Make Video Games Cool Again: The Blue Skies Campaign

Posted by JacobSloan on June 30, 2011

We want to COLLECT BANANAS FROM MAGIC CASTLES not shoot enemies in unrealistic and shoddy drive-bys! We want to fight WEIRD MONSTERS not drug-dealing criminals!

Sure, video games are art nowadays, but do they have to be depressing art? In light of the preponderance of dark, dull, grey-and-brown-hued titles such as the Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto series, the Blue Skies in Games Campaign is a call for a return to the days when the ascendant video games were happily surreal and bursting with technicolor. In addition to more detailed discussion, a quick-fix series of suggestions is offered:

DEVELOPERS: HOW YOU CAN HELP TODAY!

- Change everything that’s grey into blue.
- From now on, everyone wears red shoes.
- Make everything happen at midday or sunset.
- Replace gun textures with banana textures.
- Turn all cars into pink convertibles that wobble and only do 15mph.
- If you get 100 of anything, a little tune plays.
- Instead of saying “crew” say “your buddies”.
- Instead of saying “hood” say “zone”.
- Make the female characters something other than prostitutes.
- Make the black characters something other than drug dealers.

Posted in: Gaming, nintendo, nostalgia, nostalgic toys, Pop Culture, sega, Video Games

Anonymous

“Hey, remember when that thing I like was different then it is today? I sure wish it’d go back to the way it was originally because I dont like change.”
Malk

I dont mind people making violent video games so much as the stupid parents that buy it for their kids…

but I’d gladly stand behind this campaign. mushroom trips through mario land was a lot better than any las vegas murderer game with special gore physics as a selling point.
Nuts

In a nutshell. Video game genres are video game genres.
Arsela

This is a really stupid thread.
poopypoopycockandballs

Your face is a really stupid thread.
jp

It’s ABOUT F*CKING TIME

Jesus, i don’t know how long i’ve been complaining that video games are just stupid since like, ps1 or ps2. Everything is one of three things, God of War/Prince of Persia, Goldeneye, Grand Theft Auto, if you’ve played those 4 games, you’ve played every single game that is on the market right now except for weird japanese RPG’s that are seemingly all based on anime, sports games that only an idiot would buy more than once, racing games which can’t even compare to the original mario kart, and every now and then, an uncommon puzzle game that’s either worthless or brilliant depending on your taste (and for some reason, ridiculously overpriced, because i like to pay 60 dollars for a new Katamari game when it’s barely different than the original which was 20 dollars new). Seriously, it’s time for video games to be awesome and fun again, i’m sick of uncreative developers selling everyone on graphics, for everyone who’s seen the movie Avatar it should be no surprise that we all feel like we’re being sold of novelty instead of actual FUCKING substance.
jp

It’s ABOUT F*CKING TIME

Jesus, i don’t know how long i’ve been complaining that video games are just stupid since like, ps1 or ps2. Everything is one of three things, God of War/Prince of Persia, Goldeneye, Grand Theft Auto, if you’ve played those 4 games, you’ve played every single game that is on the market right now except for weird japanese RPG’s that are seemingly all based on anime, sports games that only an idiot would buy more than once, racing games which can’t even compare to the original mario kart, and every now and then, an uncommon puzzle game that’s either worthless or brilliant depending on your taste (and for some reason, ridiculously overpriced, because i like to pay 60 dollars for a new Katamari game when it’s barely different than the original which was 20 dollars new). Seriously, it’s time for video games to be awesome and fun again, i’m sick of uncreative developers selling everyone on graphics, for everyone who’s seen the movie Avatar it should be no surprise that we all feel like we’re being sold of novelty instead of actual FUCKING substance.
jp

