[Phantom Hoover]

Flying a (fake. Thanks thread!) Confederate flag is basically telling every black person that sees it that you are glorifying a period in our history where they or their ancestors were kept as property.

To be fair, the same is true of any symbol of the pre-1865 US. That includes any imagery of the founding fathers.

[Scotty]

I feel like there's a pretty big difference between "artifact of when slavery was still legal" and "this symbol is designed specifically to remind you that you're inferior and property".

[S-99]

I came in here way too late. I will summarize what my mechanic an ordained minister told me uncensored. I am not in any way trying to be offensive, his words had great wisdom. To put it straight, he doesn't like homosexuality as long as it doesn't bother him, what bothers him is the civil unrest and how much of a hot topic it is. He'd just rather deal with human society operating with homosexuality as norm as opposed to everyone being up in arms about what is otherwise bull**** (adults can consent to the responsibility of marriage after all, it doesn't have to do with sex).

"Faggots have been around since the beginning of humanity. A lot of countries around the world don't mind them; they're just a part of human life. Why does our country have a problem?".

Don't get me wrong, he obviously doesn't agree with homosexuality, and with that, he will never hold weddings for people of the same sex ever. That be his choice, he just doesn't understand why this is a problem in america (when it's not in other places) when everyone could just get along and mind their own business instead of political gain of conquer and divide the masses for votes and power.

[Flipside]

There's a strange quirk in human nature that, when someone finds something offensive; they don't want to be alone, they want to be part of a crowd, even if they have to spend a considerable amount of time and resources telling that crowd what was so offensive in the first place.

Take computer games, I wish there was a way to calculate how many sales or downloads of 'offensive' computer games could be directly attributed to curiosity caused by people screaming about how 'disgusting' they were.

[Bobboau]

I can think of at least one game in recent history where you can safely assume nearly every cent of it was from that.

[Flipside]

The thing is, society changes a hell of a lot faster than people can, like the movie industry, those sort of games are already becoming relegated to 'Greenlight' or Newsgrounds, which is kind of the Computer Game version of 'Direct To DVD', you get the occasional good one, but you have to trawl a lot of crap to find it. The difference is, the Movie Industry has been around long enough for people over 50 to be comfortable with it.

This is the source of a great many of todays 'moral' dilemmas.

[Grizzly]

I can think of at least one game in recent history where you can safely assume nearly every cent of it was from that.

I'd actually beg to differ. That game made it trough Steam Greenlight rather quickly and before the media caught wind of it. There already was a lot of interest in that sorta thing...

(But there's obviously still a lot of cents made from that 'controversy')

[Luis Dias]

I was under the impression that that game was controversial way before it was launched, when they sent a "controversial" trailer about it last year and every media blew up on how eggregious violence is and "omg has anyone noticed how GTA and other games are also violent? OMG I had never thought of this before!!1one!!" An armaggedon in the making, the worst in "gaming culture" expressed in one single horrible satanic example, except the game came and went and it had mild bored "meh" reviews at the actual "game", and that was about it.

Outrage culture being comoditized by capitalism at its best. At least Mortal Kombat and Doom were actually good games.

[Grizzly]

Hmm, not on the media I have been following, but fair enough.

[Luis Dias]

For reference

Kotaku: http://kotaku.com/the-kind-of-video-game-violence-that-disturbs-me-1647874540
Polygon: http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/16/6988687/the-worst-trailer-of-the-year-revels-in-slaughtering-innocents

Wikipedia on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatred_(video_game)#Reception

[Grizzly]

I'm... Very sure that I don't  see your depiction of "outrage culture" into the Kotaku article. It's very self-reflective, there's no "BAN THIS SICK FILTH" at all in it. I'd see a bit of your point in the polygon article, but, well... It's Polygon. That's kind off what they do.

[Bobboau]

Yeah they nailed the outragebux. perfect timing, perfect presentation, getting that AO rating (or not). They knew what they were doing, and they played it flawlessly.

[Bobboau]

I'm... Very sure that I don't  see your depiction of "outrage culture" into the Kotaku article. It's very self-reflective, there's no "BAN THIS SICK FILTH" at all in it. I'd see a bit of your point in the polygon article, but, well... It's Polygon. That's kind off what they do.

