- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Controversial gaming opinion: video games are good.
-
For all readers and writers
After much ado, our new tagging system is here and being rolled out to the userbase. Read more here!
What are controversial gaming opinions you have?
- Location
- Do you really care?
The difference, to me, is that the developer knowingly signed a contract that explicitly gave Sony the right to make that kind of change. The only reason Sony can even legally do that kind of thing is because the creators explicitly allowed them to. If you sign up for a publishing deal knowing that the publisher might choose to exercise a contractual right that you gave them and then they actually do so, I personally file that under "your own damn fault." Don't develop your game for a Sony console if you don't like the idea of Sony having that kind of creative control over your work. There are other platforms. If you do it anyway, then you clearly didn't really care that much about the specifics of your character designs to begin with - and that's not censorship, it's a mutually acceptable compromise.
Last edited:
This is running out of any actual relation to the prior discussion, but this reads 'if you let yourself be locked into one-way coercive contracts that's your choice and we should recognize their basic righteousness'. I don't think game developers dealing with platform owners and publishers are in that much different a position than consumers dealing with license agreements for that to make sense.
Comrade Future
Man from Zeerust
- Location
- USSR
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
Let's face it - without endless DLC, many of Paradox's games would be much more boring, or would take much longer to develop.
Tekken 8 also lost a significant portion of its players due to the update and its associated microtransactions. I note that both Dogma and Tekken are not shy about sexualizing their characters - so "armored bras" don't save anyone. However, the question is still whether large developers will understand this.
Since arguing about objectification with a woman will be at least insensitive, I'd rather focus on the painfully funny aspects.
Firstly, regarding that paragraph in the article (which I actually read) that "No one pays attention to Eve's sexuality." It turns out someone is paying attention:
View: https://youtu.be/FRKoQ6rpz3Q?si=CtsXZheYgSpTNg8P
View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UVcIZGtAdls
Marxism dictates that this is product placement, but I swear to God it's damn funny.
..,..................,.
In fact, I forgot to mention the main complaint about the "third iteration" of Resident Evil - the lack of non-linearity. The first three Biohazards stood out for their non-linear progression. The first one had an open mansion and different endings - you didn't even have to kill all the enemies. In the second, bosses and various plot points changed depending on the order in which campaigns were selected. In the third, it was possible to react differently to different situations and this somewhat changed the course of the plot and the ending. And in the last two? Only one solution in the 7th part, and complete linearity in the 8th. And we have four different Abodes - one could come up with tricks related to the order of collision.
21stCentury
Let's get down to bismuth
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- They/Them
My stance is that capitalism is bad and money shouldn't exist and game studios should have creative control of their projects and not be punished if they make something unpalatable to the masses.
Should Stellar Blade exist? Yeah, it's someone's creative vision.
Does everyone need to love Stellar Blade? no, of course now.
Is Stellar Blade male gazey/objectifying/overly sexualized? literally there is no answer to this. this is up for debate and will never be resolved. As this threat is proving.
Will i get Stellar Blade? nah, probably not for a variety of reasons.
21stCentury
Let's get down to bismuth
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Controversial opinion: You SHOULD tip game developers for games and it SHOULD be common practice to get a small DLC package called "Tip to the Devs" that is mentioned (since linking that is against Steam TOS) at the start of the credits. Or perhaps a Patron mention (since linking that is against Steam TOS).
But only if the dev is independent.
But only if the dev is independent.
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Is this unpopular? I don't think people care about an indie game having a "support the dev" DLC that offers music or concept art or something.
What's actually reviled is the idea that people should tip devs in AAA games. As in the games where developers are most disposable and tend to be the most expensive. It's a self-evidently terrible idea that no one would defend who isn't a corporate ghoul.
That kinda took a turn, didn't it? Capitalism isn't why creators are subject to public reaction for creations they present publicly.
Probably not? I've seen people flip out about it on Steam forums, but that's a terrible metric.
Last edited:
21stCentury
Let's get down to bismuth
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- They/Them
every time? No, of course not.
But publishers meddling in on games is a problem. I thought the Stellar Blade thing was all about how Sony asked the dev to cover up the protag? did i misunderstand?
21stCentury
Let's get down to bismuth
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Then why are tip DLC/Microtransactions so rare? I usually only see them on free games.
- Location
- Do you really care?
Well, they weren't. Are you feeling oppressed by the fact that you aren't allowed to post hardcore pornography on Sufficient Velocity? Because it's literally the same relationship. Publishing your game on a proprietary console is not a right. It's a privilege.
