Weekend Confirmed 92 - Holiday Special

I'm a week behind on episodes, so I've just listened to this one, but I hope Garnett or somebody checks this out. I hate to bring this heavy shit to the table but I think it's important. Yesterday I read an article regarding the treatment of women on the Internet that made me think twice about the jokes that were made in introduction to the "girl gamer" section of the show. Please check it out, here:

http://skepchick.org/2011/12/reddit-makes-me-hate-atheists/

Now, this is an extreme example, not specific to gaming, but to reddit, but I'm sure there's a lot of crossover there. I know that the men on the panel are not bad people as in that story, and I'm not condemning them in any way; I've made similar jokes in the past. However, this particular article made me realize that we might be feeding into this negative culture unknowingly. I'm not trying to bring anyone down, but hoped you might stop and think about it. Am I off-base here?

New Holiday Story to share with everyone

(this might turn into a Nintendo rant... you've been warned)

For the past 4 years, my wife and I have enjoyed playing Mario Kart DS together. It has become one of our favorite past times. Since one of our DS systems died early this year, I figured now might be a nice time to surprise my wife with a new 3DS and Mario Kart 7. I went out early boxing day morning and picked up 2 3DS consoles and 2 copies of Mario Kart 7.

When I got home, my wife was still asleep in bed. I woke her up while holding the box for her new 3DS in front of her face. She giggled and jumped out of bed so we could play our new game together. It was great.

What followed after was not so great.

1st, my wife's copy of Mario Kart refused to recognize her profile name for some reason. Rather than listing her name in the online scoreboards, it calls her "Player". We tried swapping copies of the game, and both copies recognize my profile name without any problems. No big deal, but disappointing to her.

Then she wanted to create her own custom logo for her car, like she could in Mario Kart DS. When we discovered that you can't do this in Mario Kart 7, she was again a little disappointed.

Then we went to race together. Mario Kart DS gave us a great range of custom options for multiplayer. We could select how many AI drivers to compete against, the speed of the cars (50,100, or 150cc), the difficulty level of the AI, team races, etc.

We were then surprised to find that Mario Kart 7 gives you none of these options. You can select the speed, but this also effects the difficulty. This means that we could only play against "easy" opponents if we selected the lowest speed. My wife found this confusing, since she's good enough at Mario Kart to enjoy the faster speeds, but wanted to play against easy opponents while she learned the new tracks.

No big deal. We start racing. My wife asks if she can use the d-pad to drive instead of the circle pad. She just prefers using the d-pad. So I try to pause the game and find an options menu. This lead to our next surprise: You can't PAUSE Mario Kart 7 during a local multiplayer race!!! Seriously, who the fuck at Nintendo thought this would be a good idea? I understand removing the pause function during online play, during local play? If my wife or I want to go get a drink in the middle of a game, WE CAN'T DO IT. Even after the race has ended, the next race automatically starts after a short countdown. This means we can't play together unless we can commit to an entire 4-race GP without interruption.

So we quit out of the race, hoping to find an "Options" menu at the main screen so we can tweak the controller settings. Another surprise: THERE IS NO OPTIONS MENU!.

After all this, my wife and I decided to put Mario Kart DS into our new 3DS's and play our old favorite together. I'm glad to have a 3DS, because I want to play Ocarina of Time, Star Fox, and a few other titles. My wife, however, is so frustrated by the stupid thing she would just return it if she could.

I just wanted to take a moment and wish everyone a merry Christmas and happy holidays!

To Garnett, Jeff, Xav, Del Rio, Brooklyn, Jeff M, Christian, Billy, Andrea, James, Ariel, and everyone else who's ever been a part of Weekend Confirmed, THANK YOU for another year of the best podcast around. I look forward to the show every single week, and you never disappoint :)

This video is really thought-provoking, right up until you see that the person who uploaded it goes by the tag 'SexyNerdGirl'.

"Judge me for my ability, not my gender... but know that I am a girl, and oh yes, I am sexy!'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XrBoeMF4FYs

Garnett & Company, have you guys seen the article on Joystiq called "I'm TIred of Saving the World?" It's something that will spark some great discussion on WC. Here's a quote and a link to the full article:

"Gaming could explore the human condition by interfacing with the player like books, movies, and TV never could. Instead, we do battle with rogue Russian nationalists, storm Normandy for the 47th time, or fight off an alien invasion. I can't relate to any of this. I'm tired of saving the world, and the industry is belatedly coming to the same realization."

Full Article:

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/12/28/editorial-im-tired-of-saving-the-world/

I have two perspectives on females in gaming, which might be insightful.