"More importantly, a lot of people have decided to draw their line in the sand and say this—not GTA, not Postal or what have you—is too far."
message: "This game is unacceptable". (insert Lemongrab soundbite here)

Honestly I think the Polygon article is less ban happy out of the two of them

[Grizzly]

Nah, you're misreading it, grabbing single out of context quotes to push it. I mean, if I would pull a quote from that article, it would be this:

Now the usual disclaimer: I DO NOT THINK GAMES CAUSE VIOLENCE. Nor, for that matter, do I think this game should not exist. It has every right to.

[Bobboau]

just re-read the Kotaku article, I definitely get a ~this game should not exsist~ vibe from it, whereas the Polygon one is more of a ~this game is disgusting~ vibe.
/*shrug*/ difference of opinion

[Luis Dias]

It doesn't matter if writers thought that this was a bannable game or not (hint, of course anyone would write such a "caveat" especially if they are about to write a damning piece on the object), what matters is how they managed to get everyone "Shocked! SHOCKED that violence occurs in games" and everyone was talking about that game for several days merely due to a "gruesome" trailer. This played perfectly to the developers' hands, who flat out confessed that was the entire point of the trailer. The game went on to become a huge success in sales, despite it being lackluster in terms of actual gameplay.

These strategies are not new. GTA and even Carmaggedon made similar publicity stunts back in the day.

[The E]

It doesn't matter if writers thought that this was a bannable game or not (hint, of course anyone would write such a "caveat" especially if they are about to write a damning piece on the object), what matters is how they managed to get everyone "Shocked! SHOCKED that violence occurs in games" and everyone was talking about that game for several days merely due to a "gruesome" trailer. This played perfectly to the developers' hands, who flat out confessed that was the entire point of the trailer. The game went on to become a huge success in sales, despite it being lackluster in terms of actual gameplay.

These strategies are not new. GTA and even Carmaggedon made similar publicity stunts back in the day.

And of course it is impossible for anyone to actually mean such a caveat, because they're all evil censorious SJW douchebags who want nothing more than to take your games away and chastise you for having bad wrong fun that makes the little kittens cry.

Because that is totally a real position and not just a strawman that exists in your mind.

Also, "huge success" is, perhaps, a bit overstating it. There was a peak of 3000 users playing it, and as of this moment, there are .... 30 people. According to the various DB trawlers, it has about 40k owners.

[Grizzly]

just re-read the Kotaku article, I definitely get a ~this game should not exsist~ vibe from it, whereas the Polygon one is more of a ~this game is disgusting~ vibe.
/*shrug*/ difference of opinion

Okay, I get where you are coming from with the polygon thing, but I found it weird that you get a ~this game should not exist~ vibe from an article where the author literally says that he does not feel that way. I wouldn't take an issue with your stance at all if that piece wasn't there, but now I simply don't get where you are coming from.

It doesn't matter if writers thought that this was a bannable game or not (hint, of course anyone would write such a "caveat" especially if they are about to write a damning piece on the object), what matters is how they managed to get everyone "Shocked! SHOCKED that violence occurs in games"

But, again, the article you linked literally stated that this is nothing new. Again, to quote from the article itself:

It has, of course, also gotten a crazy amount of attention, which makes sense given that its entire announcement campaign smacked of a thinly veiled grab at publicity. "Bring [the trailer] everywhere and let the haters hate! (And they will, oh they will...)," the developers wrote. They proudly trumpeted their alleged lack of "political correctness" or affiliation to art/any kind of message—despite, in doing so, making a very pointed political statement—and generally leaned on how different they thought they were being.

Thing is, they really weren't. This is just a footnote in a book with many, many chapters.

[Luis Dias]

I don't really care about their "real intentions", what matters is that they were obviously baited into doing these "op-eds" bashing violence in games and "questioning" the role of games and so on, and they took the bait. And this, in turn, boosted their sales. That is my sole point. If the writers themselves were self-aware of this phenomena and still fell for it, then what can one say about their utter lack of dignity and self-worth? Alternatively, the articles themselves, riddled with this faux-poignancy about righteous babble, were as click-baity as the game itself, and both were just tools that fed each other to success in a capitalist game of fake outrage culture.

. "This is how we are being manipulated into being outraged so all of you buy this game, isn't that outrageous? Think of that, and don't forget the title of this game that is so outrageous so you know that you definitely won't buy this at all to find out what it really is all about!!!!"

[Grizzly]

Luis, your own thesis is disproven by your own examples and... well, honestly, the only one here who actually seems outraged is you.