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Stephanie Sterling made this argument 8 years ago, and as always, is repeatedly vindicated.
(video is from before transition)
even mechanics can be unintentionally political. there was a really cool errant signal video years ago talking about civilization games. it was mostly about what the games idea of a “civilization” is and how the win conditions reinforced the idea that one civilization has to be the superior one to rule them all…
but also these ideas were further reinforced by the way barbarians were depicted. that word already has baggage but the interesting thing is that in civ4 they share a banner with wildlife. like, they’re almost like animals or natural disasters and not people at all.
what conservatives don’t understand is that you can think about things like this and acknowledge what they mean and still enjoy the game and or understand why these choices were made. they’re not necessarily political choices as much as they’re mechanical, but that doesn’t mean we can’t think about what mechanical choices might mean to the player, or what messages they send. if video games are art, they can—and I would say must—be critiqued.
fear of change is at the core of conservatism, and that drives their utter aversion to introspection, and also to criticism of things and people they like. and vice versa, they can’t bring themselves to appreciate any part of anything they don’t like. if they like a person they can do no wrong. if they like a game it must be perfect. if they dislike a song it’s the harbinger of the fall of civilization (ooh look at me bringing it full circle).
in a world of absolutes, there can be no discussion. don’t ask me to think about things please. leave your thoughts and opinions out of my fun time, lest my views get challenged. this is what’s funny about the likes of ben shapiro pretending that they have the facts while liberals are too emotional. their entire world view is based on their feels, and their arguments follow those as justification.
because you think of “I never get laid” as a normal human need to connect with another person, which is what it is but they’re too deep in misogyny to realize it. instead to them getting laid is a quest to complete and it involves a quest item known as a woman, not a character. so I never get laid has less of an undertone of “why can’t I connect with a woman” and more of “when will we get our government mandated sex slaves”
fucking lol.
- terrible game design
- zero game direction
- nonsensical script
- not even 2 dimensional characters
- incredibly unlikeable companions
- bad dialog
- fallout 4 style fake choices and railroading, only one way to complete most quests,
- open world" that requires fast travel, completely undercutting exploration
- immersion breaking loading screens for literally everything, even following cutscenes which aren’t used for bg loading for some reason
- spaceship fantasy that barely makes use of the spaceship, it’s just a toy you can decorate but can’t properly pilot, space combat is horrendously bad even though other games nailed it in the fucking 90s
- planet exploration fantasy that breaks planets into tiny chunks even though no man’s sky existed for years
- open world fantasy where discovery is undercut by the fact that the same assets are reused over and over. like not even texture and models randomized to have some variation, but entire buildings copied including the placement of objects inside.
- classic Bethesda style afraid to lock the player out of anything approach that means you have no choices to make, just get through everything in the order you like … be a cop and a thief and a merchant and a cultist and a garbage man why not
- vast space fantasy with a gazillion planets yet you are the center of everything
- scifi universe that doesn’t have means of long distance communication for some reason, needing you to go back and forth between planets just to relay messages
i can go on but got bored.
the fact that you claim that the only problem starfield had was it’s scifi setting when massively successful scifi games like cyberpunk, deus ex, half life, nier, mass effect etc exist just proves you know nothing about video games.
and more specifically your seem to have no idea what people want from rpgs if you even consider starfield to be one worth mentioning, let alone an exemplary one.
the difference is cyberpunk has good direction and writing. starfield’s got neither. the problem with cyberpunk wasn’t the core of the game, it was bugs. once they fixed most of those the actual direction and story of the game had a chance to shine through.
starfield’s problem is the exact opposite. it was praised for being less buggy than the average BGS game, which is faint praise, but the problem is that it’s badly designed from the very core. it has bad writing, terrible characters, no direction at all, and no vision. bland, boring and basic. there’s no amount of updates that can fix that. the problems aren’t technical. there’s just no talent there.
It’s not their fault. I mean fuck them, but it’s really the fault of the patent offices that allow such horseshit.
also the best thing about the minigame patent is that it lasted just long enough for loading screens to become too short to justify coding minigames for the sole purpose of filling that time.
FEAR I think is my favorite, although they have a crazy lineup. I even loved playing gruntz.
shadow of mordor was really good too, although fuck wb for preventing the one innovative part of it from being implemented in any game (other than the sequel), not repurposing it for batman which is such an obvious candidate, and also after finally giving us hope to see it again in the upcoming wonder woman game, shutting down the studio and canceling that too in the process.
seriously if the entirety of wb went down in flames I would celebrate its anniversary. fuck these vultures.
self censoring bodies like pegi are there to protect the industry, so it doesn’t get actual censorship from the government. EA is the industry. of course they get special treatment.
also gambling is the blueprint of AAA gaming now, so pegi loves it. they only do this shit to small devs so they can pretend to care while protecting industry giants from the actual scrutiny that they deserve.
at least in the realm of video games AAA only refers to funding, not quality. in fact it’s pretty consistently shit because terrible business practices almost inevitably result in late and premature releases because they have to meet arbitrary deadlines and believe they can always fix things later. to be fair the community is pretty idiotic and they consistently reward this behavior so they have nothing to lose in most cases.
I think in most cases it could easily be replaced with fun, enjoyable or great. if you’d like something more about how you interact with it: engaging, compelling, maybe even captivating depending on the context.
you might think it doesn’t make a difference but addicting is something that a lot of big publishers deliberately aim for, and unfortunately knock it out of the park. it’s best not to relate that to small developers without that sinister goal.
yeah why do people use this as a positive? it’s literally a way for lots of AAA titles to manipulate their audience.
that being said mini metro isn’t addictive. it’s fun and chill and it can get hectic; depending on the mode you’re playing.
being good enough that you want to play more isn’t addictive.
this dude and his son monitor each other’s devices to make sure they don’t consume porn. i don’t think he should be allowed to talk about literally anyone else’s habits.