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[mckmas8808]

Let's stick with Uncharted because it contains examples of both types of storytelling.

If I'm climbing through an area or exploring ruins and engaging with the game and Drake or [companion] are talking out loud, that's great. It is a better version of scattering convenient "journal entries" and audio-tapes everywhere.

If I'm racing through the crowded streets of a city, ducking and dodging and vaulting over object in real time, that's great. It is a better version of watching a cutscene.

But if I'm watching a 3-minute cutscene between Drake and [companion] to show emotion, that's not good videogame storytelling, in my opinion. Especially nowadays where so much emotion can be conveyed by a quick facial expression, most of the exposition is unnecessary. The developer in question is obviously capable of this type of subtlety:

I won't begrudge anyone who wants to "play their movies" or "play their books" (I only use those phrases because we don't have a better descriptor). But I don't consider those good storytelling methods in the context of videogames, just like I don't think pictures are a good storytelling method in books nor do I think written text is a good storytelling method in movies. It has its place but should be used minimally in favor of methods that actually fit the medium.

For a second, I thought you were about to trash that scene above in TLOU and I was about to go crazy on you.

But seriously, I agree with what you said here. I think the medium is still young and they are trying to figure all of this out. I think the newer technology will help with the subtlety. But like you said better writers (and more importantly Directors) will be needed to get the most out of this newer technology.

What do you think about games like "The Walking Dead" or "Life is Strange"? Games where they tell a story but the story can go multiple ways depending on the player's choices?

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

For a second, I thought you were about to trash that scene above in TLOU and I was about to go crazy on you.

But seriously, I agree with what you said here. I think the medium is still young and they are trying to figure all of this out. I think the newer technology will help with the subtlety. But like you said better writers (and more importantly Directors) will be needed to get the most out of this newer technology.

What do you think about games like "The Walking Dead" or "Life is Strange"? Games where they tell a story but the story can go multiple ways depending on the player's choices?

I haven't played either because they don't really appeal to me. I played Minecraft Story Mode and I thought it was okay, but that game isn't really focused on story in quite the same way.

Visual novels and adventure games have their niche. I don't want to expunge that sort of storytelling from gaming. I just want it to be used in its proper place instead of lazily crammed into genres where it doesn't belong. Phoenix Wright is one of my favorite franchises, but I wouldn't want that style of investigation and dialogue leaking into another genre. Detective Pikachu was also another enjoyable adventure/story game.

Example of dialogue crammed where it doesn't belong (timestamped video):


Raiden V included voiced story sequences that play between and during stages. No shmup player actually asked for this and the first thing I did was investigate how to turn the voices off completely. The dialogue and visuals in Raiden V are easily better than 95% of shmups on the market, but it's irrelevant.

 

[mckmas8808]

I haven't played either because they don't really appeal to me. I played Minecraft Story Mode and I thought it was okay, but that game isn't really focused on story in quite the same way.

Visual novels and adventure games have their niche. I don't want to expunge that sort of storytelling from gaming. I just want it to be used in its proper place instead of lazily crammed into genres where it doesn't belong. Phoenix Wright is one of my favorite franchises, but I wouldn't want that style of investigation and dialogue leaking into another genre. Detective Pikachu was also another enjoyable adventure/story game.

Example of dialogue crammed where it doesn't belong (timestamped video):


Raiden V included voiced story sequences that play between and during stages. No shmup player actually asked for this and the first thing I did was investigate how to turn the voices off completely. The dialogue and visuals in Raiden V are easily better than 95% of shmups on the market, but it's irrelevant.

OH! You're so right here. These voiced story sequences are trash.

 

[Mr Nash]

I'm fine with video games tackling heading issues and having a wide cast of characters. The problem is that games have consistently been very hamfisted about this. The sad truth is that studios usually aren't willing to fork out the cash to bring in capable writers. They rain money on other departments, but the writing just isn't very good or it's by a person who may be decent in other medium, but can't translate that skill well into games. More often than not, people need to preface praise for a game's story under "it's pretty good, for a game". This has been going on for at least 20 years, but I guess each new generation wants to be the one that feels like this is a whole new concept whose burden they're the first to shoulder. During the PS1 there were a lot of games clumsily trying to bring narrative beyond saving the princess / world / galaxy.

The two problems I see now are opposite sides of the same coin. On the one hand, when people call out clearly ill-conceived stories, one camp starts pointing it's finger and shouting a bunch of words that end with "ism". Conversely, when a game attempts to address real life issues, there's another camp that immediately assumes that the developers are working their way down a diversity checklist and dismisses the project out of hand without giving it a fair shake.

 

[Barsinister]

Well....that's not fair lol!!! That's like saying...well that soccer player didn't have a good game if you take out the first goal he scored at the 5th minute and that goal at the 89th minute of regulation of play and then scoring the last penalty kick in Extra Time.

The ending was all about the release. If the ending were just a cutscene, it would have went over horribly. As it is, the ending got a mixed reception at the time, as I recall. Testosterone made the ending, in my opinion.

 

[KonradLaw]

I think the beauty of games is that it grew so much as a medium it doesn't need to be one thing. We got games that focus solely on gameplay, those that focus solely on story and those that mix those two and all of those aproaches are just as valid. I have no problem playing Graviteam Tactics (zero story, all gameplay with WWII battles) and right after that playing 11-11: Memories Retold, which is pretty much all story.
And I didn't care they included women in battles in BFV (aside from the fact that it was lazily done, making shit up instead of using real stories of women kicking ass, which there's plenty of in WW2), but I also love that you can go and play Post Scriptum, which has zero women in battles and focuses on realism.

 

[mckmas8808]

The ending was all about the release. If the ending were just a cutscene, it would have went over horribly. As it is, the ending got a mixed reception at the time, as I recall. Testosterone made the ending, in my opinion.

What do you mean "testosterone made the ending"?

 

[TLZ]

Videogame writers and game journalists on the whole are mediocre. Full stop. That is the source of 80% of the problem, and so it's an apolitical issue, at the core.

Videogames are not a good vehicle for a traditional movie-like or book-like narrative. The best games let you "write your own story" through the experiences. I know people love stories in games. I do too, but story is the medium's weakest facet, especially when story is conveyed through a ton of voice acting and dialogue and cutscenes.

As a result, all the "writers" in the industry resort to poor and/or lazy writing tropes to shock and awe the lowest common denominators of the audience. The hero is a strong woman? And she's a lesbian? All along I was learning about depression? OMG OMG OMG

This would be shocking if it appeared in a Saturday morning cartoon circa 2007, but it's insanely derivative as fiction consumed by adults. Even so, it brings in the clicks and the attention (for now).

