Worth Reading: 07/14/2014

• Pyrella's spin on a Metroid-inspired action game is making darkness a key component.

Go fund this! I know one of the guys working on it, and he is no newcomer to game development. The footage they show already looks great, if not a little lackluster, mainly because it's pre-alpha. In the end, I'm always down for a new metroidvania game with cool mechanics. :)

I've really enjoyed the more regular text based content. Video is good and all, but sometimes I'd rather read something.

Just to clarify...I didn't mean I didn't want you to reply directly...just that I wasn't asking those questions with the expectation that you must answer directly.

Anyway...so...you wrote "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." That's what I was responding to...you said the romance loses impact because it doesn't resonate with your expectation. Now, perhaps I read that incorrectly...but I thought you were making a somewhat universal statement (that it objectively loses impact) because of the way it doesn't meet your personal expectations. Perhaps what you meant is just that it loses impact for you because of the way it doesn't meet your personal expectations? - Which is somewhat different as I thought you were making more universal statements.

As to the second bit...see I disagree with you with regards to whether ME or DA is going for a fairy tale tone. In many ways it is going for a more grounded version of a fantasy, sure...but it's still a fantasy. They've got magic and space magic and hyper-sexual blue alien ladies and giant robot aliens and Morrigan...like, Morrigan is straight out of a fantasy. Adult fairy tales, perhaps, but still fairy tales.

Like, of course not every gay person prefers the way ME handled representation to a more realistic one. The point of diversity is a diverse set of representations. Both the story of overcoming struggle and the fantasy of living without struggle are valuable stories...but considering ME and DA have spaceships and dragons why is it that the notion of a gay guy not having to struggle with discrimination is what throws your 'unrelateable' switch but the blue aliens don't? (Also a somewhat hypothetical question).

Well now you're asking me to prove a negative...but alright, I'll bite. Let me rephrase: It does not harm anyone. She did not perpetuate a stereotype which is used to commit violence against people; she did not personally attack anyone; she did not threaten or insult anyone; she did not name names or call out a specific individual...thus, no harm. - That someone might have read her statement and had their feelings hurt, well yeah...that's possible. As I said, that sentence wasn't particularly nice or polite...but Quinn is human (like the rest of us) and thus isn't always going to be the most polite or the nicest.

As for the second part: those two are mutually exclusive when we're talking about 'Quinn wasn't nice' versus folks sending threats and slurs to Quinn, personally.

man, patrick. If the internet had your honesty the world would just melt.

I love all the podcasts and videos, but the site has felt really lite on written content for awhile now. Perhaps because there aren't as many reviews done nowadays? Alex and Jeff are the only ones that seem to write them now, and its infrequent. As entertaining as QLs and the new Unfinished series are, its nice to get more than an initial impression of the first few hours of a game.

Perhaps I'm getting old and that's the new YouTube generation, but I always enjoyed hearing and reading full thought out discussions/opinions on games the crew has finished. I think that's a big reason why people enjoy the Endurance Runs or Spooking/Spelunkin' with Scoops so much because they got to be a part of that full game experience.

Also, I agree with several of the previous posts that a post mortem look at games sounds really appealing. Whether it's a review, interview, essay, or roundtable discussions. The Walking Dead interviews and the Beyond: Two Souls spoilercast are both great examples.

I'm not trying to make universal arguments, I'm only arguing from my personal taste, which I consider to be good and therefore meeting my standards should be considered best practice ;)

Your other point regarding suspension of disbelief in a fantasy world is a common one. Ultimately a stronger case can be made for Dragon Age than for Mass Effect, as despite sharing many of the value systems of our own past, Dragon Age doesn't occur on Earth. However, the premise of Mass Effect is that it takes place in our own future (not-so-distant, either), and thus, our current prejudices are in its history. As such, it's natural for us to expect to see them addressed.

I know this weekend was a one-time thing, but could you keep Worth Reading a Friday/Saturday feature? I have a lot more time and attention to read articles over the weekend than on a Monday evening.

The thing is, meeting straight white dude's expectations is what's considered 'best practice' when it comes to most AAA games (and pop culture in general). This is part of why, when you've been talking about your personal expectations and breaking immersion, I thought you were applying them more universally. Because, in general, your personal expectations are applied universally.

But also...breaking expectations is part of what makes for good storytelling. If you anticipate every beat of a story, it becomes boring. Discovering that what you thought you knew about a character (or the world) is actually wrong can be really powerful.

Thus, that common argument that I made (about accepting dragons and spaceships but not a gay utopia) applies rather well to both ME and DA, I think. In ME it is not surprising one would expect to see similar prejudices to our current world...but it's also not impossible that we have a world where those prejudices are more-or-less gone in some (even not-so-distant) future. The breaking of that expectation can be quite powerful.

Now, whether ME and DA executed portraying these queer utopias well is another question entirely.

@hrn212: It's possible that there is some queer-friendly setting that could be written in such a way as to challenge our expectations rather than just being a bland failure to address them. I'm willing to accept that.

This is some good stuff Patrick.

Nope this should be up in Fridays were I can relax from a stressfull week diging into articles and following up with other articles into the wee hours of the night without worrying about responsibilities the next day. And about the Levine article ... what a load of bull I love how conveniently everyone forgets about the miriad of games that has not violence in them like Tetris the sims , harvest moon , sports games so on and so forth ... really it was just the gaming media being whinners with Bioshock Infinite because of "reasons"? Stupid ones like why is this a FPS even if the whole franchise is a FPS??? Sheesh really?

