Critics Ruin Video Games? ?Good!

[JudgeGame]

I'm willing to listen. I'm prepared to take your word that the prostitute did in fact kill a bunch of people. That information isn't relayed in the video. I assumed the people firing bullets at the corpses killed the corpses. In my opinion, they could have made the effort to make that clear to anyone who saw the ad. I suppose, if you have prior knowledge to the universe of Cyberpunk 2077 you wcould infer all that.

This is the same problem the article I linked was talking about. Instead of marketing their product at a large audience, they concentrate on a small group and marginalize everyone else. I'd be surprised if they even bothered screening this ad to a random audience to gauge their reaction.

If I am to accept that interpretation, it's terrible composition and real amateur directing. The first thing you see are the woman and the bullet hitting her. Next you see the police who are in formation for some reason even though she only just saw them. Next we see the bullets AND the bloodied corpses which would help us make a false association. Half-way into the video, we see the "scythes" which I didn't recognize as such. To be honest, I had no idea what they were supposed to be until you mentioned it. I could moan about how structurally unsound they look and how ineffective they would be as combat weapons but hey it's sci-fi so I would be prepared to meet the trailer half-way if it at least told me they were weapons. Finally, we see the policeman pointing a gun to the back of her skull, which doesn't make any sense since he's in the line of fire but if we just ignore that it still looks pretty disturbing and not the kind of thing I would find exciting or epic. To most people it's just a bunch of fascist cops executing some random woman war lord style, all in beautifully rendered slo-mo cam so we know it is awesome.

I really can't see why anyone thought it was this scene that would sell the game, I would have chosen something more action-y, less morally compromising.

Ok now you are not even trying.

I am thinking you havn't even seen the trailer then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P99qJGrPNLs

1:14 in.
News reporter "14 people are dead. 4 have suffered serious injuries. Police have a suspect"/cut off

I am not going to waste my time trying to reason with a guy talking out of his ass.

I hope you are taking the piss. Not only did I not hear that the last 3 times I watched it, I can barely understand that line now that you've pointed it out. Again, really shit sound editing. You'd think that was the most important piece of information in the whole scene and it's just a murmur over music and interference and near the end of the trailer to boot. This garbage isn't worth defending.

 

[JudgeGame]

-snip-

This is the point where I think you're trying to make fun of me. Do you seriously expect anybody to go read up on a trailer? A trailer is advertising. It's an undesirable audio-visual nuisance we have to put up with to get to entertainment. What possible motivation could a human being have to waste time reading a bunch of text in regards to an advert that they didn't even like? Did you really need me to say this?

 

[JudgeGame]

I'm willing to listen. I'm prepared to take your word that the prostitute did in fact kill a bunch of people. That information isn't relayed in the video.

So you just assumed those giant, red-liquid-covered armblades were just kitchen ustensils used to cut tomatoes?

Then I'm sorry to say that the problem lies with you, not the trailer.

They didn't look like blades at all, let alone weapons. It just looked like her arms had begun to break apart from the volley of shots she just received from the police.

 

[JudgeGame]

-snip-

This is the point where I think you're trying to make fun of me. Do you seriously expect anybody to go read up on a trailer? A trailer is advertising. It's an undesirable audio-visual nuisance we have to put up with to get to entertainment. What possible motivation could a human being have to waste time reading a bunch of text in regards to an advert that they didn't even like? Did you really need me to say this?

Well you investigated this so damm thoroughly when you started leading the offensive on this being sexist.

So damm throughly that you didn't listen to the trailer and heard what everyone else heard and didn't read any context off 3 single paragraphs.

nope.

Sexist.

Knifeblade woman just minding her own business and being gunned down. Clearly the victim here.

Here is your problem. You are leading the evidence. You have a conclusion and decided on it from the get go. You decided on this and then try to lead evidence to your conclusion. So when reality is getting in the way, you seem to be doing mental backflips off "well it is poor sound editing" "well no one reads descriptions". Yeah well keep standing up mate. Because your voice seem to get muffled when you sit down.

You are the problem here. You leading the evidence to your false conclusion rather than study the bloody evidence and draw one.

I don't recall at any point saying the trailer was sexist. You are the one who claimed "The hooker represents hedonism and anarchy. A "pleasure" girl showing off different aspects of human carnal desires of lust and envy," and all I said is that that interpretation sounds disturbing. I do think the tone of the trailer aswell as the dozen other things I've mentioned are pretty lazy and bad quality.

What do you want me to say? The news snippet is barely audible, the trailer makes no damn sense and the notion that I'm supposed to go away and do research after watching an advert is ludicrous. You are defending an advert that fails on every conceivable level to perform the functions expected of an advert and on top of that it has a truly disturbing ending shot.

