Starsector

Starsector is a 2D open-world space exploration/combat/trading sim with role-playing elements. It first entered development in 2010 and I originally bought it as an "early access" type game (before Steam had taken that concept to into the mainstream and ruined it) around 2012, back when it was still in a very early stage of development and was going by a different name, Starfarer. Back then the game was a solid little 2D space combat sim with only a few light open-world exploration mechanics I played around with it for a bit but lost interest due to the long development cycle and lost track of it around 2014.

A few weeks ago I randomly remembered Starsector and decided to check it out and see what it looks like nowadays after 3 years out of the loop. As luck would have it just a few days later a major update to the game dropped, adding and improving on several features that had been apparently cooking for quite a while that fundamentally altered and fleshed out the core gameplay loop, turning it into something more than just a 2D space combat sim. Back when I was playing the main "objective" was just to fly around with your fleet, battling other factions' ships while accumulating money and enough resources to improve your own fleet so you could take on progressively larger fleets and armadas. Combat took place in discrete little arenas in real-time while you could pause the action to issue a wide range of commands to your fleet ranging from attack orders to escort assignments and rally points. This gameplay loop hasn't changed too much but instead has been augmented with a couple layers of additional mechanics like:

• Scavenging: Drifting derelict ships, dormant automated probes, space stations long dark and other objects are now sprinkled throughout the various star systems waiting to be discovered. These are often the subjects of missions but can be sought out independently while roaming about as well, and they often contain valuable rewards. Good stuff.
• Surveying: Also the subject of missions, uncharted worlds can be surveyed and cataloged freely to obtain detailed data on a couple of factors like amount and types of natural resources, habitability, etc. This is also an activity that is easy to do while just exploring random systems and can yield some major dosh.
• Missions: I think these have been in the game for a while now, but this has been my first experience with them so I think it makes sense to include them here. These are simple single-objective tasks that send you to survey or scan distant targets in far-flung systems or deliver X amount of Y good to someone somewhere. Not particularly complex but they do a decent job of providing an incentive for exploration, which is the game's real strength because it allows the emergent potential of its mechanics to come up. You also have the option of taking a "commission" with one of the game's several factions which gives you a reward for destroying that faction's enemies while making those enemy factions immediately hostile to you. This basically lets you join a faction.
• Bounties: Similar to commissions, but these are constantly being posted by various factions and individuals for different targets all over the map. They seem to be split between general "Destroy X faction's enemy ships in Y area, get $$$" and taking out specific named NPCs commanding fleets ranging from 3-4 small frigates to enormous armadas. 

When I first played Starsector there were 3 factions: The Hegemony, which are kind of like the Imperium of Man from 40K without all of the gothic horror or kind of a low-tech Galactic Republic. Basically, the space government. There was also the Tri-Tachyon Corporation which was the Hegemony's rival and the designated "high-tech" faction and a Pirate faction, but since you couldn't ally yourself with them I guess they don't really count. Nowadays there are several additional factions present all with their own relationships to the others that you can undertake missions, bounties, and commissions for who are all out and about in the game's overworld, constantly battling each other (and you as well depending on your relations with them). This overworld is referred to in-game as "hyperspace" and it's kind of like a freeway system for space travel that sees a buzzing level of activity as enemy fleets duke it out (feel free to join in and assist your allies), smugglers and scavengers skulk around looking for their next big score while pirates and fanatic techno-religious cultists (one of the new factions) roam the void in search of victims.

 

Starsector's current map size as of version .8

The list of tweaks and changes goes on: a revamped skill tree, a substantially more fleshed out UI and lore, new skills and ways of navigating the game's enormous space, and a fully discrete tutorial that, while not perfectly successful in bring new players up to speed with everything going on, is an enormous step in the right direction and I find myself continually impressed with what has been accomplished here with such a small team as Starsector's developer, Fractal Softworks, is made up of just one full time dude and a handful of part time contributors. Then when you see the game's modest $15 price tag, relaxed system specs, and brilliant modding community, its just great to see a game with such a cool concept as this not succumb to the myriad ticket-punchers that end so many other early-access games. Starsector has come an enormous way since its very humble beginnings and I haven't even mentioned several of the other new things included in the latest version. This is simply early access indie development done so, so right.

