Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
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User ID: 214
Those CZN links are a real rabbit hole, I hadn't been aware of that controversy. It's a shame about the writing issues, as I am really liking the game's art and character design from what I saw. It does seem like the game was rigged from the start for CZN, though, with the original writer being pushed out, so it's hard to see a situation where that happens and the writing is good no matter how they handle the fanservice.
I would like to see your theory on these incidents fleshed out in a longer thread. It really does seem like a proxy for the gender war. Even unrelated things are downstream of this - proximity voice chat in Halo 3 was removed because too many women were made fun of in comms. I think by this point most men into these kinds of games understand the shape of the conflict fairly intuitively, as all media and elements of media made to appeal to them have been systematically attacked in the same way again and again for the last decade+. A lot of them will admit that there is an impasse between the sexes and that it's best if games are made differently for men and women, a position I find very defensible. In my experience women who get involved in these battles are unfortunately not as honest about preferences. A lot of them get upset at fanservice, can't seem to accept the idea of something being made to appeal to men, and will agitate to have those things made to appeal to them. The me of ten years ago was much more sympathetic to women wanting to be included, not I see it and get annoyed because, well, I've played these games before. Now there is plenty of media made to cater to their tastes, but that never seems to be enough.
Part of me thinks Western games becoming how they are is an inevitable and unavoidable consequence of the Civil Rights Act, and no amount of gamer rage could have prevented it. If it's illegal to maintain a bro culture that values bro things in the office, you're going to see that reflected in the product. If you're successful enough, eventually you're going to have to comply with CRA hiring and workplace requirements, and if you don't do it fast enough, you're going to get body slammed by the government for millions and take a massive reputational hit. A court ruled that Riot Games requiring its employees to play their games to be a discriminatory hiring practice against women. I don't know how you can maintain a good culture for making games under conditions like this. I'm not sure if CN or KR have an equivalent law, so I can't say for sure.
I enjoyed that post of yours, I'd had it saved from a few years back. I get what you're saying, but I guess I disagree that Reverse Collapse is not a valid target, as long as you grant that this type of pressure campaign is acceptable or necessary. It's a game by the same developer with a release date somewhat lined up with the GFL2 controversy. If you're trying to put the screws on a company for taking a direction you don't like, there are few targets more fair than review bombing their other games. It's not just an East Asian thing; Bethesda's whole catalog has been review bombed on steam during paid mod controversies centered on individual games. It's a bit unhinged, but there just aren't that many real avenues for players to influence the direction of these games, so they're going to reach for any lever they can pull, and it's a big, easy lever to pull. Funnily enough, I also found out about the controversy through Reverse Collapse, so if the players' aim is to drag the company's name through the mud through any means necessary... it clearly worked for both of us.
I feel bad for the voice actor in this situation, she obviously didn't deserve to have that happen to her. I would like to say that should never happen, but realistically it probably just isn't possible to have a playerbase willing to go this far to defend their games and not get ugly collateral damage like this. If everyone involved was level-headed enough to not go after unrelated people, they'd probably be level-headed enough to just not freak out in the first place, and then bad actors never get pushed out of the industry. I hate to say this at risk of sounding like a mind killed partisan, but the optimal number of wrong scalps to take is probably not zero.
Chinese gacha players seem to be a different breed entirely.
You know, I have to respect it. Their actions resulted in the company making changes to the storyline and firing the writer responsible. I can only dream of Western developers having such respect (or fear!) for their players. I think Chinese and Korean gamers are so defensive about their games because they can look over here and see what happens when the industry gives an inch to the type of people who hate the average player of games. If they detect a whiff of someone like that fucking with their games, they go full nuclear scorched earth. As a result, developers over there are a lot more careful about their actions.
You can protest that it is silly, or that creators should have artistic freedom. To some extent I agree, but again — look at what we're getting out of American AAA studios. It is difficult to imagine a company in literally any other business (besides other sectors of entertainment) having that much contempt for its audience. Imagine a power tool company hiring people who casually talked on twitter about how they hated the average person who uses power tools, and wanted to use their position of influence to make the new generation of power tools appeal to that person less. This is just Wednesday for big game companies, though.
And come on — at the end of the day, GFL is a waifu collecting game. If I were writing for of those, the literal last thing I would ever do is ruin the wish fulfillment fantasy of the story. That's the entire point of the game, that's why people are paying me money. There are places for such storylines and it's not wrong for them to exist, but it is baffling to me that the company who trades on waifuism would ship such a story for what is to my understanding one of their flagship characters.
I understand the desire because, at least for me, writing is work. Torturous work, even, when I’m trying to write creatively and draw out a specific idea properly.
However, putting aside the usual arguments about human creativity and soul and all that, I think there is genuine value in having to write things out. I find that ideas I take the time to write out become much more ‘real’ in the process; concepts that can bounce around loosely in your head suddenly need to be translated into something coherent. The process is almost always transformative, and I find myself making connections or grappling with an issue in a way I hadn’t before. With creative writing it’s very similar — there are so many times I’ve found what the scene was really about through the act of turning notes into prose.
I won’t say this is how it is for everyone, but I suspect there would be something significant lost by skipping the friction of writing it out, even in hypothetical scenario where an AI could hook up to your brain and port the contents of your thoughts into readable text.
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