Idle Thumbs 101: Introduction to Video Games

[voxn]

"This is Alex Ashby of Idle Thumbs, introducing Nick Breckon, and his 18 minute vocal rendition of Battletoads Pause Theme"

[BigJKO]

"This is Alex Ashby of Idle Thumbs, introducing Nick Breckon, and his 18 minute vocal rendition of Battletoads Pause Theme"

 

Yes!

 

I wish I had had enough money back then, I would've loved to get this vinyl.

[osmosisch]

I'm absolutely not saying you're wrong for feeling that the story is weak. I'm only saying that an ending like the one proposed would be even worse.

The shift of focus happens less than halfway through the game. The race stuff is used as a means to an end for developing the relationship/revelation of secrets between Booker and Elizabeth and

oh my god I hate spoiler tags

By all means, dislike the way they used the themes presented in the beginning of the game. I'm not bothered by it but I can totally understand the lack of enthusiasm you and others have. Just saying: the ending proposed would've been really out of place with, well, almost all of the game - especially the second half. Also, all of it is self-centered. That's kind of the point. From minute one to minute end. It's all about Booker wiping away the debt, as it were. Bleh.

Anyway I've said enough on this and it's clear literally no one in the universe agrees with me. OUT.

 

EDIT: I've analyzed this game's story more than I think any other video game I've ever played. Weird feeling. Makes me wish I had the time to keep up with the bookcast so I could do it with some real fiction that probably deserves it a million times more. I'm like twenty thousand books behind at this point. TOO BAD, SO SAD.

Yeah, I see where you're coming from for sure.

Ultimately my disappointment boils down to my realisation that the game's ambition and story are so small when contrasted to the invested resources, possibilities of the sci-fi stuff and the grandeur of Columbia. In comparison Bioshock 1 had a lot more to say on a much more general level, in a much tighter space, which definitely appeals more to me.

[osmosisch]

I would like to see Irrational do a Dead Space type game. That would be interesting.

[Scipio]

Isn't an Irrational Dead Space System Shock?

[Niyeaux]

Yes, absolutely! That would be such a wonderful thing, considering how a lot of mainstream gaming news sites are essentially curated towards straight males.

Maybe it's just me, but this is exactly the sort of curated reviews that I have absolutely no interest in whatsoever.

The advantage to curated reviews is that the person curating them has their own tastes, and over the course of their work you become familiar with those tastes. If you have similar tastes, you can generally rely on their opinions on things to align with your own, at least to some degree. Whether that person is gay or a woman or a racial minority or what have you is completely irrelevant - there's lots of straight white dudes who's taste in games I'd completely hate, and probably some queer black women who have extremely similar taste in games as I do. I'm a straight white male. So why should I care what demographic the writer falls into?

[Argobot]

I guess it is true that your tastes will not always line up with those of other straight white males, because straight white males are not a giant amorphous blob, they're individuals with different opinions, just like how not all queer women share the same opinions. But as a white male, you're much, much more likely to share similar opinions/tastes with other white males, because that's the perspective you're most accustomed to. As a straight woman, I'm more likely to understand the viewpoint of other straight women than I am to understand the views of queer women. Which is normal! But that's why it's important to seek out content or criticisms written by people who have different identities than your own, especially if its a marginalized identity. While you may share many of the same opinions or tastes, reading a review written by a queer black woman will probably also introduce you to a completely new perspective that's impossible for you to have as a straight white guy.

 

(As a larger point, it's cool that sites like The Border House exists and that people are interested in actively seeking out a website whose content almost exclusively consists of reviews written by minorities or women, I just wish that those reviews weren't automatically relegated to a 'special interest' site. It'd be cool if one day a black woman's take on Infinite could appear on a site like Kotaku or IGN or whatever and not have it be a thing.)

[shammack]

But as a white male, you're much, much more likely to share similar opinions/tastes with other white males, because that's the perspective you're most accustomed to.

