Wishful Thinking

It is something I cross over a lot with many gaming reviews. people complaining about how they wished a feature used in some other game would be great to have in the game they are talking about. The problem with this is that many times those features don't make or break a game, are just things they wished the game in question had or that they believe should be implemented. Many will go as far as give a game a low score because of features that wasn't there neither was promised.

I think this kind of behavior kinda dumb. A game, or movie or any product, must be evaluated by what it was promised to give and how much of this promise they accomplish. Not about things they never promised but the buyer wish they had. Or else we will ended up always disappointed.

Obnoxious

Personality don't mean acting obnoxiously. When you keep acting as an attention whore trying to show how much 'personality' you have, you just make people wanting nothing with you.

Witch Hunt, Or How To Make Everybody Forgets What Matters

The term witch hunt never seemed as ironic and appropriate as I feel it is now, for the issue at hand. An issue that I avoided hard in the last time to put in blog form, because I never felt it was worth the time, effort and trouble it causes to me. And to do it, I decided to use the kind of imagery used up there, to help make my point. What I am going to talk about?

Sexism and misogyny, that’s what.

And of course, if you haven’t run away from this blog by now, it means you are curious to listen what I am going to talk about. First, let’s start with my previous statement, of people running away from the theme in question. This is a bad sign for people trying to fighting sexism and misogyny, which people are not wishing to discuss it anymore. It means that somehow the people discussion such complex and in need of being discussed themes aren’t willing to. Making people wanting to discuss a theme complex as those two is an important step to change things. But now people are so tired and feed up of them that many, like me, don’t even want to start talking about it.

The fault, of course, is in both sides unrelenting desire to not give up in their points of view. Neither side, both defending that sexism and misogyny is a great problem and the side saying it is not a big deal or even a real problem don’t want to listen to each others arguments, or even accept that both sides have some very valid points that must be taken in consideration.

'I don't care you agree with some of my points, Missy! Or you  totally agree with me or you are an idiot!'

And constantly hitting the head in brick walls is not the way a discussion is made, not how both sides can find common ground to work with. This constant and consistent walls put by both sides that neither side is willing to put down is making those discussions an exercise in frustration. So, I ask you to withstand me for a while and carefully listen to the point I wish to make.

Yesterday I have crossed over this tweet by famous actor Simon Pegg. He states how much he loves girls in cosplay attires. I also love girls in cosplay attires. Damn, a lot of people of any gender love a lot of people in cosplay attires, women or not. He is stating how much he loves girls cosplaying. Or, if you are out there hunting sexism witches and misogyny devil lovers, what you will read means how much he objectify women and think badly about them.

Exactly what he said.

And that is what I wish to talk about. It is clear to me that Simon Pegg never intended to downplay women or say how they are inferior to men. He never said that. But clearly you cannot say anything regarding women nowadays that don’t fit a mysterious behavior code that someone will take offense and then make it a bigger deal than it should.

There shouldn’t be anything wrong with stating how beautiful a woman is, or how attractive her clothing makes her. It is how men approach women to start relationships. It is not a statement of women’s place in society, or men stating how they dislike women except as sex partners. It just refers to how much men appreciate the female form and how much women make themselves beautiful and attractive.

Of course, this is not what many white knights, usually men trying to look good towards women and some women see it. They are now seeing anything that could be interpreted as offensive to women, no matter how much stretch they must do to fit it in their strict points of view or how much they must completely change the meaning of a statement to make it sounds how they want it to sound. They must make it worth raging over it.

I hate the term ‘feminazi’. It is a term that invalidates all the fighting women have done to have some basic rights in our society. We live in a society that was for centuries based on men having more rights and privileges than women, and we still haven’t reached a point where women have all the same rights and privileges granted. We still live in a society were women gains less than men to do the exact same job having the same qualifications. A society that still denies women promotions or that still doesn’t accept women doing typical male jobs. All those are worth fights we all must support of. Like we must fight against people who belittle women or that make little of problems like rape. But when certain people goes to great length to take everything who they think, being it real or imaginary, are sexist and misogynistic, no matter how small they are, it makes the real cause, the one worth fighting, lose its value.

What most people must think when hearing the word feminazi.

They become the fictional ‘feminazi’, no matter if men or women. The legendary vitriolic feminist who see sexism in everything and that nobody must take it serious. And many men and women are not helping feminism by going after every small thing or hunting fictional sexists, literally witch hunting what many times don’t exist. Many times, there is nothing there to be seem, but this need to fight a very real problem is making many people seeing problems where there is not.

Let’s go back to the cosplay thing. Why people of any sex cosplay? Because they like to do it. They like to put the costume together, going to conventions and get all the attention that a good cosplay can generate. Yes, they are doing it for themselves, but also the reward here is the attention they receive from others.

So, of course they have all the right to not being sexually molested by horny people who think they dressed just to have sex with them. Damn, no women should have to deal with idiots that cannot understand some basic social behavior just because they are dressed more provocatively. Just because the girl is showing cleavage does not mean that she wants sex, just to dress with something they might like.

