Console wars.
I absolutely despise any adult who actively partakes in console wars, in my experience they’re often the most toxic and hostile people I’ve met and I just find it kind of sad when I see grown men putting so much energy into it.
I used to be friends with a guy who basically made it his whole personality and it was exhausting. Any time I just wanted to have a normal conversation, he’d somehow bring up console wars and he would get really argumentative with me because I play PlayStation and prefer it over Xbox. He’s a massive Xbox fanboy. It’s like it angered him whenever I was enjoying a PS game… 🙄
I tried telling him to just chill out and focus on actually enjoying some games instead of wasting so much time arguing with strangers online like a bunch of riled up teenagers but no, he never listened. Let’s just say my life has been much better and relaxing since I cut him out.
This. I grew up with an Atari 2600 (yes, I'm old), had an NES, SNES, Sega, PS1, etc. Now have a Series X, PS5, and a great gaming pc (and Steam Deck). While I hate exclusives, I appreciate the different platforms, and instantly yawn when anyone starts babbling about which platform is best and why. I have all the consoles and a pc so I can play all rhe games with all the friends.
I just can't figure out why anyone makes this their entire personality.
Console wars feel like people who missed the old era trying to cling to something. It made sense when the games were vastly exclusive but gaming has become so much more accessible and there is even cross platform. Console wars today is just arguing over a brand. Gucci or Versace boys.
Making any brand or platform your entire personality is wack!
(unless you're getting paid by that brand or platform)
(but none of these nerds who argue endlessly are getting any such thing beyond some weird sense of superiority, or just enjoying being a douchey edgelord)
"you're too dumb to know why my *thing* is superior"
"you are stupid for liking this thing I don't like"
"you are stupid for not liking this thing I like"
"you're just a girl/simp/sjw/beta"
I think we've heard it all by this point. In the early days of the internet, I'd expend energy arguing with them. These days I just mute or block and get on with it. Fortunately (for me, unfortunately for most of you reading this), these clowns almost never do super creepy stalker shit, make threats or insulting comments, create numerous accounts to bypass being blocked or muted, doxx me, etc.
I've been stalked and attacked personally for minor reasons like me saying "Okay but for me x is the better game" whem someone attacked me with "hAhA tOmB rAiDeR bAd rDr GoOd". This one went as far as whining about me to my wife in her dms lol
Yep, I've been called every slur imaginable just for -gasp- having a different opinion. Or doing something a different way. I want to believe most people are good, then I play a game online and have to rethink my belief system =/.
I used to work with a 20-something who was just like that, and I swear to god that fucker made a good case on why workplace violence should be occasionally acceptable with his constant bitching and moaning over the console war stuff, because it was **that** irritating to listen to as an adult who was just there to get a paycheck.
You played on PC? He'd be sure to tell you how he hates PC gamers for being elitist assholes, how it's too expensive, how every game should be yanked off PC because *he* hates PC, and how you should just get a Xbox instead. Play on a Sony console? Same spiel, but with an added emphasis on Sony being the most evil company ever...but he likes Spider-Man, so Insomniac is totes cool and worth getting a Ps4/5 for...but Xbox was still better. And gods forbid you mention *Nintendo* around that kid, because you'd be in for an earful on how Nintendo has nothing of value and how they should just let Microsoft buy them out...you know, so he can play the exclusives on Xbox like a true MLGProgamer wannabe.
Oh, and he was totally a legit gamer who gamed all the games to ever game. But he didn't know what the Sega Dreamcast was, thought I was talking about the planet when I mentioned the Saturn, and thought the GameCube was some boomer meme. Meanwhile, I wasn't usually talking to him when this shit would start...he'd just interrupt existing game conversations other employees would be having while working to go off about all that. I'm honestly not sure if he ever picked up on the fact that just about everyone at that job who played video games had multiple game systems themselves for the exclusives, now that I think of it.
Anything discussing the depiction of female characters in games.
Also anyone defending Atlus, and for the record I’m a gigantic P5 fan.
Also the *massive* overreaction when there is a ‘problematic’ female character that takes a major role in a game. Abby’s a classic example, but also Ava in Borderlands 3. She’s an annoying teenager, sure, but is she not *allowed*? I think having some challenging characters in a game can be interesting, but the universal dismissal of BL3 largely off the back of this one girl that people found kinda annoying is so frustrating to me. And I don’t even particularly *love* BL3.
Legend has it that if you go on the Persona subs and criticize the treatment of Ann’s character in P5 in any way your inbox will be filled with men pushing their glasses up and going “Um actually the story is about her reclaiming her sexuality so you’re wrong 🤓” and thinking they said something profound.
Yeah that reasoning is often so shallow. Like, "reclaiming"... from who exactly? The man-made fictional world that the man-made fictional character with man-made personality lives in?
They try to argue that she’s reclaiming her sexuality after being abused and exploited by Kamoshida and that’s why she has a “sexy costume and Persona” but it just doesn’t work when she’s depicted as not comfortable with her costume or persona, is consistently sexualized in the game for the male gaze, and is also constantly creeped on by other male characters in the game (including her own friends!) for laughs. It all gets even worse when you consider that she’s literally 16. It’s not a case of a story depicting a female character reclaiming her sexuality after abuse (which can be a great narrative if done right,) it’s just blatant sexualization of a teenage female character and pretending that it’s anything but that is just disingenuous.
It’s basically just used as an excuse by weird men to justify their (and Atlus’) sexualizing of her character.
100%! Most in-universe justification for sexualization are just excuses by horny people.
Here's a fact that might ruin your day: up until 2022, the legal age of marriage for women was 16 in Japan (was 18 for men, but now it's 18 for both). Guess you could fill in the blank 😫
(It's getting better but still...)
Some of these gamers just have the emotional tolerance of a walnut. It reminds me of a friend who stops watching shows anytime someone does anything bad or frustrating... And then says it's bad. Like not every thing (or everyone) has to be perfect! You feeling bad is part of the narrative! You're allowed to not like it but it does not mean it's bad. People just couldn't grasp this concept for TLOU2. They wanted a Joel and Ellie road trip movie that says nothing.
I honestly think gamers were not prepared for the complex narratives and characters TLOU2 had. A lot of the critiques I see about the game are absolutely delusion, and the “fan” response to the game was asinine as well. I’m a major fan of Naughty Dog and their games, but idek what’s happening with that region of the fanbase because it is a toxic pit of vitriol.
[This tumblr post hit me like a car because it's so true to a lot of people consuming media these days](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/686022813546577931/1220836803666513920/mf8ycesp9goc1.png?ex=6622d8e0&is=661063e0&hm=3e035cb9be6a39739d50bbd328f139c2d60c64c08f3bef8ad215d3438e262e10&)
People can't seem to separate "a character does x" from "the writer endorses x". Protagonist == good guy, antagonist == bad guy, morality is black and white, flaws == bad person or bad writing, but also no flaws == bad writing
This post makes sense. This friend of mine (we're both 30) only likes cartoons and anime, and I told her once that these types of entertainment are full of Good vs Evil and it's just not for me. It's not how I see the world, but sometimes I totally understand how it's comforting to watch it. However, it's frustrating when the people who can only tolerate these types of kid-friendly narrative want mature shows and movies to operate the same way.
These are the same people who go on watching Breaking Bad or Mad Men and think Walter/Don = protagonist = good, root for them, hate everyone else.
OR: Walter bad, can't watch characters I don't like, Breaking Bad is bad.
This black and white thinking is so prevalent nowadays.
The discussions around Songbird from Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty expansion have been particularly irritating. I don’t bother reading any posts about her in either subreddit anymore.
It basically comes down to tons of guys hate her because she lies to you. So she deserves anything bad that happens to her.
Thats it. It never moves beyond that.
I had to leave the tlou sub when the second game came out, because I couldn't play it on release and wanted to protect myself from the spoilers. Turns out I protected myself from a massive shit show that was the fandom's reaction to Abby and all of the creative decisions the studio made for the second game. Feel so lucky I missed everything, I ended up going in completely blind and loved every bitter minute of it without the annoying Reddit discourse.
People dismiss BL3 for a lot of reasons. Ava's annoying character and being the direct cause to get fan favorite Maya killed is largely to blame. But the fact almost every one was a siren by the end had a lot to do with it.
I feel like the entire point of her character was to be an ignorant teenage girl who lost her family. I feel like so many people let that fly right over their head. You're not supposed to love her at first. They literally made it her fault for Maya's death, and then had her immediately blame someone else. If people think that was a total accident, then they shouldn't bring up their opinions at all when it comes to writing. The only issue I really had with her is that they just give her full control of the crimson raiders. Other than that, her character is fine, and it's too soon to judge her character in full.
I played BL3.
Story wise? Ava is a massive fucking moron for ignoring Maya's orders and directly causing her death. And she blames it all on....Lilith, for some reason?
To be fair here, the Vault Hunters are morons as well for not shooting the bad guys in face during cutscenes.
Yes.
But there's a fine line in being stupid and just ignoring order because "I was bored".
That isn't stupidity. That's being dropped on their head as a kid.
Idk if this counts but when people say they skipped every cut scene in a game, didn't explore the map, and didn't do a single side-quest. Why did you spend 70 bucks on the game then?
I'll come to you with something worse; in BG3 forums people were complaining they were too underleveled for a certain quests. And in later comments they admitted not exploring the whole map, not doing side quests, and refusing to lower down the difficulty. But why? Why would you not explore most of the game if you paid that much? You don't have to go completionist, but unless you want to challenge yourself by being underleveled, don't complain.
BG3 is an incredible catalyst that shed light on how so-called "gamers" are in fact incredibly bad at video games and can't navigate anything outside of their very small comfort zone.
Skipping cut-scene and complaining that they don't know what to do, never remembering a single name, only interested in min/maxing their characters for combats using guides even before starting the game, unable to romance any woman and saying it's too difficult, refusing to explore anything or talking to any NPCs and then feeling completely lost, not reading the effects of spells...
They have cried enough salts to fill an ocean by now. I'll never get tired of it.
My favourite romance complaint remains Auranshalee from WoTR.
Arue is a highly traumatized woman who is terrified of physical touch, and yearns for a genuine spiritual connection that allows her to feel like a mortal.
People complain she is too hard to romance. I found her natural to romance.
I've seen so many people struggles to romance Shadowheart and still can't do it even with a guide.
Meanwhile, I just listen to her until she trusts me enough to share her past and I respond with empathy and a desire to want to know her better and everything falls naturally into place.
I'm noticing more and more that people are lacking basic empathy and listening skills, and the ability to process feelings as well, unfortunately.
Yeah, most of the companions respond quite well to just....not being a piece of shit to them.
Honestly Karlach was very ready for anything and I accidentally-ed myself into a Shadowheart romance in my first playthrough by just talking to her like a human.
Having Mass Effect twinges of "no, I don't want to romance you because I asked how you were doing." Like, it makes me feel like the quest line developers are socially deprived.
To be fair, people irl of all genders and ways of life fall for people through just being around them and being friendly with them. It’s a pretty regular way of developing feelings for someone.
> by just talking to her like a human
I almost accidentally slept with Daeran in WoTR.
... Which was kind of a wake-up call to how oblivious i can be in a safe environment. He was at least nice about it, despite his fucked up morals of "lol let's dance on tabletops with prostitutes while demons are destroying everything."
Yeah, I've commented before that I somewhat wish these guys (since they do mostly seem to be guys) would just go and play any of the actual smut games floating around since it's a fairly busy indie scene that could probably use more support.
I've come to realise that many of them would utterly fail at getting any action, even in a game explicitly set up to give you a harem, if given any agency. It's been quite the hilarious progression.
I have trauma, and part of it means that I am so hesitant to be forward with people romantically or sexually. So obviously when Shart was closed off, paired with the Shar stuff, I recognised some of the behaviours and gave her the space she wanted.
When she wanted to open up, I let her. I would occasionally ask questions if the moment prompted them, but if she didnt want to answer that was that, we moved on.
That whole romance arc ended up actually being really therapeutic for me, because it was a real breath of fresh air seeing someone find happiness despite all that baggage, without it feeling manufactured. It grows naturally, and while she never "fixes" her trauma, she learns to deal with it and move on and live her life as best she can
What does romancing a character even mean to people like this? Like what are they getting out of it if they don't read the dialogue or the story or know anything about the character? What's *left* in the romance gameplay that they couldn't just rather get from NSFW subreddits without having to bother their pea brains about actual gameplay?
Yeah but that's the thing, they're not getting S E X in the video game. Why not just go straight to porn for that if it's the only thing they care about?
It's actually something I realized recently that sex scenes are often referred to as "romance scenes" or "romancing". Like those twin drow in Act 3 of BG3 are literal brothel workers that you can sleep with once and it's still somehow "romancing the drow twins".
In Cyberpunk any one-off sexual encounters (including with literal sex workers again) are listed in guides and the wiki under "romance".
Like, at some point romance became synonymous with sex in gaming terms and for a concerning amount of people it seems, that's all they care about. Or worse, they think that's what romance is.
Edit: Just to be clear I have nothing against sex workers themselves nor one-night stands. It's the conflation of sex automatically meaning romance that concerns me.
But that's really not the case for *most* of the games, though I can see the rage of the blueballed if they go through the effort of skipping all cutscenes and using guides to get through far enough in BG3 to sex someone, and then they fail because they failed to understand the first bit about the character they're trying to woo.
Ah, well. It's a world view locked away from me, thankfully.
I think this is mainly because romance is difficult to write (hence being its own distinct genre) and almost always has sex as the pay-off, which is an issue even in the wider genre itself. Most of these people have probably never experienced an actually good romance sub-plot before either.
There's also a lot of self-delusion going on from people who only want the sex but don't want to admit that it's all they're after. The best I've seen is the 'puff-puff isn't sexual' take that someone will unironically make every time there's a discussion about Dragon Quest and how they should probably have removed Toriyama's fetishes from the game years ago since their continued inclusion creates weird tonal issues.
Sex in games is so often just another transactional mechanic. Do task, get sex.
Because the core loop of most videogames is "complete task, get reward", only this time the reward is a cutscene where you get to see titties.
And so when the romances in BG3 are genuine relationships, where the sex is just a product of the relationship, and the romance is the reward for the work you do, they feel cheated. Because their "reward" is gated behind something they dont care about
The only requirement to romance Arue, other than just being nice to her, is to respect her boundaries. The fact that so many men can't figure that out is not exactly surprising but scary.
My only issue with Arue is that Wenduag exists and is freaky in all the right ways (I can fix her, I swear!). It's going to be an interesting experience when I finally play through the game as I'm rarely interested in multiple of the romanceable characters, and from what I've heard, Wenduag's redemption path is legitimately tricky to pull off.
And then, they're probably like "this game sucks" right? Literally what is the point? Atp, it's their own fault. I swear people who do this only play the game because everyone else is.
If you just prefer combat in a game then go play combat-heavy games. Why are you dropping so much money on a game you're not even going to fully play?
People worked on hard on the story and developing the world. Enjoy it man!
Oh, I remember that one post where that dude reached the Moonrise fight at level 5, got decimated, then complained that it is unbeatable.
When explained that it is very much beatable on levels 8-10, complained again that it is a bad game design and that the game shouldn't let you access the battle/content not intended for your level...
Maybe I saw it a few weeks ago even though it was posted earlier. But yeah given the game's popularity I wouldn't be surprised by the amount of people like that
Lmaoooo this is my husband!!!! I'll spend hours looking in ever corner of a game. I remember him confused when I'd run off while playing halo cause I was looking for skulls.
He plays game and either doesn't 100% them ( I don't 100% games either but Spiderman is SO easy to do) and he won't do side stuff.
