Editorial: Why We Write: On Game Critique, Influence, and Reach

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thatpinguino

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@thatpinguino said:

@washingmachine: @amyggen: I can't wait for the day when these sorts of pieces aren't necessary. But, given the largely positive response to this article when compared to the tenor of your usual game discussion on race, I think the article hit its mark and steered the discussion in a positive direction.

Maybe there's value in saying it to remind the people who commit those sins, I'll give you that. I just try not to engage with them - that's my solution.

Sure but if you don't challenging people who are being ignorant or disingenuous you allow their comments to stand as permissible. If I've learned anything from my years on blogging on GB its that the best way to elevate the discourse is to try to politely and intelligently engage others as best you can and let people know when they are out of line. I think it is a corollary to the knucklehead rule in basketball: every team can tolerate one knucklehead, but if you have two or more then they start hanging out and then you have a problem. I think rudeness and disingenuous arguments function the same way. One or two are fine; but, if you just allow them to go unexamined, then you get problems.

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Homelessbird

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#602  Edited By Homelessbird

@corvidus: No, it's cool - let's just agree not to answer each other's questions - people that are interested in dialogue have a dialogue.

Also yeah - i'll keep my religion to myself next time - just as I did this time, in that I didn't mention it or anything vaguely resembling it.

Edit: probably also worth mentioning - didn't say that you're white, either. Said you're clearly not constantly reminded of the color of your skin.

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mr_creeper

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Okay, I tried to read through all this, but it's a lot and the subject matter isn't one I'm really interested in. Thanks for the effort, nonetheless.

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NameRedacted

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Good Article, Austin.

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graf1k

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@crysack: Alas, I already paid for it (digitally no less) so I'll at least give it a shot. I've heard it's a lot of fetch quests and MMO type stuff which is certainly not going to cut it after TW3, but I'll let it make it's case...

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Fiyenyaa

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@karkarov: "You can't critique it because it doesn't conform to your idea of inclusion and social equality."

Dude. You cannot critique for this reason? Cannot? Really?

That article you linked to is about how discourse is being shut down by people overreacting to things (to grossly simplify). And before you link that, you say something cannot be discussed because it's subjective? That sounds like you have an extremely weak argument to me, I'm sorry to say. Why does saying "I don't like this thing about a game" make it seem to you that they are placing their feeling above the creators right to make the work to you?

I think most people are not as extreme in their position as you think they are. I am a pretty standard social liberal in most ways. So here's a quick video game example. I see Dead or Alive and I think "man that looks sleazy!". I say to my freinds "what's up with that sleazy game, right?". At no point am I infringing the right of Team Ninja to make it (beyond the scope of my opinions to influence my friends/people who happen to see/hear my opinion expressed), and nor would I ever want to.

You want the creative process to be sacrosanct? Good. So do I. But I also want criticism to be sacrosanct. In an ideal world, people should be able to make whatever they want to, and everyone else should be able to say whatever they want to about it.

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thatpinguino

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#611  Edited By thatpinguino  Staff

@karkarov: I actually have engaged in formal debate before so I don't really get where you think an uninformed person who doesn't even bother to read the articles and research that is in question would be allowed to speak directly from their ass for all to hear. You haven't engaged with anyone elses' ideas, you just keep repeating yours. That's not debate, that's myopathy. That kind of debate would be laughed off the stage (if you were in a high enough level of debate to have a stage).

As for whether its fair to critique things based on social issues, what criticism do you read if you don't think that's acceptable? Have you ever read a movie critique? A book review? An album review? Because plenty of critics wrote about the shitty racist caricatures in something like Tansformers 2 and how F Scott Fitzgerald depicted the American Dream in The Great Gatsby and how Iggy Azalea appropriated Atlanta sound in her rap albums. They didn't limit their criticism to the camera angles, word choice, and note charts. They didn't treat each of those works as if they existed in their own universes separate from the rest of society, which is exactly what you are asking for.

