Topic: The PlayStation Fan Thread

You reminded me that Biomutant exists.

That Polygon article about the TLOU 2 trailer is very cringy. Didn't realize the people there are such big feminists.

Apparently the scene would have been much better if it showed men being brutally tortured and not women. Cause you know, equality and all.

I didn't read it because I really, deeply don't respect game press (not in a gamergate way I just think they're unthinking nostalgia constructs with a western multiplatform slant). But I don't think there's anything wrong with feminist criticism in general, especially not in this industry. I don't think there was anything particularly objectionable here besides a conference that coincidentally had a lot of violence against women in it.

In general, there is something odd about putting harrowing scenes in a trailer because trailers are usually about excitement and employ happy violence to get people to anticipate something. That can rub people the wrong way. I think it was just a bad scene to pick for a trailer, something at once unrelated and at the top of the scale for how violent the previous game was can make people feel uncomfortable.

Trailers make me realize that I realize that things that occur to me fairly benignly or in a 'that was weird' sense other people interpret almost violently and share online. Like everyone who was getting antsy at Monster Hunter: World and Breath of the Wild's slow marketing cycles, random things like that underwhelming Ready Player One trailer, or just underwhelming shows like Sony's E3 this year or the Nintendo Switch event that people get soooo pissed off about (and I realize I was critical of Sony's E3 too but not once did I ever type the phrase 'Sony sux'). So I think that's what happened with the TLOU 2 trailer's violence, if that makes any sense.

Biomutant looks incredibly good. That game caught my interest the moment I laid eyes on it. I don't know what it is but it just stands out. Kind of how Nintendo games stand out. The vast majority of games I see trailers for just blur together. All the same. Gritty, realistic, cinematic cut scenes galore with strong story focus... But when I saw a Biomutant it struck me as different and unique and totally awesome. Obviously we'll have to see if it's as good as it looks, but I'm definitely interested.

I just hope it doesn't lean on the same old tired formula every other game uses. Like Far Cry 5. I liked Far Cry 4. Solid game. Lost interest a few hours in. Got Primal, lost interest even quicker. Now I see FC5 and it just... I don't even care in the slightest. Feel that way towards a lot of games. And I don't think it so much an issue with one particular series, I just think it's an issue with all these games releasing that have similar structures and... it's just too much.

@KirbyTheVampire
Polygon is horrible. They're like Neogaf. One and the same.

@Haru17 I don't think it was a particularly good trailer either, and almost exclusively using violence to sell a story-driven game like The Last of Us is kind of a bad idea, but the idea that the violence was worse because it depicted women as the victims and not men is so annoying to me, especially when the author questioned whether the women at Naughty Dog were too scared to speak up about it because it's a male-dominant industry and Naughty Dog is a male-dominant studio.

I think critiquing their use of shock value to sell a game that's supposed to be based on relationships and story is a much more valid complaint than "Nurrr, we no like women get hurt".

Of course, one woman's complaint isn't a big deal at all, I just think whining about violence against women in a game trailer is a pretty big waste of breath. Of course, my complaining about it is also a waste of breath, lol.

@JaxonH I didn't realize that before because I don't follow Polygon that closely, but I definitely do now, lol.

@Haru17 Knowing Neil Druckmann, that's the last thing you need to worry about

Also this. Biomutant is weird. One one hand I liked what I saw, on the other hand I have no idea what kind of game it is. They told me it was an open world, but the gameplay had a weird linear section with an annoying narrator and a multiple choice ''pick left of right'' feature that you normally see in an interactive horror filmgame. I'm not sure what the game is trying to be, or how the rest of the game plays. I want to see more, but I am intrigued.

@Octane Sorry, what in particular should I not be worried about knowing Druckmann is writing?

I'm not optimistic for Biomutant at all. Not really a fan of the Just Cause games. They're fun little novelty games, but they're not worth more than 20 dollars IMO.

Wasn't very impressed by what gameplay we were shown, either. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

As Druckmann is quoted in that Polygon protection racket offer (/honest logical thinkpiece), violence in games like the Last of Us is quite important as a kind of narrative signalling device. It tells you from the start that you're not dealing with a world that's going to play by a comfortable set of rules. It keeps you on edge. Makes it feel realistic, like anything could happen.

