Category Archives: Games

Computer and Video games, usually horror-related

The Mindset of Sexist Game Developers

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

Normally, when bringing up the topic of sexism in gaming, I’m loathe to actually refer to any of the developers as sexist, as usually these are mistakes committed out of pure ignorance. Nobody wants to think of themselves as sexist or chauvinist, and when addressing these issues, it’s much easier to create a dialogue by not throwing out accusatory words and terms. Yet there are some moments when the behavior of certain developers is so outrageous that it’s officially time to dust off the boots and make them wear it (if you’ll pardon the mangled colloquialism).

Recently Jason Schreier over at Kotaku criticized the character design of Dragon’s Crown Sorceress, saying she looked like she was pulled out of a 14 year-old boy’s doodle-pad. This was not only a commentary on the over-the-top sexualization of the character, but also on the poor quality of the design in general.

In response to the article, Dragon’s Crown artist George Kamitani, president of Vanillaware shared this on his facebook.

Image

Cue, slow-clapping sounds. Very, very tasteful Mr. Kamitani. Very tasteful, indeed.

Obviously by the selection of large, naked dwarf men embracing one another you mean to imply that the only reason anyone would find your busty female character designs in poor taste are that they must be gay! Not only is this a juvenile retort one might actually expect of a 14 year-old but is also slightly homophobic. It’s using homosexuality to belittle another person. Bad form, Mr. Kamitani!

This is exemplary of this boy’s club mindset that’s currently plaguing the game’s industry. This total disregard for quality control and marginalization of anyone who isn’t a slovenly neckbearded guy jacking off over fanservice T&A.

There are many heterosexual gamers who are put off by this creepy objectification of women, mature adults who don’t want to even touch Dragon’s Crown because frankly they don’t want to be seen as endorsing that kind of behavior. Then you have the gay men who are going to be put off by your homophobic implications, Mr. Kamitani, myself included. And then of course, there is the vast majority of female gamers who are going to feel uncomfortable and put-off by this attitude, because it’s the same one they face every time they have to go into a gamestop and are treated like an object by those within, who have to sit there and endure the uncomfortable cat-calls and inappropriate grabs if they decide to cosplay at a convention.

Kamitani tries to point that each of the characters in Dragon’s Crown are hyper-sexualized, but the difference is that when a man undergoes this kind of fetishization, he doesn’t encounter this same kind of treatment. When a man takes his shirt off for a cosplay at a convention, the most he’ll get are some pictures of his cosplay…not women grabbing his junk inappropriately ((Redacted)). He also won’t be called into question for any of his other talents, or ever reduced to solely that of his physical appearance.

Finally, I’d like to add that the character design of some of the female characters of Dragon’s Crown are just all around bland and uninteresting. None of them particularly stand out and merely fade into the background of every other hyper-boobed anime female video game character. I don’t necessarily see a problem with characters that are sexy or titillating, but when fan-service gets in the way of crafting unique and interesting characters that serve to enrich the world you’re building and the story you’re telling, the product is hurt as a whole, and nobody wants to see that.

Don’t Rest Your Head: The Growth – Session 1 Pt. 2 Oliver

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

In Don’t Rest Your Head, as opposed to the opening scene being narrated by the Game Master, this is given to the player. Again, DRYH emphasizes player agency, which is why the rulebook refers to them as protagonists.

Scene #1

For his opening scene, after a few hours at work, trying to distract himself from his thoughts with a book, Oliver found that he wasn’t alone in the junkyard. There was a loud clattering noise when a pile of metal scraps fell, and then louder disturbances as if someone he couldn’t see was running around knocking things over and causing chaos. The calling got louder, screams that only he could hear with the ground melting beneath his feet until everything went black. The black faded to a haze of unfamiliar surroundings and he opened his eyes to find himself in his bedroom with his shirt and hands covered in someone else’s blood. (as written by Bastian)

He stares in shock and confusion at his bloody reflection only to hear footsteps coming up the stairs. He can see red and blue flashing lights out the window of his apartment. Oliver makes a mad dash out the building only to black out once more.

When he comes to, he’s standing outside in utter darkness. The only source of light is an odd street-lamp at the end of the corner, but he has no time to observe it with any detail. The red and blue lights are coming for him again, this time accompanied by a shrieking siren. He books it, hands and feet flying. He can’t outrun this car forever.

Immediately, he begins looking around for a hiding spot. There is something that looks like an alley near him. He dives into the darkness, only to find that the further he goes down the narrower the alley becomes as if the buildings are melting together. He can only get so far before he has to duck down into the darkness and pray for the best.

He’s sweating bullets as he hears the cop car come to a shrieking stop just outside the alley. The flashing lights create a dizzying spectacle against the walls of the alley Oliver’s chosen to hide in. He can see bricks of various textures and ages of decay and styles of architecture haphazardly smashed together, like a child put this city together out of mismatched Lego bricks from different decades. He hears footsteps but can’t see the policemen yet, only four blue flames flickering in the dark.

