A wonderful Gerudo King

People say Rockstar just “Isn’t a rockstar anymore”

No, this is pretty much how I expect from washed up rockstars who’ve sold out and only care about reliving the glory days. Constantly shouting “Don’t you know who I am?” when anyone gives them any grief.

I vibe to this because my BF recently got into Runescape and he was like “You play this?”

Then I walked him through various quests and kept hooking him up with new armor and like a shit ton of Rings of Life.

The bottom line is, people who feel safer with a gun than with the right to see a doctor, are not mature adults with a healthy sense of rational fear.

The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun… In an action movie, in real life, there’s kinda too much chaos going on for anyone to differentiate between the “bad guy” and the “good guy”, or for the “good guy” to know the situation.

I’ve heard of more times where someone tried to play hero and was gunned down by the police who mistook him for the real shooter than I have any reports of “Hero Gunman slays horrible villain”

So, people who would have no interest in seeing the world of Borederlands adapted to a new medium?

“Hey guys, wanna buy my new Indiana Jones game? It’s meant for people who don’t like Indiana Jones, or games for that matter… What no? Why not”

(Note: The new Jones game actually looks good, it was just the first IP to come to mind)

These people do realize that the Mario movie had an entire segment dedicated to Mario Kart, which is like… the most popular Switch Game right? And the Sonic movies stayed true to the characters and had tons of little easter eggs for Sonic fans, even had some comic book tie-ins for the movie?

Just saying, when you cater to fans, fans will buy a product and show it to their friends and family saying “Oh hey, you know I’m a big fan of X. Well this is a good entry point for it if you wanna see what it’s like.”

Seriously I got a friend of mine who “Was too old for video games when Sonic came out” but had “Seen some fanart here and there he enjoyed” (I’m a furry, inter-generational friendships are kinda normal in that fanbase), but he saw the Sonic movie on my recommendation and it had him asking me for recommendations… Before I knew it he had purchased Sonic Adventure DX on Steam to learn more about Tails and Knuckles’ characters to get ready for the second movie, and Sonic Generations as well to get a quick run through of the hedgehog’s history in general.

This man is a Catholic dad who’s always busy with work, his kid, and his faith, but he found the time to love that Hedgehog, because they made a good movie that catered to fans. (Yes, Christians can be furries, the Christian Fur demographic is actually pretty big. Fun story, the fanart he’d been talking about was a comic about Tails becoming a Priest and later trying to help Sonic stave off Chili Dogs for Lent)

What I’m saying is, if you’re good to your fans, they’ll be good to you, and if people see a happy crowd they’ll want to join that happy crowd. Love makes the world go rounder than money does, and as a chubby chaser I do like round things… I forgot the point I was making as now I just have the Queen song “Fat-Bottomed Girls” stuck in my head.

Yes actually

“The new X thing isn’t meant for YOU!111”

Is a common line the media pulls out when the product is failing or have poor reception. Don’t take responsibiliy for the company fucking up, that implies the company is capable of doing wrong. Just shame fans for liking a property and wanted to see it respected. Call them bigots and say the problem is the thing they like is bigoted!

It’s… absolute bullshit.

Sadly it works, people who aren’t well-informed think of the fans of X are just assholes and the new thing is good actually…

It also doesn’t work because the people who aren’t well informed weren’t fans of X, so they’re not seeing/playing the new X thing…

Meaning I guess the The New X thing wasn’t really for anybody… “Literally no one” is a strange demographic to market it to.

See: Skullgirls censoring their game in order to “appeal to a wider demographic”, outlets claiming Skullgirl fans who hate the changes are “secretly pedophiles”, aaaaand… Now the game has a dwindling player count, the Steam forums are reduced to asking when the game will be fixed, and the original creator who was not involved with the censorship has a defamation lawsuit going because a lot of people called him a diddler…

It also works the other way around, when something the big corporations DON’T want to be popular is, just slander it as bigoted

See Also: That time Cuphead fans shat on a game journalist for not being able to clear an overly easy tutorial, so the oulet he worked for tried to save his street cred by… claiming Cuphead was racist and a front for antisemitism… Which the Cuphead fanbase just kinda laughed at because it’s an asinine claim.

It really sucks because as somewhat of a social justice activist and a gamer, well… “Clowns to the right of me, Jokers to the left of me…”

Sidenote: Can we stop the trend of neutering female characters? Seriously bought a fucking Avengers comic the other day (I mostly read Sonic, but I’ll pick up the occasional Marvel from time to time if I think the story looks interst) and I didn’t realize till after I paid for it that the “Thor” on the cover was actually Captain Marvel… all I saw at first was “Blonde, Masculine Face, Masculine Build. I guess that’s a new Thor costume? I dunno, don’t keep up with it.”

Got to reading it in the car and realized “Oh shit, that’s actually Captain Marvel. Sorry about that Carol.”, this didn’t impede my enjoyment of the book mind you. I like Captain Marvel and Thor, so it’s all good…

Look she doesn’t need to pull a Power Girl and have tits the size of her head hanging out of her costume, but I feel like the de-sexualization of female characters has gone far beyond combatting the male gaze and is now reaching the “Dear God, can’t let people see her ankles!” stage, which is actually more sexist than keeping the ridiculous chain mail bikinis in the first place, as it implies that traits we consider feminine are inherently sinful and should be hidden from view.

