Gaming is generally considered a meritocracy, but honestly, that label only applies well to only two certain areas: gaming skills, and programming prowess.
>If developers are shit at fixing buggy code (like mass effect andromeda or asscreed unity), their game WILL result in a glitchy, broken, and sometimes legitimately Unplayable mess. And all because the programming side of game development can be utterly ruthless to those who are computer illiterates. Ensuring that even if a dev is cucked beyond belief ("let's add even More sjw bullshit to our games!"), they're still expected to be Good at minimalizing the errors in their game's development. Not unless they want to create a fucking disaster like Superman 64. ^ These meritocratic barriers are only possible because computer software (whether the game's software itself, or the software used to develop them) is an objectively unbiased arbiter, instantly/mercilessly punishing any talentless hacks (regardless of their "identity") the exact moment they fuck up. Ensuring that these losers are instantly kept in their place.
Unfortunately, these meritocratic barriers are not found in any other areas of gaming. Especially those where "Subjectivity" reigns king, or which have error-prone human arbiters (who have inherently biased judgments, and don't ALWAYS punish the mistakes of others) presiding instead of unbiased software. For example, how Good a gamer is at fighting games is not a subjective matter. He either wins or loses or ties, as determined by what the game's software announces onscreen. On the other hand, being Good at writing about games (for example) is more of a subjective matter, because it's the reader's personal opinion (not a very objective metric) that decides how "good" and well-written they may find an article. Leaving the door open to talentless hacks because this unobjective "subjectivity" and lack of immediate consequences (nothing akin to instant game overs or buggy code) means that they can get away with half-assing things in their respective areas:
But you're correct about SJWs attracted to the least meritocratic parts of gaming. That's been obvious to a lot of us ever since they've tried pushing walking simulators.
What does this have to do with anything in OP's post
Cooper Martin
Why do you want video games to be a meritocracy? If you just want a circlejerk of people who think you're a badass because you beat Dark Souls, why don't instead you funnel that time and energy into a sport or an actual skill?
Zachary Young
I think the problem lies in having reviews reduced down to a single score. You can write the best, most objective review the world can offer and barely anyone can read it or appreciate it because "WOW YOU GAVE THIS GAME 8/10 WHAT ARE YOU RETARDED" mentality that reviews have to make you feel good about your purchase or reinforce your own views. There's also the fact that everyone who is a gaming journalist is living a godawful life. As such these journalists are racing to get their content out first. Meaning if that if they were to enforce some perfectly reasonable prerequisite of needing to complete an entire game and/or it's challenges and stating so(with proof), reviews would take a long time to come out(because journalists fucking suck at video games despite "playing them" for a living)
Henry Hernandez
Are you actually retarded? When did OP mention his reasons for playing vidya at all? Video games being a meritocracy is a byproduct of the medium and you somehow conflate it to ebin memers circlejerking about difficulty
Dominic Miller
It wasn't game design I was referring to, but the developer's capability of stamping out the bugs in their game. If they're unable to do that well, their game will immediately suffer objective consequences. (Sometimes game-breaking bugs, or stuff that will make it impossible for gamers to progress in a game.)
Jaxon Brown
Learn to read between the lines. This is just another complaint thread.
Ryder Cooper
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Gabriel Peterson
Is it me or has the autism on Holla Forums gotten way worse in the past few weeks? What is it with these long posts complaining about stupid shit like this?
Camden Roberts
this meme is kind of dead to be quite honest, he has review this game in high regard
Michael Cox
I don't think so. I'm questioning OP right now on his exclusion of shit like game design from the stronger meritocratic aspects of game-making
I know what you were referring to. Are you saying though that shit like knowing proper map design isn't strongly meritocratic?