One is my Mom. She loves playing Bejeweled on Facebook, so I purchased a full version that she could play on her computer. She rarely plays it though, which makes me think she is more attracted to the social aspect of that game when played on Facebook and not the game itself.

Another, is right after Skyrim came out me and one of my roommates were in our dorm playing it. Our bro/jock roommate walked in with his bro/jock type girlfriend. "So you guys playing Call Of Duty? I'd totally kick your ass. I'm a total gamer!" she said. "No, we're messing around with Skyrim." "Is that some kind of shooter?" she asked. "No, it's an RPG." we said, but before we could expalin anymore... "Well, if you guys play COD later tell me because I'll totally kick your noob asses!" she said as walking off.

This addresses several issues with females in gaming. I don't know if she was just trying to impress us or was just oblivious, but she came off as dumb by trying to represent herself as a bro. Another (which is a separate discussion) is what a gamer is. To call yourself a "total gamer," but not to know what Skyrim is seems obtuse to me (and I would guess) many other gamers. It demonstrates that COD has tapped into a massive audience ( as we all are aware), but has it really pushed gaming forward? This case would say not.

Andrea "Women struggle with wanting to be sexy ladies, and just being gamers."

Ok, well if that's the case, then maybe it's time to come to grips with the fact that you're bringing alot of the attention (both positive and negative) on yourself.

Maybe the whole 'girl gamer' issue would go away if girls just focused on the games, instead of giving in to the temptation of using them as another opportunity to bask in male lust.

(I'm not done listening to the episode yet)

Is it just me or does this episode never actually IDENTIFY the second woman who joined in?

How about some resolutions from the podcast crew to give a little more recognition to downloadable games on Nintendo platforms? I notice that Wii Ware/eShop never get mentioned in the same breath as PSN and Xbox Live... it's like how Gamecube was never mentioned as a major platform next to PS2 and Xbox. I know there's a disparity in content but it's not like your dicks will shrink if you discuss the good games, guys.

This last week the 3DS "ambassadors" got their 10 free GBA games, original Gameboy Tetris is on the eShop, as well as Mighty Switch Force from Wayforward (we want to give those guys some love, don't we?)

In honor of the HD rerelease of Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath on PSN this week, I present a special retrospective:

2005 - The year of the overlooked and/or forgotten gem.

2005 was the transition year. The hype for the Xbox 360, the recent release of the Nintendo DS both overshadowed great games on the GBA and previous generation of consoles. Despite this, it was a year when complete comfort with the platforms and a huge userbase to work with allowed developers and publishers to try out some truly weird, cool ideas.

This is the reason I'm more than willing to wait for the next generation. We haven't reached the point where developers feel comfortable enough to try new things. Speeding into the next generation, starting from scratch with a new userbase, new hardware, and higher costs will only make new ideas HARDER to come by. Let's wait until we see some more weird ideas and polished gems like:

Advent Rising
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Conker: Live and Reloaded
Darkwatch
Darwinia
Destroy All Humans
Digital Devil Saga
Full Spectrum Warrior
Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows
Gun
Gunstar Super Heroes
Haunting Ground
The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction
Indigo Prophecy
Jade Empire
Killer7
Kingdom Under Fire
Kirby Canvas Curse
Mercenaries
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath
Phantom Dust
Project: Snowblind
Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy
Psychonauts
The Punisher
Rise of the Kasai
Second Sight
Shadow of Rome
Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves
Stubbs the Zombie: Rebel without a Pulse
SWAT 4
Total Overdose: A Gunslinger's Tale in Mexico
Unreal Championship 2
The Warriors

You pronounced my name correctly the first time you said it though!!! D:
Light - Gam - It

How long our we going to have the handheld doom talk? Then say how shallow iPhone/iPad games are. Seriously handheld sales don't compare to the iPad or iPhone sales but handheld play games solely. The iPhone and iPad sell to many different people for many different reasons then just games. And the 3DS sales are very well right now. Im going to go out on a limb and simply say the vita will sell as well if not better than the psp, and the 3ds will get close to DS sales (it's still ahead of it in terms of pace).

What'd you get for Christmas?

I got Resistance 3, Sonic Generations, Battlefield 3, and Zelda: Skyward Sword!

1. Seriously guys, the forced sexual innuendo jokes between Garnett and Jeff followed by a few minutes of schoolboyish giggling are just awkward at this point. I started to turn off the podcasts because it's gotten uncomfortable. Also, the VGAs totally misrepresented gamers with all those immature jokes, right? Right?-)

2. Regarding the discussion about female stereotypes in games: how about taking a look on the male side? The vast majority of male characters in videogames are strong, smart, cool dudes. As a man, I'm annoyed by character stereotypes like Chris Redfield in RE5, for example. I want more realistic (read: flawed) characters no matter what sex.

