It's not overt racism that's the problem (in fact, I would say Gibson as a author is someone who is very careful to avoid racist caricature in his work, unlike say Neal Stephenson); rather, the orientalism comes from who is being written about, and who is left out. Like, this blog post puts it really succinctly:

But in a setting that draws so heavily on East Asian culture, why are all the characters white?

Here's a polygon article that'll do the topic more justice than I ever could, but to summarize the crux of the problem: that picture of "The Future" that's "Cool Japan"... that was never real in the first place. That's the tourist brochure version- reality is that the other side of the world's covered in The Sprawl too.

And it's hard to really blame Gibson- as far as he was concerned he's just writing some silly sci-fi story, he didn't ask to define an entire sub-genre- but the fact of the matter is that without really doing the necessary research to accurately portray things from the perspectives of those he's accidentally othering with his aesthetics, he just left the doors open for a kinda "Yellow Peril 2.0" to remain embedded within.

Edit: I just realized another point to that last bit, that when Cyberpunk as a genre was forming all the mixing in of Japanese aesthetics and language was meant to be alienating and reflected/played off American fears of Japanese tech industry surpassing American industry, whereas now it's like just more comfy/pretty aesthetics for generations that have grown up consuming anime.

I mean, a lot of the visual identity of modern cyberpunk has been heavily influenced by anime (Akira, GiTS).

It's sorta come full circle as a visual shorthand for the kind of cultural flattening effect neoliberalism has, although I'd wish they'd kinda move past some of the orientalist connotations into something more interesting.

BBI did Deserts of Kharak and that game wasn't bad at all.

HW3 is ok. Presentation-wise, it's great. Visually it's amazing, audio is amazing. Story-wise, the campaign is a bit better than 2 but not as good as HW1, Cataclysm or DoK. It feels really rushed and you don't really get a chance to get to know the new characters well, and imo the campaign is waaaay too short. Also, the cgi cutscenes are pretty bad compared to the storyboard animatics of the previous games. Gameplay-wise, it's... ok? Balance feels off (some units like Assault frigates feel overtuned), strike craft are too fragile, the production queue is a bit too generous in letting you queue up multiple unit types and maybe most egregiously unit-pathing is prone to bugging out and doing weird stuff, but it's fine most of the time. If you like how combat feels in HW1, 3 actually returns to that and mostly feels similar (minus the fragile fighters) so personally I appreciate that at least.

Imo give it a few months for QoL and balance patches and mods (mod support is built in) and this game will be a sleeper hit. Hard to recommend it right now unless you're a diehard homeworld fanatic though.

The post before that was amazing too

Just think of it as enforced day

Based and Nausicaa pilled

Yes. Games as Narratives (as opposed to abstract Games as Play) can absolutely be subject of DotA- author's don't have to intend things for them to become part of the text.

The effect you're describing is ludonarrative harmony, which is the opposite of ludonarrative dissonance.

Elon saying “Put your hand in the box” except the box is a tesla

Right? How the fuck Crichton wrote something as anti-capitalist as Jurassic Park is still a mystery to me

Being Open Source.

The software’s codebase is ideologically communist!

Was in an interview with the CEO on a Milsim gamer channel: https://youtu.be/FJs_kqHrzzQ?si=3Zy-kgXDPXLF8qxm

I don’t have a timestamp sorry, on my phone atm

The original Helldivers came about because the devs read Edward Snowden’s book and started memeing around the office about US propaganda and foreign policy

I figured this would happen too considering HD1's balancing (although I hope they buff my baby the recoilless back up to how it was in the last game) and imo maybe the Devs could have handled PR a bit more delicately.

That said, like omg it's really clear how many people just wanted to steamroll diff 9 and not, like, engage with the game at all on the game's terms, hell the nerf wasn't even that bad just switch to unsafe, hold the charge an extra second and shoot 3 times instead of 2 before switching to your primary and mag dumping. The exact same generalist loadout still works, it just has some drawbacks and a slightly longer time to kill to put it in line with all the other stuff in the game.

I finished 2 Helldive missions with randoms, with at least 1 diver managing to extract with all the samples, without voicecom; all the people complaining that the game is unplayable now are just straight up cappin'.

Lmao railgun got nerfed and now the subreddits crying about it

Standard liberator and defender (and knight) are as good as the breaker. Liberator trades some damage to be effective and all ranges.

Slugger, scorcher and diligence are great, might need to pair them up with the redeemer and/or a guard dog to cover all bases but they outperform the breaker in their specific use cases. (Mainly vs med armor at range)

Liberator pen, lib explosive and Dominator are underrated because ppl don’t understand how weakpoints, armor and explosives interact, and I don’t blame them cos none of that shit is explained anywhere

If your team is willing to work together and specialise the other support weapons are completely viable (only exception might be the flamethrower). Crew manned recoilless rifle actually does the railguns job better, but you need to know where to position yourselves so you don’t lose 2 helldivers to sprays/explosions. (Ironically shield backpack on the gunner helps with this)

Having just sunk 60 hrs into the game...

It's cause it's two games stapled together. The first half is a short 'Tales of' game, with some ridiculous anime bullshit setpieces (in the best way), the second half is a monster hunter clone, and probably the best monster hunter clone ever made.

I can sorta understand why the devs would add that for the people who just jived with the monster hunter combat portion of the game and weren't down with watching some of these really long story cutscenes about the power of friendship or whatnot.

: “So are ya Chai-nese or Japanese?”

It's ok if you're just having fun, but we are so far past that point.

From the linked thread

Latest indie darling blow up videogame fad that you'll hear less of in a month or so. I say that somewhat derisively but I think it's pretty normal, Lethal Company was the last one and that was a neat little horror co-op game imo.

I think the reason word of mouth is spreading so much can be attributed to two things:

1. It's somewhat edgy, misanthropic and subversive take on Pokemon/Nintendo's family friendly aesthetics. I can't say much about this as I haven't played the game myself to judge just exactly how much is being played straight and how much is satire (and I don't plan to), but I'd guess people who grew up with Pokemon as a franchise have been looking for that edgy take and are reacting to that, and the resulting controversy is driving the engagement algorithms (I mean just look at hexbear lmao), and

2. it's fulfilling a niche that Nintendo hasn't by being an online multiplayer Pokemon-esque game that's not turn-based; just judging based on some of the clips I've seen but working together with your friends to catch a high level Pokemon-alike actually does look kinda fun. This one's really on Game Freak for allowing Pokemon to go stale by playing it safe and not innovating the game design at all, so Palworld coming in to steal Nintendo's lunch money here's pretty deserved, I think. (Although yeah, I guess Ark did it first but the cartoony character designs are doing a lot of heavy lifting in making the on-screen action legible).

Guy published a book titled "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" and hasn't been arrested yet, idk maybe if I try and "Gotcha" him now in an interview it'll work