A hand reaches for him and grabs him by the scruff of his collar jerking him out of the alleyway. For the first time he can look into the face of those chasing him. It’s what appears to be a man only his eyes are empty blank sockets and only flickering blue flames fill them. His skin is oddly textured with little bumps and raised edges and then Oliver realizes the man grabbing him his made of wax.

“Who are you, and what are you doing out alone in the streets?” The wax-man screams.

The other one, who’s wax has dripped over his clothes and of seemingly larger bulk comes to join him. “What my brother means to ask is, are you okay? You’re covered in blood!”

Oliver looks to both of them. Throughout his life he’s become accustomed to passing himself off as someone else, lying about who he actually is to trick other people into believing his own constructed fantasies. He can make anyone think he’s what he wants to be, whether that’s a married man with a wife and kids, or a vicious and powerful tycoon, or someone just charming and suave. He’s none of these things, he’s just Oliver Jr, the broke son of a writer. He immediately begins to think of a yarn to spin for these two gentlemen.

He can’t tell them the truth. It sounds too shady. A man blacking out and waking up with blood on his clothes, blood that is decidedly not his. Anyone would bring him in for questioning, and if he wants to know what happened during those hours of darkness, he’ll need to be a free man to do it, even when faced with such impossible absurdities.

Oliver tells the candle-cops that he’s been in a terrible car accident and that he may need to get to a hospital. There’s a moment of hesitation and he wonders if even such strange creatures could buy such an obvious falsehood. They look back and forth to each other and the moment taxes him. For the first time Oliver feels the pangs of sleep calling for his eyelids, and then the second one grabs his brother’s hands and forces him to release Oliver.

“We gotta get this man to a hospital! Quick!” They grab Oliver and throw him into the back of the police car and race off speeding into the night.

Oliver looks out the windows, seeing the bizarre rooftops and buildings all squished too closely together. This is not the city he left. He can’t tell if he’s dreaming or if he’s simply gone insane. He shrugs his shoulders and lies down in the back of the car, resigning himself to let whatever happens come.

End scene.

Don’t Rest Your Head: The Growth Session 1 Pt. 1 Introduction and Characters

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

Don’t Rest Your Head is an indie tabletop RPG where players take on the role of insomniacs, sleepless men and women who for whatever reason can no longer fall asleep. One night, at a pivotal point in their life, be it mundane or supernatural, they find themselves in a strange city, full of the anachronisms of times collapsed upon each other in a dizzying amalgamation. This is the Mad City, and they have become the Awake, a place where sadness and memories can be purchased, and order is kept by a man with a pocket-watch for his head. The Awake have discovered special powers, talents that tax their sanity and their sleepless bodies; however, they will be stalked and tormented by the vicious nightmares that populate the city, eagerly hunting them down. Every action will bring the Awake one step closer to perilous sleep, or to falling into madness and becoming nightmares themselves.

The game has essentially one goal, in the words of Nancy Thompson, “Don’t. Fall. Asleep.”

Don’t Rest Your Head remains fairly character-driven as the nightmares and the situations the characters find themselves in will be determined by the personal stories and the paths the players set out for their characters. Their special abilities usually come from their own inner struggles and real-world talents. Plot is usually determined based off of the player’s chosen path for their character, example what the character is hoping to achieve in their life, or in the Mad City.

Because of the character-driven nature of the game, as opposed to setting up a natural plot, I merely introduced a new adversary into the mix and built upon the world based off the events of the previous campaign I’d run. In the last game, a young girl Marceline and a runaway gay youth named Ryan were tasked by the Wax King to destroy the factory of flamethrowers run by Officer Tock and Mr. Tack that were being used against is candlewick army. They succeeded, and in exchange he was able to send them home to the slumbering city.

Now, the Wax King has taken over the Mad City, ousting Officer Tock and Mr. Tack from their positions of power and replacing all members of authority with his loyal candlewicks. He has also blotted out the sun with his special machines, for the candle army thrives best in the dark where only they can see. Yet something has stirred since his people have abandoned the sewers, and without the coming of the dawn there is nothing left now to hold it back from spreading its terrible filth across the land.

I didn’t want there to be too much emphasis on the plot and setting as I wanted to leave the direction of the story primarily in the player’s hands; however, I needed very much to create for them a terrible adversary. It needed something to be enigmatic and terrible for them to overcome or succumb to depending upon their chosen stories.

Without further ado, I give you the player-characters I’m going to torment.

Oliver Lennox Jr. played by Bastian, my boyfriend

The son of an experimental genre author most well known for a surreal novel that has achieved moderate cult status. His son however has spent all of his father’s money and now in his 40′s, has taken work guarding a junkyard. Voices in his head calling to his darkest desires and cruelest intentions keep him awake at night. He has a talent for obfuscation, lying to others about who he is, deceiving them into thinking he’s a much more interesting person than what they think. In the Mad City, he dips into the pools of insanity to bring the surreal visions of his father’s book to life in terrible ways. Oliver will either try to suppress his dark urges, or give into them and embrace his newfound power.