It’s ABOUT F*CKING TIME

Jesus, i don’t know how long i’ve been complaining that video games are just stupid since like, ps1 or ps2. Everything is one of three things, God of War/Prince of Persia, Goldeneye, Grand Theft Auto, if you’ve played those 4 games, you’ve played every single game that is on the market right now except for weird japanese RPG’s that are seemingly all based on anime, sports games that only an idiot would buy more than once, racing games which can’t even compare to the original mario kart, and every now and then, an uncommon puzzle game that’s either worthless or brilliant depending on your taste (and for some reason, ridiculously overpriced, because i like to pay 60 dollars for a new Katamari game when it’s barely different than the original which was 20 dollars new). Seriously, it’s time for video games to be awesome and fun again, i’m sick of uncreative developers selling everyone on graphics, for everyone who’s seen the movie Avatar it should be no surprise that we all feel like we’re being sold of novelty instead of actual FUCKING substance.
wizard troll

i vote keep the hookers!!
fuzzgun

This style of video games is anything but dead…. haven’t you heard of
the Wii?

Anyway… the real issue is American video game developers vs Japanese developers. They’re two completely different aesthetics. American games tend to come off as artless military simulations, while Japanese games seem more like interactive works of colorful surrealist art. There are definitely exceptions from both camps though.
DukeNukem

Go back to your diaper, baby!
PoopFace

Your threads have nothing on my blue suede shoes
PenisFlower

Too simplistic… Developers come from around the world. The problem is the Human condition.
KansasDonkey

Damn right!! Mario was whore.
http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

Damn…I’m lookin’ good!
http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

I have hijacked this thread in the name of Glorious People’s Republic Of This Thread!
http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

I played Mario when it was new to the world and an ‘X-box” was where you hid your stash of playboys. Donkey Kong was cute but uninspiring then…without the changes that allowed games to mature along with us…most of us would have stopped even bothering to play about 20 years ago.

Gimme Doom 1-3, Duke Nukem then and now, Starcraft, Diablo, Civilization, Age Of Empires, Red Dead Redemption, Fallout, Halo, Half Life etc…

The games of yesterday were tasty candies for hungry kids…the games of today are tasty smack for jonesing grown ups…and I wouldn’t have it any other way!
fuzzgun

Did you play video games in the 80s or 90s? The style of the vast vast majority of console video games was like this when Japanese developers ruled the western video game market. The current drab military sim aesthetic became the norm here when American and European FPS developers started to gain a stranglehold on the western market in the late 90s and early 2000s. The Xbox360 barely sells at all in Japan, and it’s because it generally lacks the types of games described in this article.
Guest

I own and play more NES Games than I do my 360. Better variety and difference in game play. It’s much more often that I find myself playing a 360 game and I get tired of it because it really does just feel like I’m playing a slightly altered version of another game.
Ezekiel

You know there’s still Sonic or Mario video games, if you don’t like violent video games don’t buy them and stop being a boring faggot : buy the next Wii and let us play adult games for real men on PS3!!!
Nunya

Unless you were playing mature games on pc, such as x-com, master of orion, daggerfall, master of magic, fallout 1 and 2, etc.

The games today are all the same..they lack novelty and creativity in their pursuit to be interactive movies with very little gameplay. Games didn’t grow up with us, consoles games are marketed to teenagers not adults. The tweens and teens rule the market.

PC games back in the day were marketed for adults, and they could afford to be niche, now games cost millions and they have to sell to the lowest common denominator.
Anonymous

Gaming has sucked since they nearly killed off the adventure genre. The heyday of lucasarts presented us with amazing games which had humor, depth and lovable characters. Go back and play Monkey Island and you’ll have more fun playing a nearly 20 year old game than you will playing the latest brown generic shooter. Generally the only great games in recent time have been amazing one shot things like Braid or Portal, both of which are fun for their puzzle solving mechanic, not their fast paced shooting. Doom perfected the FPS long ago, you simply can’t top it.
FuckFace

You are too ugly… Stand back!
PenisFlower

O.k. you win this argument but my avatar name trumps yours… I am PenisFlower! You are fuzzgun…

I win!
http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

sad but true, but there are still a few gems out there if you look hard enough.
http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