That has nothing to do with it at all, you just greentexted what you wrote and pretended like its an argument vidya programming is objectively a meritocracy regardless of budget because of it as a medium, similar to playing vidya (though the latter is starting to change as they add in microtransactions to replace skill as the tool of the medium to do well in playing video games)
Concepts and ideas tend to be more on the subjective side when it comes to evaluating how "good" they are. (One man might consider a certain map his favorite, but another man might view that same map with utter contempt.) Of course, a map with no exits whatsoever is obviously bad in most regards, but could still work in like a horror game or something. Either way, I'm not not downplaying the effort that goes into map design, but how "good" it is correlates to what the gamer's idea of what "good map design" is.
What's not subjective however, is implementing this concept into actual code. At which point, if you can't stop the computer from litering your game with all sorts of programming problems, those bugs and glitches will remain a stain on an otherwise subjectively good map. (Until they're patched out or something, that is.)
Tyler Morgan
Soulless corporations drive out the excellent developers by instituting ridiculous policies that make non-gaming opportunities in software engineering much more palatable. 70-80 hour work weeks with no bonuses, vacation time, even OVERTIME pay quickly become grueling and can turn a labor of love into a mindless timesink when it becomes more than apparent that the game you're designing is no longer your own. This, in addition to publisher demands, such as making unnecessary tech demos, preorder bonuses, cut missions for DLC, hyper-restrictive timelines and the like, can make the process unbearable.
Eventually, the best developers leave. The people who design games because they love them get so burnt out and broken down that they either find a development studio they like or simply leave the industry. The publishing studios can't simply leave an IP that's on a hot streak, so they fill the gaps with relatively inexperienced developers; many of these people, of course, are hired on by their friends, who bring in more of their friends as the cycle continues, until you wind up with a development studio that is simply a brand name filled to the brim with garbage-tier developers who have no idea what they're doing.
Bioware is a great example. Even as recent as Dragon Age: Origins, Bioware was regarded as one of the best development studios around. Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, and even Mass Effect were, by many peoples' standards, nothing short of the best that a developer could offer. Enter EA. As they pushed a harsher environment on Bioware, many developers left; a couple of the senior devs left for Blizzard, and many simply left. In the void, we can see the obvious lack of talent and drive on top of the political leanings.
While not a direct cause, the amount of money spent on marketing compared to actual development and, by extension, developer pay correlates with the rise of apathy consistent with leftist ideology.
Jose Bailey
fucker, he's not only talking about AAA, he's talking about programming in general, indies included, and how programming isn't as forgiving as other mediums, for example painting, where incompetent hacks can hide behind a "you just don't understand it" barrier
i swear to god, what's with the decline on reading comprehension
Grayson Sanders
I am talking about the act of programming like OP was you retard, not programming's role in vidya development or how much money it gets relative to the budget Also consider this: the games which do what you describe end up as bad games
Sebastian Young
to add to this:
If you suck at a game, you die and you lose, there isn't any excuse but your skill wasn't the required, cue the SJW-muh art-hacks shit salt party that we see nowadays
But if you suck at composing, or making a painting, these fuckers always cry "i-it's modern art" and enter a circlejerk where other frauds defend this mentality
Also when you program, it works or it doesn't, there are no mid points, so if your game is buggy and shit, the programmer is at fault, and no one else
Making games is a business of making money. Just like movies. The rules for being the best and making the most money are not the same.
Parker Ortiz
You don't get what a meritocracy is. You're saying: programming is programming, one's skillfulness is what decides performance in the end - there's your merit deciding success.
But as the other user is saying, it's not the programmers who call the shots: they are merely employed to keep the gears as greased as possible. It's a top down relationship where working well, at most, allows you to keep working on contract while actual power is still way above you.
Landon Perez
Ding ding ding.
Isaac Watson
OP is an autist but when did Holla Forums become tumblr? Holy shit.
Luke Rogers
i can also contract Juan to paint something c'mon user, i thought you were smarter than that
Carson Mitchell
Who decides merit?
In capitalism it's the market, which allows people to buy any widget they want even if it's universally sub-optimal producers have a chance to succeed or fail on their own merit of delivering what the market wants.
