I'll start things off.
This is old shit, but if you remember when Gamergate was at its height, a lot of them complained about "walking simulators," games like Gone Home, Dear Esther, etc. with very little in the way of typical gameplay mechanics like challenges that have to be overcome through skill or failure states. Gamergate dipshits seized on a white-hot, psychopathic hatred of these games, spinning the lack of skill required into bizarre conspiracy theories about game journalists promoting these as a plot by non-gamers to pave the way for the infiltration of gaming by "anti-gamers." Also because a lot of these games are about minorities, who of course GG assholes considered by default to not be "real gamers."
The thing is, I don't like walking simulators either. I've only played a few, but the only one I even kind of enjoyed was The Beginner's Guide (and even then, I don't think I would've missed out on much if I'd watched a longplay instead). The medium is the message, as the old saying goes, and the ability to engage through interaction with the mechanics is what sets games apart from other media. Walking simulators (and visual novels, but that's a different gripe) don't take advantage of this in a way that gets me invested. To me, a walking simulator feels like the equivalent of a movie that consists solely of a guy sitting in a chair and reading a story out loud.
The difference between me and a GG dipshit, of course, is that my dislike of the genre doesn't hinge on ridiculous conspiracy theories or hatred of minorities, and also that rather than wage some crusade to kick walking sims out of the gaming club, I just don't play them. In any case, though, the association is strong enough that it's something I tend to avoid bringing up.
how bill gates, more than possibly any other single individual, has oceans of blood on his hands from his actions on covid vaccines, because if you mention gates in the same breath as vaccines people will mentally lump you in with the (((mind-control-microsoft-vaccine-microchip))) crowd
and speaking of bill gates, the obvious one of mentioning that the ruling class is full of paedophiles who use their wealth and power and connections to avoid any real consequences
also: i really like walking simulators
Libs have trouble distinguishing between communists and fascists, but communists actually hate fascists way more than libs do. It’s the liberals, after all, who constantly work with fascists—city councils funding the police or Biden funding the military, for example. Still, two liberals I know have mentioned that I sound like a Q cultist because I’m aware of Epstein. I think it’s a psychological defense for them. “Everyone who disagrees with me is either insane or a Russian puppet.”
Pretty sure there's evidence the CIA pushed conspiracy theorists to discredit people reporting on actual government conspiracies.
Bill Gates also caused thousands of deaths by starvation in Africa by "investing" in agriculture. The result was that starvation increased by 30% in countries because they had to export foodstuffs to pay down loans.
What's funny is the most popular games for kids are the online equivalent of dicking around in your back yard with friends (and an infinite lego budget).
There's so much to this problem. Kids aren't allowed to be unsupervised outdoors anymore. If a bunch of eight year olds are walking around someone's liable to call the police. There are fewer and fewer places where it's acceptable to just be outdoors. It compounds if you're the wrong color or income bracket. Car bound cities make it difficult to travel too and from places for recreation.
Remember earlier this week where there was an article about parents who don't give their kids smartphones? I feel like this is a similar line of thinking. Kids absolutely should spend less time in front of screens and especially exposed to modern day tech-companies. However unless this is done as a collective decision, you are more than likely just going to run into a dead end trying to bruteforce it, since the kids don't want to be outside, since outside is fucking hellish if you don't live somewhere with decent outdoor options (i.e. not in an American-style suburb).
Atomization and commodification of relationships under capitalism has resulted in some serious deformations to how most people date and find love, but talking about it is a minefield of being accused of being an incel more often than not.
As much as I am favour of therapy for anyone who finds any use from it whatsoever, this is a criticism I often level at therapy and then I get told off for it. I don't think I could find any solace in talking to a person who is there for the paycheck, possibly solely by necessity.
If we actually did fully atomize and commodfy things it might be better.
Plenty of chuds and incells would chill out if they could do some Japanese style activities I think.
"humanity has done X behaviour that is inherent to our fundamentally fallen lizard moral nature since cavemen days"
Source: :brainworms:
Dying of diseases caused by drinking the same water that one bathes and poops in is also natural.
