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Penny Arcade - Comic - The Hierarchy
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - The Hierarchy
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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Who is Ninja, and why should I know about him?
I'd no real idea either, but I'd heard on twitch yesterday that he broke some records for most viewers and most subs because he streamed with Drake. One can only imagine how many more viewers he'd have got if Josh had also been there...
Poor Gabe.
Ninja's a top 1 Fortnite streamer that has a insane amount of viewers every time.
I see and hear about streamers who just play competitive FPS and it irritates me. Battle Royale and PUBG irritate me. I don't understand the fascination with these games, and I don't understand why the industry has taken a sudden shift towards something that seems neither revolutionary or groundbreaking to me. Big maps, many players, deathmatch, wasn't this stuff all done back in like 1995?
Of course, I don't understand the mainstream appeal of Call of Duty either.
Yeah, yeah, everybody has different tastes, blah blah. But man. My tastes are so out of whack with what everybody else seems to enjoy. I cannot even fathom how some of the most successful games are so successful.
Shooting dudes online? No thanks.
PVP... blech.
From what I understand he came out of nowhere and broke viewership records. He's the "next" big thing or the current thing; either way he's a thing.
Yes, the, um... [sound of furious googling] super-weird South-African musician who once played basketball with Kanye West against, um, Drake? That's gotta be it.
I'm 33 and I really enjoy watching people play PUBG. With Jerry and Kiko it's fun to just watch them have fun and play a meta-game, but at a competitive level it's an amazingly tactical game. Every decision you make has ramifications that affect how far you'll go in a match. Do you spend more time looting and potentially die to the circle or attrition? Do you move in with subpar gear? Do you fire now and give away your position? Do you wait and potentially lose the opportunity? Do you hold a building and hope the circle moves onto you? Do you move and expose yourself to enemy fire or ambushes? The "Most Dangerous Game" aspect is a part of it too.
My favorite games tend to be PvE coop games like Destiny, WoW, et al. Working together out of PvP is where I really find joy in games, but sometimes working together in PvP can be more rewarding. The stakes go beyond meeting an arbitrary threshold set by the game designers and that adds a level of excitement that PvE just doesn't have. I'm definitely a carer, or one who cares about outcomes at the very least, so I'm more of a Mike than a Jerry, which can be problematic in PvP. Maybe that has something to do with why I enjoy watching it more than playing it.
That sounds more like you not liking FPS PVP gameplay (or just PVP in general, I dunno) rather than you being an old curmudgeon. My father is in his late 40s and has spent the last decade playing FPS games online with his brother, also in his late 40s.
People who play PVP FPS games like to compete against other people, and an FPS is fairly easy to pick up the basics of, so a lot of people get hooked into them fairly early because of friends (and marketing).
He's been around a lot longer than can simply be chalked up to age, though in relative obscurity until now so I don't fault anyone for not knowing - I don't watch him either but I happen to know of his history.
He was apparently a competitive Halo 2/3 player way back when that was relevant, but eventually got his real break streaming "battle royale" games, starting with H1Z1(occasionally teaming with other popular streamers like Summit) and becoming progressively more popular as he moved on to PUBG and eventually Fortnite. His popularity exploded the other day when it was noticed that Drake followed him on Instagram, and that connection somehow eventually led to Drake making an appearance on his stream.
Right there with you on the PvP thing. I'm a year behind you and I grew up playing a lot of games, PC and console, but I've never invested the time into any one game to be competitive. When I tried Halo 5 MP after finishing the campaign, I was getting fragged seconds after I spawned. Nothing fun about that. I suspect the Battle Royale thing will play itself out and some new shiny thing will come along, but for now, the only way I can see more than a minute or two of a match is to watch someone else play. Some of the personalities on Twitch are pretty funny too.
Second time this week I have no idea what P-A is talking about. :P
1. Huge maps
2. 100 players
3. Looting all your equipment from semi-randomized spawns
4. Random shrinking play field
5. No respawns
And frankly up until the late 2010s, almost nobody was doing any of that. The reason the industry has taken a sudden shift towards it is in part because it's an extremely compelling kind of game. It's very different from traditional deathmatch, team deathmatch, or objective based shooters. Even the largest shooter maps (Tribes, the Battlefield series) aren't as big as the maps in a lot of these games. Even the longest round no-respawn shooters (Rainbow 6, Counterstrike) have rounds a fraction of the length of these games. Even the games with the widest variety of equipment you have to pick up from the map as you go along (Quake) have nowhere near the sort of looting mechanics in these games. Even the games with the highest number of players (Tribes and BF again) don't have 100 people. And nobody did the randomly shrinking map before this, I think (the maps were never big enough).
