natellite

It's that... ocean game. Underwater journey. There was a teaser at E3 last year.

They misunderstood, it's actually going to be a 4-pack of Last Guardian Standing multiplayer maps for Destiny.

Yeah, that's wild. Stuff like this always highlights the huge power imbalance between the press and the companies. I guess that's a problem in tech generally, too. I can't help but think that overcoming or subverting that is gonna be our Big Issue - or, you know, another Big Issue on the pile along with misogyny, harassment, and the general existence of games press as a branch of games marketing divisions.

ಠ_ಠ it's probably going to have guns.

Yeah, and through the course of this discussion I've realized that my problem isn't with the way that Holkins talks about Hatred per se (though I think his characterization of it as 'punk' is absurd) so much as his sneering about people who write about games, which isn't strictly relevant to the conversation about the game. So, like, a discussion for another time - or, indeed, no time at all, because the less time I spend thinking about Jerry Holkins, the better.

Danielle, you totally aren't the only person who never played an MMO before - Patrick Klepek hasn't either. Y'all should do a series.

Haha, I understand! Cinnamon chai tea is just herbs in a pouch, but if going back to starbucks is going to make you want to drink coffee, then probably best to just stay away. The only reason I recommend it at all is because I work there, and it's the only kind of herbal chai I have any firsthand experience with. There are likely dozens and dozens of other varieties.

You might try Starbucks' herbal cinnamon chai - the actual tea, not the latte or whatever. It's basically like steeping red hots. We don't sell much of it but it's pretty good!

No, but Penny Arcade doesn't operate in a vacuum. That piece of rhetoric is combined in my view of their organization with their past defense of things like Dickwolves, as well as Krahulik's tendency to say dumb, incorrect and hurtful shit about trans people on twitter, just to name the two things I remember offhand. In aggregate, that leads me to believe that they view the games press - the same games press that jumps to call them out on their missteps - with disdain. And at that point, the things they have to say about the press start to sound very familiar. At the very least, it's enough to make me not want to extend either of them the benefit of the doubt. They wasted that capital with me years ago. I'll be the first to admit there are significant issues with games journalism, but to my mind, a lot of those issues stem from the fact that people who write about games extend too little criticism about their subjects, not too much.

For what it's worth, I don't know what to do with a game like Hatred. I'm of two minds: As a game, it's thoroughly mediocre, but the way that they've positioned it as a product is clearly designed to bait people into talking about it. It's a time-honored tradition, and it works. So obviously, you don't want to give them the column space. But from my perspective, that's how I engage with things like this - I play the game, and then I talk about it or write about it. Saying "just ignore them" doesn't actually work. I think Hatred is going to be thoroughly forgotten in a month or two, and hopefully the people who made it will go back to drawing pentagrams in the margins of their notebooks or whatever. But I fundamentally disagree with the notion that the best way to deal with something I find offensive is not to engage with it at all.

Yeah, and not to turn this into Dota Thread 2: Electric Boogaloo but I have that problem even with games that don't monetize hero selection. Gyrocopter is one of my compendium challenge heroes and I've been on a crazy losing streak trying to get that guy to work for me, but Xboct can jump in and farm 6 slots by minute 40? How is that fair? Valve, please fix.

My point is that Jerry takes a break from calling a bad game bad to slydog the games press by saying "heh, if Hatred wanted some good reviews, they should have said it was a deconstruction," like we're too dumb to know the difference between Hatred and a game like Hotline Miami - and by the way, when people did talk about the hyperviolence in the latter game, they were decried for "missing the point". It just sounds like Gamergate-lite (which, I suppose, coming from the writer of Penny Arcade, is unsurprising).

Riot has long suffered accusations that they balance for maximum cash rather than actual game balance - new, more expensive heroes are more powerful and then once the fervor wears off they get nerfed back down. I don't know if it's true, I've never played League. It makes me thankful I play Dota, though.

"You can always not buy it" isn't a good excuse for a bad pricing model! And it isn't anger so much as, like, as someone who has put single-digit hours into Hearthstone, I don't understand how anyone could think that this is worth that kind of money. ...on the other hand, that Shadow Fiend arcana was, like, 20 dollars, so it's not really without precedent, I guess.

Actually what he said was the difference between hatred and hotline miami is that the spunky indie devs over at Devolver ingratiated themselves to the games press with concepts like "irony" and "inside connections." edit: It's not even actually about Hatred. Let me clarify (emphasis mine): The implication here is that people who write about games are either 1. desperately looking for an excuse for making hyperviolence socially acceptable or 2. too stupid to know the difference. With all due respect to Jerry: fuck off with that.

hmm that's an interesting point jerry but on the whole i think i'm okay with the spooky feminists over in games journalism not praising the nazi game

I had a quote in there, I don't know where it went! I was addressing Reyturner.

Okay but I think Alex's point is that 10 dollars to change a 2 inch x 2 inch portrait and a half-dozen sound files is crazytown. Nobody is even having a conversation about it if it's 99 cents or $1.99 or whatever but ten god damn dollars is like a not-insignificant amount of money for what amounts, ultimately, to very little.

I knew I was playing this game wrong.

Yeah, I fed 10 bucks into the dota maw and got a few cool sets for some heroes I play pretty often, so I'm happy! That Dragon Knight set is neat-o.

Oh, Mr Goldblum! I'm a married woman!

Deadpan, that is all super useful. Thank you so much. At one point I had a blog for my games writing; I'll dig it up and see if there's anything worth salvaging in there.

If he's supposedly a giant trekkie, why use the 1701-E? Fake geek boys, I swear.

A lot of it also seems to have an undercurrent of, like, dismissal of trans identities as though they're purely a way to make headlines. "Bruce Jenner says he's a woman now? God, those wacky Kardashians at it again!" Which is, you know, super dumb-shitty and bad.

thank god