LTGTR: Jamie Thomas and Homies in Anze Borrego

this is definitely a peernnial question. There are lots of different ways to approach an answer but most methodological positions will advocate for a kind of alternation. Go ahead an be a gamer but then stop being a gamer for and be an analyst.It is impossible from the point of view of naturalistic and interpretive social science to be a gamer and analyst at the same time because being a good gamer (or good member of gamer culture) means not being overly critical, reflexive or analytical about what you are doing. To put it more bluntly to become a in practice member of a community (like becoming a gamer) means not having to think about how to become a member . these things recede as habits, conventions, tacit knowledge and forms of life. The job of game culture analysts is to unpack (or deconstruct) these things but the task of the gamers is to pack them up.@Adamvs yeah I agree with this I reread my post and now I don’t like it there are too many conflicting ideas. I think the main point I want to make is toward the end concerning the strange temporality of gamer criticism that looks backward and forward on a discreet technological continuum. I am not sure other art forms operate this way.Another way to think about this is that short if Ian Bogost, Dominic and a handful of 8-bit retro types we do not venerate old games as we do with old art works or old films. You could say that is because we have yet to achieve our Battleship Potemkin or Citizen Kane (thumbs down already on Heavy Rain but more on that later) but my argument is that there is a mechanism in game culture that will make the Citizen Kane-ing of a game impossible. In film the core aesthetic qualities seem to have been rendered independent of the medium so that black and white, silent, cinemascope and 3D can all produce equally bad or good films. It is clear from Dragon Age however that the better game will come from better AI and better dynamic cinematics to avoid the cringe effect . ooh i’d better stop even though this thought is not finished because I need to use real examples from the game now and so it’ll be nothing but spoilers.My last word of Dragon Age advice by the way make sure you play the side quests before the endgame because I already tried restarting with a new character and since I know how the story goes now dealing with the NPCs is not the same at all and that messes with the choice mechanic in a cool but also annoying sort of way.