If You Are Going to Hate on a Game Company, Do It For the Right Reasons

[Thanatos2k]

I think in these two cases, the companies' statements are what garnered the controversy. Tomodachi Life had relationships between two men but Nintendo patched them out because they weren't "whimsical" enough. And Ubisoft made that stupid statement about how animating female characters was too much work. The moral of the story is that if you're not going to be inclusive, then you should keep your mouth shut.

Not true at all. Nintendo never "patched" it out - it was a bug in the first place that allowed it. It was never coded in. It was never in a released version of the game.

This misinformation still persists.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/9198-Tomopology-Life

I don't see how this contradicts anything I said. There was male-male marriage, then Nintendo got rid of it. I am aware it was a bug, but that doesn't make their first statement about gay marriage any better.

You are intentionally misconstruing their intent, implying that they added it and then took it away. They never added it. It was a bug. This bug caused other problems. From Day One their design was that characters could only marry the opposite gender. They did not fix the bug in order to "get rid of it" - they fixed the bug to fix problems it was causing in their game. The problems it was causing was not "gay marriage."

Dude, my whole point is that Nintendo stirred up controversy because of their dipshit statement that gay marriage wasn't "fun" or "whimsical." The actual order of events doesn't matter.

What statement? This one?

http://operationrainfall.com/2014/05/07/nintendo-stance-same-sex-couples-tomodachi-life/

Nintendo never said anything about gay marriage not being fun or whimsical. If that's the conclusion you drew you need to re-read what they said a couple times.

Yes, their original statement was kind of lame and their excuse was flimsy, but people have misinterpreted it beyond belief, as you yourself have shown us.

Bashing on Tomodachi Life wasn't legitimate to begin with.

Here's an inconvenient truth - gay marriage is not legal in Japan. Do you really think Nintendo was going to depict *illegal* activities in their game that was rated E for Everyone? Your problem isn't with Nintendo - it's with Japanese culture. Get that changed first, then you can rail on Nintendo.

Zelda games (all but two of which have E ratings) fully endorse destruction of property and theft of other people's money.

In a magical fantasy world where grass contains an infinite amount of cash, and destroyed property magically reassembles itself when you leave and reenter the room. It's not the same and you know it.

Ever notice how in video games and anime from Japan that they never EVER allow underage drinking? Often they'll go out of their way to even lampshade hang that they're doing it.

 

[Vault101]

[quote/]Neither did complaints about Lara Croft being in therapy[/quote]

wait....people complained about that?

 

[RTR]

We may not agree on much stuff, but at least for today, Yahtzee has my sword.

 

[blalien]

What statement? This one?

http://operationrainfall.com/2014/05/07/nintendo-stance-same-sex-couples-tomodachi-life/

Nintendo never said anything about gay marriage not being fun or whimsical. If that's the conclusion you drew you need to re-read what they said a couple times.

Yes, their original statement was kind of lame and their excuse was flimsy, but people have misinterpreted it beyond belief, as you yourself have shown us.

You're really splitting hairs here. These are the exact words of their statement:

"We hope that all of our fans will see that Tomodachi Life was intended to be a whimsical and quirky game, and that we were absolutely not trying to provide social commentary.?

What are we supposed to take away from that? I'm glad they issued a better apology and promised to include gay marriage in the next game, but come on, are you seriously denying that that is pretty offensive?

 

[AntiChrist]

Yahtzee talked about this in more detail in his most recent video on Youtube. I think the gist of it is the same as what I believe: That is, gender roles cannot have come from nowhere, they must be linked to our sexes biologically. However, society has exaggerated these roles, and developed individuals should be able to throw off the restrictions of society and biology to pursue their own interests.

Ah, I see what he's getting at now. Thanks for clarifying that.

 

[sXeth]

We'd love to hate you for your murders, Yahtzee, but they were so imaginative and twisted it's hard not to be in awe of you.

And those prostitutes had it coming anyway.

I think what would be good for gaming now would be for publishers to work more like major movie studios, having separate divisions for mainstream big budget stuff (Transformers, Call of Duty and so on) and smaller, artier projects made by auteurs trying to push boundaries (and hopefully win awards when we get a game version of the Oscars).

Ubisoft seems to be trying to do this. Child of Light and Valiant Hearts being the two main examples (to a lesser extent, some of their standalone DLCs seem to also follow the concept). Not necessarily that they're pushing boundaries, but they seem to be putting some effort into maintaining a mid-tier alongside the AC/Far Cry/Clancy trifectum of money-machines.

Yahtzee is speaking sense, as the topic goes. Blame UBI for cutting out the competition MP, not having the writing chops to make a 4 character story, or being steadfastly boring on the standard blueprint, but I wouldn't really consider them sexist for their oddball MP setup.

