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[ink.inc]

  This means that Mario can occupy 3324*75 different locations or 249,300 diffferent locations.*post cut out cause it was long as fuck*

this kind of complexity isn't really what we are talking about, here.

out of all these possibilities you talked about, the majority of them are things like jumping pointlessly forever until the time ends, or running against a wall for minutes, or  pressing back and forth repeatedly at the very beginning of the stage, or throwing yourself stupidly into lava, etc. 

consider this example: is a rock more complex than SMB3? a rock could be or be taken to ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE. it could be at nearly any speed or temperature. think of all the things you could use it for!! there are definitely many more possibilities than atoms in the universe.
yet, a rock is boring, cause all these possibilities are either impractical, pointless or just insane.

Obviously you are not very verse into rock science, with rock you can do so many things, from weapon to house and extracting ore. Rock is deep man.

 

My first non-sarcastic, non-belittling 'lol' of the day.

[mirosurabu]

this kind of complexity isn't really what we are talking about, here.

out of all these possibilities you talked about, the majority of them are things like jumping pointlessly forever until the time ends, or running against a wall for minutes, or  pressing back and forth repeatedly at the very beginning of the stage, or throwing yourself stupidly into lava, etc.  

consider this example: is a rock more complex than SMB3? a rock could be or be taken to ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE. it could be at nearly any speed or temperature. think of all the things you could use it for!! there are definitely many more possibilities than atoms in the universe.
yet, a rock is boring, cause all these possibilities are either impractical, pointless or just insane.

Yup, you're pretty much right about that, but I think he was hinting at something else: there are different sorts of complexities or to be precise different ways to measure "game complexity". And different games score differently depending on which measure you choose.

What you are talking about here is probably decision-tree complexity, but this one is even harder to measure in video games and I think if one did, most video games would score poorly in comparison to combinatorial games.

[shig]

just saying counting possibilities doesn't mean shit

[C.A. Silbereisen]

You say that you agree with some things icycalm says, so I don't know if you're bringing this up as a point of contention or not.  But, just to clarify for everyone else, this is right in line with what icycalm says:

It was meant as neither a point of contention nor a an attempt to refute what he says, I simply wanted to do a quick rundown of the instincts behind my taste in games.

I've read the entire article now (and agree with pretty much all of it), but it's from 2008 and doesn't seem to be in line with what he says today i.e. that you should compare genres and that the way to good criticism is to look beyond genre boundaries and establish common criteria for all games (I don't have the exact quote handy right now, but I'm positive he said something to that effect). In the article you linked to he seems to be more tolerant of different tastes, whereas he just recently went on about what kind of subhuman fagot you'd have to be to enjoy JRPGs more than chess. His Genealogy has an entire sub-header titled "Lesser Tastes = Lesser Men". It's that stuff I disagree with.

I dunno, maybe I'm just misinterpreting something.

Oh and also, thank you for actually trying to clarify things about Icycalm rather than calling everyone a fag and responding with "lol".

[shig]

This thread is not for parrot, parrot only know what their master told them.

who gives a shit if he's quoting or linking or copypasting

he's right


also considering the whole thread pretty much revolves around what icy says, how can we not quote him for evidence, especially when every one has a different interpretation of his posts?

[Gimym JIMBERT]

It's also about jason rohrer

[shig]

who !?!?!?!?

[William Broom]

In the end, whether people are "liking" or "hating" modern games is irrelevant. People have always liked and hated stuff, and always for stupid, nonsensical reasons. It's criticism that's at stake here.

With this quote I think I'm able to come closer to engaging with icy's ideas. If you replaced "stupid, nonsensical" with something like "diverse", then I would pretty much agree with the statement.

If we think about icy's ideas solely in the context of game criticism, then he doesn't sound quite so crazy.
It seems to me that criticism is not about quality and value so much as it is about conveying ideas of quality and value to other people. In the article about comparing genres, icycalm talks about a list of 'Top 10 lightgun shooters' and how the purpose of that list would be to introduce newcomers to the genre and veteran players to games that they've overlooked. So it's not just about some sort of aspergers-induced desire to sort everything by numbers.
So there are two things that criticism can be about, neither of which involve any "objective" or "ultimate" standard. First, it can convey information to people with like-minded tastes i.e. veteran players, because they are simply unaware of the existence or quality of game x. "You like lightgun games, and so do I. I like 2 Spicy. Therefore you will probably like 2 Spicy as well."
Secondly, criticism can encourage people to develop new tastes i.e. those new to the genre. "Here is something that can be enjoyed in a way that you've never enjoyed before."

