I don’t get it. Do payment processors want less money? Do they hate being entrenched and bringing in revenue just for existing? Do they want us to try and find alternatives to them?
this bullshit is surely coming from the recently intensifying family friendlinessification of the internet, but why the fuck do payment processors care? i have no idea. are they taking a cut of advertising revenue? do all ceos just want to appear as massive prudes? do they see children as an untapped market to exploit? or maybe they’re just fucking stupid? what is actually going on
Capitalism is creating a level of censorship that exceeded what the US government was ever able to do after the Warren court. Parts of this have been there for a long time. You can drop f-bombs on cable TV all you like; the FCC can’t do anything about it since it’s not over public airwaves. They generally don’t do that, because advertisers don’t like it. Capitalism set the rule, not the government.
YouTube has put this idea into overdrive. You can’t make a straightforward, monetized video about the Holocaust anymore, because the language you would have to use would violate YouTube’s written and unwritten rules. Meanwhile, actual fucking Nazis have had little issue using YouTube to spread their bullshit.
Credit card companies have had issues with porn sites in terms of fraud reporting. Not necessarily because of actual fraud–if the site you use is under CCbill, it’s fine–but because some guy’s spouse sees the card transactions, asks what this particular line is for, and he lies and says it’s probably fraud and he’ll call it in. Get more than a few of those, and the processor will always be flagged for review.
They do outright stop some of the more fringe porn. Bree Mills (of Adulttime) has said that they get limited by the credit card industry far more than the government. All the faux-incest videos go out of their way to mention in dialog that everyone is a step family and over 18. You won’t find scat on Kink.com, again because their payment processor won’t allow it.
That’s been the situation for a few decades, but it has gone beyond that in the last few years. They tried it on OnlyFans, and the company maneuvered things to show why that’s an incredibly bad idea, and then the card companies backed down. But they’re trying again elsewhere, and they’re starting to be successful. I severely doubt they had any significant fraud issues on Steam or itch.io, NSFW items or otherwise.
Ultimately, this stuff is a tiny slice of their revenue. If they want to shut it all down on a moral crusade, they will barely notice the hit to their numbers.
On a side note, I’d like the advocate that you should pay for porn if it’s within your means. You’ll often find better quality stuff at sites that properly run their sets with consent. If you like queer porn or unconventional body types, there are a lot of sites for that which just don’t show up on PornHub.
I think someone once told me its about charge backs. People will pay up for hours and hours of content (more for addicts) and then issue a chargeback, or otherwise say their card was stolen (how dare you insinuate I’m into that fetish! Type shit) and because there is no physical product to seize, the company is left with repeatedly eating investigation costs into fraudulent porn addicts.
E: I’m not judging anyone’s porn content, idgaf what you smack or flick to. Merely an observation of people not realizing how much they will charge their CC until statement time, and freak out and then chargeback, making the company susceptible to puritanical influence because “those damn porn users” keep costing the company money.
They make money hand over first for doing practically nothing… They’re perfectly happy with their current situation and the most important thing to them right now is not rocking the boat.
If I had to identify a game that radically changed the public perception of videogames, that would probably be The Legend of Zelda.
It was one of the earliest examples of modern gaming, changing the game design from an “arcade” standard to something that was more suited for home consoles.
Shadow of the Colossus was such a landmark game. The few little changes to the standard video game formula combined together just made for an absolute masterpiece.
Certain parts of the game haven’t aged well, but there’s no denying that Vaas was a wonderfully done villain. He’s a great test case for the “a good villain can’t be absent and mysterious” argument. Most of the memorable villains in gaming have been nearly omnipresent; Vaas, GladOS, Andrew Ryan, Handsome Jack, etc…
All of them are good villains because they are consistently present. They have enough screen time to actually develop into full fledged characters. They’re not just some dark and mysterious overlord, patiently waiting in the bottom of a dungeon for you to come fight them. They’re persistently in your face, interacting with you. Even if they’re not actively hindering your progress, the fact that they have a continued presence means their eventual downfall is that much more satisfying.
I mean, if that’s all you want in a villain, I guess, yeah - Vaas was constantly pestering the player. His dialogue and mannerisms were just awful though. Philosophy 101 freshman tweets level awful. I feel like putting him on the same level as GLaDOS should be criminal.
Hell, if philosophy is the driving factor for a good villain, then GladOS wouldn’t even be on your list. A villain doesn’t need to be morally grey to be a good villain. Plenty of good villains are evil just for the sake of being evil. Even GladOS would fall into that box.
The point was simply that players need an end goal to keep them focused, and having a consistently present villain acts as a moving end goal. The player is driven to chase that goal until the conclusion, because the villain is always just out of reach. If you see a goal waiting on the horizon, the march there feels like a slog. But if the goal is consistently at your fingertips as you chase it, you’ll chase it all the way to the horizon without even realizing.
Hell, if philosophy is the driving factor for a good villain
…I didn’t say it was? That’s just Vaas’ whole schtick - poorly understood philosophical quips that everyone eats up for some reason. Again, if all you need is a bad guy constantly needling you, then I suppose I see why you like Vaas. I just don’t think that’s enough to make him “museum worthy”.
If we wanna get into what I think makes a top tier video game villain, I’d say the critical characteristics would be menace, intelligence, and capability. In short, they need to be an obvious threat that know what they’re doing and are a challenge to best, both mentally and physically. To be honest, I can’t think of all that many villains in video games that I would consider that good. GLaDOS fits for sure. I think the Kingslayer in The Witcher 2 is also quite good. Fumbled ending aside, Mass Effect had a good run of baddies as well - Saren, The Illusive Man/The Collectors, The Reapers. There might be more, but that’s all I can think of atm.
Specifically for older titles, I’d definitely say a game like, if anyone could find the original first version to ever be released of the game and not one of the many rip-offs/clones, Tetris. It’s probably, as far as I’m aware, the most copied/cloned/ripped-off game in existence.
As for newer titles ( 2000 onwards ), I can’t think of any that I think should 100% be in museum. Most of the titles I can think of aren’t good enough, in my opinion, to go into a museum. I’m not an expert on judging what should go into a museum, but I couldn’t think of a single title that would fit in any exhibit.
Edit:
Tetris is already in the video game hall of fame. Should have figured. Definitely deserves its place there. Even so, someone with a floppy of the original or clone of the floppy or digital backup should definitely see if there are any museums willing to take a copy because the original is something I think would be a shame to completely lose.
Looking at it from a general perspective that has less to do with games themselves; I would say huge parts of the Assassins Creed games due to the accuracy they often have had with depicting historic architecture and such. Heck, they used the games model of the Notre Dame in its reconstruction. EDIT: [So I just looked this up and apparently it’s just a nice story that has stuck. But the actual model was never used.]
From a more game-focused perspective, there are some real gems in there too (especially the Ezio-Series). Tho that quality has sadly not kept.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne