Journal of Other Forum Analysis

[Potato]

They're just doubling down on this shit. I'm pretty sure this is the last AAAA+ gaming generation any of us 30-something millenials will engage and participate in when it comes to games produced in the west. It's not like we'll magically get a new batch of developers, designers and HR staff who aren't woke af. Activists and incompetent nincompoops is all that is left at these corporations and all hiring programs encourage this type of shit.

The damage of DEI cannot be undone in the gaming industry at this point.

On a different note, why are non-binary characters always women?

Because like on ResetEra, that's who they/them/wlw want to fuck.

It will follow the same cycle of the non-woke brigade going indie, producing a huge hit and then the big corpos following suit to get that bag.

[Potato]

I still maintain that all of this is eminently doable in a way that isn't...y'know, this.

BG3 was woke as fuck and is universally beloved by everyone in the world. The stuff isn't hidden, hard-to-find, or even particularly subtle.

I don't get why writers can't be more creative than having a fantasy bull-woman sit at the dinner table and declare explicitly: "as an AFAB non-binary genderqueer pansexual, my chosen pronouns are they/them". 

True

You can have good writing and good stories that revolve around these characters, it's all about execution. TLoU2 also wanted to have a trans character, but everything felt ham-fisted, because the truth is that a lot of these writers are terribly afraid of offending who they are trying to represent so it comes as purely performative and without any soul to it. Doesn't feel genuine.

A lot of these writers are also just shite...

[benji]

Gotta love how there's a few calls to "ban Dualshockers as a chud source" all because of one little line about Sweet Baby. Pussies just have to ban all verified sources just because of a wrongthink or two.

Also apparently the line been edited out, but the pussies in the gamergate 2.0 thread aren't so willing to forgive.

Typical chuds getting upset over the slightest thing they're told is a reason to hate. This is why there needs to be zero tolerance for their kind, bury them under the prison until these snowflakes learn not to show their subhuman faces around decent people.

[Uncle]

people care so little about mainstream review sites that no one actually listened to the IGN review

here's why the game got a 9 out of 10:

https://youtu.be/5LCv2aMoFCY?t=509

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

[benji]

Vote for whomever you want just don't use retarded nonsense to justify your vote

I'm voting for Trump because Nintex sent me a million dollars to do so.

[Greatness Gone]

people care so little about mainstream review sites that no one actually listened to the IGN review

here's why the game got a 9 out of 10:

https://youtu.be/5LCv2aMoFCY?t=509

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Wait I don’t get it

[Uncle]

timestamp explains it, the spoiler is just an additional piece of info for those who can't see youtube dislikes

[benji]

here's why the game got a 9 out of 10:

Formerly T.J.:

Now "non-binary" she/they Leana:


Sapphic femme lesbian bisexual:

[D3RANG3D]

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

[Taco Bell Tower]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/why-women-criticise-sexualised-character-designs-ot3-make-her-look-more-corpulent-more-stuffed-where-the-eyes-cant-escape.275780/page-433#post-130525368

Cross post from sweet baby rays thread

Plz tell me this is satire.

Princess Bubblegum

That's sadly better than Jill's boob physics in REmake.

This guy def needs to make a Ree account and post in Why Women Criticise thread

Naiad

Oh cool, the guy's a creep into young high school teenagers. Good to know.

So is Ree 

[Besticus Maximus]

here's why the game got a 9 out of 10:

Formerly T.J.:

Now "non-binary" she/they Leana:


Sapphic femme lesbian bisexual:

[books]

Why are we losing such handsome men? I blame women for not giving these nutcase a chance forcing them to transition to trans lesbians

[Potato]

I stopped giving a shit about reviews a long time ago. The only opinion that matters for media is my own. If you like a movie, song, game, etc, that other people don't like, so what? Same with disliking stuff that a lot of people like. It's called an opinion. Just deal with it and move on if someone disagrees with you on a piece of media. Not rocket science.

RetardEra have never gotten past the high school stage of maturity.

The difference is that they have never moved past the high school stage in their financial maturity either. 