 

I'm not sure I agree with this. Why should my race and gender have any impact whatsoever on my taste in video games? Unless it's a game that's actually about those topics in some way (which is pretty rare, because video games), I don't really see how it's relevant. I know a lot of AAA games tend to be described as straight white male power fantasies, but I think this is misleading; I'm a straightish white male, but I find that stuff as off-putting as anybody else. I'm not suggesting that that makes me a special snowflake, but that the specific tastes that those types of games and sites cater to are maybe not as closely linked to race or gender as they're usually made out to be. I certainly don't want developers or journalists trying to pander to me on the basis of those things; it's presumptuous, crass, and gross.

 

(As a larger point, it's cool that sites like The Border House exists and that people are interested in actively seeking out a website whose content almost exclusively consists of reviews written by minorities or women, I just wish that those reviews weren't automatically relegated to a 'special interest' site. It'd be cool if one day a black woman's take on Infinite could appear on a site like Kotaku or IGN or whatever and not have it be a thing.)

 

Agreed!

 

This is tangentially related, but a while back everybody got excited about that guy who modded Donkey Kong so his daughter could play as Pauline, and it spawned a little wave of discussion about doing similar swaps in other games. That's cool and all, but on some level it also kind of bothers me because the implication is that people don't want to play a game where the protagonist doesn't look like themselves. Are we really that lacking in empathy? Why are we perfectly willing to play as anthropomorphic rodents and shit, but put off by playing a human who isn't our exact race or gender (especially in a game like Donkey Kong where it has literally no effect on anything)? Admittedly, in the case of the Donkey Kong thing, the daughter was a little kid, but I do have to wonder if it's actually a good thing in the long run to cater to players' desire to play as someone as much like themselves as possible instead of challenging them to empathize with a character who isn't like them.

[Argobot]

I understand the larger point you're making -- I just don't agree with it.

 

Being represented in a video game (or a book or movie) is a reminder that you exist, that there are other people in the world who are like you. It's an incredibly powerful feeling and I really don't see the problem with underrepresented groups wanting more representation. 

[tegan]

This is tangentially related, but a while back everybody got excited about that guy who modded Donkey Kong so his daughter could play as Pauline, and it spawned a little wave of discussion about doing similar swaps in other games. That's cool and all, but on some level it also kind of bothers me because the implication is that people don't want to play a game where the protagonist doesn't look like themselves. Are we really that lacking in empathy? Why are we perfectly willing to play as anthropomorphic rodents and shit, but put off by playing a human who isn't our exact race or gender (especially in a game like Donkey Kong where it has literally no effect on anything)? Admittedly, in the case of the Donkey Kong thing, the daughter was a little kid, but I do have to wonder if it's actually a good thing in the long run to cater to players' desire to play as someone as much like themselves as possible instead of challenging them to empathize with a character who isn't like them.

 

Because I've been playing as straight white males for my entire life and am already more than comfortable enough empathizing with that kind of character. I don't think it's greedy of me to want to be able to play as someone like me, or to be interested in the idea of others being able to play as someone like me. Looking at my game shelf right now, I see only five* where the player is forced to play as a woman (that is to say the only playable option is a defined female protagonist as opposed to a character selection, customization option, or party member) and only one where my character can have anything even implied to be a same-sex relationship. I think the only games I've ever played where I actually got to be a lesbian were Kindness Coins and Mighty Jill Off, which is maybe thirty minutes out of my entire life.

One of the first games I ever owned was the Gameboy Advance port of Super Mario 2. Imagine how weird it was to find out later on that I couldn't play as Peach in any of the other ones.

 

Sorry to be rude, but I just think that "I'm a straightish white male; video games pander to me as a straightish white male; I don't want developers pandering to minorities; I think people should challenge themselves to play as someone who's not like them" is just a weird and kind of offensive bunch of statements to all be coming from the same place.

 

 

 

*four of which are Metroid

[shammack]

I understand the larger point you're making -- I just don't agree with it.

 

Being represented in a video game (or a book or movie) is a reminder that you exist, that there are other people in the world who are like you. It's an incredibly powerful feeling and I really don't see the problem with underrepresented groups wanting more representation. 

