“For whatever reason, no matter how much
public demand is demonstrated, the people on the business end at the
entertainment companies we love still can’t seem to believe people want women starring in their products.
That’s so much worse than just not thinking outside of your comfort
zone as a creator. That belief in business and marketing—that people are
disinterested in female characters to the point of being actively
repelled by them—is what teaches society that women aren’t as good or
important or capable as men; that they’re the girlfriend, not the hero;
the sidekick and not the protagonist.”
Monument Valley honestly kept me from having a panic attack a few weeks ago.
I was on hold with my bank for roughly a half hour because someone had stolen my debit card number and had charged a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff to it. All I could think about while I was on hold was what if my rent check bounces, I can’t afford the late fee I’ll be slapped with and I’m already on bad terms with my super – and I felt that horrible grip around my chest squeezing down and my breathing getting faster.
Normally I can just drink a cold glass of water and sit in front of my ac (to remind myself that no, my throat is not actually closing up, and that yes, I can still successfully get air into my lungs with the help of a fan) but this time neither of those tricks did anything. Well actually that’s not true, they reminded me that I was alone in my apartment, and if couldn’t find a way to calm down, I wouldn’t necessarily be able to get help – which only scared the shit out of me even more.
So I sat in front of my AC and pulled up the brightest, happiest looking app I have on phone, which is Monument Valley, and within ten minutes of building pathways to guide the princess through the castle I was breathing normally. I found myself thinking, look at this bitch, you’re already solving this, this will be cleared up with your bank in the next half hour, and in case your check bounces, you’ll have documentation as to why to show your landlord. On good days, it’s sometimes honestly as simple as helping a tiny me walk through a beautiful castle while solving simple puzzles to remind myself:
After reblogging that post about the passed away fan who had his likeness put into Fallout Nuka World, I went looking for him in the game. I found him and talked to him and then I went into his hut and automatically (since I loot pretty much everything) took 10 caps from his toolbox. Then, despite not suffering any consequences – his stuff was free to take – I felt really bad because that was a real person. So I left some comics and sloth plushies lying around his house to make up for it, even though that would have absolutely no impact on anything whatsoever.
Video games. They’re a strange and wonderful medium.
anyway something I hate about video games is when they make some assertion about the fictional society not being homophobic and yet the society is still heteronormative like. that’s not how things work
example: skyrim sexual orientation isn’t really talked about at all afaik and every person who can be married can be married with either character gender but like: everything is straight. I haven’t played skyrim in a while but like it’s all straight I feel like also there’s things people say in it that are heteronormative and are in there bc the people creating it didn’t see it as a problem or at odds with their apparent homophobia free society and like how can you create a fictional homophobia free society when you ain’t free of your real life assumptions. Anyway
I’ve noticed this with misogyny too, like when you go to pick your character’s gender in dragon age it says something about how men and women are considered equal and there are equal numbers of men and women in the army and in leadership positions etc.
and then you go to actually play the game and the overwhelming majority of the soldiers are male, soldiers are constantly referred to as “men,” there are characters who will say blatantly misogynistic or sexually aggressive things to you (like, blatant enough that it must be misogynistic on purpose)
and it makes me die
One game that does seem to avoid this on both counts, mostly, is Fallout New Vegas?
(Or I think so? Haven’t played it in a while. Accepting corrections.)
I don’t play video games much anymore (likely to change if I get some equipment of my own, but for now…). But games kept me sane for a long time. Specifically:
Nintendo DS was literally pain relief and suicide prevention before I could get treatment for my trigeminal neuralgia. Video games can put you into a trance like state that disconnects you from body sensations including pain.
World of Warcraft allowed me to continue my hobby of exploring random places when I was bedbound from a combination of myasthenia gravis and adrenal insufficiency. Eventually it became too exhausting even to play, but for awhile, while it lasted, it allowed me to keep exploring while physically unable to do so offline.
World of Warcraft also let me interact with a very good friend regularly, and to get to know some of her family and friends.
Unlike some people, I will never consider video games an adequate substitute for the flesh and blood world. There’s too much they can never capture no matter how advanced they get and I get nervous at some techno futurist types who think that something similar to video games will ever be even a half decent substitute for the physical world.
But unlike some other people, I will never pooh pooh video games as so unreal that they are entirely destructive and only stupid people would ever use them, while the real people in touch with real reality are horrified by their transparent unreality. That just seems so unnecessarily snobby. And I’ve gotten the assumption that I’m somehow not in touch with reality because I’ve used video games at times when nothing else was available to me to have certain experiences at all.
And I think video games are especially important to a lot of disabled people. Because pain control. And because they can allow us access to at least a simulated version of experiences we might never have any version of otherwise. And I’m not saying that as in, “Feel sorry for us because we can never have real experiences so wet must content ourselves with virtual substitutes, oh how wordlessly pathetic we are!” I’m just saying it because it’s true for a lot of us.
It’s been kind of rough for me lately, with trouble concentrating enough to get into gaming very much. Especially with as useful as it can be for dealing with pain, as has come up before.
Better accessibility sounds like an excellent thing, in general.
