Vainamoinen

...and not one of them bears the name "Monkey Island". Oh come on, Disney!

Also, the actual target group of sexualized beat'em'ups is #notrobertsshield. God damn social justice warrior, fighting without asking the people he fights for, etc.

Cross-posted rebuttal of gamergater article incoming. Reaxxion "ethics officer" Sam Roberts, who only last week called John Birch’s verbatim inflammatory anti-communist hate speech on the site a "simple case of plagiarism", has an interesting new article up: "If you don’t like games with big-boobed girls, don’t play them" (will not provide link). "Interesting" of course because Roberts routinely and probably purposefully misses the issues by a mile. It may be just the usual hyperbole, it may be an argument made for the sake of making an argument, but starting right from the conclusion-turned-headline, Roberts assumes games to be there for him, just him, only him. Unfortunately, the lunacy goes way beyond that. As the boobs are threatened to be taken away (by whom?), the female secondary sex characteristics suddenly become the most important thing in those games, their fundamental raison d’être. Says Roberts about Dead or Alive: "it is a game about eye candy for boys". An exaggerated perspective of Roberts’ view, a quote taken out of context? Not at all. As eye candy for boys clearly is the central topic of the beat’em’up for Roberts, similar eye candy for girls would be strictly atopical: "if I were to demand that this year’s Madden included a boss fight with a fire-breathing dragon at half-time, everyone would look at me like I was a lunatic […]". It’s the very same thing for Roberts, and that is very telling: The integrity of the sports game is violated by fantasy elements, the integrity of the beat’em’up is violated by the sexual appetites of the opposite sex. “These games are not for you” and “don’t play them” are the cries heard particularly from some of the most argument resistant gamergate cultists. We already know that the industry has chosen and in some ways created their target audience, and we already know that in our modern times, their construction of demographic reality fails big-time. Roberts, together with the video game industry, lives in an imaginary world in which "girls" play mainly facebook games and the occasional Sims provided their boyfriend gets the thing to run, then go online to complain about games they’re not interested in anyway. The truth however is that female players have long since started playing all kinds of games. The truth is that they play and love a lot of games that have aspects they find problematic. The truth is that some games are made for a target group only just reaching puberty, and grown men find them cool because they have failed to grow up. The truth is that a lot of men who play beat’em’ups like DOA find the skin overload and the breasts bouncing between chin and toes to be rather cheap and childish. The target group may not rebel against those games, that is true. Then again, Roberts is not part of that target group. At least not if he’s of legal age.

Well, my definition of "game" begins on the lowest possible level, so quite indeed I find the discussion of what constitutes a game rather boring. Interactive entertainment software = games. As long as it's interactive, regardless of the level of interaction, and if it's consumed for entertainment, bam, it's a game. Of course The Sims is, of course Depression Quest is, of course Gone Home is, and every single interactive movie type game is right down to Dragon's Lair. That doesn't mean I have to like either one of those game mechanics just because "I like games". Evaluating the game mechanics and their subjective impression on the player, in what way he/she is motivated or emotionally moved, in what way repetition is sensible, what degree or what modes of interaction feel best to an individual player, those are all very worthy fields of investigation. In comparison, calling a game "not a game" leads nowhere.

No, it's not an innovative mechanic. It's your everyday "choose your own adventure" or "fighting fantasy" single player roleplaying mechanic found in hundreds of 80's and 90's books. It still is an important game that has deeply moved me. Digging up older game mechanics like that is about as valid as relying on the same mechanics for dozens of years (like about every game genre in existence). And of course Depression Quest "is a game". The argument "It's not a game", in any discussion, universally means "I am dissatisfied with the game mechanics, but do not have the patience or rhetoric skill necessary to explain what exactly constitutes my dissatisfaction". All this is, I think, very much on topic. All tendencies in gaming that run counter to gamergaters' preset notion about what games are supposed to be about are, by their definition, the infusion of political ideology, an invalid way of making games.

If Double Fine supplies the inventory art, good news indeed.

I may still gather my thoughts about the Nightwatch segment and put it into a more coherent critque about why this whole thing was in no way helpful and why I think Sarkeesian and Schafer were misrepresented in a rather extreme way. For now, the news of the day certainly is that Crash Override was unveiled. And naturally, the verge has an article up immediately, calling gamergate a "contemptible online gang".

I remember coming across tank controls for the first time in Resident Evil 2 in 1998. Unfortunately that game starts with a lengthy dodge the zombie sequence, so I probably restarted a hundred times before I somehow managed to get through the first minutes. I eventually mastered them - but then again, interacting with a complex world via verbs is a totally different thing than shooting brains up. Manny never looked at the right stuff, never performed the right action and hardly ever gave an indication that he didn't, he never walked in the right direction, he never had the right item in his hand. For me, point and click has always been vastly superior to the needlessly prolonged and complex control mechanisms of Grim Fandango. If Double Fine incorporates, matches or even surpasses the fan made P&C patch, especially including the inventory handling, the new Grim was well worth buying.

Pretty sensationalist stuff of which e.g. Katherine Cross wasn't too fond of. What you do get in return is, of course, TotalBiscuit commenting on how the segment had "lies within the first 5 seconds"... because there presupposedly are no video games "showing violent depictions of women being raped". Only the usual hyperbole makes Bain's comment the laughing stock here. The underlying basic assumption is that rape being shown in video games is neither extremely frequent nor a recognizable trope, and that is quite correct; nor is that the central problem feminists have with video games. It does happen occasionally, and is then mostly just the cheapest possible shock value, plenty worthy to have a good SJW fit over, but that is comparatively rare.

