• A Guide to Ending "Gamers" - "Fun is a neurological trick."
    182 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Disgruntled;45865023]These people HATE video games. They hate people that play them. They hate the people that create them. They hate EVERYONE that isn't them. And this is just more proof of that. Remove this toxin from the games industry. It has no place here.[/QUOTE] Kinda reminds me of [B][I]Phil Fish[/I][/B]. I mean, he's a suicidal maniac, he hates everyone involved in gaming and he's as narcissist as your regular Tumblr feminazi. AND YET he gets involved in the gaming industry.
[QUOTE=Fatfatfatty;45856550]Dont bring your politics into my video games.[/QUOTE] Fuck this shit. Politics are literally everywhereally and video games are not going to be the planetary exclusive medium that is not affected by human nature. Fuck your shitty attitude and your stubborn, anachronistic beliefs. Video games can be whatever the hell they can, need or want to be and you have very little say on this matter. You can't control art, fuck you for trying.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;45868793]I don't know what the hell is up with gamers lately but everyone just seems so [I]scared[/I]. [/QUOTE] I am not going to lie, I am scared. When two weeks of internet calamity occur regarding games journalism's integrity, and the only thing to come out of games journalists are "Gamers are dead", "Here's how to end gamers", and "Gamers are the worst", there is good reason to be scared. The industry is more fucked than we originally thought, and we originally thought the industry was fucked.
Here is a counter-point to this article (and all the others like it) that I feel does a good job expressing my opinion (and indeed the opinion held by many of the posters on /v/ and reddit who have been discussing this for days) [URL="http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/01/Lying-Greedy-Promiscuous-Feminist-Bullies-are-Tearing-the-Video-Game-Industry-Apart"]http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/01/Lying-Greedy-Promiscuous-Feminist-Bullies-are-Tearing-the-Video-Game-Industry-Apart[/URL]
[QUOTE=Take_Opal;45869084]Fuck this shit. Politics are literally everywhereally and video games are not going to be the planetary exclusive medium that is not affected by human nature. Fuck your shitty attitude and your stubborn, anachronistic beliefs. Video games can be whatever the hell they can, need or want to be and you have very little say on this matter. You can't control art, fuck you for trying.[/QUOTE] You dont seem what I try to say, I dont mean video games are 100% going to be 100% excluded of politics, if you want to make a video game with a political message then that is fine, if you want to discuss the political message of a game with a political message that is fine. I dont want to read about why Tomb Raider needs to be banned because it turns men into rapists because lara croft has boobies. Sometimes you just want to sit down and have fun with a game, not listen to someones political agenda
[QUOTE=Zeke129;45868793]I don't know what the hell is up with gamers lately but everyone just seems so [i]scared[/i]. Scared that feminists are going to take their games away, scared that gay people are going to force every character to be bisexual, scared that game dev company CEOs are going to be tarred and feathered unless they hire 50/50 men/women, scared that only walking simulators are going to get good reviews from now on, just fucking [i]scared[/i] little children. These last few weeks have been a great period of aging for gaming, only the aging happened in reverse. The image of gamers in the mainstream is at an all-time low and the blame isn't on the feminists or the gays or the "social justice warriors", it's on the gamers.[/QUOTE] please don't ignore strong arguments to pick on weak ones and then stand on some high horse. Most people don't care about having those things in, go ahead, I welcome it personally but I understand the apathy of people who don't care. I don't actually see people making these "scared children" posts, but I'd love to see them, and I'd love to see the logic that lets you generalize a group of people. If the image is at an all time low, and an industry that covers games, gamers, and game drama paints a portrait of them at their all time low, don't you think those two things are tied hand in hand regardless of the status of gamers as it is? I've seen the most mature responses in the last few weeks from people who are tired of this kind of dismissal. I know not everyone is speaking or thinking at that level, but neither group is so no one gets to hold that above anyone.
