Bjorn

I do not seem to have the negative associations with punk that you do, I think we're talking from two pretty different foundational perceptions here. I'd get a drink there. Also: Dongle Bar

I don't think I ever want to watch it again, but I remember having fun watching it with a bunch of friends years ago. I think that memory is probably best left as-is without revisiting the movie.

Lord Gaben: The Man Behind The Man

Interesting question! My kneejerk reaction is that it would have to be a combination of the two, with a bit more weight given to effect. You have to want to be punk, but if your attempts ultimately make you a laughingstock, then you're not really punk. Same with wanting to be anti-establishment, you might want that will all your heart, but if you ultimately make a product that pretty much conforms to the establishment, well, then welcome to the machine Cog #8935.

Yeah, she's brought me around to thinking that comedy should have more forgiveness built into it than some other creative forms. But even thinking that, I think Seinfeld's a tool. Like, how many comedians' careers have been actually affected by pushback from college students? Maybe they get some feedback or criticism they don't like, but I can't really think of having heard of any examples of real backlashes against comics specifically for shows in college towns. Maybe there are, and I don't know about them, but it seems like a bit of a dog-whistle. The whole thing also strikes me as the old man yelling about "kids these days." Like I'm sure that comedians in the 50s thought that college kids of the 60s/70s were also ruining comedy forever with all their worries about protests, and civil rights, and hippies and everything.

Yeah, I'm not convinced that a game that revels in graphic violence like it does is in any way anti-establishment in a medium which is dominated by verbs like shoot, stab, punch and murder. Hatred is like a suburban anarchist, a kid who screams about the man oppressing him, but has no idea who mows his lawn and likes to go to the community pool on Saturdays. Something like Hatoful Boyfriend would be more punk than Hatred from an anti-establishment definition.

We've got a relatively new friend whose a PhD student writing her dissertation about the intersection of modern feminism and comedy. She freely admits to liking a lot of things that other feminists would label "problematic". Comedy often requires pushing against boundaries or social norms, which will inevitably result in pissing people off. Her attitude boils down that she thinks most of the borderline stuff can just be ignored or forgiven (there are some obvious racist or sexist material that shouldn't). Her big problem with comedy is that often female comics aren't given the same leeway that male comics are, stuff like male comics can make dick jokes all day long, but a woman cracking jokes about her genitals can make some audiences and club owners super uncomfortable. She's got whole lists of shit like that. Other than watching the occasional comedy special now and again, I haven't known much in-depth about comedy. Hanging out with her over the last few months has taught me that there are some fascinating politics and arguments going on inside the world of comedy that I didn't know existed.

I'm not honestly sure which article you're talking about (one straight up labels the sit-com as racist, the other is talking about Seinfeld's prickly reaction to a question about race). There are some great essays I've read over the years analyzing both Seinfeld and Friends and the relationship those shows had with the racial diversity of New York City. It's an interesting question to ask at what point does erasure of diversity (combined with extremely selective, often stereotyped bit parts) in real life locales become a kind of racism itself, and there's an argument to be made that those shows cross that line eventually. The example with his daughter that he gave was really not clear. Telling a young woman she ought to be spending more time trying to meet boys, I don't think there's enough context there to know why his daughter reacted the way she did. Even if it wasn't straight up sexist, at fourteen, she might have been trying to convey a discomfort or problem with what was said, and lacked a full enough vocabulary to explain the nuance of what she was feeling. His reaction speaks volumes though. He thinks she's wrong, and he used her as an example in front of a national audience to show that she doesn't understand what sexism is, and by extension neither do her peers. Plus he didn't bother to try to understand what she was trying communicate. That's kind of a "fuck you" right at his daughter. As for his web series, he's got a show that's really celebrating current and historical comedians through one-on-one interviews, and through three seasons he appeared to have completely ignored huge swaths of comedy. It's his show, he can do what he wants, but other people can also ask why there's a ton of really talented comics, who all happen to be not white, who weren't getting invited onto his show, even after it had been around for three years (I looked at the lineup in the following couple of seasons and it was much less white). Add on that as a rich, old white guy (Jewish, sure, but also incredibly rich and privileged), he's in part telling young women and people of color that they don't know what sexism and racism is (including his daughter!). That's...shitty. Layer on the whole Michael Richard's racist outburst thing, which Seinfeld defended his friend for years (a perfectly reasonable thing for a friend to do). He defends his friend who stood on a stage and yelled racial slurs at customers as "not a racist", but then tells young people they don't really know what racism is. It's the kind of thing that might make young people tell Jerry he can go fuck himself. People who have experienced racism first hand don't know what it is, but the guy who defends someone who had a public, racist outburst does. Issues related to race in comedy and television have been floating around Seinfeld for upwards of 30 years, and it obviously makes him angry. But that doesn't mean his critics are wrong, or even ignorant.

