The Journalist Skill Debate Again

Cuphead is an upcoming run and gun game coming out soon that I'm fucking excited for.  It looks like a cartoon from yesteryear and mixes that with challenging game play similar to things like Contra.  It looks awesome and I can't wait to get my hands on it.

However controversy has once again reared its ugly head however this time it has nothing to do with the game itself and more to do with the people playing it.  If you remember when DOOM was coming out and a dude called Arthur Gies played it and sucked massive cocks at it?  Well it's that AGAIN.  People are pissed off (rightly so) that so called industry professionals can't handle a fucking tutorial level and of course gaming press is shooting back by claiming people are over reacting.

I would recommend at this point to go look up the video, it's easy to find but I'm not linking it here because I don't want to give any of the idiots at Venture Beat views on their shit, embarrassing video.

Let me start by saying that I have ZERO respect for games journalism.  It seems to be entirely populated by fucking morons who don't know anything about games and are more interested in writing clickbait or sucking corporate cock rather than ACTUALLY helping consumers in any meaningful way.  I'm not the only one who holds this view either, go find any thread about the state of video game journalism on social media and you'll see a lot of people repeating that sentiment.

So big question of the day, do video game journalists have to be good at video games?

The quick answer is yes, of course they fucking do.  The job of a reviewer or someone reporting on industry goings on is to assist the consumer.  Therefore, you MUST know what the fuck your on about or your failing at the most basic facet of your job.  No one is asking journalists to be pro gamers winning The International every year or speedrunners with 5 or 6 world records under their belt but we ask that you at least know how to finish the tutorial of any game that you might come across. 

Imagine if you were trying to buy a car so you look up reviews of various vehicles.  Imagine then you find out that the person reviewing the cars CAN'T FUCKING DRIVE.  This is what the Cuphead/DOOM debate is basically all about. 

If you are an individual and you make a YouTube video or write a thing for a personal site, it's OK to suck at games or suck at just that one game.  For example I don't know shit about sports games  so if I gave a scathing awful review or did a terrible gameplay video of the new Fifa and then called it shit, it's clear that it's just one tossers opinion on the sea of piss that is the internet.  HOWEVER, if I was writing for a PROFESSIONAL news website in a PROFESSIONAL capacity and then couldn't even finish the most basic stage of a game with like, 2 button controls, of course people are going to question my ability to do the job.  In the case of Cuphead it brings into question everything that Dean Takahashi has EVER said because clearly the man lacks the basic motor function to hold a controller properly.

Which leads me to my other point about this.  Arthur Gies and Dean Takahashi didn't just show "bad" performances.  People can have an off day or just be not particularly geared towards a certain genre, that's fine.  These performances were INCOMPETENT.  The kind of game play I'd expect from a child who has never touched a game before.  No word of a lie, I could give my mother a copy of Cuphead and within 26 minutes she would finish the tutorial level.  Even my wife, who doesn't game and who has put in some FANTASTICALLY embarrassing attempts at certain titles would probably finish the fucking TUTORIAL of Cuphead in 26 minutes. 

You couple this with all the problems that games journalism has had over the years and now we're at a point where people have a problem trusting these websites.  One stupid prick writing for some stupid website Game Revolution said "If one plumber fucks up your taps, do you never hire another plumber?"  Which is a fair point in a way but he's missing the bigger picture and generally being an apologetic little bitch.  If a plumber fucked up my taps, I'd hire a different plumber FROM A DIFFERENT COMPANY.  So we now know that Venture Beat can't be trusted to pick up a control pad without probably choking on it, where am I going to go?  Gamespot? IGN? Kotaku?  Well these websites are also full of complete bullshit.  People are mad because, if we're using the plumber analogy, that ALL the plumbing companies in the towns are staffed ENTIRELY by inept wankers.

You want game news?  You want game reviews?  There are plenty of enthusiastic individuals on sites like YouTube/Twitch or various blogs and personal websites that you can get your info from?  This is ESPECIALLY important if you are into a niche series or niche genre.  If you're into dungeon crawling who are you going to trust?  Some cunt on IGN who played Grimrock once for 20 minutes and gave it an 8/10 or someone who has been playing games in that genre for fucking YEARS. 