In socialism it's the committee, there's the best and only the best widget the committee decided is the only one people will ever need, and anyone who attempts to make and sell niche widgets get shot.
Mason Turner
Why can't it just be objective quality of product/work? Neither Judeo-capitalism nor socialism account for anything objective, so they're clearly not great measures of merit.
Ethan Gonzalez
I do, and you have none. Fuck off.
Oliver Martinez
Who decides what is objectively better? Like with food
Dominic Price
An interesting point, and you're right that it's the reason why influence peddlers have had such a hard time subverting gaming culture and the hobby. Unfortunately like other anons have said programming is widely disposable and ability is often trumped by the bureaucratic processes in making games
Evan Reed
And thanks to Democracy, so does Tumblr, Biodrones and EA sports fans. And all three outnumber you.
Xavier Sanchez
Not as easy as you think. Programmers are dime-a-dozen, but good programmers are rare as fuck these days. Sure, indiedevs can program in a slow as fuck language like java, or rely on an engine, but they're mostly on the PC (this is also why really simple games have high requirements). The guys on consoles working on AAA titles like Assassins Creed and uncharted have to bust their ass, because they're limited to shit hardware but constantly have to improve their game. These are the people who know how processors work inside and out and optimize their code in C and assembly, while also considering how much data is being wasted. They break programming rules all the time, because they only care about being fast.
Ian Flores
You make a good point but it's hard to buy that anyone in AAA actually works on improving jack shit.
Nathan Young
They're not improving the industry really. It's just console devs trying to make as cheap of a product as they can, while making their programmers pick up the slack.
Lucas Young
I don't doubt that but it's just that companies can afford to brute-force and hastily slap together crap code from sub-par progammers because there will always be an audience for awful games, much more than for good ones unfortunately
Adam Wright
A programmer making incredibly smooth code doesn't magically become the company president. That would be -cracy, getting actual power.
Luke Richardson
Yeah but shit like the 60fps 1080p on the new consoles meme was massive. You can't get that on a PS4 with spaghetti code.
Carson Hernandez
Who the jobs are going to is not the point here. I did mention before that I don't consider these "Perfect" meritocracies (exceptions will always stand to prove otherwise), but the ability to program code that isn't riddled with bugs/glitches is still very meritocratic indeed. Seeing as how even those pajeet programmers STILL have to be competent at ironing out bugs, or risk releasing a broken, unplayable mess of a game.
Filmmakers can tour around New York and crap out a 2 hour shitty movie without anything stopping them. The movie might be fucking unbearable, but never legitimately Unassessable (Twilight's content from beginning to end is still fully assessable; meaning that it is easy to shit out movies that are technically watchable) in the same way a game-breaking bug can severely limit your assess to a game's content by making it legitimately Unplayable and unassessable.
Meaning that even if jobs are going to pajeets, the unskilled incompetents among them will Still face problems for their inability to fix the game's bugs. Rooting out the decent programmers from those who think they can simply half-ass it.
Jackson Nguyen
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Gavin Hill
I'm sensing you either don't understand the concept or believe anyone who has the money and power is automatically the best person around.
Luke Anderson
Video games are not a meritocracy. Their is no government of videogames. There is simply the ability to do them or not.
Ryder Jenkins
Sure buddy, let's see your documentation on what 'true' meritocracy is then. If you wanna say that games """(((journalists)))""" are shit just say so, but don't try and mix a broader argument into it to support your claims as if it makes it fact.
Josiah Butler
None of what either of you are discussing is meritocratic at all because there's no actual functional hierarchy. You're just saying you like skilled people.
Henry Thomas
You're right, I was about to try and argue that social standing that results from being rated as the most qualified to complete a certain challenge would be meritocratic, but the only power that might stem from these ratings would be that one might be more likely to be included in a future judging panel for a competition, which is a stretch at best to call a meritocratic system. Meritocracies are absurd and utoptian anyway, even when a position in a hierarchy is determined by merit it's impossible to entirely extricate the concept of merit from other contaminating factors that those who are in power to decide merit in a hierarchy would have, so a merit can never be pure and unaffected by croneyisms or subjective biases. My post was low effort- I'd clung to a minor argument that stood out to me as absurd when in reality there was a much more ridiculous assumption staring me right in the face.
