Worth Reading: 11/03/2014

Even though countless games have been delayed from 2014 to 2015, we're about to hit the busiest part of the year. It's when games start getting thrown into a stack with a promise to play them later, only to have those promises broken over and over.

For me, I'll be bouncing between Sunset Overdrive and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare for a tonal departure from October's deluge of horror. Of course, that means Bayonetta 2's being left in the rearview mirror, but I intend to get back around to that one, even if I have to take a day off work to make it happen. It's a different kind of game, but it reminds me of Asura's Wrath...

The real question is how Dragon Age: Inquisition fits into everything. I'm hoping to finally join the series with its latest release, but such a plan was drafted when it seemed like Dragon Age would arrive in September. While it may only be the beginning of November, I feel like the month's already gone...

You Should Read These

• "Meet The Men Trying To Immortalize Video Games" by Joseph Bernstein

As video games begin to weave themselves into the cultural fabric, it becomes increasingly apparent what a terrible job the industry does of archiving its work. This isn't news, obviously, but as the Library of Congress begins to consider how games should be considered alongside movies, music, and other mediums, hearing how game companies are largely against handing over source code is disappointing. We can't play older games on our newer consoles for technological reasons that are sometimes understandable, but we should be looking for better ways to make sure our medium can be remembered in the decades to come. So far, we're screwing that up, but there's time to turn it around.

"More pressingly, the Moving Image Collection currently has no good way of dealing with digitally distributed media, and not just video games. The Library’s processes are, by the standards of 21st century media consumption, antiquated. Netflix has to print special VHS copies of their streaming hits like Orange Is the New Black and House of Cards for copyright consideration. As games move toward exclusively digital formats, the Library has to standardize digital specifications for fiber optic copyright submission, and then it needs the major game publishers to comply.

The Library has strong relationships with big film studios, who come to Packard for prints when they want to publish new editions. Many game publishers, though, see the archivists’ desire for comprehensiveness as a threat. 'Most game companies,' Gibson wrote in 2012, 'view the source codes as trade secrets not to be distributed.' That, according to Gibson, is a mistake, especially since the Library keeps all material under lock and key. 'Archives are trying to save and legitimize the things they’re making,' he said."

• "The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed" by Adrian Chen

While this isn't about games, it touches on the problems of expanded speech on the Internet. There were several moments I became physically ill while reading Adrian Chen's piece about the psychological cost of content moderation in the social media age. Chen talks with the companies and employees tasked with making sure your grandma doesn't come across a dick pic on Facebook, and reveals the darkness of humanity that we're often never exposed to. Dick pics are nothing compared to what's described in Chen's piece. I've never recommended having a drink handy while reading something on Worth Reading before, but there's a first time for everything.

"While a large amount of content moderation takes place overseas, much is still done in the US, often by young college graduates like Swearingen was. Many companies employ a two-tiered moderation system, where the most basic moderation is outsourced abroad while more complex screening, which requires greater cultural familiarity, is done domestically. US-based moderators are much better compensated than their overseas counterparts: A brand-new American moderator for a large tech company in the US can make more in an hour than a veteran Filipino moderator makes in a day. But then a career in the outsourcing industry is something many young Filipinos aspire to, whereas American moderators often fall into the job as a last resort, and burnout is common.

'Everybody hits the wall, generally between three and five months,' says a former YouTube content moderator I’ll call Rob. 'You just think, ‘Holy shit, what am I spending my day doing? This is awful.'"

If You Click It, It Will Play

These Crowdfunding Projects Look Pretty Cool

• Sylvio is a ghost story about a voice recorder and a park covered in a thick, red fog.
• Mad Geniuswants to build a motion controller for every console. It's not looking good.
• Impact Winter is a game of survival set during a winter that shows no signs of ending.

Tweets That Make You Go "Hmmmmmm"

Oh, And This Other Stuff

• Danielle Riendeau highlights some free horror games to play, even though Halloween's over.
• Anita Sarkeesian writes about the future of video games for The New York Times.
• Film Crit Hulk tries to make sense of GamerGate.
• Maddy Myers calls for an end to the term "male gaze" and asks for more nuance.
• Mike Fahey laments the slow destruction of his favorite game hidden inside Call of Duty.
• Jay Hathaway reports on a black anime cosplayer who was shot in the back six times.
• David Gaider, lead writer of Dragon Age, on the idea games can't stand up to scathing criticism.
• Kat Bailey argues the 1994 version of X-Wing is way better than the 1998 version of X-Wing.
• Amy Knepper adored Child of Light's embracing of hope, even in life's darkest moments.
• PJ Vogt talks with the columnist behind IGN's influential Ask Leah column from years ago.
• Jamaal Ryan defends the right for ugly games like Hatred to exist.