Developer says: "Hey, we would like to develop a game for your console!" Sony says: "Great! We'd love to have you. Here are the content guidelines. Please read them carefully. If you find them acceptable and believe you can abide by them, sign the contract and everything will be ready to go." Developer says: "Yes, that sounds just fine to me." *later* Sony says: "You seem to have failed to comply with our content guidelines. If you wish to publish your game on our console, you will need to change this and this." Developer says: "Oops, sorry about that, let me fix that right quick." Sony says: "Alright! Everything else seems to be in order, so we'll be looking forward to seeing your game in the stores soon."
Internet says: "RAAARGH SONY ARE NAZIS FREEDOM FOR CONSOLE PORN RAARGH HOW DARE THEY HOLD PEOPLE TO THEIR PROMISES RAAAAARGH"
So yeah, this is literally a give and take. Both sides want something out of this relationship. One of them failed to deliver and had to fix the issue after the fact. A completely unrelated third party with no awareness of how contract law or console licensing agreements work has strong opinions about this and nothing to say that is actually worth listening to. And thus, we are here.
21stCentury
Let's get down to bismuth
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'm very confused that you would think my praxis is posting porn?
Why are people on Sufficient Velocity so aggro?
Anyway, i'll take a long walk off a short pier for your benefit now.
Edit: actually, no, this is my fault. It keeps happening and i keep coming back like the moron i am.
Last edited:
- Location
- Nowhere
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So I went out clothes shopping in London last weekend. Fairly normal, I do this quite often. Halfway through my trip, a man came up to be and said:
"Hey sweetie, smile more, it might never happen!"
This happens quite often. Maybe 50% of the time I go out in London someone will tell me to smile more. Sometimes they call me "sweetie", sometimes "lady", sometimes they call me "girly". But all of them revolve around the same point - that I'm just not enough of a smiling sexy lamp for them.
It doesn't matter I'm relatively good looking. It doesn't matter that I like wearing clothes that make me look attractive. Because at the end of the day, if I'm not constantly, 100% looking the most attractive possible, a man will - inevitably - pop up to tell me to smile more.
Because a frowny women just isn't sexy enough - nobody likes to remember women are people afterall, with internal thoughts and feelings - so of course she needs to be reminded of her fault so she can resume being a smiling sexy lamp.
This is constant throughout society. Women are constantly expected to look good, be attractive, be appealing.
It's why men's evening wear looks like this:
While women's looks like this:
Don't get me wrong, that's a very nice dress, if I was the type of fuck-off rich to have several thousand pounds of cash lying around I would absolutely get myself a Suzanne Neville dress.
But the point isn't whether it looks nice, it's about what's expected.
Video games are but another extension of this. It isn't enough for women to just generally be attractive or good looking and wear normal clothing, they have to be ridiculously attractive, put in the most ludicrous clothing possible, and twisted into almost-impossible poses to flaunt their assets to a (presumed) male audience.
One of the things this dialogue of the past pages has missed is that it isn't about sexualisation or fanservice, because those terms imply a broad appeal. "Fanservice" appeals to fans, plural. "Sexualisation" is a broad term. But we don't see that happening, and it's not what goes on in games like Stellar Blade, or in the wider video game industry. What we see there is quite simply:
Male dick pandering.
Because that's what it is. It isn't just sexualisation, it's sexualisation of a very specific group (attractive women) designed to appeal to a singular audience (straight men) to make pee-pee go hard. Calling it sexualisation or fanservice misses this. It misses the fact that is 99.9% a uni-directional event. It is always women being sexualised, women being made into sexy lamps for the male audience to enjoy.
And that one directional pandering occurs in a society that already forces women into being sexualised, and which already punishes women for not being attractive, for not actively appealing to men.
Going "Oh well, I'd love to see more sexualised women and more sexualised men in muh video games" comes off as farcical, because society doesn't demand a performance of sexuality from men like it does women, and this isn't reflected in video games either. It's the horny-video game discourse equivalent of "all lives matter". Technically correct, but also missing the fucking point.
Sure, it would be nice to see sexualised men, but we don't live in that society, and using it as a shield to deflect from things like Stellar Blade's gross horny shite ring very hollow.
The other thing this discourse passes over is what classes as "puritanical".
Because I would argue that a lot of very horny, very fanservicey media is actually quite puritanical.
Think about anime or manga for example. I'm sure you can probably think of a lot of examples of ridiculous horny shit in anime/manga. Characters with ridiculous breasts, impossible figures, stupid jiggle physics, and an implausible level of "accidental" groping.
Ok, done that? Now think about the number of (non hentai) anime/manga that has like, sex in it. I'm not talking full on ball-slapping penis-in-vagina sex, just like, media that acknowledges that sex is a thing™ that exists and which people do, and which the characters do.
