So because some people still just don't get it, this post is something I see as necessary. I'm going to try to explain what's currently happening, and why it's necessary, if not good. Because at the end of the day this isn't about James Gunn, or pedophilia, it's about winning a war, and the concept of "total war" isn't just for armed military conflict.
For those unfamiliar, although I doubt any of you are, James Gunn is the director of Guardians of the Galaxy who was recently fired from his job because of some pretty outrageous "joke" tweets making light of pedophilia. This was mostly undertaken by Mike Cernovich and his fans, and because of this Gunn scrubbed his twitter account and lost his job. New targets include Patton Oswalt, Michael Ian Black, and Dan Harmon.
I should state up front that I really don't care what they joked about. Those who follow me for any length of time come to a quick understanding that I consider no topic "off limits". There is no cow so sacred that I won't tip it if I feel like it. Comedy is comedy, jokes are jokes, and neither are evidence of a crime. I don't think that Gunn and Oswalt and Black and Harmon have actually done anything wrong, not until I see actual evidence of it. It certainly seems suspicious to me, but there's no law against that.
But like I said, this isn't about them individually, or what they said or did. This is about winning a war.
Because whether or not you like it, or want to admit it, there is a culture war happening. The left and the right have been going at it since the 60's, and given the absolute state of things at the moment you can see who's been winning. Spoilers: It's the left.
Any idiot can see that. The marriage rate, divorce rate, fatherlessness rate, devaluation of currency, invasive laws being passed every day, the creep on gun rights, privacy being violated, and free speech being socially abrogated are all evidences of the disastrous policies of the left becoming more prevalent with each passing year.
This is also on top of the left thinking they own the public space, that any person who has wrongthink or badfun should not only be excised from that public space, but should be unable to feed, clothe, and house themselves and their families. They burn people alive and give no thought to cleaning up the ashes before they're on to the next target. We see it in people like James Damore, Roseanne Barr, and hundreds of people you've never heard of whose lives are completely destroyed by the leftist outrage mob.
Another thing it's crucial to understand is that the tactics of the left work. They are effective. They get results. They shift the culture. Anyone who denies this is lying to themselves and to you.
You should also keep in mind that pride and principles do not, and I repeat DO NOT WIN WARS.
For example, the picture I used above. World War One was one of the most horrific wars in the history of mankind, if not the outright worst ever. Specifically let's look at gas warfare. Germany was the first to use gas of any kind, but specifically bromine and chlorine, in the effort to demoralize and kill their opponents. If Germany had kept using gas, and the Allies hadn't, Germany would've won that war.
So much like in the current culture war, the Germans (the left) are using gas warfare (calling for people to be fired for mean tweets) in an effort to demoralize and at the end of the day kill the people they perceive as their enemies. Caught up on that comparison? Okay good.
So what happened in WWI? The Germans started using gas, then the Allies started using it back, and eventually both sides stopped using gas and nowadays whenever you hear about someone using chemical weapons, even on troops in a declared war, it's considered a war crime that the international community spits on and holds in utmost contempt.
Are you starting to see where I'm going with this?
This is how war works. One side will escalate in an attempt to win, and the other side will either be bowled over or escalate in turn. Deescalation only happens when both sides have been harmed enough to agree to it. Now, I know that lunatics on the left like Cenk Uyger like to say that the left just lies back and thinks of England while the right rails them six ways from Sunday, but I can assure you that just isn't the case.
I watch the news quite a bit, and I can recall about seventeen incidents off the top of my head wherein the leftist outrage mob has gone after some poor undeserving soul just within the past four years. The left does this almost weekly, and its plain to see. The right, on the other hand, has what's been happening the past couple days on twitter and Gamergate, which wasn't even a proper right wing movement. It was just a bunch of nerds from all over who wanted their goddamned video games left the hell alone.
So no, the right does not engage in these tactics. Up till now they have been almost solely the purview of the left. That's why people are getting so upset at the people going after Gunn, and Oswalt, and whoever else. This is Simply Not Done™. Not by the right.
No, see, we have principles. We have honor. We do not stoop to their level.
Well, okay. Let me ask you some questions.
How many people whose lives have been destroyed by the left has your principles and honor saved?
How many actual victories have your principles and honor won?
How many leftists (you know the type) have looked at your principles and honor and said, "You know, maybe we shouldn't try to kill these people after all"?
And most importantly, will your principles and honor be able to keep you warm on those homeless nights after you offend the leftist outrage mob and are rendered unemployable?