Marceline “Mara” Myers played by Owl

Years ago as a child, she found herself wandering around the Mad City, tormented by Mother When, the nightmarish school marm, and her vicious Ladies in Hating relying on her only friend to protect her, a dog named Casey. Marceline survived the encounter and returned to her mother safe and sound. Unfortunately, this happiness was not too last as crime gradually overtook her neighborhood and the gangs grew more violent and more powerful. Casey was the first casualty, and then they came after her mother. Marceline has now joined the rival gang of those responsible for the death of her loved ones and now calls herself Mara. Their war is coming to a bloody conclusion and she’s been losing sleep over it. Normally, Mara has a talent for manipulating others into doing what she wants them to do. Now that she’s awake, she can summon any weapon she needs out of thin air to blast away her enemies.  Her one goal is revenge, to take out the gang who killed her mother.

These characters are smart and resourceful and seemingly well empowered to deal with whatever the Mad City has to throw their way. Perhaps if things were simply as they had been when Ryan and Marceline had first chanced upon it some years ago, it would be enough to survive, but now that the Growth has awakened and the disease has begun to spread these new nightmares, death may be preferable to the horror that is to come.

Oliver, Mara, welcome to the Mad City.

Don’t. Fall. Asleep.

More to come later…

A World I Don’t Want To Leave

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

Years ago, I hated the idea of MMORPGs, or has Yahtzee of the video review series Zero Punctuation calls them muhmorpigguhs. I don’t like spending time around other people, and I’m fairly anti-social by nature. I generally surround myself in silence and seclusion, the walls of which are only ever breached by those few I love and trust enough to breach my sacred private space. However, I think I may finally understand the appeal.

In the last year alone I’ve become more withdrawn than I’ve ever been, hiding inside myself and keeping everything secret and self-contained. I’ve suffered from a lot of self-doubt and many questions about who I am and where I’m going that before I was so sure of. It’s funny that when you’re a kid you think that maybe when you grow up you’ll have everything figured out, but the longer I seem to spend on this earth the more I think we just become even less sure as time goes on.

In all this questioning I’ve felt weak and powerless, and every harsh or critical word uttered against me has finally broken through my apathetic skin. I realize now that those words don’t work like rocks or stones. They’re more like darts, each with their own bits of poison. One or two or three might go unnoticed for a while, but you get an entire clip unloaded into your chest and the poison works faster, taking you down before you’ve even realized what hit you. I’ve come to question nearly everything about myself, always wondering if the vitriol spewed my way was more than just that.

All this insecurity and negative feeling goes away when I tab out of whatever I’m doing and open up a little game I’ve been playing this year: Guild Wars 2. I’m not gonna gush about the game here, even though I’ve come to love it a lot. It has its slew of problems, buggy mechanics, broken AI, areas of bad writing, etc. What is wonderful though is the gorgeous artwork in the environments, the atmospheric sound design and bits of dialogue from the NPCs around you, and what keeps coming back is the promise of being better.

In the real world, I am Dorian Dawes a broke wannabe horror writer who procrastinates too much and has issues finishing his own work. I’m weak and depressed and have lost all sense and semblance of purpose and direction. I have hope that things will get better of course and it is a constant battle that I am not willing to give up just yet, and at the same time I need a respite from being me.

In the world of GW2? I am Helios Perdix, feared Necromancer and a proud member of the race of Asura, an intelligent though diminutive people who have established their dominance throughout the world of Tyria through their mastery of technology and magic. I have a slew of undead minions to do my bidding. I throw down wells of blood to aid my allies in battle, and if the situation grows dire I can change forms; whether it be a plague to curse my enemies or a fearsome Lich towering over the battlefield. The threat of the risen dead and the foul dragons is great but my will to grow in power and knowledge is greater.

It’d be so very easy for me to just abandon living in the real world and become one of those lumps that just sit endlessly playing the same game for forever. It’s not even because the game is that great, even though I do think it to be a great game. It’s because I get the illusion of being something that I’m not. I’m donning the cowl and robes of someone smarter, more charismatic, and more powerful than I am. This character unlike me has a sense of purpose, and he never runs away from a battle. He even has more money than I do, the twat.

Things are simpler there. Help out people around the world by offering your grand powers to aid them in their plights, farm dungeons for loot and gold, buy new armor and weapons to increase your power, and when you’re ready, kill the dragon. Why would anyone not want to live in a world like that? All diseases can be cured by just racing bowls of magic water to the afflicted. It’s full of heroes willing to throw their lives on the line for the good of all. Even the suffering have hope in their eyes for the future.

Today at work, I declined having my face and bio put on the business facebook account. I don’t have anyone local added to my facebook. I don’t want people knowing who I am, being able to find where I live. I’m too afraid to. I’m still reeling from the fact that a gay man was murdered in my hometown a few months back. It’s still very dangerous for me to exist.

Even walking outside lately is an act of bravery, an adventure in itself.

It’s not all negative though, and I think a little bit of escapism is harmless at times. There are days when I force myself to endure things that make me afraid to live, afraid to continue. The first thought I have is what would Helios do? He’s a badass Necromancer, he wouldn’t be afraid. He’s taken down giant spiders, slain dragons, liberated cities and villages, and taken on gods themselves. What is life to him but another adventure waiting for him to find?

