A gay, bi-racial's take on this whole mess

[verdant monkai]

Basically a bunch of people criticizing journalistic integrity. There's a metric shit ton of baggage that comes with it, but that's not the point. The point is that if I were to tell them that they just need to stop whining and become journalists if they care about journalism so much, I'd expect them to get angry at me, because I'm dismissing their complaints.

Well I'd say what you were telling them was fair enough then.

Complaining is ok but you have to be prepared to be called out on it if you aren't prepared to act on your complaints. Actions are worth a hundred words and all that.

If OP turns around now and says "You know what if I want these games no one seems to be making, I'll have to make them myself" I'll commend them. I wouldn't have bothered saying anything but for the fact that complaints like these are all over the fucking internet. No games are being made there are just people complaining, and shitting over the industry in general. A lot of gaming complaints are fair enough like "I'd like more StarFox games", nothing you can do about the state of StarFox as Nintendo has the rights. But saying things like "I want games that pander specifically to me/whatever group I identify with" then you need to get your act together and make it. Or at the very least write Nintendo a letter asking for a Black gay StarFox.

 

[verdant monkai]

So far, you're not missing terribly much.

Yeah thats the general feeling I'm getting from this whole mess.

Thanks for trying to clear it up for me.

 

[Erttheking]

Basically a bunch of people criticizing journalistic integrity. There's a metric shit ton of baggage that comes with it, but that's not the point. The point is that if I were to tell them that they just need to stop whining and become journalists if they care about journalism so much, I'd expect them to get angry at me, because I'm dismissing their complaints.

Well I'd say what you were telling them was fair enough then.

Complaining is ok but you have to be prepared to be called out on it if you aren't prepared to act on your complaints. Actions are worth a hundred words and all that.

If OP turns around now and says "You know what if I want these games no one seems to be making, I'll have to make them myself" I'll commend them. I wouldn't have bothered saying anything but for the fact that complaints like these are all over the fucking internet. No games are being made there are just people complaining, and shitting over the industry in general. A lot of gaming complaints are fair enough like "I'd like more StarFox games", nothing you can do about the state of StarFox as Nintendo has the rights. But saying things like "I want games that pander specifically to me/whatever group I identify with" then you need to get your act together and make it. Or at the very least write Nintendo a letter asking for a Black gay StarFox.

Where can't that argument work? If you dislike a dish at a resturant can someone just say "If you have such a problem with it, you become a cook." If you dislike how houses are built, can someone just say "If you don't like it, you become an architect". If you dislike how the president runs the country, can you just say "If you don't like it, you run for office"

Most people can't drop everything in their lives to fix an issue they have, no matter how dearly they care about it. Also, what the Hell am I supposed to do if I have complaints about music and foreign aid? Am I supposed to just dedicate myself to one and shut the Hell up about the other one forever? It's why I don't buy that argument, it's basically a more eloquent way of just saying "shut up"

 

[BloatedGuppy]

It's why I don't buy that argument, it's basically a more eloquent way of just saying "shut up"

There's nothing eloquent about that argument. It's a fool's argument. As you elucidated, if you spend five seconds thinking about it, it falls apart completely.

"Car not running to your satisfaction? Make your own car or shut up."
"Gave a thumbs down to my movie? Make your own movie or shut up."
"Think the space program deserves more tax dollars? Make your own space program or shut up."

 

[verdant monkai]

Where can't that argument work?

Not a bad point actually! its that sort of thinking that makes America the great nation it is today. DIY driving us into the future.

 

[Netrigan]

Basically a bunch of people criticizing journalistic integrity. There's a metric shit ton of baggage that comes with it, but that's not the point. The point is that if I were to tell them that they just need to stop whining and become journalists if they care about journalism so much, I'd expect them to get angry at me, because I'm dismissing their complaints.

Well I'd say what you were telling them was fair enough then.

Complaining is ok but you have to be prepared to be called out on it if you aren't prepared to act on your complaints. Actions are worth a hundred words and all that.

If OP turns around now and says "You know what if I want these games no one seems to be making, I'll have to make them myself" I'll commend them. I wouldn't have bothered saying anything but for the fact that complaints like these are all over the fucking internet. No games are being made there are just people complaining, and shitting over the industry in general. A lot of gaming complaints are fair enough like "I'd like more StarFox games", nothing you can do about the state of StarFox as Nintendo has the rights. But saying things like "I want games that pander specifically to me/whatever group I identify with" then you need to get your act together and make it. Or at the very least write Nintendo a letter asking for a Black gay StarFox.

