Wired: The Game Console Is Dead

[AppleQueso]

It's a puzzle game involving blocks. Maybe I'm just spoiled with higher tier games, but it's just terribly boring. I'm not saying it's badly made at all, nor am I attempting to devalue the brilliance of its design. The difficulty curve is great, and it's simple to understand yet hard to master. The makings of a great game. But to me, it's boring. Don't interpret my question "why does one need to appreciate it" mean that I don't see what makes it good. I'm just curious as to your reasoning behind that.

Then again, I'm the type of person that plays Sim City 2000 when I'm away from home. I need true complexity in my games to have any sort of fun. I also think Pac-Man is boring as well, by the way. Blasphemy I'm sure, but whatever.

One doesn't necessarily have to actually like a game to appreciate it. Saying "all you do is drop blocks" is dismissing what makes it good.

[alienjesus]

I'm not saying it's badly made at all, nor am I attempting to devalue the brilliance of its design. The difficulty curve is great, and it's simple to understand yet hard to master. The makings of a great game.

I think when he said you should 'appreciate it' he meant exactly this. You might not enjoy it but you appreciate that it's a good game. The 'all you do is drop blocks' comment probably led him to believe that you don't understand why it's such a good game.


For the record, I also don't find Tetris especially exciting (or Pac-Man for that matter) but I can easily see why they're good games, and why others enjoy them.

[AppleQueso]

You guys go ahead nad call Pac-Man boring. It pales in comparison to Ms Pac-Man anyway.

[Michi]

Ah yes, Wired. I have vague memories of browsing through Wired while going through the magazine rack. Now I remember why I never picked up an issue.

[marlowe221]

As people have said before, depending on how you look at it, consoles -- as game machines exclusively -- have already died.

The question then is: Why is this a problem? What is inherently bad about a multipurpose machine?

Nothing, it's awesome. Having a system clutter up the living room for one thing only is not very enticing for the average consumer.

As I've said before, I even wish proprietary machines would cease to exist altogether, but we can't always have what we wish for, can we?

Why is it bad? If the game-playing function of the machine got less money/time/effort in development than it otherwise would have because we just HAD to have Netflix on a 14th device in our homes then, for me, I would rather have a dedicated game machine. But if not? Well, meh.

IMHO devices that do multiple things typically end up sucking at 1-2 of them - at least at our current level of technology.

[gtmtnbiker]

Am I the only one who thinks that pasting a link to a long article/video and just saying "discuss" is a really annoying and bad way to start a thread? Quote the intresting paragraphs and highlight the most important points of the text. Comment the text yourself. Tell us what exactly it is that you want us to discuss about. Do something. If you're not willing to take the effort to present your/some one elses argument in an intresting manner, then it's not likely that other posters are willing to take the effort to read through a wall of text if they've only seen the headlight.

No, you're not the only one. I've noticed that this is Pulsar's MO to do this sort of thing. He never comes into his own thread to contribute to the discussion. I have to think he only does this to see what kind of reaction he can get.