Having principles and honor is all well and good, but it is not how you win wars. You win wars through decisive action to smash your opponents as swiftly as possible. The left already views this as a war and have been acting accordingly. So, I have to ask, why in the flaming fuck haven't the right?
Another thing people need to understand is that the person being attacked doesn't get to decide when a fight starts. The country minding its own business that gets invaded doesn't get a say in whether or not they're actually in a war. The side of the culture minding its own fucking business doesn't get to decide when the culture war starts when the other side of the culture walks up to them and starts trying to strangle them.
A war is upon you, whether you like it or not. You can either fight it, or pretend that you're better than everyone else while doing literally nothing about it other than condemning both sides for trying to win. In a life or death fight, honor means nothing. Keep your principles and honor, but understand that the people attacking you have none and don't want any.
They will use any method period to utterly destroy their opponents, or the people they have decided are subhuman. To defeat such a widespread and honorless enemy as this, you are going to have to lay down your honor and principles and smash the absolute shit out of them. You can pick them up later when the fight's over.
So when Antifa shows up to a peaceful protest or march or whatever and start getting violent, you kick the everloving shit out of them. Send them home to their parents' basements with broken noses, cracked skulls, shattered ribs, and a note attached to their backs to never do it again.
When the SJW's on twitter pull this outrage mob bullshit to get people fired, like Damore or Roseanne or anyone else, you dig into their twitter history, or their entire online history if you can find it, find the fucked up shit they've said, and contact their employer about it.
Now you may ask, "If this war is basically being fought online, with no face to face contact with the rest of the combatants, how will I be able to see the enemy's appeasement signals when they're ready to talk truce?"
To which I would respond, "Don't worry. They won't be able to see yours either, or they'd have come to the table by now."
So as distasteful as some people may find these tactics, they are necessary to end this bullshit. You have to speak a language these people understand. With Antifa, it's violence. With the outrage mob, it's outrage. One man with principles can't fight off all of Antifa (unless it's Rufio, that mother was handing out dirt naps like candy on Halloween), and one man with principles can't stop the outrage mob. You need friends, allies, tactics, goals, weapons, and heads on motherfucking pikes.
It's good for morale, trust me.
Because the left has been on track to win this culture war for decades at this point. They're organized, evil, ready, and coming whether you like it or not. So for the milquetoast "conservatives" and the anti-SJW's who think they can win this war by killing them with kindness, you need to stop being a denthead about this. War isn't won by honor, principles, pleading, and happy feelings.
And you are in a war, whether you like it or not.
I'm sure you've all heard the stories. You can probably quote them by rote at this point. After all, they get shoved in our face so very often, and yet one thing they all have in common is this: Zero Evidence. For those of you wondering what I'm talking about, it's this myth that's circulated in feminist circles about how men are supposedly exclusionary to women. That we guys are gatekeeping our own hobbies, and trying to keep women out. From the stories we hear this happens everywhere in the nerd hobbies. Comics, tabletop, video games, you name it. All of these hobbies and more are supposedly just infested with awful men that hate women and don't want them to have any fun.
This is, of course, retarded on its face.
I've been sitting on this post for a while, but finally decided to write it when I saw this on Twitter today.
[archive link to the tweet in question]
This utterly ludicrous statement was made by the creative director of Dungeons & Dragons. The whole entire franchise. He also co-created the bloated abomination that is 5th ed., so now we all know who to thank for that. But before I get into this I'd just like to make sure that he understands one thing, should he ever read this post.
Much like a TV show can't decide who does or doesn't tune in, you don't get to decide who does or doesn't buy your product. You have no power in this situation. I can go to any number of online stores and buy a copy of 5th ed. and be playing it with my friends tomorrow, and there's quite literally nothing you could do to stop me. I won't, because as I said 5th ed. is a bloated monstrosity, and I also don't believe in encouraging people who want to put actual serious barriers to entry (such as a series of books you require to play the game all priced at $40 each), or giving money to people who so obviously hate me. I'll go play Moldvay, or AD&D, or GURPS, or ACKS, or Traveller, or Gamma World, or Hero System, or Vampire The Masquerade, or even Children of the Sun. There are about 500 or so other systems I could be playing besides 5th ed., and I would encourage others to look into those instead of giving Wizards of the Coast and Mike Mearls your money. But he needs to understand that he can't fire customers, and attempting to attack his customer base will only shrink the amount of people willing to put food on his table and pay his bills via buying his products, and if I were running WOTC right now he would issue a very public apology, delete that tweet, and watch his ass because it would be grass should that ever happen again. You don't insult your customers. That is a firing offense in literally every other industry.
