The end of August is finally here, and we're heading into the last third of the year! One last stretch to go and we'll have made it. Until then, let's have a little fun as we usually do on the weekends. Today will be a more straightforward one.
Considering recent topics, I wanted to go over one we've touched on a bit, but one that seems to be coming back with younger generations: the rental experience. What exactly do we miss about rental stores, and what can we get back?
For one, obviously the preference for a long time has been to own. When DVD first came in during the late '90s and became standard in the early '00s (almost two decades ago) it became a lot more common to buy what you wanted. Rental stores themselves (the chains, particularly, though some smaller ones did this too) cleared out old stock cheap, some even offering classic games that go for hundreds on the second hand market for peanuts. It made sense why that was popular, sometimes favorites disappeared and you would never find them again. You had to grab what you could.
That era passed quickly, however. and the '00s changed as they went. By the end, social media was standard, cheap DVDs were common, and this new thing called streaming and even YouTube had taken over by the late '00s. Blockbuster died, becoming a corporate monolith pumping Hollywood product at the expense of local scenes and lack of variety, showing that the customer could have more than the hobbled selection they were left with by the end of that behemoth.
I know there are younger people (particularly '00s kids, Millennials) that don't believe me, but Blockbuster was a corporatized monopoly that replaced local industry, no different than pretty much everything we complain about today. It choked out variety, (local stores had their own selections not mandated and supplied by Hollywood directly), local filmmakers who used to have incentive to share their wares at their local store, and turned the rental experience into a bland facsimile of what it once was. Everything you complain about today in regards to places like McDonalds, Walmart, and even the recent Cracker Barrell disaster, all started with Blockbuster. Make no mistake, if it was alive today, it would be just like them.
That said, Blockbuster was not without merit, even if a part of the decline of the industry itself. There is something missing in the entertainment space without renting around. In fact, there is something missing in the entertainment space in general, as we have finally accepted it all as throwaway and interchangeable, and as we've done so we've begun to crave that missing piece we've been missing. But what exactly was it?
As the above video shows, it's all the little things, the touches of humanity that have since been lost to interpersonal Consuming and hiding away from the world.
Just think of how much the medium of cinema has changed, for the worse since the 20th century. One can also throw television in here too, and even aspects of gaming (like multiplayer). It started as a public activity in a high trust society, and ended as a private affair in a low trust one. It doesn't matter whether you "hate people" or think your taste impeccable and beyond reproach, but an activity that once included sociality as an important factor which is now completely stripped away signals something important has indeed been entirely lost.
Some might say we cannot get that back, that "progress" is inevitable and time marches on so we must adapt. While the latter is true, the former does not understand that every single change that happens in life is not automatically "progress" and needs to be kept around. We now know that something behind "new" does not preclude its quality, a lesson we had to learn after that decade of disaster known as the 2000s and the rot to come of the 2010s.
There are things we lost, important things, and we need to bring them back. We cannot keep pretending we can go on as we currently are.
Streaming has its uses: online gatherings, meetings, and even video sites, have their place. What it cannot do is replace real life needs, like social interaction. For example, online multiplayer has never come close to replicating the feeling of playing in the same room with someone you can directly interact with. Even when the games were better, they never matched up due to missing that important feature earlier classics took for granted. The cinematic experience is the same.
It goes without saying that the solution isn't to bring Blockbuster back, or to get another company to replace what it did. The corporate era is over now, and it's clear we cannot bring it back. Much like how McDonalds hanging its awful modern design wouldn't change how choked out the fast food industry has been of fresh blood in decades, just putting up logos and chanting old sales pitches and advertising lingo won't repair the larger problem.
It has to start locally. It just does. There is no other option. If one really wants the rental experience to return, it is going to have to start there. It is going to have to start where it began, in small mom and pop shops serving the local community. People are going to have to drive out of their way, even from the next town over, to scope out your wares and spread the word. Just as it once was, this is the only way it can be.
That being said, it isn't like just offering rentals will change the social climate. Telling someone to just start a business to fix social problems is a recipe for disaster. But we have to start somewhere with an idea, and that is closer to the ballpark than wishing for the return of corporate control of an industry again. That is just plain never going to happen and not a path worth traveling down. We do not need another Netflix. We do not even need the current one, to be brutally honest.
So I'm not going to make this post anti-Blockbuster or anything of the like, because it really doesn't matter at this point. However, there is something to be gained from such a simple industry being lost purely for automated digital distribution.
The arts and entertainment in general have been losing their connection with society, with real people, and it isn't a new phenomenon. We've trumpeted anti-social "leaders" and artists for decades as the people whose example is worth following, and it's led us to where we are now. We can't go any farther in this direction as it it has done little but foster acceptable mental illness in the mainstream and confuse the abnormal with the normal. All standards have been lost.
To go forward at this point requires going back. It isn't a suggestion, it is simply reality. We've spent too far mindlessly plowing ahead and ignoring the road signs while plugging our ears and repeating "progress" like it's a religious mantra of some kind. Continuing to do that, despite its very clear failure will not just magically work now, because it never did to begin with.
This goes beyond just renting, but I think that much is apparent to anyone reading this, so I'll just stop right here. What is more important is that we're aware of past mistakes so that we don't make them again just in more ridiculous ways.
That's all for today, I hope you've had a good August and I will see you in September! Let's charge into fall in style.
Thanks again for all your support. 2025 has been a weird one, but there are still many of cool surprises ahead of us. I can't wait until I can show you what I've been working on.
It's been a bit since we did one of these, so I wanted to pick something of a bit more obscure subject to cover. This time I wanted to cover the current practice of character rot currently plaguing modern mainstream franchises and revivals. It isn't just an ignorance problem, it's an ignorance problem brought about by stubborn ego.
A lot of talk is spent about why so many properties forcibly change old things to "fix" them while a loyal cadre of people who got into it for what it originally was always complain about it. Contrary to popular belief, it isn't the customers who are wrong in these cases: it is the creators who willing ignore what they don't like or understand about the property and set about to "repair" its perceived problems. All while pop cultists who will consume anything let them uncritically demolish it because they too do not care much about the issue.
For an example of this very problem I suggest the above issue from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and franchise itself that has had one nasty identity crisis its entire existence, but only really became a problem when a certain sect of western obsessives got their foot in the door and started making demands instead of approaching the assignment with pure intentions. What you get is the mess above that completely misses the original intent of the project.
We go on a lot about how ideology is responsible for these trends, but the truth is that it all stems from an ignorant misunderstanding of a subject then, instead of correcting course, doubling down the way the ideology tells you to. In the end, it's ego. While artistic ego is real, when working with others one is meant to reign it in and collaborate to make the best of both worlds. At no point should you consider it carte blanche to run roughshod over everyone else and assume you are the final arbiter of what is right and good.
It's a strange narcissism that runs in this generation of creators that seems to be just about everywhere, even when it's completely undeserved. Whether in comics, TV, video games, and even books, there is a disturbing lack of humility to be found in it, even in something like an old stalwart property from the 1990s. Every 20th century IP is infected with this mentality now, and it appears to be completely inescapable.
However, what's not inescapable is the change in the independent spaces and NewPub. There you don't have to go through any of this decay because it's all owned by the original creators who have no aspiration to sell out to a dead industry for a quick buck. It's about building, not cashing in and going home. We have a duty to create, and we're going to do it.
In other news, there's a new podcast episode on the Patreon. This one is over an hour long and is about tertiary characters and creations and how they matter more than we might think. I also go on a bit where I think the industry is heading beyond this modern rut. It's an exciting one!
We've got quite a lot to look forward to.
Thanks again for all your support, and I'll see you next time!
Hey all, I've been kind of down in the last few weeks, by both life and health. If you've got some prayers, I could use them. Regardless, there isn't a lot to mention. I'm still working behind the scenes between recovery periods.
So today I wanted to share this video about a strange internet figure who didn't turn out to be some kind of creep. In fact, he only got more eccentric as the years went by.
All this is just to say that things don't always get worse. Sometimes you won't even know how much has changed until you wake up one day and see just how much has changed. You never know just what's going to happen.
