Weekend Confirmed 148 - Disney Infinity, Path of Exile, CES 2013, video game legislation

To me the problem with the Dead Island statue is not that its a gorified woman, but that the presentation doesn't account for a zombie context. The bikini woman is just beheaded and delimbed. Like if it was just a zombie girl in a bikini, and it actually informed the setting, it could work and be kind of cool. But zombies don't carve up their victims like a turkey, they just eat them. So really its just an example of lurid debauchery from man babies.

So the problem to me is that as the game industry has become so hit driven and based online gameplay, it has also become increasingly homogeneous as a culture and demographically oriented. The result is that when you make content for these games it only has to be not offensive to the 18-24 male mindset its meant to sell to. Essentially the "hardcore" aspects of the video game industry has become like The Howard Stern Show or something.

That said, Andrea's point that the violence should be fantasy based does not really solve the problem. What this argument does is reduce the video game debate to "they either have to be these violent chauvinist things or really infantile and for one's "inner child" and/or actual children." It is exactly the kind of fogey antiquated perspective the people in congress want to promote. The problem isn't that violence can't make legitimate entertainment. Its that the violence in games as of late is really dumb, and comes from a place of fulfilling banal power fantasies.

That said, Jeff had it completely wrong with his "ejaculatory" accusation of Cyberpunk 7070. I mean perhaps there is something to that take on the imagery, but the whole point of that trailer was the subvert the conventional femme fetal, Madonna-whore pyscho drama that often plays out in media. That was a sexualized woman who couldn't simply be "put down" with a bullet because she was a crazy cyborg. The suggestion is that we will have to deal with her as a character because of the cyber punk setting.

Speaking of which it would have been nice if you actually talked about how cool that trailer was rather than resorting to glib talking points from daytime talk shows. My only problem with this new format is that it seemed to lead you down to this place of trying to sound important rather than actually talking about video games. I was half expecting Andrea to shout out "Think of the children! Won't somebody think of the children!!!"

The place of the video game writer/critic is to unpack game media in a constructive way. Like its very easy for an outsider to demagogue games and say "Oh but Call of Duty is worse than Saving Private Ryan because you are the one killing the people!!" lol. Where are we if people inside the industry can't get over that one confused notion? Its more significant to say "Call of Duty is dumb because its distilling war down to grown up G.I. Joes" and going into how to change that.