I've been playing MMORPGS for a bit more than 6 years now. at the same time i pretty much stopped playing FPS games and have been focusing on MMORPGS. The reason for that is that I find MMOs alot more relaxing and pleasant to play. it allowed me to socialize with tons of people from many different origins, live awesome group experiences and experience teamwork and competition at new levels.
While playing these MMORPGS, I ended up analyzing my own behaviors and other players, and how everybody interacts in these virtual worlds. I elaborated a bunch of theories and ideas about MMORPGS and their playerbase. and i could probably write 30 or so articles on the subjects as I already started doing with this blog but nothing could summarize my thoughts better than this psychological research that is the Daedalus project:
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/gateway_intro.html
if you click through the different parts of this site, youll be able to click on words that will lead you to detailed results and analysis about various aspects of the research
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
Bringing more girls in the video game world
As is it this now (altho its changing every year) not many girls play video games. some do and for the most part they are considered "geeky girls" and are often special in their own way, (theres plenty of "normal" girls too, but just not enough yet) The other thing is that they play certain types of games, typically RPG games, sometimes FPS games, and rarely RTS games. RTS games dont appeal to all guys, and it seems understandable that it doesnt appeal to many girls, youre not really a character in a game, but someone dictating the fate of units on the battlefield, kinda like chess, but more starcraft 2. then theres FPS games which are mostly violent and very competitive. theres alot of "owning everybody" and "raping everyone" in these games, which again doesnt appeal to a lot of girls.
lastly theres role playing games which are probably the more popular genre for girls, where youre character is usually involved in a story, and works with others to overcome challenges. and even within RPG's girls often fill stereotypical roles by playing healer classes that are supposed to heal and tend other players. the problem with that is that theres alot of roles that needs to be filled in a group and not every girl is made to be a good healer but thats another story. then in some games like SWG most girls played entertainer classes like dancers, musicians and image designers, because thats girly. and guys that had characters playing these proffesions had em strictly for the utility their provided or to joke around and have funny looking characters.
I also want to clarify that im pointing out the general trend here, theres definitely good RTS and FPS female players, same goes for RPGs, not all girls are healers, (tho I have yet to see a female main tank in any MMORPG)
Then games are mainly designed for guys, with male main characters, usually really badass people (think of Infamous, the force unleashed, Mafia 2, assassin's creed etc etc) girls are rarely the main character, and if they are, they are usually very very sexy, and not necessarly the best type of character for a girl to identify to (think of Lara Croft) in fact, it seems to me that female main characters are generally just to look cool, like a female kicking everybody's ass or using a big gun to destroy things, actually thats how I like to play female characters, unrealistically strong for their size, and just really badass, kinda like all male characters but better looking.
Many girls think these female game characters just look stupid the way that they are arranged to be sexy and have a perfect body and basically dont behave any different than guys as characters.
Now that leads to many questions, how do you design a game that will have credible female characters that are feminine instead of simply looking feminine. and if they are feminine, is everybody gonna cry because the game is too stereotyped. lets say a RPG game wanted to make a realistic female warrior character and for that they had to give her more muscle mass and make her look less feminine. would females and even males be interested in playing such character. ask yourself the opposite, would a male be interested in playing a male character that runs around wearing a bikini. in all games the male game characters are really badass iconic characters that the players kinda want to be, therefore that character has to be a symbol of masculinity to please the male crowd. at the same time, female characters kinda become that perfect woman, tough and rough like a man, but looks like a woman.
To appeal to more girls, there need to be games designed towards them, real games, somehow the industry needs to get a feel of what girls will like and create games accordingly, for example a game that focuses alot on story telling like Heavy Rain couldve been it, but its filled with poorly handled stereotypes and hollywood-like cliches that makes it not a very rich experience. I cant think of other possible avenues for now of games that would interest girls and actually made the brain work to solve problems quickly because...
