The enshitification of video games with microtransactions and other corporate garbage: I sleep
Women wearing slightly more clothes in video games: REAL SHIT?
Lol this will always be funny because she's doing exactly what "Gamers" wanted, which is treating video games like an actual art form (it is imo) and critiquing it like any other art. And then they lose their minds because they have exactly 2 braincells
Exactly. Gamers conflate having something be an "art form" with "you're not allowed to make fun of my hobbies".
I remember this one time in a literature review class, we were critiquing this one work (I can't remember what it was, sadly), and this one guy was clearly new to higher-level English and Lit classes. So he puts his hand up after about 20 minutes of discussion and goes, "I don't get it. Are we, like, making fun of the book? I don't understand."
It was just funny to me that someone who had never experienced literature discussion before genuinely thought the professor was mocking the book for a laugh, and that's it. I don't blame the guy at all, he wasn't a chud and was actually eager to learn. It just goes to show that there are so many people out there that fundamentally do not understand art or discussion. Especially, capital-G Gamers will throw a massive fit whenever someone attempts to publically move gaming past "consume product".
I failed college English 101 bc I failed to understand that I wasn't supposed to write some sort of deductive proof based on the work. My TA was also bad at telling me this; I think bc they failed to understand how my approach wasn't the typical one.
she's doing exactly what "Gamers" wanted
What gamers wanted was for a conga line of NYT Op-Ed writers to treat E3 like the Met Gala and shamelessly fawn over their own fan-list of creepy online weirdos like they're Manhattan royalty.
They didn't want games treated like art. They wanted their niche hobby to be drooled over like a collection of Fabergé eggs.
And then they lose their minds because they have exactly 2 braincells
I grew up on a lot of gaming pundits, back in the 90s/00s, who bemoaned the wretched state of the industry and attributed that to many of the shortfalls and self-sabotage that ruined the industry. Critics like Lum the Mad (Scott Jennings) and Mr. Destructoid (Yanier Gonzalez) and the Penny Arcade folks were all in or adjacent to the industry and were mostly speaking out as enthusiastic-but-jaded fans.
But there's not a ton of money in honest game criticism or shameless QA horror stories. So they either faded away or sold out.
Sarkassian was in this tradition for a minute, and garnered a pretty active following as a consequence. But because she was an EW GIRL and because her criticism was feminist rather than merely technical, she became a victim of her own success.
These people aren't stupid. They're very canny with their delivers. They just recognize that going ham on the industry itself isn't where the money is at. You can both get a large audience AND avoid pissing off the advertising money by playing inside baseball and screeching at THE GIRL ad nauseum. And as The Algorithm rewards homogeneity and length, you end up with these increasingly absurd "Look What ANNA SARKASSIAN did THIS TIME!" four hour long rants. This shit will end up sounding stupid because there's nothing left to be said that isn't pure fabrication or long-winded rehashing of the original afront.
But they do get people exposure, which gets them money, which allows them to climb the ladder into more prestigious positions.
Which is all any of these losers really want.
How did she destroy video games, she made a couple semi-decent videos making very basic critiques.
If CHUDs were right (and they're never right), then they really only have themselves to blame because they dogpiled on someone thinking it will be an easy culture war win after getting overconfident with dunks on tumblr. All they did was give Sarkeesian a bunch of free press and some game developing studios actually listened. Because get this, artists tend to be the "weirdos" CHUDs hate on so much.
CHUDs hate free speech, and REALLY hate artistic freedom.
Eh, they weren't that good. The critiques were very basic, but they were also very shallow and based in inaccurate claims - she could have done a great breakdown of the sexism in the princess peach games and how they contrast to the mario games, talked how long it took to get a single princess peach game and how few there still are in comparison, but instead she said there aren't any at all. Capital G gamers would have been infuriated anyway, but her inaccuracies gave them ammo to dismiss the entire critique with.