I just realized Andrea's name is perfectly suited to her video game tastes: 'Andrea' (Greek) means 'manly, virile, courageous.' :-)

A lot of you seem to have taken umbrage at the discussion of woman characters in games - well, ok, maybe not a lot of you, but at least Myssss :) - but what about the concept of mechanics that I was trying to talk about on the show?

I realize the following is full of broad generalization (no pun intended) but go with me for a second. If we concede that western civilization grew out of hunter/gatherers that were basically split down gender lines, then one could look at modern video games as a throwback - or modern fulfillment - of those basic roles. That is, men and boys are generally drawn to simulations that allow them to "hunt" (any given shooter or RPG) and women are generally (again, generally) drawn to the types of games that allow them to gather (The Sims, FarmVille).

I wonder how the audience here feels about mechanics in video games as an extension of gender roles rather than simply characters.

It kind of got buried in the other threads, but I want to make clear that I'm not going out of my way to offend people. I don't just run off a long string of curse words, or make an effort to piss people off for my amusement or anything.

It's much more passive than that.

At the end of a long day though, I'm not going to go out of my way to make damn sure everything that comes out of my mouth is rainbows and sunshine either.

I just act online the same way I do when I'm with a group of friends, and we're all completely comfortable with each other, and have the freedom to use language or talk about subjects in a manner we might otherwise not unless in private, or shrouded in the noise of a bar.

And I know that there are players out there that wouldn't appreciate it. So I either enter a party with friends or, if we don't have enough for a full team and actually want to communicate with the other players enough for basic teamplay, then we leave a lobby if we feel like there are those in the room who might be offended by our casual, unguarded conversations, reactions, etc.

Yeah what total BS conversation woman aren't represented well in games. What unhappy because every game doesn't feature a woman as the main character? That's what it sounds like. As for woman in games yeah right they have great parts in almost every game name some that they don't, where men are represented well. Here's a good list of positive.

Bayonetta
Mirrors edge
Final fantasy 6,7,10, and 13 have woman and strong woman as the main leads
Zelda
Halo woman get a complex cortana men get me go shoot stuff guy!
Street fighter/ Soul caliber/ dead or alive
Metroid
Uncharted
And many others like I said if a male character is represented well in a game they're is almost alway a female counterpart so get real.

Woman can't play games online "Waaaaaa!" you mean the games that everyone gets harrassed in. What about WoW, or burn out, or street fighter, or castle crashers, or any game that's co-op. Whatever.

It sounds more like woman get harrassed more by they're own gender for playing games, than they do by guy gamers. So take care of your own business first and foremost.

I think we need to get a bit more real and honest as far as the "plight" of women in gaming. This is not necessarily a problem rooted in gaming culture-- it is a problem rooted in our society and the roles it likes to stereotype people into.

I am not saying that it is OK for women gamers to get treated differently, I am just saying that it should not be surprising. It doesn't help that there are not more visible females in gaming, and that the ones that do exist tend to skew to the prettier side. Again, I am not saying that it is OK to think a pretty girl can't also be a gamer, but I can see how it raises red flags for some people. Would Morgan Webb, who I think does a great job and is definitely a gamer, still have a job if she was forty pounds heavier or had some poorly placed facial moles?

That said, I think that ALL demographics that are not young white males are under-represented in gaming in every way: from characters in games, to media presents, to the types of titles being offered. I am very thankful that I spent, and still spend a good bit of time on Bitmob, where I have seen a bit more diversity than you get on through your average media site.

This is not just a problem for women in gaming.

If you want to jump online to enjoy the game, you have to be prepared for the culture that is bound to it.

I can't go to a Star Trek convention and start yelling at everybody to stop being so weird with their costumes, language and everything else they partake in.

What Andrea and company are doing now is analogous to coming into your house, where you have things arranged the way you like them, your own habits and behaviors, and then saying 'Nope, I don't like this, change everything for me so I feel comfortable.'

Now, maybe we agree that the general tone of online games right now is toxic and should be changed. Fine - that's a process that takes work. No established culture changes immediately and willingly in reaction to the arrival a new, relatively smaller population of 'others'.

As larger numbers of women go online and stand up for themselves, then the feedback to female-centric hostility will change as females and their supporters shout down, embarrass or do whatever else to those who perform it - the same way that being hostile toward women in public is frowned IRL.

The other option is assimilation. That as more and more women come online, they warrant less and less attention, they respond less and less to the decreasing attention, and eventually, the culture is either diluted to the point that they find it acceptable, or they change their behavior and match the tenor of the aggressors themselves.

