Worth Reading: 09/06/2013

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Backed Shantae thanks to this article. I enjoyed the DSiWare game and played a little of the GBC game too. Good platformers.

I always wonder why gaming is so desperate to be considered an art form, and yet resists the same cultural criticism that novels and movies have undergone for decades.

@corvak: I think that just stems from the Youtubers being an emerging force. The same thing happened when webcomics were just starting to become popular. A lot of traditional cartoonists talked down to them, and so the web cartoonists shot back. As these guys mature, and as the traditional press start to take them more seriously (not necessarily personally, but as people with sway), that sort of thing will happen less.

@groverat: The issues aren't relevant to gaming either, that's why it's tiresome.

Totalbiscuit talking about sub numbers - is important for the personal finances of big youtube channels, but a rather meaningless piece of information to the rest of us. It's the kind of boasting that drove me to unfollow him on twitter.

One of the reasons I prefer outlets like Giant Bomb or Polygon, is for writers like Patrick Klepek and Phil Kollar - neither of whom have ever flaunted their connections with the game industry or their large number of viewers and readers as a form of bragging rights.

Youtubers and conventional games writers/press are becoming part of the same field and I have no desire to watch Totalbiscuit if that sort of adversarial attitude is how he treats his peers. I guess he's just as angry now as he was when he was a WoW podcaster.

@csl316: well said

@tehsorrow - Maybe because racist/sexist/homophobic attitudes are a huge problem both in the gaming community and among the type of people who likely make up the majority of GB's fanbase? (Or a secret lesbian conspiracy?)

I'm sure there's an element of issue-fatigue to it not being discussed on the Bombcast, but if you look at the PAX audience's reaction to Krahulik saying that pulling the dickwolves merch was the biggest mistake Khoo ever made you see a fairly powerful motivation for any kind of political speech to stay off the Bombcast. Why alienate part of your fanbase, even if it is part of your fanbase that you disagree with? The Bombcast is not the venue for that.

(Short version: Because a lot of their fans refer to serious issues as "tiresome" because those issues aren't directly related to them.)

Penny Arcade has been a staple of my "Funny Stuff" folder for more than 11 years now. I've watched the art and the jokes change over the years, and during that time, the creators have come more out of the shadows, for better or worse.

People grow and change, but these two are doing it on the public stage. You're watching two young men become legitimate adults. When most of us are confronted with new information and have to change our opinions, we do it privately. For better or worse, Jerry and Mike have to do it in front of a few million gamers.

For example, I am 35. Last year I took a graduate class that involved a large component about racial identity theories. Until then, I adamantly denied the existence of "white privilege". By the end of the class, I still feel that about 50% of racial "theory" is unsupportable fantasy - but - there are a lot of elements that I, as a white male American, had never even considered.

In light of new information, I came to a new conclusion - that while I don't necessarily believe there is a "shadow system" of legislators, bankers, police, and others who sit in darkened rooms laughing about keeping minorities oppressed, there are still elements of society (intentional and unintentional) that I simply don't have to experience, and that this is by itself a privilege. If I get turned down for a credit card, well, my credit wasn't good enough. If I don't get good service in a store, it's because the clerk is an idiot. But for others, there are lingering doubts that maybe the loan officer is racist, or a fancy store doesn't want "my kind" in there. These kinds of experiences are very real to people, and so they shouldn't be ignored, because they are a part of their emotional landscape.

Now, look at me before that class - if you had asked me about all the privilege I enjoy, as a dude who works 40 hours a week but still has to pay the full cash payment for a doctor's office visit, and drives a 10 year old car (wife has a 15 year old car), I would have been pretty rude, and probably made some offensive comment about how people should worry less about racists and worry more about their own life performance. After the class, I would have said, "Well, I think there are a lot of parts of this society I won't ever fully understand, but I certainly face a lot fewer obstacles in my life than I might otherwise have to, which is a real problem for society at large." It's not exactly a KKK to NAACP turn around story, since I wasn't close to the KKK level of depravity to begin with, but it represents a mind taking in new information, considering it carefully, and deciding that old values are outdated and must be replaced.

In this context, if I had been a public figure in the gaming community, I would already be labeled a racist, and my turnaround would be considered some form of hypocrisy, born only out of my desire to get out of trouble. Whatever game I worked on or site I wrote for would be lambasted for employing such racist scum. Although many might accept my admission that I was wrong before, the vocal few would talk about how I contribute to "racial oppression" and how people like me shouldn't be allowed a public forum.

I can't speak to Mike's internal motivations - I've never met the man. Like a lot of artists, he is quick to get very emotional, and quick to defend his work, and that gets him in a ton of trouble. Then, when he says, "You know what, guys, I've been a real asshole and I'm sorry", people don't want to let him out of it.