 

[DoPo]

Do you seriously expect anybody to go read up on a trailer?

YES, YOU ARE REQUIRED TO DO THE MINIMUM AMOUNT OF INFORMATION GATHERING ON ANYTHING YOU'LL BE CRITICISING SO HARSHLY. AND BY MINIMUM I MEAN YOU HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION.

I hope big letters make you see them better. I don't want you to miss those, like the news report, the giant arm blades, the corpses and the description of the video you clearly ignored in order to ascribe some completely different meaning to the trailer. It's a two minute trailer, I watched it with headphones on - the earplugs style, my OS is outputting sound at only 20% of the original volume. I heard the news report. If you have the bare minimum knowledge of the cyberpunk genre (there are people with various implants, including arm blades and other weapons, crime is plentiful thanks to those, too) then you don't need to know about the RPG it's based on. I don't know anything about Cyberpunk 2020 aside the name and that it's cyberpunk (duh) and I managed to catch all of these. Not recognising it is your fault, stop blaming everything else for it.

 

[JudgeGame]

They didn't look like blades at all, let alone weapons. It just looked like her arms had begun to break apart from the volley of shots she just received from the police.

Spoiler: Yes this is completely understandable. Oh wait

Don't blame it on the trailer for not being clear enough while you weren't paying any attention yourself.

They don't look like blades to me. I work in a kitchen. I know what a blade looks like. Also, the scene lasts less than one second. I'm only human, you know.

 

[veloper]

You guys are overthinking this. It doesn't matter if the cyborg chick is the villain or not, or that the cops are fascists or not.

The perspective of fictional characters does NOT represent the views of the creators. Disclaimers of that nature are fairly common for good reason it seems. This is FICTION afteral and complaining about the presence of evil in a fictional setting, is like complaining there's swastikas and nazis in a WW2 movie.
While fiction can go wrong, if it goes all political and the intended message is also backwards, at this point nothing suggests anything like that.

Just some shock value here. No big deal.
This stuff will probably sell and that's the bottom line.

This sexism in fiction complaint is one lost cause I don't mind seeing crashing against the cliffs.

 

[TaboriHK]

I stopped at "they segregated same-sex players of Star Wars Old Republic away on their own gay-ghetto planet." If the article is ostensibly about fighting ignorance, it should probably not be guilty of it almost immediately.

Also, my impression of the Cyberpunk trailer is that it's a teaser. It's supposed to make you wonder what is going on. There's not enough substance there to quantitatively say anything about the game other than it's clearly going for the tone and feeling of its title. You can't say it's sexist or anything, when you know literally nothing about the people it shows, for a brief flash of time, with no exposition whatsoever.

 

[JudgeGame]

Do you seriously expect anybody to go read up on a trailer?

YES, YOU ARE REQUIRED TO DO THE MINIMUM AMOUNT OF INFORMATION GATHERING ON ANYTHING YOU'LL BE CRITICISING SO HARSHLY. AND BY MINIMUM I MEAN YOU HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION.

I hope big letters make you see them better. I don't want you to miss those, like the news report, the giant arm blades, the corpses and the description of the video you clearly ignored in order to ascribe some completely different meaning to the trailer. It's a two minute trailer, I watched it with headphones on - the earplugs style, my OS is outputting sound at only 20% of the original volume. I heard the news report. If you have the bare minimum knowledge of the cyberpunk genre (there are people with various implants, including arm blades and other weapons, crime is plentiful thanks to those, too) then you don't need to know about the RPG it's based on. I don't know anything about Cyberpunk 2020 aside the name and that it's cyberpunk (duh) and I managed to catch all of these. Not recognising it is your fault, stop blaming everything else for it.

I'm not critisizing anything harshly. I'm just saying what's there. I'm not the one singing the praises of an advert. And for the record, I know plenty of cyberpunk: Serial Experiments Lain, Ghost in the Shell, Matrix, Doctor Who, Neuromancer, Cowboy Bebop, etc... none of which feature scythes coming out of your forearms. I would understand out of your knuckles which makes prefect sense. Scythes out of your forearms sounds pretty stupid.

Edit: To be honest there's probably a Doctor Who episode where someone has a scythe coming out if their forearm, it's Doctor Who.

 

[JudgeGame]

-snip-

This is the point where I think you're trying to make fun of me. Do you seriously expect anybody to go read up on a trailer? A trailer is advertising. It's an undesirable audio-visual nuisance we have to put up with to get to entertainment. What possible motivation could a human being have to waste time reading a bunch of text in regards to an advert that they didn't even like? Did you really need me to say this?

Well you investigated this so damm thoroughly when you started leading the offensive on this being sexist.