So is dying from ectopic pregnancies.
For real, appeal to naturalism is pure ideology. :zizek:
Could you elaborate on this and name some specifics, please? I'm interested to hear your thoughts.
TFA was entertaining when it came out, but it poisoned the well and set the trilogy up for complete failure. It made it so everything had to be steeped in the same aesthetics and political landscape as the originals. "Smol beans vs big empire" had already been done, so filmmakers following TFA had the choice to continue rehashing the old trilogy or trying to invert it.
I strongly disliked The Last Jedi. Sure, Rise of Skywalker managed to be even worse, but almost everyone accepts dunking on that one. It's very hard to criticize the film without being associated with "PURPLE HAIR BAD" :frothingfash: or for that matter unintentionally inviting :frothingfash: to side with me for the wrong reasons that I do not share.
I hate new Star War for the same reason I hate Marvel movies. They're soulless cash grabs that barely even try to hide what they are.
Lucasfilms was a business, obviously, but George brought a really dorky charm to it, and I loved their video games.
It was always very clear that George Lucas and all of the major players in his company read alot. Maybe they didn't always apply it well, but the fact was that they read actual non-school assigned books and really enjoyed them, and brought that enjoyment to the creative process. If I were to guess, no one at Disney has read anything non-work related in years.
See also all post-Ashman/Menken Disney films. The whole renaissance was heavily LGBT coded, from BatB and its AIDS metaphor to Mulan and it's Trans coding.
Also, it's clear George Lucas was making the kinds of films he wanted to make, whereas Disney is made up of arrogant MBAs who think they can market research their way into good art.
It's quite annoying, especially since it became clear that Lucas can in fact tell a story if he's managed by a team and that with even mediocre dialogue and pacing the Prequel setting can be made really gripping.
Hot take: The prequel trilogy is one of the best stories ever describing how someone can sink into fascism.
I have a deeply held belief that Attack of the Clones is one of the best ideas anyone has ever had for a movie, ever. It's just also extremely poorly executed. It manages to be a noir mystery, political thriller, epic romance, action film, and war movie all at the same time. If it had just had better dialogue/acting the film would be enshrined in every film nerd's personal Hall of Fame.
I love the idea of AotC, but the actual film is so bad that I can't stomach rewatching it any more. These days if I sit down to watch the Star Wars movies all I watch are III through VI. And I'd say I only like half of VI.
PURPLE HAIR BAD
lmao I'll take the chance to say I disliked Holdo lol, I was very annoyed when people were saying that they liked Holdo from the getgo, when she's obviously meant to be interpreted as intransigent otherwise there's no way to even be invested in the B plot. like I dunno, always got the feeling they were lying when they claimed Holdo was a cool at introduction.
Plus the character in general was weak,she was transparent fodder, had no reason to not explain Oscar Isaac (forgot the character name lol) her plan, or to the rest of the crew for that matter since their lives were at literal stake. If you squint your eyes maybe you could interpret her character as sparing everyone else from making the truly terrible decision of who gets to sacrifice themselves for the rest to escape and who doesn't and that she was ready to sacrifice herself as well to carry that burden, but I fear I'm reading too much into Holdo and also the movie really wastes no time mourning dead people for it to have any impact. I dunno, annoying character, chuds hate her too because she has pink hair so she's SJW but kamikaze scene is nuts and easily the best part of the movie
The purple hair was about the best part about her by comparison to the "act shifty and demand total obedience and keep secrets for pointlessly petty reasons just to dunk on the mysteriously dudebroified guy that was a lot more likeable in the previous film" part.
Also, like so many Bad Robot/Secret Hideout films, it cracks open an appropriated setting's lore and leaves no choice but "ignore the exploit later so it doesn't become the new standard in the setting." Yes, the hyperspace ramming was neat looking, but there is no viable reason why it doesn't then become standard operating procedure for the Nu Rebels to do that to the Nu Empire whenever they can and not even bothering with other weapons.