Is there any video that shows how the point & click inventory actually works...?

That essentially is the same allegation the gaters are tossing around for the main feminist actors. It is mostly just meant to invalidate all arguments of the opposing side before a discussion even starts. I usually try not to do it. In the case of Yannopoulos however, it's kind of hard to invalidate arguments that are not even brought forward. He doesn't put any kind of effort in it, he's just trolling. I found that sweet playing card under an article on breitbart titled, "What feministfrequency has to teach us about the effect of video games on society", and the article consists of, ha ha, an empty page. It's kind of difficult to say anything against this kind of argumentation. Besides, of course, "good thing that's not the topic of the Tropes vs. Women series".

The thing about Yannopoulos is, he's ripping off the gamergaters. With Bain, you at least get the impression that he really believes all that borderline imbecile crap he's coughing up daily. Yannopoulos has made a dishonest turn the second he heard about gamergate. His plainly anti video game articles are still online, if I'm not mistaken. If it serves him in any way, his "book about gamergate" could take a stance against the gamergaters, as in muckraking, as in "My year among stupid kids". But, hey, they're giving him this. That's the kind of misplaced devotion kid gamers usually only have for Gabe Newell.

Yes, that's it. However, the original Grim alternatively had WASD controls some kind of direct control as well. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of its control woes. Oh no, not at all. The people who don't use tank controls may not be Real Fans™ of Grim Fandango. They are, however, Real Fans™ of LucasArts. When you clicked on a written verb or an icon in a verb coin, at least you directly knew what command you just issued. In this ingenious control scheme, you had to look up in the manual whether what you'd just did had any sense. The "I already tried that" effect was striking. I hated Grim's controls.

Uh, yeah. Precisely. The corporate takeover, reinforcement, nay creation of the geek/gamer culture/identity, that is the problem. I'm glad whenever someone close to GG even SEES some kind of corporate influence. Usually, I get the "let the market decide" argumentative treatment instead. But the market created their "gamers" in the first place; some of the problematic games are actually loved by those who do also find them problematic; and a target group that isn't served can not decide with their wallet.

I got the same impression. And that is, for all it's worth, an art critique. I'd rather focus on the issues.

GOG could campaign all they want, they offer three to five percent of the sales numbers of Valve's platform, no developer is that stupid, least of all a mostly Valve dependie dev like Double Fine. GOG has nowhere near the market position to get exclusive content, not even timed; and Valve, while never demanding it, still factually gets exclusive content on their platform whenever a dev decides against alternative and/or DRM free distribution or whenever a developer uses Early Access. The pre-order starts on GOG earlier because Valve actively advises their business clients against having a pre-order phase. Apparently, the game's position in the Steam charts will be considerably higher the first days after release if there is no pre-order phase, and the many undecided "gamer culture" Steam fans happen to treat the Steam charts as a shopping list. So, no pre-order phase means more sales. Plain and simple. And it is SO TEDIOUS to wait for that. There were like three LAEC releases to herald the Disney cooperation, and then... nothing. Nothing at all.

As noted by David Futrelle, reaxxion has finally taken down the infamous John Birch article, decribing it as "a simple case of plagiarism" and patting themselves on the back for their morality. Why gamergaters internationally are apparently falling for literal 1960's US ultra right political rabble rousing hate speech rhetoric is not approached as a subject by "ethics officer" Sam Roberts of reaxxion, at all.

I've googled "frozen princess peach" to post something witty, but the pictures which came up were a liiiittle too raunchy.

The double standard. Christian extremists like Breivik = "sick person". Muslim extremists like the Hebdo murderers = "jihadist cancer". What about the "crusadist cancer"? Can't we hold Christian people as a whole responsible for any and all atrocities committed in the name of God?

Always, always, always I see "Freeze Peach" and read "Freelance Police".

Possibly. It is, however, a neat solution to the problem as posed in the first post.

New article up at REAXXION, the site to plant your 'borrowed' cultural war enraging speeches! And boy is it a hilarious one. So Robert Conway does think that gamergate essentially is a war that is mostly taking place against women. Huh, count all those women towards all the male social justice warrior white knights, and you'll come out with a pretty superior army against gamergate kids that "even include women". The social justice warrior is crafted to be a derogative term in much the same way as the "socialist" in American politics. People might be best served if they started proudly calling themselves exactly that or, to lend from Jim Sterling, slight alterations like the "Social Justice Bard".

You got angry at me before? Good thing I didn't notice. Interpret the "tendency" correctly. Of course there are journalists out there making a stand. It's just that you find cave in behaviour on the side of journalists that I just don't see happening on the side of developers. Also, that's "journalist" as in "journalist"; I've been following e.g. Cross for quite a while now, but a journalist she is not.

Write your characters, and when you're finished, take a few dice RPG style and use them to decide gender and race.

I hate Hitler comparisons. Granted, I brought up the fascism, and I stand by that. And of course the hunted video game critics can be seen as artists in their own right (according to Oscar Wilde at least), so I guess we're reeeeeally not that far off...