Mega Thread The Random Thoughts Thread Part 1

[Eddie Dingle]

I liked life when it was simpler.







When Port won and every other campaigner suffered.

They didn't have video games back then.

 

[El_Scorcho]

Portia while i'd agree with that sentiment usually, Bioware in Dragon Age take their "romance options" to an embarrassing degree, with every bloody character in the game being bisexual and horrendous writing. Not to mention some of the interviews with David Gaider (who does most of the writing) where he shows a pretty alarming lack of understanding of gender issues. It's someone trying to do the right thing I guess buy it misses the mark by a fair way.

Well that was the case in Origins. I've had no interest in a Bioware game since.

 

[Portia]

Well that was the case in Origins. I've had no interest in a Bioware game since.

This seems to be the night for people expressing opinions without knowing/looking into/trying what they're criticising.

 

[Dylan8]

http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2kw5c3/no_anita_sarkeesian_did_not_factually/
http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2kw5c3/no_anita_sarkeesian_did_not_factually/

Also So how do you feel about a social justice issue like racism in a hobby like football?

Football, which is the real world, and video games, which are entirely fantasy and don't have any bearing on any person in the real world. If you're finding a connection, I'm not seeing it.

FYI in the game you are penalised for killing the women. Giving the player to 'tools to do so' doesn't mean the game is saying 'hey, this is acceptable in the real world'. This failure to distinguish a virtual world from real life is astounding. It's not like the mission is "go into the brothel and kill and ogle the women".

I don't understand what is so bad about having hookers in a video game? Hookers exist in real life. Sure, the sex industry is for the most part terrible to women, but it exists. If you're setting a game in a place similar to our world then it's perfectly fine to take things from it even if they're bad. Are they going to make a brothel where there are no women?

 

[El_Scorcho]

This seems to be the night for people expressing opinions without knowing/looking into/trying what they're criticising.

Has the writing or the fact that everyone is bisexual changed significantly since the first Dragon Age game? I played the hell out of that, and based on the interviews with the developers, they were incredibly proud of the direction they were taking their writing.

 

[SilenceOz]

I just plain dont care what sexuality a NPC is, Im in this world to faff about and kill some monsters save some people.
From the impression I was getting from others it is brought up in just about every conversation with your companions.

 

[Dylan8]

Romance in BioWare games is mostly cringeworthy anyway. I did enjoy bonking Alistair in DA:O though, he was a great character.

 

[Portia]

Football, which is the real world, and video games, which are entirely fantasy and don't have any bearing on any person in the real world. If you're finding a connection, I'm not seeing it.

I showed you the connection. `social justice issues in a hobby', like you said.

Football is a hobby in the real world. Video games are a hobby in the real world. You're being a weasel trying to back out of a follow-up ignorant statement with obfuscation, are you a young Liberal neonazi by any chance?

Would love an answer to my question by the way.

FYI in the game you are penalised for killing the women. Giving the player to 'tools to do so' doesn't mean the game is saying 'hey, this is acceptable in the real world'. This failure to distinguish a virtual world from real life is astounding. It's not like the mission is "go into the brothel and kill and ogle the women".

You `lose points' for killing the women. Wow.

1. So if you lose points, the designers have created the game with the expectation that you will kill these women.
2. I guess that shows there's not a contribution to a trend of dispassionate objectification of women going on?

I don't understand what is so bad about having hookers in a video game? Hookers exist in real life. Sure, the sex industry is for the most part terrible to women, but it exists. If you're setting a game in a place similar to our world then it's perfectly fine to take things from it even if they're bad. Are they going to make a brothel where there are no women?

I think the more relevant question is `why is there always a brothel?".

 

[spookism]

I like Pong

 

[Portia]

I just plain dont care what sexuality a NPC is, Im in this world to faff about and kill some monsters save some people.
From the impression I was getting from others it is brought up in just about every conversation with your companions.

Yeah, that is completely incorrect. If you don't romance anyone, there is no romance.