As for the sanctity of an artists vision. As someone who actually puts my ideas out there every once and a while, I love criticism. When people tell me what I did well or poorly in their view I get a chance to grow. I can accept that criticism or reject it. Working with no feedback is a great way to make a shitty piece of art. No one is censoring me when they disagree with what I write. So I think the devs at CDPR really don't need protection from other perspectives. They'll survive a few analytical essays. They may even grow from them.

Also I read the story and it seems to me the problem is with the school structures that this teacher is working in. Treating teachers as replaceable and fungible employees who need to make x number of students happy or else is the problem, not students disagreeing. Students and teachers have always disagreed, it is when the schools empower student complaints without delving further into them that teachers suffer.

See reading what people are actually talking about can be useful when having a discussion.

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TheHT

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#612  Edited By TheHT
@karkarov said:

You can critique a game for it's bugs, or it's challenge, or it's mechanics, or it's story. You can't critique it because it doesn't conform to your idea of inclusion and social equality. Why? Because your idea of inclusion and social equality is all in your head, it is based purely on your personal feelings. It also sets the standard that your feelings matter more than the intent of the content creator or their right to create the content as they envisioned it. It is of EXTREME importance that creators of media be it music, games, books, or anything else be allowed to create content that is challenging and does not conform purely to what is politically correct. Especially the American version of political correctness. The day that inclusion is mandated is the day that inclusion becomes meaningless, is reduced to a simply check box on a list, creativity gets kicked in it's proverbial crotch.

I mean, you should be able to criticise a game for any of its ideas, and a debate (a genuinely engaged in debate, not just bloviating in order to allure the undecided) should follow.

No reasonable person would want to mandate inclusivity, and critiques that express a desire for more inclusivity aren't asking for it to be legally ordained. Pressuring inclusivity into every creative endeavour as a sort of unspoken "climate" rule so as to avoid the ire of some is no good, yes. But there is a difference between that and actually forcing a creative to change their ideas, which critics have no actual authority or means to carry out.

The end result might be the same, but conflating the two ways of achieving it clogs the discussion. Suddenly you're writing articles and comments about the differences between the means, one of which is so obviously absurd that no reasonable person would advocate for it. It becomes an argument against an imagined problem. Meanwhile, the potentially problematic ends themselves fall into obscurity.

@thatpinguino said:

As for the sanctity of an artists vision. As someone who actually puts my ideas out there every once and a while, I love criticism. When people tell me what I did well or poorly in their view I get a chance to grow. I can accept that criticism or reject it. Working with no feedback is a great way to make a shitty piece of art. So I think the devs at CDPR really don't need protection from other perspectives. They'll survive a few analytical essays. They may even grow from them.

I think the fear is that the environment within "games culture" will become such that you effectively can't reject it. That doing so would reliably invite accusations of harming society, or at worst being considered a monstrous human yourself for being "exclusionary." If there isn't an actual dialogue, if some contentious ideas are seemingly blanketly accepted and preached, you smother that opportunity for growth.

Whether that fear is unfounded or not I think would be an interesting discussion.

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leebmx

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That was absolutely fantastic mate, one of the best written and most clearly argued pieces I have read on Giant Bomb. I thought you struck exactly the right tone in presenting why criticism is so important, and furthermore how this criticism should be presented and accepted.

I used to enjoy reading Patrick's stuff, but it always felt like the work of someone who was coming to grips with issues and how to present them to readers as he wrote. You writing seems fully formed and I am really looking forward to enjoying more of it over the coming months and years.

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washingmachine

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#614  Edited By washingmachine

@thatpinguino said:
@washingmachine said:
@thatpinguino said:

@washingmachine: @amyggen: I can't wait for the day when these sorts of pieces aren't necessary. But, given the largely positive response to this article when compared to the tenor of your usual game discussion on race, I think the article hit its mark and steered the discussion in a positive direction.

Maybe there's value in saying it to remind the people who commit those sins, I'll give you that. I just try not to engage with them - that's my solution.