 

Sure. I'm unequivocally not arguing against underrepresented groups having more representation in games. But I do think there's a distinction between "underrepresented groups should have more representation" and "I don't want to play this specific game because I can't play as [whomever]." It's the latter attitude that I find troubling, and it goes both ways -- that's also part of the reason why you always have to play as a straight white male, since the prevailing wisdom is that that's the most profitable demographic for games and they only want to play as characters who look like them.

 

Because I've been playing as straight white males for my entire life and am already more than comfortable enough empathizing with that kind of character.

 

That's a good point and one that I'm probably not capable of fully understanding since I'm never going to be at a loss for straight white male protagonists, although I don't feel that they represent me in anything but the most superficial ways.

 

I don't want developers forcing me to play as a minority

 

Pretty sure I didn't say anything even close to that; my point was kind of the opposite.

[tegan]

I know, I thought about it, re-read it, and changed it. I'm sorry. My point still stands though. I think that "superficial" traits like race, gender, and sexuality should matter in media for as long as they matter in real life.

 

And just as an example of what I mean, that conversation with a localization guy that I mentioned on the last page? Both of the girls in question could be dated by the protagonist, which gave bonuses to everyone involved.* Both myself and the localization guy felt pretty scummy playing as a straight guy breaking up a (perceived) lesbian couple and being rewarded for it.

 

 

 

*man I am not doing a good job of hiding what game I'm talking about

[I Saw Dasein]

Maybe it's just me, but this is exactly the sort of curated reviews that I have absolutely no interest in whatsoever.

The advantage to curated reviews is that the person curating them has their own tastes, and over the course of their work you become familiar with those tastes. If you have similar tastes, you can generally rely on their opinions on things to align with your own, at least to some degree. Whether that person is gay or a woman or a racial minority or what have you is completely irrelevant - there's lots of straight white dudes who's taste in games I'd completely hate, and probably some queer black women who have extremely similar taste in games as I do. I'm a straight white male. So why should I care what demographic the writer falls into?

 

I think it's relevant because people who have different experiences in life will have a different point of view on games. When I read games journalism, I'm not necessarily looking for someone with the same taste as me; I'm looking for someone to share their views on a game, even if those views aren't the same as mine. People with different backgrounds will have different things to say about a game, which is both interesting and changes the way I view and understand the game.

 

Basically, a wise Latina once said ...

[Patrick R]

I know, I thought about it, re-read it, and changed it. I'm sorry. My point still stands though. I think that "superficial" traits like race, gender, and sexuality should matter in media for as long as they matter in real life.

Yup! Representation matters. And the example of the guy changing Penelope to the protagonist in Donkey Kong doesn't even fit with  "I don't want to play this specific game because I can't play as [whomever]", because it wasn't a daughter refusing to play, it was a father seeing problems in representation and trying to correct them. 

[shammack]

I know, I thought about it, re-read it, and changed it. I'm sorry. My point still stands though. I think that "superficial" traits like race, gender, and sexuality should matter in media for as long as they matter in real life.

 

I guess I don't disagree with that. I consider them "superficial" in this context because most games present them without actually dealing with them in any meaningful way. I think games as a medium have a lot of potential for putting the player in someone else's shoes and showing them what life is like from that perspective, and I wish there more that took advantage of that. All I was really trying to say is that I don't think "it's the exact same game, but now your character looks like a girl!" actually accomplishes much and it may be detrimental in some ways (but it's just Donkey Kong that somebody edited to amuse his daughter; I am probably overthinking this).

 

And the example of the guy changing Penelope to the protagonist in Donkey Kong doesn't even fit with  "I don't want to play this specific game because I can't play as [whomever]", because it wasn't a daughter refusing to play, it was a father seeing problems in representation and trying to correct them. 

 

Maybe that's the case. I thought I remembered seeing it reported as the daughter having asked him to change it or something along those lines. But yeah, it's clearly a bad example in any case and I shouldn't have brought it up.

[Patrick R]

I get where you're coming from, but I think it makes sense to reach a point where this hypothetical (since I don't think anyone here is actually arguing that they should cut all media that doesn't represent them out of their life, and honestly it makes your arguments feel kind of weird and "slippery slope") woman or minority just doesn't want to support an industry that refuses to represent them in any meaningful way.

