Author Topic: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings  (Read 18156 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Luis Dias

  • 211
Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
Because "disagreement" is what comes to mind when the Verge (for instance) publishes a piece basically blaming games for the Orlando Shooting

That's totally in the realms of "disagreement" and not in farcical pseudo-hipsterist asinine douchebaggery.

 

Offline The E

  • He's Ebeneezer Goode
  • 213
  • Nothing personal, just tech support.
    • Steam
    • Twitter
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
Because "disagreement" is what comes to mind when the Verge (for instance) publishes a piece basically blaming games for the Orlando Shooting

That's totally in the realms of "disagreement" and not in farcical pseudo-hipsterist asinine douchebaggery.

Where in the text did that happen? Seriously, point out the passage there that article says, even in a paraphrased way, that this tragedy or others like it are caused by videogames. Based on my reading, it doesn't: It merely questions the reaction of the games industry (specifically, EA's) to that tragedy, it asks whether or not it's appropriate to promote the next round of shooters at this particular time. Which, in my opinion, is a fair question to ask.

And yes, as far as I am concerned, nothing you said is more than mere disagreement, whether it is over the content of a news post, or the way it is written. To me, neither is reason enough to wish that the writers or articles I disagree with get removed from the Internet or the business. My question to you is, why do you feel that way? Why do you think that games journalism would be improved if Polygon et al didn't exist, or writers would stop writing articles like the ones you dislike? Why does exposure to those words trigger the rage centers in your brain so hard?
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 

Offline Luis Dias

  • 211
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
Where in the text did that happen? Seriously, point out the passage there that article says, even in a paraphrased way, that this tragedy or others like it are caused by videogames.

Jesus ****ing Christ, are you ****ing kidding me now? Do you think that space between the lines is just #ffffff background coloring? Were you ****ing born yesterday?

Why, oh WHY would EA have to even mention the shootings, if the connection wasn't implied? The guilt tripping language doesn't even make a pause in that vomit piece to ask itself whether it even has the moral authority to continue its condescension towards everything and everyone in the industry.

Quote
Based on my reading, it doesn't: It merely questions the reaction of the games industry (specifically, EA's) to that tragedy, it asks whether or not it's appropriate to promote the next round of shooters at this particular time. Which, in my opinion, is a fair question to ask.

How can it "ask" that question without implying the so-called "non" causality here, hmm? Please square that circle for me, I'll be amused by your attempts.

Quote
And yes, as far as I am concerned, nothing you said is more than mere disagreement, whether it is over the content of a news post, or the way it is written. To me, neither is reason enough to wish that the writers or articles I disagree with get removed from the Internet or the business. My question to you is, why do you feel that way? Why do you think that games journalism would be improved if Polygon et al didn't exist, or writers would stop writing articles like the ones you dislike? Why does exposure to those words trigger the rage centers in your brain so hard?

Because I hate these pretensious ignorant hacks vomiting their so-called "intellectual" (what a misnomer that is) activist agendas as if they are reporting on some "objective" truth, blaming innocents for all the ills of the world, self-hating douchebags who are an example of how the western civilization is beggining to destroy itself, by hating itself and by blaming itselft for anything and everything.

 

Offline The E

  • He's Ebeneezer Goode
  • 213
  • Nothing personal, just tech support.
    • Steam
    • Twitter
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
Jesus ****ing Christ, are you ****ing kidding me now? Do you think that space between the lines is just #ffffff background coloring? Were you ****ing born yesterday?

No, Luis. I know about subtext. And the subtext you're implying just doesn't register for me here. Is there an implicit question as to why we have so many games centered around guns and their use in there? Yes, absolutely. But that's nowhere near putting blame for gun violence on the games. I dunno, maybe I'm just too trusting or something. Maybe you're right and everything even mildly critical of the games industry and the culture it promotes and exists in is actually part of a hidden agenda to ban all games that are even a bit violent. And maybe you're wrong and jumping at shadows. I don't know, but for now, I will stick by my belief that you are just jumping at shadows.