Anyway, that's all for now! I hope you're having yourself a good October and I will hopefully see you sooner than later. Have a good weekend!
Welcome to the weekend! Hope it's been a good week for you. I've been tinkering with a lot of stuff behind the scenes for various projects, so there isn't much to report on this week.
In case you missed it, Star Wanderers is out for everyone post-campaign! It's 8 stories of adventures between a galactic cop and a mysterious space knight. For those who read it, yes there will be more. In fact, I have some more in the can (one of which was released in Anvil #2, if you missed it!) and some yet to be announced. Aside from that, I do have other stories I'm working on, including a set I'm trying to get done ASAP for later submission periods. In fact, after this post is done I will most likely get back to them (unless something goes sideways, anyway).
On top of all that, Phantom Mission is still ongoing! We just passed an important reveal regarding the underground city and what the not-do-good doctor's plans might be for the future of this fallen place. Is the world really ending, or is there more to it all than we think? Catch up on this serialization by checking out the Patreon today! For those curious, I've also already finished up the first draft of the follow-up to this story (it's looking like it will all come out to be a total of 3 parts), so if you want to be the first to read it, sign up today!
That aside, for this weekend I wanted to cover a nearly forgotten time in internet history--early YouTube. It might be hard to imagine it now, but the first days of the site contained a very different world than the one we live in now. Said site was also tremendously more functional and less prone to backbiting and sabotage.
But I digress.
Before the western world became a series of shanty towns for subcultures spun out of control into cults and separated from the greater whole, the online world was once a window into what late 20th century life was rapidly turning into. Back then we were still mostly united and had very similar every day to day lives and experiences, and it shows when you watch early YouTube today. It might feel foreign to a kid today, but that's part of the point. That stuff succeeded back then because everyone could relate--not a hyper-specific minority of loud people.
It's hard to imagine now, but one of the earliest successes on the platform back then was the Angry Video Game Nerd (Originally "the Angry Nintendo Nerd") who mastered the early format of YouTube by keeping his videos short, concise, and relatable to the Gen Y teenagers and young adults hooking themselves up to the platform for the first time. He was THE star of early YouTube. His comedy videos focused on what it was like to grow up in the late 80s and early 90s, a world that was very rapidly disappearing, and filtered it through shared experiences in his work. His videos were very popular and more or less defined the early history of the site, even when doing battle with the diabolical copyright strike system of early YouTube who clearly had no idea what they were doing. When people say the early internet was the Wild West, this is the sort of thing they mean. It wasn't always as tightly controlled (though that is rapidly falling away) and formulaic as it is today.
This creator of the AVGN , James Rolfe, would eventually come to define what YouTube would eventually be used for, both good and bad, in the decade that followed. In essence, he was a pioneer of this new landscape and was the first to show others how it could be done.
Naturally, of course, this meant he would have many imitators and followers that would both ape what he did or go in their own direction using his example as a base. The most obvious example is Doug Walker, the Nostalgia Critic, who would instead focus on movies and TV shows from the past and rib them in a way similar to James.
However, there is a bit of difference to how it began Vs what it turned into. If you paid attention to a lot of early videos back them from either James or Doug, or their imitators, they would frequently discuss what it was like for "us" growing up and how "we" felt at the time these things were made. In a sense, they were speaking to their generation and communicating both tongue in cheek observations and stray thoughts their cohort had growing up at the time. It was never meant to be taken seriously, but to the generation who were ironically raised on their videos, it was deadly serious. They just didn't understand at the time how it would come to define them.
Before nostalgia became a weapon to either fire up subversives or traditionalists, it was entertainment itself. The above video focuses on just how many people at the time there were on the early days of YouTube trying to connect and express this discovery. At the same time, others were simply trying to get a piece of the pie for themselves. What "pie" that is, however, is not clear, since there was no monetization on early YouTube. There wasn't anything to gain except video views and attention. I personally believe a lot of this early fanfare was just an excitement that you could actually connect with others across the world on your shared interests--something you could not do before YouTube came into existence or the internet became more ubiquitous in everyday life. YouTube, much like the then-burgeoning social media, would change how the internet worked in the years to come. It would do this to the point that the world before it has almost entirely been erased.
I can't say whether that part of it was intentional, but there is a bit of bitterness in these spaces today that wasn't really there at the time. Getting drunk video responses arguing about how the original NES TMNT game was actually flawless from college kids showed just what sort of environment was. When that disappeared, much of the intent was lost. Instead of communication device, it became its own ecosystem.
It's a big goof now for the Millennials raised on the internet to lampoon or goof on the early days of what we have now, but it was taken surprisingly seriously at the time by the Gen Y teens and young adults who were trying to take advantage of this early landscape to communicate with their cohort. And despite how it would later turn out, it wasn't to share their love of the pop cult or let everyone know who world changing or terrible entertainment was--it was a desire to find your fellow wanderers through life and connect with them as the world was so rapidly changing post-9/11. It's hard to describe, or really get across today, but the site was very different before money and worldwide fame became a real factor.
That doesn't mean there weren't still coattail riders, though! Check out the above video and you'll see what I mean. Amidst the genuine angry reviewer wave of people like Armake21 (RIP) there were just as many who simply wanted to be James Rolfe with no idea of what made his material work. There is a reason few of them lasted beyond the early days of YouTube, though the fate of some is surely an interesting story in itself.
What is funny is that you can track the change and how fast it morphed by the time of the Blip.TV days with sites like That Guy With The Glasses to being an attempt at an industry that thrives off not only milking nostalgia, but tearing down the past. By the time the 2010s hit, that early vibe and optimism was lost to the growing cynicism and greed that would come to define many of the "Content Creators" to come. Different world, different priorities.
Related to that, the same user as the above video also made one that features an in depth look at how the Nostalgia Critic came to be, showing the change from the mood of early YouTube into what it would become in the process. He also gives some perspective as a younger viewer at the time and how he processed a lot of this Gen Y attitude that comes across as strange to many young people today who take it for granted.
I recommend this one as well, though it is much longer:
You can see a lot of DNA here in what would soon become the madness of 2010s YouTube from political wankery to the ever-prevalent "Us Vs Them" narratives that more or less run the site now. Do whatever you can for those extra dollars, just like what wiped out journalists in the mainstream media. Eventually even the "Content Creators" will suffer the same fate. It didn't start that way, though, and it's fairly obvious when watching early footage from when it began that it was never meant to be anything other than a lark.
And yet, here we are today.
Regardless, that old world is gone now. Though James and Doug still exist and are still successful on the platform, as we barrel towards their 20th anniversary as video creators (yes, we're that close), it seems clear that where we are now is not where we imagined we'd be back then. What exactly we imagined is still anyone's guess, but with how unstable formerly stable things have gotten, how the internet went from being a sure thing to being ready to fall apart at a moment's notice practically over night, it's strange watching a lot of this early material and remembering just how different it was back then--especially when you consider what happened to a lot of these people over the years and where we ourselves have gone.
When was the last time we could use the term "we" and feel like it could actually apply to a cohort? It feels like it's been ages.
Of course, none of that is ever coming back, but this current present also isn't forever either. No one really knows what's coming next, though I don't think we've ever been quite so uncertain about it before. This makes looking at a lot of this past work so fascinating from the perspective of the unstable '20s. We never saw any of this coming. Would things have changed if we had? Maybe. There is no way to ever know.
We were born before the internet was even a factor in anything. What will it be like when we return to that state? What will we have have learned and applied from this experiment that just didn't work out? I don't rightly know, but it is interesting to think about. Today isn't eternity.
That's all for this week. I hope you're keeping cool as we head into the final stretch of August. Summer is almost done, but we're not. There's still plenty to look forward to.
Welcome back! I've been doing a lot of running around recently and waiting for the Star Wanderers proofs to arrive in the mail, so I've not had much time to write here. That said, there have been some strange happenings, one of which I want to speak on today.
We've been speaking a lot about independent spaces where creatives are truly flourishing away from the rote and puerile corpo scene for years at this point. Sure we've gone on puffing our chests and talking about this change, but has there been much in the way of results? While the old industries fall away, is there actually something rising to take it's place?
