Nature has laws, society has laws as well. They are necessary bounds for human actions, intended to prevent any undesirable ones, to keep society as healthy as possible.
But the more tight is this law, the more will to be above it raises in a human soul. And the dramatism is that some laws weren't devised to make life better, but are just a prejudice in people's heads, a superstition. So all such quasi laws do is banning some random act for the sake of itself, not to make life more interesting.
Thus, one shall be wise enough to divide these two categories, not mixing clever laws and blind believes.
The major quality of a human nature is a will to reach something unreachable, to jump over expactations, to push all possible limits. Human is always unsatisfied with what he has. Yet he isn't supposed to be perfect either. But this imperfectness just strengthens his will to reach it. Eternal yearning, impossible to satisfy totally, but not less strong because of that. Sometimes we can't even explain the exact thing we seek, but an inexplicable feeling keeps gnawing our hart and forces to PUSH THE LIMITS.
Some people are too much wallowed in their weird superstitions. They are too cold and pragmatic. They can't dream, can't create their own reality in their heads and fill it with unique stirits that they own exclusively. Because they have NO spirit to fill their life with, it's completely sterile. Unfortunately, as they still have a will to do something unusual in their life, they spend their strength on penetration of their superstitions into seciety, impose their own view of common sense, while thinking that they are setting fumanity free from superstitions.
These two categories of people, with all their attributes and environments, can be defined as cynics and romantics.
But it seems that no one has ever managed to combine peculiarities of both categories to produce something absolutely inbelievable. Or wait... There are such people! They are creators of tool-assisted speedruns. These guys are completely merciless to their laziness and weakness, to their notion on their own apprehension power and creativeness. They actually make themselves more patient than a human can be, as balanced as a chess master is, more ingenious than a film director can be, as reasonable as a programmer is.
They create video masterpieces, entrertaining films having games characters as their actors. They take game developers' scenarios and turn them inside out just to see the unexpected, to show how fantastic regular things can be, when you use a weird, yet creative approach.
They are like children. They are easily able to accept reality as it is, but don't you even try to prevent them from building their own fairy-tale world over this visible world! It's just useless, they'll build it anyway. And does anyone dare to say that their magical reaity is a lie? That the main goal of a healthy society is to free them of their spiritual fantasy? Then what's the sense of that so called health, if it kills dream ability, kills will to become more than you are supposed to be, kills interst to develop yourself?
No, on the contrary, the humanity will feel better if it goes over its superstitions, starts improving itself in all possible ways. And the easiest way to do so is to improve something eternally, both in some obvious marginal value and in a delicate value of brilliance. As TASing, while being something average between chess, programming, direction art and acrobatics performance, actually stands above each of these separately, because it requires technical exploration lust (that can be measured by concrete parameters, like time) along with skill of handling with media content (that is way more subtle and harder to compare, like entertainment).
Tool-assisted speedruns authors are both cynics and romantics towards both themselves and the games they run. They kind of say: "Nah, game, I know you can do more, extremely more than you do now. Let's explore your real abilities a bit... Okay, your own creators never expected you'd ever act like this, ha-ha. And all I'm really doing to you is just providing button presses, which are surely absolutely legal." On the other side, they always say to themselves too: "C'mon, man, I know you really can exploit your own abilities to perform crazy exploits during this famous game. Though it is felt ordinary by most people, that just get used to it and don't expect to see any impossible tricks, but you remember how you managed to produce that awesome glitch in your childhood, now you really can dive into it and study how it works! Keep on diving, man. Yes you can!"
As we can see, TASing is a science of self motivation, that (if successfully studied) provides totally unexpected result, both with a game and with human soul, expanding mental abilities just as much as one can keep diligent.
And let's finish with one beautiful quote from TASVideos' father:
"If a child receives a box containing an expensive toy as a birthday present, it's possible that he will enjoy the box more than the toy.
This is creativity.
We're doing the same for these games.
Instead of walking on the paths created for us, we create our own paths, our own legs and so on.
And we're not listening to people who say "you can't do that!".
Just like children."