Quote
Why, oh WHY would EA have to even mention the shootings, if the connection wasn't implied? The guilt tripping language doesn't even make a pause in that vomit piece to ask itself whether it even has the moral authority to continue its condescension towards everything and everyone in the industry.

... Because EA actually displayed some awareness of these things back when Ferguson happened and they tried to sell Battlefield: Hardline? Because it was a really big, tragic event and games culture doesn't exist in a vacuum? Because even a token showing of respect for the victims wouldn't have derailed the press conference?

Quote
Quote
Based on my reading, it doesn't: It merely questions the reaction of the games industry (specifically, EA's) to that tragedy, it asks whether or not it's appropriate to promote the next round of shooters at this particular time. Which, in my opinion, is a fair question to ask.

How can it "ask" that question without implying the so-called "non" causality here, hmm? Please square that circle for me, I'll be amused by your attempts.

Speaking of condescension, could you not? Why should I try to explain anything to you if you're not going to take it seriously?
Not that I actually could. I would have thought it obvious that at least some attempts to distance the fun of shooters from the tragedy of real-life shootings would be made.

Quote
Because I hate these pretensious ignorant hacks vomiting their so-called "intellectual" (what a misnomer that is) activist agendas as if they are reporting on some "objective" truth, blaming innocents for all the ills of the world, self-hating douchebags who are an example of how the western civilization is beggining to destroy itself, by hating itself and by blaming itselft for anything and everything.

I guess I'm done here. I cannot even begin to fathom how to argue with someone who believes this on such a visceral level.

But then, it's not like that's news, is it. We've been on opposing sides of this thing for two years now, it's not like that's going to change.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 

Offline Luis Dias

  • 211
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
It's going to get worse and then you'll finally realise what I am saying is true, that the Regressive Left is not a right wing conspiracy mirage, but an actual disease within liberalism that should be diagnosed and cured. By liberals, not others. Unless of course you want what happened to the conservative movement (hijacked by tea partyists and Trumpsters) happen to the wider liberal movements.

You might want to excuse yourself from explaining the unexplainable by mentioning how "emotional" I'm being (quite the anti-feminist rethoric there), I'll just leave the conversation with the memory that you didn't even try to address that issue at all and take the obvious conclusions from that.

 
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
I'm roughly with Luis on this one, it's extremely ****ty to badger people or organisations for not responding to a tragedy with the gestures that you personally have deemed appropriate.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline Det. Bullock

  • 29
  • Madman in a box.
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
It's going to get worse and then you'll finally realise what I am saying is true, that the Regressive Left is not a right wing conspiracy mirage, but an actual disease within liberalism that should be diagnosed and cured. By liberals, not others. Unless of course you want what happened to the conservative movement (hijacked by tea partyists and Trumpsters) happen to the wider liberal movements.

You might want to excuse yourself from explaining the unexplainable by mentioning how "emotional" I'm being (quite the anti-feminist rethoric there), I'll just leave the conversation with the memory that you didn't even try to address that issue at all and take the obvious conclusions from that.
I dunno, americans look all regressive to me anyway in a way or another.
Surely dumbing down the debate and criticism (meant as writing reviews) makes the medium more vulnerable than a few intellectual game pundits that have outgrown shooters or never liked them in the first place (typical of the many who have a console background and HATE CoD-likes and all the tropes associated with them), for each one of them there are others that have the same cultural level and wildly different opinions.
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

  • 211
  • The Cthulhu programmer himself!
    • Skype
    • Steam
    • Twitter
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
Until you actually read the poop that comes out of the keyboards of these pretensious twats, who think they are all some kind of jedi masters of the english language (whose "command" amount to the total knowledge of their education, given how most of them come from english majors) and they'll shove that self-awareness to everyone's throats.

And this asinineness becomes too obvious to deny when they become so blazé to even admit how they don't even finish the games they are supposedly reviewing, for they were "too boring" or "too difficult" or whatever else excuse they bring forth, followed by a barrage of their own narrative building activism-of-the-day tirade of nihilistic hipster pretensiousness.

