I've always found the whole GG vs..women? censorship? Whatever argument to be fascinating. Like a clear sign that gaming is growing up.
No, seriously. Think about it. What did everyone with any shred of credibility want from either side of that debate last year?
More attention paid to the needs of women/minorities in games? More games in general not designed just for teenage males? Hmm..I think we got that in spades this year thanks to the success of gone home, twine and the like. I see no signs of that slowing down.
How about a denouncement of the harassment and hate directed at women? Why when you look at that, people take that more seriously/denounce it as serious issue now more then they ever did before.
Oh how about the internet media being more open and disclosing? Well, I for one have seen a great deal more "in the interest of full disclosure" and "This is a sponsored video" and "this game was provided free of charge by.." in online video game content now as compared to a year ago.
Oh but what about making sure that the games teenage males want to play aren't censored and no longer allowed to be made? Hmm, go check steam. More anime boobs on there this year then in any year past. Multiple games with decensor patches in their forums..stickied by the developers.
About the only things we did not get that both sides wanted were either A-removing women from gaming and B-censoring the porn. Huh..that sounds a lot like..
...every other form of media ever. Like seriously. TV, books, movies, comics. They have all gotten resistance when one group or another wanted stuff made for them, which the majority would not enjoy/understand. We've seen people try to censor what they deemed unacceptable and...my oh my, both failed didn't they? Any attempt to do either of those things, hording it all to yourself or censoring parts of it you don't like have utterly failed.
And so are we headed in video games. We are growing up. A decade or two from now and people will look back on the idea that games that appeal to teenage males and adult women couldn't both exist without threatening the other as laughable. They will look on people who wanted to keep women and other minorities out of 'their games' as backwards and stupid. They will look at those who wanted to censor everything so it fit their tastes as failures and wastes of energy.
In the end, it was a argument that had to happen sometime. When video games reach the point they become a political issue, then of course the extreme conservative and extreme liberal points of view regarding them will come into play...and then both will fail and/or be laughed down/ignored as the genre grows to encompass everyone.
As to this topic? Eh, its baby steps. Clearly they handled it in a knee-jerk "omg omg can't piss off those GG people!" where as a clear headed "Yo heads up, we don't have the time or resources to handle the controversy your panel has caused" would have sufficed to make this entire thing a non-issue.
@alistercat: So its super late to ask, and maybe I missed it in the comment somewhere but.
As someone who played, and then left behind minecraft at about the point redstone got added (I think)..has the modding gotten any easier?
When I got bored with the Vanilla game way back when, I looked into modding but it seemed like so much work to get even a single mod working. No built-in loader, no 3rd party program you could just drag/drop files into, no self-installing files. It was all 'here is a file with 3-10 folders, install a fresh minecraft and put files 1 here, files 2-3 here, the assets, but not the dlls in files 4-7 here and.." and so on.
What does the modding scene look like all these years later from a end-user standpoint. I know, even back then, you could do lots of amazing things. Is it still the hassle it was then to see any of them if your in the 'I don't do multiplayer' side of things?
I do sometimes wonder why the backlash towards talking about, covering, or just mentioning certain games is so..high. Sub topic, why does Brad seem to be addicted to all of them. But I mean think about it. Dota, Destiny, MGS5. I mean yes, there is only so much you can about a given game in a given, say, one month period? I don't mean the "We are tired of hearing about the same thing 4 weeks in a row" I mean I wonder about the "Omg not that again!" months down the line that something like Dota or Destiny gets that causes them to, say on this podcast desc, have to downplay that they even bring one of them up. See how people treat any Dota content on the site and etc even if its months since the last one, and about something completely new (a scandal among the teams, a complete revision of systems that make it more player friendly, whatever). In any other game that would be news..but its Dota so rage!!!"
I'm not even being critical of people who hold the opinion, I am one of them! I just couldn't for the life of me explain to you why I can't stand Dota or Destiny or etc and yet don't mind other games that come up with similar frequency/fan-bases.
Not worth 20 dollars. But worth picking up during the next steam sale for 10-12 I think (which I am sure is more or less what we will see it for).
The combat seems such that once you've got an idea for it..you need only bring 3ish people, double your resources gained and..never bother to bring snipers. Hard to justify a unit that does only 1 more point of damage, in only 1 square at a 'the a.i. is smart enough to avoid leaving a unit in at the start of your turn' sqaure who dies in a single hit..which any unit they can not kill on their 1 attack (cause again the A.I. seems smart enough to move guys out of the way) can get.
Would take some tutorial watching to get but the counter-attacks seem weird too like. From what I saw sometimes they triggered, sometimes they didn't? Is it random? is it 1 a turn is it..but whatever. The game needs some combat re balancing and U.I. improvement. Shot gunners should be able to be shown what square they will knock someone back into. Your Melees should have a "you shall not pass' That lets them blockade movement in any squares next to them, and maybe a taunt at the level up that forces an enemy to attack them over another target in range. Your pistol guys need to be able to, say, move and fire. And the whole "oh your being tactical/not rushing forward like an idiot, punishment time!" mechanic is complete trash. Like, in a game where the combat is bad, and the only way to get guys out alive without taking damage (a thing your encouraged to do cause your punished if you don't via the heal-time/perma death) to include a mechanic that essentially says "We expect you to blind-rush your guys forward or else" is..bad. Like, those two things are at complete different odds.
But then, its something developers who go for a game like this do. Darkest Depths being the other example I can think of. They took the "ok people are turtleing and playing defensively as a negative, and punished it..when what they should have done is address the reason's people felt that was the most optimal choice. The Dark souls series did this right. "Shields are kinda breaking what we wanted out game to be..so lets replace them with mechanics that make it flow in a way that works' This, as opposed to just taking away shields and not replacing them with anything.
To be blunt. You don't punish the player for playing your game in a way you didn't intend..when its your fault they have too. This game seems to do that..so screw that.
That said the elements that make it good, the FTL-like nature, the story, the art. It seems like a "for 10-12$ I can get over the issues I have with it" kinda game. I wouldn't pay full price for it though.
@dezinus: You know what thought? Dan is right. The cross over between "People who watch Raw' and "people who watch shows on USA" is....well..minor. Like if RAW were on another channel? I'd never watch/record a single second of USA tv.
Its not until you get onto a channel like El Ray (or spike i'd guess) Where the number of people who watch the wrestling show on that network..also watch the network. Like, we don't watch RAW cause its on USA, we watch USA cause that's where we have to go to watch Raw.
So eh, its a simplistic thing to say "I don't want anything on USA' but from a WWE fans perspective, WWE programing is its own self-contained thing, its not tied to a channel brand. Not in the same way you might go "Man I enjoy the shows USA puts out, I'm gonna give this new series a try."
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