Gaming Journalists Make No Damn Sense

[Dreiko]

So Jordan Peterson or Dave Rubin? I alway wondered how they could call themselves intellectual when half their stuff is gobbligook

Rubin for sure, Peterson was not on tv much I don't think, I saw him more on internet things, and he was an actual professor and psychologist and so on, he was making money on things like Patreon from normal average people as opposed to getting Koch donations and what have you.

About the only time I ever saw Peterson on tv was when one of the people I am actually referring to was either interviewing him or also invited there, trying to "get" him, like that blond British lady who got her comeuppins in that one iconic interview. She didn't sound like she had one authentic opinion that whole time. That's the thing I'm describing, people officially on the payroll of the rich people who own the media corporations. And also Rubin.

 

[BrawlMan]

YouTube pseudo intellectualism 🥱

Dude has a point. Don't know what you're griping on about. Don't really give a rat's ass. Besides, there's a whole lot of wannabe intellectuals in the "professional" gaming criticism, just as much as on YouTube. I don't like or care for most YouTube game critics either. They are two sides of the same coin at this point.

While I liked GoW a lot more than this guy, I think the difference here is that DMC was outwardly scornful of its beloved past iterations when the reboot was pretty mediocre at best, whereas GoW at least doesn't remove from canon the past games while actively mocking them and it is a legit good game unlike DMC, and while I find being "ashamed" of Kratos for having "toxic masculinity" as being idiotic, it is still a believable thing that can happen so when I saw them going in that direction I just let them do their thing and actually judged how they handled it as opposed to form my opinion before letting them do their thing. It ended up working quite well for me, I didn't feel the need to see Kratos grow because the events of the game itself were compelling enough and not too related to his past anyhow.

Mostly this, though I apperciate that Kratos finally was taking responsibility for something, outside of the ending in 3. I may not have liked the stories for most of the old GoW games, but I would never happily abandon them just impress people who dislike or look down on others for enjoying video games.

I think the difference is that nobody really liked Kratos, people thought he was badass but he wasn't really likeable or beloved.

Unless you're this guy, some of my former co-workers, and certain friends from high school.

Eeeeeveryone liked Dante, everyone, outiside of the guys they got to make that cursed reboot lmao.

There's an YT user that hated Dante back in the old YT days. Granted, he started liking him enough around 2014, but he was one of the few, before it got "popular" to start shitting on Dante. Once DmC came out, nearly every "professional" felt to the need insult og Dante or act as if the games never had character growth or meaning. Or that good old, Japanaphobia for a lot of Japanese games. When 5 (and the Switch version of 3) came out, you had these critics calling the newest game trashy fun, or unfairly comparing 3 or to GoW4. These insecure assholes are so afraid and self-concious what their non-gaming peers think of them. You got people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s+ acting as if they are still in fucking high school. Trying to please Daddy Ebert and get his approval like he has the final word on gaming. It's fucking pathetic

 

[Agema]

So Jordan Peterson or Dave Rubin? I alway wondered how they could call themselves intellectual when half their stuff is gobbligook

Just as any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, any sufficiently advanced intellectual concepts are indistinguishable from gobbledigook.

Unfortunately this also means there are plenty of charlatans passing off gobbledigook as intellectualism to the uninitiated.

 

[Samtemdo8]

YouTube pseudo intellectualism 🥱

Thumbnail of some anime boy dabbing and GOW 4 Kratos who is a meme unto himself is certainly "intellectual"

 

[Samtemdo8]

Dude has a point. Don't know what you're griping on about. Don't really give a rat's ass. Besides, there's a whole lot of wannabe intellectuals in the "professional" gaming criticism, just as much as on YouTube. I don't like or care for most YouTube game critics either. There are two sides of the same coin at this point.




Mostly this, though I apperciate that Kratos finally was taking responsibility for something, outside of the ending in 3. I may not have liked the stories for most of the old GoW games, but I would never happily abandon them just impress people who dislike or look down on others for enjoying video games.


Unless you're this guy, some of my former co-workers, and certain friends from high school.




