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[Stumpokapow]

It's pretty embarrassing. Imagine if on a serious film forum, instead of discussing Her or the new Blu-ray of Sunrise, posters argued over the merits of IMAX vs ETX and excitedly posted GIFs featuring the companies' executives. This is where games are at right now and those of us interested in the study of play are feeling increasingly alienated. Hopefully things will balance out once the glow of the new electronics wears off.

Might there be room for an AVSforums style forum where the subject of discussion is film but the topic of discussion is technical qualities, versus a forum that discusses more critical approaches to film or whatever? Like how both things are done on GAF. We have topics to discuss the nitty gritty of performance issues or technology, but we also have topics to discuss thematic content or mechanics.

 

[Zombie James]

I played both of the next-gen versions of Call of Duty, and didn't really notice a difference between the two. Sure, maybe if I squinted at my TV screen I could parse out the various inferiorities of the Xbox One version, but after poring over articles about "resolutiongate," the main question I was left with was: who gives a shit?

It effects the gameplay experience in some minute ways that are usually only apparent if you're really looking for them.

 

[SwiftDeath]

the main question I was left with was: who gives a shit?

Clearly your eloquence with the english language automatically forces me to respect you as a journalist although the comments on framerate differences as big as this one being minute are far more eye-opening

 

[PJV3]

Don't agree With the article, gamers/media talk about every aspect of gaming. Like everything, sometimes the conversation is shallow, sometimes deep.

 

[swcpig]

Resolution and FPS matters. It's part of the mechanics which makes games. Of course we should be talking about it.

We should also talk about games in a more nuanced and detailed manner. I agree with that but that's a different plea versus the technical aspects of a game. Some games do demand technical aspects to meet demands from the game such as immersion. Not all games demand that so that's not a benchmark qualifier for ALL games but necessary for many.

But what, wait, rape culture? What's that about - did I miss Tomb Raider being a rapey vibe game? I didn't play it the first time around and he tosses it in there like oh nevermind this.

 

[Dreams-Visions]

The problem is that deeper discussions are often shoved aside by fanboy wars and epeen measurements

No they aren't. And generally, surface discussions about resolution, framerates, and features are only prolonged in so much as they are struggled against by apologists and PR spin doctors. If it had simply been an accepted fact that the One could not and would not match the power of the PS4 and if their PR team had not tried to twist the story around to fool the gullible into believing there would be more parity, we wouldn't have 3,000 post threads about resolutions for new games as they come out.

Also, there are no shortage of substantive topics about this and every other game that comes out. Nobody would suggest NeoGAF's gaming side lacks threads about gender issues, morality, story concepts, reflections, etc. etc. etc.

 

[Syphon Filter]

 

[WarMacheen]

Another resolution doesn't matter article

just shut the fuck up already.

But does a slightly faster frame rate or denser resolution say much of anything about the role of video games in society today? It's time that game critics started separating out the signal from the noise.

Game critics have a hard enough time having integrity, let alone trying to tell readers what they should and shouldn't care about.

 

[SwiftDeath]

You know I would love, absolutely LOVE a journalist to go into detail what level of difference is required to make it matter? Literally half the framerate is the best takeway we have at present and they are still downplaying it. HALF THE FRAMERATE, HALF.

 

[Arkam]

Silly article.

It's like saying movie goers don't get enough respect 'cause some of them obsess over 3D, or leaked scripts, or actors personal lives, or whatever else that gets reported in the media regarding film.

IDK I thought it was spot on.
My take away was "when you cry about dumb things, you appear dumb"

Also this line was good
"Journalists, however, face another question when they start to see stories like this appear. When you write about something as a controversy, you're telling your audience that they should be viewing it as a controversy."

Simple minds need only a flicker of light to follow, so torch bearers aught to be more responsible.

 

[Neuromancer]

some sketchy-looking online reports about what the Xbox One's frame rate would be.