There's also the tiny little matter of WOTC actually passively protecting pedophiles in their Magic: The Gathering judge community until the fan outrage became so loud they were forced to respond and institute background checks on judges and refuse to work with any organization that actively hired sex criminals, but hey, that's fiddly little bullshit, right?
Stop giving WOTC your money. I'm deadly serious.
But anyway, my personal hate-boner for WOTC aside, let's get on with this post here. According to this fucking moron, the narrative repeats. The thing that really gets me is the inherent sexism in his statement. Apparently, according to Fuckstick up there, complex rules and lore are exclusionary, and women can't understand them. Therefore he has to fix the game by dumbing it down to women's level, and the guys who are mad about the dilution of their game aren't mad because everything they liked about the game is changed, they're mad because they hate women.
Obviously.
Remember, this is all according to this idiot. Now, on the other hand, and what I think is more likely, is that all of this is made up. I'd put the number of made up accounts at 99.95%. It's not outside the realm of possibility that this has happened a few times, but with nowhere near the frequency that these people claim. Remember, as the "Feminist 40K" mods have stated themselves, flat out admitting to it on more than one occasion, they assume there is a problem rather than looking to see if the problem is actually there or not. And given that there are women out there who can and have lied about being raped to get out of cab fare (no, I'm not bullshitting you), it's perfectly reasonable to assume that the vast majority of these complaints are either made up from whole cloth, or come from out-of-context or misinterpreted social interactions.
Unfortunately, and this really, truly is unfortunate, we don't have any data to prove anything. There have been no studies done on this by reputable organizations such as Pew, and whenever these people bring these complaints and stories, they never, ever have evidence of such. You'd think they would at least have audio, if not audio and video, given that damn near everyone has a high-definition camera and microphone in their pockets. But no, they expect you to just "Listen & Believe". Take what they say on faith.
Social justice is, after all, a religion to these people. They take so much on faith, they cannot comprehend a world where someone would actually want them to prove the bullshit they spew rather than just believing them outright. I mean, there are wammen to respek! We don't have time for things like methodological study, due process, or critical thinking! Just believe them, and then we'll start burning witches and tearing down everything you hold dear! Don't you want that? Because you're a misogynist if you don't!
Well, in lieu of actual evidence, all we really have to go on is what these people call "lived experiences". This basically means we listen to people who have been there, because they exist in that hobby/fandom/job/whatever and therefore are more qualified than average Joe off the street to speak incredibly broadly about it for some reason. Well, I've been here since I was a child, so my lived experience must add up to a shit ton of authority at this point. Tabletop is more recent, but about twelve or fifteen years of being in that hobby should count for something.
I've met a lot of nerds in my day. I am one, they are my people. They're the people I almost exclusively hang out with because I find the discussions there more interesting. I don't hang out with people who talk sports because I find sports incredibly boring, but if those people are talking scifi, fantasy, tabletop, comics, video games, etc. I'll be right at home among them, because they're speaking my language and talking about things I'm interested in. I must have met or been tangentially acquainted with about a thousand nerds over the course of my life.
Post-puberty, not a single one was even mildly hostile to women because they were women.
In fact, we actively tried to interest women in our hobbies, and the ones who were interested were treated like queens. They were invited to D&D games (and some even showed up), to get loaded and watch movies or anime, whatever nerd shit we were doing, the more women that were interested in it, the better. Nowadays I don't care so much, but when you're a horny teenager swimming in hormones who gets weird looks because he's reading D&D manuals at the lunch table, the approval of the opposite sex means a lot. So finding women who were interested in things like D&D was like wandering through the forest and stumbling upon a unicorn out of nowhere.
It's no surprise to anyone that women just generally aren't interested in games where you go into dungeons and bash goblins around for their meager gold coins. Or wargames like Warhammer 40K. Most of Dungeons & Dragons, or 40K, or Warhammer Fantasy, or other wargames and TTRPG's, is rolling dice until monsters fall down and die. Of course there are also other aspects to the game like shopping and roleplaying interactions with non-player characters, but the meat of the game is generally wandering through dungeons and slaughtering monsters. More so with wargames than with RPG's, but the point still stands. The name of the game that started all this is Dungeons & Dragons, after all. Sort of implies that there will be a fair amount of dungeoneering and dragon fighting in this game. And those are things that women tend not to be very interested in.
