Everyone relates with a sad trombone

A couple of times a year, a "Phenomenon Game" pops up out of nowhere and is suddenly the talk of the town. Trombone Champ fits that description. It became a viral meme seemingly overnight, but this genius comedy game didn't come from nowhere. The people who made Trombone Champ had to stick with it for three difficult y?ears, working only?? on nights and weekends, to put it all together.

The game was created by industry veterans Dan and Jackie Vecchitto. They've been self-publishing games for about a decade, and most of their projects have been free. Trombone Champ is actually the first title they've ever sold on Steam, so you can imagine their surprise when it went on to sell 20,000+ copies in its launch window, prompting NBC, The New York Times, and the CBC to all come calling for interviews.

[embed]//www.yout??ube.com/watch???v=mOaYsW-Q1lU[/embed]

Much to my surprise, they were also willing to talk to me for my Talking to Women about Videogames podcast (also on iTunes and Spotify). It's a small-time show by NBC standards, but since they had an OK time on Sup, Holmes (an interview live stream show for game devs I used to do), I guess they didn't mind coming back for another talk eight years later. I've been rooting for these two ever since then, long before I knew they were the people who made Trombone Champ, and it's been so great to see those roots grow into a tree made of ??trombones, thousands?? of dollars, and mainstream media attention.

We got into all that plus the couple's love of Star Trek, D&D, gnomes, my theories on the autobiographical n??ature of their gameography, and a lot more. Thanks again to Dan and Jackie for ?taking the time, and doing it on video to boot. It was (ahem) a "hoot."

The post Meet the people who made Trombone Champ appeared first on Destructoid.

Kerri Ann Hoskins is a real wonder woman

A couple of weeks ago, I cold-called Kerri Ann Hoskins, famous for her roles in Mortal Kombat 3 and Aerosmith's Revolution X, to see if she wanted to do an interview for one of my podcasts. A week or so?? later, she said "Sure." She didn't even ask what it was for! That "who gives?? a f*ck let's just do it" attitude is a big part of who she is, and I am so grateful for it.

In just under 25 minutes, she gave an amazing overview of some of the highs and lows of her life and career. I had planned to chat with her for 5 minutes about whether she wanted to play Sonya again and a couple of other light topics, but then a half-hour later, she was still talking about growing up with a step-father with wartime PTSD, the mesh implanted in her bellybutton, being pregnant with twins while playing the pinup girl villain in the Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero, and a lot of other parts of her life that make Sonya's struggles in the games look lightweight in comparison. In fact, while we were talking, you may see her check her phone a few times ??to check to see if her twins had contracted COVID-19. I was amazed that she was willing to take the time to talk to me in the midst of this potential crisis, but as I soon discovered, pushing through difficult times has been her way of life f??or as long as she can remember.

//youtu.be/YsCnNzNONpw

So wh??y haven't we seen her for a while? From the sounds of it, taking care of her kids needed to be her top priority for the past decade or so, but at 51, she's toying with getting back into the game. What with the new movie out, it couldn't be a better time for her to jump back into the role of Sonya, who also became a mom over the years, but I was surprised to find out she'd rather play the character in a new game than a film. I can't blame her! Games are more fun.

If you want to see more of Kerri Ann, she's pretty active on Twitter and Instagram, as well as her online gallery. You can also hear an alternate version of our interview on the Talking to Women about Videogames podcast. Remember that show? It was on Youtube for a while, and the episode with Jessica Nigri actually did pretty good numbers. Now that they are on each other's radars, maybe NetherRealm will cast Jessica in a new Mortal Kombat game as Cas??sie Cage and Kerri Ann as her ass-kicking mom? One can hope...

The post The real Sonya Blade wan??ts a new game, might pass on a movie appeared first on Destructoid.

About one in a hundred

"Critical" Kate Wileart, last seen on Destructoid with a tribute to both comics legend ??Jack Kirby and Nintendo's Kirby, is back with a much larger scale project. This time she's celebrating National Woman's Month with a YouTube series called Video Dames of the '80s. Her plan is to catalog every named, playable woman character in games throughout the? decade. After that??, she may continue on to the '90s and beyond, creating a veritable virtual all-inclusive encyclopedia of women of the medium. 

That would be quite a challenge, but of course, it would also be a heck of a fun job if the money was right. Kate's just getting started though, so time will tell if continuing the series with thousands of future entries will end up being a prudent profession?al undertaking. For no?w, her focus is just on the '80s, and a scant list of 84 woman characters who were both named and playable in games throughout that decade. Considering there were 8000+ games released in that time frame, that's an embarrassingly small number. 

The first full episode of the series is tentatively scheduled to release around Easter, an appropriately rabbit-themed holiday. Though Kate hasn't announced which character she'll be profiling, my guess is it will be Billie Sue, the lead of Wabbit, which may have been the first home console game to ever feature a woman lead. Incidentally, I've offered up a $1000 reward related to a certain search surrounding the character. Anothe??r prudent professional undertaking? Proba??bly not, but it would certainly be one for the books. 

The post Gaming in the ’80s had shockingly few leading ladies appeared first on Destructoid.

Cblogs Recap: Week 42

-Jonathan Holmes returns with Talking to Women about Video Games.

-Kerrik52 reviews Siren: Blood Curse on the PS3 as part of his Travele?r in Playtime reviews series.

-Lord Spencer reviews Front Mission on the DS as part of his DS REVIEWS blo??gging series.

-Exber reviews God Hand as part of his Retro Reviews blogging series.

-Joel Peterson writes about his ?reluctant transition to the digital video game age.

-Sapato64 discusses how not to get? bored an?d stay invested while playing MMOs.

-Shoggoth2588 continues his review of the last? decade with this blog focusi??ng on 2019.

-Black Red Gaming reviews Mafia: Definitive Edition on the PC.

-Dinoracha reviews La Mulana on the PC.

-Xeo shares his impressions from the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War beta.

-Agent9 continues with his daily journal for this month.

-TheBlondeBass writes some short narrative prose under the guise of an Owlboy review.

-PhilsPhindings discusses the similarities between the soundtrack Wizards & Warriors X and the music of Kansas.

-PhilsPhindings discusses the similarities between the soundtrack of Animaniacs and several other pieces of music.

-ChronoLynxx is back with another TGIF open forum blog.

Thanks as always to Lord Spencer for the Cblog Recap and ?to our wonderful community members for some great reading! If you want to see your own thoughts included in next week's recap, then head over to our Community Blogs and spill your words.

The post Cblogs of 10/10 to 10/16/2020: Mafia, Front Mission, and Jonathan Holmes’ podcast returns appeared first on Destructoid.

A bird yells about beautiful boys for 3 minutes

Art Hawk is a self-mocking think-piece video series that started as a spin-off of an even more self-mocking think-piece video series called Talking to Women about Videogames. Between the two, Art Hawk was the easier one to make, but other than one episode about Candy Crush that was a hit with some smartypants game developers, the series struggled to find i??ts audience. That combined with the fact that I ju??st sort of stopped having new ideas for the series led to it going on hiatus for a while. 

Then a couple of weeks ago, long time jbsgame.community member and collaborator Andrea Ritsu asked me if I wanted to bring Artimus back to talk about Final Fantasy XV. I said sure, though I h??ave no idea what makes that game art more than any other action-RPG. Andrea wrote up a script, and a few ad libs and hours in the editing bay later, Art Hawk was back. 