I said this in a previous (locked) thread about this subject but that Total Biscuit/Stephen Totilo video is really good and maybe the best indictment of GamerGate there is. As they show, it's entirely possible have actual discussions about actual ethical issues in games journalism without attaching them to some deluded, hate campaign.

Nothing from the GB community this week?

Other than that, great Worth Reading as always Patrick.

There was some really strong writing this past week.

The community stuff was supplied by ZombiePie, who hasn't been feeling well lately. I can't say for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if he just didn't get around to sending Patrick that stuff because of those reasons. That said, I don't know for sure, so I could be wrong.

I heard about but never watched the Total Biscuit/Stephen Totilo video, thanks for the reminder.

Glad to see the article by FILM CRITIC HULK, he is one of my favourite writters/critics, his articles are a pleasure to read, and this is really touching

This is correct. He's recovering from some medical issues. It'll be back ASAP. :)

RIGHT. I knew he was ill, but I forgot it was him who provided the community stuff.

This community owes a lot to you @zombiepie, eh? Get well soon, duder.

RE: archiving of video games: Would be nice if copyright law was so that if someone wants to file a copyright on any artistic work (such as video games), that a copy of the source code should be deposited to a government institution for safekeeping AND to be used as a reference in case of copyright lawsuits. This should be done at a certain point after the release (as to get the best working version, and to appease publishers that are afraid their work might get stolen that way) and should also include any related software, such as multiplayer servers or DRM. Companies are free to refuse being included in this project, but then also have no legal defence against anyone copying the game because there is no deposited version to check any counterfeit against.

It would be a crime against culture if in a hundred years we would lose access to this entire form of media. People have been figuring out old games up to a point, but there's a pretty huge leap between decompiling Atari hardware and games, and getting the PS3 version of GTAV to run on whatever Quantom machine our grandchildren will be using.

That Morrowind video captures perfectly why nothing Bethesda has made since even comes close to it.

Guys, you should really play Morrowind.

That Impact Winter kickstarter looks pretty great. I went to donate at the second reward tier thinking it was 9 USD because I didn't see the pound sign. I ended up give almost 15 USD, but whatever the concept looks amazing.

@almostswedish said:

It's so hard to go back to, though. I tried jumping into it about 18 months ago after having not touched it since it first came out and found it basically unplayable.

At the end of the day in every instance of GG I am always left with the same questions for GG..

1) Why is the focus on all of the GG stuff keep being brought against women and smaller voiced women in the community? There never seems to be much that I read that there are demands being brought to bear against the bigger companies that actually could be forcing huge sales swings for their games if they are in cahoots with a game site as opposed to indie dev's?

2) What exactly is the desired end to this? What would need to happen with game news sites to allow the rest of us to go back to not having to read/hear about another female community member/dev/reporter/opinion person getting harassed in relation to this stuff?

At the end of the day it's video games, and in order for these sites to get information from those companies there has to be some level of friendliness.

I don't know anything about TotalBiscuit and am currently listening to the Stephen Totilo interview and both people seem super reasonable.

I LOVE that Film Crit Hulk piece but I just can't read it with the ALL CAPS HULK SPEAK thing. If you are like me, google for 'the dehulkifier' to read like a normal article.

@fracture: I think the slate article may be the best way out. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/10/how_to_end_gamergate_a_divide_and_conquer_plan.html

I worked at a city archives during college when I was getting my Bachelor's in History, so I can sympathize with anybody trying to archive anything, much less something as nebulous and difficult to systematically catalogue as video games. Far and away, the hardest part of trying to function as an archivist in any situation is manpower; our facility had exactly one full time employee, my boss, and whoever he could wrangle up as an intern from the nearby liberal arts school. He was in charge of hundreds of thousands of excavation artifacts, city maps, a library of reading and research material, more file cabinets than I have toes (and I have all of them), and he was expected to know everything about all of it, on top of putting together research requests from the public and building museum-quality exhibits on a regular basis.

Trying to do that with every single video game, and part-time to boot? I'd buy that Gibson guy a drink any day of the week.

That Morrowind video is pretty awesome. Thought about skipping it and starting with Oblivion but probably not now.

I watched the Colbert thing. Did no one else get that he basically said all games media is garbage and talking about ethical issues in it is pointless because there was never anything good about it to begin with?