 

[roski]

"Hating some companies for the right's reasons"
As opposed to the "left's" reasons... Am I right?

I can't make that joke work though, can anyone help?
Should I use "leftists" or maybe "right-wing"?
I should know this, CAE exam in November.
I bet Yahtzee could make that joke work, though..

 

[RedDeadFred]

What's this? A voice of reason in the hurricane of rage? A lot of these are points I've brought up in posts on this issue.

I don't agree that what they are doing is okay, but it's a societal issue and they make lots of money because of it. If people really want change, they need to vote with their wallets. If enough people do that, companies will change since their first priority is always going to be profit. I'm sure plenty of them would actually like equal representation, but unfortunately (and not surprisingly), they like money more.

 

[Pogilrup]

What's this? A voice of reason in the hurricane of rage? A lot of these are points I've brought up in posts on this issue.

I don't agree that what they are doing is okay, but it's a societal issue and they make lots of money because of it. If people really want change, they need to vote with their wallets. If enough people do that, companies will change since their first priority is always going to be profit. I'm sure plenty of them would actually like equal representation, but unfortunately (and not surprisingly), they like money more.

Voting with wallets is easier said than done when those who still offer their wallets don't care for better representation of social minorities.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

Hang on hang on hang on...

No, the fact is, the lack of diversity may well be a result of big companies not wanting to take risks. And I'm not saying female-driven games would definitely be a risk, but if white-dude-driven games are bringing in the cash, then it is the nature of the soulless corporation to not try to fix what isn't broke. And why SHOULD they? It's not something they can do casually, experimentally; the jobs of hundreds if not thousands may depend on a game's success. Even more so with budgets being so ridiculously high these days. I don't think you can blame a corporation for keeping things safe and bland out of the desire to maximize its chances of continued existence. More to the point, I don't think you should be 'blaming' anyone.

You're saying that being paranoid about potentially losing money is a decent excuse for the bullshit that video game companies pull? Who are you and what have you done with Mr. Croshaw? I mean, you do realize that's the excuse behind the majority of things you've criticized games for doing, right? It sounds like the sort of words you'd put in a strawman's mouth only to respond sarcastically, "Oh right, how silly of me to forget; ten out of ten, then!"

The point you made about the online entertainment media being quick to throw out wild accusations of sexism, racism, etc. over nothing is right on the money, though. I've seen this happening over the last year or so in every medium; it's basically a combination of critics stumbling into the social-justice movement, being overcome with white/male/hetero/what-have-you guilt, and joining the fight without knowing where to draw the line; and other critics seeing how much attention those people are getting and jumping on the bandwagon. And maybe a handful of fuck-the-world types discovering a new excuse to vent their irrational hatred towards all of humanity that doesn't make them look like fuck-the-world types. (Incidentally, I realize that professional courtesy forbade you from mentioning your cohort by name, but we all know who you were talking about.)

Your guess that Unity was meant to be four slight variants on the same character is exactly what I figured too (Ever play Magicka? That's what it immediately reminded me of; of course, the hoods made it pretty obvious.) until Ubisoft's prepared statement made it clear that's not what they had in mind at all. And look, either what they said really is their excuse, or they're lying because they're just physically incapable of ever telling the truth. If it's the latter, then I can think of no more fitting punishment than taking them at face value. Let's not try to pretend that Ubisoft or their design decisions were defensible just because we can make up our own theories that they've already refuted, OK?

 

[Rebel_Raven]

I think Ubisoft has a STORY POINT for Ass Creed.
Now I only played 1 and 2, but I seem to remember them saying that only the *men* in that one family line get passed the genetic memories. So... how can you then play as a woman? Maybe women helped out a lot, but the character you play would have been a guy. Cause the really dumb sci-fi nonsense said so.

Assassin's Creed: Liberation's Aveline would like to have a word with you.

OT:
I'm gunna hate companies/games coz they teased me with inclusion, then basically said "screw you" in -2- games from Ubisoft, and a large refusal to acknowledge homosexuals in Tomodachi life (though it's easy enough to do as yahtzee suggested in his review which kinda takes the suck out of being left out.) though they promise to acknowledge them in the sequel (And with that, I doubt there will be a sequel, or nintendo will go back on their word. <.<) which helps.

Look, I'm not calling Ubisoft Misogynistic. Liberation, and Child of Light were nice. not full blown AAA games, but it's a -lot- better than a lot companies are doing. I'm just hating them for saying I was ever so close to letting me feel more invested in the character, then yoinking it away... TWICE.

