Worth Reading: 07/14/2014

@maluvin said:

I can confirm seeing this posted on Friday verbatim. (I was going to comment on the really crazy things shareholders said in that one link at the bottom of his post, which is why I remember.)

They probably decided around then that it'd be a Monday thing from that post forward and simply modified the publish date to set the precedent with this post? I'm sure they'll actually start posting these on Mondays now to follow through, this was just a way to transition from Fridays to Mondays is my best speculation.

@maluvin: Yarp, look at the first few posts, all from 3 days ago.

On what grounds does it not hurt anyone?

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Have you got a link to the article you paraphrased?

Hey @patrickklepek,

just wanted to throw in my two cents here

I really respect that your very much a perfectionist of sorts in your journalism here on giantbomb when it comes to news articles. Though you really need to be a little less hard on yourself with this stuff. Your the only person on here that posts anything really "worth reading", 95% of the time and we all enjoy your writing style feel free to switch things up and do want you want. I don't speak for everyone but, alot of people choose gb over other sites for its style of journalistic freedom that staff posts about what intrests them not just the big news. Meaning I don't really care if you post something that tha may not directly interest me, or some may consider click bait worthy. As long as it interests you I'm intrested to see your point of view. You've certainly gained the respect here from your readers to take risks on certain articles because hate it or love it will come back for more.

Overall, I'd like to see more readable content on this website. That is currently my biggest flaw with giantbomb that if I just want to read something in between appointments at work they're are only certain times a week I can do that here on the giantbomb. Feel free to throw more out there even if your feeling a little shakey on the article its cool I'm still interested to see what you have to say.

I know your basically a one man army on quality news articles and I thank you for the effort you've been putting fourth. On a side note another great worth reading today keep up the good work.

So...you expect Quinn to never respond to any of this in a human way? You expect her response to always be the Most Moral and Perfect?

Her response does not hurt anyone...thus the fact that it's not a perfect response is not a problem. My "justification" which makes it understandable DOES make it okay, because her response was not harmful. The question of whether something is understandable but not okay is legit only when the thing is harmful.

For example, I'm sure we could explain some folks' hateful messages to Quinn in such a way that makes them understandable (perhaps some folks are acting out aggression due to personal problems or whatever)...but that would not make it okay because their hate was still harmful. Quinn's statement, though not an ideal response, is not harmful.

This is why I said that your comparison of the two is uncalled for. You cannot compare something that's not all that nice to something that's actually threatening or insulting.

It is actually quite exhausting the way this plays out (over and over and over). Folks decide to focus on whether or not someone's response to hate is Good Enough, rather than focus on the fact that...y'know...it's messed up someone was targeted by hate.

And you don't understand that I'm not talking for myself, but partially for the writers at Bioware and the fact that you just can't satisfy everyone with anything. For one thing, they are fictional universes and not some hard knock life preparation courses, having a world where homosexuality is widely accepted is not some insane fever dream, especially when I thought such a state is what society is striving for anyway.

Secondly, the author writes the gay relationships are romanticized, idealized without the hardships of a real relationship. Well, yes, but so are the heterosexual relationships in these games. They are, game-y in that all you do is increase a variable to a certain point to open a dialog choice to watch a cutscene.

Finally, what's the alternative? That after you're done Anderson intercoms you and says "get of my ship, you faggots" to show the kids what might happen when they decide to come out?

@hrn212:

'Twas a genuine question.

I can't tell if this is a genuine question or I've we've venturing into specious arguments. If there are no characters the issue of whether there are lgbt characters is mute...because there are no characters...

I referenced one in the sentence that follows where you clipped my quote.

@hrn212: I'm not sure what you want me to say. I think that the dialogue and the romance itself loses its impact by not being treated in a manner that would resonate with my experience.