RE: Indie Games on Xbox Live

Am i the only one who thinks that the vast majority of the indie games just aren't any good? I don't mean to come off sounding like a jerk, but if you really do sit down and look through the Indie channel on Xbox Live, 99% of the games available are simply not good enough to justify purchasing.

I've bought a half dozen indie games over the past year, and none of them were enjoyable for more than a minute or two. They usually end up feeling like some sort of technical demo or proof-of-concept proposal from the designer, rather than feeling like a fully enjoyable game.

Obviously, there are fantastic indie games out there. But they are the rare exceptions. The average quality bar is just so low... It's not even a matter of price. Even if the games were free, I still wouldn't play most of them because I have Halo, Mass Effect, Alan Wake, Limbo, Bad Company, Assassins Creed, Trenched, and a dozen more EXCELLENT games competing for my TIME.

I think that the indie game scene is going through a similar struggle as what indie musicians have struggled with for years. As a musician, it can be really tough to convince people to spend money on my indipendantly released album. Even if I only charge $5 for a full length CD, the fact remains that most people would rather go home and listen to CDs from their favorite bands. At least with music, an Indie album is pretty close in sound quality to a full-budget studio album, unlike the production values of an Indie game vs a full budget title.

I think the Indie community is full of many fantastic, talented, and creative people. But all games, regardless of price, are competing for our spare time. Given the quality bar of the average indie title, I'm really not surprised that they get such low billing on the dashboard.

Ha! Look at Jeff in his little Cannata's Corner.

While I appreciate every show you guys do, IMO "Holiday special" implies more Holiday stories than what I heard. Frankly, I am not sure what all the girl gamer talk and SWKOTOR talk was doing there (okay I know but it's not what I was wanting out of a holiday show)

Mocked the VGA's teabagging joke last week, started this week with a '2 girls 1 cup' joke. ಠ_ಠ

Damn, another time when I wish this show had a call in option. ^_^

I feel like I am in the same boat as the girls here, even though I am a guy. When I play a game where i can create a character I always create some nerdy variation who look like grown up versions of what I used to make in Tony Hawk Pro Skater. Non of the characters are Gears proportioned, or even Drake-like, the typically resemble a scientist version of Tom Hanks. However, most of the games I see depict males as tanks and brutes thereby not "speaking" to me.

Firstly, the Xbox 360 interface needs to copy Amazon (and Valve copying Amazon) and have a system to recommend games based on the games you in particular have played and liked. Preferably a system that would be source-agnostic, including recommendations for retail, games-on-demand, XBLA and Indie games in the same interface.

Secondly, the wimmins in games discussion was so scattered and undirected I don't think it went anywhere meaningful. If you're going to discuss such a vast and contentious topic you really ought to try to have some kind of focus.

Thirdly, tangentially related to the wimmins in games discussion, I find it baffling and irritating when people say things like "we are in an industry that makes exclusively summer action movies". Yes, the parts of both industries that are driven by over the top violence are driven by over the top violence, but does that mean that all the other games out there are just chopped liver? Yeah, they're not being advertised on TV and on the sides of public transportation like Skyrim, but neither are the overwhelming majority of movies. Don't confuse marketing spending with reality.

Also, just because someone doesn't identify as a "gamer" doesn't mean that they don't play video and computer games. Windows Solitaire is a video game. Bejeweled is a video game.

There are far more male "hardcore gamers" than female ones, but that's because "hardcore gamer" is precisely and exactly defined in terms of games that male gamers play. You can sink just as many hours into non-"hardcore" games, get just as far into the details, jargon, strategy, etc, but because they don't have guns or swords in them they're not "hardcore" and people who play them aren't "hardcore". It's a circular definition.

Every minute of the gender issue discussion proved why gender issue discussion of video games will always fail.

Wow, what an insightful and thought-provoking discussion of girl gaming from Andrea.

That was a joke.

I think Garnett asked something along the lines of where are the games that do not stereotype, or pigeon hole; I presume he was asking wondering when games would come out where this issue would be null. Look back to classic mega hits like Pacman that played off of the "domination" aspect of games, or more specifically the "fight or flight" aspect of humanity's primordial hardwired paradigms and it was not about the iconography, sales department can go to hell, it was about the mechanics. Games like Armitage, Mario Kart, Pilot Wings, Flower, etc. bring us these experiences. However, as my wife points out, sometimes you just want to go into a village in Skyrim and set every motherfucker on fire. Anyway...

Oh man, Jeff stuck in the corner for this podcast. Kids table confirmed.