When i first bought it, I quickly put it fown and didn't return to it until 6 months later. Morrowind was never easy to get into.

But yeah, as someone who has returned to it every few years, I guess it is a little hard for me to see why people find it hard to get into. Still, everyone I have managed to convince over the years to go play it (even if they got into the series with Skyrim) eventually agrees that it a much deeper and more rewarding game.

It is a much deeper and more rewarding game, but it's also got an issue with age. Part of the reason I like Skyrim so much is aesthetics - every time I jump into it, I just think it looks gorgeous. And the atmosphere it tries to have is right up my alley - somber and grim, but not without hope. Morrowind just looks really muddy these days and any atmosphere it might have for me is sucked away by the super slow movement speed and the fact that you can swing a sword at something and clearly hit it but cause no damage because dice rolls. I've tried several times to get into it and I just can't. If Bethesda themselves were to re-do the animations, all the graphics, and the combat and movement mechanics, I could probably get into it. And I know that at least one of those problems has been solved by the community, but spending a lot of time modding a game just to make it playable sucks the fun out of it for me.

Huh. Can't say I was expecting a video made by a GGer (Total Biscuit started actively supporting it after all those death of the gamer articles) to be posted on this site. Not entirely sure what to think about that.

In regard to the Chen article, I work the abuse department at a small/mid-sized hosting company, and while most of the content of my work entails DMCA take-down notices and phishing injections - I inevitably have to moderate content which has shown the worst of humanity - and certain images do stick with you that you wish you could erase from memory.

That was such a great article @patrickklepek , thanks for sharing this!

@yeliwofthecorn: You should feel good about it because the video provides both sides in a calm and rational manner. In contrast to almost every other video on the subject (including one posted last week by Patrick).

1) Because anti-GG wants you to believe GG is all about oppressing women and other minorities. If we were only talking about what people tweet with hashtag #gamergate or similar, then yes that would be the focus. Fortunately, there's a ton of pro-GG people trying to improve the situation in a few communities (r/kotakuinaction) for example. Gawker, the main media company behind most of the highest criticized sites, has had a number of high profile advertisers cease doing business with them due largely to these communities.

2) Pro-GG people have actually tracked down and attempted to silence some of the worst offenders. In fact, one of the main Sarkeesian-hate spewing multi-account holder on twitter was tracked down in the past few weeks and reported to the police. Unfortunately, Anita must report the harassment herself or the police will not act. She has refused (possibly to avoid having less evidence of her harassment). But back to your question, what is the desired end of Feminism or similar movements? Every movement wants to improve things in the manner that they see as right. Gamersgate will continue until people no longer concerned/upset enough to continue. There's no ultimatums and organization is loose at best.

@fracture: Just to address these as an observer who was been following gamergate for a while, and think they have more than a few valid concerns.

1) A lot of the stuff being brought towards women is because they were some of the first people to be so vehemently anti-gg, others as a mix between a dislike for gender politics in games coverage and an idea that they have been undeservedly propped up. That digs into another aspect of games that some people haven't liked and that's the idea that things like Depression Quest aren't really games. Don't really agree with most of it, but its become sort of an alliance of convenience for some folks. There's more drama surrounding the legitimacy of some of the threats, GG folks actively helping to track down Doxxers but being ignored when offering up the information to the folks who have been doxxed etc. People also get very unhappy with you when you accuse all of them of being a hate group when often the death threats and doxxing are only individuals and don't represent the whole.

There seems to be a sentiment that the big companies are going to do the shitty bribery and preview event stuff like offer a bunch of free booze, or pay for escorts (Wargaming has allegedly done this, much to my surprise) but it is in many ways expected of games reporters, journalists or whatever you want to call them to deny it. There's also a big desire for disclosure in articles, which many sites/publications already do. Some don't, and in the Totilo interview with TB you can see how distrust may build when he says he expects his writers to play it by their gut feeling. Gut feeling won't get you far with anyone on the internet, especially when they're already displeased with you about some articles you've run and people who have worked in the same organization that have said pretty awful stuff.

2) I think the desired end for it depends entirely on who you ask, some people would just be happy with some disclosure, others want to see it all burn to the ground and start over. (figuratively I think) If you were an occasional reader or viewer to the site and saw that Zoe Quinn was in a bit of site content (bombin in the am, and the thing about the magnet in her finger) after having the favourable coverage bundled in with Cart Life etc; and you're already suspicious after a history of corruption in games media you can see how someone might side with GG. It's sort of a side effect of having so much content on the site and communicating so close to developers, which is to say it's unavoidable because doing stuff close with devs and whatnot is what makes GB so damn good.

