Jimquisition: Lugoscababib Discobiscuits

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

I have very little to say about this topic. Gender issues and game publishing practices, I can charge in with verbal battleaxe in hand...but I can confidently say I have never heard anyone talk about this issue. I listen to the Escapist Podcast and get several game magazines, both digital and in the mail. I've never heard of this argument.
Its oddly reminiscent with that late 90s renaming of things. Where shyness became social anxiety disorder and what not.
Ludo-narrative dissonance used to be called 'silly'. I think Conker called it 'Context Sensitive' and it was hysterical. Conker is a prime example, indeed because that's the point of the game. Conker does not want to play the game. He wants to go home and fully interacts with the player character and developer. And yet because he's the protagonist, he has no choice but to continue. Practice different then premise. And it was hysterical.
People really need to lighten up about these things.

Also did this week's episode seem shorter than normal? It just feels like it was over really quickly.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

SWEEEET coat man!

Keep up the good work too.

 

[00slash00]

I thought the argument people were making about Infinite was primarily the scene where Elizabeth runs away because you kill a group of people. Where she is a afraid of you and thinks you're a monster, and then a few minutes later is completely fine with you killing anything that moves

 

[Ukomba]

I get the point of Bioshock being violent, but the violence was so catoonish that it brought me out of the game. A lot of it looked like it could have come straight out of Team Fortress 2.

 

[Kaendris]

Disregard... you have already stated your opinion on the matter I questioned, no sense in drudging up the past.

 

[infinity_turtles]

I agree with most of this, but disagree that Bioshock Infinite incorporated the violence into the narrative well. Last of Us though? While I may not have enjoyed that particular game's combat very much, the violence very clearly serves the story there. I don't know how anyone can play the game and not get that, even if they disagree with the game's tone/message/whatevs. The violence, and the degree of violence served that story. Infinite, while there being combat serves the story, the way it was handled didn't.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Hey Jim, did you lose some weight? It looks like you lost some weight. If so, good for you. Keep it up. We don't want you to die. We know god wants you by his side, but it will have to wait.

I don't care much about this issue, but it really was a huge problem in Tomb Raider. And not just because of discobiscuits, but because the series had always relied on platforming puzzles more than action. So to suddenly have that shift in...genre, essentially, and in such a strange way makes no sense. It's a good thing for Tomb Raider that shooting mechanics are so damn satisfying. But I wouldn't have minded if it was introduced more slowly and carefully into the game. Lara got her huge arsenal of firepower and the expertise to use it way too fast.

 

[Bad Jim]

Good episode.

However I never saw that problem with Tomb Raider either, at least not as much as people seem to. It's a story of a girl who's trained both physically and to use weapons by an ex-special forces dude (you'll miss it if you don't pay attention). And the whole premise of the character arc is that she doesn't know herself. Hence after the first "that just happened" freakout, she shocks herself with what she can't do, "It's scary just how easy it was."

Yes the combat is exaggerated like in much of gaming but it is not completely at odds with the narrative or glossed over.

I bought that in the Steam sale and have been playing it over the weekend. I did hear a quip about her having to do a lot of hikes. But I didn't hear anything specific about weapons training.

I figured she was taught the skills relevant to archeology. Long hikes. Living in remote, harsh environments. Maybe learning how to use a gun to keep unwanted wildlife away. But not how to kill dozens of mercs. Not how to use a bow either, that takes years of effort for no forseeable purpose.

 

[Lightknight]

Solid episode. Thanks for bringing this up. I actually heard a person use this in-person recently for a book and had to explain that a failure to immerse in the plot is not what the term means, just a potential result.

 

[Piorn]

So who's the target audience for this episode?
There are people who know what Ludonarrative Dissonance is, and they don't need this episode.
There are people that don't, and if these people use a word they don't understand to prove a point, they'll most likely not stop using it just because someone reasons with them.

Ludonarrative Dissonance is an interesting topic, true, but explaining it properly would be a much more constructive way to deal with it than just ranting about people misusing the word.