In many ways, the episode is less about Final Fantasy XV, and more of a declaration of appreciation for Bishōnen character design in general, which isn't exactly a new thing to many of you dear readers. But if you're looking for any excuse to celebrate your love of beautiful boys, or of the rejection of gender norms in general, then this hunky hawk has you covered.  

The post Art Hawk: Final Fantasy XV appeared first on Destructoid.

I didn't think she'd be so darn picky

_{[Originally published a year ago by one of our readers, an adorable blast from the past! Also, I was cute in 2012 before I turned into captain morgan. -Niero]}

Somewhere in deep South Texa?s, born and raised, on the playground was where she probably spent some time at... is a woman that has been, to me, in several ways, the most important person in my life. She birthed me, she fed me, she protected me, she never judged and always helped out whenever I needed it, and she bought me a lot of awesome video games. Way too many, at that. I even still mooch off of her and she obliges with nary a leering glance. Like any person, she isn't perfect, but she is still lovely and great and caring. And I love her very much. 

This is why I have decided to poll her on ??the video game world's sexiest men. 

In this slightly awkward interview, I lay out who I believe might catch her fancy as well as some characters who I would be surprised to have her find attractive. I asked her not to? take it too seriously in that respect, but, alas, we don't exactly carry the same sense of humor. Had she, I would have gone reeeeally out there. Prepare for some mostly blunt responses, but I think we'll have some fun nonetheless. 

In no way do my biases work towards convincing her that some characters are better than others. I can assure you of that. 

Me: Mom? 

Mom: Yes?

Me: Ever heard of games journalism? 

Mom: Uhh... I guess? Yeah.

Me: Well, that's what I'??m about to do some of. ??;

Mom: Okay...

Me: I maintain a somewhat popular blog on Destructoid ??and I thought it'd be cute, funny, stupid, lighthearted, etc. to poll you on some of video games' most sexy men. Because I know you like men and stuff. 

Mom: (laughs) Ummm...

Me:&nb??sp;It'll be fun! And it won't b?e but for a few minutes.

Mom: Uhh, alright. 

Me: Awesome!

Geralt (The Witcher)

Me: Since there's a third game in the Witcher se??ries coming up very soon, in honor of that, what do you think of Geralt? 

Mom: .... think of him as far as what? 

Me: Well, his ph??ysical appearanc??e, his attitude...

Mom: How do I know his attitude?

Me: Well, I'll tell you! 

I don't wanna describe him as a sleaze when it comes to love, but he's kind of a... I guess a one-night stand?? sort of guy. 

Mom: Oh. 

Me: Kind of a love 'em and leave dude. 

Mom: Look-wise, yes. Attitude, no. 

If that's who he is, that's who he is, but it doesn't?? make him a bad person. 

Me: Well, no. There's no??thing w??rong with a one-night stand as long as it's consensual.

Trevor (Grand Theft Auto)

Me: Trevor... Trevor's a reeeeal shitty person.

Mom: Look-wise? ... kind of the same deal.

No. 

... you mean as far as my tastes?

Me: Yeah. He's a schizophrenic, he's...

Mom: Oh yeah, that's my type! (chuckles)

Me: ... he's a murderer, he's... (laughs)

Mom: (laughs) No. Not even cute. 

Me: Well, you can always? g??o for the "face with personality" card.

Mom: Ehh, no.

Me: Ok!

Mom: Especially w?hen he??'s a schizo-murderer, no. 

Me: And he's an asshole, at that. Even ignoring the murder, h??e's a real asshole. 

Dante (Devil May Cry)

Me: Gettin' into some pretty boys, here's Dante from Devil May Cry. 

Mom: Yeah!

Me: He's a demon hunter...

Mom: Yeah!

Me: ... and he's a good guy, for the most part. And he's kind of a? "Totally radical!" kind? of guy. Cool 90's bad type. 

I was thinking maybe he'd be too young for you.

Mom: Well, yeeeeeah. I didn't think we'd be goin??g for that part.

Me: Yeah, but physically and attitude...

Mom: Yes!

Me: You wou??ldn't be, at all, turned off by his personality? 

Mom: Well... I guess not. I don't think I'd? go for someone s??aying "Totally radical!", but... (laughs)

Me: Well, he has that kind of persona. 

Mom: Somebody my age wouldn't be saying that!

Me: Like, something he says in Devil May Cry 3 is "This party's gettin' crazy! Let's rock!"

Mom: It might make me laugh, but...

Me: Yeah! He'd make ya laugh. 

Dante (DmC)

Me: Now, there was actually a reboot of Devil May Cry in the form of DmC. This is Dante from tha?t. He's more of a ruffian, rebel-type.

Mom: He's cute.

Me: This is a prequel to Devil May Cry, but it was also meant to be a reboot somehow and... he's no?t an ass, he's just? kind of a flawed character. 

Mom: His body looks bigger than his head...

Me: (laughs) I??t's probabl?y just the angle. I'll find a new picture.

Mom: That's better. 

Me: He's also a one-night stand sort of character. Until he became the Dante you saw before. He cleaned up a tad and just became a cool, fun character.&nb??sp;

Anders (Dragon Age)

Me: This is actually somebod??y I don't know anything about. I've just played the g?ames... sort of. His name is Anders.

Mom: Hmmmmmmmmmmmm...

Me: Just from?? looking at his picture, he's probably very snarky.

So, physically, he's your type?

Mom: Hmm... yeah, I guess so. 

Me: I'm not sure of his sexual preference. Consid?ering the games he's in, he could be homosexual. So... no chance with him!

Mom: Ah. 

Varric (Dragon Age)

Me: How do you feel about short men?

Mom: Nah! They have to be at least my height.

Me: (laughs) Well then, you may not like Varric from Dragon Age. 

Mom: Not saying I'm not attracted to 'em,?? it's just...? no.

Me: Physically, not even? 

Mom: Mmm no.

Me: He's ??another cool, suave character. Makes ya laugh. He's a writer!

Kuja (Final Fantasy)

Me: Getting into some Japanese designs, so it may really not be your type, but here's Kuja from Final Fantasy. 

Mom: Mmmm... not really.

Me: Too skinny? Too...

Mom: Too skinny, for one.

Me: Too dismissive looking, too evil...?

Mom: I can't even see what he looks like! (the picture is ra?ther small)

Me: Well, here's a cosplay of 'em...

Mom: Too feminine looking. 

Me: (laughs) Yeah, that's pretty much Japanese cha?racter design in ?a nutshell when it comes to younger characters or even the villians. 

The mindset behind that, I'm not sure of.

And ??if it means anything, here's his "Trance" form where he becomes somewhat of a beastly version of his former self...

Mom: Mmm, no. 

I'm not sure if that's any better.

Squall (Final Fantasy)

Me: Getting into some more Final Fantasy characters, here's Squall. 

Mom: He's got ??too much of a little boy face. He looks like he's about 1?7.

Me: Yeah. He might actually be more 15 or 16, but sometimes when Japanese games are localized into ??English, they might bump up the ages to more reflect our idea of what's legal by making them 17-18. 

Mom: His legs are longer than his body!

I'd say no.

Me: So, too young for ya?

Mom: Waaaaaaaaaaay too young.