Sort your shit games journalism.  Maybe if you hired some actual passionate people who aren't borderline brain dead, people wouldn't hate you.  Stick to writing about "social issues" for easy clicks and leave the games, to the gamers.

Games Media Is and Always Has Been Trash

Every medium needs its critics.  If it wasn't for people criticizing the works of others then things would never get better.  Content creators wouldn't have much of an idea of what people like and what people don't and we'd be a lot worse off for it.  That said, mainstream games media is complete trash and has been complete trash for a fairly significant amount of time.

I've ranted about how shitty certain sites are in the past such as PC Gamer and Kotaku but just generally speaking, mainstream games media is fucking dreadful and it always has been.  Even before I was using the internet as my main source of information, back in the day when I had a subscription to Edge Magazine, I thought games media was a fucking waste of goddamn time.

It's not ENTIRELY useless as we need someone to come along and report the facts so there is some merit.  When a company announces a game or when something happens in the industry it's good to have a publication on hand to report that shit so we know what's going on with this hobby that we all hold so dear.  However, reviews of individual games and opinion pieces are a complete waste of fucking space and I don't know why anyone bothers reading them.

There is some evidence to point out that a fair number of reviews, especially for big name titles with a lot of money pumped into their development are paid for by publishers but putting that aside reviews are still a waste of time.  A review is essentially the opinion of the person writing it and quite frankly the people who currently write for games media just aren't worth listening to.  All too often I've read stuff written by some prick who claims to have expertise in the field of games but in reality knows very little.  Too many fucking morons claiming to be "life long gamers" who are actually just part time bloggers writing about a game they played for half an hour one time.

Not only that but games review sites INSIST on using fucking numbers at the end of their reviews which pisses me off to no end.  How can you boil down a complex opinion on something like a game to something as simple as a fucking number out of 10.  The numbers have lost all meaning nowadays anyway with 10/10 meaning "really fucking good" rather than what it's SUPPOSED to mean; "perfect".  It annoys me with films as well how everything is X/5.  Fuck off with that, just write about the movie/game and leave the fucking numbers out of it.  If you base your decision to purchase a game based on it's score out of 10 on IGN then you are a fucking idiot that needs a slap in the face.

Also in recent months (maybe years) there's too many fucking opinion pieces written by people who know nothing of games and have skins thinner than a wet paper bag.  All too often I hear about "this game is sexist" or "this game causes violence" written by fucking idiots who know nothing about games in general OR THE GAME THEY ARE FUCKING CRITIQUING

What I want from the games media is cold, hard facts.  X developer is working on Y game.  A event has happened to company Z.  I don't give a fuck that you think the latest AAA game is "8.8/10" or whatever, or you think that a certain title is sexist or overly violent because your opinion is absolutely trash and you should keep it to yourself.  They all parrot the same shit anyway.

You could argue that I should keep my opinion about the gaming press to myself but I'm a nobody blogger who isn't be paid to do this shit.  The fact that you are receiving a salary to write shit opinions about video games is disgusting and in an age where YouTube/Twitch and enthusiast blogs exist, you money grubbing idiots aren't needed.  Fuck off.

Death of a Gamer?

What the fuck is going on man?  Why is it just so fucking HARD to enjoy games anymore?  The world has gone fucking topsey turvey. 

A few days ago I posted a story about the whole Zoe Quinn situation and how I didn't give a fuck about it because we all knew just how corrupt the whole gaming "journalism" situation was.  Then some new Anita Sarkeesian video comes out with all its cherry picked retarded arguments made by a woman who knows absolutely diddly dick about video games and between the Zoe situation and that video getting released what can only be described as an all out war has fucking started.

I got to the point where I just accepted that all these agenda pushing "social justice warriors" or SJWs for short were completely off the fucking rails.  None of them knew anything about games and none of them had anything constructive to say.  If you tried to argue with them they throw personal insults and say all sorts of nasty shit to you and they never want a real discussion.

People who play games were never mad at Zoe for cheating on her boyfriend and they were never mad at Anita for making feminist videos.  They were mad because Zoe revealed the corrupt nature of games journalism and Anita showed just how totally bullshit their whole agenda really is.  Problems arise when you have your typical internet twats sending threats and whatnot and just fueling the fire.  For the most part however, gamers were willing to talk about these issues and their willingness for debate was met with hostility and insults.