It turns out that the answer, regardless of what industry you might be thinking of, is yes. If there is any form of art and entertainment you enjoy, there is an example of its independent space dwarfing what the mainstream has to offer. Such a thing would be unthinkable a decade ago and not even thought of as possible 20 years before. Of course these means a lot more curation is needed, an obvious downside to the death of failed gatekeepers, but that is just the reality of things.
The fact of the matter is the duty of gatekeeping industries is to shine a spotlight on quality first and foremost, to allow it the chance to shine and connect with wider audiences. However, the position being warped and used as a way to reward political allies who deliver bomb after bomb to the market while ignoring the rest of the world has repelled the mass audience away from every "professional" space. The trust that had accumulated over the years is now gone, and said industries are on their back foot. A good portion of the will probably do little but shrink and circle the drain until they are eventually dead. This is what happens when you fail to adapt.
Once the audience leaves, they don't come back. Deliberately chasing them out is suicide, and now we see it in full bloom today.
So then what of independent spaces? Are they still looked at as "vanity" projects, or for folks that "couldn't make it" in the mainstream, or has that perception changed? If the audience is walking away from failing mainstream industries, where are they going now?
You might have already guessed it, but the answer is that the independent world is no longer considered fringe or lesser to the majority of the audience that has moved on. It is now seen as a direct competitor, and anyone paying attention not only considers that fact, they also vastly prefer the new space that is currently growing at rapid speed.
Which industry does this refer to? That's the bizarre part--it's all of them. There isn't one creative space where the folks independent from the old system isn't outdoing said old system on just about every account besides budget, and budget has quickly become a dirty word in most artistic endeavors in modern day. The old industries threw too much money, overblew budgets, and polished everything until nothing remained but sheen blinding the audience to anything original that might have once existed. Every old industry is like this now, and they are all dying.
Despite that, of course it isn't all sunshine and roses. Most of the newer alternatives are still scraping by and still gaining steam and support. Again, without a marketing budget or an entire system behind them (as gutted as it has been from misuse in Current Year), these new spaces are still growing about as slowly as the old industries are falling in on themselves. The way the wind is blowing is obvious, and most have either accepted it and made the change accordingly or refuse to face reality.
It might be slow going, but we all know where this is eventually going. The only question is how long it will take to finally get there.
However, one example of an independent space growing so big it has actually pierced the mainstream and seized the wheel, is video games. While every other industry might still be slowly making strides to change itself, games have already done it. In fact, they did it so well that most people have yet to really notice it already has.
As the AAA industry burns to ash in the mainstream, video games have had a resurgence. There has not only been an increase in new ideas and approaches, but also in formerly abandoned genres that were once industry standards but were thrown aside for the AAA slop. Now that is actually acceptable to say how bad the industry is, especially after an entire console gen of literally nothing, audience are now realizing where they are getting their entertainment from, and it's not the big dogs.
Nowhere is this shift more obvious than in the FPS genre. What was once a genre of kings back in the '90s before being overtaken by AAA throughout the '00s, eventually, like everything else, had its core removed, its edges sanded off, and turned into safe corporate AAA product. The days of Duke Nukem and even Half Life were long over. This all changed throughout the '10s, eventually building into a new scene that has just recently finally managed to burst out and take over the landscape.
We've gone over this before, but the scene has only gotten better with the passage of years. If that old piece is hopeful, the reality turned out even better.
Let us go into an example of how things have improved.
The above video at the top of the post is a review of a DOOM II "mod" (and I use the term "mod" extremely loosely) called Ashes: 2063, a completely free download of a post-apocalyptic adventure that has more depth, replayability, and ambition than anything the mainstream is putting out. There are multiple episodes, each offering different approaches and refinements of the original concept, making it a wholly original game that using the term "mod" is almost insulting. They fashioned an entirely new game out of John Carmack's masterpiece of an engine, showing just how ahead of time DOOM really was for its time. Even now it impresses.
For a full breakdown on what the game is and why it's so impressive, I highly recommend watching the above video. Simply putting it into words won't work when a visual comparison or a visual medium will do that much better. Needless to say, there is much more to the project than you might think and it is very representative of how the scene operates today.
However, that is not all. Ashes is just one example in a wave of new creators taking over from the failing old industry.
On top of the above was a recent stream for an FPS game showcase. It might not seem like a big deal unless you understand hoe much things have changed in a mere few years. This one stream put the last decade and a half of E3 shows to shame on its own. Not only was there 70(!) games presented, all recent and new releases, it's almost all entirely pure gameplay and with minimal filler to be found in its massive length.
You can see this stream below. If you have any interest in video games or the genre you will be blown away by the sheer amount on offer, most of it looking top notch. While the AAA industry struggles to even release games at all anymore, the indie space is putting this out:
For those who don't want to watch or skim the stream, it is several hours long and contains nothing but wall to wall game footage with minimal channel ads for the host. It's almost like a throwback to another age of the industry that no longer exists.
One of the projects shown off is even the newest instalment in the Ashes saga, Ashes: Hard Reset. As someone who was watching when it was shown off, the chat exploded with excitement at the gameplay reveal. It was almost like watching those old E3 shows again. That thrill is still there--it's just no longer in the mainstream.
That's a common theme today. The old spirit still exists, it just no longer resides in the old industry. It doesn't matter what medium this refers to--that is simply the reality of it.
The book industry, while not at the level of video games (we have a lot more work to do to make up for decades of failure, after all) is one such industry that has long since lapped the old one. The visibility problem might be bigger, but that just comes with the territory of operating in a weaker industry. It has to be built up again from almost the ground level.
I highlighted a few crowdfunds at the beginning of the month, and since then there have been a few that have popped up in just the short time. For instance, Cirsova has put out a limited campaign to sell 100 copies of the Illustrated Stark omnibus by Leigh Brackett. Over half have already been sold, so you might want to jump on that while you still can. That aside, there is something new showing up almost every day. No one can really keep up with it all, though that is a better option than the alternative. No one wants to go back to that dead end state.
So if you're feeling discouraged by the state of things, you might want to reconsider exactly where we are and what is going on outside your window. There is a vibe shift happening and we have evidence of it everywhere. Even those who have stuck by the ever-declining mainstream can no longer avoid the obvious and are now changing their tune after years, even decades, of ignoring what can no longer be ignored. The winds of change are blowing harder everyday.
You might want to pay attention to it now, because who knows where it will go next.
Back in the '90s, it felt like something new was coming out about every other day. Which, it was. People have described it as every day feeling like Christmas, which isn't entirely inaccurate, but a sign as to just how much was being put out at the time by the gatekeepers.
Today I wanted to highlight one such interesting project, which was released by the cereal brand Chex back in the mid-90s. This has always been a fascinating case.
Everyone alive today knows how popular DOOM was when it first released, pretty much singlehandedly reshaping the PC gaming scene in its image and truly kickstarting the FPS genre. One of the games that came in its wake, and one still looked back on as a favorite from that day, was the project called Chex Quest.
Essentially one of the first top tier DOOM mods before the scene really got well known, Chex Quest was an entire child friendly mission pack given out for free in cereal boxes. That's right, they gave out entire games as free bonuses back in the day. Not only that, but Chex Quest was actually really good. Such a thing is unthinkable today.
There was also a second episode released by Chex and, eventually, a third one was put out for free online to complete the entire adventure. To this day, Chex Quest is considered one of the defining FPS titles from its Golden Age. And it was given out for free by a cereal company.
Check out the video above for more information. If you're a genre fan and haven't given it a shot, now is your chance. It's also perfectly safe for kids, too. There isn't really anything violence to be found, despite the genre it takes place in.
Again, this was a much different era than the one we live in now. Something this is unthinkable today, especially when every company is so aggressive against their perceived outgroups, but Chex Quest is a pleasant memory to when things were a little different and when possibilities in the mainstream were a lot more open to things than they are today.
It truly was a different and long over era. Oh well, we'll just have to work even harder to make the next one even better.
That's all for this weekend, and I will see you next time.
Welcome to the weekend! Today we're going back to the past, but not too far back. This time we're not even going back to the 20th century.
