system11 wrote:
Wait, let me consult a psychiatrist because I have to work for a living and it's boring. Escapism can simply be daydreaming - is that a psychological problem too?
"Studies have determined that prisoners in penitentiaries and jails often use daydreaming as a means to retreat from the reality of prison life. Sometimes they do this willfully, and at other times the mind just seems to want to wander away from reality all on its own."
But no, I don't think that daydreaming counts as a psychological problem, despite maybe being a tiny form of escapism.
Who would have thought that being confined in a cell 24/7 with nothing to do, surrounded by people fueled with testosterone that either want to rape or kill you would result in a mental diversion to escape from reality.
BIL wrote:
"Small sack, LOTS OF CUM" - Nikola Tesla
I don't think that escapism is separate, in how the mind reacts to it, to mentally constructing counterfactuals, which are certainly helpful in human life. We can make clear distinctions based on what the purpose of escapism or alternate realities are, but ultimately you have to use your brain to figure out which is going to help you, and which is an MMO (as louisg and Rob were saying earlier).
I wonder what's going to survive longer: The games people are bitching about, or the sordid record of this horrible and awful first-world debate?
I'd say "you can't monetize GamerGate," but I know that's wrong too...how many "gamers" really just are in it for the drama? It's almost enough to make you think like a modern conservative: "Why can't everybody just leave the leeching scum hanging off the modern art movement alone?" Except, of course, I doubt that Republicans really like art.
drauch wrote:Who would have thought that being confined in a cell 24/7 with nothing to do, surrounded by people fueled with testosterone that either want to rape or kill you would result in a mental diversion to escape from reality.
Yeah right? That's exactly why I posted it. I was just making sure that people here know the fact that it happens!
If GamerGate supporters want to be part of a movement that's taken seriously, they need to divorce themselves from the toxic GamerGate label and form some sort of organized body that can represent the movement instead of clinging to some town bike hashtag that can and will be exploited by trolls and well meaning fools alike.
Oh, and they can stop being apologists for rape and death threats.
As for concerns about SJWs ruining our games and culture, creators are free to address their criticisms or not - they may be under pressure, but they're still in control of and responsible for the decision they make. And as much as we'd like to pretend that creative decisions and vision are sacred, I suspect a lot of creative decisions are marketing-driven to begin with (especially in the area of "sex sells"). And while I guess it would suck to suddenly feel like your tastes aren't the center of the dev's universe, I can imagine it also sucks being a woman who's wearing a bit thin on the whole experience of always gaming in a man's playground.
In short, I can't figure out why serious GamerGaters are trying to coopt a perfectly good trolling movement so that they can fight back against a group trying to coopt their movement.
You could chalk me up to "neutral" because I find it hard to care about either side. If GamerGate could get reviewers to give 10/10 scores to shmups or arcade style games maybe I'd pay attention, but that's neither their intention nor what they are capable of, so fuck it.
Hell, if every game mag published 100,000 editorials about how Tropes Vs Women in Games was the best thing ever, but gave good scores to the types of games I like and understood them, I'd be totally cool with game journalism (I mean, they have their opinions, I don't have to agree/disagree with all of them if I feel otherwise, so who cares?). But they don't, so fuck it too.
RegalSin wrote:Japan an almost perfect society always threatened by outsiders....................
Instead I am stuck in the America's where women rule with an iron crotch, and a man could get arrested for sitting behind a computer too long.
We'll see over the next few days if media outlets rally around the treatment of Liz F. I think the difference between an actual victim and a professional victim is quite distinct.
CStarFlare wrote:As for concerns about SJWs ruining our games...
One game that was most definitely ruined by SJWs was Divinity: Dragon Commander. It was a game best described as "less than the sum of its parts," but the most promising part was the political decisions portion. The different races in the game have different political viewpoints, and every round you're asked to make a decision on thinly-veiled fantasy versions of real-life issues, weighing doing the right thing against possible military consequences of pissing off the race whose province you're going to invade next...
...except that's not how it goes. If you do the right (liberal) thing, the races that were opposed last round come up to you and tell you that they've changed their minds and gay marriage is a wonderful thing. If you side with the right-wingers, next round the right-wing guys say they're having second thoughts. Also fully 50% of the issues are about homosexuality, from marriage to hate crimes, to public displays of affection. Alright, already!
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.
An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.
Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
I'm not sure how that gets laid on SJWs door. Did the SJW force a majority of gay-positive content, or are the devs just bad at scenario design and/or unimaginative? I imagine there's a distinction between a game "being ruined by SJWs" and the game's dev team failing to deliver on its potential while showing a liberal bias.