And it has nothing to do with sexism. As I said, women who want in on these things have always, in my lived experience, been welcomed with open arms and encouraged by the male players who were already there. I have been to comic shops, game stores, GW stores, and more all across my long years of being a nerd, and not once in my life have I seen some guy give some chick shit because she had a vagina.
Not once.
Matter of fact, the exact opposite always happens. If a woman shows interest, the guys treat her just like they'd treat a guy who showed interest. They show her the game, what she'd need to get started, how the rules work, and offer to play a starter game with her to show how the mechanics work in practice. Whether it's Magic, D&D, or 40K, this is how it goes every time, because the people who exist in these hobbies understand that while they may be fairly popular, they're also pretty niche, so having more people interested who know what they're doing means having more people to play with, which means more fun for everyone. And for guys who are historically and stereotypically as bad with the opposite sex as nerds, it is completely counter-intuitive for them to treat women who actually want to be around them like shit. Most of these guys couldn't be mean to a woman if they wanted to.
A good personal example of this I have is from my time in college. Turned out there was a GW store a few miles from the school, and they were open on the days I had classes, so I would go to class, then drag my backpack full of models, paint, and brushes into the Games Workshop store and hang out for hours at a time and paint my armies. The manager at the time was a five-foot-nothing Asian woman, and she knew more about the lore and rules than most of the guys. She was treated perfectly fine by all of the regulars who knew this game and its lore inside out. She was also fucking obsessed with Orks. The big green fungus monkeys that reproduce via space spores and eat each others' heads off. Of course she, like everyone else including myself, lamented that the Sisters of Battle get no love from GW, but she didn't want to play them. She wanted to play Orks, and what's more she wanted to make an entire Halloween-themed orange and black army of the bastards. She could also fuck you up on the tabletop.
Now I don't know if you've ever taken a look inside a 40K rulebook, but I have, several times. Lemme give you a quick and dirty. If you buy one of the beginner boxes it comes with two small armies from different factions, a general rulebook, and a book with the different scenarios you can play to tell the story of what happens in that box (they're usually structured around some kind of story that adds to the lore of the game). The rulebook is single-spaced, double (sometimes triple) columned, with incredibly small print. It's 156 pages long. Of course there are plenty of pictures and diagrams, but the majority of this book is taken up by tiny text, and depending on how you play you need to be generally familiar with all of it. Furthermore, there are special rules for each faction (Orks, Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Eldar, etc) that each have their own books, and you need to be familiar with those as well.
That manager damn near had the entire book memorized, and could rattle off rules from the top of her head. She was well respected, and put her heart and soul into running that store as efficiently as possible to bring in new customers. It was a fun time.
But very rarely, at least while I was frequenting the place, did we have women come into the store. When it did happen they were usually with male friends, or their boyfriends or husbands, or they would be little girls with their parents shopping for Christmas presents and the like. When they were interested at all, they would be interested in the Lord of the Rings models, rather than the hardened militarism of the Guard or the Space Marines, or the tentacle-faced horrors of Chaos, or the gribbly nonsense of the Tyranids, or the soccer-hooligan-esque antics of the Orks. 40K is literally a game about neverending, grimdark warfare where nobody is in the right, and the only ones that are good by human standards are completely immoral space nazis that want to genocide all the aliens, because the aliens want to genocide all of them.
It's just not something that a lot of chicks are into. The male players aren't keeping them out, I can attest to that personally. Hell, the guys in the store acted as unpaid salesmen to potential female customers more than once while I was painting my models or thumbing through a rulebook. There was only one GW employee there at a time most days, and occasionally it got pretty busy. They were mostly trying to just keep the people in the store until the manager could get to them, asking them if they had any experience, talking shop, discussing lore, the books, all that stuff, but the guys in the store helped her make more than one sale (I know this because I was one of those "more than one" sales).
Anyway, point is, women are perfectly capable of understanding complex rules and lore, and the rules and lore don't need to be changed to accommodate women at the expense of the men who already like it the way it is. We've proven that the "Wider Audience Appeal™" is a complete myth. It does not exist. Marvel tried this for over 5 years. They hired a bunch of diverse people to write diverse comics to appeal to a "Wider Audience™" and managed to run their company so thoroughly into the ground that they've almost taken the US comics industry with them. The people they were marketing towards were simply not a sustainable market, because they were not interested and weren't showing up to buy comics. And the comics were on the shelves, we know this from testimonials from shop owners who had to throw them away or bargain bin them and take a loss because they weren't selling. The "Wider Audience™" is as much a myth as the Exclusionary Nerd™. Literally nobody was stopping these people from buying these comics. They just didn't want to.
