By on 28 Jun, 2012 at 11:00 AM
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Fringe Division — Chronological Snobbery And Brothels

Fringe Division — Chronological Snobbery And Brothels

Hello there readers. Long time no write. I suppose I should give a good reason for my absence from the column scene for the last month, but I’m afraid besides Diablo 3 there isn’t one. Today I’d like to talk to you about quite an important topic. Something that many of us suffer from as gamers. However why don’t we start the evening off with an entertaining little personal story of my own.

As you probably don’t know, I’ve been rather diligent with regards to my finances and invested my money in a nice three bedroom house in an unnamed Capetownian suburb which I can rent out for a decent amount of money while I pay off the bond on it. I live a relatively modest lifestyle by renting a bedroom from my parents and putting as much money as I can into paying off my house. This was my first time renting so I thought I’d get an agent to manage the property for me for a rather significant 10% of the monthly rental. This agent (Who I will name and link in this post in the hope that their name will not be edited out by Cavie since this opinion I’m about to express is my own and is in no way associated with egamer.co.za) was Leapfrog.

So everything was fine for seven months. The money came in roughly on time until about two weeks ago when after phoning the agency they told me that the tenant wished to leave early before his twelve months were up. So no problem, the agency would find me another tenant. In the meantime he had cleared out and paid up for the month. We inspected the house to find it in exactly the condition I left it in. Little did I know however the hell that the neighbours had gone through in the past seven months. Basically to cut a long story short, I found out from my neighbours that my tenant was running a Chinese brothel out of my house. The cops had raided the place four times in seven months, they had found an illegal firearm, arrested one of the “workers” and of course they found some narcotics. Anyway when the police and the neighbours asked Leapfrog as to who / where the owner was, they were told by them that he was “overseas”. So take what you like from that little amusing story. The real lesson here is all estate agents are filthy lying pigs and you should reduce your contact with them in your life to a minimum. From now on I’m managing my own property. The lesson has been learnt, and at the end of the day there was no real harm and you’ve all heard a rather amusing story about how I inadvertently became a slum lord.

And now for something completely different.

Chronological snobbery is the fallacy of assuming that advancements in technology make us smarter or better than our predecessors. This is indeed very much a false perception. Anyone familiar with the fields of Science and Philosophy would know that the greatest minds in these fields have already lived and died. Einstein, Plato, Socrates, Pascal, Darwin, all of these world changing individuals lived many many years ago and were definitely smarter than you or I. If anything movies like Idiocracy seem to joke about the devolution of the human race, how socio-economic conditions are a breeding ground for a lowering of the collective intelligence in the world.

What if, and here’s a crazy idea, this actually applies to games. It’s very possible that we as gamers have become chronological snobs when it comes to games. The most recent example of this for me was demonstrated with a conversation I had with another human. We were discussing Diablo 3 and I explained to him why I thought the game was inferior in game play and enjoyability in comparison to Diablo 2. He instantly shrugged Diablo 2 off as inferior with the reasoning of: ”It’s shit because it’s old.” I think as gamers we should avoid such fallacious reasoning as aspects of a game such as game play mechanics and storyline can be mostly timeless and technology independent. Similarly we can fall into the same trap when it comes to how we think about movies.

Unfortunately I really don’t have time to expand on this idea, although there isn’t really too much more I wanted to say on the matter. Between having to write a technical spec and a progress report for my day job for tomorrow and taking leave to redo three bedroom floors with carpet squares, tiling a bathroom and painting four rooms all before the new tenant moves in on Saturday, I’m afraid I’m a bit busy at the moment. I don’t even have time to even find a picture for this column. (FORGIVE ME CAVIE)

If You Liked This, You Should Try These!