Are you going to take that, EatChildren? He's dissing your rep!

 

[Air Zombie Meat]

The only thing I found ridiculous about resolutiongate was using CoD as a benchmark for what these machines can do but theres not a lot of other options right now.

 

[TangoAlphaLima]

As it states, I think it's natural that gamers (or any type of consumer) would want to know which one is the definitive version when making a purchase. The main reason that so much discussion takes place of this issue is the lack of transparency from publishers.

Agree with this.

Ultimately, what most Gaffers want is the objectively best hardware with the objectively best software. I think where that message gets lost in translation is when there is obsession over these details to the point where the Xbone is viewed as a total failure because "720p 30fps, lulz."

 

[FrostuTheNinja]

Whatever your average hardcore gamer has to say about resolution pales in comparison to the average music nerd about vinyl/receivers/etc.

It sounds warmer.

I guess whoever wrote this has never had a single conversation about anything outside of videogames or simply likes to blow hot air out of their bum. Regardless, they sound like a hoot.

 

[Dreams-Visions]

A bit of strawmanning in the article.

Actually, I think it's a bit more relative privation than strawmanning. They're not really misrepresenting the position of the gamer who cares about framerates and resolutions; rather, they are arguing that these things don't matter because there are all these other things that really matter more. And that you suck for wanting to major in the minors.

 

[chrominance]

You sort of proved his point by linking to P4K's newer and less visible "The Pitch" column though. Those pieces are on the front page of the site for a short amount of time and aren't as big of a deal as their album/song reviews and their news articles. Hence, not one of their "best critical faculties," more of a niche concern.

I mean, I guess, but did Gamespot splash "CALL OF DUTY: GHOSTS: 720p XB1, 1080p PS4" on its front page? Yes, gaming communities are often echo chambers for this sort of thing, where everyone on GAF thinks resolution is super important when actually many people who play video games don't care that much. But I think that article commits the same mistake, assuming that because there's a bunch of people on places like GAF and Reddit talking about Resolutiongate, that the wider world will also see that and think "boy gamers are really stupid." What's the gaming equivalent of Rolling Stone printing an article on the loudness wars? Does anyone outside of GAF and Reddit even know what "Resolutiongate" as a term refers to? Plenty of people have heard about the 24fps/48fps Hobbit issue; will as many ever know about the 60fps/30fps split in Tomb Raider? I just don't think the mountain of coverage on arcane technical issues actually exists the way the article claims.

 

[123rl]

I used to do amateur DVD reviews about 10 years ago and I used to get a lot of praise for going into detail about grain, edge enhancement, and various technical details - certainly in far more detail than the typical mass market review. "Professional" reviews just want quick and superficial details about the content but it's the amateurs and fan-base that demand to know things on a more technical level. If I tried sending one of my normal reviews to an "expert" magazine like What Hifi, it would get ripped to pieces and re-written because, unlike the hardcore fan base, the mass market just doesn't care about quality or anything on a technical level.

It's the same here. I'll get the PS4 version before it will be as good as, and most likely better, than the Xbone version. That's enough of a reason for me to get it. I have no bias towards one format or the other and I want the best version.The Xbone version is still going to be amazing but the PS4 version will look and play better.

 

[EnVy_CaLiBeR]

Vocal minority.

Remember GAF, that's us. I personally never paid attention to resolution differences or FPS until I started frequenting online forums like this. Ignorance is bliss

Truth. My friends and some of my family members who are gamers don't even know about this stuff. I only knew about it because of sites like this and because I had to learn about resolution and frames for my major.

 

[NullPointer]

That is a lot of words to just say "Who gives a shit?"

Obviously plenty of people DO give a shit, especially since many of us grew up with or still do game on PCs and we're very acquainted with these details and how much of a difference they can make to our experience.

Gaming, no matter how accessible you make it is still wed to the tech, and pushes that tech to the extremes, and people heavily invested in gaming will know just how that tech works, how its being pushed, and will almost certainly have their own preferences.