The women that are into 40K are already playing and collecting, and the women who would get into it but don't know will find their way around one way or another. Changing the hobby to be more "inclusive" of women is just going to kill it, and if anyone is pushing this as an objective that GW should be pursuing it should be assumed that killing the hobby is their goal. We have objective proof at this point that appealing to social justice principles does not work, it alienates your regulars and it doesn't pull in the people you're condescending to. Sorry to say, but a new Sister of Battle codex and model lineup won't bring them in, nor will changing the lore. This will kill the hobby dead. I don't mean a new Sisters Codex. Honestly that would probably make GW some cash and get people buying the Sisters models again (especially if they made some tentative explorations into giving them plastic). But changing the lore and rules absolutely will kill the hobby, which is probably why GW doesn't do it. They may be one of the physical manifestations of corporate evil on planet earth, but they're also not stupid.
So having observed this pattern in certain women wherein they will lie for attention and victim points, I think it is safe to say that this simply does not happen outside of a few isolated incidents, and the people those isolated incidents happen to need to find better friends and game shops. What I think is actually happening is that these guys are trying to figure out where these gals are with regards to lore and rules knowledge, so they can fill in any gaps that might exist in order to better facilitate gameplay or enjoyment of the medium in question. Comics, card games, tabletop, whatever. It's no secret that primarily men built these industries and hobbies, and they're to this day primarily enjoyed by men.
Given this, as well as the fact that stereotypes exist for a reason, unless a woman shows up with a full deck(s), a fleshed out character sheet and the rulebooks, or her own painted army, they're going to assume she's some level of newbie. And there's nothing wrong with that, because 9.95 times out of ten, they're doing this because if she is a newbie, they want to help her become adept as soon as possible. As I said earlier, the more people playing, the more fun everyone has, and the vast majority of nerds agree with this.
The problem comes in when these women expect to be treated deferentially, they expect everything to be changed for them, they expect everyone to worship the ground they walk on. This is, quite simply, not how things work. In these hobbies you show your ability to hang by knowledge about the setting or system. If you're playing Magic: The Gathering, and you're sufficiently able to manipulate the rules such that you completely fucking destroy anyone of any deck style that you go up against, you're going to get more respect than the guy who gets wrecked every game but is happy because he's just playing to have fun. Simply having a vagina, sorry to say ladies, does not qualify you to be respected in nerd circles, nor does the fawning adoration of sweaty virgins give you lease to start changing things to suit you.
You need to learn your place, just like the rest of us did. I knew dick all about the 40K game when I walked into that GW shop. I listened to the friendly, more experienced people and they helped me understand the mechanics, why there were so many dice I had to roll, and the advantages and disadvantages to each army and system generation. So really what I think is happening here is that these guys are trying to be helpful and the women assume that they're treating her like she's stupid.
It's either a complete fabrication or a misinterpretation of the social dynamics of an unfamiliar place and group. This actually happens fairly frequently across all kinds of social groups, and the technical term for it is called a "faux-pas". Just a silly mistake someone made because they don't understand the group they're trying to gain entry to. There's nothing wrong with making a faux-pas or two so long as you actively work to become better versed in the thing you're trying to understand and be apart of. Nerds who dig comics and tabletop are also far more friendly about faux-pas if they know that you don't know a lot about the subject matter.
"Fake it till you make it" doesn't apply here, because you can't fake knowing a rule set that you've never encountered before. You absolutely can not fake damn near 40 years of lore (or more, depending on the thing in question). The best approach is to just be okay with making mistakes, and listen when someone corrects you. Nobody knows all the rules, nobody knows all the lore. Just be cool, and everyone around you will be as well.
Of course I should mention that this applies to an incredibly small subset of women. The vast majority of women into nerdy stuff I've met in my life have been totally cool about everything, and usually they're just as into it as the guys are. But we're talking about a subset of a subset of a subset of a population. Allow me to get sociological for a moment.