It's like when you see Sean Bean playing a likeable father figure in a movie or tv-show. It's a warning. Don't get too comfortable. That one's such a universally recognised form of signalling that even Square Enix used it.

@Dezzy Unless its one of those flicks where he lives.

"It makes it feel realistic". Yep. Because we've all been strung up by cults claiming we are possessed by demons and prepare to hang and disembowel us, who then proceed to assault people before being killed by skilled archer kids right before the plant based zombies attack.

You know. Realism.

You know what is realistic though Naughty Dog? Sexual Assault claims. Juuust saying.

@KirbyTheVampire Don't even try to rationalize it. It'll just frustrate you.

And yeah, Polygon is one of the more openly leftist gaming sites on the web. And I mean that in the least charitable sense possible.

Did Polygon acknowledge the person with the knife in that trailer was female?

I think so. Though, it seems that their main point, besides critiquing the effectiveness of the trailer, was that it 'needlessly' demonstrated violence against women. Which they felt was a very real and serious thing.

@BLP_Software I believe so, although they said that the fact that the cultist is a woman does little to undercut the fact that the trailer is using brutal and unexplained violence against women to "thrill the viewer and sell a video game".

@Ralizah Well that's a bummer. Is Kotaku any better?

I don't tend to like making assumptions, but has someone who has not seen the new TLOU2 trailer, nor read the article, let me see how correct I am:

Game journalists point out shocking scene could potentially be questionable, assumes it MUST be bad and offensive to women in this universally beloved game for its dark, gritty storytelling where messed up things happen where the dev literally fought their hardest to keep the female character on the cover of the first game, against the wishes of higher ups and marketing. And whose most recent game was a female led spin-off of a previously male centered franchise.

Correct me if I'm getting all this wrong, I'm intentionally not bothering! Some game journalists aren't so obnoxious and idiotic with their pseudo-feminist articles, but Polygon tends...to earn the reputation it gets so I feel my assumptions are pretty reasonable. I'm not even saying they're wrong, but maybe...they're jumping the gun a bit here? Just...maybe? Hey, remember when people accused the 2013 Tomb Raider of being rapey before release? The one that was written by Terry Pratchett's daughter? Just saying...

I'll be surprised if they even got so far as realizing "it's just a trailer".

@JaxonH Hey, man, as much as I hate NeoGaf, they're a community, not a news site. If anything, I hate how people treat NeoGaf like a news site. Polygon's problem is that they love to cause drama for the sake of publicity, and turning certain games into strawmen just so they can turn reviews and standard articles into clickbait for Metacritics browsers and curious people doing random Google searches. It's the sort of crap you'd expect from a bottom feeder blog, yet they have enough marketing pull to come off as respectable despite all that.

@KirbyTheVampire Only in that Kotaku knows that it's just fan blog, despite being relatively well known. They suck, but last I checked, they aren't actually trying to be professional.

@KirbyTheVampire Somewhat, although any site that was formed as a part of the Gawker media network is still pretty awful. The Gawker brand might be gone, but Kotaku, for all intents and purposes, remains a Gawker site in spirit. I don't regard it as the spawn of Satan like Gamergate folk tend to, but I would never recommend it to anyone.

Destructoid isn't too bad, and Siliconera is fantastic if you just want a good news site.

@CanisWolfred @Ralizah Alright, good to know. Thanks!

Kotaku ran an article on which amiibo makes the best butt plug. Clearly, they're the epitome of professional journalism

Whew!

This thread certainly went places since yesterday...

Sony has released their recent quarterly report, which not only includes a YoY bump, but a raise in their annual shipment figures, from 77 million to 79 million - an increase of 2 million! I reckon the mythical $199/€199/£199 price point is coming sooner than expected, or at least for the Black Friday weekend.

Here’s the cumulative quarterly reports, from July to September (worldwide figures):

Nintendo Switch - 2.8 million
Nintendo 3DS - 1.8 million
SNES Classic - 1.7 million
PlayStation 4 - 4.2 million
Xbox One - somewhere between 800,000 and 900,000 (going by NPD yearly percentages, 500,000 has been sold in the US)

Business wise, things are going pretty well in the video game industry! I cannot wait to see just how well things will go from October to December, which are three of the biggest months for all three companies.