Arguably though, her videos did kinda destroy the chud idea of videogames as reactionary power fantasies, and saw a lot of introspection* from the industry and a move away from many of the themes she raised. The absolute explosion of rage they incited brought the discussion to the forefront of video game culture and forced developers to make conscious decisions about including or excluding them. AAA games pretty much completely ignore the idea of the docile damsel in distress now, even when they're, like, Hogwarts legacy or some complete shite.
*Realising being sexist was going to stop making them as much money
Who is this and what was the video?
Looks like it's Anita Sarkeesian, wasn't able to find the video though
Yep, it's her. Looks like this is the video (haven't watched it). It's from 10 damn years ago.
Could it be the capitalist race to the bottom in the name of infinitely increasing shareholder value that is destroying every single entertainment industry?
No it must be women. Yes surely that's it.
amazing one woman with a youtube channel just changed an entire industry somehow
4chan reactionaries think the world works on literal magic. If someone has enough meme energy or whatever, reality morphs to fit their desires. It's why they think they elected Trump instead of machinations of capital and the electoral college.
It's a myopic mindset that can only exist because they're socially isolated maladroit weirdos (but not like us, we're cool about it)
Nov 3, 2023?????? They're still on about this like 10 years later?????
What's the difference between a cow and gamergate?
You can't milk a cow for ten years.
Reactionary aggrievment has no bottom
Oh please don't tell me that was actually 10 years ago 😭
Yes, terminally online hogs have been doing a ten year long victory dance about their culture war victory.
Gamergate was the civil rights movement for white people.
there are literally only two feminists on earth today and they are anita sarkeesian and that one angry girl with the red hair from all those chud memes
Always rub in their pathetic faces that for all their crying about games sucking and hitting the point of no return, they'll continue to buy and consume $current_year slop like every other g*mers.
Modern Online Game Pundit be like: "Gaming has been ruined! Women! Minorities! Bechtel Test! Woke Marxism! I can't even kill anyone anymore!"
2023's Game of the Year (BG3) Most Popular Streamers: "Y'all, strap in we're doing the No Kill, No Gold Speed Run with Best Girl Karlach and before you ask - yes - we fuck the bear!" Patreon explodes as crowds cheer in background
Y'all listen to the Deprogram ep about Patreon's upcoming enshitification? Looks like they're looking for a way to milk the whales and don't think the stretch goals are the answer. Get ready for an online Patreon store!
Liberapay probably got it as a fall back
Women wearing slightly more clothes in video games:
Some thoughts.
And do they not realize that artists generally have a bit more freedom in their craft than most other businesses?
Why do you think porky didn't give that much of a shit when the Haye's code was repealed despite benefiting from the idea of conformity = good? Because they generally let their artists have leeway.
Hell, where are THEIR art successes? The Haye's Code being abolished was a net positive for art. Charlie Hebdo would destroy Stonetoss and Wyatt Mann combined, Stan Kelly is objectively funnier than the guy he's trying to parody. No really, I want to see from them how a game is properly done, might as well learn from the standing authority themselves.
Furthermore, I remember around the beginning of the gamergate stuff, a common refrain from chuds was that if SJWs want games with more normal portrayals of women, SJWs should make their own games
Well we're currently in kind of a golden era of indie games. There have never been as many independent creators than now, and that seems to have simultaneously led to a slight increase in diversity among video game devs at big studios. Since more people are making games now.
It's a simple numbers thing too since games are far more complex now. Atari 2600 games were frequently made by a single programmer. The first Doom game had a dev team of something like 8 people. Red Dead Redemption 2 had a team of 1,600. At a certain point there will simply be more women, more gay people, more than just cis white dude bros working on your game if the complexity requires more people. And that's invariably going to lead to more diverse perspectives represented in the final product. Chuds want to ignore that and want cis white heteronormativity to be so powerful it overrides the very people designing the games.
Gatekeep? You're the morons who called us losers in high school and then all came pouring in for Call of Duty.
Go back to NASCAR and sportsball, normies. Quit gentrifying my hobbies.
Trump was supposed to make anime real and put Anita behind bars and he never did, no wonder why he lost.