Do you remember television? If so, you're probably old. It's fairly irrelevant as a medium now, but back in the 20th century, it was king. However, much like cinema, it's currently on the way out as popular entertainment, relegated to the history books.
But, I digress. Let us put ourselves back in a time when it mattered.
In 2002, a TV network called G4 launched into the world, and it ended up shaping the tastes of a lot of Millennials who grew up with it. It was a cable network focused on video games, at least at first, before becoming the first geek culture hub on television. But what you don't know is a lot of the behind the scenes weirdness involved with the network's creation.
Back in the early '00s, a channel called TechTV was one of the biggest cable networks for tech nerds. This was back when TV was so big there were niche channels for just about anything. TechTV flourished, for a time, finding its own audience. That is, until it was merged with the upstart network G4 after being bought by Comcast into being one of the first Geek Culture network, in 2004. To this day, the TechTV merger is still looked upon as a sore point for a lot of tech bros from back then, and it, in a way, was a harbinger for wider things in the culture to come. Everything would be pounded into the same mud slick or disposable entertainment.
But this is about G4 itself, and not the controversial merger, so lets keep it on topic.
If you were a young Millennial gamer, you probably have a lot of fond memories of the network, if you were a computer nerd or an older Gen Y/X gamer, you probably hated it. Especially since it influenced such programs as The Big Bang Theory and the pop cult that formed around it as the 2000s wore on. That was a strange period of television history whose reverberations are still being felt today, well over a decade after G4 ended.
That means this is a topic well worth exploring and looking into. Thankfully, someone actually has done this, and recently.
Last year, Chris Gore, one of the people who were involved in the original cable network released an extensive documentary about G4, covering its beginnings in 2002 up until its end in 2012. by mainly focusing on its flagship series, Attack of the Show. This documentary is also interesting from the perspective that G4 itself represents the end of television itself as it is more or less the last original cable network to launch to any sort of success. In essence, it works as both a snapshot of a time and place, and the story of how an entire era of mass media ended.
It also presents a timeline of events in a specific era in pop culture from its beginnings to its endings by the time the network was shuttered. Even just starting with the last remnants of '90s style extreme design and font in its beginnings that slowly fell away to the big and bold '00s style of "edge" and degeneracy that was popular at the time, it represents the shift in tone very well. It's no wonder so many Millennials fondly remember the network--it encapsulates what the decade was like for those around at the time who lived through it.
I do recommend watching the above documentary if you are curious about what it was like back then, even if the time period was not your favorite. It shows exactly what people were interested in at the time and what exactly they wanted out of entertainment and their products. You can't look at G4 and not just see the 2000s in every facet of its existence. This is also why the network relaunch was always doomed to fail, because it was built around personalities that hated what the network was built on and the people who made it while forgetting that times have changed and the social climate is much different, and worse. Many such cases, unfortunately.
Even G4 itself never really recovered from Attack of the Show losing the last of their two original hosts in 2012, just before the network ended, a signal that the hangover that was the 2000s was really over and the 2010s were just ahead.
There's just no going back. That era is over.
"G4 is to TV what the MCU is to movies." ~ Quote from the documentary
All around, just a bad era culturally and socially, and it led to an even worse one in the decade after.
The documentary even tries to bring up the old canard that only geeks and nerds read comic books, played video games, and engaged in tabletop games back in the day, something that is a HEAVY revisionism of what it was actually like back then for those like me who lived through it. Everyone in my schoolyard, for instance, played a collected Magic: The Gathering and every single person in my class played video games. This was BEFORE the 2000s, and I keep being told that liking this stuff was some sort of taboo back then. This revisionism to make "geeks" a separate cohort that were bullied for the products they consumed is simply not the case.
What this sort of talk does is foster an ingroup outgroup dynamic based on half-truths that lead others to think they have to behave a certain way to be accepted into a club. This leads to today when you can look at any Geek Culture podcast or stream and be amazed that not only does everyone look and dress the same but they all have their apartments/rooms decorated in the exact same ways while they spout the exact same opinions on everything else.
G4 didn't cause this, to be fair, but it was the starting point for where a lot of this weird lifestyle brand attitude showed its early form.
It turned a hobby into an identity.
But that's not how it was back in the 20th century.
Fact of the matter is there were only two weird kids in my class growing up: one who awkwardly brought up wrestling all the time and another one who was an antisocial thug. The first was not weird because he liked wrestling, but because he had bizarre thought patterns no one understood. He was not hated or bullied over it, either. The second was a weirdo because he attended political protests and threw Molotov cocktails at government buildings. That dude was also a fedora and seethed to himself a lot. Needless to say, the second one was the only one the other kids outright disliked. Neither were considered odd because of corporate products they consumed, because even those people had an identity beyond entertainment media.
We had a guy in our class that installed emulators on the school computers and once printed out porn of a video game character and even he wasn't the target of bullying. Believe it or not, the world wasn't such a simplistic place where your interests defined your identify back then. It was how you treated other people and conducted yourself in public. Revenge of the Nerds is a deranged revenge fantasy of people who probably should have been stuffed into lockers. Even then, however, watching popular movies didn't make you part of a social class.
You are never going to convince me that the giant merchandizing blockbusters of Star Wars up to The Matrix were not enjoyed by normal people, because they were. Super Mario Bros. 3 was a multimillion seller and the NES one of the highest selling systems of all time--ever kid and teenager played them or knew what they were. X-Men comics used to sell around one million per issue and I knew a lot of people who read them. All of this stuff was normal. You were not weird for engaging in this stuff. Again, this was all before the 2000s before people were bringing Death Notes to class and Naruto-running in the hall in their porn hoodies. Take a guess as to what was actually different about the times. Hint: it was not the entertainment itself but the attitude behind those consuming it.
All that happened is that the brand overtook identity and consumed social interaction. It was no longer about things you like, but about things you obsess over to fill a spiritual vacuum in a way of putting Us Vs. Them.
But that is really what happened in the 2000s. All forms of real identity fell away and became little more than a question of what products you like, which then folded over into other groups trying to inject their poisonous new morality systems into this climate to lazily change the world through classroom theories made by people with no authority over anyone. Hence, the G4 network relaunch's failure. That era was transitional, to a time before the poison had set in, and there is no going back to a time before the audience had been tampered with.
The 2000s time period felt like a generation of people who gave up on any sense of identity or ambition beyond the products they consumed. This lead to a lack of perspective and a way for those in charge to have a way to press down on new morality systems to those who let their old beliefs fall away. Without any immune system, it was a perfect chance to revamp these people into what they wanted. Even with the network itself you can see it get strangled with more and more restrictions as time went on, eventually leading to the point that there was no way to retain its original identity. If you want to talk about the problems for or against gatekeeping, it's been an issue for a long time.
That said, Attack of the Doc! is an important documentary to watch if you want an idea of what it was generally like back then, or at the very least what a certain generation grew up with in their mass media. It might help understand exactly why the pop cult has such a hard grip on them today in a way older generations do not seen to quite be affected. And I would assume, any younger viewer might find the entire thing straight up bizarre. After all, television has never been relevant in their lifetimes, so seeing how it affected a whole generation of people might be difficult to process.
But that's just it. Television is over, and its affect from the Boomers up to the Millennials is pretty well fading. It's difficult to describe just how it has changed since the 2000s.
Much like when we talked about Nickelodeon and the like, there was a period of time that affected a lot of young people, one that is no longer around and will never return, and should be understood as such. At this point, the remnants of pop culture are more or less antiques of an old civilization that is currently being swept away by progress and the winds of change.
It is up to us to preserve what works and discard what doesn't, and now is the best time to do just that.
It's the weekend! Let us talk about something a bit different.
We've talked a lot here about decline over the years, and that is a subject worth addressing, but now it is the time to finally discuss what it takes to reclaim what has been lost. Now that the 2020s are rolling out, we're going to make this the decade where everything finally changes.
While we've discussed the NewPub phenomenon many times before, we haven't quite discussed another medium that, while commercially successful, is in the final stages before its own collapse. That industry, of course, is video games.
