Soren Johnson interview at Rock Paper Shotgun

JPR · January 9, 2008, 11:11am

RPS has an interesting and pretty lengthy interview with our own Soren Johnson.

Soren on Desktop Tower Defense:

That’s an awesome game too. I play that more than most strategy games I’ve played this year. Which is weird but… what does that mean? So yeah, absolutely. The PC Market is no one thing any more. There’s no sales figures you can look at. The question is simply is “What is the variety coming through? What are the different options available we didn’t have three or four years ago”. For me, PC Gaming should be like Punk Rock – being able to do whatever you want. And people are forgetting that the Punk period isn’t just the Ramones and the Sex Pistols… it’s Talking Heads, Televisions, Patti Smith, Pere Ubu, Gang of Four… this huge variety of stuff because people were making it up as they were going along. It was easy enough to make music that people did what they wanted to. And that’ll always be the advantage of PCs.

Qenan · January 9, 2008, 11:13am

Talking Heads weren’t Punk, they were new wave.

KieronGillen · January 9, 2008, 11:33am

New Wave is what marketing people called Punk to sell it to people who were scared.

KG

PeterGinsberg · January 9, 2008, 11:33am

He said “punk period” not punk. But along the same pedantic lines: The band is Television, not Televisions.

Stroker_Ace · January 9, 2008, 11:34am

what kind of noob capitalizes market

KieronGillen · January 9, 2008, 11:37am

Odd. I got it right in the intro, but didn’t in the quote. Bloody transcription.

I’m going to have to listen to Marquee Moon to clean myself.

KG

Timemaster_Tim · January 9, 2008, 11:38am

And for what its worth, Talking Heads performed at CGBGCBGB.

Stroker_Ace · January 9, 2008, 11:40am

CBGB?

JPR · January 9, 2008, 11:40am

This is pretty much how I wanted this discussion to go.

KieronGillen · January 9, 2008, 11:41am

Yeah. I’m a little sad too.

KG

Shadarr · January 9, 2008, 11:44am

It’s either this or PC GAMING IS DOMED.

Matthew_Gallant · January 9, 2008, 11:55am

GET SOREN FOR ME

Mordrak · January 9, 2008, 12:07pm

Exactly.

tomchick · January 9, 2008, 12:26pm

I would slam dance with Soren Johnson. Wait, do people still do that?

-Tom

JPR · January 9, 2008, 12:30pm

They might, but they definitely don’t call it that.

Raife · January 9, 2008, 12:42pm

So this Soren Johnson guy is some kind of Punk Wave musician? Why is he even talking about games? Also, wrong forum.

SorenJohnson · January 9, 2008, 12:43pm

I was trying to say that, for a long time, it looked like PC gaming was going to get ghetto-ized as the home of just FPS and RTS games. This was especially sad as the PC is, by definition, the most open platform. This is starting to change - in particular, I felt this year was a real turning point - and we are going to see a real flowering of PC games over the next few year (using both new and forgotten mechanics). Is this our DIY/Punk/CBGB period? Well, I’ve never been afraid to overstretch a metaphor… :)

Qenan · January 9, 2008, 12:45pm

Having lived through the period, I don’t really agree – it may have started out as marketing, but soon acquired real distinction.

Brendan · January 9, 2008, 12:51pm

Just back away from this thread slowly. Don’t turn your back and whatever you do don’t show fear…

KieronGillen · January 9, 2008, 1:54pm

This is probably best taken to the music forum if anyone wants to take apart the punk/new-wave semantics.

Generally speaking, while I didn’t live through the period* and have just read a whole lot about it afterwards, but my take is that Punk ended up all the weaker with the art/realist split.

KG

*Well, in an active way. I was a kid on the street, yeah. But it was Sesame Street.