Apart from the humour and the puzzle challenge, I think I really like the Portal games because I don’t have to kill stuff, which is a rarity in a game these days.
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Nothing we make, create or invent is completely separate from the context of the reality that we live in; to even insinuate that’s the case is highly disingenuous.
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Thanks for the recommendation!
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I’m not promising you won’t scream in frustration sometimes, but the laughs on the way and the end-title songs make it worth it 
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I used to like (well, I probably still do, but I’m too poor for a new gfx card) a bit of the old run around with a big gun shootin’ Nazis, or aliens, or alien Nazis (plasma fire is the only language yer Space-Nazi understands), but IMO Portal is the ne plus ultra of FPS style games. I wish devs/studios would do more shit like that. I’d maybe spring for that new card…
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I still haven’t played that. The boy got a copy gratis plus other fun from a friend of mine who works at Valve. He really liked what he played of Portal.
I am paitently waiting for Borderlands 3 as I will wait till I can get on a Steam sale or at least on Steam.
The whole space/western thing is just my cup of tea plus a lot of the background stuff they do a lot better with as the women are not just eyecandy/fanservice. Even the stacked sexy babe NPC is very much in charge of how she is promoted and perceived and runs her world and you as the player are not going to get anywhere with her other than getting paid for being an errand boy. You find out that one of the NPC’s is gay on a sidequest because you are helping find stuff his ex beau dropped before dying and it is just accepted in the game world like no big deal.
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There are gay characters in Borderlands 2 and the Pre-Sequel and the fact that this is not presented as a big deal is kind of a big deal.
Yeah, the jokes are terrible and it’s ultra violent, but somehow it works; Borderlands is like a comic book you get to play.
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I almost never play FPS, but when I do, it’s borderlands.
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“We’ve both said a lot of things you’re going to regret.”
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" Well done! Remember: The Aperture Science Bring Your Daughter to Work Day is the perfect time to have her tested. "
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This is a big factor to why I felt fine with getting a copy for my then 13 year old boy so we could play together.
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No.
But they aren’t the “vast majority of available options”. That’s the issue. There are currently more videogame choices than in the entirety of human history, they offfer incredible diversity, and a teeny tiny number of them would be Doom or Grand Theft Auto – for example, the entire Nintendo Switch library (first party at least), zillions of indie games on the Steam / Epic / PS4 / Xbox stores, etc. And mobile, good lord… is a whole world.
That’s already the case. Look at the growth in the videogame industry in the last decade
You don’t, and that’s the misinformation that’s being perpetuated here. This is no more true than complaining that the only movie available for you to watch is “John Wick 3”, and oh dear isn’t that terribly violent.
I feel like Anita’s channel was the videogame lefty version of Logan Paul back in 2015. It’s pandering youtube channel clickbait for people of a certain political leaning, who want to get righteously angry and “fight the good fight for the right team”, even if the details aren’t really… correct? I’m glad we’re done with all that. It’s not a period of history I’ll be celebrating.
I am happy, however, to celebrate near-infinite choice in gaming, which we already had, even in 2014, and it’s only getting more infinite.
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Look, I don’t want to have to re-explain to you the context in which Sarkeesian posted her critiques of gaming culture. But it seems I have to, because you - a man old enough to be my father - weren’t paying attention when it was happening in 20 goddamn 14.
2014, a time when grown-ass men were shouting racial epithets at each other and horrifically harassing women for daring to be gamers or game developers.
2014, a year where the best selling games were Grand Theft Auto: The Eighth, TotallyNotHalo, and Call of Duty: Eleventh Warfare.
You know what gets my goat?
This whole appeal to balance where on one “side” you have a lady critiquing an artform and on the other you have dorks like The Golden One and Yolo Minneapolis directing bomb threats and sending hate mobs to make women quit being online.
I’m fucking sick of centrist bullshit.
The truth isn’t in the goddamn middle.
The truth is that games are art, and should be critiqued as such. Nobody’s going to stop making games or even playing games. But it IS helpful to be engaged on more than a surface level with the art in which one participates.
