Fuck this game. I’m more interested in the embrace of the cyborg as a metaphor by trans folks. As shrug noted a couple posts back the old metaphor had more to do with becoming a product or ceding your mind to computers. It was born from that same mindset that gave us the facelift scene in Brazil.
I think it’s really interesting that this weird undead genre has found resonance with a modern audience in a way that the originators never predicted (just like they also never predicted cellphones).
I think (hope?) the raging reactionary gamer id is a very loud minority with too much time on their hands.
I think this is basically CD Projekt’s immaturity as an organization - I was wrong to draw an arbitrary line between the social media person and the writers, but I am shocked that they let the artist give that interview.
I want the world in which CD Projekt hires people specifically to make e.g. a trans narrative work, but it’s also baffling that they are just showing their whole ass. It’s like Facebook letting Palmer Lucky continue to slip the fourteen words into their media strategy long after they should have made him shut up or sacked him.
Alright so here’s the strategy: you put shitty things in your game so you appeal to the anti-SJW crowd, and then you weakly hand wave it away so that the gaming journalists only include it as a footnote in their review and don’t feel TOO bad for playing it. “See, they tried to explain themselves and it’s not the best but they didn’t mean it maliciously and hey videogames are big and hard to make please click our guide 7 things I wish I knew before playing Cyberpunk 2077.”
The Rockstar Gambit
the way games journalists handled red dead 2 is proof that their profession has no credibility in the slightest because it cant by design
i hate this because its true its exactly whats been happening
like this tweet was about animal crossing but replace fuschia with keanu, or whatever
every time i see an article thats about how the game is problematic but its still 9/10 worth your time i think of that gaming in the clinton years review where he talks about how symphony of the night is disappointingly enjoyable
I worry that I often come off as defensive in these subjects because my natural tendency is against being judgmental and giving chances to learn and change. Highly judgmental callout culture is absolutely a defensive mechanism the driveby nature of a platform like Twitter creates (and it’s why I have to leave); I’m much more comfortable in a community setting where reputation can be formed and remembered and people can work through issues.
I have a hard time assigning judgment on companies and their products for related reasons. Something this large is created by hundreds of people with different views. Beyond that, our massive overburdened open-world games are so big that they contain contradictory messages within them. So I can play GTA 5 and leave the radio off and ignore the missions and just be absorbed by the way the city looks at night from the hills and it’s a valid experience that’s absolutely within the intention of those creating the game; the environment and the art and the feel of the cars are things within themselves that ripple through my own memories and perspective.
And then we’ve got the mode where a piece of media spurs harmful dialogue and beliefs, and crazier is how much it feels out of the hands of the people who made the thing. When taken up by a culture art can come to mean A Thing – to be replaced by a totem in conversation – and that gets ascribed to the people who worked on it even as they feel helpless.
What I do, personally, is listen to those who are hurt, learn best practices, and offer a perspective of moderation if I am uncomfortable with the judgment, having been on the other side.
same but my natural tendency is to be extremely judgmental but to assume that my being judgmental is stupid and idiosyncratic and not at all worth putting on other people 100% of the time
which is not to suggest this approach is morally superior to any other it’s just how I deal with myself
some of us are just really sick of giving games the benefit of the doubt for literal decades i think
im glad some of you guys have the privilege of being able to give people the benefit of the doubt every time
I think that’s a fair criticism, and I’ve dwelt on that before. But my openness has also been important in my life in dealing with difficult people and earning trust.
also most of my best qualities are fundamentally fairly stupid and vice versa but I don’t see why not to have a sense of humour about that
i definitely get what youre saying bustedastromech, i wrote a piece about the apolitical ubisoft games shit where i talked about because so many people work on these games ultimately they dont really say anything because its a conflicted disjointed mess of ideas but also yknow, fuck the finished product? the expectation that we must be considerate of every single angle when it comes to this shit is incredibly tiring because it almost always gets used as a deflection by guys who feel the need to come in and say well you know i handle things different maybe they deserve the benefit of the doubt. and its fine people handle shit differently, thats for you to deal with, but it doesnt make it any less tiring
its really tiresome to be told ‘just spend the 60 bucks this time it might be okay’
i dont think people thoughtfully expressing their issues with this game is CALLOUT CULTURE
its literal criticism and reducing it to callouts gives off very ‘NO NEGATIVE FEEDBACK’ deviant art vibes
we’re not posting dox and names and saying to personally cancel everyone involved
its marginalized people being personally affected by something and, like always, feeling blown off
dealing with rampant transphobia and shit is so fucking exhausting for me because every time i go “actually this is bad, im mad about it” my anger gets interrogated by every fucking person i talk to! the expectation is that marginalized people have to be infinitely patient and coddling to everybody on the planet but everyone else can just fuck up and/or be shitty all the time with no consequences. its incredibly frustrating and the same shit is all over videogames
yeah I think the determination to Buy Videogame pretty much precludes any intelligent critique
ah yes polygon has already forgotten it seems
integrity is hard
i think a lot about their big article about how fucked the labor situation with red dead 2 was and how they immediately followed it up with RED DEAD 2 WEEK wOOO COWBOYS YEEHAW