Of course she have the right to not have to deal with dicks wanting to put their dicks in her. It does not mean I don't have the right to think she looks hot.

But them going to attack men who finds the women attractive and make comments about it is too much. They are not always belittling the woman in question. They may just genuinely think she is quite beautiful and attractive. And what they are doing is stating that. There is a difference between going to a friend at your side and saying how much he thinks that girl on tank top is hot and going to the girl and asking for sex and than verbally insulting her because she refuses. The first is innocent and don’t have any negative effect on the women and their place in society. The second is probably a crime and stupid.

Many white knights and witch hunters are so blind to what is acceptable behavior and have no impact in real life and what really is a trouble and must be addressed, that they just attack everything they can remotely put under their very personal definition of sexism and misogyny. And by doing that, they are hurting the real feminists, the real people who are trying to solve very real problems that affect people in real life by making those people be associated with the raging lunatics who cannot shut up about how sexist it was of that one guy saying how much he love girls in bikinis.

'You idiot! We were almost killing the dragon but your meddling allowed him to escape!  I hope that unicorn put his horn in your ass!'

By constantly attacking behaviors that they classify as insulting, but isn't (or maybe they are, but are minor when compared with some real big issues), and by constant annoying anyone on sight with their ranting, they weak the cause. They justify the existence of the ‘feminazi’ stereotype, making anyone trying to talk about their concern about real issues like workplaces that are harmful to women because men are dicks or women who are abused by their partners, being put in the same bag as the people who complaint about how bad is people commenting how much they like a fictional character in a bikini in an obscure internet forum.

What happens is that if anyone starts talking about sexism issues everywhere, people will not know if they are going to talk against misogynistic politicians trying to prevent laws giving equal rights to women or if it is someone who will start discussing how much they hate a comic book character that uses mini-skirt instead of cargo pants. It makes people avoid even engaging conversations by the fear that they will be dragged in an useless discussion about how bad is that a fictional character is portrayed or how awful is the fact that some guy said that some girl have a nice ass.

This witch hunting I am seeing nowadays, were everything is offensive to someone and blow up out of proportion is more harmful than good. It does not raise awareness about real issues; it hid the real issues in layers and layers of pettiness and imaginary issues that make it harder to the people fighting the real issues to be able to do their jobs.

So, before jumping in the wagon and start hunting witches around with torches in hand, the very first thing you may ask is: Are the witches, the issues real? They are really the responsible for the problems? Or there is a real problem that I will not see because I am hunting fictional problems?

Because when you lose your time and everyone else’s time in useless witch hunting, everyone loses. Especially the people you think you are helping.

Too Much to Do

A dream many gamers have is a game who allow them to do everything. If they want to go swimming they can go, if they want to become Batman they can become Batman, things like that. Of course, programming something like that would take years, thousands of people and a NASA worth supercomputer. So, the closest we get with this dreams is games like Skyrim and GTA. Games who gives its players plenty of freedom.

In Skyrim, you can fight, craft, steal, talk and participate in an almost endless stream of quests. it is the dream of anyone who played table RPGs some time in their lives. The problem in a game of this scope, a problem GTA share, is that everything it does it is not the best thing in the gaming world. They ended up having some pretty mediocre gameplay elements in the mixture.

This is way less cool in person.

It is not that Skyrim or GTA are bad games. They are great. If you analyze each aspect of their gameplays separately, sure they would suck but because they offer so much variety and have other qualities outside it (Skyrim living and believable world, as are the GTA cities) that we are able to forgive some of the lesser elements because it works great as a whole.

But it make me wonder, do I need a game where I can do everything in a so-so manner or should I choose games who make one thing, but make this one thing amazing?

Maybe I will not have an answer for everyone, but I honestly prefer to have few things done right than a lot of things done just acceptable. I am replaying Mass Effect 2 and when I compare it to Mass Effect 3, Mass Effect 2 have way more things to do. Things like hacking,  scanning and probing planets, the Hammerhead.

But god, how I hate those things. They are more time wasters, done just good enough to not break the game, that I dread the fact I need to play those mini-games. The Hammerhead missions are some of the worst possible I have played.

FUCK YOU YOU PIECE OF CRAP!

This is a problem I already talked about before. Adding variety for the sake of variety. That is why I loved Mass Effect 3 more than ME2. They just cut all the useless crap and stream-lined it. And that made the game way more enjoyable for me. I know a lot of people loves to have some break over the constant repetition of gameplay.

But I prefer to repeat a pleasant task over and over than being interrupted of it because some designer at the studio decided to add some 'variety'. Variety is only good if done right. And if you don't have the time don't even bother including it.

Not only that, sometimes I feel that developers try to cram too much in their games. Not only mini-games, but too much systems in it. JRPGs are the worst, with a dozen given systems for everything you want to do. Battle become a nightmare where you try to keep at least three different bars and four different systems in check to be successful.

Sometimes you are overwhelmed with too much to do, not all of it good enough to justify its mere existence. And many times I just ignore completely all the secondary stuff. If it is not fun or if there is lots of better things to do, why bother?