Now personally speaking, the number of anime/manga I'm familiar with in which ridiculously horny "fanservice" occurs vastly outnumbers the pieces of media which just has the characters fuck.
This too, is a feature of misogyny. The lamps are allowed to be sexy, but they are still lamps, and lamps don't have agency. Lamps don't fuck.
It's the constant and contradictory expectation that society puts on women that we must simultaneously always be sexually appealing, while also calling us sluts and whores if we actually have sex.
This is from what I've heard, reflected in Stellar Blade. Eve is designed to look like ridiculously sexy women, posed in ridiculously sexy ways, but is also completely ignorant of her own sexuality. She is a "safe" women.
A women who is sexualised to an extreme degree, and who will exist as eye candy for a male audience, but who lacks any sexual agency so as to not disrupt their masturbatory fantasies. Simultaneously existing as both "pure" (yuck) and sexualised. Classic madonna-whore stuff.
/rant.
Lol no she's not.
Eve's model is a porned-up version of an already good looking model.
Also,
Look at how her sharply her back bends in order to get her to pose with her tits and ass ticking out. Her spine just abruptly turns 45 degrees to vertical. That's not a normal pose - I'm not even sure it's physically possible for a spine to bend that sharply in such a short distance, and it's certainly not a natural or comfortable position.
"Hey sweetie, smile more, it might never happen!"
This happens quite often. Maybe 50% of the time I go out in London someone will tell me to smile more. Sometimes they call me "sweetie", sometimes "lady", sometimes they call me "girly". But all of them revolve around the same point - that I'm just not enough of a smiling sexy lamp for them.
It doesn't matter I'm relatively good looking. It doesn't matter that I like wearing clothes that make me look attractive. Because at the end of the day, if I'm not constantly, 100% looking the most attractive possible, a man will - inevitably - pop up to tell me to smile more.
Because a frowny women just isn't sexy enough - nobody likes to remember women are people afterall, with internal thoughts and feelings - so of course she needs to be reminded of her fault so she can resume being a smiling sexy lamp.
This is constant throughout society. Women are constantly expected to look good, be attractive, be appealing.
It's why men's evening wear looks like this:
While women's looks like this:
Don't get me wrong, that's a very nice dress, if I was the type of fuck-off rich to have several thousand pounds of cash lying around I would absolutely get myself a Suzanne Neville dress.
But the point isn't whether it looks nice, it's about what's expected.
Video games are but another extension of this. It isn't enough for women to just generally be attractive or good looking and wear normal clothing, they have to be ridiculously attractive, put in the most ludicrous clothing possible, and twisted into almost-impossible poses to flaunt their assets to a (presumed) male audience.
One of the things this dialogue of the past pages has missed is that it isn't about sexualisation or fanservice, because those terms imply a broad appeal. "Fanservice" appeals to fans, plural. "Sexualisation" is a broad term. But we don't see that happening, and it's not what goes on in games like Stellar Blade, or in the wider video game industry. What we see there is quite simply:
Male dick pandering.
Because that's what it is. It isn't just sexualisation, it's sexualisation of a very specific group (attractive women) designed to appeal to a singular audience (straight men) to make pee-pee go hard. Calling it sexualisation or fanservice misses this. It misses the fact that is 99.9% a uni-directional event. It is always women being sexualised, women being made into sexy lamps for the male audience to enjoy.
And that one directional pandering occurs in a society that already forces women into being sexualised, and which already punishes women for not being attractive, for not actively appealing to men.
Going "Oh well, I'd love to see more sexualised women and more sexualised men in muh video games" comes off as farcical, because society doesn't demand a performance of sexuality from men like it does women, and this isn't reflected in video games either. It's the horny-video game discourse equivalent of "all lives matter". Technically correct, but also missing the fucking point.
Sure, it would be nice to see sexualised men, but we don't live in that society, and using it as a shield to deflect from things like Stellar Blade's gross horny shite ring very hollow.
The other thing this discourse passes over is what classes as "puritanical".
Because I would argue that a lot of very horny, very fanservicey media is actually quite puritanical.
Think about anime or manga for example. I'm sure you can probably think of a lot of examples of ridiculous horny shit in anime/manga. Characters with ridiculous breasts, impossible figures, stupid jiggle physics, and an implausible level of "accidental" groping.
Ok, done that? Now think about the number of (non hentai) anime/manga that has like, sex in it. I'm not talking full on ball-slapping penis-in-vagina sex, just like, media that acknowledges that sex is a thing™ that exists and which people do, and which the characters do.