There are also sentiments about misrepresentation of the threats, some pro-gg folks have been doxxed/swatted (King of Pol or Internet Aristocrat being two of them) and that the coverage of GG has been savagely one sided hasn't helped much. Heck even when people like David Pakman who has sort of sunk his teeth into this whole shitstorm is being called out as harassing people when asking for interviews, or why people cancel it's pretty sad. But then again anti-gg people think he's doing unfair interviews when pro-gg think he's being neutral.

All in all, it's good that these discussions are at least happening if they happen at all. The "don't touch the poop" attitude from pro-GG folks stifles it, and the painting of any gamergate person as an angry basement dwelling nerd who participates in internet hate mobs isn't doing much to sow the seeds of discourse.

There were some straw polls put up asking gamergate folks what they want for gamergate to end and some other opinions, can go pull those if you want a sort-of not terrible pulse on the opinions of the group.

Sorry for the long-ass wall of probably indecipherable text but you asked some totally valid questions and I think you deserve the half-answers someone who's sort of impartial can give you.

Here's the best thing I've read about gamergate so far. It takes both sides into account which is exactly how we should be addressing this situation.

Gamergate and the Politicization of Absolutely Everything

Patrick I really would encourage you to check out Dragon Age: Inquisition because while Bioware Edmonton has had it's writing staff become inundated with community expectations and outrage that is likely driving them to a specific game that will cater to a pre-established community; the games art team, in what little they've exposed of their development process, has shown a clear influence from work outside of video games as seen in the art director explaining the influence of Northern Renaissance art to the games color pallette to the Lead Cinematic Designer expressing his strive for more cinematic cutscenes beyond just lens flare and explosions.

My cousin is one of the lead editors for DA:I. I'll let him know you said that, I'm sure he'll love to know that "No one left at Bioware has the ability to string an interesting sentence together, never mind a coherent story."

Was going to say something similar but you have beaten me to the keyboard. I did not expect to see that link there at all. That "podcast" was pretty interesting to listen to. You can tell with the tones of their voices how much they disagree on some things. I guess all it says is that the "ethics" discussion will never end.

@mc_hify:

Oh I heard it. And he is pretty freaking right too. It is time to accept gaming related content as entertainment and nothing more. Games don't have to be considered "art" to me anymore. I don't need a justification for my hobby like we all cried for years ago. Because frankly, the people that we would want to persuade to think that games are art are probably the same people who think that games cause mass shootings. Who cares what they think when they have such a warped view already?

"Ethics" in such a dumb field is a waste of time and energy. If you accept gaming coverage for what it is, you will not be fooled into anything unethical.

The Total Biscuit & Stephen Totilo video is the perfect example of what there should be more of, but sadly won't be, because people are either too scared or too prideful to do it.

Also, the Maddy Myers article was good, and is exactly what plenty of posters around here and elsewhere have said before. The term "male gaze" is a very presumptuous term that gets applied to virtually everything sexual, is extremely hetero-normative (gay dude here that loves seeing sexy women in games; plenty of women dig it too!), and most importantly, is really just an abstract academic term that shouldn't be applied to individual people because it doesn't really advance the debate very much. A lot like terms such as "patriarchy" or "privilege," they're terms that are valid academic concepts to be preserved and discussed, but when applied directly to individuals they rob each situation of its individual merit and put people on the defensive as opposed to fostering open-minded dialogue.

@marokai said:

I would argue that many of the words you highlighted don't have any place in an academic or critical sphere. Gaze theory, for example, has undergone drastic changes since its inception in the 70s and it is held by some feminists that one can gaze while recognizing the humanity of the individual subject to the gaze. Patriarchy is also subject to debate; some believe that it is the construct of any hetero-normative society, while others think it applies exclusively to certain cultural groups like those in India or China. Ultimately, as a philosopher, there is a lack of firm definition for many of these terms. That makes them unhelpful in any analysis, critical or otherwise.

It may be your personal opinion that things like Bayonetta demean females, but that should be based on well reasoned argument, not knee-jerk reaction and poorly defined concepts such as gaze theory or patriarchy.

I'd totally be up for a remake as long as they preserve the stuff the guy talked about in the video (i.e the crazy spellmaking/enchanting system, the non-scaling difficulty etc). Sadly, I don't think Bethesda is the kind of company that would create that game anymore. And frankly I don't think any company is.