Yes, I know homosexual relations were part of the game breaking bug in Tomodachi life, and fixing them removed the relationships, but they aren't even offering an optional patch to get it back in somehow. At least it's easy to make Miis look a lot like the opposite gender. They left that, which is nice.

Seriously, if I can't be mad about that, then you can get out of my world. <.<

Edit: Oh, I do have some loathing over the industry for being sexist (Some parts -are-.) and for hating the idea of having a homosexual protagonist (some do.). I don't blame all the industry, but there's too few bright spots for me to pretend the discriminatory behavior doesn't exist. If I can't be mad about that, then, well, you can GTFO out of my world.

 

[RicoADF]

For the record, I think this outrage was founded on misunderstanding. Unity seems to be doing the same thing Watch_Dogs does, that is, integrate the multiplayer seamlessly into the single-player story. So when you join the multiplayer, you're still playing as the story's protagonist, as are all the other human players. They take on slightly different appearances when appearing in someone else's game just so that you don't see four copies of the same dude running around. It's no more sexist than there being no option to play a female Aiden Pearce, or a male Lara Croft.

FINALLY!! I've been saying this the whole time but it seems to have been ignored by the main gaming press and all the players who were happy to jump on the hate train. Good to see someone doing real journalism and getting the facts straight for a change. This is why Yahtzee and Jim are my main sources of gaming commentary, they get the facts straight.

 

[RicoADF]

No, I'm going to hate on Ubisoft for sheer laziness. AC: Brotherhood had a diverse range of characters in multiplayer, and I'm not just talking gender, I mean size and shape. You had big people, skinny people, a range in the middle--you know, like how people are in real life. Unity's four MP protagonists are all the exact same guy. Same height, same build, same stance, same gait. Other than some bits of clothing and small variation in the chin and facial hair, they're identical.

So this is what the steeplechase pursuit of higher graphical fidelity has led to: devs are effectively palette-swapping player characters like they're sprites from the 8-bit era.

You don't seem to understand, you wont see 4 white males that look the same, you will see you playing as the white male and 3 other random looking assasins. There will be the diversity, you just wont pick how you look to others.

 

[ACman]

Oh dear.... Carrying water for Ubisoft's inexplicable and discriminatory laziness are we?


To those claiming that "It would be too much wooooork. Wah wah!" (Yahtzee included) for Ubisoft to animate female models.... There are animated models.... In the competitive multiplayer.

http://youtu.be/Ht2klK2LWkc?t=1m47s

So unless they've ditched those assets and have not included new female competitive multiplayer models (which would be probably worse) - the excuse that it was too much work doen't really hold water.




If the excuse was "But we want to maintain the narrative perspective (of being the designated generic, white, mid 30s, male protagonist) - because....." I don't understand any reasoning after the "because". When my narrative from the perspective of my genergic white male protagonist is being invaded by my friend's mirror-image protagonist the idea of narrative cohesiveness has disintegrated.



Why not just let people select one of the multiplayer models - that I assume are avaliable for the other multiplayer modes - before invading another person's story experience?

 

[RedDeadFred]

What's this? A voice of reason in the hurricane of rage? A lot of these are points I've brought up in posts on this issue.

I don't agree that what they are doing is okay, but it's a societal issue and they make lots of money because of it. If people really want change, they need to vote with their wallets. If enough people do that, companies will change since their first priority is always going to be profit. I'm sure plenty of them would actually like equal representation, but unfortunately (and not surprisingly), they like money more.

Voting with wallets is easier said than done when those who still offer their wallets don't care for better representation of social minorities.

Oh I know. This all comes back to the systemic issue as a whole. The sad truth is, the majority of buyers probably don't even have this stuff cross their minds when making purchases which is why this will keep happening. I'm sure we'll see a change eventually, but it's definitely not going to happen over night like a lot of people are wanting.

 

[weirdee]

While it is easy to criticize the more visible and messy components of a backlash, it is also easy to overlook the other lesson from this story, which seeks to question what we have to look forward to if the only choices that the supposedly all powerful big money players in the electronic gaming industry have now are the safe ones that don't bother to attempt accomplishing anything beyond treading water. Frankly, yelling back at the roaring tide is even less useful than attempting to find meaning from the ceaseless churning. If you want to promote the constructive conversation, spend an entire article writing about that instead of pointing out that there are loud people on the internet with misguided intentions.

I'm gonna take an indulgent moment here to lament the fact that a lot of people are agreeing with this article on the basis of assuming that you agree with them that everybody should shut about social issues forever because video games, or worse, that people need to be made more aware about how wrong certain people are about the issues they are trying to promote and use them as a reason as to why we should be shutting up.

 

[Fsyco]

What's this? A voice of reason in the hurricane of rage? A lot of these are points I've brought up in posts on this issue.

