WaPo writer: making your own levels for a game is deluded egotism

I've seen this being bandied around and I think it's kinda relevant to the Doom mod community: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2015/09/15/super-mario-maker-is-an-engine-for-circulating-horrible-new-mario-levels/

It’s a tool for the mass production of cultural refuse, single-use distractions that fail to replicate the spirit of the original.

“Super Mario Maker’s” levels feel strangely raw and hostile, underscored by the game’s endless lives, allowing you to play the same level over and over until you’ve made it to the end, at which point you’re sent back to unreliable heap of broken community creations. Over time, it becomes intensely dispiriting, with the few creative levels being lost among the gaping archive of disposable failures.

There is a futile egotism to “Super Mario Maker,” a piece of software that caters to delusory belief that enthusiasm and creativity are interchangeable, that being a fan of something can, if practiced with enough care, create an equivalent of the work to which one’s fandom is fixated.

“Super Mario Maker” is primarily an engine for circulating bad ideas and broken gimmicks as if there weren’t already an overabundance of them.

Give it up guys, our futile egotism can lead to no good end.

If your work is gimmicky and wonky then it's trash and has zero place in the world and you'll never amount to anything because all of this is wasted time and effort and it'll always be wasted time and effort because you'll never make something not gimmicky and wonky because nobody can ever change thus a game that allows people to create gimmicky and wonky works is also trash because everything in ~my world~ should be perfectly and top-quality like that Sonic the Hedgehog game released in 2006 which was far better than literally anything Mario Maker can create because everyone who uses it only makes gimmicky and wonky works and that's trash and they'll never create anything else because nobody can ever change thus a game that allows people to create gimmicky and wonky works is also trash because everything in ~my world~ should be perfectly and top-quality like that Sonic the Hedgehog game released in 2006 which was far better than literally anything Mario Maker can create because everyone who uses it only makes gimmicky and wonky works and that's trash and they'll never create anything else because user-created content will never not be trash and only someone who is a game designer but does not fancy himself a game designer should touch games like the guy from Nintendo whom I have a body pillow of that used to be mostly blue but is now white.

lots of fandoms surpass the quality of the licensed products by far. just look at the lego community. it's not surprising either, licensed products are always constrained by corporate interest, wich means that oftenlly they are done just acceptably good enough to sell (many transformer toys and disney games tend to be awful for this reason)

the only real difference between a professional and a skilled fan is that the professional is getting paid, but that isn't neccessarily a reflection of the quality of their work. the doom community is just one of many that have proven it, and no doubt the mario maker community will too as more time passes

Arctangent said:

If your work is gimmicky and wonky then it's trash and has zero place in the world and you'll never amount to anything because all of this is wasted time and effort and it'll always be wasted time and effort because you'll never make something not gimmicky and wonky because nobody can ever change thus a game that allows people to create gimmicky and wonky works is also trash because everything in ~my world~ should be perfectly and top-quality like that Sonic the Hedgehog game released in 2006 which was far better than literally anything Mario Maker can create because everyone who uses it only makes gimmicky and wonky works and that's trash and they'll never create anything else because nobody can ever change thus a game that allows people to create gimmicky and wonky works is also trash because everything in ~my world~ should be perfectly and top-quality like that Sonic the Hedgehog game released in 2006 which was far better than literally anything Mario Maker can create because everyone who uses it only makes gimmicky and wonky works and that's trash and they'll never create anything else because user-created content will never not be trash and only someone who is a game designer but does not fancy himself a game designer should touch games like the guy from Nintendo whom I have a body pillow of that used to be mostly blue but is now white.

Huh?? A few (hundred) periods would help convey your message a tad bit better....just sayin'.

There is a futile egotism to “Super Mario Maker,” a piece of software that caters to delusory belief that enthusiasm and creativity are interchangeable, that being a fan of something can, if practiced with enough care, create an equivalent of the work to which one’s fandom is fixated.

This is such a bizarre argument to make, it kind of does my head in just trying to process the logic behind it.

Isn't "fans of stuff working hard on new stuff to eventually surpass what came before them" pretty much a summation of how the progression of creativity and cultural iteration always works?

But trying to make your own creative work is now 'too egotistical'. You must only consume!

Sounds like somebody who's spent too much time in hoity-toity coffee shops with the "in crowd" of published writers, by-lined journalists, the occasional TV producer, and maybe even a reasonably well-known actor or two. Just far enough up the social ladder to believe that neo-capitalist shit about culture originating from the top down to be consumed like a product. Forgetting for example that Mario was inspired not only by games that came before it, but also a healthy dose of fairy tales and mythology, and that, starting out, it itself was certainly never promised success - what if Shigeru Miyamoto's chubby plumber out to save a princess in a weird storybook world had fallen flat and been dismissed as too kiddy - or maybe even too "enthusiastic" versus its creativity?