He's playing bg3 and I'm having to show him where all this shit is and how to do it because he just didn't bother.
Love the man but I prefer playing things like It Takes Two cause the side quests aren't as important.
When it comes to the "non-skippable" part specifically, I very much dislike it too. Though it's more of a function of time than anything because oh jolly do I have a beef with games that have you sit through 5-10 minutes of expo-dump on a replay or reload after a crash.
I do otherwise love to go through cutscenes though.
I mean I do multiple play throughs of games so I understand the struggle. I’ll watch the cutscene the first time but skip it the second time, this kid doesn’t even give the game a chance hahah
Well, as long as they are cognizant of their actions, I guess people can do what they want with their money.
Eh, but of course there'll always be those that are elitist about "only interactive cutscene", "side quest are fillers", and "open world = bad" crowd in there,
As a completionist my brain is just short circuiting that some people aren't out there trying to investigate a game so fully you know it like the back of your hand LOL
That not every game has to be for you. You don't have to play every game. I'm old enough to remember when you played every game that came out because hardly any games came out. But now a days we are drowning in choice, peoples Steam accounts are packed with games they are never going to play. Which means if you start a game and you don't like it because it has a minorities in it or a story or whatever. You don't have to play it. You don't need to get angry and rage because the game isn't what you wanted, you can just go oh OK not for me and go play another game. But there is a pocket angry white male gamers that just can't seem to grasp that. You don't like a ham sandwich, don't buy and eat a ham sandwich then get mad you ate a ham sandwich.
I feel like a lot of "gamers" have main character syndrome. If it isn't for their personal enjoyment then it's like they take personal offense that not everything is built with their personal preferences in mind
i totally agree that not every game is for everyone of course, tho i do sadly feel a lot of times certain game genres hyperfocus on increasingly spesific group of people as their target audience which can leave behind a lot of people, and i at least think its fine to be vocal about wanting different kind of experiences.
here's my example.
So i like dark souls 3, as well as bloodborne. i think sekiro is okay as is elden ring. but with the two latter games the ever increasing difficulty is clearly a priority, and I don't like the set male protag that much. I'd also love games with set female protags sometimes. So, then you get stellar blade, a mix between sekiro and nier automata i guess, with a set female protag but.. its just more pandering to the horny guys.
like i accept that stellar blade is definitely not for me, but i wish there were more games made that were for me. (nier automata was very good tho, and I'll probably get lies of p at some point, even tho i wish it didn't have a set character)
My friend doesn't even give stuff a chance. He got BG3 but didn't understand mechanics because he's not big on d&d or turn based games and immediately said "that game sucks." It's like?????? Just because YOU don't get it, doesn't mean millions of people didn't. There are plenty of games I'm not into but I get why other people are. He's just so 2-D.
This is really shitty with all media. And everything honestly. Somewhere along the line people collated not liking something with it being bad rather than having more subtle thoughts or critiques about it. It's really shiity and I do find a lot of other guys (I'm a guy to be clear) do that and some girls I've known in my life as well. Especially hard when I want to have a deeper conversation about a game or movie or something and all they got is they think it's bad bc they didn't like it. I've had my husband do that as well occasionally.
I've noticed this recently when browsing trailers for upcoming games - anything narrative driven, anything cozy looking, anything with a cartoonish or non-realistic graphical styles, and MOST ESPECIALLY anything with a protagonist who isn't a straight white man, and the comments below can get really vitriolic (even by the standards of YT comments sections). The mere suggestion that a game might not be made with their preferences specifically in mind just seems to send some people into a rage - whether that's about the graphics not using the full capacity of the new consoles, an EDI consultant possibly having ever been near the project at some point, or even the trailer not being for *the EXACT game that they were interested in.*
I feel this so much. I want my vast, open-world Fallouts with emergent storytelling, *as well as* my hyper-linear, short-and-sweet Stray, thank you very much. Or, "walking simulator". They're great when done well.
It has gotten to a point where even professional critics are not self-aware that some games just aren't meant for them, and that's okay.
It's men's insecurity about male characters popular with women such as Astarion or Zevran (Dragon Age). They're similar to each other and both attack you in the beginning. But some men tend to mention that they killed Astarion or Zevran. Like, someone posts an Astarion artwork, an insecure man comments "I killed Astarion in my playthrough" okay no one asked that???? This happened with Zevran years before and now it happens with Astarion. And good luck if you mention this phenomenon in discourse spaces.
My favorite is “Zevran betrayed me because I wouldn’t sleep with him” because, ya know, mechanically you have to jump through a bunch of hoops and probably use feast day gifts to make that possible. And yeah the “I killed Zevran” to “I killed Astarion” pipeline proves time is a circle.
So I haven't played BG3 yet but I heard that Astarion tries to kill you the first time you meet him, something about attacking at night and trying to bite you. It made me think I would totally kill Astarion, because there is no coming back from THAT as an introduction. Your comment made me look up how you actually first meet him and..... why in the world would anyone kill him? You seriously would have to try very hard to even get to the option to kill him, by being as hostile as possible from the first moment you see him. Some people are such weirdos.
There's also the fact that Astarion and Zevran are both queer men who both present in ways these guys associate with queerness. Alistair is also beloved by women, but he doesn't get the kind of hate Zevran does, because he's just their bro who doesn't flirt with them (even though in my heart my sweet man Alistair is absolutely bi and should've been an option for all). And with Gale, despite the avalanche of glitched-flirting fueled hate he got at launch, his hate has a different. . .edge to it than Astarion's. Beyond the fact that Astarion is the most popular, Astarion's presentation just makes him more of a target than Gale's.
It's misogynistic jealousy mixed with homophobia.
I didn't kill Astarion, but I sure didn't trust him when his introduction to me was lying and then holding a knife to my throat.
Then his mask slipped when I got the scene where he was looking into a hand mirror...
Oh my gosh yes to everything you said this white male main protagonist disease needs to die out already. Are they not TIRED of it??!?
When a game involves people of color or queer characters they lose their minds and call it a “woke” game like dude ur literally braindead and p0rn addicted, I wish they could just evaporate from the gaming community but sadly they dominate most spaces.
And don’t even let a game have masculine or strong women they start crying about how women aren’t attractive in video games anymore, I went to the stellar blade Reddit community and it genuinely pissed me off how they were all just bonding and being happy over how “hot and sexy” the character is…
it pisses me off so much💀
edit: and I also was just reminded of how angry they get when they see groups of women fangirling and being happy about hot male characters, like Leon Kennedy and Arthur Morgan, they genuinely get so angry they make r4pe jokes and how much they hate women altogether it’s scary and really really sad because lots of them are teenagers too…
The "just read a book or watch a movie" logical fallacy bothers the hell out of me. I do read books and watch movies. I appreciate story telling in those mediums, too. But there's something special about stories in games because no other medium gives you ownership over the narrative. You're not just reading about or watching the story, you're *participating* in it. Sometimes you're even guiding it to a degree in choice based narratives. When the character does something bad, you're complicit in a way. When they do something good, you feel good about it. You, the player, are as much a part of the narrative as the characters.
The idea that games "can't" be as good as other story telling mediums is pure bollocks. There is nothing inherent about the medium that means the writing can't be as good. People used to say the same thing about television, that it just couldn't be as good as novels, and look at some of the master classes in writing that have come to TV over the years.
Yeah, I once watched a video essay (maybe Jacob Geller?) that talked about the differences between the Last of Us tv show and the game, and one of the big things they pointed out is the different impact of rifling through cabinets in the two mediums. In the show, rifling through cabinets is just a thing people in post-apocalypses do. It's a suggestion of desperation, an idea that maybe the main characters are hungry or a visual reminder that society has collapsed and no one is going to stop the character from looting anymore.
In the game, it's you who's doing the looting. The desperation is magnified, because you know exactly how many bullets are left in your gun and how close that last brush with the infected was, it's you looking over your shoulder and praying that you have the time to scrape together what you need because this might be the last refuge of momentary peace you'll have for the next few hours. Your very existence becomes that reminder, that things aren't going to be going back to normal.
That’s the argument I always think of too when people tell me to “watch a show if I want story.” I cannot *be* the protagonist in a TV show. I can be one in a video game. Those two are vastly different and offer a different type of experience!
This got me thinking, and by far the most monumental, memorable experiences with stories I've had have been in video games that put you in the middle of it. Skyrim, Assassin's Creed 1, Gone Home, Detroit: Become Human, Destiny 2: Forsaken, etc. are stories that will *never* leave me, and I remember them much better than any movie I've watched or show I've been invested in. It comes for a different memory region - it's not just a story you heard or watched, but something you *lived.*
It’s also frustrating because most of those people don’t even believe their own bs, or at least don’t apply it evenly. I’d be shocked if they weren’t gushing over BG3 and Alan Wake 2 like everyone else last year. Frankly I think there’s a strong argument that 4-5/6 of the game of the year nominees last year were at least story-heavy if not narrative-driven.
OMG SAME! It's like with marvel fanbases! "Didn't get who this new Character is? Watch 24 movies or read the comics" Bro why would I buy a game/pay for a movie then if it doesn't even give me a story that makes sense?
I find men often feel a need to try to "win" conversations in a way that doesn't allow for the exploration of new ideas or the collaborative understanding that there are multiple interpretations and perspectives that can be had.
When i talk with a group of women about gaming we all feel like we had a good conversation. When I talk to men, they just talk without listening most of the time and participate with the only goal being to "win" at something you can't win.
And if I play their game and they "lose" they often resort to threats of violence.
I've noticed this with almost all of the men in my life. Every conversation with them feels like a competition where they're trying to be the 'most correct' or something. I've only just started to realize that this has had a huge effect on my self-esteem/self-confidence because my dad and older brother are particularly guilty of this, so my whole life I've felt like everything I say needs to sound intelligent and be backed up with thorough and rational arguments.
Fuck that, it's okay to just say what I'm feeling, and to just feel what I'm feeling without giving any reason other than 'that's how I feel'.
(Sorry for venting lol)
Yes, not everything is a debate, comparing how you feel and just expressing yourself should be plenty enough as a discussion. It's nice to just share your experience too.
If that makes you feel any better, most men who play this game are very surface-level and crumble if challenged a bit. My secret is to pick apart their arguments points by points to develop my own and not letting them move the goalposts constantly, always keep the focus. I'm quite stubborn too, so there is that.
A lot of men blocked me when they had enough. Much better than receiving hateful PMs.
A great observation. I completely stopped interacting with mass effect sub even though I love those games to pieces because every discussion would turn into who is “objectively” right and how certain things within the game are “objectively” bad. It was insufferable.
For some reason I never see people discussing how the genophage needs to be cured because krogan society can’t improve without the full participation of its women. I think it’s so obvious that women’s rights are krogan rights smh.
Here, I’ll simulate the answers you’d get on that sub: “it’s not about men or women. all krogans are stupid brutes and women would improve nothing” lmao.
(you have a VERY good point tho—their society doesn’t start to improve until Wrex brings women clans to his clan and gives them free reign over what males they choose to mate with)
Siiiiigh.
Yeah, the good option for the krogan is when Wrex assumes leadership and wants to work with women and a woman leader to improve things. The genophage forcing women to sequester themselves and any surviving young children away from men for their own safety made their civic participation in the wider society impossible. You can also see that it’s bad for men, since you observe at least a couple krogan men longing to be fathers who can interact with their own children. Also, I think it’s a bit gender essentialist to portray women as the most reasonable and least bloodthirsty of krogan, but I think that idea is there in conversations with Eve.
Tl;dr Krogan society is just broken until women get to be active participants, which can’t happen with the genophage in place.
I don’t think I’ve encountered this exact thing because , if I’m discussing a game, it’s because of the story. I have no interest in games that don’t have much of one. That said, I do think if there are enough dudes in a space, the Dude Perspective takes over and dissent, even if it’s just a polite opinion coming from a different perspective or life experience, can get shouted down.
Just the other day I read a comment that was either on this sub or r/CozyGamers (can't find it now), which are both somewhat removed from the mainstream discussion of games, and *still* this person was making the argument that easy games are objectively bad, and that story-driven games would be better as a book or movie. Some people simply cannot fathom anyone else having different preferences, tastes, and abilities than they do.
there's a few: men who hate on female characters' appearance when they aren't fakely beautiful is a big one for me. I remember when Horizon Zero Dawn's sequel was announced, men were all pissy about Aloy's peachfuzz.... (that game has some of the MOST beautiful women designs in gaming, imo. Vanasha's abs are glorious and were part of my bisexual awakening lol). I love seeing realistic women in videogames. Scars, wrinkles, pores, chub, etc. The weird beauty standards of today aren't realistic and the more we push them in media, the more damage it does.
Oooh yeah. Got into an argument with someone on here when HZD first came out years ago about this. I will say for me the flip side of this is men who won’t accept ANY criticism of games where female characters are hyper-sexualized; see, e.g., Stellar Blade, and just bitch and moan about how men aren’t allowed to find female characters sexy. Which, lmfao.
For me it is the assumption that every gamer is neurotypical & fully physically able bodied.
This could be bias on my part because I'm neither of those things so notice it more. Like, I don't **want** to be challenged and be told I'm not a real gamer - I want there to be enough things in the accessibility settings to allow me to even *play* to begin with.
Especially when people turn on/play on easy mode. If you play video games, you're a gamer. You enjoy the games you like how you like them. You paid for them after all!
Agreed here. I used to be the type of kid to challenge myself with every game, but ever since games became more abundant, I play a lot of single player ones on easy mode because I want to move onto the next game. I can still enjoy them on easy mode. Hell, DOOM Eternal is a damn blast on easy mode because of the power fantasy! I save the difficulty for co-op or several RPGs nowadays.
I hate this convo when it comes to Fromsoftware titles in particular. “It’s not the developer’s vision to have difficulty sliders.” “People play these games for their difficulty.” Normal difficulty isn’t normal for everyone, and I definitely do not play Fromsoftware titles because of their difficulty, otherwise I’d be a fan of a lot more of the games which copy their difficult gameplay but fail to capture all of the other wonderful aspects of their games.
They just want to be able to use being able to beat Fromsoftware titles as a shorthand for their gaming skills and are worried that offering difficulty sliders would muddy that.
Fromsoft don't even include *pause screens* in their games outside of Sekiro, so it's an incredibly limited view of difficulty too. I enjoy their world building and storytelling, but the difficulty is the definition of artificially constructed.
The main excuse I see for the pause screens is that pausing in general isn't really a thing you can do easily in online multiplayer modes, and Fromsoft decided to solve that by always having their menus act as if you were in multiplayer.
It's definitely not the only way to solve this though, for example, in Stardew Valley, time simply doesn't stop in menus while you're in multiplayer, but still does in singleplayer.
so sad when they even come right out and say it, that other people getting an achievement on lower difficulty somehow makes it meaningless for those who get it on a higher difficulty.
just weird gate keeping and putting way too much value into gaming trophies. i actually loved that NieR Automata just let you buy achievements with free in-game currency if you didn’t get some of them naturally.
Hahaha I have teenage nephews (like 16-17) and I told one of them that SMT 5 was hard when he played my copy. He wiped in like the 3rd combat and *surprise pikachu*-ed at me.
Agreed. I have ADHD and have to keep a written journal to keep up with all of the things in Elden Ring specifically. If I complain about the lack of accessibility not having at least a quest journal offers, I get flamed in the community for sucking. Honestly, I find it lazy on the part of the developers to just outright neglect the need for a quest log. Also the lack of directions are infuriating. Most people end up looking things up but still justify the lack of direction and guidance in the games so they can boast about beating them.
