Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[Captain Syrup]

Making the mob or the hood "racially and culturally diverse"

It’s the global market!

 

[Bully OST by Shawn Lee]

No, they aren't. GTA:Vice City was a better game because the mob was all Italian guys. SA was better because the hood was pretty much all niggers. Making the mob or the hood "racially and culturally diverse" would have been a bad thing.



The problem is not how they convey this idea. The problem is it's a stupid fucking idea, and its stupidity becomes obvious when somebody pulls some retarded shit like making a Steam Age game set in a London that is mysteriously full of black women wearing top hats and monocles.

The hood scenes in GTAV were especially effective because they had real live hood niggers do their hood nigger jive speak, I believe even to the point the white liberal producers were uncomfortable, conveying a meaty realism that you simply can't if you buy into the fiction that all people are the same. There are only two kinds of people who would write a character like Lamar Davis, racists and hood niggers.

White people aren't like this (this is the guy who voiced Lamar):

The GTA series is a good example of it being done correctly. GTA 4 in particular is diverse as shit on a grand scale and no one threw a fit over that. My main point was that it needs to be done intelligently or else it comes off as artificial, because the real world gets less diverse the more you zoom in on one part of it. You're pointing out factions that are typically associated with one race, and violating that for the sake of inclusivity would obviously be retarded.
As for the steam age London thing. It would be retarded if they did it in a historically grounded context, because they accounted for like, 1% of the total population at that time. Now if it takes place in an American city right now, then the absence of commonly known groups like gays, blacks and even trannies would imply that these people do not exist, which is false. They're a minority but they're not invisible. I think we agree on the idea that different groups shouldn't act the same or immediately get along, but these people getting along would probably make for a cool story beat if you actually put time into making it make sense.

 

[Bully OST by Shawn Lee]

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It’s the global market!

We haven't had cool black people in media since the 90s and this disturbs me greatly.

 

[The Last Stand]

No, they aren't. GTA:Vice City was a better game because the mob was all Italian guys. SA was better because the hood was pretty much all niggers. Making the mob or the hood "racially and culturally diverse" would have been a bad thing.

I think you're missing the point. Vice City and San Andreas had a diverse supporting cast for the protagonist to interact with. Not just race, but personalities and motives. The diversity helped those games as it expanded on their open worlds. Vice City had a rich area, downtown area, poor area, tourist area with some unique peds to set the stage. San Andreas went further in scope with the countryside, city, casino strip, industrial areas each with their own unique biomes and ped density.

 

[Captain Syrup]

I think you're missing the point. Vice City and San Andreas had a diverse supporting cast

Unforgettable characters. You’ve got your Woozy, your Johnny Sindacco, your Sweet, your Catalina.

Not a fan of Caesar—I think it might just be my distaste for that low rider mini game.

 

[The Ugly One]

Now if it takes place in an American city right now, then the absence of commonly known groups like gays, blacks and even trannies would imply that these people do not exist

I lived my entire life in major American cities and have known maybe a dozen or so total fags, and the majority of those were due to being involved in the arts. They're 1% of the population and mostly segregate themselves. A game having an urban setting doesn't automatically mean one of the focal cast members needs to like having sex with men.

The GTA series is a good example of it being done correctly. GTA 4 in particular is diverse as shit on a grand scale and no one threw a fit over that.

No, the GTA series isn't "doing diversity." GTA is simply reasonably depicting late 20th/early 21st C American metropolises. That isn't "diversity," any more than Zulu! is "doing diversity correctly" for depicting the Battle of Rorke's Drift as having an insane number of coal-black negroes fighting white men. Lawrence of Arabia is not a "diverse" movie because it depicts TE Lawrence as white and Arabia as full of Arabs. If I made an economic sim game about getting rich on the Atlantic slave trade, depicting the slaves the player buys in Africa and sells in the West Indies as black, while all the sailors are white, is not "diversity."

"Reasonably depicting the thing you're trying to depict in a way that actually makes sense" isn't what anybody means by "diversity." The most hardened racist in the world would agree that an NBA game ought to have black players. But what you said is that a racially & culturally diverse cast is good, full stop, and it just isn't. It often doesn't make sense, and when it doesn't make sense, it makes things worse, because the only way to have that is if you're pandering.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

A game having an urban setting doesn't automatically mean one of the focal cast members needs to like having sex with men.

Right. It needs that regardless of setting.

 

[Mister Fister]

Strangers of paradise has the best dialogue. We've all thought this.

 

[Captain Syrup]

Strangers of paradise has the best dialogue. We've all thought this.

Jack saying what we’re all screaming every time Nomura writes dialog. What the hell even is this nonsense?

