- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Controversial gaming opinion: video games are good.
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What are controversial gaming opinions you have?
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It's a matter of degrees, I think. BOTW and TOTK made me very much think that Nintendo was aware that people would not really be playing these games for the story, so they made sure that the story would be solid and well-made enough, but did not see a point in putting too much effort into it beyond that. Honestly, I can respect that, because as far as I'm concerned, they were completely correct.
Triggerhappy
Stick with Trigger and You'll Make it Through
- Location
- SoCal
It's not just that. The minimal story works perfectly, diegetically, with the games. In BotW you are left with a basicalyl linear, but open ended solution to how you're going to deal with Ganondorf. Do you rush in now, or do you take time getting stronger and securing an advantage against the giant miasmal cloud that's tormenting Hyrule.
This also aligns with a player's real life skill. Yes, an absurdly skilled player can go and beat Ganon like a tambarine with nothing but a pot lid. But a even a mediocre player can win with sheer preparation work.
Obviously there is no real time limit, but also, the fact that almost everything you do is in service of preparing to fight Ganon, helps to align the game's open world exploration with the urgency of saving the world.
More story would actually just distract from this.
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- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Thousand Year Door has a very competent story for a Nintendo game, but also it spooked the higher ups away from letting Mario be in a game with story after that or something so maybe we shouldn't risk that.
The_Reptile_
Jolly Good
- Location
- THE PITS OF HELL. Also known as Connecticut.
It was actually Super Paper Mario that did that, for what it's worth, and SPM was edging in some dark territory for Mario so I don't fully blame Nintendo for wanting to pull back from that a tad. What I do blame them for is watering down the gameplay as well.
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I won't claim that I missed having a more involved story in the game, but I think that's a bit of a stronger statement than you really have a justification for.
Triggerhappy
Stick with Trigger and You'll Make it Through
- Location
- SoCal
It's been a few years since I played Zero Dawn, but I think what made it work for me was the amount of each activity was lower than it would be in, say, your average Ubisoft game. There's 4 or 5 Tallnecks compared to 30 or 40 towers, 4 or 5 Cauldrons, about 8 bandit camps?, etc. None of them really outstayed their welcome.
I kinda liked Andromeda and the graphic didn't really bother me outside of one or two glitches that hurt my neck just looking at them, but also it sucks in some ways, like that there weren't more new aliens. We got the angara who are Fine but not great and the kett who are boring generic space baddies/discount brand Borg. Compared to Mass Effect 1 which introduced asari, salarians, turians, krogan, quarians, hanar, elcor, volus, geth as space baddies but they were imo cooler than kett, batarians, vorcha I think, uh... (Now I can't remember if drell were only introduced in 2 or if we see them in 1) It's just so less diverse and it makes it lack something.
I kinda liked Andromeda and the graphic didn't really bother me outside of one or two glitches that hurt my neck just looking at them, but also it sucks in some ways, like that there weren't more new aliens. We got the angara who are Fine but not great and the kett who are boring generic space baddies/discount brand Borg. Compared to Mass Effect 1 which introduced asari, salarians, turians, krogan, quarians, hanar, elcor, volus, geth as space baddies but they were imo cooler than kett, batarians, vorcha I think, uh... (Now I can't remember if drell were only introduced in 2 or if we see them in 1) It's just so less diverse and it makes it lack something.
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Well, know then that I disagree with thine opinion. In a polite and non-combative way, but still.I don't think so. But that's why this is an opinion thread.
Triggerhappy
Stick with Trigger and You'll Make it Through
- Location
- SoCal
Yeah, Horizon is an open world game that definitely respects your time. It's very much a 'you can 100 percent this in 30 hours, 38 is you include the DLC.
Which sounds like a lot, but compared to other open world games it's a pretty reasonable estimated play time. If you're doing side missions as they appear, you'll be pretty closed to finished by the time you run out of main story.
There's actually, like 8 or maybe even 10 tall necks. But the thing is, they each offer their own unique climbing challenge.
