Eurogamer: 'Shenmue 3 as close to being announced.....

[mue 26]

I do sometimes think that the internet and social media has somewhat stifled the world a bit. It's like it saturates the world with so much continual information that it makes genuine sub-cultures harder to take root these days. Though that's just my grouchy old man theory and probably not true.

[ys]

You could have a point though, mue. Many move on to the next thing much faster than before.

if anything the world is getting more artistic and smarter, it's just horrible trends are more frequent and spread faster now, which makes it seem worse.

Yeah, a lot of stuff that had less of a chance to spread before can do so easily now.

I'm not sure if getting smarter is that clear cut though. One study saw a slight increase in industrial countries while recent studies saw a global decline of a few IQ-points over the last few decades.
Reasons they mentioned were increasing population and dysgenic fertility which were nice words for : the more educated have less kids which results in certain traits and upbringing having less of a chance to get passed on.

Anyway, Shenmue 3 right? Great news and I'm curious if it will lead to other information soon. Hopefully it's not a sequel to an earlier case of insiders confiding to Kikizo.

[LeeringShrimp]

You could have a point though, mue. Many move on to the next thing much faster than before.

if anything the world is getting more artistic and smarter, it's just horrible trends are more frequent and spread faster now, which makes it seem worse.

Yeah, a lot of stuff that had less of a chance to spread before can do so easily now.

I'm not sure if getting smarter is that clear cut though. One study saw a slight increase in industrial countries while recent studies saw a global decline of a few IQ-points over the last few decades.
Reasons they mentioned were increasing population and dysgenic fertility which were nice words for : the more educated have less kids which results in certain traits and upbringing having less of a chance to get passed on.

Anyway, Shenmue 3 right? Great news and I'm curious if it will lead to other information soon. Hopefully it's not a sequel to an earlier case of insiders confiding to Kikizo.

Hey this is a late response but I thought I might throw a little behavioral science up in here.


There is a concept in IQ scoring called the Flynn Effect. IQ's, by definition, are taken over what is supposed to be a representative sample of the population. The 'average' score is set to 100, with a standard deviation of 15. So if you score a 115, you are in the top 86th percentile of the population. 130? You're in the 95th percentile.

The thing is, the 'average' score keeps going up, and the standard deviations have to be adjusted yearly. Some of the first time this was noticed was soldier IQs recorded in world war I and world war II. By all accounts, soldiers in world war II did a lot better than the previous generation on IQ tests. This was likely due to better education, etc (1). That's totally sweet. What's more, that effect is very much still happening, and is, believe it or not, MOST noticeable in the United States(2), which surprises me because I've always felt that we kind of had a monopoly on stupidity. The thing about feelings, though, is they have a tendency to be all sorts of wrong. Our emotional intelligences evolved to deal with small scale problems and hunter-gatherer life. They're really bad at probabilistic reasoning. Is the games industry getting dumber? I doubt it. Call of Duty still puts up huge big sales figure, but then again the transformers movies were huge financial successes, and you'd be hard pressed to claim that the art of intelligent and meaningful cinema is fading into obscurity. The games industry has matured rapidly to become a legitimate art form in the past decade or so, IMHO.

Now, IQ scores are ANYTHING from a perfect measure of intelligence (and some claim that they are inherently racist and were made originally with the intent of proving racist theories of the early 20th century(3)) which totally sucks. But the IQ test can be a decent proxy if you respect its limitations. Long story short, since the beginning of I don't know how long, people have been lamenting the arrival of newer, stupider generations and the disappearance of older traditions. The human story, however, is one of ever increasing progress. We've traveled to the moon, doubled our natural life spans, and shrunk the once seemingly enormous globe to something you can travel across in less than a day. Humanity is totally awesome, and yes, we stumble from time to time, but I believe that we on an upward slope, with the occasional tick down from minor setbacks notwithstanding (darn you European dark ages, mao's cultural revolution and arabic anti-intellectualism!)
How does this relate to Shenmue?

Oh crap...um...well, Shenmue is totally awesome. Also yesterday I came to terms with the realization that my life really won't change whether or not Shenmue III is ever made (it probably won't). Those games set the bar when they came out, and though the bar has been moved quite a bit since then, and some of the changes I don't always agree with, its not my place to stand in the way of progress. Games are better at telling stories and evoking emotion than they used to be, and that's totally fine with me.

(1)http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199828340/obo-9780199828340-0150.xml
(2)http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Flynn_effect.html
(3) Peterson, Merrill D. (1960). The Jefferson Image in the American Mind.
University of Virginia Press. p. 167. ISBN 0-8139-1851-0.

[LeeringShrimp]

^^

BOOM. WORDS.

[mue 26]

We need Kiba back to set this guy straight and let him know why there will never be a better time or place than 18th century Britain.

Also yesterday I came to terms with the realization that my life really won't change whether or not Shenmue III is ever made (it probably won't).

haha, I envy you. I'm absolutely cast-iron certain I need to experience Shenmue 3 before I can move onto the next stage of my life and fulfill my true destiny.