And he’s 100% right.

They’re all lining up to kiss Trump’s stinky ass because they expect him to provide them with an unprecedented opportunity to thoroughly and completely fuck us all, and there’s nothing they want more in the world.

I don’t want to hammer on this really, because I think you mean well, but…

You’re not condemning the specific assholes who treated you poorly - you’re condemning “men” generally. Your point and your focus isn’t that they were assholes, but that they were men, as if that’s the actual problem - as if their failure isn’t being assholes, but simply being men.

I don’t know if that’s your actual view, but that is the way it comes across. And broadly, that view is part of the problem, since it alienates men who deserve no blame and diverts attention from those who do. And that’s exactly what I meant when I said that countering misogyny with misandry is a poor strategy.

but I feel that it is important to recognize and call out the misogyny element in this story

I don’t.

I think that countering misogyny with misandry is rather obviously a losing strategy.

This broad dynamic isn’t new and it isn’t unique either to gaming or to men. Every single creative volunteer community on the net is filled with assholes and drama llamas, of any and all genders. It’s just the nature of the thing. You see the same things over and over with game modding, cracking, romhacking, emulation, manga scanlation, anime fansubbing, vocaloid production, mmd modeling, fanfic, fanart, and so on and on.

People often (generally?) are willing to invest the time and energy into whatever it is that they’re going to post online at least in large part because they crave the attention they hope it will bring, and specifically, they want to be lauded for their talent and skill.

And that often runs up against the fact that an awful lot of the responses they’re going to get are going to come from self-absorbed and entitled assholes bitching because they don’t like whatever it is that they’re getting for free, and think they have to be accommodated.

And very often, the response from the creator, unsurprisingly really, is to effectively (or even literally) say, “Fine then - fuck you all. I’m done.”

And 'round and 'round it goes, and has from the start, and likely will never stop. It’s just an unfortunate but pretty much inevitable clash between a personality type that’s likely to create and share something online for free and a personality type that’s likely to comment on something somebody else created and shared with them for free.

Oh wow, I really riled you up.

Presuming, for the moment, that this laughable, trite and terribly cliched rejoinder is in any way true, how would it be relevant to anything?

Never mind though - that was a rhetorical question. I know, and I suspect you do as well, that it’s not. It’s just a casual, and at this point entirely predictable, bit of disparagement tossed out to give yourself what you erroneously believe to be an edge.

the real problem is the idiots who are paying.

I mean, I think that this is contentious enough to be worth picking apart.

Feel free. I’m more than willing to explain in as much detail as you want exactly why it is that I think that people who pay extra for early access to games are “idiots.”

(Just, by the bye, as I think that people who don’t wear seat belts, tahe the guards off their table saws or don’t get covid vaccines are “idiots.”)

I can’t imagine calling someone an idiot unless I thought they kind of deserved what was coming to them.

Which is exactly what I do in fact think.

It’s this schadenfreude you seem to feel that I take issue with.

I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

I don’t feel any sort of pleasure or sense of fulfillment at their idiocy - I simply note it.

I’m especially curious about that one.

Oh, that would be this, actually:

demonstrates more contempt for one’s fellow man than decreeing that they shouldn’t even be allowed to make their own choices.

You are, for some reason, arguing against the concept of rules. I never asked you to do that.

In response to my statement that:

any consumers who, in such a situation, do not say no to a bad deal have nobody to blame but themselves

you wrote:

Do you suppose that choosing not to wear a seatbelt, a very bad deal, should be left entirely up to individuals, um, “stupid” enough to take it?"

Clearly, with that, you established that the point you wished to dispute was whether or not “choosing… a very bad deal should be left entirely up to individuals.” That was the exact point of contention you stipulated.

So this:

You are, for some reason, arguing against the concept of rules. I never asked you to do that

is blatant bullshit. In point of fact, with the example above, that’s the specific focus you introduced. Curiously, you said nothing at all about the “contentious” phrasing of my original post or my supposed “schadenfreude.” That only came along now, in this desperate bit of backing and filling in which you’re vainly engaged. Rather, your immediate and exclusive focus was on whether or not “choosing… a very bad deal should be left entirely up to individuals.” The clear, and in fact only, alternative to that is that it should not be left up to individuals, so that’s the position you’ve taken, and the position in support of which I’m still waiting for you to provide an argument.

Now - if that’s truly not what you intended to say or imply, that would be another matter. And in fact, in any other situation, I’d be willing to simply grant that that wasn’t your intent and amend my responses accordingly. We could simply cooperate to find the exact point of our disagreement and focus on that (and could both enjoy this exchange much more).

But you blew that chance a long time ago.

So that was in fact the position you took, whether intentionally or not. And I’m still waiting for an argument in support of it.

It’s amusing and revealing that at no point here have you actually directly addressed anything that I’ve actually said. Instead, you’ve just used what I’ve said as a jumping off point for a ludicrously exaggerated, barely relevant and deliberately insulting strawman.

Here’s a challenge for you - instead of leaping from strawman to strawman in this vain effort to somehow prove that I’m a horrible person and therefore wrong, go all the way back to the beginning here and frame a positive argument for your position. Tell me exactly why and on what basis (as appears to be your position) publishers should be prohibited from charging extra for early access, and what nominal public good that would serve.

As a bonus, you might also try to explain how the position that publishers should be allowed to charge extra for early access is in any way “a very anti-covid-vaccine argument.” I’m especially curious about that one.

Feel free to take your time

I would say that there’s almost nothing that demonstrates more contempt for one’s fellow man than decreeing that they shouldn’t even be allowed to make their own choices.

Yes.

It’s that population that actively makes games worse for all of us

That’s exactly why I don’t cut them any slack. Their dumb choices don’t just harm themselves - they harm me and all other gamers, insofar as they’ve made it so that publishers can get away with putting out unfinished, buggy, unbalanced crap.

Sure - the gamers might spend a while ineffectually bitching on forums and handing out 1 star reviews, but that’s just meaningless noise. The ONLY thing that matters to the publishers is whether or not people buy the game, and those dunderheads not only buy the game - they line right up to buy the next one too.

Or, now, line right up to pay extra for early access to the next one.

Yes - it really is the customers’ fault.

It’d be different if games were a necessity - then the idea of “predatory” behavior would be relevant, since we’d be talking about someone taking advantage of the fact that the consumer has to buy the thing in question.

But games aren’t a necessity - not even close - so any consumer is at any time entirely free to say no to any transaction without suffering any meaningful ill effects.

And any consumers who, in such a situation, do not say no to a bad deal have nobody to blame but themselves.

Hot take - while it’s obviously greedy for the publishers to be charging for this, the real problem is the idiots who are paying.

Nailed it.

Dredge.

A very simple concept and gameplay loop that expands out into the bizarre and fantastic.

Honorable mention: Ronin.

Bullet time, effectively turn-based ninja combat. Simple, regularly autosaved “go until you die, then try something different” gameplay loop and just a helluva lot of fun.

Honorable mention: Valley.

Smooth and thrilling first-person mechanically-enhanced parkouring along the way to investigating the mysteries - both ancient and more recent - of a unique and very picturesque valley.

That just says to me that no near future Monster Hunter game is going to be worth playing, since that focus just means that gameplay and story are going to be sacrificed in favor of graphics and gimmicks.

How is anybody even surprised by this?

This is exactly the sort of thing Beth has been moving towards ever since their first ham-handed attempt to monetize mods deservedly blew up in their faces.

They didn’t give up on the idea - they just shifted to a strategy of doing it incrementally.

And this is just the latest step in that ongoing process.

Think about how bad it’s (very deliberately) going to be by the time TES 6 finally comes out…