Worth Reading - 05/24/2013

It's real shit how game developers are now attacked for putting anything remotely politically incorrect in their games. Talk about stifling creativity. Censoring those who actually want to express themselves about race, sex or violence, in any way they choose, is not going to make the problems go away. I'm beyond tired of the no fun allowed brigade intimidating anyone who doesn't parrot their opinions as fact. It is truly regressive and abhorrent that the up-its-own-ass games journalism sector won't defend basic rights to freedom of expression from those clearly trying to suppress it. Fuck them and everyone living in the delusion that your rights end where my feelings begin.

For an example of how this isn't a one-way street, I recall back in Call of Duty: World at War the killing of dogs made me extremely uncomfortable. But I did not take to the internet to harass the developers for "normalizing animal cruelty." The cancer in this industry, largely represented in this week's Worth Reading, have way too much credibility and power for essentially doing absolutely nothing except bitch about video games they generally play at a casual level. What's perhaps most idiotic is the following these loons have from the fringe, a vocal minority if ever there was one.

Hey man it's all well and good to defend Kotaku from the dumb arguments Marcus Beer was making but let's not lose focus of the fact that Kotaku is the kind of place that posts vapid articles trying to drum up outrage over a children's game by comparing the censorship of anime butts to the non-censorship of one of the greatest and most influential pieces of artwork of the renaissance.

@threepi said:

South Park has a long history of being preachy when it suits them and then throwing down some regressive BS when it's time for a laugh. Sometimes they wander into Family Guy territory (as in this joke), where it's just irony and shock value but nothing funny or clever or good.

@truthtellah: I'm just glad that when I see a Totilo article, it's not an article that one might often associate to a typical Kotaku article before he came in. The article where he addressed the AC4 leak where he showed a lot of transparency as to what they do and what they did in that situation despite the fact that there was a conflict of interest, made me more or less trust some of the articles that has come out of there since then but usually just the Totilo penned articles. :)

@sunjammer: Agreed.

I think that generally her games and her desire to spark discussion in the gaming community at large is wonderful. But, her attitude toward anyone who has the slightest disagreement with her is appallingly childlike. She regularly condemns people in the games industry without actually looking into what they really said and/or their reactions and explanations to what they said. Plus her book was filled with odd factual inaccuracies, but whatever.

Again, I have nothing personally against her and generally think she is a force of good in the video game community, but I do think that she should self analyze a bit. She and her friends have a crass, vulgar, and silly way of speaking to each other (which I'm fine with, I do the same with my friends) but the moment she hears/reads someone else's sarcasm that she doesn't like, she and her many twitter friends will dogpile on them.

I liked Anna Anthropy's games a lot more before I started reading the shit she writes.

"I'm really good at luring gamer nerds in, then surprising them with a discussion about gender," she says with a sly smile. "I think making things that look like video games and play like video games and are very 'video gamey' video games is a really good way to trick people into becoming more enlightened, educated human beings."

You just tricked me into never playing one of your games.

Thanks for linking the Sonic Xtreme article, Tricky. That game is so fascinating... even if it did look pretty fucking terrible.

In regards to the whole Shadow of the Eternals thing, I'm actually glad that it's so far behind on funding. Crowd funding cannot support multi-million dollar projects. If this had succeeded, other large scale developers would follow suit. Keep crowd funding for the people who actually need it, the indie developers. Not developers that are completely capable of finding investment elsewhere.

If I hadn't watched Space Brothers I would totally have skipped over that ISS video. It is very awesome to learn about astronauts as real people living and working in space.

In regards to the Kotaku stuff, I'll be completely honest: a few years ago there was a whole stream of false, inflammatory articles on the 'death' of starcraft 2 and esports in general. They were clearly written to create a huge argument in the comment section and draw in page views, and contained not only the writers personal feelings on the subject (in a NEWS story) but also had out-right lies about viewership of major events like Dreamhack or MLG. They may have changed since then, but the steady stream of articles about their link-bating since doesn't engender much confidence in me.

@

From the little I remember, I do not recall Shadow Warrior at every turn normalizing racism and sexism. To be honest I only played the shareware demo, so maybe it was top heavy that way for the full game. I do remember the skinned cat in the kitchen, and I did not think that funny. But otherwise I agree in sentiment with threepi, at least for a Shadow Warrior game we have not even seen yet! Well, except for the blood and bodies in the trailer.

But if it happily showed what happens to Raccoon Dogs for their fur, I would not buy the game, granted. So again are we talking about the tradition of parody in an upcoming game, or an event that occurs in real life?