This article is pure ignorance.

 

[belvedere]

The music industry, it's journalists, content and how that content is reviewed is exactly like the videogames industry.

 

[Dreams-Visions]

Truth. My friends and some of my family members who are gamers don't even know about this stuff. I only knew about it because of sites like this and because I had to learn about resolution and frames for my major.

Interesting. Did you guys grow up with PC's in your home? I'm pretty sure I know about framerate differences by the age of 12 when I got my first PC gpu upgrade.

 

[Stone Ocean]

It affects gameplay, which is why we do this shit in the first place. If a 3D movie looks like shit, people will be bothered no matter how good the movie is. If you released a song in a low quality format, people would be bothered by it. The guy even admits people were bothered by The Hobbit for fuck's sake.

What a load of horseshit. The reason videogames don't get enough respect is because people that have no idea of how videogames work keep trying to say something when they should shut up.

 

[Mihos]

How about they stop trying to tell me what I should care about.

I absolutely want to know about the technical performance of a machine on multiplatform games, especially when one wants an extra $100 cost of entry. I would also want to know if one version was buggy, or if content was cut on one machine over another. This whole 'you should feel bad for caring' crap is what pisses me off the most.

There has been and still are plenty of discussions on whether the reboot and other aspects of Tomb Raider is good direction.

Saying we should only discuss things a certain way, only implies that everyone values the same thing. On a platform where you can decide which one is most important (PC), you will see lots of people set things differently based on their preferences and play styles. When the only setting you control is which machine you play on, then this becomes polarizing.

 

[Phades]

By the way it reads, it is as if the writer doesn't like writing about video games and PC tech. It sounds a lot like a personal problem and instead should do more op:ed stuff about the "culturally or politically relevant" stuff that the writer actually is interested in.

I have no idea what on earth the dizzy article writer was trying to argue. Stop talking about important tech stuff relevant to entertainment purchases, talk more about mis-appropriated cultural criticisms?

Yep, gotta promote that important social cause before actually analyzing anything relevant to an actual game, the system it is played on, and how that translates into user experience. Yep, #1 important thing is to put at the forfront the political aspect of what a game allegedly implies through design and presentation.

Between this sort of thing and paid reviews, it just makes me wonder how these individuals think they are going to retain any interest or credibility down the road which enables them to have a job in the first place.

 

[electricpirate]

Oddly, he seems to be excluding places like Neogaf. He's focusing on the critical press.

 

[Infinite]

I see both of these kinds of discussions the article is talking about on neogaf. False dichotomy?

 

[Tain]

I think that a lot of forumites draw hilarious lines in the sand regarding tech. "720p/30 fps is unplayable to me", stuff like that.

I don't think the amount of respect that video games get by people that don't care about them is particularly important, though. I'd rather see passionate shortsighted fans argue about fairly minor tech differences than see nothing but pseudo-intellectual desperate garbage about how some flavor of the month "elevates the medium into something more".

 

[Jomjom]

Author should add to his article title "Framerategate"

 

[SneakyStephan]

I definitely agree with the article when it says that arguing about fidelity and framerate should take a backseat to discussion about unoriginality and squeezing every dime out of gamers instead of offering compelling experiences though.

Why can't we have both? .gif


I hope you guys aren't giving the article in the OP clicks...

 

[Gxgear]

Gaming "journalism" like this has more to do with respect than anything else ever will. Entire article written to defend the graphical gap while trying to grasp at the moral high ground. It's not you place to tell us what matters and what doesn't, the job is to report it. If you want to offer your opinions let it be known as an editorial piece so I don't ever have to read you condemning the entire community for having different opinions. Sickening.

