#i'm not sure if this instinct comes more from video games or from digital art but FUCK

[apatheticlexicographer]

does anybody else get the thing where you work up the courage to start a project in the meatspace and get past the hours of indecision and intense deliberation over how to do each step Perfectly, and you get to a point where you've done all the calculations and mockups and trial runs and pro/con lists and second opinions you possibly can and you need to Do something irreversible that you're not 120% sure will work how you want it to,

and every bone in your body is like FUCK me i need to save this Right Now. checkpoint please. when was my last autosave??? control S control S control S

or is it just a me thing idk

[jet-bradley]

i talked about it in the tags of a post the other day but it really is funny to me how many people are like "tron 2.0 really is a closer sequel to tron 1982 than tron legacy! however i hate it because i struggle with [game mechanic]" like at some point just set the fucking game to easy if youre there to bask in the lore, or cheat, or watch someone else play it, like i promise you it is worth it even if youre having skill issues

but it's also so frustrating because as much as yall like to laugh about tron having an FPS sequel, i really do think tron 2.0 is a glowing example of 1) how a game *was* the perfect medium for a tron sequel specifically, 2) that game sequels can even be good at ALL in ways that compare to films or books they're supposed to continue, and 3) how a game is another immersive storytelling medium just like an amusement ride, and how especially for a company like disney with ties to both the film and amusement & attractions industry, it can serve that same niche

to knock tron 2.0 off the pedestal i always put it on, i will say one review i've read pointed out that it came out in a transitional period in the fps genre, and that's where the clunkiness in the level design comes from. but that's another similarity it has to tron (1982) imo. tron's digital animation gets laughed at because it's so dated, but they were animating it on a supercomputer because dedicated graphics processors at a scale suitable for the film industry didn't exist yet. the glowing circuits were colored over black and white films, almost like a digital take on how old silents were colored frame by frame.

like, has anyone else noticed how when something in a newer art medium, like a movie, or a video game, is bad because of the period it was made in, we immediately just call it bad? people dismiss the work that went into silent cinematography because they don't make use of camera cuts the way modern films do, when those techniques didn't exist yet because the medium was new. they make fun of the acting in silent films because it's exaggerated, but early silent actors are stage actors because film acting suitable for a camera that can capture close up shots did not exist yet. we make fun of tron's digital animation like digital animation had even been done in the film industry on the scale of tron before tron. we have the instinct to do the same for old games...

when we struggle with old arcade games, i'm talking Discs of Tron, Tron arcade cabinet, and other old games, it's always that the controls are bad, it's never that we're bad. because we grew up with them, how could we be bad at them? there's no recognition for how we grew up with games that drew from the generations of games that came before them, just like with films. tron 2.0 plays awkwardly because it's an older game, sure. but does it feel awkward because it's an awkward game, or because we're used to games that rely on their players having a sense of how to play games that built off games like tron 2.0? and the games that built off the games that built off games like tron 2.0's generation of games?

compare that to how we talk about the writings of much older authors than the film industry. when you're in high school, your teachers get ANGRY if you say that you don't like the writing of authors from the 18th century, because it's hard to parse and there's tons of sentences long enough that if you wrote them, your teachers would call them run-on sentences and mark you down a grade. and there's a reason for that; not only does it help you learn how to read at that level, giving the struggle to read it merit, but it helps you appreciate how authors learn from each others' writing and written language evolves over time. to be clear: YOUR TEACHER IS RIGHT HERE. even if it's hard to read, it's worth the struggle to become a stronger reader and it helps you appreciate modern books more.

but why don't we give that same respect to more modern mediums? how come old movies are just "antiquated" and old games are just "clunky"? is it because games and movies are more popular forms of art, and less intellectual than plays or books? in that case, why don't we do more to teach people how to appreciate where the games and films they love came from? why don't we appreciate that the struggle to work through an old game is a part of learning how to play new ones? why don't we appreciate the work people went through with genuinely antiquated tools of their medium to forge the techniques people use to create with them in the present day? why do we only offer that patience to some mediums and not others?