The epidemic began on September 13, 2005, when Blizzard introduced a new raid called Zul’Gurub into the game as part of a new update. Its end boss, Hakkar, could affect players by using a debuff called Corrupted Blood, a disease that damages players over time, this one specifically doing significant damage. The disease could be passed on between any nearby characters, and would kill characters with lower levels in a few seconds, while higher level characters could keep themselves alive. It would disappear as time passed or when the character died. Due to a programming error, players’ pets and minions carried the disease out of the raid.
Non-player characters could contract the disease but were asymptomatic to it and could spread it to others.[2] At least three of the game’s servers were affected. The difficulty in killing Hakkar may have limited the spread of the disease. Discussion forum posters described seeing hundreds of bodies lying in the streets of the towns and cities. Deaths in World of Warcraft are not permanent, as characters are resurrected shortly afterward.[3] However, dying in such a way is disadvantageous to the player’s character and incurs inconvenience.[4]
During the epidemic, normal gameplay was disrupted. Player responses varied but resembled real-world behaviors. Some characters with healing abilities volunteered their services, some lower-level characters who could not help would direct people away from infected areas, some characters would flee to uninfected areas, and some characters attempted to spread the disease to others.[2] Players in the game reacted to the disease as if there was real risk to their well-being.[5] Blizzard Entertainment attempted to institute a voluntary quarantine to stem the disease, but it failed, as some players didn’t take it seriously, while others took advantage of the pandemonium.[2] Despite certain security measures, players overcame them by giving the disease to summonable pets.[6] Blizzard was forced to fix the problem by instituting hard resets of the servers and applying quick fixes.[3]
The major towns and cities were abandoned by the population as panic set in and players rushed to evacuate to the relative safety of the countryside, leaving urban areas filled to the brim with corpses, and the city streets literally white with the bones of the dead.[7]
Next up on Worth Reading: The other team should just fucking let me win when I play baseball.
well this isn’t necessarily a bad point. there are games with great stories and really awful shoehorned fighting sequences. then you also have handicapped/disabled gamers who don’t necessarily have the dexterity to finish a game but would still like to be able to.
optional “cakewalk” modes aren’t that bad of an idea.
what if i want to just see the story of the game and dont want to actually play it? like??
as it is i would never pay for a bioshock game or a fallout game but i am very interested in the story. so i just watch youtube videos of it. they could get money from me if they sold the skip combat mode
i’m a games developer and an avid gamer and i really really think games should let you skip combat
honestly one of my favourite things about la noire was when you failed a sequence twice the game was like “yo do you just wanna skip this bit?”
the gaming industry/community has a huge problem with accessibility tbh. like, thank god for standardised control schemes (although bring back full customisation jfc not enough games have that anymore) but fights require time, literacy in both that type of gaming & in the individual game, you need to be able to navigate the system which can be anywhere from slightly difficult to hellish for people with visual/audio processing disorders. and tbh sometimes you just wanna enjoy the story and not get stressed the hell out doing the sAME FIGHT 700 times. it’s why i always put a game on easy/casual when I’m replaying unless i’m specifically going for difficulty based achievements.
not to mention SO MANY GAMES have either poorly designed battles or fights that have been shoved in for no reason other than to pad out the game (dxhr & da2 come to mind immediately) that sometimes it’d honestly improve the gameplay to just skip them altogether
Imagine if you were a gamer with arthritis or MS or some other disability that took away your ability to click buttons quickly, and every fight became as frustrating as THAT GODDAMN DA: ORIGINS OH FUCK I’M ON FIRE SLIDE PUZZLE.
Yeah. Skipping combat might seem like a not bad idea then.
Mass Effect 3 has this:
[Screenshot from a Mass Effect 3 menu, with title: “Choose Your Experience”, showing the options ‘action’, ‘role playing’ and ‘story’.]
‘Action’ makes most story choices for you and conversations become straight up cutscenes. ‘Role playing’ is the default experience, both challenging gameplay and character/story building. And ‘story’ has the roleplaying but very easy combat, letting you breeze through it. (You also have a ‘casual’ difficulty setting that’s a bit more rewarding but still pretty easy.)
The thing about video games (particularly RPGs or in general games that allow you to explore or direct the story) is that the interactivity is what makes it different from movies or watching LPs on youtube. And I’ve played games that got FAR stronger emotional reactions out of me simply because I had to carry out the actions myself rather than just watching. And that experience should be more accessible.
Because SHOCKINGLY: games aren’t always about winning, or being good at it. It’s about having fun. This is kindergarten education here.
Yeah, it always baffles me when I see people react so negatively to a perfectly reasonable suggestion like this.
Why the hell shouldn’t games let you skip combat if you want to? Why shouldn’t there be a super-duper-easy-peasy mode for everything? No-one is gonna force YOU to play it like that if you don’t want to! Continue to be as hardcore as you like!
I just don’t understand the resistance at all. What we’re talking about is simply having more options for gamers. You’re adding something that would make games more accessible and fun for loads of new fans, and you’re not taking ANYTHING away from existing fans.
Like…do you…not want more people to enjoy these games?? Do you really hate the idea of other people having fun so much that you’ll rile against it even when it literally has no effect on you or your experience whatsoever?? Are you honestly that selfish??
You know, if you liked Undertale (and it seems like lots of people do) I bet you’d like my sibling’s game, D.S.A:
It was no less than 5 years in the making and it is very, very funny. It also has some expert lampooning of current pop stars and celebrities, some great music, and some extremely snazzy-looking character designs.
