thatpinguino

@hassun: I'll do a bit more research and get back to you.

@eribuster: @rmanthorp: Thanks!

@humanity:Maybe?

So what do you actually want out of an article about unionization in the game industry? Do you want someone to articulate a pro-union argument and then have another person articulate an anti-union argument? If that is what you're looking for, the second person is just arguing for the status quo. We already know what a non-unionized game industry looks like because that's the world we live in today. Do you want Austin to track down someone who's ideas on labor are super "right-wing" and have them pitch ideas on how to fix the game industry's labor situation? That option requires someone to actually pitch the article your looking for. That column can't just exist because you want it to, it needs to come from an actual person who sends in a pitch. The absence of a matching piece is not evidence that the editor in chief if a publication is suppressing dissenting views, it could mean that a matching piece hasn't been pitched, or one is in the works and it hasn't been published yet, or no one has pitched one, or the people who have pitched alternative articles didn't meet standards in one way or another. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for this column to exist without a matching opposition column, and most of them don't involve a "far-left Communist circle jerk".

And if you think that opinion pieces are "partisan 'pieces' from idealogues pushing their own beliefs on an audience" then what the heck do you think of opinion columns or editorials in news papers? Do you think those shouldn't exist without a matching column? Or do you think that every editorial should have a designated section where the author argues against their own beliefs so that some potential opposition "can have a say". I really don't think every article on a potentially touchy subject needs to be framed as a debate, expository essays have a place in the world. Readers are not as passive as you're articulating. They are entirely capable of finding other perspectives on a subject without a single publication providing all of the potential perspectives on an issue.

Also if you want to read opposition to this article, read the comments to this article. There are people articulating anti-union arguments all over the place. Those people are bringing "an opposing point of view to bring about a real discussion" (even though I disagree with your assertion of what constitutes a real discussion).

@slag: I played Undertale with a keyboard. I didn't try to use a controller because I actually played the Zeboid RPGs (Cthulhu Saves the World and the Penny Arcade RPGs) with a keyboard as well. I didn't think that a controller would make that much of a difference with a control scheme as simple as Undertale's. Also my computer setup is such that playing on the keyboard isn't that cumbersome.

My experience with MC was pretty different from a difficulty perspective because my house started with a relic as part of my backer rewards. I actually had a big leg up from the word go and by the end of the game my backer relic was far more powerful than whoever happened to be carrying it. Like I could hand that thing to a nearsighted newborn and they'd have a 90% hitrate and a 50% crit rate. Another side-effect of my playstyle was that I focused on sending my family's warriors into combat at all times since I wanted them to get the most exp. As a result, I actually ended up with 2 relics in my family and 1 more in my "second pillar" house. My playstyle just happened to slot perfectly into what the game rewards. I actually didn't have much trouble at any point in MC, aside from the emotional trauma of having an entire generation of my family die in about 30 real world seconds.

@president_barackbar: To be fair, I don't do that if I can actually discern the tone of the other person. I only really have this problem on forums because it can feel like groundhogs day explaining the same basic points over and over to new people.

@president_barackbar: I'm sorry if my response reads hostile. I didn't intend to have that tone, but re-reading it I certainly erred. You said nothing that was especially aggressive, it is more that I've had this discussion about "young feminist writers" with enough people on these forums that have specifically meant that as an attack that I tend to read tone where there may be none.

My main point was that this style of critique is still fairly new for games and I think it's hegemony is overblown. It just happens that every time someone writes an article on feminism or race it tends to find its way to these forums and blow up for days at a time.

@president_barackbar: Whenever people bring up this supposed block of young feminist writers, I don't know what to do with it. There are entire sites that have no articles even resembling feminist critique. Gamespot, IGN, Game Informer are the biggest game sites on the web and they don't cover games in this way. If your problem is that people believe in the theses of their articles, I don't know what to tell you. There were entire decades of game writing where no one said anything about the clearly cringe-worthy sexist stuff that went on. Watch some of the Playstation underground demo disc videos if you don't know what I mean. If there's a young group of writers over-correcting, I don't really mind. Especially since it seems people still take really minor feminist criticism as a moralizing, puritanical attack.

Also the form of most "disagreement" with feminist leaning video game articles is either a complete misunderstanding of the basic vocabulary and methodology of feminist critique or insults. I don't really blame people for not being diplomatic when that is the response to their work. Like I've read feminist critique before, and the stuff about Quiet in this article is incredibly mild. The argument is that her depiction made the author have to engage critically with the game she was playing. That's it. And plenty of the responses to that thesis have been some from of "I don't feel guilty for anything!" which was totally not the point of the article. One of the central theses was to not let other people shame you out of playing the things you love, but people have focused on the first half of the article instead.

As for your other point, the two halves of the article are in dialog with one another so I don't really see the issue with articulating two different types of guilt. It is in depicting the first kind of guilt that the distinction with the second kind becomes apparent.

@marokai: Ok that makes a lot of sense then. I think the distinction that most people draw when they talk about things like objectification and the male gaze is in how particular characters, be they actors in movies, characters in books, or characters in video games, are treated by the directorial "camera" of their medium and whether there is a gendered element to that treatment.

In the largest sense all fictional characters are objects created by the author or author, but the way the author treats each can communicate subtle differences in what the author values about each character. For example, if an author spends multiple paragraphs painstakingly describing how a man looks, but then only gives him one line of dialog, it could communicate that that man's central importance is his appearance. In the micro, that's one character decision in what could be a huge novel and it could mean nothing. However, if that same character decision is made for every man in the novel you might be able to characterize the novel as having a female gaze that objectifies the male characters. They are there to largely be looked at, not empathized with. If that pattern continues in most popular books, then you've got yourself a study. The same sort of analysis can be applied to things like where a camera lingers in a movie/ game or what a game allows you to do to certain characters.

That is a very simple example, but the point is that these things might not be noticeable or objectionable in the micro, but it can become loud in the macro. If you can accept that there are values being communicated by things like camera angles, dialog, and dress then the next step is to show that the fiction we consume can change the way we see actual people. I don't have studies off hand that prove that fiction effects personal perceptions at the ready, but I've believed that fiction can change people's opinions of the world since I first felt like a game changed my life in one way or another.

@marokai: Thank you for your well thought out and measured response. I was wondering if you've studied feminist criticism before academically? I feel like there is a disconnect between what I believe the word objectification conveys and how you interpret it and I feel like the root of the disconnect might be that I have taken classes that focused on just this sort of study. As a result, I see value in analyzing the larger context that lead to the creation of a character like Quiet and why things like the camera and the character design treat her the way it does. It seems like you reject the central hypothesis of things like gaze theory outright. So I was wondering if maybe you're conclusion that "somehow when it comes to video game ladies it's all different" comes from not being exposed to feminist critique outside of this context. And if you have and just reject it's findings, that's okay too.

I've just read or listened to enough feminist interpretations of literature that there is nothing that seems out of the ordinary in this particular reading. In fact a lot of the critiques in this piece are pretty standard stuff from my experience.

@austin_walker: Yeah intellectually I understand that and that understanding has helped broaden the types of literature I consume, but it's that emotional response that I can't fully shake. It might be because I used to really believe FFVIII was a great work of literature as a child, but looking at it with adult eyes has changed and focused my appreciation. I still like the game, but for very different reasons. Now I like its story because I think it paints a very odd picture of what is and is not inheritable, whereas I used to feel as though the story shared my worldview. Its basically like realizing that you're supposed to identify with the Holden Caufield at the end of The Catcher in the Rye and not the one from the beginning.