Polygon: "Why Gone Home is the Most Important Game of the Decade" - Polygon does it again

[The tired cat]

Im always weirded out when people say how Gone Home was the game, that made people stop trusting the gaming press. Just, I dunno maybe its from my experience but I recall the whole "not trusting gaming press" went further back, say when Driver 3 came out and it was a huge shitshow with magazines being accused of being bribed or hell there were these huge stories in the Russian gaming market, where Russian reviewers would give good scores to VERY trashy games.

 

[AnOminous]

Im always weirded out when people say how Gone Home was the game, that made people stop trusting the gaming press.

Who the fuck ever trusted "games journalists" in the first place? It wasn't being corrupt shills that started Gamergate though but when they started calling people Nazis and shit and destroying their lives for pointing out the obvious.

 

[SiccDicc]

Who the fuck ever trusted "games journalists" in the first place? It wasn't being corrupt shills that started Gamergate though but when they started calling people Nazis and shit and destroying their lives for pointing out the obvious.

I preferred them as corporate shills to be honest. At least then the articles were exciting and fun to read. Now I feel like I'm reading a pamphlet handed to me by a Jehovah Witness who for some reason is very intent on my reading it or he will personally send me to Hell.

 

[Picnic_Boy]

The pinnacle of gaming journalism was the earnest dorkiness of old Nintendo Power, and even they were shills.

 

[CIA Nigger]

Gone Home was important, but not for the ways the gaming press hailed it as. It was an example of just how hard the gaming press was shilling for pretentious, hipster made indie games. It helped coin the phrase "walking simulator", a slang term for shitty half assed "art games" with little artistic value and less gameplay than a visual novel or classic adventure game. Said walking simulators were also distinguished by the fact that the gaming press absolutely gushed over them, yet nobody else seemed to give a fuck.

Gone Home is important in the same way a disaster like No Man's Sky was important, instead of being important in the same way Minecraft was important. In no way, shape, or form was it the most important game of the decade either. Gameplay wise it's like Bioshock (and other games sharing the same audiolog + gameplay story formula) if the only gameplay elements were exploring the setting and picking up audio logs. To add to that, the story and setting were dull as shit so it's an insult to compare it to a lot of other games. It had little appeal to traditional gamers, and it had little appeal to gamers who enjoy classic adventure games and visual novels.

Yet it was being shilled hard by the gaming press as the bestest best game ever made. One of the few dissenting critic reviews called it a game searching for a story and many of the critical reviews said the same thing. A popular video and gif mocking the game involved a 47 second speedrun of the game with the "all doors unlocked" modifier.

Unsurprisingly when the Gone Home developers made another game, it sold like absolute dogshit despite even having a Game Informer cover. The gaming press might have loved gone home, but the average gamer saw it as a punchline to a joke about the gaming industry and press. It might not have been the first time gaming journalists were caught being paid off (driv3rgate, the GameSpot Kane and Lynch firings, Dorito Pope, and numerous other scandals come to mind) but it was a key turning point among indie games. It showed just how much disconnect there was between gamers and the press/developers.

 

[Pissmaster]

I know there was like a 180 dollar version of Gone Home that came in a replica drawer.

It was like super limited and it makes me wonder how many scalpers bought them and are now stuck with them.

I hope someone sends one to Ashens so he can make fun of it.

 

[Marissa Moira]

The pinnacle of gaming journalism was the earnest dorkiness of old Nintendo Power, and even they were shills.

Gameplayers and Ultra Gameplayers(and later PSM) were probably the best game magazines because they fucking went off the rails when they hated a game. They also had a good third of the magazine be absurdist humor and hired many well known comic book artists to make covers for them. I mean PSM's swimsuit issues were legendary.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Im always weirded out when people say how Gone Home was the game, that made people stop trusting the gaming press. Just, I dunno maybe its from my experience but I recall the whole "not trusting gaming press" went further back, say when Driver 3 came out and it was a huge shitshow with magazines being accused of being bribed or hell there were these huge stories in the Russian gaming market, where Russian reviewers would give good scores to VERY trashy games.

Gaming journalism threatened to get pretty good for a while there in the mid to late 2000s, think Dan Hsu's infamous interview with Peter Moore, I was also a big fan of a site called Destructoid in its early days.

It seems like they were trying to get away from shilling, but even prior to that gaming magazines were simply a lot of fun, even if you had to take reviews with a grain of salt sometimes.

But as soon as SJW culture took hold it was game over for gaming journalism, it's actually kind of incredible how an entire industry was basically completely ruined.