Games are all about mathematics, the game setting is just a costume to make mathematics more appealing, but its all about numbers and geometry, thats why initially it was only nerdz and geeks playing games, and also mostly guys (the engineering and computer science world is still mostly composed of males). nowadays with games wanting to appeal to a wider audience, and the huge market share of casual games and social games, we have a HUGE portion of the gaming population that doesnt realize that they are doing maths. somehow game developpers needs to make mathematics appealing to girls for them to want to take on challenges we typically get from good games where you have to adapt quickly to a situation and make the best out of whats at your disposal and eventually reach the highest level of competitive play where you play against other human players and where your intelligence is put against the intelligence of other humans. because i think girls are just as competitive as guys, they just demonstrate it differently.
lastly theres role playing games which are probably the more popular genre for girls, where youre character is usually involved in a story, and works with others to overcome challenges. and even within RPG's girls often fill stereotypical roles by playing healer classes that are supposed to heal and tend other players. the problem with that is that theres alot of roles that needs to be filled in a group and not every girl is made to be a good healer but thats another story. then in some games like SWG most girls played entertainer classes like dancers, musicians and image designers, because thats girly. and guys that had characters playing these proffesions had em strictly for the utility their provided or to joke around and have funny looking characters.
I also want to clarify that im pointing out the general trend here, theres definitely good RTS and FPS female players, same goes for RPGs, not all girls are healers, (tho I have yet to see a female main tank in any MMORPG)
Then games are mainly designed for guys, with male main characters, usually really badass people (think of Infamous, the force unleashed, Mafia 2, assassin's creed etc etc) girls are rarely the main character, and if they are, they are usually very very sexy, and not necessarly the best type of character for a girl to identify to (think of Lara Croft) in fact, it seems to me that female main characters are generally just to look cool, like a female kicking everybody's ass or using a big gun to destroy things, actually thats how I like to play female characters, unrealistically strong for their size, and just really badass, kinda like all male characters but better looking.
Many girls think these female game characters just look stupid the way that they are arranged to be sexy and have a perfect body and basically dont behave any different than guys as characters.
Now that leads to many questions, how do you design a game that will have credible female characters that are feminine instead of simply looking feminine. and if they are feminine, is everybody gonna cry because the game is too stereotyped. lets say a RPG game wanted to make a realistic female warrior character and for that they had to give her more muscle mass and make her look less feminine. would females and even males be interested in playing such character. ask yourself the opposite, would a male be interested in playing a male character that runs around wearing a bikini. in all games the male game characters are really badass iconic characters that the players kinda want to be, therefore that character has to be a symbol of masculinity to please the male crowd. at the same time, female characters kinda become that perfect woman, tough and rough like a man, but looks like a woman.
To appeal to more girls, there need to be games designed towards them, real games, somehow the industry needs to get a feel of what girls will like and create games accordingly, for example a game that focuses alot on story telling like Heavy Rain couldve been it, but its filled with poorly handled stereotypes and hollywood-like cliches that makes it not a very rich experience. I cant think of other possible avenues for now of games that would interest girls and actually made the brain work to solve problems quickly because...
Games are all about mathematics, the game setting is just a costume to make mathematics more appealing, but its all about numbers and geometry, thats why initially it was only nerdz and geeks playing games, and also mostly guys (the engineering and computer science world is still mostly composed of males). nowadays with games wanting to appeal to a wider audience, and the huge market share of casual games and social games, we have a HUGE portion of the gaming population that doesnt realize that they are doing maths. somehow game developpers needs to make mathematics appealing to girls for them to want to take on challenges we typically get from good games where you have to adapt quickly to a situation and make the best out of whats at your disposal and eventually reach the highest level of competitive play where you play against other human players and where your intelligence is put against the intelligence of other humans. because i think girls are just as competitive as guys, they just demonstrate it differently.