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
This is so true. When I work on a game and find a new glitch or shortcut, it makes me so happy, because I'm jumping boundaries that held me back playing the game in realtime. Knowing that you're pushing the game to its limits and that you hold the WORLD RECORD for this game is really exciting. This is especially true for me if I'm trying to improve a real-time speedrun (on SDA), because after every level I'm so motivated by the huge amount of frames I've saved that I keep wanting to TAS more, and to play more. Making a tool-assisted speedrun really is one of the most fun activities I can think of.
The most motivating thing for me to dive into TAS is the fact that THESE pazzles werent ever invented by anyone! I've always hated all kinds of strategic games and brain-twisters. And I always liked watching friends playing console games than playing them myself.
What actually inspired me to writhe the above was moozooh's post about RTS/TAS holywar. Real-time speedruns are all about players, "look, I am so skilled, I can do this and that". While TAS is all about games "OMG, I've never imagined that is possible AT ALL in this game". So, TASers are less conceited anyway.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Why even bring up conceit into this? Are athletes conceited? How about engineers? They can do this and that, too, and aren't ashamed to show it! And it's a good thing they aren't.
It's pointless and misguided to even attempt to take sides on this matter. I've written that post in defense of TASing, yes, but ultimately I've ended up creating many more finished unassisted speed-/scorerunning products than anything I've done for this site and its audience. Why? Maybe because the realization of being in the "right" crowd didn't keep me busy!
But I digress. Keep in mind that if you want to fit this article in a magazine format, it will need a lot of editing, and I don't just mean grammar. There are logical and semantical inaccuracies all over, as well as sub-par stylistics. Take this example:
"Nah, game, I know you can do more, extremely more than you do now. Let's explore your real abilities a bit... Okay, your own creators never expected you'd ever act like this, ha-ha. And all I'm really doing to you is just providing button presses, which are surely absolutely legal."
A game doesn't do or act on its own, it reacts; that is, responds to the actions of the player. Consequently it can't have abilities to explore; the word you're looking for is possibility. Different words, different meaning. "Surely absolutely legal" is worded in a way that makes a reader instantly doubt your words, because that "surely" indicates uncertainty that can't be offset by "absolutely". Are you offering some forbidden pleasures to the game (or the reader, for that matter)? Not to mention that the whole quote looks like it's written by an abusive sadist, not a romanticist or a child alluded to later in the text. A child would never say anything like that.
Writing is in fact very similar to TASing: it takes a lot of effort to get into as you're bound to make every single mistake there is, and the end product is always a result of many small optimizations, countless rewrites, and thinking beyond the obvious. So voting meh, go back and redo from stage 1.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Keep in mind that if you want to fit this article in a magazine format, it will need a lot of editing, and I don't just mean grammar.
I completely agree. I used to write for certain newspapers and journals, and while the rough shape of an article is present in the first post, it will need a lot of revision to get there.
Specifically, I would shorten it up considerably. feos, you take way too long to get to your main point; tool-assisted speed-running. Before that there is a lot of philosophizing, much of which ranges from "painfully obvious" to "unconvincing". Leave some of it there if you want, but not as much as there is right now. I was honestly disengaged midway through the piece, before you even touched upon speed-running at all.
I also believe this sentence should be taken out entirely;
feos wrote:
They actually make themselves more patient than a human can be, as balanced as a chess master is, more ingenious than a film director can be, as reasonable as a programmer is.
You're trying to convince people who have never heard of a "TAS" how awesome and impressive it is, and one of your very first statements is this incredibly arrogant statement. (Which you don't provide much support for) I'm someone who already finds TAS's very impressive and respects the hell out of the authors, and even I would strongly disagree with those assertions.
Why do you feel the need to insult other professions and mental endeavors? You can convey how you feel about TAS's just as easily without that. Also, "more patient than a human can be" sounds weird; are you implying that TAS authors are aliens? :)
There's a lot of other things I could note, but that's a start if you're interested in getting it published as an article.