There's an YT user that hated Dante back in the old YT days. Granted, he started liking him enough around 2014, but he was one of the few, before it got "popular" to start shitting on Dante. Once DmC came out, nearly every "professional" felt to the need insult og Dante or act as if the games never had character growth or meaning. Or that good old, Japanaphobia for a lot of Japanese games. When 5 (and the Switch version of 3) came out, you had these critics calling the newest game trashy fun, or unfairly comparing 3 or to GoW4. These insecure assholes are so afraid and self-concious what their non-gaming peers think of them. You got people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s+ acting as if they are still in fucking high school. Trying to please Daddy Ebert and get his appeoval like he has the final word on gaming. It's fucking pathetic

That God of War video speaks to me as a guy that grew up with the older games.

 

[Agema]

These people are paid professionals, and these websites are businesses, yet somehow they have no professional standards.

Checking out reviews is like any other form of information seeking: find something reliable and trustworthy, don't just pick something off any old source. So note individual journalists whose opinion you have found to match your own (or at least be reasonable), favour institutions (websites, magazines, etc.) that are more likely to host more reliable and trustworthy reviewers.

Secondly, there's also always the point that a critic can make a criticism that the reader does not understand: many readers might interpret that as the reviewer being a moron. In fact, it's actually because the critic sees more than the review reader, or is looking at different perspectives.

Finally, part of the art of being a journalist is that there is an art to making the delivery of a review entertaining. I can go onto YouTube and watch a brilliant player explain how to play a game, and turn it off in a few minutes because it's just so dull. Or I can watch someone less competent do a less good job of getting through the game, but make it really entertaining and I'm more likely to last to the end.

 

[Dreiko]

There's an YT user that hated Dante back in the old YT days. Granted, he started liking him enough around 2014, but he was one of the few, before it got "popular" to start shitting on Dante. Once DmC came out, nearly every "professional" felt to the need insult og Dante or act as if the games never had character growth or meaning. Or that good old, Japanaphobia for a lot of Japanese games. When 5 (and the Switch version of 3) came out, you had these critics calling the newest game trashy fun, or unfairly comparing 3 or to GoW4. These insecure assholes are so afraid and self-concious what their non-gaming peers think of them. You got people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s+ acting as if they are still in fucking high school. Trying to please Daddy Ebert and get his approval like he has the final word on gaming. It's fucking pathetic

Oh yeah, those people sure did have stuff to say, I just never considered them as part of the "everyone" I was talking about, I was more talking about the actual people who played DMC, whom I grew up around from like, middle school up until the reboot. Those are the everyone.

The people who would hate on Dante only did so because gamers liked him, and they were in the same time period that their zeitgeist would cause them to produce like 20 gamers are dead articles, so I just chalk up their Dante antipathy to their general anti-gamer bubble they were dwelling in and not any real sentiment that they were tapping in.

Just as any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, any sufficiently advanced intellectual concepts are indistinguishable from gobbledigook.

Unfortunately this also means there are plenty of charlatans passing off gobbledigook as intellectualism to the uninitiated.

I never got why people found the things Peterson said confusing. I got what he described, I don't agree with most of it cause he has a very traditionalist bent to his values but it's not complex so I can't help but feel people aren't being genuine, or they're just dumb.

Like the "enforced monogamy" thing, he uses that term to describe how society enforces monogamy as a value through various cultural traditions and behaviors and so on but people were reacting as though he said we should conscript women to fuck incels so there won't be mass shootings.

It's just baffling and anyone who'd really earnestly take that away from such an explanation is definitely an idiot. You can disagree with an idea without needing to disparage it and strawman it to oblivion. I think it is this strawman of his views that sounds like gobbledigook to people, because that's what it's designed to sound like by those who put it out.

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[Dreiko]

Peterson was (I doubt he'll be making a return to the public, especially after he managed to not follow a third of his own rules and got himself addicted to benzodiazepines, then refused best practice treatment in preference of being sedated to not suffer withdrawal) a great rhetorician. In most discussions he could run laps around the people he talked to simply by virtue of how carefully he selected his words. His favorite tactic was to throw a bunch of volatile opinions out ("we should have women marry angry young men to stop them from becoming violent incels") and when people responded to his preposterous ideas he would then walk them back with further qualifiers until they were generally palatable ("They shouldn't be forced, but society should encourage monogamous relations as a means to uphold social norms"). He did this all the time and was great at flip-flopping between holding onto his most vitriolic bullshit when talking to his die hard fans and conceding enough ground that his opponents couldn't keep pressuring him when talking to them.

