Worth Reading: 10/04/2013

Wow, I haven't heard of Mighty No. 9 until this article and now I am so stoked! To see the effort and motivations/drive of Inafune and how the whole team supports that. Definitely going to be the first game I back. Something I really want to be a part of.

@funkasaurasrex: Your tone was more than likely obvious to most, I am just very cautious to not be a dick on the internet, as I hate being one in life in general. If you enjoy the videos you have seen of Game/Show, I would highly recommend the PBS Idea Channel as well, especially the episodes about Attack on Titan and the nature of evil, and especially the episode on the ethics of AI.

Yeah, that was gross. To be honest, I eventually found my politics splitting from Clancy's too towards the end of his career, but if anything, the guy should be commended for realizing when what was in his own head was no longer what people wanted to read and that was when his production tailed off. I don't know Tom Clancy at all, but even if I did, I certainly wouldn't be judging him for disagreeing with me, and he definitely didn't try to shove his opinions down anyone's throat, like Crichton did toward the end of his days.

Wow! That "app flipping" article is downright offensive to my software engineer sensibilities. There's nothing I hate more than people exploiting shady and unethical software practices to exploit people out of their money.

No problem. Also, point taken!

Wow, I almost put up that Goosebumps cover in the Bombin' The A.M. comments this morning as the Night Of The Living Dummy trilogy is my favourite of the series. Went with Say Cheese and Die instead.

Yeah - Tom Clancy, while a good writer in his early days, started to become extremely right-wing in his later years. Although I don't think he realized it, and while I think many people would defend him, he became slightly racist - well, perhaps not racist, but extremely nationalistic. To the point that I felt many of his books were essentially: "USA Rules, EVERYONE ELSE IS TERRIBLE"

The last book of his I read, "The Bear and the Dragon" had some borderline racist stuff in it. Maybe that's how people in the military talk, but to have the protagonists and heroes openly use racist language against the Chinese was very uncomfortable for me. Now, you can say "oh well, he has protagonists of various races in his books" - true. But when his characters openly use terms like "skinny-bastards" and "gooks" to refer to the Chinese or to other Asians, that's pretty bad. The Bear and the Dragon was very uncomfortable reading for me.

Yeah, that is fucking scummy as hell.

Write about it all you want but Gone Home is still a shit game.

"one of the grosser things" link was awesome. I loved his "hot ganster tip". Display banner ads while counting up the score after a level. People out there working hard to crack the code. Mobile Gaming!

Also the guy with the comment that ad revenue was 8:1 to in-game transactions. Mostly because in-game transactions only really worked if you have a good game. LOL!

I really wish that the games industry would just grow up so we can stop writing article about how the games industry needs to grow up. It's kind of depressing that a great game like GTA V gets bogged down by all this crap.

Amateur video game academia might be the worst thing ever to happen to video games.

It's an inevitability. Though there are people out there that would prefer the stance of "They're just games, stop thinking!" (not saying you're one of those people), the medium and industry have grown large enough to the point where formal academic study is viable. It does give rise to the ivory tower intellectuals of the video game world, but it can also lead to some very worthwhile study on the industry, games, and player communities.

i dont blame the people that want to enjoy games as mindless games, cause at the end of the day, imo gaming got to the size it got due to the mindless games, and i dont blame the people that want actual thoughtful dissection of a games qualities.

but a better balance i think needs to happen though, but thats probably the toughest thing to ask for.

My problem with the current breed of game intelectualism is that it seems to have gotten really pretentious almost overnight, and frankly I don't think games have really earned it yet. Put it this way, it makes sense to me when film critics scoff at the latest mindless blockbusters because odds are they have a good number of genuinely artistic alternatives to drive people towards, whereas there aren't really that many truely impressive art games. The difference between a Michael Bay movie and an Abbas Kiarostami movie just seems a whole lot more vast to me than the difference between Call of Duty and Limbo. That's why I reserve my intellect for movies and books and mostly just come to games when I just want to shoot shit and blow up stuff.

There is a stark difference between Call of Duty and Limbo in terms of not just their genre, but presentation, themes, narrative styles, and purpose.

From the app-flipping article, the author wrote this in his comments section:

"Sigh. Haters gonna hate. Funny thing is the apps I make are probably better than half the shit most indie developers spend months of their lives on…then go broke."

I'm going to vomit.

@aliens4: You literally do not need to "cherry pick" statistics on the violence and harassment that happen to trans people because it is always happening. Furthermore, ANY statistics gleaned are literally less than what they really are because so much that happens to us goes unreported or ignored by law enforcement. A lot of it happens FROM law enforcement!

Satire is nothing without subversion. Making fun of trans women only perpetuates that notion. Without asking what this really means and what it does, you are merely restating negative attitudes. A lot of the public sees trans people as a joke. Making more jokes about trans people just adds fuel to the out of control fire.

As an aside as more of these issues come to light I've noticed a lot more negative encounters with people in public, and trans friends of mine have as well. It shouldn't be our job to educate people on what is right and wrong, but because nobody else stands up for us we have to, and it's miserable.