I don't agree that what they are doing is okay, but it's a societal issue and they make lots of money because of it. If people really want change, they need to vote with their wallets. If enough people do that, companies will change since their first priority is always going to be profit. I'm sure plenty of them would actually like equal representation, but unfortunately (and not surprisingly), they like money more.

Voting with wallets is easier said than done when those who still offer their wallets don't care for better representation of social minorities.

Oh I know. This all comes back to the systemic issue as a whole. The sad truth is, the majority of buyers probably don't even have this stuff cross their minds when making purchases which is why this will keep happening. I'm sure we'll see a change eventually, but it's definitely not going to happen over night like a lot of people are wanting.

That kind of reminds me of what MovieBob said last week, where the problem isn't really with the content creator but with the audience, and also what Yahtzee said in his Let's Drown Out about the 'silent audience'. Basically, Yahtzee was talking about how the majority of consumers of anything don't really leave much feedback, and that people who are really vocal are in a minority. So there might be a lot of buzz around something new and innovative and progressive, but a silent majority just doesn't want to try it for whatever reason, and so it sells like crap. His example was internet review shows, where the reviewer makes up characters and has plotlines and skits with them, and hears alot of positive feedback from his fans. But your average joe is turned off by it, and instead of saying so or leaving a dislike, they just stop watching. Viewership declines despite all the positive feedback, and the reviewer is left scratching his head wondering what the hell is going on. This is why you get alot of critical darlings that people rave about (like, say, Psychonauts) that don't sell all that well.

Although when applying that to video games, that gets trickier since marketing gets involved. Figures indicate that games starring women sell less, but they also don't get as much marketing behind them, since people think they sell less, so they spend less money on marketing them. It's kind of a vicious cycle, really.

 

[Casual Shinji]

You're saying that being paranoid about potentially losing money is a decent excuse for the bullshit that video game companies pull? Who are you and what have you done with Mr. Croshaw? I mean, you do realize that's the excuse behind the majority of things you've criticized games for doing, right? It sounds like the sort of words you'd put in a strawman's mouth only to respond sarcastically, "Oh right, how silly of me to forget; ten out of ten, then!"

That's sorta what I was thinking, too.

I mean, what's the point of this article exactly? To say that the AAA industry lacks diversive protagonists, because studios and publishers are allergic to risks due to the millions upon millions of dollars they stand to miss out on? Uhm... no shit?

When did anyone say Nintendo were homophobic for Tomodachi Life or that Ubisoft were sexist pigs for not incorperating female character options in Unitiy? I think the general consensus among the community here was that this state of affairs fucking sucks, and that gaming needs to get its shit in order if it ever wants to mature past puberty.

 

[Lono Shrugged]

Yahtzee, knowing when to put down the club and start making some glue out of the dead fucking horse...

Such a refreshing article

 

[srpilha]

It [feminism] is a poisonous dogma that's irrelevant and outdated in modern society and today does nothing but harm. I'm glad to note that its fading slowly and losing popularity as more and more people are alienated by its nonsense completely at odds with real life.

I don't wish to enter a debate about it anyway. I don't care about it at all, I hate that it's encroaching into sites I used to enjoy visiting regularly and would be glad to see it gone so we can get back to the real issues of games sucking and why. (snip)

Let me guess, you're a white cis-gendered heterosexual man with some reasonable (or even very good) education and no glaring financial problems, right? This is not an accusation, mind you, just a description. You're certainly not entirely responsible for most it, so no blaming here.

But notice that you're doing quite exactly what U-238 was criticizing in games and in society at large: you're dismissing serious issues as not being the "real" problem, mainly because they don't affect you directly and you can't see any relation between them and other problems which are closer to you, and/or because those issues haven't become so violent and clear-cut as to warrant immediate condemnation from you.

(In other words, and as it was present in Yahtzee's text, you're position is equivalent to "homophobia/misogyny as active hatred is a real problem, but just not considering gay people/women as equals, "passively" as it were, is not". BTW, the latter is homophobia/misogyny too.)

I get it that you may not at all be touched by sexism against women in all of its forms. Lucky you. It's still a very real problem and yes, minimizing it DOES make it worse.

"Why do feminists often fight more for women's rights than men's rights if they're about equality, then?", you may ask. That's because men *already* have lots of rights and humongous amounts of privileges. Many, many of these privileges oppress women and make our society a worse place for them than for men. So yeah, balancing things out does mean cutting some of those privileges back a bit. Tough luck.

If activism is about equality, you could also ask why there isn't a "straight pride parade", for instance. Except there is. On every other street, every day of the year.

So yeah, let's check our privileges, hm?