It’s 2019, dude. Go write your own damn essays on a game. Shit, make a video. But realize this: a woman will face 200x the amount of flak than dudes online ever will, and none of that flak is in good faith.
Go compare the reddit threads for hbomberguy’s Fallout 3 videos to the reddit threads for Ms Sarkeesian’s takes on the same game series.
Do you notice something?
Yeah, that’s right:
A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING GAMERS, THE SPECTRE OF MAYBE HAVING THEIR GAME CRITIQUED BY A FEEEEEEMALE.
it’s 2:00 AM and i need some goddamn sleep. maybe i’ll write an essay. or make a video. or something. but i’ll never, ever, face the bad faith brigades like ms sarkeesian still has to face to this very fucking day.
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Well, video game “journalism” is … mostly a waste of time, regardless of the source? Note the date here, this sentiment predates GG stuff.
I guess what bugged me, personally, is that this criticism wasn’t coming from someone who actually cared about videogames, such as they are, it was more like a guerilla academic exercise to apply feminist theory to a “space”, e.g.
“Video games were always a part of this project. Video games are a part of pop culture and they were always on my mind. But I spent a lot more time watching TV. That’s always been my wheelhouse. I was constantly coming up with ideas about things that I was watching on TV. But with games it was a little bit different. I didn’t really know what the ‘in’ was there. It was just easier for me to do TV at the time.
“One time, I was writing out a list of tropes and looking at different kinds of media. I was like, oh, there’s a lot of stuff in games. I feel like I should bring games into what we’re doing because I’ve put that on the back burner.
As someone who played a lot of those games, I watched one of the videos and saw that examples were cherry picked, the most slanted explanations were presented as fact (“you must kill prostitutes in this game” etc). I wasn’t at all radicalized and motivated to go riot in the streets by this video, mind you, I just wasn’t a fan of the formula – which I felt was more about an outsider generating controversy and clickbait By Any Means Necessary™ than actual dialog. It didn’t seem to be motivated by “I care about gaming and I want it to be better” from my perspective.
Is there a ton of diversity and choice today in gaming? Absolutely. You can play Slime Rancher, or you can play Mortal Kombat 11. That’s a good thing, clearly, and it’s the path the industry was already on… even in 2014.
The actual best selling games of 2014, though:
- Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
- Madden NFL 15
- Destiny
- Grand Theft Auto 5
- Minecraft
- Super Smash Bros (for 3DS and Wii U)
- NBA 2K15
- Watch Dogs
- FIFA 15
- Call of Duty Ghosts
Well, I don’t live in a country where live TV shows are delayed for several seconds so a censor can bleep a “dirty” word… The puritanism when it comes to sexuality and the acceptance of violence in US media has always been an oddity to me.
And I don’t get why Tomb Raider was picked as an example. I played the first few games, and one reason I liked them was the very fact that the protagonist was a strong, independent woman (for clarification: white male dude here). The physical attributes were really not an issue once you started to play. I agree that a lot of stuff around the game, like the magazine cover shown by @anon59592690, are not acceptable, but I don’t think that Eidos or the developers had much control over this development. And if Lara Croft is such a bad role model, did Angelina Jolie get the same backlash as the software developers?
If video game journalism is a waste of time - what exactly is walls of text about that waste of time?
What value does that bring?
Call me when you’re getting death threats -
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Mm… if you had spent Tomb Raider closely following behind the polygonal hot pants of Larry Croft (I’m not going to look to see if that exists, I’m not going to… fuck it… yup, there he is), wouldn’t that have been a very different game? Eidos’ choice of a female lead, her mode of dress and her physical attributes are all integral to the success of the Tomb Raider franchise, and they were calibrated for the game’s target audience.
There’s probably a worthwhile comparison to be made to the Nathan Drake series, but I haven’t played it so I can’t comment.
Bonus pic:
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“And I don’t get why Tomb Raider was picked as an example. I played the first few games, and one reason I liked them was the very fact that the protagonist was a strong, independent woman”
This is what I don’t get. Both of these things can coexist. A strong female character can still be hyper-sexualized to the point that the character is hampered by it. Personally, I always liked and gravitated toward her character but I also knew that it “wasn’t meant for me.”
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