Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wayside" data-source="post: 4599721" data-attributes="member: 8394">If you're capable of talking specifics then talk specifics. No one will begrudge you that, since for many people the big issue with "videogamey" is that it's virtually meaningless precisely because it tends to float free of such specifics. People can discuss specifics with you, but discussion halts in the face of this nebulous concept we're calling "videogamey." In fact, the only real reason to use it at all is to lean on it apodictically for its lingering propaganda value.No doubt. But like Umbran you're assuming that when someone says "X is videogamey"* they're simply stating an impression, which isn't the case. They're making an argument, and in the structure of that argument the idea of "videogamey" is always given weight one way or the other. Initially that weight was negative, but the argument tried to disguise the assumption on which this negativity was based by being enthymematic: "X is bad because it's videogamey." The unstated assumption here is that "anything that is videogamey is bad," and people have rightly taken issue with it. To put it another way, "videogamey" was originally just a loaded term used by people whose hat of WoW know no limit.** (Ditto that for comparing 4e to wargames, CCGs, etc.) But since the self-evidence with which the observation was offered has been repeatedly challenged and overthrown, the only way to responsibly claim that 4e is "videogamey" now is to elaborate the specific features of video games you (the indefinite "you") see in 4e and what in particular you find problematic or worthwhile about them. Otherwise, you might as well call 4e chocolaty. (I happen to love chocolate. And video games. So in the event that I ever play 4e, I sincerely hope it is both chocolaty and "videogamey.")* Whether or not you want to localize this to 4e is up to you. If 4e is "videogamey," though, then so is every other edition of D&D. A double-jumping rogue has nothing on some of the stuff in 3.5e, and it's something any amateur acrobat (someone who does <a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/TPIw3cv8Zls&hl=en&fs=1" target="_blank">parkour</a>, for example) can do with ease. How exactly that makes it "videogamey" I have no idea.** Please bear in mind here that I'm not treating all uses of the term as coincident but am acknowledging developments in those uses as some of them have been disarmed by critiques like the ones in this thread. Argumentation does not take place in a vacuum, and the uses of "videogamey" now are sometimes very different from the reactionary ones that sprang up when 4e was first announced over a year ago.No doubt you can tell from the sober way I've approached the issue that neither your "it's not worth getting any knickers in a twist" nor SHARK's "I don't get . . . worked up" apply here. Attributing such emotions to your opponent in an argument is also intellectually dishonest. It's a (rather transparent) way of discrediting them by showing them to be unreasonable and of uneven temper.</blockquote>

Verification