If I buy a game or see a film that I don't like, I'm disappointed but it isn't the end of the world. I'm annoyed I wasted money, but that happens. 

On the other hand, they are so financially stunted that the wasted cost of a game amounts to financial hardship for these retards and they won't be able to eat (chicken nuggets) for a week.

[HeavenIsAPlaceOnEarth]

Thankfully it seems like the most egregious person of gender shit can be ignored outside of one character's companion quest. I'll keep my preorder, but I don't think Bioware is ever going to return to their heyday.

Hopefully Exodus is good. WRPGs need a win outside of Larian and Owlcat.  :-/

Keeping the pre-order?

After SkillUp and MrMatty confirmed you cant even be MEAN to other party members?

Let alone be mean to other ppl?

It is natural for the average gamer to crave at least one vidya slop per year. 

I also have it per-ordered.

[benji]

The difference is that they have never moved past the high school stage is their financial maturity either. 

If I buy a game or see a film that I don't like, in disappointed but it isn't the end is the world. I'm annoyed I wasted money, but that happens. 

On the other hand, they are so financially stunted that the wasted cost of a game amounts to financial hardship for these retards and they won't be able to eat (chicken nuggets) for a week.

They don't grow out of this either, most of them don't even have to go without tendies.

[benji]

Musk and Trump are ramping up the use of violent rhetoric, and we know he's working with Putin. Why Musk has not been designated an enemy combatant I can only guess, but given his reported associations with Putin and Kiriyenko, we should operate under the assumption that Musk and his network are a domestic terror threat operating under direction of a hostile foreign power.

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

[benji]

Easily explained by bad luck or systemic issues:

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

can y'all.. SIGH.. not be chuds all the time?

[Shecky Fragbaum]

Man I'd love to clap that Zendaya's cheeks so hard (and with proportional syncopation) that they tapped out " YES PAPI" in Morse code.

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Lilith I'm such a lesbian

[benji]

can y'all.. SIGH.. not be chuds all the time?

Cis don't care.

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

wow and Jansen voted for democrats?   Guess no one cares about the genocide anymore.

[HeavenIsAPlaceOnEarth]

Easily explained by bad luck or systemic issues:

Based on that picture alone, that man is 100% guilty of whatever anyone says he did.

And more that we don't even know about.

[benji]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/dragon-age-the-veilguard-review-thread.1020987/page-22#post-130788297

Didn't expect to get slapped in the face by this at the very end of the dualshockers review, lmao

A lot of "professionals" showing their asses with this game, it seems.

This is crazy. It all happened so fast as well. Feels like this would've been unthinkable just a year ago.

Those people feeling emboldened enough to come out of the woodwork like this on even some of the more mainstream sites is fucking scary man.

That's not a dog whistle, that's a goddamn air siren

I wonder how many more of these we will have to see before people accept there is a genuine hate campaign against this game lol

Man this game got people going full mask off huh

I gleaned reading that. At least these reviews are outing a lot of shitheads.

Yikes..

Have they always been like that or is this a coming out moment?

Absolutely the last thing that should be allowed to be normalized.

gamergate never ended. we didn't do the job of actually packing these fools out. they still here.

Revolting, embarrassing and quite pitiful.

It frustrates me to no end that all legitimate criticism of this game is going to be inevitably drowned out by the ceaseless whining of these petty, terminally online children. Even worse to see a game critic participating in it.

Extremely suspect to even think of writing something like that out.

Man...just woke up. There sure lots of mask-off today huh.

Yeah I can't really take any reviews seriously about it anymore with how mask off people have been today.

Any site posting about SBI in that way can only be interpreted as actively attempting to martial harassment toward developers. Site needs to be perma banned from here.

It's just a gamergate 2.0 dogwhistle. Made louder by a whole cesspool of anti-SBI groups on Steam and grifters on Youtube and other places making money off of the outrage.

Anyone posting about SBI as some kind of negative is a massive red flag on their coverage.

It's 100% just chuds pushing it. They don't care about the game/reviews it's just something to usher in their negativity. They've been against the game before release, same thing happened with Silent Hill 2.

