Picture it: top secret game design manual found in dumpster outside big game publisher's HQ

Where is the slomo circle? IT FITS PERFECTLY WITH EVERY GROUP, I DEMAND SLO-MO OR I MIGHT CRITISIZE A BLOG SITE FOR POSTING WHATEVER THEY WANT BECAUSE IT'S A BLOG AND THEY'RE ALLOWED TO WHEN REALLY I JUST NEED TO SHUT THE FUCK UP!



Yeah, caps lock makes me cooler than you. Get over it.

Someone above said these graphs weren't funny anymore... I disagree... I think they get funnier every time.

... by the way though, this graph is backwards.

Inspired by Indexed, but lacks Indexed's humor.

so true.

PICTURE IT:

Vladimir Cole having some talent other than making graphs and charts

Well, by posting my comment, I'm in some way defending the post: the posters have the right to post whatever they want, including some humorish graphs, as we also have gaming news. Using dynamic homepages like netvibes.com, I have many gaming news sites added in my RSS tab, and I found it quite funny (in the good way) to be able to read some dumb post that makes me smile.

Also, I'm not reading Joystiq since a long time, but on every news I go, I can find some lame comments about this console being too weak, and this one coming in parts, and Joystiq talking about a press conference instead of games... Although I don't especially like the PS3, I'm not going to brag about the amaaaazing 360/Wii/what else, and as I like when comment sections are a place where people can have a debate, I really don't understand why some are still coming to cry.

Shikoku88Henro - that implies that it takes talent in making these. Right now I'm seeing no talent.

Bloody hell... I never thought the internet could shock me but people actually find these witty? Seriously where's the wit? Do I need to be brain dead to understand these or something?
Today my Armando Iannucci Show DVD arrived. Try watching that for examples of quirky humour, or try Have I got News for you for real, actual wit.

Ok Vlad, we get it, you have an Economics Major, you can stop with the graphs now, thanks. For those bitching about others getting sick of these graphs, maybe it's because we would like to see some news or something interesting, not something that looks like an eighth grader drew in two minutes for his math class.

Hey lets take up a collection to buy Vlad some tools so it looks more professional. Maybe a compass and a ruler or graph paper.

what is that? one of those new Simpsons episode? I like funny posts. Where is the fun? Jokes for morons.

A= Joystiq
B= Softcore gamers
C= Hardcore gamers
D= Fanboy trash

"...and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea."

- Plato's Critias

My only qualm is that you should photo shop the crinkles in so it kinda looks like you found it in a dumpster.

Its time to heat things up! Its a slow day!

Im a big nintendo fan and I will buy a Wii. Bottom line! Nintendo's controller is goning to go out like their mini disc did. It seems neat at first, but after awile it gets old and thats when you will want your old style controller back.

For a new gamer or even a regular gamer trying to figure out the wii's motion sensing while holder two seperate controllers and pressing buttons will be harder than picking up a PS3 or 360 controller!

jonathan. i'm confused. can you explain this:
"it lacks any comedic timing, modicum of originality, and dexerity."

1) comedic timing? on the web? how do you manage that? with little stacatto breaks or purposefully crippled punctuation? for that matter, how do you accomplish comedic timing in a graph?

maybe you're talking contextual comedic timing? i'd argue that it was, as we've had several examples of games released/written about recently in his set. coupled with the recent large gaming events, how does it have bad timing?

2) a modicum means a little. when taken to be relational to the truism "nothing is original," it's not really hard to hit that "modicum" mark, now is it? given it's not a post about "rrrrrrrrrrridge racer" or anything on that scale, i would say it has some originality. noone else is applying this sort of visual humor to their sites.

and, yes. he is paying homage to indexed. he linked to the in the first couple.

3) dexterity? um. you are obviously talking abstract forms of dexterity when you're referring to the post. i'd say it does take a bit of mental dexterity to navigate the commentary he's positing.

why are there games built around big guns, fast cars and hot babes? because they make money. there's this sort of passive aggressive method of rebelling -- it's called satire.

seems pretty dexterous to me.

m3mnoch.

