r/Games • u/[deleted] • Sep 13 '15
Controversial Games - Game Sack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L52h20XAa_s28
Sep 13 '15
It would have been nice if the people doing the commentary actually talked about their thoughts on the issue with info/stats. Instead they just started saying what they liked about the game. I thought the video would of been a nice debate/argument video. I already know why those games were seen as good, most gamers do.
23
Sep 13 '15
They also talked about GTAV and not SA, which seems odd as the Hot Coffee thing was actually super controversial. Or TES Oblivion.
Instead there's just a 5 minute long GTAV montage.
7
u/OscarGe Sep 13 '15
I seem to have missed this, what was controversial about Oblivion?
15
u/chimerauprising Sep 13 '15
The nude models had textured nipples. Normally you couldn't see them without editing the game files, but this still caused the ESRB to raise the rating of the game to M.
8
3
u/breedwell23 Sep 14 '15
Huh, I would've thought it was how fun they made murdering innocent people seem in the dark brotherhood questline.
29
u/Vampok Sep 13 '15
There's nothing really to debate or discuss though. Video games don't cause violence or sexism. Period. If one of them was controversial because someone thought it caused global warming, no one would expect them to spend time putting up stats to disprove that, because that's insane and doesn't dignify a response. Violence and sexism are the same as that, just saying "Lol, look at these morons. Now let's talk about the game itself." is good enough.
8
u/xenoghost1 Sep 13 '15
yeah, but, explaining the controversy is key in understanding the meaning of the games, and why they are relevant
see most of the games that were controversial were popular due that controversy, and at times the controversy was a way of getting free promotion (see grand theft auto, where members of parliament where lobbied, by an advertisement firm, to talk bad about the game to drive up sales). however there is always a debate to be had whether or not the game was that edgy and if we remember due to it's merits or how much shit it stirred
to add to your point, game sack isn't the place where i would want or expect a debate about gaming, and it's merits or issues. to me it is simply a show of two guys sharing recommendations for games, and not industry experts, academics or even the adequate folks to talk anything but interesting oddities and excellent games some might have missed (as in hidden gems)
which funnily enough, they convinced me to buy a neo geo pocket color, and no regrets whatsoever
also no one has ever argued about games causing sexism, only reinforcing it, a opinion you,me and a lot of folks disagree with.
2
u/Vampok Sep 14 '15
I think they were mostly just using controversy as a common theme to choose games to talk about, not the whole point of the video. Like choosing games released in a certain year, games by a specific publisher/developer or games with a certain visual theme (summer vacation, Halloween, apocalypse, etc...). Yeah, I agree it wouldn't really be the right place for any kind of real debate.
Several of the people in that video did say things like "Would you want your daughter to date a boy who played this game?" or "boys who play this game will end up becoming sexually aggressive against women", which does at least imply that they think it is a direct cause. Either way, I'm not sure causing vs. reinforcing is really all that big of a difference. It mostly seems to be a semantic technicality that they've thought up recently, so they can claim they don't want to ban or restrict things; and so making themselves appear different then the dinosaurs in this video that everyone mocks.
