>>176808
Not to sound arrogant, but I think many of us came here to escape a lack of civility.

>>176811
>>176808
That's what I like about this chan.

4chan moves too fast and is more likely filled with spam, *porn, and trolling bullshit than actual quality anything for me to ever go there again.

*nothing against porn, but I think there's a time and a place for it

>>176797
I did. It was called Kaiserreich. I added a bunch of doughy southerners to the game.

>>176806
Maybe the OP pic?

Question about other people being offended.

Okay, so I'm guessing a lot of you know already about how Plants vs. Zombies had, pre-2009, a Michael Jackson zombie in it, and Popcap was given the option either to pay Jackson's estate when Jackson died, or replace the zombie. They opted to turn him into a disco zombie, instead (which I don't mind, I do think the intro cutscene for him in "Garden Warfare" is hilarious).

Here's the thing, though. When Michael Jackson did the "Thriller" video, he knew he would die at some point. And the okayed-by-Jackson's-estate "Michael Jackson Experience", which came out right after he died, had him as a zombie AND a ghost in it. So it's only okay when they do it, but when another company does it several years before the celeb dies, it's not okay?

You basically answered the question yourself. Popcap just didn't want to pay. No moral dilemma involved.

>>176839
Enh. Fair enough, I always figured it was a "dude, you can't have a reference to a celebrity being dead now that they're actually dead, even if it's a reference to a role of theirs" thing, or being mandated to pay someone because you did a shout-out to them in a game.

>>176838
Copyright law is insane.

>>176867
That it is. Especially the "it's only okay when we do it" kind of thing.

>>176868

Wait, was it a "don't make a Michael Jackson zombie, too soon!" kind of thing, or was it a "we have control over Michael's estate, so we say what his image is lent to, and how much such a thing will cost!" kind of deal?

It sounds more like the second, frankly.

I've never been bothered enough with the race of game characters to be agitated by it. Even if the character was dull I wouldn't blame his race for it. Just the writing and gameplay.

>>176886
Well, from what I know, PvZ made a Michael Jackson zombie reference over a year before he died. So it'd been in the game awhile before they asked Popcap to replace it.

The fact the we just can't be different.

The more people push for cinematic games, the more you will see the comparison.

Back on the feminism thing, sort of, but as a thing that happens in movies, too. A series will introduce the protagonist's daughter, and will feature her regularly as a secondary character, but when it comes time to do a spin-off, it'll focus more on a never-before-seen/seen only once son instead. I don't know if it's sexist, or more just bad/weird writing.

Examples being Layton Brothers Mystery Room (Which isn't about Herschel's brother, it's Adrian Brody with a ponytail, I can't unsee it, which is about Alfendi Layton, Herschel's not-yet-born son, not Flora, his sister.

As a black guy, I can't bring myself to be offended by the lack of representation in the entertainment I consume, mostly because I've come to accept that the people who provide it don't "owe" me anything but a product worth paying for. That and I'm the kind of guy who tries to enjoy things for what they are, not for what they aren't.

>>177105
It's still pretty shitty, though.

>The background to this troubling statistic was the news that according to the ABS, the digital games sector has dramatically fallen in terms of employees. That 8.7 per cent represents 51 people of an overall 581-person industry, down from 151 women out of a 1431-person strong industry (10.5 per cent) in 2007.

http://www.abc.net.au/arts/blog/Daniel-Golding/Who-makes-videogames-Australia-gender-130627/default.htm

austrailia maek gaem?

>>177115
I thought video games were illegal in Australia.

>>177105
>That and I'm the kind of guy who tries to enjoy things for what they are, not for what they aren't.
This is exactly what a white apologist would say.

>>177117
Only when it's not aimed at children.

>>177123
I'm Trinidadian. I don't get salty for games not having Trinidadian protagonists, because its just goddamn impractical.

>>177115
>an overall 581-person industry
Wait, what exactly qualifies for "making" a game? Because in between programming, art direction, sound direction and the like in a nation of 20 million I would imagine the industry was a lot bigger than that.

>Diversity—of gender, of sexuality, of race, of disability
>disability
Unless they're able to make competent gimmicks for them or find a good way to handwave keeping a "normal" playing style I do NOT want a sudden influx of blind/deaf/crippled protagonists for the sake of avoiding "ableism". I've heard enough wank about goddamn prosthetic limbs and neural or limb regeneration medicine being offensive and evil from that particular sector of SJ.