I think I can learn a lot from Helios, even if it’s just learning how to live.

Lucius – How It Could Be Better

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

I recently finished playing the debut horror-adventure game from studio Shivers, Lucius, a game where you play the son of the devil a la’ The Omen. I’d been following the development of this game for quite some time and was looking forwards to playing its final release. I was not disappointed, but this was because I went into this with general interest but fairly ho-hum expectations. My interest in trying out this title was based purely on the concept alone of murdering people in the name of your father Satan.

While having its fair share of problems that I’m going to get into later, the game itself is fairly good. It’s a neat little adventure puzzle game that has some frustrating moments and odd bugs but is for the most part enjoyable and relatively unique. It is unfortunately not a great game, but I think it had the potential to be, and if it were to be done again, here’s how it could be:

1. Obtuse Puzzles and Pixel-Hunting

While some didn’t have nearly as much trouble with these as I did, I think it’s an age-old problem with the genre itself that slows down gameplay and creates a less fun and less interesting experience. To be fair, not all of the puzzles in the game are as esoteric as others and some are wonderfully inventive that anyone with a sick enough mind could easily conjure up and some others are absolutely ridiculous. A more consistent hint system would probably have eliminated quite a few of these issues. The game itself is a bit aggressive with its puzzles, offering no alternative solutions but the solution that it provided.

I remember one disappointing bit where you’re expected to barbecue a man handcuffed to a wall with your combustion powers only to find that it wouldn’t give me the spurt needed to be able to destroy him and he had no perceivable health bar unlike previous combustion victims. I then realized that I had to use telekinesis on a gas can over his head to pour gasoline on him and then set him on fire and the kill lost some of its satisfaction as I felt I was just clicking pre-scripted events to make them happen. This is a big issue that I’ll go into later.

The pixel-hunts and tracking down certain items did become a bit of an issue, and while I applaud the studio for encouraging the player to explore the mansion that so much lavish attention to detail, the very real fact is that not every object can be interacted with. After a while it gets really boring opening up drawers and wine cabinets, and the gleeful thrill of smashing wine bottles and plates to the distressed reaction of the house’s inhabitants loses its charm rather quickly. The items that you can carry and actual key items that you need almost blend in with the environment at times and it’s not unheard of for some players to search the same room for quite some time just clicking on everything trying to find what they were looking for. Having more interactive objects and having key items stand out just a bit more would have been appreciated.

2. Character Development and Voice-Acting

The voice-acting in this game ranges from forgettable to downright awful. It’s probably not the worst voice-acting I’ve ever heard in a videogame but it’s without a doubt some of the worst I’ve heard in a while. I get that this is an indie studio and there wasn’t that large of a budget but it really does diminish the enjoyment of the game a bit when drunk and Irish Yvor all but practically demands to know what you’ve done with his Lucky Charms.

That brings me to the issue of the characters themselves. They’re badly written and uninteresting fodder for you to kill but none of them ever actually feel like people. There’s definitely some cool things you can learn about some of the servants by looking into their rooms at one point in the game, but these barely touch the service on them as characters, and next to nothing was done to build any sympathy for your two parental figures.

Nancy, Lucius’s human mother might just be one of the worst characters in the game. Her voice-acting is completely atrocious, and the chore system that she gives you can sometimes override her pre-scripted dialogue resulting in a jarring effect where she can suddenly go from freaking out about the accidents to smiling and telling you she can’t find her earrings. It breaks the immersion and it’s voice-acting that’s difficult to be immersed in already because of just how unbelievably bad it is.

It’s safe to say that the characters are as stiff as their animations. While loving details was poured into the mansion and the gory grand guignol style death scenes, the character animations were shafted. These are a group of expressionless people who have taken up permanent residence in the uncanny valley, as wooden and dull as their backstories and personalities. The lack of any pathos for all the victims to me seems such a wasted opportunity for some interesting storytelling and emotional depth or context for any of the deliciously gory kills, and had their been a prior story during the course of the item grabbing and puzzle solving that led to their murder, I might have appreciated their horrible end just that much more.

Another big item to note is that some of the pre-scripted events involving the characters moving from one place to the next can get hung up, resulting in some frustrating gameplay experiences. There’s a nasty early stealth section where you have to use telekinesis on a light-bulb to burst it causing a character to go investigate so you can sneak past him. Instead he remained still and let all of his dialogue go through before automatically catching you no matter where you were on the map, resulting in an instant game-over.  A rather infamous bad spot involves a maid heading to the bathroom to shower, but gets stuck on a door and ends up just walking in the hall for forever and a day.

If more time had been put into the character animations, writing, dialogue, and voice-acting I’m sure a lot could have been improved. It almost feels as if all the love and enthusiasm went into the dense atmosphere, gory kills, and beautifully rendered mansion and then suddenly the developers remembered that there had to be people walking around for us to kill. They seem almost like an afterthought.

