Worth Reading: 06/27/2014

And if that theory was always true, my post wouldn't exist. But it's not always true, and if you're going to try to be informative about a game, spend a little while longer toying with the difficulty settings! That's good information to know!

Of course, in instances where they find they DO enjoy a higher or lower difficulty better, I bet we'd see some sort of irrational indignant stance toward it, like the person playing was insulted that the developer had the audacity to not tailor the experience to THEIR preference. Brad is particularly bad with that, getting mad any time he has to change a setting to fit how he likes to play ("The auto aim makes this too easy." "So turn it off." "NO I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO!" Pigheaded nonsense!), not realizing that not everyone is as good/bad as him at video games.

It doesn't take that much longer, and it provides more and more useful information to the reader. I see no reasonable stance the staff could take to try and NOT try other difficulties. At the very LEAST in games where they bitch about how easy it is.

To a certain extent, it's a no-win game. You either don't have enough time to really tinker around with the other difficulties in time for a review, or you only tinker around a little bit and risk misrepresenting it. Not many games let you switch the difficulty on the fly, and difficulty curves can bounce all over the place.

Considering GB rarely does actual reviews and the ones they do decide to write are almost never on time, I don't think I really buy the time argument. I'm talking mostly about their Quick Looks and Podcast/Bombin' chatter as that's where we get most of our game info from GB. Just because it's not a formal review doesn't mean I'm not listening to their opinions.

But if their opinion is "it's too easy and also I refuse to change the difficulty because I shouldn't have to for some reason" then I'm just left scratching my head. Is the game overall too easy? Does the harder mode make it more fun? Is it just people hyping up a harder mode that's actually bad? Why are you actively trying to be ignorant about this, GB?

It often means I have to turn to other sources to get actual relevant info from people who aren't insanely stubborn about such an important question, information-wise.

That Sims picture on the front page reminded me of Ryan's virtual tennis avatar. <3

UO was my first MMO and first and only Ultima game. Greg has worked on three of my favorite games.
I was that whole damn hour and was glued to the screen, so so good.

@xbob42: You seem to hate Giant Bomb. That's fine. We all have differing opinions, but complaining rudely to other commenters about people who probably aren't going to read your comments is kind of fruitless, in addition to being off-topic and annoying to those who aren't so passionate about difficulty levels.

Now, if you're simply annoyed about this single issue and otherwise you deeply respect Giant Bomb as a whole, as I do, then how about you shoot Jeff a Comic Vine PM detailing your concerns so he may address the issue at length during one of his fantastic Jar Time videos.

Samantha Allen's article is a goddamn trainwreck, almost comedic in its mediocrity.

I'm not even going to explain it, plenty of people have spotted it for trash and stated why already.

I don't hate Giant Bomb at all, what a silly comment. I'm irritated by this one aspect of their coverage.

Additionally, it's not off-topic at all, it's in the friggin' article. It's the first several paragraphs! It basically is the main topic!

And if anyone's "annoyed," by my posts... tough titty, I guess? I'm voicing legitimate complaints here in an article that starts out with the very subject I'm complaining about. And the idea that Patrick wouldn't read these comments is silly, he replies to his articles all the time.

Why would I shoot Jeff a Comic Vine PM about the issue? He made it very clear what his stance was just a couple days ago. It basically amounted to "this is what we think the typical player is going to do, slam A A A A and get playing."

Which is funny, because during that same topic he says about normal difficulties being easy, "What's the publisher trying to say about the average gamer?" So he believes that the average gamer is a brain dead idiot that slams A A A A to start a game and get to the "hot action," but laments publishers for thinking the same thing...? What could a complaint to him possibly amount to besides a "we've already talked about this a lot recently and you know my opinion on it"?

At least by addressing Patrick I could maybe be reaching someone who isn't as stubborn on the issue. But you know what? I'll shoot a PM to Jeff anyway, just to be sure.

I doubt we will see this but one of the things I would love to see in Dragon Age romance options would be a choice between love and duty. You could choose to have a relationship (or marry) a guy or girl who you truly loved or one who would advance your goals (ie for example unite some factions). This could even be advanced to another level where you had the option to marry somebody for strategic reasons but carry on an affair for true love. However, if it got found out either by your wife/husband or by the public it could have potentially dire consequences. If you were playing as a character who was attracted to the same sex it would also mean that you might choose to marry somebody of the opposite sex to say unite a kingdom but also carry on an affair with your actual preference with the potential of it being found out and really bad things happening.