Eh, Last Jedi had a few good scenes that deliver the slop i expect from a Star War, especially the key action scenes like the fight in the throne room, the destruction of the First Order's fleet or the battle on Krait. I enjoyed those parts. What was inexcusable was the tonal whiplash where the movie could never decide if it wanted to be Empire Strikes Back or Space Balls. Just do one or the other. Screwball comedy and grimdark down't work together. Or the pacing issues, ffs why have the entire casino arc, that shit was awful. Or the totally nonsensical plot, or the libshit understanding of how revolution works ("we need to run away and survive to inspire the next generation of rebels", no you idiots, you run to save your ass and/or to fight another day, inspiring people is perfectly possible when you've died as a martyr for the cause you spineless liberals).
I liked the throne room fight at first glance until someone pointed out, and I couldn't unsee, the fact that the actual fight choreography was extremely sloppy. There was no weapon on weapon contact (which was a staple of Star Wars lightsaber fights until that point) and some of the stuntmen in the funny robes visibly fall over without getting hit or stop an attack that Daisy Ridley simply didn't notice or do anything about. It was a far fry from prequel choreography there, or even original trilogy.
fair points, i only saw Last Jedi once when it came out and didn't notice that
I think Disney is evil, evil to its core, more evil than the average capitalist institution, for reasons. Just different reasons than the chuds have.
It has an insidious near-monopoly on a rather powerful and influential piece of real estate: the dreams and imaginations of children exposed to their products.
also ya know, controls most of the worlds copyright laws, as well as having a shitload of people watch their news coverage. They are truly a fucking media behemoth worthy of an anti-trust case, but I highly doubt I will live to see that.
I hate the new Trek shows, but for the opposite reason chuds do. Literally all I ever wanted from a reboot of the shows was TNG or DS9 but far more explicitly queer, that's it. I really don't think that was a big ask but instead we got liberalism in space wearing the corpse of something vaguely familiar :rage-cry:
DISC/PIC have so much edginess and so much gore and suffering and torture and melodrama all in a misguided attempt to be "prestige TV" in a way that most Trek fans never asked for and don't want, yet even with NuTrek's attempts at performative wokeness bits, done with all the grace of clumsy uncreative cichet white men running the shows, TNG and especially DS9 were more queer in a more sincere way, and could have been moreso if Berman fucked off to the Douche Dimension and stayed there.
The violence is both brutal and over the top. I saw a clip from Picard Season 2 where Seven of Nine and another character overpower a guy and slowly force a knife into his throat as he struggles back. Then there's the elf ninja guy whose main character trait seems to be cutting people's heads off with a katana.
Why is it so violent?????
Because Kurtzman is a rich privileged failson that is bored by anything short of spectacles of suffering, like the edgelord banker-sons that took Game of Thrones and forced in more rape and misogynistic spectacles (including turning several female leaders into prostitutes or rape victims) than were in the books to begin with.
If you've ever read Kurtzman's commentary about why he wanted the NuMummy project so badly, it was because of his belief that "everyone is a monster inside" which may sound pseudo-deep but I think it's more of a "a thief believes everyone is a thief" self-tell.
It's wild that the guy is still working after TASM2 and the Dark Universe.
Don't worry though, a character is going to say something
stupid and cheesyemotional and profound after the shooty murder scenes so it's actually all very positive and life-affirmingI just hate that they make everything pointlessly sad and edgy and give it a progressive veneer by saying it's actually a depiction of PTSD and trauma or whatever
Picard's mom committed suicide when he was little because there's no apparently no mental health services in the Federation, Troi and Riker's child died from a preventable disease, Seven of Nine became Punisher after DS9, Data comes back just so he can be euthanised, Q comes back because he's sad that he's dying
Given their track record with returning characters so far I assume at least half of the returning TNG cast is going to die in Season 3
Kurtzman and most of his era's fellow failsons contaminate and irradiate franchise after franchise and they keep getting paid to do it again no matter how much the trash they push bombs or outright collapses previous viable franchies. Few things have Jokerfied me more than that fact. :jokerfied:
Western ideas of justice are purely punitive. It's hard to shake those brainworms. We have been taught a basic social contract from every source of media that "when somebody does bad thing, it's okay to dehumanize them completely and all protections are gone."