Gaming for girls
http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-games-statistics-2010-09
interesting how social games on facebook are sooooooo popular, but more interesting is that 69% of the facebook game gamers are women (and 19% consider themselves addicted). meanwhile when it comes to real games, were not sure, but it doesnt feel like more than 20% of gamers are girls.
id be tempted to guess that theres some kind of desire to game in girls, a similar desire that animates us, guys, and allow us to enjoy video games. but at the same time, most games are directed toward guys, and appeal to that crowd specifically, theres also the socialisation hypothesis, where the way we raise kids, its more socially acceptable for a guy to play video games and less for a girl.
in general girls suck at video games, but it doesnt mean they cant be good, its just that most of em dont play or dont bother to reach the same level of competitiveness of guys. I think if there was games targetted at a girl audience, but not stupid games like some of the games that already exist where you have to do really pointless girly lstuff like put makeup on your character and the only point of the game is to look pretty. but actual good games.
at the same time im not sure if both sex are looking for the same thing in a game. for example we could say that guys like to have puzzles to solves, in a game i want to use to use my logic to overcome challenges i want to be able to adapt to situations really fast and push the use every tool at my disposal to its highest efficiency. the question becomes, does that appeal to girls too? For some of them im sure it does, those represent the pretty big amount of gamer girls in this world, but their are still a minority so I'm really wondering what most girls would be looking for in a game, how would it be played, what would be the goal
heres a real world example: last summer I was playing a card game with 2 friends that are girls. I won the first few games, then one of the girl started winning too, and in the end me and her were pretty much equal while the second girl was annoyed by the fact she always lost and thought that her friend was good in games in general (I didnt get credit but thats another story :P) then her friend said that she counted the cards a little to improve her choice of cards when she played and so did I, because its really easy and its so obvious to me that I couldnt do it otherwise. Because if you always play the best card possible every time you greatly improve your chances of winning than if you do several mistakes in the game, the rest is due to luck and having good cards. so the 2nd girl was surprised that we were doing that, and said she didnt and didnt intend to.
I concluded that the 2nd girl in my example would probably suck at most video games unless she really focused on learning, but that would take a moment. but dont get me wrong, i dont think guys are superior than girls in video games or that girls are not capable of being good. its just that some of them either dont want to, or are not socialised in a way to encourage and develop certain skills at a early age, skills that are needed to enjoy video games. I would also like to add that the second girl in my example really liked farmville and tried to get me to play, but after a few levels i just stopped because there was no point in playing for me (earning ribbons? so I can show the world how awesome I am at growing pumpkins?)
interesting how social games on facebook are sooooooo popular, but more interesting is that 69% of the facebook game gamers are women (and 19% consider themselves addicted). meanwhile when it comes to real games, were not sure, but it doesnt feel like more than 20% of gamers are girls.
id be tempted to guess that theres some kind of desire to game in girls, a similar desire that animates us, guys, and allow us to enjoy video games. but at the same time, most games are directed toward guys, and appeal to that crowd specifically, theres also the socialisation hypothesis, where the way we raise kids, its more socially acceptable for a guy to play video games and less for a girl.
in general girls suck at video games, but it doesnt mean they cant be good, its just that most of em dont play or dont bother to reach the same level of competitiveness of guys. I think if there was games targetted at a girl audience, but not stupid games like some of the games that already exist where you have to do really pointless girly lstuff like put makeup on your character and the only point of the game is to look pretty. but actual good games.
at the same time im not sure if both sex are looking for the same thing in a game. for example we could say that guys like to have puzzles to solves, in a game i want to use to use my logic to overcome challenges i want to be able to adapt to situations really fast and push the use every tool at my disposal to its highest efficiency. the question becomes, does that appeal to girls too? For some of them im sure it does, those represent the pretty big amount of gamer girls in this world, but their are still a minority so I'm really wondering what most girls would be looking for in a game, how would it be played, what would be the goal
heres a real world example: last summer I was playing a card game with 2 friends that are girls. I won the first few games, then one of the girl started winning too, and in the end me and her were pretty much equal while the second girl was annoyed by the fact she always lost and thought that her friend was good in games in general (I didnt get credit but thats another story :P) then her friend said that she counted the cards a little to improve her choice of cards when she played and so did I, because its really easy and its so obvious to me that I couldnt do it otherwise. Because if you always play the best card possible every time you greatly improve your chances of winning than if you do several mistakes in the game, the rest is due to luck and having good cards. so the 2nd girl was surprised that we were doing that, and said she didnt and didnt intend to.