[QUOTE=Scot;45858123]why are these people who clearly hate the gaming industry keep being hired by and featured on gaming websites?[/QUOTE] To stir shit up and clickwhore for ad revenue, simple as.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;45868793]I don't know what the hell is up with gamers lately but everyone just seems so [i]scared[/i]. Scared that feminists are going to take their games away, scared that gay people are going to force every character to be bisexual, scared that game dev company CEOs are going to be tarred and feathered unless they hire 50/50 men/women, scared that only walking simulators are going to get good reviews from now on, just fucking [i]scared[/i] little children. These last few weeks have been a great period of aging for gaming, only the aging happened in reverse. The image of gamers in the mainstream is at an all-time low and the blame isn't on the feminists or the gays or the "social justice warriors", it's on the gamers.[/QUOTE] On the contrary, im a gamer, and i see a vast majority of the changes proposed by legitimate feminists, and other "social justice" types to do with gaming industry and "gamer culture" as both necessary and positive. What i don't view as positive is the constant trash talking blogs and even news articles are churning out about the demographic for no reason other than to create drama they can then profit off of. This isn't about the stupid hate-boner people seem to have for feminists right now, at least its not for me, its about being sick and tired of seeing me and my hobby being used as the latest scapegoat go to for almost every social issue ever, now that people can't blame [i] that dang loud satanic rock music[/i] anymore.
[QUOTE=fulgrim;45870091]On the contrary, im a gamer, and i see a vast majority of the changes proposed by legitimate feminists, and other "social justice" types to do with gaming industry and "gamer culture" as both necessary and positive. What i don't view as positive is the constant trash talking blogs and even news articles are churning out about the demographic for no reason other than to create drama they can then profit off of. This isn't about the stupid hate-boner people seem to have for feminists right now, at least its not for me, its about being sick and tired of seeing me and my hobby being used as the latest scapegoat go to for almost every social issue ever, now that people can't blame [I] that dang loud satanic rock music[/I] anymore.[/QUOTE] The problem is that media/religions/etc. always seek to blame anyone on any issue the world is having. With the Columbine killings, media blamed the game they were playing, Doom, and other dark scene artists like Rammstein, Marilyn Manson, and so on. With the Sandy Hook massacre, they blamed Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc. When in truth the Columbine killers had issues with bullying and psychological problems, and the Sandy Hook massacre was a problem with the gun laws in the US and a severe problem of autism from Adam Lanza. Media (even these "social justice warriors") always blame anything that is an easy target for global hate. This is some sort of shady pattern that always works on the really uneducated and dumb individual, as it worked on history, as in the Middle Ages when disasters happened and they blamed a demon to the uneducated masses, as the kind of indoctrination nazis did to blame Jews of all their failures in WWI. It's all bullshit. It's all that when these people couldn't look at themselves in the mirror. And for that I'm feeling [I][B]angry[/B][/I].
The main thing I see as the issue with a lot of recent stuff criticizing games is very much akin to stuff fox news and Jack Thompson posed a while ago. The main issue is it seems like these "critics" are having the medium of games as less a medium of entertainment that may challenge certain societal views, and more a source of issues that can be the source of social issues. The reason that I feel stuff such as this is taken in any way literally is do to how games as a medium are still young and still being embedded as a main stay medium. This is very much comparable to how comic books, jazz, and rock were used by journalism as a site of the problems in society. It is pathetic to consider entertainment media as a source of issues since it undermines the true non fictional societal issues.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;45868793]I don't know what the hell is up with gamers lately but everyone just seems so [i]scared[/i]. Scared that feminists are going to take their games away, scared that gay people are going to force every character to be bisexual, scared that game dev company CEOs are going to be tarred and feathered unless they hire 50/50 men/women, scared that only walking simulators are going to get good reviews from now on, just fucking [i]scared[/i] little children. These last few weeks have been a great period of aging for gaming, only the aging happened in reverse. The image of gamers in the mainstream is at an all-time low and the blame isn't on the feminists or the gays or the "social justice warriors", it's on the gamers.[/QUOTE] You're not nearly as smart as you think you are.