Oh man, I really loved that game. It's not perfect, but everything else is good enough that I can basically ignore or forgive its problems. The worst thing about the PC version is that they cut out the multiplayer horde mode. When I played it on 360, the servers were all empty. I know if it had MP on the PC version, at least my wife and I could check it out and have some fun. In other sale news, Zeno Clash 2 is on sale this week for $2.99. I've never actually got around to playing 2, and I've heard it's not as good as the first one, but I love Ace Teams games even if they are kind of weird and broken sometimes.

I think it could be a fun media analysis exercise to go back to some of the early Hatred coverage and compare it, particularly the parts that focused on the violence, to the coverage of games which are just as graphically violent. There's no doubt that many games get passes on graphic violence while a handful of others do not. However, I do think PA has either ignored or conveniently forgot a few things. Like in the original trailer almost all of the close up, "visceral" kills are of women or people of color. And it appeared that several of the members of the development studio were supporters of politically radical groups in Poland that were at least anti-immigrant if not straight up racist hate groups. Add how gamergate immediately adopted Hatred as a cause célèbre. I guess the "squares" are the people who applied some thought to the trailer, investigated the backgrounds of the developers and then questioned how it is that a subset of gaming (gamergate) could so gleefully adopt Hatred as a cause. You know, actually engaging in a bit of journalism rather than just reprinting press releases, like they're usually accused of doing. The actual goddamned context surrounding Hatred makes Jerry's comparisons to punk and Hotline Miami fucking laughable. You could get into how there is/was a subculture of racism, white power, neo-Nazism, and etc in punk, and that might be an interesting comparison to make. But that's not what Jerry is doing. He's just name dropping punk as though there is some kind of insightful commentary inherent to that statement.

I actually managed to miss that there was a trailer for this back in that original announcement (I keep a script going that disables all auto-play videos). I like that we'll probably see more missions in population centers where civilian casualties are a thing you will have to account for. Also, adding drones is of course the most logical thing. I'll be interested to see how disposable they are. Having comparatively cheap drones you could treat as disposable could be incredibly useful during some encounters.

Jerry Seinfeld thinks that kids are too sensitive and don't know what the words racism and sexism mean, won't perform on college campuses anymore. At least no one has ever accused the Seinfeld TV show of being one of the more racist sitcoms ever made...oh wait. Or you know that time when people suggested that his web series spent several seasons ignoring non-white comics, and he blew up about it.

Haha, I should stay out of discussions I'm not closely following, since this point was already made. Nvmd

Isn't this a hallmark of CCGs though? I never got into Magic, but I was under the impression that this was just standard across the entire genre, more or less. Your criticism may still be completely right, but it's not like Hearthstone is doing something different.