Well, that's tough, guys. You can support him, and Penny Arcade, or not. But part of being an adult is learning to responsibly change your mind or admit you're wrong, and when somebody does that, adults will respond by saying, "I forgive you" or "I don't forgive you", but they don't linger around for months, saying, "I demand that this person cease existing in the public space because I don't find their apology to be of sufficient fervor/sincerity/length/etc!"

In short: If you don't believe that Mike has apologized correctly for you, then stop visiting his site and don't give him the traffic or revenue. Make your views heard, and drop the issue. But otherwise, consider that what you are watching is a normal grown man who is trying to improve, not some magic pillar of virtue that should never be wrong who has somehow betrayed a set of values that you expected him to follow.

Sports games are great every year.

@groverat: I ignored the post because an idea is not solid proof of anything. It is only as valid as ideas about violence and video games without any supporting evidence.

Thanks for predictably ignoring the content of my post.

Let me go ahead and express just how predictable it is that you completely ignored what MoonwalkSA posted and then completely missed kentonclay's point about the distinction between influencing action and influencing attitudes.

Wow @patrickklepek, I wasn't sure if you were gonna share the Total War story on to Worth Reading and you didn't need to, but cool. Thanks for sharing the story on here.

Actually the first page of comments of that Rachel Ededin piece is very interesting, including a very civil discussion between a rape victim who supports Krahulik and several other people on both sides of the fence. Didn't keep exploring to see if it gets nasty anywhere.

@kentonclay: See, that's the problem. The "violence" argument is also that games make people more prone to disregarding authority, being lazy and flunking out of school. Which is the same as saying games make you hate men / women, because clearly they don't make you into a rapist, which is a violent crime, if that were true I would consider it a problem. In my opinion, they're both sides of the same coin.

Man I had no idea the dickwolves thing had turned in to such a shit storm. And to think I use to have so much respect for mike and jerry, what a terrible thing they've been doing. urgh

The easter eggs and, even more, the myths associated with San Andreas are what made it the best game of the generation for me. I spent weeks on it placing clues together with an online community searching for various myths. It was amazing... doubt there will ever be anything like it again. I hope GTA V has that same sort of mystery with it.

Its actually been really fascinating watching Totalbiscuit (and other youtubers) channels grow, I got hooked in when he was doing WoW videos 3 or 4 years ago, and its amazing to see how the little things, like mic quality and video bumpers have improved so much.

@nsmb2_mario:

It's the difference between saying "GTA might turn a normal person into a cop killer" and saying "GTA might have some small influence on how a normal person looks at organized crime."

The first is saying that the medium compels the consumer to specific action, the second merely suggests that it has a basic socializing effect.

I didn't know what the whole "dickwolf" thing was when they talked about it on the AM show, and looking at the timeline here I was surprised it all started three years ago and is apparently still a reasonably big thing (that I've completely missed for three years.) Looking at the original comic it's hard to understand why it started such a furor. It's a guy who gets raped every night by imaginary creatures. No mention of women being raped. Is rape only allowed to be thought of as happening to women? Haven't we all seen Deliverance? Is it just the word "rape" that has to be completely exised from everything, because women might encounter it, and be tormented? The early responses I read to the comic seem to completely remove the man from the comic, and turn it into violence against women.

It looks like it all spiralled into something that the objectors could legitmately object to, though.

Congratulations on marrying someone with Omaha ties. If she's an east side girl, that is. West side can get snubbed.

In my opinion the dickwolves comic is OK. The dickwolves shirts were a bad idea. But thanks for completely missing what I said and attributing the opposite to me. This shit is par for the course for all these non-troversies.

I don't have one for violence because I have yet to see any properly conclusive study about how videogames and other media relate to violence (and it's annoying to search for because of so much sensationalized bullshit around the subject), but a lot of the reasons behind sexism can be explained by the idea of in-group bias and out-group exclusion (that is, people naturally like to feel like they belong to a group, and one of the harmful attitudes that can arise from that is considering themselves better than people who don't belong to that group). Those two concepts don't really apply to viewing violent images, but they absolutely apply to seeing small ways in which one could consider men better than women (or vice versa).

Just use the terms "in-group" and "out-group" to find more if you like, maybe coupled with "sexism", but here's an article about it that wasn't hidden behind a paywall like so many psychological studies unfortunately are: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201012/in-groups-out-groups-and-the-psychology-crowds

@seveword: You summed up my thoughts much more eloquently then I ever could have.

@moonwalksa: Not buying the discrepancy without sources.

It actually is. People internalize ideas about violence and ideas about gender (and interactions with the opposite sex, attitudes towards other people, et cetera) in completely different ways. The human brain isn't just some simple input-output number machine, it uses different rules for different concepts.

EVERYONE IS CRAZY. That is all.

Putting RG3's giant face as the link to an article is a surefire way to get me to click it.

