sorry for lowering the level of discourse here, "t. schizo rant" set the bar high.

>>10490004
>watching and celebrating cherry blossom isn't autistic. having summer festivals with fireworks in yukata isn't autistic.
Because these things aren't hobbies, they are traditions. Americans still celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving and whatnot. Might well complain about that.
What I want to get to here is that when someone collects ships and trains and shit in the west, people MIGHT go "heh weird hobby", and leave it at that. In Japan people WILL go "why can't you have a normal hobby like playing baseball." Japan is strange, stores that cater to the weird hobbies are more open, but people are also more judgmental about your hobbies.
You can argue the ships and trains part percolates more to the surface, but then again, Euro Train Simulator is an European game.

>>10489617
Makes sense, that's why while it is easier to find something really fun in the indie scene i don't agree when someone says "indie games market is the future" when in reality it's just like the big company, but making short games with one person or a big game in 1 decade with a few people nstead of open world of remakes less fun than the original one.

>>10489351
*devolving

>>10487370
Agreed

>>10488758
>/vr/ in general is hesitant or just straight up hostile to this bullshit "soul" meme.
This thread proves otherwise with the amount pretentious replies that can't even come to concensus on the definition and are just textwalls of intellectual fart huffing and naval gazing about games they think are good.

>>10486878
>>10486880
>>10486882
>>10486887
So you choose to prove him right, bot?

>>10489795
>>10489830
I understand your point but this idea autistic vision for the sake of being quirky is one of those things that just fuels this "blue vs red" shit I don't like seeing what so ever.

This idea what the japs are doing is right and what the west is doing is wrong is fucking stupid. Both are shit, they are two extremes with clearly negative effects, the japs are literally not fucking anymore because of anime and the political west is nothing more than American's history with wars and russia, it's not something new at all, there was just a period you weren't alive to see where everyone was just fucking done with wars killing innocent people and tired of dealing with the dread white racist slave owners were making the average white person look like the devil for treating blacks, asians, hispanics and anyone with even a drop of "mutt" in them as subhuman. You were just born in the era people just wanted change and you never realize that made up a literal fraction of a fraction of human history that wasn't about killing people they didn't like or art being nothing more than copying what the rich kings wanted you to draw for them. There was no imagination, no "soul", when art was once only created and commissioned thanks to kings giving you money to make their cathedrals look good to the consumers that were allowed to see them

Am I saying art is a meme and soul isn't real? No, but this idea you were part of the norm humanity was always a part of, a norm no one was still suffering in or had negative consequences, is beyond ignorant and shows a lack of clear understandance as to why things "changed" all of a sudden when it really was moreso things going back to what they were before things "calmed down". Trust me, a world with incurable diseases like the fucking flu and war after war after war with the fear of nukes falling from the sky at any moment, puts a lot of stress on people, stress that could fuel the want to do "soulful" things before you die.

>>10487370
This is one of the worst formatted, piss poor attempts at a "meme" greentext I've ever seen.

>>10487370
This, I've noticed a lot of people now just use "SOUL" for anything they like instead of using the word for what it truly means

>>10490045
>Because these things aren't hobbies, they are traditions. Americans still celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving and whatnot. Might well complain about that.
that's not the point. it's tradition, yes, but it connects to the mentality as a whole, it's not just some facade. Japanese will seek beauty everywhere: in nature, like in mount Fuji, the ocean, traditional arts, cuisine, even in everyday life design like their house, furniture, etc., and in taste of simple things like green tea. it's all tradition, but you can see it all emphasizes the worth of aesthetics. I think Italy and France are somewhat similar, like they have appreciation for wine / coffee / cheese / other foods, for fine crafts, and such.
it is my subjective impression, but I think the majority of Americans don't value aesthetics much. they value convenience, cheapness, being "cool" and pleasure above everything. anything else is easily discarded. again, this seems to be their mentality: people raise their children like this, they are completely fine living without aesthetics and even laughing at it.
>What I want to get to here is that when someone collects ships and trains and shit in the west, people MIGHT go "heh weird hobby", and leave it at that. In Japan people WILL go "why can't you have a normal hobby like playing baseball." Japan is strange, stores that cater to the weird hobbies are more open, but people are also more judgmental about your hobbies.
ok, I don't know about that, if true then fair. then again, see above. I don't imply everyone in Japan is like this. I just believe this is a reflection of whether a culture puts value in aesthetics or not.

