Conceding to Game Terminology

[JamesRobot | 5,841]

Castletroidia 

[Link | 2,743]

14 minutes ago, Sumez said:

Did you quote the wrong part?

No I did not. You can't finish a game like Dig Dug or Robotron in an hour. There is no end. Looping back to stage 1 is less prevalent.

14 minutes ago, Sumez said:

What I said had nothing to do with repetitive design

I'm bringing it up. Design that is repetitive (at first glance) is common. A screenshot of the first stage of Pac Man or Space Invaders essentially looks the same as the 20th.

[PII | 1,899]

8 minutes ago, JamesRobot said:

Castletroidia 

I think you contract that from using the "toilet" in old Castles...

[Sumez | 2,995]

6 minutes ago, Link said:

No I did not. You can't finish a game like Dig Dug or Robotron in an hour. There is no end. Looping back to stage 1 is less prevalent.

It was obviously opposed to a game that takes a long time to finish.  

I already noted that some arcade games have no ending, but that's very clearly a different thing. And it's not like you were meant to play those games for 10 hours

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

6 hours ago, Sumez said:

Pretty much anyone into the genre has long since conceded to STG as an alternative, so there is really no need for any other alternatives. Shmup still gets thrown around a lot though. Like anything else, if you use a term often enough, and it's too long to spell out comfortably (shoot-em-up), it will 100% get shortened, so there is no way around that.

Ok, so this thread is the first time I've ever heard of the term/abbreviation/acronym/whatever "STG," so I've got to ask...what the heck does that even stand for?  Shoot-The-Gun?  That's the only guess I've got.  Do fools go around calling games "stiggs" since it seems to be the trend to actually say acronyms instead of spelling them out?

30 minutes ago, Sumez said:

People pretending Castlevania SOTN isn't a fantastic classic with a ton of influence on countless games to follow it.

Oh yeah, it's all the.. *checks notes*  "sony fanboys" 

Personally, I've never cared for SOTN.  I first saw and experienced it when it was brand new and my best friend had just moved into his first place.  He had rented the game from Blockbuster and then decided to never take it back because he was so enamored with it (although why he didn't just buy a new copy is beyond me).  I thought it was pretty, and could be kind of fun to watch someone else play, but in general, felt that the "Metroid" bits of the game just made the typical Castlevania difficulty even more so, and artificially inflated the length of the game, both of which took the fun out of it for me, and a lot of others.

My friend was just delighted to finally have another Castlevania game available to him (our region not having really seen anything since Castlevania IV on the SNES), but he understood where I was coming from and respected my opinion on it, even if he was having a different experience.  Most SOTN fans I've encountered can't say the same.

Sony fanboys are the ones who pushed the game into the gaming stratosphere via their shield wall of blind, masturbatory reverence for a game that they saw as wholly new and unique.  This wasn't the case, though, it was just that most of those had somehow failed to play a single Metroid game previously, and didn't realize that there was already an entire series of games that not only did it first, but also did it better.

15 minutes ago, JamesRobot said:

Castletroidia 

That sounds like an affliction to the part of the body that the shmup comes out of, perhaps inflaming it in the process.  If it doesn't go away in 3-5 days, make an appointment to see Dr. Tetrio.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,599]

25 minutes ago, darkchylde28 said:

Sony fanboys are the ones who pushed the game into the gaming stratosphere via their shield wall of blind, masturbatory reverence for a game that they saw as wholly new and unique.  This wasn't the case, though, it was just that most of those had somehow failed to play a single Metroid game previously, and didn't realize that there was already an entire series of games that not only did it first, but also did it better.

Debatable.  I also played SoTN at launch, and I already owned Super Metroid at the time.  And I don't consider myself a Sony fanboy.  But I still put SotN in my top 10 or 15, higher than any other Metroidvania.  And I've played a lot of them.

But I also don't think very highly of the original Metroid.  And I don't have the same reverence for Metroid II that some people do.

It was a very intoxicating game back in the day, and I still think it completely holds up.

[Tulpa | 3,537]

29 minutes ago, darkchylde28 said:

Ok, so this thread is the first time I've ever heard of the term/abbreviation/acronym/whatever "STG," so I've got to ask...what the heck does that even stand for?  Shoot-The-Gun?  That's the only guess I've got.  Do fools go around calling games "stiggs" since it seems to be the trend to actually say acronyms instead of spelling them out?

I had to look it up, and apparently it's a Japanese term for "shooting game." To be honest, STG is pissing me off almost as much as shmup.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

4 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Debatable.  I also played SoTN at launch, and I already owned Super Metroid at the time.  And I don't consider myself a Sony fanboy.  But I still put SotN in my top 10 or 15, higher than any other Metroidvania.  And I've played a lot of them.

