Worth Reading: 08/25/2014

There's something vaguely aggressive about all of that, considering the way that sort of criticism has started to lean.

You might as well just say:

That's a nice reputation you've got there, it'd be a shame if something were to happen to it.

Concerning role models, for someone to find a role model in a video game does not require a direct correlation between the gender/race of the player and that of the character. It's the things they do and how they behave that you look up to. You know, their role.

I'd like to see more well realized characters of different forms and backgrounds in games. When it comes to looking beyond the superficial and actually creating a character, I have to wonder if certain things would be considered off-limits by some who also call for diversity.

We've already seen how negative things coming from negative characters in video games can cause some people to cry foul on the game itself, or even the companies associated with the game. Does the call for different looking characters also carry standards of exactly how that character be represented? How a story including these characters plays out?

That's an important question for right now, not down the road. Unless these characters are completely hollow (an issue in its own right), then figuring out their personality is as much a part of creating them as is designing their appearance.

Are elements on the side of those calling for more varied representations doing so honestly, or are they only wanting for more representations that adhere to their own particular sensibilities and prejudices?

The medium ought to grow and expand to allow for many new sorts of characters, stories, and ideas; not the opposite.

So, that Matthew Burns article, I have a question. It was steeped pretty heavily in pretension and overwrought metaphor, so I want to be sure. Is he saying I'm a bad/self-centered person because I don't like it when people lie to me or misrepresent the truth?

Trying to piece together whatever the hell this Quinn thing was from the various comments here is... interesting. One minute it seems like it's about some infighting over an indiegogo campaign, then it seems to be some kind of sex scandal, then I hear it has to do with the integrity of games journalism, then I hear it's about sexual harassment.

Anyway, I finally googled it and I'm ever so slightly less confused. It sounds like the game journalists should get off their high horses and just report on the damn thing because forcing people to hear about this stuff from weird rumors on forums is probably worse for everyone involved then letting them hear about it in articles that have actually been fact-checked and organized.

Since I was talking in terms of proportions, saying I want less peas does imply I want a fuckload of everything else, and saying I want more of everything else does mean that I want less peas--again, proportionally.

@roadshell:

Part of the concerns surrounding all of this cuts right to core of how games journalism works. Take Cliffy B's tweet about how people in the service industry have sex with each other all the time so get over it, people have sex. He posted that and honestly thought that was applicable to this case. That's the industry at large here, there is zero separation between the journalism side and the creative side and they see nothing wrong with that. No wonder why they don't want to talk about it. Everything is broke in their favor already, why fix it?

Also its so much easier to just dismiss this all as men being horrible to women instead of actually taking a long hard look at things that probably don't have easy answers and get into meaningful discussions about them. They'd rather make snarky comments on Twitter and call it a day.

thanks patrick

Thanks for posting that article and all of the thought provoking discussion @patrickklepek. It was an intriguing read.

@grantheaslip: Sometimes I can't tell when Klepek is being ironic/sarcastic or being a hypocrite.

@patrickklepek Hey it seems like you're trying to add more community content to the bottom of Worth Reading as of late. That's pretty swell, non-ironic use of the word swell, so thanks for doing a little bit extra to engage with the community.

@darek006: And it's without that context that saying one would seem less "nefarious" than the other; a context that the statements alone do not include. As they do appear, they are not interchangeable. It'd be counter-intuitive to ask for less of one thing and expect to only receive more of everything else.

Consider asking someone for less peas: would you expect to be given a normal amount of peas but a more than normal amount of everything else, or a normal amount of everything else and a less than normal amount of peas? That latter, more literal response, is the most obvious expectation; asking for less peas is a request concerned only with the amount of peas.

And again, it's that apparently reduction-focused language that gets some people get bent out of shape.

You could just put the context right into the statements themselves ("I want proportionally less white males"), and then they'd be equivalent. A bit ambiguous maybe, but the sentiment should be clear to someone familiar with the current landscape in video games. To someone who isn't, well, then you might just come across as a racist misandrist.

Or you could avoid all of everything by saying "I want a variety of characters" instead. It's not that much harder than saying "I want less white men".

I know it's a semantic thing, but hey, words matter.

I am really missing me some Worth Playing :(.

@grantheaslip: I think the take away is that it's funny. There's also nothing in that link that says anything about people who like anime being "stupid/gross." Calm down.

Saw both those music video this past weekend. Good shit.

I actually quit using anime avatars because I felt it was getting me judged for my opinion before I even said it, and more than once I was "called out" on having an anime avatar. I usually just stick to retro game avatars or don't even bother setting an avatar. One less thing for people to judge me on.

My original post said, "more representation of people who aren't white males" which was later simplified to "less white males". I think that bit of context changes the way the ensuing conversation reads. On its own, "less white males" is not equivalent to "more everything else", but in the context of the conversation (in which I first implied and later outright said multiple times was about proportions rather than absolutes), I still believe them to be interchangeable. I think that's basically what you're saying, though, so I digress. I think the disconnect here is because I've been arguing from a within-this-specific-conversation perspective and you've been arguing from a meta-perspective. I didn't pick up on that. Apologies.

Uh, that quiz is very clearly ridiculing anime and implying that people only watch it for big breasted anime girls and DBZ-esque nonsense. ''lol anime'' in general is such low-hanging fruit these days that making fun of it always comes across to me as akin to kicking someone while they're down, much like making fun of Sonic. And I say all this as someone that isn't particularly interested in anime very much, either. Or Sonic for that matter.