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;45868793]I don't know what the hell is up with gamers lately but everyone just seems so [i]scared[/i]. Scared that feminists are going to take their games away, scared that gay people are going to force every character to be bisexual, scared that game dev company CEOs are going to be tarred and feathered unless they hire 50/50 men/women, scared that only walking simulators are going to get good reviews from now on, just fucking [i]scared[/i] little children. These last few weeks have been a great period of aging for gaming, only the aging happened in reverse. The image of gamers in the mainstream is at an all-time low and the blame isn't on the feminists or the gays or the "social justice warriors", it's on the gamers.[/QUOTE] And the image of feminists is also on an all-time low with the people on the other side of the street all because of this very same conflict. What is constantly brought into the spotlight is extremists being at war with each other. You have people on the "SJW" croud comparing gamers to ISIS, and you have the "neckbeards" comparing feminists to Nazis. But sadly, as the conflict goes on, more and more extremists are created. And no, this hasn't been a "great aging period" for gamers as you call it, in its stead, it has been a great aging period for those who call themselves journalists. Never before have we seen childish insults, generalisation and collaborative attempts to demonize a culture on this scale. Even on issues unrelated to this one, like that about the celebrity leak, you see writers use incredibly exaggerated slurs and insults on every second sentence about another culture, generalising it to hell and back. It's an embarrassment to professional journalists everywhere. But yet still this doesn't apply to all of them. Not every one of those journalist is corrupt and not every journalist is bad, just like not every gamer is a gross basement dwelling misogynist pig, and just like not every feminist is a Social Justice Warrior demonizing others for the smallest issues. This particular surge of feminism is still relatively young (even though the concept of it is very old) and is trying to find a spot in the mainstream society, just like the games industry is trying to take hold as well. However, in this conflict, both are constantly being played out against each other, and that blame does not lie on the feminists, nor on the gamers. It lies on the selective group of Indie developers and news sites who are using the two sides of this conflict for their own advantage.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;45868793]I don't know what the hell is up with gamers lately but everyone just seems so [I]scared[/I]. Scared that feminists are going to take their games away, scared that gay people are going to force every character to be bisexual, scared that game dev company CEOs are going to be tarred and feathered unless they hire 50/50 men/women, scared that only walking simulators are going to get good reviews from now on, just fucking [I]scared[/I] little children. These last few weeks have been a great period of aging for gaming, only the aging happened in reverse. The image of gamers in the mainstream is at an all-time low and the blame isn't on the feminists or the gays or the "social justice warriors", [B]it's on the gamers.[/B][/QUOTE] boom shacka lacka good generalisation buddy! once again, another person talking about gamers as though they are one autonomous group, or hivemind, and trying to ascribe actions or responsibility to them when are you going to realise that this shit doesn't make sense, stop doing it it's like saying that cyclists are all immature road hoggers, that's how dumb it sounds
[QUOTE=Zeke129;45868793]I don't know what the hell is up with gamers lately but everyone just seems so [I]scared[/I]. Scared that feminists are going to take their games away, scared that gay people are going to force every character to be bisexual, scared that game dev company CEOs are going to be tarred and feathered unless they hire 50/50 men/women, scared that only walking simulators are going to get good reviews from now on, just fucking [I]scared[/I] little children. These last few weeks have been a great period of aging for gaming, only the aging happened in reverse. The image of gamers in the mainstream is at an all-time low and the blame isn't on the feminists or the gays or the "social justice warriors", it's on the gamers.[/QUOTE] Probably because gamers are getting all the flack for all of the problems that rose up this week. For starters, the industry IS fucked. It has been for a while, but it keeps on getting worse. Same goes for reviewers who lie out their asses. But the worst part? The worst part is how we have hypocrites, thieves and liars scolding and giving lessons on what gamers should like or dislike. Anita pocketed a shitload of cash to make half-assed videos with cherrypicked opinions. Suddenly, the internet is in flames just because someone made threats to her. Although it being indeed pretty sick, thats the internet for you. Theres a lot of people who probably get death threats every day of the week and neither they nor anyone else bats an eyelash. BUT, since its Anita, boom goes the internet, and