1970

Is that what it means? Ah. Well, I agree. Tired of the white-guilt crowd speaking on behalf of the infantilized brown folks of the world. Thankfully, being mixed race (I don’t talk it up because it DOESN’T MATTER) gave me immunity to white guilt and seeing both sides gave me a healthy respect for western civilization.

1971

That was pretty damn funny.

1972

So what? It’s not like there’s anyone with a fiduciary duty anywhere near that situation. “Here’s some free money 'cause I like you.” “Thanks!”

Patronage is hundreds of years old. Frankly I’m a little disappointed in our modern-day rich folks who just piss money away on airplanes and vacations rather than funding some ART. Especially you, Trump.

1973

Mmmm. I watch Birth of a Nation because I love it as a film (I actually enjoy the first half, that is, then it goes a little bit too loony even for me). But that’s part of the point, you don’t need to stop liking things you criticize, which I think has been lost in all this mess.

You bringing up that movie made me think, because that’s a very loaded work, really evil in some of the things it says, yet I can’t avoid finding a lot of it enjoyable (and a lot of it despicable -which I fell I need to keep saying, which says a lot-). I think this might be similar to how I react to some games in the context of all this mess. When I first played FC3 I almost threw up after killing one of the bad guys and looking down at his corpse (it was one of the first times, then I don’t desensitized and just didn’t think about it). I abhor violence and I don’t get any enjoyment out of it, yet I am able to keep playing a shooting game and enjoying it “despite” all this.

One could even argue that, by bringing these issues to the forefront (representation in games) and addressing them, we are free to keep enjoying those games for their virtues and avoid criticising them as a whole (saying, for example, that a lot of games are sexist is not the same than saying that games are “eeevil” and “bad for the kids”).

this could be a good thing (isolating troubling elements in a critical way) or maybe even hand-washing (an excuse, basically). I dunno.

1974

And btw, 2 years in development and for now we only got a 3 hours (or less if you are good) 1st part of Broken Age. Despite graphic adventures is one of the most simplest video games you can make (2d game, some background and some sprites for characters, no complicated animation system, no unpredictable events in real time, no AI, just some simple and fixed interaction actions for the puzzles, no great optimization in the engine to make it run ok). I’m starting to being worried of what will happen with the second part.

1975

Yeah, definitely something weird went on with that. Part of it might have been the development of the engine (I read some technical post on that, and there was a lot of work done to make it portable), but it’s still super weird. However, writing is really, really hard, and the game had (in my opinion) excellent writing, so that kind of explains where a lot of time went (plus, without writing, there are many things you can’t do, so the process was probably very bottlenecked). I guess I’m more surprised about the cost, for such a small game, than about the time it took to make.

My guess would be that they started production too early, basically having too many, well paid, people working on it when just three or four leads would have sufficed.

1976

So, Dead Rising 3 review is on Gamespot.

One psychopath is a Chinese man, bearded and dressed as a monk, fought in a temple garden, who attacks you with a medieval polearm and kung fu. The game stops just short of playing “Chopsticks” as an accompaniment (but it does ring a gong). One is a sexualized policewoman wearing a Halloween-costume version of the uniform. One is a female bodybuilder that the developers, through Ramos, gleefully misgender. Another is a chap-wearing bisexual man in a pink cowboy hat. He has a phallic flamethrower.

…Because I think what we have here is a Boggart, reflecting back someone’s subconscious fears about minorities. And to conquer those fears, they’ve cast a mean-spirited spell to turn the things that frighten them into ridiculous caricatures. It’s a cruel portrayal, and superfluous besides: in a game that’s ostensibly about zombies, shouldn’t the zombies be scary enough on their own?

…The game is saddled with deeply sexist and mean-spirited overtones.

Or maybe someone who doesn’t want to be reviewing games is writing op-eds on gaming culture again.

1977

I know right? Just the other day I was walking by a chick getting sexually assaulted on the sidewalk outside a bar and some bartender guy tried to intervene. I eye rolled so much I almost gave myself a migraine. I was all like “Jeez, maybe someone who doesn’t want to tend bar is pretending to be a cop again.”

1978

So the “corruption in games journalism” that you are waging this virtuous war against is any sort of cultural critique in reviewing a medium?

1979

How the fuck did you make that leap in logic?

1980

Here is a better review:
Game is open world with emergent gameplay.
Graphics are visually stunning.
Narrative is epic.
Controls are tight and responsive.
Combat is meaty and visceral.
Zombies!
Crafting!
Objectively 7/10.

Sidebar: I was going to mention how you could dress up the male avatar in women’s clothing but I didn’t want to inject my review with icky topics like gender expression and representation.

-Todd

1981

Alternatively it’s someone unfamiliar with the series’ sense of humor, which I never found very funny, mainly because I’m not into broad and vulgar Farrelly brothers style humor. The psychos in Dead Rising always were pretty cringe-worthy, and Dead Rising 3 is in the unenviable situation of trying to top the last two games. Good thing the reviewer missed the fat lady in the wheelchair, which could be a double offense of discriminating against people with disabilities and weight issues.

The funny thing about Dead Rising 3 – I don’t know whether the Gamespot reviewer caught this and I’m not interested in reading a Gamespot review to find out – is that it also tries to have its female empowerment cake with a pretty cool attempt at a Rosie the Riveter style character, who kind of segues into the same territory as Rose McGown in Planet Terror. Dead Rising even tries to redeem its stereotypical fat goombah loser character. I think one of the token minorities turns out to be a villain. The main villains are totally a white empowered dude and a woman in a wheelchair. Dead Rising 3 is all over the place. You can pretty much make whatever case you want with its broad clumsy strokes.

Just as sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, sometimes bad writing is just bad writing.

-Tom
1982

I don’t know how to work twitter, but only 2 people seem to be replying here, and neither is the satan person? How do I see all of these tweets you’re talking about? :(

1983

Thanks for fighting the good fight Brad Grenz.

1984

He needs to look up chopsticks. It’s not what I think he was thinking of.

1985

I watched my son do that fight. It didn’t seem particularly offensive, in fact IIRC it gave the guy a little more depth than the average DR psycho by making his life prior to the city’s infection not something he wanted to go back to. He wanted to go out fighting.

1986

I think that this is something that I first saw in college, but I really dislike people who get offended for other people. It comes off as condescending. Sure, there is injustice in the world that needs to be righted, but making philosophical assumptions of the game developer’s intentions in characters in a comedy-zombie game isn’t really “fighting the good fight”. People can find something to be offended about in pretty much everything.

1987

Is there some sort of requirement I missed that says the reviews all have to be the same. He didn’t find the games humor funny, and there really isn’t anything wrong with that. Doesn’t sound like my cup of tea either. What’s really not going to be funny, is the gaming communities typical response to something like this which is probably going to make him a target.

1988

You really think off colour jokes are the same thing as abetting rape, or are you mocking how ridiculous SJWs can be?

1989

So hey, guess what, another baseless accusation against Zoe Quinn turns out to be bullshit:

Has a single accusation against her actually stuck? Other than shit about her personal life which has zero bearing on anyone’s lives but her and her ex-boyfriend?