I can't even start to express the rage that goes through my head while trying to read some of those ridiculous conglomerations of "words" whose authors probably think are writing some kind of brilliant teatrises on gaming.
I'm confused; are you describing games journalism, or your own posting?
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 

Offline Det. Bullock

  • 29
  • Madman in a box.
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
Pleas, cut it out with the anti intellectual bull****, videogames are a form of art and as such are heavily subjective by definition, you can't reduce them to the technical aspects, it denotes a basic lack of respect for the medium.
You can't reduce them to the technical aspects, but they damn well lose points if they can't maintain a stable framerate or suffer gamebreaking bugs.

I never read a reviewer who didn't do that, no matter how "intellectual" he or she happened to be.
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor

 

Offline Luis Dias

  • 211
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
I'm confused

QFT

Surely dumbing down the debate and criticism (meant as writing reviews) makes the medium more vulnerable than a few intellectual game pundits that have outgrown shooters or never liked them in the first place (typical of the many who have a console background and HATE CoD-likes and all the tropes associated with them), for each one of them there are others that have the same cultural level and wildly different opinions.

I think the medium will be much more vulnerable to market forces than journalists, although they do try to be as destructive as possible. I feel as if they are trying to compensate for the realization that their efforts are getting less and less impactful. Thus they force their bull**** through inane means (passive aggressiveness, social media bullying, personal attacks, ideological name-callings, etc.) so they can still hang on to some sort of power over the industry.

Trouble is, it's a fast waning power. And all that is left is the market, which is amoral in itself. If people enjoy battling each other within the context of World War I, then that's what they'll buy, irrespectively of some pretensious wannabe journalist decrying this as a moral failure of some sort.
« Last Edit: June 14, 2016, 08:37:31 am by Luis Dias »

 

Offline The E

  • He's Ebeneezer Goode
  • 213
  • Nothing personal, just tech support.
    • Steam
    • Twitter
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
It's going to get worse and then you'll finally realise what I am saying is true,

But it's not getting worse! Games have gotten progressively better in the past couple of years, across the board, and I do believe that this is at least partially due to games criticism growing to encompass criticism of gaming culture from within gaming culture (as opposed to Thompsonite criticism of gaming culture from without). What I'm seeing from you is not constructive in this regard, you seem to be saying that there's a whole class of opinions games journalism (and journalists) cannot have, and I strongly disagree with that. I just cannot get my head around the idea that it is categorically wrong to write about perceived ills in the gaming industry or gaming culture if those perceived ills fall into a specific category. That's what I'm hearing from you here: The absolute statement that certain topics or ways of thinking are not only wrong or misguided, but need to be taboo because if they aren't, something terrible is going to happen. Admittedly, this is a topic I am wavering on a lot, but currently I am of the opinion that the best answer to bad opinions is good opinions, not trying to suppress the bad.

Quote
that the Regressive Left is not a right wing conspiracy mirage, but an actual disease within liberalism that should be diagnosed and cured. By liberals, not others. Unless of course you want what happened to the conservative movement (hijacked by tea partyists and Trumpsters) happen to the wider liberal movements.

Funny how most of the uses of the phrase I come across on the internet are coming from decidedly non-liberal places. That being said, I cannot disagree with the desire to avoid a widespread radicalization/regression of the left in a mirror image of what has happened on the right, but we do differ a lot on what exactly is a symptom of said radicalization or regression. I do not see critical examination of games and gaming culture as such.

Quote
You might want to excuse yourself from explaining the unexplainable by mentioning how "emotional" I'm being (quite the anti-feminist rethoric there), I'll just leave the conversation with the memory that you didn't even try to address that issue at all and take the obvious conclusions from that.

My problem is that, in order to properly explain my viewpoint, I have to be able to empathize with yours, and I just can't. I disagree with you on such a fundamental level on this issue that it is beyond my rhetorical abilities to bridge that gap without resorting to name-calling (and we both know that that doesn't work). This is my failing, not yours.

