Category: rants

So in my last post I criticized those who thought that Grand theft Auto 4 ads were so horrible they should be removed even though they didn’t have any problem with much more explicit ads for Sopranos.

Now I’m making a post criticizing those who criticized those who criticized GTA IV. Boingboing.net the self-proclaimed directory of wonderful things has posted a link and summary of the link titled, “Grand Theft Are You Fcking Kidding Me. The link is to someone named Susannah Breslin who criticizes Jack Thompson and the blog Feministing for criticizing GTA IV. Now I’m certainly not concerned about someone criticizing Jacko. And while I usually agree with Feministing I’m not so upset with someone criticizing them either.

What I’m upset about is the way in which Breslin attempts to refute Feministing. Feministing wrote, “It is no question that GTA is merely reflective of the bigger misogyny embedded in capitalist patriarchy, but the question is why is a game that depicts such violence towards women so popular?” How did Breslin respond? She wrote, “Jesus Christ, if this is what degrees in gender studies hath wrought, polysyllabic bloggers still carping about the patriarchy, please fucking stop handing them out.” Then she followed up with “Did we not hunt down all the feminists and shut them up already?” and argues that Feministing is wrong by asserting that men treat women like crap and like prostitutes (implying that all men do that and not just some) and writing that “men seek out prostitutes because prostitutes let men express themselves ruthlessly. With utter impunity. Because if you pay her, you don’t have to feel guilty” as if all of that proves Feministing wrong.

My reaction to this post is in no way a condemnation of GTA. I don’t have a current gen system so I can’t play GTA 4. I have played the previous GTA games and they are, like R rated films, meant for adults. The play mechanic of running over people, including prostitutes, is way over hyped by the sensationalistic media and that is not even to mention that ignorant people keep claiming that there is rape in Grand Theft Auto 3 when there is no such thing.

My reaction is a condemnation of summary dismissal of raising questions about what the depiction of women in the game means and the implication that not only is it an accurate depiction of the world but that all men are like that and that we should just shrug our shoulders in response and say “that’s just the way the world is.”

In all honestly, I’m not really concerned that someone posted some off-based defense of GTA IV. I’m saddened that Boingboing would link to this post, seemingly without irony. Really? This is what Boingboing things is a wonderful thing? I thought they were better than this.

Edit:
So apparently not only is Boingboing anti-feminist and anti-intellectual, they don’t like criticism either because one of my posts got censored. That’s two strikes…

For several years there has been that lingering question, “when will videogames make us cry?” and while I think that is a totally loaded question second only to “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” the ability of videogames to create emotional reactions in the players is something that a lot of people are concerned about. However, I have been wondering later if videogames are already causing players to feel emotions. Besides feelings of pride, joy, and frustration which we feel while playing, there is also the emotional attachment that we feel long after we have finished playing the game.

I haven’t played a Thief game since the last one came out in 2004 but I still have a strong attachment to those games and the character of Garrett. People have tons of Mario merchandise. Lara Croft was a huge phenomenon. While playing GTA: San Andreas I was pissed when the game forced me to detour away from the relationship between the main character and his friends when you were forced to flee from the city. I wanted to interact with them more, not go off and learn to fly a plane or deal with the running of a casino.

Why else would the new game consoles have the ability to play old games? Why else would I still have my Atari? It is the emotional attachment to the games and the experiences we had playing them. While these aren’t the same kind of emotions that we experience when watching some movie about someone dying of cancer just when they find the love of their life but it sticks with you and you feel attached to the game and the characters.

Those are emotions of a different kind. Just because games aren’t very good at making us cry doesn’t mean that they can’t make us feel something.

So there’s quite the controversy over the firing of a reviewer at gamespot.com with allegations that he was fired for giving a bad review to a game that was an advertiser for the site. This comes a couple weeks after pne of the Penny Arcade guys says that game reviewing is essentially broken. Overall, I think I kind of agree. Think about it, game reviewers are almost always under pressure to be the first one to review something so they have to rush through the game. Movie reviewers don’t have to watch a movie on fast forward nor do music critics. But most movies are 90 minutes and most albums are even shorter than that. But even short games are 10 hours and the Half-life episodes are something like 4-6 hours. So it really isn’t fair to review a game in the same way you review a film.

Game reviews need to stop being so focused on getting out first, and certainly need to stop worrying about pissing off the advertisers. Moreoever, reviews need to change their content. Most reviews are the same format: gameplay, graphics, multiplayer. Sure those are interesting but isn’t there more to it than that?

On a somewhat related note is the fact that at the heart of this is the competition to be the first and the pressure is double for gaming magazines. They have lag time between writing in publication of months compared to a websites potential to have mere minutes between writing and publishing. They can’t compete with websites for exclusives forever. They need to stop trying. They need to offer things that more websites don’t do. There’s the saying quality over quantity but I think in this case the phrase should be quality over quickness. Do something different and maybe your reviews won’t stink and maybe you won’t have to rush through a game and maybe just maybe you won’t be so dependent on preview access to games so you won’t have to worry about pissing off gaming companies.