Likewise in the second game where you have to do things like help finish the assembly and deployment of a Tall Neck during a Cauldron mission.
Like I said, I kinda wish they'd leaned more into the fact that the Andromeda species have never experienced the synthetic cycle that consumed the Milk Way. Their technology and outlook should have been envisioned from the start to be different from the Citadel races. Instead we got bunny people who hug a lot . . . Which I don't hate, mind you, but it's not nearly enough to carry a new game.
Comrade Future
Man from Zeerust
- Location
- USSR
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
However, all Mass Effect games had problems with facial animation. I remember memes of Shepard's weird expression before Andromeda came out. It's just that Andromeda had so many shortcomings that this shortcoming became more noticeable.
Morganite
Happiness is a large book.
- Location
- Dynamis - Firefly Alley
Not agreeing with your numbers is not the same as not understanding them, or to put it another way, you have not actually presented enough examples of someone who made a fangame deciding to "And now, I own The Legend of Zelda! The whole thing, not just the stuff I actually made!" to convince me that this is common enough to give Nintendo a solid financial incentive to commit what I consider to be immoral actions. (And I'll freely admit the last two words mean you've got an uphill battle, but even two or three examples of what you describe happening would be enough for me to say 'Okay, yeah, I still think they shouldn't do that or be legally allowed to do that, but I'm not surprised that they are doing it.')
And also, this:
What does that even mean? How do you 'keep your head low' and 'not make waves' by means other than "don't tell anyone you're doing it", which as others have pointed out is likely to be a death sentence for a big project? But there's lots of very public projects that seem to be entirely ignored by Nintendo - and that's good - but that means it's very unclear what to do to avoid issues. (Other than not saying you own the original IP of course, but once someone's going that degree of batshit it's not really about fanwork anymore.)
Assuming this is still a reaction to me, I don't even know what you're talking about, because I never mentioned choosiness at all?
My take here is: If someone plays one (for example) Metroid game, and loves it so much that they play more Metroid games, and loved them so much that they still want even more Metroid, so they go looking for romhacks and fangames and randomizers, which tend to involve a lot more work than just buying the games? They probably really like Metroid. And someone who makes a romhack or fangame or randomizer, which is even more work? That's really getting up there. I would not even be vaguely surprised if the dev for AM2R loves Metroid 2 more than anyone who actually worked on Metroid 2.
That's what I'm talking about when I refer to devoted fans. Those who Nintendo cannot produce enough to satiate.
Well, I'm obviously out of touch. I knew there was a single player XCOM/dating sim game, but I didn't know there were any gacha ones. (Then again the most contact with a gacha game I've had in the last couple years was watching a streamer play Azur Lane for half an hour. What genre is that anyway?)
That seems like it's going to involve a lot of personal judgements about what is justified. Or, well, it's like Quiet, it's not that there's no... well, call it explanation... it's just that a lot of people think it's dumb. (It doesn't strike me as much weirder than a lot of -other- stuff in the franchise, but then I haven't played any of them.) But... well, even for myself I could say that maybe you could separate the spicy material in Ar tonelico from the rest of it, but I'm not sure it would make it better even if you don't technically need it. Arcana Heart? I don't like the box presentation, but I wouldn't change any of the in-game content. But is just having apparently set out to have one of each major girl stereotype enough to count as fanservice if the gameplay itself isn't sexually charged? Oh, and the groping in Atelier Rorona and Atelier Totori I don't really like whether it makes sense or not.
I don't think those are terribly unusual positions in the west. Though personally, despite understanding the alluring logic of laws that would do things like going after pimps but not prostitutes, I don't even vaguely trust them not to be used primarily for the persecution of prostitutes.
Fire and Ice on the NES was pretty good, but maybe that's because the ice and block pushing was the entire gameplay. (And your character's power was to create and destroy ice.)
I'm not 100% certain they don't, kind of... it's not really clear even looking at the ESRB's own website what it takes to get tags like "Sexual Content" or "Suggestive Themes". The explanations for all the sexuality tags (except maaaaybe Sexual Violence) seem pretty vague compared to the rest.