Today, 5 articles were written by a bunch of so called "journalists" claiming that in the light of recent events we are witnessing the death of the "gamer" identity.  What a bunch of fucking bullshit.  I refuse to link those articles but you can go and look them up but be prepared for some of the most mind numbingly retarded fucking diarrhoea that you have ever read in your life.

When you are writing worse articles than ME! you need to rethink your life.

These articles, written by so called "professionals" are just flat out insulting people who enjoy games.  Lumping them all in the same boat and calling them "toxic" to the industry.  Claiming that anyone who doesn't agree with their immensely fucked up world view on what equates to sexism or bigotry must therefore be a horrible person.  We have all been described as terrorists by these people, just because we try to point out their blatant bullshit in the comments sections of news websites and YouTube videos.

It's fucking disgusting

I don't want to hear it anymore.  I already did a long fucking article on why your race/sexuality DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER when it comes to games but we all know that it's not really about games is it?  It's about making clickbait articles to generate ad revenue for your shitty websites and for people like Anita it's about manufacturing outrage at something that doesn't fucking exist to fill her damn pockets.

I can't fucking MOVE anywhere on the goddamn internet anymore without hearing about this shit and I'm fucking sick of it.  Games are turning to shit and now I can't even fucking ignore it because it doesn't matter where I turn, some cocknugget is claiming how something in a game offends him and it should be censored or pulled or some level of stupid garbage bullshit.  I can't go a single fucking day without someone bringing up "feminism" like women in the industry is even a fucking issue.  Like women in the industry are totally oppressed and it's impossible for them to do anything which is total bullshit.  Like women in the industry get threats way worse than those of men but that's also complete bullshit and anyone willing to look at facts and not just cherry pick tweets from nobodies can realise in about 20 fucking GODDAMN SECONDS.

Gaming and the identity of the "gamer" isn't dead but people have finally had it up to here with all the bullshit and people aren't standing for it anymore!  I won't fucking stand for it anymore!  But I'm not going to join this so called "war" against social justice types, I'm just going to keep enjoying games and ignoring journalists and writing about things that I enjoy.

I get upset about this because I'm passionate about this hobby I have held since the age of 4.  I am not a misogynist, I am not toxic and I am absolutely not a fucking terrorist just because I had fun playing Project Diva F2nd this morning.

Get out of my goddamn hobby and stop pushing your fucking -isms where they don't belong.

Fuck.  

Terrible Journalism Strikes Again

How long has this been a thing!? I only found out about it a few days ago and you know after that big gushy post I made about Hotline Miami I'm hyped as hell for this.

So, what does my hype for Hotline Miami 2 have to do with terrible video games journalism?  Well have a read of this article on PC gamer.

http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/hotline-miami-2-wrong-number/

The title reads "Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number hands-on" so you would expect this author, one Cara Ellison, to talk about the game right?  Well wrong, she spends very little time talking about the game and the majority of her post talking about her fucking feelings.

Her issue with the game is that the end of the tutorial features some kind of implied rape scene where the player character has his wicked way with a women and how she feels "betrayed" by its inclusion.  You may be thinking at this point that I'm going to go on another "games being sexist" rant, but I'm not, but before I get into the main point I have let me just point something out about Hotline Miami.

This was a screen shot I took last night while I was going through the levels getting puzzle pieces and A+ ranks.  If you look just in front of the open door, there is a dead male who has had his genitals blown off.  This, if you ask me is just as "bad" as that implied rape scene because you can infer from this situation that he was tortured by having his genitals mutilated before eventually being put out of his misery and shot in the head.  Sounds awful right?

Well on the other hand you could just realise that you are playing a game that is making you perform horrible acts against other human beings for points while showing you other horrible acts to bolster the games atmosphere and maybe even make some kind of statement into video game violence if you're the kind of person willing to read into it that far.

But anyway I'm getting far too into something that isn't my point.  My point is, that these so called "journalists" like Cara Ellison and many others are in the wrong job.  That article should have been about Hotline Miami 2, but instead it turned into another rant on feelings and political correctness.

I know exactly nothing more about Hotline Miami 2 after reading that article than before I came across it.  All I learnt is that the game is violent and that someones feelings were hurt, but I don't care about the writers feelings and I already knew it was violent so basically the whole thing is a big block of text about nothing at all.