>>177133
Against prosthetic limbs? Really?

>>177138
Yes, because they believed prosthetics and restorative therapy "shamed" (god I fucking hate that word) disabled people by implying they couldn't live a full life without them.

>>177133
>Unless they're able to make competent gimmicks for them or find a good way to handwave keeping a "normal" playing style I do NOT want a sudden influx of blind/deaf/crippled protagonists

>>177141
From the way the previews show it, Phantom Pain seems to be going for the "competent gimmick" approach during that segment, and the "handwaved disability" afterwards. If he doesn't control like a fully-able character, at least they have some sort of idea for how it's going to affect actual gameplay without feeling token. Hopefully Phantom Pain will be a case of how to go about a disabled character the "right" way (they have the disability, but it's implemented in a "fun" or truly interesting way, or dealt with so that it doesn't cripple the gameplay).

What would be the "bad" kind of way to implement disabled characters as opposed to the two I just mentioned, would be an FPS where you play Woozie Mu, or a bunch of developers thinking: "Let's put our protagonist in a wheelchair! That'll show how progressive we are!" but instead of being Bentley they'll move like a tank complete with terrible physics and insurmountable barriers. Truly "disabled" protagonists, as opposed to cases where the disability is dismissed (like Adam Jensen and Blind Kenshi who I don't think people would really even count) are a lot more difficult to do than other "underrepresented" groups, and may even hurt the gameplay tremendously if people just stick them there for the sake of diversity, as opposed to doing something interesting like Pulse. It has a much bigger impact on gameplay than race/sex/orientation, so it's not something to be taken lightly like as a pet cause.

>>177142

Keep in mind this only really applies to games where you gotta do a lot jumping and shit.

If we just had like, a puzzle game where the MC was wheel-chair bound it'd be a lot simpler to pull off.

Payday: The Heist

>>177141
I have no idea if it will be a good portrayal of disability, but judging by how MGS has a history of having segments where the gameplay is super hampered, and how Snake can never properly stand up during that segment in the trailer, I'm pretty sure gameplay will be different for that stage. Of course that could be attributed to waking up from a coma or hospital drugs as much as it could be the hand.

I found some old gaming magazines from '04 that mentioned the treatment of women, and I realized that it's been an issue longer than it's been at the forefront. I just don't know if I liked how they handled it back then.

PSM would complain about certain females' costumes by calling them "slutty", and captioned a pic of three female cosplayers at E3 with "Did someone pay them to show up, or did they sneak in here?" Ugh.

I assume by "offended" you mean as in, something has struck you as being morally unsound without the creators being aware of that moral unsoundness or worse with the full acknowledgement of its unsoundness but framed in such a way to make it seem noble or right?

Cause if not I've been offended by videogame STORY and MECHANICS before purely in the sense that they're bad and unfinished. But I get the feeling that's not what we're discussing.

I don't think I've encountered many because I mostly play platformers and action games and those tend to not have things like blatant misogyny or racism. That's more the realm of shooters of the grim and gritty variety... oh wait no I got one.

God of War 3. Specifically the sex minigame. It was kinda funny and cheeky and risque in the first two games and I get that Aphrodite is kind of... well... goddess of love. But they dwelled on that scene WAAAY too long and at the end I just got the impression they wanted to pander to the 14 year old boy in me... who was honestly more creeped out than anything.

ON THE TOPIC OF RACE REPRESENTATION WEEELLLLL...

OK this is gonna be a bit hard to put into words but... having minorities in your show or game or whatever is not really how you have representation. I know that sounds wrong, but if that's how it was then why should any minority feel underrepresented when we have the Burger King Kids Club?

The point is this: Representation comes from people exploring a different culture or a different perspective and knowing when doing so will improve the narrative of your work or add a little extra fluff or detail that'll make it something unique. And it SHOULD come from a legitimate drive or spark of creativity. It should come from the writer asking himself "What would this character be like if he was an urban black youth?" or "What if this person was a black man who grew up in a rich-white community?" or even "What if this person was a Chinese immigrant?". All of these questions should or could be things explored by authors or creators in the process of creating their characters.