(I'm a little surprised Galerians didn't have a 'use of drugs' tag... is that because the drugs are fictional, or because in setting they aren't illegal?)
-Morgan.
Comrade Future
Man from Zeerust
- Location
- USSR
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
Well, after AH and this forum, I got the feeling that these positions are unpopular. Moreover, according to Wikipedia, "sex-positive feminism" includes a positive attitude towards prostitution, which I cannot accept.
But it seems that this is where the difference between me and many forum leftists stems - they are very afraid of police violence (even if they themselves control the law enforcement agencies), and would prefer to solve problems peacefully and through gradual improvement of the situation. I personally believe that you cannot solve problems only with carrots - you must have a stick and the courage to use it.
It seems that I have come to the following conclusion: theoretical reasoning on this issue is useless. The only way for me to understand what is acceptable and what is not is to create content myself and learn it practically.
Morganite
Happiness is a large book.
- Location
- Dynamis - Firefly Alley
Well, it's not like there's just one idea of what "sex-positive feminism" is, any more than there's just one idea of what feminism in general is.
But also... it's not like this is a philosophical position here? There's been research. Criminalization is awful. Saying it does more harm than good is a compliment it doesn't deserve.
-Morgan.
Comrade Future
Man from Zeerust
- Location
- USSR
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
I am a supporter of the "Swedish Model".
- Location
- Te Ika-a-Māui
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Being a prostitute is legal, hiring one isn't. This is notably not a way to make being a prostitute any safer.
Morganite
Happiness is a large book.
- Location
- Dynamis - Firefly Alley
The basic idea is "criminalize purchasing sex, but not selling it".
Amnesty International has some things to say about it. Uncomplimentary things.
-Morgan.
- Location
- Australia
Fan service in videogames is on topic. Government policy regarding sex work isn't.
In the context of this thread I'd expect sex positive feminists don't object to fan service but do object to a heterosexual male bias across the industry where female characters tend to be get less prominent roles and are more sexualized than male characters.
In the context of this thread I'd expect sex positive feminists don't object to fan service but do object to a heterosexual male bias across the industry where female characters tend to be get less prominent roles and are more sexualized than male characters.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
I can't find a proper full example right now, but in many cases there are descriptions and elaborations on what the rating terms mean. Most of the time they have to be brief to fit in the tiny blurb on the box (whether physical or digital), but the concerned consumer can look it up on a dedicated site.
For example, based on a cursory Google, there's the ESRB page on FFXIV which gives examples of "sexual references" and "strong language". (It also appears to be based only on ARR, so there's that caveat.)
So it's not often that the rating only says "sexual content" and nothing else. Usually there's more detail.
A huge part of the issue with MEA was how the launch version of the game was just... not finished. As in not finished in the QA and "does this animation actually trigger when called on" sense. There's the infamous "My face is tired" line where the NPC is supposed to do a tired temple-massage gesture, but at launch she just stares directly at the player character blankly.
And then there's stuff like lack of manual saving, and autosaves being in unintuitive locations and events (eg zoning back onto the ship does not automatically save in every circumstance). So there had to be a patch to add manual saving, except it was kind of fiddly even then; standing on the bridge of the ship gave a "You cannot save here" message, but taking one step forwards (or backwards) suddenly allowed you to save there.
The overall impression was a game that wanted to do a lot of cool things, but the devs simply weren't able to accomplish that technically for whatever reason.
I'm wondering how much overlap this has to the gameplay style of "hub and mission"; there's a central home base hub, from which the player can pick which "zone of interest" they want to explore, and actual missions (story or side) will take place in these zones of interest, occasionally limited for the sake of the story, then opened up for free exploration.
The example that comes to mind for me is Monster Hunter, but I'm aware it's not the first nor most prominent of that style. I don't think I've heard Monster Hunter referred to as "open world", though, possibly because there's not actually much to do outside of the titular monster hunting or gathering in those "free exploration" sessions.
Morganite
Happiness is a large book.
- Location
- Dynamis - Firefly Alley
That's where the question really becomes "and what do you do about it?"
