2014-09-22, 01:38 AM
For those of you who wonder just how corrupt and agenda-pushing gaming journalism can affect video games:
1) Jason Schreier from Kotaku mocks George Kamitami as a 14-year old boy over the Sorceress design in Dragon's Crown.
2) Samantha Allen from Polygon labels Tomodachi Life as a game that promotes 'gay erasure' Source
3) Dead Rising 3 scored twice on Gamespot for different versions, one of the reviewers scores it a shocking 3/10 for 'sexism and racism' Source
Just three examples here, and here's where I'll summarize why these are problematic:
1) No one pineappling cares if games have some murders and some scantily-clad women, to call the second sexist is like saying it's sexist for real women to want to dress like that! For example, some people have called Ubisoft sexist for not including female playable assassins in Assassin's Creed: Unity, but given that sexism is based on general discrimination towards women and the series has a number of notable female characters, it absolutely doesn't add up.
2) None of these things are related to the actual quality of the game. To make a comparison, what these jokers are doing is tantamount to reviewing a car and complaining about what the makers of the car said about completely unrelated subjects rather than actually reviewing the specs, which is what they're paid to do.
3) Case #2 reeks of ethnocentrism. It takes only a simple Wikipedia search to tell you that gay marriage is not legal in Japan and Nintendo Japan allowing gay marriage in the game would have kicked up a lot of controversy, if it even managed to get approved. I'm emphasizing this because a lot of people took offense when they said they weren't trying to make a political statement with their game and misunderstood their intention:
"Allowing only straight marriages in Tomodachi life is not a political statement because that's how things are in Japan, but allowing gay marriage would be making a political statement because that would be defying common convention."
Tl;dr: These writers are trying to shame people for buying certain games regardless of the worth of the game, trash it based on irrelevant points and they clearly have no pineappling idea what they're talking about.
That is not okay!
1) Jason Schreier from Kotaku mocks George Kamitami as a 14-year old boy over the Sorceress design in Dragon's Crown.
2) Samantha Allen from Polygon labels Tomodachi Life as a game that promotes 'gay erasure' Source
3) Dead Rising 3 scored twice on Gamespot for different versions, one of the reviewers scores it a shocking 3/10 for 'sexism and racism' Source
Just three examples here, and here's where I'll summarize why these are problematic:
1) No one pineappling cares if games have some murders and some scantily-clad women, to call the second sexist is like saying it's sexist for real women to want to dress like that! For example, some people have called Ubisoft sexist for not including female playable assassins in Assassin's Creed: Unity, but given that sexism is based on general discrimination towards women and the series has a number of notable female characters, it absolutely doesn't add up.
2) None of these things are related to the actual quality of the game. To make a comparison, what these jokers are doing is tantamount to reviewing a car and complaining about what the makers of the car said about completely unrelated subjects rather than actually reviewing the specs, which is what they're paid to do.
3) Case #2 reeks of ethnocentrism. It takes only a simple Wikipedia search to tell you that gay marriage is not legal in Japan and Nintendo Japan allowing gay marriage in the game would have kicked up a lot of controversy, if it even managed to get approved. I'm emphasizing this because a lot of people took offense when they said they weren't trying to make a political statement with their game and misunderstood their intention:
"Allowing only straight marriages in Tomodachi life is not a political statement because that's how things are in Japan, but allowing gay marriage would be making a political statement because that would be defying common convention."
Tl;dr: These writers are trying to shame people for buying certain games regardless of the worth of the game, trash it based on irrelevant points and they clearly have no pineappling idea what they're talking about.
That is not okay!