Though video games have been decried for many years as frivolous and useless (as every medium has at one point by the people who provably cannot preserve culture at all), there is a very real formula and meticulous design process that comes from them. Despite current trends, there was a lot more to video games that poorly written Z-movies that contain a few button presses to make scripts happen. In fact, when the industry ran on arcade design was when it reached its peak.
Now, if you've played video games since the death of the arcades, you've noticed a decline in creativity since the Sega Dreamcast died and arcade faded from prominence in the '00s. I am not talking about technology or graphic fidelity, I am talking about the gameplay itself. Gameplay loops (such as they are today) barely exist anymore and have been replaced with carrot on a stick drudgery to get from one cutscene to the next--a trend that began with the first 3D console generation but only started to take over once HD consoles came in.
What is missing from today that we used to have isn't that obvious
This was the era when countless middle market publishers and developers closed up shop, parting the medium in two between AAA cinematic experience and low budget indie game. In other words, this killed creativity almost overnight. If you can think of a big name AAA game in the last three console generations with a new gameplay experience (that isn't made by Nintendo) then I would be surprised. Even more so if you can name more than five. It simply doesn't happen anymore.
As a result of this shift, the industry has been in a creative rut, praising pointless downgraded remakes of old perfectly fine games because they have pointless modern bells and whistles. You should not be buying a new $599 US Dollar console and expecting to play remade and dumbed down games from 2004 on it.
So what caused this? I would recommend watching the video above. It is the loss of arcade design that the entire medium was built off of. Just like "pulp" became a dirty word in OldPub in order to denigrate adventure stories, arcade design has been sold as cheap and lesser since at least the mid-90s thanks to water carrying game journos. In other words, you were sold a lie. the entire collapse that video games are about to suffer through (or already are, depending on your perspective) will be caused by this abandonment of what made the medium what it was.
This has happened more than enough times in other mediums for anyone to understand it at this point. The further you stray from your roots, the more you risk losing them, and video games have definitely lost that link and have lost it some time ago.
Though you might be wondering, what about indie? Well, it's not as easy as all that. Check the video yourself and see why simply being 2D and having pixel art isn't quite the same as classic arcade design and why it's not quite enough. There was more to classic game design than "tightening up the graphics on level 4" as the old saying goes.
If you're a developer yourself, definitely take in the above information and think it over. How much have we lost along the way that we don't even consider anymore? How far can we really push forward without solid ground to stand on? Food for thought.
All of our industries are going to have to start asking those questions if they want to have a future. There is little choice left but to look back and carry forward again. The only other option stagnancy has, is death.
That should be the last thing we want for any medium. We've already lost a lot, at some point we're going to have to start gaining again.
Anyway, have yourself a good weekend and I will see you next time!
Welcome to the weekend! Let us look at a bizarre subject today, and one of been wanting to put my two cents in on for awhile--a sort of change that almost happened but never did.
The 32-bit console generation of gaming nowadays is usually seen as transitional if not seen as a pale imitation of the one to come right after it. Rarely is it ever considered one of the best these days unless someone grew up with it. There is a reason for that. However, it does contain my personal favorite Sony console, and you will soon see why.
Considered the Fifth Console Generation (though it would be the First Generation if EA had its way), this era has become increasingly controversial over the passage of time, though for many reasons, both valid and not. These days it is rarely anyone's favorite.
One area that was undisputedly a step down from what came before was in sheer performance of the systems themselves. No gen is quite as dated as this one has, and its mostly due to its own short-sighted choices. This is probably what has aged the fifth generation worse than any other before it, and makes it difficult to return to. As far as games that are hard to go back to, this is probably the gen with the most offenders, and it isn't even close.
Before this console generation every single game was expected to be 60fps, unless it had consistent slowdown problems due to mediocre programming or planning. These frames per second helped define gaming as fast-paced and smooth, allowing a feel that perfectly accentuated the arcade roots of the medium even at home.
For the fifth generation, all of that took a hit because everyone wanted shiny 3D graphics before anything else. As a consequence, you would be lucky to have a lot of the games even reach 30 frames per second consistently, never mind 60. This dramatically changed how video games were expected to play because to this day, 60fps has been warped into an unachievable prospect for selfish gamers who are never satiated. In other words, it was excused away so they could see you less for more.
At the same time, the basic technical issues of these consoles were all over the place. PlayStation 1 games were full of texture warping and low res graphics, N64 games were covered in fog and blur, and Saturn games that couldn't even handle transparencies. On top of it, all of them suffered from early 3D problems of camera issues, unsure controls, and games made more as vague sandbox ideas than any idea of traditional arcade play. In just about every way, this is the generation that led us to where we are. For both good and ill, though the good would decay a good bit with the usual entropy and diminishing returns this path was built on.
But there is a hidden part to that transitional era that's been lost amidst the rush for higher tech and even more shiny bells and whistles plastered on top over the years. Even with the change in focus that happened during this time period, there were many who did use the opportunity to use the new tech for the gameplay. You don't hear about these so much because the era was more focused on the graphical arms race that reach a fever pitch (and an incredible low) in the first HD generation two gens later. This was the period where focus on gameplay became lost, leading us to the pit we're in where we are now basically in Gen 7, part 3 . . . or Gen 5, part 5.
What used to define a console generation wasn't just a new system with new bells and whistles, but by the new gameplay styles that were impossible on older tech. Not just in regards to more polygons and enemies on screen, but in the new experiences that could be delved into.
This is the reason why the comedy behind the old "$599 US Dollars" meme in regards to the PlayStation 3 has been lost over time--the system wasn't actually offering anything new at the time when the meme was made. you were just expected to jump in because it was Sony, and the graphics were prettier. That's it.
Now it's just expected new systems will not offer anything except bells and whistles, and you will fork over that $599 US Dollars for a system that gives diminishing returns in exchange for pushing more shiny graphics and nothing else. The industry became the meme and you are expected to consume only a beltline of warmed over and stale seventh gen console games forever. The consoles no longer having creative or unique names should have been the tip off to that.
However, the video at the top of the page is different from all of this. In it, we can see the sparks of an era we could have had instead. There you see a smattering of 60fps PlayStation games, but beyond that almost every single one of them offers gameplay of the like that was not only new at the time, but has never been expanded on in the decades that followed them. This was the path a truly new console generation could have brought us and a path we could have gone down.
It is funny to think of what the industry might be like had the Sega Saturn focused primarily on being a 2D powerhouse, the PS1 on these sorts of new 3D experiences, and Nintendo a balance of both, instead of what they actually did do. The industry would be in a totally different place. Not only that, but the systems all would have aged much better, because it would have been the gameplay that carried them, not the soon-to-be-outdated tech. Everyone could have got what they wanted.
Alas, it wasn't to be!
Regardless, there are plenty of indie and middle market developers now creating their own games and forging their own paths. Perhaps this was all inevitable, but it might have happened much sooner had we not all been suckered in by bells and whistles over what mattered--new gameplay experiences. We should demand more, because ambition should be rewarded over complacency. But that era is over, and now it's up to the smaller guys to lead the way forward.
We need less of whatever tired 2006 rehash with a new coat of paint that nu-Naughty Dog is pumping out and more of this:
That is what I'm talking about! Things are looking up again, and it's about time.
For those old enough, you might have remembered what was called the Video Revolution back in the early 1990s. This was the period where technology was making so many leaps and bounds that no one could quite keep up with everything going on. It mostly peaked by the time of Windows '95 and affordable internet for the masses, but for awhile it seemed as if the sky was the limit. By the end of the decade, technology would rule everything and the planned analog future would be a thing of the past.
One such example of this wave was the burgeoning Nickelodeon television network. Their game show series, Nick Arcade, combined the exploding video game hobby (yes, it was always popular, folks) as well as the arcade scene, with their wildly popular game format made popular by Double Dare and Guts, in order to form this unique creation.
You can see the entire history and what tech it took to get this crazy idea running in the above video. Not only can you see the style and attitude that made the early 90s so very distinct from the back half, but you can also see just how different video games were back then before the AAA monstrosity warped them into bad D-tier movies. It's truly a time capsule of a different era slowly being forgotten.