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

If that is the complaint, if that is the problem people have with the game, then they should say that instead of shouting "ludonarrative dissonance!" when it does not apply. The gameplay and story differing from each other and an interesting world that players aren't allowed to explore because they're being railroaded from shooting gallery to shooting gallery are two massively different complaints. You aren't really contradicting anything said in the video. In fact, you're pretty much proving Jim's point: that people are tossing ludonarrative dissonance around because they aren't intelligent enough to properly articulate what their actual problem with the game is.

The violence never bothered me in bioshock infinite, what did bother me was how booker was a one man army gunning down thousands of cops soldiers and HUGE SPOILERS vox members, even with all of the vigor?s he has that?s ridiculous.

It also bugged me how long it took before soldiers started to appear, you would expect them to start showing up very quickly but instead they send out hundreds of ill-equipped cops to be gunned down in mass before bringing out the big guns.

Welcome to shooters, you must be new.

Well that is exactly it, not because it is used extensively is the criticism any less true. And YES, this does constitute some ludo-narrative dissonance. A lot of games tend to require some narrative flexibility to make a game more enjoyable. It isn't a huge issue, but it can start grinding when it becomes an over-used trope. This is accentuated when a game takes itself very seriously, and tries to present a thoughtful narrative, but immediately throws in wave after wave of hundreds of increasingly difficult enemies just as mechanical stepping stone, starkly contrasting with the human exposition just presented, and severing a lot of the logical and emotional connection with our reality that it may have achieved before. With universes so thoughtfully crafted, it is these smaller details that show the cracks and the tension between game mechanics and game narrative.

Also, assuming that by using a term people are not intelligent enough is insulting. It is possible that they are observing that division between game and story in ways that you may not have thought about, or even that this fractures are pertinent only to their experience of the game or their playstyle. I'm sure there are people using the terminology without full knowledge of it's meaning, but so far I have not really seen that as a standard, so why be insulting straight away?.

I'd be interesting in seeing some of what Jim is talking about here. 'cause the only one I can think of is the EC episode, and there reasoning wasn't just "violence".

Link to the episode for those interested.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/in-service-to-the-brand

Doesn't surprise me at all that Extra Credits was wrong. Did they talk about how Gears of War is a first person shooter again too?

Well, the fact that EC made a mistake defining the genre of one game (not really a very important mistake in relation to this topic) doesn't make their reasoning about this subject wrong (that is in fact a fallacy). To be honest, EC's analysis of Bioshock is rather clear, coherent, logical and correct(I will not say it's true, because they make a few subjective observations, but it makes a lot of sense). In any case, you shouldn't dismiss it so quickly without even trying to understand it's explanation. And no, it isn't solely based about the violence.

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

I'd say both Bioshock Infinite and Last of Us do have ludonarrative dissonance because the story is trying to tell use how great/moral/right/sympathetic the protagonist is but during the game the protagonist keeps killing everyone who opposed them, rather than try to resolve their problems in any other way. As long as the gameplay only allows the player to act as a mass murderer a narrative that shows this character acting any other way has a high chance of exhibiting ludonarrative dissonance.

Except they don't...

Maybe slightly in the case of Booker, since although he is a desperate, tough war veteran with a shady past, he seems to be troubled about it, and wants to correct his wrongs. So I'll grant you that he does seem like a good guy that has done wrong, so there is some dissonance with his endless killing.

But Joel!?

Spoiler

Joel is a troubled guy, he is NOT a good guy. Sure we can relate to some of his suffering, since he will do anything to survive, but the story repeatedly states that he is literally willing to do anything to achieve what he wants.
Violence is integral to this, it doesn't try to make you forget about Joel's actions, or make him look great/moral/right/sympathetic, just desperate and driven.
The game also does promote stealth in various occasions, so yes, there are very beneficial alternatives to violence.
If you have not finished the game, you don't know what Joel s capable of, but in many ways he is very much the villain of the story.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Don't you just love it when people use terminology that that they don't understand the meaning of and instead just use to sound sophisticated when all they're really saying is "Stop liking what I don't like."