I don't want to know what "G*mer values" are
They really need to improve their writing on these woe-is-us doomposts.
Anyways, apparently a single Anita Sarkeesian was powerful enough to destroy video games forever. If only, lmao
I forgot the actual quote, but I remember basically reading from What's The Matter with Kansas (Thomas Frank is a good gateway voice for the libs in your lives) that half the strategy that Rupert Murdoch uses is to keep letting the right constantly think they're losing, even when they're winning. In short, never give them a moment's rest to have something to complain about, no matter how small.
EDIT: Not 100% the quote, but I found this
"Anyway, Frank coins a term he calls the plen-T-plaint. Unlike complaints, the plen-T-plaint is a gripe that has no fundamental basis, although it certainly has a target. There are all kinds of plen-T-plaints, usually seen in terms of political correctness. A child sues his school district because he was assigned homework for the summer. A woman cries sexual harassment because she is complimented on the color of her sweater. An artist dunks a picture of Jesus in a jar of urine and wants public funding for doing so. As you can no doubt see, these gripes have one thing in common: They’re all examples of liberal outrages. The point of the plen-T-plaint is not to engender discussion, but to get voters riled up and, hopefully, voting Republican.
Are there bona-fide examples of liberal silliness? Unquestionably. However, this silliness is presented not as ludicrous and ignorable, but as a pernicious example of the corrupting influence of liberal philosophy on American society. Liberals have very little influence over the national government, which is solidly controlled by Republicans, and yet to listen to Bill O’Reilly you’d think the US was under the iron Birkenstock of the Berkeley crowd. It’s dishonest and distracting, but it’s a great way to reap a harvest of votes for Republican candidates, isn’t it?
Let’s be honest about these outrages. They mean little, harm almost no one, and affect nothing. However, conservative outrages, which do more harm, receive no attention from the Anne Coulter set. Want to write anti-gay discrimination into the nation’s founding document? Sure! Want to ban the teaching of a scientific theory accepted by every reputable scientist everywhere in the world? No problem! Want to give taxpayer dollars to religious organizations to fund jobs from which many of the taxpayers will be banned? Sign me up! Personally, I find these little crusades much more disturbing than the occasional frivolous lawsuit or a baseless accusation of sexual harassment.
I tend to have a pretty solid faith in humanity, but the plen-T-plaint, and the way it has resonated in modern times, has given that faith a nice solid shake. "
Unrelated but "enshitification" is my latest least favorite word, it's just commodification repackaged to be less frightening to liberals which is inherently anti-intellectual.
I think doctorow laid out the idea pretty well, but soon it's gonna mean "my treats have gotten worse"
This is already how I see it used.
No, it isn't? Iunno mate directly tying frustrations people have to a particular pattern seems politically useful. Sorry it isn't in a hundred year old book lol.
Just in general I get the feeling this "lib" as a slur thing gets used to try to make ourselves feel superior to others and pretend a tiny vanguard of posters is going to do anything with like zero connection to the outside world. The enshitification concept has been really useful for explaining why the frustrations people I know are connected to my politics. If I find myself upset that people are concluding capitalism makes things worse I will.know it is time to log off.
Not because its less scary, because its easier to viscerally understand. Making the same point in a way that makes sense to people who haven't read theory isn't a bad thing. Most people when they see a word they don't know don't look it up, they just shut down and move on. Anyone can understand what enshittificaiton means. (Also I disagree that its synonymous with commodification anyway?)
And sure, I'm on hexbear not twitter, but I still don't see the problem.
Holy shit, these people are STILL on Anita Sarkeesian?
Their brains literally never left Gamergate lol.
We always use the term "rent-free" here on Hexbear, but to this day I will not understand just how much Anita Sarkeesian, of all people on this earth, lives rent-free in Gamer heads.
I'd almost say good for her if it wasn't such a pathetic scenario
They never stopped, and at this point it's doubtful they ever will; they congregate, among other places, on /r/KotakuInAction. It's a sad sad place.
You know, I thought that KiA had been banned, for some reason. Very disappointed to learn that that's not the case