Commodification of play? For example, apart from a greater emphasis on narrative exposition than puzzles, how is Witcher substantively different than, say, Knights of the Old Republic? Aren’t the games’ player identities truncated differently by genre? And key limits both share, conditioned by commercial factors?
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When I think of the two, Character Creation stands out as a big point of difference. The more the player can shape the character (name, species, gender, body shape, skills, etc), the closer it is to my ideal of an RPG.
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That is more interesting to transgress or change a social identity than stacking crates to reach a box of pretend ammunition.
Now I’m curious about Witcher.
In terms of protagonists, they tend to come in three flavors.
Roll-Your-Own - Choose race, sex, traits, voice-actors etc.
Mute Protagonist - A blank slate that other characters talk at.
Established Character - A fully baked character that has his/her own motivations, quirks, and sometimes knows more information than the player and doesn’t reveal it.
You’d be hard pressed to name many video games with established female leads.
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And all three varieties are in turn constructed linguistically as rational subjects by socioeconomic norms an’ stuff.
Did anyone ever read Tad Williams’ Otherland?
Apparently there’s a long delayed MMO coming. Really liked the books but not sure how this would really work, plus can’t say it looks all that great.
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Yeah, I can think of a few, but not that many (and the first one to jump to my head - the Tomb Raider reboot - seems like a slightly ironic example). But that does seem to be the big issue. There are a lot of established character games, not just characters established from outside of video games like batman, but also lots of games that bring the character with them - Prototype, Infamous, Dead Space, Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed, Metal Gear, etc. If a game is being developed from the ground up with a brand new character, it isn’t like making a Batman game. That character could be any gender.
What’s interesting about the study that my comment in @funruly’s post came from is that it shows that while women would like to see more female characters, men largely don’t care if there are fewer male characters*. So basically making more female protagonists ought to be a win-win.
* This isn’t exactly true - there is obviously a group of men out there who would be perfectly fine playing a game with a female protagonist but would be very angry if they suspected that the reason why the protagonist was female was to address a lack of representation. The protagonist being female for some kind of “pure” reason relating to the story is fine.
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As a man who plays games, I’d love to see more women in them.
Alyx was one of the many details of Half-Life 2 that made it special. And I’d play as Alyx too, she kicked ass.
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Hey Now, looks like I missed that a new FemFreq video got posted.
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and while it is something that already kinda felt skeevy in RAGE and some stuff I have seen footage of some of that is jeez ‘hey programmer dudes, keep your boner fodder out of your games’
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I’ve not seen tell of the provenance of the Pip-Boy from Fallout fame.
Yet, in the news today, a regional auto-repair company called the Pep Boys sells out to national tire chain Bridgestone.
And I look at that post-war art-deco style, those bobble-headed grins, and wonder.
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Well, this sounds interesting.
Got some down time during holiday break and need some games.
Don’t tell me Fallout 4.
I have been quite addicted to Hexcells of late which is a minesweeper like game.
And got the remake of Rise Of The Triad on sale which has been amusing if a little hard.
ETA (Hexcells: Infinite has the most play value)
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Step one is to play Horse Master.
I realize that almost everyone who is interested in it has already played it, but I just started playing Dark Souls (yeah, the first one) recently, and it actually seems to be extremely awesome.
If you like waiting for things to happen a lot then I’d say Kittens Game or Sandcastle Builder if you haven’t played them (or if you played them like a year ago since stuff seems to keep getting added).
I’m really looking forward to Disgaea on steam but that’s not until February. If anyone has played Disgaea and knows of games that are similar to it I’d be interested to hear (bearing in mind that similar means almost limitless ways to level up and customize, not necessarily tile tactics).
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I still like Tontie.
I’m liking Valiant Hearts.
I’ve been seeing a lot about ‘That Dragon, Cancer’ recently - it was on the RadioLab podcast recently, and reviews are starting to pop up.
I’d be intrigued to see @Leigh_Alexander/Offworld’s take on it. Though I’m not sure it’s something I want to ‘play’…
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Have you played it, though? Much as I loved the last two Fallouts, I’m having a tough time engaging with this new one. I think a lot of boneheaded decisions were made, and so far the writing is incredibly forgettable.
Plus, I simply don’t get the recent (?) trend toward crafting and resource management and fiddling with twiddly little bits of a game. It’s a big part of what turned me off of Destiny and Borderlands, and though I was able to completely ignore it in Fallout: New Vegas, I’m having a tougher time playing around it in Fallout 4.
I micromanage fiddly shit for a living. Do I really have to do it in a game, too?
Remember how the best Halo games had just one flavor of rocket launcher? Wasn’t that enough?
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