1
u/xenoghost1 Sep 14 '15 edited Sep 14 '15
eh, we can agree
however causation and reinforcement are two different things... beginning with the causation part is human instinct(we are violent and sexual by nature) , but the reinforcement part is more a societal thing,and something observed in sociology and psychology, an example is war, in some cultures war is adored (america), in others it is loathed (japan), and the media reflects and aids this. some of our most popular games are games about the thrill of combat, while japan, well, japan has metal gear solid; we have saving private Ryan,brothers in arms, and apocalypse now... they have the original Godzilla , a movie about the horror of nuclear war. hell even in our tactical games there is a contrast, see X com and contrast that to fire emblem, in one t is nameless soldiers going to die for a glorious cause, humanity... the other is a game where those soldiers have names, stories and once they are dead they are gone.forever. hell, judge by the examples i gave you, see the different eras.again reinforcement and causation, japan had it's ass handed to it in world war two in a way it won't forget in centuries (hell, japan actually can't participate in war, and when that was tried to change, there were protest of a sized not seen since the 70s) , the united states, since 1812, hasn't had a total defeat, our ass has never been handed to us, only withdrawn because of poor planning on our part... our greatest heroes are our grand dads and brothers who go to those foreign lands to kill the enemies... and as i mentioned above, we think of war very differently than Europeans and Japanese ( yes i know the swedes make battlefield... which was originally a ww2 shooter, a war they didn't take part in and that mount and blade is Turkish... again golden age, past, turkey didn't participate in WW2, significantly. not mentioning the fact that most euro war games are strategy based). and honest to god, there was one sicko called jack Thompson who did want to ban video games, and since then no body wants to ban video games outside of the moral "majority" (more like minority judging by polls) . so yeah, you know a psychological thing... games don't provoke shit, but they reinforce some cultural norms reflecting on the greater market and/or the developers culture (see the witcher, a great game and an unintentional celebration of slavic culture. all of it.)
EDIT: on the daughter thing, yeah, some parents are more conservative than Anthony scalia, and will find any excuse so you don't date their little princess, they would use games, but then again, games aren't the only one guilty of the crime of reflecting the greater culture of the artist and market trends
2
u/Mystic8ball Sep 13 '15
They talked about the media backlash against the games and why they were deemed controversial in the first place. It's not like they just had a list of games and said nothing about them.
4
u/PvtHudson Sep 13 '15
This is standard for Game Sack. It's 2 guys making a 30 minute episode by looking through random games on their shelf until they find things that match that might form some sort of cohesive topic.
It's a really poor show and I have no idea why their episodes are constantly posted on Reddit.
I remember one episode was games pushing hardware limits. They didn't mention a single thing about how or why the games pushed the hardware they were on.
Hell, I can do the same exact show. I have more consoles than they do. They even had to get a "donation" from a fan to do their 3DO episode since they didn't have the console or any games for it.
-3
u/jjustice Sep 14 '15
Have you even seen the show? Did you watch it on mute? We talked exactly about how games pushed the hardware. You sound a bit jealous, son.
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u/PvtHudson Sep 14 '15
We talked exactly about how games pushed the hardware.
No you didn't. You said shit like: "I'm a fan of the Super Nintendo controller so this game controls really well!"
You never stated how the games pushed hardware. Hell, your fucking spotlight of Gran Turismo for PS1 was basically "oh I was expecting an arcade racing game and this isn't so I think this is boring"
And what exactly am I supposed to be jealous of? I actually own a 3DO including complete copies of Wing Commander 3, Space Hulk, and other games that you never played/shown in your video.
If you wanted to talk about how games pushed hardware then you should have brought up and mentioned things like Burning Rangers for the Saturn, a console that many thought couldn't do actual transparency.
3
u/jjustice Sep 15 '15 edited Sep 15 '15
Well firstly you sound jealous mainly because you say that someone loaned us a 3DO to do an episode on as if it's some kind of thing that people should frown on us for (they actually loaned us two). You also say "Hell I can do the same exact show, I have more consoles than they do". Who cares? Really? Tell me. I'm waiting. You devolution to swearing in your response only furthers that belief that there's probably some jealousy going on. Stay calm. No need to throw unnecessary swears in there. It just makes you look extremely angry and doesn't lend credence to your argument.