Sure but if you don't challenging people who are being ignorant or disingenuous you allow their comments to stand as permissible. If I've learned anything from my years on blogging on GB its that the best way to elevate the discourse is to try to politely and intelligently engage others as best you can and let people know when they are out of line. I think it is a corollary to the knucklehead rule in basketball: every team can tolerate one knucklehead, but if you have two or more then they start hanging out and then you have a problem. I think rudeness and disingenuous arguments function the same way. One or two are fine; but, if you just allow them to go unexamined, then you get problems.

I get all that. I'm just pointing out that some people seem more interested in talking about why they're talking than actually talking, if you follow.

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thatpinguino

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@theht: I think that worry is largely unfounded, or at the very least it is just a normal part of societal progress. Taboo topics and standard conventions ebb and flow over time as prevailing ideologies change. Fahrenheit 451 used to be a banned book that threatened society and now its required reading in some American schools. Birth of a Nation used to be an acceptable movie and now it is almost universally reviled.

Criticism has its place in shaping those cultural values. The more ideas that challenge the status quo or defend it, the more discussions we can have.

@washingmachine: I gots it!

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Kimozabi

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#617  Edited By Kimozabi

When you take offense to people arguing that you want to try and force game devs to change, it's because your Witcher 3 race piece leaned unabashedly towards one side of this question:

"Do you think they have a obligation to add diversity to their media, even if it never existed in the source material?"

When you write an entire piece in favor of developers being obligated to add diversity, regardless of the source material, people are naturally going to assume that's what you want them to be.

If you stop the whole "When I hear this argument, it sounds like they're being racist", which you so clearly did in your Witcher 3 race piece, it'll be much more fun debating with you. But at least you didn't go and call a world in which women can be business owners, fighters, political leaders or the most powerful beings in the world "oppressively misogynistic".

And I'd like to point out that while a review or opinion piece that gets hundreds or thousands of people to complain to companies and publishers might not force a game company to change, Animal Crossing in no way "forced" you to worry about your skin color for half an hour every day:

"When a game made me spend a half hour of my real time every day just to keep my skin color on point, I was told that, no no, of course games have a problem with race, but why did I have to go after Animal Crossing?"

How on God's green Earth did that game in any way force you to spend that much time on your skin color? Did the game stop working if you didn't? Or was this an instance of you wanting the game to portray a specific cultural value that it didn't, which you then made the game's responsibility?

But I feel you're missing a very key ingredient in critic influence over game devs: Metacritic. This is where critics can directly impact a developer, positively or negatively. We've all heard how some devs have bonuses tied directly to metacritic scores, and if enough critics take a game they would normally have give, say 8/10, but then score it 6/10 because "not enough women or POC", they you are forcing the devs to include those things next time. And not because the devs want to, but to avoid losing parts of their paycheck. You critique can do so much more than just hopefully reach the ears of the devs. In the end, a developer needs to make money to put food on their tables. And if they suddenly get paid less because a bunch of critics decided to utilize their influence on Metacritic, we've moved beyond critics being completely unable to force developers to do certain things.

And from what we learned from the whole Paid Skyrim Mods, it cost Valve $1,000,000 to process the amount of angry feedback. And if enough critics garner enough support for complaining to a developer, and that developer gets a flood of angry feedback based on certain e.g. reviews, then the critics have once again asserted very notable influence. Much more beyond just hoping for the best.

Critics are not these uninfluential dreamers anymore. With social media and Metacritic, critics hold so much potential power and influence.

"Those of us who write about things like race, gender, class, and sexuality in games do so because we fucking love games."
Now I'm curious: When was the last time a critic wrote about class in games? When was the last piece talking about e.g. the importance of making poor people feel represented? What problems to video games have with class exactly?

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Homelessbird

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#618  Edited By Homelessbird

@kimozabi: The way I read it, Austin wasn't saying "Animal Crossing forced me to spend time on my skin color," but rather, "since I cared about my skin color, Animal Crossing's only solution was to spend a half hour of real time every day on it." I can see how it can be read both ways, though.