Where can't that argument work? If you dislike a dish at a resturant can someone just say "If you have such a problem with it, you become a cook." If you dislike how houses are built, can someone just say "If you don't like it, you become an architect". If you dislike how the president runs the country, can you just say "If you don't like it, you run for office"

Most people can't drop everything in their lives to fix an issue they have, no matter how dearly they care about it. Also, what the Hell am I supposed to do if I have complaints about music and foreign aid? Am I supposed to just dedicate myself to one and shut the Hell up about the other one forever? It's why I don't buy that argument, it's basically a more eloquent way of just saying "shut up"

I've got no guff with people criticizing stuff. Criticizing stuff is often how you let people know they need to fix things. Feedback is good.

Where I think GamerGate goes off the rails into Fantasy Land is they seem to think they seem to have this very inflated sense of what they're accomplishing not unlike Occupy. They tried to hand Game Journalists a story they thought was very important. Journalists did a bit of fact checking, went, "bah, this is bullshit, we're not covering it." GamerGate got really upset. Journalists said, "alright, we won't cover the story, but we'll acknowledge our reporting can be kind of crap... oh, here's an Anita Sarkeesian article which is all journalistically responsible which we're writing just to piss all over those laughable GamerGate guys who didn't bother to fact check their video properly."

That and taking credit for a downturn in clicks at various sites, which might have to do more with there having not been any major games lurking about, but now we can score some easy clicks with Destiny articles and, look, the clicks are starting to go back up again... almost like GamerGate had nothing to do with the downturn in the first place.

So maybe GamerGate had people running scared there for a moment, but they still never published those "conflict of interest" stories that got everyone all upset in the first place. And GamerGate still has Davis Arurini, which is probably punishment enough.

 

[Beliyal]

You said it yourself. Instead of whining and saying the industry needs to progress. YOU need to get into game development, you even suggested people who aren't happy do that.

Do you honestly believe that every gamer has the ability, knowledge, money and time to get into game development?
Do you honestly believe that if you want to play a game that represents you better, you can just make the game yourself? To be on par with the AAA titles that get tens of millions of dollars?

I want better representation in video games for a lot of things, but I am not a game developer and I never will be. I don't have a degree in programming and I won't have. I am not going to be hired by a major studio. What I can do is "whine", or to put it better; I can make my voice heard and hope that the developers are listening to my and similar voices. I can hope that one day, developers and publishers will stop being afraid that anything out of the ordinary won't sell. We're getting there right now, I see a positive future in the gaming industry and it's because people spoke out about the state of gaming. Because "whiners".

Seriously, why is this ever an argument? Can you imagine this being used as an argument everywhere? Build your own house. Make your own car. Film your own movie. Write your own book. Do your own neurosurgery. Create your own super-advanced robot for space exploration.

Just because you are a A gay bi-racial doesn't mean anyone needs to make games for you, so its up to you to get the ball rolling. To most sensible gamers things like skin colour and gender don't matter. And certainly not sexuality. That sort of thing only matters to people like yourself.

I look forward to your first Title.

Perhaps those things don't matter to "most sensible gamers" because our society is conditioned to perceive whiteness, straightness and maleness as the default state of humanity? This is not an attack or a fault of anyone in particular, it's a consequence of hundreds and thousands of years of history and cultural development. I mean, it doesn't matter to me at all, I can play a game and immerse myself in a male protagonist. Everyone can. What we want is for the industry to consider making something other than that. If things like skin colour, gender and sexuality don't matter, then I'm sure protagonists can be black, female or gay, right? For some reason, they usually aren't. This video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85M3LnoHz6o] illustrates this pretty well. 33 games, 40 men. If I counted correctly, only 4 non-white (which is 10%). Probably zero non-straight, though I can't know that for games that aren't out yet. Certainly, there is something to be told about this trend. Maybe, just maybe there is this trend and when people point it out, they perhaps have something of substance to complain about. And before anyone jumps to conclusion, no, I don't want straight white male protagonists to be banned from games. That's not going to happen, yo. There'll always be those protagonists, but there is definitely room for something more diverse as well.

 

[Lono Shrugged]

And as the last few weeks have shown, I have good reason to suspect that some games are being pushed at me with an agenda. I thought Gone Home was a very poorly written game. I thought the gameplay and presentation was interesting and fresh. But the subject matter and writing was completely ham handed.

That's fair. A very cogent argument can be made that the writing IS ham handed.

Can you uh...can you give me examples of game writing that ISN'T ham handed? Because if this is the standard you are employing, your list of tolerably written games should be about three titles long.