There are religious movies and religious books. Even if someone is staunchly opposed to religion and its doctrines, that doesn't prevent you from walking into a Barnes & Nobles, does it? No, and one reason is because Barnes & Nobles doesn't artificially signal boost entire categories of books and shove it into your face. You could go to Family Christian Bookstore for that. In B&N you are greeted by a cookie-cutter store that pushes no ideology or politics or standpoint on you.

That is how a market should operate.

In videogames, we have journalists and a very narrow caste of game developers/writers who are pushing an ideology pretty hard and who aren't hesitant to artificially signal boost it. This is the opposite to how a market should operate. Even Hollywood -- the most sanctimonious secular artifice of the modern age -- releases kids movies and religious movies and family movies and political movies alongside the Summer blockbusters and Oscar-bait.

If we had better writers -- or at least writers who understood the medium better instead of trying to ape Hollywood -- then the political preaching would vanish into the background static, just like entire genres of books that hold no interest for you vanish into the background static of the store's layout.

Fully agree. Let them all have equal grounds, equally available. And let us find our way to them. No need for them to stick out like obtrusive pop-up ads.

 

[Barsinister]

What do you mean "testosterone made the ending"?

There are two stand out moments in games that I remember exactly how I felt while playing through them. The first "God of War" and "The Last of Us". While playing both, I was visually angry. Both times I was in a role as a protector of someone helpless. I felt fired up and was NOT going to let anything stand between me and my charge. I feel that same way when I think my wife or daughters might be in trouble. And I am not talking about the other side of it, the female side, so I'm not interested in writing about it.

I felt that way when I held my little girl for the first time, too. It's like, with the new "God of War". It seems like it was a story conceived by a new father. Novel at best, but not too compelling, worrying about how to teach your child. When the gameplay became too repetitive, I gave up on it.

Don't bag on me too hard because I think men feel and deal with emotions differently than women do. I really don't think the ending of "The Last of Us" had the same visceral impact on women as it did men. Not that they couldn't feel those emotions, they just deal with it differently. Like men are more likely to act out in emotional moments, but women will internalize more.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

I do think videogames could be a great vehicle for politics and for ideology, but let me engage with it in a way that is in-line with the medium.

Sid Meier's Civilization has warfare, politics, and trade. Instead of telling me "genocide is bad", teach me the consequences in the gameplay itself. Maybe the natural consequences in Civilization would be other nations vilifying me, my own populace revolting, and me losing the game. It wouldn't be "preachy", but it would "tell a story" nonetheless.

Where games go wrong is when they want to tell you how to think about a situation. Heck, be preachy! But at least do it in a way that utilizes the medium. Spec-Ops the line has a very specific, non-ambiguous message. It has very clear opinions on war. And even in that case -- where perhaps the player would be offended by "the politics" -- because of how it is delivered in the story, it doesn't feel preachy.

If you want to preach that racism is wrong, then turn it into a gameplay mechanic like they did in Arcanum: Of Steamwork and Magick Obscura or in South Park: Stick of Truth. The former was balanced heavily against orcs and gnomes where they were often denied services or attacked or insulted specifically because of their race. Humans were treated with respect, of course. Or in South Park where the difficulty slider increases with melanin. That's funny and interesting.

 

[CrustyBritches]

I've seen the future of games and the inmates are running the asylum.

 

[Barsinister]

I am not trying to demean anyone but I want to make a point. Watch the intro to this video, like 30 seconds...



The costars of this video review show by James AVGN Rolfe look like giant hairy babies to me. They are trying to look like what they think a man should look like, but are failing. Just looking at them, to me, I can't take anything they say seriously. I can't make it past the intro. I don't know what it is, maybe it is just me.

This guy has the same look..



But it feels natural on him. This is how this guy is. Am I the only one who thinks like this?

 

[Alexios]

Lo

Example of dialogue crammed where it doesn't belong (timestamped video):


Raiden V included voiced story sequences that play between and during stages. No shmup player actually asked for this and the first thing I did was investigate how to turn the voices off completely. The dialogue and visuals in Raiden V are easily better than 95% of shmups on the market, but it's irrelevant.

Looks cool to me except for the subs which weren't a problem originally as Japanese speaking players could listen to it, or ignore it, while playing as normal with no on screen distractions. It doesn't even seem to make level transitions slower. I don't see the problem if you can disable the subtitles even if that means you can then not understand what they're saying and just focus on the game. Now if the dialogue hides audio cues you need to play the game expertly, then that's bad, but I imagine it's mostly in the easier sections, being start, before a boss, end, etc. I just see it as a theme, like movie styled flashing lights, signs and noises on a pinball table, you don't pay attention to those when you're focused and playing either but they're still cool in their own way. Either way they were clearly not trying to do anything of the sort the people clamoring for cinematic walking sims over gameplay want to say is a better game than fun gameplay focused stuff (I also disagree with people saying the opposite, there's room for both styles and more and combinations depending on the circumstances), they just tried to add some fun context while leaving the same gameplay speak first as always and you think they failed is all.

 

[Dthomp]

It has nothing to do with change. Videogaming business was infested with people who would rather be anywhere but working around videogames, because they most likely were never fans of the medium, so they're attaching themselves to bigger causes (like social issues) and writing convoluted garbage to build videogaming into something it has never been and never will be.
"Videogames are art" doesn't come from a profound love for videogames, it comes from people appalled and embarrassed to be associated with toys for children, repackaging them to look more mature than they actually are.
Videogame journalists are below the bottom of the barrel, they're glorified advertisers paid to shill Fortnite, it's no wonder they feel the way they do.

Just wanted to say I really enjoyed this post. I do worry especially for older gamers like myself that the overall love of VIDEO GAMES has been heavily lost in the industry. I'm not saying people don't enjoy making them, but gone are the days where people got into it for the sheer love and learned the craft of games from somebody their senior. I agree with all of your points sir? ma'am? person?

 

[hariseldon]

Games can tell stories in all sorts of different ways and no doubt will continue to explore those options. I echo DunDunDunpachi 's thoughts on preaching, one can include a bit of politics without preaching and maybe actually make someone think. The key thing is not to bash people over the head with it. The focus should be on the game, not the message.

A good example from back in the day is Damocles, which came out during the reign of Margaret Thatcher. The game takes place in a solar system led by a different Margaret, clearly modelled on her, and the game takes the piss subtly about much of what was happening politically at the time, without getting preachy about it.

