Thank fucking god you made this point. "Video games are already a respected medium in their own right" is not even close to true.

I think it's even more complicated than you make it. Yes, a lot of people over the age of, say, 40-45 still think all gamers are basement-dwelling nerds drinking soda. But everyone under that age range frankly isn't much better; they're on the side of video games because they grew up with them, but they don't really ask much of the medium other than it keep delivering them their Halos and Angry Birds and so on. I'm an avid video game fan, and sometimes I don't respect the medium. It can achieve great things, and rarely does.

The vast, vast majority of the audience for video games still wants something with all the artistic merit of Avengers: Infinity War + a functional washing machine. Which is to say, the expectation is that it has "shooty blowup noises and feel-good dopamine hits" + "it doesn't break during use" and nothing more.

For every 1 game that, I dunno, explores the brutality of human conflict like The Last of Us, or challenges the status quo of military games like Spec Ops: The Line, or has the attention to detail in audio/visual composition and atmosphere like Inside, there are 5000 games that are simply pandering to market demands and have nothing to say, no feeling to evoke, no beauty they're trying to distill.

I'm aware this same complaint can be applied to other media as well. Movies, TV, literature, they're not perfect, some people just want to take in stuff that's easy for them to take in, and large companies are happy to produce works that will satisfy those people. But I really do think video games are doing much, much worse than those other media. Indie devs that are way off the grid release some wild stuff on itch.io that like 80 people ever play, but when you look at most of the stuff that gets played by a wide audience, woof. Some days I really think video games as a whole, both creators and the audience, are still stuck in the colourful coin-op days of the 80s, where the almighty dollar and cheap thrills still comes before anything of actual substance.

EDIT: fwiw, my above post isn't meant to be a screed against all video games. There are types of games that I think do something truly unique to games, and every year they are advancing and offering new experiences. Rhythm games marry audio/visual experiences with a player's sense of rhythm. Competitive experiences live and die on how finely tuned and balanced everything is, and for all their visual window dressing, the most important thing is whether hitboxes colliding with each other feels like a compelling competitive experience. I'm not here to indict the writing in Tetris anymore than I'm here to indict the writing in chess.

But singleplayer games often have something resembling a narrative experience. The number of games whose stories don't offer anything that is challenging to think or feel is kind of astounding sometimes. There's still so much you can do with interactive storytelling, and sadly the wider audience seems oblivious to a lot of the games that try.

@bisonhero: I'm pretty active about listening to music, and it's quite impressive how much meaningful new music there is made day in day out. And how listeners seem to appreciate the more introspective stuff, music that reflects on the way society works or artists experimenting with new sounds. Sure, there's a lot of shallow & vapid stuff to be found too, but it's incredibly easy to find a wealth of artful material. In the gaming scene we have to cling onto our 20 year old Spec Ops. A game that received mixed reviews and barely sold.

Spec Ops: The Line was a commercial failure, selling less than anticipated by Take-Two.The sales of Spec Ops: The Line, combined with Max Payne 3, were lower than the combined sales of L.A. Noire and Duke Nukem Forever. The low sales of the title contributed to Take-Two's disappointing financial results in fiscal year 2013.

@bisonhero: When I sometimes think about how grown up gaming is as a whole, I often think about the voice-over delivery for even many of the "mature" games. I am sure that delivery often has to do with how voice acting is a small field and how the characters and monsters in games can be voiced only so many ways, which requires vocal gymnastics to a probably significant degree, but these voices frequently sound like they belong in a child's program.

From villains in the Arkham games to Barret in FFVII Remake (appreciated the Red XIII voicing for the most part though), they sound ridiculous so often -- and have for so long -- that I think we don't even notice really how strange it is; people who don't play a lot of games or people who only notice them casually at a Walmart probably don't see them on the same level as movies as a whole in part because they aren't.