Its time to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and I’m all outta gum!
fuzzgun

Your name would win IF my name was a reference to the shitty major label band Fuzzgun. It’s not – it’s a reference to the Mudhoney song… so I win.
Anonymous

It’s time to put the 90’s behind us!
http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

Even the console games are infinitely more complicated than they used to be…not just the PC games. Plots used to consist of goals rather than ideas…like “Breakout” or Galaga”///then they morphed into very simple ones like “Save the princess…”…then they became a little more relevant as PC game markets offered long scale games with actual plots…and here we arrive today…with macro and micro plots, character development, in game relationships with countless variables…sorry man…I think the improvement is visible, measurable and playable.

As for whether its marketed at kids now instead of grown ups…complete disagreement. 30 years ago you only rarely found adult gamers who were retro pinball fans and still tried new stuff at arcades or bought new in home console sets. Today…I don’t know anybody in my age group (30’s to early 40’s GenXers) who doesn’t have a console set, a PC, Wii, or what have you. We love our games…hell…even my mom nearing 70 plays an occasional PC game…she loves the mystery/puzzle stuff. Kids and preteens may be a solid part of the modern market…but if anyone imagines that hardcore violent games are only being developed for a juvenile market…they aren’t paying attention. The harder core, more violent, more graphic and adult games have only come into being to meet a market made up of and dominated by almost 3 decades of gaming experience that demands more than ‘beep beep…boop boop’. They make it because we love it…and we can afford it a hell of a lot easier than the junior set.
Hadrian999

you can’t put the genie back in the bottle, games have moved on. modern games are made for adults as much as they are for children, the kids who started on atari and nintendo are adults with expendable income now and they demand mature games, sometimes thats’s just gore a thrills and sometimes it’s deep interesting stories with complex characters, the industry isn’t going to go back to just making mario and sonic type childrens games any more than the tv and movie industry will go back to making donna reed and andy griffith. there is a market for old style games but they are far from the whole market.
Malk

I think the distinction should be made that…
civilization, diablo, starcraft, etc. really aren’t that bad…
it’s games like grand theft auto where you are asked to do real life crime, hurt innocent people, run from the law, do hard drugs, and kill the prostitute you just bought instead of pay her…. kids that play these “realistic” and brutal games get messed up in the head. Killing Diablo you’re a “hero” or conquering Rome or whatever, not a big deal…. stalking and murdering someone in the open streets of Los Angeles because the drug lord you’re working for doesn’t like him is really not something a 12 year old should spend hours thinking about and plotting how to do better.

If you’re an adult and have a firmer grip on reality… no one’s going to stop you from enjoying your sick pleasure; most people have one or another. But putting a “M” stamp on a game is useless with the useless parents we have nowadays.
Malk

SE reported huge losses this year after their flashy new games SUCKED HARD.
creativity is in extreme depletion, I agree entirely.
MadHierophant

> violent video games

> faggot
> let us play adult games for real men on PS3!!!
way to undermine your whole point.
chinagreenelvis

This is retarded and doesn’t belong on Disinfo.com.
LPHovecraft

Everything posted on disinfo is retarded and doesn’t belong here according to someone.

I like the complete randomness of content I find here.
papicuzo

Real men aren’t homophobes.
Hadrian999

waiting for tipper gore to show up
Hadrian999

waiting for tipper gore to show up
DeepCough

Hey, he’s not the most eloquent person in the room, but I agree with his sentiment: Grand Theft Auto III didn’t oust Sonic and Mario from the video game world, they just opened up a new avenue of gaming that was gonna pop up sooner or later. And has the person who wrote this article even played Super Mario Galaxy 1 or 2?
Newsblok.com

creativity is dead in so many aspects, why would developers bother being creative when the same bilge sells over and over again, remember not many (if any) of them are in the business to make innovative new games, they simply see what sells and basically copy that.

The same principle works on most forms of media :

Games, Music, Movies, TV – if it doesn’t sell well, it won’t be copied or attempted again.

