The U.S. Culture(s) thread

It's still hard to find a Western game that doesn't have shooting as it's main form of gameplay nowadays, even if they aren't FP Ss or Action games. Melee combat is pretty much exclusive to Medieval-style WRP Gs, and Stealth is virtually dead now.

For what it's worth, a non-medieval game without a lot of shooting makes a lot less sense.

edited 28th Mar '17 1:48:21 PM by Protagonist506

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

Eh, I'd say anime loses points for how choppy^note as in the frame rate the animation usually is, at least when it's not using CGI. Maybe they have us beat in visuals and colors, but the animation itself... nah.

I'd argue anime doesn't have any more "passion projects" than WA does. Unless you count shows that were made specifically so the creator could nerd out about [insert topic here], of which there are plenty. I think I read somewhere that most anime is meant to be consumed quickly and forgot about by the next season.

edited 28th Mar '17 2:59:14 PM by PhysicalStamina

Well yes, versus the US approach of "crank it out for as long as physically possible, against all sense and reason". Note that this change was relatively recent and is more indicative of the change entertainment has/will undergo in this new age of internet streaming.

The animation is lower FPS, but it's just so much more detailed and personalized. There are very few situations in cartoons these days (I need to emphasize that) where I think the animation quality is really improved by the extra frames.

I don't think the Japanese approach of "pump out some mediocre-to-decent 12-episode series/adaptation to sell merch/promote the source material" is much better.

Also, personally, I define the quality of animation by how well it moves (Stylistic Suck notwithstanding). So while I'd rate something like modern Family Guy's GoAnimate-tier animation pretty low, I wouldn't put something like, I dunno, Akiba's Trip that much higher, and I'd put Star Vs. the Forces of Evil several levels above both of them.

On a purely technical level, Odder? Really. We have access to the same technology, and probably the same amounts of talented, hardworking people eager to work in the animation business.

I'm going to have to ask you to back this up with facts rather than with the gut feelings you appear to be going with. Your opinion here is very clearly shaded by a strong bias, and you're making an assertion that your opinion is fact.

I hate Family Guy so much, but that has to do with how mean spirited and tone deaf the whole fucking show is. The animation is fine, it's everything else that's a garbage fire of misogyny and bizarrely horrible people.

Also, anime is more personalized? When stock character models just sort of shamelessly rip each other off repeatedly, rage enducing huge boobs are common, and rampantly sexist plots are presented as funny somehow? I could go on, but that would veer into criticizing Japanese culture, which is not the topic of the thread. But anime is not the grand font of wondrous creativity. It's as profit and market driven as anything in the US. They just have way different broadcasting standards which lead to series frequently being shorter than we'd expect in America.

edited 28th Mar '17 6:28:19 PM by AceofSpades

FG's animation is just so stiff. It's even more jarring since I've seen bits and piece of the earliest seasons and it looked so much better.

Also, in terms of aesthetics it's just kinda bland? I understand the need for and even beauty of simplicity, but it feels like almost every adult cartoon has pretty worksmanlike and even crude designs. Sometimes that can work to a show's benefit but I think right now Samurai Jack is the only real exception I can think of, and only with the newest season.

Not really, grand strategy games and 4X games exist, RTS games aren't in their golden age anymore but still exist, builder and management games remain strong and have their place. That's before we get into the super niche stuff like visual novels, dating sims and more.

Now you're unlikely to find such games on console, but they do exists.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Yep.

I can't say I haven't spent countless hours trying to make a city run in Sim City or figuring out the best way to advance my civilization in Stellaris or trying mod after mod in Command and Conquer.

PC gaming is less constrained than consoles, simply because having a mouse + keyboard allows you for more complex controls

edited 29th Mar '17 9:15:27 AM by AngelusNox

Inter arma enim silent leges

For what it's worth, shooters don't actually take up as much of the market as one would think. It's casual games that eat the most dough.

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

@physcialStamina - the quick consumption of anime, compared to western animation is do to with a specific Japanese cultural element of which the name is escaping me (might be Mono-no-aware, but don't quote me on that). basically the idea of the transient nature of media and consumption, hence why so much new anime comes out, and is usually promptly forgotten when its all over by the populous at large, save for hard-core fans.