The Institute looks like a really intriguing movie, and a creepy one. I hope they show it somewhere in my area...

The argument that we shouldn't have a problem with GTA's portrayal of transgenderism because "it's GTA it makes fun of everyone" falls incredibly flat.

The game makes no effort to take the piss out of cisgendered people. There are people who are cis who are the butt of jokes, but not because of their status as a cisgendered person.

On the flipside, literally the only examples of transgendered people in the game is to be the focus of some very cruel, ignorant "humor" that makes fun of them for being transgendered.

So no, you don't get to claim that these "jokes" are fair, or that people that have a problem with them want transgendered people to be "special snowflakes" and "treated better than everyone else". That is just plain bullshit. Because no, the game in fact does not make fun of everyone.

@nekroskop: Man, that seems like a bit of a mean over-generalisation. You know most of the bomb-crew and other people, like Max Temkin from Cards Against Humanity, have Tumblrs right? Which they use to answer questions and stuff?

Anyway, great article as usual Scoops!

So...what about the jokes are harmless, from an objective standpoint?

The jokes aren't harmless.

It's not that GTAV, on it's own, in a bubble, in a vacuum, is the problem. The problem is that it is not in a bubble, not in a vacuum. It is part of a mosaic that contributes to cultural trends and attitudes. When almost every example of transgendered people in popular culture is these kinds of "jokes", it fosters those attitudes towards transgendered people in real life. Why do you think transgendered people are treated so poorly? Because people have been encouraged to believe that transgendered people are "wrong" or "weird" or "traps" or "perverts" or one of the many negative stereotypes the media constantly portrays them as.

Representation in media matters a whole hell of a lot and to claim otherwise is a total falsehood. If representation of transgendered people in media was actually fair an balanced way less people would kick up a fuss when something like GTAV does what it did. No one gives a crap when something makes fun of white people or straight people or cisgendered people for this reason, because white people and straight people and cisgendered people don't have to worry about how almost everything in pop culture portrays them as a joke.

At least they're supporting Jake Gyllenhaal's work.

PS Spelled that correctly on my first try. Where's my fucking trophy.

@walkmanboy: Thumblrs to answer questions are fine. It's the ones who have preachy blogs I dislike. Those people aren't right in the head and need help.

Tell that to anyone that's been bullied and made the butt of jokes in school or anywhere else. See how they feel about your blatant ignorance.

I shouldn't comment piecemeal, cause there's more reading to do, but that poor guy in the Developer Diary vid. I ended up skipping through it every few minutes, and I swear it was just one long sentence of ''We did it, I think I am on the verge of tears'.

llol.

Doesn't make the joke any less hurtful.

I like how wanting transgender people to not solely exist in the game as a joke while the same game makes no cis jokes at all is "wanting special treatment".

Some people are just truly oblivious to their social privileges.

Holy shit, that article about selling apps. I feel like I need to take a fucking shower now.

Loved the GTA mythbusters and the awesome message from Gabe.

GABE FOR PRES!

Take a drink everybody.

Privilege is a real thing and absolutely relevant to the conversation.

Cisgender people are in a priveledged position where they can play any game and know their gender status won't be mocked and marginalized.

Transgender people are in a position where the vast majority of games either won't have any representation for them at all, or will mock them and belittle them.

So for someone to say that the lack of positive treatment of transgendered people in games is a non-issue and to bring out the old "everyone gets made fun of, you just want a group to be treated special" is an incredibly hollow and meaningless argument made from ignorance.

Pretty much.

I don't see what's so hard to figure out. Indeed, the comment could be levied at all the other groups lazily maligned in your average GTA.

Minorities being in a joke is not the same as minorities being the joke.

I wish I could be more socially outraged about how bad life sucks sometimes.

In fact, the Clancyverse has always seemed weirdly utopian to me, almost like a neocon version of the Star Trek universe.

That was the best line ever. Seriously, that should have been the quote for the Tom Clancy article.

About GTA, while I've not played V, I've played I-IV and Chinatown Wars, and there's this overwhelming sense in the series now that Rockstar are just trying to push buttons. Everything seems forced, like the major effort in every bit of dialogue and story is to be as provocative as possible. Perhaps that's why I find myself both not offended and uninterested. It just looks like they're trying to be provocative for its own sake, like a kid who learned his first swear word and can't stop repeating it on Xbox Live because it's something he's not supposed to do. It's hard to be worked up into a storm when you can't help but turn on the babytalk voice and go "Who's being provocative? You're being provocative! Want a cookie?"

Seeing that Night of the Living Dummy cover reminds of how much goddamn R. L. Stine I read in my youth.

You're not so good yourself. That sentence should have been past tense.

@crippl3 said:

If he said that to make people mad he is a master-level ruseman. If he actually believes that, well, he's in denial about his status as a bottom-feeder.

What his non-troll defense should actually be is:

"I'm just a part of the ecology. We aren't all blessed with the gifts to make Fez or Braid, and as long as there are people out there who will download an endless running app about Lady Gaga there will be people making money off of them."