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Blorx wrote:I'm not so much giving rap as a whole shit, as I am giving the standard for rap shit. And if it continues to be the standard, rap will continue to be a speed bump, regardless of how you look at it. Standards are what move us forward, whether we like where they take us or not.

Blorx, missing the point since 1994.

Renegade_Turner wrote:

Blorx wrote:I'm not so much giving rap as a whole shit, as I am giving the standard for rap shit. And if it continues to be the standard, rap will continue to be a speed bump, regardless of how you look at it. Standards are what move us forward, whether we like where they take us or not.

Blorx, missing the point since 1994.

1993*

This error invalidates anything you say for one turn.

Blorx wrote:This error invalidates anything you say for one turn.

Fail. You weren't able to reason until 1994. You think I'd count the day you came out of the womb?

This error invalidates anything YOU say for one turn.

Renegade_Turner wrote:

Blorx wrote:This error invalidates anything you say for one turn.

Fail. You weren't able to reason until 1994. You think I'd count the day you came out of the womb?

This error invalidates anything YOU say for one turn.

Hurba burba flisengar.

Turn taken. Your move.

Oh wait, that turn didn't count, so in effect, I didn't have to waste a turn

Let's look at it this way.

Standard = progress.

Standards are created by intellectuals (or in the case of rap, blithering idiots) who decide that what they've created for a certain grouping of ideals, objects, commodities, etc, is what the people should think of as that thing. They are then marketed to the masses, and if they catch on, other intellectuals, and possibly proprietors, catch on and push it towards "standard" status.

Standards are the norm. They're not usually the best way forward, and they're sure as hell not full-proof, but they're what we come to conceive as the prime thought of that concept.

For example, when you think of a shirt, you instantly think of a processed, one of a million, dyed, perfected piece of cloth, tailored exactly how the designer wanted it to be.

People elsewhere could be using towels or potato sacks as shirts, maybe even because they like it and not because they're forced to. However, the standard has been set that the above is what a shirt is.

From there, we try to cut corners AND make it better at the same time.

That's progression.

Renegade_Turner wrote:So you give out about rap.

Other music doesn't have that much depth when you look at it.

Hardcore? Too many breakdowns.

I agree.

Renegade_Turner wrote:Death metal? Too many songs about death and entrails and blood.

I agree.

Renegade_Turner wrote:Dub-step? Too many songs with that same annoying beat you hear in most dub-step songs.

I agree fully.

Renegade_Turner wrote:Fingerstyle? Too many people trying to copy Andy McKee.

Ironically, just as many people aren't. There are plenty of people still trying to copy Jose Feliciano.

Renegade_Turner wrote:Statium rock? U2 won't shut the hell up.

Lmfao.

Renegade_Turner wrote:You just don't get it. All forms of music have a lot of shit people and then a few good people.

I do get it. However, rap was the one called to question. It's the one giving the most end to progress. Pop, in general, has spread. It's made everything move towards some form of standard, rather than see truly inventive musicians.

This thread was a coherent conversation about games not to long ago...

Lotus Wolf wrote:This thread was a coherent conversation about games not to long ago...

'twas, 'twas.

Then we ran out of things directly related and started using comparisons...and got way off. >.>

Blorx wrote:Standard = progress.

I would (strongly) disagree with that statement.
Most people would say that The Beatles "set the standard" for rock music back in the 60's. Here we are, in 2010 and half the rock bands out there are still just trying to do the same thing that The Beatles did nearly 50 years ago. Standards do exactly that: keep things standardized. Whether you like this uniformity or not is a question of taste, but I have a hard time calling it "progress" (good or bad). I just see standards as a homogenizing agent.