And while I don't exactly disagree with you about Metacritic - the importance of which does lend extra weight to numerical scores on critic reviews - I'd like to point out a couple of things:

A) Metascores are based on the aggregate of all major review sites - so to feel the sting of that lowered review score, it would have to be an issue that a fair percentage of the reviews factored into their score - and if that's the case, isn't it an issue worth looking at?

B) It's not really up to the critics how publishers choose to do business with developers. It's certainly something to consider as you pen your critique, I suppose, but to me, it's similar to the "are these publishers gonna pull their advertising if we give their game a bad review" question. Yeah, it's a truth of the business, but if you're going to operate a criticism business, you kind of can't let that influence how you do your job, or you're hamstrung. It's influence, but it's very indirect.

C) I'm sure you're aware of this, but there are plenty of forums for expressing these opinions, like the above essay, that are not numerically scored video game reviews, and are therefore not factored into Metacritic. If you're saying that perhaps that's a better forum for questions like these than in scored reviews (at least, if you're going to change the scores because of it)... well, that's a much more complicated question, but I probably agree.

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cabbagesensei

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@karkarov: I'm sorry, but isn't RE5 the same game that had tribal African zombie people who wore war masks, leaf skirts, carried spears, and essentially said "Ooga Booga, Ooga Booga"? That game had more problems with depictions of racial stereotypes than you're willing to admit.

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cabbagesensei

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@kimozabi: And before someone brings out the "it's a game made in a Japan for Japanese people who are light skinned" argument, you'd be surprised how tan Japanese people can get.

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Kimozabi

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#621  Edited By Kimozabi

@homelessbird said:

@kimozabi: The way I read it, Austin wasn't saying "Animal Crossing forced me to spend time on my skin color," but rather, "since I cared about my skin color, Animal Crossing's only solution was to spend a half hour of real time every day on it." I can see how it can be read both ways, though.

And while I don't exactly disagree with you about Metacritic - the importance of which does lend extra weight to numerical scores on critic reviews - I'd like to point out a couple of things:

A) Metascores are based on the aggregate of all major review sites - so to feel the sting of that lowered review score, it would have to be an issue that a fair percentage of the reviews factored into their score - and if that's the case, isn't it an issue worth looking at?

B) It's not really up to the critics how publishers choose to do business with developers. It's certainly something to consider as you pen your critique, I suppose, but to me, it's similar to the "are these publishers gonna pull their advertising if we give their game a bad review" question. Yeah, it's a truth of the business, but if you're going to operate a criticism business, you kind of can't let that influence how you do your job, or you're hamstrung. It's influence, but it's very indirect.

If you're saying that perhaps that's a better forum for questions like these than in scored reviews (at least, if you're going to change the scores because of it)... well, that's a much more complicated question, but I probably agree.

Personally, I read his words like he wrote them: "When a game made me..." And I get that his piece was about feeling represented, but nothing about the game is different based on your skin color to my knowledge. Do characters even react differently to a tanned protagonist? So saying that the game made him spend that time getting a tan just sounds wierd to me.

To your point B). I'm not saying scores should be altered to avoid devs getting no bonuses - I wholehearted object to that notion. A critic's responsibility should be to her/his readers, not the devs. But I am saying that it's a very real, very powerful potential influence a critic can exert, and that consideration is completely missing from Austin's piece. In my opinion, he could have touched upon it at least. But that's just my opinion about his opinion :)

To your point A), I would argue that many game critics today are friends to various extends. They see each other at the trade shows, they communicate internally, they often do guest appearances. There is always the possibility that your opinion is influenced by your friends, so many reviews sharing an opinion can be - but can also easily not be - a result of a close group of people sharing their experiences about the same game with each other.

Also, there also tends to be a difference between reviewer averages and user averages on Metacritic, sometimes a little and sometimes a lot.