One game I thought did some interesting things with story telling is Doki Doki Literature Club which really got into my head.

 

[Ballthyrm]

It is yet another "journalist" confused by the medium they are working in.

For all the talk about diversity they don't seem to like it much in their video games choices.
They all have their own perfect video game formula they want to see and throw away every game they come across that doesn't mold to it.

The beauty about video games is that, it is an interactive medium, you get what you bring, you are the hero after all. The diversity the author want so much of, if anything, is enabled by more gameplay, by more verbs to express yourself.

We wouldn't be talking about minecraft in art galeries if all the game gave you was a lesbian syrian refugee boat crossing simulator (it would make a great exibit though, lol)

 

[mckmas8808]

There are two stand out moments in games that I remember exactly how I felt while playing through them. The first "God of War" and "The Last of Us". While playing both, I was visually angry. Both times I was in a role as a protector of someone helpless. I felt fired up and was NOT going to let anything stand between me and my charge. I feel that same way when I think my wife or daughters might be in trouble. And I am not talking about the other side of it, the female side, so I'm not interested in writing about it.

I felt that way when I held my little girl for the first time, too. It's like, with the new "God of War". It seems like it was a story conceived by a new father. Novel at best, but not too compelling, worrying about how to teach your child. When the gameplay became too repetitive, I gave up on it.

Don't bag on me too hard because I think men feel and deal with emotions differently than women do. I really don't think the ending of "The Last of Us" had the same visceral impact on women as it did men. Not that they couldn't feel those emotions, they just deal with it differently. Like men are more likely to act out in emotional moments, but women will internalize more.

This is a INTERESTING take! I wish I could speak to 3 women right now in the gaming media to get their feedback on this.

 

[Barsinister]

This is a INTERESTING take! I wish I could speak to 3 women right now in the gaming media to get their feedback on this.

Better yet, ask women NOT in the gaming media.

How many males do you know who suffer from anorexia or bulemia?

 

[strange headache]

The article is full of hollow buzzwords that sound nice, but ultimately mean nothing. There's nothing wrong with diversity, but I often find the argumentation behind it to be rather contradictory. For example, try to reconcile both of the following statements from the article:

Women want to feel represented in their hobby. It gives them more enjoyment than playing as a man.

Now, more than ever, we need games to let us be someone we’re not. We need to spend a while in someone else’s skin.

Representation seems to be the main argument behind forced diversity, at least for those who aren't represented in a video game. For everybody else though, the argument is being switched around. If you argue for diversity on the merit of representation, then you must also admit that it's fine for [white male] gamers like to enjoy their [white male] protagonists. If not, then you must admit that empathy goes both way and also fault [female non-white] gamers for not wanting to put themselves into "someone else's skin".

However, these problems only arise if you look at diversity from a political and ideological standpoint. It's an inherent logical flaw that comes with identity politics who limit the notion of representation to immutable external characteristics. If you'd let diversity happen in an organic manner by choosing from a wide palette of geographical and historical settings, you would not have this dilemma. But that would mean abandoning identity politics altogether by losing the medium as a political bludgeoning tool.

I just don't think that you can force this by assuming that if Basement Bob the 40 year old incel plays "The Blue Haired Adventures of Pussy Hat Penny" for long enough he'll be voting Democrat for sure in 2020.

It's funny because it's true. As explained above, this problem only arises because identity has become such a politicized notion. The ideological sycophants that have co-opted the gaming industry can only think of identity in these predefined political categories, thus limiting and hurting the very notion of diversity. The vast majority of people would not view themselves as part of one of the above mentioned categories and as such, they are neither "Basement Bob" nor "Pussy Hat Penny". Hence why many games are perceived as propaganda because the developers saw fit to push their own preconceived categories upon the audience.

You don't covey your political message by making an appeal to emotion because emotions are highly subjective and individual. Unfortunately, the author in question does not seem to understand this:

Think back to the most recent games you’ve played – the ones that have stuck with you – and I bet many of them linger because they triggered some kind of emotional response.

The games that stuck with me are not games that made me feel, but games that made me think. The subject of politics is not best approached through emotional manipulation, but by placing the audience in a situation where their preconceived views and notions are insufficient to solve a certain issue in an acceptable manner. Often by creating dilemma situations that challenge the viewer's principles by showing him the possible downfalls of his convictions.

1984 and Brave New World are political fiction by definition. They did tackle serious societal issues without dabbling in silly political partisanship, hence why they became timeless classics. They are respected works no matter where people find themselves on the political spectrum. They did so by selecting certain issues and ideas and by taking them to their logical conclusion, they didn't tell you what to think or what to feel. Emotional virtue-signaling and proselytizing on the other hand are inherently boring and counter-productive.

People don't want to be told what to think, they must be able to come to their own conclusions and as narrators and game designers you must allow for this to happen. Unfortunately, many game developers have come to despise their own audience, holding them in childish contempt by regarding them as wholly unable to come to the right conclusions given a certain situation. Hence why they must be lectured to. By holding your own audience in distrust, you've already lost as a narrator in the first place.

Edit: I would like to add an example of diversity done right. Since I've been playing DQXI for quite a while, Sylvando is a really great character. It's this swell dude right here:

Sylvando is an overly flamboyant hispanic guy with overly gay mannerisms. But he is not a great character because he's gay, he's just a very helpful and optimistic soul that would go great lengths to bring a smile to your face and who also happens to be gay. If the gaming community would be really so homophobic and opposed to diversity, how come DQXI is such a well received game?

 

[MP!]

I agree completely ... and it is one of my major issues with most of sony's offerings ... I'm sorry, no I don't feel anything toward that Computer generated program you just made me kill for your narrative... I just met IT 4 hours ago... ...

for me I can see through all the pretentious "Don't you feel sad? You should feel something right now" moments in games... my true joy or emotional connection comes through MY personal experience while playing and the connection I form with my character as I play.... (and the music) not the written canned story I'm forced to sit through in between actual gameplay

 

[mckmas8808]

Better yet, ask women NOT in the gaming media.

How many males do you know who suffer from anorexia or bulemia?

Nah, but I've seen mad amount of men suffering mentally from body issues. Dudes aint out here taking steroids for nothing.

I agree completely ... and it is one of my major issues with most of sony's offerings ... I'm sorry, no I don't feel anything toward that Computer generated program you just made me kill for your narrative... I just met IT 4 hours ago... ...

for me I can see through all the pretentious "Don't you feel sad? You should feel something right now" moments in games... my true joy or emotional connection comes through MY personal experience while playing and the connection I form with my character as I play.... (and the music) not the written canned story I'm forced to sit through in between actual gameplay

Yo! Do you have a heart? Like any emotions inside?