Nsync (Final Fantasy)

Me: Final Fantasy XV is coming out soon enough and I wanted to get your? opinion on, actually, all the main characters at once. 

They'?re pretty much a boy band fetishist's dream. The joke around the coll??ective community is that they practically look like a boy band.

Mom: Mmm. That's what they look like. 

Me: Well, from what you? can tell from this picture, which do you like? One? All? N??one?

Mom: (points to the ?right, first from the middle) He??'s cute.

Me: Okay. 

And I a?ssume that guy (points to the right, back from the middle) is too young looking for ya?

Mom: That's, ye?ah, er... no. Not with that hair. And the color.

Me: And it's the hair with this guy too? (poi?n?ts to middle)

Mom: Yeah. 

Me: There'??s a lot of that going a?round in Japanese character design as well. 

Chris Redfield (Resident Evil)

Me: There's actually two versions of Chris Redfield. Here's the older one from the classic? era. 

Mom: Mmhm. 

(throws hands up) I guess!

Me: Well, here's his Resident Evil 5 and 6 model. On steroids, basically.

Mom: (chuckles) Yeah.

Me: Too big for ya? Not into muscles?

Mom: Not that big! T?hat's like Arnold Schwarzenagg??er big!

Me: He's bigger than Arnold Schwarzenagger!

Mom: Or The Rock. That's almost too much!

Me: Well, the face. What about the face? 

Mom: Yeah!

Leon Kennedy (Resident Evil)

Me: Here's Leon from the same franchise. 

Mom: I remember him from the movie!

Me: Did he look like that at all? 

Mom: Ehh, kind of.

Me: You like 'em here?

Mom: Yeah!

Me: The hair too pretty boyish for ya?

Mom: Yeah, but just as long as it's not ove??rboard.

Danny (Game Grumps, Ninja Sex Party, Starbomb, etc.)

Me: Surprise! This one's rea??l. His name's Danny, most famous probably from Game Grumps.

Mom: No!

Me: Too young for ya? The hair? 

Mom: Everything. 

Me: (laughs)

Me: Nothin'?

Mom: Well, he's not ugly.

Me: No. 

He's sort of a whacky, fun dude. Stupid humor can ??be his thing.

Mom: And ??personalit??y sometimes makes up for everything.

Me: Of c??ourse! Long-standing relationships just about require a good personality.&nb?sp;

Mom: Looks don't always matter. 

As?? your grandma always told me, "You should marry your best friend.". I thought she was crazy!

Jacob (Mass Effect)

Me: I wanted to find a decent African American character to showcase. Unfortunately, there aren't many centralized African American, Hispanic, etc. characters in general. But, here's one. Name's Jacob from Mass Effect. 

Mom: (nods head) Mmhmm!

Me: He's a very? fit dude. A mil??itary man. Very stern and to the point. "Hoorah!" and all that. 

Mom: That's okay. 

Yeah. Nice lookin' guy. 

Me: To the best of my recollection, most, if not all, these human chara?cters were modeled off actual people. So, it's not super weird!

Mom: Okay!

Me: With that said...

Thane (Mass Effect)

Me: He's actually an alien, but he's... huma?n-esque. Here's Thane from Mass Effect.

He's a tragic character. Told to the player that he is potentially to die very soon, he's now trying to simply do all that he can for the greater good before that time may come. A very sweet, gen??tle, soft ?spoken character. 

But, well, he's an alien. Not your type?

Mom: No! (chuckles)

Me: (laughs) Okay!

... couldn't even maybe get past the alien looks? If he were a ??nice g-...

Mom: No!

Me: Okay, okay!

MaleShep (Mass Effect) 

Me: Back to human characters, this is the main male character from Mass Effect. Named Shepard.

Mom: Yeah!

Me: ??Depending on how you play, you can have him be an asshole, a middle ground guy, or a nice guy. So, I suppose his attitude doesn't really matter at that point. 

Purely based off physical appearance...

Mom: Yeah!

James Sunderland (Silent Hill)

Mom: Yeah!

Me: He's a broken character. 

You wouldn't care if he were the type of g??uy to come to you about his?? problems, maybe cry a bit... just be generally emotional? 

Mom: No.

Me: You don't care? 

Mom: No, I would care!

I mean, to a point.

Me: He's just a depressed cha?racter. His wife died, then he gets a note from ??who might be his dead wife, possibly crazy...

Mom: That's a lo??ooooot of emotional baggage. No. 

Troy Baker (everything)

Me: Another actual person. 

This is one of the people ??I met at Comic-Con last year, Troy Baker.

Mom: Hmmm... cute. Pretty boy.

Me: I think he looks better with a beard, so...

Mom: That's a nice looking guy!

Me: Like 'em better with the beard?

Mom: Yeah!

Salvador (Borderlands)

Me: Here is a more cartoon-y character. Name's Salvador from Borderlands. Another short dude, but he's not ugl??y...

Mom: Not for me. 

Me: The beard? The hair? Short stature? 

Mom: Yeeeah. 

Me: Everything? 

Mom: Evvvverything.

Me: (laughs)

Me: Nothin'?

Mom: No. He looks like a troll. 

Faust (Guilty Gear)

Me: How do y??ou feel about men with bags over their hea?ds?

Mom: ............

...........

Yeah, no.

Ratchet (Ratchet & Clank)

Me: You re?member me playing Ratchet & Clank? 

Mom: (knows what's coming) (chuckle) Yeeesss.

Me: How do you feel about anthropomorphic c?haracters? R?atchet!

Mom: ... other than being cute...

Me: Nothin'? 

Mom: I caaaaan't say.

Me: Some actually find? characters?? like these sexually attractive.

Mom: And, hey, that's them!

Me: Yeah! (nervous) More power to 'em! 

(inner conflict)

Captain Qwark (Ratchet & Clank)

Me: Okay, f??ine. Here's a human from the same series. He's just a very exaggerated figure. ??Named Captain Qwark.

Mom: He looks like someone that would probabl??y make me ?laugh...

Me: Yeah...

Me: Eh? 

Mom: Can't say it do??es anything for?? me. The nothin'!

Me: He's an e?gotisical sort of guy, ?but not straight up evil or even kind of evil. At least, not now he isn't. He just simply thinks more of himself, trying to be the hero he's made himself out to be. 

So, physically and attitude, not your type?

Mom: (shakes head)

Me: Alright!

Dr. Nefarious (Ratchet & Clank)

Mom: Oh! I know him!

But... from where? 

Me: Probably from Ratchet & Clank, which I played a lot of when I was younger??.

Dr. Nefarious is an evil mastermi-... well, not a "mastermind". He's sort of a clutz. But, he is evil. (impersonates) Sounds kind of like this! (end) And he thinks he's great, but he's no??t so great. Gets things d?one, but it always blows up in his face. 

Mom: Nooooo.

Me: Well, just imagine flesh over those robot parts, then may??be... (I forgot to show her his human form)

Mom: No!

Me: (laughs)

Peppy Hare (Star Fox)

Me: You sure on the anthro characters? Pe??ppy Hare?

Mom: (minor frustration) They're cute!

Me: Alright!

I was hopin??g you'd surprise me and say "Oh! I'd do that!". 

Mom: Ugh. Nice. 

Monkey (Enslaved: Odyssey to the West)

(Note: I could swear Monkey was actually part monkey and had a tail. I realized far too late that ?I was way off. I even pla?yed the game! Agh!)

