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What's your rig for music listening?
Oscar Robertson's comments have once again ignited generational angst. As someone who endeavors to remain eternally objective and non-biased, I'm going to settle the old vs. new debate once and for all. Of course, human history is long, so we have to a reasonable cutoff. I'd wager the majority of posters on here range from 18-50, so I think 1980-1999 vs 2000-2016 would be a relevant comparison here (note: this will be a long post).
(Disclaimer: I'm 36, and "hip" to all the latest trends, Internet memes, websites, and the like. If I don't like something, it has nothing to do with generational penis envy. It means I think it's )
Sports
The entertainment value of sports will remain forever the same despite the era. End of the day, a great game is a close, compe ive game filled with drama. Those elements will always trump "aesthetic value" (how the game is played). A local T-ball game can be more entertaining than a professional game if the former is compe ive.
That said, the aesthetic value of sports has improved exponentially since 1980. Athletes, while not necessarily more athletic (human beings peaked athletically a long, long time ago), are better trained, conditioned, and taught. A long held, but now erroneous, idea was that a professional athlete needed to be a "natural" from birth, born with "greatness," if an athlete didn't have a certain it factor from childhood, he was deemed to have no chance. Yes, a pro athlete still needs certain inherited gifts, but with our ever improving knowledge of the plasticity of the brain and other biometric advances, we know a lot of skills taken for granted as "natural gifts" can be taught. Stephen Curry, Kawhi Leonard, etc are probably role players in the 90's because the scouts wouldn't believe they, with their relatively underwhelming athleticism compared to their peers, could turn into elite players. , even people on this forum doubted Kawhi could be a great offensive player. Shane Battier was his peak.
Add analytics into the equation, and you get a sports landscape that's more complex and aesthetically pleasing than ever. And old players like Robertson don't have to be salty about it, since the biggest advancements in this regard have to do with knowledge. Older players aren't intrinsically any worse, they just existed during a time when the knowledge side of the game was still evolving. Any great player from any era would be able to evolve provided he was young enough.
Edge: Modern Era
Movies
Worse than ever. Garbage looking CGI has replaced practical effects, "stunts" are even typically CGI'ed unless you're Tony Jaa (I haven't seen one of his movies in years, so I'm sure he's sucking from the CGI now) or Jackie Chan, who's too in old now. Car chases look like (also CGI'ed). And no modern director can seem to choreograph an action scene to save his life. The fight scenes in the Dark Knight were 1980s Charles Bronson B-Movie tier. And it didn't help that Bane sounds like Kermit the Frog, but Nolan, who's essentially a straight-to-video action movie director, is celebrated as this generation's Orson Welles.
Compare any modern action shootout to this:
That's a 3 minute continuous tracking shot. No edits. Using thousands of squibs and practical effects, demanding perfect timing and choreography from the actors. You up, and you have to reset and shoot the entire thing over again. But alas, CGI has even turned John Woo into a lazy hack.
Or to this:
Comedies are even worse. The Apatow, Rogen, Franco, Hill collective are just not funny. And I don't irrationally hate on them. They were funny with Heavyweights [written by Apatow], Freaks and Geeks, and Undeclared, but now all their movies are essentially a derivation of Porky's.
Oh, and don't get me started on how bad remakes are today. Robocop as a PG-13 "superhero" movie?
There's also no such thing as the "Indie/art house movie" anymore, either, unless you count youtube garbage. I would rate the quality of Foreign cinema about the same.
(note: I'll try to be a bit shorter from here on out)
Edge (by a huge, Koolaid_Man's asshole sized margin): The Past.
Television
The mid-80s-99 was undoubtedly the peak of television comedy (Cheers, Roseanne, Seinfeld, In Living Color, Peak Simpsons, etc). What do you have today? Bazingaaa!!!! Absolute .
But today's television dramas (everything from the Wire to Breaking Bad) handily on NYPD Blue and Hill Street Blues. And since dramas are typically more complex and challenging, I can say television is better than ever.
