Jimquisition: Neutered
- Thread starter Jimothy Sterling
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This kinda is the point, Your mad the game doesn't attract you, but even if they changed the game to attract you, you'd still never buy it. But if they did that, The market that is there might not buy the game if it doesn't have the *fan service* for them.JimB said:
Vanillaware isn't a big company, and JRPG's isn't a big market, but it is a dedicated market. If you build it, they will come, even if it sucks you'll still get some sales. They made a game on a low budget knowing that they are catering to a smaller market and when your gonna live or die depending on if you can make that market buy your game or not, That is the market you pander to and screw everyone else.
The only thing that matters is at the end of the day, it worked. It sold very well in japan and with all the buzz here and people pretty much all the defending and such that deep down it's a very good game, it will sell well here and in Europe and not just right off the bat, for a while to. JRPG's being a small niche market good world of mouth keeps sales coming for a while ala demon/dark souls, and spread out of the jrpg comfort zone.
Yes.JimB said:
There was a video about a year ago that have touched briefly on how media can influence people (8:44). http://blip.tv/foldablehuman/s2e15-sam-witwicky-6086238JimB said:
" Media is actually kinda bad at changing people's behaviors, but okay at changing the way people think about things, and good at changing their values".
To be fair she had ~$27k out of a $6k goal before the spamming happened (the spamming also used an image of her that didn't appear to be available anywhere before the spamming occurred implying that she likely had some hand in it, also there's the oddity of waiting until fairly late in the campaign to post the campaign video to YouTube and the chanspam starting more or less the instant the video went up alongside the initial video description containing a preemptive apology for the trolling that was about to be received. It's also noteworthy that other "feminism" related Kickstarters have generally not been subject to large-scale trolling campaign, before or after TvW). Given how far into her campaign she was and that successful Kickstarter campaigns tend to have pretty similar funding curves, she probably would have ended up with ~$40-55k if not for the chaspam and subsequent trolling.nuttshell said:
Yeah, the whole "Need to spend several grand on video games -- never uses footage from actually playing those games, steals footage from LPs without crediting them or even telling them instead" thing is kinda questionable.nuttshell said:
Why not go a step further and say every game down to it's content should be customisable by the player? Because 9 times out of 10 it would suck.Smeatza said:
How would classic games (like alex the kid, mega man or metroid) have become popular without characters that were pre-created for the player?
As a few gaming gurus on this website have already pointed out - sometimes it's nice to have something created for you. We are not all script writers, we cannot all create amazing characters - and besides if every character was customisable then the game would have to be generic enough to encompass any and all player choices. Customisable characters only really work in a select few genres of games. So what you really want is for every game to be a sandbox game or an RPG.
It's like wanting to create your own marvel characters every time you want to read a comic.
The world you wish for sounds like a distopia to me, with every game ironed into a customisable experience with legendary characters like lara croft vanishing under a blanket of player-made mediocrity.
What about resident evil? You can play as a male or female, with no disadvantages for being either - each was equally capable and neither were objectified or overly idealised. Did the game suffer because their sexuality didn't incorporate the entire spectrum? No. Did it suffer because it didn't pander to every different person on earth? No.
Games are just games, we don't need to identify ourselves through the character we are playing as. Customisation in an RPG or sandbox is fun but rarely consequential to the actual gameplay and although i don't see the harm in including a wide range of choices for the player during the customisation of the said character, i don't see how this has anything to do with gaming in general.
Look at, i don't know, Spelunky. Are you honestly trying to argue that the game would be in any way enhanced by changing the main character sprite to include all races, genders and sexualities? Of course it wouldn't. I understand the need for creativity when developers are making new game characters and more variety would be good, but it does actually stifle creativity rather than encourage it when gamers DEMAND that their gender/sexuality whatever be included in a game. Would games honestly be better if they all had "token" characters of each religion/gender/sexuality just to please the masses? Hell no.
Fuck me, only five-year-olds moan about having to play as Miss Scarlet when they wanted to be Colonel Mustard in Cluedo. Why? because it doesn't make a damn bit of difference to the actual game and adults know this. Why is it any different for computer games?
Games are just games, we don't need to identify ourselves through the character we are playing as. Customisation in an RPG or sandbox is fun but rarely consequential to the actual gameplay and although i don't see the harm in including a wide range of choices for the player during the customisation of the said character, i don't see how this has anything to do with gaming in general.
Look at, i don't know, Spelunky. Are you honestly trying to argue that the game would be in any way enhanced by changing the main character sprite to include all races, genders and sexualities? Of course it wouldn't. I understand the need for creativity when developers are making new game characters and more variety would be good, but it does actually stifle creativity rather than encourage it when gamers DEMAND that their gender/sexuality whatever be included in a game. Would games honestly be better if they all had "token" characters of each religion/gender/sexuality just to please the masses? Hell no.