@xbob42: You're right. I was silly to say it's off-topic. Calling my comment silly is a bit rude, though. I was not charging you with the crime of hating Giant Bomb; I was only musing that that's how you appear in those comments. Since you're a subscriber, it's unlikely you hate Giant Bomb, which is why I added the second section, recommending you ask Jeff directly. He can be quite reasonable, and perhaps he could explain his thoughts more clearly in a medium in which he can speak at length on the issue. Maybe you will still disagree with him, but he's a reasonable guy with much more experience as a games journalist than you or I, so we should at the very least give his opinion some respect.

If you think Patrick would be a more sensible voice, you could always pose your question to him on his Tumblr. That's a pretty sure way of getting a response from him. I think my main point was just that if you have deep concerns with Giant Bomb's method of analyzing games, the comments section is probably not the best medium for finding answers, as you aren't guaranteed even to get the right eyes on your words.

Bam, in your face.

I totally agree. Seeing someone just walk up to soldiers and rifle butt them in the face while they're screaming and firing a machine gun makes the game look dumb for any competent gamer and doesn't say anything about AI or tactics required to win. It's useless. Just like showing Sniper Elite with all the prompts and assists and saying the sniping is not satisfying.

No shit, Sherlock! BOOM!

It's weird to see that point of view from Giant Bomb. They should know better. Play the game properly then touch on the assists and easier difficulty for those less competent. Whether the devs made the Normal, Veteran or Hardcore difficulty the best option doesn't matter, they're just labels.

Good job duders, all these comments seem better considered, more level headed and rational than the articles. What was that tweet storm about the state of journalism? Must've missed it, and Patrick is unwilling to journal it.

Greg Kasavin seems like a cool dude.

@achaemenid said:

I've never really got the whole "WHY IS PEWDIEPIE POPULAR?!" question either. The silly immaturity of his content is precisely the reason why. It appeals to young people, it appeals to people across language barriers because of the simplicity of the material, etc. That's really all there ever was to it. I don't care for him and I don't think it comes down to "Old Man Syndrome" when I'm a fucking 23 year old. His material is just very deliberately aimed at a simpler audience. How that piece managed to twist it back around to his "toning down of misogynistic humor" was a great example of trying too hard to be meaningful. There is no meaningful secret at play here.

Also, I'm disappointed to see more Samantha Allen stuff being featured. Not because of her, but because the quality of her arguments are so consistently shallow and pre-conceived there is very little discussion to be had around her stuff unless you're already part of the choir she's preaching to. The (really great and well written) Leigh Alexander piece made pretty much the same points, motivated by pretty much the same thing, much more effectively than Allen did, and did so without sounding so bitter.

Who is Richie Shoemaker and why is Patrick so excited about him? Brad's brother/son/space father?

@xbob42: Difficulty is a matter of perspective in a critics approach to covering games. As Jeff has said many times, he used to work at Gamespot back in the days when they tried to be as objective as possible in their reviews and coverage. Even though Jeff and the rest of the gaming press have come a long way since then, I think that approach continues to inform his and his staff's approach to covering games. If you're providing what is essentially purchase recommendations to your users, then you need to try and look at the games from the perspective of your average player. It's less about about what you think about the game, and more about how you think the wider audience will engage with it as a product. Hence, it becomes possible to form multiple perspectives on a game.

Although GB is now focused on a much smaller audience that generally knows more about games than the average player, they seem to approach and understand games from the perspective of the people who are the target audience of the game itself, rather than the GB target audience. When a game says that this level of difficulty is normal, that is being normalised against the expected audience for that game, and the success of the game will be dependent that difficulty matching the level of experience of the majority of buyers. As an example, let's say that hypothetically Jeff is going to review Barbie Horse Adventures. He's not going to go in looking for a Megaman level of difficulty, even though that's the kind of game he might enjoy. The right approach is to try and imagine how a 6 year old girl might feel about the game. The same can be said for Dark Souls, the expectation is that a game like that is going to be very difficult, so there would be a much higher focus on the level of challenge within the game.

So it's not only fair, but necessary, for critics (including GB) to put themselves in the shoes of the game's target audience when reviewing a game. It's legitimate feedback to say that a game is too easy or hard, regardless of your own idea of difficulty, enjoyment of the game, or level of experience, because you're speaking to a wider audience. There's always going to be a balance between trying to engage with your audience while also expressing your individual opinion, but it remains important for the critic to assess the experience of games at the level that the developers expect most people will play it. After all, the skill of a good critic is being able to understand the mind of the average player, and think how they will interpret the experience as it is presented to them.