I have been looking for an entertaining Firefighting game for ages, and the one you shared is awesome! Thank you for sharing! It's now on our station computer and everyone is playing it!

@patrickklepek Would you be at all interested in someone shooting a download link for Yume Nikki your way?

No.

Other than Android, iOS is the most open "game" platform. The ability to self publish content and have it go up in the iTunes store beats out the flexibility of Steam. Apple's requirements are extremely lax (for better and for worse), and rarely ban games based on content. Their banning of controversial games is extremely trivial compared to the three console makers.

Yes. Obviously. Not only is that not funny, it's racist, it's mean-spirited and it's fucking LAAAZY comedy. But expecting anything but gross, lazy "comedy" from South Park is asking too much, I suppose.

I'm not sure those particular criticisms are as relevant today. I do think it's fair to not want to sift through lesser content to get to better content, but it's easier than ever to just find what you want to check out. I wouldn't ever suggest that Kotaku is a site for everyone, but it has its certain appeal. Though, for me personally, my enjoyment of other commenters on the site has been the backbone of why I still visit there at all.

As far as those specific complaints, I'll say this.

• This is a criticism I'd agree with. While I wouldn't say it's all shit, a decent amount of content is not really important. Like trailers and little press releases.
• I rarely, if ever, see Tim Rogers posts anymore. If his linkedin profile didn't indicate that he still contributes to them, I wouldn't even know that he does. He doesn't have anywhere near the presence he once had.
• Thankfully, this has improved -a lot-. I have been a champion for Kotaku commenters for a long time now, and I agree that, a few years ago, things were a lot worse. I did not appreciate how the Gawker mentality against commenters hurt the site. Fortunately, Kotaku has gone in a good direction since Totilo came in. He has recognized how much Kotaku commenters can contribute, and there is even a dedicated sister site to Kotaku called Talk Amongst Yourselves which allows commenters to create articles which are occasionally highlighted on Kotaku proper. Commenting is also improved, with much more acceptance of opposing viewpoints. Totilo really seems to have changed the tone, and having talked to him myself, I think he has been big in steering the site in a good direction.
• I would say those creepier articles are relatively down. Their Japanese and Chinese contributors provide more interesting content, even if it is sometimes wierd as well. Brian Ashcraft seems to have improved a bit since settling down with his wife, and while he still does enjoy weirder stories from Japan, it's a lot less creepy. Now, it's more like just fun oddities or silliness.
• There has been a bit of a shift on this, as well. Totilo really does seem to believe in professionalism, but he does try to strike a balance when it comes to the tone. Their bigger push on looking at games seriously has led to a decent push for women in gaming and social issues within games, but they also think it's alright to just have fun with games. So, it's more like people that take gaming seriously but still have a sense of humor. And as mentioned above, writers don't just enable bad habits in commenters anymore. I'd say they're not too different from GB commenters; though, maybe with a tad less cynicism.

Now, I can understand still choosing to go elsewhere for gaming news, but I think it's an alright place to go if you can get through some of its rough spots. Though, that can be said of most sites. Just gotta browse at your own discretion. Different sites for different folks. :)

Yes.

yes

I was referring to the fact that they are all within a 6 hour time frame. from 6:30 am ( Exactly ) to 12pm. And those were only the ''click bate'' If they are putting out an article every hour then how much time can they really be spending on the articles?

I'm not going to defend the Annoyed Gamer piece; I find Beers full of himself, and in general refuse to take any internet personality that markets him or herself with the line "________ Gamer" seriously. I don't care if you're annoyed, irate, incensed, pissy, edgy, sexy, or whatever.

That aside, regardless of what other reasons others might have for beating up on Kotaku, I have my own, and I'm going to stick to them. They employ some truly horrendous writers on their staff; Luke Plunkett alone is one of the single worst so-called-journalists working in the industry today. I can't imagine him being employable at any publication that isn't owned by Gawker (save perhaps Polygon since his original Kotaku boss now works there).

Their 'throwing shit up on the site and seeing what sticks" mentality lowers the quality of their content overall and makes it harder to take take their content that's actually thoughtful and well-written seriously because those articles are like islands in a sea of shit. I should note that it's been years since I've intentionally visited the site, other than to take bait like Schreier's and read what people are complaining about so I can be at least informed enough to form a valid opinion of my own (then I close my browser in disgust for going there).

