Metro 2033 Redux free on GOG.COM
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A fantastic game
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Looks interesting. Kerbal plane program?
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Not my bucket of borscht, but I figured some of you might be interested…
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I heard that broke sales records for a Sony PC release, but Helldivers 2 sold more than twice its amount on day one.
Marketing jackals will always find a way to make a success worse, I swear.
Cultural Impact?! It’s a game that’s literally just T&A fanservice…
The first Mafia was a cultural impact on gaming communities…
Harry Pitfall had a cultural impact…
Hell- Space Invaders had more of a …
ok ok I stop.
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He really laid it on thick, lol. I think I’d agree more if a major publisher wasn’t attached.
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I believe it has a strong cultural impact if it finally deads the current american tendency to create ugly female game characters to avoid the exact T and A fan service type remarks you made.
I’ll admit that part of the reason I and others never gave Star Wars outlaws a second look was because of this esthetic.
So… this is not necessarily my type of game, but I went ahead and played the free demo and was pleasantly surprised at the gameplay and the graphics.
Not so much by what looks like a very complex skill tree, at a time when my attention span is definitely shorter than it used to be.
My personal first impressions when encountering the female protagonist was Oh, shes actually attractive, followed by the realization that I’d been playing a lot of games where it seemed developers deliberately made females in particular, unattractive.
To the point that attractive female characters are now actually a notable thing, such as when I played Clair obscura and was similarly surprised that the female characters were actually attractive.
Honestly it probably shouldn’t even be an issue, but the fact that it’s been made into one is what’s causing the backlash.
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Personally I disagree to a very large degree with what you wrote- but then again, a personal opinion shouldn’t be ground for a fight so, sure whatever.
Personally, I’m waiting for this onslaught of ‘ugly’ characters to actually show up.
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Well, a perfect example would be this character. Of course, looks are subjective, but the gaming audience simply did not want to play as this character, and voted with their money, making the sequel to a hugely successful game into a relative flop…
Or we could go with this…
Things get more interesting when you compare the real life actresses doing the Mo-cap and voice etc., to their alter egos in the game, emphasizing that this is something deliberate by the studios in question, which also causes resentment from people feeling their games are being invaded by unwelcome cultural agendas.
Studios can do this if they want, but annoyingly, people are likely gonna just keep right on voting with their wallets.
And if the subtext is that looks don’t matter, then I wonder who these companies think are downloading all those innumerable free beauty mods and/or paying through the nose for in-game glamour/cosmetic/costume packages…
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Interesting discussion.
You got me thinking @HiFlyer , and since I’m not very good at critical thinking, plus we seem to be lacking a woman’s perspective, I showed this video and the following comments to my scientist.
She understands the desire for idealized characters and appearances in games and is happy that different preferences are being served.
At the same time, she is personally relieved that the hypersexualized female main character is not the only playable option anymore. The first game she loved was Mass Effect (2007), in no small part thanks to the fact that femshep was someone she could identify with, and was treated as an actual person, not objectified.
So I guess it’s different strokes (ha!) for different folks.
The comparison between photoshoot pictures and in-game screenshots got a good chuckle out of her. (She thinks the conditions, selection, postprocessing are too dissimilar)
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I’m not sure with modern-day graphics, that that’s really a significant factor. If todays game designers want to accurately represent their human model in digital form, the technology is more than up to it.
(Heck, look at Star Citizen)
A case in point is Hellblade 2, where the digital doppelganger was an exact match to the real life actress to such a degree that the things she was going through in the game upset my stomach, and I never finished playing. 
What actually seems to be happening (or at least that’s what many people think) is that to avoid being attacked regarding sexualizing women, designers are erring to the point of coarsening the characters with more manlike features.
There’s another game I was just glancing at, I don’t think its released yet, where the female character is bald, and is at the point where if you narrow your eyes its pretty much impossible to guess her gender.
The only way you know is that at the beginning of the trailer, she is shaving herself bald.
Its interesting that none of this sort of stuff is apparently necessary for male characters, who pretty much remain stereotypically sweaty, musclebound hunks, for the most part.
I’m discussing it because it came up, not because its the issue of the ages but the main thing for me is, can I empathize with/care about the character; and some of these games make it harder than it needs to be.
A side addenda to this is the tendency to make these new age characters actively unlikeable to “subvert expectations” which is also no fun.
(And helped get Wheel of Time cancelled)
Give the people what they want!