Yawn at these tired ass 2010 takes, trying to shove games into the framework of other mediums without even sparing a fucking word for what video games excel at and set them apart.

Oh, and the subject of this topic is wack too, I guess.

I'm sure the gaming scene has plenty more to "cling" onto than a mediocre third person shooter stretched over a well-written script.

On the Giant Bomb subreddit, somebody started a topic about what game it was during the 2018 GotY discussion that made Vinny get choked up. It was Florence. I had never played that game, but somebody in one of the posts recommended a video "let's play" of it.

This is coming from not having physically played Florence myself, but I have played games that it reminded me of it, e.g., Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Games like these show us how the medium can be so different and excel in areas like tactile response, an area where movies lack. When we see in Florence how putting puzzle pieces of a moment in the game together that are trying to slowly drift apart as something in the game is coming undone can make the player feel invested in a way that a movie could not exactly replicate. As that was happening, I realized that this is one of those things that sets games apart and makes me appreciate when somebody does something very cool and pretty unusual with the medium. That was just one small example of what Florence did to create an experience that deserves to be praised.

@bludgeonparagon: yes, but it is the game people keep returning to in threads like these. A game that most people at the time didn't like particularly much, critics nor customers. If we had an abundance of meaningful game-stories to talk about , we wouldn't keep bringing up this mediocre third-person shooter with a well-written script. Just like no one wants to talk about Tonic Trouble or Earthworm Jim 3d anymore because there are better, more interesting platformers out there. It would have been surpassed over and over again.

I get what Jeff Cannata meant when he brought up Schindlers List, in the poorly suited place for nuance that is Twitter. I thought it was fairly obvious he meant that Schindlers List is an uneasy movie to watch and that TLOU 2 is an uneasy game to play. He's not the only person to say that it's an uneasy game to play.

But Twitter is the "telephone game" of how poorly messages are received. Even after he tried to clarify what he was saying, people think he's saying something else. It's an impossible game to win so you should just not play.

Nobody wins in this or comes out looking well. I respect the work Schreier and I've enjoyed his articles and books, but he came across entirely too confrontational and he wasn't interested in any sort of discussion with either of the Sony guys, instead immediately playing the work conditions trump card.

I cannot believe that Sony still allows guys at the head of studios have personal Twitter accounts that don't have every tweet be proof read by PR people first.

And attitudes like "lol another zombie game" is just really not constructive in any way. @sweep said it very well earlier in this thread, you cannot be a voice for pushing the merit of video games and their achievements as a medium of interactivity that's unmatched by any other format and then just say "lol but it's a zombie game mate, so whatever".

Twitter does not like anything, ever.

The Road adaptation is obviously the most apt, if anything. It's a dumb analogy, regardless. Last of Us 2 is far from a landmark game, no matter how good it is. It's the most recent hurrah from an action studio's take on a miserable revenge tale that desperately wants to be a tragedy.

There are a ton of thoughtful articles arguing for widening gaming audiences, which generated zero controversy.

Leigh's wasn't really one of them, as she specifically called for exclusion and also referred to gamers as a series of obscenities, which is not really what you'd expect on an industry website for professionals such as Gamasutra. I don't know if there's an inclusive way to call for the death of an entire demographic, but Jason did step in at the time to tell Kotaku readers that when Leigh says "gamers" are man-babies and wailing shit-slingers, she wasn't referring to all gamers. Which is a nice point of clarity that should have probably in her piece

Regarding film, I've seen plenty of professional and amateur film critics compare certain films and books to Schindler's List without generating any backlash besides maybe eye-rolls. Maybe Jeff though he'd similarly get away with it?

I haven't played this and usually let people have their fun with Naughty Dog, but they've been kind of doing a version of the same story since Uncharted 2, where you're the killer bad guy in some way, and its pretty tired. It never really goes anywhere besides the ending of Last of Us 1 where it did... and then they made another game. The acting is good though.