 

[Janus]

I find it strange the only thing I repeatedly hear about DA:I is that its a game where every man/woman/thing is actually an Homosexaul/Transexaul/Pansexaul/Omnisexaul different gender indentifying creature of some description.

Maybe I've been tainted by other game boards but every screenshot or scene has been about the side/romance characters sexual identity and it is just weird.

Does it actually have monster killing? or is it just dealing with feelings the whole game?

I don't claim to be the greatest gamer in the world - I used to be pretty good, but not anymore - but the first map took me quite awhile to clear. I haven't even got into the romance stuff yet...having too much fun riding around on my horse and doing all the side quests.

 

[Portia]

Romance in BioWare games is mostly cringeworthy anyway. I did enjoy bonking Alistair in DA:O though, he was a great character.

Alastair was on a par with Interesting Matthew Lobbe.

 

[El_Scorcho]

Romance in BioWare games is mostly cringeworthy anyway.

This is the issue. It's absolutely horrendous. It's like it's written by someone who has never been on a date.

I don't mind the idea of bisexual characters, even if really poorly written, but every single character you have the opportunity to romance being bisexual is pretty off really. Why is everyone bisexual?

 

[Portia]

My main question is why are so few people attracted to ranga dwarfs?

 

[SilenceOz]

http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2kw5c3/no_anita_sarkeesian_did_not_factually/
http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2kw5c3/no_anita_sarkeesian_did_not_factually/

Also So how do you feel about a social justice issue like racism in a hobby like football?

Players in Hitman: Absolution are meant to kill half-naked women and play with their dead bodies..They're meant to do both of those things, because the developer placed the player character (a murderer) in a setting with women wearing lingerie.

Oh cmon, you play as a murderer in-universe the whole idea is you murder people

But then there is a body laying on the ground dead which means you need to hide it or be found.

It doesn't matter if its a woman in lingerie or a 7ft male Luchadore fighter.
Im going to move that body so I dont get caught.

The only thing I agree with is that Brothels and strip clubs are overused.

 

[Portia]

Oh cmon, you play as a murderer in-universe the whole idea is you murder people

But then there is a body laying on the ground dead which means you need to hide it or be found.

It doesn't matter if its a woman in lingerie or a 7ft male Luchadore fighter.
Im going to move that body so I dont get caught.

The only thing I agree with is that Brothels and strip clubs are overused.

How many times in the game do you kill your way through a room of unarmed men?

 

[El_Scorcho]

Actually the main question I had with DA:O is why I couldn't opt out of the main quest. Most on-rails Western style RPG ever.

 

[Janus]

Actually the main question I had with DA:O is why I couldn't opt out of the main quest. Most on-rails Western style RPG ever.

You should play a game called The Stanley Parable. It instructs you on the limits of player agency and is quite clever as to why 'open world' games are not conducive to a well written story.

I mean, I loved Skyrim, right? But it lost me when, after becoming the Grand Mage or whatever it was, I go to a city, and not only do people NOT know I'm the grand mage, they are telling me about problems in that town that I've already solved! Give me on-rails any day if programmers can't even get basic binary 'if...then' gates right.

 

[SilenceOz]

How many times in the game do you kill your way through a room of unarmed men?

Very little.
I see what your point is and I agree.
However its not the developers made all the women in the game strutting around in underwear and being helpless.
Assassin nun's are out to kill you.

 

[Portia]

I mean, I loved Skyrim, right? But it lost me when, after becoming the Grand Mage or whatever it was, I go to a city, and not only do people NOT know I'm the grand mage, they are telling me about problems in that town that I've already solved! Give me on-rails any day if programmers can't even get basic binary 'if...then' gates right.

I dunno, Skyrim was pretty great at not railroading. I had already taken over the Thieves Guild and destroyed the Brotherhood before I even found the main quest line.

 

[Dylan8]

I showed you the connection. `social justice issues in a hobby', like you said.

Football is a hobby in the real world. Video games are a hobby in the real world. You're being a weasel trying to back out of a follow-up ignorant statement with obfuscation, are you a young Liberal neonazi by any chance?

Would love an answer to my question by the way.

You `lose points' for killing the women. Wow.

