tegan

I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)

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I think there's a pretty massive difference between characters A.) finding out someone has a mental illness and treating them as worthless out of hand and B.) valuing someone less in a life or death situation because their behavior (which may or may not be the result of a diagnosable mental illness) presents a consistent liability.

 

I absolutely don't want to defend any elements in the community detailed in the tumblr posts, or the weird glee over a character's death that was welcomed by the Telltale folks in the interview, but the character and situation seemed perfectly reasonably drawn to me at the time and now after thinking more about it. The characters seemed completely naturalistic in how they acted in the episode.

 

The walking dead has so many moments of people judging each other based on their characteristics and situations for whether that presents a liability to the group. Pregnancy, age, temper, the list goes on and on. It's one of the main drivers of the interpersonal drama.

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I guess I see where you're coming from, and I apologize for falsely accusing you of such a thing. I just hate when we finally have an example of a lot of things done right and instead of celebrating it, we find ways to pick it apart and get angry. I'm not saying that's exactly what you were doing, but it's a trend I see a lot of and it really rubs me the wrong way, even if it's only being done just a little tiny bit.

It's totally fine, I just didn't have the full context of the game to know that it rises above a lot of common tropes regarding race and such. People seem pretty quick to defend it, so I'll retract anything I seemed to claim anyway. I was only talking about the article and the thread.

I do agree about the somewhat misplaced anger too. I'm particularly inclined to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and it isn't a good thing for the world. Things only happen in increments. 

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One thing of note: Whether or not the girl is disabled or not, this is still a young girl of color. Killed because fans and the developers thought her annoying. Still fucked up.

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Obviously everyone can choose to support or not support whoever they want for whatever reason, but I'm not really sure how this bit is relevant to the larger issue. No one associated with Idle Thumbs actually wrote this particular episode (as far as I'm aware) and were definitely not part of the interview that is being criticized.

That does sound quite gross, and makes me want to play The Walking Dead 2 less (even if I have already bought the game). But:

 

 

I'm equal parts intrigued and confused by this, not least because I find the idea that decisions relating to me might be based on my (former) colleagues' views or actions sort of unnerving.
 
What is the fear here? That by supporting Idle Thumbs, you are also supporting Telltale Games' (alleged) views? Or that the alleged (I keep saying alleged because I find it hard to consider the two guys’ opinions representative of the whole office, even if they keep talking about ”the office”) poisonous work environment (can’t find the correct term at the moment) has somehow contaminated the two former and one current Telltale Games employees* in the Idle Thumbs podcast? If the latter is true, do you think the views Sean, Jake, and Nick have expressed in the podcast echo those of the two Telltale Games guys in the interview? Like at all?
 
Will this also affect the decisions relating to Campo Santo?
 
I’m not trying to be an asshole here, even if I might come across as one (I find it hard know these days). I genuinely want to know what is the reasoning here. As Sarah already pointed out, you are of course free to make your decisions based on whatever. I’m just curious.
 
 
* Sean and Jake were only involved in the first season of The Walking Dead (which, as a whole, was nothing like the scene you described here, if I remember correctly), while Nick did in fact work for The Walking Dead Season 2.  

 

This may be the one thing I somewhat regret saying, but nonetheless feel that its something that is related to this. I'd respond to this, but I literally accidentally deleted what I had written in response and am not in the mood to right it again. Here's the gist of it tho:

 

I've always felt games feel manufactured, designed with precision to simulate something crafted with heat and soul. This story confirms that for me. It tells me developers design and write stories to satisfy a vocal, disgusting fan base rather than design and write of what they believe in. And it's EVEN worse than that, since these people also believe what their fans believe. So its even worse. I'll leave it at that, but I'll try to elaborate in another post later. Right now, I'm not feeling well and can't manage to re-write what I had deleted by accident.

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One thing of note: Whether or not the girl is disabled or not, this is still a young girl of color. Killed because fans and the developers thought her annoying. Still fucked up.

 

I just don't think you can claim this. Unless I've missed something, there's been no indication that the writers killed the character because they thought she was annoying. It seems at least equally likely that she was planned to be disposable from the start, which I admit is probably less interesting than watching her develop, but tons of the WD characters are completely disposable.

 

And even if that were the case, the race part seems like a strange protest against a series whose protagonists have been Lee and then Clementine. Even in the grosser parts of the community cheering her death, I haven't seen any significant racial animus. The writers have seemed to me to be on even more solid ground in that department. All the hatred for the character I've seen (admittedly, not tons) has been directed against her freezing and being 'useless'.

 

Edit:

 

developers design and write stories to satisfy a vocal, disgusting fan base rather than design and write of what they believe in.

 

I really don't think there's been enough evidence to conclude this. Why is this a more plausible reading than that the writers are trying their best to come up with interesting stories but wrote something you don't like? Awkwardly going along with a dudebro interviewer for publicity just doesn't seem to me like the strongest evidence of malice.

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I just don't think you can claim this. Unless I've missed something, there's been no indication that the writers killed the character because they thought she was annoying. It seems at least equally likely that she was planned to be disposable from the start, which I admit is probably less interesting than watching her develop, but tons of the WD characters are completely disposable.

 

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“…there’s just so many people like in the office, on the internet who were just like y’know, ‘Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, I can’t wait to get rid of her.’

 

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“So it’s just like, ‘Oh so you wanted to slap her, but in order to do that you had to want her to be around at the same time.’ [Mark laughs]

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“…there’s just so many people like in the office, on the internet who were just like y’know, ‘Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, I can’t wait to get rid of her.’