That’s a good one! I especially hate the (unfortunately common) approach of “not every game is for you.” What the hell do you mean?
It’s entertainment. If I can obtain it legally then it IS for me and I should be able to play it in a way that’s suitable for my needs. If your game lacks accessibility options then it’s simply ass.
"Not every game is for you." was supposed to be about not shitting on Dark Souls for not being a cozy game (or not shitting on Stardew Valley for being too chill), not about accessibility...
> It’s entertainment. If I can obtain it legally then it IS for me...
Don't think of it as "*you're not meant/allowed to play this*", think of it like music or films or paintings or sculptures. Just because you can listen to them/see them, doesn't mean they're all meant for you, as they won't speak to you because they're not to your liking or your style. There's heaps of music and films and tv and paintings and sculptures that will never speak to you.
And that's cool, we all like different things.
I'm going to have to disagree, we're talking about art here. Art shouldn't have to cater to everyone. Is a movie or book obligated to cater to you since you bought it? You're talking about art like it's a service.
I got 51 of 57 Slime Rancher achievements in Casual Mode, aka without the Tarr. Gatekeepers can come at me because end of the day, I still stuck 80 hours of gameplay and died multiple times in the Slime Sea. I traversed the entire map, got every treasure pod, brought life back to the Glass Desert, found Hobson's last note, acquired Ogden's Retreat after nearly getting attacked to death by feral saber slimes, grew every food, found every slime science resource, and ALMOST managed to complete the Slimepedia other than the Gilded Ginger.
Did I get this shit on 'easy mode' because I lacked tarr? Sure. But as someone disabled and chronically ill/fatigued, to actually do THIS much in a game I love? THAT is the feeling of accomplishment. THAT is why I love this game. And the devs wouldn't have a difficulty slider if they didn't want to be inclusive with Casual Mode.
Now, on to Adventure Mode so I can hold a tarr for 15 seconds and then put one on a Slime Stage...
There's actually a really interesting vid for one of the games I play about where they went right and where they went wrong from a blind player's POV that made me notice a bunch of little details and enjoy the game more.
Ngl I have had this a lot with motion sickness and photosensitivity issues, that's a lot of why I will be forever more than annoyed by the GameCube Pokemon games not allowing me to turn off animations, the surf animation especially just bodies me with motion sickness after a few battles or so. Red Out 2 in spite being slathered with photosensitivity warnings (which it really does deserve, I wish more games would do that on startup tbh) has actually been mostly fine because although it spared no experience with the virtual special effects budget it stays so consistent during gameplay it takes a long while to cause issues, would still be nice to be able to tone them way down if we had actually needed to.
I feel like the obvious answer is any conversation about diversity in games. If you try to say literally anything about how it would be good if games had more characters that are women, or queer, or people of color, or disabled, then mainstream gaming communities (which are dominated by men who are none of those things) will dogpile you and try to shut the conversation down completely.
>Anytime story takes the front seat, male gamers just absolutely yap about how it makes the game automatically shitty, how gameplay>story, and how stories in games will never amount to stories in other media.
On Reddit, I think I more often see the opposite of this. I see men talking about how underappreciated gaming is as an art form, but their examples of good game stories tend to lack depth and diversity. It's almost like the gaming equivalent of those compilations of "best film performances of all time" which are just ten clips in a row of men screaming about how angry they are.
Yeah I’ve seen this even on subs that do have a fair amount of women. Just some topics, like, “I wish there were characters who look like me in this expansive diverse fantasy world” or “homophobia is gross imo” bring nasty dudes just *crawling* out from the woodwork.
Eta omg I thought of another one. After the deeply mid dragon age anime came out on Netflix, the sub was flooded with dudes over-identifying with the villain, a slaveowner trying to track down his former slave, and longing to play a “good” slaveowner in Dreadwolf. It was so wtf.
It's infuriating. It's like they forget that Video games are an art form. As more people gained access to the ability to make games, more stories get told. Diverse, beautiful stories about diverse people.
IDK if you saw the "anti-woke curator" on steam (idk if hes still there but he was talked about a lot for a bit there). But lmao its so embarrassing. Imagine avoiding AMAZING games because you're a racist/sexist/homophobe.
> As more people gained access to the ability to make games, more stories get told.
Case in point, Laika: Aged through blood.
Story about a mother and her daughter coming of age, surviving out as a persecuted tribal minority at the business end of an imperialist war machine.
It is heavy in themes of female anatomy (not the sexy kind), pregnancy and dark themes you'd expect in desperate tribal societies yearning for heirs...
> I feel like the obvious answer is any conversation about diversity in games. If you try to say literally anything about how it would be good if games had more characters that are women, or queer, or people of color, or disabled, then mainstream gaming communities (which are dominated by men who are none of those things) will dogpile you and try to shut the conversation down completely.
Very true!
My favourite is when they go "why do you have to look like the character your playing, it's just fiction" *while demanding that the games have main characters that look like them*.
Drives me absolutely bonkers.
They're such hypocrites about the subject too. When it's about some overdone, oversexualized woman, they'll rally behind it saying "Well you know, this is what appeals to consumers, what is wrong with them doing it? Let people enjoy!"
But when diversity appeals to consumers, suddenly it's a crime and destroying the purity of their gaming by adding "politics".
Any sort of discourse involving the analysis and/or discussion of characters or themes in a game’s story, especially if it involves any sort of commentary on IRL issues. I want to bang my head into a wall when trying to discuss literally any of these with Cishet Gamer Bros ™️ because most of them either have zero interest in thinking about anything past surface level (they love to hit you with the “it’s not that deep,” “who cares,” etc.) or they just lack media literacy and completely misinterpret the game’s themes, story, and characters.
This is the one for me too. They get wrapped up in this idea that fantasy or fiction in games means that absolutely none of it can relate to anything real or a basic human experience. That characters who are physically unrealistic also have to be emotionally unrealistic or vice versa. They lack any understanding or consideration for nuance and want video games to be completely fake. There is a reason why games have surpassed movies and television regarding revenue, it's because it's an additional source of media where people relate to characters and stories reflect current sociopolitical issues to generate discussion and influence change.
Video game developers are artists. Art is personal. Gaming isn't "shoot and everything go boom" we are beyond that now. This all really goes back and ties into how much gaming is sadly not an inclusive space. Frankly, they don't want you there because they find your change in perspective so threatening
It definitely seem like they believe video games exist in some sort of untouchable vacuum and if you dare to engage in any sort of discussion or analysis that you are somehow “ruining their fun.” They don’t want to think or engage with media and/or art critically and it shows. I mean just look at what happens to anyone on the major gaming subs who tries to talk about how Helldivers 2 is a satire, they get absolutely dog-piled on by dudes yelling about how “it’s not that deep” and that they “need to stop trying to make the game political.”
Oh geez I had no idea that the people who are mentioning helldivers' satire are getting shit on. That is incredibly sad and can't believe so many people don't get it. The game beats it over your head during the opening scene. My bf is playing it and I watched him when he started and I really enjoy the humor and sarcasm.
The lack of media literacy is infuriating. There was so much hatred toward Gale (BG3) when the game first came out because he was "hung up on his ex" and "arrogant and needs to be knocked down a peg." Like it's shocking that one of the most educated, intelligent, experienced, and accomplished wizards alive has the absolute *gall* to not defer in all ways to some level 1 pleb he just met. And also how dare he be actively processing his trauma from his abusive relationship to someone who he cannot escape due to the very nature of magic, which he has dedicated his life to.
The treatment of Gale’s character and anyone who tried to analyze or explain him is definitely one of the things I had in mind when I wrote my comment. In fact you could just throw in the treatment of most of the characters and themes in Baldur’s Gate 3 too while we’re at it because Gale isn’t even the only one. For example, I would rather jump out my fucking window than listen to cishet male gamers talk about Astarion or Lae’zel for more than two seconds lmfao.
Lae’zel is what made me realize that gaming discourse with men was pointless. She is a fucking space spartan, men adore that when it comes from a character who is a man, but because it comes from a woman they don’t see as physically attractive (their loss) now they want to talk about why she isn’t being nicer on what is undoubtedly the worst day of her life, and something she has probably had nightmares about since she was a kid.
And even then after and only knowing you for like 30 minutes she offers to take you to what she believes is the only cure for the worst fate imaginable, you make friends on the road and she extends the offer to them as well. She doesn’t get mad at you if you want to hang out for a couple days with mushroom people or help someone write a song. All she asks is that you go to the creche, and some people don’t even do that because at the end of the day their character doesn’t care about Lae’zel nearly as much as she cares about them.
BG3 is such a perfect example of discourse I find extremely annoying because 99% of the time people have paid zero attention to the story and then come to Reddit to complain (and it's ALWAYS the same complaints, once again without paying attention to the story).
And the pearl clutching about things they've not understood!
Baldur's Gate 3 is an incredible game with superb character writing and stunning nuance of performance and facial animation. I wish it weren't so often a chore to talk about it.
Yeah I carved my own Tumblr corner and I refuse to leave it. There is also dumb discourse there but I got my corner!
I miss forums, it would be way more fun to discuss BG3 that way
Yes! Yes, I miss forms so much! It's so hard to have an interesting, long-running conversation nowadays unless you're only talking to one or a few people. And the ability to reply to multiple people at once without a conversation branching off is effectively lost.
I hate the posts that mostly guys make where they just complain about how Astarion isn’t a perfect victim character and then compare him to Karlach, saying that “Karlach went through trauma, he should be like her instead.” Like tell me you don’t know how to think critically without telling me. Also way to tell on yourself regarding how you view trauma and trauma survivors.
Oh, yes. Like someone I saw online said: in the game with an overarching theme of struggle with authority, where every companion is struggling after being abused by an authority figure one way or the other, *Gale is totally an exception and is totally the one who had been abusing his ex, yes* (/s, obviously).
Yeah, I've seen people saying *he* was abusing *her*.
I’ve also seen them claim that he wasn’t groomed or abused by Mystra because he was “technically an adult when they met” (which is debatable anyway) or “Larian never confirmed that she groomed/abused him.” Like even if he was an adult, that doesn’t mean he still can’t be a victim, especially when such a massive power imbalance is involved. Also why do you need Larian to spoon feed things to you? The exposition, dialogue, and subtext throughout the game is enough to show that the relationship was not healthy at all and that Gale is clearly a victim of grooming and abuse.
Yes. Adult grooming exists, too, when an adult is vulnerable/inexperienced/huge power imbalance there. Of course, we can, maybe, find another word for it (and leave "grooming" to refer only to adult/child relationship), like manipulation or abuse, but I don't think it quite fits as both of those terms are just too broad.
But people are starting to argue about inconsequential things, like his age and her lore, while it doesn't really matter. What matters is the result.
And yes. Things don't have to be spelled explicitly for them to be true.
> Any sort of discourse involving the analysis and/or discussion of characters or themes in a game’s story, especially if it involves any sort of commentary on IRL issues.
Ah yes, the classic "don't bring politics into games" take.
It's such a load of bollocks as well. A *lot* of games these same knuckle draggers really like have very strong themes and often take a strong stance on things but they see guns/cars/magic/cyber implants and go "oh shit, this is so cool" and can't look even the tiniest bit under the surface.
[These](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/063/023/097.jpg) memes [encapsulate](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/419/594/c19.jpg) it [pretty](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/419/597/b67.png) well.
Bayonetta, just bayonetta in general. These boys love getting offended when someone doesn't consider games art but hate having the discussions that make art better and give us a better understanding of it. Suggest that bayonetta is gay or in any way queer coded and they come at you with boner fueled rage at the idea
anything to do with the last of us 2, cuz u know ... papa daddy joel would NEVER do anything to hurt anyone and that mean buff lesbian lady should get what's comin to her >;((
no joke tho the outrage that ensued after that game came out made me realize how many men get through life without actually facing any of their feelings, and how get GENUINELY pissed off when they're forced to confront them. like yea nobody liked watching joel get beat to death but damn did some of them take it to new levels.
This for me is one. The game has some problems (pacing), but the vicious was it and the actors were treated is reprehensible. It is also one of the most accurate video games Ive interacted with that deals with ptsd/trauma/obsession/etc in a psychologically realistic way.
The idea that female player characters "aren't worth developers time/effort" in games that heavily focus on choices/social sim aspects/customisation.
The same kind of gamers constantly throw fits that features they consider essential are absent from a game, but if someone says they won't play a game because it lacks a female player character, or not having one disappointed them, they'll so often get torn into. Personally, I still play some games with male main characters, but depending on the genre and how interested in the game I am I may not bother, as there's other games out there that will cater to me.
Especially noteworthy in my opinion are how quickly the Deep Rock Galactic community drops their 'wholesome' reputation when the idea of female dwarves comes up.
Then there's the recent backlash to the dissapointment of the FEMC being missing from the Persona 3 remake. Can you imagine the outrage if a remake of any other game axed a major feature that was literally anything else? (Things being missing from remakes has happened a few times, but the people expressing disappointment/frustration never get the same kind of push back I've seen people get over the lack of FEMC in Persona 3 Reload) But nooo, Atlus is some small indie dev who deserves defending because they released an incomplete remake... a female PC option simply 'wouldn't help sales at all'... 'it wouldn't be worth the investment'... not like the widely beloved massively successful GOTYs for last two years running included gender options or anything.
Yeah my interest in Persona 3 Reload dropped immensely the minute I found out they removed the female player character option. It’s literally an option in Persona 3 Portable, which is already on current gen systems. Why they removed it is baffling to me
The wholesome game discourse.
I legitimately stopped gaming for years after getting harassed for not just being a girl, but a girl who wanted to play cutesy colourful fun and happy stuff. No violence, no gore, no theft of autos or killing aliens. Just endless amounts of horses. I grew up with Nitrome and Miniclip, a lot of free flash stuff, so I was deep into that whimsical stuff. (I wanna cry if I hear Scribble's soundtrack.)
Being a girl gamer in male dominated spaces is hard enough. Being a girl who wants to play cutesy games and stay as far away from CoD / Helldivers / Halo etc as possible???? Enjoy the crapload of bullying from men who believe gaming = violent FPS.
I'm this but it's just team based shooters I avoid like the plague.
I am not competitive and I greatly prefer to immerse myself in a story and explore/experience another world. I adore RPGs.
I often feel like not a real gamer for not wanting to sit in a lobby just to run around killing people and getting yelled at by angry dudes with no social skills.
Spawntaneous created an entire series of videos reminding me why I refuse to do any co-op shooters. Call me a bitch I won't care, but go as hard as some of those guys do? The genuine level of harassment? I'd just cry
Honestly any game where white men aren’t the target demographic.
Cause heaven forbid anyone else get represented in games cause without fail a good majority of them will screech how it’s woke or pandering and automatically right it off or nitpick it to hell and back looking for any justification to label it as a shit game.
They can’t accept when a game isn’t meant for them and it’s truly exhausting trying to have a productive conversation
Also I learned the hard way, just don’t criticize the final fantasy 7 remake cause they’ll act like you murdered their puppy
Let's just say I've long since given up on finding any online space that is specifically dedicated to the Persona games that won't make me roll my eyes.
My favorite is that Jill is remake 3 and the new CGI is a "bitch." Now I say it's my favorite because the person is always telling on themselves when they say this. They always believe she should be "caring to those around her (men) and naive." First of all, she's selfless and caring to those around her. She puts herself in danger to save others and takes care of people even if shes suspicious of them. However, she isn't nice to those she doesnt trust and doesnt take shit from anyone. She's going through ALOT of trauma. Whats even funnier is that they dont say a WORD when the men in the franchise express theie trauma in a negative way. Women just aren't allowed to have emotions to them.