Just search around the internet and you'll find plenty of contradictory quotes from Peterson on pretty much all of his controversial topics. It was how he operated. It is also what makes discussing him so hard, because he was not only a traditionalist, he was very much in the reactionary alt-right with his ideas about equality, racism, social stratification etc. but he never held onto those beliefs when pressured, favoring instead to downplay them whenever challenged.

I don't consider that flip-flopping though, I consider it expanding on his points more. Basically I don't see those ideas as contradictory, I see them as merely more/less developed versions of the same position which requires time to develop hence is hard to do in a time-limited platform that gives you 2 minutes and not 2 hours to say something.

This is a case where I already disagree with something but I end up disliking the dishonest reaction people have to it even more because at least this guy is just stating his position and his reasoning and isn't trying to trick you.

On the other hand I think the people who want his position to be the simplest, most extreme form of his argument with no nuance would still be against him even if he only ever expressed the palatable version of it though.

 

[BrawlMan]

Oh yeah, those people sure did have stuff to say, I just never considered them as part of the "everyone" I was talking about, I was more talking about the actual people who played DMC, whom I grew up around from like, middle school up until the reboot. Those are the everyone.

I don't consider the game critics "everyone" either, but they sure as hell like to think so and say it out loud and proud. Trying to sell the narrative that DmC is some profound or misunderstood masterpiece, work of art. While the defensive edition improved a lot of gameplay mechanics and fixed most of my complaints, the story is still pretentious garbage.

The people who would hate on Dante only did so because gamers liked him, and they were in the same time period that their zeitgeist would cause them to produce like 20 gamers are dead articles, so I just chalk up their Dante antipathy to their general anti-gamer bubble they were dwelling in and not any real sentiment that they were tapping in.

That just makes them even more pathetic.

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[Drathnoxis]

What's an example of real intellectualism then?

Just take a look through my post history.

 

[Breakdown]

I am honestly done with Peterson, but it isn't hard to find plenty of examples of him starting out with a preposterous idea and ending up defending it as something else entirely. The part about forcing women to marry incels is what stands out the most, because he literally said that women should be "made to" marry them and then walked back on that far enough that it became some sort of general defense of the virtuous of monogamy.

I do get what you are coming at, but Peterson is a terrible example because of how much the guy waffled, squirmed and weasel worded his way around as to draw in angry, young men into his cult of personality but never stuck to his inflammatory rhetoric when confronted. Even Donald Trump is a better example, because that guy at least knows how to double down and a lot of people love to interpret everything he says as the next sign of the Apocalypse.

That just seems to be Jordan Peterson's style of rhetoric though. He starts off with a provocative statement to engage people, and then discusses the topic in greater depth, considering other perspectives and occasionally conceding ground.

The problem is people constantly take things he says out of context.

 

[BrawlMan]

That God of War video speaks to me as a guy that grew up with the older games.

By the way, I owe you apology and I must thank you for showing me this vid back in 2018. When you first posted it, I refuse to look at it and I blew you off. I didn't throw any insults, but I was not in the mood at the time for any more "hot takes" on God of War 4. This was all back on the V1 thread. I saw the video about a couple months later after you posted it. Wanted to tie up that loose end. Thank you.

 

[Dreiko]

That just seems to be Jordan Peterson's style of rhetoric though. He starts off with a provocative statement to engage people, and then discusses the topic in greater depth, considering other perspectives and occasionally conceding ground.

The problem is people constantly take things he says out of context.

Basically he embodies the ideal of "an educated mind can entertain an idea without embracing it" and people take his entertaining as him embracing the idea because it's politically convenient to them. I think his mode of communication is only really made to work in a classroom or therapy environment and is critically unsuitable for internet platforms and especially tv stations with time limits and limited attention spans.

A really open-minded person will actually entertain all ideas, not just the ones that good people have, because that's how we get to comprehend the bad people and maybe figure out what to do about them.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Checking out reviews is like any other form of information seeking: find something reliable and trustworthy, don't just pick something off any old source. So note individual journalists whose opinion you have found to match your own (or at least be reasonable), favour institutions (websites, magazines, etc.) that are more likely to host more reliable and trustworthy reviewers.