This leading into election week, crazy times man

It's crossing that threshold that Star Wars, The Marvels, The Last of Us and others have crossed that are going to make talking about this game impossible because of all the not subtle alt right talking points being regurgitated.

[benji]

Anyway, here's Nepenthe's tirades about human advancement because she's personally miserable from that Adobe thread, in case anyone still believes she isn't against everything but mandatory poverty, also bitching about users not knowing the unwritten rules again: https://www.resetera.com/threads/adobe-execs-say-artists-need-to-embrace-ai-or-get-left-behind.1019421/page-4#post-130663608

But I also know it's not pure evil and has some benefits, if properly understood and regulated.

You're on a planet undergoing ecological collapse right now because of unfettered and unregulated mass production and consumption poisoning the environment.

This is not going to be ethically regulated. It wasn't when Stability first laundered the data sets!

Shit, years ago, Google fired their people in charge of ethics.

Things are pointing toward YOLOing and fuck any and all consequences.
Like holy shit, if I hear one more person defend the shittiest of technologies with "it'll be fine if we regulate it," I'm going to scream.

Without technological advancements making us more productive you'd still be farming 16 hours a day to fill your belly with only local produce in a shit shack with cold wind blowing instead of being able to fill your belly buying food from another nation at your grocer with 30min of work. What you said isnt wrong but dont pretend the advancement of productivity efficiency didnt make our lives better. Tools making our time more efficient is what made us go from having to spend all our time being hunter gatherers to be able afford time to improve our lives and start civilizations.

This is basically just tech-colonialism, an extremely flat, context-less take on how technological advancement has hurt as much as it has helped.

Again, you're living through ecological collapse as a direct result of unregulated and careless technological and military advancement. And the reason we're not seeing a reversal anytime soon should be obvious!

Technology should ultimately be developed responsibly in tandem with concepts of conviviality and sustainability. Unfettered technological advancement under a capitalist lens is going to be the death of millions of us on the good route, and potentially billions on the bad route. The fact that a tool or an advancement has no inherent moral value in a vacuum is irrelevant because nothing exists in a vacuum anyways.

And yet, the modern culture is: «Go fast and break things»

People legitimately got pilled into believing that technological development on its own within a capitalist framework is going to save humanity from fascism and climate collapse instead of humans working together with one another to organize for our collective benefit.

Maybe the wires are a bit crossed but for me when I'm talking about "does it make our lives better" I meant in factors like how much fulfillment you get, how much work you do, how much free time you have, things in that sense and I would argue that those aspects were massively improved with increased sociatal productivity through technogy. I absolutely agree we arent being responsible and we are heading straight through a wall crashing with how reckless we are to the environnement and exploitation of others in pursuit of those goals.

But even then, I think parameters like "fulfillment" and "free time" must be examined in a more critical and dialectical lens. Like, the computer in a vacuum allows me more free time because of how fast it is at making calculations and processing data. But it also allows me unfettered access to addictive games and social media, potentially impacting the quality of free time it has in turn given me. Indeed, my social and mental health are significantly improved the more I get away from digital devices and spend time in nature or with other human beings, despite these being extreme advancements in technology that would kill a theoretical Victorian child, as it were lol.

But again, the computer doesn't exist in a vacuum. Nothing does. Our world is vastly interconnected and almost infinitely complex. Technological gains do not come without losses, sometimes very grave ones, somewhere, and the lie that every self-proclaimed pioneer, from Ford to Gore to Musk, has told us is that nothing but utopia and freedom await on the other side of whatever gadget they've helped cook up.

So yes, while it is undeniable that capitalism has led to advancements in productive output which in turn have led to more comfortable lifestyles for those lucky though to be born in the West, it is also undeniable that it has literally cost millions of lives from direct harms like chattel slavery to indirect harms like cancerous pollutants, to say nothing of the vast billions of people living in deliberately underdeveloped societies. Social and cultural connections have been made as well as torn; while I can speak to almost anyone in the world no matter where they are, the social fabric of standard American living is lonely, full of mistrust and perpetual grievance, and interactions meant to be transactional versus just quality time spent together, far moreso than in underdeveloped areas where communal ties are more maintained. And it goes on and on.