Super Mario Maker is one of the best games in ages, and is predicted to revive the 2D platformer as a serious genre and not just for indie titles and handhelds. Reviewer linked in OP is a knob.

I'd read it, but I've already filled this week's quota for processing retarded rants.

No offense Mario fans but Mario seems like a very limited platform to make anything that really shoots high over garbage. Afaik being able to make your own Mario levels doesn't sound much more groundbreaking than having an editor for Wolf3D. You either make something that's worse or on par with the original product with little room for innovation.

If I'm wrong then Doom should probably be a pretty strong precedent for a game like this. 3 years of garbage with few gems, and a long following of creative geniuses who stuck around to make it all worth while.

i've watched a few Raocow vids and he's definitely dug up a lot of cool Mario mods which are leagues better than the original level sets of Mario 3 or Mario World. the romhacking community tend to hack in new music and textures, too, so you could say it was more or less analogous to what we do!

Chewyninja69 said:

Huh?? A few (hundred) periods would help convey your message a tad bit better....just sayin'.

That would go against the fact that it's complete nonsense. Like this article, except that's actually trying to pretend it's not.

On top of the stuff already brought up by esselfortium and Quasar, it sounds like our professional writer is unfamiliar with the adage popularly known as "Sturgeon's law":

90% of everything is crap.

It's a medium for human creativity, like writing or art. Of course it'll be an "unreliable heap of broken community creations;" the majority of work in any field of human creativity can be considered crap. Plus, the fact the game's marketed to everyone from adults to children... Something tells me this isn't a review so much as the work of a troll.

Is this some clickbait bullshit or something that is worth reading?

Because by reading the thread, it seems the author has nothing of value to add.

Reviewer probably couldn't get to grips with SMM and had his attempts rated as shit, so instead of learning how to improve he just threw his toys out the pram and derided anyone with creative talent as "egotistical" instead.

What a fucking prick.

40oz said:

If I'm wrong then Doom should probably be a pretty strong precedent for a game like this. 3 years of garbage with few gems, and a long following of creative geniuses who stuck around to make it all worth while.

I think in the first few years the tools available for mapping were worse than the tools used for the iwads. Also the workflow was different since the mappers didn't have access to an advanced mouse driven OS with a big screen, nor an easy way to test maps on a network PC (with that option that reloads the map from disk without restarting the engine)

I.. I can't even...

I've read so many articles on the web - So many stupid articles - But never have I just straight up wanted to punch the author in the fucking face. Seriously, I'm such a peaceful person but if someone said that to me there'd be a violent fight ahead..

Kids, the moral of the story is "If you like something and want to make it yourself, don't bother, just kill yourself cause we'll all be dead one day anyway"

I wonder how this guy feels about Art and Music classes in Highschool, probably negatively. Doesn't sound like this guy has an artistic mind, a true lover of the arts would embrace this. Sure, a lot of crap will spring up (just like Doom wads) but, if you're willing to sift through it, you'll find some gems.

Judging by the quotes alone (I still don't want to traumatize myself with the whole thing), the entire concept of user-created content is a very novel, scary idea for the author.

Actually I think the Doom community's generally negative opinions of '94 wads vindicates the opinion of the author of the article. If the article author had been downloading Doom levels in 1994, he might have said precisely the same thing about DEU and BSP: the many "my house/work/school" levels and glut of poor one-time efforts uploaded by a single individual who then never appears or participates in the community again strike me as very similar. Things like rooms full of cybs, monsters stuck together or in walls and ugly texture choices sounds pretty similar to what the author is talking about when stating "levels feel strangely raw and hostile".

I'm pretty sure a lot of '94 levels (and first levels) have been considered by members of the community to have been made simply for their own sake: "OMG i made a dewm levul!!!11"

There is a futile egotism to “Super Mario Maker,” a piece of software that caters to delusory belief that enthusiasm and creativity are interchangeable, that being a fan of something can, if practiced with enough care, create an equivalent of the work to which one’s fandom is fixated.

It's slightly different, but I can't help but detect a scent of this in the "before you ask for help in your new mega-cool-and-whatnot project..." forum extension here. I acknowledge there's a difference in that the doomworld tag line is intended to press people to show substance to their project idea, but I think the underlying cause - that of newbies with plenty of enthusiasm but a lack of serious commitment - appears to be common to both.

Sui Generis said:

Actually I think the Doom community's generally negative opinions of '94 wads vindicates the opinion of the author of the article. If the article author had been downloading Doom levels in 1994, he might have said precisely the same thing about DEU and BSP: the many "my house/work/school" levels and glut of poor one-time efforts uploaded by a single individual who then never appears or participates in the community again strike me as very similar. Things like rooms full of cybs, monsters stuck together or in walls and ugly texture choices sounds pretty similar to what the author is talking about when stating "levels feel strangely raw and hostile".