More Mad Max Thoughts

I was thinking about the Mad Max game earlier (since apparently I'm turning into the Joseph Anderson of Mad Max) and I kind of came to a realization as why I thought the game felt it too safe, and it has to do with the cars (specifically Max's car, the Magnum Opus). See, in the movies it's made pretty clear that cars = life in the Mad Max universe and shiny new F-150s aren't exactly growing on trees. This is pretty obvious to anyone who's seen any of these films (especially Fury Road) but I think it's worth pointing out that cars are put on a seriously high pedestal in this franchise, and not just in the The Fast and The Furious kind of "these cars are real fast and look cool" way -- they're really more like horses, with names and personalities that haven been customized to the owner's tastes over the years, but far more valuable since you can't just wander out into the outback and lasso a car to replace the one that just got wrecked. Max's Interceptor in The Road Warrior is equipped with a bomb that will go off if anyone tries to siphon his petrol and we're shown several times in Fury Road that all of the vehicles in Immortan Joe's fleet have detachable steering wheels, unconventional fuel modifications, and in the case of the War Rig, a dead man's switch preventing ignition without a special sequence of switch flips. It's shown quite clearly to us how valuable and irreplaceable many of these vehicles are, so I think it's a real shame that Mad Max the game doesn't really continue with this theme and instead kind of goes in the opposite direction.

For starters, Max is able to steal any enemy vehicle with just a single button press - evidently they thoughtfully drive around with their doors unlocked all the time. This is pretty silly just in the least immersion-breaking case of you being able to theoretically sneak up on a guy and steal his car leaving him stranded in the desert (this never happens). It gets hilarious in practice however as, if you can get the timing right, you can pull enemies right out of their own cars while they are still moving. Often these car doors are festooned with rusty spikes and jagged tips probably intended to prevent this exact scenario from occurring, but whatever, they probably originally built the game to not let you perform these carjack stunts but in testing people hated getting run over repeatedly without any recourse so... there you go. This still would've kind of silly and dumb if the enemies were allowed to do this to Max's car as well, but no, instead of trying to give Max a taste of his own medicine enemies will just hop onto your car and try to kick you / punch you / stab you to death. This is a real bummer as you're frequently forced to get out of the car and leave your sidekick / mechanic buddy Chumbucket all alone and defenseless, but since none of the enemies can actually hurt him there's really no danger at all, even though Chum has lots of incidental dialogue about how scared he is, how dangerous the area you're in is, etc. It feels like a pretty obvious idea so I'm guessing Avalanche Studios at least thought about this but it's a shame nothing made it into the final game as that added tension of needing to protect Chum and the car would've added a lot of white-knuckle moments as you race back from whatever you were doing to save him before some scavengers run off with your Magnum Opus and erase about 15 hours of progress. What would've been really cool, is if at that point you have would've had to repeat some of the introduction missions of the game and gone back to the Boneyard, grab another of the 5 car bodies, and try again with a stock Opus. Maybe too punishing since you're asked to get out of your car a lot, but still probably would'be felt more in line with a post-apocalyptic hellhole than what we got.

The other aspect that the game slides backwards from in relation to the films is enemy variety. I don't mean the variety of the enemy factions as those are actually fine even if they are all kind of same-y - I mean the cars. For a Mad Max game there is a dishearteningly small pool of included car designs that you will encounter way, way too often by the end of the game, and it's so fundamentally at odds with the universe this game takes place in and the generally accepted ground rules of post-apocalyptic media that I honestly believe that this was just a result of Avalanche's inexperience with making a Mad Max game, as this is an issue that the developers must have been reminded of time and time again as they were putting this game together.

 
This isn't every vehicle in the game, but these are definitely the most common ones you will see in your time in the Wasteland. Notice the repeats? Yes, every vehicle has totally separate entries in this menu for its "no armor", "some armor", and "tons of armor" versions (as you progress through the areas of the environment and get closer and closer to Gastown, the enemies get tougher. In this case "tougher" just means "has more health" but whatever, you will see 13 of the vehicles on this page so often that they are honestly the only enemies that exist. What's worse, there is a lot of overlap between enemy factions here: 3 factions have a heavily armored car with shredder tires (top left, far right middle row). 3 factions have a "rammer" car with a huge cowcatcher and distinctive exhaust (2nd from left, top row and 2nd from right, middle row). 3 factions have a similar looking coupe-type vehicle with a flamethrower mounted in the back (far left, middle row, 2nd from right bottom row). 2 factions have pickup trucks filled with dudes who try to board your car (2nd from left, middle row). And then all 4 factions have their own front-line "infantry grunt" vehicle that makes up the bulk of convoys and a significant portion of patrols (right 3 top row, left 3 bottom row). The excessive repetition stings even more considering that many of the vehicles are modeled after the cars featured in Fury Road, a film where you couldn't find a repeated car model with a gun to your head.

