Jim is terrible at promoting meaningful discourse about the medium. It's hot takes, inflammatory rhetoric and reductionist nonsense 95% of the time.
That Time The Last Of Us Part 2 Was Compared To Schindler's List (The Jimquisition)
- Thread starter Richiek
- Start date
Jim is terrible at promoting meaningful discourse about the medium. It's hot takes, inflammatory rhetoric and reductionist nonsense 95% of the time.
I agree with you that the shallow critiquing of games as per your examples given needs to stop.
But valid, nuanced and intelligent critiquing of the artistic and literary nature of games should be encouraged and we need to see more of so the level of discourse can be elevated.
Thanks for the heads up. I may leave it for now.
Schindler's list works on a completely different level given its subject matter which makes the comparison more egregious than Citizen Kane.
Or maybe a "masterpiece" is a very subjective thing. One man's junk is another man's treasure or something like that?
No one comes off looking good coming off of this. Schrier for kicking the whole thing off in a hostile way, Cannata for doubling down and getting defensive over it, Druckmann and Barlog for getting involved when it wasn't appropriate for them to do so.
Everyone comes out looking like an ass.
Everyone comes out looking like an ass.
It would be better if the discourse did not include some nebulous connection to popular movies/television because the writer or analyst cannot speak about the language of games/game development and cannot separate different media forms in their brain.
I don't agree Schier looks like an ass mostly because of how he handled it, the rest don't come out of it looking to bad at all.
No it does not....maybe the writers of the tv show could refine it though and place the series of events it in a better order.
yeah and doing so with your pre-order bonus of more amo for your gun (seriously, I had no idea that was a thing for this game lol )
I don't know why gamers see gaming as a inferior media, never capable of being great.
Not talking about TLOU here. To me Disco Elysium writing is gold tier, but it's a game so people act like any bad book would be better.
Yup. Clearly extremely influenced by what gets views online (and I can't blame him for that I suppose)
I think it's objective to say that the standards of literary criticism the best videogames are held to is lower than that of the passive mediums and traditional artforms.
In other words what we see as masterpieces in the videogame space, would not be considered so in other mediums. Videogames have another level they can achieve, and constructive criticism to encourage that is fantastic and we need to see more of it.
Absolutely agreed.
Why not? I think more of us should blame him for that. If he didn't have any history in the industry, he would be treated like any other troll YT channel.
His content and takes are becoming increasingly worse.
I have given up using any kind of simile/metaphor/comparison, because it takes exactly 2 minutes for some whiny pedant to roll up and say "How can you claim that X and Y are exactly the same thing?! Can you see that <tedious explanation of why two obviously different things are different>"
I think it's mostly people just being disingenuous, combative, and wanting to correct people. In a previous Jimquisition thread I asked why "He's gotta make money/capitalism" is a frequently parroted justification for Sterling's transparently click-seeking empty calorie hot takes, but is not an adequate excuse for the ways publishers monetized games. Someone of course proceeded to explain to me the difference between Jim Sterling and Electronic Arts, as if I didn't already know that a Youtuber and a billion dollar publisher operate on different scales. People would rather nitpick the details than talk about the principle being addressed. They understand that it isn't an equivalence (I hope), but would rather just be obtuse and dishonest to land a few shots.
He posted a two year old tweet of Cannata's that had absolutely nothing to do with the situation to have a go at him on this forum and quite a number of jokey tweets that came across as mean spirited and petty. It came across as a bit ass-y and he should maybe reflect on how he handled it. They all should tbh because they all kept escalating - I don't think any of them were trying to be mean but they need to improve how they handle social media. Neil and Corey got personally invested very fast over something that shouldn't have been that big
There's a wide gulf between this, and Trump calling avoiding STDs during the 70s "his own personal Vietnam."
Didn't you say Druckmann's tweets felt personal? I don't see much difference between what you did with Cannata and he did.
It seems like a lack of responsibility on all sides to not realise the importance of what you put into the public domain when you have a large following. There was no real need to tweet what you did in the way you did and I think it was utterly stupid of Druckmann and Barlog to get involved. Cannata could also have dealt with criticism better.
I'm sure you've all had abuse and possibly death threats over dumb shite like this. Even if it was unintentional situations like this just unnecessarily enflame that kind of behaviour and people like Stirling propagating it for clicks doesn't help either.
I agree that it was not a wise comparison and he should have taken a step back and realized it would be inflammatory regardless of what he meant by it.
Because a book would be, because you can do more with a book for alot less money.