At the same time, watching an episode is strange because it's very clear something like this couldn't be made now. It is because "Game Shows" and "Video Games" both equated to the same thing: surmounting challenges and getting high scores to beat your friend on the couch or standing beside you in the local arcade. The latter no longer does this, long since stripped from its routes. As a result, I have no idea how younger generations would take this series.
The industry has simply shifted too much. Then again, supposedly the industry is having the same issue as comics did before it imploded: unable to try to connect with younger generations and catering to a dwindling demographic who do not enjoy the changes fostered on their hobby. We are far from the Golden Age of video games that existed with Nick Arcade was around. And we are even further from the time the network itself was relevant which ran out with the 1990s itself.
That said, this creation is a fascinating time capsule from before Nickelodeon bought their shares to separate from MTV before then being scooped up by Viacom and having their originality gutted to become . . . basically what it is to this day. Here you can see two early '90s juggernauts, Nickelodeon and video games, at their peak from a much better time. It looks like an entirely different universe today, doesn't it?
Here is an episode of Nick Arcade you can watch today since, like most of their live action material, it will never have a physical release:
A weird aside. I have watched a few of these old episodes recently, and some of the questions really show you how different it was, and what basic pop culture knowledge once contained. One of the strangest is that so many kids seemed to know about Tarzan in the 1990s. Not only that, they knew a lot of things made in the early part of the 20th century. We're talking from before any of them were even born. Strange, isn't it?
This was before the "kids don't watch old things" propaganda was set down. I know because I was there. They didn't need to put out the lie that old things were bad to sell new things yet. That would come in a few years after this. Everyone cared more about something being good first.
Again, it was a different era. One we can probably still learn plenty from. Which is why '90s nostalgia has stuck around so long. There is still much we haven't quite learned from it yet.
Anyway, that's it! That's all for today. As an update: The Gemini Man campaign is now wrapping up (answer your surveys, please!) and the kindle versions will complete release next week in time for the holidays. If you haven't backed the campaign then keep an eye out! You have quite a lot of books to look forward to. I will hopefully have news for a mass market physical version by then too. It's been quite a busy 2023 getting this series finished up, so it is nice to finally see the end of the road up ahead.
I know it's been a rough year for a lot of people, but the holidays are close and we are very near the end. Just a bit further to go! So sit back and relax, and enjoy your weekend. You have earned it.
What if you learned an entertainment company you enjoyed fondly as a young one fell apart? Even worse than that: what if you saw the entire thing coming from a mile away, but not only could you do nothing to stop it, the people in charge thought they were succeeding instead? How exactly what something like that come about?
Well, it turns out that we have no shortage of such examples in the modern world, many I've even highlighted before on this blog. However, today I wanted to highlight one project in particular that was such a specific sort of failure that it can only have happened to one company on one project in particular. That's right, this is about RoosterTeeth and Gen:Lock.
For those who don't know what either of those are, and there are plenty these days, RoosterTeeth started out back in the 2000s as one of those user-created content mills based on the properties of others, much like Machinima was (remember them?), who started with the comedy series Red Vs. Blue. RvB was a Halo parody using in game assets to make comedy skits and observations about the video game and pop pop culture itself. It was very much a 2000s era product, as its very name shows, and could not have been made at any other time.
Red Vs. Blue did well, eventually leading RoosterTeeth into trying something more ambitious. Using their talents, they endeavored to make an original universe spearheaded by a man named Monty Oum. He worked on the last few seasons of RvB and was responsible for such viral videos as Haloid (a Metroid/Halo crossover) and Dead Fantasy, (a Dead or Alive/Final Fantasy crossover) which is a 2000s era project if there ever was one. This new project, of course, would be RWBY.
I'm not going to bother to go into RWBY, that whole thing is a story in itself, but suffice to say it was popular. It was so popular that RoosterTeeth attracted a lot of attention from outside parties, many eager to see if they could cash in on this burgeoning "new" form of entertainment. Naturally, this meant more projects would come about.
One such product is the now infamous Gen:Lock, their attempt at a "modern" mecha series. It is now more well known for its failure than anything it did while it was around. There is a lot to go over, so I recommend watching the video above to get the entire experience. Suffice to say, it was an unbridled disaster, spurring from both the worst aspects of independent creators AND the worse aspects of corporate interference. Gen:Lock runs the full gamut of mistakes, bad luck, ineptitude, and does it in such a way that is almost impressive.
As you watch it keep the events in mind for whatever it is you are passionate about, and remember them. Things can always get worse--don't choose to make them worse yourself. Remember what the purpose of art and entertainment is and try your best to not fall into this hole yourself. A lot of the problems described, especially those that happened near the end, are very much turning into common mistakes today in the here and now. This whole event is becoming far too common, and we should not fool ourselves into thinking it should be acceptable.
That's all for today! November is here, and the weather is turning chilly. Be sure to keep warm and have yourself a rest.
If you know anything about video games, you almost assuredly know about the original DOOM, from 1993. The revolutionary game that more or less invented the first person shooter as we know it (Wolfenstein 3D laid the groundwork, but it was DOOM that set the standard) was quite the wonder when it released. The game was fast paced, immaculately designed, simplistic and yet deep, and contained nearly limitless possibilities. Needless to say, it was a phenomenon. To this day it is still thought of as one of the greatest games of all time.
It didn't stop there, though. 1994's DOOM II added the super shotgun to the already impressive arsenal and a handful more enemy types, going all out with the level design and showing all the potential possibilities it had, but there was little else to build on beyond that. They more or less nailed it the first time, and this was a victory lap for developers id Software. DOOM remains one of the greatest games of all time, and there was little way to improve on those first two games. This was proven when 2004's DOOM 3 instead changed focus to be more of a survival horror experience instead. What more could one really do to improve the rock solid formula, after all?
But back in the mid '90s, developer id Software had to do just that. Not only did they have to follow up one of the best and most revolutionary games of all time (It was easily as popular as Mortal Kombat, Sonic the Hedgehog, or Super Mario Bros. back then) but they also had to jump into the third dimension. Yes, DOOM is infamously a 2.5D game, one that pushed the second dimension to its limit in what could be achieved. Aside from Build Engine games like Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, and Shadow Warrior, the three genre classics that pushed 2D graphics as far as they could at the time, the industry was screaming for 3D.
So id Software had to oblige.
I'm not going to go into the total cluster fudge that was the development of their follow-up to DOOM, but I'm sure you can guess how much pressure there was for them at the time. Think about it: How in the world do you follow-up something like DOOM, a game that completely changed the entire industry?
Suffice to say there were a lot of discussions and arguments around what their follow-up game should be. Everything from a full-on RPG with a protagonist named Quake to a third person adventure game inspired by Virtua Fighter, of all things. However, since there was so much pressure on them to deliver, and do it quickly, they decided on making another first person shooter. But this one ended up being quite a bit different than expected, even for the time.
It also ended up being the last game the famous id Software dream team would make together as a group. Thus there is quite a lot of mystique around this title, and almost as much hate from those who hated the shift. Needless to say, the final product is an interesting thing to talk about, because it actually does represent the end of an era, but not quite the start of a new one.
I will get into what that means, but let us first go into the game in question. Yes, the topic of today's post is Quake.
The infamous Quake released in 1996, the year 3D completely overtook gaming as a whole, and it was a revolution for both id Software and the industry. John Carmack created one of the most important engines for game creation and John Romero was allowed to let his hair down and finally use all three dimensions to torment players as he had in DOOM. This was quite a unique and special occasion. The end result is one of the few early examples of a full jump to 3D that still manages to hold up to this day. There are a few reasons for that.
The first question you might have is if Quake is merely just DOOM in 3D. After all, surely all the creative interference and paring down of ideas in production must have led to a safe, bland product for mass consumption. Would it not have made sense to play it safe then? Safe is not what I would describe Quake as being. In fact, it is not at all. While DOOM is one of the most influential games in the entire industry, Quake also ranks up there, as well. That is quite a hard trick to pull, but id Software managed to weave through development issues and create a classic in its own right.