Some people love this game and it's cool, but it is valid to do cross media comparisons. Yeah it does come across like a watered down version of the Road to me and it being a zombie game does prevent it from hitting a certain high for me.

The thing that would be dumb to do is compare it to Schindler's List. That's common sense. Its a joke like others said for a reason. I am not high on some level of dragging, especially from certain people mentioned, but it was a real stupid tweet.

I think there's a difference between some people just clowning on someone and others trying to cancel them and fire them here. Happens a lot.

Funny thing is I love Cormac McCarthy and The Road is maybe my least favorite of his novels anyways lol

FINAL TAKE: Just stop comparing games to movies and acting like games need to get to some level of other mediums. Just move on from that.

When I see big critics laud AAA output as the best, most artistic, creative stuff the medium can offer, especially from a narrative standpoint, I’m wondering how deep their experience with games actually go. There’s more pathos and pain in a single scene of That Dragon, Cancer, or Papo & Yo than in the entire first The Last if Us, and I doubt Part II will be any different. I get being impressed and enjoying AAA games, but bruh, broaden your horizons a bit.

@11111110: Gamers aren’t a demographic, they are a marketing group created by companies. Some people just bought into that marketing group as an identity, because they love being marketed to.

Edit: it always amuses me that some video game likers have bought into that marketing so deeply that they are upset by that article.

The problem with the games press is that too many of them are professional victims

@plan6: It kind of is though. Self-described "gamers" tend to be mostly male, lower-income and less white than people who play video games but deny the label:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/12/survey-gamers-are-poorer-more-male-less-white-than-game-players/

Granted, nearly every demographic, age category, and hobby has been categorized, quantified, studied, and pandered to by marketers. But if the group doesn't exist, then what type of person was Leigh asking game companies to stop marketing to? Lower-income, nonwhite males?

EDIT: And just to be clear, the quality of her article in no way justifies any harassment she got afterwards

@11111110: C’mon, you can’t be seriously asking the question that Leigh Alexander was attacking low income non-white males when she wrote that article. For one, the study appears to have been done about a year after the article was written. And for another, the understanding in that article that “gamer” was used colloquially to refer to the gamergate chuds that used their identity as “core” or “true” gamers to marginalize women, non-binary folk, LGBTQ people, and racialized people. It was not a sociological study, it was an opinion piece. And the persistent diaper wetting over at kotakuinaction these past five years has only made her point clearer.

@navster15: She was attacking a specifically toxic group of the overall gaming culture but doing so with an incredibly wide brush. Leigh has always been very harsh and outspoken with her opinions while also being idealistic to a fault. She sets standards for games that can’t possibly be achieved and then criticizes said games for falling short of those expectations. While she is a talented writer she has a very bad habit of talking down to people which in turn draws the negative reactions she receives. People wonder why some folk don’t want to let go of some incredibly unprofessional things she might have said in the past and looking over some of her condescending responses on Twitter it’s not hard to see why.

@humanity: I guess as a marginalized person myself I have more sympathy for her reaction. I saw gamergate unfold in 2014, I saw the viscous attacks on women and other marginalized folks in the space. And yes, those attacks only came from a segment of self described gamers. But I also saw the wider swath of gamers look away, rationalize, or gaslight the people who were taking the brunt of the abuse. Even Giant Bomb stood silent, giving out the only tepid of responses at the time. In that environment, Alexander’s piece felt cathartic, a punch back against the swarms of gamergate who were making so many lives miserable. And without strong allyship taking the burden of the fight off of us, that was all we had.

EDIT: And to be clear, I’m not interested in defending every single thing she’s done. I was just pointing out the disingenuousness in using a gamer survey to discredit the article she wrote in 2014 regarding a specific environment that developed in the gaming internet sphere.

@11111110: I don’t want to over debt the article, but the wasn’t that “Gamers” no longer existed, but that they wouldn’t have to be the focus of the industry and marketing any longer. The whole part about them being dead or going away is a weird product of the backlash to the article and people not really understanding where the term gamer originated.