Let's talk about one of these other areas of under-representation you mentioned. It's not as though I'm arguing that because there aren't many black CEOs that there shouldn't be one in a given story, I'm saying that if there is a black CEO in a given story, it behooves that story to acknowledge the fact that he has had to overcome prejudice in order to succeed (and probably continues to do so). The fact that it's whitewashing reality doesn't bother me, but by not acknowledging the challenges that we, in our minds, know must be there, it becomes that much less like something real and that much more like a fairy tale of little substance.

Justification means nothing. Anybody can justify. We would do well to remember that

And that makes it OK?

That still doesn't make it OK. Understandable, but not OK.

When has this ever happened? I've yet to come across any such criticism.

Um, dude...for one thing she made a general statement about a non-specific group of people based on their behaviour...rather than a personal statement about an individual or a statement about a group of people based on their identity (which is what the folks leaving her horrible messages are doing). So that, right there, is a huge difference. For another, her response is based on something that these folks have said to her, individually and personally...which gives her leave to be less-than-magnanimous with her response. Also, she said in the beginning of her post that she might be a bit aggro.

Plus, 'these guys must not have anything interesting to do' is not even remotely comparable to the expletive and slur-ridden insults and threats Quinn is sent. Like, come on, now.

I've not experienced the sort of targeted hate that Quinn has on as large a scale or with the regularity that she's faced it. But I have been the subject of targeted hate...and at some point, if only for self preservation, you end up writing those folks off. And then when you're in a better headspace (because the attack has let up a bit) you're able to come back and be a bit more magnanimous in your consideration of them. Sometimes. If you're lucky enough to ever get to a place where the attack has let up.

Shareholder to Nintendo: "Why aren't I getting any sweet free games?"

/facepalm

You're a shareholder in a very large corporation and you can't afford to buy yourself games? Really? Are you that petty to ask Ninten.... yes you are.

There are still billions of people on this planet who care very deeply to which ancient tribe you inherited your genetics from. There are places in the so-called First World where you can get killed or assaulted because of this.

People who believe that the circumstances of your birth inform your character will always exist. They will always exist to tell others that They Are X So Therefore Y.

Polygon had an excellent video round table discussion about Bioshock Infinite not too long after the game was out. It was fun to watch them excitedly talk about the game without fear of spoilers. I heard a few things I missed, and it also prompted me to examine my own thoughts on the game. I don't know why there isn't a spoiler cast for every big AAA game (which are the games you can be reasonably sure a large part of your audience will play).

Then of course there are the Geoff Keighley "Final Hours" deep dives, like the one he did on Portal 2. Those are great. I get why there aren't a lot of these things--it's the stuff true enthusiasts want. Previews (and other pre-launch content) cast a much wider net.

Reading about those Nintendo Shareholders makes me so glad that I'm not a CEO for once. If I had to deal with dipshits like that I think I would honestly lose my shit.

I don't think I'm misinterpreting what you said...just responding to something you said and responding to something you didn't say and perhaps not making that clear in my response...I'm getting nuance-y or nitpicky or whatever...not trying to black-and-white argue with what you're saying.

Anyway, it was really your use of the phrase "social agendas" that prompted my response to take the form it did. Though you didn't say it, the notion that social agendas should take a backseat to narrative is precisely the argument used to exclude diverse representation. Right? That it would "break immersion" for there to be women on a battlefield or that it would "break immersion" if there were too many gay characters running around...etc. etc. (This is also why I pointed out who the "you" was in your statement really matters...because what breaks immersion for one group of people won't for another...and in US AAA games the assumed 'you' is always white straight and male).

I agree, Bioware's treatment of gay relationships is meant to be idealised and are thus not-quite-realistic by today's standards (regardless of personal perspective). BUT, the potential issue with that isn't to do with whether that breaks immersion. The potential issue is whether that idealised world serves to mask and and paint an unrealistic picture of the realities of being gay in today's world.

Oh man! Thanks for posting my Thief Town trailer patrick! :)

I don't understand.