Imagine if Schrier had taken this to a DM to voice his concerns rather than publicly attacking the guy for the least charitable interpretation of his tweet possible.
Marlon Brando himself recorded for that game (it´s ok) but those takes were unusable as he was at the edge of death then.
And this but Jim did say that Indy gaming has more merit as "art":
Poland puts computer game "This War of Mine" on school reading list
While computer games are often used in education, Poland may be the first country to put one on the reading list for children in schools.
notesfrompoland.com
Theres definitely an issue of treating these games like the second fucking coming in release reviews, especially when the reviewers cannot even talk about large portions of the game ahead of time. You end up with these reviews full of flowery abstract prose instead of specifics.
I didn't follow the whole thing closely, but from the resetera thread my understanding is that Neil is just defending Jeff after Jason aggressively calling out Jeff's review, resulting to many of Jason follower attacking Jeff as well.
I didn't think Neil bring up the quality of his game at all, Jason is the one who start bringing up his article, implying that Neil comment is because of Jason's article.
I don't agree with Jim 95% of the time. I think he is always regurgating info that everyone else has said by the time his videos are up.
But god damn if he didn't hit the nail in the head throughout the video. Good on him for calling out Druckman's and Barlog comments. Those tweets were embarrasing as fuck.
But god damn if he didn't hit the nail in the head throughout the video. Good on him for calling out Druckman's and Barlog comments. Those tweets were embarrasing as fuck.
I don't see why you're worried at all that a bad book is viewed as "better" than a video game. If you like the game and the game seems celebrated by critics then what is the actual problem?
No, I can't choose to read a book story with a communist point and view, and then re-read with a hopeless drunk point of view like in DE. It's something you can only do in gaming.
Because it makes no sense to me, that's all.
Yeah I think it also speaks to just a pretty brazen illiteracy to other mediums. Like yes Citizen Kane is great but it being the goldstandard of filmmaking was more of a trope from 70's criticism so the ened to evoke it or Schindler's list speaks to a very limited vocabulary of references. So far there are a few films I would compare this to particularly Late August at Hotel Ozone but that is a bit more niche vocabulary so hopefully Last of Us 2 might get people to try to up their media literacy for better comparisons.
Sorry to single you out, but, I also can't stand this attitude from a bunch of critics I've seen online.
"Watch more movies and read more books" even in this video, is a really condescending way to talk about stuff. Maybe a lot of these people haven't been exposed to indie films, or great literature. Maybe some of us went to film school and still think the game is a masterpiece.
This whole "I've seen and witnessed TRUE art" attitude is gross, IMO.
We live in a world where dumb shit like MCU are considered master pieces. Lets not kid ourselves. At the very least when it comes to this game specifically it can absolutely compare to most of the bid budget films we see put out. Hell I think TLOU part 2 is far far superior to movies like Logan which is considered a pretty good movie in the critical circles. In fact I would go ahead and say TLOU Part 2 compares favourable to some fantastic Korean movies sharing similar themes.
Its ironically from the same group that find it okay to lose their shit at the next dumb Marvel movie or the next rote Ari aster movie.
Him using Schindler's List as his point of reference was tacky as fuck even though I understand what Cannata was getting at, it ultimately just reveals that his frame of reference was either so limited or he didn't think his own audience would understand him getting the point across without that comparison
That's not really the point though. People were pointing this out before Jason tweeted what he did. If he pauses and reflects on why someone might find it a problematic comparison then it never gets to this point.
I just ordered the game today and you're not helping contain my excitement and lack of patience :P.
Druckmann's tone was not nice? Lol. How do you approach this is a nicer way? I'd like to see how you'd have framed this opinion to be nicer in tone.
Yeah, because even my first reaction was, "No he didn't just compare TLOU2 to Schindler's List". LOL It wasn't till I calmed down and reread it to fully understand what he was trying to convey.
1. Being about the Holocaust doesn't make a piece of art unassailable. See: maudlin trash like Life is Beautiful. Therefore, there is nothing sacrilegious about comparing a great piece of art to another great piece of art that involves the Holocaust. Art is art.
2. Are we still talking about this? Baitiest click-bait he has done in while.
2. Are we still talking about this? Baitiest click-bait he has done in while.
When this comes up I always think about Death Stranding. If somebody made a movie so filled to the brim with flagrant and shameless Monster Energy product placement, it would be laughed out of critical circles and awards. Even a fucking comic book could not be that commercially unabashed without seriously undercutting its impact. But since Death Stranding is a self-serious game (and a self-serious Kojima game), there was little hesitation to heap a dump truck full of GOTY awards on it.