@mozzle: Thank you for taking the time to write that out. Obviously this week has been traumatizing in a million different ways to everyone. I appreciate the fact that if someone wants to take a step back from the news to just hear about game stuff that they should be able to do so. Obviously from a site standpoint, though, we will continue to talk about what is going on in the world. If you wish to skip that, so be it; I certainly won't judge you for it.
Sorry if this comment seems insensitive, mozzle...not really sure what I'm trying to say lately.
It's not that they're wrong that because they fought over this all day they need to unwind. However, this is not a thing anyone actually gets a break from because it's a problem all over the country 24 hours a day 7 days a week for hundreds of years now.
I have *terrible* social anxiety and anxiety in general, am prone to bipolar depression and spiralling, and I do not avoid what is happening in the real world. Specifically, I do not perpetuate silence about injustice and thus injustice itself in order to fall down a rabbithole of fiction, brands, and escapism. People who can't deal with it need to understand that we need people to deal with it, we need people to talk about it, or the problems will only continue.
If you've been fighting for justice on this you should understand the damage of creating places of silence on the topic. If you can't deal with hearing about it 24 hours a day, try imagining what living with it 24 hours a day and being unable to escape it is like.
For those looking for a timestamp to skip the "political" talk...
Too effin' bad. Be uncomfortable for a while.
This. Go through your gaming spaces and anywhere it's not okay to talk about this because "people just want to chill", tell them its wrong, and leave them. Silence is the problem.
People who won't speak up either don't care about injustice OR don't want to lose money from racists. Have some courage to curate a community that does not involve cowards who would leave the community over having to hear about something this important. Have some courage to forego the income that comes from these cowards and especially the bigots who would withhold their funding over this.
Moreso, have some courage to leave spaces run by people too scared of the consequence or work of moderation for this to be an acceptable topic. Definitely quit giving them support and money.
xcom2 wotc vanilla is good to have a playthrough for
but tbh the client is just a mod platform to "roll your own" stack of a completely customized game
i played one campaign vanilla and then 1700 hours modded (not counting modding hours)
once you feel comfortable i would also recommend ironman even if you think its extremely not your thing; having to live with the consequences of your actions and actually having to restart is actually much better to build skill and the higher difficulties (and mods for this) are extremely rewarding.
Feel like I got less out of listening than I usually do, in terms of how to critique games in general. "We did the thing, sat in the podcast room for days, checkboxes all marked." Instead of like, the stated reason y'all do this to this late date, to really get into the nitty gritty and have interesting, in-depth discussions.
Instead, this year felt sanitized, like it was just a meeting with people giving presentations (or book reports) more than anything. I'm not here to listen to y'all fight but at the same time, it felt like very little of the discussion was passionate.
Seemed as though a lot of stuff was just "noone else played this" or closer to that. Maybe the industry widening, but it's less interesting to hear 1-2 people who got 20 minutes into a game talk with someone who beat it (maybe). Over and over.
>game with amazing, perhaps groundbreaking writing
many enjoy it
>but its not a power fantasy, whimsical, twee adventure
some go UGH THIS IS TOO GRIMDARK AND GRITTY
smh, after everything that needs to be said about game devs/publishers attempting to act like they don't have politics somehow, perhaps just the fact that it handles the grim realities of our world should be lauded -- even if someone doesn't have the energy to deal with it. this is like shoving games back into a "quit being darkly political, thats not what games are for" hole
JonDo's comments