Me: Well, how about half-animal, half-human characters? H?ere's Monkey? from Enslaved. 

Mom: Got a cute face...

Me: The tail wouldn't bother ya?

Mom: I guess not.

Me: You can't imagine that coming into play ??in the relationship? Ya know...

Mom: C'mon!

Me: WHAT?!

Adam Jensen (Deus Ex)

Me: Adam Jensen. 

Again, he's the kind of character where you can play good, bad, neutral, so his personality i?s up in the air.

Mom: Yeah! Cute.

Me: It's weird what y?ou consider "cute", I consider more rugged and masculine.&?nbsp;

Mom: It's just what I like!

Me: That just a word you use willy nilly? 

Mom: Well, alright, "he's a good looking guy". ?;

Me: Alright then!

And he's augmented. So, he's got heightened perception, strength, durability, and so o?n. Might wanna take that into consideration. He's probably very much your type. 

ProJared (ProJared)

Me: Another real human! His alias is ProJared.

Mom: Ooooooooh no!

Me: Oh no? (chuckle)

He's got kind of a S?teve Buscemi charm about 'em. 

Mom: I'm ??sure that makes h?im very funny, but as far as looks...

Me: And he ?is a funny guy! He's a game reviewer. He's a pretty funny guy, yeah.

Me: Not even i??n his b?est pictures, a liiiiiittle bit? 

Mom: Mmm, can't say that. 

Me: Oh, okay. 

Mom: No offense to 'em.

Isaac Clarke (Dead Space)

Me: Now, this is somebody you probably want? to, emotionally, stay clear of. Name's Isaac from Dead Space. 

Mom: Ehhhhhh... not too bad. 

Me: He even looks pretty emotional?ly distressed in this picture.

Mom: Looks?? pretty much mental in that picture. 

Me: He... he has a reason?? for being crazy because of what happens in the first game, but yeah. He is crazy. 

Mom: Yeeeeah. 

Me: He wo??uldn't kill ya,? but he'd probably cry during sex.

Mom: Emotionally unstable?

Me: Oh yeah. 

So, again, too much emotional baggage? 

Mom: ??;Yep. I've got too much of my own stuff to?? deal with. I don't need someone else's. 

Me: Well, not to say you wouldn't at all help out someon??e, emotionally, if they needed it?.

Mom: I didn't say that!

Me: Alright, alright!

Link (Legend of Zelda)

Me: Nooooow... you may see some child photos...

Mom: (looks dreadfully worried)

Me: ... but, we'll be focusin??g on adult Link. For obviou?s reasons.

Mom: Yeeeeah. 

Me: He is a?? young, pretty boy. But, he is legal! 

Mom: Yeah, I don't do pretty boys. 

See??, Janice (mom's friend) is t??he pretty boy lover. 

Me: That's what I thought! I thought interview??ing her would be a lot more interestin??g!

Mom: She probably would be.

Me: Yeah!... no offense to you.

Me: Nothin'? 

Mom: No. Like I said, ??he's too muc?h of a pretty boy. 

Me: Okay. 

You wouldn't? imagine, maybe, because he's younger that'd mean he was more agile, energetic, fun to be around...

Mom: No!

Me: Fine, geez!

Nathan Drake (Uncharted)

Me: Here's Nathan Drake from Uncharted. 

He's pretty much a carbon copy of Indiana Jone??s. He's a smart alek, suave...

Mom: Mmhmm! Yeah!

Me: ... he's a treasure hunter, raids tombs,?? ancient secrets and all that.&nbs??p;

Mom: Sounds good!

Me: Probably would land you ??a nice bit of comfort. 

Me: So?

Mom: Yeah! Sarcasstic...

Me: You like sarcasstic types?

Mom: That's all I've ever been around is sarcasstic guys! It's probably ha?lf my problem. 

Me: (laughs)

Solid Snake (Metal Gear Solid)

Me: Here's Solid ?Snake from Metal Gear Solid. 

We?ll, actually, there'?s another form of him around here. This is him pretty darn old.

Mom: No. 

Me: You're not into gilf's? 

You know what that stands for? 

Mom: No.

Me: Grandpa I'd Like to...

Mom: Nooooooooo!

Me: Okay! (laughs)

Me: Well, here's a younger version ??of him. 

Actually, I'm not even sure that this is, canonically, Solid Snake. The story deals with different timelines and clones and whatnot, but, either w?ay, it's pretty much him physically.

Mom: No. 

Me: He's a stern sort of dude. Very ?intelligent and skillful, but not really the kind of guy who'd go out o?f his way to make you laugh.

Mom: Nope. Nah. 

Waluigi (Mario)

Mom: No. 

Me: No? 

... n??ot even, as you'd say, "cute" for being a ca??rtoon? 

Mom: No. 

Me: Mustache doesn't do anything for ya? 

Mom: Yeah, no. 

Me: The manliner? 

Mom: No!

Me: Okay, okay!

Samus (Metroid)

Me: There's totally a guy under tha??t? armor. Where does your mind go? 

Mom: Absolutely not. 

Me: (laughs) 

The face is a mystery! What does he look like?!

Mom: No. 

Me: Your mind doesn't conjure anything? 

Mom: Nah uh. 

Me: You don't have an imagination? 

Mom: ... I'd be afraid to say I did. 

Me: (sigh)

It's a female.

Mom: I was fixin' to s??ay... if ?I had to take a bet...

Robert Lutece (Bioshock)

Me: Here's Robert Lutece from Bioshock. He is? one half of a pair of twins. 

He's a very proper character. Classy, upkept...

Mom: Oh. Nope.

Me: ??He's humerous, but in an antagonistic fashion. 

Mom: He's got a sourpuss lookin' face. 

Me: Yeah. (chuckle)

Mom: Nooooope. 

Eikichi (Persona)

Me: Another younger character, but his inte??resting attire may make up for that. Eikichi?? from Persona. 

Mom: Innnnteresting is to say the least. 

(points to the MC) Th??e other one's cuter. But, he looks like he's about 15!

Me: He doesn't look that young!

Mom: Okay, 17. 

Me: R?ight. Canonically, I believe, like most other Persona characters, he's 17-18. 

Me: But, ignoring him being too young for you?

Mom: Mmmm... maybe.

Me: Sort of a Marilyn Manson appeal? 

Mom: ??;I'm still laughing about ?Marilyn Manson being on Sons of Anarchy.

Yosuke (Persona)

Me: From the same series, here's Yosuke.

Too pretty boy?

Mom: Yes. 

Me: He's a ditzy, clumsy character, but...

Mom: And he looks like he's about 14!

Me: (laughs) He's legal, if not 17. 

Mom: He doesn't look it. 

Me: Now, would you date him i?f you were younger?

Mom: If I were younger, yeah!

Kanji (Persona)

Me: What about Kanji?

Mom: No.

Me: No? 

... no more comments? Just no? 

Mom: Just no.

Me: Hansen will not be pleased.

Mom: Who? 

Frank West (Dead Rising)

Mom: He looks like Chris Pine! (laughs)

Me: (laughs) 

P??eople say he? also looks like... oh, that guy. Ghostbusters? 

Mom: ... Dan Aykroyd? 

Me: Yes!

Mom: Yeah, I guess, right? there he does. His face is long like his.? 

Yeah! He's good. 

Me: Another funny character. Makes ya laugh.

Mom: Yeah!

Me: Adventurous ??too. Stupid, but still real nice. He's also very versitile. The name of his game is to use anything at all possible in the environment to clobber his enemies. It can range from hotdogs, to CD's, to chairs, so that's something.

Mom: They teach you that in martial arts!

Me: Yeah! You can even lea??rn martial arts in the?? game. He's perfect!

JonTron (JonTron, Game Grumps)

Me: Another human being. Hi?s name is JonT??ron, or Jon Jafari. 

He's a veeeeeeeeeeery wacky, funny kind of guy.

Mom: Noooooo.

Me: ... fat? 

Mom: Yeah.

Me: Not into fatter guys? 

Mom: It's not necessarily the weight, it's just... ?no. 

Me: (laughs) Okay. 

Mom: I'm sure he's fun as hell and crazy, but...

Me: Oh, he is! You're just not into?? especially ??eccentric types?

Mom: No. That's just a little bit much. 

Me: Again, even physically... no? 

Mom: Nah. Not my type. 

...

Niero Gonzalez (Destructoid)

Me: This is the head of Destructoid, N??iero Gonzalez. 

Mom: He's cute.

Me: Okay. 

I'm not sure of ?his personality, but he's probably a fun guy. He's responsible for a fun website and all. 

Jordan Devore (Destructoid, Saturday Morning Hangover)

Mom: Ehhhhhhhh...

No. 

Me: No? 

Mom: Nuh uh. 

Me: Too nerdy lookin'? 

Mom: Yah. 

Me: Too nerdy?!

Mom: Mmhmm. 

Me: The glasses? Red hair? The...

Mom: At least in t??hat picture, yes. Too nerdy lookin'. 

Me: Well...

Me: That one? 

Mom: No. 

Me: Well, alright. 

Dale North (Destructoid)

Me:&??nbsp;Here's Dale North, previously of Destruc??toid.

Mom: Nooo. 

Me: No?

Mom: No. 

Me: Well, he's pretty w??ell-liked around the community?? for his looks. I'll find a better picture of him.

He's in love with Japanese culture like I am. Also?, a ?thing for corgi's. 

Mom: Mmm no. 

Mom: Well, there he's not too bad lookin'. 

Me: Got a nice smile. 

Mom: His face is so long!

Me: Such a dog lover. 

Mom: Mmhmm.

Me: Doesn't do anything for ya?

Mom: Nooope. Doesn't sell it. 

Me: What do you like more? Dogs or cats?

Mom: Dogs. (looks to our cat) No offense, Summe??r.

Steven Hansen (Destructoid)

Me: Eh? 

Mom: (chuckles) No. 

Me: Is it the hair... is it...

Mom: Just... doesn't do anything.

Me: Not ugly, though. 

Mom: I didn't say he was ug?ly! Just not my type. 

Jim Sterling (Destructoid, Podtoid, Jimquisition, Podquisition, Squirty Play, etc.)

Me: Here's ?the guy you said sounded a lot like Ricky G??ervais from that podcast I showed ya. 

Mom: Yeah! He sounded just like 'em!

Me: Physically, not your type? 

... uhhhhh. It's... with all due respect to Sterl??ing, it's hard to find a picture of him that isn't intended to be stupid or dramatic. 

Mom: Yeah, they all look pretty stupid!

Me: (chuckles)

Mom: (glances to Google search) ... is that??... Willem Dafoe? 

Me: Yes! A thing of his, previou?sly, on Podtoid was this idea of Willem Dafoe movie pitches. Go to Hell Monkey Adams, District Dafoe...

Mom: (laughs) I love Willem Dafoe! (laughs)

Me: I'm trying very hard to find a good, le??gitmate picture of?? him. 

I... guess this is close enough.

Mom: No. 

Mom: I'm sure he's funny as hell, but no. 

Me: He is! He is hilarious. 

Mom: An??d, yes, he's sounds like Ricky Gervais. 

Chris Carter (Destructoid)

Mom: He's cute. 

He looks like Nick Lachey. 

Me: Who's that?

Mom: He used to be married to Jessica Simpson.? 

Me: Oh my!

Jonathan Holmes (Destructoid, 'Sup Holmes, Samus and Sagat, Podtoid, etc.)

Me: Just one more. 

Jonathan Holmes! There he is, m?akin' a wacky ?smile. 

Mom:&nb?sp;??I hate the thumbs up pose! I don't know what it is...

Me: (laughs) You hate thumbs up pictures? 

Mom: I don't get it. I just think they're so stu?pid.&nbs??p;

(Sorry, Randy!)

Me: Or the dreaded "duck face".

Mom: Or that too!

Me: Oka??y, okay. Here's a more flattering image of him then.

Mom: Maybe it's that stupid Career Point? commercial that really made me hate it. 

Me: Eh? 

Mom: Nah. 

Me: Not really?!

Mom: No. 

Me: I think he's a good lookin' guy!

Mom: He's kind of cute there, but... mmm. 

S'alright. 

Me: Is it his baldness? 

Mom:?????????????????????????? No! 'Cause I like bald guys, and he's not re??ally bald.

Me: You find almost-bald awkward or what?

Mom: He's ju?st losing his hair. He can't help it! 

Me: He's also pretty well-built. 

(massages the point around his stomach) He's... sort of lost it with his age?. 

Mom: Hmm.

Me: That second picture was probably the best you can find of him fr??om these days. 

However, back in his 20's...

Mom: (looks impressed) He's pretty ripped!

He's changed quite a bit. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I didn't think she'd be so darn picky! I like most of these guys! I expected most of the younger dudes to turn her off, but I'm surprised at the lack of affection for Varric or Monkey. And no Holmes?! Oh well. I'd defin??itely take them all to bed and let them do all the work. Oh yeah!

What's your take on some of these guys? Al?l of them?! Whoa! Slow?? down! 

The post My mo?m gives us the skinny on the sexiest men in gaming appeared first on Destructoid.

What a time to be alive

The Chinese can take gaming very seriously. So seriously in fact that they have created an entire industry revolved around keeping l??onely gamers happy while grinding away in their virtual wastelands.

While in places like America we are relegated to finding our "escorts" on Craigslist and risk a plethora of potent??ial problems, the Chinese have simplified things and made it so their escorts are virtual and best of all, helpful.

Not helpful in the sense that you have new STDs to categorize, but helpful in that the available online female escorts will not only enhance your virtu?al social life, but they'll also help guide you along the way (you can even do face to face chat if you're feeling daring).

The services the girls provide can range between $3 to $16 an hour. Much cheaper than your standard real-world hooker, I mean escort. Kidding aside, ??not only is this a great service for those stuck in the depths of online loneliness, but it also is a nice bit of scratch for the girls themselves. The female online escorts can pull in anywhere from $485 to $1,300 a month doing this.

So how long until America jumps on this trend? Any ladies want to help me slug through Bloodborne?

??Female escorts for online gamers in vogue in China [Want China Times]

The post Lonely Chinese gamers can hire e?scorts for?? the feels appeared first on Destructoid.