Tl;dr- my feeling about these false beliefs of technological utopia, these distinctly European, quasi-Christian ideas that we are meant to colonize and conquer everything with no regulations or second thoughts, all while living on a dying planet can be summed up with the poem "Whitey on the Moon."

this is such a frustrating reply. Jordan117 has gone out of their way to provide balanced information on AI for the benefit of this community, including obtaining mod approval for a thoughtful thread that ended up getting randomly shut down without warning. they aren't at all asking for recognition as a victim, they're saying this is an important topic for everyone in the world to keep abreast of, and yet era is arbitrarily limiting that discussion.

as i mentioned earlier in the thread, AI threatens my livelihood as a writer. that is precisely why i want to learn as much about it as possible so that i can make informed decisions about where to focus my work. the victims here are the people who aren't able to view or discuss up-to-date information on technology that might change their lives for better or worse.

AI discussion isn't wholesale banned. Industry trends are allowed to be posted here. There is also an AI-OT. Jordan's thread being locked was an admitted mistake, but the rule was ultimately to stop a lot of spam and fighting, which it succeeded in doing.

If you are looking instead for a place where people who either aren't in the arts or are more amenable to the technology can nag on artists who stand against the technology, or an overall safe space to be excited about AI content generation, you're not going to find that here. That was by design.

i don't want a safe space, i understand the concerns and criticisms and share many of them myself. i just think jordan is plainly right that the topic is singled out for harsh moderation here and i think that is probably not going to age well in the future or help anyone today.

Jordan isn't correct that this topic is singled out harshly compared to others when there are far more harsher bans on certain subjects here (try to talk about Hogwarts and see how fast you'll get cooked), and just as well moderation has faced more significant quagmires and fires than this regarding subjects being singled out. If anything, the AI ruling was actually one of the few things that went over well with the community at large.

But ultimately, ResetEra is not the vanguard of anything significantly important. Our conversational rules about not just AI, but literally anything here, are not going to have a strong material impact on any relevant industries or political processes. This is a space for minorities to talk about video games and other nerd shit without having to deal with the entire brunt of right-leaning chud bullshit from the rest of the gaming community on spaces like Reddit. That's all it is.

We don't actually owe it to anyone to curate this space in a way that takes into account "the future." We're not psychics. We instead owe that attention to this community to try and make the space they want, and unsurprisingly a community filled with exploited minorities, many of which are professional creatives, hate AI content generation and thus don't want the subject flooding the forum.

If anything, the fact that there is an OT and some guard rails is actually an olive branch, because I was gunning for a full conversational ban when discussing this with staff.

This is a strawman. Every time anyone wants to talk about this objectively important field more openly there's this gross kneejerk reaction to paint them as hateful techbro chuds who just want to troll artists and censor any criticism. It's insulting.

It's not a strawman. That childish attitude was specifically leading to enough fights and hundreds of reports that it prompted a staff discussion in the first place, and we permed our fair share of people over it before settling on the rule we did. It wasn't artists that were the primary problem, although we did ban a few of them as well for being way too antagonistic to folks who actually work in fields relating to AI. It was folks who were repeating corporate buzzwords about "democratization," calling artists outdated like coal miners, and largely just hassling them and acting like they don't know how to do their own damn job that were the problem.

AI proponents are primarily responsible for poisoning the well here. This is the result of their attitude towards artists.

And pretty hypocritical, given the de facto suppression of informational threads while simultaneously tolerating negative threads that spread misinformation or trigger inflammatory attacks on people who use AI or have an interest in it (which apparently you are now explicitly blessing? "Worst proponents" is a qualifier, I guess, but not one I have a lot of confidence in).

Again, the rule was ultimately a concession to not ban the topic outright. This is an anti-AI space, and staff don't necessarily owe it to anyone to make it more fair and neutral. Now, do I think we can be more consistent with how we lock threads? Yes absolutely. It would not personally bother me if you made a Frontier update thread, although I would not actually moderate anyone for being inflammatory towards the tech itself. Do I care that you think it's hypocritical that both staff and members are laxer towards anti-AI threads than neutrally or pro-AI threads? Not in the least.