I don't get why people are so upset with these. If you really pay attention it make perfect sense with the right amount of snark to round it out nicely. That's just one man opinion

its not like you guys have to read this stuff, im sure your all a group of bitchy 13 year olds who claim overcensorship on tv and say if you dont like it change the channel. well there ya go, if you dont like it, dont look at it.

D: GTA4

It is really sad, games shouldn't be designed to contain certain things but to cause the player certain feelings, the main: "fun", nevertheless it looks like this is the way the industry goes.

So I just visited Indexed for the first time. Now I'm embarassed for VC. He's become the Weird Al of video game blogs, but even more of a one-trick pony.

Why bother defending this?

I find these pretty entertaining, but I think the frequency of them needs to be toned down. This is certainly a good *weekly* feature, but not a good daily one.

I don't think there would be such aggravation over these posts if they had been spread out over the course of four weeks rather than four days.

Here's an accurate little graph:

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/9092/graphpe5.jpg

^^^^

And that graph was drawn correctly!!

I think these graphs are getting progressivly funnier, and even a mildly lame update is nicer than no update at all. People need to stop whining about content on free weblogs, if your time was worth so much you wouldn't be reading them in the first place. Not to meantion things like this keep a more casual atmosphere that keep it different and more appealing then the next IGN or 1UP. If you want your "important gaming news" go there, otherwise don't complain, no one told you to come here and no one promised you anything.

"Picture it: Joystiq before Vladimir Cole.

It was nice here, once upon a time."

Indeed

I don't know what's worse. The inappropriateness of these on the site, their lack of cleverness, having to see them every day, the people bitching about them, or the fact VC doesn't know how to properly make charts or graphs.

Ummm stop calling it a graph, it's not a graph it's a Venn Diagram. I'm getting sick of these people calling it a graph. Why can't commentators come up with better things than this site is crap come up with better stuff.

mildly amusing but it's better than the last one.

because they're too busy jumping on the bash-bandwagon. they're the very same people who post spam about spamming. the people who call diagrams graphs. the same people who just don't "get it."

"oh. it's a vlad post. i don't think for myself, so let's bash on it! ha! fire vlad! yeah, that's it!"

basically, that's intrepreted as "not only do i not have 2 brain cells to rub together, but, i don't realize the only person who is going to 'fire vlad' is either vlad or calacanis. neither of which is interested in the duty, i'm sure. meanwhile, bring on the controversial post's traffic!

so, yeah. summed up? ignorant commentors.

m3mnoch.

Hi, m3mnoch. I was surprised to see your reply (I didn't really expect to check for any), but since it was polite and well written, I do feel compelled to reply. I'm short on time but the gist of what I meant was this:

In terms of timing, I meant that he's posted this exact sort of thing a few times now. I agree that it was fairly amusing the first time, but it was already a bit of a stretch on the second time. I've no problem with the nod to Indexed, I believe it to be a pretty thin joke as it is, posting it back to back just weakened its effect.

I agree that originality is incredibly rare, which is why I attempted to qualify the word. If he wanted to do series of these, perhaps it would have been nice to do it in his own style or with something to give it his own touch (outside of changing the subject matter) or make the moderately amusing joke more entertaining. As it stands now, it basically feels like a rip-off with, on top of that, little to say outside of a pointless jab at some fanboys, I guess. I'm no big fan of Indexed--and, in fact, didn't know that it existed until I saw it noted here--but it almost feels like an insult to it to just co-opt its somewhat unusual idea and use it over to weak effect.

As for dexerity ... well, he took another's idea and used it over and over unless, in my (and, obviously, others') opinion, it wasn't humorous and seemed to just be another fanboy bash or somesuch. There's no comedic adroitness and little cleverness to it all, I feel. Perhaps if they were at least spaced a lot farther apart--I don't know.

But this isn't important, of course. Joystiq can post whatever it wishes. I normally make it a point not to join the copious Joystiq griping (I subscribe to the school of don't-like-don't-read), but I decided to get my feet a bit wet this once. It was an interesting experience.