I concluded that the 2nd girl in my example would probably suck at most video games unless she really focused on learning, but that would take a moment. but dont get me wrong, i dont think guys are superior than girls in video games or that girls are not capable of being good. its just that some of them either dont want to, or are not socialised in a way to encourage and develop certain skills at a early age, skills that are needed to enjoy video games. I would also like to add that the second girl in my example really liked farmville and tried to get me to play, but after a few levels i just stopped because there was no point in playing for me (earning ribbons? so I can show the world how awesome I am at growing pumpkins?)
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
fired from her job for being too sexy?
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2010/06/03/14241021.html
This woman was fired from her job because her bosses thought she was too sexy. The first thing that came to my mind is that maybe she didnt respect the dress code and wore clothes that were too revealing. but according to the article, it doesnt seem that way.
it really sounds more like her bosses couldnt resist being tempted by her and to avoid being tempted to cheat with their gf/wives they decided it was a better option to fire her.
and in my male mind that doesnt make any sense, theres no reason to logically want to get away from a person you find physically attractive. if they really were tempted by her, the simple fact that they got to hang with her at work should normally be the perfect learning environement to learn how to control yourself and stay calm in the presence of a hot person.
Then if their reason was to avoid cheating on their wives/gf, if they really couldnt control themselves, then maybe they need to look at their couple and try to fix their own little problems instead of trying to find an other person to point fingers at. but thats just me hypothesizing, i cant really tell what goes on in their mind, it just doesnt make sense from the outside
This woman was fired from her job because her bosses thought she was too sexy. The first thing that came to my mind is that maybe she didnt respect the dress code and wore clothes that were too revealing. but according to the article, it doesnt seem that way.
it really sounds more like her bosses couldnt resist being tempted by her and to avoid being tempted to cheat with their gf/wives they decided it was a better option to fire her.
and in my male mind that doesnt make any sense, theres no reason to logically want to get away from a person you find physically attractive. if they really were tempted by her, the simple fact that they got to hang with her at work should normally be the perfect learning environement to learn how to control yourself and stay calm in the presence of a hot person.
Then if their reason was to avoid cheating on their wives/gf, if they really couldnt control themselves, then maybe they need to look at their couple and try to fix their own little problems instead of trying to find an other person to point fingers at. but thats just me hypothesizing, i cant really tell what goes on in their mind, it just doesnt make sense from the outside
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
pirating music
I was browsing the web as usual when I found an interesting article about music pirating, one that shared a point of view thats not what you generally hear from artists. http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Oasis-Misic-Piracy-P2P-Download,news-6476.html
Basically what the guy says is that artists shouldn't complain as much about people that pirate music since it allows them to reach a bigger audience. And what i say is that we cannot deny that it sucks for artists to have their revenues diminished because of music piracy, but right now it doesnt make much sense to pay for every single song you have. for many reasons: we consume alot of music and its easy to find for free.
We're consume alot of music, way more than they did before. before you had to go to see an orchestra for good music, later on you had to buy vinyl discs and the hardware to read it, then you listened to the radio, then you waited for your song to come up to record it on a tape, then you could copy the content of a cd on your computer and listen to it through your speakers or burn it on other discs and make your own compilations. Then there was the internet and people started to share music and they could download music, so people started to try new stuff, discover new artists, discover new genres and develop tastes. So while music became more widely accessible, it started to play a bigger part in everyone's life and we've been consuming so much more music than ever before.