I'm 27 and I love pewdiepie. I find him really entertaining. I don't watch all his videos, but when I found out (quite recently actually) that he was a big hit all around the world, I was really surprised. I know why I like him, but I don't get why so many people do. At least here in my country (Brazil) the kind of humor people go after online is VERY different.

The author of that PewDiePie article is seriously reaching. Most people don't like him because he's annoying and his humor is for children. In fact, he self admits that his audience is mostly teenagers. Why are we simply not allowed to like his shtick without it being a social justice issue? I basically read an article that just told me I don't like PewDiePie because I'm homophobic...wait what?

The entire article is a serious stretch. I dislike PewDiePie because he's an annoying human being and not funny. The fact that he does charity is great, and I'm glad he has an audience and don't begrudge him his money...but I'm also allowed to really dislike his schtick and not have it be about questioning his classical masculinity.

EDIT: Oh, no, she totally did write it knowing that.

Using the veneer of standing up against heteronormativity and misogyny to defend someone that, until recently, made normalizing and trivializing rape a central part of his $4-million-a-year schtick is kind of disgusting.

Great heads up on The Fall @patrickklepek. I played it on the basis of your recommendation and really enjoyed it.

Yep, Pewdiepie doesn't alienate his female audience by screaming rape constantly, saying he wants to rape every female character that comes on screen...

"I'm totally going to rape you at checkers" is not equivalent to "I'm totally going to kill you at checkers."

One is normalizing and trivializing a vile crime against humanity, and the other is a harmless boast that all parties understand is not to be taken literally, and does noting to undermine the seriousness of the actual crime. Is this your argument? I've seen this suggested in posts such as yours, and even personally feel that joking about the former is worse than the latter, but I can't quite explain it logically. Can you?

When I was younger, I used the word "rape" in such a manner, but I eventually grew out of it. I stopped doing so, because I personally feel that there's a certain distastefulness to using the word in that way, but I would stop short of agreeing that I was ever normalizing or trivializing actual rape. I'm sure you would disagree with that, and that's fine.

What I'm interested in is the seriousness that we give the idea of rape over murder, and the sense of hypocrisy that I feel behind it all, even as I naturally go along with it. And if I--someone who debates the idea of normalizing and trivializing rape--can naturally arrive at the conclusion that frivolously mentioning rape is somehow worse than frivolously mentioning murder, doesn't that sort of thing directly contradict the concept of rape culture?

I'm sure there are some fairly standard replies for such questions, but I can't say that I remember reading them. At this point, I'm not really interested in an argument, so much as to simply hear the other side of the debate. As I've suggested, I even agree with you to a point.

Why?

The thing that annoys me about people dismissing Battlefield Hardline as "a mod" and therefore not worth anything is that mods are awesome.

Tell me he realises that the problem is not that it looks and feels like a mod but that they want $60 for it.

@hassun: I took his comment to mean "calling Hardline a mod is an insult to the idea of mods."

But then, I always was foolishly optimistic.

@psychohead: I thought about that too but let's be fair here, most mods are not good unsuccessful.

That makes sense.

I think it's cute to see so many articles defending Pewdiepie saying "oh you hate it because you don't get it.".

I hate it because it's annoying as fuck.

No, it doesn't. It's needlessly condescending and dangerously alluring. "Oh, they like this thing I don't like because they're man-children." (The hidden corollary being, "And I'm mature because I don't like him.")

Yeah, I don't like his videos at all, but I don't see the need to throw stones at people who do like them, and somehow claim to be more mature than them.

@spaceinsomniac: rape survivors are around to hear the joke. Rape is generally regarded as a fate worse than death, and is committed to take control away from the victim. Victims are then blamed for their rapes, suffer stigmatization, intense psychological trauma, etc. There's a lot of heavy shit around rape, and we as a culture of human beings have mostly decided that it's not a very funny topic, in any circumstance. I personally am not down with, say, dead baby jokes, but no one is telling dead babies they were asking for it, you know?

There exists, in some universe, the paradise for people who don't want to empathize where it's okay to joke about anything and not worry about offending someone or making them relive a waking nightmare, but I (would like to) think most people would prefer to act in ways that don't hurt other people.

