Blood, Guts, And Videogames (The Jimquisition)

I have to admit that I've never thought about this before. Just... what the fuck. Realism isn't worth trauma, especially not realism that doesn't contribute to anything. And I wouldn't want to play a fully realistic game where I kill people anyways. What would that even look like; me shooting someone and then going to 100 hours of virtual therapy to get over my PTSD?

Lea Chinelo

I don't really play video games to feel grim and put-upon. I'm certainly not above playing violent video games, but it's strange to me to play games that revel in trying to make players feel that way when so much of the rest of the world is happy to do the job. It doesn't even really have what seems to me one of the biggest emotional draws of video games- the sense that, despite being in an extreme situation, you have some vestige of control; a potentially tragic situation might be prevented by your actions, or at least mollified. Conversely, I did play "Spec Ops: The Line", and while I felt the unavoidability of the "white phosphorus" incident robbed the situation of some of its power, I appreciated that the game was trying to do something different. But I also felt like I had in some ways been pre-warned that the game was going to do something different. (I don't know how much of that was in the publicity surrounding the game itself, but somehow I had cottoned to it.) I support that games are art, and an artist has a right to try to express things with their art, even things that might be quite extreme, intense, or unpleasant. Yet at the same time, I have to wonder if this is really what people want. The secrecy (or attempted secrecy) behind big games like TLOU2 begins to feel like trickery. The creators want players to feel bad as they work their way through a dozen hours or more of unpleasantness, but they still want to be financially rewarded for it; they still want to be able to sell them violent experiences in the future, even as they want to effectively lecture them for daring to enjoy a violent experience. And if things do continue this way, trying to squeeze the last ounce of shock out of the person behind the gamepad, do we really end up anything but emotionally numb?

Kraken

Oh... Oh god...

NoPeaches

I personally wasn't as bothered by that sex scene as Jim was, didn't look too bad to me(course i'm still a virgin so maybe that's why LOL).

RedBedroomRecords

Yes I used to work a grocery store and experienced that same feeling, all job industries have shit bosses like that.

RedBedroomRecords

I don't think it's a dumb idea at all if there's an actual point to it, and it sounds like TLOU2 does have a real point despite what Jim claims, i'm legitimately fascinated by that idea.

RedBedroomRecords

Personally I don't think Druckman is a creep at all and I do think the mocking voice thing was a bit much. Yeah his employees probably shouldn't be having to do that stuff(at least not without a mental health advisor or something like that), but given what a genuinely good guy he's been so far in other areas I think a more measured response to his statement would've been better. Though from what i've heard he did apparently allow devs that were uncomfortable with the violence work on other stuff in the game. Also I got the point he was trying to make-he considers sanitized violence more offensive then realistic violence and that's an argument i've heard before in the documentary "This Film is Not Yet Rated", which goes into detail about how hypocritical the MPAA is in rating movies, at least one segment has a director pointing out that PG-13 movies are actually more violent then R-rated movies(due to PG-13 films having more gun violence) and another person argues that PG-13 films that don't properly depict what real violence is like by sanitizing it should be rated more harshly then films that show what graphic violence is like in real life(especially true for war films). So maybe this was Neil making a point about how he didn't want to make anymore T-rated games like the Uncharted series where the protagonist casually kills dozens of people and it's not shown to have any negative impact on him whatsoever. I for one do actually want to see more realistic violence and I do believe Last of Us 2 is actually properly using it to make a good point, when I hear that enemies are all named and will react to you killing their companions, that shit fascinates the hell out of me as it's something i've not seen in a game before, I like the idea of a game that makes you think about what you're doing(at the very least i'm sure it will handle the message better then Spec Ops did, I felt like its message got clunky since it forced you to do a bad thing to continue the story and then berated the player for it even though the devs where the ones that designed the game that way to begin with, so that guilt-tripping never really made a lick of sense to me) and makes you feel bad about it, cartoony over-the-top violence would feel horrendously out of place in Last of Us 2 and would take me out of the game(though i'm sure there are some creative liberties taken with the violence) and no I don't think Neil is saying he wants to make a "murder simulator", he's just saying he wants players to feel something, and given the overwhelmingly positive impressions of the game so far i'd say he's succeeded with flying colors. Not to say you didn't make good points though, devs shouldn't HAVE to watch disturbing shit if they don't want to, i'm pretty sure it was possible to make TLOU2's violence look like that without real-life references and yes mental health counselors should be available, I heard a story about how that Suicide Squad movie had mental health counselors on the set to help out the actors because of how dark the film was(That was before it got reshot to be more comedic, I do hope the original cut turns up one of these days). Also Snuff films aren't actually a real thing, that's an unfortunately common myth that came about as a result of a publicity campaign for the 1976 horror film "Snuff", it helped the film do well in theaters but unfortunately it led to an often-repeated myth that continues to this very day even though no actual "Snuff" films were ever found before or since that movie came out, this great Cracked article goes into detail:https://www.cracked.com/article_24178_5-stories-that-captivated-world-that-were-utter-b.s..html P.S. not really feeling all that sympathetic towards Jungbluth as he's one of those bastards that gleefully pissed all over TotalBiscuit's grave mere hours after his tragic death from cancer(funny how someone who was supposedly so affected by watching real violence was so vicious and uncaring towards the real life death of someone who dared to criticize Bioware in the past, so glad Bioware shitcanned his ass after that disgusting series of statements he made about TB), he deleted his posts after backlash, but the internet never forgets: https://archive.fo/XCqUR#selection-3593.0-3620.0

RedBedroomRecords

to be fair, a lot of hentai games i've seen do fucks pretty well .....uh, not that i PLAY or OWN them or anything. ha ha!

Tyrannodokuro

Time for video game developers to stand up with oppressed minorities. SPEAK UP JIM.

Arjun Roy

Trust me, not saying it's as bad as video game devs, but my job in fast food has taught me that bullying bad bosses, insane customers, and miserable joyless gossip coworkers will make you feel dead inside and dread your job. I can only imagine it's a million times worse for people who have to add 'psychological trauma' to the conga line!

Trevor Bond

Well, hearing the stuff developers go through was..... Disturbing. “I remember back in the 2000’s people accused video games of being murder simulators...” Jesus Christ, I remember that too. To hear developers actually wanting to simulate real life violence is such a fucking stupid idea...

Dying Breed

This reminds me of an interview I saw some time ago about sportspeople doping to achieve greater results. They drew a correlation between the demand that fans place on the industry to keep breaking records, pushing harder, etc. - much like the gaming industry. The demand becomes more intense and we end up having to push ourselves harder and harder to raise the bar. The thing is that while you constantly aim to increase the revenue opportunities, depth of experience, etc - it's easy to lose yourself to the increasing desire of management. You start feeling that it's on if you don't reach the ever-increasing daily goals.

I had no idea cant wait to watch this when baby is down for a nap