{"id":409,"date":"2006-08-30T12:47:56","date_gmt":"2006-08-30T16:47:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2006\/08\/30\/top-gaming-myths\/"},"modified":"2006-08-31T21:02:59","modified_gmt":"2006-09-01T01:02:59","slug":"top-gaming-myths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2006\/08\/30\/top-gaming-myths\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Gaming Myths"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Extreme Tech&#8217;s Loyd Case (one of the &#8220;final words&#8221; on hardware, as far as I&#8217;m concerned) has written one of those &#8220;list&#8221; articles that are entirely geared to provoke discussion. And here I am, discussing it. Bravo.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.extremetech.com\/article2\/0,1558,2009491,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532\">Case&#8217;s topic is Gaming Myths<\/a>, and the top ten list runs the gamut from contemporary business anaysis (<em>Is the PS3 as doomed as the PC is<\/em>?) to cultural analysis of who gamers are and what they want.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure what I think about Myth 7, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.extremetech.com\/article2\/0,1697,2009494,00.asp\">PC Games are too complicated<\/a>&#8220;. Though I&#8217;m sure that Case&#8217;s line about <em>Windows Solitaire<\/em> is meant as a joke, his larger point that a game with a good interface can make a sophisticated game easy holds true. (I often draw a distinction between &#8220;complex&#8221; and &#8220;complicated&#8221;. The two should not be used interchangeably.)<\/p>\n<p>But then you run into an editorial <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediacrumb.com\/2old2play\/\">like this one<\/a> from snakemeister (yeah, I know&#8230;) opining that thanks to strategy guides, many games are designed so that you can&#8217;t experience everything without some help. Easter eggs, hidden special items&#8230;games aren&#8217;t just complicated. They are designed to trick you.<\/p>\n<p>What does one have to do with the other? Case&#8217;s argument that PC games aren&#8217;t more complicated than console games isn&#8217;t too interesting if console games have also spiralled upward in complication. Though it seems that some people can turn <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2148548\/\">Madden into a learning experience<\/a>, it can take a lot of time to become good at a particular game.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve written before about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.extremetech.com\/article2\/0,1697,2009495,00.asp\">Myth 10<\/a>, what I dubbed <a href=\"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2005\/05\/25\/gamer-shame\/\">Gamer Shame<\/a>. I think this is a generational thing, but,as Case notes, it isn&#8217;t helped by the mocking self-loathing of many gaming media outlets who imply their own readers are nerdish, isolated teens living in a basement surrounded by photos of Stacey Kiebler.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Extreme Tech&#8217;s Loyd Case (one of the &#8220;final words&#8221; on hardware, as far as I&#8217;m concerned) has written one of those &#8220;list&#8221; articles that are entirely geared to provoke discussion. And here I am, discussing it. Bravo. Case&#8217;s topic is Gaming Myths, and the top ten list runs the gamut from contemporary business anaysis (Is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-6B","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}