Also, the choppy-ness just has to do with how notoriously low anime production budget is. that, mixed with how info dense the Japanese language is, is why anime, as a visual medium, still relies on telling and talking, over showing or inference by in large.

of course, to a western consumer, most of that isn't known, and they tend to see the things anime does that western animation doesn't do, and cling to those, regardless of its own cultural contexts or hangups.

edited 31st Mar '17 8:14:36 AM by Jetyl

I'm afraid I can't explain myself, sir. Because I am not myself, you see?

Part of that can be seen by how you don't really get that many season finale cliffhangers, unless there's a guaranteed way to continue the story somehow.

Western productions love the cliffhanger.

Not Three Laws compliant.

The same can't be said of customers, especially for season finale cliffhangers. Though if you stretch the definition of "like" enough...

edited 31st Mar '17 8:21:43 AM by Medinoc

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

again, that has to do with the difference in cultural and economic attempts.

Japan's animation industry is heavily informed by their cultures own quirks, resulting in them taking a very different strategy to make money of it, resulting in further niche's and catering to obsessive mega-fans who will sink tons of money into something.

the US's animation industry lacks those quirks, but has its own hangups. the "Animation is for kids" mindset comes to mind. because of that, you didn't really see adult or serious animation works in the west until very recently, and a vast majority of our animation was episodic, with no serialization at all. even now, with the recent boom in western animation, you still see the works marked as "kids shows" and starting out episodic, only now they also appeal to adults, and develop serialized elements.

and because they're are no cultural assumptions in the way of making something the most immediately economically profitable (ie, keeping something running until it stops being profitable), which also benefits from an episodic set-up

edited 31st Mar '17 8:41:09 AM by Jetyl

I'm afraid I can't explain myself, sir. Because I am not myself, you see?

In general, Genndy Tartakovsky is great at taking simplistic models and animating them into something truly beautiful. Adventure Time has also provided similar opportunities. Steven Universe and Friendship Is Magic also come to mind as Western cartoons that use simple character models with very fluid animation.

Star Versus The Forces Of Evil is gorgeously animated and voiced, but ultimately rather shallow and flat most of the time.

Then you have Animesque shows that take the opposite approach, namely the two Avatar series, The Boondocks, and Voltron: the designs are more detailed, realistic, and sleek, but the animation is also choppier, except at key moments.

I think both philosophies are fine. But we need more shows that tell very personal, very heavy stories. Shows that leave us feeling that the time is well-spent, rather than a mere distraction.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

And the debate in US cinema has been thusly: SFX vs. Story.

We're angsting in the Live Action Ghost In The Shell thread because Hollywood has both cast a famous white actor in an Asian role AND made another shlock SFX guns, bombs and boobs fest.

What do people remember from Star Wars? (geeks put your hands down) Not the various aliens and the ships, it's the story and characters. If the ships are remembered, it's because of what the characters did in them.

Star Trek: we make fun of the Techno Babble, but cry when Spock dies, want to give Data a hug and cheer when Voyager makes it home.

But most studio execs are convinced that if you put boobs (or dudes with muscle) and explosions on the screen that's it. The rest is just window dressing.

Now the reason a lot of movies are "actioned up" it's that the source material is "too intellectual" or "too high concept".

A lot of directors and writers are all "fuck that noise" and do tell stories with effects and great characters. Only the SFX is a tool it's not the story.

edited 2nd Apr '17 3:32:26 PM by TairaMai

All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48

To be fair, the commercial success of Transformers and The Hobbit, among many others. People do buy garbage if it's got nice tits, Stuff Blowing Up, and redemptive violence involving an endangered underdog who almost gives up.

What a piece of shit the latter was. Couldn't they have done a Hobbit, a Silmarillion, and a Hurin for the same price?

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

It depends. Sometimes mediocre films with very "low-brow" appeal make money, sometimes they don't. Part of the folly of entertainment executives is thinking that a successful property is something you can engineer and reliably replicate when in reality things are far more unpredictable.

Awww...

Well, you have to alot of risk taking individuals on board for those projects that don't appeal to the Lowest Common Denominator. That stuff sells and then is forgotten or burned in effigy by critics, but it makes millions first. It's like a very stable feedback loop. I imagine it taking some kind of seismic shift to push Michael Bay movies the movies you just described from the mainstream.

Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives

And then there's stuff like Tim Burton and Peter Jackson and JJ Abrams starting off new and then going stale.

At least we nerds still have Guillermo Del Toro to bring us some glory here and there.

Pacific Rim was such a perfect film.

And of course there's the lightning in a bottle that is Mad Max Fury Road.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

It all depends where you look. The top of the industry being smoke and mirrors and stupidity isn't new at all, this has always been the reigning state of big commercial movies, particularly the American ones.

This year alone we had John Wick: Chapter 2, Split, Logan and Get Out! as far as "commercial" movies cleverly made go.

edited 2nd Apr '17 4:19:58 PM by Gaon

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

Let's not shit on SFX crews too hard. Star Wars was decently visually impressive, and the hoops they went through to make that shit work is god damn awe inspiring. There's a reason people got pissed at the overuse of green screen in the Prequels, and why the practical effects of The Force Awakens were such a big selling point. Or hell, Fury Road, which looks fucking spectacular. Or Gravity, which was hit or miss storywise for many, but used some pretty cool visual tricks to great effect.

Beyond that, of course we love films that look good. We shit on directors that abuse shakey cam (cough Taken 3 cough) because we like it when our films are coherent, visually speaking. We like awe, we like shock, we like it when shit looks good. Hollywood's been getting on people's nerves in the past 20 or so years mainly because they've been using the same visual tricks, which don't even look that good , to get the same reactions.

Both of those had built in audience that went without or even despite boobs and explosions. Just personally speaking, I stomached everything stupid about Revenge of the Fallen just to see the Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons.

edited 2nd Apr '17 7:04:18 PM by Parable

I don't mean to piss on the legions of SFX artists who toil to make the movies/tv shows we love.

It's just that a good movie is like a cake: SFX is the icing, NOT the entire cake.

Being a geek isn't a bad thing. But missing a good story and good characters for the SFX is like eating a bad steak because you like the mushrooms it comes with.

Studio execs are a huge part of the problem: Studio execs tend to think of characters and scenes in terms of marketability.

Now a lot of creators do. Stan Lee wouldn't draw anything without thinking about how he could market the characters. He just didn't stop at "How do I get the Hulk on a lunchbox?"

The Avengers (2012) - an okay superhero story set apart by the action sequences and the wonderful performances Joss Wheldon got out of the cast. Star Trek series at their high points - SFX and actors working to sell the concept and tell the story.

Contrast that to the M Ichael Bay Transformers, live action Ghost in The Shell or Star Trek Enterprise - directors, writers, show runners thought that action and SFX would sell the concept. Stories are more a bunch of neato ideas or "high concept" but poorly thought out.

But body did they make money and sell toys!

Geeks don't do any better. For every Promoted Fanboy (see Wheldon,Joss), there are those who think that scenes, cameos and callbacks sell the story by themselves. See the 2017 Ghost in The Shell or Star Trek Into Darkness and it's "twist" that wasn't a twist.

And when that fails go for the low brow (Enterprise did fart, piss and sex jokes all in one episode). Bring in the boobs (see Scar Jo in Ghost in the Shell) or bring in the "action".

There is a reason a lot of "bad" films tend to lean on the action or make you focus on the SFX. The story sure ain't carrying it.

Cloverfield kept up the stupid mystery of what the monster looked like, to the point that the camera "never could quite see the monster". What Jar Jar Abrams missed was that the audience was either going to follow the characters or want to see the monster. What we got was whiny hipsters being eaten by a blurry mess. The creature's look was spoiled by the toys the studio licensed anyway.

American films are "more" violent in that some directors like to focus on action. Some like to focus on the dark parts of life: Quentin Tarentino, Joss Wheldon. Sam Peckenpaw had some of the most violent films you have ever scene. But he used the violence to tell a story, as Spielburg did in Saving Private Ryan (due to the source material, the movie is almost unfilmable without SFX).

Bad directors let the SFX, sex and violence take over.

We've always had violence in our popular culture. Dime novels, comics, films. Sure they tried to whitewash it, cover up the crimes of the past. Try watching "They Died With Their Boots On" today- just don't make a drinking game out of the historical errors -you'll die of alcohol poisoning.

All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48