Gamification claims another victim. I go from my gamified line of business app at work, to my gamified task list at home, to my gamified literature for relaxation.
I'm too old, but given that the new generation of boys spends a lot of time playing video games, this is the logical place to meet them.
Not that the authors think that way--from what I can tell they like writing this, and so they do it. It's the new pulps--the next Lovecraft or Howard is swimming around there somewhere. Time will tell who it is.
I hope they are the next pulps. My dread is that gamification is simply our modern need to be spoonfed goals and accolades like children in order to make progress.
I don't like Sandersons writing style. It feels kind of like a paint-by-numbers affair. While it has it's place it often leaves me the reader feeling like I've read something without a point. Without a central philosophical thrust the way that proper traditional fantasy and science fiction novels tend to have. A fun little adventure with a LOT of world-building exposition, but floating atop a shallow puddle of philosophical depth. It's very mechanical.
There's the spirit of an Epic built into more complex stories like the Illiad or Tolkien or Strugatsky. Those elements are simply not there in Sandersons work, or those who mimic him. I want complex ideas reformed as stories. Material like Soviet Fiction or a theological treatises. Story is a great framing device for complex ideas, but at its core is just a framing device. Without something greater than themselves, what value does a mechanical story really have?
I no longer play video games. Even when I did, I didn't read RPG style books, with one exception Phoenix Rising Online. That's only cause a friend wrote it.
After a while, all RPG books read alike. A failure of a man gets into a VR rig and powers up, gets a harem, and saves the world.
I got tired of 37 pages of stats and no story lines.
I absolutely detest LitRPG in all of its forms. I first became exposed to it via Japanese media, where historical fantasy is basically a synonym for medieval fantasy with gamified magic and level systems, and from the very start it struck me as inauthentic and unnatural. Those elements have their place, and are necessary for games, be they tabletop RPGs or video games, but I believe that other types of fiction are lessened by contact with these systems. The true magic of something like Tolkien’s Legendarium is that sense of wonder and mystery to the magic; if it could just have been explained away by saying that Gandalf was revived by a level 15 Resuscitate spell, or that Numenor was drowned because their swimming and armor stats were too low, then the whole thing would be cheapened.
Dungeon Crawler Carl has tons of character development despite the game like nature of the setting, although I note Carl hasn’t looked at his character sheet in a few books now.
Gamification claims another victim. I go from my gamified line of business app at work, to my gamified task list at home, to my gamified literature for relaxation.
I'm too old, but given that the new generation of boys spends a lot of time playing video games, this is the logical place to meet them.
Not that the authors think that way--from what I can tell they like writing this, and so they do it. It's the new pulps--the next Lovecraft or Howard is swimming around there somewhere. Time will tell who it is.
I hope they are the next pulps. My dread is that gamification is simply our modern need to be spoonfed goals and accolades like children in order to make progress.
I don't like Sandersons writing style. It feels kind of like a paint-by-numbers affair. While it has it's place it often leaves me the reader feeling like I've read something without a point. Without a central philosophical thrust the way that proper traditional fantasy and science fiction novels tend to have. A fun little adventure with a LOT of world-building exposition, but floating atop a shallow puddle of philosophical depth. It's very mechanical.
There's the spirit of an Epic built into more complex stories like the Illiad or Tolkien or Strugatsky. Those elements are simply not there in Sandersons work, or those who mimic him. I want complex ideas reformed as stories. Material like Soviet Fiction or a theological treatises. Story is a great framing device for complex ideas, but at its core is just a framing device. Without something greater than themselves, what value does a mechanical story really have?
I no longer play video games. Even when I did, I didn't read RPG style books, with one exception Phoenix Rising Online. That's only cause a friend wrote it.
After a while, all RPG books read alike. A failure of a man gets into a VR rig and powers up, gets a harem, and saves the world.
I got tired of 37 pages of stats and no story lines.
I absolutely detest LitRPG in all of its forms. I first became exposed to it via Japanese media, where historical fantasy is basically a synonym for medieval fantasy with gamified magic and level systems, and from the very start it struck me as inauthentic and unnatural. Those elements have their place, and are necessary for games, be they tabletop RPGs or video games, but I believe that other types of fiction are lessened by contact with these systems. The true magic of something like Tolkien’s Legendarium is that sense of wonder and mystery to the magic; if it could just have been explained away by saying that Gandalf was revived by a level 15 Resuscitate spell, or that Numenor was drowned because their swimming and armor stats were too low, then the whole thing would be cheapened.
Dungeon Crawler Carl has tons of character development despite the game like nature of the setting, although I note Carl hasn’t looked at his character sheet in a few books now.
Worldbuilding is setting fetishised.