>>10486347
"Pouring ones soul into something" has been used for novels and movies for decades. It just means that it comes from hard work and passion, and usually has marks of the individuals who worked on it. Most games are soulless now because they all look the same, control the same, play the same. Indies rarely have soul because they're often just streamlined versions of [developers childhood (Nintendo) game].

>>10488785
They fell by the wayside because they were derivative, worse clones of better games.
The busy series is a prime example

>>10486872
I wish that I could repost this to every single soulless person that I interact with online.

>>10489928
Art imitates life. If art is ugly, the world is ugly. Don't shoot the messengers (artists).

>>10486347
Soul means doing something because you sincerely want to do it, as such you will be giving it your best. Nothing that comes out nowadays, except very VERY few games, is made sincerely

Any game made by a team bigger than 10 member has no soul, simple as that.

>>10492436
Frankly, I think current year "art" is not exactly the reflection of life—it's a reflection of the market. And the "artists" can hardly be called so.
You can see there was a big shift in most of the media after computers became powerful and the internet was introduced. This is not a coincidence. On the one hand, obviously, it greatly simplified many tasks, and gave us huge new possibilities. But there was a darker side to both.
Because it "greatly simplified many tasks", this quickly removed the need for professional artists everywhere. Music got hit the hardest: turned out you didn't have to learn to play—you could just download samples and make shitty EDM in your bedroom. Traditional art got replaced by countless deviantart / twitter artists who got tablets and started drawing cancer—now add AI to that. Graphic design as a whole was almost automated, and got outsourced to 3rd worlders—if you ever wonder why flat design crap is everywhere and pages load like shit, that's why. Automated tools like Unity allowed for countless shitty games to be made cheaply. And so on.
All of these boil down to: tools got simplified, so the field got flooded with cheap labor, and destroyed the need for educated professionals. Result: crappy art by people who have no clue about art.
And as for the "huge new possibilities" the PCs provided, these resulted in ever-expensive CGI, that turned out to wow the masses more than anything. Quickly, movie directors showed that by dumping $$$ into CGI, you could make blockbusters that rake in millions and leave no chance for "boring old" movies. And game developers showed the same with AAA games. As they started dumping all money into graphics, big games and movies got more and more corporate and less and less creative—with more and more ads to sell them.
So that's where we ended up in 2020s. We have cheap n' dirty non-art on the one side, and expensive tinsel on the other. Neither are really "art", and they reflect shit.

>>10489795
>kojima worked on boring games for years to get to be a director he wanted
>turned out climbing the company ladder is soul now

>>10492525
you missed the point. he didn't climb the ladder for personal gain, he needed to work on projects he didn't want just to bring his vision to life. pokemon creator went through even bigger hell though, they lacked funds and when they released the game, everyone thought GB was dead.

>>10486872
Zoom zoom

>>10492481
This probably the best description of 'soul' vs 'soulless'. Best recent example, the Mario RPG remake, total soulless trash.

OP here. wow, didnt expect to see that post growing that rapidly. cool! i like the consensus about how most modern games suck because of too much money that is going on in this thread.

>>10486753
another interesting way to look at the topic. 'soul' just as a synonym for 'nostalgia'. also a possibility.

>>10486794
nice summary, good info. something to really think about. especially the financial aspects ("small devs cant compete anymore") are interesting true. we come full circle topicwise: theres just too much money pumped into the industry, it is more about crafting a 'product' rather than 'art'.

>>10486802
also interesting and plays into what >>10486794 and >>10486808 said.

>>10486809
i get you. by making teams bigger and having more clearly set goals for what the final results should look like, spontaneous creativity gets lost.

>>10486872
i agree. thats why i wanted to delve deeper into the semantics of one of those buzzwords and explore what people actually mean by it.

>>10486931
really interesting! the spanish counterpart. i can totally get that; pre and early 2000s 'sentir' media and art just hits different.