3. Player Freedom

This is probably the biggest and most obvious one, which is why I’m saving it for last. Now, I understand that this was set out to be a unique puzzle-adventure game with all of the puzzles ending in murder, and I think that they definitely succeeded in making a fun little title out of that concept, but when the trailer promised us that we would be stepping into the shoes of Damien er, Lucius the son of the devil, well I think we saw more potential than what was actually promised. This is where a lot of potential for greatness was missed and how the game could easily have been retooled to be a truly great game.

All of the solutions are aggressively linear as pointed out, and it’s not so much as the player committing the murders themselves as Lucius is and you’re just being dragged along for the ride. You can’t create your own strategies or set up your own murders and that’s really disappointing. I like the idea of a murder themed adventure game, but if there would have been alternate solutions to the puzzles and the combining of items in the inventory system I think it would have created a more interesting and rewarding experience and might up the replay value on the game itself.

The game is like being given a whole bunch of toys to play with and then being told you’re only allowed to play with them on its terms. You’re given telekinesis, mind-control, combustion, memory wiping, and if you do all your chores a tricycle. I really would have loved it if I could have re-enacted a famous scene from the Omen by knocking my mother over a balcony with the tricycle, or caused a chandelier to fall on someone’s head by using telekinesis. It does itself a disservice by tempting the player with macabre and fiendish ways to end someone’s life and then leaving no room for player ingenuity or creativity.

I would have liked to see it reward you for devising kills that looked more like an accident and were less obvious as a murder, be it a score rating or perhaps alternate endings. I would like alternate cut-scenes that show people getting murdered in different ways, which leads me back to how simple it would have been to create alternate solutions to the puzzles.

If just a bit more imagination and creativity had went into this, I think Lucius could have been a truly spectacular game, as it is the game is good and I don’t think it could be argued that it is a bad game in any way. It’s simply just a horror puzzle game where you help a little kid murder everyone inside his house. If that concept is enough to sell you, I think you’ll enjoy the game well enough as I did, and you can pick it up at Steam or DRM-free at GOG.com

Journalistic Integrity

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

I don’t lay any claims to being a journalist, at least what it is that I do now could hardly be called journalism. That’s not to say that I don’t have some journalistic credentials in my history, but since it’s not something that I do full time or aspire to do much of in the future I can’t really place that claim up there in my list of titles. I’m all right with that. I don’t even pretend that what I’m doing here on this website is journalism. It’s something called blogging.

Many people in the games “journalism” community really should learn the difference, particularly the people who read these articles. It’s helpful to note what the difference is between a blog and a journalistic article. It’s helpful to know the difference between someone spouting their personal opinion in a public diary entry and an actual article endorsed by a publisher and reviewed by an editor. I think the people who write these things ought to learn the difference between these, and know what should and should not be referenced in the interests of full-disclosure and at least some semblance of non-partiality.

There of course also comes that nasty word of “journalistic integrity.” Well, due to a recent debacle involving a certain European gaming website and one brave man who actually dared to question and criticize some of his colleagues for being a bit well, rather under the table to put it nicely, in one of his own pieces I’ve been considering what this phrase means quite a lot. I’ve had to weigh in on it as again, while I am not a journalist, I am a writer and these things do interest me.

I’ve come to think of journalistic integrity as being a commitment to trustworthiness. It’s ensuring that when people see your name come up underneath an article that they can  trust that the article will be researched, honest, and fair. Note that I didn’t say unbiased because I believe that bias is a personal thing that’s going to get into just about anything, particularly when it comes to entertainment pieces. I think for the most part though there is a reasonable expectation of impartiality that is placed upon the shoulders of each and every journalist, particularly game reviewers. When we as gamers go to your site and read your review and look at the scores, we are trusting that you are being completely and totally honest with us, with no outside influences pressuring you to be more positive in your review than you actually are.

Lately when it comes to games journalism and many big-name gaming news website this isn’t the case. It’s really hard to have that expectation of impartiality when you see huge ads for certain games literally letter-boxing the entire site, a pop-up ad comes up on nearly every page, and every video review is blocked off by a short ad for the game letter-boxing the website. Now I understand that these websites need the ad revenue from the publishers to be able to survive and what better and more relevant ads on a gaming website than for an upcoming game, at the same time I think it’s gotten perhaps a little out of hand, and the cost of survival has been their credibility. Even if the reviewer themselves is being completely honest when he gives Dishonored a near perfect score of 9/10, it’s hard to take his word for it when the review itself was followed by the trailer for the game itself. That level of trust is gone, and there’s a sense of unease about the information you are receiving, and for many who like to check reviews and opinions of others before weighing in on a game to try and make a well-informed expensive purchase it makes the process just that more difficult.

This is something that needs to change in the industry, I think probably more than journalists being braver to give games negative reviews or to call into question seedy PR tactics. Don’t get me wrong, the aforementioned necessity is an urgent one, but I’m wondering if perhaps all of this will still be a moot point if the magazines and sites in question don’t change the way they do their business practices regarding ad revenue. There’s a certain website that I visit often because the panel of personalities it boasts are unique and diverse, and were it not for the personalities in question I would have been a little leery of anything positive said about the recent Dishonored thanks to the big giant banners decorating the site that week, that and I had recently finished the game myself and was in perfect agreement with most of the points made.