I mean, I know the example I used was a comic, but this shit is happening in games too. I’m a woman and a gamer, games are my power fantasy, me being highly attractive is PART of my power fantasy. Stop making me not hot damn it!

Sorry it’s just… Kotaku’s complacent for creating the environment this happened in, and we’re talking about Kotaku so I felt like airing a grievance of mine.

He got a lot of money to be Bowser in a movie that made a lot of money, desperate film makers wanting to get in on the “Video Game Movie” trend thinking it’s the next “Super Hero Movie!” trend hire Jack Black thinking he’s the sole reason for Mario’s successful movie and not just a component of it.

…and Jack Black’s just taking the check and not correcting them.

Don’t blame him, he’s just grabbing that bag.

Reminder: Jack Black broke up Tenacious D to try to save this thing

and…

“Oh, no see, you’re mad, but you see this version of the franchise isn’t for you. It’s for a new crowd that was alienated by the previous version and you need to be nice and let them have their…”

Shut the fuck up, if it’s a version of a thing made for people who are defined by not liking the thing, it’s not going to get the other crowd to like the thing, it’s just going to piss off the people who do like it…

God I’d love to redistribute the fat from my belly to my hips and tits

I basically mean, who intentionally picks an overly masculine character unambigiously male character with female pronouns? Because that’s really only a thing in transphobic far right political cartoons.

I could see people picking the “female” character with he/him pronouns if they wanted to play a femboy and there wasn’t really an option to make the male character look “pretty”, but the “male” character with she/her, I dunno about that one chief.

Hold up…

Runescape has a mod scene?

To be fair he didn’t know Samus was a woman, Kid Icarus’ name was actually Pit, or that Metroid was the name of the alien not the planet, so yes… he was definitely a joke to me.

Brb, making a sequel to Sonic & The Black Knight and officially licensing it.

What? Sega can’t copyright Camelot!

Huh… well how about that

So max femme makes you look overly and cartoonishly feminine? I’m sorry I’m not understanding the problem. I’d imagine any slider pushed to one extreme end would give you an extreme result.

Actually if you read what I said, I’d say part of my problem is that having two character models one that is “Unambiguously Male” and one that is “Unambiguously Female” while claiming “Oh you can just choose your pronouns, and we didn’t actually say Male or Female! So it’s fine” is a lazy solution that does more to annoy than to assist.

And that if they were actually serious about being more respectful to the wider gender spectrum that exists in real life, they’d have more than just those two options. But the concern dev studios have is not in helping gender non-conforming individuals be more immersed in games, it’s to say “I’m with the current trendy thing, upvotes to the left.”

We need to be critical of what’s called “Rainbow Capitalism/Pink Capitalism” or we’ll be stuck without any real meaningful change.

No, but we still see models that largely either have bulges or camel toes.

Seeing a buff, hairy, bulge-having individual labeled “she/her” is typically only done in transphobic alt-right political cartoons and it feels a little tone deaf that game companies actually expect transpeople to unironically go with that…

This, but unironically.

If they were labeled something like masculine or feminine, buff or curvy, or anything that doesn’t imply a hierarchy that would have been an improvement.

“Dude and Chick” aren’t terms I’m saying they should use instead, I’m saying Body Type A and B come across as disingenuous and better terminology could be used. “Masculine” and “Feminine” would work, as you can be masculine without being male. I’m a short-haired tomboy who strongly prefers she/her pronouns, I’d be considered “Masculine, but not male” even if I was cis!

Heck I myself am in a relationship with a cisgender male who presents feminine with many of his behaviors, but that doesn’t make him less of a man aynmore than being masculine makes me less of a woman. We’re all adults here we know that pink can be for boys and blue can be for girls, this isn’t kindgergarten in the 80’s anymore.

In fact let’s take a look at how Old School Runescape handles it. This image is… not great…

Why is the term “Body Type A” and “Body Type B” present at all when there are clear pictures of the two options that speak for themselves? It feels like just going out of the way to include “the corporate approved buzzwords intended for maximum synergy with the brand!”

That’s not the only problem with the UI as we’re still seeing rigid reinforcement of the gender binary.

The example picture of the more masculine build has a beard and the example picture of the more feminine build has a skirt, as if to reinforce gendered stereotypes while trying to avoid using the word gender, which is a mixed message at best… And to really draw the point, she/her is located just under the feminine option, and he/him is under the masculine option as if to imply these are the “correct” options.

The message this gives off is “Look, we call these A and B, but you and I know what’s really going on here eh fellow cisheteronormative? Gotta check off that box for corporate”

When the message they should be giving off is “He, she, they… whatever, it’s all good. All we have is that you have fun playing our game and try not to let anyone else tell you who you’re supposed to be!”

I agree we should be more inclusive, but we should do so in a way that feels less insulting and backhanded.