>>10486939
is that really the origin of the term being used here? intriguing.

>>10486998
words can mean different things for different people. as you have read here, the meaning of 'soul' seems to have now expanded (this always happens automatically when words and memes start to spread) and many people actually have an explanation for their use of the word. however, i understand the frustration that must have arisen when observing people using the word in a merely very blunt sense.

>>10487305
>>10488195
>>10488772
>>10489026
those four takes summarize the general consensus in this thread very well, i think

>>10486802
>Now, investors know video games so they can make demands about them (less X, more lootboxes, follow these consumer demands, etc).
this is one underrated point. you'll be shocked just how many dumb / annoying decisions in games are forced by bosses and investors. so many dev interviews reveal this. just from the catalog:
>>10486786
>There was an interview with one of the main devs on THUG2 (can't find the specific video anymore) and he said that a lot of the dumb humor and car mechanics were pushed from higher-ups.
their logic always is: "X is popular, so now you must make your game like X". doesn't matter what your idea was, doesn't matter if it fits. "oh, you were making a platformer? sorry, you must make it like Halo and GTA now. I don't want to hear your excuses, it must be like Halo and GTA or else."
it's always the same old story: instead of giving the devs creative control, they give it to people who are clueless about video games and think of it as "copy product X". result is almost always failed series. they never learn.

>>10492804
>result is almost always failed series
Just ignore the times when platformers copied DMC, Metroid, and Halo, and it resulted in massive success. Outside of platformers, the times when isometric RPG copied FPS, a fighting game copied DMC, stealth game copied DMC, JRPG copied dating sims, and fixed camera horror went third-person shooter.

>>10492842
I said that forcing stuff into games is bad. it's different from taking inspiration from games or just stealing good ideas. to an extent all games (and art) take stuff from each other; it can give great results—see all the influence of Metroid, OoT, Wizardry, etc.—whole genres would vanish. moreover, sometimes trying to reinvent the wheel results in worse games—see Western games on NES that tried to invent their own controls when SMB and Contra solved them earlier; see all the 3D games trying to invent their own camera / control.
forcing stuff, however, rarely if ever results in anything good. by definition, it's uninspired, and clashing with the concept.

>>10490736
>the japs are literally not fucking anymore because of anime
Pretty sure it's their crushing workforce that says become a cog in the machine until you break, not the big eyed cartoons.

>>10486347
>what does 'soul' mean in gaming
neat things i like

>>10493001
Yes lets just ignore they literally don't want to fuck their real women and create families, something the anime industry literally is now making animes about being in a family, even McDonald's ads are doing it now. But please, go on telling me there's zero negative effects coming from the years of "perfect" ideal female in anime.

>>10493001
anime is part of the workforce too, someone's animating and drawing all that

>>10488757
limitation breeds creativity

>>10493157
Can't believe manager-san made Goku work overtime without pay again...

>>10493149
Anime is the symptom, not the cause. T here's a reason why most anime these days have highschoolers - it's the last time in their lives where they have time and freedom, and even then they're still confined to having "adventures" at school since it's where they're at most of the day.

>>10486347
I think when passion is put before profit, it shows in the final product. A quote comes to mind; a craftsman is someone who works with his hands and mind, an artist is someone who works with his hands mind and heart.

For me that's soul.

>>10493263
>Anime is the symptom, not the cause.
prove it

>>10493541
If you think what's making people not want real women is attractive cartoon girls existing then you might just be in the American video game industry.

The humanity coming through in the finished product, in one way or another. Sometimes this can be via a well made and creative game, or a sloppily made game that had a lot of good ideas which were undermined by an almost endearing lack of technical skill (the "child's art" effect), or what even comes across as a self-serving "this is what the developer's themselves wanted to play" game filled with in-jokes/references and the like which happens to also appeal to a broader audience (like the original Mortal Kombat), or even absolute dogshit which you can tell that some people on the team were in totally over their head or were even resentful about what they were making.
Lack of soul can come from heavy reliance on design by committee, intentional pandering, overpolishing to the point of blandness, and a general sense of corporate profit first and foremost. You want an example of soulless, look at the GTA6 trailer. It's technically impressive, it looks like it'll probably be a competently made game, but the whole trailer feels like a corporate head saying "you're all really impressed by these realistic graphics, huh? Pay attention to all these references to wacky viral news storie! You kids like them chunky fat-assed, oh, sorry, 'THICC' women, right? We know black people and hiphop culture are still trendy! And remember Vice City!? Oh man have we got the game for you!"