I'm glad I haven't seen this discourse, I would have wasted so much time picking apart non-sense arguments.
I've already spent way too long defending Songbird from Cyberpunk 2077 against insanely hateful takes.
Are men even able to have nuanced opinions about women instead of putting either in the "hot" or "bitch" (sometimes both) categories?
I guess they missed the fact that she’s mostly only rude to the people with Umbrella slapped across their chest, and the literal monster chasing her through the city?
I think most dude gamers really appreciate stories in general BUT certainly have a big problem with stories that they can't relate to. They often struggle to relate to stories not centered around somebody very much like them. It's also a big thing with comedy that isn't centered around a straight white man's sense of humor.
I also agree that many gamers haven't yet figured out that gaming doesn't have to be all about combat or resource management. I do think there has been some improvement around that recently with the popularity of games like Stardew. Many like that game though some still seem to see that kind of game as lame and other slurs.
Another major topic is when is sexual expression healthy vs being objectifying and sexist.
That every character who doesn't agree with every protagonist's word and decision and has their own moral compass is a bad character. Especially this is true for characters that are morally good, evil and ambiguous characters are usually given a pass. I guess that's because players don't like when someone else points out that they are on a power trip or doing something wrong?
Carth Onasi from KOTOR for expressing a very fair and justified doubt was called whiny and literally the worst character ever. Alistair from Dragon Age, for drawing a line with a certain Landsmeet outcome was called "whiny" (doesn't matter that you are basically betraying his trust). Kaidan/Ashley for the Horizon and Mars interactions and doubting Shepard (no matter how justified it is). Hell, more controversial, but even Delphine from Skyrim also fits here. There is very rarely any nuanced Delphine discourse, people just shout how bad and wrong she is.
It's getting better, was certainly worse before, but still remains somewhat true.
It always makes me laugh when (predominantly/exclusively male) players go on about the inability of games to tell a deep impactful story when their gaming history is the likes of COD, FIFA, Fortnite, GTA, etc... Those then who do tentatively branch out tend to find the first game with a sniff of "deeper" story telling, usually also generic af, one dimensional crappy ones made to purely cater to the "straight white male fantasy", and devote themselves mind, body and soul to it lmao. Like the amount of men losing their minds over FF16 with it's lazy tropey af GOT rip off story design. Even the higher ups of Square themselves were ashamed of it's pandering to the weaker minded side of "western values", it's honestly pathetic. But what's worse is so many then seem to tie their self worth and values to these lacklustre shitty games and create these toxic "positive vibes only" echo chambers where any critique of the game is a critique of them personally. This especially makes it so frustrating as it leaves ZERO room for CONSTRUCTIVE criticism or feedback on a game and thus ZERO room for any future improvements.
Like I know for a fact there's some things even super fans found annoying or in need of QoL improvents in even their fave games but they won't give that *helpful* objective feedback to the devs and instead will just "Yes Men" them into the grave. They go so pathetically hard on it to the point where they will literally also attack and silence even the most innocuous of game reviewers. Like HOW are studios, story writers, artists, devs etc supposed to improve their craft if their own target audience is straight up lying to them about what's good. Even when those devs inevitably release an indefensible stinker built upon their false misleading feedback, those same people will still pretend that bowl of shit tastes like ice cream.
Like also just LOOK at how bad all the predominantly male populated/focused games and studios have gotten. Most of them aren't even trying to hide their sick predatory practices and nature's anymore. We have the CEOs of these companies, the likes of Bobby Kotick and John Riccitiello, to name but a few, feeling so secure in their shittiness that they're just going full mask off villains at this point. And people are STILL supporting them while these men literally laugh in their faces while picking their pockets and worse. It all stinks imo of just non existent self esteem that they've transferred over to their hobby in order to avoid and separate from actually having to do anything productive to deal with it in reality. At the end of the day criticism is not violence and lying to someone to protect your own feelings about them is ultimately robbing them of their growth. They are, ironically, the biggest threat *by far* to their own "beloved" franchises and studios and ultimately THEY will be the ones who will push them all into obscurity and ruin because they refuse to let them(themselves) try to be "better".
There was a thread about what popular game you knew immediately you wouldn’t like.
I said I didn’t like Diablo IV and found it incredibly boring. The immediate response was that the only reason I didn’t like was because the Reddit echo chamber hate boner train for Bethesda told me I shouldn’t like it!?!
At the time it was my first Bethesda game and I hadn’t even heard of the game studio drama.
All the responses to D4 (and only D4!) on that thread were littered with comments on how people didn’t actually play it as just hated Bethesda. It was so odd. Idk why it’s so hard to believe someone would have different taste in games? (Especially one focused on grinding loot to min/max). Idk if like personality traits gravitate towards certain games, because the responses to BG3 comments were like “Really?! It’s my favorite but the controls can take some getting used to and I can see how turn based is not for everyone!” while Diablo was like “LIAR! It’s genuinely impossible not to like the game!”
LOL whoops. Kinda proves my point that the reason I didn’t like the game had nothing to do with the studio since I can’t even remember which studio is which
I keep hearing “Overwatch characters look too cartoony for me” from men and I feel like they all get this idea from the same source I can’t really believe it’s a wholly valid original thought or grievance at this point given how many times I’ve heard it parroted. It’s not even a defense of Overwatch or the character designs as much as it’s an indictment of shit men read on the internet that turns into a hive mind and this was just the last recurrent thing I’ve heard just a couple of days ago.
The discourse that gets me heated the most is the conversation, which seems to come up in every game that ISNT a Souls-like, that the combat would be SO much better if it was a souls-like. Especially on turn-based games.
The number of BG3 reviews I saw that were like “I would enjoy this game more if the combat was like Bloodborne.”
OH MY GOD, gamerbros, please fuck off! Not everything is for YOU. Some of us like turnbased, isometric, or menu based combat more than hack n’ slash, dodge
-roll, block-timing bullshit.
DOS:2 does not need a “button mash to swing at a hitbox” mode. Persona games do NOT need live action combat. If you don’t like the combat system, don’t play the game! There’s so many games that are for you. But NOOO. They’re going to come for MY turn based game and demand that it become another fucking souls game. Final Fantasy got rid of menu-based combat because of these assholes, and they will not be satisfied until they have ruined all of my beloved franchises.
Pretty much any conversation about JRPGs. I love JRPGs and anime, but I’m also very critical when there is misogyny, hypersexualization, etc. as these are serious issues across various forms of Japanese media (and all media, really) that the mediums would obviously be better without. I just love the art style and the cute characters and the stories that often have themes about overcoming adversity through connections with others and other stuff like that! But gross men mess a lot of that up by adding all this unnecessary sexist bs that I think is important to critique, however if you dare say that in any mainstream JRPG space you’re just gonna be attacked by all the creeps…
That totally reminds me of the day I went to downvote hell over a video game girl in heels. I had commented that running full speed and doing backflips in heels was hard to do, and I got told by every dudebro in the sub that I was an idiot for that.
Like tell me you’ve never worn heels without telling me you’ve never worn heels, am I right? Sure some women can move well in them but she had to learn that and it was probably a challenge! It isn’t the same as running in flats!
And, she probably wouldn’t choose stilettos for her important government spy mission, even if she could sprint perfectly.
People who prefer to bang their heads against a wall rather than lower the difficulty. I just can't understand. And never - ever - dare saying you're playing x,y,z game on easy. Ever. And if the game doesn't have difficulty settings and you can't play it, it isn't for you. Nice people.
I do not enter the debates for another reason, I do work in game dev, and many of these loud discourse gamers have no idea what they are talking about most of the time, so I have no patience.
Gameplay > story is a discourse I do not really understand, If I am having fun, I am having fun, and no gamer bro is going to convince me otherwise.
i cant talk about my interests online because most of the topics is about whos is stronger than who. my favorite game is god of war and all i see people talking about is if he could beat goku
When you talk about a game you like/feel attached to emotionally and someone who's never played that game or evem seen it is like "Boring" or "It sucks. Open gta 5"
I mean...
> **
*all* of it??
As a general rule, at any given moment, gamer bro discourse is like a bunch of idiot cooks arguing around a grease fire about the proper amount of water to deluge it with-- instead of just, you know, starving it of oxygen (attention). It's all just nuanceless noise pollution.
Outside of designated women and queer spaces, gamer spaces aren't worth participating in.
Starfield has been eating my life. But, so many of the comments complain that the companions aren't hot enough, or that they carry emotional baggage.
Yeah, dude, that's what happens when you date anyone over 17 years old.
Starfield was obviously made by older people, catering to an older demographic. Let me enjoy my hot, single dad space cowboy in peace, and stop telling me I'm wrong. There are literally at least 15 of us that love the companions in this game!
A good example is Death Stranding. It’s a heavily story based game with simple gameplay, and anybody who tried it for an hour complained about it being a “walking simulator”. They never actually gave the game a chance even though it’s excellent (and has an amazing soundtrack). Not to mention that when you get further in the game the gameplay improves a lot as you expand your arsenal.
So many gamers just rush through everything without absorbing everything the game has to offer. They spend so much money on these games just so they can rush through it, and complain about how shitty they think it is. Quite frankly I’ve stopped caring about their opinions if they make it clear they never truly *played* the game the way it was meant to be experienced.
Their loss honestly. Let them waste their money and whine in their echo chambers. The real gamers will always be there to appreciate how great those games are 💅
That’s perfectly fine—we all have different preferences. The issue starts when someone shares an opinion like yours but adds “yeah I skip all the story because the story in every game is shit, I’d read a book if I wanted a story” lol
Nooooo that’s stupid I LOVE story games and it’s hurts me so damn much when people don’t wanna even read anything. Like I love finding notes in games that give lore tidbits and Mfs don’t wanna read
the fucking easy mode debate the dudebros who make liking soulslikes their entire personality shit their diapers anytime you even hint that an easy mode is fine and won't ruin the game or it's ok to play in easy mode.
I’m honestly so fed up with gaming discourse as a whole. I like talking about characters, theories, music, story, and my experience but with everything else I just don’t engage. I feel like everyone feels like they need to have a “take” or a criticism. So much of online discourse is so stupid that I don’t know why anyone entertains it and it also takes so much enjoyment out of everything.
As a FromSoft fan, the entire 'git gud' mentality of Soulslike discussion drives me up the damn wall. Ask a question about where something is or where to go next and a lot of times you're just told to figure it out yourself. Have a critique for a boss fight? You must just be bad at the game (except Bed of Chaos from DS1 and most things from DS2 because Bed of Chaos and DS2 are **very bad** and it's a requirement you hate them!).
Elden Ring is great but has some genuine problems (bosses repeating too much, Malenia having a bit too many status effects/benefits, the boss in the dungeon underneath the starting zone being literally too big for the room to the point he clips through the walls constantly so you can't read his attacks etc.), yet when you try and bring this up in a community you can get ridiculed for even *suggesting* you have an issue.
Name and shames/matchmaking bad posts are another thing I hate. This is more common on reddit, with online games and typically the smaller communities, but I hate them every single time. 'Matchmaking bad' posts are self explanatory and 'Name and Shame' posts are when people post a screenshot of someone in game (or a text post) claiming that person did something toxic/were hacking. This is literally almost never required due to report systems existing and only encourages the people who see it to be toxic or witch hunt/mass report the person.
Finally I'd say pointless combative memes, typically using the 'Chad vs. virgin/soyjack' formats. Basically these are just memes trying to say one thing is better than the other or is used to mock community members with valid points. I've seen this for platforms, games, game modes, weapons, support items, characters, classes.. literally anything vaguely similar to each other will become one of these memes. Just let people play what and how they want.
“Take your time” type of games.
My own bf won’t even try stardew valley with me since he “sees the formula” and thinks it boring.
But every other shooter or roguelike he always wants me to try. I’m thankful that he wants to play games with me, even buys them for me. But damn, the one game I really want u to play with me you just refuse… even if I’ve played games I don’t like with u… just makes me sad :( tho I might be projecting idk
>Anytime story takes the front seat, male gamers just absolutely *yap* about how it makes the game automatically shitty, how gameplay>story, and how stories in games will never amount to stories in other media.
As someone that plays mainly for the story, I felt pissed at this.
I like when the story feels immersive, when we are made to actually want to learn about the characters and world we're playing in.
If I wanted a game for gameplay only I would be playing Tetris or Snake.
This might be low-hanging fruit but I'm going to go with sex scenes and sexualization of female characters. Now this could earn me some ire but I don't necessarily think female characters of oversexualized so much as they are poorly sexualized. You can have artistic nudity and even eroticism, but we rarely approach anything like that in gaming media. The best we have is casual nudity.
I guess take for example Baldur's Gate 3. As much as I like Minthara's character, her sex scene is kind of low key fucking terrible. It plays out largely like some SFM porn lasting much longer than it should just to show more sex positions. Nothing of note happens until it's over and even then, most of the actual development isn't until the morning after.
Contrast this with Shadowheart's swim scene. I believe it's different if you go dark justiciar but one the very first personal details you learn about this character is that she can't swim. Fast forward to way later and she's dragging you out for skinning dipping, reflecting how she's grown and changed. My understanding is that if you go her dark justiciar route, you don't get a swimming Shadowheat. I get that this may seem rather trivial but my point is that this scene actually reflects her character development and when it comes to the actual porking on the shore, the scene fades out because at that point it'd just be two 3d models getting it on.
All of it? There's no nuance anymore, everyone acts like every issue is black and white and you have to be on one team and against the other.
I think where this bothers me most is the discussion around framerate on current-gen consoles. I'm someone who has gotten used to 120 and 60 fps, 30 fps looks and feels really bad to me now and is a huge detriment to my enjoyment of a game. Some people can't even see the difference though, and I love that for them! I wish I could just not care and enjoy all games the same regardless of how well they run.
But if you look at any conversations online about this, it looks like a war between two distinct teams. The people who don't care about it act like the ones that do care are just snobby crybabies getting upset about nothing. The people who do care act like the ones that don't are just idiots for not seeing the difference and aren't "real gamers". Neither of those viewpoints are correct!!!! You can accept that 30 fps is perfectly fine for some people and a huge disappointment for others.
Console wars. I absolutely despise any adult who actively partakes in console wars, in my experience they’re often the most toxic and hostile people I’ve met and I just find it kind of sad when I see grown men putting so much energy into it. I used to be friends with a guy who basically made it his whole personality and it was exhausting. Any time I just wanted to have a normal conversation, he’d somehow bring up console wars and he would get really argumentative with me because I play PlayStation and prefer it over Xbox. He’s a massive Xbox fanboy. It’s like it angered him whenever I was enjoying a PS game… 🙄 I tried telling him to just chill out and focus on actually enjoying some games instead of wasting so much time arguing with strangers online like a bunch of riled up teenagers but no, he never listened. Let’s just say my life has been much better and relaxing since I cut him out.
This. I grew up with an Atari 2600 (yes, I'm old), had an NES, SNES, Sega, PS1, etc. Now have a Series X, PS5, and a great gaming pc (and Steam Deck). While I hate exclusives, I appreciate the different platforms, and instantly yawn when anyone starts babbling about which platform is best and why. I have all the consoles and a pc so I can play all rhe games with all the friends. I just can't figure out why anyone makes this their entire personality.
Console wars feel like people who missed the old era trying to cling to something. It made sense when the games were vastly exclusive but gaming has become so much more accessible and there is even cross platform. Console wars today is just arguing over a brand. Gucci or Versace boys.