@navster15: I am with you on this one. I love video games, but people who act like the narrative and story telling of a game like LoU2 rivals cinema, really need to watch more films. And games with really stunning narrative highs like The Outer Wilds doesn’t have this problem because they are not trying to copy the style of cinema.

Edit: I think folks need to remember that Gamer was a marketing term used by companies long before it caught on among people who played games. Like in the 1990s. And it was mocked as stupid for years, because it was. But then some folks became super consumers and started basing their identities around brands and marketing, dooming is all.

@navster15: That's fine. If she only meant to refer to jerks, instead of 'gamers' in general, then she probably should have specified it at some point.

In this case, it doesn't matter that 'gamers' are lower-income and less white, because Leigh didn't know that, so she couldn't have meant to be describing them. We know that. But it's a bit of an issue of the writing itself that we have to speculate so much on who she meant to be generalizing, and disregard what we actually know

That, and it's really really tough to call people names on the internet without getting a negative reaction.

@plan6: The worst thing about TLOU2 these days is the sheer amount of back and forth about it's quality or lack thereof mostly from people that have not played the game "but heard it's good/not that good" and are now forming an opinion of their own, which by the way is now a fact.

The Outer Wilds was one of my favorite games of last year and much like many great games, it wasn't any one thing that propelled it that high on my personal list, but rather a combination of a lot of great things working in tandem. I don't think the story there was that outstanding, but combined with the sense of discovery and the magnitude of brilliantly bespoke clockwork level design elevated that simple story way beyond it's punching weight. This is the same for The Last of Us - the first game which I've played and beaten. There definitely was a cinematic quality to it in a sense that I finished it and had a real emotional reaction afterwards that was only possible because of it being a game that I controlled. This also happened despite the fact that I didn't care all that much for the gameplay which I found clunky at times, but all the unique pieces that make games what they are produced a really amazing piece of "media" in the end that was on par with some of the best cinematic experiences. roger Ebert might not think so, but Roger Ebert is no longer with us and was never a real authority on games to begin with so we can probably move on past that.

The whole part about them being dead or going away, was a weird product of the article's headline declaring them to be "over". Again, it was poor wording. Marketing games to a wider range of people is the best thing that could happen to games, but she presented the idea in the form of demanding game developers to disregard whatever she feels their existing audience is. Which is a bit redundant since games had been expanding to wider audiences about a decade prior to the article

The sad thing is that the phenomenon of people basing their identities on brands or products predates gaming by decades, having bridged over from sports marketing. To the point where it's almost expected for sports fans to riot or get into drunken fistfights over their favorite game. Somehow those hobbies remain embraced by the mainstream, while those of us in gaming hand-wring over the potential optics of mean tweets.

But to get to your point on marketing, nowadays isn't even about the products themselves anymore, modern marketing sells to you a desirable identity first and foremost, and then attaches a product to it.

@humanity: the comment I made was more to the point that comparisons to cinema are unfair to games because they are two wildly different mediums. It is comparing the taste of apples to the taste of cold brewed coffee. The things that made The Last of Us one hit are accomplished because we are interacting with the medium. We are partaking in the scenes, even if they are often on rails. This point has been made over and over through the years, and we have gotten away from talking about games like they are movies. But then a game like LoU2 comes along, pulling from the craft of movie making and we revert a bit and go back to chasing comparisons to great films.

I also started to wonder why Roger Ebert got so much backlash, when the internet of 2005 was already packed with people on gaming message boards mocking video games. He had to ask people to stop sending him copies of FF7, because SURELY he had never witnessed a love interest dying!

I think it's because those people saw him as a potential source of validation for their hobby, he was the biggest name in reviewing things, so he's the closet thing to an authority on the subject. So his approval meant something to people that didn't even read his articles.