>>10493620
GTA VI definitely is using the VC peak nostalgia to sell it, whereas GTA V didn't use SA nostalgia at all, since it came out only like nine years later. That definitely adds to the "soulless cashgrab" aesthetic

>>10493149
This is a bizarre post. Its not the fault of anime. Its everything else

>>10493819
>Anime is holy, it cannot do wrong
Wow ok, lol, keep thinking that tranoid.

>>10486998
Shitty games can still have soul.

>>10492667
You mean the remake that kept it faithful yet still added extra content and went the extra mile to make the final super boss extremely special? If anything, it's a clear example of soul. A better example of soulless would be that new spiderman game, or those diamond and pearl remakes that came out two years ago

>>10493850
I don't even like anime

>>10493541
>prove it
When you prove your claim first, since you spoke first.
Read about the process Jap kids have to go through to enter the workforce and how much it restricts their personal life, as well as their economic bubble burst in the late 80s/early 90s. Jap boomers didn't have this problem since they created it in the first place.

>>10494725
>When you prove your claim first, since you spoke first.
>Everything pre 2000s, before anime took over the west, had men fuck real women
>Everything post 1990s where anime was about badass men and sexy adult women, turned into moeblobed faced children with beachball tits stapled onto them where all the men are sissy boys constantly emasculated by women that attack them for showing them affection.
Now, show proof anime has nothing to do with why men, japanese men especially, aren't manly anymore.

>>10488785
Games that I like = SOVLLL
Games that I don't like = SOVLLESS

>>10486398
>The Lord gives sight to the blind,
>the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,
>the Lord loves the righteous.
>Psalm 146:8

>>10494768
>why men, japanese men especially, aren't manly anymore
I already told you. If anime was so much of an influence as you think it is, 80s and 90s anime would've made manly millenial japanese kids. Youngsters do express a desire to make families and these dreams don't fucking pan out because of corporate culture that they STILL haven't broken free from and an economic insecurity they STILL haven't fully recovered from, not to mention the obvious correlation between wealth, IQ and families having less children.

>>10489795
>>10489830
I feel the intelligence and soul behind your mini-essay. This is why I come to 4chan, to find broader understanding and little gems in heaps of shit.

>>10494796
I've yet to meet someone whose sight was restored by Christianity but okay

>>10494797
>80s and 90s anime would've made manly millenial japanese kids.
Well this idea japs were anywhere as manly as the west was likely not true after the age of samurai warriors became obsolete, but still, this idea the animes pre digital age was as emasculating to males that watched it compared to the digital age animes is pure headcanon to believe. There's no way any jap that would rather watch shows like Sailor Moon to the moeshit we had since over Cowboy Bebop and DBZ aren't being feminized into only preferring cutesy anime slop.

Soul comes off like kino in that it comes off like a communist bot meme that got popularized in the mid-2010s on this site like spam.

>>10494768
you know where 80s anime and games drew influence from: 80s movies. kids wanted to be Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Bruce Lee. so what do you think they should be inspired by now? Hollywood crap about fighting patriarchy?
Americans here often complain why anime isn't made for them anymore, why it doesn't have square jawed muscular half-naked guys. but Japanese consider this some gachimuchi gay crap, to them the bishonen has always been the sex symbol.
anyway, modern anime is ruined for other, but all the familiar reasons. it is yet another case of traditional art form destroyed by the digital era and retard consumers. 2D animation struggled for relevancy, and they found that the thing that sold the most was 2D girls. so gradually they went
>good anime but with sex gags / some hot character
>even more female characters, but still has plot / action
>just all girl anime now, barely any pretense of plot
>almost complete erasure of plot, just girls (moeshit)
>not even anime, just some 3rd world ethot making funny voice with anime filter (vtubers)
once again, lowest common denominator wins, gradually erasing the art from the artwork. they found that most money was in pandering to simps and coomers, and what everyone had suspected has always been true: people watched anime for girls and couldn't care about anything else.

