PBS apparently was going to broadcast the Narcissa Wright (the speedrunner) documentary Break the Game and then abruptly pulled it out of fear because it’s a sympathetic documentary about a trans woman. then they abruptly reinstated it after journalist reached out to them and presumably they were afraid of negative press.
as the article says, PBS has shown several other left-wing films during the last few months and made a big show about protecting independent filmmakers. it’s clear Break The Game was taken off the schedule explicitly because it was about a trans woman - even though it’s not really a particularly political film.
“It’s not hard to connect the dots here,” Wagner told me. It was “painfully clear,” she said, that PBS had switched positions on the film in an effort to “avoid public scrutiny and accountability.” Certainly, the back-and-forth suggests that PBS executives are not exactly crawling through the mud in defense of independent filmmaking. When the network’s president and CEO, Paula Kerger, was asked at the DOGE subcommittee hearing to defend PBS’s other trans-themed documentaries, she gave a tepid, practiced answer: “These are documentary films that are point-of-view pieces that are part of our primetime schedule for adults.” Of course, she could have said the same about POV and Break the Game: The series is literally named point of view, and the film’s original broadcast slot had been set for 10 p.m., during the prime-time schedule for adults. The fact that the network still chose to disappear Wagner’s movie—and then to re-appear it later on, still without an explanation—suggests that the institution is at sea. Self-censorship may be easy to undo, but it’s also easy to avoid in the first place. PBS seems to have created this scenario of its own accord, and now it’s showing that it doesn’t even have the courage of its lack of convictions.
Look guys, it’s Anthem if Anthem had been a game and not a proof of concept!
Also seems to be moving in a completely different direction from Armored Core, so that’s pretty cool. Looking forward to more gameplay trailers. Oh yeah, uh, be forewarned, there will be anime BS.
if anything, that trailer seems to be overselling the fixed nature of the characters. this quote definitely makes me feel a bit better about it
If anything, Zero Company seems ready to take that idea even further. Soldiers you create can be customised to the class and appearance you want, but appropriately for Star Wars you can also choose their species. Then the game also has authored characters—the crew seen in the trailer and art—who turn up already armed with personalities, backstories, and roles in the story. But not only will they have a degree of customisation too, they’re not exempt from permadeath, and if they are lost in some Outer Rim skirmish, that will actually affect how elements of the story play out.
i’ve said this before, but there’s nothing that a certain group of indie game people love more than to sign NDAs. with it implies that you have some great industry trade secret that you need to protect. the image of exclusivity is a huge part of their own livelihood and identity. a lot of these people love to traffic in industry secrets of various types, either about publishers or companies or about each other. it’s maintaining different kinds of high school gossip as a business plan. and they’re too NDA-brained to understand other people might not operate that way. if there was some more egalitarian way of sharing this information they’d lose a lot of their social power, so ofc they’re not interested in that.
it is especially funny to apply that to hyperpop, a genre that has famously never fully broken through to the mainstream because a lot of young artists who come from online communities where stuff is freely shared rightfully distrust the mechanisms of the music industry and have been unwilling to cooperate within it.
i will probably find 4.5 hours tomorrow to watch this, whatever mythologies tim indulges in i’ve always enjoyed when he gets really nitpicky on flawed videogames
funny old life