This may sound callous but, Representation is not an obligation. It's a service. A service to people who don't get seen enough in media or by the general public because their population simply has a smaller voice compared to the majority, so it's a nice and good deed to perform it. But it's not something you should feel like needs to be done. If you're a writer for a game or a movie or whatever and you're happy with this character as is and you feel adding or changing details wouldn't really suit how you feel his arc or narrative will progress then don't feel like you HAVE to change him to fill some invisible representation quota. You aren't setting the country back 10 years to the age of segregation because you wound up writing a story about white people. Believe me, when writers feel they're FORCED to change something not to improve narrative coherency or character dynamics and make what feels like an aesthetic change (from their perspective) tends to lead to bad results. Feeling like you need "The Black Guy" or "The Asian guy" rather than thinking about what a Black person in America deals with or what an Asian person might go through in life is going to lead to really cache stereotypes, really bland characters or KINDA RACIST characters. At best you'll be given a pat on the back for trying and at worst you'll be lambasted by everyone for your terrible portrayal.

Representation SHOULD involve research, understanding, empathy and a clear artistic vision before you undertake it. And I totally understand if a writer simply isn't able to do that at this time. Maybe his story just doesn't call for that kind of thing? Or maybe he feels if he tries to insert a trans or genderqueer character he'll just come off as insensitive? Again: I don't judge less an Author remove all doubt about his preconceptions. Not everyone feels they need to study foreign cultures or other people's self-made lifestyle in order to tell their story and that's fine. And sometimes people will use "problematic" set pieces, articles or language and again, that's fine.

As long as nobody drags out the point to when it stops being civil or informative or if one or the other side devolves into screaming man-children and the topic basically has to become taboo entirely to prevent a scene from being made. If an Author or writer accepts his goof or misuse with a simple apology then no harm's done, as any hurtful action from others that might result from that accident could easily have resulted anyway or been triggered by something else. We wouldn't know, because illogical people can't really be predicted.

WITH ALL THAT SAID the issue I think most people have here is that there are games with huge fucking dev teams. 40,000+ people all programming away at a multi-billion dollar release title, with a crack team of developers, artists, writers, etc. And a whole EMPIRE BUSINESS CONGLOMERATE BACKING THEM with the potential to make any game that they want and they keep making shit that looks the same.

This is the exact same argument people have been making for eons. Only now they're complaining about the lack of black people or transgendered persons instead of the lack of well... anything original. The reason why this is now is the same as why it was back then, and it was as dumb then as it is now. These are games meant to pander to the most blanket idea of what the focus groups and share holders THINK their primary demographic is.

And it IS white dudes in their mid teens to early 30's. Ergo they make protagonists that THEY can relate to as well as mechanics THEY'RE familiar with. And plots that pander to THEIR sensibilities. Yes there are other demographics out there. Yes they can always attempt to attract NEW demographics. Yes the fact they've tried and failed isn't a good excuse to give up. But at this point? I feel like bitching about the lack of good PoC or QUILTBAG protagonists in games is a lot like the bitching about sameness in media in general, just with a new coat of paint. How do we fix this? I dunno. But bitching seems to have a 33/33/34 trackrecord of improving slightly, doing nothing, and making the problem worse.

NOW AS FOR "BLANKET" protagonists? IE: the ones with character creation options but conveniently lack certain tones of skin? Well... I hope that's because they just didn't have enough memory... I hope.

I'm coming to feel like the entire "offended" discussion is a red herring

For example, someone on /tg/ was posting snuff gifs. Gifs taken from recordings of actual people being shot/electrocuted/run over. None of them had visible blood or gore, and they were actually relevant to the thread topic, i.e. he was trying to participate.

Several people said hey, that's not okay. And the assumption by all those who disagreed is that the people who said "hey don't post that stuff" were offended. That they were saying "don't do this because it causes me distress. You are causing me to experience negative emotions."

It took me a damn long time communicate that I, for one, was not distressed or upset. That wasn't the issue here. The issue here is that they were being disrespectful (in that case, of the person who died). Same thing goes for unironic sexism or racism- it's not about whether it causes me emotional distress, it's about the other person failing to respect a significant portion of the human race as people.

>>185023
That actually makes me wonder if the problem isn't the representation so much as its' the underlying thematic values.