These "journalists" with agendas need to be booted out of this industry, they are completely toxic for it and contribute nothing.  They aren't here to talk about games, they are here to talk about false controversy for nothing more than page views and it's getting a bit stupid now.  There are lots of sites such as Kotaku who care more about printing bullshit rather than actually talking about games.

I don't want to talk about this shit either, I just want to enjoy games.  Really I had planned to write a little mini review for 3D Dot Game Heroes since I just replayed it recently but if the people with common sense don't make it clear that this kind of "journalism" will not fly, then within the next 5 years there will be so many social justice "gaming" websites that finding actual gaming news will be next to fucking impossible.

If you want to talk about social justice shit, make a fucking blog or something and stop clogging up sites like PCGamer.com with this shit.  Those sites are for games and game discussion/news and I don't want to read about your fucking feelings on it.

Feminism, please stop

You remember that PS4 thing about a week ago?  It was pretty good, we got some insight into the upcoming hardware, we got to see some new games everything was great.  You know what didn't cross my mind?  The gender of the fucking people on stage, but Patricia Hernandez and a bunch of idiots on twitter think that this is some kind of issue.

I'm aware Patricia Hernandez is a hack who doesn't deserve what's shes being paid (Charity link is on the side if you see this post Patricia) but her, and everyone who posted about it on twitter is just making an issue out of nothing.  Just because there were no women on stage at that event doesn't make Sony or any of the game developers sexist.  It just means that the people that those companies felt were best to give the presentations HAPPENED to be male, they were not excluding women, just no women within those various departments had enough knowledge and expertese on hand to deliver talks at the event.

Here is the worst thing though, I didn't give a fuck about feminism before this whole topic came up some time during the last year.  As someone who has experienced nothing but feminists complaining about sexism in games and other non-issue garbage, I'm now completely sour to the concept.  I've learned by reading articles and watching forum conversations that feminists don't want equality, but they just want to demonise everything men do and put themselves above.

I'm aware this probably isn't true, but as someone who has only really seen feminist arguments via video games, this is the impression I get.  Not only are these people being sexist in their complaints, but they are making their "cause" look extremely bad.

But at the end of the day, I don't give a fuck about feminism, why is this even a thing?  All I want to do is enjoy fucking video games and I'm sick of seeing shit like this day in day out.  Video games aren't oppressing you so why not go find some ACTUAL issues to moan about?  Idiots

Borderlands 2 Racism Bullshit

Borderlands 2 is a game that has yet to be played.  I own a copy and it's been added to my eternal backlog, but as I'm writing this post, I've yet to play it.  Luckily, I'm not commenting on the quality of the game, but more the idiocy of certain people on twitter.

While browsing the internet I was made aware of this article.

http://kotaku.com/5981171/players-accuse-tiny-tina-from-borderlands-2-of-verbal-blackface-gearbox-writer-says-hell-change-her-if-racist

For those that don't want to read, some idiots on Twitter are claiming the character of Tiny Tina in Borderlands 2 is racist because she talks in black slang.  Yes, I am totally serious, the link above contains the story in more detail and the twitter conversation.

This is quite possibly one of the dumbest things I have ever heard and I can't believe that people have gotten to the point where they are being offended by the way a character speaks.  I've heard white people speak like this all the damn time, and a dialect like that isn't limited to just one group of people, any prick can talk like that, it's not a hard speech pattern to imitate.

The character of Tiny Tina, from what I looked up on youtube, is super annoying but not racist.  You would have to be some kind of drooling turbo idiot to think that speaking a certain way makes you a racist.  It pisses me off that there are all these people that are on a crusade to try and ban everything that may be even SLIGHTLY offensive to someone.

NEWSFLASH!  Probably every game/movie/book has something that offends SOMEONE, so if you start trying to change things so that no one will be offended, the only thing you can possibly do is just stop making things.  Example, I find these people on Twitter to be offensive, so I think they should stop posting, but they wont.  These people think characters like Tiny Tina are offensive and want them to stop being written that way, but they wont, so shut up.

If anything, I'd say that the dudes making the argument that the character is racist, are racist themselves since they are making the implication that the only kind of people who talk in low class black slang, are black people.  Maybe these people should think before they chat shit.