You have all women. Then you have women who might be interested in nerd shit. Then you have the women who might be interested in nerd shit that actually go out and get into nerd shit. Then you have the women who stick around. Then you have the women who stick around and don't act cool, but instead try to turn it into their own little kingdom where they can do whatever they want. Given the numbers that we're working with (mostly unknown, but we can make educated guesses in certain directions EXTREMELY TENTATIVELY), this means that the amount of women into nerd shit who are actually shrill harpies with daddy issues is relatively small. We're talking maybe 2 or 3 out of 40, if I had to make an extremely tentative guess. I've been apart of a bunch of groups into a lot of shit and have only met one personally. This is over about 20 or so years.
However, one of the things about social media is that it allows these people to congregate, as well as garner a misguided following of thirsty orbiters. Often these people are not involved in these hobbies, or if they are it is in the most tangential fashion. They don't buy comics, they don't buy models, they don't paint, they rarely if ever game, they barely understand how D&D words as a system, they might've watched some Marvel movies and Star Wars back in the day. And yet, they think that because a woman claimed something, it must be true, therefore there's this gigantic problem in these communities that they know precisely fuck all about. Their combined presence, as well as their incessant whining, leads people to believe that these people are more numerous and more important than they actually are, which gives them a certain level of power with out-of-touch corporations like WOTC or Marvel. This happens because the people actually enjoying the thing are just quietly enjoying it like they always have been. So these people look like an even larger contingent of the customer base because nobody is countering their narrative.
And what's more, with Gamergate, we saw that these people are more than willing to lie to advance that narrative. The FBI itself did an investigation into the movement/hashtag, and found fuck all to do with abusive behavior coming from the GG side of things. Anti-GG, on the other hand, were implicated in a lot of abusive behavior, and since the events of that fateful consumer revolt a lot of the major players have been outed as sex pests if not outright rapists. So in reality what's probably happening here is that old chestnut of, "Accuse the enemy of that which you are guilty."
As evidenced by Shitnugget's tweet up there, he is very contemptible of women. Women like Morgon Newquist, or that GW manager just don't exist, and if we want to appeal to women and get them into our hobbies, we have to dumb the games down for them. We have to make comics unreadable preachy Chick Tracts so that the stupid blacks and browns can identify with them, because they're obviously too dumb to get white comics. When you really break these people's beliefs down, it honestly sounds like something out of an alt-right screed, doesn't it? They're white supremacists and misogynists with guilty consciences.
But as I said, given their frequent use of lies and absolute refusal to provide a single shred of proof of these misogynistic, racist, hateful, exclusionary nerds, we can safely assume that they are lying about his as well. This is how the burden of proof works. The one making the claims must provide the proof. So to all of the people claiming that this problem exists, the only thing I can say is this:
Prove it.
Presumably this is happening in public areas. Film it.
If it's happening in skype chats then tape it with a program like OBS. Although you may want to get consent, depending on the laws in your state or country. Some countries/states require both parties to consent to a recording in a non-public setting.
If this is such a widespread problem, if it happens so often that it's this big of an issue, prove it.
I know you can't, and you won't, because it isn't. But the time is now, because we've listened to you crow about this for too long.
Put up or shut up.
Prove it, or get the fuck out.
There's been a lot of hoopla on twitter recently about this recent Rock Paper Shotgun article (archive link here) about how games should let people skip combat and boss fights, because the writer doesn't like them. Now there are numerous problems with this article, not the least of which is the tone of smug superiority that permeates every single sentence. But, and you may want to sit down for this, I'm of two minds on this. Before you pull out your torches and pitchforks, hear me out. I'm firmly on the side of, "Git gud, you fucking pussy." However, I can see the guy's point. I read the whole thing, and you should too before reading my response. Use the archive link, don't give these idiots anymore clicks. I gave them at least two finding the article, and even having my ad blocker up thanks to the Brave browser, that's far too many for this dreck.
So, what's his main contention? Well, it's mostly that he doesn't like boss fights, so he should be allowed to skip them. This actually doesn't seem to be an egregious request. The way he phrases it is completely out of bounds, and the smug aura of self-congratulation in this post is beyond disgusting. However, skipping boss fights and combat doesn't seem too bad to me. Honestly, I have a couple of games that I keep installed on my computer because I can get absolutely blitzed out of my head (read: so drunk I have trouble seeing straight) and still play the game and have a good time. Viscera: Cleanup Detail is a good example, and the vast majority of the time I've spent in that game was spent so drunk I could barely see or so hungover I can't think beyond simple tasks like "clean this room".