Now personally speaking, the number of anime/manga I'm familiar with in which ridiculously horny "fanservice" occurs vastly outnumbers the pieces of media which just has the characters fuck.
This too, is a feature of misogyny. The lamps are allowed to be sexy, but they are still lamps, and lamps don't have agency. Lamps don't fuck.
It's the constant and contradictory expectation that society puts on women that we must simultaneously always be sexually appealing, while also calling us sluts and whores if we actually have sex.
This is from what I've heard, reflected in Stellar Blade. Eve is designed to look like ridiculously sexy women, posed in ridiculously sexy ways, but is also completely ignorant of her own sexuality. She is a "safe" women.
A women who is sexualised to an extreme degree, and who will exist as eye candy for a male audience, but who lacks any sexual agency so as to not disrupt their masturbatory fantasies. Simultaneously existing as both "pure" (yuck) and sexualised. Classic madonna-whore stuff.
/rant.
Lol no she's not.
Eve's model is a porned-up version of an already good looking model.
Also,
Look at how her sharply her back bends in order to get her to pose with her tits and ass ticking out. Her spine just abruptly turns 45 degrees to vertical. That's not a normal pose - I'm not even sure it's physically possible for a spine to bend that sharply in such a short distance, and it's certainly not a natural or comfortable position.
Last edited:
So what about indie AAA games?
- Location
- Do you really care?
Sorry if that sounded more aggressive than intended, but I find the way some people act like publishing a game on a company's console is somehow a god-given, inalienable right immensely entitled and self-centered. Nobody is obligated to just give you everything you want with no questions asked. Money is only tangentially related to it, unless you're just categorically opposed to the existence of binding contracts and personal property in general. The relationship is the same because there's an up-front agreement. You want to post here and agree to abide by certain rules to do so. Developer wants to publish game on console and agrees to abide by certain rules to do so. There's basically no difference between these things. The porn was just an arbitrary example.
Last edited:
Hawkatana
That jaywalking punk anarchist
- Location
- That place in the thing
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That's an oxymoron.
- Location
- Russia
Thank you for finally managing to narrow down a potential real reason why Bayonetta ends up being taken as less of a lamp. It's incredibly obvious that she absolutely does fuck.
Why would it be?
AAA is a term describing the scope, budget and basically size of a game. It doesn't say anything about whether it's indie or not.
- Location
- Russia
"In the video game industry, AAA (Triple-A) is an informal classification used to classify video games produced or distributed by a mid-sized or major publisher, which typically have higher development and marketing budgets than other tiers of games."
Besides that tidbit, it is fundamentally impossible for an independent to gather up the absolutely ridiculous amounts of money AAA games require to qualify unless they're literally Elon Musk. It is something exclusively limited to fucknormous publishers.
Technically it's possible. In practice, I think literally the only person who ever qualified was Kojima, maybe.
Last edited:
- Location
- Ireland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Baldur's Gate 3 is technically an AAA indie game, since Larian has no separate publisher, but BG3 was lightning in a bottle with circumstances that are practically impossible to recreate.
Axslashel
I am a pessimist not a realist.
- Location
- Land of the Midnight Sun
I think a lot of the anger is that Sony either changed the contract or changed the way they acted on it from how they used to do things. And developers who have exclusivity deals with Sony are for pretty obvious reasons not happy about their platform landlord going "I have altered the deal. Pray i do no alter it further." on them.
Does it though? It is called "fan"-service. It only needs to appeal to the people who are actually fans of the game.
- Location
- Russia
It can also be argued that Baldur's Gate 3 wouldn't qualify as an AAA game due to, from what I recall, its budget being more than half the budget of the average triple-A game and spread across at least six whole years rather than, like, one as is the case in this circus of an industry. And also not really having much of a marketing campaign.
Last edited:
Well, here's the thing.
Once your property is big enough, treating it as "personal property" with which you are free to do as you please becomes a disaster. This plays out digitally not so differently from how it does in physical space. The iteration of it for game platforms is a bit less dramatic and charismatic for people who aren't actually game developers, but if you want to be reductionist about 'private property' stuff you're right next to 'what could be wrong with landlords being free to offer whatever terms they want in their leases' or 'why shouldn't Microsoft provide warnings against using anyone else's browsers with their operating system'.
- Location
- Do you really care?
Is there any evidence they actually did so? Because there are laws that would prevent Sony from just unilaterally going back on their own side of the agreement, just as much as they bind the developer to theirs. Even if they presented this developer with a different contract from their usual, it would have no effect at all on the existing exclusivity deals that were already signed with others.
- Location
- Russia
Aka "The more power someone or something has, the more checks there should be on that power, with no exception or distinction of technically who has that power or how exactly that power manifests"