 

[petran79]

Actually yes lol! That's exactly what I'm saying. I do believe people were less empathic to black people between 1776 - 1965, than they are today. It took 1000s of people on the outside of the majority to speak and reach out to them to explain and show them why the current way of things was wrong. And reasonable after some time, those in the majority got to realize that "those people" aren't so bad. And in some cases, they even realized that they are awesome for the greater society and it worked.

Actually the first step was made in 1791 and gained support. Unfortunately this incident is hardly taught at schools because it shows the bad aspects of the French Revolution, even before the reign of terror. Not that the Haitians did not commit atrocities either
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution

Also Cuban Revolution influenced African American activists, as well as Ghana independence

 

[Barsinister]

Nah, but I've seen mad amount of men suffering mentally from body issues. Dudes aint out here taking steroids for nothing.

Different ways of dealing with the same emotional issue.

 

[BlueAlpaca]

I think there are three motivations behind this nonsense:

- Some people are obsessed with 'meaning,' which itself is meaningless. And for some reason they can't leaves games alone and search for higher 'meaning' somewhere else. Gameplay can never be 'more' and they can't handle that.

- And then there are the moralists. Self-righteous zealots who love to tell everybody how to think and behave. This is similar to the first but while I think all moralists are little totalitarians with their own 'meaning' in morality the reverse is not necessarily true.

- And last but not least, the pseudo intellectuals. These people are probably embarrassed by videogames but instead of leaving the hobby they subject it to the over-analysis and 'over-intellectualizing' they subject to everything. A game can't be just gameplay, and because they're too stupid to be real intellectuals and too stupid to even get in humanities departments already filled to the brim with their kind they go after videogames.


There are certain people that check all three. Did you guess who? Believers of a secular pseudo-religion based on 19th century political-economic pseudo-science that offers pseudo enlightenment to power and status hungry morons that want to look smart.

 

[Alexios]

I'm confused, are you talking about nazis? What do they have to do with this topic?

 

[EverydayBeast]

Yeah Political agendas are important, but it becomes a problem when you abandoned the purpose of the game and it’s hard to do both.

 

[LegendOfKage]

The sad thing is I don't think that's an exaggeration of what they do want. When you ask normal people "what's your dream game" they say things like "I'd like a new Elder Scrolls, but with really good combat that maybe uses a 3rd person camera. Oh, and co-op so I can play with a few of my friends. And some really good lengthy side quests for things like the magic guild and the dark brotherhood." Or maybe they come up with an IP and pair it with a developer. But I have to think for ideologues like this, they'd gladly give up any of that for what you just described above.

And that's 0% wrong with that. It's okay for people to want a game that speaks to issues within our society. Why do you two guys want to limit what games are and can be? They can be all these things.

I don't. I wanted to give this post some time to properly consider and reply to, because I think we're at a pretty important point in gaming right now, perhaps even more important than when Mortal Kombat and Night Trap were under fire.

First to address the thought of limiting social issues being explored in video games. I don't want that. For an example, I recently really enjoyed my play-through of Detroit, and Persona 5 at one point literally brought me to tears, due to its handling of one of the character arcs, and how close it hit to something I went though in my personal life. None of that is a bad thing. All of that is great for games.

Games I don't care for doing their own thing are fine too. Gone Home and Dream Daddy are good examples. I'm happy games like that exist to give people different experiences. But then you have what was described above:

They want games that they imagine you'll play with tears streaming down your face as you sob "oh-- m-my g-gosh golly gosh this is what it feels like to be a woman in Trumps America". Fuck off.

And what struck a chord with me is I think this doesn't sound too far off from some game journalists today. And that inspired my little rant. Mostly though, my contempt for those who feel this way isn't due to my opinion of them, or the opinions that they hold. It's due to their opinion of those who disagree, especially as it extends to the ideological cleansing that comes with it.

Which brings me to my second point, slightly adjusted, which comes from a post made the other day.

The point is there wasn't ownership of the hobby, that's correct, but the SJWs have sought to fill that vaccuum by taking ownership, kicking out the people who disagree with them.

And for anyone who cares to dispute this, please name me anyone working at a website that is featured on Metacritic who is openly conservative, or libertarian, or classically liberal (especially when it comes to being critical of censorship, deplatforming, removal of sexuality, and other ways of people acting like the morality police) as those political groups relate to US politics. Which twitter profile of an employed modern video game journalist can I look at to find any of this?

If anyone cares to offer an answer to that question, I'd be interested in hearing it. For a better understanding of how I feel when modern gaming journalists talk about sexuality in games as if it poisons the minds of those who play them, cringe along to this groups of conservatives who are pretty much doing the same thing with violence.



To be blunt, I'm not part of the group who wants to limit what games are and can be, and I'm sorry if my rant suggested otherwise.

 

[Thiagosc777]

You're talking about physical evolution. We are talking about social evolution. It's two different things.

Empathy is a basic function of the brain and is not given by society. I guess this is what happens when you teach children that everything is a "social construct".

 

[Saruhashi]

I'd be curious to hear what your wife actually has to say on the matter. My wife and I have actually discussed this before. One of the things that she thinks is difficult about being a woman, specifically a gamer woman, is that there are very few games where she gets to play as a woman. That's what we call under representation. Remember, women make up half of the population. Realistically, they should make up half of the gaming protagonists. Remember that when you cry foul of "forced diversity."

As for whether that's addressed by playing games with female protagonists, yeah, of course it is. Bullseye levels of gratification. She plays all sorts of games, obviously, but she really appreciates the chance to play games with fully realized female protagonists. Heck, I think it's half the reason she's playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey right now.

We talked about it but in the end we kind of concluded that you'd probably literally have to make "Woman Simulator 2019" and have it filled to the brim with Feminist talking points. Even then you are just going to have most people saying "hm, that's a game to never ever play".

In a sense you'd literally have to trick the audience but it seems doomed to failure since making it too obvious will be off putting.

I was using an example like Horizon: Zero Dawn as I have played approx 70 hours in the game. Thing is that the game didn't have much in it that would teach non-women exactly what life is like for a woman. There's no like big come to Jesus moment where the player could reasonably say "oh my gosh THIS is what it's like to be a woman in our society". Aloy could have been switched out for a dude or the entire game could have been filled with anthropomorphic animals and it would have made no difference.