I agree with your rant and that we'd all like to see even bigger/deeper changes emerge, but the reality of what we exist in is that the people arguing for change don't have the kind of top-level power necessary to see it enacted an a large scale and are often put in positions of having to constantly fight bushfires because they are so ever present. Bringing up evolution is an interesting one. Kansas is a state that has tried to gut the teaching of evolution within the last decade or so. I have a lot of friends who are educators. They would love to be focusing their time and energy on improving science curriculum, but instead they have to be on near constant vigilance for religious conservatives who want to destroy some of the foundational pillars of science. The same is true of something like abortion. I know people who work for Planned Parenthood, and they would love to be able to focus a lot of their attention on some bigger picture reproductive and women's health issues, but the fight over abortion in Kansas is literally never ending. Then they get criticized for focusing so much on abortion, when they are literally having to oppose multiple legislative attempts to completely ban it every year. I feel like that's analogous to some of the pushback that people get when talking about gender or race in games. If problems didn't show up in so many games, critics wouldn't have to talk about this shit nearly constantly. I think the fights over something like representation in games is similar. Yes, there are some bigger picture goals that would fabulous to pursue, but how do you do that when the most basic elements necessary for them barely exist? On romances, I totally agree with Apple Cider. Romances in games are still a relative rarity, usually only showing up in large scale RPGs or small indie games focused on them. The vast majority of games have no romance options. If anything, I want to see more, better and more interesting (mechanically) options for exploring in game romances. And criticisms of unnecessary or poorly executed romances in fiction are something that have existed for many years now.

I'm tired and quite literally about to crawl into bed, so don't have time for any deep thought on this. But I'd probably disagree with every single one of those examples.They are all examples of a single step, with many other steps preceding and following that tend to get lost because of our obsession for looking for massive turning points that rarely exist so cleanly in history. The Internet, particularly, has been nothing but a series of thousands of steps that have been winding and ascending for several decades now. And that's the example we've all lived through. If we had lived through the older examples, we'd have seen the same progressions. Change never comes suddenly. It comes in fits and starts, with ground gained and lost, arguments big and small.

I've honestly assumed that it was a Short Circuit reference since the first time I saw it as one of your other screen names.

Would it help if I told you I had never even heard of DROD?

I've played Metro 2033 and about half of Last Light. I've only played about half of Witcher 2, and I started Witcher 1, but didn't get very far. I've by and large avoided direct commentary on the Witcher series, and tried to focus more on how it's fine for others to criticize it because there are other people way more familiar with the series than me. That said, the Metro series oozes former Soviet Union out of every pore. I don't think that game works the way it does if it isn't set in the context of Moscow. The tone and the attitude are something you only find in Russian/Ukrainian fiction. My time with the Witcher never really indicated to me that it is coming from any particular cultural heritage. If I didn't know it was a Polish developer, I don't feel like I would be able to tell you at all where it was developed. I'm also not nearly as familiar with Polish/Slavic culture, so I'm not even sure what I'd be looking for. I've hung out with a fair number of Russian and Ukrainian folks in Kansas City over the years (used to work with several guys who ended up introducing me to their larger community), and I think that has given me an interest and appreciation of certain elements of their culture I wouldn't otherwise have.

The Know is apparently owned by Rooster Teeth and somewhat popular/reputable? I cannot fathom why that is the case though. Perhaps this is a sign that we're all getting old if this is what the kids are into.

It was actually me who linked to the article, but you did do the bulk of the yelling. I didn't say much because I felt the article pretty much nailed everything worth saying. My point was that I'm not sure there is a big overlap between people praising Boyhood, and criticizing the Witcher 3. If there is, then it's perfectly reasonable to ask those people about the disconnect in their opinions. But I'm not sure that it works to use Boyhood as a counterpoint in a group that never praised it. In general there's been a lot of reaching back in time in this discussion (Akira, Mass Effect, Mononoke, etc) that I don't think is particularly useful. Our standards are constantly shifting, and none of us necessarily expect out of a 20 year old movie, or 8 year old game, what we expect out of a modern movie/game. There's also a difference between a story that is clearly focused on a specific culture or place, and one that is generic fantasy fare created for a global audience (which is what the Witcher is now, regardless of pedigree).