Sorry for being lazy, but I don't want to spend too much time on this. Sometimes I didn't quite get what you were trying to say, probably because I don't speak Russian, so my corrections might not be to your liking. "Law" has probably a much narrower meaning in English than it has in Russian, so the whole introductionary part doesn't really work too well imo. I also don't really think the way this text literally glorifies TASers is appropriate. Maybe that's just my interpretation though. I agree that starting from scratch might be a good idea.
feos wrote:
This is written in a journalistic style, fitting a magazine format. It'd be cool if we could send this article to some periodical, or spread otherwise (yet it may need corrections).
Nature has laws, society has laws as well. They provide necessary boundaries for human actions, with the intention to prevent any undesirable ones, to keep society as healthy as possible.
But the stricter these governing principles are, the stronger of a desire to circumvent them arises in the human soul. And then there's the irony that some principles that we live by weren't invented to make life better, but are just the results of prejudices in people's heads; in essence they are mere superstitions. All they do is ban some random act simply for the sake of themselves, they do not aid to make life more interesting (convenient?).
(thus means "in this way", "because of this reasoning", etc., never "as a solution")
Ideally, one would have to be wise enough to distinguish between these two categories, not to mistake well-devised principles for blind beliefs.
One of the major traits of human nature is the will to reach something unreachable, to exceed expectations, to push all possible limits. Humans in which this trait is predominant are always left unsatisfied with what they have. Yet he isn't supposed (by whom?) to be perfect either Yet they will never be able to reach a level of perfection either. But this restriciton just further strengthens their will to reach it anyway. (in general you use "them" instead of "his" as a gender neutral form, even if you're referring to a single person, f.e. "Whoever I'll run across next, I'm going to ask them for the time") Thus goes their eternal yearning, impossible to satisfy totally, but not the least bit fainter because of this. Sometimes they can't even explain the exact thing they seek, but an inexplicable feeling keeps gnawing at their hearts and forces them to PUSH THE LIMITS. (strange emphasis. In English you'd rather put an emphasis on FORCES)
Another category of people are lost in their own set of odd superstitions. They have become too cold and pragmatic, have lost their ability to dream, to imagine their own realities and let them be governed by their very own unique sets of principles. Because they lack the creative input to nourish their lives with, they simply cannot prosper. Unfortunately, as they still have a will to do something extraordinary in their lives, they end up spending their strengths on merely penetrating their own superstitions, so that their beliefs match the rest of society, and then impose their own view of common sense onto others, thinking that by doing that they can set humanity free of its superstitions.
These two categories of people, with all their attributes and environments(?)(lumps and bumps?), can be defined as cynics and romantics.
But it seems that no one has ever managed to combine characterstics of both categories into something entirely new, something absolutely astonishing. Oh wait... (style) If you think so, think again! There are such people! They are the creators of tool-assisted speedruns. These guys are completely relentless when it comes to overcoming their natural tendencies for laziness and comfort, as well as their insecurities about their technical abilities and creativeness. They display greater levels of patience than any other human being could do, are as calm and collected as a chess master, more ingenious than a film director can be and as analytical as a programmer is.
They create video masterpieces, entertaining films with game characters as their protagonists. They take game developers' scenarios and turn them inside out just to see the unexpected, to show how fantastic completely ordinary things can become if you apply some unusual principles, combined with loads of creativity.
TASers are like children. They are easily able to accept reality as it is (are children really able to do that?), but don't you even try to prevent them from building their own fantasy world on top of the visible world! Trying to reason with them is just useless, they'll build it anyway! And what if there was somebody who dared to argue that their magical reality is nothing but a lie? That the main goal of a healthy society would be to free them of their overly idealistic fantasies? Then what's the sense of this so called health, if it robs them off the ability to dream, the will to become more than they are supposed to be, the interest to develop themselves further?
No, on the contrary, humanity will improve only if it overcomes its imagined limits, starts improving itself in every possible, thinkable way. And the easiest way to do so is to keep improving something in an eternal process of refinement, both in some measurable value by marginal optimization and in subtle shades of brilliance. TASing, while being somewhat of a mixed breed between chess, programming, movie making and acrobatics performance, actually stands above each of them separately, as it requires the lust to exhaust some technically imposed limits (this can be measured by concrete parameters, like completion time) along with the skill of making the movies appealing to an audience (these aspects are way more subtle and harder to compare, e.g. entertainment).