Name: Matthew Slade
Location: Cape Town
Position: Columnist, Mobile

Matthew has published 19 posts. Read all of Matthew's posts.
  • http://www.facebook.com/nanonyous Theo Lubbe

    In case you were being serious about the agents thing – nope. Our agent, a rather butch lesbian with her own personal problems surrounding her parents disowning her when she presented her partner to them and the lightbulb finally went on, was absolutely awesome to work with as far as selling our house and settling arrangements for our new place were concerned. She was more than willing to drive for hours on end just to personally sit with my mom while working through papers with the agent in the town we moved to, at her own expense, despite the fact that our place and the place we were moving to were comparatively chump change versus the properties she worked with otherwise in the Cape Peninsula.

    wrt the article itself – definitely. That anyone can even begin to think that a game cannot possibly go backwards in terms of quality versus its predecessors or even simply other games within the same genre (or, hell, just other games in terms of age), is to be the biggest flaming retard on the planet.

    Dungeon Siege 3 versus 1 and 2?
    Need for Speed: Carbon / Pro Street / Hot Pursuit (2011)?
    Diablo 3?
    Starcraft 2? (no, seriously, what the fuck was up with the conversations’ animations? What the fuck is up with the animations of talking characters in Diablo 3, too? Have they really gotten this goddamn lazy from WoW?)
    That game that had to do with a granny turning into a dragon or something, the sequel of which was some shitty action-RPG deal, the first – oh, Dragon Age 2. Goddamn. I never managed to finish Dragon Age 1 since I had to (not by choice) restart a good few times, but Dragon Age 2 was a comparatively shit game.

    Mechwarrior 4 vs 3 and 2. Why oh why did they NOT have the awesomely intuitive free-look reticule system that Mechwarrior 3 had in #4? Single. Most. Awesome. Function. Ever.

    Quake 4.
    Duke Nukem Forever (I almost don’t want to mention this game as I’m pretending it didn’t exist for the sake of my own sanity)

    If I weren’t putting a mental block on all these games that I just plain hated for how shit they were in comparison to their predecessors, I’d be able to fill an entire column with games’ names, but suffice it to say there have been a lot of games in the past decade that have released as sequels or spiritual successors that I would not pay money for if I were payed to – not to mention games that were just plain disappointing in aspects given to the persistence of developers and publishers to gradually dumb games down until we’re just holding a button to make the game continue playing itself or letting go when we don’t agree with a choice it’s about to make on a minute-long timer waiting for us to react, drool hanging from our chins, two-person sofas filled with our fat asses and chips packets forming soft ramps leading up the ceiling.

  • CataclysmicDawn

    LOL! You pimp-lord, serves you right for devoting so much time to Diablo 3. :P

    Although, so far as agents go, my parents let out my grandfather’s old house in Durban with the aid of an agent, and when you have someone actually doing their job properly, it’s fine. Not so much when your agent is facilitating the running of a Chinese brothel.

  • AG_Sonday

    From now on you shall be called Pimp-slayer because slayer is almost your last name.

    On a serious note though, I’d liek to talk about games and not real estate if that’s alright with you :P. While old games don’t always age too well, the real classics have this quality that new games just don’t have and a lot of that is down to the fact that they assume a degree of intelligence with players. I respect old games for that. I’m currently playing Max Payne 2 and besides what I just mentioned, it offers a better shooter experience than a lot of games I’ve played recently.

    Chronological snobbery is something that I am definitely not a part of but it is sadly something that dominates gaming culture it would seem.

  • Timothy

    Would’ve been a stronger argument if you had expanded on it. In all fairness it’s too biased and full of holes to hold up and convince anyone that hadn’t already decided their opinion before reading this. Though for those of you who maintained that idea before reading this article I’m sure you’ll rejoice in having another share your opinion.

    I for one am entirely against looking at the past as some higher point of existence, in meaning and/or quality. And especially since every argument I have ever seen for ‘the past versus the current’ is almost always so full of holes I could use it as a strainer for my pasta.

    • Matthew Slade

      First of all are you referring to the general arguement for chronological snobbery or my more specific application to games?