But now there's still a degree of insecurity among many gamers about their public perception. It's not enough to personally love a pastime in isolation, other people have to like it as well. And it doesn't count if other gamers like your thing, a seal of approval has to come from whoever is a representative of Normal People. But how many cinephiles have discussions about the 'public perception' of film?

I should check

@11111110: I would ask you to read the article itself. Because the text of the article works through the “not all gamers” angle and takes pains to specify what subset of people she is talking. But if we’re just litigating the headline, I gotta say that’s not a conversation I’m willing to engage in.

+1 to those who don't see anything wrong in his tweet. The Internet is just being the Internet...

Freedom of speech, huh?

P.S. I'm outta here to play some horror games: https://gamasexual.com/horror/

A someone who has been pretty into talking film critique with over the years, the public perception of a work almost doesn’t matter. It is what it is. But it also doesn’t happen when the film is released. The real critique happens after people have had time to process the film outside of the marketing and hype. The same with TV.

But you hit the nail on the head when it comes to validation. Video game likers and even the developers want to occupy a similar place of cultural importance as film. But if you look at the history of film, it took decades for them to build up to what we consider cinema today. Cinematography and cinema studies. Many of the modern concepts we consider in film didn’t exist until the 1950s and 1960s. And they were created at cinema schools, created by the movie industry.

This is why I hate it when video games chase cinema without understanding that it took over 100 years to get to where we are now. Video games can’t look to other mediums for the key to cultural validation. They have to carve it out for themselves, just like film had to.

Yeah, there's going to be a lot of furrowed brow critique from this game in about a month's time.

Okay let's be clear here folks, Schindler's list isnt a documentary. It's a MOVIE. It's an artwork even. It's not actually the Holocaust. You can compare anything in media based on merits alone without going full blown PC principle and making your thumbs blead pounding tweets about it.

There aren't many great films like Schindler's list. And so if you see something or play a game and you're trying to find a good comparison to it's artistic decisions and story telling methods/visuals etc. and the only thing that comes to mind is Schindler's List than that's OKAY. He's comparing that stuff, not the subject matter. He obviously knows the game is based on sci-fi and the movie is based on real events.

@iridium884: Bob Mackay has never been above taking shots at people that he thinks deserve it.

In the case of Jeff's tweet it may have been inelegant but I think it was clear enough what he was trying to convey that the game is not a John Wick power fantasy nor a feel good Fast and Furious action movie, it is difficult, unpleasant and hard to get through but ultimately rewarding. I am not sure what other movies you could compare that to because every movie like that I can think of is based off some historical real event.

"No No No, I'm not a gamer, I'm a self-actualizer. Corporate America, you must understand how difficult I am to market to, you must understand my particular lifestyle group."

2014 was a mistake. Please don't bring these conversations back, marketers already know exactly who you are. You're not rebelling against conformity, this already happened in the 80's. People who build their identity, and in fact an entire business model, around not being some other identity are exhausting.

This is why you delete the tweet instead Jeff.

I think I understand the position you're taking here, but I think there's more to it. It's not so much that I need cultural acceptance of the medium to validate my personal attachment to the medium. It's more that I feel deeply sad that some creators out there are making powerful stuff that comes out, sells a couple thousand units at best, and then is absolutely forgotten.

Like, OK, cinema took a hundred years to get where it is today. But let's make a comparison against, say, comic books/graphic novels. Comic books, also approximately a century old. There's a fork in the road somewhere where comic books could've started to cover a wider variety of subject matter, and sometimes that took hold, sometimes it didn't. The Japanese and Korean scene of comic books managed to branch out to a wider set of subjects, as did the European scene (primarily France/Belgium, as far as I understand). But in North America, comic books got stuck in this rut of being either "funnies" (Archie comics, or those dreadfully dull comic strips in major newspapers) or action adventure stuff for kids (Marvel and DC). There is an alternative scene of comic books in North America, but compared to the other continents mentioned, the North American scene is toiling away in relative obscurity and if you tell the average person you read comics/graphic novels, they almost certainly assume you mean Archie/Marvel/DC and will have no idea what the fuck you mean if you mention any title from a smaller publisher/imprint.