Also this guy who has the same narcissistic belief as Nepenthe:

Do people really think they can stop AI and people/companies using it?

I don't give a fuck.

What's funny to me is that these creatively infertile deadheads think their shitty generative AI is even of interest to a genuine artist.

I've played around with it, seen its limitations and know it has absolutely to practical use to me. I could generate 100 versions of the same bastardised, distorted image, and not a single one would be what I want. As a 'tool' it has no place in my pipeline. It's useless shit.

I think what some people just can't get through their thick skulls is that artists create art because it's their passion. And if we're lucky, we get paid for doing something we love. And I think that galls those people.

I'm sure people and companies will continue to use AI, and that those same creatively infertile deadheads will think themselves artists because they typed 'Flying burger with wings' into a text field. I bet they all have to use chat GPT to write prompts for them too.

I know exactly what 'the bigger picture' you're advocating for will be.

A world in which commercial 'art' is produced by the least creative people on Earth. Just wall to wall endless dogshit.

Makes me really greatful to have had 44 years experiencing all of the art and media I have, and that I might be dead before 'the big picture' has swallowed everything worthwhile.

[Shecky Fragbaum]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/dragon-age-the-veilguard-review-thread.1020987/page-22#post-130788297

Didn't expect to get slapped in the face by this at the very end of the dualshockers review, lmao

A lot of "professionals" showing their asses with this game, it seems.

This is crazy. It all happened so fast as well. Feels like this would've been unthinkable just a year ago.

Those people feeling emboldened enough to come out of the woodwork like this on even some of the more mainstream sites is fucking scary man.

That's not a dog whistle, that's a goddamn air siren

I wonder how many more of these we will have to see before people accept there is a genuine hate campaign against this game lol

Man this game got people going full mask off huh

I gleaned reading that. At least these reviews are outing a lot of shitheads.

Yikes..

Have they always been like that or is this a coming out moment?

Absolutely the last thing that should be allowed to be normalized.

gamergate never ended. we didn't do the job of actually packing these fools out. they still here.

Revolting, embarrassing and quite pitiful.

It frustrates me to no end that all legitimate criticism of this game is going to be inevitably drowned out by the ceaseless whining of these petty, terminally online children. Even worse to see a game critic participating in it.

Extremely suspect to even think of writing something like that out.

Man...just woke up. There sure lots of mask-off today huh.

Yeah I can't really take any reviews seriously about it anymore with how mask off people have been today.

Any site posting about SBI in that way can only be interpreted as actively attempting to martial harassment toward developers. Site needs to be perma banned from here.

It's just a gamergate 2.0 dogwhistle. Made louder by a whole cesspool of anti-SBI groups on Steam and grifters on Youtube and other places making money off of the outrage.

Anyone posting about SBI as some kind of negative is a massive red flag on their coverage.

It's 100% just chuds pushing it. They don't care about the game/reviews it's just something to usher in their negativity. They've been against the game before release, same thing happened with Silent Hill 2.

This leading into election week, crazy times man

It's crossing that threshold that Star Wars, The Marvels, The Last of Us and others have crossed that are going to make talking about this game impossible because of all the not subtle alt right talking points being regurgitated.

 For you it was a crashing wave. For me? It was a tidepool.

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

[Chumbawumbafan69]

Guy says he's cautious about those super positive reviews, but Shinobi insists he must have veered into hate discussion territory

lol

This kind of tweet could only be made by a resetera brain. Oh something feels off about overly positive reviews, have you considered that you might be a Nazi?

[AnnoyedCanadian]

I think being obsessed with games that have had consulting work done and worrying how "woke" a game might be is on the same level of people obsessively hating it and/or the developers because not politically correct / done by the "right" people. Life is too short to worry about dumb shit like that. If you don't like a game, just ignore it. Same with shows, movies, music, etc.

[benji]

This kind of tweet could only be made by a resetera brain. Oh something feels off about overly positive reviews, have you considered that you might be a Nazi?