 

“So it’s just like, ‘Oh so you wanted to slap her, but in order to do that you had to want her to be around at the same time.’ [Mark laughs]

 

I think if you watch 

 for at least the first 6 minutes or so that it's pretty obvious that the Telltale folks' opinions are just not as clear cut as you're painting them. It turns out gifs don't capture a complex set of views in a specific context. And the segment discussing Sarah in particular was pretty brief overall. I bet if you sat them down they would have some decently well-thought out and nuanced ideas about her.

 

The first thing they both immediately say when Miller says he had wanted to kill Sarah for a while is "Why?"

 

They later ask "Do you think you would have done the same thing if you were Lee", pushing back on Miller's enthusiasm for leaving her to die.

 

The line which DIRECTLY FOLLOWS the first quote you list is "But when it actually came down to it, you know, not everyone [let her die in the scene they're discussing]," referencing the near 50-50 split in player decisions.

 

It seems clear to me that (whether they succeeded or not) they were trying to write an interesting character, and present a truly difficult decision. They don't at all seem to treat her with the disdain that the pullquotes alone imply.

 

With regard to the second quote, the situation seems completely naturalistic and not malicious in any way. There have been many moments in my life when I'm  frustrated with someone I care about because they're causing harm to themselves, and I want to slap them or yell at them or do something to bring them to their senses, precisely because I care about them. To me, they're describing a human experience of desperation coming from care for someone else.

 

 

 

If I were in the interview, I may well have pushed back more. Maybe they're not perfect interviewees. Maybe they didn't want to protest too much because it's a sort of publicity opportunity. I don't know. But they definitely don't come off to me as racist or ableist monsters catering to the worst parts of their fanbase, that they covertly agree with.

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There's a lot I want to respond to here when I'm not on my phone, but to contribute something as someone who has played all the episodes:

Sarahs death did seem oddly premature to me, as well as to a friend I discussed the episode with. We had both made the effort to snap Sarah out of it and take her with us, and I was expecting there to be some real development from there where you were trying to help her adapt, in contrast to how her dad was sheltering her. But instead she just croaks pretty abruptly. In light of these thoughts, I could believe that the decision to kill her off was affected by the fans response to her, though obviously that's still not proof. And I also would say that this is a problem, though it's different to how it's being frames because it just means the writers are investing more into what the players want than they are in considering the social issues and writing what they feel is best. My personal interpretation still makes me doubt that the writers were really trying to make her disabled or act ableist, rather they seemed to adhere to ableist wishes of some players.

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I think if you watch 

 for at least the first 6 minutes or so that it's pretty obvious that the Telltale folks' opinions are just not as clear cut as you're painting them. It turns out gifs don't capture a complex set of views in a specific context.

 

Short rant about dialogue gifs in general: they are truly horrible. Sure, they are easy to share on Twitter or whatever, but they also completely obliterate the tone and the context of the quote without adding anything of value as compared to a plain text quote except for a face that you can now love, hate, or feel disgusted about. Which, of course, is the exact reason they are so effective (in some cases at least).

 

Rant over. Sorry for this bit of offtopic.

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Right now, I'm not feeling well and can't manage to re-write what I had deleted by accident.

 

I remember you were looking at this thing like six hours after the Ferguson debacle broke. Do you think that might have influenced your reaction?

 

I apologise if I'm being insensitive, but I know I've been reacting to things oddly in the wake of Robin Williams' death.

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Short rant about dialogue gifs in general: they are truly horrible. Sure, they are easy to share on Twitter or whatever, but they also completely obliterate the tone and the context of the quote without adding anything of value as compared to a plain text quote except for a face that you can now love, hate, or feel disgusted about. Which, of course, is the exact reason they are so effective (in some cases at least).

 

Rant over. Sorry for this bit of offtopic.

 

Rant appreciated.

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The worst thing about dialogue gifs is that there's literally no reason a person couldn't just embed the video.

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I'm amused that the internet in general is convinced that gifs are an excellent format for short, looping animations, and several sites these days take those gifs and just convert them into video because that is actually the appropriate format.

 

I think the reason why dialogue gifs exist is so you don't need sound, because fuck sound.

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I think the reason why dialogue gifs exist is so you don't need sound, because fuck sound.

I can actually empathize with that, but if that's their justification, they need to reproduce the entire interview in text, rather than just rip a few quotes completely out of context and then try to get the rest of the internet angry with them.

 

I mean, I get that that's how the internet works, and I'm rather used to it, but sometimes I just want to complain about it, and so now I have. PEACE.

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HCS87nj.png

 

 

Adamant with Guts and perfect IVs. 31s across the board. I couldn't be happier. OuO

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Caught a shiny Weepinbell in the wild while raising Heracross, because I am some kind of wizard apparently.

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FINALLY. This took fourty-something boxes. Not quite as bad as Feebas, but yeesh.

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Currently breeding for a shiny Goomy. Goomy eggs are tied with a handful of other Pokémon for the distinction of taking the longest to hatch.

 

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Currently breeding for a shiny Goomy. Goomy eggs are tied with a handful of other Pokémon for the distinction of taking the longest to hatch.

 

VZb8q59.gif

 

Nooooo, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon in the same post, you're crossing the streeeeeaaams!

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EePBFXx.png

 

 

Great stat spread (31/24/31/31/31/31) and the right nature (Sassy) plus Iron Tail as an Egg Move, but sadly has the wrong ability. At least it was a short hunt (only 124 eggs!).

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Awesome! That's rad. Also you never filled me in on what mods I should use for SS2. ):<

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Awesome! That's rad. Also you never filled me in on what mods I should use for SS2. ):<

 

ARGH, you just reminded me! I'll get on that later. I'll eventually upload that to YT and link the mods in the description. Right now, I'm shaking my head on the fact that I say LIKE a lot in both of my SS2 streams! 

 

"Like, this, like, evokes a certain, like, you know, like, a kind of type of, uh, like, thing that like, like..."

 

:adama:

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