Deadpan

That right there is a top-notch post.

I feel like none of the praise for this game prepared me for how much I enjoy the main menu music. If anybdoy wants to play some games on European servers, feel free to add me on Steam. Just let me know here that it's you, else I'll worry that it's somebody who's after TF2 items, or worse, something GG related. Edit: Now with links!

Maybe those insufferable people should just stick to their fantasy and stay off the internet.

I figured you might not have meant that aspect, but it's hard to tell with these games what skill even means because of all the high-level strategizing that's going on. I guess I actually do know most abilities in the game. That's something you pick on relatively quickly from playing these champions yourself, but also from playing against them. This is one of the parts that makes the game kind of unapproachable if you haven't played it a lot, but the good news is that commentary usually helps with the confusion a little bit even if they aren't focused on explaining stuff (but what they're saying can still help you connect specific abilities that happened to specific players and champions for instance), plus it's not super important to know every ablity by heart. Although players obviously use all abilities to get the most out of their champions, champions usually still have one or two notable skills that stand out for how impactful they are. Usually these are the ones that can stun or otherwise disable enemy players, or that can set up some kind of map play. Like, the fact that Shen can shield himself from damage and throw knives at enemies isn't as noticeable or relevant in matches as his ability to dash into the enemy team and taunt any player he hits, or to shield an ally anywhere on the map and teleport to them.

I figure that if you watch it for big plays, you're probably not going to find much in it, because those tend to be pretty rare. At that level all players are generally skillful enough that they rarely straight up get outplayed by their opponents or manage to outplay them. Kills, objectives and map control are instead usually gained through a slow process of positioning, vision games, strategic rotations around the map, et cetera, until everything is set up so that a successful move on the enemy doesn't depend on fancy tricks but on everything continuing the way it was going. Like, one thing that confused me initially when I watched high-level matches is how quickly people back off when they their engage doesn't instantly work out, because in my own sucky attempts at League I'd then feel like I can still turn this around and keep going even if that opens me up to some counterplay. But those players all know exactly how much room they need to work with and when their window of opportunity has closed. So sometimes you see something like an isolated player flashing away from some people trying to group up on them, but then actually turn around and keep farming, and even though they only moved this seemingly tiny distance and even though all the enemy players are still right there they won't bother with it anymore because they know it's not worth it anymore because their odds of success decreased significantly. That kind of macro-level strategizing can be hard to appreciate since it's hard to take into account everything that these teams take into account to succeed. One part of the game you can try to feel out if you enjoy this stuff on its own (which you might not, it's a matter of taste) is in watching how teams set up and position for teamfights, like how they test and bait each other out in fights around the Dragon or Baron pit.

You're right, I shouldn't have gone there and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have taken what you said personally, but I kind of did. I still don't exactly see though how you can say this: and still feel completely comfortable taking all these potshots at a field of work that is directly connected to the kind of work I do and is frequently mischaracterized the same way as the work that I do. I just really don't appreciate the sudden turnaround of "Well, speaking as somebody who is affected by this" because myself and others are too. It's safe to say I didn't entirely follow your hypotheticals, but I think these statements show a misunderstanding that can maybe be cleared up. I don't know about Problem Machine obviously (although I think we're in agreement on this), but I'm not arguing that streamers deserve protection because they transform the game itself and therefore can lay claim to it, I'm saying that they own their playthroughs, because these were authored by them, even if developers set up the boundaries within they could operate. That doesn't overwrite the protection of the assets the developer created, it just sets up a context in which that protection is temporarily suspended, since enforcing it would conflict with the streamers' ownership of their creation. I'm arguing that most kinds of streaming are a form of fair use, and the concept of fair use doesn't contradict, threaten or invalidate copyright and intellectual ownership. It just protects certain permissions within those sets of rules. The rules themselves and the public acknowledgement of authorship aren't endangered by this.

If people don't acknowledge this, I think it has more to do with the fact that we universally prefer to think of owning games themselves (when we actually ever only own licenses to digital games) than it has with them rejecting the principle of licensing. I myself am arguing from the point of view that there should be no separate licensing fee since streaming should already be covered by the initial agreement, being a logical extension of the way we use games (the contemporary equivalent of watching your siblings play stuff in a lot of ways) and I think generally a lot of people base their rejection of revenue sharing on some variation of "I already paid for this" Maybe the most realistic option for adding on top of this would be something like the Unity Engine model where you only need to share profit when you reach a certain threshold. But then the only games that contribute significantly to a streamers revenue all on their own probably don't need the extra support.