Like the issue with Max's carjacking and Chumbucket's invulnerability, I'm sure the obvious solution to this was already thought of by the developers (obvious to me, at least): take the Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor, and reshape to generate random procedural enemy vehicles instead of Orcs. This is almost certainly an insane amount of work however, so I can understand why they weren't able to do something like this as I'm sure they recognized the potential of semi-random convoy or camp leaders for Max to take on. What is interesting to me is that there hints of a more modular car customization system a la Mafia II that exists, as a there are certain late-game vehicles that belong to a smaller faction which are like twisted, even more souped up versions of the "regular" enemy vehicles seen in the image above. These vehicles strangely are the only ones in the game that you cannot capture for yourself and feature some very cool and unique parts and chassis, so it's a bit of a bummer that they weren't able to do more with that - maybe since each "region" of the map is under the control of a leader who specializes in certain aspects of car combat (one is all about armor and tires, another is all about engines and exhausts, etc."), the enemies in that region maybe could've had distinct, unique customizations in order to survive against the leader's people. Which brings me to another strange piece of this game: the people.

Throughout Mad Max, you do most of what you do in order to help the people of the Wasteland. Whether that's taking over outpost camps, wrecking convoys, or clearning minefields and etc., it's all ostensibly to further Max's own personal goals while helping the "normal" people of this world get out from under the thumb of the game's antagonist, Scabrous Scrotus (yes, that is really his name). And to some extent, your progress is tracked and reflected in the game world - the "threat level" of each area goes down, reducing the frequency of enemy patrols, and whenever you take an enemy camp it's repopulated with friendly NPCs who are for some reason shown dismantling everything. Yes, even in the post-apocalypse where water is more valuable than gold you can stand and watch these people for hours hack, saw, and grind away at the metal structures that can only have been put together with countless man-hours and resources. It doesn't make any sense and the game only gives this lame "we have to make it so there's no reason for them to come back" excuse as a hand-wave, but that makes even less sense. No one has guns in this world (except snipers. Snipers with fully-functioning rifles are littered all over the place but Max possess literally the only other firearm you will see in the game) so what are they going to do? Ram their cars into the outpost? It would've made way more sense if, every time you captured a camp, you had to defend against an inevitable counter-attack - kind of like the 2nd stage in a boss battle. And depending on the amount of perimeter defenses that you destroyed on your way in (stuff like flamethrowers, snipers, and bizarre automated turrets) the fight would be easier or harder since the people you liberated it for might not have enough tools to push back the enemies. That could've fed into a larger system of territory control for each region's leader in a similar way to the gang fight mechanics from GTA. As it is now you just kind of clear out camps and the enemy factions just kind of accept their losses and leave you and the camps alone in a very un-Fury Road manner. Just having something really small like the outpost retaliation mechanic in Fac Cry 4 would've gone a long way towards making this seem like more of a constant struggle that Max and the player are helping out with instead of the one man army conquest that it is now.

This is getting long and kind of ranty so I'm going to end it here, but I might write something about the car combat as well since it's mostly good but way too easy and has some strange quirks about it. We'll see.

Mastodon - Emperor of Sand

Since the early 00's Mastodon has been slowly prying open the mainstream hard rock/metal market with their idiosyncratic trade-off vocals, technical yet increasingly groovy riffs, and an ever-improving ear for the ever-important hook. They've created bizarre and ambitious concept albums loosely based around the elements of water, earth, fire and whatever "aether" is, as well as more literal tales like Moby Dick and other loose chronologies that flow through the course of their records. These albums all feature pretty universally  excellent artwork and the group's success at blending progressive rock's focus on ambition and craftsmanship with the songwriting and memorability of popular hard rock is second in my mind only to Tool. But whereas Tool's music was a deep pool that I enjoyed exploring, Mastodon has never really "clicked" for me. Not for lack of trying either! I've lost count of the number of times I've run through Leviathan, Blood Mountain, and especially Crack the Skye, earnestly trying to find and lock on to the supposedly amazing material contained within without much luck. After Once More 'Round the Sun seemed to cement the band's more radio-friendly approach as their immediate future direction I had checked out, more or less for good until I heard rumors of the impending follow-up release, titled Emperor of Sand. So I decided to check it out and see if this was finally going to be that fabled album at long last that moves all the pieces into position and allows me to really dig into this Atlanta quartet.