gamers are all branded shit. It's the equivalent to a bad movie plot where killing someone would spark an all out war. Then we got Zoe Quinn and all her white knights. Despite the huge fucking mess they all made, theres still people giving her reason and defending her, despite the ton of shit she's supposedly into. And if you don't defend her? You're a misogynist and branded by everyone an asshole, scum of the earth, and so on. Even Adam Baldwin got shit for this lol. Another thing that bothers me, is that there has been hazing and threatning on the internet since forever. Nobody ever gave a shit about it because "you fucked my mom? fuck you", if you know what I mean. But suddenly, everyone apparently burst their shields and whenever someone says something to, say, a female gamer, all hell breaks loose yet again. And all of this for what? What does being a gamer have to do with you liking or hating women? Why do you even need to know werther your character is straight, gay, bissexual, or some other thing? Why do you need 50/50 men to women ratio in companies if the most likely thing to happen is one of the genders not liking the field they would be in? You're asking things that never really needed to be asked. What purpose will a character's sexual preferences matter in a game? Who cares if you like or hate women? Play the damn game, that doesn't matters at all. And who cares if theres a whorehouse in the game aswell? JesusFUCK, this is so fucking stupid. People complaining about some games depicting whore houses. Really? You're gonna complain about that and nothing else the game might be doing wrong that would actually matter? You're gonna complain about the game having whores at some point?... Meanwhile, we're getting lied to by reviewers and developers, charged out the ass for 1/15 of the game's full content that should be in the main game for starters, getting games that are either completely broken or just not games at all, and who knows what else. Man we sure have our priorities straight!
[QUOTE=Zeke129;45868793]I don't know what the hell is up with gamers lately but everyone just seems so [I]scared[/I]. Scared that feminists are going to take their games away, scared that gay people are going to force every character to be bisexual, scared that game dev company CEOs are going to be tarred and feathered unless they hire 50/50 men/women, scared that only walking simulators are going to get good reviews from now on, just fucking [I]scared[/I] little children. These last few weeks have been a great period of aging for gaming, only the aging happened in reverse. The image of gamers in the mainstream is at an all-time low and the blame isn't on the feminists or the gays or the "social justice warriors", it's on the gamers.[/QUOTE] Maybe people are scared because the community they count on for their entire past-time not only ignores literally every little bit of advice, concern or criticisms they bring, but [I]actively hate them.[/I] I mean, for the past five years it was just passive-aggressive hate; game has sexy characters? We need to call gamers immature pedophilic asswipes for liking it. This company has more males than females in it? Wow, this is way more important than the games they're making! Woman reviewer who doesn't actually play video-games gets a ton of money to make half-assed videos about a subject she only knows "hates women?" Don't you dare criticize her, or you're a misogynistic man-child! It's years and years of shit gamers have been screaming is a problem, but literally no one is listening to them until they say something that helps the agenda. With the recent discovery of very real evidence of very real corruption in the industry, how do the same people that tittered and mocked their userbase react? "How can we kill these guys?" Zeke, I always thought you were a fairly smart guy, you really couldn't see any of this going on?
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;45869202]please don't ignore strong arguments to pick on weak ones and then stand on some high horse. Most people don't care about having those things in, go ahead, I welcome it personally but I understand the apathy of people who don't care. I don't actually see people making these "scared children" posts, but I'd love to see them, and I'd love to see the logic that lets you generalize a group of people. If the image is at an all time low, and an industry that covers games, gamers, and game drama paints a portrait of them at their all time low, don't you think those two things are tied hand in hand regardless of the status of gamers as it is? I've seen the most mature responses in the last few weeks from people who are tired of this kind of dismissal. I know not everyone is speaking or thinking at that level, but neither group is so no one gets to hold that above anyone.[/QUOTE] Add onto the fact that this argument places the blame on the public instead of the content creators who we propped up and created the foundation by which they enjoy their success.
[QUOTE=Aphtonites;45857311][URL="http://lullabydust.tumblr.com/post/82702186562/why-not-ask-whether-heterosexuality-exists-are"]Here you go.[/URL][/QUOTE] The actual source tumblr("ughstraightpeople") always crack me up.