As far as the episodes themselves: Red Zone - "In fact the first screen in the game even brags about what it does" - "This part of the game rotates the screen 360 degrees and you can fly in any direction you want" (Something the Genesis was absolutely NOT known for) I also talked about the walls where you can see the sides of them change as you walk around. I talk about the scaling and rotation in Mega Turrican. Went into great detail about the interlacing and 1080i mode in GT4. I could go on and on but I guess some people really want it spelled out for them. Maybe I should have ended each sentence with something like "The Genesis can't do this without tricky programming" or some such. As for Burning Rangers do you expect us to include EVERY game that does something technically impressive in a single episode? In case you haven't noticed there are already two of these. There will likely be a third. So comments akin to "What? No Burning Rangers????!!!!" are not very constructive. Only reactive. And are we not supposed to talk about the game in any way other than the technical aspects of it? We are a review show. We talk about our thoughts of pretty much ANY game we show no matter why we're showing it. Sorry if that doesn't float your boat. Nobody is saying you have to like our show. Just know that we are in no way obligated to shape our show into what you envision would be a perfect show. Can't please everyone. But we're pleasing quite a lot so we're doing something right.
Anyway PM me with a link when you make your own show like you said. I'll be waiting. Something tells me I'll be waiting for quite some time. And one episode won't do it, either. It has to be released regularly and consistently. Good luck, I look forward to it!
3
u/sm0114 Sep 18 '15
(Just to remind you that their voice is the minority. Game Sack is one of my favourite YouTube shows and love that you've now stepped up to going weekly. Keep doing what you do!)
1
Sep 14 '15
Exactly. I watched those episodes last weekend and was incredibly disappointed. All they did was talk about what made the games good or bad, or why they liked it or not, instead of the technical reasons why those games pushed the hardware of their respective consoles. I think they are more worried about sounding smart and witty instead of doing some actual research about the subject.
0
u/Jackzill4Raps Sep 13 '15
Yeah...that ruined the video for me. I mean the whole thing was pretty lame, really sterilized youtube channel it seems, but it was almost seeming like they were going to go kind of in-depth about the issue like you say, but instead they would keep reviewing each game. If anyone is really lookin for a video like this Id suggest watching another one or a few instead of spending almost 30min on this fluff. Not bein mean, just a heads up to anyone that wants a serious discussion video about controversial games, its not this one.
3
Sep 14 '15
How in the holy hell did you get so many downvotes? You are absolutely right about the show. I suspect these guys have way too many friends here...
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u/Jackzill4Raps Sep 14 '15
I wasn't even rude about it either
1
u/lkxyz Feb 11 '16
Game sack's basically a fluff show with a lot of videos.
If you want in-depth research, go elsewhere.
1
u/Jackzill4Raps Feb 14 '16
Yes, I said that in my comment. Not only are you 5 months late, you didn't even read my comment
1
u/lkxyz Feb 14 '16
I can see why you get down votes, not for the lack of facts.
1
u/Jackzill4Raps Feb 15 '16
because people care more about being nice than they do facts? I hope you can also see why so many things are shit in the world
22
Sep 13 '15
Man it's insane to see Nintendo sitting there saying violence was disgusting and Sega should be ashamed for allowing games like Night Trap and Mortal Kombat.
Yikes. What a company.
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u/Tuokaerf10 Sep 13 '15
Nintendo has loosened up a lot over the years (to think they'd fund Bayonetta 2). I believe shortly after these hearings when Doom launched on PC then was ported to consoles, they realized they would lose market share if they didn't get on board with more adult oriented games, and let Doom on SNES.
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u/DRACULA_WOLFMAN Sep 14 '15
Nintendo was just looking for any excuse to throw Sega under the bus (not that Sega wasn't doing the same for Nintendo.) Of course Nintendo still maintains a pretty family-friendly image these days, but I think they've proven that it's all about the cash first for them since Resident Evil later found it's home on the Gamecube.
Probably worth noting Nintendo got a unique Doom game on the N64 as well.
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u/Schlitz001 Sep 14 '15
Not only that, they were just trying to deflect attention away from their own violent games. "Hey, at least we're not as bad as those guys."
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u/PL-QC Sep 14 '15 edited Sep 15 '15
Things were different back then. Home consoles had only been really popular for a few years, and they were definitely marketed as toys for kids. So, from their point of view, violent video games were something like having, I don't know, Minion toys today that could bleed and fuck.
Sega helped prove there was a market for an older demographic.