But I also don't think very highly of the original Metroid.  And I don't have the same reverence for Metroid II that some people do.

It was a very intoxicating game back in the day, and I still think it completely holds up.

And I respect your opinion on it, even if I don't agree with it.  However, you're giving a thoughtful, measured response as to your feelings on it, and not the typical "OMFGWTFBBQ!!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!!!!!!!one!!!!!" of the typical PlayStation-head back in the day.  Those are the folks I'm talking about circle jerking the game into the stratosphere.  When there were "reviews" from "gaming journalists" of the day that consist of "All I can say is WOW!" that really says something about the depth of thought and consideration that went into it for die-hard SOTN fanboys.  My best friend loved the game, and still likes it to this day, be he can articulate why (and it's mostly just having another, and prettier, Castlevania game).  Regardless, that doesn't really make a good reason why one game got used to insert itself into a genre that, at the time, it had almost no presence in.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

3 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

I had to look it up, and apparently it's a Japanese term for "shooting game." To be honest, STG is pissing me off almost as much as shmup.

Honestly, it sounds like something you'd go see Dr. Tetrio about some medication for, which would be located on the opposite side of the body from one's Castleroidia's.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,599]

5 minutes ago, darkchylde28 said:

When there were "reviews" from "gaming journalists" of the day that consist of "All I can say is WOW!"

I think that was most reviews back in the day. Especially Gamefan 

EGM starting bringing in actual writers at the end of the 90s, and I love how they'd make fun of the earlier reviews.  Like pointing out how their review of Wild Arms listed the game's biggest pro as the "items." That always stuck with me.

[fcgamer | 4,754]

15 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I think that was most reviews back in the day. Especially Gamefan 

EGM starting bringing in actual writers at the end of the 90s, and I love how they'd make fun of the earlier reviews.  Like pointing out how their review of Wild Arms listed the game's biggest pro as the "items." That always stuck with me.

Well, items are important man. If I were playing an RPG and one of the items was an STD cream, I'd probably be thinking "Wow! This game certainly took a different direction from other games too" and rank it based on that

[JamesRobot | 5,841]

1 hour ago, PII said:

I think you contract that from using the "toilet" in old Castles...

 

52 minutes ago, darkchylde28 said:

That sounds like an affliction to the part of the body that the shmup comes out of, perhaps inflaming it in the process.  If it doesn't go away in 3-5 days, make an appointment to see Dr. Tetrio.

 

"All of these shitty Metroidvanias are really inflaming my Castletroidia!"

    - @DefaultGen probably 

[PII | 1,899]

9 minutes ago, JamesRobot said:

1 hour ago, darkchylde28 said:

That sounds like an affliction to the part of the body that the shmup comes out of, perhaps inflaming it in the process.  If it doesn't go away in 3-5 days, make an appointment to see Dr. Tetrio.

 

"All of these shitty Metroidvanias are really inflaming my Castletroidia!"

    - @DefaultGen probably 

There's a rumor you can also get it from eating pork chops that have been stored in walls but I'm not buying it.  Eating Wall Chops made me who I am today..

[Sumez | 2,995]

2 hours ago, darkchylde28 said:

Ok, so this thread is the first time I've ever heard of the term/abbreviation/acronym/whatever "STG," so I've got to ask...what the heck does that even stand for?  Shoot-The-Gun?  That's the only guess I've got.

Shooting Game, simple as that  Similar to how most people in the fighting game communities refer to that genre as FTG.

Both terms are common Japanese terms that date back to the infancy of the genres, and given both are populated generally by like 95%+ Japanese games, and have very very strong active scenes in Japan, it makes sense they were adopted  

2 hours ago, darkchylde28 said:

Sony fanboys are the ones who pushed the game into the gaming stratosphere via their shield wall of blind, masturbatory reverence for a game that they saw as wholly new and unique.  This wasn't the case, though, it was just that most of those had somehow failed to play a single Metroid game previously, and didn't realize that there was already an entire series of games that not only did it first, but also did it better.

I think what SOTN did great had very little in common with what any Metroid game has done great. There is so much more to the game than just the basic structure, well there is to both of them. And they both add very different takes on a similar genre, which is why I think it makes sense to look at both of them when describing a genre. Eventually though nearly all games put into the "metroidvania" box today have taken much more after SOTN than Metroid, which I think is ultimately unfortunate.

As with Reed, SOTN is one of my all time favourite games, but then so is Super Metroid. It's silly to assume it ever had anything to do with fanboyism, especially given the Sony camp at the time (and kinda still) hated 2D games, and thought SOTN was an antiquity.