 

[big pauper]

The joy of realizing mid-game that the build you spent all that time perfecting is useless. You get your face kicked in and it hits you "Oh this game doesn’t care if I have a life."

the vast majority of video games come from arcade games balanced around having just enough resources to complete the game while also not giving too many that it becomes easy. role playing games come from a different pedigree, they're tabletop games. there is an entirely separate game system underneath the "game" that meshes with it, that dictates far more about the player's gameplay experience than what monsters you put into a level.

if a game is an rpg then you shouldn't be able to run out of resources. if an rpg is balanced around resource limitations then it seriously begs what that underlying system is even doing for the game because what is being described starts to resemble resident evil more than a role playing game

 

[big pauper]

Terminal Yapping Syndrome has afflicted action games just as badly. Playing things like Hades or RE4make or literally anything by Squenix is grueling and feels like playing Ghostbusters 2016 because nobody ever stops yapping and quipping. Then if you play faster than their Kojima ass script can keep up, the characters cut themselves off and jump ahead just to keep up with you and maintain the constant flow of yapping. That is, assuming the game doesn't just stop you wholesale so it can catch up. It shatters my immersion, leaves nothing to the imagination, and creates an absolutely miserable aural cacophony when combined with today's dogshit audio mixing and design sensibilities. Oh, you like soundtracks with prominent melodies? Well too bad, because that would be too distracting and get in the way of the constant fucking yapping. Lowest common denominator design for the overly socialized with goldfish imagination and comprehension.

This is a generalization of course, but my impression of people who play video games for the words first and foremost is that they want a book club and a community more than they want a video game, and video games have more of a community than other word-based entertainment because the barrier of entry is considerably lower and it's where the porn is.

an entire generation of writers grew up as broadcast media started dying off so the people who grew up starry-eyed at the thought of coming up with the next disney movie or a hit television show all got pidgeonholed into the video game industry. the vast majority of them were people who had never really been interested in anything more than finding an audience for their stuff but then video games became the biggest entertainment industry on the planet. if neil druckmann can get praised for his chops then hell maybe they can too

 

[Mister Fister]

Jack saying what we’re all screaming every time Nomura writes dialog. What the hell even is this nonsense?

Jack makes the Nomura dialogue work.

 

[Bully OST by Shawn Lee]

No, the GTA series isn't "doing diversity."

"Having a diverse cast isn't diversity." I think we disagree on what that word means. Because I'm seeing a game with a lot of ethnic backgrounds shown off in the main story and you're seeing the same thing but apparently that isn't a diverse cast.

 

[Adolf Kitler]

A modded Wii U can run almost all of the bing bing wahoo slop you play on the switch but way cheaper, the only reason why i could consider buying a switch instead is because it's portable it has some good exclusives that the Wii U doesn't have, and because certain models can be modded too so i don't have to pay 60 euros or more for an "enhanced version" of the same game i played years ago on an older system.

Also, the gamepad is comfy as fuck.

 

[Jace on ice]

Days Gone is an incredibly mediocre and boring 5/10 game that only got attention because the MC was a grizzled white dude and everyone was incredibly fucking sick of girlboss protagonists.

 

[LifeAlert]

A modded Wii U can run almost all of the bing bing wahoo slop you play on the switch but way cheaper, the only reason why i could consider buying a switch instead is because it's portable it has some good exclusives that the Wii U doesn't have, and because certain models can be modded too so i don't have to pay 60 euros or more for an "enhanced version" of the same game i played years ago on an older system.

Also, the gamepad is comfy as fuck.

The only problem is that bing bing wahoo slop is all there is on the Wii U. At least the Switch has all of that plus the much larger game library. IMO the Wii U is a much more interesting console than the Switch but there's no fucking games on it unless you like CoD or Ubislop

 

[ParasiteSteve]

Days Gone is an incredibly mediocre and boring 5/10 game that only got attention because the MC was a grizzled white dude and everyone was incredibly fucking sick of girlboss protagonists.

It goes on forever, and ever, and ever. Also, once you are about 3 hours in, you will likely have played all their is to play. Its just that same loop for about another 15 hours of "story". Its the classic "lets just hit the road and leave......after this" that plagues television shows and games alike. Even books get that shit, where you can tell they are wanting to turn it into a 13 book series of never ending story.

 

[Adolf Kitler]

The only problem is that bing bing wahoo slop is all there is on the Wii U. At least the Switch has all of that plus the much larger game library. IMO the Wii U is a much more interesting console than the Switch but there's no fucking games on it unless you like CoD or Ubislop

You also have a decent catalog of indie games and some good third-party ports, and not to mention emulation, in that section the possibilities are almost infinite.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Days Gone is an incredibly mediocre and boring 5/10 game that only got attention because the MC was a grizzled white dude and everyone was incredibly fucking sick of girlboss protagonists.

I was under the impression Days Gone only got attention from Sony fanboys. To everybody else it was a generic open world zombie game after the open world zombie game fad had dried up.

 

[The Ugly One]

"Having a diverse cast isn't diversity." I think we disagree on what that word means.

It's best to use words the way they mean in the broader culture that originated them.

Because I'm seeing a game with a lot of ethnic backgrounds shown off in the main story and you're seeing the same thing but apparently that isn't a diverse cast.

Zulu! has people with lots of different ethnic backgrounds - Zulu, English, Welsh, and Irish. Ask yourself why nobody ever holds up Zulu! as an icon of diversity in film casting.