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Kolanaki, do games w Nexus Mods Fine With Bigots Leaving Over Removed Starfield ‘Pronoun’ Mod
!deleted6508 avatar

They finally give you something that controls how people refer to you in their games, and dipshits wanna remove it? This is as close as you’re going to get to having characters refer to you as a choice you’ve taken other than Codsworth and Vasco having like 1000 generic names recorded to use.

Whatisawaffle, (edited )

I mean, I sorta get it. Identity politics are political and often divisive, and some people don't want it in their escapism.
It's not a perfect analogy, but if a role-playing game had a mandatory character-selection choice to choose if my character was pro-choice or pro-life, I could see myself mildly resenting it.

darq, (edited )
@darq@kbin.social avatar

Not really a good example. A more apt example is if these people were getting angry that the character creator allowed a player to create a woman, or a person of colour. The game offering you a choice of pronouns is not asking you for a political opinion, it's literally just an option to create a type of character that these people don't think should exist.

And that's the crux of it, they aren't angry about pronouns, they're angry about trans and non-binary people becoming normalised.

Whatisawaffle, (edited )

I dunno, being a man, woman, or black person isn't political. Trans, non-binary, etc is, and normalizing it is political, regardless of if it's right or wrong. I think that you're correct and that it seems like something done as ammunition in the Culture War; normalizing identity politics rather than a design decision done out of a necessity to improve the quality of the game apart from that.

My earlier analogy was about having a pro-life/pro-choice option forced on you, but I guess to make it more accurate it would be more like the game just telling you that you're pro-life as part of your character settings? Because it's not just putting the politics in the game, it's taking a strong side. Again, rightly or wrongly, I can see why some people would resent that in their escapism.

AngrilyEatingMuffins,

Fuck off forever

darq,
@darq@kbin.social avatar

I dunno, being a man, woman, or black person isn't political.

I agree, they should not be, but people still try and make them political.

Trans, non-binary, etc is

No. Absolutely not. Trans people and non-binary people are types of people who exist. Exactly the same as men, women, people of colour, and so forth. They are no more or less political than those other types of people. People still make them political, but that's exactly the same thing as with other groups.

My earlier analogy was about having a pro-life/pro-choice option forced on you, but I guess to make it more accurate it would be more like the game just telling you that you're pro-life as part of your character settings? Because it's not just putting the politics in the game, it's taking a strong side. Again, rightly or wrongly, I can see why some people would reset that in their escapism.

You are mistaken. There is no political opinion here. None is being asked for, and none is being assigned. The character creator having additional options is just allowing players to make trans or non-binary characters. This isn't asking you for a political opinion, it's simply adding options to create more types of characters.

Which is why the bigots are upset. Because they don't think those types of characters should be allowed to be made.

Whatisawaffle,

Whether or not it should be, isn't LGBT issues political/controversial?

darq,
@darq@kbin.social avatar

As are women and people of colour, and their inclusion in media. These are all demographics of people. There is no difference.

Whatisawaffle,

There's no difference between a movie casting a woman/black man as the main character, compared to casting a trans person?

darq,
@darq@kbin.social avatar

No, there is no difference.

Your previous comments implied that there was a difference in type between the inclusion of women or people of colour, and the inclusion of trans of non-binary people.

There is a difference in magnitude of the controversy. But not a difference in type. Something can be more or less controversial, but it's still the same type of controversy.

Whatisawaffle, (edited )

Yeah, it seems we agree. My stance was only ever that I can understand why some people would've wanted to remove political controversy from their escapism if it made them uncomfortable and added nothing to the gameplay itself.

CileTheSane,
@CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

Whether or not it should be, isn’t LGBT issues political/controversial?

Simply acknowledging LGBT exist

  1. isn’t political
  2. helps make it less political
nadir, (edited )

Of course it’s political. Politics aren’t just about things where there can be legitimate disagreement.

Acknowledging climate change is political. So is everything from basic public transport, better healthcare to if sexism and racism are even a thing.

It shouldn’t be. We also shouldn’t have a resurgence of actual fascists. But we do and it is.

SkyezOpen,

Acknowledging climate change is political

Acknowledging reality is political? I mean I guess I knew that already, but seeing it put plainly into words is silly.

Shit, I’ll see if I can pose as a right wing grifter and see if I can convince them that wearing matching socks is part of the liberal agenda.

CileTheSane,
@CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

If everything is political then it’s impossible to make a game that isn’t political. This is no more valid than someone complaining that including an option for skin tone is political.

SkyezOpen,

Trans people: Exist

Brainlets: “Is this politics??”

Wirlocke,

I guess my existence is “political” then, I guess I can’t exist in a space without having something “forced” on people.

We were male/female, now were women/men/other, that’s it. It’s a personal matter that we go through and we want to simply exist. That’s only “political” when your dealing with people who actively want to harm our rights. I cannot stress enough that these people shouldn’t be treated with respect as if they’re not trying to destroy people for a simple personal choice.

DarkThoughts, (edited )

Aside from you being transphobic, you should realize that the people complaining about pronouns are also the people who complain about the "replaced white people" and "female leaders" in the game. So I guess black people and women are also political, by your logic?

RiikkaTheIcePrincess,
@RiikkaTheIcePrincess@kbin.social avatar

being a man, woman, or black person isn't political

Being a woman isn't political... until I do it? Kinda seems like there's no actually valid (sound? I forget the terminology) argument for how our existence is a problem, nor for how supporting or acknowledging our existence is a problem.

I don't actually quite understand what you're on about but it kinda seems like you're arguing that allowing people to play characters that don't match your preferences exactly is some kind of forced political thing and that's kinda horsecrap, y'know?

Anyway I'm gonna go exist at that bigot up there now. Byeee ö/

snooggums, (edited )
@snooggums@kbin.social avatar

I dunno, being a man, woman, or black person isn't political. Trans, non-binary, etc is, and normalizing it is political, regardless of if it's right or wrong.

Women and black people getting the right to vote and be treated equally has always been "political" you fucking jackass.

GentlemanLoser,

The best bigots are the ones that tell on themselves, dontcha think?

Kolanaki, (edited )
!deleted6508 avatar

I wouldn’t. I mean, I hate Nazis but I don’t mind a game where I can choose to play as one (so long as the context makes sense like it’s a multiplayer WW2 game or Diso Elysium). It’s a fuckin’ choice. If you don’t like one of the options: Choose a different one.

DarkThoughts,

Terrible analogy. It's just turning the binary male / female into non binary body types & pronouns to be more inclusive for those who fall outside the norm on the spectrum of things.

SkyezOpen,

Does it even affect dialogue? The PC is hardly ever referred to with pronouns, actually I can’t remember a single line.

Zehzin,
@Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

I believe it changes enemy barks like “He/She/They shot him!” and maybe a few dialogue lines?

kamiheku,

Heh, I like how the enemies are considerate enough to figure out and use the correct pronouns mid-battle

Hey, you! What are your pronouns? … Thanks, now eat lead!

Zehzin,
@Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

I might be a paid killer, but I’ll be damned if I’ll misgender someone. Professionals have standards.

Kolanaki, (edited )
!deleted6508 avatar

They definitely use your pronouns a lot. It’s all they refer to you as, aside from cute nicknames like “Dusty,” or “rook” or “renegade.” Probably doesn’t stand out if you chose your normal pronouns, since they’d just be say he/him or she/her or they/them.

Default_Defect,
@Default_Defect@midwest.social avatar

A security officer referred to me as sir in New Atlantis.

mindbleach,

We can’t be far from text-to-speech tweaking a ton of voice acting. Might have to pronounce or IPA your custom name, to get an AI voice to nail it… but maybe it’s better-off being wrong. There’s disarming verisimilitude in schmaltzy NPCs confidently fumbling your character’s name. Or if some characters heard it, but haven’t seen it, and you catch some mutter ‘so that’s how it’s spelled.’

Whether that name is Paarthurnax, Heloise, or Ng.

Kolanaki,
!deleted6508 avatar

I am just picturing the orc noble who uses words incorrectly/mispronounces shit. Forgot what those are called, but they have similar characters in most of their games. In Starfield, they even called him “Dumbrosky.” Dumb Bro ski.

mindbleach,

Malapropisms.

