Playdate: Tender Loving Care (04/14/2017)

I think a lot of people are forgetting that the game/multimedia entity was created as a piece of entertainment. It is not meant to accurately portray the reality of having a live in psychiatrist or attempt to make a political point on the effectiveness of psychiatric help. These are characters, poorly acted (and poorly written) in a strange erotic-thriller FMV game from the 90s. Need I say more.

It clearly thinks it's incisive psychological entertainment, though, and consequently pulls in sensitive material that, as Vinny said, it doesn't have the chops to pull off.

@snowypliskin: No, you're just not accounting for the ideas of "Death of the Author" - in summary, it doesn't matter what the intent was, what matters is the outcome. You cannot simply read text in context of how it was intended as once it's created the author loses control of the context. A work should be able to stand on its feet.

@alex: Like I said it's not something that actually strongly bothers me in any way, just something I found weirdly out of the norm for the site - you don't really see a lot of these on Giant Bomb very often so I was curious why this goofy game warranted it. Thanks for the explanation, and if the status quo from this point going forward will be to have more disclaimers of this variety then hey at the end of the day it doesn't hurt me in any way and might actually help someone in some capacity so why not.

@jensonb: Like I said, this is poorly written and poorly acted and in that regard probably doesn't warrant the scrutiny its being put under.

30 minutes in and I'm gonna call it: The player is the dead kid.

Only 10 minutes into this, so I don't know if it's more directly referenced but I bet someone involved in the making of this game thought they were being incredibly smart using Betty Page clips for the TVs given the themes of it. Betty Page had schizophrenia and depression.

The author of this game skimmed a couple chapters of an abnormal psych textbook and thought "yeah, I can make something here."

"Its Fray-zzzzurrr, not Fray-shhhher"

how to pronounce

Oh hey, I got the crappy 3D stuff to work. :0

Michael has a weird Wings era Thomas Haden Church thing going on that's kind of unsettling.

yeah the dude is being kind of an dick but they keep dragging up his dead kid, forcing him to pretend he/she is still alive. I don't know how I would handle that situation but I could imagine being annoyed and angry.

Maybe next time include a trigger warning for anyone who is affected by polite disclaimers.

I never stop finding the humor in how angry people get about content warnings over the actual content...

I didn't even NOTICE the warning until I saw people breaking out the fainting couches over it in the comments.

Yeah, but it doesn't FEEL that way, does it?

And I'd LIKE for it to be true, so isn't that good ENOUGH for me to apparently watch and rewatch frame-by-frame until I see something that maybe MIGHT fit my narrative!?

God, I wanna say this is new, but I've been a GB user long enough to remember the "SCANDAL" of Brad Groping from the first Big Live Live Show LIVE...

Jesus fucking christ, it's just a content warning. How the fuck did being like 'hey, this might not be for you' turn into a weird rallying cry for people on the right to get salty? I have a friend who's an Iraq war vet, and he told me a story about how a bunch of shit-lords started making gun and explosion noises at him and it set off his PTSD. Does the right just fucking love being assholes? Christ, people.

Yes. Yes they do. Because if you can't "handle it" when they're an asshole to you then you're not a "real man" so they'll stomp your "snowflake" face into the mud to make themselves feel superior. "They're just words."

But if you tell them that, say, the Bible is "just words" then look who runs straight to the government for protection to practice their religious discrimination.

Everyone's got a trigger. They just think theirs is more important.

Speaking in terms of the game, it seems so simplistic the problem is Catherine never took Michael into her confidence from the start. Of course, the game walked around that.

That suit was too large.

Posted before the end, whoops!

@pokysharpy: So its simply arrogance and hubris.

And its not like "the right" doesn't cope with trauma also. I know a few centre-right wing people who have to cope with those, both large and small issues. I wouldn't say its restricted to the "the right" who does the bulling, but rather its a sizeable amount of pseudo-extremists that are affiliated with a political affiliation. As an example, people doing physical bullying most likely believe that "purging the weak" is a legit school of thought, sometimes even just subconciously.

Whether or not "the right" bullies more than "the left" is another question entirely but I wouldn't be suprised if your implications are truthful here, thats also what I can gather statistically.

I do believe however that a good approach would be to stop putting people in political groups, rather just call them who they are, fucking assholes.

@pants: "Political topics" (I wouldn't go as far to consider content warnings a political issue) on Giant Bomb are bound to turn into a shitfest of sorts. I can only feel empathetic to the poor mods who have to read through the messes to keep things clean.

@captaininvictus: Relax

Welcome to the penis farm a.k.a. this comment section.

Please finish this.

So GB softcore porn hour? Also I hate that we have to have a disclaimer because people might get offended. I understand it, especially with games of this era like the Phantasmagoria game. Can anyone name a game that portrays mental illness well?

Those 3D images are fun to do. I used to get really confused by those because of the instruction to unfocus your eyes. You're never told that once you notice a third image in the middle you need to regain focus on it. If you just stay unfocused you're never going to see it properly.

@evilashe:

The co-worker doesn't refer to the handicapped child as "it". She said "The new one's, um, handicapped. But she seemed like a cute little girl!"

I don't think that's any better, referring to a child as "the new one" like it's a damaged used car.

I secretly hope the video walls at the CBSi offices that show footage from their properties pull content at random.

Funny how a content warning made everyone angry for no reason at all. If you don't like it... don't watch it... simple.

@thepotatoman said:

In Australia it's a national past time to squish cane toads. Here in New Zealand I don't think anyone would shed a tear if you ran over possums or other invasive pests.

But yeah, don't like just run over peoples' pets or anything.

When is the series finale coming up? I can't wait for the conclusion of this story!

@beartaco: Even if they're an invasive species, that's, uh, still pretty grim bro.

Where is part 3?

God the internet sucks. This game however is hilarious to me, though I can understand why it isnt to a select few, hence the nice and considerate warning. Can't wait for part 3, but I wish the dudes would cut the game juuust a little bit of slack.

People are SO much more outraged by their perception of "outrage culture" than anything...

Thanks for the content warning: I'm dealing with my own set of mental health problems at the moment so it's good to know beforehand that this might touch on it. Maybe I'll come back later when I know I can handle it <3

Weirdly, hypnosis therapy dredging up false memories of childhood sexual abuse is a real thing.

This week in "don't read the comments"...

Someone, I think it was Vinnie, guessed that the grocery list said "rennet-less cheese." That was it.

Most cheeses aren't vegetarian (although most vegetarians conveniently ignore this). They use rennet, which comes from intestines. There are vegetarian (not to be confused with vegan) cheeses; the packaging will usually advertise this.

"Rennet-less cheese" fits right in with the rest of that hippy-dippy grocery list.

Vinny's absolute, blind rage near the end at the woman saying "I guess the new one is handicapped" is one of the highlights of this entire series. And year.

The episode notes should have said "Fair Warning: This game is terrible."

WELCOME TO THE PENIS FARM

"Clearly you've used pants before" nearly killed me.

Did they have to call the great uncle Dick?