I'm pretty sure a lot of '94 levels (and first levels) have been considered by members of the community to have been made simply for their own sake: "OMG i made a dewm levul!!!11"

It's slightly different, but I can't help but detect a scent of this in the "before you ask for help in your new mega-cool-and-whatnot project..." forum extension here. I acknowledge there's a difference in that the doomworld tag line is intended to press people to show substance to their project idea, but I think the underlying cause - that of newbies with plenty of enthusiasm but a lack of serious commitment - appears to be common to both.

IMO there's an important distinction between the mindset of "People sure are making a lot of bad maps, is this whole modding experiment really going to go anywhere?" and that of "Those sorry amateurs will never make anything as good as True Game Creators and should just give up! Who do those egotists think they are?"

Both are arguably shortsighted and missing the point, but one is a lot crazier and seems to be separating content creators and consumers into separate castes that shouldn't be allowed to overlap.

The problem isn't in distinguishing effort from enthusiasm, but in suggesting that neither of those things is enough to make a difference between crap and gold, and all the amateurs should be ashamed of themselves for trying.

I'd like to see this guy's review of his kids playing football in the park...

There is a futile egotism to “kids playing football in the park,” a game that caters to delusory belief that enthusiasm and athletic achievement are interchangeable, that being a fan of something can, if practiced with enough care, create an equivalent of the sport to which one’s fandom is fixated.

Arctangent said:

jesus christ

Is that you, GGGMork?

Sui Generis said:

Actually I think the Doom community's generally negative opinions of '94 wads vindicates the opinion of the author of the article. If the article author had been downloading Doom levels in 1994, he might have said precisely the same thing about DEU and BSP: the many "my house/work/school" levels and glut of poor one-time efforts uploaded by a single individual who then never appears or participates in the community again strike me as very similar. Things like rooms full of cybs, monsters stuck together or in walls and ugly texture choices sounds pretty similar to what the author is talking about when stating "levels feel strangely raw and hostile".

I'm pretty sure a lot of '94 levels (and first levels) have been considered by members of the community to have been made simply for their own sake: "OMG i made a dewm levul!!!11"

It's slightly different, but I can't help but detect a scent of this in the "before you ask for help in your new mega-cool-and-whatnot project..." forum extension here. I acknowledge there's a difference in that the doomworld tag line is intended to press people to show substance to their project idea, but I think the underlying cause - that of newbies with plenty of enthusiasm but a lack of serious commitment - appears to be common to both.

You're forgetting about the average mindset of a doomer in 1994. It went along the lines of 'Holy shit we can make our own maps for this game? I have so many ideas I want to try' The concept was still quite new then.

I'm guessing this guy and Gabe Newell wouldn't exactly see eye to eye. Valve's the complete opposite, they love it when the community gets involved and makes their own stuff, they even release their own editing software for free just to help them out.

Michael Thomsen is a writer in New York. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Slate, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, The New Inquiry, Kill Screen, Edge, and Gamasutra. Follow him on Twitter @mike_thomsen.

lol

this guy

this guy rants against deluded egotism

this guy is leading the good fight against deluded egotism, and he has a twitter account

Twitter is a bad comedy. It indulges internet people in the fantasy that they’d be good at writing witty snippets. This sort of self-deception has become common in the age of digital consumption, and while there’s something utopian in Twitter's appeals to community participation and sharing, the network quickly collapses into a scratch sheet of horrible ideas and posts you’ll regret having read. It’s a tool for the mass production of cultural refuse, single-use distractions that fail to replicate the spirit of literature.

Blah blah blah you get the joke.

mouldy said:

I'd like to see this guy's review of his kids playing football in the park...

There is a futile egotism to “kids playing football in the park,” a game that caters to delusory belief that enthusiasm and athletic achievement are interchangeable, that being a fan of something can, if practiced with enough care, create an equivalent of the sport to which one’s fandom is fixated.

I considered making a similar comparison but my initial heat from reading such blarney prevented me from writing anything intelligible..

Sui Generis said:

Actually I think the Doom community's generally negative opinions of '94 wads vindicates the opinion of the author of the article.
[...]
I'm pretty sure a lot of '94 levels (and first levels) have been considered by members of the community to have been made simply for their own sake: "OMG i made a dewm levul!!!11"

The 'negativity' towards 1994 maps is totally different (well, among sane people at least) than the puerile filth this dude was spouting about creativity, though.. When we look back at 1994 wads, it's usually with with an attitude like "Oh shucks, we were so silly back then, editors really sucked hard, aren't things so much better now?" and rarely is it ever implying the authors had no possible way to match ID's maps, so they shouldn't even bother.