Focus is not a bad thing. Sometimes it gives you some of the best games ever. Variety is not bad, as long as it don't overwhelm you or just distract you from the really nice things. You know, like eating a plain great stake or having to find the delicious meat between the mashed potatoes, salad, bread, fries, onions and all that stuff in the plate.

It is more sad to me to have plenty to do and not wanting to than having only one thing to do that I really want to do. And many games need to stop trying to do more than they can. That way, we can ended up with better experiences for everyone.

PVC Introduces: The Thunderdome! (Updated)

In my old days at Destructoid, one of the best features they had was their debates between two members of the community, followed by a popular voting selecting the one who best defended the theme choose for that specific theme. I always love a good debate, made in a civil manner showing the points between two sides of the same questions. Destructoid haven't done one in a while, which is unfortunate. Of course, being a relatively big site means they have plenty of stuff to do. So I decided to make my own debate between people that visit my blog. I call it....

The Thunderdome!

The Thunderdome have very simple rules. Basically, I will propose a theme, a simple yes or no question about pop culture (gaming, comics, movies, cartoons, anime, manga, TV, music, etc...), let two people choose their sides and defending it, them letting the visitors to my site decide who best defended their proposition. So, let's start with the rules for the debaters:

1. Keep it civil: you can use profanity as much as you want, as long as you respect the opposing sides. Despite this being called The Thunderdome, it doesn't mean a battle to death with dwarfs riding mentally challenged giants. Respect the debaters, this site and the people commenting in it.

2. First calls keep it: Once I proposed the themes, the first ones to call dibs on their side will keep it. I will make a selection of ten themes at a time and you can choose up to two of them. You can choose the themes at Twitter through @plastvideocomic or send me an e-mail using plastvideocomic@gmail.com

3. Make it happen: After choosing a theme, you will have ten days to send me the text to the blog's e-mail, up to 600 words and three pictures of your choosing. If you aren't able to send me the text in ten days, I will put the theme up to choosing again.

4. You are free to defend your points at the comments: After going live, if the debaters wants, they can counterpoint each other or any other person commenting, as long as it is kept in a civil and respectful manner.

5. You can propose your own themes: If there is a point you want to make about any theme involving pop culture, you can suggest it. I will be happy to put it live. Just make sure to choose themes with relevance to the pop culture scenario.

6. I will remain neutral in this: I will not vote, nor I will comment about the points being made. I will only interfere if I perceive a personal attack is being made. Hope I have not to.

7. Remember to enjoy doing it.

Now that we have established some rules for the debaters (I may change them if I see fit, but will inform people of the changes beforehand), here are the 10 themes for the first batch of The Thunderdome's themes:

Is backwards compatibility really important for consoles? Sean Daisy will do the argument against the proposition. Who will argue for it?

Are sequels negatively impacting movies and games?

Are comics today unwelcoming of newcomers? Xzyliac will be against the proposition.

Should games deal more with sexual themes?

Is Kickstarter really starting a revolution?

Will OUYA change the game industry?

Are remakes bad?

Geek and nerd culture exists?

Should games always be fun?

Is Superman a good character?

Choose your theme, the side you want to defend (yes or no) send me a direct message via Twitter or e-mail and I will put it up as soon as possible. Just remember to read the rules. And now I will put here the voting rules. I will put the voting rules every time a theme goes live, but just to give a preview:

1. Choose the best debater: base your vote on the strength of the argument and in how well it was presented to you. You can only choose one. You are free to justify your voting.

2. Keep it civil. Personal attacks against any debater, people commenting or myself will be deleted: you are free to state your opinion. Not to offend the people involved in the discussion. If you cannot abide to this, you have no place here.

3. You cannot change votes, so think carefully.

4. Do not spam: if you have a point to make, make it in the comments.

5. Try to not deviate of the discussion: I know sometimes one topic brings up another. I will warn you if you are deviating too much of the topic at hand. We can save the new topic in a future Thunderdome.

Well, that is pretty much it. I really hope this work out and we can have great debates. Remember that if there is a theme you want to discuss to tell me. I will try to fit it in the ones I proposed. See you soon.

So, About That Deadpool Game...

So, you probably saw the new Deadpool game trailer. The trailer is really good, and the jokes are awesome. If one thing this trailer showed to gamers is that the writing on the new Deadpool game will be hilarious awesome, and that half the battle. The other half, the half that is hard to evaluate by the trailer is what about the gameplay? There is few hints on the trailer and if they can pull it out it would be awesome. I really want this game to be good, but I am not holding my breath. I am not sure if this will be the best hero(villain, anti-hero?) game this side of Batman: Arkham games. So is better to not keep a high expectations for this one yet. hope people can have hands-on soon, so we can have a better idea of it.

OK, I admit, it is really hard not to love this. But let's wait to see this game in action.

How To Effectively Complain In the Internet

Making a fuss in the internet probably will only have any effect in politics, because politicians live and die based on popular opinion. But when we talk about products and services, complaining only, specially complaining in obscure internet forums or for you friends and followers in internet social services is not very effective. And actions will always speak louder than words. Always.