>>10492524
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX_zIInIZQU&pp=ygUjVGhlcmUgaXMgbm8gd29ybGQgb25seSBjb3Jwb3JhdGlvbnM%3D

>>10493541
I don't see every people with 30/40 years going to gym and looking like a Part 3 Jojo character even with all those classic movies like >>10496560 said.
It's really just a reflex of nowaydays society there, and also why "isekai" / going to another world and living up your fantasy instead of looking a way to go back (like Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced 1 and 2) is so present in their media.

>>10486347
SOVL is often an "argument" used to justify the enjoyment one finds in mediocre titles which in their time, and even now, weren't well received by most people. A lot of the time it can be kind of challenging to explain exactly what makes us enjoy a title we recognize isn't the highest in its quality, a lot of the times it's nostalgia or their charm, so SOVL just sort of encompasses it all.

>>10494796
christians on 4chan:
>reads "aristotle"
>has to write something about god immediately
ok bro

>>10486872
ratio'd

>>10493810
all the HD GTA games were preudo-remakes. IV was a remake of III, V was a remake of SA, and VI will be a remake of VC.

now that Rockstar is done with all the cities that were in GTA 1, that means the next GTA will be set in Anywhere City

>>10489795
>>10489830
People need to learn that the vast majority of consumers have no choice. An all-out blitz of propaganda since the dawn of telegraphy and radio and even newspapers has rendered formerly critical and sensitive human beings into last men, or glazed-eye cattle. And just like real beef, you can pump them full of growth hormones and GMO corn slop, or you can raise them on natural pasture like roaming buffalo.

Unfortunately the masters who control the entire world's media, educational, political, military, and most importantly financial apparatus, do not want healthy cattle. They, themselves, have become the Philistines they once hated. How could they possibly avoid the same poison they put in the food and water and air? Nowhere on Earth is free of microplastics, for example. The masters have become dull and gray, starting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, due to a deliberate decision to kill classical art.

They started the video game industry and its trends, but it was hands-off at first. The dawn of musical recording was mostly opera, jazz, and folk (AKA soul). It only went downhill from there. The film industry followed the same soul-sucking trend. Once the medium proves that it isn't a silly novelty, it cannot be allowed to thrive organically.

>zoomer culture gives you a glimpse of what's next
>because it reflects the consumer perfectly
Stop blaming zoomers for the way things are. Generational warfare, directed above or below your age, is a way to distract you from the real enemy.

If you want video games to have soul again, if you want to see real art, if you want to eat clean food and breathe fresh air, you must:
>stop in-fighting
>organize offline with like-minded people
>boycott EVERYTHING
>refuse to be governed and elect local people who will order the arrest and trial of politicians, bankers, military officers, ceos, scientists, etc complicit in mass poisoning

>>10501889
>organize offline with like-minded people
This is next to impossible for so many reasons.

>>10489795
I think this might explain the stark contrast of box art between regions. The american one always looks like a toy or something sloppy to catch people's eye and that's it. It's interesting since I think the people in the states marketing products like this didn't have the greatest understanding of them and just thought of them as something to market to kids and nothing else.

>>10504505
>The american one always looks like a toy or something sloppy to catch people's eye and that's it
Pretty much. Same reason why most burger games are also shovelware with no soul whatsoever. Horrendous consumerist culture.

>>10486378
yeah i remember trying to get an A rank in the original resident evil 2 to unlock 4th survivor, nowadays stuff like that is just dlc, fucking lame (i dont know if the 4th survivor is dlc in the remake though)

another thing i loved was unlocking new costumes.

>>10504547
A bit of a tangent but I'm always disappointed when fighting games have really interesting character designs, but the game pretty much almost doesn't explore them in any depth. I really wish there was a KOF rpg of some sort to flesh out the world a bit more.

>>10504705
It's an SNK game, it's not worth making lore about.