I look at this statement:
Quote
Because I hate these pretensious ignorant hacks vomiting their so-called "intellectual" (what a misnomer that is) activist agendas as if they are reporting on some "objective" truth, blaming innocents for all the ills of the world, self-hating douchebags who are an example of how the western civilization is beggining to destroy itself, by hating itself and by blaming itselft for anything and everything.
and I just have no idea how to unpack it and address the points made properly. There's so much in there, so much background that we do not share or do not agree on here that I have no idea how to respond to it.

I'm roughly with Luis on this one, it's extremely ****ty to badger people or organisations for not responding to a tragedy with the gestures that you personally have deemed appropriate.

And I'm roughly with the authors of that piece Luis posted: I don't think that events like Orlando should be unackknowledged. Games do not exist in a vacuum, and if the games you're about to promote are all about the feeling of power that comes from holding and using a gun, then some statement regarding such a tragedy is appropriate. What form that should take, I don't know, but continuing on with business as usual is IMHO not the right choice. In any case, I see no harm in an article that is asking the question what the right choice should be, because that's a thing that I believe should be discussed.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

  

Offline Det. Bullock

  • 29
  • Madman in a box.
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
Surely dumbing down the debate and criticism (meant as writing reviews) makes the medium more vulnerable than a few intellectual game pundits that have outgrown shooters or never liked them in the first place (typical of the many who have a console background and HATE CoD-likes and all the tropes associated with them), for each one of them there are others that have the same cultural level and wildly different opinions.

I think the medium will be much more vulnerable to market forces than journalists, although they do try to be as destructive as possible. I feel as if they are trying to compensate for the realization that their efforts are getting less and less impactful. Thus they force their bull**** through inane means (passive aggressiveness, social media bullying, personal attacks, ideological name-callings, etc.) so they can still hang on to some sort of power over the industry.

Trouble is, it's a fast waning power. And all that is left is the market, which is amoral in itself. If people enjoy battling each other within the context of World War I, then that's what they'll buy, irrespectively of some pretensious wannabe journalist decrying this as a moral failure of some sort.

Those journalists aren't "destructive", if I wrote an article on how Dante's Inferno is a crass insult to Dante Alighieri's legacy (which is something I actually feel very strong about) would I be "destructive"?
Also those journalists usually aren't pretentious because they tend to know what they are talking about, they aren't Damon Lindelof trying to say something profound on science vs religion and failing utterly for being completely ignorant about both of them, that's pretentious, not observing that there might be a problem with the tone of a game when confronted with its gameplay.
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor

 
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
But it's not getting worse! Games have gotten progressively better in the past couple of years, across the board, and I do believe that this is at least partially due to games criticism growing to encompass criticism of gaming culture from within gaming culture (as opposed to Thompsonite criticism of gaming culture from without).

And yet the actual content of the article you're siding with is essentially identical to Thompson's campaigns: games incorporate guns, gun violence exists and so games are in some capacity responsible for it. It's exactly as wrong as it was when it came out of his mouth.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline The E

  • He's Ebeneezer Goode
  • 213
  • Nothing personal, just tech support.
    • Steam
    • Twitter
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
But it's not getting worse! Games have gotten progressively better in the past couple of years, across the board, and I do believe that this is at least partially due to games criticism growing to encompass criticism of gaming culture from within gaming culture (as opposed to Thompsonite criticism of gaming culture from without).

And yet the actual content of the article you're siding with is essentially identical to Thompson's campaigns: games incorporate guns, gun violence exists and so games are in some capacity responsible for it. It's exactly as wrong as it was when it came out of his mouth.