Secondly, there's also always the point that a critic can make a criticism that the reader does not understand: many readers might interpret that as the reviewer being a moron. In fact, it's actually because the critic sees more than the review reader, or is looking at different perspectives.

Finally, part of the art of being a journalist is that there is an art to making the delivery of a review entertaining. I can go onto YouTube and watch a brilliant player explain how to play a game, and turn it off in a few minutes because it's just so dull. Or I can watch someone less competent do a less good job of getting through the game, but make it really entertaining and I'm more likely to last to the end.

True, but im not really talking about reviews as much as im talking about those articles that come talking about whatever other nonsense in the games industry. Complaints about difficulty or complaints about character design. Things like that.

Though there are surely bad reviews as well.

 

[Samtemdo8]

By the way, I owe you apology and I must thank you for showing me this vid back in 2018. When you first posted it, I refuse to look at it and I blew you off. I didn't throw any insults, but I was not in the mood at the time for any more "hot takes" on God of War 4. This was all back on the V1 thread. I saw the video about a couple months later after you posted it. Wanted to tie up that loose end. Thank you.

Wow, it was 2 years ago I posted that?

But yes all the video needs to say about all this is that the game's industry has the memory span of a damn toddler along with Dishonesty.

 

[Houseman]

Basically he embodies the ideal of "an educated mind can entertain an idea without embracing it" and people take his entertaining as him embracing the idea because it's politically convenient to them. I think his mode of communication is only really made to work in a classroom or therapy environment and is critically unsuitable for internet platforms and especially tv stations with time limits and limited attention spans.

A really open-minded person will actually entertain all ideas, not just the ones that good people have, because that's how we get to comprehend the bad people and maybe figure out what to do about them.

I see a failure to do this a lot in my circles (including here, to a degree). Whenever a metaphor is brought up that compares something to something else, people focus on the comparison to the exclusion of everything else. For example, when talking about the concept of suffering, one might bring up an example about how a child's tantrum over something might appear silly to an adult, so our complaints might appear similarly silly to a god. The other person might say something like "DiD YoU JuSt cOmPaRe tHe hOlOcAuSt to a tOdDlEr CrYiNg oVeR SpIlT mIlK?!?!?!" and get so wrapped up in being offended that they miss the point entirely.

Just a shower thought.

 

[Gergar12]

I always play on easy mode, not because I can't on hard mode, but because I am lazy, I want to feel like a badass, and I don't want to think when playing the game. Granted the only time I played on hard mode was in Ace Combat 7 when I unlocked the F-22 in... easy mode.

But I don't hold it against devs if they want to exclude it, all games are works of arts, and easy mode requires balancing as well, and splits the dev's attention, it's more than just adjusting a few ints/numbers.

 

[Gyrobot]

There's an YT user that hated Dante back in the old YT days. Granted, he started liking him enough around 2014, but he was one of the few, before it got "popular" to start shitting on Dante. Once DmC came out, nearly every "professional" felt to the need insult og Dante or act as if the games never had character growth or meaning. Or that good old, Japanaphobia for a lot of Japanese games. When 5 (and the Switch version of 3) came out, you had these critics calling the newest game trashy fun, or unfairly comparing 3 or to GoW4. These insecure assholes are so afraid and self-concious what their non-gaming peers think of them. You got people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s+ acting as if they are still in fucking high school. Trying to please Daddy Ebert and get his approval like he has the final word on gaming. It's fucking pathetic

There is nothing wrong trying to gain the respect of Ebert as futile as it was as he held his belief that games wasn't art until his death as it inspired indie devs to aim higher with games like Neofeud, This is the Police and Actual Sunlight. And for the record there is nothing wrong with critics being Japanophobic around that time as Japanese games really were in a rut given how many mediocre titles or attempting to aggressively pander to western sensibilities were while the West has learned to find compromise between art and entertainment.

I still remember how I used to put Yakuza on a pedestal but realize how cheesy it was. Meanwhile Mafia 3 delivered a harsher crime drama than Yakuza.