I feel similarly. It sometimes seems like Youtube is getting flak not because it causes problems but because it makes them visible, like the mismatch between people playing and people paying that takes us back to piracy discussions. A lot of people approach it from the angle of "think about the developers!" but it's not like every complaint a creator has about the way their creation is used is automatically valid and a lot of stuff developers themselves have said on the subject feels like it's coming from the same kind of anguish they might feel when they see somebody at an event playing their game "the wrong way".

Well, that's not what I intended to get across, but I was on the edge about including it for how rude it might sound. Sorry about that. The thing is that a lot of comments made here about the triviality of streaming and the like, even if targetted at somebody like TB, who I loathe, are still by extension condescending towards the work that I and a lot of others do. Like, so much of this discussion is beat by beat repeating garbage "Screw those guys, they get to play video games for a living" attitudes that people have towards reviewing.

Yeah, a lot of Thumbs work in arts and media, myself included. That's another point I was trying to make before, that this is a conversation I see a lot of artists going into in order to defend their right to be paid for their work, but in trying to argue that it's really their place to make this demand opposite other creators, they actually rely on arguments that devalue art as a whole. People feel comfortable throwing this one medium under the bus to try and make things better for themselves, but it relies on a lot of worrisome stuff, and I don't think it's a constructive approach.

The reason it comes across as agressive (to me as well) is that the purpose of this thread is to discuss feminist topics, like how people feel about Quiet and other game characters, or issues affecting women in game development, or content warnings and their uses, not to debate the merits of feminism on the whole. So this isn't really the place to dispute a well-established point of feminist thought (and media sciences). If to you it doesn't seem to make sense, you can try asking questions or to be pointed to more writing on the subject, but "actually I think this is wrong" isn't really a helpful contribution, because nobody is here to convince you. There's a bigger issue this is connected to in the topic of proof and who is expected to provide it. People asking for conclusive evidence before they address certain issues is often a way to make sure things stay exactly the same because it's often almost impossible to provide hard evidence for something that has so many facets, is created by so many hands and is as ubiquitious in our lives as socialization or media effects. Especially since people are generally willing to disregard personal experience as valid data, even if it's corroborated by many, many other people who have experienced the same thing.

But the argument isn't that demos and therefore also pirated copies are effective at convincing people to buy something for real, it's that they're convenient for people who want to check out a game even though they have no legit interest in it (although a lot of people are going to deny that kind of interest even if they have it, that's how you get those Steam reviews from people with 100+ hours in something saying it's boring). Not to be a stickler about this, but the article you quote also doesn't give an actual source for the numbers beyond "the developers said so". Like, is that based on the total number of downloads from file sharing platforms or something like that (apparently it is, but no word on how they estimated based on that. Also, interesting context)? Cause I am unconvinced that every single person who gets the game is then also going to even install it (something a lot of people don't even do with games they own legally because of sales and bundles), or that there aren't people who download it multiple times for whatever reason, or who can't get things to run, or whatever else. It's ultimately not terribly surprising to me that the ratio of free to not free is weighted heavily in the direction of free, and that looks bad sure, but that doesn't tell us much about the who, what, why and where, as Problem Machine brings up. Plus, the more outraged you are about this issue, the more convincing my original point should have actually been to you. Why would people be "pirating" games by watching videos of them when they can pirate them for real? The bigger an issue you think the latter is, the weirder it is to assume that the former makes any meaningful difference. I figure it's a step up for honest discussion of this issue that we finally included piracy though, because a lot of the anti-Youtuber sentiment I see seems to be born from 1) people seeing developers they like not doing well financially (whether market forces, or piracy, or just capitalism being shitty is to blame for this, hard to say) 2) people seeing Youtubers doing well financially (even though this is based mostly on being disproportionately more likely to notice the big successful Youtubers than the thousands of little guys that are as much in dire straits as the devs), so they create arguments for what they feel is right in this situation: Youtubers giving money over to devs. But just because one group is in trouble doesn't necessarily mean the other group has to make up for that. I mean, aren't they kind of a big company though? Either way, their copyright claim system is something that affects both big and little players, but in the current environment (to say nothing of the "all power to devs" thing you suggested) only the big players have the means and voice to effectively protest misuse of the system when it affects them (of course they complain the loudest, as you say, they got the biggest megaphones). So if you really think that networks and big companies pushing out individuals is the real issue here, I don't understand why you argue in support of policies that directly favor them. You may not be pro big business, but your argument is. It honestly doesn't surprise me to hear that, so much of what you write feels like it's coming from a place of feeling personally threatened by something. And that's not exactly helping you.