Again: That's not the message I am getting. But I am known to be an ideologically blinded regressive leftist.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
Well then go ahead and actually justify what it's saying! Why should EA be obliged to perform some penance for selling games about shooting people? We have those games in the UK and we don't have people shooting up gay clubs!
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline Luis Dias

  • 211
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
It's going to get worse and then you'll finally realise what I am saying is true,

But it's not getting worse! Games have gotten progressively better in the past couple of years, across the board, and I do believe that this is at least partially due to games criticism growing to encompass criticism of gaming culture from within gaming culture (as opposed to Thompsonite criticism of gaming culture from without). What I'm seeing from you is not constructive in this regard, you seem to be saying that there's a whole class of opinions games journalism (and journalists) cannot have, and I strongly disagree with that. I just cannot get my head around the idea that it is categorically wrong to write about perceived ills in the gaming industry or gaming culture if those perceived ills fall into a specific category. That's what I'm hearing from you here: The absolute statement that certain topics or ways of thinking are not only wrong or misguided, but need to be taboo because if they aren't, something terrible is going to happen. Admittedly, this is a topic I am wavering on a lot, but currently I am of the opinion that the best answer to bad opinions is good opinions, not trying to suppress the bad.

The criticism is lazy, unfair and merely "progressive" by fad alone. It's done by hacks, not by "intellectuals" trying to get the world become a better place. That is the true mirage. Let's all band together in outcry against that horrible, horrible shirt that made mankind take two steps back, while the meteor landing only gets to be awarded one step further, because that's the way, that's the spirit, right?

No, it isn't and yes, it's destructive. That you don't feel the sting of its inherent injustice, untruth and overall degeneracy is a testament to your own obliviousness or merely lack of first person experience with all the guilt tripping passive aggressive nature of these vermins. In a way, I envy you.

Quote
Funny how most of the uses of the phrase I come across on the internet are coming from decidedly non-liberal places. That being said, I cannot disagree with the desire to avoid a widespread radicalization/regression of the left in a mirror image of what has happened on the right, but we do differ a lot on what exactly is a symptom of said radicalization or regression. I do not see critical examination of games and gaming culture as such.

"Tea Partyists" is a phrase mostly used back then by progressives and liberals. Didn't describe an irreality, now did it? And think about that one. Since when have we decided to marginalize 50% of the population as demented twats just because they are more conservative than not? And then we get to complaint about the trends of ever increasing polarization? The change we want is within us. If we want polarization to diminish and reason / debate / conversation to go through everyone then we must open ourselves to what "The Other Side" is saying.

Because many times, they may well be right.

Quote
My problem is that, in order to properly explain my viewpoint, I have to be able to empathize with yours, and I just can't. I disagree with you on such a fundamental level on this issue that it is beyond my rhetorical abilities to bridge that gap without resorting to name-calling (and we both know that that doesn't work). This is my failing, not yours.

I applaud your honesty and self-awareness. It's probably your biggest quality (apart from your professionalism, ofc).

Quote
I look at this statement:
Quote
Because I hate these pretensious ignorant hacks vomiting their so-called "intellectual" (what a misnomer that is) activist agendas as if they are reporting on some "objective" truth, blaming innocents for all the ills of the world, self-hating douchebags who are an example of how the western civilization is beggining to destroy itself, by hating itself and by blaming itselft for anything and everything.
and I just have no idea how to unpack it and address the points made properly. There's so much in there, so much background that we do not share or do not agree on here that I have no idea how to respond to it.

Hey, it's just me being a pretensious twat ranting about what I believe. The difference though, something that just woooshes past someone like Ralwood's head, is that I'm not paid to write this stuff. I vent for free and it's all voluntary, in a forum where people are supposed to do just that. That some people can't recognize that a games journalist is supposed to behave differently, then it's beyond my power to help them at all.

Quote
And I'm roughly with the authors of that piece Luis posted: I don't think that events like Orlando should be unackknowledged. Games do not exist in a vacuum, and if the games you're about to promote are all about the feeling of power that comes from holding and using a gun, then some statement regarding such a tragedy is appropriate. What form that should take, I don't know, but continuing on with business as usual is IMHO not the right choice. In any case, I see no harm in an article that is asking the question what the right choice should be, because that's a thing that I believe should be discussed.