It doesnt make sense to buy it all when it can be found for free to easily. The only reason to buy a song is if you want to support an upcoming artist a little bit which relies solely on your good will and we know thats not economically compatible in the world we live in. I buy some songs when they are really good and i cannot find them anywhere to be downloaded but a really great amount of songs i have on my computer wouldnt have been worthy of being bought so i wouldnt have bothered buying them if it was my only option. Another problem is that teenagers and young consumers dont have much money to invest in music, they will prioritize other stuff thats more important. Thankfully tho, music is widely available to be downloaded for free if you know how to use a computer and learn to avoid viruses and spywares.
Lastly, I think the music world is what it is now because music was easy to find for free on the internet and people shared it. That made us all bigger and bigger music consumers and music started to take a bigger place in everyone's life and now we dont want to lose what we acquired. I think that is the kind of issues the internet will be faced with alot as the mainstream world starts to grasps internet's neck. Video games already losts their free DLC, ISPs are now charging for bandwith usage. We're slowly losing what we had acquired in the free world that is the internet.
Basically what the guy says is that artists shouldn't complain as much about people that pirate music since it allows them to reach a bigger audience. And what i say is that we cannot deny that it sucks for artists to have their revenues diminished because of music piracy, but right now it doesnt make much sense to pay for every single song you have. for many reasons: we consume alot of music and its easy to find for free.
We're consume alot of music, way more than they did before. before you had to go to see an orchestra for good music, later on you had to buy vinyl discs and the hardware to read it, then you listened to the radio, then you waited for your song to come up to record it on a tape, then you could copy the content of a cd on your computer and listen to it through your speakers or burn it on other discs and make your own compilations. Then there was the internet and people started to share music and they could download music, so people started to try new stuff, discover new artists, discover new genres and develop tastes. So while music became more widely accessible, it started to play a bigger part in everyone's life and we've been consuming so much more music than ever before.
It doesnt make sense to buy it all when it can be found for free to easily. The only reason to buy a song is if you want to support an upcoming artist a little bit which relies solely on your good will and we know thats not economically compatible in the world we live in. I buy some songs when they are really good and i cannot find them anywhere to be downloaded but a really great amount of songs i have on my computer wouldnt have been worthy of being bought so i wouldnt have bothered buying them if it was my only option. Another problem is that teenagers and young consumers dont have much money to invest in music, they will prioritize other stuff thats more important. Thankfully tho, music is widely available to be downloaded for free if you know how to use a computer and learn to avoid viruses and spywares.
Lastly, I think the music world is what it is now because music was easy to find for free on the internet and people shared it. That made us all bigger and bigger music consumers and music started to take a bigger place in everyone's life and now we dont want to lose what we acquired. I think that is the kind of issues the internet will be faced with alot as the mainstream world starts to grasps internet's neck. Video games already losts their free DLC, ISPs are now charging for bandwith usage. We're slowly losing what we had acquired in the free world that is the internet.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
A book about not looking fat
I saw a little video on msn video which was a short introduction to a book titled "How to Never Look Fat Again" by Charla Krupp (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfC2lj_HJi4 thats not the video i saw on msn btw). While the video was loading i was thinking to myself "this is gonna be ridiculously dumb and outraging" because if you didn't already know or if you didn't guess it already, I don't really like how fashion is presenting us really skinny women as the type of body shape girls should strive for.
I don't like how were all very superficial, how there's so many girls concerned about their fat and silhouettes while most of the time they really are not overweight and in many case look absolutely gorgeous. Sometimes it's so bad it makes me wonder if girls concerned about their silhouettes have trouble with their spatial vision.
I also really hate the social pressure women have to live with because they need to look great all the time.
