Not to overdo the English language talk, but English is also full of compounds that lost their two-word sense centuries ago, like anyone, elsewhere, otherwise, alright, and birthday, and almost never get separated, which I think is pretty interesting. But also some words and terms that never ever get compounded, like ‘a lot’. I also see English as being interesting because of its fluidity, and how in the end it doesn’t really matter if there’s a rule or not for when compounded words are compressed into one or left as two. Oh, and speaking personally, I find hyphenated versions of these words to be almost exclusively archaic, to the point where they always read as archaic to me, so if you want to sound like a penny farthing bicycle enthusiast, you can say video-game.
I used to be insufferably uptight about the correct sense and use of words like this by the way, but these days I just don’t care for the most part! The only rule I think that is important is to be consistent-- so if you like videogame, just go with it! But don’t use it and video game in a single conversation or post unless you’re making a point.
I speak and write all busted and weird as a native speaker. For example, it’s really common for people to speak in a weird truncated way in my neck of the woods when something needs to be done.
For example: the grass is very long, so you could say,
“The lawn needs to be mowed”
or
“The lawn needs a mowing”
Instead we say:
“Lawn needs mowed” It’s how I say it, and everyone around here says it, and I guess it makes us sound really dumb.
All that aside, I agree with @NoJoTo that videogame and coffeemaker look gross.
Yes, it is absolutely laughable how often people dredge up “nostalgia” as some way to delegitimize enjoying old games. Majority of the time I’m playing old games it is in fact games I did NOT play as a child, games I didn’t even know about, games that weren’t sold here, games that were out before I was born, games I would’ve had no interest in at the time.
When people go “you only like because nostalgia” I’m imagining a version of myself who’s been playing Sonic 1 daily for 30+ years like a hostage. Tears in my eyes as I YEARN for the games of today, but alas, the Sonic 1 whip cracks and I am forced to repeat Green Hill Zone once more, in a feeble attempt of reliving the days of yore.
This isn’t specifically contrarian because I haven’t heard anyone argue otherwise, but it is something I don’t hear people talk about enough.
Video game scenes should have conversation logs, at the very least! It’s always maddening when I press A one too many times or stop paying attention for one second, and now there’s a line of dialogue that’s just gone forever. In every other medium (except live theater, I guess) I can trivially go back a few seconds and watch it again.
I’ve been replaying 1000xResist, and I’d love to be able to hit a button and see the script up to my current point. Or controls to just rewind the scene in general. A lot of visual novels have this feature and engines like Ren’Py have it built in, but looking back through a scene hasn’t made it over to narrative adventure games.
Yes I know making video games is already too much work and this would be yet another feature, but it would be worth it. For me, specifically.
Timed dialogue choices suck. It doesn’t make a tense scene any tenser, unless you count the frustration that comes with not being able to read all choices in time, how hard it is for non-native speakers, for people with all sort of reading comprehesion difficulties, for playing with friends watching and so on. The best Telltale games using this also allowed to pause the game, effectively making the timer optional, but later ones did away with pausing.
I had to make frequent stops between each chapter, some lasting days, so picking it up again always led to some confusion. I ended up just playing it more for the vibes than to try understand all its threads
One of the things that makes Persona 5 an excellent video game is the ability to see and even replay prior dialogue in a scene. If the dialogue is worth reading carefully (and, very occasionally, it is in Persona 5), it’s worth being able to flip back, book-style, and catch the nuance in a prior line.
I often say that Australian Rules Football commentators should have to immediately retire if they claim that a losing team “needs a mark” from a forward entry, but said team scores and wins without taking said mark.
I’m extending this policy to youtube video essayists who are wrong about video games.
I’ve started playing Zero Ranger, Which I’m enjoying.
But the person who invented the “There should be as much noise and fanfare as possible, but under no circumstances should the player be able to realise that they’ve erred or taken damage” school of visual and audio design, has a lot to answer for.
I’m not sure I understand. There’s hit stop, an explosion, and a sound effect when you get hit. I honestly found it a distracting amount of feedback compared with most shmups. What would you be looking for?