[westinlee]

Ah, bless you IT. Your forums have good talks. I'm going to make an account...
 
I loved listening to the Bioshock segment in the episode. I agree with you guys on just about everything this time. I am often left underwhelmed when the ending of a story usurps character and story for clever or sci-fi purposes. See: M. Night Shyalaman
 
I wasn't terribly surprised at the irrelevance of the American exceptionalism and racism in the story - even in the first Bioshock, where the gameplay and story seemed pretty intertwined with Objectivism, at the end you fight a green monster and it is A Video Game After All.
 
The Bioshock franchise has a proud history of promising and then denying the player the things that are used to sell the game. The little sister choice in the first game? Uh...well it doesn't really matter because of the huge payout later if you spare them. Ken Levine even said somewhere that he doesn't care about consequences, he just wants you to feel icky when told to make a choice. 
 
I wasn't tremendously bummed about this until Infinite's ending. I felt like Elizabeth was sold down the river in the service of

two characters that, frankly, you never see in the game. I knew Bioshock Infinite wouldn't be about Columbia or racism or whatever. But I was hoping it would be about Elizabeth, and it totally wasn't. Elizabeth as a character was conveniently steered in the endgame to go from aspiring, strong willed believable character to suicidal all-story non-person.

 
And no one else has said as much online, from what I've read. Am I really the only person that thinks this? We were sold a bill of goods, man!
 
It would not have been hard to give her a single beat at the end to make it all come together. True story. I wrote a blog post about it over on my site. Five seconds. Fixed, done, and all I have to feel weird about is everything else.

 

Anyway, like I said, good talk.

[Twig]

That's a good point and one that I'm probably not capable of fully understanding since I'm never going to be at a loss for straight white male protagonists, although I don't feel that they represent me in anything but the most superficial ways.

I'm not sure I agree that it's a "superficial" thing, although it's definitely rarely an important thing to the story. Probably because it's the norm.

 

However, the last bit is probably the most important bit of this thing I have quoted from you. I'm a straight, middle-class, white male, but I don't feel like any video game characters ever really represent me beyond being white dudes, which is almost never even the point of whatever story they're a part of. I'm not sure I've ever played a game where the point of playing a white dude was... playing a white dude. (Obviously it matters in context, like, say, Bioshock Infinite(!), but I'm not a dude who slaughtered Native Americans, either, in that case. Maybe if video games existed in the early 1900s, and I was alive then, and I was a mass-murderer... etc.)

 

Not saying there shouldn't be more diversity, but, well, the straight white dudes that exist everywhere are never representative of me, personally, just like they're not representative of non-whites or non-straights or non-dudes. I'm sure there are white dudes out there who feel differently, but I'm not one of them.

 

When I step into the shoes of any video game character, I'm stepping into the shoes of someone who isn't me, and I like it that way. I can appreciate the desire to step into the shoes of someone who is more like you, though.

 

NOT SAYING THERE SHOULDN'T BE MORE DIVERSITY - NOT SAYING THAT IT'S OKAY LIKE IT IS - NOT NOT NOT

[castorp]

NOT SAYING THERE SHOULDN'T BE MORE DIVERSITY - NOT SAYING THAT IT'S OKAY LIKE IT IS - NOT NOT NOT

I'm not sure, but I think you are saying that you are not a male white straight space marine.

It does seem like you are suggesting that you stepping into the shoes of male white straight space marines while only being male white and straight is kind of the same exercise in detachment as it would be for someone who is gay and/or female and/or of colour. I'd say not caring for their sex, orientation or colour of skin and looking at their space-marine-ness comes easily only to those who are that threepart-'norm'.

And while 'being white' might not often be the point of a story it still very much is a point, in that most active or important or capable characters in most games are white. I guess how important that is for you, or even how much that registers, again depends on whether you are white or not. Same goes for 'male', just that in this case the female side still often get served outright shit in that they are just there to look nice and/or scream and get rescued. Oh, and every relationship is straight, just 'cause.

[Gormongous]

Oh, and every relationship is straight, just 'cause.

