Just to preface that I haven't played mixtape and probably won't given how...white upper middle class it all feels. But besides that, can we talk about how this drama enlightened me on just how gamers are paradoxical hypocrites? They want games to be seen as an artform, which to some sounds reasonable, yet do nothing to make that argument clear. And when a game does try to be art, they complain there's no violence, no clear lose condition, no means to cheese it to reach the end faster. Say what you will about walking sims, but they have place among interactive media as a whole, not just as games.

So If games are suppose to be art, why are gamers so unwilling to step out of their comfort zones to experience? Why is a lack of "gameplay" a deal breaker when the story and visuals are the main highlights of these games? idk, but I feel like as games continue to change in order to meet demands, I wish people did give these games a second shot instead dismissing them as lesser for not being hardcore (as if that's the pinnacle of good game design, but I always also neutral on soulslikes as a whole so)

in skyrim, fallout new vegas, witcher 3, RDR2, elden ring, all these great games, i can play through the WHOLE experience start to finish with little to no time wasting interruptions in what i want to do. THAT'S freedom.

the ability to sleep/pass time whenever and wherever you want IS freedom. for the game to say "no you HAVE to let this timer slowly tick by" or "you HAVE to wait until the NPC decides to turn up" IS a bad, unengaging design flaw that leaves the player stranded with no power to progress for several minutes and in the worse cases, HOURS.

so, the PC players said fuck that and made a mod that 100,000's of people downloaded. console players are still stuck washing their fucking dishes while the timer on the bustling hill quest STILL isn't finished slowly ticking down to zero.

but yeah, "GOTY GUYS"🤓

another little addition. the content online about this game is so fucking repetitive and clickbaity. every post is "the dev's finally did it!" to suggest that they've "solved gaming" by adding a fucking dog collar or some shit. they always point out how "no one's devving harder than the CD devs" like they're putting everyone to shame and their crummy fucking MMO is the shepard that'll lead us to the promised land.

An argument I keep running into online is how current Western media "hates femininity" because there is more variety in female characters beyond the buxom, often scantily clad fanservice types. One of the most common targets of this accusations is Neil Druckmann because of Abby from The Last of Us 2 and Jordan from the upcoming game Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. The former is a woman who is more muscular than the average female video game character, the latter is a bald woman. The recent Mortal Kombat games got similar accusations for toning down the female outfits' fanservice elements despite the majority of women wearing skintight clothing and high heels.

Even the Sonic games have gotten similar responses over Rouge's chest being covered up and Amy being less of an obsessive Sonic stalker.

This extends to adaptations of games as well. The terms "masculine", "girlboss", and "Daisy clone" get thrown at Peach in the Illumination Mario movies simply because she's portrayed as a competent fighter who doesn't talk about baking and shopping every five minutes.

And this isn't just coming from the typical suspects like Nerdrotic, The Critical Drinker and Asmongold. This is coming from even progressive leaning online fans and critics, or at least they claim to be progressive. Their argument is that having female characters act "masculine" (which often just means them showing negative emotions in understandable contexts and being capable fighters and athletes like the guys) is an attack on feminine women and thus anti-feminist. In fact, the situation with Peach in the movies that I mentioned above is a complete reversal from the original situation from before the movie's release. Originally, it was the alt right types screaming about how they were emasculating Mario by making Peach a better fighter. Then the movie came out and they calmed down in regards to her, but now it's the people wearing the badge of feminism crying about how this movie is further proof Hollywood hates feminine women, as if Peach is some tattooed, short-haired butch girl who talks about how much she hates men and doesn't shave.

Thanks for the request GZbladewing for the request to know

"What grinds my gears"

about exploits💯☕️😎

I'm so tired of male gaze games.