[QUOTE=Aphtonites;45857311][URL="http://lullabydust.tumblr.com/post/82702186562/why-not-ask-whether-heterosexuality-exists-are"]Here you go.[/URL][/QUOTE] [QUOTE]All primates (with the exception of humans) are bisexual. Bonobos and chimpanzees especially. In human societies that are not corrupted by homophobia or biphobia (see Greeks, Canaanites, and various modern tribes), the people are bisexual.[/QUOTE] [IMG]http://fi.somethingawful.com/safs/smilies/2/0/biotruths.001.gif[/IMG] Anyway, I bet this is just fabricated trollbait to confuse/piss people off and/or to give SJWs/ the LGBT crowd a bad image, just like those "EATING TACOS IS CULTURAL APPROPIATION" posts. If you see a post of this kind always take it with a pinch of salt.
Imagine all the publicity you'd get if you made a game that's actually offensive to women.
[QUOTE=The Baconator;45867663]I think focus on story ruined FPS games You can't have a non alien/james bond/cowboy/spaghetti western game where you proceed to shoot thousands of people in the face. Many critics of Bioshock Infinite felt the story and gameplay did not mix, and a game like Doom or Half Life will never make sense with a serious/realistic political or meaningful story[/QUOTE] Half-Life has a really, really good story that comments on the medium it was built in that is completely hidden in every facet of the entire series. If you look into it, it is also extremely hard sci-fi which goes leaps and bounds beyond technobabble. It does things with subtle implications and single bits of dialog alone that most modern games which are trying to send a message can't accomplish at all. The shooty shooty, crawly crawly aliens is an excuse for the narrative in the same way that Winston, Julia, and their relationship was in 1984. Half-Life is far from a good example towards your point. It's an example of how FPSes that aspire to have a linear but meaningful and interesting story can work and how stories haven't ruined FPS games, lazy writing and hamfisted methods of portraying messages and themes has.
what's next, the car industry ending drivers? the food industry ending eaters?
Honestly, fuck current game journalism in general. It's bad enough the game industry has been making the push towards unimpressive nickel-and-diming, lying, and other horseshit. Do we really need to listen to a bunch of self-important, self-described "journalists" (many without actual journalism degrees, or degrees in bullshit) telling people off for their hobbies.
[QUOTE=Karmah;45856612]My hobbies are my hobbies because they are fun Activities that aren't fun won't become my hobbies And since I'm 100% sure that the video games I play, I play as a hobby, I can thus conclude that those video games are fun. If he wan'ts people to stop using fun as a descriptor of an engaging hobby that yields pleasure, then why don't we rate games in volume of dopamine released in ml/hr. Oh wait, that would be impractical to measure, and would vary across people just like every other subjective experience. So unless he has a better method of objectively rating a subjective experience, people will continue to argue that something was fun as a reason to try something[/QUOTE] It seems to me like most people here missed the point of the article. Imagine someone saying that films should be judged on artistic merit, and that the 'fun' of watching a movie shouldn't be the sole way we judge films, but with people replying that films are just a hobby and fun should be a good descriptor of a hobby. Sure, if you enjoy games solely as mindless entertainment, the way we watch summer blockbusters or go to sports games, then you can personally evaluate them solely on fun. There's nothing wrong with that. But as an industry and an art form, we're still stuck on the equivalent of Michael Bay explosionfests, and while there's nothing intrinsically wrong with enjoying those, that's (for the most part) all there is to gaming. Let's take your post and replace 'video games' with 'books': [quote]My hobbies are my hobbies because they are fun Activities that aren't fun won't become my hobbies And since I'm 100% sure that the books I read, I read as a hobby, I can thus conclude that those books are fun. If he wan'ts people to stop using fun as a descriptor of an engaging hobby that yields pleasure, then why don't we rate books in volume of dopamine released in ml/hr. Oh wait, that would be impractical to measure, and would vary across people just like every other subjective experience. So unless he has a better method of objectively rating a subjective experience, people will continue to argue that something was fun as a reason to try something[/quote] Doesn't that attitude seem a little overly simplistic when you apply it to books? Evaluating books based on dopamine release? 'War and Peace is a shitty book, I didn't find it fun'? Most people who read do it for fun, but literary criticism is not focused on what books are 'fun' or not. You will not find long book reviews from accredited institutions that boil down to whether or not the book was 'fun' to read. 'Fun' is not a very good metric, it's too subjective, and the elements that make a book or game or movie enjoyable for one person will vary. I read a book on metaphysics and found it very fun to read, I don't think most people would have the same experience. Fun is simply what happens when the characteristics of the work happen to appeal to your interests in a compelling manner. On a mechanical level, it's more useful to talk about whether a game is intuitive, responsive, and bug-free. On a gameplay level, you can talk about whether it's innovative, well-written, well-paced, whether or not it has sufficient variety, lots of still subjective but more objectively identifiable elements. And then on a highest level, you can talk about what the game really accomplishes- something like Serious Sam may be fun because it's a mindless twitch shooter, while something like Spec Ops: The Line may be fun because it's deconstructive about the medium. It's funny to me that right now, people are complaining that a journalist said games should try to be more than just mindless entertainment. Yet when the next politician or media icon comes along to say that games are just mindless (usually violent) entertainment with no artistic value, the same people complaining today will be complaining then. If gaming is ever going to become art, we need to recognize it in terms of art, and considering factors beyond a trite 'was it fun or not?' is where we start.