As for why the "metroidvania" terms exists with the "vania" part in it, the explanation is quite simple, that SOTN represented a shift in the Castlevania series, seperating it into the "classicvanias" and the "metroidvanias". The latter term just happened to coincidentally get adopted outside of the series fanbase due to the lack of any preexisting terms.

Edited January 22, 2023 by Sumez

[T-Pac | 7,595]

9 hours ago, Sumez said:

Pretty much anyone into the genre has long since conceded to STG as an alternative, so there is really no need for any other alternatives. Shmup still gets thrown around a lot though. Like anything else, if you use a term often enough, and it's too long to spell out comfortably (shoot-em-up), it will 100% get shortened, so there is no way around that.

I certainly don't doubt that "STG" is the standard in your circles, but it's far less ubiquitous in the North American YouTube sphere where casual fans like myself tend to hover. Even still, I have my qualms with all of the terms - but you're probably right that it's best not to begrudge abbreviations too much.

Ultimately, I'm just yelling at clouds here haha.

-CasualCart

[Sumez | 2,995]

3 minutes ago, CasualCart said:

I certainly don't doubt that "STG" is the standard in your circles, but it's far less ubiquitous in the North American YouTube sphere where casual fans like myself tend to hover.

Yeah like I said, it was a common term within the genre communities  Everyone there understands it, but it's not expected people who aren't into the genre will know what it is, I think that is perfectly reasonable

As for "north american YouTube sphere" - YT is an international website on an international internet so I'm not sure that is truly a thing  Every video has watchers from everywhere.

Edited January 22, 2023 by Sumez

[T-Pac | 7,595]

2 minutes ago, Sumez said:

Yeah like I said, it was a common term within the genre communities  Everyone there understands it, but it's not expected people who aren't into the genre will know what it is, I think that is perfectly reasonable

As for "north american YouTube sphere" - YT is an international website on an international internet so I'm not sure that is truly a thing  Every video has watchers from everywhere.

I'd consider myself a part of the genre community to a degree - I just don't see the prevalence of "STG" to the same extent as "shmup" (which is evident by the shoot-em-up fans chiming in here who weren't even aware of that initialism).

And I think my regional distinction in the YouTube scene is based on the content creators I'm referencing being North American, and the majority of their audiences being North American as well (at least I assume). That's not to say they're the online "authorities on shoot-em-ups" by any stretch of the imagination - they're just the ones that casuals like me tend to stumble across most often (and they can't help but present a North American perspective and bias in their opinions and terminology).

-CasualCart

[Sumez | 2,995]

The online shmup community has nothing to do with any specific geographic region though, so I still think it's an odd point to be making 

Coincidentally probably the best shmup dedicated channel on YouTube was run by a couple of (really cool) North Americans, and it's called... get this - STG Weekly

[ZeldaFreak | 3,623]

On 1/20/2023 at 5:16 PM, Code Monkey said:

Also, why is downloadable content not abbreviated as DC? Why is the L in there at all?

The one and only contribution I'll make to this thread is that I do agree with that actually, that has always kinda confused me about why it's DLC and not just DC. I always assumed the L is the L in "downloadable," but even knowing that, it still never made sense to me since it's one word. Maybe the person who came up with the abbreviation thought it was two different words, like "down loadable content," haha.

Either way it doesn't much matter to me personally, abbreviations are abbreviations and if everyone agrees that this particular thing should be abbreviated in that particular way, or if everyone agrees on a particular portmanteau, then so be it. I'll do it the same way too.

...Also, I've always liked shmup because it sounds goofy, that's why I always liked the term, haha.

[ifightdragons | 234]

11 minutes ago, ZeldaFreak said:

The one and only contribution I'll make to this thread is that I do agree with that actually, that has always kinda confused me about why it's DLC and not just DC. I always assumed the L is the L in "downloadable," but even knowing that, it still never made sense to me since it's one word. Maybe the person who came up with the abbreviation thought it was two different words, like "down loadable content," haha.

Either way it doesn't much matter to me personally, abbreviations are abbreviations and if everyone agrees that this particular thing should be abbreviated in that particular way, or if everyone agrees on a particular portmanteau, then so be it. I'll do it the same way too.

...Also, I've always liked shmup because it sounds goofy, that's why I always liked the term, haha.

At least this is easily explained:

1. Download is frequently abbreviated as DL. So it makes sense to call it DLC. DC is way too broad, and is a common abbreviation used for way more prevalent things than downloadable content.
2. Download is originally two words, combined into one: down load. Therefore, DL makes sense.
3. An effective abbreviation needs to be google-friendly, these days. DC would not be a viable option. DLC works way better.