 

Unless they're gay but you don't have to be gay if you don't want to.

[tegan]

If the representation is so trivial anyway, then why is it such an issue that someone would want it to be different? I really feel like at least having a gender or race option should be standard in any game where being male isn't part of the explicit premise. I know there's the issue of character models and voice recordings, but throw me a bone here.

 

Incidentally, I remember playing Muramasa for the first time on the Wii. I played through Momohime's path first, because hey, ninja lady. I hadn't realized going into the game that her whole thing was that she was possessed the ghost of a male swordsman, and wasn't in direct control of her actions for 99% of the game. In the epilogue, she hates herself for everything she's been through and becomes a nun to try to atone for all of the horrible murders that she is in no way responsible for. At first I was horrified, and then I went, "wait no, I'm a woman in late seventeenth-century Japan. Of course I'm going to be filled with self-loathing and unhappiness." I went from disliking that my character got such a lousy ending based on her gender all the way back around to actually being kind of impressed.

 

 

Also, Twig, every game where your character is a straight white dude is emulating the straight white dude experience by not having other characters occasionally sling epithets at you.

 

unless you're on xbox live

[Patrick R]

The other thing is that, as straight white males, you have been told that your experience is the default human experience. There's a lot that, to someone of privilege, feels completely gender/race/orientation neutral but actually isn't.

[Reyturner]

SOCIAL JUSTICE ARGUMENT AGAIN, THIS TIME WE'RE GOING TO SOLVE IT GUYS!

 

 

  

"This is Alex Ashby of Idle Thumbs, introducing Nick Breckon, and his 18 minute vocal rendition of Battletoads Pause Theme"

 

 

 

[malkav11]

It's a nice concept, but it just doesn't work, even by the game's internal fiction.

 

I dig that giving your life to prevent Comstock from ever existing is a touching narrative end, but it simply doesn't make sense in any version of the world they made. Even if Liz did take the player to some root reality where they could kill that version of Booker at the baptism, it wouldn't be the player that does the drowning, but the "local" Booker in that reality. Just going to a different reality doesn't turn the Player-Booker into the local-Booker, or else the player would have taken Comstock's place in the main game.

 

Furthermore, if the entire point of the game is that there are infinite realities where each variable changes, then killing the Baptism-Booker still wouldn't prevent Comstock, because there would be an infinite number of realities that split off from that decision point based on you *not* choosing to kill Booker.

 

I mean, it's a very pretty idea, but it falls apart the moment you actually start considering it. And that's before getting into the unpleasantness of it casually bringing up a bunch of heavy themes (racism in America, morality of fighting against it< religious zealotry and brainwashing) and then entirely punting on the idea of treating them with depth and respect. And, of course, the fact that the narrative and the gameplay are deeply at odds against each other.

 

Sorry to rant, but it drives me crazy that so many sources are praising it as a good story without realizing that the story doesn't actually work.

 

I've seen this argument elsewhere, and I think it's a misunderstanding/misrepresentation of what the ending is actually presenting.

 

They're not just moving to another reality, but actually replacing Booker at the moment he undergoes the baptism and chooses to become Comstock. When he's drowned instead, that choice is never made and no universe containing Comstock is ever produced to branch into a quantum infinity of Comstock-universes. The tears are, after all, repeatedly presented as also accessing other times, particularly when it comes to music, but also in, say, the scene where Elizabeth opens one onto a movie theater advertising a Star Wars film. But they have to have a Booker that's willing to make that choice.

 

I'm not saying it's perfect, but I think it hangs together well enough. Insofar as these sorts of stories ever do.

 

On an unrelated note, I highly second the earlier recommendation of Nier. That game is fantastic.

[Twig]

It does seem like you are suggesting that you stepping into the shoes of male white straight space marines while only being male white and straight is kind of the same exercise in detachment as it would be for someone who is gay and/or female and/or of colour.

Well, I'm glad you got the completely wrong impression because I very much never said that. I'm speaking about my own personal goddamn experience and very explicitly avoided ever speaking for anyone else, it was all about me, me, me.

 

Your response is why I almost just didn't post and now I regret posting.