It's a matter of personal opinion, for instance. It's my opinion and what I have been trying to say in my last few posts s that everyone is entitled to their own opinion on games and should be able to play what they want without interference from outside forces. I think Kentucky Route Zero and Thomas Was Alone are beautifully written video games. Not a lot of people might share that opinion. And even the ones who do might not like the fact I enjoyed Max Payne 3's writing, as clunky and affected as it was, was great video game writing. It put me in the mindset of this whiskey swilling hard boiled cop. The beauty of the hobby is that there is something for EVERYONE. which is exactly what I was trying to say in my first post.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

It's a matter of personal opinion, for instance. It's my opinion and what I have been trying to say in my last few posts s that everyone is entitled to their own opinion on games and should be able to play what they want without interference from outside forces. I think Kentucky Route Zero and Thomas Was Alone are beautifully written video games. Not a lot of people might share that opinion. And even the ones who do might not like the fact I enjoyed Max Payne 3's writing, as clunky and affected as it was, was great video game writing. It put me in the mindset of this whiskey swilling hard boiled cop. The beauty of the hobby is that there is something for EVERYONE. which is exactly what I was trying to say in my first post.

There's no need to feel defensive, Lono, I was just curious about calling out that specific game for being "ham handed". By traditional writing standards, most certainly. By industry standards, it punches in a pretty rarefied weight class. I'd be similarly curious if someone slammed the writing in Planescape Torment, or Bioshock, or The Walking Dead. Not because it is beyond reproach, but because it would make me curious what they DID consider to be good writing.

And it is my understanding that Kentucky Route Zero is a widely acclaimed title.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

I've got no guff with people criticizing stuff. Criticizing stuff is often how you let people know they need to fix things. Feedback is good.

Where I think GamerGate goes off the rails into Fantasy Land is they seem to think they seem to have this very inflated sense of what they're accomplishing not unlike Occupy. They tried to hand Game Journalists a story they thought was very important. Journalists did a bit of fact checking, went, "bah, this is bullshit, we're not covering it." GamerGate got really upset. Journalists said, "alright, we won't cover the story, but we'll acknowledge our reporting can be kind of crap... oh, here's an Anita Sarkeesian article which is all journalistically responsible which we're writing just to piss all over those laughable GamerGate guys who didn't bother to fact check their video properly."

Now why do you think it's unimportant that people were/are being censored everywhere for discussing a topic?
Also, the the JournoPros chat didn't make things any better where the journalists were advocating censorship merely because Zoe was their friend.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Now why do you think it's unimportant that people were/are being censored everywhere for discussing a topic?

Also, the the JournoPros chat didn't make things any better where the journalists were advocating censorship merely because Zoe was their friend.

No, I don't think it's particularly important what private entities "censor" on their privately owned websites. I can understand why some people feel aggrieved about it, but this isn't Rosa Parks refusing to sit at the back of the bus, or Mark Felt blowing the lid off Watergate. As with Sarkeesian's rather lazy Feminist Frequency videos, the reaction to the event is a significantly more telling story than the event itself.

 

[verdant monkai]

Do you honestly believe that every gamer has the ability, knowledge, money and time to get into game development?

Have you heard of RPG maker? its on Steam and it lets anyone make their own game, you don't need programming knowledge or a high end PC.

If you have time to complain you have time to make a game.

 

[Beliyal]

Do you honestly believe that every gamer has the ability, knowledge, money and time to get into game development?

Have you heard of RPG maker? its on Steam and it lets anyone make their own game, you don't need programming knowledge or a high end PC.

If you have time to complain you have time to make a game.

I have heard of it, yes. So, you think that a game I can make by myself for myself can be in any way on par with the work done by professional game designers and that I should just be satisfied with the best I can do, having no education on good and efficient game design?

Time to complain? Yeah, I have 15 minutes time to write a comment on an internet forum. I think it would take me much more than that to create a game, even in RPG maker. And there's only so much that the RPG maker can create. I doubt I can create an SF third person shooter or a sandbox with stunning visuals. Perhaps I can make one or two games for myself, but I'll still want to play professionally made games because of other genres, professional music, voice acting, mechanics, gameplay.

I don't see how this solves anything. It seems more like an argument to shut down any complaint in a lazy fashion. I don't see how it contributes to the discourse about the lack of diversity in gaming, other than telling me to just get over it and that I'm a negligible member of the gaming community, along with millions of others.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

If you have time to complain you have time to make a game.

Still?

You're still positing this as a legitimate rebuttal to media criticism? This strikes you as a cogent argument, does it? You're going to double down on it and stand behind it?

 

[Owen Robertson]

You want more out of an industry? Vote with your wallet. This discussion may spur some people to action, but the most important thing is to always buy games that tout diversity, even if it's disingenuous. You can buy Uncharted and CoD every time because straight, white men will always sell as protagonists. But, even when it's lazy, buying a game with a bi-racial homosexual as the main character is going to make a difference. It'll become more and more mundane and regular,and years down the line it'll just BE.

Another point: Look how far we've come. There's a long way to go certainly but remember MW2's campaign? You play a latino serving under a black sergeant. The game True Crime: Streets of L.A. (on the PS2 and Gamecube) had you playing as a bi-racial cop. BioWare and Bethesda build homosexuality into their games (albeit only in the life-sim parts, but hey; small victories). Bioware made an entire species transgendered/ungendered, and a critical crew-member disabled. (I'm not even a Bioware fan, but I give credit where it's due.)