 

[Entitled]

It'd be useful if Jim actually gave examples of the people who used the words so vile and repugnant as to make him yell at them over the internet. Because at this point I don't know if there actually are people (who are meant to be taken seriously) that say such things or if Jim is just misinterpreting justified criticism.

Indeed. It seems to me that most people here are on the same page about discussing certain games having problems with exactly how violence is portrayed, while still being grievously outraged against this illusive mob of "those people out there" who are supposedly shouting "ludonarrative dissonance" without any proper context.

 

[RikuoAmero]

I just started playing Tomb Raider a couple days ago, and I noticed this discontinuity myself. I'm seeing Lara being afraid and traumatised, yet somehow she's able to pick up a bow and arrow, or a pistol and simply kill mooks with ease. Even the Heavies with riot shields are no match for her. I'm starting to think she's play-acting all the innocence and was actually trained by ninjas or something.

 

[Psychobabble]

Well look there's my new phrase for the week.

My question is, are the people you say are using the phrase incorrectly actually annoyed because they feel the violence level of the game doesn't match up with the narrative's depiction of the games protagonists? Or are they just annoyed the narrative is shallow and ineffective, and usually at a lesser literary level than of that of an old 1980s "action film"?

 

[DragonDai]

Amazing show this week.

 

[klaynexas3]

I have to still disagree about Infinite, as the combat in it highly does break with the narrative. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be violence, but the way it is done is that this city, which is supposed to be some upright moral haven, is loaded with soldiers and warriors and weapons a plenty, basically prepared to murder anyone within the city that they damn well please with a lead sandwich. While I am willing to accept this part on the grounds that it is Columbia's sole purpose to basically set the world aflame and destroy modern society, so of course they need trained soldiers and killers and weapons a plenty. If that is also so, then how is one man, who participated in all of one battle in his whole life, that was more of a massacre than an actual battle, is capable of mowing down this army that was capable of destroying entire cities, which we were even shown at something being possible. The story itself is about a man, who is all human. He shouldn't be this juggernaut capable of downing armed and trained masses. That makes no sense.

Along with that, the Vigors were just shoehorned into the game because "Bioshock needs super powers" which is horse shit because I never even used them. And also, the rummaging around trash cans in a city that hasn't been completely destroyed is also immersion breaking. Them having random places to buy guns and ammo and upgrades also makes little sense, as how many people in the city actually owned a damn weapon? Besides the police and such, only you and the rebels had guns, and even the rebels were supplied elsewhere, so in no way do those shops make sense in the game.

There is a lot wrong with the Infinite gameplay. There being loads of violence is not what is wrong with it, but gameplay wise and even still combat wise there is still plenty wrong.


As with The Last of Us; Joel's combat mode including loads of violence makes sense, as Joel was shown to be inherently a violent and even a pretty bad person. Sympathetic, sure, but he is not a good guy by any stretch of the word. Ellie, on the other hand (which is where most people point their disdain towards) only ever is forced to kill one person. Throughout the sections that you play with her, it is entirely the player's choice as to if Ellie performs any acts of violence, not Ellie's. The player can easily choose to use stealth, something the game even at plenty of times says you can and should use. Stealth is a massive part of the game, meaning Ellie is never put to the point to where she actually, canonically speaking, kills anyone, except that one point in the game, which was meant to be her turning point. It was a moment that made sense.

 

[RJ 17]

Lugoscababib Discobiscuits

This week, Jim loads his gun and shoots holes in the argument that certain games suffer from ludonarrative dissonance, just because they're violent.

Watch Video

Oh man, speaking of people automatically dismissing violence, have you read greg tito's GTA V review? Oh yeah, how dare a GTA game be violent.

I just read that and...really couldn't quite believe it. I have to wonder if Greg has ever played a GTA game before? It's a series based on jumping into cars, mowing down pedestrians on the sidewalk before picking up a hooker, screwing her in a back alley, then beating her with a baseball bat to get your money back once you're finished. In other words: GTA is a series based on over-the-top violence. I get the feeling that Greg's the type of player that always drives on the road and stops for every stoplight when he plays GTA.

Oh, and Jim....that really is a damn fine suit you've got there.