Forget about 'quality' or 'enjoyment' for a moment. Criticism requires definite criteria that can be ranked, so if a game has value in a way that can't be ranked, it's useless as far as criticism goes.
Icycalm's argument would be that complexity is measurable whereas authorial intent, emotion or whatever are not measurable and thus are outside the boundaries of criticism. (He'd probably also say they're subhuman fagotry, but oh well.)


Have to go again, but I'll think about this more later. @Miroslav, if you're not interested in reading icycalm's articles then do you really think there's any value in your posting in a discussion about icycalm's ideas?

[Gimym JIMBERT]

And there is two icy, old and fresh and new and crank

[ஒழுக்கின்மை]

this kind of complexity isn't really what we are talking about, here.

out of all these possibilities you talked about, the majority of them are things like jumping pointlessly forever until the time ends, or running against a wall for minutes, or  pressing back and forth repeatedly at the very beginning of the stage, or throwing yourself stupidly into lava, etc.  

consider this example: is a rock more complex than SMB3? a rock could be or be taken to ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE. it could be at nearly any speed or temperature. think of all the things you could use it for!! there are definitely many more possibilities than atoms in the universe.
yet, a rock is boring, cause all these possibilities are either impractical, pointless or just insane.

exactly: even icycalm said that complexity is about *meaningful* decisions, not just about the total number of decisions possible

[PleasingFungus]

So there are two things that criticism can be about, neither of which involve any "objective" or "ultimate" standard. First, it can convey information to people with like-minded tastes i.e. veteran players, because they are simply unaware of the existence or quality of game x. "You like lightgun games, and so do I. I like 2 Spicy. Therefore you will probably like 2 Spicy as well."
Secondly, criticism can encourage people to develop new tastes i.e. those new to the genre. "Here is something that can be enjoyed in a way that you've never enjoyed before."

Forget about 'quality' or 'enjoyment' for a moment. Criticism requires definite criteria that can be ranked, so if a game has value in a way that can't be ranked, it's useless as far as criticism goes.
Icycalm's argument would be that complexity is measurable whereas authorial intent, emotion or whatever are not measurable and thus are outside the boundaries of criticism. (He'd probably also say they're subhuman fagotry, but oh well.)

I have no idea how you move from "criticism is useful for pointing interesting games out to people" to "criticism requires definitive criteria that can be ranked".

Could you elaborate on that? Because you've completely lost me.

Also, I feel kinda sad that this post was completely ignored, especially because it's somewhat relevant.

[Gimym JIMBERT]

Many relevant post was ignore no big deal, it's not an intelligent discussion, it's a shouting contest with accidental thought when one ego try to prove justify his point to another.

[mirosurabu]

@Miroslav, if you're not interested in reading icycalm's articles then do you really think there's any value in your posting in a discussion about icycalm's ideas?

There is no value in anything in this thread or on Tony's website. Timmy, Sinclair, Breadcultist and a couple of other people which included me talked and talked and nothing.

I can read his articles no problem, but if you want to discuss then discuss don't just drop a link. I think I already said this.

EDIT:

exactly: even icycalm said that complexity is about *meaningful* decisions, not just about the total number of decisions possible

But you completely ignore the point of his post which was to show that there are different but valid ways to measure complexity. The guy even mentioned "game-tree complexity" but nobody stood up and said "yes, this one!".

[Incision]

First of all, this is the article William Broom is quoting from:
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/does_anyone_hate_anything_anymore/

At the end of the day I am pouring scorn on the rest of the internet not because they enjoyed No More Heroes, but because their reasons for doing so were some pretentiously "funny" animu clips, or the fact that they got such a big kick out of shaking the controller around like monkeys, in other words that that they were unwilling -- nay, that they were unable -- to see past the pointless novelty and realize that the underlying game design had about as much conceptual complexity as an FMV game from 1996....

Reasons, reasons, reasons.  It is all about the reasons.  And don't read too much into his use of "right" and "wrong" in that article--think "strong reasons" and "weak reasons."

EDIT: Might as well go all the way with addressing PleasingFungus' post.

I'm not really interested in ranking one over the other. The key is that they're not the same game - they provide substantially different experiences.

Hey, criticism isn't for everyone.

