My Thoughts on Tokyo Game Show 2014

This post is a little overdue since I had to travel across half the country, start a new job and because of the national holiday I was quite drunk and my time for making blog posts was a little low.  However things have sort of normalised now and I can finally talk about TGS.

Just before I get into it, I wanted to have a lot more pictures but I stupidly left my camera in my buddies apartment, so when I get it back I'll upload all the TGS stuff as a gallery post.  Also I'm not going to talk about the games so much as I'm going to describe my experience with the event, I'll do the games on an individual basis later.

I've never really been to any big organized gaming events like this before so TGS was pretty crazy.  It's hosted in a big hall in Tokyo called Makuhari Messe and despite being fucking massive the crowds are so big that it's hard to navigate ones way round all the booths.  Games are also not the only thing on display here with there being another massive cosplay section going on somewhere a short distance from the main floors but still part of the show.  I got some really cool pictures of a few of the people so look forward to seeing that shit when I get my camera back.

If I was to try and sum up my TGS experience in one word it would be "unprepared".  I sorely underestimated the crowds and as a result it was almost impossible to get a hands on with anything.  There was an indie booth where I managed to play a couple of really interesting games but all the big titles like Bloodborne were not only rammed out but I think you needed advance tickets or something.

I was actually really looking forward to seeing all the stuff for The Evil Within but when we arrived at the booth the wait was over an hour long so we just said "fuck it" and moved on.  There were also a number of things happening with developers going on stage and talking about their games but because of my lack of preparation we missed most of them.  We did get to see the demo Resident Evil Revelations 2 being played and we caught the Silent Hills stuff about half way through but that shit was so hard to hear we just gave up on it in the end.

Despite that, TGS was fucking amazing and I'm probably going to go again next year but next time I'll ready myself appropriately so I don't have to make shitty nothing posts like this in the future.  Like I said, my thoughts on individual titles will come later because if I did that here it would take me all evening to type out so watch this space and the pictures should be uploaded around Saturday.

Why PAX's "Roll for Diversity" is a load of shit

Now hold on there for a second, don't crucify me just yet, this isn't the kind of rant that you think it's going to be.

So a couple of days ago I was made aware of this "Roll for Diversity Hub and Lounge" at PAX.  The idea behind this thing is that members of various communities will be able to go to this booth and make people aware of various issues in the game industry and stuff like that.  Developers can go down to this thing and talk with these people, listen to their concerns and all that kind of good stuff, it sounds great right?  Well sure, it sounds great on the surface, but just hold the phone a second.

The idea for this PAX booth was I'm sure, created with all best intentions in mind but really it's a load of shit, just think about it for a second.  Women, members of the LGBT community, people of colour and all the other groups that were put on that list, they weren't banned from PAX before and I'm sure no one said anything when they inevitably showed up at PAX, right?  Well now they've been cordoned off into a little corner of the convention and are probably going to end up mostly ignored, not because people don't like them, but because people who attend PAX want to hear about VIDEO GAMES! not social issues.

There is no need for this booth to exist in this form.  If these people have problems, then the developers do panels and stuff, it can be brought up there, among everyone else and not segregated to it's own trivial little corner of the convention.  But that's the big problem with it really, it's trivialising the whole thing.

I can't be bothered to go find the video, but there is a clip of Morgan Freeman talking about Black History Month.  He says in this video, that he doesn't want a Black History Month, because he doesn't want his history to be boiled down to one month of the year, and it's essentially the same thing here.  These groups have been reduced to a single booth at PAX just so that they (they being PAX by the way) can seem more progressive, and it's a bit sickening in a way.

You want to hear about a REAL progressive and friendly community of people?  The speed running community, that's who!  With my experience dealing with speed runs and speed running, they don't give a flying fuck if you're a man or woman, black or white, gay or straight, able bodied or not or whatever, if you just enjoy playing games really fuckin' fast, then you are MORE than welcome to join the community and they'll help you in whatever endeavour you take on.

THAT is how you deal with this issue, you be inclusive not by waving around a booth sign going "LOOK AT HOW PROGRESSIVE WE ARE" but by just being that way in the first place.  The issues that do exist within the industry DO need to be talked about but almost 100% of people doing it right now are doing it wrong.   Sexy women in games aren't oppressing you and a lack of gay characters aren't going to ruin your life, they don't matter.  What you want to be talking about is equality in the work place, availability of education to different groups of people, that kind of thing.

That's why people get upset when things like Dragons Crown come up, because those issues don't fucking matter.  Let us enjoy the Amazon's huge ass, go and fight a battle that ACTUALLY matters and will actually better the industry in some way.

So to sum up the whole thing; Fuck you PAX, your booth is garbage