So damm throughly that you didn't listen to the trailer and heard what everyone else heard and didn't read any context off 3 single paragraphs.

nope.

Sexist.

Knifeblade woman just minding her own business and being gunned down. Clearly the victim here.

Here is your problem. You are leading the evidence. You have a conclusion and decided on it from the get go. You decided on this and then try to lead evidence to your conclusion. So when reality is getting in the way, you seem to be doing mental backflips off "well it is poor sound editing" "well no one reads descriptions". Yeah well keep standing up mate. Because your voice seem to get muffled when you sit down.

You are the problem here. You leading the evidence to your false conclusion rather than study the bloody evidence and draw one.

I don't recall at any point saying the trailer was sexist. You are the one who claimed "The hooker represents hedonism and anarchy. A "pleasure" girl showing off different aspects of human carnal desires of lust and envy," and all I said is that that interpretation sounds disturbing. I do think the tone of the trailer aswell as the dozen other things I've mentioned are pretty lazy and bad quality.

What do you want me to say? The news snippet is barely audible, the trailer makes no damn sense and the notion that I'm supposed to go away and do research after watching an advert is ludicrous. You are defending an advert that fails on every conceivable level to perform the functions expected of an advert and on top of that it has a truly disturbing ending shot.

Barely audible to you only it seems.

But hey now you are doing even more mental gymnastics and adding quotemining in an effort to get a leg to stand on. Se the word REPRESENT? and you leaving out the part of my post going on about symbolism? Oh yeah because selective reasoning seems be your thing and you read that as "It's a bunch of dudes killing a hooker because she's a slut. You seriously don't see why some people have a problem with that?".

Yeah I am wasting my time talking to you. Tell when your reality matches up with with the rest of ours and your insight might even be valuable.

I'm sorry there was barely anything I could understand in that first paragraph.

 

[TaboriHK]

I can't possibly imagine caring about scythes coming out of a character's forearms.

 

[JudgeGame]

You guys are overthinking this. It doesn't matter if the cyborg chick is the villain or not, or that the cops are fascists or not.

The perspective of fictional characters does NOT represent the views of the creators. Disclaimers of that nature are fairly common for good reason it seems. This is FICTION afteral and complaining about the presence of evil in a fictional setting, is like complaining there's swastikas and nazis in a WW2 movie.
While fiction can go wrong, if it goes all political and the intended message is also backwards, at this point nothing suggests anything like that.

Just some shock value here. No big deal.
This stuff will probably sell and that's the bottom line.

This sexism in fiction complaint is one lost cause I don't mind seeing crashing against the cliffs.

I'm tired of people pretending that in the medium of videogames tone doesn't apply.

 

[DoPo]

They don't look like blades to me. I work in a kitchen.

And I suppose the hidden blade in Assassin's Creed is a toothpick? It's an implant designed to be lethal and hidden, do you want it to spring meatcleavers? It looks like at least a spike. When I saw it, I wasn't completely sure it was a blade but I knew it was designed for killing. Why? (aside from being covered in blood and there being corpses nearby)

Spoiler: That's what it looks like (as well as numerous variations of these kinds of appendages).

That's what it looks like (as well as numerous variations of these kinds of appendages).

I know what a blade looks like. Also, the scene lasts less than one second. I'm only human, you know.

I'm counting 8 seconds since they become visible. Or 5 seconds if you want to see her standing with the things extended. In slow motion.

Did you watch the trailer in fast forward? This would explain much about your confusion over it.

I'm not critisizing anything harshly.

Incompetence, bad video editing, failure to convey information. And it seems you're the only one who didn't notice those, too. But no, that's not criticising, right?

And for the record, I know plenty of cyberpunk: Serial Experiments Lain, Ghost in the Shell, Matrix, Doctor Who, Neuromancer, Cowboy Bebop, etc... none of which feature scythes coming out of your forearms. I would understand out of your knuckles which makes prefect sense. Scythes out of your forearms sounds pretty stupid.

Spoiler: Yeah, I agree it almost like having hidden weapons doesn't make sense

Yeah, I agree it almost like having hidden weapons doesn't make sense]

Spoiler: Or deployable implants

Or deployable implants

It must be some completely new concept there. Oh, wait, where did these screenshots from GITS appear from?

 

[JudgeGame]

They don't look like blades to me. I work in a kitchen. I know what a blade looks like. Also, the scene lasts less than one second. I'm only human, you know.

The blades themselves get 8 seconds of screentime with 3 seconds of that being a close-up, from 1:00 to 1:08.

I get it. Your eyes glazed over, you were tired, the room was too bright etc. It's fine, it happens. What I have a problem with is you trying to criticize the trailer (which did nothing wrong and sent the intended message) in a weak-ass attempt to hide your own shortcomings. A normal person would just say "yeah, my bad" and everyone would understand. So how about you admit you made a mistake instead of trying to shift the blame?

