I don’t even have a good definition for ‘mainstream’, but I kinda thought FEAR was/is. But then at the wedding I was at over the weekend, nobody knew why I found it amusing that the best man was called Jankowski.
OK, I was finding it more amusing than it technically was, but nobody?
High end games are targetted at hardcore gamers. There’s really nothing mainstream about them, and as long as the market stays that way it won’t attract too many others. But then, a lot of the non gamers view gaming as a huge waste of time, and won’t be bothered to try it anyway, so that’s alright.
I would probably have had the same reaction.
Was it an FPS geek wedding?
Try making a WoW joke at the next wedding.
Wasn’t Jankowski also the guy in Deus Ex 2 who got turned into a cyborg?
Did you anonymously poll all of those present? Because I suspect your data set might be incomplete.
FEAR doesn’t have a whole ton of people playing online. There are usually only one or two servers running CTF. That’s my probably meaningless and certainly unscientific addition to this thread.
You say the whole crux of the issue was that the best man was “called” Jankowski. Was he called that because it’s his NAME? Or is it a nickname he acquired because he plays FEAR a lot or looks like the guy in FEAR or for some other reason that is also a sideways reference to FEAR?
Cause if it’s the latter, then I could maybe see your point.
But if it’s the former, then you got all up in a laff-riot over the mild coincidence of a guy in real life having the same name as a guy in a game. A coincidence made even less remarkable by virtue of the fact that the shared name is a pretty common one, if you travel in circles of big Polish families (and I should know, being married lo these many years to the beautiful and Polish Old Lady Gravy). And in that instance I’m going to have to declare you a huge dork, and speculate that some of the people who denied it actually did know what you were giggling about, but were too embarrassed to admit it.
Yes, FEAR was very mainstream.
I would honestly be very surprised if most people at any weddings I attended recognized the name Gordon Freeman, much less Jankowski. I think you, like probably many of us here, sometimes have a hard time realizing the magnitude of our geekiness when we’re around people lower on the geek totem pole. :)
I’ve never played it and I have almost a thousand posts at Quarter to Three.
I bought FEAR, plowed through it, thought it was a solid 7/10, but I would never have laughed at that, or even noticed it. Am I still allowed to post here?
The only games I’d possibly even consider mainstream are the Sims and any EA Sports Game. World of Warcraft is pushing it, because while people might know the name, they probably won’t get any jokes about it…
Older games too, of course. Anyone would get a Pac Man or Donkey Kong reference…
FEAR isn’t memorable for its story bits, it’s memorable for its enemy squad AI and the cool particle effects. I would’ve had no idea what you found amusing about Jankowski either.
WEDDING PARTIES ARE NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF SOCIETY AT LARGE…
Yeah, had the guys name been Donkey Kong I would have laughed too - but Jankowsomething? Not so much.
Pac Man would also be a funny name for a best man.
Old Man Gravy has me pegged, I fear.
Only because it takes one to know one, Lare.