That Burns article was a thinly veiled piece saying "you fuckheads would forget it in a week's time" -- which I don't doubt. Disparaging tone and false dichotomy aside, I think it is great that a bunch of game bloggers/journalists/whatever they consider themselves have come out on this so we can see where they stand. And the best thing out of this is an admission that all of gaming is just one huge spectacle -- that nothing in this industry matters except keeping the consumer happy and lining the producers' pockets.

He is wrong though. It does matter which specific titles the customer buys. It matters for the developer who puts effort into games and it matters for how the industry is perceived. Spurred by this article, if someone asked me whether video games would ever achieve the same artistic integrity as films, I'll be sure to laugh in his face.

As a journalist myself (non gaming) - I'm disappointed about the lack of coverage over something which has multiple news angles and ways in which wouldn't be inflammatory. Only it's a massive news-worthy story and it's being consciously ignored and censored by the gaming press.

It annoys me more that Giantbomb has published very eloquent articles on the subject which have been thought provoking, and NOW we're skirting around the issue? Please.

Other than that, nice pieces in the article.

Over the course of the past ten years the term Gamer to me has referred to a club, or a clique if you will. One that does not see me as a member. I got out of games for a long time and when I got back in, in my late twenties, my tastes were very different. I don't like grim gritty things that much any more and "Mature" games tend to leave me cold. I never clicked with the GTA style open world game and FPS games were never my bag either. As budgets bloat and things get tighter the "gamers" seem to be pressuring the studios to focus more and more on what I don't especially care for.

What is troublesome to me is it seems to be working. Nintendo, the company that makes most of what falls in line with my tastes (yes I acknowledge that they eff up a lot about the platform) is falling by the wayside. I like party games a genre pretty much spat on by what is considered the "core gamer" so as fades Nintendo, so do I. I enjoy some of the indie stuff, but I do like to get a bigger scale game and as of recently, I have fewer and fewer options to get something whimsical that has any effort put in.

More concisely its a label people want to hold as exclusive not inclusive, and they way that some are defining it is, a certain colour, a certain gender, a certain orientation and with the "right" tastes. If they are the important consumer, then I may be forced out of the hobby or at least to its fringes on the odd mobile or portable game. Which is kind of a bummer.

Just a slight addendum since I don't follow any game people in the industry, just GB:

The Burns article directly linked me to two blog posts on objectivity -- one of which by Cara Ellison, who didn't sound particularly coherent so I won't refer to it, and Brendan Keogh. Firstly, regarding the issue of objectivity in reviews that they latch on to: I don't know who is making that argument but I wouldn't put it past them considering what a clusterfuck the place was a couple of days ago, so I digress.

The more disturbing line of thought is that the supposed 'cronyism' is justifiable in the face of a cash cow industry or how he puts it:

I am one hundred percent completely okay with writing about games made by friends who don’t have access to gazillion dollar PR leech companies because they made a cool game and, as a game critic, I want nothing more than to tell people about cool games to play.

This is particularly disturbing because it completely ignores the power dynamics that goes into the relationship between a dev and a critic (I guess we are calling it that now). The critic is in a privileged (loaded term is intentional) position in its relation to a dev because they are considered the arbiter of taste in games that can make or break a game. Ordinarily if the parties existed in a vacuum, a dev's livelihood is of no concern to the critic. Since they don't, there are implicit pressures, whether critics know it or not (a familiar argument because it is), to help devs out. Similarly, there is also an issue with the undefined way he uses the word 'tell'.

In a more practical example, there is a spectrum of how much a journalist/critic can support a game. A review is the most transparent one where one's professional judgement in how a game excels (or not) is detailed and whatnot. No concern with this because just like that Alien: Colonial Marine review, you can write critics off as you see fit. However, it can also extend to just a casual mention or features (stuff like interviews). The issue with the latter two is that it does not bring in the professional judgement of a critic and this becomes particularly exploitable for obvious reasons.

It's rambly I know, but it's also 3 am.

Since the guys seemed to joke on Twitter that the quiz was made by Jeff, I think @patrickklepek linked it as a mockery of those who irrationally dislike and stereotype anime(like Jeff often plays). I don't really think it's that effective of a mockery, as it could be taken as an insulting post depending on your interpretation, but I don't believe Patrick linked to it out of an interest to insult anime fans.

Having said that, I do agree that the Kill la Kill thread was far more interesting, and it had the potential to make a real point to people about accepting ourselves and our fandoms. It is certainly unfortunate that easy jokes often get prominence over more meaningful discussions.

@spaceinsomniac: Probably a big mistake I reckon because it might have more of a knee jerk reaction on her part, etc. but I don't really know the entire story. This story is also particularly bad for everyone involved as well but also I just wanted to say that I wasn't talking about that story in my post since its also an entirely different situation altogether though it also involves her in it.

You know what would be great? An article actually talking about whether journalists can write about good friends/romantic friends games without disclosing it. Or an article about how a man can get merely accused of rape and it's posted on game sites while a woman admits to it in a conversation and it's fine. Or an article about how some of the most famously antagonistic gaming communities are working together through what's been happening recently.

But I guess we'll just settle for tweets, censored forums, and vague allusions to anything that happens. If you don't want to cover it, that's perfectly at your discretion. Alluding to the situation without elaborating is taking advantage of the situation and leaving people in confusion. You could write plenty of articles that don't include specific people and completely avoid the "personal issues" but then things might actually change for the better.

I want to support Max Temkin, but I don't have any friends that would play Slap .45 with me. I have some that would play Punch .45... but I don't really want to play with those guys. I have a pretty face. Hell, I'll probably still back it, anyway.