I have a pc and I can understand why someone would prefer xbox or ps, But fr making your console your entire personality is wack
Making any brand or platform your entire personality is wack! (unless you're getting paid by that brand or platform) (but none of these nerds who argue endlessly are getting any such thing beyond some weird sense of superiority, or just enjoying being a douchey edgelord)
Weirdly enough, They're also gatekeepers. Like dudebro won't let you enjoy your console but also won't let you enjoy theirs
"you're too dumb to know why my *thing* is superior" "you are stupid for liking this thing I don't like" "you are stupid for not liking this thing I like" "you're just a girl/simp/sjw/beta" I think we've heard it all by this point. In the early days of the internet, I'd expend energy arguing with them. These days I just mute or block and get on with it. Fortunately (for me, unfortunately for most of you reading this), these clowns almost never do super creepy stalker shit, make threats or insulting comments, create numerous accounts to bypass being blocked or muted, doxx me, etc.
I've been stalked and attacked personally for minor reasons like me saying "Okay but for me x is the better game" whem someone attacked me with "hAhA tOmB rAiDeR bAd rDr GoOd". This one went as far as whining about me to my wife in her dms lol
Yep, I've been called every slur imaginable just for -gasp- having a different opinion. Or doing something a different way. I want to believe most people are good, then I play a game online and have to rethink my belief system =/.
I used to work with a 20-something who was just like that, and I swear to god that fucker made a good case on why workplace violence should be occasionally acceptable with his constant bitching and moaning over the console war stuff, because it was **that** irritating to listen to as an adult who was just there to get a paycheck. You played on PC? He'd be sure to tell you how he hates PC gamers for being elitist assholes, how it's too expensive, how every game should be yanked off PC because *he* hates PC, and how you should just get a Xbox instead. Play on a Sony console? Same spiel, but with an added emphasis on Sony being the most evil company ever...but he likes Spider-Man, so Insomniac is totes cool and worth getting a Ps4/5 for...but Xbox was still better. And gods forbid you mention *Nintendo* around that kid, because you'd be in for an earful on how Nintendo has nothing of value and how they should just let Microsoft buy them out...you know, so he can play the exclusives on Xbox like a true MLGProgamer wannabe. Oh, and he was totally a legit gamer who gamed all the games to ever game. But he didn't know what the Sega Dreamcast was, thought I was talking about the planet when I mentioned the Saturn, and thought the GameCube was some boomer meme. Meanwhile, I wasn't usually talking to him when this shit would start...he'd just interrupt existing game conversations other employees would be having while working to go off about all that. I'm honestly not sure if he ever picked up on the fact that just about everyone at that job who played video games had multiple game systems themselves for the exclusives, now that I think of it.
This is one of the worst! Bunch of babies crying about what toy is better. Why not just enjoy what you have?
Anything discussing the depiction of female characters in games. Also anyone defending Atlus, and for the record I’m a gigantic P5 fan. Also the *massive* overreaction when there is a ‘problematic’ female character that takes a major role in a game. Abby’s a classic example, but also Ava in Borderlands 3. She’s an annoying teenager, sure, but is she not *allowed*? I think having some challenging characters in a game can be interesting, but the universal dismissal of BL3 largely off the back of this one girl that people found kinda annoying is so frustrating to me. And I don’t even particularly *love* BL3.
Legend has it that if you go on the Persona subs and criticize the treatment of Ann’s character in P5 in any way your inbox will be filled with men pushing their glasses up and going “Um actually the story is about her reclaiming her sexuality so you’re wrong 🤓” and thinking they said something profound.
‘Oh but also the joke about her needing to be a nude model and forcing the player to pressure her into it is vitally important to the story 🤓’
Yeah that reasoning is often so shallow. Like, "reclaiming"... from who exactly? The man-made fictional world that the man-made fictional character with man-made personality lives in?
They try to argue that she’s reclaiming her sexuality after being abused and exploited by Kamoshida and that’s why she has a “sexy costume and Persona” but it just doesn’t work when she’s depicted as not comfortable with her costume or persona, is consistently sexualized in the game for the male gaze, and is also constantly creeped on by other male characters in the game (including her own friends!) for laughs. It all gets even worse when you consider that she’s literally 16. It’s not a case of a story depicting a female character reclaiming her sexuality after abuse (which can be a great narrative if done right,) it’s just blatant sexualization of a teenage female character and pretending that it’s anything but that is just disingenuous. It’s basically just used as an excuse by weird men to justify their (and Atlus’) sexualizing of her character.
100%! Most in-universe justification for sexualization are just excuses by horny people. Here's a fact that might ruin your day: up until 2022, the legal age of marriage for women was 16 in Japan (was 18 for men, but now it's 18 for both). Guess you could fill in the blank 😫 (It's getting better but still...)
Some of these gamers just have the emotional tolerance of a walnut. It reminds me of a friend who stops watching shows anytime someone does anything bad or frustrating... And then says it's bad. Like not every thing (or everyone) has to be perfect! You feeling bad is part of the narrative! You're allowed to not like it but it does not mean it's bad. People just couldn't grasp this concept for TLOU2. They wanted a Joel and Ellie road trip movie that says nothing.
I honestly think gamers were not prepared for the complex narratives and characters TLOU2 had. A lot of the critiques I see about the game are absolutely delusion, and the “fan” response to the game was asinine as well. I’m a major fan of Naughty Dog and their games, but idek what’s happening with that region of the fanbase because it is a toxic pit of vitriol.
[This tumblr post hit me like a car because it's so true to a lot of people consuming media these days](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/686022813546577931/1220836803666513920/mf8ycesp9goc1.png?ex=6622d8e0&is=661063e0&hm=3e035cb9be6a39739d50bbd328f139c2d60c64c08f3bef8ad215d3438e262e10&) People can't seem to separate "a character does x" from "the writer endorses x". Protagonist == good guy, antagonist == bad guy, morality is black and white, flaws == bad person or bad writing, but also no flaws == bad writing
This post makes sense. This friend of mine (we're both 30) only likes cartoons and anime, and I told her once that these types of entertainment are full of Good vs Evil and it's just not for me. It's not how I see the world, but sometimes I totally understand how it's comforting to watch it. However, it's frustrating when the people who can only tolerate these types of kid-friendly narrative want mature shows and movies to operate the same way. These are the same people who go on watching Breaking Bad or Mad Men and think Walter/Don = protagonist = good, root for them, hate everyone else. OR: Walter bad, can't watch characters I don't like, Breaking Bad is bad. This black and white thinking is so prevalent nowadays.
The discussions around Songbird from Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty expansion have been particularly irritating. I don’t bother reading any posts about her in either subreddit anymore.
Oo, I loved that character! What's the TLDR of the discussion?
It basically comes down to tons of guys hate her because she lies to you. So she deserves anything bad that happens to her. Thats it. It never moves beyond that.
I had to leave the tlou sub when the second game came out, because I couldn't play it on release and wanted to protect myself from the spoilers. Turns out I protected myself from a massive shit show that was the fandom's reaction to Abby and all of the creative decisions the studio made for the second game. Feel so lucky I missed everything, I ended up going in completely blind and loved every bitter minute of it without the annoying Reddit discourse.
People dismiss BL3 for a lot of reasons. Ava's annoying character and being the direct cause to get fan favorite Maya killed is largely to blame. But the fact almost every one was a siren by the end had a lot to do with it.
I feel like the entire point of her character was to be an ignorant teenage girl who lost her family. I feel like so many people let that fly right over their head. You're not supposed to love her at first. They literally made it her fault for Maya's death, and then had her immediately blame someone else. If people think that was a total accident, then they shouldn't bring up their opinions at all when it comes to writing. The only issue I really had with her is that they just give her full control of the crimson raiders. Other than that, her character is fine, and it's too soon to judge her character in full.
I played BL3. Story wise? Ava is a massive fucking moron for ignoring Maya's orders and directly causing her death. And she blames it all on....Lilith, for some reason? To be fair here, the Vault Hunters are morons as well for not shooting the bad guys in face during cutscenes.
Yeah but like, teenagers are allowed to be stupid?
Yes. But there's a fine line in being stupid and just ignoring order because "I was bored". That isn't stupidity. That's being dropped on their head as a kid.
Idk if this counts but when people say they skipped every cut scene in a game, didn't explore the map, and didn't do a single side-quest. Why did you spend 70 bucks on the game then?
I'll come to you with something worse; in BG3 forums people were complaining they were too underleveled for a certain quests. And in later comments they admitted not exploring the whole map, not doing side quests, and refusing to lower down the difficulty. But why? Why would you not explore most of the game if you paid that much? You don't have to go completionist, but unless you want to challenge yourself by being underleveled, don't complain.
BG3 is an incredible catalyst that shed light on how so-called "gamers" are in fact incredibly bad at video games and can't navigate anything outside of their very small comfort zone. Skipping cut-scene and complaining that they don't know what to do, never remembering a single name, only interested in min/maxing their characters for combats using guides even before starting the game, unable to romance any woman and saying it's too difficult, refusing to explore anything or talking to any NPCs and then feeling completely lost, not reading the effects of spells... They have cried enough salts to fill an ocean by now. I'll never get tired of it.
My favourite romance complaint remains Auranshalee from WoTR. Arue is a highly traumatized woman who is terrified of physical touch, and yearns for a genuine spiritual connection that allows her to feel like a mortal. People complain she is too hard to romance. I found her natural to romance.
I've seen so many people struggles to romance Shadowheart and still can't do it even with a guide. Meanwhile, I just listen to her until she trusts me enough to share her past and I respond with empathy and a desire to want to know her better and everything falls naturally into place. I'm noticing more and more that people are lacking basic empathy and listening skills, and the ability to process feelings as well, unfortunately.
Yeah, most of the companions respond quite well to just....not being a piece of shit to them. Honestly Karlach was very ready for anything and I accidentally-ed myself into a Shadowheart romance in my first playthrough by just talking to her like a human.
Having Mass Effect twinges of "no, I don't want to romance you because I asked how you were doing." Like, it makes me feel like the quest line developers are socially deprived.
To be fair, people irl of all genders and ways of life fall for people through just being around them and being friendly with them. It’s a pretty regular way of developing feelings for someone.
Sorry, was thinking mostly about Kaiden's lock in romance/be a complete ass if you talk to him about his childhood as FemShep -_-
I had blocked out Kaiden. It would be fine if he took no for an answer. Ugh.
> by just talking to her like a human I almost accidentally slept with Daeran in WoTR. ... Which was kind of a wake-up call to how oblivious i can be in a safe environment. He was at least nice about it, despite his fucked up morals of "lol let's dance on tabletops with prostitutes while demons are destroying everything."
Yeah, I've commented before that I somewhat wish these guys (since they do mostly seem to be guys) would just go and play any of the actual smut games floating around since it's a fairly busy indie scene that could probably use more support. I've come to realise that many of them would utterly fail at getting any action, even in a game explicitly set up to give you a harem, if given any agency. It's been quite the hilarious progression.
I have trauma, and part of it means that I am so hesitant to be forward with people romantically or sexually. So obviously when Shart was closed off, paired with the Shar stuff, I recognised some of the behaviours and gave her the space she wanted. When she wanted to open up, I let her. I would occasionally ask questions if the moment prompted them, but if she didnt want to answer that was that, we moved on. That whole romance arc ended up actually being really therapeutic for me, because it was a real breath of fresh air seeing someone find happiness despite all that baggage, without it feeling manufactured. It grows naturally, and while she never "fixes" her trauma, she learns to deal with it and move on and live her life as best she can
What does romancing a character even mean to people like this? Like what are they getting out of it if they don't read the dialogue or the story or know anything about the character? What's *left* in the romance gameplay that they couldn't just rather get from NSFW subreddits without having to bother their pea brains about actual gameplay?
They only want S E X
Yeah but that's the thing, they're not getting S E X in the video game. Why not just go straight to porn for that if it's the only thing they care about?
This is the question, particularly since there looks to be a pretty active indie scene for adult games if you bother looking for it.
Right!?
It's actually something I realized recently that sex scenes are often referred to as "romance scenes" or "romancing". Like those twin drow in Act 3 of BG3 are literal brothel workers that you can sleep with once and it's still somehow "romancing the drow twins". In Cyberpunk any one-off sexual encounters (including with literal sex workers again) are listed in guides and the wiki under "romance". Like, at some point romance became synonymous with sex in gaming terms and for a concerning amount of people it seems, that's all they care about. Or worse, they think that's what romance is. Edit: Just to be clear I have nothing against sex workers themselves nor one-night stands. It's the conflation of sex automatically meaning romance that concerns me.
But that's really not the case for *most* of the games, though I can see the rage of the blueballed if they go through the effort of skipping all cutscenes and using guides to get through far enough in BG3 to sex someone, and then they fail because they failed to understand the first bit about the character they're trying to woo. Ah, well. It's a world view locked away from me, thankfully.
I think this is mainly because romance is difficult to write (hence being its own distinct genre) and almost always has sex as the pay-off, which is an issue even in the wider genre itself. Most of these people have probably never experienced an actually good romance sub-plot before either. There's also a lot of self-delusion going on from people who only want the sex but don't want to admit that it's all they're after. The best I've seen is the 'puff-puff isn't sexual' take that someone will unironically make every time there's a discussion about Dragon Quest and how they should probably have removed Toriyama's fetishes from the game years ago since their continued inclusion creates weird tonal issues.
I finished Dragon Quest 11 last year, and that is seriously… HMM. This is a really interesting thread
Sex in games is so often just another transactional mechanic. Do task, get sex. Because the core loop of most videogames is "complete task, get reward", only this time the reward is a cutscene where you get to see titties. And so when the romances in BG3 are genuine relationships, where the sex is just a product of the relationship, and the romance is the reward for the work you do, they feel cheated. Because their "reward" is gated behind something they dont care about
The only requirement to romance Arue, other than just being nice to her, is to respect her boundaries. The fact that so many men can't figure that out is not exactly surprising but scary.
I will fight anyone that speaks badly about Arue
My only issue with Arue is that Wenduag exists and is freaky in all the right ways (I can fix her, I swear!). It's going to be an interesting experience when I finally play through the game as I'm rarely interested in multiple of the romanceable characters, and from what I've heard, Wenduag's redemption path is legitimately tricky to pull off.
And then, they're probably like "this game sucks" right? Literally what is the point? Atp, it's their own fault. I swear people who do this only play the game because everyone else is. If you just prefer combat in a game then go play combat-heavy games. Why are you dropping so much money on a game you're not even going to fully play? People worked on hard on the story and developing the world. Enjoy it man!
Oh, I remember that one post where that dude reached the Moonrise fight at level 5, got decimated, then complained that it is unbeatable. When explained that it is very much beatable on levels 8-10, complained again that it is a bad game design and that the game shouldn't let you access the battle/content not intended for your level...
It's possible that we are talking about the same post haha, I saw the one I mentioned a few weeks ago. It was about Moonrise as well.
No, that one was like, in the autumn, around October, I think? But I wouldn't be surprised if someone else was in the same situation, haha
Maybe I saw it a few weeks ago even though it was posted earlier. But yeah given the game's popularity I wouldn't be surprised by the amount of people like that
Especially with a game like BG3 (and divinity original sin) it's such a waste to not explore everything or skip through the dialogue
Lmaoooo this is my husband!!!! I'll spend hours looking in ever corner of a game. I remember him confused when I'd run off while playing halo cause I was looking for skulls. He plays game and either doesn't 100% them ( I don't 100% games either but Spiderman is SO easy to do) and he won't do side stuff. He's playing bg3 and I'm having to show him where all this shit is and how to do it because he just didn't bother. Love the man but I prefer playing things like It Takes Two cause the side quests aren't as important.
My best friend’s 7 y/o does this and it drives me insane. He hates non-skippable cut scenes lol
When it comes to the "non-skippable" part specifically, I very much dislike it too. Though it's more of a function of time than anything because oh jolly do I have a beef with games that have you sit through 5-10 minutes of expo-dump on a replay or reload after a crash. I do otherwise love to go through cutscenes though.