So I understand where dude is coming from. However, I also subscribe to the idea that video games are not books, movies, or tv shows, and should not be treated as such. To my understanding game design and development is fiendishly difficult, and adding this mode into the game is not as simple as people believe it to be. And above and beyond the extra strain on the developers, video games should not be treated like other media, because they're not like other media.
Video games are a diverse entertainment media. There are games like Dark Souls (that really isn't as hard as people make it out to be) which focus on combat and storyline, and the gameplay is tight as shit. There are games like Primordia, that are more focused on puzzle solving and point-and-click adventures. There are games like Red Faction, that are straight-up first person shooters. There are platformers like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro The Dragon. There are stealth games like Thief and Styx: Master of Shadows. There are RPG's like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and The Elder Scrolls. There are JRPG's like the Final Fantasy series. There are strategy games like Stronghold Crusader, Civilization, and Endless Legend. There are visual novels like Katawa Shoujo and the Sakura series. There is a near endless range of genres of games to choose from, and many that mix genres and do it very well.
With the exception of visual novels (which I honestly don't have much experience with), most of these game genres expect a basic level of competency from the player. It's not quite so bad as in the old days of the NES, SNES, and consoles like them, whose games were built on the arcade model which was specifically designed to get kids to cough up quarters into machines at arcades, rather than be easily beatable. But even the games on those consoles taught me valuable lessons about overcoming challenges and the inherent worth in working for something.
I grew up with a NES, upgraded to a SNES, and then got a PSX. I'm very familiar with the difficulty level of games like Contra, Kung Fu, Ninja Gaiden, and other classics of the NES catalogue. Some of these games were so difficult that I couldn't beat them. I never did beat the original Super Mario Bros. I got to the level where you have to work out the top, middle, bottom sequence and couldn't work it out as a kid. But I did get to Wiley's Fortress on Mega Man X as a kid, and just getting that far in the game made me feel very good. Like I'd actually accomplished something.
That feeling of working for something, applying the lessons the game had taught me, using my skill and knowledge and luck to get past the boss is a part of what gaming is about. It's not a hobby for everyone. What this writer at RPS is asking for is the ability to put the disk into their machine and watch a long play. Before Let's Plays, there were long plays, where someone would play a game, record it, and put the video up on YouTube with zero commentary or facecam. People still do these, and the footage is very useful for people who want to see a game before they buy it, or don't want to play the game but want to see the story.
Games are meant to be challenging on a certain level. That's why walking simulators get deservedly panned by gamers. They're barely games, they require minimal input from the person playing the game, and they're primarily story driven. They're essentially first-person visual novels. There's no inherent challenge, they're easily beatable by someone with no functional knowledge of video games, and they have a very low satisfaction level for completing the game. This is why I avoid visual novels. I've played a couple, and they're just not interesting or entertaining. That's not to say the story isn't interesting, but the progression of the game happens something like this:
Click through dialogue for a few minutes
Battle happens off-screen
Click through dialogue for a few minutes
Make a choice in dialogue options
Click through dialogue for a few minutes
Make another dialogue choice
Click through more dialogue
And so on. It's not entertaining to play, because there's no actual "play" happening. I'm just clicking the mouse and reading. I could go to my kindle and get the exact same experience. Albeit with fewer sexy pictures. Apart from the "visual" part of a visual novel, there's fundamentally no difference between playing one of those types of game and reading a book on my kindle. When I play a video game, I don't want to just click through dialogue and not watch while all the action happens off-screen.
What this game journo is asking is for all games to have a "visual novel mode". This I find fundamentally abhorrent because I value learning and struggling to achieve, and the final achievement I get after the struggle is a basic part of why I love video games so much. Playing through Thief, I loved the tension and challenge in getting around the guards and figuring out what I have to do to progress in the game. The challenge is rewarding because I was able to work it out and progress. I was the equal of the challenge, and that brings a sense of accomplishment that other entertainment media doesn't bring and at base level isn't designed to bring.
Movies are passive. Books are passive. TV shows are passive. You are not taking active part in the goings on of the story. Video games are fundamentally an active entertainment storytelling medium. The player is part of the story. Even if the player is railroaded by the story, they are participating. They affect the outcome via their choices.
Dark Souls is a good example here. In Dark Souls, there is the legend of the Chosen Undead that may or may not be the player. Over the course of the game you go through a journey that makes you the Chosen Undead. You were not actually Chosen, you just happened to be there and have the determination to complete all the challenges and earn the right to decide the fate of the world. You became the Chosen Undead by right of trial by combat, and through your choices along the course of the game. The only way you can not become the Chosen Undead in Dark Souls (and thereby "lose" the game) is to stop playing.