When we write gay characters who undergo true-to-life experiences of gay people, including being insulted, belittled, invalidated and having their personalities overwritten by people who think all gay people must behave like X... those games get criticized for 'contributing to an anti-gay culture' by including bigoted characters who act in homophobic manners. Even if it feels like an authentic portrayal of that character. Especially if the game doesn't follow up by making that character a complete villain. Think about Yosuke's rather typical homophobia, he doesn't appear to hate gays but he does feel threatened by Kanji and a lot of other rather typical things of people who grew/grow up in a culture that tells them certain things about gays. These games have the true-to-life gay experiences that the article wants, but they get used as examples of how games writers hate gay people by including real life negatives.

When we write sci-fi space operas that take place two hundred years in the future, and we see a culture that has ostensibly advanced ethically in that time (just as we probably feel we've advanced ethically since the 18th century), by portraying their intergalactic future culture as being past discrimination based on sex, race or orientation (all Mass Effect discrimination and bigotry is based on species), these are examples of how games writers don't care about real life gay experiences because they didn't include real life negatives.

I don't feel as if there is any winning from the hyper-critical few who only want to drag a cup across steel bars.

In lighter fare, Kentucky Route Zero; pretty cool. There's a Midwesty Kurt Vonnegut tone to it that I really dig.

The best thing is the follow up tweet of Edmund McMillen, where his niece tells him that he can differentiate between meat girls and boys by giving the girls muscles and the boys a red bow and makeup.

One thing I enjoyed during some of the original bombcasts was the idea of spoiler casts. When Adam Sessler was at Revision 3, he did a show called "Spoiled Games". This kind of content in particular helped me sort out my thoughts about games I finished.

This idea could work out. Some games I don't have time to play, and most certainly not a second time through. I think as long as you can get a couple people together who finished it, and weather or not you have to Google Hangout the thing. I've noticed a void for this kind of "One specific game only" content all over the internet. More post-mortems that aren't tailored for the GDC audience only would be great too.

What about games without any characters to speak of, but where immersion is still a factor on some level? Like Burnout, for instance?

I know...I'm quoting myself:

Forgot to add these links. I'd love to see huge behind-the-scenes guest posts like these ones from Joey Ellis:

http://www.joeyblog.com/2014/05/the-visual-development-of-bonsai-slice.html

http://www.joeyblog.com/2014/06/making-leaky-timbers.html

I'm all for seeing how the sausage is made.

There's a bit of dissonance, there, though between what the narrative is trying to explicitly say and what other aspects of the game say.

"It shouldn't be a big deal in the future," is what the narrative says...and yet they didn't have an option for MaleShep to be gay until ME3.

"It shouldn't be a big deal in the future," is what the narrative says...and yet the queer bits of the story were hidden from the player unless the player actively chose to find them. (Until ME3 where we had what's-his-face mourning his dead husband).

Mass Effect and Dragon Age are attempting to be (and largely succeeding) social commentaries and yet still often fall into some of the traps of the society they are commenting on. Personally I think that's part of what makes the idealised treatment of same-sex relationships in the game somewhat frustrating...it's not just that they are idealised, it's that they are idealised in some ways and problematic in others, thus making the idealised bits seem a bit hollow.

@hrn212: Well, first off I think you realize that you're sort of misinterpreting what I said. The "unexpected social dynamics" are not the presence of gay people but rather the way in which they conduct themselves. As for what "expected" social dynamics are, there is certainly room for person-to-person variation, but this particular topic wouldn't have come up if it struck people as the norm when they encountered it. The fact that this Bioware employee made his point in the way that he did kind of confirms that it was not meant to be a realistic homosexual encounter by the standards of the current day.

I dunno, that basically just seems like post-structuralist/post-modernist dogmatism that doesn't really meaningfully engage with his argument at all, to me.

Yeah, like maybe combine this with a developer interview. That would take "I liked the shotgun" and add in "You probably liked it because we did X to the physics and Y to the animation to make it feel like Z when you pulled the trigger."

