8mo ago

A patient gamer youtuber explaining why she only plays old games

57 comments

Older games are better than a lot of modern AAA slop, but not for the reasons she describes.
I was hoping she would talk about game design, or writing, mechanics, player agency, gameplay before graphics or literally anything else but she spent nearly 15 minutes only talking about tired culture wars talking points like, "why don't women look feminine aymore," "why are characters designed for diversity/inclusion first before story," "Concord sucks lol."
Yeah AAA writing is shit, please change the record so all the sweaty neckbeard virgins complaining about Aloy's facial hair can crawl back in their caves. So sick of hearing about it.
She shouts out Asmongold in her comments. Disgraceful.
- Agreed with your reasons, but she made points I have never heard about that I found interesting, like disappearing of some femininity aspects to awkwardly try to avoid sexism accusations. I wanted to share a point of view that I think is rarely shared in gaming communities.
  I don't follow YouTube drama much, so I don't know who Asmongold is.
  The reason I ended up there is because I recently started playing Oblivion, and saw her videos mentioned.
  
  she made points I have never heard about that I found interesting, like disappearing of some femininity aspects to awkwardly try to avoid sexism accusations.
  These are very common talking points of gamer gate bigots. It's a giant red flag, because the people who talk about it are bigots
  
  disappearing of some femininity aspects
  Can you describe some of those aspects that have been disappearing?
- talking points like, "why don't women look feminine aymore," "why are characters designed for diversity/inclusion first before story," "Concord sucks lol."
  They're fair observations. Convergent, homogenous graphic design plagues big-budget game production.
  Ubi is the sort of mob that could put out a title set in Georgian England and offer a cast that includes among others a queer green-haired ship's captain, a Chinese bailiff and a Rastafarian archbishop. There's a place for getting whimsical with character creation, but done often enough (and across so many genres), it becomes self-satirizing.

I rarely click on YouTube links. For some reason I gave this one a try. Turns out she's bigoted.
That'll teach me for clicking
- At one point I was looking for some help with implementing something akin to UE's Metahumans but in Godot.
  Somehow I stumbled across this one, single person on youtube who had a half decent implementation of what I was looking for...
  ... and after watching some other videos on her channel... yep, she's an open NeoNazi.
  That was enough internet for me, that day.
  
  yep, she’s an open NeoNazi
  In the interest of not giving a potential neo nazi any more views, what made you think this? Apart from if she said "I'm a neo nazi."
- Ok, I was not considering this point of view at all when I shared this. I was thinking that's a different point of view on patient gaming that I didn't have.
  
  I don't know if it could be classed as patient gaming. As I understand it, patient gamers will eventually get around to current games, just not now. It doesn't sound like she ever wants to play what's been released now due to her skewed views
- YouTube is like the rest of the internet, some good, some bad.
  
  YouTube, like other corporate social media and engagement platforms, thrives on anger and conflict, and pushes shitty takes higher up the recs list to get angry engagement.
  So it's more likely to be bad than good.

one of her reasons is "erasure of femininity in gaming" with a screen bemoaning "masculine features" of modern female characters, and her pinned comment says "you know things are bad when oblivion npcs are prettier than some of these new game characters" and also thanks asmongold for sending viewers her way.
so uh, how about no for this hateful garbage.
- What here is hateful and if it is where is the hate aimed at?
  
  The youtuber is claiming modern games have "masculinized" female characters likely in response to attempts to not sexualize some female characters in contemporary games. Representing this as "erasure of feminity" sounds like a conservative defense of sexist gender norms.
  Her right-wing views also explains why Asmongold, another streamer, is sending viewers her way.
  If you're not familiar, Asmongold has right-wing views himself (e.g. characterizing the Palestinian people as "terrible" and an "inferior culture"), and sexist views in particular, for example he was upset that a woman won a fan vote for an esports award, claiming it was a "diversity pick" and she only won because she was a woman (promoting a conspiracy theory that the vote was rigged because he doesn't believe she actually could win the vote). He claims she wasn't a top streamer despite the fact that she was a top streamer with 6.5 million fans, etc.
  While nublung's comment points out the youtuber's sexism, likely what they meant by "hateful garbage" was the typical conservative bigotry, which aims at:
  women,
  racial minorities,
  political enemies (liberals and leftists),
  sexual & gender minorities (LGBT+),
  heathens (i.e. non-Christians) and religious minorities (e.g. Muslims),
  immigrants (example),
  poor people (e.g. "welfare queens", food stamp recipients, etc.), and
  disabled folks (example)

I was surprised when she brought up Mortal Kombat as an example of over sexualized characters, and not, say, the entire Dead or Alive series. Especially Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. She does make some good points in her video, and I don't want to dismiss her point of view, but I feel she took the easy way out in addressing this point.
Games, and movies and tv, have treated women as sexual objects for a long time, and now the pendulum has swung the opposite way in reaction to that. It's going to take a while for games, and movies and tv, to allow for better perspectives on women. I think the indy scene is where we will find this happening before we ever see it in the major studios, since the latter has to worry about limiting risk and making investors happy. But hopefully the recent flops will be a shot across the bow and wake them up.
Except for that, this was a good video. She lays out her arguments well. I don't agree with every point, but I understand where she's coming from and can respect her point of view.
- "NOTHING IS MORE BADASS THAN TREATING A WOMAN WITH RESPECT!"
  -Mr. Torgue Flexington. Borderlands 2
- I 100% agree here.
  That said, I don't think this video has much to do with patient gaming. My understanding is that most are patient not because modern games aren't worth playing, but because they're not worth playing at launch.
  So while the video has merit on its own as a critique of the weird AAA over-correction, it's not particularly relevant to patient gaming.
- Thanks for the reasonable take. I almost lost hope for a second.

I don't need to fix her.
- No.. No you don't. People like her need to be ignored

Based

57 comments