It feels weird to be watching this conference in such high quality. I had forgotten just how many memes this conference spawned, but I do miss that awkwardness a lot of the mid-2000s E3 presentations had. They weren't just a guy in a suit talking about sales figures anymore, but they were still a long way from the more polished showcases we have today.
I really hope that Austin will make his voice heard a bit more even after ShillUp returns from his break. This seems like a pretty well reasoned review.
As a pansexual man, I like that games do this. But what I actually want to see from a game at some point is characters whose diversity includes their sexuality – not just characters that mirror my own. (For simplicity’s sake I’m lumping romantic and sexual attraction together here, though I know they are different.)
I want a male character to turn down my advances because he’s straight, or a female character to do the same because she’s just not in to guys. Or the hot pink-haired enby punk to turn down everyone because they’re ace/aro.
But I also want scenes where a same-sex character awkwardly confesses their feelings with the protagonist, and players who are straight end up in the situation of having to let them down. (Or, perhaps, decide that it’s okay if your character’s preferences don’t mirror your own.) And maybe those players discover the character they’ve been crushing on all game isn’t interested in them – but with mature options for handling that rejection.
In a world where people are always talking about the patriarchy and toxic masculinity, why aren’t we presenting the idea that its okay for a straight man to continue to be good friends with a woman who loves other women without the “maybe I can change her mind” mindset?
We really do need more romance in games not being presented as a mean to get a prize. Maybe some randomness could be applied and the same actions would not always result in the desired outcomes.
It was curious when I realized, not many years ago, that people found strange to play a character with a different gender. Imagining a different sexuality is probably the same. In both cases, games don’t go deep in making you feel like the other, which is kinda sad.
Imagining a different sexuality is probably the same.
There are completionists out there who want to get every bit of possible story or every affordable achievement possible out of a game.
If written well (and that in itself is a challenge), I can see a game encouraging people to do a second playthrough as a different gender or sexuality just to unlock more of character backstories or achievements or whatnot. If that means some of them better understand what life is like for people of different genders or sexualities or learn something about themselves, that can only be a good thing.
It’d be a monumental task to develop such a game though. You’d need a writing team that fully understands all of this and a large enough cast where there are enough options for everyone. You can’t just have one token character of each representation – there still needs to be meaningful choices and characters that are deep enough where you can get invested in their story.
Having romanceable characters be “playersexual” drastically reduces the required size of the cast and all of the development benefits that come along with that. But by doing so, you aren’t really representing diversity – you’re just making character identities mirror whatever the player wants them to be. This appeases LGBTQ+ players who want to be able to romance whomever they are attracted to but doesn’t help with visibility to or acceptance from cis/het people.
Oh man, I played so much of this game growing up. Yeah, a lot of the flak it gets for repetitive gameplay, poor controls, and edginess is somewhat justified. At the same time, I feel like this was perfectly aimed at mid-2000s kids who wanted a more "mature" and "adult" Sonic game without really understanding what that meant.
I unironically love that game. It was equal parts bold and stupid. Where else you can find a game about a cartoon mascot character who can side with a alien-demon invasion to try to kill the president and the hero protagonist? SEGA can be judged for many things but they weren't afraid to dare.
I also really like how they did multiple endings. I know ultimately there is a single canon one but it's still interesting to see all the others.
Compared to Sonic Heroes which was released during the same generation, I like this game much more.
Playing the first mission a bunch of times was a bit of a chore but I did like the multiple endings and branching story. I’ve played around half of the endings many years ago. The “I’m an Android now, I guess?” ending is my favourite.
Thank you for the transcript! I hate watching videos when I can read their content faster, and I will usually not bother to go to youtubetranscript.com.
OP mentioned it first. I’m just thanking them for giving me that so I don’t have to do any work to search it out myself. I’m not paid to do any advertising for this website.
This is probably my first accusation of being an advertiser. I’ve seen other people get accused of advertising or being shills before and saw that it was pretty difficult for the person to convince others they were just a regular human person without any motives. I’d prefer if you thought I was a normal human, considering I bothered to defend myself, but feel free to think I’m an advertiser I guess?
Also, as a bi person, this is something I always appreciated about video games. I remember telling my friends about it in highschool and they didn’t believe me, it was like they didn’t even notice. And we were all pretty hardcore gamers.
youtube.com
Aktywne