Tool-assisted speedrun authors act as both cynics and romantics towards both themselves and the games they run. They think along the lines of: "Nah, game, I know that more is possible within your little world, much more than you can imagine. Let's explore your actual boundaries a bit... Okay, it seems your own creators never expected you'd ever act like this, haha. And all I'm really doing to you is to just provide button presses, which are surely absolutely legal." Simultaneously, they keep saying to themselves: "C'mon, man, I know you really can use your own abilities to perform even crazier exploits in this famous game. Most people have gotten used to the ordinary playing style and don't expect to see anything truly revolutionary anymore, but you remember how you've managed to produce that awesome glitch in your childhood? Now you really can explore it in detail and study how it actually works! Keep on going, man. You can do it!"
As we can see, TASing is an art form that takes a huge amount of self-motivation, and that (if successfully practiced) provides totally unexpected results, both within a gaming world and within the human brain, improving mental abilities just as much as one can keep diligent.
And let's finish with one beautiful quote from TASVideos' father:
"If a child receives a box containing an expensive toy as a birthday present, it's possible that he will enjoy the box more than the toy.
This is creativity.
We're doing the same for these games.
Instead of walking on the paths created for us, we create our own paths, our own legs and so on.
And we're not listening to people who say "you can't do that!".
Just like children."
Sorry for being lazy, but I don't want to spend too much time on this. Sometimes I didn't quite get what you were trying to say, probably because I don't speak Russian, so my corrections might not be to your liking.
I'm Russian (and I know moozooh is too), so I can safely say there is nothing culture-specific in feos's article. That being said, looking at it again, it is needlessly wordy at times. Using longer sentences with fancier words doesn't always translate to effective writing, however.
Kuwaga wrote:
"Law" has probably a much narrower meaning in English than it has in Russian,
"Zakon" (I'm being lazy by not using Cyrillic) has the same meaning in Russian as "law" does in English.
"Zakon" (I'm being lazy by not using Cyrillic) has the same meaning in Russian as "law" does in English.
That's strange, as I don't really think feos' use of the word was appropriate in all contexts. "And the dramatism is that some laws weren't devised to make life better, but are just a prejudice in people's heads, a superstition."
It was really difficult for me to follow this part f.e. Laws that are just prejudice, a superstition? It maybe works if you think of law in a metaphorical sense, but then you'd have to put it under quotation marks and it'd still be difficult to follow imo. Maybe it's the term prejudice.
I also don't think a law can be "clever". I ended up replacing "law" with "governing principle", as I thought that would be closer to the intended meaning.
I'm sure there are still lots of flaws in my correction, and it may even be worse at some parts if I'm unlucky, but that was the best I could do in the time I decided to spend on it.
"Zakon" (I'm being lazy by not using Cyrillic) has the same meaning in Russian as "law" does in English.
That's strange, as I don't really think feos' use of the word was appropriate in all contexts. "And the dramatism is that some laws weren't devised to make life better, but are just a prejudice in people's heads, a superstition."
It was really difficult for me to follow this part f.e. Laws that are just prejudice, a superstition? It maybe works if you think of law in a metaphorical sense, but then you'd have to put it under quotation marks and it'd still be difficult to follow imo. Maybe it's the term prejudice.
I also don't think a law can be "clever". I ended up replacing "law" with "governing principle", as I thought that would be closer to the intended meaning.
I'm sure there are still lots of flaws in my correction, and it may even be worse at some parts if I'm unlucky, but that was the best I could do in the time I decided to spend on it.
I understood that particular passage you cited; feos is saying that many "laws" are in fact not laws at all and purely illusory. Instead, they are unnecessary heuristics.
Oh wait, I put it all here firstly not to make it suitable for a newspaper, but to share my own thoughts, to discuss the inspiration itself! The spirit of TAS.
Now I see that my "style" sucks (though in pure Russian this can be easily undersood, but okay), but then let's speak about thoughts themselves.