It doesn't even feel like the game sneakily made me realize some new non-male truth that I had not yet acknowledged.

She reckons that God of War doesn't really have much to say about being a man or even being a father because the game events are so "out there" it just doesn't seem to translate well to reality. Like the pudgy men in the supermarket with their kid sitting in the trolley are not more relatable to her because she spent some hours hacking up Draugr as Kratos.

Games where you choose a gender are mostly useless since things like Bloodborne, Far Cry 5, Skyrim etc do not give any particular insight into the experience of women in the real world.

She reckons that mascot games like Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Mario etc would not have much extra to offer her if they were female. I tend to agree with that.

So when I am saying to her "what would a game have to do to teach me things about what it's like to be a woman" the only thing we could come up with would be like a management sim that would actually be kind of a bit patronizing. As I said "Woman Simulator 2019" was the best we could come up with.

The point was made also that, being over 30, I already have enough life experience that I shouldn't necessarily need a video game to help me understand the lives of others. She's correct about that too. I already understand what uniquely female challenges she has to face in her life so shoehorning that into, for example, a Sci-Fi shooting game seems rather pointless.

Does she prefer to play female led games? Depends on the game.
Right now she is mostly playing Smash and mostly picking Kirby so...? I dunno.

I was even trying to get at something like what does the Wonder Woman movie offer that, say, Ant-Man doesn't and again the response is that the gender of the protagonist in these seems largely irrelevant compared to a movie that might be dealing with Rape Culture or post-natal depression etc. Having the big bad and main obstacle in a Wonder Woman movie be her period cramps is NOT going to go over well with audiences.

I think maybe a core problem is that there are some people who consume escapist content in a way that demands it be believable that they themselves could be the main protagonist. Not quite a Mary Sue, self-insert, but something similar.

Then there are others who just see Aloy or Kratos or whoever as an interesting character without really identifying with them to such a large degree.

So you have a little conflict there.

Personally I think it's kind of sad that some folk need to match their gender or race to the protagonist in a game in order to achieve full gratification while at the same time thinking that it's other people who need to develop empathy.

I'm reminded of those dudes in front of the Black Panther poster banging on about how "this is what white people get to feel like ALL THE TIME". It's just so weird. I can't think of a single superhero movie ever that made me think "wow, the hero is basically me".

I don't even think I'd WANT a game that was like "Saruhashi - Quest For The Golden Thingamajig". My day consists of mostly moaning about stuff. Good luck getting compelling yet empathy inducing and instructive gameplay mechanics out of that.

 

[hariseldon]

I'd be curious to hear what your wife actually has to say on the matter. My wife and I have actually discussed this before. One of the things that she thinks is difficult about being a woman, specifically a gamer woman, is that there are very few games where she gets to play as a woman. That's what we call under representation. Remember, women make up half of the population. Realistically, they should make up half of the gaming protagonists. Remember that when you cry foul of "forced diversity."

As for whether that's addressed by playing games with female protagonists, yeah, of course it is. Bullseye levels of gratification. She plays all sorts of games, obviously, but she really appreciates the chance to play games with fully realized female protagonists. Heck, I think it's half the reason she's playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey right now.

Just wondering, if the need to play as your own gender is so important, how come Tomb Raider was so popular among males?

 

[Saruhashi]

If anyone cares to offer an answer to that question, I'd be interested in hearing it. For a better understanding of how I feel when modern gaming journalists talk about sexuality in games as if it poisons the minds of those who play them, cringe along to this groups of conservatives who are pretty much doing the same thing with violence.



To be blunt, I'm not part of the group who wants to limit what games are and can be, and I'm sorry if my rant suggested otherwise.

I think it's funny because the video game industry, I think, has always been a little more left leaning and the sort of classic "The People vs Video Games" has been coming from The Right and had always been focused on the sex and drugs and violence.

For he longest time it felt like games were seen as a non-Christian influence that would corrupt the Christian youth of America.

On The Left the reaction to that was always "haha you idiots" and we've seen the stats and heard the arguments to debunk the arguments of The Right.

Except, The Left DID always believe that games could influence people. They were just fine with it because it was always seemingly anti-Right messages so it was more helpful to them that unhelpful.

As soon as the power shifted and for whatever reason you had The Right doing the trolling and the memeing gaming suddenly became a den of Fascism and Nazism and Sexism and Racism... fuckin, ALL THE ISMS.

Then guess what? Gaming DOES need to be regulated because gaming DOES influence the youth and it's making them like how we don't want them to be like.

I bet if you asked Conservatives back in the 90s what games should be about they would say if the games were about family values and the word of God then that would be better all round cos it would teach the kids empathy or whatever.

So here we are in 2019 now with the same old tactics and arguments repackaged.

 

[Three]

Any substantial change to humans would take millions of years. It's impossible for any real change to have occurred in the last thousands of years, let alone decades. That's why the human today is the same, as far as intelligence and "empathy" goes, as the one from antiquity.

The reality is the people alive today are the same as they have always been. Your "empathy" argument is nothing, but fiction.

Changes to thought and cognition is not the same as a genetic change.

The barbarians of thousands of years ago are not the same humans as you see today.

 

[rabbity-thing]

Personally I think it's kind of sad that some folk need to match their gender or race to the protagonist in a game in order to achieve full gratification while at the same time thinking that it's other people who need to develop empathy.

I'm reminded of those dudes in front of the Black Panther poster banging on about how "this is what white people get to feel like ALL THE TIME". It's just so weird. I can't think of a single superhero movie ever that made me think "wow, the hero is basically me".

Speaking as a minority who doesn't see himself often represented in media, this is actually a big deal. I suppose it doesn't seem like much to people that get to see that all the time and I imagine it's impossible to really convey what it's like to know that kind of "otherness," but it exists. For people to say it doesn't exist simply because they don't experience the polar opposite feeling is a bit strange. I'm not sure I can accurately describe what it's like for me.

As a kid growing up loving super heroes, I can't tell you how depressing it was when I realized that none of my heroes shared my ethnicity. Sure, we could be lovable sidekicks, but we weren't heroes. That feeling sucks a great deal. So, yeah, when Black Panther comes out, a lot of people get to see what white people feel like all the time and a lot of white people don't seem to understand what the big deal is because it's hard for them to disassociate themselves with an experience that has become so common place that they no longer question the impact it has had (and continues to have) on their lives.

We talked about it but in the end we kind of concluded that you'd probably literally have to make "Woman Simulator 2019" and have it filled to the brim with Feminist talking points. Even then you are just going to have most people saying "hm, that's a game to never ever play".