This makes me feel old. I take solace in that it would also make the kids I used to tutor/minister to a decade ago also feel old.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
So at that point I just wasn't interested in *not* using that strategy and getting killed by someone half a mile away fifty times in a row when I knew damn well it was unnecessary, OR in *using* that strategy and then bothering to go the rest of the way, when 90% of the time you spend playing the game is just rote time-killing.
Can't say it really captured my attention, but it was fun. I'll probably jump back in every now and then when I get bored. Gonna be interesting to see what other developers do to tweak the battle royale formula so their games stand out.
THEY'RE COPS
You and me, man.
I've watched several PUBG streams and I don't get it, either. Yeah, there may be 100 people on a map, but they tend to be so spread out, it doesn't matter. Random equipment everywhere has the unfortunate side effect of some people being geared to the hilt, and others having nothing worthwhile for most of the game. The circle is somewhat interesting, but moves so slow, and covers so much of the map during the first half of any given match as to not matter.
It's, like you say, deathmatch with a couple added gimmicks.
But, like you, I find that my tastes are the opposite of mainstream. I play games for immersion, story, etc. Popping dudes on the same map over and over is the antithesis of fun for me.
Between these and some of the QA panels, i don't think G&T will ever tire of making jokes about how uncool they are to their children and children's peers.
Everything about that sequence of events is so very very dumb.
I get not liking it, I don't personally.
But to say you cannot fathom how people would enjoy competition(a thing commonly part of humanity... forever) in a game that lots of people are playing (better and more varied competition) also while stuff like e-sports and streaming make competitive gaming a bigger deal then I think you are not even remotely trying to understand.
And even the date comment doesn't make any sense. Even if some of it has been around(even though huge improvements have come over the years and lots of parts were not done back then) competitive shooters were always popular. And now gaming has become more popular and more accessible and the advent of streaming and actual professional gaming means that it makes perfect logical sense that competitive shooters are more popular now. It would be weird if they weren't.
It's dumb but it involves someone big in an older and more established entertainment industry buddying up with a gaming nerd so it's dumb in a great way for me.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
And Twitch is where you go to find that your cousin is homophobic.
Such a difference between generations.
EDIT: I can also only assume "Ninja" is a name this streamer picked when he was like 12 and stuck with it ever since (says the guy whose online handle is Link.)
Meh. I'm with donavannj here. I have absolutely no idea why the kids are into the things they are into now, Minecraft aside. And the only PVP fix I've ever been into is good old Fighting Games. But them young whippersnappers don't know the Hadokens no more. T_T
I mean, I was ~14 and Ken Penders was writing a comicbook about Knuckles the Echidna when I first started using H3Knuckles on websites, so kind of in the same boat. Just, you'd think a streamer would want something that would be more unique.
Lol lookit these nerds still using handles from when they were teenagers.
Waitaminute...
Growing older is a process of understanding that life is a bit like a circle. This is especially true when you have kids.
Because now you can appreciate how befuddled our parents were at our fascination for sitting on our asses and pressing buttons while staring at a tv doing stuff that is totally pointless.
Not that their spectating hobbies made any more objective sense. Watching people throw a ball through a circle, then run to the other end and throw a ball into a circle, then repeat for what seems like hours to me? Or watching people hit a ball with a stick and try to run really fast before someone can throw that ball back and touch them with it? Bleh.
Though I suppose the people playing those sports (compared to us playing videogames) might be able to at least make the argument that they're at least forestalling the inevitable collapse of their meat vessels. But then with all the injuries, even that argument starts to get diminished.
For me, though, I can at least understand some of the edges of this. I love watching Jerry and Kiko play PUBG. Of course, they don't play to be competitive, but just to enjoy playing with each other and entertaining their PA fans.
Like this:
https://clips.twitch.tv/ResoluteRacyDragonflyCurseLit
https://clips.twitch.tv/FreezingSaltyDiscDancingBaby
Or you can enjoy Josh making fun of tube, which he does, like, every five minutes:
https://clips.twitch.tv/IronicAgreeablePorcupineTooSpicy
And I have to tell you, on those few occasions where they get down to the final handful of people, it gets tense as hell. Usually I leave the stream up while I'm working on other stuff. But at those times, I have to move that window back over to my big monitor and just stop and watch from the edge of my seat. I can get the excitement.
And when you say, "wasn't this stuff all done back in like 1995?", while you are absolutely right in one way you are totally wrong in another because what wasn't there in 1995 was the ability for people to see it who weren't on your couch. And if you'll remember - the people on your couch, on those rare occasions when you could get that together - had a blast! This is even true of us old fogeys, because now we know how hard it is to arrange a thing like that. But with streaming, we can actually still enjoy that experience.
Personally, I hate most FPSes but love to watch the aforementioned PUBG/Fortnite/Sea of Thieves streams
Most streamers don't start off knowing they are going to big streamers. And once you have an audience no sense in changing your name. They are still using the name that all of their online friends know them with as well.