Much the same, in other video games you need to show a competent level of skill to progress. This is intrinsic to the medium. It is not the same as books, movies, or tv shows. All gamers have a game that we love above most others, but there's THAT ONE PART that drives us fucking crazy. But we play through it because getting through that infuriating section of the game not only allows us to experience the rest of the story, but gives us the feeling of accomplishment that comes with completing a difficult task thanks to our own ability, pluck, and ingenuity.
While I'm not against a "tourist mode" in video games, it does undermine the medium because video games are not meant to just give you anything. You're supposed to earn it. It's an interactive storytelling medium. It has been since shortly after the very beginning. Even with games like Pong there's no "Press X To Win" mechanic, and there shouldn't be. You win Pong by being good at the game, and giving Pong a "Press X To Win" mechanic would cheapen the experience. Not just for me, but for anyone who plays the game.
This is one of this person's breakdowns. That the people complaining about the "tourist mode" would somehow be negatively affected by the inclusion of this mode and other people using it. That's not the case with me.
I think the people using it will be negatively affected by it.
It matters not one whit to me if I decide to buy AssCreed Origins, play it through properly, enjoy it, and someone else decides to use the tourism mode. If it's in the game, it's the player's decision to use it. But the player who uses the option will not get the sense of achievement that people like me receive from playing the game properly. They're just watching the game at that point.
And, really, you can find a long play, or a let's play, that will do the exact same thing for you. You can get the entire story in the same amount of time, and it will require no effort on your part apart from finding the video on YouTube. So why not just do that? Why request that every developer in the foreseeable future include this mode in their games? Which, I remind you, will require more development time and effort on the part of the developers.
This approach to game design also inherently undermines the entire point of excellent games like Undertale. I bought it, and genuinely enjoyed it, but I stopped playing because the bullet hell approach to the battles annoyed the shit out of me. I'm not a fan of bullet hell games, so I quit playing. And because of that I didn't get to see the rest of the game. This game is designed around player input. Your choices matter on such an intrinsic level in this game that almost no two people's playthroughs will be exactly alike. Adding a "tourist mode" to the game would undermine everything about the way the game's storyline is supposed to develop based on player choice.
My theory is this game journalist, and by extension most people calling for a "tourist mode" in video games, has (have) never had to work for things in their life. They've had things given to them.
They're entitled.
They think they're entitled to see the rest of the story of the game, despite the fact that they haven't absorbed the proper information or developed the proper skills to progress, or actually tried to beat it. They want it given to them, and this is the heart of the breakdown between game journos like this person and gamers. Gamers have spent their lifetimes earning their achievements, be those achievements simply beating an NES game, or the more modern, conventionally understood meaning of "achievements" on Steam or various other gaming platforms.
This mindset is inherently alien to me. I like earning what I have, be it the money I make off of the books I write (or help write), the audiobooks I produce, or the simple pleasure of beating a video game I like. I don't understand how people can find satisfaction in having everything given to them. Even with movies, books, and tv shows, you have to watch through the "boring parts" to get to the fun bits. There's no skill involved, but you have to invest the time, at the very least. Even people who like the sports games that EA pumps out every year like to play the games. Otherwise they'd just go watch football, or soccer, or whatever.
This article serves to underline the divide between the games press and the gamers, the people who support the hobby and keep it on its feet. Video games are built upon (sometimes) hard work and achieving through struggle, persevering through adversity, winning through impossible odds to the final goal. Be that adversity puzzles, hordes of enemies, boss fights, what have you.
I get the feeling that game journos just do not understand this, because they are not gamers. They have not been playing games since they were young, they have no understanding of the roots of the medium, and they do not enjoy video games. They are journalism majors who got into games journalism because they thought it would be easy, because really who cares about the biggest entertainment industry on the face of the earth? They do not understand the hobby, and therefore they do not understand the backlash they get when they print horrifyingly smug articles like this.
All I can say to them is: Go play something more your speed. Play visual novels, or walking simulators, or point-and-click adventure games (although p&c adventure games do have puzzles, and that might tax your brain a bit and force you to actually work for something, so they may throw you off a bit). But there are games out there to cater to your non-play style of...playing games. Go play those, and stop pretending you represent a serious segment of the hobby, because you don't.
Most of us enjoy a challenge.
Where the fuck do you think Gamergate came from?
