Just catching up with an old post:
RNGmaster wrote:I should not have said anything. Not because I offended you, but because my arguments have absolutely no effect. Since you're evidently too tired to read through what I said, here's the cliffs notes: You say that you do not care for anything I said, but evidently the fact that I rescinded some of my more inflammatory statements was beneath your notice. I am not trying to talk sense into elitists - I said that there are no elitists here in the sense there are on FTG forums. You got WAY too pissed off about being branded an elitist, and evidently refused to read anything else I said, deeming it stupid, trolly garbage. Likely you will only glance through this post, and will again refuse to listen to anything I say, but I don't consider it a waste of time. Although having to argue with just one person after pacifying everyone else is kind of a bummer. (Seriously, BIL and Acid King were willing to listen to my justifications for saying "elitist", and their latest posts are not as hostile to me as yours are.)
I'm pretty sure you're not here any more, but here's a couple points that were bouncing around my head about a week ago; back when this would have been relevant; back when I had no 'net access:
Ancient Chinese proverbs: "The wise man also knows that when the well is dry, the cattle have died, and the grass is brown, that he shall not tarry in search of a conversation." More relevantly:
"A healthy man does not blame his stomach for poisoning; the tactful man does not blame the host for his food; but even the desperate man does not shit where he sleeps."
The fact that this discussion had both of us making errors and skimming through should have been the first indication this topic is of no great import - in terms of gains to be made in understanding or in "correcting" the landscape of shooters. Even if you consider there to be some utility in rehashing these issues
again (for your own benefit), it doesn't strike me as a conversation that has borne fruit in the past, nor does it strike me as likely to. Your determination to read through the whole thread just makes me shake my head. What did you gain from that? What did the community gain from that, other than your ability to say you, too, can join in pouring your thoughts down the memory hole? That's not how I'd use my time; I'm familiar enough with the arguments to know that this is just a wide-ranging free-for-all, and if every person is standing by their own beliefs, the divisive element of trying to "find" culprits for the supposed death of the genre is just going to widen divides the community cannot afford.
There's a wide variety of persons on this Forum, with an only slightly smaller variety of tastes in games, but our desire for better games from the industry is more than dampened by our unwillingness to compromise on quality for the sake of herding the industry towards spaceship shooters. How the hell is that supposed to work, anyway? As far as the industry is concerned, a negative is only proven when it comes to piracy, not in searching out underserved genres; the lack of good old-fashioned arcade-style games (if calling even a Cave / Raizing / etc. game "old fashioned" is appropriate) is not going to be remedied by throwing our money at half-baked projects that come close but ultimately miss the silver ring. All paying for dreck will do is take money from our pockets and mislead game companies about what the fans actually want. (I'm not saying that there haven't been any good shooters, or scoring systems, or games worth paying for.) All this talk on this Forum ultimately has to be pressed into action to amount to anything, but focusing on the gamer as what needs to change - that one doesn't fly.
Can't say I mind being called an elitist, other than that it's less a fit than a proper insult would be.
I also don't think that going for a high score is a completely lost concept in the gaming world yet. The music genere (Guitar Hero, DDR, etc) definitely still has an emphasis on replay for high scores. Going even more casual, the other day my 14 year old cousin was bragging about beating some of my high scores in a few of the Wii Fit mini games. 
)