Halosheep,

As someone with a generic name, fuck you!

Default_Defect, do gaming w Starfield’s Paid Mods Ignite A Review Bombing On Steam
@Default_Defect@midwest.social avatar

The best part is that the free mods will end up being better anyway.

rubikcuber, do games w Star Wars Outlaws Requires The Internet To Install It
@rubikcuber@feddit.uk avatar

The whole Internet?

Graphy,

Mom said it’s my turn to install Star Wars!

JoeKrogan, (edited ) do gaming w Ubisoft Wants You To Be Comfortable Not Owning Your Games
@JoeKrogan@lemmy.world avatar

Well I’m comfortable not buying any of theirs. They’re in my steam ignore list along with EA 🖕🖕

Ubisoft disable multiplayer in games like splinter cell and then have the nerve to charge you 20 ducats for a 10 year old game with only half the gameplay requiring a shitty launcher and with glaring bugs that they just didn’t bother to address.

As for the future. There is still emulation. So stock up 😉

Filthmontane, do games w GTA 6 is likely to skip PC again and only launching on current gen consoles

PC is always current gen. When will they learn?

MaxVoltage,
@MaxVoltage@lemmy.world avatar

they did a long time ago the game will be online only without a story

III,

PS is always “millions of iterations of current, next, last, the previous, the one before that and the one after that” gen. I believe they have learned.

Etterra, do gaming w Starfield’s Paid Mods Ignite A Review Bombing On Steam

It’s like Todd is an infant without object permanence.

redcalcium, do games w Will Smith Zombie Game No One Has Heard Of Bombs

wtf I never heard of this game before. How come a game that cost ~$140 million had virtually no marketing except for Will Smith posting it on his youtube channel?

Crashumbc,

Rich People’s ego. He thinks his “name” is enough that he doesn’t have to market.

reflectedodds,

For real, I might get it to try it out. I’m learning about it from this post.

Joelk111,

I wouldn’t…

reflectedodds,

Is it that bad?

drengbarazi,
@drengbarazi@lemmy.world avatar

Just… An AAAAA game.

SeabassDan,

Calm down, Will.

tocopherol,
@tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

“We can save millions in advertising, just get your friend Will to post about it, it will be great.”

ShepherdPie,

I think we’re seeing the marketing right now.

Furbag,

95% of the budget went to paying Will Smith.

Blackmist,

The post-apocalyptic zombie shooter allegedly had more than 300 developers on it and a budget of nearly 1 billion yuan (around $140 million)

The word “allegedly” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. There is no way on this Earth that a mess like that cost $140 million to develop, unless somebody pocketed $130m of that and then just outsourced the rest to a tinpot Z tier studio.

rickyrigatoni,

Will and Jada are scientologists so that’s exactly what happened.

Blackmist,

He wishes he got that from it, and looks like he was barely involved other than a quick poorly made advert and use of his face. It’s not even his voice in game.

The whole thing looks like it was thrown together in Unity by a dozen people from mostly stock assets. If that figure is anywhere near accurate then Tencent got scammed.

local_taxi_fix, do games w Skull And Bones Open Beta Review: It’s Meh, Matey

I played the beta for 20 minutes and was so disappointed I immediately launched sea of thieves to recover.

It just felt like a cash grab done as cheaply as possible.

DebatableRaccoon, (edited ) do gaming w Square Enix Wants To Make Fewer Games – New CEO Takashi Kiryu wants to focus on making AAA and indie titles and marketing those titles better

Now that is a business strategy. Just make them ownable and not all looter shooters and people will probably buy them

Edit: typing whoopsie

Draedron, do gaming w Final Fantasy XVI Suffers From Its Superficial Handling Of Slavery

Unlike OP I have played the game and have to say I diaagree completely with the article. You see the deeper implications of the slavery wherever you go. Sure the violence is the biggest factor but so many side quests show the emotional toll the slavery has on the people. Even just walking in those areas is gut wrenching. I dont know how a final fantasy could portray it better. It is hard to handle already.

stopthatgirl7,
!deleted7120 avatar

Unlike OP

…why are you bringing me into this?

dreadgoat,
@dreadgoat@kbin.social avatar

You post a lot. I see your name come up non-stop. That is great! It is really appreciated. I'm certainly not doing that work.