Gameplayers and Ultra Gameplayers(and later PSM) were probably the best game magazines because they fucking went off the rails when they hated a game. They also had a good third of the magazine be absurdist humor and hired many well known comic book artists to make covers for them. I mean PSM's swimsuit issues were legendary.

I loved those PSM swimsuit issues, lol.

 

[ZehnBoat]

of course notice they say important, not good
what's important to them is MUH LESBOS and MUH BLACK COCK

 

[Syaoran Li]

Im always weirded out when people say how Gone Home was the game, that made people stop trusting the gaming press. Just, I dunno maybe its from my experience but I recall the whole "not trusting gaming press" went further back, say when Driver 3 came out and it was a huge shitshow with magazines being accused of being bribed or hell there were these huge stories in the Russian gaming market, where Russian reviewers would give good scores to VERY trashy games.

Agreed. I'd say Gone Home didn't end the goodwill gamers had towards gaming journalists in and of itself, but the shilling and pretentiousness surrounding it was basically the straw that broke the camel's back.

The game itself is boring and pretentious, and while I wouldn't call it the most important game of the 2010's, I would still consider it one of the more important games of the 2010's, but not in the way that Polygon means it.

Gone Home is actually important to the history of video gaming but in a very negative way.

If we're comparing 2010's video games to 1970's cinema, then Dark Souls and Minecraft would be like Star Wars and Jaws while Gone Home would be like Heaven's Gate.

 

[CIA Nigger]

Gaming journalism threatened to get pretty good for a while there in the mid to late 2000s, think Dan Hsu's infamous interview with Peter Moore, I was also a big fan of a site called Destructoid in its early days.

It seems like they were trying to get away from shilling, but even prior to that gaming magazines were simply a lot of fun, even if you had to take reviews with a grain of salt sometimes.

But as soon as SJW culture took hold it was game over for gaming journalism, it's actually kind of incredible how an entire industry was basically completely ruined.

There was another shift when SJW culture took hold as well. Gaming journalism used to defend gaming from critics like Jack Thompson and back in the 2000s he was the personal lolcow of everyone in the industry. At one point he even had an idea for his own CWC's Adult Chronicles type game which got made...leading him to have a meltdown. Everyone from gamers to Penny Arcade to gaming journalists was mocking him.

In the 2010s however, other critics of the industry who wanted to impose their own puritan ideas like Anita ended up getting into the industry. Anita seemed to be meeting with every game studio under the sun at one point giving talks there and whatnot, got shielded by the press, even as it turned out she wasn't a gamer at all. Jim did a video on this when that drama was huge and invested in vids on that pretty much talking about how she was a fake gamer and analyzing her whiteknights. Even to this day, the usual sites still white knight her once in a while.

Also quite a few edgelords who had gaming journalism gigs like Seanbaby or Jim Sterling ended up whining about Trump on Twitter or how games are problematic.

 

[Dom Cruise]

There was another shift when SJW culture took hold as well. Gaming journalism used to defend gaming from critics like Jack Thompson and back in the 2000s he was the personal lolcow of everyone in the industry. At one point he even had an idea for his own CWC's Adult Chronicles type game which got made...leading him to have a meltdown. Everyone from gamers to Penny Arcade to gaming journalists was mocking him.

In the 2010s however, other critics of the industry who wanted to impose their own puritan ideas like Anita ended up getting into the industry. Anita seemed to be meeting with every game studio under the sun at one point giving talks there and whatnot, got shielded by the press, even as it turned out she wasn't a gamer at all. Jim did a video on this when that drama was huge and invested in vids on that pretty much talking about how she was a fake gamer and analyzing her whiteknights. Even to this day, the usual sites still white knight her once in a while.

Also quite a few edgelords who had gaming journalism gigs like Seanbaby or Jim Sterling ended up whining about Trump on Twitter or how games are problematic.

The about face gaming journalism did with Anita versus Jack Thompson still never ceases to amaze me.

She was basically doing the same thing Thompson was, just replace violence with sexual content.

 

[The Littlest Shitlord]

Im always weirded out when people say how Gone Home was the game, that made people stop trusting the gaming press. Just, I dunno maybe its from my experience but I recall the whole "not trusting gaming press" went further back, say when Driver 3 came out and it was a huge shitshow with magazines being accused of being bribed or hell there were these huge stories in the Russian gaming market, where Russian reviewers would give good scores to VERY trashy games.

I remember back in 2010 when Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 came out and was just absolute utter dogshit that practically everyone hated. Some Japanese Final Fantasy fan had a bunch of stock invested in Square-Enix, and he had pre-ordered FFXIV and played it on launch day. And he was so horrified that he not only quit the game, but he very publicly sold all his SE stock and told everyone he was doing it because FFXIV was so terrible. So of course Western "gaming journalists" all run stories about this guy, and they all say the same thing: basically "LOL RAGEQUIT!!!1".