Just look a Shovel Knight: http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/shovel-knight (big diff)

Pillars of Eternity: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/pillars-of-eternity (small diff)

GTA V: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/grand-theft-auto-v (big diff)

Heroes of the Storm: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/heroes-of-the-storm (not as small diff)

Consensus from critics doesn't always reflect opinions from users.

I would love - and I know this is impossible - to see how many people talked about race in Witcher 3, before sites like Giantbomb and Polygon started doing it.

@cabbagesensei said:

@kimozabi: And before someone brings out the "it's a game made in a Japan for Japanese people who are light skinned" argument, you'd be surprised how tan Japanese people can get.

Well, according to Austin, you can also get tan in Animal Crossing, and just like real life a tan take time and effort to maintain. :)

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AJasmer

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This is a good read. Austin, you're good at getting to the heart of an issue.

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cabbagesensei

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@kimozabi: My junior high school students are not "taking time and effort" to maintain a tan.

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brads_beard

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Seems to me the only people trying to force anything on anybody else are the ones telling others what they can and can't say about games

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brads_beard

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#625  Edited By brads_beard

@kimozabi: you should understand that a games metacritic score is hardly representative of critics actual feelings since they do they do a bunch of really crazy stuff like weight certain critics much more than others and translate every score to a 10 point scale, horribly mangling the intent in many instances.

Metacritic itself has far more influence over their scores than any single critic.

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Homelessbird

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@kimozabi: Yeah, we're not too far apart there, and I agree that the discussion about critic influence on websites like Metacritic is worthy, and probably could have been in Austin's article. Where we diverge is mostly that I just don't really see critics influencing each other that much in the games space - a lot is made of reviews like Arthur Gies review of Bayonetta 2 over at Polygon, where he docked it points for what he viewed as an exploitative main character (I think - it's been a while since I read it), but despite many other critics publicly backing that opinion, it didn't end up in many other reviews at all. Clearly the games press is overwhelmingly educated liberals, so there's gonna be some groupthink here and there, but overall, I think it's a point of pride for reviewers to keep their material from becoming too homogenous. Most of them (probably) have some pride as writers.

And I would hesitate to take the differences between the User Metacritic scores and the Critic scores too seriously - I have personally been on forums multiple times while they were organizing raids on Metacritic, either to artificially boost scores for games that they felt weren't getting enough attention, or to drop user scores for games they thought were too highly praised. Happens in Steam reviews too, and that's not even touching curation. Those User metrics are pretty much unregulated across the board, and at least personally, it leads me to be seriously suspicious of their usefulness as a gauge of public opinion.

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rorie

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I'm not sure anyone on this site knows where it is going

How do you mean?

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TheHT

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#630  Edited By TheHT

@thatpinguino said:

@theht: I think that worry is largely unfounded, or at the very least it is just a normal part of societal progress. Taboo topics and standard conventions ebb and flow over time as prevailing ideologies change. Fahrenheit 451 used to be a banned book that threatened society and now its required reading in some American schools. Birth of a Nation used to be an acceptable movie and now it is almost universally reviled.

Criticism has its place in shaping those cultural values. The more ideas that challenge the status quo or defend it, the more discussions we can have.

@washingmachine: I gots it!

Well I certainly don't expect either of those cases to go back to how they were. I don't think it's quite that fluid, though I would agree that debate is a normal (and vital) part of societal progress (unless you meant something else by that).

But I'd rather see an extensive discussion that dives into this particular topic in games. Why is that fear unfounded? Why are games without diversity exclusionary? What are people looking for when they play a game? Do they want to be perfectly represented or relate with whatever's there? Are those mutually exclusive? Should video games tailor to consumers or should creators focus on their own vision? Should that affect how a game is received? Is it fair to criticise something for what it isn't, and if it is, where should that end?

I don't think that wanting games to include more varied designs is a particularly scandalous idea, but it also isn't mutually exclusive with liking ones that don't. So why is it that anything not actively figuring into that variety seems to be treated with contempt?

The ambition isn't to change every game towards a narrowly diverse path, it's to add to the overall medium.

