Worth Reading: 05/09/2014

Tone really matters though. To dismiss tone is to do a disservice to these debates.

Also I think her labeling went pretty overboard. Throwing around the "racist!" and "sexist!" and "bigot!" terms too casually can result in them meaning nothing. It's something to really watch out for.

The amount of missing the point in response to the Samantha Allen tweet is a bit unbelievable. You detractors understand that in broad terms, she's referring to white males, and not various subsets of white males, right? By an undeniable majority, video games have a (generally straight) white male or inanimate object on screen as a controllable entity most of the time. There are certainly exceptions, but let's be realistic here. Not a personal affront, just a call to do better. More diversity doesn't necessarily threaten the existing game market. Interpreting a point literally to disprove it is a poor way to pose a counter argument.

Not trying to be shitty or holier than thou, but some of these comments are just silly.

It would be if that was what people were responding to.

It's her article that people have an issue with, mainly because it pretty directly accuses Nintendo of being hateful bigots.

If Thomas Grip played Alien Isolation like I did, he'd know that how the developers are trying to avoid the "death = relief" problem by making the xenomorph AI dynamic. I died twice in that demo and because of the AI's unpredictability, it made each trek to progress further into the game that more tense.

When you get more time to look at the enemy, I'm still worried that I'll die so even if I got a good look at its intricacies, I'm no less scared of its abilities.

Grip's idea of having the story and exploration tie into the monster is interesting and I can't wait for SOMA either. I've seen developers be critical of other games in their own genre and I like them challenging each other, but sometimes it doesn't pan out in the final game because of certain limitations so I hope SOMA proves he can walk the walk, too.

Feel like giving The Thing a go now. Wait, why does Andrew Curtis' face look familiar to me?

Oh shit, he was about to work on that Realm adventure game that I highlighted here a while ago but wasn't successful. And he shows up in that game's kickstarter developer diary.

The Hum looks to be the first alien invasion game? At least I hope so. The alien walking around reminded me of this scene in Signs:

@conmulligan: ....The games that DO feature character customization DO represent everyone, because you can create anyone. I'm not sure where you were going with that.

Good job adding fuel to the fire Patrick. Why does it never fail, that a Worth Reading is basically just an opportunity to link to other agenda-bait articles...non-issues that are continued for yet another week.

Why GB allows this type of "journalism" now is beyond me....but I guess they know it increases revenue, so integrity be damned I supposed.

Whatever, keep it up though...soon companies will just say "F it" and not make anything anymore, since unless they somehow make every game include every possible option everyone wants, they will get socially castrated.

I'm kinda reminded of this time I got beat up for pushing a dude away from me when he drunkenly started grabbing my ass in a bar. I didn't have the time to tell his righteous friends that I'm bi, I just don't like getting my ass grabbed in bars. But they were so ready to pounce on any guy that they saw as a gaybasher that I was close enough I guess.

So, are you for free speech? Are you for the free market? Because if you are then there's no reason why any of this should bother you.

A corporation cares about profit, not public reaction. If the public reaction is loud enough and is percieved as being possible to eat into profit then a corporation will respond in a way to try to recover any possible lost money. That's it.

The idea that some companies will say "F it" and be like "PEACE HATERS WE'RE OUT NO MORE VIDEO GAMES FOR YOU" is completely devoid of any reason or logic. It has never happened and will never happen.

The very idea that you see dissent and displeasure voiced by a consumer base as "social castration" is supremely messed up-- at this point the only tiny amount of power that consumers wield in this system is to voice their displeasure and hope that it can make a difference.

Why would you ever want that silenced?

And I'm not just speaking to you but to everyone who has a problem with this kind of social media focused dissent against corporations and other structures of power.

It's fine that he linked the article. Exposing yourself to things you don't agree with can have the same effect as reading something you'd more readily accept, if not stronger.

It can galvanize you to figure out exactly what you do think about the issue.

I certainly don't think @patrickklepek posts them to stir up controversy and "increase revenue", especially when you consider the placement or brief descriptions of the links. I also don't think he posts all of these articles for you to agree with undyingly. He posts them to get people thinking about these topics, perhaps in ways they otherwise wouldn't have.

Whether you're swayed by them or not, hopefully you'll come away with a better, more realized form of your opinion, and that's only to the benefit of yourself and the discussion as a whole.

If you're not interested in a particular discussion, this feature tends have a pretty varied selection of topics to explore, so you ought to be able to find something else that is interesting to you.

It it wasn't for all the outrage, I wouldn't even know what Tomodachi Lifewas.

Man, I loved The Thing on Xbox. So good.

Hey folks, for what good it will do, I'm posting this to apologize for my statement earlier in the thread. I may have edited it to soften it somewhat, but I knew the damage had been done, and I also made the personal decision to step away from the whole thing at that point because I didn't feel great about it either.

In retrospect, I think I really wanted the statement to be more a tongue-in-cheek response to the ideas being espoused in the comment I posted in response to (though unquestionably still very much coached in a fair amount of pointed derision for the ideas), but the reality is I let my ire at the ideas get the better of me and it ended up being delivered as much too much of a personal attack, and that just isn't cool.

I've made a personal apology to kindgineer for my statement, so this general apology here is for anyone who (quite rightly) felt my post was over the line. I'm sincerely sorry for the way I conducted myself on that one.

@patrickklepek I'd be interested in the playstation voice control video. Also one on the playstation-vita remote play experience. I'm not sure how you'd record that one but it's a good idea to show these unique features warts & all. I've only ever seen them demonstrated on press conference videos.

Haha, Lounge Lord is great. I love Electroplankton, Mario Paint and such.

Also you still don't seem to know what a roguelike actually is.

That FF article is huge. I feel like future Final Fantasy games can't succeed because, as was mentioned, the teams are too big and they focus too much on graphics. It's not about fantasy and imagination anymore; it's about watching a movie and pressing A to "win".