Eberon on 2/12/2003 at 21:19
Am I the only person who is getting really tired of hearing the buzzword emergent when this game is referenced? It is driving me into a rage! Are all the review staff in the world nothing more than parrots? The English language is very robust, containing many synonyms. Furthermore, I seriously doubt that if someone doesn't jump on the bandwagon and use this word a couple of times in their editorializing that Ion storm will send out a hit squad!
Arrrgh! I vote to an end of the term "emergent gameplay."
BlackCapedManX on 2/12/2003 at 21:46
And would you rather racing games were called a "racing game" by one reviewer and a "game with tendancies toward velocities of great magnitude" or "a beat your opponent by arriving at a destination in a shorter period of time than they do game" etc. by another? I would consider emergent to be almost a genre. Something of a genre within a genre, but it's a title to put on certain games if they allow more freedom in decision than other scripted games. And does no one use say "non-linear"? I could have sworn I've seen that in some reveiws. It's like asking that we not use First Person Shooter to define a First Person Shooter. I suppose that with repeated reference within one article it would make since not to use "emergent gameplay" dozens of times, but if every reviewer calls DX:IW a first person shooter with "emergent gameplay", then it would do well to define what the game is. I vote against.
Gingerbread Man on 3/12/2003 at 00:20
To be honest, I find "cutting edge" or--as it now sometimes shows up--"bleeding edge" to be a tiny bit more banal than "emergent"
I'm never sure exactly what PR departments think they mean by "emergent gameplay" but I assume they think it's a way l33t cyberword that the kidz will d1g.
But yeah. I'll line up to kill the next jumped-up asshat who peppers a review with it, sure. We could all do with "journalists" having a thesaurus handy if they're not going to learn the goddamned language well enough to avoid spouting the same clichéd buzzwords every three steps.
lame slug on 3/12/2003 at 00:30
My main concern with game review terminology is that many reviews read like fleshed out versions of press kits. Put a bullet in the press release and a journalist will spend two paragraphs exolling the virtues of it in the review. If I ever publish one of my stupid game projects (yeah right) I'll make a note of putting in the press kit a bullet called "press kit game review syntactic transfer gameplay" and see if any of the reviewers find it in the game. (Probably not, if I don't pay the magazine)
SubJeff on 3/12/2003 at 01:37
And to add insult ot injury they are banding this term about in relation to DX:IW which, if rumours are to believed (and weight given by the demo ) is actually taking a step BACK for PC games.
Udasai on 3/12/2003 at 06:21
lol--"emergent"! That's when the software does things the software designer didn't believe they explicitly directed it to do. The premise is that you create an environment (gaming, AI, etc) that is "robust" or "rich" enough for unforseen consequences to arise.
The best example of this from the old days is the "Game of Life".
However...it's vacuous. Say I define a language thusly:
S ::= N V O .
N ::= Yo mama | Deez nuts | A priest, a nun, and a rabbi
V ::= enters | found | eats
O ::= a bar | the Eiffel Tower | the Matrix
Lookit, a valid sentence is:
Deez nuts eats the Matrix.
OMG it's emerging!!!! HOW MANY INSANE SENTENCES CAN I MAKE??? Well, 27, but if we define V to be any verb in Webster's, then my stupindis intelect has created an emergicant system of stupifendous brillicationality!!
twisty on 3/12/2003 at 10:30
What game is he working on these days GS? I haven't heard anything about him in a while.
NoOne on 3/12/2003 at 11:35
hmm... the emergent stuff hasn't bothered me that much in reviews.
the rpg thing bothers me a lot more. come on people, dx:iw is NOT a rpg anymore. if they call a game with a choice of 14 biomods and ~9 weapons rpg then it's gone all weird. jedi knight/jedi academy are really hardcore rpgs then, not counting some recent fps games. lame. really lame.
ok, that bitching is not about the story. i believe the story will be really good anyhow.
-Londiste
...i'll never grow up!
Uncia on 3/12/2003 at 13:28
I think you have the definition of RPG wrong way round, laddo.
