TwilightBard: The raw fact is, the game doesn't force you to play as an abusive dictator, it's completely onto the player, the game just gives you the options.

TwilightBard: I gotta say, I found someone calling Tropico a bad game because you play a dictator hilarious, considering that the game does allow you to actually NOT be a total ass (And in fact, a lot of the dictatorish stuff actually has penalties involved). I actually thought that the game was well thought out with the powers it gave you and how people reacted to that, and even if you wanted to take it onto social commentary, it gave an insight into how a politician has to spin plates and make choices to keep people happy.

The raw fact is, the game doesn't force you to play as an abusive dictator, it's completely onto the player, the game just gives you the options.

Rusty_Gunn: To me, It seems the SJW types don't want us to have those options Like how Sarkesian was going off because she 'COULD' drag the strippers lifeless bodies on the floor all the while saying there was a sexual thrill in one of her videos.

Jennifer: I've noticed that a lot lately. It seems like if a game gives options, some commentators will go out of their way to take the worst possible path (even if the game gives penalties or bad consequences for it) and then they complain that the game "encourages" that kind of behavior in real life XD

I think a review should definitely make readers aware of what's in the game, including if it does have really actions and whether they're optional or mandatory to complete the game, but I think that's the extent of what it should be. After they've informed people about what to expect, the review should be more along the lines of, "If you're okay with the premise, then here's how well the gameplay mechanics work, this worked well, that was clunky, etc."

Neobr10: Alright, if you want the article, here it is:
"‘Game culture’ as we know it is kind of embarrassing -- it’s not even culture. It’s buying things, spackling over memes and in-jokes repeatedly, and it’s getting mad on the internet.

It’s young men queuing with plush mushroom hats and backpacks and jutting promo poster rolls. Queuing passionately for hours, at events around the world, to see the things that marketers want them to see. To find out whether they should buy things or not. They don’t know how to dress or behave. Television cameras pan across these listless queues, and often catch the expressions of people who don’t quite know why they themselves are standing there.

‘Games culture’ is a petri dish of people who know so little about how human social interaction and professional life works that they can concoct online ‘wars’ about social justice or ‘game journalism ethics,’ straight-faced, and cause genuine human consequences. Because of video games.
(...)
That’s not super surprising, actually. While video games themselves were discovered by strange, bright outcast pioneers -- they thought arcades would make pub games more fun, or that MUDs would make for amazing cross-cultural meeting spaces -- the commercial arm of the form sprung up from marketing high-end tech products to ‘early adopters’. You know, young white dudes with disposable income who like to Get Stuff.

Suddenly a generation of lonely basement kids had marketers whispering in their ears that they were the most important commercial demographic of all time. Suddenly they started wearing shiny blouses and pinning bikini babes onto everything they made, started making games that sold the promise of high-octane masculinity to kids just like them.
(...)
“Gamer” isn’t just a dated demographic label that most people increasingly prefer not to use. Gamers are over. That’s why they’re so mad.

These obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers -- they are not my audience."

And this is just from the Gamasutra article, there's a lot more in other similar articles that were posted at the same time to attack their audience.

Neobr10: Oh boy, do you really have to do so many acobratics instead of admiting that you are wrong? It has nothing to do with races, i even mentioned christians as an example because of that. I'm just saying that labelling any group with offensive adjectives is fucking ridiculous. It doesn't matter if we are talking about a religious group, an ethnic group or a group that share the same hobby. Can you understand it now or do i have to draw a picture for you?

Neobr10: Obviously not, because a game is just a fucking game, it's an entertainment product and nothing else. The article was real i did feel offended by it, just like i found it offensive when an user here called all greeks "crooks".

ET3D: ??? Gamasutra's focus on game development is normally pretty good. Can you explain what this comment refers to?

NWN_babayaga: snip

Rusty_Gunn: To me, It seems the SJW types don't want us to have those options Like how Sarkesian was going off because she 'COULD' drag the strippers lifeless bodies on the floor all the while saying there was a sexual thrill in one of her videos.

Jennifer: Yeah, I found that really weird. I haven't played the Hitman game yet, but as I understand it, that's only possible in one specific place and the strippers are treated like every other NPC in the game (which is to say you're supposed to sneak past them and if you mess up then you have to kill them and hide the bodies before they alert anyone else about your presence). I don't see anything wrong with that. It would be really odd if the female NPC's were treated differently from the male NPC's in terms of game mechanics.

It kind of makes me think of Fallout 3 where they made the children invincible because they were afraid of controversy if any players killed children. I always play as a good character anyway, but I found it really annoying that the children were invincible. The game took advantage of their unkillable status to jerk the player around, making the player jump through hoops to such an extent that if I had the choice I really would have contemplated killing the annoying little bastards just because it was so ridiculous. Now, if the game really did have the choice, that could have been interesting because it would have made me wonder how much crap my character was willing to put up with in order to do the right thing. However, without the choice, it just seems like a really aggravating game mechanic and ruins my immersion because all I'm thinking about is how annoying it is.

So yeah, if people are going to complain just because women and children are treated the same as far as game mechanics go, then we either don't get to have women and children in the games at all, or the game does something aggravating like Fallout 3 XD

TwilightBard: You know, that still doesn't make sense to me how someone could play a Hitman game and think that's what the game WANTED you to do. Or that it was trying to make it sexy, instead of the practical decision that came out of the player fucking up stealth.

TwilightBard: I honestly don't get it either. I do find it interesting is that you don't really see much bitching about the female bandits and raiders in Oblivion/Skyrim/Fallout3/NV. But yeah, you can't have a game set in a city, or a large countryside and not have women and children, honestly I think that's a situation far worse then having them be killable.

TwilightBard: The funny thing with children and Skyrim, still unkillable, CAN be turned into vampires. A friend of mine had to put a mod in to kill children to deal with a child vampire that was chasing him all over Skyrim, since it was still unkillable. And there was the vampire in the Dark Brotherhood storyline who was stuck as a child, and she abused that over and over again for her kills.

TwilightBard: You know, that still doesn't make sense to me how someone could play a Hitman game and think that's what the game WANTED you to do. Or that it was trying to make it sexy, instead of the practical decision that came out of the player fucking up stealth.

TwilightBard: You know, that still doesn't make sense to me how someone could play a Hitman game and think that's what the game WANTED you to do. Or that it was trying to make it sexy, instead of the practical decision that came out of the player fucking up stealth.