Moreover, usually negative critiques of Doom maps are coupled with pages of insightful advice on how to make the next map better, what people did and did not like about the map, suggestions and ideas, etc etc etc - Never just "Someone made a better map once, so we should all just commit ritual suicide because what's the point".. It's just such a non-productive outlook on anything in life, including but not limited to creative interests.

I've never seen any newbie map attempts being unfairly bashed here on DW - At least not in years. I dunno, this idiot author is getting way more attention than he deserves from me so I better cut myself off now.

esselfortium said:

IMO there's an important distinction between the mindset of "People sure are making a lot of bad maps, is this whole modding experiment really going to go anywhere?" and that of "Those sorry amateurs will never make anything as good as True Game Creators and should just give up! Who do those egotists think they are?"

Both are arguably shortsighted and missing the point, but one is a lot crazier and seems to be separating content creators and consumers into separate castes that shouldn't be allowed to overlap.

The problem isn't in distinguishing effort from enthusiasm, but in suggesting that neither of those things is enough to make a difference between crap and gold, and all the amateurs should be ashamed of themselves for trying.

Yeah, I agree the article is myopic and erroneous. Indeed, it almost reads like a post-ragequit rant about how "wtf this levulz sux!!!11 lol" but with added verbiage and better articulation. I think (and I do acknowledge that the author is guilty of very lazily generalising to all user-created levels) the author is being motivated in writing this solely by the bad levels, and in particular the bad levels that have been made purely because the level author could and just thought it was cool to stamp their name on something and then flush it down on to the world, as opposed to because the level author was serious about creating something truly good. The cynical part of me however suspects the author might be perfectly aware of the modding communities that exist for games and may simply be being intentionally controversial to attract hits by posting an article designed to troll.

rf` said:

...
You're forgetting about the average mindset of a doomer in 1994. It went along the lines of 'Holy shit we can make our own maps for this game? I have so many ideas I want to try' The concept was still quite new then.

No, that was actually the exactly mentality I had in mind when posting above. The desire to make something simply because of the novelty and because you can rather than because you want to invest time and seriously want to make something that people will like. A bit like the difference between a simple graffiti name tag and street art.

Earlier this summer: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2015/07/07/portal-stories-mel-is-a-surprisingly-difficult-but-imaginative-game-made-by-fans/

Though “Mel” is clearly a game made by people intending to make a narrative spectacle, it’s difficulty and erratic sense of progression are a welcome reminder that games are just as beautiful when they expect the inconceivable from us, driving players into the role of developers as they try and understand the incomprehensibility or imperfection of what they’ve been through, and imagine things being done another way. Designers are always trying to put themselves in players’ heads, and players are always guessing at what designers want from them. “Portal Stories: Mel” reminds us just how artificial the divide is between the two.

Two weeks ago: https://twitter.com/mike_thomsen/status/638404109905883136

The idea of spoiler uses fans as proxy to enforce rhetorical standard in which only safe discussion topics come from marketing

Contradicting his own self from a few weeks ago doesn't even faze him. You're giving him too much credit, guys. He's your typical modern game journo who envelops simple "I (dis)liked a thing" with broad stroke theories in which he pretends to get inside everyone's heads and recognize the underlying concepts. Reviewing the product is for mainstream plebs nowadays, intellectuals are interested by the bigger picture, the meta, the meaning. On his twitter feed, when he's not quoting "deep" soundbytes from various articles he agrees with or musing on SJW issues, his own thoughts make him sound like an ennui-stricken Jaden Smith.

intentional fallacy in the streets, affective fallacy in the sheets

Accessibility necessarily leads to a lack of quality control. This is an unavoidable aspect of any modding community, and it seems as though the author of the article (I read only the initial quotes) is too bleak and cynical to consider long term results. The Cacowards, for instance, is an excellent database of what, to many, are the highlights of Doom's two decades of modding. It's a concise list, but one that continues to grow. Mario Maker, at some point, will (ideally) reach a level of organization and balance that will favor the best mods.

To add one more point, there's something to say about egotism and modding. It becomes evident that a mod is very ego-driven when the act of releasing the mod, and the personal agenda of the mod maker, is more important than the player's enjoyment.

Sui Generis said:

Actually I think the Doom community's generally negative opinions of '94 wads vindicates the opinion of the author of the article.

It's always been my opinion that we owe an intellectual debt to that period as it had to be grown through in order for the relatively fantastic quality of editing we have now to have evolved. No matter how bad some of the levels may be, they are in their own way important as part of an evolutionary social phenomenon.

There are some legendary 1994+5 wads. It's not the net average that matters.