You also post quite a bit of inflammatory clickbait without having any personal knowledge to back it up. That's a bit confounding. At the bare minimum, you need to be prepared to accept criticism for that.

I can personally say this is the second time you've posted a FF16 ragebait article and gotten offended when prodded about the fact that you yourself haven't even played it. Why are you spreading information that you don't even have the ability to evaluate?

stopthatgirl7,
!deleted7120 avatar

I post things I think people can talk about, even if I can’t actively take part in it. That’s it.

And if you don’t like what I post, you are more than welcome to block me - I actively encourage people blocking folks they don’t like. Please, feel free.

dreadgoat,
@dreadgoat@kbin.social avatar

I've already said that I appreciate your efforts. I'm not going to block you, your work is valuable. I'm just explaining that you ARE going to be criticized for what you choose to post, and you shouldn't act surprised. If you really don't care about whether or not the stories you are propagating have merit, then just ignore anyone who pushes you on it. Consider attacks on "OP" to be the original author of the article, not you.

Or, be more selective about what you post, if the approval matters to you. Consider it constructive feedback.

stopthatgirl7,
!deleted7120 avatar

Please block me. I’d block you (actually, I will anyway), but blocking on kbin is busted and means you would still see and be able to comment on my posts. Hopefully they’ll fix that.

moral_imperative,

deleted_by_moderator

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  • skozzii, do games w Xbox Console Sales Are Tanking

    I’m never gonna buy another console except steamdeck.

    oatscoop,

    I’m with you on that. What makes the Steam Deck so appealing is it’s a handheld PC.

    sebinspace,

    Xenia is rapidly developing its Linux support aswell, lfg

    Melatonin, (edited ) do games w Will Smith Zombie Game No One Has Heard Of Bombs

    Will Smith is a “past” celebrity, relying on his name, infamy, and horning in on already proven commodities.

    Bad Boys for Life, Aladdin, Suicide Squad, (oh, and “King Richard” lol, we’ve all seen that!)

    Those are his “popular” movies since 2009. Put a fork in him. He’s done. He should enter politics.

    Dark_Arc,
    @Dark_Arc@lemmy.world avatar

    He should enter politics.

    Please don’t do this to us.

    HoustonHenry,

    Maybe he can go slap putin (hckkkk sppt)

    CaptKoala,

    Get my wife’s name out your Kremlin!

    HawlSera,

    To be fair Suicide Squad is something he did and passed up Independence Day 2 for believing if he was in one of these “Super Hero Movies that are doing so well” it would revive his career

    And he likely would have been right… If he went with Marvel instead of the DCEU

    ours,

    Dodging a bullet on ID2 just to land on Suicide Squad. Ouch.

    HawlSera,

    Yeah I think his Agent fucked up market research

    DingoBilly,

    Aladdin was pretty good though.

    Haven’t seen the rest.

    ours,

    Didn’t he try the celebrity YouTube route for a hot minute?

    HopingForBetter,

    Yaaaa!

    ours,

    That is hawt!

    Zoidsberg, do gaming w GTA 6 Devs Slam Rockstar Games For Return-To-Office Mandate
    @Zoidsberg@lemmy.ca avatar

    SLAM

    chuckleslord,

    I’m so tired of that word

    OneRedFox, do gaming w The State Of The Nintendo Switch In 2023
    @OneRedFox@beehaw.org avatar

    Clearly the wizards at Nintendo know something about optimizing games for the Switch that others don’t.

    Could someone share this information with GameFreak? The beats shouldn’t drop as hard as the FPS.

    callouscomic, do gaming w Capcom President Says ‘Game Prices Are Too Low’

    I say big budget games are too large in scope. Too much going on, too ambitious, too much emphasis on certain aspects that I feel developers value more than consumers. Not every game needs to be the biggest baddest game of the year blah blah blah.

    saigot,

    For real, I think it’s rather telling that there are people who exclusively play some triple a games for the mini games.

    It’s also interesting seeing indie take larger and larger chunks from the triple a market. Remember when harvest moon and simcity were big corporate endeavors, now it’s indie titles like city skylines and stardew Valley.