The main idea is that criticism is necessarily comparative. For it to be useful at all, the critic must have high standards -- and the higher the standards, the more valuable the criticism. And again, the greater the number of things which are being compared, the higher the standards must be set: because human life is brief, and the amount of time one has to watch movies, read books or play games does not increase with the increase in the total number of movies, books or games.

To put it more simply, for someone who loves games in general, it is normal to enjoy all of the games they play, just as for someone who loves fishing, for example, it is normal to have fun whenever they go out fishing -- even on bad days.

Does this make sense?

So yes, you enjoy all (or almost all) of the games you play. The question is: which do you enjoy more? (And why?)

If someone is not capable of answering these questions, and insists that they enjoy all games equally, then there's nothing a reader can gain from such a person's opinions (-- in fact such a person does not really have opinions).

Think of a person's critical ability as a never-ending staircase. The critical task is to place ONE and only ONE game on each step of that staircase. For the person who likes everything there IS no staircase: he simply heaps all the games on the floor and says: "Hey man, just pick one! It's all good! Different strokes for different folks, etc." The critic, on the other hand, will sit down and labor over the task of setting each game on a single step, making it easy for his readers to immediately see which he values more than others. It doesn't even matter if his choices are "objectively" good or bad: the task of MAKING THESE CHOICES (and attempting to rationally justify them), of establishing a hierarchy, is criticism.

http://www.insertcredit.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=287620&sid=820217b325bb951bbe98415c29930f20#287620

The reason that you can't establish objective rankings for games - the reason that it's ridiculous to try - is bipartite. First - people are different, different people like different games and for different reasons.

Yes, and?  See the quoted article above.  An intelligent person can not only rank games but also rank criticism.  I mean, look at this:

The first person might be working a construction job, and plays complex games to give his mind the exercise it doesn't get elsewhere; the second person might be a rocket scientist, playing mindless games to give his brain a break.

Okay, but--is this a strong point from which to offer any criticism?  How far are you going to run with this idea? "This game was pretty cool because it helped me pass some time when I was waiting at the airport.  10/10"  (But at least that would be an honest review, and the reader could easily see that the criticism was not very valuable, maybe have a laugh, and look elsewhere...)

...everything he writes seems to be based on the assumption that taste is somehow linked to character. I just don't see any evidence or reasoning behind that.

How could your taste not be linked to your character?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை]

But you completely ignore the point of his post which was to show that there are different but valid ways to measure complexity. The guy even mentioned "game-tree complexity" but nobody stood up and said "yes, this one!".

of course there are different ways to measure complexity, but icycalm's theory defines a specific way of measuring it, so the other ways aren't relevant in criticizing his theory

there are other ways to define quark too, but that doesn't make those meanings of the word relevant to a discussion of quantum theory

[mirosurabu]

His articles aren't showing that:

1. he understands there are various ways to measure complexities
2. he has a special sort of complexity measurement of his own
3. his methodology is objective

So, I can't really infer that he has complexity of his own. He talks about how games should be complex and that complexity should be meaningful, but nowhere he says it's the sort of complexity he invented on his own, nowhere it looks like something really specific and concrete.

Please, if there really is an article where he explains the kind of complexity he likes and the way he measures it, post it here. Then we can talk about the value and importance of that complexity. Otherwise, how do you expect proper discussion?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை]

have you read his genealogy of art games essay? i thought he did those things there. here are some quotes:

a higher genre can POTENTIALLY give rise to higher games, but at the same time to lower games than have ever existed. And that's why a game of the order of Pac-Man can still be a blast to play, and why such games can often be seen gaining ground against the badly-designed, sprawling, bloated three-dimensional simulation monsters. The stupid of course infer from this that there is some merit in simplicity as such, whereas the pleasure in going from a J- or MMORPG back to Pac-Man comes, not from simplicity per se, but from the relief of getting away from what I call "meaningless complexity"; from sham-complexity; from BLOAT — in other words from a game with many interconnecting parts that are however not properly co-ordinated

But to stay with the case of music, what all those composers were striving for in their relentless struggle to outdo each other in the sheer size and scope of their compositions, was not an increase of complexity for complexity's sake, but for the sake of mirroring, or at any rate of approximating — that is to say of simulating and thereby arousing and manipulating — the vast complexity of possible states of the human soul