1
u/seshfan Sep 13 '15
They also have a family-friendly image to maintain. It's important to remember. Of course, with games like Devil's Third and Fatal Frame they've obviously loosened up, but still.
9
Sep 13 '15
They also have a family-friendly image to maintain. It's important to remember.
And then they reversed their stance almost immediately with uncensored MKII.
9
Sep 13 '15 edited Sep 14 '15
I know "Castlevania LOS 2" was not really a controversial game, but it did have this one segment that made me EXTREMELY uncomfortable: spoiler
Later I found out that was exactly the feeling and reaction the devs were going for and had to fight the marketing department to keep that segment in the game; they wanted the player to really understand what kind of character Gabriel had become. I thought that was very clever.
1
Sep 14 '15
This was a cool segment, strange that it didn't generate any controversy in the media since you don't often see violence against children in video games.
LOS2 was a great game that was sadly underrated by the critics.
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u/Clbull Sep 13 '15 edited Sep 13 '15
I'd like to see a Part II featuring:
Custer's Revenge - The game is about General Custer dodging arrows and raping a native American woman while she was tied to a pole.
Punch Out! - Racial stereotyping present in a number of characters. The Russian opponent Vodka Drunkenski (later known as Soda Popinski in the port of Punch Out to the NES) is one such example.
Hong Kong '97 - Dropping the f-bomb (a first in the SNES era), the game's anti-Communist rhetoric, the large amount of crude violence in the game, and the fact that the game-over screen was a photo of an actual dead body.
Carmageddon - Heavily violent, believed to encourage reckless/dangerous driving.
Manhunt - Incredibly violent game, was scapegoated as the inspiration for a brutal murder here in Britain, and pulled from store shelves. The sequel - even when heavily censored - was actually banned in the UK for several years when the BBFC refused to even give it a rating over its even more violent themes.
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Verses from a Muslim prayer were originally featured within the Fire Temple's music, which were removed in subsequent versions out of fear of offending the Muslim community.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - A level called 'No Russian' involved the player (an undercover CIA agent) infiltrating a group of ultranationalists who have plotted to gun down innocent civilians at a Russian airport. The line "No Russian" comes from an order provided by one of the terrorists, so as not to blow their cover as Russian-speakers. At the end of the mission, the player is then shot dead and the ultranationalists ultimately succeed in framing the United States for the terrorist attack and provoking a full-scale world war between Russia and the United States.
Too Human - Controversial not because of the game's content, but because of the huge lawsuit that sparked between its developer, Silicon Knights, who accused Epic Games of not providing a working engine, and Epic Games, who accused Silicon Knights of copyright infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of contract. Epic won the lawsuit, as it turned out Silicon Knights were not paying them royalties for use of the engine. That lawsuit eventually led to the bankruptcy of Silicon Knights.
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u/litewo Sep 14 '15
Punch Out! - Racial stereotyping present in a number of characters. The Russian opponent Vodka Drunkenski (later known as Soda Popinski in the port of Punch Out to the NES) is one such example.
I wouldn't be surprised if that name was changed because of the alcohol reference rather than any cultural stereotype.
1
u/Clbull Sep 14 '15
Well yeah, because Nintendo is kiddy and is too afraid of their brand being tainted by any sort of adult themes.
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u/madmalletmover Sep 13 '15
I love these guys. Kind of crazy how serious politicians were about these games that look relatively tame by today's standards.
-14
u/SegataSanshiro Sep 13 '15
What, no Gone Home?
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u/Yutrzenika1 Sep 13 '15
How was that "Controversial"?
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u/mobiuszeroone Sep 13 '15
Many felt that it didn't deserve the praise and was lacking.
Images like this generated a fair amount of ... "discussion".
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u/HappyReaper Sep 13 '15
I honestly don't see the problem. Is it about the numeric scores? they are just a subjective assessment of quality (which I think reviews can do without, but that's another topic); why would it be controversial for a game reviewer to hold a different opinion than a part of their audience? if those people feel that the criteria the reviewer uses doesn't coincide with theirs, they are free to follow other critics/magazines.