His voice is annoying

There was an episode of Talking to Women about Videogames a while back that got screwed up when it started to rain, requiring that we abruptly end the episode without a proper resolution. That's why Art Hawk (also known as Artimus Hawkins from the famous Snail Trails Gamecube commercial) was born. Art Hawk can end anything. He even ended the creation of his own show, all before it had real?ly begun.

Tobbii Karlsson helped me put together a pilot episode for a Art Hawk spin off show a while back, but it never went anywhere because we weren't happy with it. Or so I thought. After working hard on the Podtoid Wiki for days stra??ight, Tobbii apparently became so delirious that he wanted to upload it.

OK, sure. So I guess I should post it on Destructoid? It's hard to say. Either way, here you go. This episode is about Grand Theft Auto. I hope you can handle it.

The post Art Hawk talks Grand Theft Auto appeared first on Destructoid.

Time to get cran-tastic

[Talking to Women about Videogames is a series where Jonathan Holmes talks to different people who are women about the biggest videogame news of the week for some reason.]

Myths can start innocently enough. Pure fabrication, simple misunderstanding, or a more complex misdiagnosis of the phenomena at hand can all lead to faulty explanations and perceptions.What keeps those misconcepti??ons going is usually a combination of lacking information and some measure of ill will. That happens a lot in the videogame world, largely doe to the&nb??sp;secretive ways of game publishers and the inner-conflict-prone gaming community.

When?? a company has been a huge (and divisive) part of the videogame industry for as long as Nintendo has, you're going have a few myths stuck to your ass. I figured? that the release of the Wii U would be as good a time as any to bust a few of them, because I like busting. It makes me feel good. 

Nintendo always sells consoles at a profit

I think this got started as a byproduct of the bitterness that many felt towards Nintendo for selling the Wii for $250, despite the fact that the hardware wasn't much of an upgrade from the $99 GameCube. While it was "a bit cheeky" of Nintendo to charge so much for the Wii, they still ended up losing tons of potential revenue ??;on the thing back when the Wii would go for ~$350 on the secondhand market. 

Back to the point, the Wii U is be?ing sold at a loss, the 3DS is being sold at a loss now that the price has dropped, and the GameCube was sold at a loss for the majority of its time on the market. Nintendo consoles are sometimes sold at ?a loss. Myth, consider yourself busted.

Nintendo doesn't support third parties

This one started back in the N64 days, and for good reason. Nintendo did gi?ve third parties a really hard time on the platform, charging ridiculous licensing fees and leaving them to deal with the near-obsolete cartridge format. Since the GameCube days though, Nintendo has taken a very different tact with third parties. That's why the Wii and the DS were flooded with third-party releases (many of which were of questionable integrity, but we'll get to that later).

People also say Nintendo should promote third-party games more aggressively, like Sony and Microsoft tend to. I'm always baffled by that. Call of Duty: Black Ops II took center stage at the recent Wii U pre-release ?event in New York City??. Nintendo has had EA, Activision, and Rockstar with them on stage at E3 many times. Whenever third parties put their most marketable, top-budget titles on Nintendo consoles, Nintendo historically meets them in kind with marketing resources and active support. 

The problem often comes from the fact that third parties do?n't often put their best stuff on Nintendo consoles, which brings us to the next point

Third-party games don't sell on Nintendo consoles

In the NES and SNES days, third-party games did exceptionally well on Nintendo consoles, but things changed on the N64. The previously mentioned licensing fees and restraints inherent to the cartridge format, combined with the N64's smaller install base caused the console to be largely ignored by third parties. The GameCube saw improved support in those areas, which led to increased support from third-party developers (with initially exclusive games like Resident Evil 4, Viewtiful Joe, and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes), bu??t with an even smaller install base than the N64, they took more of their business to?? the PS2.

All that history definitely contributes to the myth that these companies don't care about and/or don't sell on Nintendo consoles, but the Wii is where idea that third-party games "don't sell" on Nintendo consoles truly ingrained itself in gamer culture, with some studios making bold statements about how disappointed they are with the sales of their Wii games, blaming the "Wii audien?ce" for not appre?ciating their titles, etc.

The part they often leave out is that third parties rarely put marque titles on the Wii. Other than Monster Hunter Tri (which apparently sold well enough on the Wii to garner several Nintendo-exclusive follow-ups) and a few "down ports" of multiplatform titles like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Reflex Edition, third parties rarely put their most marke??????????????????????????table games on the Wii.

Instead, they took risks like MadWorld and Muramasa: The Demon Blade, tried to revive "dead" genres like the on-rails shooter, the point-and-click puzzle adventure and... whatever NBA Jam is, or just ported DS games to the console, assuming that Wii owners couldn't tell the difference between the two. (No offense, Trauma Center. You're still my jam.)

Third parties are right. Those games didn't tend to sell as well as their bigger budgeted, more fully featured relatives on the PS3/360, but that's not just  because "third-party games don't sell on the Wii." I'm more inclined to guess that lower budget, less marketable, new IP don't have much chance of doing big numbers at retail on any home console. There are plenty of  third-party games of varying levels of quality that didn't sell on the PS3/360 as well: Shadows of the Damned, The Sabatour, Darksiders II, Child of Eden, Wet, Hyperdimension Neptunia, El Shaddai, Enslaved, Vanquish, and Majin and the Foresaken Kingdom, to name a few. 

While I love a lot of those games, there is not questioning that they aren't as marketable as big-budget, established IP like Grand Theft Auto IV or Resident Evil 5. Like similarly budgeted, similarly struggling third-party games on the Wii, they just couldn't do GTA IV numbers. The only difference is, a game like No More Heroes can make a profit on the Wii where development costs allowed for games to sell 500,000 lifetime sales and sti?ll turn a profit.

Nintendo hasn't put out any new series since Pikmin

I love this one, because it's such a sweet Oroboros. There are people who complain that Nintendo only makes Mario and Zelda games. These are the people who will only buy a Nintendo game if it carries the Mario or Zelda name. Those folks who buy all kinds of Nintendo games already know that they released Xenoblade and Rhythm Heaven Fever just this year, that the worked very closely with Mistwalker on the development of The Last Story, with Treasure on Sin and Punishement: Star Successor, and so forth. 

Nintendo has published a lot of new IP since Pikmin was released. Sadly, people tend to overlook that, which only makes it harder for Nintendo to put ?out new IP. Oroboros indeed!

Nintendo only puts out games for "kids"

Nintendo of America has been pretty gun shy towards M-rated games ever since Eternal Darkness failed to set the world ablaze, but they've been pretty consistent in putting out T-rated games, like Metroid, Twilight Princess, and whatever else they think will sell. In Japan, it's a different story. Nintnedo publishes a lot more risky stuff there, in terms of both content and potential for sales -- stuff like psychologically disturbing Fatal Frame series, the dildo-infused Captain Rainbow, and the Cero Z-rated online ogre-slaying simulator Zangeki No Reginliev. 

It's only when compared to the "no kids allowed" attitude of Sony and Microsoft that Nintendo of America looks "less mature." Microsoft has dabbled in "all ages" games (mostly from Rare, and mostly with limited success) and Sony has put some resources into stuff like LittleBigPlanet, but most of the current crop of first-party titles from those two groups are T-rated or above. Combine that with fact that most who don't play Nintendo games only know the company for Mario and Zelda, ?and it's easy for the perception that they only make kids games to continue, despite ample evidence&nbs?p;to the contrary.

