Hey you're the one who invented a problem that didn't exist and then whined about it. They were just helping you get over it.
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The Escapist getting relaunched, "leaving politics at the door"
- Thread starter KoolAid
- Start date
Out of interest, do you think it's possible for people to debate what exactly a game is "saying"? Or do you just go around telling people what every game is saying?
Oh and, I think you misunderstood. There's no problem. I'm pretty content being able to seperate overt political statements in games from games that don't have them. You know what overt means, right?
Well, coming in a thread and saying your games have nothing to say while giving no examples, it's hard to have a debate. The lack of discussion is on you.
So you don't know what they're saying, but gosh darn it you know they're saying something. Something overtly political.
Ah, now it's only overtly political.
What are examples of "overtly political"?
If you want to say "I accept that many games aren't overtly political and can easily be talked about without any political focus", that's okay.
I don't mind that you're moving goal posts, but some examples would be nice for your wanted discussion.
From this point forward in the thread, if people say they don't want politics in games/games coverage and they refuse to specify what kind of politics they're referring to, and I mean a bullet point by bullet point list, I'm just going to assume they are gamergaters scurrying back and forth between here and r/KIA. No one has given me a legit answer yet.
Again, you know what an overtly political game is (papers please) versus a game that's not overtly political. Now, there's a reason I've bolded that word, I'll get onto that in a sec. Let's first establish that yes, every human action on this planet is political in some essence, as is the very nature of our existence. Lack of statement is still a statement, etc etc. So, every game, book, movie, piece of art, whatever, is political in that it's a product of a human or humans. Why then is the word "overtly" in bold? Because there's a distinction between something with politics at the core of it's being, and something without. If that's not a distinction you can see, I don't know what to tell you my dude.
Yeah because that makes perfectly logical sense. So you'll just assume the poster below is a GGer?
Glad they're doing this. Not everything needs to have a direct link to current political events and have it at the forefront. It's become too much in entertainment lately. And given how toxic the current political climate is, taking a step back from it is a good thing, IMO.
If they don't want to specify, it's because they know actually specifying would reveal their shitty beliefs.
Like I said before: If you want just a bullet point of "game facts" then sure, go for it. Enjoy your super sanitized "news" that not even press releases contain. To separate story and gameplay is a fool's errand and at that point you may as well just get a cookie-cutter form response ready for genres such as "FPS game," or "RPG game" if that's how you want to completely boil it down and ignore everything else.
The rest of us will be here in the real world.
Yes they do! Aesthetic plays a big part in motivation for a player to keep playing. Aesthetic is part of the reward loop, same reason why advertising works or why certain UI or fonts or graphic styles are used otherwise everything would have the same aesthetic. If Fortnite was devoid of all the colours and cartoon aesthetic and satisfying audio visual feedback and UI, people would spend less hours on it. Wouldn't be Fortnite anymore. It's not so easy to divorce these aspects in discussion.
"Why should video game analysis only focus on the aesthetics and story? Why is analysis of gameplay not meaningful?"
This is more down to which critics imo rather than a working generalisation. Some critics focus on certain aspects more. Some focus on the interplay of all the systems, aesthetics, and mechanics.
There's like a full page of discussion where I've covered all that.
Tldr: a heavier focus on gameplay analysis does not equal "objective reviews".
Of course, I'm not saying aesthetics don't matter, I'm saying they're not the primary driving force for why people play Fortnite or CS or Halo etc.
God, the people who make crap like the Naughty Dog agenda video are so wretched. At best they have no self-awareness. He keeps claiming that he has no problem with women and gays, but the fact is that if Lost Legacy and TLOU had had entirely straight male casts, with TLOU2 having Dina as a straight love interest for Male Ellie, he would never have even made a video. That's the core of it.
So has there been any further clarification on what exactly they mean by "leaving politics at the door?" That pledge combined with not even acknowledging which particular brand of toxicity sank the previous incarnation of the site looks... suspect as fuck. It's straight out of the usual playbook: decry non-specific wrong-doing in the past and present yourself as a neutral party who's above it all.
I guess we'll have to wait and see what the new site content ends up looking like, but I'm not exactly raring to check it out at this point.
I guess we'll have to wait and see what the new site content ends up looking like, but I'm not exactly raring to check it out at this point.
What are you doing?
(I'm guessing you can't see the difference between a game with overtly political themes and one without)
Replica soldiers most satisfying enemies of all time though yo (f.e.a.r)
Yeah, same here. Bonus points if they can describe their response without using meaningless terms like "click bait" or "drama".
To suggest there's a difference between a game that's overtly political and one that isn't, I guess? In general, I think people can agree that all human expression is political by nature of being human expression, but I think what a lot of "are all games political" discussion comes down to is difference between games that have a clear, open political statement or theme to convey, versus ones that don't. If there's no discernible difference to you between something like papers please and something like centipede, then I guess you do you, muchacho.
