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On its 20th anniversary, Suck's co-founder says it couldn't exist today
Suck reunion from L to R: Joey Anuff, Ana Marie Cox, Carl Steadman, Heather Havrilesky, Tim Cavanaugh. "A fish, a barrel and a smoking gun." If you recognize that phrase, it's likely you're old enough -- or at least, been on the web long enough -- to remember Suck.com, one of the earliest ad-supported content sites on the internet. Started in 1995, Suck offered daily doses of satirical editorial that skewered all manner of topics -- from the state of the early web to politics and pop culture. It ran its course in 2001, and while there were efforts to at least keep its archives online, even the last remnants of Suck.com disappeared from the web unceremoniously earlier this year. In celebration of Suck's 20th anniversary (which passed a few weeks ago), several of the publication's original crew gathered at the XOXO Festival last weekend to reminisce and reflect on its legacy.
The Daily Grind: Do you suck at MMOs?
That's a serious question. Back in February, our sister site WoW Insider published an editorial called You're bad at WoW, and so am I. Author Olivia Grace argued that no one is perfect at any game, that everyone makes mistakes, and that the worst mistake is not admitting those weaknesses because then you'll just keep on sucking. Reading our comments sometimes, you'd think that everyone reading here is a world-class player who's better at ALL OF THE GAMES than professionals and certainly than the developers, when the reality is most of our readers are probably above-average gamers slacking off at work. Ahem. Personally, I'm pretty good at the psychological warfare of economic PvP and general PvE dungeon-running, but man, jumping puzzles and platforming -- I'm horrible at these things. What about you? Do you suck at MMOs? I promise I won't laugh at you if you won't laugh at me. Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Anti-Aliased: I, suck
So my last column was one heck of a surprising column. Anti-Aliased got steamrolled with your opinions, thanks to the linking from N4G, Kotaku, Reddit, WoW.com, and Joystiq and everyone spreading the word and telling their friends. Without a doubt, that was the most productive column I've written in a long time, and while some people may have written it off as a rant, the more important thing is that it started some great discussion amongst the community. Everyone who gave their view on things, from the people who agreed to the people who wish I would crawl into a ditch and die, thanks for giving your view! So this week when I went out with a few friends to get a drink, one of them mentioned Darkfall. Of course when an MMO comes up in conversation, all of my friends turn and give me this long, dead stare. I sighed and recounted my time in Darkfall, but as I thought of it, I began to notice something. I really sucked at Darkfall. Not just kind of sucked -- really sucked. The combat in that wasn't my thing, as I never really deal with pressure in PvP when something big is on the light. FPS games where I go to my save point when I die is one thing, but dying and losing everything? That's something different. I think I killed like 3 people in my entire month there. Although, when it came to crafting, I was a arrow machine. But that got me thinking about sucking in general and how we as a community aren't very supportive when it comes to players who may not be the best at the games they play.
Why games suck
When games suck, we tend to blame the developer. This piece by David A. Rodriguez over at Buzzscope tries to shed some light on the development process behind bad games -- helping us figure out why they suck.As with many things in life, it's all about the money -- those who wield it have ultimate control, regardless of how unreasonable or impractical their desires. Rodriguez has a neat explanation: developers aren't artists, but they're in customer service. Whatever the customer wants, the customer gets. In this case, the customer is often the publisher, who wants to make more money by releasing a game that will sell. So, next time you think about picking up that copy of Crazy Frog Racer, remember this article -- and don't.[Via Eurogamer]