As for "laws", I mean not only legislative acts, but any bounds over people's actions and thoughts. The law is what allows you to say "you can't do that!" And we constantly hear that towards our runs on youtube and other videohostings. But the bounds inside these people's heads aren't legislative acts, they are just stereotypes. Mental, psychological "laws". They are notion on what's possible.
And I see TASing as a form of ascetic work both on the subject one chooses and on himself.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
Another word you might have wanted to use instead of "laws" is "restrictions" or start out with something like "Nature imposes certain limits on...". You could then go on and speak of imaginary barriers/restrictions/boundaries/limits, etc. I just don't think that you think of the word "law" in such broad sense in English. "Laws of nature" is already a slightly metaphorical use of the word. Maybe it works because "law" used to be a much broader term in English as well, historically, but it isn't anymore today. Then again, I'm not a native English speaker either, but that's my take on it.
And I honestly think you totally overdid the glorification part, but I found the overall idea of the article to be quite good and inspirating, once you get it. Maybe it's more well accepted to "lay it on thick" in Russian than it is in English. I have similar problems as a native German speaker. F.e., it's generally regarded as good style to form long and complex sentences in German, but not so much in English. It can be really difficult to identify and adapt to the different expectations that English readers have.
Oh wait, I put it all here firstly not to make it suitable for a newspaper, but to share my own thoughts, to discuss the inspiration itself! The spirit of TAS.
The main issue with this essay (which I believe to be the correct name for this body of text), as I see it, is that the author himself is so inspired by TASing he gets caught up in it completely, glorifying the phenomenon and praising the people involved to the point of absurd. I'm not sure it's worth it to follow the trope of describing a general TASer as a selfless, hard-working wizard of thought, able to solve impossibly hard problems while making it to be the most awesome-looking thing to grace the screen. Because that's simply not true. More often than not it's a story of entertainment compromises, countless hours of grinding or bot work, engaging in practices best not announced during social encounters (unless they happen to be mainly with nerds and gamers, otherwise you're running the risk of not being taken seriously), and yes, laziness. A TASer isn't always being reasonable, as you may notice by the frequent quarrels, and neither is a programmer (it's some kind of an idealistic image that has little to do with reality). It makes for a moderately inspiring read, but is it correct to sugarcoat it so much that it doesn't resemble the actual thing anymore, so that when you start doing it the first time you realize how brutally steep the learning curve is? I'm not sure. I wouldn't do that myself.
The essay covers up another very important aspect of tool-assisted gaming: it is virtually devoid of fun of the actual gameplay process; the entertainment derived from it is a high-level abstraction mainly coming from the fact that you're breaking some kind of limit or law imposed by developers by just being very precise, because in real world that kind of thing is ostracized, punishable, or at all impossible. (The other part is, of course, gaining recognition for your work, but we won't touch that because it's an irrelevant can of worms in this case.) One would argue that unassisted speed- or scorerunning eventually comes to the point where perfecting the gameplay sucks the fun out of it as well, but at the very least it is always engaging as it demands your full attention at any given moment. That is pushing the limits of being human. We push different limits, mainly that of what a game allows a theoretical player to do. It is detached from reality; in a way we are constructing a reality of our own ("how it would look like if things worked differently", in a nutshell), but the difference isn't elaborated.
In other words, it appears to me as a piece of propaganda that appeals to readers' emotions by singling out and purposefully hyperbolizing the better traits and completely ignoring the rest. I agree with the idea, I don't agree with the realization.
feos wrote:
And I see TASing as a form of ascetic work both on the subject one chooses and on himself.
What do you mean by an ascetic work on oneself? I can't make heads or tails of that sentence. :x
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
What do you mean by an ascetic work on oneself? I can't make heads or tails of that sentence. :x
Err, the main and only aim of asceticism is to become something above yourself. Improve your soul, mind, abilities (firstly spiritual).
While you go deeper and deeper into TASing you face some psychological barriers in you, hang-ups, that need to be excelled. Ascetics were weaving baskets or beads, or employing their hands other ways. Some were studying martial arts and other unique things, that may look impossible for an unready viewer. Asceticism overcomes human limitations, makes human a superhuman. So do we, making play a superplay, involving both artistic eye and nerdish work.