Here's what I recall from the days when I used to visit Kotaku on a regular basis:

• The same general content-to-quality ratio as exists today (i.e.: islands in a sea of shit).
• The rambling incoherence of Tim Rogers being mistaken for some sort of deep commentary (I guess? I still don't understand why they let that clown write for them. Certainly not for his complete lack of skill as a writer.)
• The general feeling that the staff treated their readers as plebians, with a promotion start system based on the whims of what the staff found amusing more than informative. God help you if you express an opinion contrary to or attempt to correct certain staff.
• Weird, creepy articles. Did you know that Aya Brea is thirty-eight years old in The 3rd Birthday? Did you? Let me tell you this in an article based on this one fact alone in three paragraphs with an intensely weird, obsessive focus.
• A general atmosphere of a frat boy mentality completely lacking in any manner of professionalism, where the writers seem free to just write whatever the fuck they want without consequence while enabling those readers that worship their shenanigans.

Eventually, I just had enough of their bullshit. Kotaku has a long, long, long way to go in suggesting to me that they've changed in any way for the better, and Schreier being a dick to someone and then using the reaction for his own gain doesn't help.

In my opinion. I think Kotaku sucks. I think they like to get clicks by doing spoilers and trying to create controversy where there is none.

Wow, Gimmick! looks/sounds incredible

The thing that gets me about that Shadow Warrior deal is similar to the Syndicate and OG Xcom reboots: Why the fuck are you bothering with an IP if you're not working it's memory or shouldn't? This fucking industry, I swear.

Also, fuck yeah, Mr. Gimmick!

Poe's law.

So when South Park's Mr. Kim misprounces "City Wok" as "Shitty Wok" and Cartman dons large fake teeth, squints, and wears a conical hat, that's just normalising racism right? And they should be taken to task for that?

it's not parodying sexism and racism, it's normalising it. it isn't explicitly denouncing it, it's using it as a feature. also, it isn't funny at all

I'm disappointed at the removal of the humor in Shadow Warrior. People don't seem to be able to differentiate between actual racism and a parody of racism. At some point the stereotypes go so over-the-top into the level of the absurd that you can't take it seriously as racism. It's akin to the fake trailer in Grindhouse by Rob Zombie, Werewulf Women of the SS. Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu is a joke, not actual racism. Women with large breasts and ample cleavage in Nazi uniforms is a joke, not actual sexism.

I had a firefighter game for the Game Boy, Mr. Rescue reminds me a bit of that.

Why have I not heard of Gimmick before? I'm even Scandinavian!

Another great worth reading. I will miss Anthony, no more turtle or star wars talk on Up at Noon now :(

I'm gonna miss Anthony Gallegos. Brap Brap.

Did you even read the previous tweets? He's talking about it in the context of putting stuff (or publishing for you cool kids) on there. Anybody can do it.

Every single Twitter user I've ever talked to uses it solely to follow people they're interested in, not to talk to their friends. Twitter is basically useless without having a lot of followers, and people who aren't celebrities or who produce internet content don't have people interested in following them. There are better ways to communicate with groups <10 people. That twitter article is flawed in the most basic way.

Oh, I'm SO glad Patrick wasn't just posting a link to Marcus Beer's absolutely atrocious video and instead to a piece calling him out on the crap he pulled.

Not only was it gross to see him berate another games journalist for the exact same stunt he pulls for a living (I mean, he calls himself "Annoyed Gamer", and lives up to that name), but the stuff he called out was just weird, either because Hernandez hadn't done what he was saying she did or because the stuff he criticised was so off the mark.

The article Patrick links breaks it down pretty well, but it skips the one moment that made me cringe really hard and vow to never click on his content again: He's talking about the complaints about Sony not having women on-stage. Fair enough, one can believe that Sony just didn't think of it or that the way their current corporate layer is aligned meant there weren't any naturally lined up (which is a different problem that many corporations have).

BUT.

But then Beer presents his alternate scenario, why he thinks this is trolling and Sony couldn't win in the eyes of Patricia Hernandez.

Because "if Sony had turned around and put a hot girl up there, an atractive woman in a tight outfit, looking amazing who delivered her stuff and delivered her stuff brilliantly, we would have seen an article saying 'Oh, they only put her up there because she has big boobs'"

Ew. Eeeeeeew. The implication, if you're keeping track, is that if Sony had put a woman on stage, it would have been a model. Because women are models, get it? They're not game developers or executives or producers or designers, get it? Or maybe he thought that they are those things, but that had the woman been attractive, the commentary she would have garnered would have been about her looks. From Patricia Hernandez. Right.