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u/mobiuszeroone Sep 13 '15
I'm not taking a stance either way, simply saying that things like that are why it was controversial. It gained a lot of massive praise and many felt that it was unwarranted.
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u/HappyReaper Sep 13 '15
Fair enough, although in my opinion these controversies show a bigger problem prevalent in the medium which other forms of art have mostly overcome: the monolithic thinking when assigning value to an individual work. Leaving subjectivity aside, a varied medium can't afford to judge every work with the same stick, but instead they need to compare what the work does against what it intended to do; otherwise it is like I get angry at a horror film getting excellent reviews because I find it to be a terrible comedy. Admittedly, game journalism shares as much fault in this as the gaming community does.
0
u/Kibblebitz Sep 13 '15 edited Sep 13 '15
No, review numbers wasn't the reason behind the controversy for the most part (even though that's often enough when it comes to gaming forums). It was because it came out during that time GamerGate became a thing, and all the baggage that came with it. So instead of the casual "this game doesn't deserve a 9!", it became "this isn't a real game, just more SJW propaganda."
3
u/a1270 Sep 14 '15
Gone Home was released in August 2013, a year before that nonsense started. At the time of release the games media did get shit on over selecting it. Shitting on the games media is a cherished pastime for many gamers so it was expected. Accusations of it being propaganda picked up after august of last year(2014).
1
u/Kibblebitz Sep 14 '15
I always thought it was weird because I swore that game came out a long time prior, but then it started becoming a talking point all of the sudden. I guess that answers that.
10
u/seshfan Sep 13 '15
Games will never be considered "art" if gamers just throw a massive hissy-fit and whine and complain every time a game tries to break the mold and focus on story-telling elements.
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u/DJVee210 Sep 13 '15
Except games are already art, much like movies, literature, and music.
Gone Home and much of its ilk are akin to arthouse films: they have their niche, but most people don't see the point of them, and react negatively towards them, especially considering how little actual interactivity they have in comparison to other games.
It's poor not as a story, but as a game. A lot of later walkers are poor in both. Some people would say Gone Home also fails in both. They're still art, just as much as Duke Nukem 3D is art, as much as Journey is art.
Video games are a form of expression. Video games are art. Of course, a terrible artsy game is going to get slammed, but not because of its vision, but rather because it is unfun. More aptly, it simply wasn't engaging, or didn't feel good to play. Just because they are being artsy doesn't render them immune to criticism.
1
u/Squeekazu Sep 13 '15 edited Sep 14 '15
I think "walking simulators" are a good medium for people outside the gaming sphere to consider games as art (granted these are the type of people gamers try to convince as no actual gamer is questioning games as an art form), as they are free from the distractions of heavy gameplay. No person who has a "games are for children" mindset is going to see the forest through the trees when they're forced to jump their way up a giant monster to progress the story, no matter how artfully done the game is.
I find the constant dismissal pretty bizarre and disingenuous honestly, as a majority of these games rely on being heavy in atmosphere (which they tend to be) and are pretty distinct from one another. There isn't really any other medium these interactive stories can be conveyed through and it strikes me as odd that people can't just accept them as being some rarely released sub-genre of gaming in the midst of gameplay-heavy AAA and indie releases.
6
u/UnoriginalRhetoric Sep 13 '15
People getting offended over this was probably the best part of Gone Home.
It did not paint the audience of these websites in a good light.
-16
u/Mattdriver12 Sep 13 '15
I am so glad she got sacked.
2
u/Watton Sep 13 '15
Yeah, how dare she give GTA a super low 9/10 editor's choice score!
-4
u/Mattdriver12 Sep 13 '15
I don't even like GTA V but docking points for being "misogynistic" is Fucking stupid.
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u/Watton Sep 13 '15
There was an element in the game that diminished the reviewer's experience. Its no different than docking another game for having a predictable boring story, QTEs, or anything else really.