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notherpoet

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Wow. Great piece and responses to it. Your reach is amazing.

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MissAshley

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Amazing! Straight-forward, but thorough. The passion that compels you to write is palpable.

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Deckard42

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Great article. I'm down to watch some Kids in the Hall, I watched that exclusively while studying for my PhD qualifying exam.

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deactivated-5f8907c9ada33

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Great piece Austin, looking forward to more of your work on the site!

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bybeach

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#635  Edited By bybeach

I do not know yet what I agree to, or not, and to what extant with this Austin individual.

But GB has finally broken a barrier that has been troubling me for quite a while. And In time, I would like to see more diversity,notto exclusively rep a singular S.W. view. That would really piss me off. But just to reflect the diversity that our society is. And the wealth of information, perspective, and even humor that could come from it.

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slax

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This is a really great piece. Thanks Austin.

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Jimbo

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Passing judgement on civility after an opening salvo which amounted to little more than you nuking the conversation at birth by implying that anyone who disagreed was racist. Okey dokey.

If you are intending to limit your influence and reach exclusively to an echo chamber of sycophants --as most game journo types who dabble in social issues seem intent on doing-- then I suspect it was indeed a great start.

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TheKillaBunny

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Absolutely brilliant read.

While I'm not by no means new to gaming (I'm 38, being playing something or other for as long as I can remember), I am fairly new to writing about gaming. I'm basically an over enthusiastic amateur writer who just has so many thoughts in my head about my favourite past-time that it almost hurts. I only wish to share them with other gamers, with the community and people who understand what it is to be a gamer. I'm not trying to change the world, or influence developers (although it'd be nice sometimes but I never actually expect to). I never try and force my opinion on others, or influence their purchasing decisions. I just want to share my thoughts and for people to understand me. I know not everyone will, but I do hope that at least my friends get my meaning and respect it, even if they don't agree with it. The thing is that rarely happens. Everyone, even people who I consider to be friends, often immediately jump to the conclusion that if I'm dissing something they personally love then I'm wrong and they react horribly to it. It's often made me want to give up writing altogether and just keep these thoughts to myself. I find it sad, the things gamers do and say to each other. I know I'm asking too much but my biggest wish is that people would sometimes stop, take a step back from their own viewpoints and consider somebody else's in an objective way, just for a change. But passions often run high and some people can't see past the nose on their own face, even to the point of being hurtful to a friend.

The thing is I'm a university graduate. I've been conditioned to always look at things from multiple angles and consider many different points of view. Some may find it difficult to understand me. I find it difficult to understand narrow mindedness. I'm trained to criticise and discuss even the things I love and to not believe everything I read. I guess I just need to grow a thicker skin, take it all with a pinch of salt, but it's so disheartening sometimes. Especially with this community.

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starfurydysan

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At last a News Writer who uses Editorial" in the title instead of writing an Op-Ed piece disguised as news which I felt Patrick did a lot of the time. Love it Austin!

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Laowaigeez

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This was a great editorial piece and I hope we get more like this. Even if I disagree with your argument, if this is how you discuss stuff in the future I'll be happy.

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graf1k

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#641  Edited By graf1k

@cabbagesensei said:

@karkarov: I'm sorry, but isn't RE5 the same game that had tribal African zombie people who wore war masks, leaf skirts, carried spears, and essentially said "Ooga Booga, Ooga Booga"? That game had more problems with depictions of racial stereotypes than you're willing to admit.

I know this wasn't directed at me, but I've never understood why people took offense to that part of the game. The Zulu tribes are known to wear pretty much all of that stuff and they make use of spears. Obviously not all Zulus because they are a large number of that have been urbanized over the past 100 years or so, but the rural tribesmen, I'd say that's pretty much on point. As for them going "ooga booga", I couldn't really say. I know I didn't understand what they were saying, but that doesn't mean anything. If they merely said gibberish that sounded 'African' or if they actually got Zulu or some other dialect actors, I would honestly not be able to tell the difference because I know zero Bantu, Swahili or any other languages of that area of the world, as do probably 90%+ of the gaming populace.