Or even better, get devs to talk about things they would have preferred or changed. It's so rare to see game creators talk about the shortcomings in their creations. Writers, artists, musicians--they do it all the time. Game creators never do. Maybe that's because when they admit something fell short a zillion articles are written about how they dropped the ball, and because gamers are horrible creatures, they demand refunds for their 50+ hours of entertainment. Sigh...

I wonder if publishing Worth reading on mondays is really a good idea? I mean the nature of Worth reading is that it's a more of a long read that I find just more fitting for the weekend when I personally have more time and there is nothing else going on at the site. Now I am worried it will just drown in everything else. But I also feel that the benefits of a weekend's rest can be good too. So I don't know what works the best, but for me it's not ideal. I do like the experimenting tho, always good to keep us on the toes!

Since nobody else has mentioned it in the comments yet, I feel compelled to re-link the Crawl announcement. It really is the best. Crawl is Delayed

The thing I wanted to respond to is the bit where you say "social interactions behaving in ways you would not expect...screw up immersion" right after saying that "social agendas should take a backseat."

See, the thing is...every time I play a game with no lgbt characters that breaks my immersion. A world without lgbt folks is inherently impossible to me. A world with only one gay character, especially if that gay character is a hollow stereotype, is also impossible to me. It breaks my immersion.

The reasons you see lgbt folks and women and people of colour, etc. etc. demanding better representation isn't to further some abstract social agenda...it's a twofold issue of how the lack of representation affects our real lives (a la LeJacq's article) and how a lack of representation affects our experience of the game (i.e. that it actually breaks immersion).

An idealised bit of representation (i.e. where gay and straight relationships are treated equally) doesn't really break immersion for me, though...it just gets interpreted as fantasy.

The question to ask, I think, is who is the "you" in your statement of "social interactions behaving in ways you would not expect?" Because what you expect and what I expect might be quite different. And what you think of as a "social agenda" might actually be integral to an "absorbing narrative" for me.

(Sorry I'm a bit of a rambler).

That is an incredibly interesting idea. One would hope that modern games are freeform enough that gameplay methodology could be included in the discussion, as well (and be more interesting than, say, "I liked the shotgun").

@patrickklepek, I gotta say. I really appreciate the thought you put into your presentation and writing and your honesty when discussing its reception. Top of the class. You get an A+.

Did he? It's showing a July 14th publish date for me (specifically talking about Worth Reading, rather than the individual stories cited). Either way if I wasn't clear I had in mind reflective time for the reader. I know that people like stories published as soon as possible after events but think revisiting stories with a couple more days worth of reflective time has some value as well.

I like this 2-part response to that Michael McMaster piece: On Mountain and On Text Vs. Form

really makes you think

I'll agree with others that Worth Reading on Friday made it easier to read the articles - I'd usually open up tabs on all the interesting ones and browse off and on over the weekend. But I also could see how Friday afternoon would be bad for visibility.

Also I'm fine with more random news articles. I don't have time or inclination to sort through dozens of posts on a Joystiq or Kotaku, so having more here to highlight interesting news can't hurt, even if they're fairly quick posts. I mostly keep up through random twitter feeds and that tends to be uneven and spotty in coverage.

Love the experimentation @patrickklepek. Keep it up! Three suggestions:

1. Can you get some corporate synergy up in here? I don't think this should become a Gawker media re-posting mill, but highlighting some things on Gamespot like Danny O'Dwyer's fantastic No Man's Sky feature would be cool.

I think Worth Reading covers the rest, because really, there's not that much worth reading each week.

2. Kotaku has these "Tips before you start playing X" articles that I really like. I bookmark them and return when I get around to playing a game. They're particularly useful in games that involve a lot of leveling or character customization choices. I'd be interested in something similar, but maybe a bit more introspective. Maybe something like, "How I played X." You could tell us--with or without spoilers--how you went through the game and how you felt about your decisions, maybe even get a round table of guests who played it too. Busy gaming dads like myself always appreciate seeing other paths through a game because we rarely have time to make second runs--as a game journo, I'm sure you don't either.