Ultimately, I agree with you. It's not optimal. But a lot of abbreviations work exactly like this. They incorporate a letter in the midst of a word. Often it's the first letter in what originally would have been separate words (like the L in Load).

DLC is at least more "user friendly" than DC, and I'd argue it makes a lot more sense than you'd initially think.

[Gloves | 11,846]

10 minutes ago, ZeldaFreak said:

The one and only contribution I'll make to this thread is that I do agree with that actually, that has always kinda confused me about why it's DLC and not just DC. I always assumed the L is the L in "downloadable," but even knowing that, it still never made sense to me since it's one word. Maybe the person who came up with the abbreviation thought it was two different words, like "down loadable content," haha.

Either way it doesn't much matter to me personally, abbreviations are abbreviations and if everyone agrees that this particular thing should be abbreviated in that particular way, or if everyone agrees on a particular portmanteau, then so be it. I'll do it the same way too.

...Also, I've always liked shmup because it sounds goofy, that's why I always liked the term, haha.

The point of abbreviations and initialisms is to get a long term or phrase out quickly and recognizably. Sure it might "make sense" from a strictly "these are the two parts of this term" stance to have it be "DC", but it'd quickly become confusing with just two letters representing something, or worse in Code Monkey's world of one-letter acronyms.

There's no rule about abbreviations that they need to follow a strict format, only that terms be shortened while remaining recognizable. Acronyms tend to follow the format of "first character of each word", but even they are not entirely consistent". Sometimes abbreviations have characters that don't even appear within the term or phrase itself, or use numbers to represent the amount of characters present, and in some cases even create fun infinite loops.

Examples:

• a11y = Accessibility
• i18n = Internationalization
• PHP = PHP: Hypertext Protocol
• W3 = World Wide Web (also W3C - World Wide Web Consortium)

Per Meriam-Webster: "The styling of abbreviations is inconsistent and arbitrary and includes many possible variations."

The English language is notoriously difficult to learn and of course stuff like this doesn't help much, but it is what it is and one of my favorite things about it is how fluid it really is. The dictionary changes regularly and I find that kinda fun. It's made me less of a stickler for traditionalism in language and more accepting of change overall in life.

Also yeah, shmup is a funny word, and my crusade to change it to "Shrimp" is everlasting.

[T-Pac | 7,595]

5 minutes ago, Sumez said:

The online shmup community has nothing to do with any specific geographic region though, so I still think it's an odd point to be making 

Coincidentally probably the best shmup dedicated channel on YouTube was run by a couple of (really cool) North Americans, and it's called... get this - STG Weekly

That's totally fair - I just think you're missing the fact that I'm only referencing the small part of the "shmup community" that I've personally engaged with (and I don't engage very broadly online haha - I've never even heard of "STG Weekly").

The regionality distinction comes into play because the only two consistencies that I notice in that small part of the community I interact with are:
A ) They're mostly North Americans.
B ) They usually say "shmup".

That's the reason I started this thread. I felt like it was becoming impossible to avoid certain terms in the classic gaming circles that I personally participate in. I'm lucky that I get to engage with non-American perspectives so often here on VGS, but that privilege doesn't seem to present itself to me as often elsewhere (whether that's my own fault or the fault of SEO / algorithmically-generated content recommendations).
I'm only faced with this sobering reality - "Shmup" is omnipresent. "Shmup" is inescapable. "Shmup" cannot be stopped...

-CasualCart

[Gloves | 11,846]

Just now, CasualCart said:

That's totally fair - I just think you're missing the fact that I'm only referencing the small part of the "shmup community" that I've personally engaged with (and I don't engage very broadly online haha - I've never even heard of "STG Weekly").

The regionality distinction comes into play because the only two consistencies that I notice in that small part of the community I interact with are:
A ) They're mostly North Americans.
B ) They usually say "shmup".

That's the reason I started this thread. I felt like it was becoming impossible to avoid certain terms in the classic gaming circles that I personally participate in. I'm lucky that I get to engage with non-American perspectives so often here on VGS, but that privilege doesn't seem to present itself to me as often elsewhere (whether that's my own fault or the fault of SEO / algorithmically-generated content recommendations).
I'm only faced with this sobering reality - "Shmup" is omnipresent. "Shmup" is inescapable. "Shmup" cannot be stopped...

-CasualCart

Pop on over to System11 to see how @Sumez really feels!

[Sumez | 2,995]

I'm really curious what this community that @CasualCartis referring to is though

[T-Pac | 7,595]

2 minutes ago, Sumez said:

I'm really curious what this community that @CasualCartis referring to is though

It's literally just VGS and a handful of YouTube channels that I watch on occasion.

I told you my engagement isn't very broad haha.

-CasualCart