Weirdly, I think it would actually have been more dignified if they had made that character flat out naked. That's the logical conclusion of their justification about having to have skin exposed to sunlight, isn't it? (I have no idea what's going on in MGS though, so maybe not) It'd also would have communicated much more clearly that the character is (supposedly) dressed like that.for a narrative reason. The outfit they gave her is the kind of stuff other games include with a straight face, and we'll never know for sure that the weird justification it's been given in this one wasn't simply scribbled in after Kojima made one too many creepy tweets about attractive cosplayers.

I'm not saying you need to step up your argument game, I'm just a little confused that you continually insist on your vision of how things should work, when (even beyond what philosophical disagreements I might have with your stance) your proposals are just not realistically feasible.

I was at a game related open mic thing during some recent event, and a guy there talked about how his favorite thing about the GoW sex minigame is that you can not press anything and make Kratos "fail at sex" and disrupt the game's hypermasculine bullshit a little bit.

I think this is a slightly unfortunate headline given the events of the last year.

Except the power won't actually be with the copyright holders, it will be with the robots that they rely on to enforce whatever decision they make and which are going to remove Let's Plays by renowned critics alongside video talks that include game footage, regular old "Hey guys! Its xX_Radgamerdude_Xx..." stuff and full, commentary-free playthroughs. And if they want to do this stuff manually, they are either going to have to let a hell of a lot slip through, or base their calls on inadequate sightings (and still let a hell of a lot slip through). You're not addressing my point. Or half of the points that have been made over the last three pages, for that matter.

I'll have to set an alarm on my phone or something so I don't forget.

That upgrade option doesn't ever expire, does it? I'm still stting things out since I don't have any backup workstations at the moment and would pretty much be screwed if something I rely on working... doesn't.

When it comes to piracy, people sometimes contend that it doesn't so much constitute lost sales as it does extensive demo time for people who would have never bought the game in the first place. So when this argument can be made at all opposite getting the actual thing, how is it not universally accepted opposite such an obvious downgrade as watching streams of something? The other thing about this, and why I personally don't think getting to claim ad revenue is a good idea, is that the whole Youtube and streaming landscape is so disjointed that any attempt to fix things and introduce order is going to mess stuff up real bad. Like, the only pies really worth cutting a slice out of belong to the biggest of the bunch, but I don't see how devs are entitled to a part of their success when we've already established that people don't come to them for the specific games so much as the personality. They play the same stuff as the largely unknown streamers after all. And below that level things very quickly expand laterally to the point where automated systems and general rules are the only possible way to enforce anything, and those are going to cut right through all meaningful differences in how and why the material is used. The only realistic way to prevent abuse on that vast scale is the block all game recordings except for officially sanctioned stuff produced by the big name folk. That's sure as hell not the media landscape I want to live in. Except it totally does! Because "this is wrong, period" isn't really a reasonable stance to take on these complex issues, and a pragmatic option such as "does this do more damage than the proposed solution?" requires more support than moral indignation. I mean, you cite the number of Until Dawn streams as if to indicate that this is a huge problem, but in the very next breath you admit that barely anyone has watched most of these. I would almost say that any stream high-profile enough to get angry about inevitably ends up being beneficial, and any stream too low-profile to help developers is also too irrelevant to hurt them.

Well then it's a good thing that I'm not saying that (and I don't know how often I need to include that disclaimer). I never said that I'm categorically against developers getting a cut. I'm simply not interested in having a conversation about how much of a Let's Play is developer content and how much of it is streamer content. But I am interested in not having a conversation where people honestly contend that it's 100% developer content.

Perhaps seductive is the wrong word. I agree that executives pushing dominant aesthetics because they're simply seen as normal has perhaps the bigger effect overall, but people tend to be more openly ensorcelled (and less critical) with big name auteurs. Supposedly artistic or personal choices get a lot more free passes than commercial ones. Also, that focus on individual creators tends to bring in the tried and true defense of claiming good intentions, even though intent is irrelevant to the criticisms being made.