And it's clear for me that the best metaphor to define TASing as a form of art is to name it something average between programming and direction. As Bisqwit sais, you have characters as your actors and no one really knows what abilities are hidden in them. But you are free to discover them.
moozooh wrote:
A game doesn't do or act on its own, it reacts; that is, responds to the actions of the player. Consequently it can't have abilities to explore; the word you're looking for is possibility.
If you teach your dog to do some cool things, it may be called reacting to your commands. We provide commands to these games. But how they process our commands may appear really unexpectable! Though everithing is deterministic and reproducible, not everyone has enough knowledge and motivation to work everything he needs out. Because it requires reverse engineering more or less (finding RAM addresses is that too).
moozooh wrote:
Why even bring up conceit into this? Are athletes conceited? How about engineers? They can do this and that, too, and aren't ashamed to show it! And it's a good thing they aren't.
The peculiarity of a TAS skill is that it stays latent untill the viewer studies TAS himself. But even if you start TASing, you can undertstand the measure of effort put into a particular run only if you try to improve it. That is true challenge, and the effort anyway stays as hidden as the entertaining beauty stays obvious (I'm not speaking about tastes on entertainment). I mean, TASer sacrifices his glory of an obviously skilled person to the sake of seeing the game done awesome (as never before). Only in this case he can get good enough luck to discover awesome stuff. It's like, destiny starts to like him and helps with his hard and exciting work.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Asceticism overcomes human limitations, makes human a superhuman. So do we, making play a superplay, involving both artistic eye and nerdish work.
Uh, you're touching subjects too timid to discuss openly. At least not on gamers' forum.
feos wrote:
moozooh wrote:
A game doesn't do or act on its own, it reacts; that is, responds to the actions of the player. Consequently it can't have abilities to explore; the word you're looking for is possibility.
If you teach your dog to do some cool things, it may be called reacting to your commands. We provide commands to these games. But how they process our commands may appear really unexpectable! Though everithing is deterministic and reproducible, not everyone has enough knowledge and motivation to work everything he needs out. Because it requires reverse engineering more or less (finding RAM addresses is that too).
Moozooh's point is about using strict terminology. Only Subject can have abilities, an Object (game) can have possibilities. In Russian it's the same different words (способности/возможности)
Anyway, that first post is just a bunch of pathos mataphors, you suck at this. The text doesn't even look very honest itself, how would you expect it to make people think more openly?
Noone know why people TAS. TASing is not very rewarding process itself, so people created external reasonings - competitions (world record) and community support. But it's the same story as at, say, Demoscene. TASing is not special in that matter.
Moozooh's point is about using strict terminology. Only Subject can have abilities, an Object (game) can have possibilities. In Russian it's the same different words (способности/возможности)
And my point is about dream reality. I can believe in some games' spirit so much I imagine they are subjects, as well as their characters. And yes, I'm pretty much naive. "Just like children".
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
So you think that TASing is fun even without all those "World record" and other ego boost measures? Lessee if someone agrees with you.
Are you being ironic? Because what you wrote is exactly the message that I taught when I created this site.
feos, you wrote in a weird style which kind of implies feelings of a deeper meaning than was actually found in the text. The article was rather devoid of actual content, in my opinion, or maybe I just did not understand what was the big deal and somehow skimmed it.
A TAS is about exceeding the expected and delving deep into the unexpected; it is about an aural and visual performance that that increases the appreciation towards the game; it is about entertainment that stimulates the brain in a number of ways.
In a similar manner as performance by experienced and well trained dancers is pleasant to look at and increases the appreciation towards the human body as an artistic device and can take the mind to another realm, so does the extremely well choreographed TAS raise appreciation towards the realm of the game, and lead the human mind towards pondering the intricancies of that realm. An unassisted speedrun can do that too, of course. Demo coders and chiptune composers do that, as well, by exceeding the specifications of the platforms they are using, still yet without breaking them. I guess I did not understand the repeatedly made point about superstitions.