I could understand someone having a problem with race in RE5 if, you know, the Zulu-looking tribesmen were running around the urbanized areas like that, or if they were the only black zombies in the game. But they only show up, as I remember, when you're pretty much up to your ass in swamp, or the parts of Africa you might logically find tribesmen still rocking the traditional attire. The thing is, this stereotype of Africans is not in and of itself offensive. There are absolutely people like that in Africa, and there is nothing wrong with that. The problem with the war mask/leopard print/leaf skirt/spear carrying African stereotype is two fold. First, initial response to images of such warriors and their appearance in Western culture was to look at it and assume those people are inferior or sub-human or whatever, because of such dress. That is an assumption or bias based on ignorance. Propaganda to somehow 'prove' superiority when it fact it's just different. It just happened to be that people were insulated and bigoted enough back then to assume that. The look isn't the problem, it was the reaction to the look. Secondly, that stereotype can be problematic when applied in that same derogatory way, to all Africans or even black people in America and Europe. From what I remember, the game did not do this, so it's really no more or less racist in it's depiction of Africans than Civ is in it's depictions of Shaka Zulu and the Zulu tribesmen.

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I mean, imagine him, but now zombified. It's not that far off from this:

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Remember, these aren't the only zombies, or even the only black zombies in the game. If the entire game was you fighting these guys, in swamps, in cities, in the military bases, then yeah, that would have been a problem. But RE5 did a passable job of representing the varying cultures that make up the milieu of African society, or at least that of a fictionalized country that could believably be African (again, keeping in mind that a zombie outbreak is afoot). About as good as you'd expect from a game about zombies anyway. The major problem I had with RE5 was how incredibly dumb and convoluted the story was, even for an RE game. Considering the West's history with medical experimentation in Africa and Umbrella (or whatever the dumb variant of Umbrella was in RE5) as an evil corporation, how was the plot not based on Umbrella doing T/G/V/whatever Virus tests in Africa and then boom, zombie outbreak? The shit writes itself, Capcom!

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AMyggen

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#642  Edited By AMyggen

@jimbo said:

Passing judgement on civility after an opening salvo which amounted to little more than you nuking the conversation at birth by implying that anyone who disagreed was racist. Okey dokey.

If you are intending to limit your influence and reach exclusively to an echo chamber of sycophants --as most game journo types who dabble in social issues seem intent on doing-- then I suspect it was indeed a great start.

God damn do you keep talking about pretty much only that in this conversation. He explained what he meant by that in his follow-up blog: http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/austin_walker/blog/more-on-race-the-witcher-and-how-to-move-forward/110183/

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Lockes84

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Very thoughtful and exactly what I want here at GB. Thumbs up.

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coolowlbro

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#645  Edited By coolowlbro

Austin has a real gift for explaining difficult concepts without feeling like he's talking down to you. Great read.

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shanbrainiac

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I'm so glad you wrote this. You have no idea. I can't wait to read your next article.

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boydc32

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I really liked your point:

Those of us who write about things like race, gender, class, and sexuality in games do so because we fucking love games.

Games are an important aspect of our culture and worthy of our critical attention. In discussing social and political issues in relation to games, we open up and expand on important discussion surrounding these complex issues. That we consider gaming worthy of this level of scrutiny is only a result of how integral and meaningful games are in our lives. So great post! Keep it up!

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danpow

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Great write up Austin! I'm just now getting back into games after playing a little in college, mostly Mario Tennis on the N64, and then focusing on work for a few years. Now I'm just getting back to balancing video games into the rest of my life. I stumbled upon Giant Bomb and the 2 podcasts a couple months ago and they've really re-ignited my passion for video games, but in new ways. I'm still interested in playing video games and having new experiences through them, but I'm more and more interested in the business and thoughts behind the games that are coming out, how and why they were made the what that they are. It's writing like yours that has brought me back to video games, thanks and keep it up!