Still though there was that mistrust, and while I think mistrust in itself is a good thing as we should always be critical and question everything we read, and evaluate the opinions we’re receiving, a part of the enjoyment of the experience is removed because of it. I don’t like not being able to trust reviewers to give good impartial scores to games I’m interested in buying. I don’t like feeling unnerved because a journalist who’s writing style I’ve come to enjoy inexplicably gives a game a glowing review.

Websites and publishers need to refocus their own ad campaigns. I think the process of shoving things down our throats has allowed this to happen. If you’re going to have the trailer for the game play in front of every video, there doesn’t need to be a giant billboard for it decorating every inch of the website. Have something inoffensive splayed in the corner if you like, don’t shove it into our faces. We have eyes, we will see it, and if your game looks compelling enough we will notice it without you needing to force-feed it down our throats.

This aggressive marketing and the need to fit in good with publishers is killing one of my favorite forms of journalism and significant changes need to be made. I love that image of Geoff Keighley looking dead-eyed in front of a Halo 4 poster surrounded by Mountain Dew and Doritos. It’s one of the most grotesque things I’ve ever witnessed, a macabre representation of evil marketing and bad business practices and the corruption of game journalism. There’s something inherently macabre in it, that it’s almost hard to believe it’s real and not some hideous pop-art satire. Unfortunately it is real and it should be a distress signal to journalists and magazines in the industry. 

I want a big bright billboard with flashing lights to get their attention like their own garish ad campaigns that says: “LOOK AT THIS! THIS IS BAD! DO NOT BECOME THIS!”

I’m hoping that all the buzz surrounding this controversy will cause many journalists and magazines to rethink the way they do business. I hope that they wrinkle their noses in disgust when a PR executive tells them to tweet a certain hashtag to win a PS3. I hope they start to disclose all these seedy practices in their own articles, taking up staunch ethics that will make them juggernauts in their own rights. It’s probably a naive dream, but I like it nonetheless and will continue to hold onto it in the face of dead-eyed doritos and space marine mountain dew.

Insecurity in One’s Opinions Leads to Stupid Shit

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

The above title has solved the conundrum of every logically-fallacious, and unnecessary internet argument revolving around of all things, entertainment. ENTERTAINMENT, for crying out loud! It’s the number one heated discussion, particularly around the nerd-culture I’m so happily steeped in. Don’t believe me? Make a fake youtube account, and under any video game trailer, just type “Call of Duty was better” and don’t even specify which game in the series and watch the fanboyism fly. You don’t even have to like the generic gun-toting, testosterone frat-boy mess that is the series endless heaps of blatant mediocrity, but it’s nice to know that the mere mention of its name is enough to bring out steaming heaps of rage on a series most gamers admit is forgettable and worthless.

Or you could even go the honest route, like I did and proudly declare a game you hated to be absolute shit, and in come the fanboys with their ad hominems and logical fallacies to their favorite franchise’s rescue. First off I need to tell you that there is no need anywhere for you to come rushing to the defense of your favorite band, favorite filmmaker, or video game franchise or even book series. Your efforts are fruitless because I will hate them all and continue hating them no matter what brilliant argument you come up with in defense of said thing. I have something that seems to terrify you, an opinion.

I tried out the thing you love, viewed it at my leisure, gave it a chance, and if I liked it I liked it, and if I hated it, I hated it. There was no malefic, seedy plot here. I didn’t secretly enjoy the thing but refuse to admit it. That’s bullshit.

Unfortunately, in gamer circles there seems to be the paranoid belief that anyone who has anything to say about a game that isn’t glowingly positive or differs from the majority, then obviously there must be some shady foul intentions going’s on. Some terrifying plot from the deep to wreck and slander the good name of your favorite franchise! You see it under game reviews that actually give an honest opinion of the game, “Well so-and-so over at IGN gave this game a 9/10! You must be lying or retarded!” I love that there’s no room for, you must actually have disliked the game. No allowance for a difference of opinion when it comes to a piece of entertainment. You know something that you do in your spare time?

My personal favorite that I’ve gotten recently is under my Resident Evil 6 rant over at my youtube channel, “You must really suck at RE 6, and I think you’re just looking for attention!”

THAT IS IT! That’s it! That’s why I called the game a steaming pile of mediocre drivel! It was the difficulty! Because quicktime events where you have to press a button when the game tells you to are so infinitely challenging! I think the only difficulty in that game is being willing to put yourself through another hour of its own jerking off.

Now of course the latter bit, I’m going to decry a game that you love just because I want your attention! That’s it! It’s a plea for help! Help me! Pay attention to me so I can earn your hatred!

And none of this has anything to do with my opinion of a shit game. No, let’s be honest. You’re an insecure twat-waffle too scared of having someone disagree with you that you have to live in a constant state of denial that any opinion besides yours could be valid. You can’t handle the concept of someone thinking that something you like is shit and have to invent wild outlandish reasons to invalidate their argument.