That's the best explanation I can come up with. It's easy to take umbrage with the idea of a thing being taboo to joke about, but at some point it's just devil's advocate bullshit. No one would crack a rape joke directly at a survivor, so why tell them at all, you know? There is some inherent hypocrisy with saying murder jokes are okay while rape is not, but you still know deep down that rape jokes aren't okay. That feeling is normally something to pay attention to.

I hope that was an adequate answer to your question. It's a weird topic.

Murder victims certainly aren't around to hear the joke, but their families and friends sure are. I was thinking about this more today, and I think that it ultimately comes down to intentions and justifications. There are times when "good people" can justify violence and even murder to themselves, but rape is in another category, and is ALWAYS seen as a villainous and reprehensible act.

Think about this: How many times in a movie have you seen the hero violently attack a villain in an act of self-defense, to protect a loved one, or as an act of revenge?

How many times have you seen the hero kill a villain in an act of self-defense, to protect a loved one, or as an act of revenge?

How many times have you seen the hero torture a villain to get information from them that allows them to protect their loved ones, or save a large group of people?

How many times have you seen the hero rape a villain for any reason? Male or female, no matter what the circumstances, I've never seen that in any movie. Even when a villain kills a witness, there's a certain justification and self-preservation that we as an audience can understand, even if we don't agree with it. But there's just no justification for the act of rape, which ultimately gives it more weight than murder.

The problem is that while rape should probably be viewed as worse than murder when looking as the one committing the crime, I think it's extremely harmful that "rape is generally regarded as a fate worse than death," if that is indeed the case. Viewing the result of rape with that level of contempt may be a good thing for those who consider themselves opponents of rape culture, but at the same time, that's an awful unintended message for any rape survivor to have to deal with.

Lastly, there's a reason why I specifically said "frivolously mentioning rape" instead of "rape jokes," and that's because I don't believe any subject should be considered off limits when it comes to humor. I also feel that rape jokes are usually shocking because of the seriousness of the topic, which actually works against the idea of normalizing or trivializing rape. But again, you're welcome to disagree, and I'm in no way trying to argue that my opinion on this issue is "right."

Anyhow, thanks for sharing your thoughts.

@spaceinsomniac @video_game_king

That's a pretty strong assumption you made from reading my post. Nowhere in it did I put myself above people who like Pewdiepie by saying they are less mature than I am. In fact, if you go back and read it, it states my very reason for hating his videos: "annoying as fuck". The way he does that ridiculous voice and yells like a complete idiot is just really bad humor, not appealing to me.

I agreed about his appeal to younger people because most of his viewers do seem to be pretty young, and the explanation I quoted just make sense. Kids going through that transition will appreciate silly stuff more easily than others.

Hell, I like some immature shit too, but I think it's better than fucking Pewdiepie. That doesn't make me better or more mature, though. It makes me have an opinion, something that you two apparently took issue with or interpreted the wrong way.

No, it doesn't. I don't even get the sense that the person writing that has made a genuine attempt to understand them. Hell, the quote doesn't even tell me that he spoke with admitted PewDiePie fans. It's just saying, "Oh, this thing I don't like is immature; therefore, you can only enjoy it if you're immature."

@spaceinsomniac: I appreciate your willingness to have civil discourse on the Internet, especially about this topic. It's surprising the amount of vitriol it garners.

@spaceinsomniac: I would say prison rape between men isn't always seen as a villainous and reprehensible act.

Would Revenge of the Nerds qualify as a hero (one of the nerds) raping a villain (one of the jock's girlfriends)? That's clearly rape, since she didn't consent to having sex with the nerd, and did so under false pretenses. It's also problematic because the person who was raped then falls in love with the nerd because he was just that good. There have been real crimes where men have pretended to be someone else and take advantage of women who would not have otherwise consented.

Thanks, @PatrickKlepek, for reminding me why I don't visit Polygon all that much.

That dude who did the terrible Mila Kunis interview (some of those questions were really predictable and too personal, come on) should see this amazing one that went viral:

Even other actresses know of that interview:

What little I've watched of Pewdiepie was filled with screaming and rape jokes. I'm not sure how you can alienate female viewers MORE than that. He made a video and song called "ITS RAPING TIME" for god's sake.

The comments in the Leigh Alexander story are fantastic, nothing less than the internet I expect.

"Did you even fight the boss monsters?"

Mods are awesome. The best mods have almost always been free.

PewDiePie bothers me because his content isn't really that good, but he made $4mil on the backs of other people's work, who aren't going to make a 10th of that in a year.

Uhh muh gawd that CORGI

@gunsaredrawn:

They're hilariously on-point.