I feel like that's a good example of exactly how I was saying that the "know it when I see it rule" applies to representation. It can be completely and perfectly appropriate for a movie to have little to no diversity. But when "generic fantasy tale #938" is told, and it continues a long tradition of being totally white for no particularly good reason, it's a different situation. I saw several pieces of great criticism about Boyhood, and those criticisms were even talked about on these forums, so I'm not entirely sure how it's a good example? Similar to my Boyhood response above, there were some interesting discussions of the portrayal in Mass Effect of various human races/ethnicities. One I remember is an argument about Steve Cortez, how on one hand he's a twofer, but then on the other hand, he's a gay Hispanic character, the kind of character we rarely see. I ended up hanging around the Bioware forums a lot because of Mass Effect, and saw a whole bunch of interesting (and sometimes terrible) discussions about the various types of representation in those games. And oh dear god don't even get into the fights about representation into who was and was not playable in ME3MP. People had very passionate opinions about how well representation was being handled there. Some of these examples that have been brought up are just not as clear cut as having been ignored or received universal praise as they are presented here. There was discussion and criticism of them, just like there is of the Witcher now. I think the Witcher criticism is showing up in more mainstream channels, but I don't think that's anything particularly special about it, and more because that's how quickly this conversation has moved into mainstream gaming publications in the last few years. Now, to throw my own favorite games under the bus, a series to ask why it hasn't received any criticism that I've seen for its representation might be the Souls games (and Bloodborne). They've got some of the most powerful (and at times nightmarish) character creators, which is awesome. But their supporting cast is, I think, pretty incredibly bland and white. They all feature a mix of interesting male and female characters. But while there are some characters who might be ambiguous, there are very few who you couldn't just easily assume that they're white. So they do a pretty good job with gender representation, but not so much race. So what's the difference between the Witcher 3 and Bloodborne that causes the difference in reaction?

I think some people will be saying that a game or movie is "bad" because of its representation. Others will just be pointing it out, to have a conversation about it, without making a sweeping judgement about the rest of the work. I usually feel like those two sentiments come through pretty well in criticisms, though I am sure there are examples where a criticism feels like a judgement. This idea of checklist representation (my term for what you described) gets brought up quite often in these discussions, and it's a frustrating argument to deal with. No, none of us want a proscriptive checklist that developers have to follow for representation. I feel like good representation is kind of like the old definition of obscenity, you know it when you see it. In some games, a single character or scene might be enough. In others, it would feel woefully inadequate or even insulting. That definition is both frustrating, and actually highly subversive. Because that was the bar set for "obscenity" decades ago, instead of a firm checklist, the idea of what's obscene has been allowed to shift and change with our culture. Things that are commonplace now would have deemed grossly obscene by the Warren court. In the same way, things that would have been acceptable representation a decade ago are different than what is acceptable now and will be different than what will be acceptable in 2025. I feel like this call to checklist representation is often looking for clear rules to a subject that inherently defies being defined in that way. Edited to add: I understand that desire for a clear set of rules or expectations. It would be easier if we could say, "It's always good to do X, and always bad to do Y." That desire is perfectly rational, it unfortunately just isn't realistic for this subject. I think you could flip the last sentence around though, and ask how do you address these topics without it feeling like finger pointing to someone? Silence isn't the answer, silence has been the de facto expectation for most of gaming's past. I take Danielle's point to be one that if you're going to try and write a believable transgender character, having someone on staff to help inform that experience is probably a good thing. Look at Fury Road, and Miller bringing in an expert on sexual slavery to talk with the cast about that experience to help better portray those fictional characters. Gaming culture tends to fawn over developers who bring in soldiers to advise shooters, so why shouldn't we ask for the same kind of consideration when dealing with something like a transgender character?

I thought about it, but the pressure was too much.

I didn't read that link the first time around, but wow, that's a really good, well argued piece.