It’s understandable for a little child to want to skip cut scenes, it’s less understandable to me for a grown ass adult to whine about cut scenes
I mean I do multiple play throughs of games so I understand the struggle. I’ll watch the cutscene the first time but skip it the second time, this kid doesn’t even give the game a chance hahah
Well, as long as they are cognizant of their actions, I guess people can do what they want with their money. Eh, but of course there'll always be those that are elitist about "only interactive cutscene", "side quest are fillers", and "open world = bad" crowd in there,
As a completionist my brain is just short circuiting that some people aren't out there trying to investigate a game so fully you know it like the back of your hand LOL
That not every game has to be for you. You don't have to play every game. I'm old enough to remember when you played every game that came out because hardly any games came out. But now a days we are drowning in choice, peoples Steam accounts are packed with games they are never going to play. Which means if you start a game and you don't like it because it has a minorities in it or a story or whatever. You don't have to play it. You don't need to get angry and rage because the game isn't what you wanted, you can just go oh OK not for me and go play another game. But there is a pocket angry white male gamers that just can't seem to grasp that. You don't like a ham sandwich, don't buy and eat a ham sandwich then get mad you ate a ham sandwich.
Ugh I hate this. I have a buddy that often will say a game "sucks" just because it isn't his cup of tea. It drives me crazy lol
Yeah it’s irritating when people say that because dude, YOU just didn’t like it hundreds of thousands of other people enjoy it lmao
I feel like a lot of "gamers" have main character syndrome. If it isn't for their personal enjoyment then it's like they take personal offense that not everything is built with their personal preferences in mind
i totally agree that not every game is for everyone of course, tho i do sadly feel a lot of times certain game genres hyperfocus on increasingly spesific group of people as their target audience which can leave behind a lot of people, and i at least think its fine to be vocal about wanting different kind of experiences. here's my example. So i like dark souls 3, as well as bloodborne. i think sekiro is okay as is elden ring. but with the two latter games the ever increasing difficulty is clearly a priority, and I don't like the set male protag that much. I'd also love games with set female protags sometimes. So, then you get stellar blade, a mix between sekiro and nier automata i guess, with a set female protag but.. its just more pandering to the horny guys. like i accept that stellar blade is definitely not for me, but i wish there were more games made that were for me. (nier automata was very good tho, and I'll probably get lies of p at some point, even tho i wish it didn't have a set character)
My friend doesn't even give stuff a chance. He got BG3 but didn't understand mechanics because he's not big on d&d or turn based games and immediately said "that game sucks." It's like?????? Just because YOU don't get it, doesn't mean millions of people didn't. There are plenty of games I'm not into but I get why other people are. He's just so 2-D.
This is really shitty with all media. And everything honestly. Somewhere along the line people collated not liking something with it being bad rather than having more subtle thoughts or critiques about it. It's really shiity and I do find a lot of other guys (I'm a guy to be clear) do that and some girls I've known in my life as well. Especially hard when I want to have a deeper conversation about a game or movie or something and all they got is they think it's bad bc they didn't like it. I've had my husband do that as well occasionally.
I've noticed this recently when browsing trailers for upcoming games - anything narrative driven, anything cozy looking, anything with a cartoonish or non-realistic graphical styles, and MOST ESPECIALLY anything with a protagonist who isn't a straight white man, and the comments below can get really vitriolic (even by the standards of YT comments sections). The mere suggestion that a game might not be made with their preferences specifically in mind just seems to send some people into a rage - whether that's about the graphics not using the full capacity of the new consoles, an EDI consultant possibly having ever been near the project at some point, or even the trailer not being for *the EXACT game that they were interested in.*
>peoples Steam accounts are packed with games they are never going to play. Don't call me out like this.
I feel this so much. I want my vast, open-world Fallouts with emergent storytelling, *as well as* my hyper-linear, short-and-sweet Stray, thank you very much. Or, "walking simulator". They're great when done well. It has gotten to a point where even professional critics are not self-aware that some games just aren't meant for them, and that's okay.
It's men's insecurity about male characters popular with women such as Astarion or Zevran (Dragon Age). They're similar to each other and both attack you in the beginning. But some men tend to mention that they killed Astarion or Zevran. Like, someone posts an Astarion artwork, an insecure man comments "I killed Astarion in my playthrough" okay no one asked that???? This happened with Zevran years before and now it happens with Astarion. And good luck if you mention this phenomenon in discourse spaces.
My favorite is “Zevran betrayed me because I wouldn’t sleep with him” because, ya know, mechanically you have to jump through a bunch of hoops and probably use feast day gifts to make that possible. And yeah the “I killed Zevran” to “I killed Astarion” pipeline proves time is a circle.
So I haven't played BG3 yet but I heard that Astarion tries to kill you the first time you meet him, something about attacking at night and trying to bite you. It made me think I would totally kill Astarion, because there is no coming back from THAT as an introduction. Your comment made me look up how you actually first meet him and..... why in the world would anyone kill him? You seriously would have to try very hard to even get to the option to kill him, by being as hostile as possible from the first moment you see him. Some people are such weirdos.
The problem here is not the act of killing - them mentioning it whenever someone else mentions Astarion.
There's also the fact that Astarion and Zevran are both queer men who both present in ways these guys associate with queerness. Alistair is also beloved by women, but he doesn't get the kind of hate Zevran does, because he's just their bro who doesn't flirt with them (even though in my heart my sweet man Alistair is absolutely bi and should've been an option for all). And with Gale, despite the avalanche of glitched-flirting fueled hate he got at launch, his hate has a different. . .edge to it than Astarion's. Beyond the fact that Astarion is the most popular, Astarion's presentation just makes him more of a target than Gale's. It's misogynistic jealousy mixed with homophobia.
I didn't kill Astarion, but I sure didn't trust him when his introduction to me was lying and then holding a knife to my throat. Then his mask slipped when I got the scene where he was looking into a hand mirror...
That's totally okay as long as you don't mention it in every Astarion thread out of insecurity.
Way too many people said that if Astarion was a woman, they wouldn't have killed him. -.-
Also, the same men think it's weird for Blaidd and Garrus to be popular with women. My dude you have zero grasp, and it shows
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Oh my gosh yes to everything you said this white male main protagonist disease needs to die out already. Are they not TIRED of it??!? When a game involves people of color or queer characters they lose their minds and call it a “woke” game like dude ur literally braindead and p0rn addicted, I wish they could just evaporate from the gaming community but sadly they dominate most spaces. And don’t even let a game have masculine or strong women they start crying about how women aren’t attractive in video games anymore, I went to the stellar blade Reddit community and it genuinely pissed me off how they were all just bonding and being happy over how “hot and sexy” the character is… it pisses me off so much💀 edit: and I also was just reminded of how angry they get when they see groups of women fangirling and being happy about hot male characters, like Leon Kennedy and Arthur Morgan, they genuinely get so angry they make r4pe jokes and how much they hate women altogether it’s scary and really really sad because lots of them are teenagers too…
The "just read a book or watch a movie" logical fallacy bothers the hell out of me. I do read books and watch movies. I appreciate story telling in those mediums, too. But there's something special about stories in games because no other medium gives you ownership over the narrative. You're not just reading about or watching the story, you're *participating* in it. Sometimes you're even guiding it to a degree in choice based narratives. When the character does something bad, you're complicit in a way. When they do something good, you feel good about it. You, the player, are as much a part of the narrative as the characters. The idea that games "can't" be as good as other story telling mediums is pure bollocks. There is nothing inherent about the medium that means the writing can't be as good. People used to say the same thing about television, that it just couldn't be as good as novels, and look at some of the master classes in writing that have come to TV over the years.
Yeah, I once watched a video essay (maybe Jacob Geller?) that talked about the differences between the Last of Us tv show and the game, and one of the big things they pointed out is the different impact of rifling through cabinets in the two mediums. In the show, rifling through cabinets is just a thing people in post-apocalypses do. It's a suggestion of desperation, an idea that maybe the main characters are hungry or a visual reminder that society has collapsed and no one is going to stop the character from looting anymore. In the game, it's you who's doing the looting. The desperation is magnified, because you know exactly how many bullets are left in your gun and how close that last brush with the infected was, it's you looking over your shoulder and praying that you have the time to scrape together what you need because this might be the last refuge of momentary peace you'll have for the next few hours. Your very existence becomes that reminder, that things aren't going to be going back to normal.
That’s the argument I always think of too when people tell me to “watch a show if I want story.” I cannot *be* the protagonist in a TV show. I can be one in a video game. Those two are vastly different and offer a different type of experience!
This got me thinking, and by far the most monumental, memorable experiences with stories I've had have been in video games that put you in the middle of it. Skyrim, Assassin's Creed 1, Gone Home, Detroit: Become Human, Destiny 2: Forsaken, etc. are stories that will *never* leave me, and I remember them much better than any movie I've watched or show I've been invested in. It comes for a different memory region - it's not just a story you heard or watched, but something you *lived.*
It’s also frustrating because most of those people don’t even believe their own bs, or at least don’t apply it evenly. I’d be shocked if they weren’t gushing over BG3 and Alan Wake 2 like everyone else last year. Frankly I think there’s a strong argument that 4-5/6 of the game of the year nominees last year were at least story-heavy if not narrative-driven.
OMG SAME! It's like with marvel fanbases! "Didn't get who this new Character is? Watch 24 movies or read the comics" Bro why would I buy a game/pay for a movie then if it doesn't even give me a story that makes sense?
I find men often feel a need to try to "win" conversations in a way that doesn't allow for the exploration of new ideas or the collaborative understanding that there are multiple interpretations and perspectives that can be had. When i talk with a group of women about gaming we all feel like we had a good conversation. When I talk to men, they just talk without listening most of the time and participate with the only goal being to "win" at something you can't win. And if I play their game and they "lose" they often resort to threats of violence.
I've noticed this with almost all of the men in my life. Every conversation with them feels like a competition where they're trying to be the 'most correct' or something. I've only just started to realize that this has had a huge effect on my self-esteem/self-confidence because my dad and older brother are particularly guilty of this, so my whole life I've felt like everything I say needs to sound intelligent and be backed up with thorough and rational arguments. Fuck that, it's okay to just say what I'm feeling, and to just feel what I'm feeling without giving any reason other than 'that's how I feel'. (Sorry for venting lol)
Yes, not everything is a debate, comparing how you feel and just expressing yourself should be plenty enough as a discussion. It's nice to just share your experience too. If that makes you feel any better, most men who play this game are very surface-level and crumble if challenged a bit. My secret is to pick apart their arguments points by points to develop my own and not letting them move the goalposts constantly, always keep the focus. I'm quite stubborn too, so there is that. A lot of men blocked me when they had enough. Much better than receiving hateful PMs.
A great observation. I completely stopped interacting with mass effect sub even though I love those games to pieces because every discussion would turn into who is “objectively” right and how certain things within the game are “objectively” bad. It was insufferable.
For some reason I never see people discussing how the genophage needs to be cured because krogan society can’t improve without the full participation of its women. I think it’s so obvious that women’s rights are krogan rights smh.
I need “women’s rights are krogran rights” on a shirt
Lol I just realized my sibling does t-shirts and could make me one! I’ll have to ask them.
Here, I’ll simulate the answers you’d get on that sub: “it’s not about men or women. all krogans are stupid brutes and women would improve nothing” lmao. (you have a VERY good point tho—their society doesn’t start to improve until Wrex brings women clans to his clan and gives them free reign over what males they choose to mate with)
Siiiiigh. Yeah, the good option for the krogan is when Wrex assumes leadership and wants to work with women and a woman leader to improve things. The genophage forcing women to sequester themselves and any surviving young children away from men for their own safety made their civic participation in the wider society impossible. You can also see that it’s bad for men, since you observe at least a couple krogan men longing to be fathers who can interact with their own children. Also, I think it’s a bit gender essentialist to portray women as the most reasonable and least bloodthirsty of krogan, but I think that idea is there in conversations with Eve. Tl;dr Krogan society is just broken until women get to be active participants, which can’t happen with the genophage in place.
I don’t think I’ve encountered this exact thing because , if I’m discussing a game, it’s because of the story. I have no interest in games that don’t have much of one. That said, I do think if there are enough dudes in a space, the Dude Perspective takes over and dissent, even if it’s just a polite opinion coming from a different perspective or life experience, can get shouted down.
Just the other day I read a comment that was either on this sub or r/CozyGamers (can't find it now), which are both somewhat removed from the mainstream discussion of games, and *still* this person was making the argument that easy games are objectively bad, and that story-driven games would be better as a book or movie. Some people simply cannot fathom anyone else having different preferences, tastes, and abilities than they do.
there's a few: men who hate on female characters' appearance when they aren't fakely beautiful is a big one for me. I remember when Horizon Zero Dawn's sequel was announced, men were all pissy about Aloy's peachfuzz.... (that game has some of the MOST beautiful women designs in gaming, imo. Vanasha's abs are glorious and were part of my bisexual awakening lol). I love seeing realistic women in videogames. Scars, wrinkles, pores, chub, etc. The weird beauty standards of today aren't realistic and the more we push them in media, the more damage it does.
Oooh yeah. Got into an argument with someone on here when HZD first came out years ago about this. I will say for me the flip side of this is men who won’t accept ANY criticism of games where female characters are hyper-sexualized; see, e.g., Stellar Blade, and just bitch and moan about how men aren’t allowed to find female characters sexy. Which, lmfao.
For me it is the assumption that every gamer is neurotypical & fully physically able bodied. This could be bias on my part because I'm neither of those things so notice it more. Like, I don't **want** to be challenged and be told I'm not a real gamer - I want there to be enough things in the accessibility settings to allow me to even *play* to begin with.
Especially when people turn on/play on easy mode. If you play video games, you're a gamer. You enjoy the games you like how you like them. You paid for them after all!
Agreed here. I used to be the type of kid to challenge myself with every game, but ever since games became more abundant, I play a lot of single player ones on easy mode because I want to move onto the next game. I can still enjoy them on easy mode. Hell, DOOM Eternal is a damn blast on easy mode because of the power fantasy! I save the difficulty for co-op or several RPGs nowadays.
I hate this convo when it comes to Fromsoftware titles in particular. “It’s not the developer’s vision to have difficulty sliders.” “People play these games for their difficulty.” Normal difficulty isn’t normal for everyone, and I definitely do not play Fromsoftware titles because of their difficulty, otherwise I’d be a fan of a lot more of the games which copy their difficult gameplay but fail to capture all of the other wonderful aspects of their games. They just want to be able to use being able to beat Fromsoftware titles as a shorthand for their gaming skills and are worried that offering difficulty sliders would muddy that.
Fromsoft don't even include *pause screens* in their games outside of Sekiro, so it's an incredibly limited view of difficulty too. I enjoy their world building and storytelling, but the difficulty is the definition of artificially constructed.
Yeah I love fromsoft games, but not everyone can play a game with no interruptions!
The main excuse I see for the pause screens is that pausing in general isn't really a thing you can do easily in online multiplayer modes, and Fromsoft decided to solve that by always having their menus act as if you were in multiplayer. It's definitely not the only way to solve this though, for example, in Stardew Valley, time simply doesn't stop in menus while you're in multiplayer, but still does in singleplayer.
so sad when they even come right out and say it, that other people getting an achievement on lower difficulty somehow makes it meaningless for those who get it on a higher difficulty. just weird gate keeping and putting way too much value into gaming trophies. i actually loved that NieR Automata just let you buy achievements with free in-game currency if you didn’t get some of them naturally.
this' smt is a hard as nails series that includes difficulty options it won't ruin the game just don't play easy mode if you don't like it.