In a sense you'd literally have to trick the audience but it seems doomed to failure since making it too obvious will be off putting.

It sounds almost like you are searching for a catch all type situation. Which is odd. That kind of game would be unlikely to catch anyone's attention. I think you are also expecting an instant observable 180 degree change in behavior. That is also odd. In my head it's going to be a much slower burn. Take Horizon, which you mentioned. If someone who happens to be a mysonginst played the game and really liked it, maybe it could alter how they view women. Maybe where once they saw them as being automatically weaker, submissive, or lesser, after having played the game they have come to see that they can be powerful and confident with the agency to make decisions for themselves.

And I don't expect a silver bullet 180 turn. Playing one game like this won't make a difference, but experiencing multiple such experiences might. Maybe a person that plays these titles wouldn't feel as entitled to hit their wife. Maybe playing multiple games with minorities would cause someone to maybe not throw out racial slurs while online or maybe not continue to want to keep reading alt-right media.

Empathy like this is not a one stop ticket to change. It starts by including the rest of society and letting that become the new normal cause right now, it's the opposite. Lots of gamers are angry that people other than the status-quo white hetero male is being allowed to share the spotlight. The amount of pushback on this is depressing. The amount of mental gymnastics being used to explain why the pushback is not just naked bigotry is depressing as well.

But it's also expected. Gaming is growing up. I say, let it grow up.

 

[Saruhashi]

Gaming is growing up. I say, let it grow up.

What does this even mean? "Gaming is growing up."

It's another one of those lines I hear often but I'm not sure what it's meant to convey.

Let's take music, literature and movies.
I what way have these "grown up" where gaming has failed?

Like it always seems to come down to this. If I don't agree with your take on things, which I don't, then that's because I need to let games "grow up".

What does that even mean?

So, what does gaming look like "before growing up" versus how gaming will look "after growing up"?

 

[Saruhashi]

If someone who happens to be a mysonginst played the game and really liked it, maybe it could alter how they view women. Maybe where once they saw them as being automatically weaker, submissive, or lesser, after having played the game they have come to see that they can be powerful and confident with the agency to make decisions for themselves.

I think this gets to the heart of it in a lot of ways.

Like this theoretical misogynist is going to seek out a female led game in a sea of games and then, despite knowing the game is fiction, is going to walk away thinking "wow the woman in the game was powerful and confident I hereby renounce my misogyny".

So if they were somehow left with no choice but to play games with "our" message (after games have "grown up" of course) then people would just think how we want them to. Right?

Cos folks can tune out during a movie or just not pay attention during a sermon but if they HAD to interact...

I think it ties so nicely to how many people reacted to FarCry 5. They wanted the game to be a commentary on Trumps America and then it wasn't they were almost appalled that the gamers might walk away having learned nothing.

Like EVERY game needs to impart important life lessons or else the industry hasn't "grown up".

It's so wrongheaded. What do you mean "the agency to make decisions for themselves"? It's literally a videogame where the player makes decisions for and outright controls the character like a puppet. FFS.

Wouldn't it be just as effective to have the misogynist lose a few rounds to Chun-Li in Street Fighter?
"OMG I thought women were weak submissive and lesser but Cammy just beat me easily so I guess that's my worldview changed".

 

[Saruhashi]

OOps.

 

[Petrae]

I really do miss the days when story and narrative took a back seat to gameplay and fun. This is what arcade games were all about. Sure, you got snippets of story at the beginning and sometimes got story in the ending, but games were 95% gameplay and 5% narrative.

This whole movement toward video games being art is a serious letdown for me. Fun is secondary to story, morals, meaning, and so on. It’s stuffy. It’s boring. It’s depressing. It’s so much like real life that I’d rather just save my money and let real life depress me for free.

Red Dead II is as much a chore simulator as a escape to the Old West. Yeah, I can do chores without having to pay $60+ and set aside 100GB or my hard drive to experience it. God of War is a depressing walking simulator for at least the first 10 minutes. I can be depressed and mope for 10 minutes for free.

And all of this narrative gets in the way of the action... if there’s even supposed to be any of that. Instead, video games have become a mildly interactive version of melodramatic storytelling. For me, that’s snoozeville. I can just read a book or watch a movie.

Video games used to take me wherever I wanted to go, without the bluster and “meaning”. It’s sad that it’s not like that as much anymore.

 

[royox]

Just the title of the article says everything you need to read to know the person who wrote it it's following a god damn agenda and it's not a gamer.

Diversity is important because a video game is much more than its gameplay

No, it's not. Gameplay is important, new stories are important, "muh diversity" is not important the second this "diversity" is just a tool to say "LOOK HOW COOL WE ARE!!!" and follow an agenda. Like with movies and books we should let the creators build the story they want with the characters they want. Look at the backlash the new star wars trilogy is having just because they are focusing so much on the agenda that they forgot to build likable characters. Same that hapens in Dragon Age Inquisition where you can perfectly tell witch characters were made with "love" for gaming and wich ones were made solely for the PC-SJW agenda.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Speaking as a minority who doesn't see himself often represented in media, this is actually a big deal. I suppose it doesn't seem like much to people that get to see that all the time and I imagine it's impossible to really convey what it's like to know that kind of "otherness," but it exists. For people to say it doesn't exist simply because they don't experience the polar opposite feeling is a bit strange. I'm not sure I can accurately describe what it's like for me.

As a kid growing up loving super heroes, I can't tell you how depressing it was when I realized that none of my heroes shared my ethnicity. Sure, we could be lovable sidekicks, but we weren't heroes. That feeling sucks a great deal. So, yeah, when Black Panther comes out, a lot of people get to see what white people feel like all the time and a lot of white people don't seem to understand what the big deal is because it's hard for them to disassociate themselves with an experience that has become so common place that they no longer question the impact it has had (and continues to have) on their lives.



It sounds almost like you are searching for a catch all type situation. Which is odd. That kind of game would be unlikely to catch anyone's attention. I think you are also expecting an instant observable 180 degree change in behavior. That is also odd. In my head it's going to be a much slower burn. Take Horizon, which you mentioned. If someone who happens to be a mysonginst played the game and really liked it, maybe it could alter how they view women. Maybe where once they saw them as being automatically weaker, submissive, or lesser, after having played the game they have come to see that they can be powerful and confident with the agency to make decisions for themselves.

