this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

None of them lived in the real world and they just churned out knee-jerk sexist bullshit because they wanted to appeal to boys going through puberty and men that never left that headspace.

It really took the industry a long time to get out of that, too. It was all through the early 2000's, and people forget, also had wonderful shit like:

this, which should have taken that franchise down. People just gloss over it now like 'oh yeah, haha, people were just like that back in... 2009!? Oh, shit, uh...'

(EDIT: Feel free to explain your downvote, you miss ads like this?)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Not the downvoter, but i appereciate how the punchline of the ad wasn't explicitly spelled out, despite the punchline being "slur funny."

I feel like we tolerated the assholes of the time because, immature though they were, they were the life of the party, which was "the point" of gaming for a demographic, to be the exact opposite of work in every way.

We need high-energy, charismatic, boundary pushing people if we want games that are fresh and innovative. Unfortunately, those tendencies can amplify the worst in us. But we don't need to tolerate asholism for the sake of entertainment, its never worth it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

I feel like we tolerated the assholes of the time because, immature though they were, they were the life of the party, which was “the point” of gaming for a demographic, to be the exact opposite of work in every way.

Hard disagree there, particularly as someone who worked in the industry, has a gay kid, and worked with women in the industry. The 'frat boy' stuff was amusing to 13 year old fans, sure, but it was abusive, cruel, and awful to be anywhere near. There's a billion different ways to achieve the same objective without being homophobic, sexist, etc, like say this masterpiece response to said ad.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yes, and I really hope more people see this. It was an embarrassment, and people tried to quickly forget. Before they did though, we got to see the absolute art piece that was the Battlefield teams response.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Yeah that's actually funny. Calling it FRAGS is just the icing.

Now that it's less broken, I've been playing Cyberpunk a lot and it feels like edgy shit done correctly. All the big tough guys are actually just weirdos enamored with the sound of their own voice, the ads are ludicrously over the top, it's bloody, and everyone's a human being. I haven't felt gross with any of the content in it so far and it has at least as many strippers as Duke 3D had. I think the loud edgelords keep trying to paint it as free speech vs censorship but it's really about not making players complicit in whatever infantile world view the director has.