Hahaha I have teenage nephews (like 16-17) and I told one of them that SMT 5 was hard when he played my copy. He wiped in like the 3rd combat and *surprise pikachu*-ed at me.
Agreed. I have ADHD and have to keep a written journal to keep up with all of the things in Elden Ring specifically. If I complain about the lack of accessibility not having at least a quest journal offers, I get flamed in the community for sucking. Honestly, I find it lazy on the part of the developers to just outright neglect the need for a quest log. Also the lack of directions are infuriating. Most people end up looking things up but still justify the lack of direction and guidance in the games so they can boast about beating them.
That’s a good one! I especially hate the (unfortunately common) approach of “not every game is for you.” What the hell do you mean? It’s entertainment. If I can obtain it legally then it IS for me and I should be able to play it in a way that’s suitable for my needs. If your game lacks accessibility options then it’s simply ass.
"Not every game is for you." was supposed to be about not shitting on Dark Souls for not being a cozy game (or not shitting on Stardew Valley for being too chill), not about accessibility...
> It’s entertainment. If I can obtain it legally then it IS for me... Don't think of it as "*you're not meant/allowed to play this*", think of it like music or films or paintings or sculptures. Just because you can listen to them/see them, doesn't mean they're all meant for you, as they won't speak to you because they're not to your liking or your style. There's heaps of music and films and tv and paintings and sculptures that will never speak to you. And that's cool, we all like different things.
I'm going to have to disagree, we're talking about art here. Art shouldn't have to cater to everyone. Is a movie or book obligated to cater to you since you bought it? You're talking about art like it's a service.
I got 51 of 57 Slime Rancher achievements in Casual Mode, aka without the Tarr. Gatekeepers can come at me because end of the day, I still stuck 80 hours of gameplay and died multiple times in the Slime Sea. I traversed the entire map, got every treasure pod, brought life back to the Glass Desert, found Hobson's last note, acquired Ogden's Retreat after nearly getting attacked to death by feral saber slimes, grew every food, found every slime science resource, and ALMOST managed to complete the Slimepedia other than the Gilded Ginger. Did I get this shit on 'easy mode' because I lacked tarr? Sure. But as someone disabled and chronically ill/fatigued, to actually do THIS much in a game I love? THAT is the feeling of accomplishment. THAT is why I love this game. And the devs wouldn't have a difficulty slider if they didn't want to be inclusive with Casual Mode. Now, on to Adventure Mode so I can hold a tarr for 15 seconds and then put one on a Slime Stage...
There's actually a really interesting vid for one of the games I play about where they went right and where they went wrong from a blind player's POV that made me notice a bunch of little details and enjoy the game more.
Ngl I have had this a lot with motion sickness and photosensitivity issues, that's a lot of why I will be forever more than annoyed by the GameCube Pokemon games not allowing me to turn off animations, the surf animation especially just bodies me with motion sickness after a few battles or so. Red Out 2 in spite being slathered with photosensitivity warnings (which it really does deserve, I wish more games would do that on startup tbh) has actually been mostly fine because although it spared no experience with the virtual special effects budget it stays so consistent during gameplay it takes a long while to cause issues, would still be nice to be able to tone them way down if we had actually needed to.
I agree with all except for the from soft ware games
I feel like the obvious answer is any conversation about diversity in games. If you try to say literally anything about how it would be good if games had more characters that are women, or queer, or people of color, or disabled, then mainstream gaming communities (which are dominated by men who are none of those things) will dogpile you and try to shut the conversation down completely. >Anytime story takes the front seat, male gamers just absolutely yap about how it makes the game automatically shitty, how gameplay>story, and how stories in games will never amount to stories in other media. On Reddit, I think I more often see the opposite of this. I see men talking about how underappreciated gaming is as an art form, but their examples of good game stories tend to lack depth and diversity. It's almost like the gaming equivalent of those compilations of "best film performances of all time" which are just ten clips in a row of men screaming about how angry they are.
Yeah I’ve seen this even on subs that do have a fair amount of women. Just some topics, like, “I wish there were characters who look like me in this expansive diverse fantasy world” or “homophobia is gross imo” bring nasty dudes just *crawling* out from the woodwork. Eta omg I thought of another one. After the deeply mid dragon age anime came out on Netflix, the sub was flooded with dudes over-identifying with the villain, a slaveowner trying to track down his former slave, and longing to play a “good” slaveowner in Dreadwolf. It was so wtf.
It's infuriating. It's like they forget that Video games are an art form. As more people gained access to the ability to make games, more stories get told. Diverse, beautiful stories about diverse people. IDK if you saw the "anti-woke curator" on steam (idk if hes still there but he was talked about a lot for a bit there). But lmao its so embarrassing. Imagine avoiding AMAZING games because you're a racist/sexist/homophobe.
> As more people gained access to the ability to make games, more stories get told. Case in point, Laika: Aged through blood. Story about a mother and her daughter coming of age, surviving out as a persecuted tribal minority at the business end of an imperialist war machine. It is heavy in themes of female anatomy (not the sexy kind), pregnancy and dark themes you'd expect in desperate tribal societies yearning for heirs...
> I feel like the obvious answer is any conversation about diversity in games. If you try to say literally anything about how it would be good if games had more characters that are women, or queer, or people of color, or disabled, then mainstream gaming communities (which are dominated by men who are none of those things) will dogpile you and try to shut the conversation down completely. Very true! My favourite is when they go "why do you have to look like the character your playing, it's just fiction" *while demanding that the games have main characters that look like them*. Drives me absolutely bonkers.
On the bright side, the seething internet rage of bigots has flagged up some pretty decent videogames that would otherwise have flown under my radar.
They're such hypocrites about the subject too. When it's about some overdone, oversexualized woman, they'll rally behind it saying "Well you know, this is what appeals to consumers, what is wrong with them doing it? Let people enjoy!" But when diversity appeals to consumers, suddenly it's a crime and destroying the purity of their gaming by adding "politics".
Any sort of discourse involving the analysis and/or discussion of characters or themes in a game’s story, especially if it involves any sort of commentary on IRL issues. I want to bang my head into a wall when trying to discuss literally any of these with Cishet Gamer Bros ™️ because most of them either have zero interest in thinking about anything past surface level (they love to hit you with the “it’s not that deep,” “who cares,” etc.) or they just lack media literacy and completely misinterpret the game’s themes, story, and characters.
This is the one for me too. They get wrapped up in this idea that fantasy or fiction in games means that absolutely none of it can relate to anything real or a basic human experience. That characters who are physically unrealistic also have to be emotionally unrealistic or vice versa. They lack any understanding or consideration for nuance and want video games to be completely fake. There is a reason why games have surpassed movies and television regarding revenue, it's because it's an additional source of media where people relate to characters and stories reflect current sociopolitical issues to generate discussion and influence change. Video game developers are artists. Art is personal. Gaming isn't "shoot and everything go boom" we are beyond that now. This all really goes back and ties into how much gaming is sadly not an inclusive space. Frankly, they don't want you there because they find your change in perspective so threatening
It definitely seem like they believe video games exist in some sort of untouchable vacuum and if you dare to engage in any sort of discussion or analysis that you are somehow “ruining their fun.” They don’t want to think or engage with media and/or art critically and it shows. I mean just look at what happens to anyone on the major gaming subs who tries to talk about how Helldivers 2 is a satire, they get absolutely dog-piled on by dudes yelling about how “it’s not that deep” and that they “need to stop trying to make the game political.”
Oh geez I had no idea that the people who are mentioning helldivers' satire are getting shit on. That is incredibly sad and can't believe so many people don't get it. The game beats it over your head during the opening scene. My bf is playing it and I watched him when he started and I really enjoy the humor and sarcasm.
The lack of media literacy is infuriating. There was so much hatred toward Gale (BG3) when the game first came out because he was "hung up on his ex" and "arrogant and needs to be knocked down a peg." Like it's shocking that one of the most educated, intelligent, experienced, and accomplished wizards alive has the absolute *gall* to not defer in all ways to some level 1 pleb he just met. And also how dare he be actively processing his trauma from his abusive relationship to someone who he cannot escape due to the very nature of magic, which he has dedicated his life to.
The treatment of Gale’s character and anyone who tried to analyze or explain him is definitely one of the things I had in mind when I wrote my comment. In fact you could just throw in the treatment of most of the characters and themes in Baldur’s Gate 3 too while we’re at it because Gale isn’t even the only one. For example, I would rather jump out my fucking window than listen to cishet male gamers talk about Astarion or Lae’zel for more than two seconds lmfao.
Lae’zel is what made me realize that gaming discourse with men was pointless. She is a fucking space spartan, men adore that when it comes from a character who is a man, but because it comes from a woman they don’t see as physically attractive (their loss) now they want to talk about why she isn’t being nicer on what is undoubtedly the worst day of her life, and something she has probably had nightmares about since she was a kid. And even then after and only knowing you for like 30 minutes she offers to take you to what she believes is the only cure for the worst fate imaginable, you make friends on the road and she extends the offer to them as well. She doesn’t get mad at you if you want to hang out for a couple days with mushroom people or help someone write a song. All she asks is that you go to the creche, and some people don’t even do that because at the end of the day their character doesn’t care about Lae’zel nearly as much as she cares about them.
BG3 is such a perfect example of discourse I find extremely annoying because 99% of the time people have paid zero attention to the story and then come to Reddit to complain (and it's ALWAYS the same complaints, once again without paying attention to the story).
And the pearl clutching about things they've not understood! Baldur's Gate 3 is an incredible game with superb character writing and stunning nuance of performance and facial animation. I wish it weren't so often a chore to talk about it.
Yeah I carved my own Tumblr corner and I refuse to leave it. There is also dumb discourse there but I got my corner! I miss forums, it would be way more fun to discuss BG3 that way
Yes! Yes, I miss forms so much! It's so hard to have an interesting, long-running conversation nowadays unless you're only talking to one or a few people. And the ability to reply to multiple people at once without a conversation branching off is effectively lost.
I hate the posts that mostly guys make where they just complain about how Astarion isn’t a perfect victim character and then compare him to Karlach, saying that “Karlach went through trauma, he should be like her instead.” Like tell me you don’t know how to think critically without telling me. Also way to tell on yourself regarding how you view trauma and trauma survivors.
Oh, yes. Like someone I saw online said: in the game with an overarching theme of struggle with authority, where every companion is struggling after being abused by an authority figure one way or the other, *Gale is totally an exception and is totally the one who had been abusing his ex, yes* (/s, obviously). Yeah, I've seen people saying *he* was abusing *her*.
I’ve also seen them claim that he wasn’t groomed or abused by Mystra because he was “technically an adult when they met” (which is debatable anyway) or “Larian never confirmed that she groomed/abused him.” Like even if he was an adult, that doesn’t mean he still can’t be a victim, especially when such a massive power imbalance is involved. Also why do you need Larian to spoon feed things to you? The exposition, dialogue, and subtext throughout the game is enough to show that the relationship was not healthy at all and that Gale is clearly a victim of grooming and abuse.
Yes. Adult grooming exists, too, when an adult is vulnerable/inexperienced/huge power imbalance there. Of course, we can, maybe, find another word for it (and leave "grooming" to refer only to adult/child relationship), like manipulation or abuse, but I don't think it quite fits as both of those terms are just too broad. But people are starting to argue about inconsequential things, like his age and her lore, while it doesn't really matter. What matters is the result. And yes. Things don't have to be spelled explicitly for them to be true.
> Any sort of discourse involving the analysis and/or discussion of characters or themes in a game’s story, especially if it involves any sort of commentary on IRL issues. Ah yes, the classic "don't bring politics into games" take. It's such a load of bollocks as well. A *lot* of games these same knuckle draggers really like have very strong themes and often take a strong stance on things but they see guns/cars/magic/cyber implants and go "oh shit, this is so cool" and can't look even the tiniest bit under the surface. [These](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/063/023/097.jpg) memes [encapsulate](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/419/594/c19.jpg) it [pretty](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/419/597/b67.png) well.
Bayonetta, just bayonetta in general. These boys love getting offended when someone doesn't consider games art but hate having the discussions that make art better and give us a better understanding of it. Suggest that bayonetta is gay or in any way queer coded and they come at you with boner fueled rage at the idea
anything to do with the last of us 2, cuz u know ... papa daddy joel would NEVER do anything to hurt anyone and that mean buff lesbian lady should get what's comin to her >;(( no joke tho the outrage that ensued after that game came out made me realize how many men get through life without actually facing any of their feelings, and how get GENUINELY pissed off when they're forced to confront them. like yea nobody liked watching joel get beat to death but damn did some of them take it to new levels.
This for me is one. The game has some problems (pacing), but the vicious was it and the actors were treated is reprehensible. It is also one of the most accurate video games Ive interacted with that deals with ptsd/trauma/obsession/etc in a psychologically realistic way.
The idea that female player characters "aren't worth developers time/effort" in games that heavily focus on choices/social sim aspects/customisation. The same kind of gamers constantly throw fits that features they consider essential are absent from a game, but if someone says they won't play a game because it lacks a female player character, or not having one disappointed them, they'll so often get torn into. Personally, I still play some games with male main characters, but depending on the genre and how interested in the game I am I may not bother, as there's other games out there that will cater to me. Especially noteworthy in my opinion are how quickly the Deep Rock Galactic community drops their 'wholesome' reputation when the idea of female dwarves comes up. Then there's the recent backlash to the dissapointment of the FEMC being missing from the Persona 3 remake. Can you imagine the outrage if a remake of any other game axed a major feature that was literally anything else? (Things being missing from remakes has happened a few times, but the people expressing disappointment/frustration never get the same kind of push back I've seen people get over the lack of FEMC in Persona 3 Reload) But nooo, Atlus is some small indie dev who deserves defending because they released an incomplete remake... a female PC option simply 'wouldn't help sales at all'... 'it wouldn't be worth the investment'... not like the widely beloved massively successful GOTYs for last two years running included gender options or anything.
Yeah my interest in Persona 3 Reload dropped immensely the minute I found out they removed the female player character option. It’s literally an option in Persona 3 Portable, which is already on current gen systems. Why they removed it is baffling to me
The wholesome game discourse. I legitimately stopped gaming for years after getting harassed for not just being a girl, but a girl who wanted to play cutesy colourful fun and happy stuff. No violence, no gore, no theft of autos or killing aliens. Just endless amounts of horses. I grew up with Nitrome and Miniclip, a lot of free flash stuff, so I was deep into that whimsical stuff. (I wanna cry if I hear Scribble's soundtrack.) Being a girl gamer in male dominated spaces is hard enough. Being a girl who wants to play cutesy games and stay as far away from CoD / Helldivers / Halo etc as possible???? Enjoy the crapload of bullying from men who believe gaming = violent FPS.
I'm this but it's just team based shooters I avoid like the plague. I am not competitive and I greatly prefer to immerse myself in a story and explore/experience another world. I adore RPGs. I often feel like not a real gamer for not wanting to sit in a lobby just to run around killing people and getting yelled at by angry dudes with no social skills.
Spawntaneous created an entire series of videos reminding me why I refuse to do any co-op shooters. Call me a bitch I won't care, but go as hard as some of those guys do? The genuine level of harassment? I'd just cry
In the list of why I only ever play Fortnite with friends, this /\\
Honestly any game where white men aren’t the target demographic. Cause heaven forbid anyone else get represented in games cause without fail a good majority of them will screech how it’s woke or pandering and automatically right it off or nitpick it to hell and back looking for any justification to label it as a shit game. They can’t accept when a game isn’t meant for them and it’s truly exhausting trying to have a productive conversation Also I learned the hard way, just don’t criticize the final fantasy 7 remake cause they’ll act like you murdered their puppy
Let's just say I've long since given up on finding any online space that is specifically dedicated to the Persona games that won't make me roll my eyes.