And I don't expect a silver bullet 180 turn. Playing one game like this won't make a difference, but experiencing multiple such experiences might. Maybe a person that plays these titles wouldn't feel as entitled to hit their wife. Maybe playing multiple games with minorities would cause someone to maybe not throw out racial slurs while online or maybe not continue to want to keep reading alt-right media.

Empathy like this is not a one stop ticket to change. It starts by including the rest of society and letting that become the new normal cause right now, it's the opposite. Lots of gamers are angry that people other than the status-quo white hetero male is being allowed to share the spotlight. The amount of pushback on this is depressing. The amount of mental gymnastics being used to explain why the pushback is not just naked bigotry is depressing as well.

But it's also expected. Gaming is growing up. I say, let it grow up.

What does representation have to do with "growing up"? Gaming is 50 years old. There are kids who opened an Atari 2600 or an NES on Christmas morning who are now parents and grandparents themselves.

Sorry, but your ideology doesn't get to dictate how games "grow up". No one made you arbiter and judge. If people feel that there aren't enough games that represent them, then make them yourself or support the devs that do. The notion that gaming is suppressing or purposely omitting representation is absurd. The majority of games have no human avatar with a recognizable race anyway.

Games are already mature. It is the ham-fisted ideological preaching that needs to "grow up" and present better arguments. Christian ideology attempted this in this late 80s and early 90s with various "Christian games". Most people don't know they exist because they weren't exactly good games. If you want to bring your ideology to the table, then make a good game instead of just insisting that games need more of what you're demanding.

Gaming shouldn't ever really be about "story" anyway. It's about escapism. If you need to "escape" into a world that is a mirror-reflection of yourself, that says more about your psychological well-being than anything else.

 

[Platinumstorm]

Again, simple. If you don't want to experience, as you state, "being a woman in Trump's America", you just don't play the game. If someone wants to, then why prevent them from doing so? Just because I'm done with Uncharted, RDR, and TLOU [not for political reasons, I just don't need the story to continue], doesn't mean that other people don't want or need those other experiences.

 

[Silvawuff]

What a fantastic read this thread has been. I'm deeply enjoying this conversation. I really mean it; no sarcasm.

I see games as a medium that have exploded over recent years, and a lot of how they exploded goes in hand with technological improvements, and our changing social structure brought about by the internet. Journalism covering games has never been at a lower point, and a lot of that has to do, again, with lack of quality writing. Negativity sells in news outside gaming, and that same paradigm of poor reporting has carried itself into gaming with aplomb. This has all been said anyway, so I'd like to add that games are doing more than just entertaining or carrying a message -- they're educating or allowing people with disabilities to do more. You can see evidence in this culture of inclusion and support with Microsoft's dynamic controller and with colorblind modes found in a myriad of games out there.

Gaming is awesome, and we live in a time where there are more choices than ever. You can choose to read about a game, or an aspect of gaming, or go to enjoy whatever you like to as you wish. You ultimately control what you expose yourself to.

 

[rabbity-thing]

What does this even mean? "Gaming is growing up."

It's another one of those lines I hear often but I'm not sure what it's meant to convey.

Let's take music, literature and movies.
I what way have these "grown up" where gaming has failed?

Like it always seems to come down to this. If I don't agree with your take on things, which I don't, then that's because I need to let games "grow up".

What does that even mean?

So, what does gaming look like "before growing up" versus how gaming will look "after growing up"?

What it means, as plainly as I can put it, is that games and games journalists (I know, boo right?) are starting to want to address, among other things, relevant social and political ideas. I say "Growing up" and not "grown" because they're still not particularly good at it.

What it will look like when it's grown is that games will be able to address such topics in a mature fashion, journalists will be able to write about them, and (most importantly) the user base will be able to enjoy it without having a thousand angry voices whining and complaining about "why can't it just be a game."

It's embarrassing how afraid some gamers are of games being more than just for fun. This is not, on the whole, a problem that more established forms of entertainment have. Heck, even comics get to enjoy having political drama without the constant complaining from readers simply because they are being asked to think or consider difficult topics that are outside of their comfort zone.

 

[Alexios]

I really do miss the days when story and narrative took a back seat to gameplay and fun. This is what arcade games were all about. Sure, you got snippets of story at the beginning and sometimes got story in the ending, but games were 95% gameplay and 5% narrative.

So, the days of pong? Although even then you could have narrative focused text adventures so, never mind. Just choose games that don't focus on the narrative now as you did back in the day man, at least I don't imagine you buying FMV games on the SEGA CD and there are plenty around still, even if not quite AAA (then again I think From Software and Platinum Games titles are close enough to AAA and there are others similar to them so there's that, Platinum likes its over the top fun cut scenes too but you can skip them obviously). I like story based games and relentless action games and a mix of both, just a few years ago I was among the people clamoring for more games of near-lost genres that were story heavy in the past but not so in their modern successors, like the pure CRPG style titles, and we're finally at a point where we're getting games like them again and alongside said relentless action games (and even space combat games made a comeback, woo) so I'm good, just choose wisely rather than play this or that game, get disappointed, then believe there's nothing for you out there. Too many games release, that's true, but some market/product research should always be done whenever you buy anything.

You might wanna look into VR as well, there are many story based or otherwise immersing experiences in VR but also many super fun purely gameplay focused experiences since the fun of VR isn't just in the visual immersion into the environment but also the new ways in which you can interact with things. Lots of arcade style games in VR too, like SUPERHOT VR for example and other shooting/dodging/throwing games. But non VR is fine too. Anyway, gaming can offer anything for anyone, no reason to abandon it just because some of that anything and anyone isn't what you like and yourself.

 

[Saruhashi]

What it means, as plainly as I can put it, is that games and games journalists (I know, boo right?) are starting to want to address, among other things, relevant social and political ideas. I say "Growing up" and not "grown" because they're still not particularly good at it.

What it will look like when it's grown is that games will be able to address such topics in a mature fashion, journalists will be able to write about them, and (most importantly) the user base will be able to enjoy it without having a thousand angry voices whining and complaining about "why can't it just be a game."

It's embarrassing how afraid some gamers are of games being more than just for fun. This is not, on the whole, a problem that more established forms of entertainment have. Heck, even comics get to enjoy having political drama without the constant complaining from readers simply because they are being asked to think or consider difficult topics that are outside of their comfort zone.

There it is again. Games will be grown up once we make it so that people won't criticise games they don't like.

So if we could make it so that the gamers won't vocally dislike a game they... don't like, that's when we'll be all grown up.

It doesn't work like that "it isn't fun" is a valid negative point for someone looking for a fun game.