Also, as a secondary cringe-worthy thing about that sentence? Note the implication that an attractive Sony exec or developer on stage would have been wearing "a tight outfit". For the record, the two female Microsoft execs that spoke on their conference were wearing a suit and a denim jacket, I think. That may be the one thing nobody has complained about yet.

Gah. It's one thing to hear that shit on comments. Commenters are commenters, there's a degree of bullshit that is (unfortunately) expected, but as I watched that video from a guy that does this professionally I was shifting in my seat. It was really unpleasant, and I only made it through because I kept hoping he was going to tone it down, or claim it had all been a joke before it was over.

There are definitely things that keep it clinging on. Plus, people like an easy go-to symbol of their frustrations. Especially on the Internet. Its ties to Gawker don't help, of course, as it is an unabashed tabloid. But there really is a big difference between what Kotaku actually is and what some people perceive it as.

And the reasons for harping against it have changed off and on over the years. Heck, the loudest criticism I've heard over the last year has simply been that they're too liberal. That they seem to care too much about issues surrounding women in videogames. They've made a big push for more acceptance of LGBT gamers and games that appeal to a more diverse audience. Which all feel more like areas of possible disagreement, not reasons to trash them. And for all the criticism around click-bait articles, most of the examples given are usually articles that don't even garner as many clicks as rudimentary trailer articles. A few weeks back, someone made a big stink here on Giant Bomb about some article that they alleged was horrendous and just out to get views with its headline, but when I looked at it, it was one of the least viewed and lowest commented articles that day. And that's not a rare example when it comes to really clickbaity sounding articles, as most people are not half as dumb as many critics seem to suggest. Topics worth interest generally get more interest.

Also, as the Annoyed Gamer article mentions, contrary to popular belief, Kotaku writers are almost all salaried workers who don't get more money for specific articles exploding with views. People often allege quick cash in articles, but it doesn't even make sense with the reality. To me, the most reasonable criticism is that a lot of their content is blips, trailers, press releases, or simple fluff surrounding their more substantial articles and commentary. That's a fine enough reason for someone to possibly prefer looking elsewhere. But the reality is that they're hardly alone in that. And most of the enduring criticisms of Kotaku are really just frustrations people have with gaming media in general.

@truthtellah: I know it's tired, but people wouldn't keep bringing it up if there wasn't some truth to it. People can defend Totilo's stewardship of Kotaku and Jason's better efforts all they like, but the site has a reputation for being the gaming equivalent of a trashy supermarket tabloid for a reason.

I can see what Leigh was saying in her post but the last line was unnecessarily scathing towards gamers like me, whether it be true or not. I honestly don't like the way she writes. She brings up valid points but her attitude always turns me off from her articles.

But that's not what he was talking about. He was just alleging click-baiting articles with click-baity headlines, and of the many articles out there that could have possibly been pointed to, he chose poor examples. And the linked to article specifically addresses these complaints.

It's just so tired.

@dagbiker: I don't understand what's wrong with any of those headlines.

The exchange with Kamitani was predicated on Schreier's initial baiting idiocy in calling Kamitani a fourteen-year-old for the way he designed the Sorceress. It's debatable whether or not Kamitani crossed a line himself in his artistic retort, but his apology was also far more sincere and far less self-serving than Schreier turning around and milking a self-made "controversy" for attention and clicks, half-heartedly apologizing while continuing to criticize Kamitani in the same breath.

@dagbiker: I actually don't see the issue with those posts you screencapped. That Dragon's Crown one doesn't fit your description at all, as Schreier definitely delves into the whole exchange with Kamitani, the Dead Island statue followup was especially surprising considering the developer had apologized but still sent it out anyway, and the third one is by Brian Ashcraft and I won't really defend how silly that one is.

On the Annoyed Gamer/Kotaku Article I didn't watch the video, but kotaku dose use misleading and often inflammatory titles to draw you in, often for articles that don't include much content, or are just information from other sites reworded and spun as their content. I don't think they do not believe what they are writing, because often they never include an opinion.

But a lot of sites do this, this news is all about a catchy headline.

But I would prefer a site with a few articles every week, like giant bomb, then a site with an article every half an hour.

You know I for one am pleased that a Shadow Warrior reboot is being done, and done without the bs. But I will re-iterate I could often give a shit about ppl,s sensibilities. If one is so concerned about the gay/transgender scene in gaming, or the ever shifting line of racism and sexism, perhaps they can save a little of that for raccoon dogs...read about it sometime.

I guess Rebel Fm and The Comedy Button will be changing things up.