It is so so difficult to find games that have

1. Female protagonists
2. Male love interests
3. No >!rape!< situations (yes, coercion counts)
4. With good art
5. With decent storyline/dialogue
6. (this is a long shot I know)Good voice acting that isn't the girls trying to make themselves sound 3 years old
7. Normal proportions, Why are their boobs larger than a refrigerator. Girl. OR they basically have the physique of a child, and the temperament of one.
8. Isn't geared towards freeuse and only freeuse

i probably wont beat the main story, i'll probably just stay in hernand forever. the main quest objectives, story and game design surrounding those things is just fucking terrible, it's some of the worst i've ever seen. but running around in the open world, fighting bleed bandits and selling loot is fun. so i'll just do that until a time that they fix the time gating, they make the bosses more fun and make the parry more responsive.

i need something to replace the dissapointment i had with crimson desert from a medieval fantasy RPG standpoint. something new and relevant. but apart from that i just want to see what happened to the baron and his family. i want to see geralt and all these characters as they're all old now.

i also want to see blood of the dawnwalker (BOTD)'s combat. i can get behind a vampire game.

i get that you get a bunch of cars, but it's still L2 to break, R2 to accelerate. you just do that in a big world. do you buy it so you can have it on the TV at a party? do you buy it so you have something to do while you watch a show or listen to a podcast? what's the end goal here?

Thought this was an interesting enough video that fully encapsulates a lot of what I and I'm sure many others deplore about gaming discourse on social media. While I think SecondWind does a good job of identifying the issues, giving multiple examples of the worst cases from just the past few months and how they comb their own community, I feel it doesn't go far enough because it stops short of how to widely correct the problem.

Would a block list or similar kind of passive order to avoid a group of content creators work? just something to reduce the sway or impressions of a lot of the professional hater and engagement farming creators. I guess it's not super dissimilar from the dei/woke/sbi detected type of game lists but I really am clueless as to what else can be done about these creators and influencers who profit off infighting and degeneration of the gaming space.

I've commented on a few other posts about this but I need to know: why is such an innocent indie game that I haven't even heard of until two days ago suddenly attracting the same outrage I would expect from a AAA game? Like I get if it isn't someone's cup of tea or something, but I'm seeing stuff on YouTube and Twitter (being passed around of course, I don't use Twitter) calling it garbage and I'm seriously confused on where this has come from.

I got the game on Steam so I am going to try it out but I want to know why it's a hot topic all of a sudden?

Just seems all this anti-woke gaming discourse around censorship is wildly selective.

Like if a localisation changes a joke, a woman in a game is slightly less sexualised, or a studio makes a character less conventionally attractive, it becomes proof that progressives are destroying media?

To be clear these companies absolutely do make bad decisions sometimes but the point here and what these people never acknowledge for some reason is the right has a much stronger record of actually censoring media.

The Hays Code shaped Hollywood for decades. The Comics Code gutted comics. Conservative moral panics targeted D&D, violent games, sexual content, queer material, libraries, schools, and now online porn access. This is all REAL institutional censorship, backed by law, pressure campaigns, school boards, and political power. Yet culture warriors and anti-woke gamers mostly talk about censorship as if it means “progressives touched my hobby.”

I'm sure this is obvious to most here but I really don't think a lot of these people actually oppose censorship. They just oppose progressive influence. When progressives pressure media, it is tyranny but when conservatives do it, suddenly it becomes “protecting children,” “community standards,” or “fighting degeneracy.”

Gaming discourse needs to stop pretending these people are consistent free-speech defenders. Most of them only care when the pressure comes from the left. They have no clue the "enemy" they are fighting is literally on their "side" 😂

People are clowning on Mixtape for being “just hold forward gameplay” and acting like the awkward kissing scene (which is SUPPOSED to be awkward and uncomfortable and most importantly, NOT SEXUAL) was some kind of moral catastrophe yet, people praised Dispatch despite it also having the same gameplay and having actual sex scenes.

I'm honestly convinced that the gaming community is FULL of Hypocrites

So, so many gaming YouTubers prey on culture war bullshit, and I absolutely hate those guys. However, I've become a big fan of MugThief, who doesn't seem like a culture war guy, and has pretty good takes I agree with. Watching his video on Mixtape right now, which he doesn't like, and he has a very measured take on why he doesn't like it, and why he thinks it's getting great reviews.