>>10504710
You're fucking lame dude

>>10486872
Soulless post. All words are memewords

>>10489830
>V-tubers, tik toks, gacha etc. are some next stage, where art had eroded to the point that it's devoid of form, shape or anything but surface level brain rot appeal.

You're insinuating a me vs them mentality, but it's more complex than that. Just like /vr/, there are a gazillion other niches that appreciate other forms of art and they have their pocket of fans. We aren't the last bastion of high art.

>>10502478
Mainly because there's a hole in his brain where his mind should have been.

>>10501889
THIS is it!!

>>10486347
it meant not looking out for the money but providing people with quality entertainment that had thought out gameplay mechanisms or an effective plot...

>>10496254
>>10500157
>Old Testament quote from David
>hears Christianity
You may be onto something.

Look, only Christians call that book Psalm. Jews call it Tehilim and muslims don't believe in it at all.

>>10486347

>>10507104
>>10507112

It's just a faggoty 4chan way of saying that a game is charming, but in typical faggoty 4chan manner it ended up getting adopted and used as a ME GOOD YOU BAD descriptor

>>10507124
>the book is called something different in another language
You can typologize based on that, but the same author is speaking. Anyway soul reminds me of finding a copy of Bible Adventures in a cubby hole at church.

>>10507142
>umm sweaty it's ackshually a jewish book did u just assume my religion
>you're using the christian name

>>10489301
It has literally, LITERALLY always been this way.

>>10507156
If you've read enough books or articles you'll hear people using both interchangeably.

>>10487370
Can relate. I know someone who gets mad because he doesn't understand the words like "soul" or "kino".

>>10489301
Basically Miyazaki's "Anime is a mistake" quote and what he meant in-context.

It's entirely because of money and the game industry trying to be the next Hollywood.
>game has low budget, small team of people making it
>expectation to preform isn't high, suits let studios do whatever
>can experiment and get weird with it
>turn a profit, everyone wins
vs
>game has high budget, gigantic team of people making it
>expectation to perform is huge, huge corporate oversight
>no vision, everything is voted on by a committee, ridiculous amounts of red tape, microtransactions, etc.
>game has to turn a profit or the studio is shut down
Everything in entertainment is too high budget.

>>10507167
I've read my fair share of Jewish theology books and they make it a point to not use the Christian names.
>inb4 shalom rabbi

>>10507194
What's the best book you've read on the subject? I'll concede that it's more likely for modern secular or Judeo-Christian authors to use both forms.

>>10507203
I don't know what the name is in English, but I've been most impressed with a book that's all about Shabbat. Like what's not allowed, why not, where the rabbinic safeguard rules come from, and all the most hotly debated arguments about sidestepping Shabbat restrictions. I admit, that last part often goes to "ask your local rabbi lol", but it's interesting to hear an argument around the legality of poaching an egg by pouring boiling water from a pot into another pot then from this into another pot and crack an egg into the third one.

>>10486347
A certain level of jank and flaws that show something as a product of its time in a charming way.

>>10507254
You mean you don't know that the name is in Christian, right? Hilariaous.

>>10508676
Sorry, I read Hebrew books.

>>10508690
I know many people who read Hebrew books. It hasn't made any of them so retarded they conflate English and Christian. There must be some other cause.

>>10509308
I'm not religious but there are some really good Hebrew books out there. It's essential to know the Qabbalah so as to 'get' series like SMT. I'd also rec the Golden Dawn, good book.

>>10507272
This seem to be the correct answer.

>>10509972
But if I read those will it break my brain so bad I won't be able to distinguish between English and Christian?
For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the ability to 'get' series like SMT, and lose his own mind?

>>10486978
Nigger!

>>10486513
/thread

the financial crash ruined gaming by killing AA games, making companies have to play safe to not go bankrupt, and ruining all experimentation in gaming. if it wasn't for the financial crash, the PS3/360 era could've been the golden age of gaming and gaming could've kept getting better and better. the PS3/360 era had such huge amazing potential: 3D was perfected, censorship was at its lowest, games were starting to have deep and mature themes and targeted mature audiences, and graphics finally stopped being old and blocky. it was all thrown into the trash for brown and piss COD FPS slop.

>>10486972
Chrono Trigger