With the announcement that Nintendo is publishing the new Bayonetta, it will be interesting if that perception begins to cha??nge.

Conclusion: It's hard to hit a moving target

Nintendo has kept the same franchises alive for a long time, which gives off the perception that they are resistant to change. Anyone who's picked up the Wii U and booted up Miiverse can tell you that's no the case. Nintnedo went from completely ignoring multimedia features with the GameCube, to touting NintendoTVii and built-in video chat as killer apps for the Wii U. At one point, they were so focused on tech that they'll actually name one of their consoles after how many "bits" of processing power it had. Fast forward a few years later to the Wii, and you have a console that's only selling point came from software and its controller. And don't even get me started how much the Zelda games have simultaneously changed and st??ayed the same over the years.

Almost all the myths about Nintendo have been true at one point in time, but those points in time h??ave been fleeting. If you hate Nintendo today, you ma??y love them tomorrow, and vice versa. That's something I know from experience. The SNES is one of my favorite consoles of all time, but I can count the amount of N64 games that I truly love on one hand. 

The only constant about Nintendo is that there are no constants. Even the Mario brothers, who are most well known for their turtle-killing skills, may end up turning into wa?ds of paper or sucking ghosts to death with vacuum cleaners at the drop of a hat. Whatever beliefs you may have about Nintendo, for better or worse, are always worth reassessing a few tim??es a generation.

Personally, I don't think they'd want it any other?? way.

The post Talking to Women about Videogames: N?intendo myth busting appeared first on Destructoid.

_{[Talking to Women about Videogames is a series where Jonathan Holmes talks to different people who are women about the biggest videogame news of the week for some reason.]}

In this, the second part of a two-part series about Lollipop Chainsaw, we'll be talkin?g ab??out zombies, psychology, how Juliet compares to Bayonetta and other female protagonists in gaming, why upskirts are a thing and what effect a male's gaze has on both creating and playing a game about a cheerleader with a chainsaw. 

So without further adieu, let's get kicking. [Warning: Spoilers Ahoy]

Juliet Vs. The Zombies

Lollipop Chainsaw's take on the zombie concept appears pretty traditional at first sight. The majority of the zombies in the game are expressions of the Freudian concept of the ID. They do not value other people's existence, and their psyches have no filters. If they want to fuck your father, th?ey'll feel no shame in telling you so. They are animals, chaotic and evil, ready to kill and hump and destroy.

The main thing that makes them different from a lot of other zombies is the amount of shapes and sizes they come in. They come in all fo??rms of mindlessness: mindless sports fan zombies, mindless suicide bomber zombies, mindlessly territorial farmer zombies, and even mindlessly videogame-addicted zombies are all part of the show. People often think that pornography is only sexual co?ntent, but by my definition, it's anything that speaks to the animal side of us. These zombies represent all that.

The arcade zombies are probably my favorite, as they don't even notice Juliet at first. They're too preoccupied with their games. As someone who's a??chieved a zen-like mental emptiness on many occasio??ns while high score hunting, it was easy for me to laugh at both those zombies and at myself. It also says something about videogame fans in general. Overall, our brand of mindlessness is lot more harmless than the kind you may find on a football field or the sharp end of a backhoe. 

That said, even the arcade zombies are pretty violent once they get going. All of the game's zombies are aggressively, relentlessly attracted to Juliet (except for the zombie chickens), which is a pretty accurate reflection of our culture's mindless and idiotic love/hate obsession with the "all-American babe" archetype. The world loved Britney Spears, then loved to watch her suffer after she fell from grace. Either way, we focused on her. The zombies in Lollipop Chainsaw suffer the same compulsion.

S?o where does the compulsion come from? Probably from a lot of places. Some of it is sublimated rage that comes from being spurned by a woman that's "out of their league." That's what drives Swan, the game's evil ringleader, to create the zombie epidemic in the first place. Having always been mocked and rejected by "normal" people, he's always ?felt that the world was filled with hostile, dehumanizing bastards. The zombie apocalypse is just a manifestation of how he always saw the world. 

All of the game's bosses (with the exception of killabilly, the game's final boss) represent resentful outsiders who have been taught by our society that beautiful cheerleaders like Juliet are more valuable than "ordinary" peop?le, and resent Juliet for her privil??eged existence. Killabilly is different in that he represents the gigantic, endless appetite of American culture. He actually wants Juliet to love him, but he also wants to eat her alive. Either way, it's all about him, and nothing is ever enough.

Regardless if they are angry punk rock zombies or simple, cannibalistic zombies, they're still zombies. It doesn't matter if they see Juliet as an object of lust or as a symbol for everything that's wro??ng with pop culture. Either way, they're still objectifying her. They're still treating her like a piece of meat.

Thankfully for Juliet, there is an upside to being objectified. Being treated that way gives her full license to treat the zombies with the same level of insensitivity. They see her as a piece of meat to be sexually or philosophically destroyed, and she see them as pieces of meat ready to be carved for fun and profit. The difference between the zombies and Juliet is, she didn't start this fight, but she sure as hell knows how to ??finish it.  

In a world where so ?many videogames are about men who treat sex like a self-interested mini-game, and treat all women like either prostitutes and/or potential murder victims, it's nice to see a game about a women who takes great joy in beheading anyone who would dare to take that tact with her.

[Original Art by Sarah T.]

Upskirts Vs. Plumbers Butt

So what makes Juliet more capable than the zombies? I think a lot of it is due to how much she enjoys expressing herself, and how little she suffers from being self conscious. She's turns the act of slaughter into an art, but it's not performance, as Juliet doesn't care who might be watching her. She's doing it for herself. The opinions of others don't matter. If a punk rock zombie calls her a "vanillaslut," she'll cut the words in half with her chainsaw, and cut him in half next. Their words can't hurt her and their "objectifying gaze" doesn't matter, which brings us to the upskirts. 

While the majority of Lollipop Chainsaw is made up of gameplay which features very little in the way of sexually charged content, the game's cut scenes do have quite a few blatant upskirt moments. I didn't notice this at first, in part because I played a lot of the game with Juliet either dressed as Ash from The Evil Dead, or as a ??giant stuffed rabbit. That's just part of it, though. Another reason I didn't notice all the upskirts is that, like Juliet, I just don't care about upskirts.

Upskirts are a fetish that doesn't appeal to me. They play on society's notion of a woman's sexuality as being like candy (or in this specific case, lollipops); it's both sweet and bad for you, and you shouldn't give into your urge to have some. Making a woman's sexuality forbidden makes it all the more exciting to some when some of it slips out. A woman in a bikini has very little fetish potential, but a woman who is fully dressed who accidentally shows you a glimpse of her underwear causes some people to flip out. Add the idea of the woman in questi?on being in high school, and the "I want it because it's wrong" fetish factor shoots straight through the roof. 

Juliet knows this, but for the most part, she just don't care. She'll cover up if the player intentionally moves the camera to try to look up her skirt, but other than that, she's not concerned either way about who sees her bloomers. Like a plumber who carelessly unsheathes his ass crack while bending over to get at your sink, Juliet is unafraid of anyone who might see her buns as she she bends over to allow her boyfriend Nick to make eye contact with friends or family. Also like the plumber, it doesn't occur to her that she could or should be treated as a fetish object. So why bother covering up, especially when the world is mostly? populated with a bunch of soulless zombies?