In a world of numerous choices, and titles hitting $70 or more, if the designers want to play games, they risk me shrugging, saying “You do you”. and moving onto something that’s trying to entertain me, not prove the latest transient social point. I could watch a handmaids tale for that, and probably be bored cross-eyed.
Quoting her responses:
“That’s just what women look like without make-up”
“It really is interesting. Men seem to either not be as activistic about the repressive gender roles forced on them, or they don’t suffer as much from beauty standards.”
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I played Everquest for years in a previous life, and it was simply a truism of human nature that me playing a hot babe got me eager assistance in completing my quests and eased being accepted in groups. Even knowing I was a guy, males are/were just wired to respond protectively and ingratiatingly to an attractive female.
(Oh, and Russians are crazy)
As hilarious as my girlfriend of the time thought that was, we are just built that way, and trying to futz with that paradigm is gonna get developers in trouble.
Interestingly, most of the women in the game (Those who let it be known they were actual females and sometimes confirmed it in voice chat) were playing particularly aggressive male barbarian types, and that was ok, too.
Its a fantasy world. Everyone was being the hottest, most badass, superhuman babe/hunk universe-saving killing machine they could be when not occupied selling insurance at work. (or whatever)
Bringing real world stuff into it just annoys people.
Not exactly an influx, is it, though? Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that character from TLOU not actually a woman but a transman? I don’t really follow TLOU at all or any mainstream games where this might be a gripe. It just doesn’t bother me when there exist websites that can cure any potential dearth of beautiful women I may or may not notice.
It also calls into question the artistic merit of games as a medium if you’re having to make adjustments and change aesthetic choices based on the whims of consumers over social media.
I’ll even be real with you: If I’m playing a game like Fallout or something like Horizon where it’s a post-apocalyptic experience? I don’t want to see finely maintained beauty standards. I’m expecting to see everyone at their absolute worst both morally AND aesthetically.
Just seems like another agenda pushed (not too unlike the one that is being claimed as being foist upon them) by social media loudmouths to get gamers whipped up into a frenzy as they are so very prone to simply because that’s stupid easy and reliable click revenue.
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Actually I could probably have gone on to post dozens of examples worldwide, I just didn’t think anyone was ready for a TLDR post on the subject. And no, Abby is completely female: the only biological oddities in TLOU are the zombies.
The games main developer is quite outspoken about his dislike of sexualization in modern games… So of course he gives Abby a quite cringy, violent, topless sex scene in the game, which you couldn’t pay me to endure.
So… Lets examine that. Should a creatives understanding of artistic merit be constrained by consumers voicing their opinions via the most common way to do so? Not at all! Creatives can do anything they please. Just don’t expect consumers to pay them any mind as they go bankrupt or get cancelled (IE Wheel of Time or Snow White)
And some people like that. And some people don’t. I would just see which titles get the greater return on investment. The only skin I have in the game is maintaining my right to ignore the pooh out of games trying to show me the error of my pervy ways when I’m am just trying to blow crap up real good for a few hours.
Sounds cool. I would posit that the loudmouths are just refining/reinforcing the messages they are hearing from tons of disaffected players and adding their own perspective. But again, In many ways I really couldn’t care less.
In the grand scheme of things, I’ll simply raise my eyebrows mildly as the latest creative, angry that their genius is not being properly recognized, rails against toxic this or that while their stuff flops.
Or maybe strikes a chord and racks up a win. If so, good for them!
Remember a commercial video game released by a publisher is an entertainment product. I don’t care how deeply devoted to their own creative vision the developer is, to get publisher money you are going to deal with them having input. That input is largely driven by focus group and consumer feedback.
I worked in the console world, were anything the big 3 said went. It was basically impossible to make money making a video game for say the Playstation 2 if Sony wasn’t going to sign off on your title. Yes there always have been “non approved” titles available for gaming consoles, but the market and sales numbers were tiny. In the PC world you can privateer, but it’s still only 1 in a thousand are going to make enough money to do it full time even with digital self publishing these days.
The video game industry is a mutil-billion dollar industry, titles with TV and movie tie ins are multi-billion dollar investments. The desires/ideas/concepts of the designers are a very, very, small part of the larger corporate decision on the final product we get.
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Hmmmmm… Great price for what seems to be highly rated game. I’m not personally a fan of the idea of sneaking around to off Bambi’s mom, but what do I know? Might be right up somebodies alley!
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That hunting game is one of the 2 best ever made hunting game for pc.
So, for the lovers of the genre its highly recommended.
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