Comments on: SHOCK: George Will is a Snob! http://www.flockofcats.com/yulzopolis/arts-and-culture/shock-george-will-is-a-snob/ Politics, Video Games, Japan, Random Stuff, Etc Sun, 20 Jun 2010 18:11:22 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc hourly 1 By: <img src='http://www.flockofcats.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/rpx/images/google.png'/> Yulzopolis http://www.flockofcats.com/yulzopolis/arts-and-culture/shock-george-will-is-a-snob/comment-page-1/#comment-260 Yulzopolis Fri, 17 Apr 2009 01:01:52 +0000 http://www.flockofcats.com/yulzopolis/email-updates/shock-george-will-is-a-snob/#comment-260 the slovenly state described is from circa 2005, in my apartment in Austin, while procrastinating from grad school. When A-Yo was gone, I was slightly less unkempt. the slovenly state described is from circa 2005, in my apartment in Austin, while procrastinating from grad school. When A-Yo was gone, I was slightly less unkempt.

]]> By: naftali http://www.flockofcats.com/yulzopolis/arts-and-culture/shock-george-will-is-a-snob/comment-page-1/#comment-259 naftali Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:43:16 +0000 http://www.flockofcats.com/yulzopolis/email-updates/shock-george-will-is-a-snob/#comment-259 "alone in my apartment, unbathed, unkempt, playing WoW for 10 hours and subsisting on turkey sandwiches and carrot sticks" It's a good thing your better half came back. Had she been gone for another month we might have lost you completely. Although I will admit that the first 6 months of WoW when that was basically my life, too, were pretty good times. Not as good as my current domestic bliss, but I did have some fun. Anyway... George Will is a snob, obviously, and so is Roger Ebert for that matter, when he dismisses games and gamers. They can't really be blamed for it, however. They're old. I mean this in a completely neutral sense, however. They were adults when video games first became popular, and when they first became did they were marketed almost exclusively to children. It's difficult to fathom that a genre whose first steps included something simplistic as Pac-Man could evolve into a masterpiece like Portal, Bioshock, or Fallout 3. Would they "understand" what I find so intellectually stimulating about Portal or SimCity or EVE if I could show it to them for twenty minutes? Not likely. I grew up playing games, and so my mind has become accustomed to being entertained in a more active way. Movies and books and all that are wonderful, transcendent art forms, but they are essentially passive, and being able to pull the levers yourself, even if the outcome is as pre-scripted and essentially unspontaneous as a Michael Bay movie, is more interesting than just waiting for it to happen. “alone in my apartment,
unbathed, unkempt, playing WoW for 10 hours and subsisting on turkey
sandwiches and carrot sticks”

It’s a good thing your better half came back. Had she been gone for another month we might have lost you completely. Although I will admit that the first 6 months of WoW when that was basically my life, too, were pretty good times. Not as good as my current domestic bliss, but I did have some fun. Anyway…

George Will is a snob, obviously, and so is Roger Ebert for that matter, when he dismisses games and gamers. They can’t really be blamed for it, however. They’re old. I mean this in a completely neutral sense, however. They were adults when video games first became popular, and when they first became did they were marketed almost exclusively to children. It’s difficult to fathom that a genre whose first steps included something simplistic as Pac-Man could evolve into a masterpiece like Portal, Bioshock, or Fallout 3.

Would they “understand” what I find so intellectually stimulating about Portal or SimCity or EVE if I could show it to them for twenty minutes? Not likely. I grew up playing games, and so my mind has become accustomed to being entertained in a more active way. Movies and books and all that are wonderful, transcendent art forms, but they are essentially passive, and being able to pull the levers yourself, even if the outcome is as pre-scripted and essentially unspontaneous as a Michael Bay movie, is more interesting than just waiting for it to happen.

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