The first few songs are fairly light fare, with the radio friendly "Show Yourself" clocking in at a svelte 3 minutes while a generous helping of guitar hooks courtesy of the excellent team-up of Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher squarely dropped on top of the typical world-class drumming of Brann Dailor keep the front half of Emperor of Sand feeling fresh and inviting, as hooky tunes like "Precious Stones" and "Steambreather" provide a catchy cushion to the more taxing and overt sludge/prog of numbers like the excellent "Roots Remain" as the album moves into its 2nd half with more than just radio play on its mind. Rearguard tracks like "Andromeda" and "Scorpion Breath" do their best to hold up the record from the typical back-half slump as the full-figured closer "Jaguar God" shuts things down on a solid enough note.

If this review doesn't seem particularly insightful, that's probably because it isn't, for the reasons I gave at the top. Mastodon's music has always kind of just washed by me in the background of my head, even though I can recognize that they can write some damn good songs. Brann Dailor is frankly one of the greatest drummers alive right now and I will always be interested in whatever he is working on, but the rest of Mastodon's sound after giving Emperor of Sand several spins, for whatever number of reasons, just does not work for me. It's especially tragic because they are one of the few legitimately cool progressive bands to have ever existed and they remind of Blue Osyter Cult, but it looks I'll have to wait for another Mastodon record.

Albums From The Attic: Isreal Kamakawiwoʻole - Ka 'Ano'i

I can't pretend to know the Hawai'ian islands to the degree that singer Israel Kamakawiwoʻole did, but after a short couple of months spent working on the small island of Moloka'i I like to think I understand a little bit of the appeal of that tropical chain.  While reggae music seems to have been a relatively small but significant subgenre here in the US's pop music scene, world music (and especially island music) has always been an understandably underground affair with few mainstream advocates - Peter Gabriel is the only one who comes to mind. The music of Isreal Kamakawiwoʻole, unquestionably the most celebrated Hawai'ian musician of his time, was able to leap over the cultural divide and find crossover success in the mainland thanks to the resonance of his 1990 single "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World", heard in film and TV soundtracks throughout the world ever since. While that single and it's 1993 containing album Facing Future earned him his biggest success, Isreal's debut album released in 1990, Ka 'Ano'i, has fallen into the shadow caused by his more eagerly received later releases.

Encapsulating a breadth of genres, Ka 'Ano'i effortlessly slips between old-time folk/island/reggae standards and traditional Hawai'ian pieces with equivalent ease. Bouncy opener "Margarita" sets the tone for the rest of the disc as follow-up "Coney Island Washboard Woman" clues you in to Isreal's sense of humor, before his gorgeous vocals and lazy ukelele playing provide a brilliant counterpoint in slower tracks like the etheral "Kainoa" and the excellently sleepy cover of "You Don't Know Me". Traditional Hawai'ian folk numbers fill out the rest of the record's modest 33 minute runtime, the strongest being the lilting "Ka Na‘i Aupuni" while Iz's best-known recording appears in an early prototype form to round out the package. While he is supported by a competent backing band, the strongest tracks on Ka 'Ano'i are the ones with just Iz and his ukelele, especially as some of the more over-produced and cheesy electronic instrumentation creeps in on "Men Who Ride Mountains" and "Sea of Love" to detract from the simple brilliance of Kamakawiwoʻole's vocal talents. The production throughout is warm and intimate and the whole thing is honestly just a simple joy to listen to.

Even if you don't recognize his name, you almost certainly will recognize at least one of these songs and will have a tough time not enjoying your time with the other excellent material found on Ka 'Ano'i.

Titanfall 2's Identity Crisis

Respawn dropped a trailer for the upcoming free DLC update yesterday showcasing the grand reveal of 2 new "Prime" Titans (fancy skins), the return of a map called Colony from the original Titanfall, and a new weapon, the R-101 (mostly just a reskin of the R-201). As such it was time for everyone to weigh in with their insightful comments on why the game is still continuously bleeding players even with such an "excellent" post-launch content model and it's "amazing" gameplay. I've seen a couple of people hitting on the real reason but they're drowned in the stormy seas of "lul @ EA" and "something something release date". As someone with just over 100 hundred hours clocked into this thing I think I've arrived at the big reason the game is failing to draw in new players: It's fundamentally not fun for weak players.