Edge: Modern Era
Music
Ah, the one cultural phenomenon that creates more generational tension than anything else. Music was most definitely more important as a cultural identifier during the 80's and 90's than it is now, since it was really the only form of expression other than fashion for youth. Social media has replaced a lot of music's traditional function, and the cultural importance of music and artists has declined massively. Sure, the quality of music will always be subjective, but we can kind of quantify it:
http://mic.com/articles/107896/scien...ame#.gYkjOe5OyThe study: In a recent study, researchers from the Medical University of Vienna in Austria studied 15 genres and 374 subgenres. They rated the genre's complexity over time — measured by researchers in purely quan ative aspects, such as timbre and acoustical variations — and compared that to the genre's sales. They found that in nearly every case, as genres increase in popularity, they also become more generic.
"This can be interpreted," the researchers write, "as music becoming increasingly formulaic in terms of instrumentation under increasing sales numbers due to a tendency to popularize music styles with low variety and musicians with similar skills."
So music is much simpler than it once was. If simplicity is your thing, fair enough, but in basketball terms: Today's music: 1960's NBA.
And as someone who listens to music on a dedicated rig and not a pair of ty Beats, earbuds, a bluetooth speaker, laptop speakers, streamed through a smartphone, the mastering of today's music is beyond bad, shredding your ears and brain with excessive dynamic compression.
http://www.cnet.com/news/compression...ng-your-music/On a more modern scale, musicians have used the volume of different instruments as one of the ways to separate them in the song. The crack of a rimshot, or the sudden blast from a guitar is almost entirely missing from modern recordings. Instead, most modern recordings are a muddled mush of sound.
If everything is loud, there's no such thing as "louder." Or as one engineer put it: "When there is no quiet, there can be no loud." There's a level of emotion removed from such de-enhanced recordings. They're that much more artificial, less like musicians playing music.
I want to enjoy today's music, but I can't since it sounds as bad as Kobe's jumpshot looks.
Edge: Past.
Videogames
As I said in another thread, for all the technical advancements games have made, game design has taken about 4 steps back. They basically make games today for casuals and re s. Really, to beat a game all you have to do is turn on your system and hold the controller. The game will do the work for you. That's not to say I don't enjoy today's games. They're fun, but very few modern games test your reflexes and mettle (unless you play compe ively, and compe ive gaming has been around since the 70's starting with Pong. Nothing new there). It used to be an accomplishment, a privilege, to beat a Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden, or achieve a high score in Defender or Pac-Man. Now it's basically little Jimmy's right to beat a game.
Case in point (check out the kid's comments at 9:05):
Edge: Past
The Internet
The Internet isn't specifically one thing or about one thing, it's basically a microcosm of reality, so no such thing exists as "The Internet," but I do think Social Media has turned people into meme spouting idiots and attention s. I also think the advent of smartphones has made conversations less interesting and not as well thought out since people are loathe to type or read anything more than a paragraph on their smartphones. Speaking in Emojis is even more re ed. But just like you can't judge a library on its bad books, you can't judge the Internet on Web 2.0 stupidity. The Internet, like a library, is simply an information repository, so as long as it adds an equal amount of good information in proportion to the , everything is fine. I can simply focus on the good and ignore the . So essentially the more information the better the Internet is, meaning the Internet improves by the nanosecond.
Edge: Modern
Count: 3=3
This has gone on long enough, so I'll just quickly sum it up:
Literature: The Past (Twilight is the best selling series of all-time. Enough said)
Technology: While some tech is slowly turning us into lazy morons, technology has obviously made our lives easier. Modern Era (the aesthetics of technology was far more interesting in the past, though).
Tie Breaker:
The Spurs won most of their les in the 00-10s
Edge: Modern in Era
Last edited by midnightpulp; 02-28-2016 at 06:56 AM.
What's your rig for music listening?
So wrong on video games. Skyrim vs. Zelda is all you need to compare.
The depth, layering, graphics always get better. But I completely agree with the difficulty aspect. Games today are glorified movies which inevitably lead to a win.
You are ing crazy if you think Im reading all that nerd .