      Regarding games, my argument could really be formalized as follows:
      Premise 1: Newer games have access to better technology
      Premise 2: Gameplay mechanics and story are largely technology independent.
      Premise 3: Gameplay mechanics and story are main contributors to the enjoyment within a game

      Conclusion: Some of the main contributing factors to the enjoyment within a game are technology independent and subsequently can not automatically be deemed better (OR worse) in newer games.

      I’m not arguing that older games ARE better. That would require a burden of proof that my argument is unwilling to bear. However I am arguing that newer games are not necessarily better just because they’re new. I think you might be presupposing a false polarization (http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white) of old MUST be better or worse than new instead of a middle ground of objective evaluation on individual merits without chronological bias. (whichever way that bias may favour)

      Also in all fairness I fail to see how challenging gamers to think more objectively about the worth of game is a biased opinion. If anything I’d say your response seems loaded with a greater than or equal amount of bias and in what seems like a rather dismissive tone I might add :P

    • Matthew Slade

      the non broken version of that link: 
      http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white

    • http://www.facebook.com/nanonyous Theo Lubbe

      Premise 2: Gameplay mechanics and story are largely technology independent.

      Just to throw it in there, physics and complex scripting and/or AI
      dependent gameplay mechanics would be largely tech dependent. Utilizing
      dynamic, realtime simulated physics that can place obstacles in your way
      while playing a racing game, as an example, or the physics ‘puzzles’ in
      Half-Life 2 or Little Big Planet, or the portals of Portal and Portal
      2, along with their physics dependent puzzles.

      I know it may seem like a very lacking example, but if the baseline for
      hardware were up to the task, we’d see a massive jump in what’s possible
      in games right now in terms of their ‘mechanics’ purely based on how
      much more interactive the game world can become.

      After all, which is more engaging? Complex AI that will actively attempt to evade your advances or attacks (avoiding grenades or throwing them back to you, sometimes in a manner that doesn’t necessarily create an opening for advance or attack), that will make a point of creating bases of fire or defense, things like that – or mindless NPCs that just keep advancing towards you in a straight line while shooting, or with a basic zig-zag movement mechanic to make them harder to hit?

    • Timothy

      Lol, “presupposing a false polarization”, I actually wasn’t arguing for or against either, I think you’re reading into my comment a bit too seriously; no surprise since tone of voice isn’t translated over text.

      What I actually meant was that it’s a shame your argument is so short as its missing a lot of detail and a nice juicy argument, whether I agree or not with it, is always enjoyable. And that without those details, regardless of circumstances, it is a little biased-which is perfectly reasonable since you’re taking a specific point of view-and I know full well it’ll attract trolls.

  • Matthew Slade

    Also for the record I’d like to state that yes there are obviously good/competent estate agents out there and I was hyperbolizing a bit when I said that they’re all evil. However I have yet to meet any of them that do rental management competently. Remember no one will look after a property that they don’t own as well as the owner. So in a way you’re the best person for the job when it comes to looking after and managing things that you own.

    • http://www.facebook.com/nanonyous Theo Lubbe

      You’ve probably done already, but you’re going to want to educate yourself on your legal rights as a property owner leasing out their property to tenants, and what your risks, obligations and methods of defense against legal issues are should your future tenants do shit that’s against the law with your property. In this regard, that’s kind of what the estate (rental) agents are there for – they’re the middle-man that would take almost all, when not all of, the legal fire should they do something illegal or their tenants do something illegal with your property that they’re managing, so that you don’t have to.

      Of course, there’s also the issue of an obligation on your part to be aware at all times as to what’s being done with your property, even if you do not live there. You’re lucky the police didn’t hold you accountable for the chinese pimp and his activities in your house – that could’ve turned into a hell of a nightmare, and the estate agent (stupidly, yet luckily enough for you) telling the police the home’s owner was overseas deflected that entirely.