Oh yeah about your articles ... was I supposed to hate them or something? I for one was glad that a lot was done in that department , nor I care much for article titles and what not , really some people just make up ridiculous things to complain about.

I'm fairly new to giant bomb, but I like your unique perspectives and the way you conduct your journalism. Don't over criticize your articles too much, I would hate to see some great content lost because of that.

I really enjoyed the news coverage last week, I felt there was more to the article than just the headline. It's definitely an experimental thing, but I like the idea of my news being portrayed with personality, that is, after all, why I come to this site.

Okay, yes. But also...a bland refusal to address a present-day audience's expectations (in particular a straight audience's expectations) for a queer character is also powerful (or can be, assuming the story is interesting, etc). Depicting a queer character whose life is not even remotely touched by prejudice based on their sexuality is powerful.

As I said before, part of the problem with ME and DA is frankly that they didn't follow through enough with this attempt to depict a world without homophobia...so bits of the game were actually unintentionally laced with present-day prejudices.

Anyway...I don't mean to pick on you and I'll stop the lecture now.

@veektarius:

To add another thought to your conversation, there's no need for a story to be wild fantasy in order to allow it to alter the social expectations of their universe. There's no ratio of Pure Realism to Bigotry that can only ease as you get more fantastical.

Take the rebooted Battlestar Galactica universe. Okay... yeah, it's sci-fi, so maybe not the best example. But their twists on "our" gender and orientation expectations weren't only permitted because it was a crazy fantasy world, they simply were able to change things which fit into their shared fictional history.

The BG characters came from twelve colonies most of which accepted a pantheon similar (pretty identical, actually) to that of the ancient Greeks. Apollo, Athena, etc. In those myths, there is a fair share of messed up rape and mistreatment of women, but that subjugation of women was never a dogma as it is in certain other religious texts and there were far more powerful and cunning women than those who were victims only. So women in their modern culture were always seen as equal to men. So the bathrooms/showers are all co-ed, and even a man boxing a woman isn't inherently seen as an unfair fight.

Also, homosexual relationships factored into many Greek myths, so homosexuality just isn't considered any different from hetero relationships. In their culture, there simply isn't a difference.

So, basically, you don't need to explain away bigotry by creating a happy flowery world where everyone is tolerant. In BG, hate and racial bias are core themes. But by tweaking the roots of their collective morality, you have a world where gender and orientation equality is the norm without it being disingenuous to our current world.

I just really want Quadrilateral Cowboy.

Ditto.

Not sure if Monday is the best day for this feature.Maybe Saturday is more fitting? But I guess you'll get a lot fewer people checking it out if that were the case.

Wednesday may also be a decent time for it to go up.

Gruber has said in the past that his long-form commentary articles seem to take far longer to write than their word length would seem to indicate, to the point where he might only do one or two a month.

As it turns out, long form is hard. Really hard. Especially if you want it to have an authorial voice, and most especially if you don't want it to lose the plot or say something you didn't intend.

I think it's great you're experimenting. Sometimes things aren't going to come out right, but sometimes they will. And through it all, you're still learning more about your craft. Keep it up.

Honestly, I missed Worth Reading over the weekend.

It's so common for there to be less articles everywhere on weekends; so, Worth Reading was convenient as a source for some additional, bigger reads on the weekend. On Monday... it kind of just gets swept up in the cavalcade of new week stories and videos.

@truthtellah: Yeah, seems you lose either way you go. Maybe Sunday morning, "Meet the Video Game Press" style?

I concur

@veektarius: I never thought that deeply about them, to be honest. To me, Mass Effect is just like Star Trek: Much of the social norms in the universe simply reflect a future where things are obviously going in western society now. I honestly don't see how social problems over 100 years before these stories start should be accurately reflected.

Patrick used Excerpt

It's super effective!

Seriously, really diggin that format for the featured articles.

I like the Vox format, the Blezinkski one seems uneccessary but then I took a step back and considered most people are unaware of personalities behind games. This is a good step to being more open to new or less knowledgeable gamers. Thinking back on it, GB content usually assumes the site visitor knows personailities such as Greg Kasavin, John Drake, Phil Fish, Jonathon Blow yet a good deal of gamers would need to Google/Wikipedia them.

Back to my point, I read the linked Vox article and I like the format, more of this please.

For the DOTA2 article I….zzzzzzzzz…zzzzz….fuck DOTA2. Nah I’m glad it exists if only to show companies how free to play can be done well. But yeah feedback on the format, didn’t have an opinion one way or the other. For the content, it makes sense to consider the viewpoint of someone who’s interested in the subject but doesn’t know where to start.

Developer/pirate format. I thought the headline was perfectly fine. You didn’t use the phrase “you wont believe what….did” or some other bullshit. No hyperbole just a simple description of the article content. I can’t speak for the rest of your traffic but I clicked on the link because stories like this are usually humorous or interesting. This story had a moral, a happy ending and pictures, the best kind of story.

Xbox & Grim Fandango stories, you summed it up well. No more to say

The Alien story I liked a lot, particularly bringing in the twitter viewpoints.

To be honest, I preferred this on Fridays. It was nice to come home from work and have a set of articles to delve into in that transition period between work and fun on Friday (waiting for everyone to shower, etc.). with some articles. On Monday, I'm just so tired and eager to sleep that I'll open the articles but let them stagnate in my browser, until finally closing them some days later.

Also, it was cool to see "professional" content and "amateur" content -- Community Spotlight on the forums -- and I enjoyed reading both throughout the weekend. I believe this should be moved back to Friday.

@brendan: For my part, while I liked STNG's socialist utopia pretty well as a kid, when I watch those shows these days they seem ridiculously naive.