3. More articles on reflections from game creators AFTER a game comes out would be great (LOVED your Walking Dead series). This industry is so preview driven, it amazes me how little we see after a game comes out. This could take the form of spoiler casts, chats with game designers, or maybe even bits of reflection from specific team members/contractors--voice actors, musicians, the guy who had to draw all the backgrounds, etc. The article on Mark of the Ninja with the old concept videos was really cool. That behind-the-scenes stuff can be fascinating.

Thanks for all your hard work Patrick!

That was a really interesting read, I didn't realize how much thought went in to just the headlines. Would love to see more like this one!

Mountain seems like a game designed sort-of like a Tamagotchi. A thing to pay attention to when you will, at your leisure. It's a sort of endlessly undulating unpredictable scenery to rest your mind on when you need to think for a moment. I'm interested in keeping such things on in the corner of my monitor.

What about Star Wars? It tried its hand at social commentary and...

....yea....

I personally prefer these in the weekends, because I tend to have more time to kill away from a PC then and there are usually some interesting links that I can read on my phone. But since most of the links aren't really hot news, I can still just keep reading them during the weekend.

More news doesn't really interest me. I go to an actual video games news site to check up on the news because I know almost everything will be mentioned there. GB will and should never be a news site, I come here to read/watch more in-depth coverage. Having talent waste their time by writing news seems silly as well, unless you get some cheap interns to do it? Having the news repeated in WR just seems pointless, since most GB fans come here often enough anyway?

Apart from that, I wonder how many people really like Cara's writing. She often covers interesting topics or people, but I always get the feeling the article is 50% about Cara herself. Especially with the prose-like writing form it just gets too hard to filter out the good/interesting/relevant bits. I think she would be much easier consumed in podcast form.

Maybe you should read the article, because he's not talking about you. He's talking about the portrayal of gay relationships in media Bioware produces. The romance is idealized, not realistic. The writer presents this idea to the lead writer of Dragon Age, and is given an answer that satisfies him, even if he doesn't agree.

You've misjudged the author's point, so I think a read is worth your time.

Was the A.V. Club article acting like Conway was tricked into taking the shot by "elusive language?" Did he not understand the sequence at the truck just a few minutes ago where it's very nearly spelled out that Conway is a recovering alcoholic? I guess it's more convenient for the article if the Financial Crisis made him do it, though.

I remember seeing something on Polygon from a gay dev at Bioware who gave a panel at PAX, I think it was. And his argument was that games are all about fantasy worlds and we shouldn't feel obliged to perpetuate social norms that we feel distasteful within those worlds. In other words, if you wish gay relationships were just like normal relationships, you should make them that way in your game if you want to fight against prejudice.

I have mixed feelings on this personally, since I think that social agendas should take a backseat to an absorbing narrative. Social interactions behaving in ways you would not expect and which aren't explained is a good way to to screw up immersion. Nevertheless, I think that's why Mass Effect and DA2 work the way they do.

I think its great you are experimenting and trying new things, and being super frank and open about it.

On the Mass Effect thing, I don't really agree. Its science fiction. True science fiction is social commentary about present-day issues. With this, Bioware is saying that 'it shouldn't be a big deal, and that in the future it won't be.'

Yup, that video about the 5 genre defining games was pretty damn good.

I'd like to hope that the "Pirating" article got good traffic not because of the kind of lame grab line, but because it was a legitimately interesting post. Because it was.

As long as you stay away from top 10 lists and 'Why you should care about X' articles, I will not hate you.

I think that's the best answer to ME's social commentary. While there will be holdouts, there always are. They will be ever more marginalized, just as say the average person of 1845 would be a cultural Neanderthal to people in the modern day (at least within the same country).