Look, you said it yourself - splintered focus. I'm of two minds on the subject. On the one hand, everybody is free to do as they like in raising awareness! On the other hand, we are a silicone implant DLC away from having evidence that being LGBT "friendly" becomes a cardinal obsession for lazy game developers, game journalists, professional gadflies and even individual slacktivist gamers to snuggle up around and feel fuzzy about. Naturalism? Who needs that? Or, if you are going for naturalism, just watch any episode of Time Team and contemplate the well-rounded wealth of mysteries ancient peoples have left us - a more compelling and informative social story than just slapping 21st century issues into everything, right down to swords-dragons-sorcery potbroilers. LGBT issues were just one part of that, but, not having played any Dragon Age games besides one really bad flash demo thing, my money's on Little Big Man still doing a more creditable take on all these sex and gender issues.
In any case, I have to ask my fellow slacktivists, and even the real activists, whether they really think that a focus on gameplay discussion - still one of the two calling cards of Shmups Forum, IMO - really is a second-class citizen when it comes to issues in modern gaming. Who wants to raise their hands? Mindless TPS forever!
I'd like to feel that there won't be any ultimate showdown with SJWs over a campaign for good games, but you can never underestimate the self-centeredness of politics. That's natural, and that's good - there certainly is a lot of injustice in the world. But I think it's living a fantasy that the SWJs will willingly give back the freedom of developers to do whatever they like and need for the sake of art or even education - to make a fantasy world without gay marriages between fishpersons and elvenkind.
I just googled a little bit and am almost starting to see what this thread is about, but not quite.
Is this the most boring nerdy shit ever? I just saw a gamer vid explaining what it is about, while playing his variable framerate Crysis3. Anybody who plays games with variable framerates I will never take serious.
That and this topic does not belong on Shmups. Please lizock this thrizzead
The worst thing about videogames are some of the people who play them. I wish this whole thing would just fuck off and every one of the oxygen thieves involved: assassinated.
The only people shitting up this thread right now are the ones scampering about with their hands in the air shrieking, "Eek! Eek! Someone's talking about gamergate! Lock the thread and cut out their tongues! We don't want to be associated with those people!"
All the people actually talking about gamergate are having a calm and civil discussion, in case you didn't notice.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.
An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.
Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
People will still make "Militarized White People Shooting Militarized Brown People In The Face 4", it will just have to struggle to find a place on the shelf alongside games normal people actually want to buy and play.
I'm not sure how you're defining normal people. Most people I know who aren't liberal like me (e.g., people who live outside of the city) like all that rah rah stuff.
I think the biggest tragedy of the whole situation is the toxic derailment of one valid issue.
Gaming media - their attitudes and ethics. Through an unfortunate mixture of personalities and timing, the SJW backlash and the gaming media backlash became one and the same and found a common label. Sadly the former contains a subset of people who are cancer to anything they touch.
As such we lost one of the best opportunities to explore gaming media ethics. You can't even talk about it without a 'Gamergate' association being made which instantly links to lunatics sending "death threats" to Anita & co. The salt in the wound is that gaming media accidentally saved themselves from real scrutiny with their obnoxious SJW white knighting, which pressed all the wrong buttons on the wrong people.
system11 wrote:I think the biggest tragedy of the whole situation is the toxic derailment of one valid issue.
Gaming media - their attitudes and ethics. Through an unfortunate mixture of personalities and timing, the SJW backlash and the gaming media backlash became one and the same and found a common label. Sadly the former contains a subset of people who are cancer to anything they touch.
As such we lost one of the best opportunities to explore gaming media ethics. You can't even talk about it without a 'Gamergate' association being made which instantly links to lunatics sending "death threats" to Anita & co. The salt in the wound is that gaming media accidentally saved themselves from real scrutiny with their obnoxious SJW white knighting, which pressed all the wrong buttons on the wrong people.
the biggest mistake was giving it a name
it's hilariously easy to tweet anita or anyone "I'm gamergate and I'm going to rape you", then she'll take it and immediately call gamergate bad regardless of the person being a troll or not and people will eat that shit up
should've remained as a nameless bunch of people annoying journos about shitty journalism in a civil way
Oh and by ethics I'm not referring to whatever may or may not have transpired with the Zoe nexus of drama, I mean the generally cushy relationship the media has been enjoying with particularly larger publishers.
Which is what professional journalism is. If you're not paying for a product, you are the product.