I would have love to have seen the series continuing to build on what makes Morrowind great. Instead, each new release seems more limited in scope, and the settings generic (altough Skyrim was a step up from Oblivion to be sure).

I feel that way about a lot of games from that generation. Take Halo: Combat Evolved for example. It implemented non-linear level design and also had the option to skip large parts of some levels for the creative players. You just don't see that type of stuff anymore in big budget games, and I think that has been a huge step back in game design.

Two copies of Quantum of Solace.... why?

On this I agree so much. A lot of the stuff I saw in the campaign section of the newest Call of Duty Quick Look seems awesome, until you realize that the game is so limited that you can only use that stuff at pre-determined times. Compare this to, say, Crysis 1 or the original Battlefield Bad Company or Halo 1 - all shooters with some pretty solid mechanics and room for approaching each playthrough at least a little differently.

I didn't really want them to change the core of Morrowind, just the stuff that didn't age well. Really just those three things I mentioned - update the graphics, the animations, and the moment-to-moment mechanics. Maybe redo all of the sounds, too. Touch nothing else. I'd pay $60 for it.

Faults in the difficulty aside, I thought Child of Light was a beautiful game. I'm so happy that it got made, definitely one of my favorites this year.

@marokai: I'm hoping we can also drop the expression "male power fantasy." It's often a lazy counter-argument used to excuse a double-standard because it challenges the point the person was trying to make.

Thanks @midjet & @r3dt1d3 for the replies.

Oh man, I had completely forgotten how much I enjoyed the first Bad Company and how disappointed I was in the sequal. Same for Crysis (at least the first half of it).

Also, I'd pay about one million dollars for a proper Morrowind remake. I'll rob a bank if I have to.

Anyway, it feels good knowing that someone agrees with me, even if we don't agree 100%. Thanks for the discussion!

@conmulligan: The main thing that makes Morrowind so hard to go back to is the combat and the movement speed, which is so slow that even glacial is generous. I tried playing it for reals for the first time a couple years ago and only had anything even resembling a good time after I had modded the movement speed to go about five times as fast and use the "always use best attack" option so I wasn't constantly missing shit. It's really just the movement speed, combat dicerolls, and the way stamina is used that makes the game so hard to stomach these days. If those are tinkered with you can have a good enough time with it.

@bassman2112: Kudos to your cousin (by proxy). I'm really looking forward to DA:I!

It's a good point but having dug into both critical (largely feminist) and mostly non-critical academic journal articles, I'll say that it's less an issue of definition since critical and non-critical scholarship alike tends to follow the important instruction of operational definitions and state up front "when we say x we mean y." Within the context of academia and analysis it's more about the philosophical underpinnings of those theoretical frameworks and the aim of the analysis in terms of social participation and addressing social outcomes in addition to merely observing or understanding them.

It is important to recognize both for sure, that definitions do vary even within the literature and certainly are a whole different beast in every day use. However internal to any given analysis if "patriarchy" is used as a central part of the analysis to frame the results, then the issue is less definition, because they likely took the step to elucidate it up front, and more the philosophy of the scholarship itself.

So between the two posts quoted above it's a little of both in my reading of it.

Oh, what's that? Morrowind is too hard? It's too dated? GIT GUD. Morrowind is an incredible fucking game, and like the dude in the video says, nothing like it will probably ever be made again. (or at least not in the foreseeable future.) The "git gud" thing is half joke, but it's also half serious. People are missing out on one of the most amazing games just because they're unwilling to put in the modicum of effort the game asks of them.

@soapy86: I loved Morrowind when I first played it; the biggest problem I had going back to it was how slow you walk. It's not a hard game, but you spend so much time walking to your next quest objective. Sometimes you find something cool on the way, but a lot of the time, you're just wandering through a barren desert trying to find a cave or something.

@bacongames: well put.

That X-Wing article by Kat Bailey is the one time I would suggest reading the comments. BUT JUST THIS ONCE.

I do content moderation for a fairly large social discovery network and I can say that she is totally on point here. Much like the example my company also outsources most of it to the Philippians, but when it comes to the real horrible stuff, the stuff law enforcement might need to be involved in, it will at times come my way. I've seen some really terrible, awful things that no one should see and many that are very much illegal and for a reason. The internet is a pretty disgusting place however a lot of people don't realize just how bad it would be without such moderation. It can really take a toll on your psyche, and ends up in a lot of quiet reflection at the local dive bar after many a shift.