Why is it anybody that doesn't want politicized games automatically a shitty person to you? You're acting like a child. I don't play games because they are high art. I primarily play grindy MMOs and loot games because I want to click a mouse and watch numbers go up. Games I play aren't making a statement OR if they are, I'm not gleaning one from them. I don't play games like Last of Us or Wolfenstein because I couldn't give less of an eff about a game that prioritizes its storytelling over gameplay and that are also finite. I like games that I can dive into and lose hundreds of hours to because gaming is my way to pass time. It's not a medium I use to engage with messages. If I want to do that I will read a book or article, or watch a movie. I guess throw me in the pile with the GGers then?
The other day I visited a games website and they had an article about working conditions on the industry, an editorial about themes in a David Cage game and one about censorship. How dare they! The whole site is RUINED and now I cannot read it. /s
I mean those are all valid topics to cover if you're reporting on games, but not every outlet is required to cover them. To the best of my knowledge, Giant Bomb hasn't written articles on any of those subjects, for example. It's not like what Escapist is doing here is some new, sinister take on games coverage. It's already being done by other sites. They just made the mistake of dropping a line about it in their mission statement and people assume it's basically just going to be a website of Nazis. Lotta knee jerking going on here with people expecting the worst.
Giantbomb has covered all these topics either trough their site, editorial or podcasts.
Edit: A better explanation about this thread: The Escapist favored GG before, and the thing GG wanted was "no more politics". So now The Escapist says they will not have politics. It's a dog whistle. And "apolitical coverage" is just journalism without context. Bland, boring, useless journalism in almost all cases. So it's bad for those two things to begin with.
Where? They talk about stuff like that on the podcasts usually in the context of someone on the staff having played the game in question, but GB doesn't do a lot of written articles, so I dunno what you could be thinking about. At any rate, they're hardly making it a focus of their website. They don't write big think pieces on those subjects the way a place like Waypoint or Polygon does. Politicizing games coverage isn't an all or nothing affair. You can cover it to many degrees and not have it be a part of your site's identity. That's all I'm saying.
I'm not American.
Politics exists across the world, and politics is inherently a part of gaming. The industry itself and the stories and messages contained within the games themselves.
Attempting to ignore politics here is futile. It's also pretty sad that people like yourself even want this when the political conversations NEED to remain to help progress for marglinalozed groups.
You can easily do the very, very least of bearing the weight of reading or skimming past political articles. Hardly a sacrifice, and people like yourself calling for politics to go are actively standing in the way of progress for marglinaozed people.
Not only that, but politics affects your own life whoever you are, and it's working against YOUR self interest to attempt to silence conversations.
I honestly don't know how you even begin to think that's ok.
They're not automatically a shitty person unless they refuse to tell me what specific politics they don't want in their games and games coverage. I thought I made that clear.
Typical, a supporter of a GG website that supports GG talking points about ~politicized games~ doesn't want to actually say what "politicized" means. Curious indeed, and not at all transparent.
Your second line is why people assume (likely rightfully) that people that don't want """"politicized"""" games are likely terrible people.
Especially when you are doing this to defend a website that has already been strongly supporting GG.
And especially when "politicizing games coverage" actually just means saying "This game has homophobic elements" or "this game has a queer character" or "the review is written by a gay person".
You people keep trying to desperately ignore the elephant in the room, which is that the existance of people like me in this industry is politicized. The only way for a website to be "apolitical" is to avoid having queer staff, avoid ever mentioning anything even remotely related to queer characters, and effectively pretend we don't exist. We see this over and over, with angry gamers shrieking at even *analyzing code* that relates to queer characters. Even if the analysis only describes the code in its objective effect. This is what you're fighting for.
Heh. MMOs aren't making a statement. You sweet summer child.
Nope: http://m.ign.com/articles/2018/06/26/lgbtq-inclusive-games-that-will-steal-your-heart
Commenting and acknowledging audiences for these LGBT+ games is pretty political.
The other end would probably be... I guess that one dude who wanted a "neutral" publication? Not this one there was another one but I don't remember who he was.
Giantbomb has created literally thousands of hours of content, so I'm not going to post here everything, so here is something to start:
Giant Bomb asked Cory Barlog about recent Labor Issue debate in video game industry
Guest Contributor Ian Williams makes the case for why we need to care about labor conditions in the game industry as much as we care about the games we love.
Yup. Jeff and Co has literally commented on every gaming controversy since the Bombcast's inception. Also Dream Daddy from GOTY and supporting it is pretty political to me just saying...
Also their snark are political in a way, lol. Jeff and his pennies. Lobby for keeping pennies!