... I coulda sworn I heard once about a franchise where the creators responded to complaints about fanservice by reducing the number of female characters, so I'm not exactly not worried about unintended consequences.
I've kinda got the impression that games with fanservice for heterosexual women is on the rise? And I kinda like that in principle, but it's sorta hard for me to judge how well that's working.
Especially when I look in one direction (in a metaphorical sense) and see someone saying "women aren't actually attracted to this characteer, it's just a male power fantasy", and then I look over in the other direction and see a woman drawing porn of the same dude.
Huh, that's actually very interesting. ... But I wonder how many people know it exists? I didn't. (I wonder how far back it goes? *searchity* Not far enough back to have one of those for Galerians, that's how far.)
One thing I've been thinking about (some before this, but it definitely relates) is that box copy was never really great for judging games and seems to be getting worse. There's some entire franchises where they don't even describe the game at all on the package, and it seems with the Xbox in particular an ever-growing amount of the back cover is taken up by fine print. It's a good thing everyone's got the internet in their pocket (not literally, not everyone), because.... you kinda need it!
-Morgan.
- Location
- Te Ika-a-Māui
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Having done a search on the ESRB website itself, they seem to have separate pages for each expac.
- Location
- Ireland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Being a male power fantasy and being attractive to others aren't at odds, is the thing. It's about the way a man is portrayed as attractive, and how that's often different to how women are portrayed as attractive.
A very easy example is the difference in how Christian Grey is shot in the first 50 Shades movie compared to the second and third. In the first, he's desirable, with the camera unafraid to show off his nudity as a focal point and giving him moments of sensuality and sexuality - it's perfectly willing to objectify him not with the goal of selling us on his personal power or whatever, but solely because he's a hot guy who's getting ready to sleep with someone and the goal of the movie is to sell that aspect.
The second and third movies changed this up so that Christian is only ever seen shirtless at best, and typically even then only while doing stuff like working out and getting buff. He hasn't suddenly become less attractive, but the way in which his attractiveness is shot is different and frankly more palatable for a male fantasy. He's hot, but he's not sexy anymore - so men aren't expected to watch a scene where a man is heavily sexualized and the point of the scene is to sexualize a man.
Notably, the directors for the first movie were women, and the director for the second and third was a man.
Ultimately, being a male power fantasy doesn't stop a character being attractive, and plenty of people will still think they're hot and draw porn of them. There's still a lot of variance in how a fictional man can be presented as attractive, and a lot of the time it boils down to being unwilling to present them as desirable in the same way women get presented, as opposed to their attractiveness being a secondary trait that supplements their personal power and wealth and coolness and intelligence etc.
Morganite
Happiness is a large book.
- Location
- Dynamis - Firefly Alley
I'm certainly not hypocritical enough to argue against that, considering that my 'power fantasy' and 'find attractive' venn diagram looks a lot like a circle.
But I wasn't talking about my position, I was talking about seeing people who would flat-out say "No woman is attracted to this dude." No reference to presentation, no qualifiers, no respect for women as individuals with varying tastes and interests (to borrow some sarcasm from my favorite feminist blogger, 'almost like people!')... basically, sexist jerks, but they were kinda noisy and hard to avoid.
Actually I am very curious, because... see my comment about venn diagrams.
-Morgan.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
I'm now a little curious, because using the Search feature on the ESRB website, I can only find Heavensward as a subsequent expansion.
I'm curious because I recall there was a bit of a discussion starting from Stormblood, specifically the Monster Hunter (World) crossover with Rathalos. From offhand comments by the devs, apparently there was an issue with ratings boards and re-certification, because one prominent feature of Monster Hunter is the ability to cut off the tails of various monsters mid-battle, and "dismemberment" is one of those things that needs to be noted for ratings.
Being Monster Hunter, and as FFXIV did it in the same way, "cutting tails" just means the tail pops off bloodlessly with a cartoonish cross-section. (There are also gameplay effects, but that's tangential to the point.) But according to ratings boards, dismemberment is dismemberment.