i played the demo for To a T at the worst place possible: GDC. and even though I didn’t like it in the moment it eventually won me over after I had played it and thought about it for a while.
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I remember seeing a thread online somewhere from a disability advocate who was VERY angry about that game. Do you think that it handled themes of disability well in what you played?
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I thought it did so but I’m also far from a disability advocate so it is possible there are flags I am missing.
Like half the demo is you getting ready for school and while it is a somewhat ridiculous condition the kid has I thought the combo of ways the kid/family has adjusted things so that the kid can take care of themself (special faucet for the sink, extra long handles for the spoon and toothbrush) while also acknowledging they will need help with some things (clothing themselves, the bathroom) felt true enough, and it never treated it as anything bizarre or out of the ordinary. That comes up when it shows thought bubble vignettes of other kids at the school mocking them (stacking their books like a T, walking around with their arms out in a mocking way) which… yeah, that 100% would happen.
It ends on a tease with you being able to spin so fast in a panic that you end up flying for a bit, that struck me as fine but perhaps that is a bit of a no-no; I don’t think showing that what makes them different and can cause them difficulties may also give them advantages is bad but perhaps it being so out there (the game is clearly a bit out there, see the giraffe cook) and often comedic would strike some as a fraught way to deal with such topics?
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uh idk if I’m the best person to say if it is or isn’t. Having adaptations around the home to facilitate stuff like putting on shoes or washing one’s face despite not being able to move one’s arms is pretty common - so the game displaying these felt like a positive? I think they might have issue with showing a fictional disability as opposed to a real one. I’d be curious to read what they thought.
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i played clair obscur and wow
shit
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Oh yeah, I also finished up Dino Crisis 2. Fun enough game, the base shooting and enemy encounters weren’t quite enough but it felt like the game was aware of this and kept tossing you new weapons or minigame-esque set pieces and was over in under 5 hours. Legit is a game that just ain’t made no more, if remade it’d be 15 hours long and each special set piece would be repeated a few times to justify the resources necessary to get the systems behind it working in the first place.
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Whenever this discussion arises (and it does every few years, because that is the nature of things) this is always my position.
Mainstream and underground are mutually complementary ecosystems. Several of the most popular games ever made, which spawned entire subgenres, were originally niche gamer mods. We sometimes see something weird and jagged break through the membrane and be assimilated into the broader culture; thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
I think it’s alluring to imagine the greater victory of righteous and tasteful culture over the nasty nonsense, to place myself in a position of battle for the soul of gaming, but I reject it personally.
Almost 40 years into a life entirely defined by games, from my earliest memories to now; an endless expanse of time thinking about and playing and making worthless little electronic toys. Meant to satiate both curious schemers and stubborn dullards alike. The medium is in forever tension between each of its poles, like any medium.
All we really have is the craft and the messages we are sending to each other and the void of the future. This ramble is not to say that fighting to make games better or players more open to strange experiences is worthless. Just that there is no victory, no justice. So I always find grand statements to ring hollow.
Or maybe I’m compromised from making games for a living for the industry for almost 20 years, and the only thing I care about anymore is my doddering little hermit hobbies. Let other people argue forever about the right direction of things. I’m okay just farting around and being an encyclopedia of gamer apocrypha, now.
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Driving around a bunch in BeamNG. I think I am going to try to get into the heads of the characters of this novel by picking cars for them, and driving around a map like I am them, going about some kind of frantic business. I don’t think anyone’s written a novel like this.
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A defining moment for me was seeing the seapunk people (a pseudomovement I always found shallow and derivative, as are its offsprings) raging because Rihanna had seapunk visuals on SNL.
Fuckers you should be disgusted with yourselves. If you have any artistic integrity, you take responsibility for having created a commodity and you radicalise and move on. I’ve been there. You don’t get to whine about your pristine online space of underground taste-makers (
) being invaded by the vile mainstream. You brought it on yourselves, vibe-peddlers.
Anyway that is to say, internet and video game scenes are composed of the least punk people in all of existence and it’s a terrible, terrible thing.
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URL counterculture
… ten.nottubtceles.www\\:sptth
… looks right, i guess?
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Not me. One of my business partners was an hour late in a very important meeting yesterday. After all the issues sloved. He told me he bought Balatro and he was addicted to playing, even playing right up to the last moment before going to meeting.
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this is funny to me bc i think i know the people who made up the term as a joke, to begin with
that was really A Time on The Internet
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is it seapunk bc it looks like a lisa frank trapper keeper, which seem to often feature dolphins?
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All this sub-sub-genre talk is bringing me back to an old DJ/producer friend rattling off a bunch of these to me, while also detailing the nuances between them, completely straight-faced and I was just baffled by the idea that anyone would give a shit about all this elaborate categorisation instead of, y’know, spending their time actually enjoying themselves and making music…
This same person also got really pissy when someone put on a song casually, explaining that they hated the snare sound…
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These categorizations help identify the exact style you like and remove the artist’s burden. So an artist can also change styles.
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I like goofy, arbitrary genre names. If it weren’t for them, I never would have seen the face Felix made when I told him what “IDM” stands for during his visit to Boston a while back.
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I played the To a T demo and have mostly the same feelings about it as others here. As someone who does have to adjust to very mundane tasks in real life, it does at least feel thoughtful regarding the tools and ways in which your character has to navigate basic objects. I do wonder if a lot of fiction that grapples with disability tends to be aimed at children as a way of counter programming society’s normative perception of disability early on, but then I wonder how many children are really interested in a game like this that would have the opportunity to come into contact with it. It feels like reading a children’s book (not a bad thing) but I don’t think I’m compelled to play the full game. It’s got very nice presentation but actually playing the game is a little tedious.
I like some of the deliberate tedium like walking home from school really slowly. I think it is a little ironic that so many actions require the analog sticks which are often a pain to do repetitive or precise actions with when you have a motor disability. The game also starts off with a flashing light (siren on your head that lets you know you may need to go to the bathroom) almost out of the gate which seemed like a big oversight for epilepsy given there’s no option to turn it off. In fact, the accessibility settings are extremely limited given the game’s themes. Maybe that’s what some people are mad about.
The mum also briefly mentions telling the kid about their father since the father is absent. I am a little worried about what the reveal of the father will imply. Like they’re going to be a tree or something.
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Was more commenting on when these things move past the point of being useful broader guidelines and transform into this quite intense hyper-specificity to where you have a thousand different sub-categories of house music, each one indicating what kind of filter is being applied to a certain instrument… Don’t get me wrong, I love goofy music terminology! If someone releases a track and decides it’s part of a new lineage of music referred to as “WobbleSpank”, I’ll be rooting for them!! But some of these things can at times feel like more work to keep track of than is useful…
Anyway, this particular person seemed especially tortured by this stuff in a way that didn’t seem entirely helpful or fun to them or others. Making music seemed closer to an exacting science for them in like… a stressful way, haha…
In fairness to Felix, IDM also makes me scrunch up my nose… Call it something like “Music for Ants” or “Computer-Soup” instead!
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