I don't understand people being against options in games. What's so incredibly hurtful to you about me, who sucks at games, being able to enjoy the same story as you? You're still able to play exactly the same game on the same difficulty, but now I can enjoy it too, and wanting to enjoy the same thing as you is a thing you want to complain about??? If a sizeable number of people wanted a COD 3rd person mode or a GTA less-crime mode.. what would be wrong with that? If a bunch of people would enjoy it more, those would be a cool options.
While I sort of agree on the drugs thing, I'd also urge some minor empathy for such people. I'm not sure anybody gets into hard drugs because their life is going swell and totally normally and happily, no matter the immediate circumstance.
You’re still able to play exactly the same game on the same difficulty, but now I can enjoy it too, and wanting to enjoy the same thing as you is a thing you want to complain about???
Yes. It's subculture devolution. Please see here for an explanation: https://devonzuegel.com/post/geeks-mops-and-sociopaths-in-subculture-evolution
as soon as subcultures start getting really interesting, they get invaded by muggles, who ruin them.
Fanatics want to share their obsession, and mops initially validate it for them too. However, as mop numbers grow, they become a headache. Fanatics do all the organizational work, initially just on behalf of geeks: out of generosity, and to enjoy a geeky subsociety. They put on events, build websites, tape up publicity fliers, and deal with accountants. Mops just passively soak up the good stuff.4 You may even have to push them around the floor; they have to be led to the drink. At best you can charge them admission or a subscription fee, but they’ll inevitably argue that this is wrong because capitalism is evil, and also because they forgot their wallet.
Mops also dilute the culture. The New Thing, although attractive, is more intense and weird and complicated than mops would prefer. Their favorite songs are the ones that are least the New Thing, and more like other, popular things. Some creators oblige with less radical, friendlier, simpler creations.
This is some freaky messed up stuff, honestly. Subcultures can and do exist very healthily without being solely composed of CREATORS and FANATICS. I do not understand this bizarre based-on-nothing philosophy. Anyone who thinks people who want to casually enjoy stuff are MOPS who RUIN ALL SUBCULTURES is very misguided.
Sure, casually enjoy whatever you want. But when what you want is a watered-down version of what fanatics want, yes that is subculture devolution and the article hits the point head-on.
But I don't want a watered-down version of anything. I want a version with a completely optional, easy to implement mode that means I can actually enjoy it at all in the first place, and thus be a FANATIC about everything else about it.
Imagine if there was a vocal group of people demanding that COD had a third person mode
if it did people would be fucking freaks about it like all the pubg losers who piss and moan about third-person.
If people are allowed to like FPS games or fighting games, why can’t they like hard games? I don’t care if devs decide to add it, but getting mad that people want to gatekeep the difficulty is silly. Treat it as a subgenre. Imagine if there was a vocal group of people demanding that COD had a third person mode or if GTA had less crime. Makes no sense.
Counterpoint: Game developers have budgets and deadlines and every feature implemented comes at an opportunity cost. Consider the video The Slightly Odd Way Bullets Work In FPS Games, which is just one subsystem that would be complicated by being able to toggle between first person and third person.
I think the vikings are super interesting and certain parts of Norse culture are really beautiful. This obviously carries some baggage with people on the left given the extent to which Norse history/iconography have been used by nazis to spread their white nationalist fantasy about ancient northern Europeans. Also the vikings themselves were generally horrible so its not hard to see why it raises red flags for lots of people.
Dealing with it is fairly simple since I obviously dont go around posting nazi memes lol. If something viking related I post does make someone uncomfortable Ill talk to them about it, and, if need be, Ill delete it.
As a Dane, it's so fucking weird to see what is basically my country's biggest Marketing gimmick be used by weird Americans to signal to each other that they are proper Ubermensch. Like in Denmark, Vikings are mostly used to sell stuff, like butter, or ground pork, or lifeboats.