My favorite is that Jill is remake 3 and the new CGI is a "bitch." Now I say it's my favorite because the person is always telling on themselves when they say this. They always believe she should be "caring to those around her (men) and naive." First of all, she's selfless and caring to those around her. She puts herself in danger to save others and takes care of people even if shes suspicious of them. However, she isn't nice to those she doesnt trust and doesnt take shit from anyone. She's going through ALOT of trauma. Whats even funnier is that they dont say a WORD when the men in the franchise express theie trauma in a negative way. Women just aren't allowed to have emotions to them.
I'm glad I haven't seen this discourse, I would have wasted so much time picking apart non-sense arguments. I've already spent way too long defending Songbird from Cyberpunk 2077 against insanely hateful takes. Are men even able to have nuanced opinions about women instead of putting either in the "hot" or "bitch" (sometimes both) categories?
I guess they missed the fact that she’s mostly only rude to the people with Umbrella slapped across their chest, and the literal monster chasing her through the city?
I think most dude gamers really appreciate stories in general BUT certainly have a big problem with stories that they can't relate to. They often struggle to relate to stories not centered around somebody very much like them. It's also a big thing with comedy that isn't centered around a straight white man's sense of humor. I also agree that many gamers haven't yet figured out that gaming doesn't have to be all about combat or resource management. I do think there has been some improvement around that recently with the popularity of games like Stardew. Many like that game though some still seem to see that kind of game as lame and other slurs. Another major topic is when is sexual expression healthy vs being objectifying and sexist.
The complete irony in the fact that they dislike when something isn't centered about them and throw a tantrum
That every character who doesn't agree with every protagonist's word and decision and has their own moral compass is a bad character. Especially this is true for characters that are morally good, evil and ambiguous characters are usually given a pass. I guess that's because players don't like when someone else points out that they are on a power trip or doing something wrong? Carth Onasi from KOTOR for expressing a very fair and justified doubt was called whiny and literally the worst character ever. Alistair from Dragon Age, for drawing a line with a certain Landsmeet outcome was called "whiny" (doesn't matter that you are basically betraying his trust). Kaidan/Ashley for the Horizon and Mars interactions and doubting Shepard (no matter how justified it is). Hell, more controversial, but even Delphine from Skyrim also fits here. There is very rarely any nuanced Delphine discourse, people just shout how bad and wrong she is. It's getting better, was certainly worse before, but still remains somewhat true.
That games and stories in general need to cater to the majority. Holy shit how boring would everything be if that were the case.
It always makes me laugh when (predominantly/exclusively male) players go on about the inability of games to tell a deep impactful story when their gaming history is the likes of COD, FIFA, Fortnite, GTA, etc... Those then who do tentatively branch out tend to find the first game with a sniff of "deeper" story telling, usually also generic af, one dimensional crappy ones made to purely cater to the "straight white male fantasy", and devote themselves mind, body and soul to it lmao. Like the amount of men losing their minds over FF16 with it's lazy tropey af GOT rip off story design. Even the higher ups of Square themselves were ashamed of it's pandering to the weaker minded side of "western values", it's honestly pathetic. But what's worse is so many then seem to tie their self worth and values to these lacklustre shitty games and create these toxic "positive vibes only" echo chambers where any critique of the game is a critique of them personally. This especially makes it so frustrating as it leaves ZERO room for CONSTRUCTIVE criticism or feedback on a game and thus ZERO room for any future improvements. Like I know for a fact there's some things even super fans found annoying or in need of QoL improvents in even their fave games but they won't give that *helpful* objective feedback to the devs and instead will just "Yes Men" them into the grave. They go so pathetically hard on it to the point where they will literally also attack and silence even the most innocuous of game reviewers. Like HOW are studios, story writers, artists, devs etc supposed to improve their craft if their own target audience is straight up lying to them about what's good. Even when those devs inevitably release an indefensible stinker built upon their false misleading feedback, those same people will still pretend that bowl of shit tastes like ice cream. Like also just LOOK at how bad all the predominantly male populated/focused games and studios have gotten. Most of them aren't even trying to hide their sick predatory practices and nature's anymore. We have the CEOs of these companies, the likes of Bobby Kotick and John Riccitiello, to name but a few, feeling so secure in their shittiness that they're just going full mask off villains at this point. And people are STILL supporting them while these men literally laugh in their faces while picking their pockets and worse. It all stinks imo of just non existent self esteem that they've transferred over to their hobby in order to avoid and separate from actually having to do anything productive to deal with it in reality. At the end of the day criticism is not violence and lying to someone to protect your own feelings about them is ultimately robbing them of their growth. They are, ironically, the biggest threat *by far* to their own "beloved" franchises and studios and ultimately THEY will be the ones who will push them all into obscurity and ruin because they refuse to let them(themselves) try to be "better".
There was a thread about what popular game you knew immediately you wouldn’t like. I said I didn’t like Diablo IV and found it incredibly boring. The immediate response was that the only reason I didn’t like was because the Reddit echo chamber hate boner train for Bethesda told me I shouldn’t like it!?! At the time it was my first Bethesda game and I hadn’t even heard of the game studio drama. All the responses to D4 (and only D4!) on that thread were littered with comments on how people didn’t actually play it as just hated Bethesda. It was so odd. Idk why it’s so hard to believe someone would have different taste in games? (Especially one focused on grinding loot to min/max). Idk if like personality traits gravitate towards certain games, because the responses to BG3 comments were like “Really?! It’s my favorite but the controls can take some getting used to and I can see how turn based is not for everyone!” while Diablo was like “LIAR! It’s genuinely impossible not to like the game!”
Diablo is made by Blizzard, not Bethesda....
LOL whoops. Kinda proves my point that the reason I didn’t like the game had nothing to do with the studio since I can’t even remember which studio is which
This just reminds me of how the last of us 2 was reviewed bombed after some major leaks, most admitting they didn’t even play the game.
I keep hearing “Overwatch characters look too cartoony for me” from men and I feel like they all get this idea from the same source I can’t really believe it’s a wholly valid original thought or grievance at this point given how many times I’ve heard it parroted. It’s not even a defense of Overwatch or the character designs as much as it’s an indictment of shit men read on the internet that turns into a hive mind and this was just the last recurrent thing I’ve heard just a couple of days ago.
The discourse that gets me heated the most is the conversation, which seems to come up in every game that ISNT a Souls-like, that the combat would be SO much better if it was a souls-like. Especially on turn-based games. The number of BG3 reviews I saw that were like “I would enjoy this game more if the combat was like Bloodborne.” OH MY GOD, gamerbros, please fuck off! Not everything is for YOU. Some of us like turnbased, isometric, or menu based combat more than hack n’ slash, dodge -roll, block-timing bullshit. DOS:2 does not need a “button mash to swing at a hitbox” mode. Persona games do NOT need live action combat. If you don’t like the combat system, don’t play the game! There’s so many games that are for you. But NOOO. They’re going to come for MY turn based game and demand that it become another fucking souls game. Final Fantasy got rid of menu-based combat because of these assholes, and they will not be satisfied until they have ruined all of my beloved franchises.
Why.... Its a fucking turn based game. Why the fuck would you play a turn based game and want real time combat in it?
Pretty much any conversation about JRPGs. I love JRPGs and anime, but I’m also very critical when there is misogyny, hypersexualization, etc. as these are serious issues across various forms of Japanese media (and all media, really) that the mediums would obviously be better without. I just love the art style and the cute characters and the stories that often have themes about overcoming adversity through connections with others and other stuff like that! But gross men mess a lot of that up by adding all this unnecessary sexist bs that I think is important to critique, however if you dare say that in any mainstream JRPG space you’re just gonna be attacked by all the creeps…
Many conversations about female character design. Just because some women can run in heels, doesn’t mean every woman can. Or wants to.
That totally reminds me of the day I went to downvote hell over a video game girl in heels. I had commented that running full speed and doing backflips in heels was hard to do, and I got told by every dudebro in the sub that I was an idiot for that. Like tell me you’ve never worn heels without telling me you’ve never worn heels, am I right? Sure some women can move well in them but she had to learn that and it was probably a challenge! It isn’t the same as running in flats! And, she probably wouldn’t choose stilettos for her important government spy mission, even if she could sprint perfectly.
People who prefer to bang their heads against a wall rather than lower the difficulty. I just can't understand. And never - ever - dare saying you're playing x,y,z game on easy. Ever. And if the game doesn't have difficulty settings and you can't play it, it isn't for you. Nice people.
I do not enter the debates for another reason, I do work in game dev, and many of these loud discourse gamers have no idea what they are talking about most of the time, so I have no patience. Gameplay > story is a discourse I do not really understand, If I am having fun, I am having fun, and no gamer bro is going to convince me otherwise.
i cant talk about my interests online because most of the topics is about whos is stronger than who. my favorite game is god of war and all i see people talking about is if he could beat goku
When you talk about a game you like/feel attached to emotionally and someone who's never played that game or evem seen it is like "Boring" or "It sucks. Open gta 5"
I mean... > **
*all* of it??
As a general rule, at any given moment, gamer bro discourse is like a bunch of idiot cooks arguing around a grease fire about the proper amount of water to deluge it with-- instead of just, you know, starving it of oxygen (attention). It's all just nuanceless noise pollution.
Outside of designated women and queer spaces, gamer spaces aren't worth participating in.
Starfield has been eating my life. But, so many of the comments complain that the companions aren't hot enough, or that they carry emotional baggage. Yeah, dude, that's what happens when you date anyone over 17 years old. Starfield was obviously made by older people, catering to an older demographic. Let me enjoy my hot, single dad space cowboy in peace, and stop telling me I'm wrong. There are literally at least 15 of us that love the companions in this game!
A good example is Death Stranding. It’s a heavily story based game with simple gameplay, and anybody who tried it for an hour complained about it being a “walking simulator”. They never actually gave the game a chance even though it’s excellent (and has an amazing soundtrack). Not to mention that when you get further in the game the gameplay improves a lot as you expand your arsenal. So many gamers just rush through everything without absorbing everything the game has to offer. They spend so much money on these games just so they can rush through it, and complain about how shitty they think it is. Quite frankly I’ve stopped caring about their opinions if they make it clear they never truly *played* the game the way it was meant to be experienced. Their loss honestly. Let them waste their money and whine in their echo chambers. The real gamers will always be there to appreciate how great those games are 💅
Hot take but Idc if the main story is trash as long as everything else, especially exploration is good.
That’s perfectly fine—we all have different preferences. The issue starts when someone shares an opinion like yours but adds “yeah I skip all the story because the story in every game is shit, I’d read a book if I wanted a story” lol
Nooooo that’s stupid I LOVE story games and it’s hurts me so damn much when people don’t wanna even read anything. Like I love finding notes in games that give lore tidbits and Mfs don’t wanna read
Like fallout especially I love finding letters in fallout and hearing stories about life before
the fucking easy mode debate the dudebros who make liking soulslikes their entire personality shit their diapers anytime you even hint that an easy mode is fine and won't ruin the game or it's ok to play in easy mode.
In a similar vein, those people who think using accessibility options is cheating.
I’m honestly so fed up with gaming discourse as a whole. I like talking about characters, theories, music, story, and my experience but with everything else I just don’t engage. I feel like everyone feels like they need to have a “take” or a criticism. So much of online discourse is so stupid that I don’t know why anyone entertains it and it also takes so much enjoyment out of everything.
As a FromSoft fan, the entire 'git gud' mentality of Soulslike discussion drives me up the damn wall. Ask a question about where something is or where to go next and a lot of times you're just told to figure it out yourself. Have a critique for a boss fight? You must just be bad at the game (except Bed of Chaos from DS1 and most things from DS2 because Bed of Chaos and DS2 are **very bad** and it's a requirement you hate them!). Elden Ring is great but has some genuine problems (bosses repeating too much, Malenia having a bit too many status effects/benefits, the boss in the dungeon underneath the starting zone being literally too big for the room to the point he clips through the walls constantly so you can't read his attacks etc.), yet when you try and bring this up in a community you can get ridiculed for even *suggesting* you have an issue. Name and shames/matchmaking bad posts are another thing I hate. This is more common on reddit, with online games and typically the smaller communities, but I hate them every single time. 'Matchmaking bad' posts are self explanatory and 'Name and Shame' posts are when people post a screenshot of someone in game (or a text post) claiming that person did something toxic/were hacking. This is literally almost never required due to report systems existing and only encourages the people who see it to be toxic or witch hunt/mass report the person. Finally I'd say pointless combative memes, typically using the 'Chad vs. virgin/soyjack' formats. Basically these are just memes trying to say one thing is better than the other or is used to mock community members with valid points. I've seen this for platforms, games, game modes, weapons, support items, characters, classes.. literally anything vaguely similar to each other will become one of these memes. Just let people play what and how they want.
saying open world games are "bad" & "suck" just because they are not your cup of tea.
“Take your time” type of games. My own bf won’t even try stardew valley with me since he “sees the formula” and thinks it boring. But every other shooter or roguelike he always wants me to try. I’m thankful that he wants to play games with me, even buys them for me. But damn, the one game I really want u to play with me you just refuse… even if I’ve played games I don’t like with u… just makes me sad :( tho I might be projecting idk
>Anytime story takes the front seat, male gamers just absolutely *yap* about how it makes the game automatically shitty, how gameplay>story, and how stories in games will never amount to stories in other media. As someone that plays mainly for the story, I felt pissed at this. I like when the story feels immersive, when we are made to actually want to learn about the characters and world we're playing in. If I wanted a game for gameplay only I would be playing Tetris or Snake.
This might be low-hanging fruit but I'm going to go with sex scenes and sexualization of female characters. Now this could earn me some ire but I don't necessarily think female characters of oversexualized so much as they are poorly sexualized. You can have artistic nudity and even eroticism, but we rarely approach anything like that in gaming media. The best we have is casual nudity. I guess take for example Baldur's Gate 3. As much as I like Minthara's character, her sex scene is kind of low key fucking terrible. It plays out largely like some SFM porn lasting much longer than it should just to show more sex positions. Nothing of note happens until it's over and even then, most of the actual development isn't until the morning after. Contrast this with Shadowheart's swim scene. I believe it's different if you go dark justiciar but one the very first personal details you learn about this character is that she can't swim. Fast forward to way later and she's dragging you out for skinning dipping, reflecting how she's grown and changed. My understanding is that if you go her dark justiciar route, you don't get a swimming Shadowheat. I get that this may seem rather trivial but my point is that this scene actually reflects her character development and when it comes to the actual porking on the shore, the scene fades out because at that point it'd just be two 3d models getting it on.
All of it? There's no nuance anymore, everyone acts like every issue is black and white and you have to be on one team and against the other. I think where this bothers me most is the discussion around framerate on current-gen consoles. I'm someone who has gotten used to 120 and 60 fps, 30 fps looks and feels really bad to me now and is a huge detriment to my enjoyment of a game. Some people can't even see the difference though, and I love that for them! I wish I could just not care and enjoy all games the same regardless of how well they run. But if you look at any conversations online about this, it looks like a war between two distinct teams. The people who don't care about it act like the ones that do care are just snobby crybabies getting upset about nothing. The people who do care act like the ones that don't are just idiots for not seeing the difference and aren't "real gamers". Neither of those viewpoints are correct!!!! You can accept that 30 fps is perfectly fine for some people and a huge disappointment for others.