I see this claim a lot, and I'm curious if anybody has ever investigated it in more detail. Assumptions about how and why people consume media frequently turn out to be off base, and I know from personal experience that sometimes I watch Let's Plays of sandbox build and craft games, supposedly the kind of stuff where watching videos whets people's appetites, go "Well, had my fill" and never look at the game again. On the other hand, I've also watched narrative-focused stuff, where people are said to consume videos in place of the actual product, and tapped out after a while to go buy the game because it got me interested and I want to experience it for myself. I don't think it does, and not for the reasons that you anticipated. Having different models for this stuff makes sense in music, because in music consuming and editing the medium are two disconnected things. With games, consumption requires editing, consumption is editing. Remix culture builds on top of something, Let's Plays work within the thing itself. They are a continuation of what games are. It's not gamers inflated sense of self-worth that I'm interested in, but how all of this affects Let's Plays as a medium. I get so impassioned talking about it because I've never seen that angle come up in conversations where I don't bring it up myself. One side of the discussion declares streaming trite and worthless right out the gate, and the other side never really grapples with that. People just get locked up talking about who deserves to make how much money off of this, usually by trying to establish who has it worse (and I think Problem Machine brought up a good point talking about how both fields have big players that can potentially bully the little players in the other). People love talking about how well off the biggest Youtubers are, but they don't ever seem to talk about just how big Let's Play on the whole are, especially with younger generations. I don't want to sound like I'm arguing from a point of "Won't somebody think of the children?!", but I do think that whatever laws and mores we build up around this issue will affect people, and not just in what kind of videos they get to watch, but in what kind of lessons and values we communicate with the rules governing the medium itself. And in that light, I do find a lot of the claims and attitudes that people voice off-handedly incredibly questionable. Like, what does the idea that everything that happens inside a game belongs to the developer communicate? That individual creativity is the property of whoever built the platform on which it took place? That anything you achieve within system belongs to whoever created the system? That even if something depends on our involvement to exist, our contribution does not deserve credit? Anyway I look at it I seems to betray messed up notions about our own role opposite the structures and systems that control our lives. The stuff I'm railing against isn't new, of course, but even if the Let's Play discussion didn't create create certain attitudes, I feel like it feeds back into them. And crucially, it's about the only subject where I see other creators either push or nod along that kind of garbage over their ill-considered views of the worth of a specific medium. I just don't see how "fuck those guys, they don't add anything meaningful" could ever become such a non-controversial statement.

It seems that for the last couple of pages we've mostly went back and forth about which comparison to older media is the most suitable for this scenario, but I don't think any of them are analagous to this premise. The thing is, for me, that making a game fundamentally requires you to hand over some amount of creative and authorial control to your players, so it seems a little disingenuous to characterize their use of this freedom as abusive. The hypothetical of "what if you talked over other forms of media" has been brought up both here and elsewhere in relation to this, but it doesn't really work for me since these other media aren't specifically built with blanks that need filling in. I don't think this invalidates developers' claims that these are still mostly their creations, but given the state of this conversation (and I don't mean here, I mean everywhere), defending IPs and copyright doesn't seem half as pressing to me as reasserting the value of players' contributions in this system. Because pretty much everytime the subject comes up, people mock streamers for being unqualified for their non-jobs, judge them for their easy living and imply that they are thieves, frauds or parasites. The prevalent attitude is that everything that happens in, near and around a game belongs to the developer and people should think themselves lucky they get to use these games at all. Which is a particularly galling attitude when it's voiced by developers themselves, because it kind of implies they think their perfect creation is corrupted by the presence of players and they'd sooner preserve the idealized version they've built up in their head. Like an architect who's upset that their building is actually in use rather than existing as this pure work of art.

The optional boss in the Ivory King DLC is now pretty much the only thing left to do for me. I got some help from another player on some of my recent attempts and consequently 1) it feels like the demon horses are slowly starting to despawn, in the early part of that approach at least and 2) I got about 200k souls lying in that arena. The best I've done, with that other player, was killing one of the two bosses, but I was eventually on my own with the other one and then things went downhill. With just NPC summons I haven't killed either of them in any attempt so far. Not sure this is something I'll really pull off.