Whoa hey dont sell us Americans short here. We also use the vikings to sell stuff. Selling stuff is the one thing, besides being extremely racist and violent, that America does
Yeah, but I think it's kind of a different idea here. In Denmark, Vikings aren't used to sell stuff based on supposed "masculine values" or anything like that. Originally we used them to cope with the fact that the British had burned most of Copenhagen to the ground, and taken our Navy, since we decided to side with Napoleon, rather than the coalitions against him. So in Denmark, vikings have historically been used to reminice about a long lost past when we actually mattered and had conquered England specifically. But the violence and racism / nationalism wasn't really empathized, at least from what I remember.
that's interesting to consider. in the US, so much of what passes for identity and culture comes from whatever tenuous or imagined connection white people have with a perceived immigrant past. aside from the racial component, it's like a reaction to knowledge that All American™️ culture is a construct of a corporate marketing campaign that succeeded mixed with the standard pastiche of over consumption, which can be hard to parse out. some people here cling really hard to a culture and place they are completely disconnected from and celebrate it in ways that i'm sure would be nonsensical to its inhabitants, even though it's only been 3-5 generation since they left.
it's hard to explain being inside of it in a way that does it justice, so it's helpful to see what these symbols and ideas mean or even how they are used in their places of origin since modernity.
Vikings are mostly used to sell stuff
OK
ground pork
I see what you did there, Dane. I cannot seem to find the emoticon for setting your flag on fire, so just pretend it's :here:.
:rat-salute: I mostly described as such since I had no idea what the english translation of this particular product name would be. It's ground pork liver, and pretty much every danish kid grew up eating it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liver_p%C3%A2t%C3%A9
You don't find rubbing pork products in people's faces with a Viking logo to be just a teensy bit Islamophobic?
I mean, Denmark is wildly islamophobic, but for entirely different reasons than the products we consume. Pretty sure the viking shit has been used for a lot longer than we have had any significant number of muslims living here, since the viking-revival really began in 1870 after we got our shit shoved in for about hundred years at that point.
I don't know what to tell you sometimes people advertise pork products
The medium is the message, as the old saying goes, and the ability to engage through interaction with the mechanics is what sets games apart from other media. Walking simulators (and visual novels, but that’s a different gripe) don’t take advantage of this in a way that gets me invested.
That's definitely the risk involved in making walking simulators, you might make a bad one where interactivity is not an important part of the experience. However, I would argue that what sets good walking simulators apart from bad ones is that they actually do have meaningful interactivity. Gone Home is a good walking sim, because the experience of freely rifling through the belongings of your family is important to the overall story. It's not like it's a linear story, you piece together the lives and personalities and experiences of the characters at your own pace, partly through your own inferences based on the things you find lying around. I'd contrast this with Dear Esther, which is a bad walking sim, because the interactivity changes nothing about the experience. The story is delivered nonlinearly, but not in any coherent way based on your own decisions. IIRC the way the story is delivered to you literally by RNG, making your 'decisions' amount to nothing more than what drab environments you happen to stumble across while being fed random disembodied voicelines.
Your experience playing Gone Home and my experience playing Gone Home would probably be meaningfully different in one way or another. Your experience playing Dear Esther and my experience playing Dear Esther, on the other hand, would not be. That's the fundamental difference between the games, in my opinion.
Taxation is coercive, alienating, and also lazy. I almost never bring up that opinion because for a lot of chuds, that's their primary political stance. I sometimes use it as a wedge though, like I might bring up to folks that most people in Cuba and the DPRK pay nothing in taxes. The DPRK only has a wealth tax and I believe in Cuba you're only taxed if you operate or work for a private business.
I like norse mythology and Roman history. It's interesting is all.