So with that in mind i started watching the video. I was thinking the 2 superficials women in it were dumb reinforcing the stereotypes and giving tips on how to hide that "buddha belly" or really large hips. The book really emphasize on changing the way women dress in order to hide the imperfections and i couldnt help it but be amazed by how sometimes the different clothes can really change the impression you get from looking at a women. I had no choice than to admit not every piece of clothes suits every women and sometimes you can go from bad to good simply by changing clothes. In my opinion, it comes down to the individuals to choose what they wear according to their common sense. Sometimes though, i thought the advice given were completely outrageous like "wear a V-neck to draw attention away from your belly" which is basically like saying "you're an object and if you show alot of cleavage people wont bother looking at the rest"
So the book can provide a band-aid fix to a problem, which is women being concerned by their silhouettes and give them a little self confidence boost. But theres still a deeper social problem where women are simply not comfortable with their body and want to hide their imperfection. They need to somehow be able to live with them and not worry too much. I could say "be rational" but who am I to say that you can objectively judge who's good looking and who isn't, who should be concerned about their appearance and who shouldn't. Come to think of it, it really shouldn't be that way, beauty is something that should remain entirely subjective to everyone, the problem is that right now were socialized to enjoy certain type of women, while others are left in the shadow not getting any attention.
Besides, what makes a person look great often will be how they are wearing their body, take for example a girl with a true smile versus one thats afraid to smile because shes concerned about bad teeth or braces. A true smile will always be nice if it bears the joy contained within a person. Beauty is NOT limited to physical traits, in fact its the result of someone's vitality.
I don't like how were all very superficial, how there's so many girls concerned about their fat and silhouettes while most of the time they really are not overweight and in many case look absolutely gorgeous. Sometimes it's so bad it makes me wonder if girls concerned about their silhouettes have trouble with their spatial vision.
I also really hate the social pressure women have to live with because they need to look great all the time.
So with that in mind i started watching the video. I was thinking the 2 superficials women in it were dumb reinforcing the stereotypes and giving tips on how to hide that "buddha belly" or really large hips. The book really emphasize on changing the way women dress in order to hide the imperfections and i couldnt help it but be amazed by how sometimes the different clothes can really change the impression you get from looking at a women. I had no choice than to admit not every piece of clothes suits every women and sometimes you can go from bad to good simply by changing clothes. In my opinion, it comes down to the individuals to choose what they wear according to their common sense. Sometimes though, i thought the advice given were completely outrageous like "wear a V-neck to draw attention away from your belly" which is basically like saying "you're an object and if you show alot of cleavage people wont bother looking at the rest"
So the book can provide a band-aid fix to a problem, which is women being concerned by their silhouettes and give them a little self confidence boost. But theres still a deeper social problem where women are simply not comfortable with their body and want to hide their imperfection. They need to somehow be able to live with them and not worry too much. I could say "be rational" but who am I to say that you can objectively judge who's good looking and who isn't, who should be concerned about their appearance and who shouldn't. Come to think of it, it really shouldn't be that way, beauty is something that should remain entirely subjective to everyone, the problem is that right now were socialized to enjoy certain type of women, while others are left in the shadow not getting any attention.
Besides, what makes a person look great often will be how they are wearing their body, take for example a girl with a true smile versus one thats afraid to smile because shes concerned about bad teeth or braces. A true smile will always be nice if it bears the joy contained within a person. Beauty is NOT limited to physical traits, in fact its the result of someone's vitality.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
ke$ha is....
hot! no thats not the only thing I wanted to write about,
I was listening to the radio today and Black Eyed Peas - Meet Me Halfway (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRNQS5UCQQIwas) playing and while listening i thought to myself "i cant imagine anybody on this planet would like that song for the male vocals more than for the rest of the songs (off course its also because its not the chorus) but my point is that its amazing how these vocals are only there to fill in the blanks and have pretty much nothing to do with the construction of this really simple song.