In terms of skill floors and ceilings, Titanfall 2 has one of the widest gaps between shit players repping team potato and 1000 DPI former Quake pros with wrists more bulging and beefed out than most dudes' biceps. That isn't an issue in and of itself, and neither is the snowball-y the-rich-get-richer killstreak system that rewards those better players with their Titans far earlier than their opponents - the real problem, and one that other, more team-based FPS games like Killing Floor and Overwatch mostly solved, is giving the average player who doesn't know how to bunny hop across the maps at 55 MPH a way to contribute to the match. While there is a killstreak reward (referred to as "boosts" here) that gives you an extra battery to give to a teammate's Titan for a bonus shield, it's not particularly deep or something you can base a strategy around.

Next to that we have the Titans themselves, which are divided into 6 distinct "classes" this time around. They're all unique in appearance and abilities and provide another thick layer of strategy on top of the manic ground game of the PvP combat, and that uniqueness gives the game an almost MOBA-esque feel (especially in modes with AI grunts like Attrition) as well as giving players a "character" to identify with and "main", similar to Overwatch. However with only 6 different choices any hope of a competitive playlist seems DoA, without even mentioning the balance of those individual Titans Titanfall 2 straddles a middle ground between full-on hero focus a la Overwatch/Dota with a small degree of customization as a holdover from it's days of aping the Modern Warfare games that it was built from. While customizing your particular Titan in the original Titanfall seems to have been a well-received feature, I'm much more interested in seeing how far Respawn can push the hero archetypes with this franchise. Possibilities for more traditional team-based shooter classes like healers and supports seem wide with the broad sci-fi universe that the games are based in, and a the Titan that wasn't just a DPS front-line combat machine seems interesting at the very least.

Titanfall 2 will continue to bleed players until all that remains is a crusty enclave of big fish in the very small pond of Titanfall games, and I don't want that to happen. If Respawn embraces the strength of their Titan designs and allows for some more varied gameplay with alternate avenues to victory for all of us who aren't 15 year olds wired up on Adderall that would do a lot to bridge the gap.

KXM - Scatterbrain

The sudden formation of KXM in 2014 and their debut album released quickly afterwards was one of my favorite records of recent years. Who would have thought that a group comprised of members of Korn, King's X, and Dokken would've sounded so good? While the disc had it's share of clunkers and sounded a bit too much like a dUg Pinnick solo album at times, it had plenty of strong moments and the fresh blood and enthusiasm exuding from guitarist George Lynch and drummer Ray Luzier seemed to have galvanized Pinnick and finally have provided with him with some bandmates that he could bounce material off effectively since his longtime comrades from King's X. Personally I assumed 2014's KXM was strictly a one-time affair due to the busy schedules of everyone involved, but the announcement of a second album was heavily anticipated by me personally, and so far this new release Scatterbrain has been receiving high marks from whatever rock press is left these days. So is it worth the buzz or has KXM gone the way of The Winery Dogs and lost the plot?

Judging solely by the singles released ahead of the album, Scatterbrain at least isn't a total loss. The opening one-two punch of the title track and follow-up "Breakout" begin things well, particularly the latter track with its multi-part vocal harmonies, climactic finale and that 100% grade-A-filthy main riff from George Lynch. "Big Sky Country" sees the trio stretch out over a bluesy groove as wide as a flood plain before moving into the first of the disc's more challenging tracks, "Calypso". Harsh, almost dissonant guitar leads alongside a doubled bassline provide a dark undergrowth as tribal drum rhythms propel us deeper into the jungle, while gang vocals anchor the chorus and provide an interesting counterpoint to Pinnick's impassioned wailing. It's a far cry from KXM's previous material and is the first of several tracks to experiment with more alternative genres (and one of the more successful ones at that) as the group moves right along into the reggae-funk of "Not A Single Word", which is again elevated by the stellar playing of George Lynch who is rapidly climbing the ranks of "most underrated guitar player". His combination of swaggering crunch and playful eagerness for experimentation, particularly on high-water-marks like "Obsession", album standout "Noises In The Sky", and "Never Enough", as I found myself constantly impressed not only by his raw riffwork but his tone and choice of effects.