To use some examples from earlier in this thread, there is absolutely no way I would have ever heard of That Dragon, Cancer, or Papo y Yo, or Florence, if I were not deeply following gaming enthusiast press. Most big games are Avengers: Infinity War or Bad Boys II, and it's exceedingly rare that anything even attempts to be Schindler's List. If big games don't push tougher subject material into games occasionally, I worry that we'll get stuck in the cycle of "big publishers think all that sells is frivolous entertainment aimed at teen boys, so as a result, the only games that get made are frivolous entertainment aimed at teen boys." I think this assumption limited comic books and animation in North America for decades since the art forms were assumed to be frivolous entertainment for youth, and video games are facing the same uphill battle due to their start as simple games in arcades for children. Cinema got to bypass this uphill battle entirely because even at their most primitive, films were already "plays, but on a strip of film you project onto a wall."

I've just seen the ending. I kinda liked it. I'll leave it at that but might... actually pick up a copy.

Media can be good, high quality and worth your time and money, while at the same time not being fun, uplifting, providing a positive experience or entertaining. Those traits are not opposite sides of a coin.

The former however tends to be a requirement for some (myself included) in thinking a given piece of media is worth my time. I might, for example, think a lot of the oscar worthy movies to come out are high quality, but still have absolutely no interest in ever watching.

TLoU2 doesn't need to be "fun" or "uplifting" or etc too be a good game. Hell just look at RDR2 or Death Stranding, games don't even need to provide "Gameplay that is first and foremost fun" to be good. Death Stranding's entire point of some of its shitty controls was to make a point, tell a story. RDR2 could have very easily been way more akin to a recent Assassin's Creed game in terms of fluid movement and quick actions (like a auto loot, a 'hit a button to loot everyone in the area' and so on). Such things would certainly have made them seem "more fun" for a lot of people, but they would have violated the point the people making them were trying to make as well.

I do think the initial idea, comparing TLoU2 to such a influential and deeply serious and important message as Schindler's List is about was a poor choice. The larger comparison though "That its as far removed from most video game stories/narratives/quality as Schindler's list is from your every-day action movie" is a valid opinion, worth arguing. I just think he could have chosen a different highly respected movie, perhaps one about a less touchy subject.

That said, I also think the opposite opinion, that TLoU2 has very little to say other then "look at us we can write a nihilistic fairy-tale about how there is no redeeming qualities in mankind and we are all monsters doomed to murder and abuse each other like the violent animals we are" is also a valid one someone could have/argue/discuss.

Personally, I tend to think anything that tries to be so damn bleak as this game is tends to really need to prove its not more then "The fantasies of a nihilist masturbating over what they think the world is really like" which to my mind is what so much angsty "Dark for the sake of Dark" media can become if not done well. "People can be violent, and violence is bad" is a pretty damn simple message that needs more then just "Look at how deep and smart I am for making such a bold statement!'. Maybe TLoU2 meets that bar, it absolutely could. I don't put it past its creators to have good, even great writing that still tells a very bleak/sad story. It wouldn't at all be my kind of game either way, I like happy endings and hopeful messages in my media/world view/outlook on life. But I don't think my not being interested in such a narrative makes it bad, either.

I do think, however, there will be legitimate blow-back, if all of the reporting I've heard from reviewers (Brad, Jeff etc) seems to be true. A lot of people really liked the characters and their growth through-out the first game. If, indeed, every last character, including all of them from the first game, have become utterly irredeemable monsters who can't learn any valuable life lessons, and end up worse off then they ended in the last game? I can see a bunch of people being disappointed with the direction the writers choose to go.

tl;dr -Maybe pick a different high quality movie to make the point brought up in the tweet. Media can be both grim and dark and not at all fun and still be high quality. That said, if they sharply changed the characterization of beloved characters from the first game in order to tell a grim-dark/everyone is a monster story, I can see why fans of the first game might be angry.