This is the guy who put his ugly five year old on blast on Twitter for being a "racist" for likes and never voted before 2020.

[benji]

I was only mildly interested but I'm going to buy this just to cancel out the chuds. Absolutely ridiculous bringing this crap into reviews.

But to explain what I mean, these dipshits created a word to describe "woke" writing they hate by using a term that was made to sound inoffensive is like, don't these dipshits know they're doing the same thing they hate? Maybe they do, either way we should stop counting these culture warriors in meta scores.

I swear gaming culture has gotten so fucking weird these days, why can't people just be normal? Guess I can never take anything they say seriously ever again, ugh

I give up. Everytime I venture out from here to look at some discussions about the game it is filled with a ton of brainrot toxic shit.

Like 40% of Americans vote for Trump, it was expected that some reviewers were chuds, now they are just revealing themselves.

As a person who tries to be positive, I'm incredibly exhausted at the number of people who just want games to fail. I don't get it. What benefit is there to you if a game doesn't do well? I feel like most people don't have much time for their hobbies. Why not play a game you like rather than spend all your time saying vile things about games you don't? It's just an absolutely inane mindset.

The Dragon Age subreddit is filled with this type of misery. Skill's review is the most trending topic and people take everything he says as gospel. I saw someone tell someone to take the "corpo cock out of their mouth" because they were happy with an IGN review. Truth sociopath behavior.

Personally I'm happy to see this game do well. Not many companies make games like Bioware, and if this gives them the juice to make another, that only benefits me and gamers everywhere.

On a related note, Steam forums need moderation. Badly.

Whenever i see that my "usual" channels don't get to early cover a game, why is it that when i search for a game outside my "walled garden" i see the most batshit crazy thumbnails, channel names and whatever. IGN is 5th result after conspiratory chud reviews. How can this be good for anyone?

Shit's messed up. Can't wait to play the game.

YouTube is fucked. When I searched for Ghost of Yotei the day after the State of Play, the official trailer was the FIFTH result, and 3 of the first 4 were "GHOST OF YOTEI IS WOKE" morons. I have to use the "don't recommend" function on almost a daily basis and it still hardly makes a difference.

Y'all wanna know why this alt-right shit is getting so substantially worse? Because all these platforms like YouTube and Xitter are rewarding people for it and shoving it in everyone's faces. And don't even get me started on Steam.

if you click on most of the people saying shit like that in the DA subreddit they are from hate subs like KIA, i wouldnt pay it much mind other than report it. i get you though its mentally exhausting

Looking forward to playing this. But boy the culture sure is in a dark place these days.

Youtube and Tiktok are a huge chud factory. I feel like people are not ready for the next generation to be more right wing that this one. It's scary.

yah I think about this all the time, smartphones + ipads were popularized in early 2010s

Tl;dr: people want games to games that do not fit their tastes/ideas to fail so that companies make more games tailored to them

It's unfortunately very easy to sell 'rage' nowadays. People who do not like 'x' series anymore or the new direction a series or games in general are taking (which is valid) are targeted by content creators who create over-reactions meant to resonate with them. Normally someone should just move on or grow "out" of a series (it's ok to let go people...).

But instead people choose 'anger' (thanks algorithms) which becomes a vicious cycle. Big games failing feels to them as if it proves their points and also gives them a sense of power (this is the addiction). Unfortunately the power dynamics of gaming do boil down to sales (capitalism). And reviews/impressions have a very heavy impact on sales.

Their logic is that if enough big games that they do not like fail then big companies will take notice and stop doing that type of game. And unfortunately I do not think this logic is flawed. Do you really think a company like EA won't follow the money?

Given the current political climate in the USA that has pretty much divided the country in two expect review bombing, brigading, over-reactionary videos, misery and doom naysaying to continue, specially in games made by Western companies.

Also avoid the places full of "misery" talk, it's just not worth your time. Cheer up. It'll pass and the world will keep on spinning. The discourse is completely beyond your control so the best you can do is support the stuff you do like, regardless of the "noise".

That's my 2 cents at least.

[Taco Bell Tower]

Buying a game to pwn the chuds