How would you classify naruto forum posts
after reading the chapter and analyzing the akatsuki leader's objectives, i gotta say i'm impressed by his business model. He's not just going to go out there and pwn everyone. He's actually going to gather allies, form armies, make money, and gradually build himself up into a viable business. Eventually, because he's got his little united nations of little ninja countries backing him, the akatsuki will end up on near equal footing with any of the five great ninja villages. Kinda like how bill gates built up microsoft from the ground up and turned it into a near super monopoly with ridiculous profit.
Meanwhile, orochimaru's chilling in caves still trying to keep up a facade of power although all he really has left is one bargaining chip(sasuke), a non-existant village, and ummm...kabuto. He had a business plan too...only it was a horrible failure because of fraud and mismanagement and ended up profiting him and him alone while leaving everyone else involved to suffer horribly when it failed. And even then, he ended up getting burned by his own short-sighted planning. Kinda like how enron was pretending all was well, while in reality, they were losing billions and their leaders were dumping its stock like crazy while encouraging employees not to panic because nothing was wrong at all. Orochimaru's ambition has little chance of being achieved, because he's got people on his ass already, little actual means to achieving it besides taking over sasuke(hey, even enron had a last grasp of possibly surviving before ultimately being shutdown)...but then what? He's still going to have people on his ass and it's just him and kabuto...and i suppose any sound that survived the invasion of konoha.
So what's my point?
Akatsuki can realistically achieve their goal because they seem to have sound strategy and a leader with a good head on their shoulders. I'm sure they'll build themselves up to the point where the goal is feasible and they're actually in high standing.
Meanwhile, i easily see orochimaru ending up like enron's ceo kenneth lay...
...dying alone on some mountain.
Sorry, if no one understands any of this crap. I just really liked that business model the al came up with.
QFT. Games are too easy nowadays. But everyone who can should try the Souls games or Bloodborne for a good old fashioned ass-kicking
I agree with the music to an extent and movies to extent.
I listen to music through symphony and concerts and not electronically created. It feels more authentic. There are excellent scores for videos games compared to the 90's. Some games remade their themes (Mario, Zelda, Sonic The Hedgehog).
I loved themes from Fable, Halo, Skyrim, Various sonic games, Various Mario games, Sims 3/4, Simcity 2013, and Rollercoaster tycoon series. Music ties permanently to periods of your life or things you went through.
The Various classical themes and modern scores from Civilization; Mozart, John Adams, JOhann Sebastian Bach, Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Christopher Tin, Antonin Dvorak, Camille Saint-Saens, Michael Praetorius, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Christopher Tin, etc.
Not to mention Hans Zimmer, Howard Shore, Harry Gregson, Joe Hasaishi, Cliff Martinez, Michael Andrews, Jon Brion; in films for me.
I've found that not all high quality movies are filmed and CGI..and some of them are necessary. If CGI is necessary, it better not be damn Cheap like The Hobbit Battle of the Five armies or cheap garbage 2012(movie). The hobbit Series was ruined by CGI'd orcs. Completely ruined. Whereas the orcs with memorable personalities from the LOTR series still live on.
There are various modern films I've loved and hated but the ones that are in need of appreciation are the ones the idiots don't watch. They won't score high in the box office either.
You can find great movies and great music if you try.
Marantz SR6009 receiver.
Marantz 6200 turntable.
Acoustic Research AR11 speakers.
Rythmik sub woofer
Sony Super Audio CD player.
Ever heard of Difficulty setting? Sure, a large part of games today are easier in normal mode than the older games but that was needed to capture the casual gamer market.
Difficulty is such a poor argument formolder games when you consider you can adjust difficulty. Play on nightmare or Hard..heck Devil may cry for example have had settings where you get hit once and you die.
