The General Pooter Games Thread.

[Psychosplodge]

Farcry 4 is amazing, like one of the best games ever amazing... it is very much the same as Farcry 3 in a lot of ways, you climb towers to uncover areas brotherhood?, you hunt and skin animals black flag, unlock free weapons all of them, craft pouch upgrades... black flag but the Himalayan scenery is incredible, very vertical, the bad guy, Pagan Min is absolutely genius, there are more weapons, more upgrades, and you can ride an elephant and fight enemies with it...

oh

[Kirsten]

yeah and you use modern weaponry just like, oh, which Assassin's Creed had those? and the mountainous terrain is just like... and the quad bikes, the first person perspective, the characters, the plot, the gameplay, the missions... hang on a minute...

[Psychosplodge]

So what you're telling me is its your description at fault?

But anyway new pokemon soon. Which version you having?

[Gotthammer]

Hi. I’m Carolyn Petit. You may remember me from [URL="http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/grand-theft-auto-v-review/1900-6414475/"]GameSpot’s original review[/URL] of Grand Theft Auto V. It caused a bit of a kerfuffle. I criticized the game for being misogynistic, and for this, users who objected to my critique flooded the comments with lots of hateful, sexist, transphobic garbage and a petition was created to get me fired for what they saw as the transgression of bringing my personal politics into the review. (Though my review was hardly “about feminism,” the reaction to it was nonetheless a great illustration of [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Lewis_%28journalist%29#Lewis.27s_law"]Lewis’s Law[/URL].) The conversation blew up a little bit, which I think was a good thing. For instance, Alyssa Rosenberg wrote about the reactions to my review in this post, “No, Analyzing the Gender Politics of Grand Theft Auto V—or Anything Else—Isn’t ‘Unprofessional.’”

Now, because Grand Theft Auto V has been released on new platforms, there are new reviews being posted for it, and [URL="http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/grand-theft-auto-5-ps4-review/1900-6415959/"]GameSpot has one[/URL]. I think it is a good, well-written review that I don’t doubt honestly reflects the writer’s experience with and opinion of the game.

There are at least a few comments on the review that praise it, in direct contrast to my review, for what those commenters perceive as its pleasant, appropriate lack of a political agenda.



But there is no such thing as a lack of a political viewpoint when reviewing a game as deeply political as Grand Theft Auto V.

And what really frustrates me about the whole ongoing debate about “SJWs” and critiquing the meanings and values of games along with their gameplay and graphics and sound is not so much the politics of those who rail against “SJWs” and their “agendas” but rather is the fact that many of these people honestly believe that their position is neutral, apolitical, that it is not, itself, a deeply political agenda in support of the status quo and against anything that seeks to call the status quo into question.

This is a huge problem. I think the first step a person needs to take before they can have any chance of reasonably participating in this discussion is simply to recognize that their position is just as political as any other. Of course, if you are a member of the dominant culture, it’s easy to see games, by and large, as apolitical, when the worldviews present in so many mainstream games (not to mention films and television programs) mesh seamlessly with your own. The politics present in these media can be invisible to you. So you can end up feeling like Grand Theft Auto is apolitical, but that Gone Home is deeply political, when of course the truth is that these two games are just differently political.


It became apparent to me that gaming culture is a deeply political space from the moment I started working for a major, mainstream gaming site. I was immediately faced with tons of comments making it clear that, to many, the mere fact that I was a woman and that I was transgender made me a transgressor in that space. If you’re a straight white man in that space, the politics of it may be invisible to you, but they could never be invisible to me.

And it quickly became clear to me that there was a correlation between the politics of gaming culture and the politics of most mainstream games themselves. Straight white men were dominant in the online spaces and in the narratives of the games themselves. Women, people of color, and queer folks were marginalized in the online spaces, and in the narratives of the games themselves. Those who are attacking women in gaming spaces, attacking “social justice warriors” and the idea of video game criticism that analyzes the sociopolitical values of games, see people who engage in such criticism (people like me) as trying to bring about an imbalance to something that was already perfectly balanced and neutral. If they had the capability to put themselves in the shoes of people different from themselves more often, if media asked that of them or if their own ability to empathize and see things from the perspective of others was simply well-developed enough, they might better be able to understand that things are already deeply imbalanced and that we are trying to bring a little more balance to these spaces.


Grand Theft Auto V is a game about men and masculinity and violence and crime and culture and has things to say—unfortunate things—about how women and [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egPpXoK9684"]trans folks[/URL] fit into this world. It is incredibly political. You cannot engage with or review the game apolitically. Despite what the commenters above may think, the new GameSpot review is not apolitical. It is just differently political from my review. Here’s an example. The writer says, “GTA V is sometimes heavy-handed with its satire, but there are few games that dare go as far as GTA does with its nihilistic commentary, and fewer still that do it with such conviction.”

That is a political statement, because satire must have some sort of political value. My political perspective on this issue is different. I don’t think the so-called satire in GTA is daring at all. I don’t think it “goes far” at all. I don’t think it takes guts at all to reinforce traditional notions of masculinity, to mock women and trans folks, to reinforce the status quo. I don’t think there is a single moment in GTA V when the average straight male player will find his worldview challenged, his notions about masculinity seriously called into question, when he will feel in any way threatened or caught off-guard by anything the game is saying about our culture.

It doesn’t take nerve to side with the powerful and to punch down.

To call for an absence of “political agendas” in video game criticism is itself a deeply political agenda, one in defense of a very imbalanced status quo that many perceive as perfectly balanced. It is also to hope for the impossible, since most games are inherently political and therefore any review of such a game, whether by choosing to discuss the politics of the game or choosing not to, is assuming a political position of some kind. When people say “get politics out of my games and game reviews,” what they really mean is “Keep making games that reinforce my worldview, stop making games that challenge my worldview, and stop questioning the political values of the games that reinforce my worldview.”

I don’t know how we do it, but I think getting people to understand that there is no politically neutral position here may be the essential first step if this conversation is ever going to move forward in any meaningful way.

[URL="http://agameofme.tumblr.com/post/103002856657/a-quick-note-about-politics-video-game-reviews-and"]via[/URL]

[Kirsten]

hot damn this is awesome, Shadow of Mordor gets free DLC allowing you to play as a female warrior commander

[url]http://www.themarysue.com/shadow-of-mordor-lady-warrior-dlc/[/url]

[eldargal]

Might just get me to get the game, sometime next year after I'm worn out with Dragon Age Inquisition which lets yo be a woman from the start rather relegating it to DLC...

Edit: Oh it's just a skin, not even voiced or given cutscenes, **** that lol.

[Kirsten]

it is a fantastic game, and a player skin is much more than most games give you

[Psychosplodge]

Had a [URL="https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Reindoonicorn"]Reindoonicorn[/URL] drop in TF2 Saturday. Must be nearly xmas.

And went back to RomeTW2. Everything was going well till loads of buildings finished at the same time and put me into very negative food. I almost lost my two oldest armies that have existed from the start, but luckily a concerted building effort put me upto 80 surplus before that happened, though most of my veterans had deserted so it did cost me heavily there. This was the turn after three factions had declared war on me in the eastern side of what is now Turkey. Luckily agent actions held them at bay till my armies recovered. They're now subdued.
The AI still isn't fixed, its still really easy to beat 3 and 4 to one odds.

[Gotthammer]

Must be nearly xmas.

One month to go!

[Psychosplodge]

Shh I'm ignoring it and it might go away