At least the kids shooping splooge on photos of Jade Raymond have motivations and have the decency to be interesting, in a horrible grotesque manner.
I still feel like a child trying to get two lego pieces to snap together, trying to understand what value added to the world an industry led by a man in a dorito hat is supposed to offer. At the end of the day, aren't they, at best, nothing more than a collection of press releases?
liberal-based game design
Well... Monopoly was supposed to teach us to hate capitalism and humanity. But then people actually started buying the damn thing en masse for some reason. Don't ask me why. I wasn't there at the time.
Supply-side economics just makes for better games. Rollercoaster Tycoon and Sim City would be terrible if they were a little realistic. Big empty buildings, so empty and lonely inside.
-While many of you are tired of it because it's been discussed to death and has been all over forums and news sites for months, some of us were late to the party, because we don't pay attention to the gaming media, because it's crap and so are most of the AAA titles they focus on, as are most of the typical discussions that happen on most gaming forums. My mom knew about this spectacle before I did, and I only found out about it because some turd tried to force the discussion in an unrelated thread on assemblergames. I wish I could say I wouldn't have heard about it at all if it hadn't been for that but I saw a thing Colbert did on it a couple weeks later. That being said I am already sick of hearing about it in that I haven't seen many truly insightful, interesting perspectives to give on it, and while I'm sure there is plenty out there I haven't read, I don't care to seek them out because...
-I know what I like and what I don't like, and thus what I should rightly feel guilty for, and what I should/shouldn't take personally. And I know the true motivations of the people who are most worked up over this. I grew out of the idea of being identified as a "gamer" years ago, I resented the idea of gaming being my primary interest, because it isn't. I think there is a real legitimate array of complaints against the game industry being brought up by this event but most of the people who are talking the most aren't helping the case for changing the way women are depicted in games. But I can only care so much about it because the T&A/cute factor in games has never been my cup of tea. I don't particularly want "sexy looking girls" in games, often times it actually bothers me because it can get to the point of being creepy("lolli"-esque girls in fighting games, and Cave titles especially), and I can't think of many very sexualized girls in the games I really do like on an aesthetic level. It doesn't matter to me that I am de facto included in the target demographic, I don't care for it so it's not a good reason to feel guilty or let the finger pointing bother me.
-I know the extent to which the "ethics in gaming journalism" argument is used has been somewhat exaggerated by the mainstream coverage, but if you care about gaming journalism you should find better things to do with your time. This is another reason the scandal the issue stemmed from is something I have a hard time caring about, Zoe was a gaming journalist, those people suck.
-Saving Peach is not the point of Mario games. I think that is an example of a very moronic and oversimplified criticism because nobody approaches the game like that. Again, there is many great examples of objectionable depictions to choose from, and Anita knows this and uses those examples too but these dumb complaints are clearly just made so people who don't know much about games(and who like her, don't actually like games) can feel like thoughtful critics. I think that undermines another argument that she has made which is that there is a generation of females who grew up playing games and that the industry should be more friendly to them. I just feel like there is a conflict between validating the female video game audience and simultaneously contending that type of comparatively harmless thing needs to change, it's writing off the fact that there is more to a game like that than saving the damsel in distress. This complaint was clearly taken too far because some smartass raised the issue to Miyamoto in an interview like it was some thought-provoking important question.
-I don't really understand why this thing warrants the -gate suffix. If anyone is meant to be the bad guy it's a collection of spineless anonymous reactionary internet dickheads. It's not like it's a government or institutional authority, which is what scandals coined with the -gate suffix usually are. I know it's just what someone called it and it picked up steam on social media, this is a silly and semi-serious thought because I'm all about semantics.
-Much like police brutality atrocities and stand-your-ground cases, the meaningful discussion that was ignited has also opened the floodgates for the reactionary dickheads to make where they stand apparent publicly and proudly. I think someone will seize the opportunity to stoke the fire and give these people a platform. There are already websites that I feel have been aiming at this audience but I think some new ones will pop up to strengthen the worst parts of video games as a community/subculture/fandom.
-Anita could have issued a bounty with her money(and solicited donations for a bounty fund) for whoever made the threat to go on a shooting spree at the university where she was scheduled to speak. Just to locate him so he could be brought to justice. I don't know if that would have been legal/would leave her legally exposed or if the threat even legally constituted conspiracy, but just sayin'...
I have no idea on what all of this noise is about, and I think that it might as well as be a matter of semantics.
As someone who played and still plays arcade games, the desperate attempts to lump together cut-scenes and random button-pressing that big companies and programmers try to call "games" strike as non-sensical.
