I had initially saved this text while drafting a response to the discussions earlier about all the previous stuff about making games, zoe quinn and etc., and hadn't put it up because I got caught up doing other stuff while working on it. ignore if so desired, it doesn't require a response or debate but I figured I'd just put it up for posterity.
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I don't often see people calling for games to flat out not exist. Criticizing an artistic direction as tasteless or offensive and desiring people to move away from that isn't the same thing. And besides, I think that the reasons for disliking a game for its craftsmanship or design, genre, etc. are different than noting that a certain aspect of one game, whether it's portrayal of a character or dialogue, can reflect and reinforce certain demographic trends and what's "popular" in society. there's a decent logic in saying that money moves with it. Just look at this NeoGAF thread for another example:
"...but don't make them TOO black." It's about the "soft whitening" of characters like Vanessa from Virtua Fighter and Jade from Mortal Kombat.
I don't think creativity is a divine force. Make no mistake I appreciate people who are creative, but it can be as much contingent and a reflection of one's tastes, favorite games and art, upbringing and environment as it is a function of willpower. I feel creativity is like personal taste in that sense, influenced by all those things, and not a fixed essence that is eternally true to one self. I don't really see why it's an issue when people criticize a game for being pandering or sexist. It can't be an issue just about content control, because gaming marketing and demographics already creates narratives for how to showcase characters and the presence of designing by committee is already known. Nathan Drake is a prime example of that. Also, project management sometimes demands the cutting of content. I just think it's overestimated, the ease and virtue/merit of maintaining something true to the self or one's vision - or at least, it's not always clear. I don't see an author's absolute control over creative production as an absolute good.
Sure, I don't think anything that shows off a woman with little clothing is sexist - I don't think Morrigan Aensland is sexist, and feminism has a history of believing a women defining her sexuality can be a means to empowerment. But the audience for games with fanservice content that appeal to straight white dudes simply seems to receive the most mainstream attention and the idea of just making more games that appeal to other audiences isn't going to work by itself. It will take ages for the audience to organically appear without sympathetic people already drawing more attention to it. And besides, art with personal values or messages imbued in it is as old as Guernica, and older. the same applies to art with subconscious meaning and influence.
As for the Reddit and NeoGAF thing, NeoGAF has exercised discretion over coverage of certain things in the past. They disallow "cool story bro" and "PC master race". They already disallow links to vgchartz, I believe dualshockers, and some bad news sites. They recently disallowed topics on Criminal Girls because the resulting discussion is often toxic ("fanservice/pedo trash", posting waifu pics, ensuing vitriol) and requires more attention than other fanservice-y games and more time than the moderators are willing to devote. It's a volunteered job, moderation, and I can understand if they say that they are tired of devoting free time to consistently toxic discussion that often retreads the same things regarding content (read: Criminal Girls) that they already find in poor taste generally. This is why they say they can't always create hard, strictly defined rules, because some moderation policies are purely in response to the userbase (read: creepshots) and aren't universal, fundamental principles. FWIW, the decision was democratic amongst mods, which is what sometimes happen on big issues, and there were a couple of dissenters IIRC but none objecting more strongly. That being said, this, in tandem with what I'm putting below, is why I understand their decision - which is to centralize the discussion into one thread.
as for Reddit, eh, that varies upon subreddit because there's a tendency in reddit for ideological congregation (neither bad nor good, necessarily) and I'm less familiar with that discussion in general because unlike GAF there are too many discussions going on in reddit at once.
The Zoe Quinn thing also had to do with the publication of a female game dev's sex life without consent. The ex-boyfriend's motivations are murky at best- he's at least as much bitter as he is apparently invested in a narrative about industry corruption. And the boyfriend admitted that he was bitter when he made his expose - every right to feel bitter but here's the thing. nepotism is a thing in the industry, and I think it's bull that Eron Gjoni became more concerned
then about nepotism and used an ex's sex life and dysfunction to make his point, because this has obviously been something on his mind for a long time. When he was confident he was done with their personal relationship, and decided that publicizing private FB and Gchats was appropriate.
I still think that there are things that Zoe Quinn has done that are exceedingly ugly but the narrative that produced the airing of this in public is gross as is the obfuscation of the reaction to it. She's immature and messed up and she admits to it repeatedly, and on some level over the course of whatever term described couldn't stop her destructive behaviors. I'm sure she dealt with some major stuff in the past, and she will probably insist on changing and have immense difficulty stopping. The totality of what she's dealing with will take a long time to change. I feel bad for Eron somewhat because he was cheated on (with an unconfirmed number of guys) and Zoe told him what he wanted to hear sometimes because my guess is she wants to maintain a relationship with someone who she thinks knows her. It's hard to know, from Eron's POV, exactly who you're dealing with in that sort of situation. But he handled this poorly and a bit dishonestly, and hopefully some things change for both of them (for example, it's not true that when you have sex with someone there has to be something emotional there.) All of that has less to do with an overarching narrative about corruption in the industry than it does with immature people.
Which is both of them by the way - look at some of his responses and attitude like the five guys thing, even though he didn't cheat. You'd find similar behaviors to what Zoe Quinn's accused of in most any industry and either gender - it's a human dysfunction question. But that the core of this issue is about defending or supporting her, and that taking either side affirms some sort of stance on corruption in the gaming industry is nonsense.
I'll end all that with this, which sort of covers what I was getting at above:
"In a well-run media organisation, advertising and editorial are separated, everyone understands the boundaries. But often, from the outside, these interconnections can be read as subjectivity""...There’s a sense that social justice warriors are going to “ruin games”. But how? This is a tiny subset of writers and developers sharing a left-leaning ideology – they are big on Twitter, but they are not going to convince Activision, EA, Capcom or any other multinational games corporations to stop making games that conflict with their beliefs.
The games industry is a global, multi-billion dollar giant, fuelled by money, not dogma. There will be no social justice revolution – just as the rise of feminist film criticism in the 70s and the explosion of indie cinema in the 80s did not stop Hollywood from making blockbuster sexist action flicks..."