Disagree on fight sequences
Just watch that hallway fight in Daredevil season 1
Or the opening sequence of the latest BvS trailer
Any modern game turned up to the highest difficulty still isn't hard because of the simple fact you get unlimited lives and typically respawn at a favorable checkpoint. Older games typically had a finite amount of lives and continues, and once you run out, it's back to the beginning. There's nothing special about getting hit once and dying in Devil May Cry hardest setting, since that was the default setting in pretty much every classic game
And that speaks nothing of game and level design. Simplistic as , with big, glowing markers telling you where to go. Case in point:
There's exceptions, sure, like the Souls series (and many indie developers make games in the classic gaming style), but overall, games are made for super casuals. Nothing wrong with that. I no longer have the patience and will to get my ass kicked by a classic style game, but I'm not going to sit here and pretend gaming is better than ever. They're glorified movies now.
Arguing game design is another stupid thing since modern gamers are either open world or semi open world.
As if dragon age was possible with older games.
I can't agree with games being better in the past. Old school games are purely linear while now you have like GTA V that is never ending fun. If you want difficulty go play shooters online, no AI can with actual human enemies.
The first Elder Scrolls games from the mid-90s are comparatively bigger games than Dragon Age. We're talking 200-300 hours. I beat DA in about 60. Dragon Age is also a more simplistic version (mechanically) than older Bioware games like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale.Arguing game design is another stupid thing since modern gamers are either open world or semi open world.
As if dragon age was possible with older games.
Open world games are nothing new. They've been on PCs since the 90s. Fallout 1 and 2 and dozens of other role playing and adventure games.
Open world games are also not the primary method of game design. For every Grand Theft, there's about 50 corridor first person shooters or movie type games like The Last of Us and Uncharted. There's also nothing complex about an open world game design, especially when you can set way points that basically guide you to where you need to go. It's impossible to get lost, unlike in older games that didn't even have maps.
Last edited by midnightpulp; 02-28-2016 at 08:49 PM.
What era are we talking about? The early arcade and home console eras were definitely linear, with gameplay based around testing reflexes, pattern recognition, and the like, but when PCs and home consoles got more powerful in the 90s, we got a wealth of open, big world adventure games (Fallout series. Elder Scrolls series. Final Fantasy Series, etc, etc).
Yes, playing compe ively is the primary way now to get a challenging experience, but even the first person shooters today are easier to get kills. Compare a twitch shooter like Quake 3 to Call of Duty.
You were comparing Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden, Pacman, etc, so I made the comparison with 80s games. Games stopped being difficult in the 90s with the Super Nintendo and Genesis. I love the oldschool Fallout games 1 & 2 (2 is my favorite game of the series), but calling them big open world games anything comparable to GTA V is a huge stretch. I still love arcade Shinobi or Kareteka on the Commodore 64, but I'll take 250 hours of Skyrim exploring mountains and chasing dragons over 1 or 2 hours of my favorite old school games.
That's the problem with open world games
Too time consuming lol
I'd rather play a great game for 200 hours than 10 average games for 20 hours.
A crossover: video game music is light years ahead of where it used to be. Sure, hardware constraints were the main culprit but many of today's games have better music than most movies.
This.
I don't consider rote, repe ive, reflex skills making a game great. I don't play them to see how many remote controls I can smash on the coffee table, I want them to be entertaining, immersive, and "fun".
My favorite old-school games were the Leisure Suit Larry and Police Quest series.
Yes, if you like exploration, modern gaming is definitely still great in that regard (although Skyrim has great graphics, I wouldn't call it a bigger game than Daggerfall, which takes a comparable amount of hours to play).
My gripe is game design. Compare even GTA3 to GTA5. In the former, there was no convenient waypoint system, quick travel taxi cabs, and the like. There was still a map, but you had to spend time in the city and learn it.
And if you've played the old school shooters like System Shock and Quake, you know FPS level design basically caters to children.
My modern gaming cutoff was probably too far back. Things didn't start to get really dumbed down until about '06-07. The PS2, Gamecube and Xbox still had "hardcore" games like the Devil May Cry series, Godhand (a real asskicker that had me breaking a controller
Police Quest games are still more "hardcore" than any adventure game today. Remember how you needed to look at the physical map that came with the game to know where you're going? Now, they just a put a big shiny marker telling you where you to go.
Yeah, but if I'm going to "waste" a couple hours in an exploration and leveling game I'd much rather do it crafting, trading, or gearing up than randomly roaming around.
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