As someone who also knows game theory (the mathematical one), and quite a bit about the anthropological aspects of gaming practices...it's even more non-sensical.
I do have colleagues and students who play "games", and sometimes they even throw the word "art" in the discourse. I generally scold them, and tell them that they need to improve their Garegga skills.
Jokes aside, I am still wondering how on earth there can be "games" about pregnancy, liberal choices and whatnot in the first place. What kind of uneducated fool needs low-brow, poorly produced mass entertainment, to be "educated"? And what kind of delusional fool can breathe my air, and spend his/her time producing such "educational content"?
Last passage is a parody/quote of Noel Carroll's ideas on why "artists" who want to convey messages are a bit naive, to put it gently. I don't even remember in which work the passage is, but I can guarantee that he was far gentler in discussing the topic. The vitriol is mine.
Nuking everyone from orbit seems like a good option to me, anyway. Yagawa would clearly approve, amen.
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
To which I add that videogames are more expensive than movies, both in price and time commitment. Anyone who says the quality of game reviews don't matter is either a trust fund baby or a pirate.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.
An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.
Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
I was actually pretty disturbed at what I saw from the less-professional gaming sites over this. I had a good conversation with a friend who's a dev about how when someone split off of a well-established mag to write a game, the mag in question straight up refused to review the game for conflict of interest reasons. Contrast that to some indie sites I saw which literally said "Of course I'm going to give a good review to a friend's game. I like my friend, why wouldn't I like their game?". Then combine this with a shockingly self-unaware attitude towards what certain authors perceived as "basement dwellers" and "aspies" or "virgin losers", I decided there was no side in this I wanted to take-- it was clear to me that nobody in this fight had any professionalism and everyone was just intent at hitting each other below the belt. It's all very hurtful stuff and there's no call for it. You can't throw that kind of language around and then tell the world you're "the good guys" any more than people who sling misogynistic crap around can. I take it seriously because there are people out there who *are* marginalized, who are shunned by their peers, and for whom games are an escape.
Yet, while I think there is plenty to complain about, especially where the indie scene's cliquishness is concerned, I think Gamer Gate is misguided. It started over a crazed ex's accusations that, AFAIK, have been long proven false. Even if the movement were to grow, it'd still have those origins, which I think are somewhat gross because I don't believe the intentions of people who believed the rumors so easily are good. There are also a lot of knee-jerk anti-diversity people on the bandwagon who I will never agree with, and whose anger is sometimes driven by some fairly backwards attitudes. And that they see more of a problem with this than the tired-out "Doritos and Mtn Dew" marketing is a bit head-shaking, especially if they truly do consider games an art-form. Lastly, if games are an art-form, you have to allow criticism no matter how annoying or wrong it is without freaking the hell out. This is probably why my most productive and interesting conversations were with NotYourShield people.
At the same time, though I believe there are some truly terrible individuals involved in GG, I do also agree that GG is an easy target. I've seen articles that go through the grinder where at the beginning it's about a random jerk online (for example, jerky kids yelling slurs in a CoD match), and by the time the news has made the rounds it has the GG label slapped on it. That has taught me to be careful what is or isn't attributed to GG.
I do think the anti-gamer-label thing is a bit of a retcon. I remember the term long before gaming was "broish", going back to people being boardgamers or wargamers. The fact is, the videogame industry (and it IS an industry) is huge. This means there's plenty of room for games that appeal to everyone. This whole "this isn't a real game because it doesn't have rigid win conditions" or "that isn't real art because it's more fun than watching grass grow" stuff being flung from both corners is worn out. I also do think there is something of a "my clubhouse" mentality to GamerGate which I find distasteful, and which drives it more than pro-GG people want to believe. I think part of it has to do with people who are resistant to change. And hey, I get it-- if games are your escape, you don't want them to change. But what's the expression? "The only thing that is constant is change"? That seems appropriate here.
From both camps, there was also a lot of message control and political posturing which seems to have suckered people on both sides pretty well. I didn't like how very few people seemed to want to take anyone to task over doxing and other shitty behaviors, and nobody cared if people that they disagreed with politically got serious death threats (not "ha ha I hope you DIAF" kind of threats but "let's mail this person a knife to send a message" kind of stuff). Terrible, shameful behavior all around that I want no part of. I also have to add an anecdote by an author I respect who said that damn near every woman in the indie scene he knows has been given serious threats. This is no good. If it's a movement truly concerned with ethics in gaming, it needs some serious introspection and a reboot.
And all of this is why I'm not taking a side here.