That being said just because something is experimental, doesn't mean it's "good". I praise those who do try to do something different, but I find that frequently, experimental art seems to lose emotional power in its effort to be different. This doesn't mean that it can't inspire future experimentalism, with better results, though. Just think of it like a sandwich. You can be experimental, and put everything in the refrigerator on it, and it probably won't taste good (for example, eggs and peanut butter don't go together very well). That doesn't mean that you can't find new combo's that do taste good, though.

h2ostra wrote: That being said just because something is experimental, doesn't mean it's "good". I praise those who do try to do something different, but I find that frequently, experimental art seems to lose emotional power in its effort to be different. This doesn't mean that it can't inspire future experimentalism, with better results, though. Just think of it like a sandwich. You can be experimental, and put everything in the refrigerator on it, and it probably won't taste good (for example, eggs and peanut butter don't go together very well). That doesn't mean that you can't find new combo's that do taste good, though.

After reading this, I completely lost where my opinion was. My part of this discussion is adjourned, as I'm totally confused now.

You guys are right on one thing though, which I guess I tried to touch on (by trashing the idea of modern art, etc) and then muddled my opinions on - Quality > Innovation.

Renegade_Turner wrote:I was having this same argument with my girlfriend and our friend tonight. This was a dumb subject matter so bear with me. They were saying that Lady Gaga was good for being different, and that she was avant-garde, as in experimental and trying new things and so on. I was trying to stress the point that she wasn't "avant-garde", unless that means that she's a pretentious try-hard who attempts to throw everything but the fucking kitchen sick into what she's wearing and what's in her videos and so on. There's a difference between being a pioneer and being a pain in the fucking ass. I was saying that it was important that you find a balance between trying too hard to be generic and trying too hard to be "innovative". As h2ostra said, a lemon sausage raviolli feces sandwich could be considered "innovative". I actually detest that word for how much of a buzzword it's become. Anyway, yes, you need to strike a balance. Most people don't like something which has no distinguishing features whatsoever from everything fucking else. However, most people also don't like something which has the creator so wrapped up in everything being different to everything else that there's no actual sense of cohesion to the work in any way, shape or form, so that it just comes out as a big cluttered mess rather than the groundbreaking landmark of orgasmic innovation which they intended it to be in the first place.[/runonsentencerant]

I'm with you on this one. ^my thoughts exactly^

Imagine a video game so realistic, so vivid and detailed that you reach an elevated awareness while playing. The type of awareness and connectivity with all methods of input… where there are no filters.
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laura09 wrote:Imagine a video game so realistic, so vivid and detailed that you reach an elevated awareness while playing. The type of awareness and connectivity with all methods of input… where there are no filters.

The only thing I can think of is graphics simplified to symbols, or an ASCII game, controlled with just the keyboard without mouse. That's connectivity and elevated awareness...

A realistic, vivid and detailed video game would be distracting. The REAL world is distracting, which is why the brain filters it.



What is it? How can you tell what it is? There's just weird shapes, a circle and coloured blots below the circle. What should be just a black color that could be painted on a wall (that's all our eyes can tell us), is a hand. Unmistakably, a hand. There's no light, no shading, no shadows... We can only tell because our brain analyzed and filtered it. Another thing that should be unrecognizable from this angle, is the bottle of water. The bottle without a hand would be much harder to recognize. The falling water without the bottle would be even harder to recognize. But the instant you saw that image, it was filtered, analyzed, categorized, recognized. Hand - bottle - water.


I'm not sure if realistic graphics can produce the same speed-of-thought experience as some roguelikes and stylized games that do their best to actually minimize the need for filtering and recognition. Realism can be good for other stuff and it can look good. Same goes for complicated input methods - games are simplifications. Simplifying controls can make a game better.

Endoperez wrote:... The bottle without a hand would be much harder to recognize. The falling water without the bottle would be even harder to recognize. But the instant you saw that image, it was filtered, analyzed, categorized, recognized. Hand - bottle - water...

Reminds me of minesweeper ... the first few times you play you suck at it and you are slow, but the more you play the more you recognize patterns and find yourself clicking boxes almost instinctively ...

As for peripherals in games I imagine they will get much more complex (especially with Wii controllers and Project Natal pushing the boundaries of data input ...)