To sum up: Buy diverse games to open the market, then be selective.

 

[Netrigan]

I've got no guff with people criticizing stuff. Criticizing stuff is often how you let people know they need to fix things. Feedback is good.

Where I think GamerGate goes off the rails into Fantasy Land is they seem to think they seem to have this very inflated sense of what they're accomplishing not unlike Occupy. They tried to hand Game Journalists a story they thought was very important. Journalists did a bit of fact checking, went, "bah, this is bullshit, we're not covering it." GamerGate got really upset. Journalists said, "alright, we won't cover the story, but we'll acknowledge our reporting can be kind of crap... oh, here's an Anita Sarkeesian article which is all journalistically responsible which we're writing just to piss all over those laughable GamerGate guys who didn't bother to fact check their video properly."

Now why do you think it's unimportant that people were/are being censored everywhere for discussing a topic?
Also, the the JournoPros chat didn't make things any better where the journalists were advocating censorship merely because Zoe was their friend.

Well, they sort of have a right to censor people on their forum. Here they're more like to bring down the ban-hammer and leave your comment up to show why they did it, but if they deem the comment to be too far out of line, they'll delete the comment outright.

I wander in and out of this conversation so I missed the fireworks, so I have no idea what kind of stuff was being posted or whether I agreed with the decision to delete it. Considering the lack of fact-checking that went into the accusation that Zoe Quinn got a favorable review from her then-boyfriend (namely there was no review at all) and that said accusation continues to be repeated as fact, I'm not terribly inclined to believe much of what GamerGate insists is true. I've not found the source to be terribly reliable.

Because I didn't see it go down, so I kind of give the whole thing a pass, which is why I didn't bother to mention it in the account. I know it made GamerGate angrier, but then I didn't mention doxxing Quinn or leaking nude pictures of her either... two actions which are certainly mixed up in the whole GamerGate thing. I don't know how all that went down, don't see how it affects the over-all thrust of the movement. It's just stuff in the middle that made a bunch of people really angry and ratcheted up the rhetoric.

 

[verdant monkai]

I have heard of it, yes. So, you think that a game I can make by myself for myself can be in any way on par with the work done by professional game designers and that I should just be satisfied with the best I can do, having no education on good and efficient game design?

Myself and a lot of others judge a game on things like quality of writing and character development. If you suck at those things then your game won't be up to par no, but if you can create an entertaining story with good characters then you have made a good game, which deserves to be judged on its own merits.

If you think a game needs shiny graphics and a large budget to be good then you have no idea. Plenty of RPG maker games ahave recieved recognition. I think the best friends played Clive Barkley shut up and smash Gaiden recently. So basically yeah you have no excuse.

But by all means please continue trying to change an opinion on the internet.

 

[verdant monkai]

You're going to double down on it and stand behind it?

I may as well. Since the statement of "I want ___ why hasn't anyone made ___" can always be answered with make it yourself.

 

[Alex1508]

You want more out of an industry? Vote with your wallet. This discussion may spur some people to action, but the most important thing is to always buy games that tout diversity, even if it's disingenuous. You can buy Uncharted and CoD every time because straight, white men will always sell as protagonists. But, even when it's lazy, buying a game with a bi-racial homosexual as the main character is going to make a difference. It'll become more and more mundane and regular,and years down the line it'll just BE.

Another point: Look how far we've come. There's a long way to go certainly but remember MW2's campaign? You play a latino serving under a black sergeant. The game True Crime: Streets of L.A. (on the PS2 and Gamecube) had you playing as a bi-racial cop. BioWare and Bethesda build homosexuality into their games (albeit only in the life-sim parts, but hey; small victories). Bioware made an entire species transgendered/ungendered, and a critical crew-member disabled. (I'm not even a Bioware fan, but I give credit where it's due.)

To sum up: Buy diverse games to open the market, then be selective.

The asari are mongendered actually and for transgender characters they introduced a really awesome one in the dragon age comics: Maevaris Tilani http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Maevaris_Tilani Unfortunately the comics came way too late in the production of Inquisition to introduce in Maeveris in the game as well....but she may appear in the future
And yes i support them and many games with awesome portrayals of LGBT or female characters.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I may as well. Since the statement of "I want ___ why hasn't anyone made ___" can always be answered with make it yourself.

Yes, you are correct, just like certain criticisms can always be answered with "I know you are, but what am I". I'm not questioning your ability to open your mouth and enunciate words, I'm asking whether or not you think it's an intelligent argument.

But by all means please continue trying to change an opinion on the internet.

I'm confused. Do you consider inflexibility in opinion to be a badge of honor?