So we see here how closely related the concepts of "immersion", "meaningful complexity" and "difficulty" are, and sense that the "co-ordination" of which Nietzsche speaks as the prerogative of the higher type must lie in their interrelation; but we must postpone their examination for another essay. For the present it will suffice to note that the complexity of a modern J- or MMORPG, or indeed of most modern 3D genres, is mostly sham-complexity; the choices that they offer mostly illusory and superfluous, if not downright self-contradictory. For the addition of a rule in a game, in any game (and not only a videogame) is, as we've already seen, to increase the game's complexity — otherwise there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to add any more rules. If the addition of a rule results instead in a decrease of complexity, it means that the rules clash; that they don't properly flow. And that is how what I call bloat is created; meaningless complexity is precisely this bloat: it is complexity that has ceased to be mechanically relevant AND HAS EFFECTIVELY PASSED OVER INTO THE REALM OF PURE AESTHETICS...

i think that understanding his concept of complexity is one of the main ways to understand his theory; he has a very specific meaning of the word that he uses, he doesn't mean it in the usual sense it's used. so again i don't really think criticizing how someone uses a word is relevant, he could use any word at all, or he could make up a word, it's the concept that matters, not the particular word that's used.

he even sometimes specifically refers to it as "meaningful complexity" as in the third quote above, to distinguish it from complexity in general

[Incision]

Man, don't start with the genealogy.  Just look here:
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_complexity_depth_and_skill/

It is indeed even possible to measure the absolute complexity of a game (and therefore its depth, and therefore the degree of skillful play that it allows) by simply measuring the maximum distance between the best and worst possible players. In our coin toss game that distance is zero. The best and worst possible players are forced to play exactly the same way (press the button; make a random guess), so that it is impossible for us to even distinguish them. In the most complex games yet made, Civilization, say, or Marvel vs. Capcom, or Supreme Commander, that distance is so great that the best player always towers above the worst like an invincible, untouchable god. (Note that the game does not have to support versus play in order for us to measure this distance. Skill disparity can easily be measured even in single-player games, usually in a number of different ways determined by the nature of the game in question.)

See the footnote for meaningful vs. meaningless complexity.  Also note that in the forum thread he stresses that it is not actually absolute but relative complexity that is relevant to criticism.  And here's another comment on why his way of measuring makes sense:

It will tell you how much work the worst player needs to do in order to reach the best. In other words, it will tell you how much work the worst player needs to do in order to master the game's complexity to the degree which the best player has. In other words, it will tell you the game's complexity.

Please, if there really is an article where he explains the kind of complexity he likes and the way he measures it, post it here. Then we can talk about the value and importance of that complexity. Otherwise, how do you expect proper discussion?

I know, right?  I posted it earlier but some asshole wanted to talk trash about it without reading it.  The nerve of that guy!

[mirosurabu]

I don't know how to respond because these paragraphs say very little. Very very little. Not a single thing from my list was covered there.

1. he understands there are various ways to measure complexities

Erm? Where does he exactly show he understands there are various ways to measure complexities? Where does he show he knows what a combinatorial game theory is?

2. he has a special sort of complexity measurement of his own

It's hard but possible to infer this.

3. his methodology is objective

Yes, I read his paragraphs and now I can easily and correctly apply his methodology.

No I can't, because he didn't explain how it works, so there is no way to tell how objective it is.

EDIT:

It is indeed even possible to measure the absolute complexity of a game (and therefore its depth, and therefore the degree of skillful play that it allows) by simply measuring the maximum distance between the best and worst possible players. In our coin toss game that distance is zero. The best and worst possible players are forced to play exactly the same way (press the button; make a random guess), so that it is impossible for us to even distinguish them. In the most complex games yet made, Civilization, say, or Marvel vs. Capcom, or Supreme Commander, that distance is so great that the best player always towers above the worst like an invincible, untouchable god. (Note that the game does not have to support versus play in order for us to measure this distance. Skill disparity can easily be measured even in single-player games, usually in a number of different ways determined by the nature of the game in question.)

Haha, this is a fun read. It only shows how subjective his methodology is though. There is no proper way to measure "distance" between the worst and the best players. It's just completely subjective measure. But he does define what he likes in games, so that's cool, but unfortunately he shows no signs of being objective.

It's also completely flawed. Suppose I make a game where you grind by pressing single button. Now suppose the main is fighting the opponent. Now suppose you win by having better stats. The player who grinds will be infinitely distanced form the worst player, so game will be, according to Tony's logic, be the most complex game ever.

And finally, games of chance (such as tossing a coin) are skillful too because human thinking patterns are exploitable.

So much for Tony Zirbas the amateur game theory writer.

[eva]

your complete dismissal and arrogance is showing