Fuck me, only five-year-olds moan about having to play as Miss Scarlet when they wanted to be Colonel Mustard in Cluedo. Why? because it doesn't make a damn bit of difference to the actual game and adults know this. Why is it any different for computer games?
Because that step further is really hard to pull off.FireDr@gon said:
Times have moved on, adding customisation options to the player character's visuals have become easier and infinitely more varied and detailed.
Well I would only want to see character creators for the player character for one.FireDr@gon said:
And yes there are games where it would be detrimental. Someone else pointed out The Walking Dead as an excellent example of this.
But if we're only talking about visuals, would it make that much of a difference?
Let's take Tomb Raider as an example, would the latest installment in the series lose anything by allowing you to choose the colour of Lara's skin, hair and clothes? Or even if the game allowed you to play as Lars Croft?
Which I do.FireDr@gon said:
One man's dystopia is another man's utopia.FireDr@gon said:
I'm biased, I mainly play RPGs. The main reason I buy the Smackdown vs. Raw games is for the awesome character creation system.
I do realise there's a great demand for pre-designed, or pre-written characters. I imagine that's the reason DA2 shifted over to the Mass Effect style PC from the traditional style. But I thought that was at great detriment to that series.
Smeatza, Although i stand by your opinion that character creation and increased variation thereof would enhance certain game genres (such as RPG and sandbox) your statement that it would improve all games seems wrong. The point i made about the marvel characters in comics is that they define well thought out, deep and interesting characters (most of the time!) and we wouldn't have the iconic characters that we have today if we hadn't handed the reigns over to other people. If iron man (for example) looked different for everyone, there wouldn't be an image that everyone could instantly recognise and relate to. It may be more endearing and likeable to one person, but no-one else is going to know that character is iron man. I'm bad at explaining myself sometimes, i hope that made sense... If i put it another way, it's like you're reading a novel, and every time you read a description of a character, you put a line through it and biro in whatever you felt like - it just wouldn't work.
I honestly don't care if people want to create whatever custom character they want in RPG's and sandbox games, because they're designed to account for that customisation. To force every game to account for player customisation though - well, how would you make, say - heavy rain, to incorporate even just a small range of player character variations? You would have to remake the entire game, plot and all.
I propose to you, If it doesn't make a difference what skin/hair colour lara croft has - why ask the developers to spend their already limited resources on giving people a wider choice? Diverting these resources could negatively impact the game in other areas, why waste them on something that, ultimately, doesn't matter?
And also, what's with this "i can't identify with the main protagonist unless they're the same as me" attitude? We don't demand this kind of lip service from books or TV why demand it from video games? Are we all so insecure about our own identities that we fucking forget who we are if the main character isn't our fucking doppleganger? For the record i'm a guy, and i didn't NEED to relate to lara smegging croft to enjoy the game, nor did i spend the whole time oggling her pixellated ass or "bewbs".
Oban - you posted above me - right on! That's exactly where i'm coming from too (only you said it way better!)
I honestly don't care if people want to create whatever custom character they want in RPG's and sandbox games, because they're designed to account for that customisation. To force every game to account for player customisation though - well, how would you make, say - heavy rain, to incorporate even just a small range of player character variations? You would have to remake the entire game, plot and all.
I propose to you, If it doesn't make a difference what skin/hair colour lara croft has - why ask the developers to spend their already limited resources on giving people a wider choice? Diverting these resources could negatively impact the game in other areas, why waste them on something that, ultimately, doesn't matter?
And also, what's with this "i can't identify with the main protagonist unless they're the same as me" attitude? We don't demand this kind of lip service from books or TV why demand it from video games? Are we all so insecure about our own identities that we fucking forget who we are if the main character isn't our fucking doppleganger? For the record i'm a guy, and i didn't NEED to relate to lara smegging croft to enjoy the game, nor did i spend the whole time oggling her pixellated ass or "bewbs".
Oban - you posted above me - right on! That's exactly where i'm coming from too (only you said it way better!)
I was aware of the first round of spam without any significant response. I thought there was a second round of spam lined up with when the video got posted on YouTube, though (hence my referring to the $27k number, since that's where her funding leveled off at after the initial rush of donations)?defskyoen said:Afaik that's inaccurate, the spamming/advertising by her or her crew happened long before she had her money on the first and second day of the campaign (May 17 and May 18).