So games do make people sexist, but they don't make them violent? Solid logic.

@patrickklepek "Launching right next time Mighty No. 9 is either insanity or genius for Shantae: Half-Genie Hero."

Little error with "time" there.

@shingro: Talking about the articles as "one-sided" is really problematic. Those all people with a spectrum of thoughts and concerns about where this has gone. I really shouldn't be approached as conflict of two clashing sides, because that disenfranchaises a lot of peoples' opinions on the matter and forces everyone into one of two hyperbolic camps whose either end goals or extreme apathy are not clear or shared by most of us.

The idea of bringing statistics of "how many people where offended" or the size of response to this in order to judge or justify where change has to happen is literally marginalization of people. It is the same response to schools addressing bullying. It took a lot of numbers and harsh statistics and injuries and deaths for national response to bullying in school to start mobilizing, followed by an immediate rush to find new statistics for improvement to say they are swiftly addressing the problem. Everyoneis defensive in a numbers game and too much time focusing on sizing-each-other-up can kill any kind of dialogue.

The idea that "dickwolves" are somehow a go to symbol of the glorification of rape-culture is completely absurd. You realize that, right?

I agree with Ben Kuchera - I really want to relive The Wind Waker for the first time again. Part of me wants to play the HD version as soon as it comes out, but some other part wants to wait a few years.

Every time someone makes the following argument...

"If we all agree that saying 'games turn people into murderers' is stupid, why can't we all agree that saying 'games can make people sexist' is stupid?"

... a sociologist cries.

Max Scoville should rather talk about his shirts affecting people instead.

I'm just saying.

Sometimes I hate the internet and other human beings. Reading about the whole dickwolf rape culture thing is one of those times.

They have the incredibly insulting anti-harassment policies at PAX, about how you shouldn't be a rapist on the show floor, but still the complaints come endlessly that they don't listen to the poor victims of so-called rape culture (a term appropriated from prison lingo, and which is pretty asinine in my opinion). The PA guys have not learned their lesson because all this phooey about the Dickwolves and women having vaginas should be ignored entirely. Don't egg on the detracts, don't try and appease them, they are childish. It doesn't matter if you give them a hundred panels to talk about imaginary problems non-related to gaming or shower them with millions of dollars in excess of what you raise for charity, you give them an inch, they will take a mile.

I don't even like Penny Arcade, but good God this controversy is pathetic.

It generates clicks for minimal effort, so desperate writers will go to that well again and again, just like the sexism FAD. I can't really blame them -- the video game business is pretty boring these days as the 360/PS3 cycle fizzles out. I hope the upcoming console Scharmützel will put a damper on these "hot topics", at least for a while.

• Leigh Alexander interviews Lucas Pope about designing Papers, Please.

"The game will be available on steam for 775 million USD"

"Here is my joke."

"um actually that makes me and some other people feel pretty uncomfortable?"

"Now that I know this I shall continue making the joke."

@pandabear: Totalbiscuit is a youtube guy who does something similar to quicklooks.

It's a false equivalency though, quality of subscribers, in real value to advertisers and relative ignorance of what they are viewing and in general may well be vastly different.

I don't like Totalbiscuit anyway, although mainly this is because his videos are often tedious, heavy on repetition and often low on information for all those other sins. That and he has no idea what he is talking about with regards to warhammer 40k so when I watched a few of his videos a few years ago, him talking about Space Marine was a painful experience.

There are some cool people and things on youtube but popularity is often decided by a plurality of seeming idiots; especially for the really popular channels.

Of course the real issue is that for all that for one content creator to judge another based on subscribers, and not the quality of what they produce, is fucked.

@pandabear: TotalBiscuit is one of many YouTube personalities that use a crummy shtick persona and thousands of people eat it up. I think his is something like Annoyed Gamer or Angry Gamer or something.

@patrickklepek Kill Screen had a longer, better story about the monster in GTA San Andreas ... I'm not going to shout plagiarism ... but fuck. Compare the two... it's pretty bizarre. It's in this issue: http://shop.killscreendaily.com/products/issue-7-the-great-outdoors-digital-edition

Also who is Totalbiscuit on Twitter and who the hell is Jesse?

It seems like one of the problems is no one really has authority over 'the issue.' I guarantee I've seen *plenty* of arguments, some in patrick's links/twitter saying "This promotes rape culture which directly harms women" yet no one seems be either inclined to "Show their work" so to speak. It's all very emotionally charged arguing and savagery, and that stuff tends to fall into the "well it's okay if I misrepresent these things because THEY'RE bad/theproblem/jerks" As a dude who was around to read the news posts and the follow up comic it was never as cut and dry as "THEY IMMEDIATELY MADE FUN OF ALL THE RAPE SURVIVORS" There was a lot of savagery directed at them, their posts seemed a little shell shocked and confused, I wouldn't be surprised considering their personalities that Gabe at least responded badly privately, and we know he responded unwisely publicly (he needs a few 'are you sure?' locks on his twitter) there was a bizarre psudo-apology/defense comic? Then the shirts and references were pulled, I seem to remember there was at least one heart to heart post from one of them saying 'someone told me "I want to take my kids to pax and not have them see that" and I kinda get that' somewhere before they pulled those shirts. It was all very strange.