Yeah except the tone isn't nearly as generous as you are writing in here, and all the guilt tripping traps are scattered throughout the entirety of it. Because the main idea of a minute of silence (as was actually done in one of the shows, I think the Sony one?) or a few words regarding the issue are absolutely of good taste. To write something righteously pointing fingers at anyone who fails to do so is just pretensious twattery of the worst kind, and something that we are all just accustumed to suffer from the same old writers. To even read some of these journos' twitter TLs regarding the shooting and games' intersections is to invite the revolution in your stomachs.

Again: That's not the message I am getting. But I am known to be an ideologically blinded regressive leftist.

A core trait of regressivism is machiavellianism: lying is good if it's For The Cause (tm). I have yet to see you lie, so no I don't think you're a "regressive". But that's just IMHO.

Well then go ahead and actually justify what it's saying! Why should EA be obliged to perform some penance for selling games about shooting people? We have those games in the UK and we don't have people shooting up gay clubs!

That's the thing, innit? They are totally to blame for the mass shootings, except no of course not  no single anyone is saying that, that's a total misrepresentation, but they better say sorry for what they've done... etc. It's totally dishonest passive aggressiveness.

 

Offline Det. Bullock

  • 29
  • Madman in a box.
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
But it's not getting worse! Games have gotten progressively better in the past couple of years, across the board, and I do believe that this is at least partially due to games criticism growing to encompass criticism of gaming culture from within gaming culture (as opposed to Thompsonite criticism of gaming culture from without).

And yet the actual content of the article you're siding with is essentially identical to Thompson's campaigns: games incorporate guns, gun violence exists and so games are in some capacity responsible for it. It's exactly as wrong as it was when it came out of his mouth.
No, it isn't, from what I remember Mr Thompson what pretty much a "think of the children" guy, those ones only say that their gung-ho advertising about GUNS and MORE GUNS and BADASSES WITH GUNS is in pretty bad taste around a mass shooting that ultimately happened ALSO because of american gun fetishism hampering any attempt at serious regulations in firearms.

Here in Europe it wouldn't happen because we don't have that particular problem, but in the US that might be just a notch below the NRA doing a congress in a place where a week before a mass shoting happened, it's not really about the games themselves but about the complete lack of restraint of game marketing.
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor

 

Offline Luis Dias

  • 211
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
Meanwhile, the guy's preacher who constantly spoke about how gays should be killed because that was Allah's law, the dude's own closeted gayness that drove him into despair due to the inherent contradiction between his beliefs and his own self, all of that is now discarded because hey, we don't wanna be racists, right? To discuss any of this is to thread too "close" to discuss things like "Islamism" and that's racist, you bigot.

Better to discuss how EA should own all of this due to its culture of "fake machismo" violence or whatever. Yeah, that's way better. Wow, that was a close one, I was almost forced to discuss real things and causes that might hurt my own values and beliefs! What a relief.

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

  • 211
  • The Cthulhu programmer himself!
    • Skype
    • Steam
    • Twitter
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
Hey, it's just me being a pretensious twat ranting about what I believe. The difference though, something that just woooshes past someone like Ralwood's head, is that I'm not paid to write this stuff. I vent for free and it's all voluntary, in a forum where people are supposed to do just that. That some people can't recognize that a games journalist is supposed to behave differently, then it's beyond my power to help them at all.
Boy, you're really mad that other people have figured out how to be paid for their opinions and you haven't, huh?
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 
Re: Video game journalism and the Orlando Shootings
American gun culture is, obviously a massive, massive problem which carries a lot of direct blame for the massacre in Orlando, and I completely endorse anyone blaming the NRA. (The same can be said of Islamic homophobia, but based on The E's postings over the last few months I doubt I'll see him demanding that any mosques fly rainbow flags.) I don't think having games in which you shoot people, especially in a military setting, is really very relevant, given that for the entirety of human history a lot of entertainment has been about violence, and I think it's in very poor taste to start blaming people for the worst mass shooting in US history based on an inevitable coincidence.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.