The main difference with Quake is that while it is a shooter, it is not a fast paced run n gun like DOOM. Because it was early 3D and they could not yet afford the speed or enemy count of 2D, id Software played it smart and changed focus to that of a horror game. There were horror aspects to DOOM, obviously, but the feeling of helplessness and dangerous exploration through eerie territory took a backseat to the frantic action. In Quake, it is about quick thinking and exploring the towering 3D labyrinths filled with traps and dodging the incredibly dangerous enemy horde in claustrophobic spaces. There is still a focus on combat, but it is chunkier and the player is at a disadvantage due to the level design and enemy behavior tied to it. The shooting is still satisfying and powerful, but you will find yourself counting bullets and learning to manage them well. Quake is more environmentally involved than DOOM is, and that ends up changing the entire focus.
One of the best things about Quake is its HP Lovecraft influence it is swimming in. It isn't the typical "Lovecraftian" copy paste job most such products went for (though there are some name drops, it isn't obnoxious) but for the crushing terror of the unknown and cold, choking atmosphere where insanity is a hair's breadth away. The enemies are almost as disturbing as the creatures in DOOM, but all of them have far different roles and ways of dealing with them. On top of it is the foreboding soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails that really sets the tone that you are roaming where you should not be. The entire game oozes atmosphere of the kind few ever had before, or have had since.
You play as a nameless ranger, much like in DOOM, sent out into portals to worlds of gothic terror, gutted military bases, and abandoned dig sites where horrid creatures were found long ago. You are just a normal soldier who must use your wits to survive and stop these impossible creatures from getting to Earth and wreaking havoc there. It's really that simple, as it should be, but like DOOM it offers much in the way of gameplay possibilities.
The fascinating aspect of Quake is that while the core game at times might feel like the concept isn't quite as fleshed out as you would like (there is no Use key, for example), the expansion packs actually do exactly that--they really expand just how deep Quake can go and how many possibilities it has in such a primitive 3D space. It turns out there is much under the surface here, much like the world of Quake itself. This is what has helped it maintain its level of popularity over the decades. Quake's modding scene is still one of the biggest in the genre.
That alone should make Quake one of the greatest games of all time. It might feel dated today, but that is part of its appeal. The creaking old corners of the world matches the gameplay and adds to the impression that you are being thrown into a place that simply isn't right.
In essence, Quake feels like a sequel to DOOM, emphasizing different elements of the formula and striking out on its own. The story itself also still has those references to satanic interference, implying the creatures you are fighting might have higher allegiances than originally thought by what the plot description tells you. The portal technology now instead of opening a portal to Hell has been mastered for man to invade his enemy's territory instead. Although, much like DOOM, this is probably something that would have been better left untouched as it opens paths to places where man should most definitely never roam.
All this contributes to create a stone cold classic, one whose stature has only improved with the passage of time. To this day, there is still nothing like Quake.
But we are not ending today's entry here. 1996's Quake is only half of today's subject. We have a bit more to cover.
Needless to say, Quake was a revolution in the industry and became one of the highest rated games of the year, a huge seller, and quickly made many gamers' top game lists. It was exactly the follow-up to DOOM that was needed, and did as well as it needed to, solidifying id Software's stature as kings of the genre and the industry itself. Despite everything working against them, the team managed to pull off a grand slam.
But the cost was huge. Developer id Software was almost destroyed by making Quake and the majority of the Dream Team that made them one of the best in the industry more or less left the company after the game was finally released. In essence, as said earlier, Quake is more of the end of an era instead of the start of a new one. This game, in many ways, was their swansong. The change that the company would go through happened much faster than you would think.
So the game came out and was a big success, okay, but what about afterwards? How did id Software capitalize on the massive success of Quake while also recovering the heavy losses occurred when developing a whole new game engine and losing so many key members?
That's easy, they put out a new game a year later. Much like DOOM II came out one year after DOOM, id Software did the same again. The main difference here is . . . well, we'll get to it. Suffice to say, it wasn't the first time they've made a sequel directly after the massive success of the previous game. Where it differs here is in execution.
The remaining members of the dev team worked on a new game while Carmack also put out a new engine, the legendary Quake II Engine, and used it to make one of the biggest and most popular games of the 1990s.
This would of course be the famous Quake II.
It is impossible today to really go into what made Quake II so huge at the time. If Quake I was a huge hit, then Quake II was a megahit. It was almost instantly praised as being a quantum leap forward from the first, was given as the reason many got into PC gaming for the first time, topped countless GOTY and best game ever lists, and more or less set the standard for what shooters have become today. In the 1990s, Quake II was one of the most popular games period.
And yet nowadays most people who like it will tell you it is underrated. You will hear about how it is forgotten and needlessly spat upon by the general public, if it is remembered at all. Where did this mindset shift come from, and why does it seem to prevail even to this day? Was Quake II overhyped, or is it just mindless hate?
As usual, the truth is a fair bit more complicated than that.
What I said earlier still applies. Quake II almost instantly pushed the original Quake out of the spotlight when it released in 1997 and overtook it in popularity pretty much instantly. How did it do this after everything I had just described of the original? Well, you have to put your mind back in 1997 and see what it is that Quake II actually did.
The first thing that should be said is that Quake II is not a sequel to Quake I. It is a completely original FPS that merely bears the same name. And the games are so different that one could hardly ever confuse the two. That aside, there are plenty of design decisions that change the game entirely, even aside from the tone.
Quake II's missions changed the structure of all FPS games going forward. Each mission, instead of being one map a player goes through to find all secrets and items before moving on to the next one, was instead a set of around 3 to 4 maps where players had to go between them to solve objectives and battle enemies along the way. The total game length was still about the same length, but the levels became more complex than they had been before simply due to this.
Another change is that Quake II is slower than Quake I, but so are the enemies, which allows for more reaction time. There are more wide open spaces compared to Quake I, more enemies in the levels themselves, and the enemy types don't hit as hard as the ones in the last game . . . for the most part. In essence it does feel like a deliberate step towards DOOM and away from the original Quake as far as general combat goes. Quake II in a lot of ways is a bit of an anti-Quake, a reaction to what they think went wrong with the first game.
Lastly, the setting was made far more straightforward. In Quake II you play as a space marine sent to a planet of body horror aliens who wish to dissect humanity for themselves. The game portrays their final assault on the home planet. Your mission is to complete objectives like shutting down satellite arrays and destroying space lasers and the like on your way to finally conquering the big boss alien at the end. It's typical Space Opera stuff, but that wasn't common in games then, never mind in FPS games. Even Blake Stone was more James Bond than Captain Future.
All of this was new in 1997, it had never been done before in a video game, and this explains why it was huge when it released. Quake II became a template for the genre going forward, and they didn't really look back.
However, this also explains why the game isn't as highly regarded today as it once was. The biggest problem with Quake II is that the next twenty years of FPS games would be trying to outdo Quake II, and many of them have beaten that horse deep into the ground. Oddly enough, it's success is why it isn't as highly thought of as it once was, despite the fact it is designed very well. Quake II is a victim of its own success.
So what exactly is the problem? Let's try to dig into it a bit.
Unlike the original Quake, Quake II actually does feel like a new era in the genre, one that would eventually be cribbed from with games like Halo and the millions of other space marine games over the years to come to the point that anything unique it might have had was buried in the context of the time it released. There really isn't any way to express how much of a change it was when its changes have been so ubiquitous in its genre over the years.
Does this new reception mean it was overrated at release? Were gamers blinded by hype? Is there anything fundamentally wrong with Quake II that holds it back?
No, not really. Quake II is a good game. It can even be very good at times. The bigger problem is that it is not particularly great. There isn't anything particularly unique about it to recommend playing it, unlike most other classics of the genre. Quake II feels like a game going through the motions, doing what id Software was expected to do--turning them into "the FPS guys" instead of a developer with wild ideas that could do anything. There is a reason the team fractured after making the first Quake. Compared to DOOM or Quake I, Quake II is just kind of there--a product for the market. shaking that impression is very difficult playing it outside of its original context.
It should also be mentioned that the changes from the original game, thought to have been revolutionary (and actually were) at the time, turned out to be a double edged sword. A lot of this might be the reason it isn't as well thought of as the original these days.