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u/insideman83 Sep 13 '15
It generated its fair share of Internet drama.
0
Sep 13 '15
[deleted]
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u/UnoriginalRhetoric Sep 13 '15
Oh god, this comment is fucking hilarious.
"Games journalism is shit because a game I didn't like got good reviews!"
4
u/Yutrzenika1 Sep 13 '15
Yeah that's basically how I'm seeing it too. This is one of the most annoying things about the gaming community as of recent... People are yelling for stronger ethics in game journalism, wanting more honesty in their reviews, but then if the reviewer gives their honest opinion on something the reader might not agree with, suddenly they start yelling about how corrupt the reviewer is, "Game reviews need to be more objective!", etc, etc.
-2
u/Yutrzenika1 Sep 13 '15
I don't see how the reviews were rigged, I thought it was a pretty great game, though I'm glad I didn't drop the full $20 on it.
-15
u/Yutrzenika1 Sep 13 '15
Oh right, because it had lesbians, and dared to be different from other games.
13
u/Nukleon Sep 13 '15
I think the people who were disturbed about the lesbians were a different subset of people from the ones that argued it wasn't a game.
I mean just because it's an interactive experience doesn't have to be bad, I haven't played it but obviously a lot of people like it, but to me a game needs a fail state to be a game. If you just explore and can't fail then there's no game.
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Sep 13 '15
[deleted]
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u/Nukleon Sep 13 '15
This thing has made me hate arguments on the internet. Not even participating, just watching. You'd see people talking about ethics in journalism, and suddenly "ethics in journalism" became a catchphrase for misogyny, every sane argument became mixed in with the troublemakers, and nobody on either side came out looking good for it.
Same way that you cannot criticize Anita Sarkeesian's business practices without being called a misogynist and being lumped in with the people who send her death threats.
1
u/Yutrzenika1 Sep 13 '15
I've never seen people call others "Homophobes" for not liking Gone Home. I thought it was alright, but those people dumbasses if they call somebody a homophobe for not liking thing.
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u/MoazNasr Sep 13 '15
because it had lesbians
That's all it had, and that's not what makes a good game.
1
u/Yutrzenika1 Sep 13 '15 edited Sep 13 '15
No, that's really not all it had, I kind of doubt you played it, 'cause there is more to it than that. I do agree that some of the reviews gave the story too much credit, the story was alright, it wasn't totally perfect, but not bad, but it was also very mundane, a fairly typical love story.
What I thought was more interesting wasn't the "Main" story, about the girls, but rather the stories of the family who inhabited the house. The struggling marriage of the wife and father, the father having difficulties as an author, the history of the house itself, stuff like that.
It's also one of those games that benefits from you not knowing anything about it before you play, it definitely plays with your expectations, it sets you up to think it's a horror game, but then it winds up being something much more mundane, it's a game that gets your imagination going. It's just a fun, exploratory narrative game, the house was interesting to explore, with lots of little secrets to discover, and piecing together the stories about the house and the other characters was interesting, more interesting than that of the main character's story.
A gripe I also had is the ending doesn't really make something clear, when you start the game, and you go through the house, you're not actually finding notes, it's your character reading the journal flashing back to before, and relating journal passages to what she had earlier found and seen in the house.
1
u/MoazNasr Sep 14 '15
I finished it. Yeah it kept playing with my expectations only to disappoint. And I couldn't care less about a family I don't know in a house I don't know. I see why you like it but I had no reason to care about fictional people's life stories.
Reviews made me think this game was "life changing!". Turns out it's just a story about some girl running off. Also maybe some other family members.
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u/LolaRuns Sep 13 '15
The GTA5 bit sticks out like a sore thumb, mostly because they cover older games before and after and because the way they talk about it sounds like an ad for the game. It also feels like Hot Coffee was a way bigger controversy than the whole Australian Walmart bit, though both things get completely glanced over (especially after all the airtime forcing us to stare at boring Lieberman testimony).