In the latest Call of Duty, for example, you play white guys assaulting a Latin American Army that is lead by a White Guy who formerly worked for the Ghosts but now has been "brainwashed" (uh it seems more like he made a rational decision to switch sides, even if it was for a dumb reason). America has become this war-torn wasteland, essentially by their own folly of putting an orbital bombardment system in space (wasn't there a Justice League episode on that?), while Latin America has become a thriving center of culture and apparent democracy. They are churning out weapons, yeah, but only because they've become the new economic super power. Meanwhile, the "bestest" stealth squad ever, the Ghosts, do most of their work by indiscriminately killing anyone who gets in their way and causing disaster where ever they go, for no really adequately explored reason. There is one level that stands out in my mind, an infiltration into a corporate skyscraper over a thumping dance festival below. The level ends with the Ghosts literally dropping the skyscraper on the civilians below as they parachute off it for extraction. While I wouldn't describe myself as "offended" per se, this kind of narrative is hugely unappealing for myself personally. I think Yahtzee even went so far as to count the number of non-white people in the game with Names, because you can literally do it with one hand. In that case, even if there is nothing offensive about the portrayal of the individuals, what ends up being offensive is the ideological underpinnings of the entire narrative CoD hasn't really had a decent narrative since MW2, each successive game foregoing the somewhat more respectful narrative the MW games had. That's IMHO though.

Far Cry 3 can actually be kind of read as a "Heart of Darkness" dark satire of the whole "White Savior Complex" as well, and a lot of the odder elements of the game are actually meant to be a kind of lampoon on it. But as one Gamasutra article pointed out, the satire is largely lost when most gamers simply miss the points and just see a fairly standard shooter.

>>185060
Far Cry: Blood Dragon is superior.

>>185060
Eh, I dont think you can really blame gamers for missing the point in a giant ass sandbox.
They probably gave up on the plot as soon a Vaas dropped out and/or spent all their time sidequesting and hunting before getting bored with it and moving on to the next game.
>>185062
True but I dont think that has a point here.
Well, maybe that (to me) ballsy(yet hilarious) sex scene got to some.
(and yes I do think the game industry has less balls then Hot Shots! When it comes to sex atlest)

>>177141
Seeing as this is the part where Big Boss becomes a villain, I'm sure there are going to be swarms of SJ hellions that are going to make the connection that both parts of MGSV are saying BB is Evil/Willing to do terrible things because he became even more mutilated.

>>185501
They're too busy being hung up on Quiet's design, even though there's a lot of stuff in the game that is potentially far more offensive (Paz ryona, child soldiers, fanboys whiteknighting Big Boss, etc.).

>>185505
>child soldiers
See, the game knows that's wrong.

Quiet's design is without a certain amount or irony.

>>185553
To be fair the man did say the same of Snake. And it's not like they haven't done similar, arguably worse things with previous characters like EVA and the BB unit. People didn't literally threaten to boycott the game and send Kojima hateful messages over them.

I got offended by the Drebin telling the B&B's backstories in MGS4

In the sense that it offended my intelligence how idiotic that crap was. Not only that's the worst kind of exposition, the writing was so abysmal I have a hard time bellieving it wasn't on purpose. Which leads to making the matter of WHY would Kojima allow such stupid shit.

>>186399
Seriously it was this close to being self-parodical. I was half expecting a set of bongos playing in the background like Drebin was one of those bongo loving New Age poets or something.

>>186399
Kojima doesn't give two shits about MGS, he just keeps getting brought back to make new ones because they are popular.

The only times I am legitimately offended at a videogame is when the developer obviously half-assed it, especially when the games belong to a franchise that usually delivers quality. Other than that, I don't really care.

Last game that gave me that reaction Was Ninja Gaiden Yaiba. Part 3 wasn't stellar by any means (it hepls my opinion that I played Razor's Edge, which I understand is a bit better than vanilla 3), but goddamn, Yaiba was putrid.

The post-credits screen from Beyond: Two Souls says "For Maria and Mercedes. From the Infraworld, I know you are watching me." The Infraworld is Cage's name for his fictional concept of the afterlife.

The whole thing is potentially offensive with advocating suicide as a means of "coping" with the deaths of loved ones, but that last message REALLY rubbed me the wrong way.

Art can't go anywhere if it's not offensive once in a while.

When games I don't like get big sales and games I like don't. It offends me.

>>186805
Well, games you don't like selling well generally means more of that game coming out and worse making game you used to like more like the game you don't.

>>186807
Has Anyone Really Been Far Even as Decided to Use Even Go Want to do Look More Like?

>>186808
Let me try cutting that run-on down to be more comprehensive.

Popular shit gets copied. Sometimes even into other series that want a piece of the pie. That tends to suck for fans of those series, especially when new fans come in and tell them how much "better" the games are now that they're like every other mimic.