1. So if you lose points, the designers have created the game with the expectation that you will kill these women.
2. I guess that shows there's not a contribution to a trend of dispassionate objectification of women going on?

I think the more relevant question is `why is there always a brothel?".

If you can't distinguish between video games and football as hobbies I'm not going to bother answering that question. Seriously ridiculous.

So you want there to be no brothel? This is a mission where you're killing a leader of the triad who have connections to criminal activity such as prostitution. I guess you could take him out elsewhere but that only serves to hide something which is used to build the player's image of who their antagonist is and what they do.

Newsflash: you can kill all kinds of civilians in these kinds of games, including women. Would you rather they made the hookers invincible as a token gesture or something?

If you're gonna get mad at a game where you play as a killer because you can kill people, maybe you shouldn't play the game.

Alastair was on a par with Interesting Matthew Lobbe.

Alistair was a qt

Actually the main question I had with DA:O is why I couldn't opt out of the main quest. Most on-rails Western style RPG ever.

It's a great main story though, better than Skyrim's, for example, where it's far more open.

 

[Dylan8]

I wish I never alt tabbed from New Vegas into this thread

 

[El_Scorcho]

You should play a game called The Stanley Parable. It instructs you on the limits of player agency and is quite clever as to why 'open world' games are not conducive to a well written story.

I mean, I loved Skyrim, right? But it lost me when, after becoming the Grand Mage or whatever it was, I go to a city, and not only do people NOT know I'm the grand mage, they are telling me about problems in that town that I've already solved! Give me on-rails any day if programmers can't even get basic binary 'if...then' gates right.

Skyrim was okay but the world was totally dead. If they spent as much time and money actually developing a living, breathing world as they do advertising that they've got one, it might actually be a brilliant open world game.

Look at say, Stalker. Everyone who plays the game will have a different experience and will tell different awesome stories. If you're telling people about a cool thing that happened in Skyrim or Bioshock or DA:O, they wont care because it probably happened to them as well. Everyone who plays the game has the same experience.

Genuinely open narrative games are basically always better. I'd much rather hear someone talk about the awesome stuff that happened to them in DayZ or Stalker or Minecraft or hell, even something like Crusader Kings 2 because those games will create these amazing one off scenarios that can't be repeated, through systems that simulate a real living breathing world that will react to what you do naturally and not in a scripted way.

 

[Portia]

If you can't distinguish between video games and football as hobbies I'm not going to bother answering that question. Seriously ridiculous.

So I'm being dismissed as ridiculous because you can't address my very simple query. I have explained myself well enough to merit at least an honest attempt from you, rather than your instant dismissal.

Its almost like you've been conditioned to see people like me as disempowered things that can be dismissed as irrelevant when compared to the righteous narrative of your anti-hero existence.

So you want there to be no brothel? This is a mission where you're killing a leader of the triad who have connections to criminal activity such as prostitution. I guess you could take him out elsewhere but that only serves to hide something which is used to build the player's image of who their antagonist is and what they do.

Yeah, Anita Sarkeesian talks at length about how violence against women is used extensively in video games entirely to show how `hard' a male character is. The only purpose of women in such scenario is to be powerless and be killed. Over and over and over again. That was the whole ****ing point of her video and you missed it completely.

 

[Dylan8]

So I'm being dismissed as ridiculous because you can't address my very simple query. I have explained myself well enough to merit at least an honest attempt from you, rather than your instant dismissal.

Its almost like you've been conditioned to see people like me as disempowered things that can be dismissed as irrelevant when compared to the righteous narrative of your anti-hero existence.

So I'm being dismissed as a neonazi racist sexist because you can't see the difference between a video game and reality.

Yeah, Anita Sarkeesian talks at length about how violence against women is used extensively in video games entirely to show how `hard' a male character is. The only purpose of women in such scenario is to be powerless and be killed. Over and over and over again. That was the whole ******* point of her video and you missed it completely.

I was under the impression the Hong Kong prostitution industry was something like that. That's not virginwhitemanvideogamedevelopers making this shit up for their perverted pleasure.