Well deserved. I figured with all this freelancing biz that they might reach out to a few of our community video editors. Hope to see these more regularly, now that you're getting something out of them besides our eternal kudos.
Hey Rowan, welcome to Giant Bomb. Sorry about getting caught by the whole "name inappropriateness" filter thing. My friend Geoff Uckland says it happens more often than you'd think.
"Guilty pleasure" is an odd expression for a number of reasons. Some folk here are focusing too much on the literal definition of "you should feel bad because this game you like has sexual objectification and violence in it". More generally, it's used to describe that uneasy feeling of enjoying something that you know deep down isn't well-made, panders to the lowest common denominator and/or is disrespecting your finite time on this Earth. The latter becomes especially more true as adulthood continues to strip free-time away from you.
The Destiny comparison in the article was the most interesting, because I think a lot of people are heavily into that game knowing its reputation as a content-bereft MMO that instead chose to double-down on the psychologically-dubious loot cycle and microtransaction aspects. It has course-corrected a lot since then, but I can appreciate how that feeling of enjoying something that might be manipulating you behind the scenes - to the extent that a lot of your contemporaries have written it off - can cause some background consternation while playing it. Some can shrug off that feeling easier than others, I think.
Anyway, I liked that the article covered all these possible definitions for a video game guilty pleasure, as well as the idea that we should openly talk about what we found unsettling in something we like instead of waiting for some internet loudmouth to tell us why we're wrong to like it or why we're wrong to find something about it objectionable.
On occasions, commonly or rarely depending on your disposition, you feel a bit gross because of a disagreeable element in something you otherwise love, but I think it's more universal to feel a little self-conscious about something you love because it's... well, kinda dumb.
About time we had some Skies love around here. Welcome to GB's front page, Heather.
Great piece, and I like how you covered the gamut of what might be considered a guilty pleasure and why. I recently wrote about open-world games and how some developers care less about making the optional content appealing than others, presumably working under the assumption that few gamers are likely to ever pursue all that stuff. I might consider games like those a guilty pleasure too, specifically the way I play them, because I'm being implicitly told by the lack of care that goes into the optional "completionist-bait" content that it's an element of these open-world games I shouldn't care about. Yet, in spite of everything, I do. That the open-world model is still so prevalent in AAA suggests I'm not the only one either.
Anyway, enough hijacking. I think the core takeaway of any article - such as this one - that discusses games and their potentially objectionable material is that it's perfectly fine - necessary, even - to take games to task for these inclusions without necessarily condemning the entirety of the games themselves: to throw out the baby with the bathwater, as the idiom goes. The more articles out there with that message the better, because it still feels like the crowd of people who raise a stink any time an eight- or a nine-out-of-ten review has a small paragraph discussing how the game's take on sexuality or politics made them uncomfortable aren't getting it.
Pulling a Nintendo, huh? I won't miss the hour-long Pele interviews, but bowing out of E3 conferences is now officially a trend. Won't be long until Ubisoft realizes how little they get from their live cringefests every year and follows suit. Maybe with a bit more pre-planning, they can create some fresh dank memes already.
It's been a fun ride, both as part of Giant Bomb's chat when the Community stages were being made and Patrick's Twitch chat when almost all of them were eventually toppled. I was only able to beat the Klepocalypse myself, so I admire your dedication to uploading those monsters and Patrick's for beating them. Congrats to you two and the many donors who helped turned an AGDQ stage - that would eventually be known as "The Kleptastrophe" - into a honorary one of these, even if it was a tad on the easy side compared to these virtual torture chambers.
Looking forward to more "nicer" levels like If The Boo Fits..., now that I know you're capable of mercy.
I appreciate the amount of work you've put into these Dan. It can be a little draining to write so much over so few days. Looks like you caught up with some real bangers this year: I hope to do the same next year, picking up all the great 2015 games people keep telling me about. Keep us posted on what you get up to in 2016, and a belated Happy New Year.
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