 

[chrominance]

And also, if we're going to split hairs and talk about "best critical faculties," here's a Giant Bomb review of COD Ghosts that doesn't once mention the word "resolution." Here's the IGN review, which mentions the resolution issue in a single paragraph that ends up dismissing it as "harder to identify in absence of a side-by-side comparison." Gamespot puts the resolution stuff at the very top of their review, but it's an addendum added after the original review. It also says "Ghosts remains an enjoyable shooter no matter which new console you choose." Meanwhile, the Pitchfork review of the mono Beatles box set includes waveform graphs. I mean, I'm cherry-picking here--99% of Pitchfork's reviews don't mention anything about the loudness war, and when they do comment on production techniques it's often to comment on the artistic effect. But you can say the same for game reviews. No one reviews Papers, Please to talk about its poor colour palette as a technical fault. No one reviews pixelated games to say their effective resolution is much lower than the advertised 1080p experience. People DO mention when, say, a Vita game is lower than native resolution because it looks messy, but you can see exactly the same stuff when you look up a Blu-Ray review. How's the picture quality? Did the clean up the original print? Was the sound track remastered, and if so, is it any good? etc.

 

[jayu26]

I'm confused by the whole thing. Also, COD was politically relevant?

 

[J-Rod]

Who the fuck wants to talk about how tomb raider participates in rape culture? I don't even know what the fuck that means. Video games aren't that important. I'd rather mull over resolutions or just about anything else than read social and political commentary from mediocre writers stuck a mile up in their own asses.

 

[Holy Order Sol]

But does a slightly faster frame rate or denser resolution say much of anything about the role of video games in society today? It's time that game critics started separating out the signal from the noise.

So issues regarding how a game actually plays are "noise" now, and the real concern is what people who don't give a fuck about games think of what it means to play games.

How about fuck you and fuck your respect, it's not like I asked for it in the first place.

 

[NullPointer]

And BTW, Formula 1 would get a lot more respect if you fans would stop talking about the fucking tires already.

Boring!

And really, when discussing Blurays and DVDs and streaming movies and TV shouldn't our reviews be limited purely to the content and not at all to the geek shit like audio or visual fidelity? I can't even tell the difference half the time so obviously it doesn't matter.

Next thing you know we'll expect political reporters to know about process in detail and share that with the audience. Pfffft. Screw that noise.

 

[Marc]

I know when people consider buying TV's they're all like "Nah man, I respect this too much to be conned by which has the better quality... it doesn't matter if one is cheaper and of higher quality, lets throw that shit to the wind."

And of course all the TV hardware review sites are all about defending the weaker hardware and will definitely not highlight any deficiencies in your viewing pleasure. Its no big deal.

Ridiculous proposition.

 

[FrostuTheNinja]

And BTW, Formula 1 would get a lot more respect if you fans would stop talking about the fucking tires already.

Boring!

And really, when discussing Blurays and DVDs and streaming movies and TV shouldn't our reviews be limited purely to the content and not at all to the geek shit like audio or visual fidelity? I can't even tell the difference half the time so obviously it doesn't matter.

Next thing you know we'll expect political reporters to know about process in detail and share that with the audience. Pfffft. Screw that noise.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Are you suggesting we hold the press to a standard of knowledge and credibility? Now that's crazy talk.

 

[DietRob]

Motherboard? Who? Glad I've never heard of this site. Garbage article.

I've never wanted the :lol smiley more than now. People everywhere are losing their shit. It's almost exactly like it was last gen when the PS3 got shitty ports.

 

[PBY]

I'm confused by the whole thing. Also, COD was politically relevant?

It definitely resonates politically as a product of its era, arguably in the ways a show like 24 did.

 

[gogosox8]

People play cod because they find it entertaining, not because of its well crafted politically intriguing story line. And its matters b/c why would I spend more money on a system than was inferior? Its also not an either or. Its not either cover resolutiongate or cover cods politically intriguing story line. So much fail in this article.

 

[jayu26]

It definitely resonates politically as a product of its era, arguably in the ways a show like 24 did.

