It’s OK to have a problematic fave, you don’t have to rationalize the crappy parts away.
8 Likes
make it fucking Robotron 2099 Now With Loot In Every Room
1 Like
I’ve played a billion shooters and very few of them were actually set within the bounds of the ryanverse
1 Like
Yeah, I can’t think of any game in recent years that created a situation where all the bad guys were realistically written nazis and the good guys were a diverse coalition of vaguely left-wing freedom fighters.
Or a game where you fight weird space monsters instead of actual people.
Or a game where, like Diablo, you fought demons from hell but now you have guns.
Or a game where everything is some kind of scifi bloodsport people are playing for prizes.
But alas, we don’t live in a world where games with those plots are possible, and we must keep killing anarchists.
4 Likes
i think it’s actually less and less okay to have a problematic fave
and we really should have less videogames that are about the “pleasure” of shooting someone in the face
1 Like
Non ironically love this idea. Set it in the Smash TV universe for extra fun.
But that would be way duller to look at than what’s here. If you’re gonna have a real city this gorgeously depicted as a backdrop for a videogame about shooting dudes nonstop, you’re gonna have a problematic image.
It’s a shooter game set in Washington D.C. Bad taste? I don’t know, it’s a videogame.
I guess I subliminally-until-now accept that “videogames” at base have a minimum bar for problematicness and fascism just due to their primal focus on empowering the player and giving them absolute Godlike agency.
1 Like
this is absolutely worth keeping in mind but it in no way obviates the other points raised itt
In Spaceyear 2099 All The Human Manz Moved From Their Old + Busted Cities To Live Beneath The Crystal Domes Leaving the Ruins… For Sports Combat
dang I did it
4 Likes
You’re telling me a game where instead of boring human there’s the potential for dozens of brightly colored robots with completely different movesets and power that could explode in satisfiying showers of parts is more boring than murdering regular people with guns.
Like the more I’m thinking about this the more I want a Robotron inspired loot shooter because it actually solves most of the problems the genre has from a narrative and game design perspective.
2 Likes
What if I want to use virtual real guns to kill virtual real people in a virtual real city in my videogame, though?
I mean, you can say a shooter set in the current year is too politically close to home for you to feel comfortable with, but I don’t think the inherent tactile joys of real-world weapons and the beauty of real-world cities should not be allowed to be exploited.
Cops killing anarchists is punching down AND advances the ideology and agenda of a dangerous and ascendant far-right extremist movement that is CURRENTLY killing people IRL and just happens to also be closely intertwined with late-2010’s “gamer” culture.
If your irrepressible gamer id cries out for realistic human murder then there are so many ways you could frame it that aren’t as irresponsible and shitty as Division 2.
For example, what if you played as a revolutionary anarchist defending their DC-area commune from counterrevolutionary cops?
2 Likes
An why? There’s a literally infinite number of possible games out there. Why does skipping one that reinforces the fucked up realities of our world have to be a huge loss?
Or we could use that ‘real world cities are only used for sport’ premise Shrug suggested. That would work fine.
it would be cool if more games were not about killing and/or mutilating things.
11 Likes
I’ll totally concede my hand in this discussion and I hope you guys enjoyed expressing your thoughts and I didn’t make you feel too uncomfortable or anything,
but
I will say as a PSA that if you can accept the problematic premise of The Division 2, the game will not do anything further to gross you out more. There is almost no plot here; there are almost no cutscenes, and you don’t hear anything besides inconsequential squawks over the radio when entering a key location, farts of directives. You will become numb to the concept of meaning, and you might love it.
edit: Is it okay if I love the image of the US Military despite never wanting myself to serve in it nor thinking higher of anyone else for serving in it? Just pure image? Just the quality of the image? What it speaks to on a baser level, before anyone necessarily gets hurt?
Definitely feels that way when our world is this on fire. But I don’t really agree. I think it’s ok to have a problematic fave IF you do the work of recognizing what’s shitty about it, understanding what it is about yourself that makes you like it anyway, and NEVER try to justify the shitty parts.
8 Likes
i’d say a problematic thing you like enough to do for a bit is probably better than having a problematic fav per se
i mean, i have reservations about basically everything i do though so
1 Like
A silver lining of listening to Michael Jackson music is knowing that everyone has gone through and handled the cognitive dissonance routine of it in their own way.
On the topic of this thread, I’m playing Baba is YOu right now. It’s a goddamn delight. I love how the game hides it’s solutions behind trying to look like a regular Sokobon game, while requiring you to think beyond physical limits.
You could probably get a whole Grant Morrison pastiche essay out of describing the game’s concepts in terms of magical workings.
The other part that fascinates me is that this game was built in Multimedia Fusion! That’s completely plausible, in fact a lot of the games specific limitations seem to be built around what the engine is good at. But since I know the amount of work that goes into making anything in MMF, I’m kind of terrified of all the stuff they had to do to make this, but also inspired.
I haven’t liked a puzzle game this much since The Witness! (I’m sorry I’m sorry, I still love the Witness even thought I hate Blow)
4 Likes
you and sega am I right
9 Likes