So you think that TASing is fun even without all those "World record" and other ego boost measures? Lessee if someone agrees with you.
I never said that, competiton component is an inalienable part of fruitful work. But we all know, that a viewer can never understand how much we put into our runs until he tries it himself. So we basically compete for the process itself, we love it. (I'm not saying realtimers don't like the process, but their work is totally obvious for everyone who sees their runs knowing the game they run).
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
I guess I did not understand the repeatedly made point about superstitions.
People born free, they do natural things when they are children, then they study lies and other bad behaviour. Thus they need a law. But simple laziness doesn't allow us to stay as free in mind as we were back then. We invent silly excuses to our weaknesses and create false mental reality around ourselves. We create false laws in our heads, which appear not to be actual laws, but our vision of what's possible, permitted. Superstitions. Stereotypes.
And those who still are able to dream, to dive into those spirits they felt when playing video or other games as a childs, are gathered here. They still feel warmth and fill their runs and their discussions with it. That totally distinguishs us among other comunities, forums, sites. Some people say this warmth has grown scanty. But hey, WE introduce warmth here, WE keep it. If we lose it, then surely it would grow scanty. But we simply can't permit that, we create it!
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Are you being ironic? Because what you wrote is exactly the message that I taught when I created this site.
Well, congratulations, your teachings are in vain. Maybe if you invented some units to measure entertainment, so that ego-people could compete for these units as well as for frames... Or if you made the site less egocentristic and more somewhat machinima-related... then people would consider learning TASing to create art, to find another side of their favourite game or to improve their minds through intense efforts (which is debatable and unexplored anyway). But currently they only learn TASing to beat existing record or make one for some obscure game. I know I did.
Because TASing is difficult. It's like playing some hardcore game (IWBTG), but its genre is turn-based strategy and at the end some people might call you a cheater. Well, I'm fine with ignorants (insufficient PR is to blame), but the problem is that the "gameplay" is not fun 99% of time (when framewhoring). It became especially tedious when we got Lag Counter and Lua, so we lost any excuse for being imperfect.
TL;DR: It would be great if someone could define new set of rules involving using tools while not aiming for speed. Or aiming, but without so much stress. Somehow.
I'm not exactly sure I understand your point.
If you want non-speed-oriented tool-assisted machinima videos, then nobody is stopping you from making them. In fact, nowadays publishing them is easier than it ever has been. You don't even have to set up a website for that or even pay any money to host the videos. You can set up a YouTube channel for free and put as many tool-assisted machinima videos you want there. If you are making a complaint, I don't really understand what it is.
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
I have an excuse for making imperfect runs:
1 - it *looks* perfect
2 - it is entertaining to the viewer
3 - it's a world record
4 - it's either that or nothing because I don't have time to make it more perfect
Those are pretty valid to me.
but the problem is that the "gameplay" is not fun 99% of time (when framewhoring).
To you.
AnS wrote:
It became especially tedious when we got ... Lua,
Once again, to you. I <3 Lua.
Don't confuse your opinion of fun as being everyone's opinion of fun.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Ultimately, I'd prefer Bisqwit (or someone else) to invent something like walkathon but less game-specific and more natural then pacifist runs. But seeing it's unlikely, I'd be satisfied with a Judge guideline saying that playarounds should be highly encouraged, so that people can experiment with submissions more freely.
As for tool-assisted-machinima-videos-without-montage, there's no such community in the Internet, and without established community it's much less rewarding to make them, so I'll pass.
DarkKobold, I do not refuse that there may some special kind of fun that I don't get. But I want to make sure you don't confuse "fun experience" with "rewarding experience", as these are completely different feelings. Could you elaborate on that matter? What exactly is fun in exhaustiive frame-polishing (when you're not competing in a framewar with someone else)?
DarkKobold wrote:
Don't confuse your opinion of fun as being everyone's opinion of fun.
Don't attack me, okay? I'm still trying to recall my will to TAS, and I don't understand how the hell I had enough motivation for this. Probably it was all because of "world record" thingy which sadly doesn't bother me now.