    I would like to see some smaller projects from triple a studios targeting genres other than open world action-rpg.

    Sina,

    studios targeting genres other than open world action-rpg.

    With the corporate culture that’s developed in the industry I don’t think anyone should want that. Indie has the small project space covered & they make far better games than EA or Activision ever could in those genres. Corporate sellouts cannot beat passion, but they can make games so large in scope that small studios just cannot compete with that.

    GoodEye8,

    Yeah. Every time someone comes up with “games are too cheap” I always point to the fact that the vast majority of AAA games have insane amount of bloat. If AAA devs were struggling to make a profit then a clear way to cut costs would be to streamline the product. If leveling is not vital, cut it. If randomized loot is not necessary, cut it. If horse balls shrinking/expanding with the weather is not necessary, cut it.

    There are always ways to cut corners in a AAA games and if the cost was an issue they’d do it. But the fact that they don’t shows how little the actually struggle. So far Bethesda is the only company that is clearly cutting the corners of their AAA products.

    Sina, (edited )

    So far Bethesda is the only company that is clearly cutting the corners of their AAA products.

    Starfield is the sloppiest Bethasda game ever, cutting corners to save cost is not how I would describe its development at all.

    I agree with what you are saying though. Spending 40% of the budget on voice acting and cinematographic dialog is extremely wasteful. As long as the gameplay is good and graphics are pretty gamers will like the product.

    jivemasta,

    Is it really the sloppiest though?

    I’d say its about on par with their past games. It’s clearly their game engine, modified to do space stuff.

    If you come at it with the mindset that not every game has to get bigger and more expansive and have more and more realism/mechanics that don’t serve the core gameplay, it achieves it’s goal.

    Not saying its game of the year material or anything, but if I was doing an employee review, I’d give it a meets expectations grade.

    ursakhiin,

    Starfield is by far their cleanest release. It’s honestly the first game I have played from them that hasn’t crashed in 100+ hours.

    There are aspects I wish had received a bit more attention, sure. But to date, Skyrim and Fallout 4 both have stability mods that are basically requirements to reduce crashing.

    And I’m saying this as somebody with near 2k hours in Skyrim. So I definitely enjoy that game.

    Sina,

    I played Morrowind, Oblivion & Skyrim at release. Compared to Starfield they were far more polished to me. Yes crashes & the odd broken quest happened, but overall they were playable, people without an internet connection could buy the games in a shop & then finish them. Also Oblivion had the best graphics for an open world rpg when it came out, while also running pretty well on the shit tier GPUs of the time. In my mind, Starfield is not pretty on ultra, runs like shit on decent hardware even at relatively low settings and the list of broken things is endless.

    ursakhiin,

    I’m honestly not experiencing the same. I’m running on ultra with an RTX 3080 and rarely even see a stutter and the only consistent bug I see is just comical. When I sprint for a bit and enter a door, my companion will be sprinting into a wall for a bit.

    I actually do find Starfield to be a pretty game, as well. They have learned better lighting strategies from previous games and the trees look much much better. I wish the facial and running animations were better, but that’s not so bad as to be too skewer the game.

    As far as Oblivion having the best graphics of it’s time, sure. But 2006 basically every game that was going for good graphics achieved the best at release. That was a pivotal period for graphics in games.

    Moonguide,

    Honestly, I’d rather have stellar voice acting and okay graphics (not good, just not bad enough to turn it off after it makes me dizzy) than the other way around. Graphics lose their appeal after a short while in-game.

    Sina,

    Imagine if people could buy a background music only -subtitle dialog- edition of Baldur’s Gate 3 for €40. How would the sale distribution go? I think this is a rather interesting thought experiment, I would personally opt to buy the cheaper version for sure, even though I do know the voice acting in BG3 is a landmark in gaming.

    Evergreen5970,

    I would definitely buy that. I usually keep my game volumes on low and click through the dialogue because I already read the subtitle, why wait around to finish having the line delivered verbally? (Interestingly enough I’ve never ever thought “hurry up, speak faster” in an in real life conversation, this impatience only exists in video games.) Because of the value of voice acting, but for me personally voice acting is just not a priority.

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