See here for instance, it even contains the numbers of the KickStarter campaign at that current point: http://archive.foolz.us/v/thread/139813364
They didn?t really bite, I especially love this post:
She had ~$27k about 2 weeks later into the campaign at the point she posted her YouTube video (on June 4):
It's even better than that -- she used to have comments open but moderated on her videos, until people started calling her out for blocking well written criticisms that weren't trivial to disprove or use as a demonstration of "the problem." That was when she first started blocking comments altogether, and as you said the kickstarter video is the only one she didn't have comments disabled on (and if you wayback it, you can see her original video description where she pre-apologizes for trolling that hadn't happened yet).defskyoen said:
I would honestly love to see her engage in an actual debate on the topic, though I expect she'd utterly fail it might as least be like a train wreck -- it's terrible but you can't look away.
Step 1. Start kickstarter campaign.defskyoen said:
Step 2. Manufacture victimhood and draw attention to it.
Step 3. Profit.
Yeah, that one was pretty awful too. It's another one for which wayback is useful for demonstrating how shady the whole thing was. About midway through they completely rewrote the entire pitch and the entire background, funny how the role of the brothers just kind of completely changes all of a sudden, for example. Not to mention that Kickstarter was for things that Kickstarter TOS doesn't allow Kickstarters to be for, and reporting it as such was grounds to have your account suspended, as was linking any press stories that discussed the shady side of the project and who was behind it on the project comments.defskyoen said:
Jim pretty much took the words right out of my mouth, especially when it comes to being aware of what kind of language we use to discus problems or issues in games.
I like to think that rather then trying to change the sort of expressions one uses in order to avoid offending people, it's more like a personal challenge to yourself to be more aware of the unconscious process of language. I'm not interested in telling people not to use certain words, but sometimes drawing attention to them can change a person's idea of them being "normal"
I like to think that rather then trying to change the sort of expressions one uses in order to avoid offending people, it's more like a personal challenge to yourself to be more aware of the unconscious process of language. I'm not interested in telling people not to use certain words, but sometimes drawing attention to them can change a person's idea of them being "normal"
Okay, the biggest problem here is that Saints Row IV makes your character's identity as a individual, not a character or figure, completely irrelevant. You are still a psycho leader with some remaining humanity no matter how you look like.
That just doesn't work the moment you need the story to revolve the person as an individual.
In games like say No More Heroes, this is nigh-impossible to do the same thing.
Travis HAS to be at least a horny but physically capable male moron who is capable of loving total sociopaths to get the same sense of themes.
If you want a more serious example, Walking Dead with Lee's conflicted faith in his parenthood of Clementine doesn't work at all the same way most of the time if he were female, had kids, or was physically talented from the start.
Tied for the 2nd biggest problem is that there's the assumption that creativity = good, inclusive = creative, and creative/inclusive = fun.
Jim, I honestly think you're at a point where your videos just further polarize opinions towards you and your point.
That just doesn't work the moment you need the story to revolve the person as an individual.
In games like say No More Heroes, this is nigh-impossible to do the same thing.
Travis HAS to be at least a horny but physically capable male moron who is capable of loving total sociopaths to get the same sense of themes.
If you want a more serious example, Walking Dead with Lee's conflicted faith in his parenthood of Clementine doesn't work at all the same way most of the time if he were female, had kids, or was physically talented from the start.
Tied for the 2nd biggest problem is that there's the assumption that creativity = good, inclusive = creative, and creative/inclusive = fun.
Jim, I honestly think you're at a point where your videos just further polarize opinions towards you and your point.
I kind of agree with his argument. I like to think of diversity as a sauce like any other, just a different flavor and we could use a little more of it. I think what people are afraid of is the chef(corporate gaming) deciding to pour that sauce on everything like it's a secret special sauce like they're apt to do because they suck at their job.
Some people in this thread seem to be a bit too all or nothing about this.
Perhaps Jim is being taken a bit too litterally.
There's room for all kinds of games in the gaming industry. That said, not every game needs Gender Select, or a female character option, BUT, the industry needs to mature into a media that welcomes many kinds of gamers and be more common about it. It needs to stop relying on the default white guy that's around 30, and branch out more into other ethnicities, and the other gender. I know they -can- do this.
Samus, Lara Croft, and pretty much every other memorable female protagonist we remember fondly are likely creations of guys.
We've seen a handful of assorted ethnicities in gaming, but I don't think we've seen enough.
I mean am I really to believe bullshit like Naughty Dog can't make a decent female protagonist? Or that Rockstar with it's writing team, and a taste for the controvercial can't make a female lead in GTA?
Honestly, Jim has a somewhat unique perspective on this. How often has a game starred a character that had Jim's build?
Saints row 2, 3, and 4 don't give a damn about what you look like, it empowers you to play all the same. As offensive as some of the jokes in the game are, the game lets you in on them with a more relateable character, not just in how the character looks, but how they sound, too. The game has 7 voices that you can pick from. 4 male voices (including the more self-aware joke voice of Nolan North) and 3 female voice, and pitch alteration!
That's part of the beauty of the series.
No, not every game, needs to go that far, but they can damn well TRY to be more inclusive more often than the industry allows!
Perhaps Jim is being taken a bit too litterally.
There's room for all kinds of games in the gaming industry. That said, not every game needs Gender Select, or a female character option, BUT, the industry needs to mature into a media that welcomes many kinds of gamers and be more common about it. It needs to stop relying on the default white guy that's around 30, and branch out more into other ethnicities, and the other gender. I know they -can- do this.
Samus, Lara Croft, and pretty much every other memorable female protagonist we remember fondly are likely creations of guys.
We've seen a handful of assorted ethnicities in gaming, but I don't think we've seen enough.
I mean am I really to believe bullshit like Naughty Dog can't make a decent female protagonist? Or that Rockstar with it's writing team, and a taste for the controvercial can't make a female lead in GTA?
Honestly, Jim has a somewhat unique perspective on this. How often has a game starred a character that had Jim's build?
Saints row 2, 3, and 4 don't give a damn about what you look like, it empowers you to play all the same. As offensive as some of the jokes in the game are, the game lets you in on them with a more relateable character, not just in how the character looks, but how they sound, too. The game has 7 voices that you can pick from. 4 male voices (including the more self-aware joke voice of Nolan North) and 3 female voice, and pitch alteration!
That's part of the beauty of the series.
No, not every game, needs to go that far, but they can damn well TRY to be more inclusive more often than the industry allows!
Creepifying read there on Sarkeesian and this Susan Wilson...
Yes, of course. They are just terrible examples. In TV and VG you can find diversity but the vast majority is just terrible. These examples mostly represent tiny fractions of the world. If a child bases it's moral reasoning on these things, it's simply narrow-minded. Now I know white, privileged, straight men have made these things difficult to escape but I won't let them have all the responsibility.JimB said:
You are right, I did a bad job there. Also, I didn't become a bully, a plumber or have a need to choose my romantic interests on an idea of a damsel in distress. Identities really don't work like that.
I'd like that.
1: You were the one defending the practice of pre-emptively trying to counter her arguments in previous comments, now you say that defending them in a general sense is viable? No, I disagree, you need to wait for what someone actually says before you drag out the tired, pre-baked ready defences.Father Time said:
2: Okay then... how many people on the internet NEED to make money from their content? It's entirely possible the kickstarter was a way of supporting herself while she took time off from her real work to do that research. Again, I've seen people kickstarting for all manner of things, you don't have to donate/approve, but what does saying they don't have to do that even accomplish?
3: Not quite, but it's a warning sign, if you know yourself not to be sexist then why get in such a tizzy about claims that some people in your community are? And if you enjoy a game and think someone is mistaken in their conclusions about it, then be civil in your rebuttals, there's a proper way to show disapproval or disagreement, and again, we're not talking about those that were debating intelligently on the topic, we're talking about those that were screaming obscenities, I think it's fairly safe to say people whose first resort was that kind of behaviour didn't have any worthwhile input into the discussion.
4: But then were the majority attacking her for a GOOD reason? She doesn't have any actual power to take away allegedly sexist games, nor has she even been saying "this game is sexist and should not have been made", so why all the vitriol? What, indeed is the point of attacking her like that? So, when you take away the people disagreeing with her and trying to have a meaningful discussion about it, what percentage of commenters do you believe would remains?
5: Subjective yes, but there are certain trends, patterns and fairly broadly accepted logic, and if you manage to offend say... roughly half of humanity, I think that's a margin of subjective opinion worth paying attention to. If we refused to change offensive things because they're only offensive to some people rather than 100% of them, then blackface would still be okay, among so many other things we now have the collective insight to realize are not cool.
6: So? It's still the type of game that attracts the frat boy demographic to play the multiplayer endlessly and nothing else, I must admit I don't know how much online douchiness was thrown back and forth when Halo was still being played by the masses, but it falls into the same general sphere of gaming.
7: I'm not saying there aren't plenty of games out there that aren't modern military shooters or otherwise multiplayer focussed shooters, just that shooters have risen to a disproportionate prominence in the community, in how we seem to the outside, in how people who play only those games seem to think the community should be.
Inclusion and exclusion are very different things. Dragons crown had both women with huge boobs and women who did not have huge boobs. Those objecting to it were largely objecting to the inclusion of women with huge boobs, and demanding that they be excluded. Similarly, those objecting to Ivy from Soul Calibur were demanding that women with big boobs be excluded, not that women with small boobs be included, because women with small boobs were already included.Jimothy Sterling said:
Generally what the people objecting to you, Jim, are objecting to is not the demand for inclusion, but the demand for exclusion.