Sigh. This is a dumb argument about nothing. I conclude a) It was a kinda dumb tweet that b) everybody piled on with unwarranted righteous indignation. Let's move on.

Movies did faced the stigma of being "low class art" partly because they were seen as just plays put on a strip of film. And those detractors weren't entirely wrong. A play you put on a strip of film makes for, and always has made for, a bad movie. It strips a play of everything that makes that medium great: live performances, audience interaction, and the spectacle that plays out in front of your eyes.

There's a reason that Citizen Kane is heralded as the most important films of all time. It did things that would be impossible for plays to do, and as a consequence signalled the turning point for movies to be taken as "serious art". Movies trying to live up to the expectations set by plays is as wrongheaded as videogames trying to live up to movies.

Of course Citizen Kane made no money. Artistic innovation is very rarely rewarded in the mainstream marketplace, which is why it usually comes from the independent space regardless of medium.

Also, that whole thing about movies being labelled low class art and Citizen Kane proving the detractors wrong? That's bullshit. Part of the reason movies were looked down on were because they were seen as static plays, but another part is that it brought art to the masses at an affordable price. The art world is steeped in classism, so anything that makes art more available or appealing will be met with snobbish disapproval, even by those who otherwise champion the medium. The fact is that any form of artistic expression is a valid medium regardless of what it does well or how accepted it is by the mainstream public.

You may lament the limitations of the north American comic market, but there was always an underground scene for people who wanted it, and even mainstream comics pushed boundaries in ways that can still be appreciated today. Despite what limitations one may see in them, comics have always had artistic merit and been worthy of respect, just like videogames are now.

At the end of the day, if someone dismisses a medium out of hand its their loss. The medium loses nothing for it.

Who lost their freedom of speech here? It's fine to see nothing wrong with what he said, but it is wrong and quite frankly boneheaded to claim any degree of restriction of freedom of speech happened here.

To a degree, I understand where he's coming from as it is a VERY bleak game.

That being said, he could have picked a movie that holds a bit less emotional weight to it. Also doesn't help that he's so combative when people push back on his analogy.

The Neil/Cory/Jason hatefest is something totally unrelated and I roll my eyes at all 3 of them honestly.

Twitter needs to just go away already. It never seems to result in any valuable discourse. Deciphering emotions and thought behind words on the internet is tough as it is. Then you layer on a ridiculously low word count on top of that?

To play devil's advocate though, I'm sure some developers at ND take it a bit personal when someone says their game "won't matter in 6 months." There's plenty of folks that put a ton of time and effort into the development of the game and it'd suck to have people write it off so easily (on Twitter no less)...and the game's not even out yet :/

I dunno. If there's one thing I can say from hearing the reviews, The Last of Us 2 leaves a mark. Games that manage that don't tend to be forgotten easily.

It says something when three adults respected in their field are squabbling over this.

I mean... Schindler's List is not even that good of a movie. There are a lot of critical texts written by very smart people about how that movie is actually kinda despicable - just reading about the shower scene... WOUF!

I enjoy everyone blaming social media for someone's complete inability to just take the L.

I would re-phrase that as:

It says something about the adults, that three adults respected in their field are squabbling over this.

lol it doesn't take much for that my man. certainly doesn't take a quality videogame.

My take: John Wick is trying to be a videogame(shooters,action and less narrative). Last of us 2 is trying to be a movie(serious drama, narratively focussed).

@sodapop7: Everyone blames the hot take factory, but we keep turning it on to manufacture more hot takes.

@dancinginfernal: I dont remember it perfectly well, but isnt The Road ultimately positive or hopeful in the end?