And I remember thinking about what an absolute idiot hivemind all of these people are; suppose you were in that guy's position, and you had a big block of stock in a company whose product you actually use personally. And the next big product release that is supposed to make up a big chunk of the company's revenue for the next few years comes out, and you try it and immediately realize that it's complete garbage and no one will subscribe to it and decades of accumulated customer goodwill is going up in smoke. The company's very existence is threatened. Your stock may become worthless. But the big institutional investors have yet to figure this out and dump their shares and tank the share price. Because you have seen with your own eyes the (gloomy) future of the company and do not need to wait for clueless business types to read analyst reports on the situation and act on them, you can dump your stock before anyone else does and save millions of dollars. Maybe tens of millions. And for this... some foreign morons are laughing at you?

I didn't give a single solitary shit about anything "gaming journalists" said after that nonsense. It was obvious that they were total fucking dipshits that hated their audience and there was no need to even suffer the annoyance of knowing their bad take on anything.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

I would argue that Sunset was more important than Gone Home because it proved, conclusively, that gamers were not interested in half assed walking simulators.

And it did so through cold, hard numbers -- the sales figures and returns.

 

[Ambidextype]

I like to say Gone Home made the gateway for all the walking simulators to follow and gain some moderate success as long as the dev doesn't act like a sperg.

 

[The tired cat]

I like to say Gone Home made the gateway for all the walking simulators to follow and gain some moderate success as long as the dev doesn't act like a sperg.

I mean, was Gone Home like the gateway? To me it seems something like Penumbra was the catalyst for that.

 

[BrokenWokenBespoken]

Zoe Quinn isn't even remotely related to Gone Home - what are you dorks talking about?

There's nothing wrong with The Fullbright Company itself - it's just some hipsters shitting out mediocre indie "narrative experiences". Both Gone Home and Tacoma are harmless and inoffensive walking simulators. The only issue here is that game journos are propping their games as some revolutionary mindblowing revelations that changed the world of gaming forever. Which they aren't. They barely qualify as good stories. Industry awards are cancer in every industry, but gaming media is far more degenerate and incestuous than even Hollywood, so shit like Gone Home gets a ton of free marketing, and real diamonds don't.

I still remember how Vice Shilled Wzogi when talking about pessemistic games. They are rpgmaker novels made from some cuck in Toronto about how powerless the main characters are and part of the sxperience is watching them fail.

 

[AnOminous]

The about face gaming journalism did with Anita versus Jack Thompson still never ceases to amaze me.

She was basically doing the same thing Thompson was, just replace violence with sexual content.

Completely chimping out about Anita's pretty tame content was somewhere GG completely fucked up. Zoe at least was so manifestly corrupt and degenerate that even normies can't actually support the repulsive behavior, stealing, and other shit she does. Anita is also somewhat corrupt, but even her crowdfunding irregularities are minor compared to shit Chelsea does. She may have delivered late and low quality content but she did actually deliver.

She may be a shallow intellect at best, but completely freaking out about her saying games have some misogynistic content (even if she was often just fucking wrong or dishonest about it like the obvious Zelda example) was autistic as shit and why GG looked like a bunch of fucking misogynistic autists.

Ironically, GG probably took a lot more shit about fake misogyny over Chelsea, even though she is in retrospect even MORE atrociously shitty a human being than even GG claimed.

 

[ZehnBoat]

She may be a shallow intellect at best, but completely freaking out about her saying games have some misogynistic content (even if she was often just fucking wrong or dishonest about it like the obvious Zelda example) was autistic as shit and why GG looked like a bunch of fucking misogynistic autists.

tbh, i get why people were flipping out over it
same shit, different person
but this person was a WAMMINZ and you can't disagree
hell, even if no one did anything there would have been fake BS and news about "HOW SOGGY KNEES GAMERS IGNORE ANITA BECAUSE SHES STRONG WAMMINZ WHO IS RIGHT"

 

[AnOminous]

tbh, i get why people were flipping out over it
same shit, different person
but this person was a WAMMINZ and you can't disagree
hell, even if no one did anything there would have been fake BS and news about "HOW SOGGY KNEES GAMERS IGNORE ANITA BECAUSE SHES STRONG WAMMINZ WHO IS RIGHT"

But unlike Chelsay, Anita was just some outsider talking some dumb boomer shit. Just ignoring her would have been better. Chelsay was a cancer more or less embedded in the actual developer scene and represented a much different kind of threat.