I hate the Final Fantasy series.

I derive no enjoyment from them whatsoever. I just don’t like it. That doesn’t mean I think every person who screams FFVII’s praises is an idiot, nor do I think they secretly have an underground cult ready to propagate their animu agenda into the world, unless you’re referring to your highschool’s anime club. Realistically, I just didn’t like the series and there’s nothing wrong with that. I have plenty of friends who enjoy Final Fantasy immensely. They don’t call me idiot for disliking it, because they are confident in their own opinions. They don’t need to be surrounded by a bunch of agreeing yesses all the time. We embrace the diversity in our own interests among ourselves.

That’s because we are grownups. We have discussions that don’t end in temper tantrums and “YOU STINK!” or “YER A FAGGOT!” Granted, seeing as myself and many of my friends are gay, the offensive slur would be merely stating the obvious. Oh yeah, someone said I looked like a faggot during my Resident Evil 6 review. I hate to break it to that person now, but if I look gay, it’s probably because I am. I’m also secure enough in my own sexuality where that’s not an insult as again, just stating the obvious.

We’re going to have to talk sometime soon about using homophobic slurs in gamer-cultur, it’s a topic that seems necessary to address on a repeated basis.

Indie Developer Senscape Releases Asylum Teaser

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

When you bring up the genre of horror in gaming, many mainstay titles and franchises come to mind, notably being that of Silent Hill and Resident Evil, and most recently Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and while these are staple titles that are wonderful in their own right, many other gems go under the radar. One of those games is Scratches, created by Agustin Cordes, and in my opinion one of the most terrifying point-and-click games ever made. With its gothic narrative and paranoid atmosphere, I found myself slowly drawn in to its haunting narrative until the shocking and disturbing climax.

Now, Agustin Cordes has founded his own company, Senscape and for the past several years they’ve been developing a title called “Asylum.” I’ve been eagerly watching its development and cringing at every delay, when finally an interactive demo was released on the game’s main website.

With no small amount of glee, I’d like to announce that the wait has been worth it. The abandoned derelict remains of Hanwell Institute, the game’s eerie and foreboding setting provide a terrifying, lonely atmosphere as soon as the player drops into it. There are flickering lights, dust coating the floors and tables. The game’s minimal, ambient soundtrack provides the rest of the chills. While still following the point and click gameplay style of Scratches, I found Asylum to be more immersive than its predecessor. It draws you in before you even have a chance to argue.

Equally interesting is the display of Senscape’s new engine, referred to as Dagon. It’s graphically gorgeous, and it will be interesting to see the kinds of games Senscape puts out in the future.

The demo can be downloaded here at: http://www.facethehorror.com/teaser/

Scratches can be purchased from GOG at:  http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/scratches_directors_cut

 

Rant of the Day: Gaymercon and Whining Breeders

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

“Oh my god! It’s gaymercon! It’s the end of the world! It’s the antichrist! Make it stop!”

In which I question the logic of the heterosexual gaming community for freaking out over an event that doesn’t even apply to them.

Support and learn more about Gaymercon here: http://gaymercon.org/

Heterosexual Cisgendered White Man Thinks We’re Too Politically Correct

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

I’m going to begin with a disclaimer in that I hate saying things like the topic of this article. I hate the idea of discrediting someone else’s opinion on account of privilege, as much as I hate discrediting anyone for any reason; however, logic states that some parties are more eligible to speak on certain subjects than others. There’s nothing biased about that, I think. We have subject matter experts who speak on subjects that they know about more than others frequently–they have taken the time to study, invested experience into their field of study, and may even have more of a personal investment in some matters than other.

That being said, I know virtually nothing else about IGN Editor Colin Moriarty, other than the above topic. The terms “heterosexual cisgendered white man” can become misconstrued as insults with the venomous way they’re spouted by Social Justice bloggers across the blogosphere, but they’re not. They are simply statements of fact, and are not attacks against his character. I have nothing to say about his game reviews or what Colin Moriarty is an expert in, and I’m assuming that is on the subject of video game criticism.

The latter bit is what confuses me most about the opinion piece he posted yesterday at IGN’s website: The Problem with Political Correctness in Video Games, click text for the full article.

If the subtitle beneath the article wasn’t enough to give one pause at its content “Don’t let the few ruin everything for the many” then the photo IGN shared to accompany the piece did.  On one side of the shared picture was an image of an organized pretty pink wardrobe stocked full with clothes and shoes, and a cartoon “RAGE FACE” meme girl complaining about having nothing to wear; and on the other side an image of a stack of XBOX 360 and Playstation 3 games, and a “RAGE FACE” meme guy complaining about having no games to play. Not only are we opening with inaccurate gender stereotyping that depicts women as vain and shallow, but also implicates that women are not gamers themselves. The subtitle also completely alienates minority groups who might have problems in the video game industry, suggesting that because they are the few they have no voice over that of the many. These are both severe issues I have about the piece, and we’re not even into the full article yet.