I understand it got WAY out of hand, I get that there were extreme people on the internet that took the opportunity to harass and bully people (on BOTH sides, your ideals/objective DO NOT make you incapable of being a jerk 'because they deserve it') It's well documented Gabe particularly tends to respond to pain/savagery with sarcasm, mocking and his own brand of savagery. So we have two sides reacting emotionally and totally willing to get out the accusatory and emotional knives. On top of that there's a way for BOTH people to view themselves as infallibly 'in the right'

Though there's stuff on both sides, there's no reason that that debacle tumblr 'summery' needs to be reposting large pictures of @rapefatchicks and related twitter handle's stupid harassment comments like those extremists reflect on Penny Arcade 'because the icon has penis paws makes it a dickwolf.' There's a lot of people in this business trying to shock other people and get them reacting in a fast and visceral way. Allow me to be as clear as possible

THIS IS NOT HELPING ANYONE. GETTING PEOPLE RILED IS NOT WHAT THE SITUATION NEEDS.

Regardless of how you feel about it and how things shook out it's not NEARLY as cut and dry many are painting it. That's a serious bummer because there's an (another) important rational discussion on what we can and can't do on the internet here. To say nothing of convicting two dudes who even in their scandles tend to do the right thing eventually. Those shirts did get pulled, Gabe donated stacks of cash to trans charities., That's not automatic absolvement, but it implies to me that their hearts aren't blackened rocks that only desire the tears of the oppressed. They feel WAY far away from 'boycott and crush their works' to me. They seem like very 'normal' dudes with maybe a few impulse control issues and a big ass microphone. Feels a lot like people are glossing over the complicated and weird parts to the whole situation. That doesn't surprise me at all.

What does surprise me is that @patrickklepek seems totally willing to participate. I always kinda had him pegged as a guy who would be willing to get people talking and exploring what happened. Investigative you know? Present both sides if the issue got complicated and messy regardless of his own feelings, but man.

Those links are pretty seriously one sided. Don't get me wrong, I'm not sure I'd be able to do any better. Hell, I'd probably have been even WORSE and not presented the token "Gosh they sure are assholes but they still do nice things for people" link as an olive branch.

I know he has opinions, but I had hoped the journalistic part of him would let him hold that emotional part at bay enough to not take such direct sides on his Giantbomb platform. I know he reads the sane and rational objections to stuff like the Dragon's Crown hubub, I know he's smart enough to parse and find logical problems, it just doesn't seem to matter much (enough? Dunno who am I to say?) I know it's irrational, but I sorta expected him to be above that.

That neogaf post starts with some decent analysis, but does have some serious logic problems. If someone tells you something makes them uncomfortable and you go ahead and do it anyway, or do it louder and harder it *can* be for a separate reason, you don't automatically HAVE to hate the person who told you, you just have to feel that their concern is less important then your own concern. Making it into "There's only one answer, they HATE RAPE SURVIVORS" is exactly the sort of demonization of the other side 'because they deserve it' that's my own personal hated thing, because it's a twisted knife in the heart of trying to have a real discussion and achieve some real peace and solutions. This was a very human problem of people and communication, treat everyone involved like they are people.

a bummer, serious serious bummer. I wouldn't say that the PA guys handled the situation well, but the level of hatred they're getting is way out of scope with the complicated and bizarre nature of the 'crime.'

For whatever it's worth, those are my feelings, and those are my few cents, tossed into the pool of 3 year old internet drama over a gaming comic. I don't know if it was important for anyone to hear, but it was important to me to say. God only knows why.

So uh, I guess thanks GB for letting me say it.

@sergio: So in your opinion Mike has said nothing insensitive and the dickwolves shirts were an a-ok idea?

Alrighty.

Not only does it seem hyperbolic. It is hyperbolic. PA has stated from the beginning they are not pro-rape. The comic itself was anti-rape. I can empathize with people who may suffer PTSD from just the mention of rape, but this comic does not contribute to rape culture as people have said.

There are some crazy people who have taken up this cause who do contribute when they threaten people with rape. No one in PA, and many others who thought this was overblown from the beginning, support that. Mike is not their keeper. Even if Mike were to apologize and tell them to step down, the craziest of the crazy won't. They'll think Mike is being forced to say these things, and they'll continue acting this terrible.

No one is complicit. The crazies who act out this way are responsible for their own actions.