[QUOTE=Mellowbloom;45871403]what's next, the car industry ending drivers?[/QUOTE] Now that you mention it, when google announced their self-driveable car, someone DID say people weren't meant to drive cars iirc
games were art from their earliest conception. anyone who is going to be a gatekeeper of "art" by confusing "bad art" with "not art" is not worth listening to
[QUOTE=Doom64hunter;45870912]And the image of feminists is also on an all-time low with the people on the other side of the street all because of this very same conflict. What is constantly brought into the spotlight is extremists being at war with each other. You have people on the "SJW" croud comparing gamers to ISIS, and you have the "neckbeards" comparing feminists to Nazis. But sadly, as the conflict goes on, more and more extremists are created. And no, this hasn't been a "great aging period" for gamers as you call it, in its stead, it has been a great aging period for those who call themselves journalists. Never before have we seen childish insults, generalisation and collaborative attempts to demonize a culture on this scale. Even on issues unrelated to this one, like that about the celebrity leak, you see writers use incredibly exaggerated slurs and insults on every second sentence about another culture, generalising it to hell and back. It's an embarrassment to professional journalists everywhere. But yet still this doesn't apply to all of them. Not every one of those journalist is corrupt and not every journalist is bad, just like not every gamer is a gross basement dwelling misogynist pig, and just like not every feminist is a Social Justice Warrior demonizing others for the smallest issues. This particular surge of feminism is still relatively young (even though the concept of it is very old) and is trying to find a spot in the mainstream society, just like the games industry is trying to take hold as well. However, in this conflict, both are constantly being played out against each other, and that blame does not lie on the feminists, nor on the gamers. It lies on the selective group of Indie developers and news sites who are using the two sides of this conflict for their own advantage.[/QUOTE] Reminds me of the case of one of our national newspapers, called "El Mundo", which is basically asskissing the right-winged and corrupt politicians just because it's a biased piece of shit. It's like we still live in the era of Franco and we never had a true "democratic transition". Off-topic, yes, but corrupt and biased journalists can be everywhere.
yes, it's called dopamine and the brain uses it so i agree it is a neurological trick
[QUOTE=catbarf;45871469]-words-[/QUOTE] unfortunately, your words may fall on deaf ears. not all ears, mind you, but some ears most definitely. because ears are attached to brains, and brains of all shapes and sizes have a tendency to prefer to feel righteous fury against something that represents something that they don't like, something we (as people with brains) are all guilty of.
[QUOTE=joes33431;45875105]unfortunately, your words may fall on deaf ears. not all ears, mind you, but some ears most definitely. because ears are attached to brains, and brains of all shapes and sizes have a tendency to prefer to feel righteous fury against something that represents something that they don't like, something we (as people with brains) are all guilty of.[/QUOTE] lol ok then
[QUOTE=joes33431;45875105]unfortunately, your words may fall on deaf ears. not all ears, mind you, but some ears most definitely. because ears are attached to brains, and brains of all shapes and sizes have a tendency to prefer to feel righteous fury against something that represents something that they don't like, something we (as people with brains) are all guilty of.[/QUOTE] where was that sigmalambda post about people lowering the level of discourse again
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.