I stand by what I said. The trailer has tons of problems. They aren't even problems of intent. They are problems of apathy.

And scythes coming out of your forearms and fucking stupid. The things would break or bend on the slightest impact and the angle they come out at make them useless as a weapon.

 

[veloper]

You guys are overthinking this. It doesn't matter if the cyborg chick is the villain or not, or that the cops are fascists or not.

The perspective of fictional characters does NOT represent the views of the creators. Disclaimers of that nature are fairly common for good reason it seems. This is FICTION afteral and complaining about the presence of evil in a fictional setting, is like complaining there's swastikas and nazis in a WW2 movie.
While fiction can go wrong, if it goes all political and the intended message is also backwards, at this point nothing suggests anything like that.

Just some shock value here. No big deal.
This stuff will probably sell and that's the bottom line.

This sexism in fiction complaint is one lost cause I don't mind seeing crashing against the cliffs.

I'm tired of people pretending that in the medium of videogames tone doesn't apply.

Well that's unfortunate for you, but unless you can prove some kind of sinister propaganda going on here, you won't get anywhere.
Boobs are allowed and boobs sell. You cannot fight this thing. Even if you boycott such games, there's a big enough audience that doesn't care or even loves this shit.

 

[JudgeGame]

You guys are overthinking this. It doesn't matter if the cyborg chick is the villain or not, or that the cops are fascists or not.

The perspective of fictional characters does NOT represent the views of the creators. Disclaimers of that nature are fairly common for good reason it seems. This is FICTION afteral and complaining about the presence of evil in a fictional setting, is like complaining there's swastikas and nazis in a WW2 movie.
While fiction can go wrong, if it goes all political and the intended message is also backwards, at this point nothing suggests anything like that.

Just some shock value here. No big deal.
This stuff will probably sell and that's the bottom line.

This sexism in fiction complaint is one lost cause I don't mind seeing crashing against the cliffs.

I'm tired of people pretending that in the medium of videogames tone doesn't apply.

Well that's unfortunate for you, but unless you can prove some kind of sinister propaganda going on here, you won't get anywhere.
Boobs are allowed and boobs sell. You cannot fight this thing. Even if you boycott such games, there's a big enough audience that doesn't care or even loves this shit.

That's not what I'm talking about at all. Tone is just the emotions that the creator is trying to convey through stylistic choices.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Okay I've read the article and most of this thread. I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry, all I know is my head hurts now.

On the article itself it seemed to try and raise some good points but is dragged down by some blatant factual errors, out of context examples and a confrontational tone which make me question the intent of this article. I feel that this article may be trying to provoke an angry reaction rather than facilitate a discussion on the issue.

 

[Kroxile]

very interesting; the article is basically telling gamers to grow some spine and stop thinking that criticizing sexism and juvenile behavior is somehow demanding that gaming be censored. For all the stock gamers put into the medium, they sure as hell don't take it all that seriously

I think its more that gamers think they're being edgy and cool or politically-correct good guys when on forums or chatting with other people.

There are real, true blue anti-gay groups out there, and real, true blue misogynists. Unsurprisingly, you usually find that they share a lot of common ground. Encounter them, read a little bit about their beliefs, and you will probably feel silly for calling misogyny or homophobia in places where it does not exist.

Also, this.

 

[Best of the 3]

Since I've read the whole of this thread so far I'll just say this.

The trailer did what it was meant to do. It showed a brief outlook of what's coming and left much to be answered. And yes, that's what it was meant to do. Questions lead to interest and intrigue, a need to find answers. This means looking further into what's upcoming. When this game comes closer to release, which could be 2-3 years time for all we know, then they'll show more cinematic which answer questions, gameplay footage, questions to the developers etc.

Nothing about it was unclear to me. The blades, the situation. All of it was easy to read, and I've never even heard of Cyberpunk 2077 until a few days ago, and never even knew of it's board game ancestry. This doesn't stop me from understanding, or at the very least, having a pretty good idea of what's going on.

All in all I didn't see anything wrong with this trailer. It worked for me, I'm excited for the release of this game and can't wait to hear more about it.

 

[DoPo]

On the article itself it seemed to try and raise some good points but is dragged down by some blatant factual errors, out of context examples and a confrontational tone which make me question the intent of this article. I feel that this article may be trying to provoke an angry reaction rather than facilitate a discussion on the issue.

I reached the same conclusion and just couldn't finish it - I got halfway through it. Well it's either that or the author didn't make the effort to make his intentions clear. It would hint at pretty bad composition and writing skills.