Justin Anderson
I guess I should clarify which definition I had mind. dictionary.com/browse/meritocracy 1. an elite group of people whose progress is based on ability and talent rather than on class privilege or wealth. 2. a system in which such persons are rewarded and advanced. 3. leadership by able and talented persons.
An aspect of meritocracy is that incompetent people can not half-ass their way to the top. (Which was the main reason I chose that word; if you can point me to me a better descriptor, be my guess.) And while the best developers may get passed over for cheaper and average pajeet programmers, those pajeets Still have to be moderately skilled. The unskilled pajeets who aren't are still shit upon by the unbiased computer, same it does to the unskilled American programmers we have over here. Meaning that you can't shit out a technically playable game the same you can shit out a technically watchable movie. Making the talentless hacks suffer for their incompetance.
It's like people don't read the original post, where I explicitly mentioned and acknowledged exceptions such as this do exist.
Robert Cooper
And the video game markets are not such a system.
Dominic Sullivan
Not video game markets. The video games themselves. In order to assess the content of a game (excluding luck-based RNG content, downloadable paid content, and other methods where content is not unlocked by merely completing objectives), the main way gamers will assess content is generally by being Good at playing the game in order to reach the end and such. Actually requiring more skill to reach the end credits than the skill required to reach a movie's end credits. The more obstacles and virtual challenges a gamer has the ability to overcome, the more content he'll potentially be privy to and rewarded with. (Getting potentially more content that his noob counterpart would get.) Like the extra bonuses some games might give out for completing difficult objectives, like how the unlockable Big Boss mask in MGS4 is beyond the reach of less competent players.
The game itself acts the system of rules you gotta play by, so I felt that the term was somewhat appropriate to describe as such.
Benjamin Myers
user please.
Hudson Brooks
Skill floor, huh? Never heard of that term before, but after looking it up, it does sound a lot more accurate than meritocracy. Thank you.
Camden Phillips
That, along with skill ceiling are typically what we use to describe that sort of thing in this context. That's why I was giving you such a hard time
Jacob Adams
They are complete joke in this year. Just point on fact that they can't play games at all. That area always was a problem. By changing/butchering story, censorship over some stupid shit, (((lolcalizations))) full of stale memes and sometimes bricking games/consoles beyond any repair. The only way to change it is by learning languages and to steal/snatch sjws jobs in that part of industry. They are just being bought out by publishers. Tell everyone to just ignore them. Recommend everyone to read comments on Steam and GOG instead. There still will be some shills and some people with garbage taste though. Academics in West is awful overall. With all these commie professors, marxists and useful idiots. HR is way how sjws infect industry with putting their people first in job applications and blacklisting/firing people for any kind of wrongthink. PR is how they change games from fake outrage made real with bots and sjw cultists.
Jayden Roberts
Speaking of "programming itself is a meritocracy" there was a mattress that said that on github's headquarters but it was removed because apparently meritocracies are misogynistic.
Nathan Cook
tl;dr?
Nicholas Roberts
Oscar Wilde was not objectively skilled at wordcraft, but is only considered good because of the reader's personal opinion (not a very objective metric).
Also, reviewers can't get off that easily, because the faggots are reviewing an objective product. Their opinions of the product may differ, fine, but the facts of what is contained in that product that they should be reporting on are not up for debate. If a game is riddled with game breaking bugs, or has very few rules leading to fail states, then it is objectively a bad game - and the reviewer's opinion merely spices the real meat of factual reporting. Modern reviewers are mistaking the spices for the substance.
Logan Jackson
By whom? I'm not interested in reading your blog even if you don't start it with a dumb assumption.