I was talking about that with a friend and we went on talking about how the pop industry was looking for marketability over musical talent. He then mentionned how, when you look at how ke$ha performs, even in her video clip, "it's not the type of music she'd be known for if she had a choice". I had heard that "Tik-Tok" was not representative of her album so i decided to search on youtube to hear some of the songs shes made. After hearing a few songs i thought that it was all pretty much the same stuff where ke$ha just talks dirty in her songs because sex sells with titles such as "I made out with a rockstar" or "party at a rich dude house" and lyrics such as "I want to put my hands in your khaki pants mr. watson" and "tell me what youre gonna do to me". But i dont think im surprising anyone here. But lets go back to our main statement about how
"it's not the type of music she'd be known for if she had a choice". because during my youtube search, amongst all the different uploads of tik-tok and the various other crappy song that can be found on her album Animal, i found this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5QYwMfac8o. I'm not gonna say i find this song good, but its definitely a huge contrast from all the other things. interestingly enough, this song is not listed in her discography and its not on her Animal album. It seems to me that shes more her trueself in that song than in others and to me, she definitely sounds way less stupid and as one of the youtube user commented on that song: "she totly rocks this type of music".
but yea that one song seems to be the only one covered by all the other songs that "sell more" but also depicts a naughtier ke$ha and a general image of a "bad girl". one thats attractive to men, one that creates revenues.
also from the wikipedia Animal album page:
Criticism for the album came from James Reed of the The Boston Globe and Jonathan Keefe of Slant Magazine. The former wondered when "the last time an album so flat and vacuous generated such a buzz [was]," denouncing Animal as "a shallow hodgepodge of 2009’s tried-and-true formulas," and said "you can almost hear the clock counting down her fifteen minutes of fame."[4] Keefe wrote a scathing review of the album finished by saying that "[j]ust about the only thing Kesha makes convincing on Animal is that the current crop of party girls are every bit as soulless as they let on."
I was listening to the radio today and Black Eyed Peas - Meet Me Halfway (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRNQS5UCQQIwas) playing and while listening i thought to myself "i cant imagine anybody on this planet would like that song for the male vocals more than for the rest of the songs (off course its also because its not the chorus) but my point is that its amazing how these vocals are only there to fill in the blanks and have pretty much nothing to do with the construction of this really simple song.
I was talking about that with a friend and we went on talking about how the pop industry was looking for marketability over musical talent. He then mentionned how, when you look at how ke$ha performs, even in her video clip, "it's not the type of music she'd be known for if she had a choice". I had heard that "Tik-Tok" was not representative of her album so i decided to search on youtube to hear some of the songs shes made. After hearing a few songs i thought that it was all pretty much the same stuff where ke$ha just talks dirty in her songs because sex sells with titles such as "I made out with a rockstar" or "party at a rich dude house" and lyrics such as "I want to put my hands in your khaki pants mr. watson" and "tell me what youre gonna do to me". But i dont think im surprising anyone here. But lets go back to our main statement about how
"it's not the type of music she'd be known for if she had a choice". because during my youtube search, amongst all the different uploads of tik-tok and the various other crappy song that can be found on her album Animal, i found this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5QYwMfac8o. I'm not gonna say i find this song good, but its definitely a huge contrast from all the other things. interestingly enough, this song is not listed in her discography and its not on her Animal album. It seems to me that shes more her trueself in that song than in others and to me, she definitely sounds way less stupid and as one of the youtube user commented on that song: "she totly rocks this type of music".
but yea that one song seems to be the only one covered by all the other songs that "sell more" but also depicts a naughtier ke$ha and a general image of a "bad girl". one thats attractive to men, one that creates revenues.
also from the wikipedia Animal album page:
Criticism for the album came from James Reed of the The Boston Globe and Jonathan Keefe of Slant Magazine. The former wondered when "the last time an album so flat and vacuous generated such a buzz [was]," denouncing Animal as "a shallow hodgepodge of 2009’s tried-and-true formulas," and said "you can almost hear the clock counting down her fifteen minutes of fame."[4] Keefe wrote a scathing review of the album finished by saying that "[j]ust about the only thing Kesha makes convincing on Animal is that the current crop of party girls are every bit as soulless as they let on."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)