The fuck? Firstly, I've already mentioned a game, by name, which I think is a great example of a game with a clear political thematic element. There's absolutely nothing wrong with games like this, and some of the best games of all time have been games like this- ones that, dare I say, are "trying to say something". The only thing I'm doing is making the distinction between games like that (in my case I mentioned papers please) and games unlike it. Yes, I make a distinction between something like her story, and something like centipede. No, I don't think centipede is a politics-free game, as I've stated multiple times already: every expression or even lack of expression is inherently political. Yes, making a game and "saying nothing" is still saying something, but one last time, I do believe there's a difference between something like gone home and something like excite bike. In much the same way, there are movies with prominent political messages (like one of my favourite movies, Dallas Buyers Club, or Wall-E) and films like Napoleon Dynamite. Now, one more time, I'm not saying Napoleon Dynamite is devoid of political worth - and I'm sure there's some interesting discussion about where that worth lies, but between that and say Selma, I'd personally dub Selma the more "political" film. I think some games are fantastic for their politics (papers please) and some games are great for reasons I would deem non political (bubble bobble*).
*Just going to add here, because apparently I can't say it enough: bubble bobble, like every piece of media ever, is still political by nature of being created by a human. I know it's going to come up that Napoleon Dynamite is actually an overtly political piece, but I'm sorry to tell you it won't be making my top 10 political films list.
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Giantbomb discusses most of the industry news and politics in podcasts, E3 shows, and used to be editorials and news reports back when Austin Walker and Patrick Klepek were writers.
Here is Jeff talking to Phil Spencer about the Fortnite crossplay block controversy (timestamp 19:16).
Many news outlets picked up on this discussion and there was a big Resetera thread for it.
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Did Giant Bomb also openly support GamerGate and signal-boost some of its biggest proponents?
User Banned (Permanent): Inflammatory comments, vilifying journalism. Junior Account.
Sites like Polygon and Waypoint produce these political articles to create drama and clickbait and are far from constructive. For example "toxic masculinity" is a common subject however the behavior in question is by a bunch of fucking dorks and trolls on the internet. Far from masculine. And all these articles do is provide ammunition for these people and they actual create a whole industry. There are people getting patreon money / youtube views making fun of this stuff. If the ridiculous articles did not exist, the trolls would have nothing, but Polygon wouldn't have their clicks.
Nobody gives a shit about this stuff in the real world. It is all fake drama on the internet. Most people just want to work, have fun, get laid etc. Gaming is a past time. There is a market for normal people who just want to play games and read about such games and don't give a fuck about dorks, trolls and whiny drama.
Nobody gives a shit about this stuff in the real world. It is all fake drama on the internet. Most people just want to work, have fun, get laid etc. Gaming is a past time. There is a market for normal people who just want to play games and read about such games and don't give a fuck about dorks, trolls and whiny drama.
Well this is no fair. Pretty sure you just gave everyone playing a Bingo.
I don't think reviews that discuss Fortnite's popularity are ignorant of the gameplay aspects that make it appealing. To me, a lot of the reasons a lot of these sort of articles provide are deep and coherent enough to have merit. There's also a lot of pernicious design decisions in Fortnite that draws in a lot of extremely young players that is directly related to its aesthetic and methods of interaction. Again, a lot of reviews have documented these aspects and are critical of it.
If we're talking about the deeper discussion of specific gameplay design, like bullet spread analysis and its impact on gameplay, a review isn't the place for deeper dives that you seem to be suggesting. Most decent reviews are able to describe the gameplay feedback in a coherent enough way that the reader has a good enough idea of how floaty the controls are, how responsive the characters are, its overall mechanics and how successful its gameplay systems are. A lot of the time, you don't even need to read a review since watching a Twitch stream will often tell you 90% regarding game design.
I think a lot of people, myself included, are hung up with that Wolfenstein example because I feel its sort of a bad example. You absolutely cannot review Wolfenstein's gameplay in a Wolfenstein review without discussing the Nazis.
A significant part of the appeal of Wolfenstein is that you're killing Nazis and not, say, bipedal koalas. The gameplay scenarios are entirely designed to exploit this aspect. We're conditioned to hate Nazis and gosh there's a video game that tells us to do exactly that.
Wolfenstein, at its core, is no different from a lot of exploitation movies and exploitation movies can't work if there's no exploitation involved. I'm not a robot, half of the visceral impact gained from Wolfenstein is that I'm a Polish Jewish ubermensch gunning down corridors of Nazis with no mercy. The unwieldy ferocious nature of Wolfenstein's weapons, something that most reviews picked up on, only feels fun because it heightens the brutality involved when you're slaughtering leagues of Nazis. The two aspects are absolutely inseparable and something that was definitely pointed out in reviews.
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