This one is going to sound strange, but it's just my experience out in the wild. Maybe it's just where I live. Expressing a negative opinion of Elon Musk offline is like a slot machine. It's difficult to predict how the other person will react, because Musk among the general population has a very confused reputation. He doesn't easily slot into the culture war, so having a negative opinion of him could easily come across as right wing or very liberal. I've been mistaken for a chud a few times because I hate Teslas and don't believe they do anything to have a positive environmental impact. That's immediately digested as me believing climate change isn't real, both by chuds and liberals. He's an epic liberal science guy to libs and he's an epic business free speech guy to chuds, or he's vice-versa if they don't like him. He's like a kaleidoscope if you lack class consciousness.
I actually do like walking simulators a lot. Does Yume Nikki count? I'm also really into LSD: Dream Emulator. I like games that give you a very strange environment to explore. Being in control of the camera and where you walk is a way of interacting and can be done immersively. The games often go further than that by encouraging you to think about what you're being shown. You put together the context of the game through clues handed out to you. Walking simulators are often kinda mysterious or surreal, so yeah there's a level of interaction there where you gotta figure out what's even going on.
I ride motorcycles and play metal music, two communities full to the brim with reactionary boomers and zoomer/millennial libs and conservatives.
Edit: oh yeah, I also like lifting weights and martial arts, which are full of many of the same people. I feel like it's hard to hang around in hyper masculine spaces and be a leftist.
i feel like metal has a relatively decent proportion of comrades tho? plenty of chuds and libs too, but that's expected
Hmmmmmmm in my experience it depends on what subgenre you're into. You'd be hard pressed to find many leftists listening to boomer metal, but I grew up on it and still listen to it, so there must be some more.
Crossover genres like hardcore and grindcore maybe, because punk is way more openly left wing (though not entirely). Maybe Desert/ Stoner too, but at this point I'm just guessing.
gf (who is a nu metal fan) says that nu metal has a decent number of leftists, industrial too
That doesn't surprise me, actually. I was going to say nü metal because of the subject matter, like Left Behind by Slipknot is about a break-up as far as I can tell, whereas Agent Orange by Sodom is about... Agent orange, I guess? IDRK, I can't decipher the lyrics
The problem with UFOs is that the ammount of energy or mass required to make them work couldn't be hidden. It is a near certainty aliens exist it is just that we have no reason to think they are any less dumb than we are.
I actually really like walking simulators. A lot of them are like you say tho, not really taking advantage of the medium, like everyone’s gone to the rapture comes to mind.
But I liked the beginners guide, and what remains of Edith finch, Soma and some others. I think there’s something to be said for inhabiting the character and seeing things from their eyes that you still don’t really get from just watching a movie. And the best of them are great at eliciting a certain mood or vibe through level design, art, etc.
Anyway trying to think of a thing I agree with chuds about… hmm come back to me, I’ll edit this if I think of one
i really like walking simulators too, and i would argue that they do take advantage of the medium - in the sense that just being in control of the camera and the movement really puts you into the role of the protagonist in a way that other media cant do (and i think they achieve this even when the movement is more or less on rails, although it works best the more the rails are hidden). because your viewpoint is not limited by someone elses control of where the camera is or what direction its pointing, i think the good ones really give a sense of personal exploration of a real virtual world. some of course do it better than others (eg edith finch vs that pretty awful one about the ira guy in iceland)
to me, tourism in interesting virtual worlds that someone has thoughtfully crafted is one of my favourite things that the medium allows for, ive often felt that with games like morrowind or skyrim that you could take out all the combat and the quests and i would play the absolute shit out of them just exploring the worlds and soaking in the atmosphere, even if you maybe wouldnt call that a 'game' as such
Check out east shade. It’s basically morrowind but no combat you just vibe and help anthropomorphized animals with minor problems.
Also agree with all that. A lot of the best walking sims lead you without you noticing and there’s an art to that in itself
lol i was just halfway through an edit to give a shoutout to eastshade, one of my absolute favourite games of recent years
They have a new game coming out that looks as charming, it’s just 2d.
I forget whatit’s called songs of glimmerwick. Really looking forward to it tbh lol
That's a nice point regarding walking simulators. The importance of agency in videogames is really overblown in popular discourse imo. Games construct their players, so you're always just choosing within a structure in which all possibilities have been predetermined. That's just more visible in walking sims