This is the part where I talk about the other band members and how they contribute greatly to Scatterbrain's successes as well, but while I will (and they do) I think George Lynch really stole the show with this one. Ray Luzier is obviously an immensely talented drummer and shows off more of his extensive range here but I can't help but get a Mike Mangini vibe from his playing - he's almost too good for my liking and at times its a bit odd to have the relatively straight-forward hard rock of Lynch and Pinnick being supported by this highly technical web of polyrhythms. With that said the production of Luzier's drums in particular and the record as a whole is altogether fuller and noticeably more rich here than the stiff, at times grating mix found on KXM, despite that album having a slightly higher DR score than Scatterbrain - strange. The material on Scatterbrain also feels more developed than what was found on KXM, with a few songs that I suspect would've ended up as solid clunkers had they been included on that album ("Stand", "Together") managing to shift gears midway through and at least partially redeem themselves with a well-done bridge or solo section. While the record slows down towards the end with more misses than hits, the laid back lullaby of "Angel" ends things on a high note. And its those peaks and valleys that make Scatterbrain all the more memorable and successful as a follow-up to KXM. Pinnick, Luzier and Lynch cover a surprisingly wide area swath of genres with this one and it seems plainly evident how much sheer fun they had recording it, navigating deftly throughout each piece's own little twists and turns. An expansion on their debut's foundation, Scatterbrain reassuringly signals that there is still plenty of gas left in the tank here and against all conventional wisdom and historical trends, KXM manages to be one of the few supergroups worth keeping a close eye on.

Otaku: Japan's Database Animals

Anime has never been a genre (style?) that I've been particularly interested in. My experience with it is about as shallow as it gets as I can count the number of actual shows I've seen on one hand, not counting the scattered reruns of Cowboy Bebop thanks to Adult Swim, and from what little exposure I've had to other popular shows hasn't exactly grabbed me. In particular I've always felt a bit weirded out by the "idiosyncrasies" of the style (high pitched shrieking female voice acting, the V sign thing, sweat drop/angry indicators, etc.) and I always kind of wondered why I didn't feel the same way about Western shows/movies and their own tropes and recurring elements, and I Hiroki Azuma's brilliant book Otaku: Japan's Database Animals has helped illuminate that for me.

Hiroki Azuma is a social critic, philosopher, and PhD at the Tokyo Institute of Technology who focuses on postmodern and other topics of "new" criticism (my term, not his). I was made aware of him through a link to both a short profile of him as well as a link to his most well known book, titled Otaku: Japan's Database Animals. Written originally in 2001 it is a fascinating examination of not just the Otaku subculture of modern day Japan but our postmodern society in general and the increasingly "nonnarrative" direction culture is going in. The main thrust of the book is that Otaku culture and the products (both physical and cultural) they consume are increasingly lacking in what Azumi terms a "grand narrative", instead moving more and more towards hollow combinations of attractive elements. In terms of the general anime style this means easily identifiable traits Azumi refers to as "moe-elements" constructed to encourage certain emotional reactions - cat ears, maid uniforms, etc. The reason Otaku are drawn to these products is not the appeal of some "grand narrative" that attempts to grapple with the human condition or any other similarly lofty goal, but because they assemble disparate combinations of these "moe-elements" into easily categorize-able entities, hence the "database". Each individual work is therefore not meant to be enjoyed on its own but rather as an endless game of musical chairs with characters, settings, and designs from other works as part of the "database" of "moe-elements". It's kind of abstract so if this explanation doesn't make any sense... just read the book.

While Azumi focuses on Otaku culture in particular, I think that his ideas on the trend of cultures moving towards postmodernism "nonnarrative" seeking and "database" attraction isn't something unique to Japan. Many subcultures raised around small niches probably show signs of this slide towards postmodernity and one that immediately comes to mind for me is the metal community, especially internet hubs like r/metal. The focus has always seemed to be on quantity above quality, with members competing to see who can rattle off a more impressive list of underground post-rock-doom-sludge-prog-shoegaze-whatever bands than engaging with the actual musical product produced by these acts in a critical way. This trend of engaging with products and culture on a "database" level can probably be seen in the modern video game community as well as films, which have long been the subject of diligent categorization by devoted "buffs". Whatever you think of Western culture's trajectory in the coming years, you could do much, much worse than Otaku: Japan's Database Animals as a thoroughly educating and entertaining piece of work.