Take the TV show The Wire for instance – often considered the greatest show of all time (often said by a lot of people, if you haven’t seen it, watch it) – it was a failure in the ratings, a failure for HBO and no other show has even attempted to do what the writers on that show did – yet as I said, it is almost certainly the greatest show ever. The fact that it was so good is completely irrelevant to the big studios, it didn’t sell so it was a failure – hence it won’t be attempted again. This is also applicable to games, it doesn’t matter how good it is, or how innovative it is, if it doesn’t sell, it’s trashed.

It’s a sad state of affairs, but sales are always put first ahead of creativity.
Jimmychoo

He obviously wasn’t referring to sexuality you moron. Thats why we have context.
Brosef

waaa!!!! waaaaa!!!!
Stripedbass

Its hard to hear you way back there in the 80’s. Do you still use aqua net and wear neon leg warmers too?
Penisdocking

mudhoney sucks though so you still lose. Penisflower FTW!!! GOOOOOAAAAALLLLLLL!!!!
untitled-01

I know what you mean about the lame grungy and urban gritty games that seem to be so popular. but going backwards is never a good idea. There’s probobly a reason why we moved beyond that. The point of those grungy urban games was to react against what you’re saying we should go back to. Instead of going retro, be creative and make your own games that go beyond either genre.
Guest

Agree, but having an age requirement or just banning it doesn’t work either. It more than likely will increase the problem by forbidding it, such as we see now. If I was 12, hell yeah, I would be playing M-rated games. Kids are exposed to violence, period. If they want to see it, they will seek it out. Forbidding your child from watching R-rated movies and playing M-rated video games is an attempt to “shelter” them from things other people enjoy in this world and really, it’s pretty sick. So, yeah, it’s real easy to say the parents are shitty and should be doing a better job, when it all actuality kids are begging their parents for this and their parents are complying with their child’s wishes. Regulation doesn’t work with drugs, it doesn’t work with alcohol, it doesn’t work in religion (repressing certain behaviors..)… once you have to be a certain age to do something or it’s illegal or in any way forbidden, but not “wrong,” you’re going to do it anyway, if you want to do it. Once everybody learns to let go and quit trying to control what everybody else is doing and learn they may not really know what’s “right” or “wrong,” we will ALL get along much, much easier. If anything, the REAL problem is marketing and how most marketing is targeted toward 13 year olds. It has such a phenomenal impact on everything around us… all media whatsoever… music, clothes, tv shows, movies, games, social networking… it’s everywhere. They’re like sponges and will absorb anything, which is perfect for the political seeds they wish to grow later. And as long as 13 year olds want it, they’re going to keep selling it.
http://twitter.com/D351 D351

I’d love to play those kinds of games… hell dark and surreal would be even better in my book, but the problem is that those games ARE being made. They just suck. When the people who make the cute games start making good games instead of banking on the fact that kids will buy anything without playing it first, then those games will sell better. Personally, I like my games either artsy (surreal’s great for indie games) or just violent (playing the crap out of Duke Nukem Forever right now, which has quite a few cartoony elements, just not in the way you’re recommending), but what I don’t like, which you touch upon here, is when games decide that realism is more important than fun. Story-telling is an art sure, but if you have to take the realism so far that the game becomes tedious, you a. have no understanding of the phrase “suspension of disbelief” and b. have lost your audiences interest as they spend more time dealing with said tedium than following your story.

Overall though, I’d like more surreal games, but these recommendations are crap. Give me more games with original gameplay, and either abstract visuals or surreal visuals and I’ll be happy, but kidding them up is extremely dependant on the particular game.
deredder

I am hijacking this thread in the name of the official People’s Glorious Republic Of This Thread!!….splitter
deredder

I am hijacking this thread in the name of the official People’s Glorious Republic Of This Thread!!….splitter
deredder

Errr…What’s this all about again?

Make Video Games Cool Again: The Blue Skies Campaign

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