You know what? I had not thought of it in that way.

 

[Imperfected]

It's pretty embarrassing. Imagine if on a serious film forum, instead of discussing Her or the new Blu-ray of Sunrise, posters argued over the merits of IMAX vs ETX and excitedly posted GIFs featuring the companies' executives. This is where games are at right now and those of us interested in the study of play are feeling increasingly alienated. Hopefully things will balance out once the glow of the new electronics wears off.

Yeah, it would be absolutely ridiculous if every film critic felt the need to make the framerate of a movie a point of contention rather than simply ignoring it to focus on the artistic value of the piece.

Spoiler

Oh wait that's exactly what happened with The Hobbit.

 

[EdibleKnife]

As much as I try and avoid console wars, technical and industrial conversations can exist alongside conversations about a particular games, tone, writing artistic value, or societal implications. (In fact, the latter seems to have only begun to grow in earnest not long ago, which is probably why it seems that there's so few in comparison). I've seen both conversations happen. And one doesn't have to be "dumb". I've seen "deep" conversations about games that were extremely dumb and as straw graspy as you could get. And I've seen conversations about a game or systems technical issues that were actually important to discuss.

 

[Kikujiro]

And I don't necessarily disagree with anything in your post! The issue is that these topics take up a disproportionate amount of the conversation, usually to no end. When these topics do crop up in Serious Film Circles, it's usually a matter of preservation. In games, it's sexy because there is mindshare at stake. Very few people care about the How or Why, but the Who. I've seen some of your fanciful PC screens so I know you are probably an exception, but you are an exception.

Again, film and games are totally different, I don't know why you are insisting with the comparison. The technical aspect of a game is important because it directly impacts the enjoyment of the gameplay, when people discuss about Assassin's Creed 3 you see a lot of them complaining about how the game is glitchy and run like shit (console version), and this is important because it's something that affects the gameplay and your personal enjoyment of it.

 

[Linkyn]

I agree with the points raised to some extent. Whether you can notice a difference between 720p, 1080p, or higher resolutions depends a lot on how slight a variation you eyes can pick up on and how large the displayed image is. The same goes for framerates. Some people simply don't notice the difference between 30 fps and 60 fps (and there are certainly genres where going up doesn't constitute a huge improvement, either).

On the other hand, the reason why these discussions keep coming up is simply because multiplats tend to be virtually identical across all platforms they are released on - with the exception of technical performance. If the only way to distinguish between the PS4 or XBox One version of a game is resolution or framerate, people are going to pay attention to it, regardless of whether they own both systems and are trying to gauge which version to get or are looking to buy one of the two systems and want access to the better third party library. If you theoretically have access to multiple versions of the same game, you simply want to get the best one.

Still, all that is no reason to make a big fuzz. These days, performance specifications tend to be used to advertise games to the point of them being bullet points on the back of a box, taking time and space away from story and, more importantly, gameplay. The sharpest or most fluent game still sucks if it is boring, whereas technologically unimpressive or limited titles can be among the best there are if executed properly.

 

[Risk Breaker]

Yeah, swallowing anything they throw at you with enough marketing is truly the mark of mainstream culture

 

[NullPointer]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Are you suggesting we hold the press to a standard of knowledge and credibility? Now that's crazy talk.

I apologize. I'd never want to stand in the way of them getting more pop culture respect.

 

[cakefoo]

So basically, people can't discuss graphics and performance at all, because there are more important issues that must take ALL of the time.

 

[JLeack]

I agree. The fanboyism is worse than ever before. I understand people like to root for something, but it's gotten to a point where it's destructive and hateful.

A person shouldn't have to ignore dozens of forum posters just to have a decent conversation.

 

[xXUndeadChickXx]

Videogames don't get as much respect is because the stereotypes still exist and they are also majorly just considered games, like what children play. Now it's not true anymore, but what can really be done?