There isn't anything truly terrible in Quake II, but nothing I would call outstanding.
The level design is solid, but because of the concept of maps basically duct-taped together, there is a lot of dead space and repeatedly wandering over areas where enemies had already been cleared out earlier. This makes the levels drag on and not feel as snappy or player friendly as older games. Because of this there are no real memorable levels, and most of the aesthetic consists of colorless military bases of the kind the genre would be mocked for in the era ahead. The entire experience bleeds into one long level, which was the point, but it takes away from the pick up and play nature of the genre.
The weapons are fine, but this is the game where the FPS standard loadout was more or less solidified. Pistol, shotgun, machine gun, grenade launcher etc., none of the weapons are all that interesting. At least DOOM set the bar and also had the Super Shotgun and BFG, and Quake had things like nail and lightning guns. The weapons in Quake II do the job, but they don't feel that satisfying to use a lot of the time. The original release of Quake II did not even have muzzle flashes which lessens the impact even more.
The enemy types are okay, but after fighting demons in DOOM, and disturbing Lovecraftian mutants, living knight armor and swords, and shambling behemoths in Quake, fighting body horror machine aliens is a step down in creepiness. The Strogg are just not that interesting to fight, overall. This doesn't even mention the annoying feature that EVERY basic enemy you kill has an annoying habit of shooting shots off at you after they're already dead unless you either wait patiently for them to fall and die or waste more ammo to blow up their still-standing corpse so they can't do that. This slows the game's combat to a crawl and at times makes exploration tedious.
All of this could have been looked past when the game was new, but the passage of time reveals a base that simply isn't as fantastic as originally thought. The developers made a good game, one worthy of success, but it is easy to see why it no longer wows after a look back to the era and where the industry went not long afterwards. There just isn't much there that you can't find somewhere else, not something id Software was known for doing.
The game deliberately being an anti-Quake is what hurt it, because those aspects are what the game is more remembered for today. It is not known for what it did otherwise.
And it wasn't as if id Software didn't know their own goals going in:
It was a conscious decision [to change Quake II's direction] and controversial inside the company. We weren't happy with the [original] Quake story. [John] Romero was gone, so there was no one left to defend it. Kevin Cloud headed up Quake II and he wanted to make it story-driven.
— Todd Hollenshead
This is all well and good, but it is the Quake I story people remember and still influences today because it is unique enough to still stand out both in atmosphere and simplistic execution. The Quake II story was completely outdone by Halo a mere handful of years later. Not a single person plays Quake II today for the story.
The harsh truth is that the only reason to play Quake II today is if you want to play another good '90s shooter, you have nostalgia for it, or you want to play through all the id Software games. It is absolutely worth playing today, though. Just don't be shocked when you find out DOOM 3 is considerably more interesting and unique, and that game has a surprisingly large hate base. There just isn't much there to recommend over their other efforts.
Quake II is a game defeated by its own success.
It is truly interesting how the passage of time changes perception. Now Quake II is considered underrated when it was once thought of as the greatest game of all time at release. Not bad for a game where critics said that Quake II was "the only first-person shooter to render the original Quake entirely obsolete."
And yet nowadays most would rather play the original.
The thing that made me write this piece you are reading was, oddly enough, the recent 25th anniversary remaster Bethesda gave Quake II. Now is the best time to play it and revisit just what made it tick, making it more relevant than ever. I had never really clicked well with Quake II, so I decided to give it a go and play through the whole thing to see if I was missing something.
My general impressions of my playthrough, however, remained unchanged from the last time I went through it. Quake II is a good shooter. It's fun. It's worth playing. You'll have a good time. But it's not a great game. It's definitely not one of the best games of all time. It's missing the spark of id Software's best work--the intense pace of DOOM, the creeping terror of Quake . . . it's just a solid game for fans of the genre.
The expansion packs are terrible, too. I played them hoping for some sort of revelation like I had when playing the Quake I expansions that showed how much was really under the hood of this whole concept. The first game's expansions are legitimately great and well worth playing. The second game's expansions, however, were worse than the main game by a considerable margin. There wasn't anything to see except bullet sponge respawning enemies and more taped-together maps in very similar environments. It was actually quite a downer playing them.
However, there is an exception.
The brand new episode made for the new remaster, Call of the Machine, changes the entire game. This expansion has you play as different space marines dropping on different worlds and digging into the Strogg's true plans for galactic conquest. This simple set up allows the developers to make each mission a stand out experience from the rest, and inject a lot of life into the game. Just about every change it makes improves on the original game in every way.
The developers found a way to make back tracking less boring, constantly add new sights and sounds and ideas, and even managed to inject some of the horror atmosphere back in again, though said horror is a bit closer to DOOM than Quake, at least for the most part.
Each mission feels like a standalone episode of its own, bringing back the better pacing from the older games, and allowing far more variety than the same three repeated locations from the original game. The entire thing is never really boring (aside from one of the early missions with rising water levels feeling a bit sluggish) and almost all of them vary from run n gun to slower horror at varying degrees, always keeping you on your toes and mastering enemy placement in a way that utilizes their attacks instead of stonewalling the player into an endless circle strafing battle. The expansion is actually quite invigorating to go through, and breathes new life into Quake II, thereby making it the game I wish the original was..
The elephant in the room is that the new expansion ties Quake I in with Quake II, and in the process breathes a lot of life into Quake II's more flat atmosphere, also returning a lot of the tricks and traps from the original game as a more important part of the level design, including an ending that makes it all feel like it came full circle. Honestly, I think Call of the Machine is far better than Quake II proper, and would actually call it great and very much worth playing.
After beating Quake II's remaster and playing these expansions, I decided to actually go back through Quake I the same way, and there really is no contest. The original Quake is simply the better overall experience.
The truth is that Quake I's particular datedness has helped it age better than Quake II's has. Playing Quake felt like playing Quake, a feeling you won't get from anything else. Quake II never really gives me any comparable feeling, aside from the excellent new expansion that, in my mind, is a huge leap over II's campaign. Even without the Quake I references, it's just a much more fun and engaging adventure to go through, and gives an experience you simply won't get anywhere else. And that's what really counts.
Again, it's really fascinating going through the two games. Their design philosophies just come across so different from each other that it makes comparing them interesting. It also helps that neither of them are intolerable to play, either.
So in my final judgement I would obviously say the original is the better of the two games, though they really show how much the industry changed in such a short time. Looking back at the two Quake games is like looking at the first real fissure in the gaming industry.
As time passed, the genre became little more than highly scripted hallways punctuated by cutscenes, the atmosphere and player input becoming more and more limited, until all that was left was reskinned version of Call of Duty and little else. The industry that allowed games like Quake to flourish was basically gone.
Then, in the middle of the 2010s came that Boomer Shooter wave, gamers who grew up in a much different industry ready to fold their influences into new games. This is how you get games inspired by the original Quake like DUSK. who build their own brand new experience on the shoulders of giants. No one could have foreseen such a change coming, until it did. As a result, the way we look back on the past has changed and we can see it from a refreshed perspective. The entire landscape and history of the genre has been recontextualized, and it will never be the same again.
It really goes to show you how strange the world of art and entertainment is. I highly doubt anyone who made Quake thought it was anything but a disappointment compared to what they could have made. Half the team left and the other half instantly began on another game intentionally ejecting everything the original even was. And yet those who played Quake at the time, and even now, see it as a genre classic and one of the best games ever made, it's influence living on to this day. You never know just what the influence you might have will become years later and detached from your own thoughts and intentions.
Perhaps it is better to keep a clear head when assessing what works and what doesn't, but that doesn't stop the passage of time from making those decisions for you. No one could have foreseen where the industry would go, after all. 1997 was a different country; 1996 even more alien. We are looking back at a whole other world.
All this going on to say, just be honest with what you want and make it the best you can. There is nothing else to be done. At least we can say id Software never chased trends and made their own way, for better or for worse. Maybe that's the key.
Regardless, thanks for reading. I have a few levels of a Quake expansion left to wrap up. I've got a universe to save.