If people feel like games in general are becoming less fun then that's valid criticism too.

Shit, say I invite friends over to watch a movie and they tell me OK so long as its not too heavy and just something fun? I don't fire back with "you need to grow up mate".

You all but admit games will be grown up when they have the content you want and people who don't like it are silenced.

Going as far as to say gamers are "afraid" of games becoming more than just fun.

Maybe folks just prefer a fun time to being preached to when playing games?

There's plenty of room for all kinds of games and plenty of room for criticism and opinions too.

It stinks of elitism to me when people start talking about how games need to "grow up" or how "gamers are afraid of change".

There are games with mature and more heavy themes releasing all the time without any angry voices complaining. There always have been.

In fact it seems to me that only the most preachy and heavy handed face the widespread criticism.

 

[Alexios]

But nobody said you should play the games you find unfun, just to not lament their existence as some kind of movement against you and everything you stand for so you also have to stand against them and everything they have to stand for when there are still fun games around. Of course you can criticize it on a forum and say you won't buy it or refunded it, no reason to give that any other connotations though. Do people who enjoy Heavy Rain-like games lament the mere existence of DUSK (if they don't also enjoy that btw, they might, people can have diverse tastes)? No, if they're even aware of it, jus as people who only watch artsy foreign cinema probably aren't even aware the Bayformers exist or even remember if they saw a trailer of it on TV. But then the same people that lament the existence of unfun games will also pile on Nintendo or others for Zelda and Mario and other fun focused experiences just because they're not exactly what they want either. It's not a good look and doesn't help anybody or any point made. And if fun games ever stop being made it won't be because you didn't stand your ground and hate unfun games and those who enjoy them enough, it will be because good old capitalism, the market itself, decided there's no money into making fun games, so really the best thing you can do is go out and buy the fun games, rather than pretend they already don't exist in any way, shape or form because of unfun games.

 

[Gavon West]

Videogame writers and game journalists on the whole are mediocre. Full stop. That is the source of 80% of the problem, and so it's an apolitical issue, at the core.

Videogames are not a good vehicle for a traditional movie-like or book-like narrative. The best games let you "write your own story" through the experiences. I know people love stories in games. I do too, but story is the medium's weakest facet, especially when story is conveyed through a ton of voice acting and dialogue and cutscenes.

As a result, all the "writers" in the industry resort to poor and/or lazy writing tropes to shock and awe the lowest common denominators of the audience. The hero is a strong woman? And she's a lesbian? All along I was learning about depression? OMG OMG OMG

This would be shocking if it appeared in a Saturday morning cartoon circa 2007, but it's insanely derivative as fiction consumed by adults. Even so, it brings in the clicks and the attention (for now).

There are religious movies and religious books. Even if someone is staunchly opposed to religion and its doctrines, that doesn't prevent you from walking into a Barnes & Nobles, does it? No, and one reason is because Barnes & Nobles doesn't artificially signal boost entire categories of books and shove it into your face. You could go to Family Christian Bookstore for that. In B&N you are greeted by a cookie-cutter store that pushes no ideology or politics or standpoint on you.

That is how a market should operate.

In videogames, we have journalists and a very narrow caste of game developers/writers who are pushing an ideology pretty hard and who aren't hesitant to artificially signal boost it. This is the opposite to how a market should operate. Even Hollywood -- the most sanctimonious secular artifice of the modern age -- releases kids movies and religious movies and family movies and political movies alongside the Summer blockbusters and Oscar-bait.

If we had better writers -- or at least writers who understood the medium better instead of trying to ape Hollywood -- then the political preaching would vanish into the background static, just like entire genres of books that hold no interest for you vanish into the background static of the store's layout.

Gonna disagree with pretty much ALL of this.

.

 

[rəddəM]

Games are the best way to entertain or tell stories IMO.
It's interactive, you're in control (partially at least).
But it's VERY HARD to succeed in all aspects of it.

 

[mckmas8808]

Empathy is a basic function of the brain and is not given by society. I guess this is what happens when you teach children that everything is a "social construct".

But race literally is a social construct. It was created by us humans. It's not a real thing.

 

[mckmas8808]

What does this even mean? "Gaming is growing up."

It's another one of those lines I hear often but I'm not sure what it's meant to convey.

Let's take music, literature and movies.
I what way have these "grown up" where gaming has failed?

Like it always seems to come down to this. If I don't agree with your take on things, which I don't, then that's because I need to let games "grow up".

What does that even mean?

So, what does gaming look like "before growing up" versus how gaming will look "after growing up"?

What it means to "grow up" is allowing a wide breadth of different games to co-exist. Some gamers have to realize that the gaming culture that they knew and grew up on is dying. Gaming is NOT nerd culture anymore. It doesn't belong to that group exclusively anymore. You have to allow gaming to mature and blossom to being bigger than what it used to be. Allow gaming to leave the house. It's not a kid anymore. Gaming is like a 18 year man that's about to graduate high school, and it's ready to move out of his parent's house. It's time for the parent to allow their child to be a grown up and take on the bigger things in life. And like that young adult, gaming will mess up and stumble on its own but it'll get it right.

And example of a poster that can't allow their kid to leave the home is this poster.

I really do miss the days when story and narrative took a back seat to gameplay and fun. This is what arcade games were all about. Sure, you got snippets of story at the beginning and sometimes got story in the ending, but games were 95% gameplay and 5% narrative.

This whole movement toward video games being art is a serious letdown for me. Fun is secondary to story, morals, meaning, and so on. It’s stuffy. It’s boring. It’s depressing. It’s so much like real life that I’d rather just save my money and let real life depress me for free.

Red Dead II is as much a chore simulator as a escape to the Old West. Yeah, I can do chores without having to pay $60+ and set aside 100GB or my hard drive to experience it. God of War is a depressing walking simulator for at least the first 10 minutes. I can be depressed and mope for 10 minutes for free.

And all of this narrative gets in the way of the action... if there’s even supposed to be any of that. Instead, video games have become a mildly interactive version of melodramatic storytelling. For me, that’s snoozeville. I can just read a book or watch a movie.

Video games used to take me wherever I wanted to go, without the bluster and “meaning”. It’s sad that it’s not like that as much anymore.

Allow gaming to grow up. Learn that it's okay that you don't like every game that's in other people's Top 5 of the year. It's okay Petrae

 

[hariseldon]

Allow gaming to grow up. Learn that it's okay that you don't like every game that's in other people's Top 5 of the year. It's okay Petrae

Could you please advise the SJW side to do the same then?