Now the article opens innocently and objectively enough:

It goes without saying, but everything offends someone. It’s an unavoidable truth. Even the most mundane and inconsequential something can send a person into a tizzy. Of course, the more controversial something gets, the more likely people will be offended by it. And this raises obvious and worthwhile questions. Should someone being offended by something actually matter? Moreover, should we let it affect how we approach our art, our creativity and the outlets by which we experience the unlikely, the outrageous and the utterly fictional?

In short, should we let the fact that “everything offends someone” alter the landscape of gaming, trashing ideas in the process because it upsets someone?

This is not the end of the valid statements actually made in the article, or that there aren’t some thoughts contained within that I don’t agree with, such as this snippet quoted on the article’s page:

 But I say to game developers, make me think. Challenge me. Make me uncomfortable.

Some might argue with me, but I agree with that statement in full. I want to be disturbed, to be shocked, made uncomfortable. I want boundaries to be pushed; however, the cases he brings up to defend his statements I fail to find innovative or boundary-stretching in the slightest.

Moriarty brings up the recent case in which the developer of the upcoming Tomb Raider game, Crystal Dynamics alluded to a segment of the game where the titular (and infamously titillating) protagonist Laura Croft would suffer sexual assault in a play-through sequence. The response to this was rightly controversial, with many snarling behemoths and pigs crawling forth from their basements to say that they’d been wanting a chance to see her sexually assaulted and “raped” for years, while thankfully many more others voiced their outrage at this grotesque example of trivializing sexual violence towards women.

Moriarty acts like this is a bad thing:

The recent episode over Tomb Raider illustrates this point rather vividly. Developer Crystal Dynamics dared to allude to sexual assault in protagonist Lara Croft’s story, something deemed over-the-top and inappropriate in gaming by some commentators. This even coerced one of the game’s producers to backtrack on earlier comments, stating that the game has no undertones of sexual assault even though it clearly does. But why should someone feel bad about including something like this in a game? Have you ever seen an episode of Law & Order: SVU? How about the movie The Accused? Why are games held to an entirely different – and completely hypocritical and unfair – standard?

This is probably the paragraph I have the most amount of problems with in this article. I can’t speak for Law & Order, but I have seen the Accused, and the primary and probably most obvious difference between Jodie Foster’s character and Laura Croft is that never once in that movie is Jodie Foster objectified and reduced to a sexual plaything for male gaze. She’s depicted as a human being with emotions who suffered an outrageous crime that happens far too often to women on a daily basis, and then had to face a society that blames the victims of sexual assault and a justice system that defends the perpetrators before the accusers. Tomb Raider is a series of games who’s screaming success has truthfully had less to do with innovative gameplay and riveting storytelling, and more to do with being able to watch a hot woman’s CGI ass for eight hours.

If Laura Croft had never once been an object of sexual desire, then perhaps sexual assault could be addressed within her storyline, but there still comes into the question of taste and motivation. Why is it compelling to the plot or game for her to be sexually assaulted, or to survive sexual assault? Why are we including this? Are we trying to be innovative for the sake of innovation, shocking and controversial for its own sake? That’s my burning question, why would you? Yes, you can, but a serious and incredibly important topic  such as rape should not be handled lightly, without sensitivity, and for no reason other than you think it will be cool. That is trivializing a traumatic experience that happens to 1 in 4 women, in the United States alone.

There’s a lot of considerations that need to go into delving into a controversial subject such as, “How will my female audience react to this? Am I approaching this in a tasteful manner?”

I think these are all valid criticisms. Moriarty mentions in his articles that many of the offended parties seek to act as a thought police towards art that offends them, and while this is true in some cases, it is an unjustly unfair response to what is in many cases a legitimate beef with the created product. Moreover, in the case of the Tomb Raider sexual assault controversy, I’ve seen more legitimate criticism than the outrageous outrage of social justice bloggers thought-policing methods.

Colin Moriarty, as someone who is a game critic, you above all people should understand the difference between trying to shut down something out of political correctness, and legitimate criticisms. Your response is that basically anyone who doesn’t respond positively to controversial subject matter doesn’t count because the majority finds everything completely acceptable.

Would you feel the same way if it was a male character being sexually assaulted? I’m going to let you answer that question. While I do share the thought that all art needs to continue to push boundaries and explore new and uncharted territories, I don’t believe that sexual assaulting a woman in a video game is a brave and courageous step forwards. I think it’s pitiful. I think it’s pathetic and cheap, a shoddy and tasteless gimmick.

How about this: make a video game about a woman who works in the gaming industry and has to sit there in the room of all her fellow male employees watching a game where another woman is sexually assaulted. She has to look at each of her co-workers, the ones who animated the sequence, the ones who make tasteless jokes about how much they wish they were the one raping the on-screen character. Then the player has to be this woman as she walks home at night, and then lies awake terrified of going into work the next morning, because the threat of being sexually assaulted by one of her co-workers is valid and real.

The problem with that is, for most women in America, that’s not a video game. That is their life.

Colin Moriarty has a right to his opinion, and I respect that right, but I feel that his opinion comes from an ignorant standpoint and he is grossly misinformed.