It's an awesome idea, one that someone such as myself, who had a scant 15 minutes of fame at one point in life, can very easily relate to. There was a time when I had to completely reject the idea of caring if people were objectifying me or intent on metaphorically ??"eating ??me alive" if I was going to get anything done. It was a lesson I took with me and have tried to harness in my videos for Destructoid, which often involve trying to prove a point by casting myself in the part of the fool. 

So it's easy for me to put myself in Juliet's shoes. Lollipop Chainsaw works as an ?excellent metaphor for what my college and high school experiences often felt like. The fact that the game pulls this off with a female lead is good thing, right? It shows that gender isn't always a barrier, and that men can relate with aspects of femininity and vice versa, right? 

Maybe that's true. The other possibility is that I'm just playing another game created by a man, made for a prima?rily male audience, and that's why it's so easy for me?? to relate to Juliet. Like so many of today's female videogame characters, she's a metaphorical man in drag -- the representation of a man's idea of what a woman could be, and not an expression of the experiences that women have had.

Juliet Vs. A Male's Gaze

As much as I love the character of Juliet, and feel as though she is a valid virtual extension of myself, I would still never pronounce that she's "a great woma??n in gaming." That's really not for me to say either way. As I am not a woman, and have n??ever been a woman, I have no idea if she does a good job of giving women a voice in the world of gaming. That's up for the women of the world to decide.

From what I've heard, some women have told me that they were immediately annoyed with Juliet, and were sad that she didn't "own and enjoy" her sexuality like Bayonetta or Lara Croft did. I've heard other women say that they absolutely love Juliet, and can deeply relate with the fact that she's partially ashamed of her love of zombie slaughter. They've told me that it's exactly how they feel about being gamers -- that they've often been a?fraid to tell people that they have a side to them that loves games packed with wanton violence, but that it's a side of themselves that they can't ever keep in the closet for long.

Still other women have told me that they think it's quite clear that Lollipop Chainsaw is a game created by a man for other men, but that doesn't disqualify the game from offering a badass portrayal of a woman. One friend told me -- "Sure, Juliet was clearly created by a guy, but unlike a lot of games, she was created by a guy that thinks femininity is pretty awesome. They also hired a woman to do her visual design, which is a good sign. Considering how many guys refuse to play as a female character, and how many developers won't include the option to play as women in their games, I'd say that Lollipop Chainsaw is a step in the right direction."

Hopefully I got the point across that in our current culture, where female protagonists are still in the minority in gaming as a whole (even in games based on movies about women), an empowered tribute to traditional concepts of girlhood like Juliet is something we'd do well to consider (even if she was created by men). So that's enough about Lollipop Chainsaw for now, though I still have plenty more I wish I had the time and the space to talk about. That might have to wait for the sequel, assuming we ever get one. Regardless of whether you like the game or not, I think it's clear that there are still plenty?? of sto?ries that could be told with a character like Juliet. 

Boy would it be interesting if it turned out that?? Juliet had a detachable penis ?the whole time.

The post Talking to Women about Videogames: Lollipop Chainsa????w Pt 2 appeared first on Destructoid.

_{[Talking to Women about Videogames is a series where Jonathan Holmes talks to different people who are women about the biggest videogame news of the week for some reason.][Header art by Linzb0t.]}

Out of all of Grasshopper Manufacture's more recent games, Lollipop Chainsaw is the one that I'm guessing is the most likely to be misunderstood. Suda 51 has been packing unexpected messages in otherwise "normal"-looking games since he wrote the shock suicide ending of Super Fire Pro Wrestling back in 1994. Since that time, most of his games have been overtly weird. It doesn't take a close examination to spot the surrealism in Killer7 and No More Heroes. Ironically, the fact that those games looked weird probably helped them?? to be more easily understood by the people who wanted to play them.

Suda's past two games, Shadows of the Damned and Lollipop Chainsaw, have appeared mainstream-friendly on the surface, but like Super Fire Pro Wrestling, they've got more to them than meets the eye. Sadly, I'm concerned that they disguise their ideas a little too well. Even our own Jim Sterling was quick to say that Lollipop Chainsaw was "the stupidest game he'd ever played," only to write a wonderful analysis of how sma??rtly written the game was a week later. There is more to this game than people may initially thi?nk or detractors may want to admit.

If the game has one central theme, I'd guess it's the idea that there are no black or white truths. Black and white can and often do exist simultaneously in the exact same place in the e??xact same time, without contradicting each other, just like a "L??ollipop Chainsaw."

[WARNING! TONS of Lollipop Chainsaw Spoilers ahead!]

Juliet vs. Sexual Objectification

One o??f the first things a lot of people thought when they saw Juliet Starling was "great, another vapid masturbatory fantasy, so this game is going to suck!" It's an understandable guess to make, but it's inaccurate. Sure, men and women are certain to masturbate to ??the idea of Juliet Starling, but the fact that some people think that automatically makes the game trash is a pretty terrible.

It's sad that so many people are still quick?? to judge a woman (even a fictional one like Juliet) by her appearance alone. As I've found from the comments on Dtoid's YouTube page, there are still plenty of people who are quick to demean a woman because she chooses to dress in a sexually provocative way, and on the f??lip side, there are plenty of people who aren't necessarily attracted to Juliet who are just as quick to "slut-shame" her under the same pretenses.

What's really strange to me is that Juliet isn't even that provocative! She doesn't moan, strip, or act horny at random times like Bayonetta did. She's in great shape, but she's not cartoonishly proportioned like the gang from Senran Kagura. She's more covered up than most female Street Fighter, Dead or Alive, OneChanbara, and SoulCalibur characters, or even real life celebrities. Compared to Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Snooki, ??and Katy Perry, Juliet is practically Martha Stewart.

So why is it that Juliet has struck such a chord of lust with horny misogynists and of disdain with those who are desperate to see less sexual objectification in gaming today? I think it's because Juliet represents something bigger than just sex. She is Britney Spears in the ...Baby One More Time video. In fact, Juliet even says, "Oops, I did it again," at one point in the game. She is every booth babe, every Lolita fantasy, every tacked-on ounce of unnecessary sex that hormone-crazed teens have been trained to fetishize and anyone who cares about women's issues?? has grown to loathe.

So why is that a good thing? There are a lot of reasons, but first among them is that Lollipop Chainsaw shows that this representation of modern femininity is more than just a doll to be trifled with. She is (quite literally) a grown-up Powerpuff Girl, a fully developed human being who seamlessly joins the love of the adorable and the disgusting into one cohesive whole. Juliet may be cute, but like she says, "she has a chainsaw" and enjoys using it.

We'll get more into that later. For now, lets get into where Jul??iet comes from, and how she ended up growing into the woman that she is. 

Juliet vs. Her Family

Juliet sees the world through a fairly limited scope. She has the zombies, which are only good for e?xterminating; her helpless acquaintances, who are only worth anything if she manages to rescue them (and collect the "ego reward" that comes with that, paid out in zombie medals); and her family. Only her family are "real" human beings to Juliet. Her relationships with them show us who Juliet wants to be, who she respects, and who she dismisses.

She looks up to her mother (the woman who taught her to "wear her vagina with pride") and her father (a DILF who isn't afraid to show a little skin and kick some zombie ass) in equal measure. I get the feeling that these two didn't? bring her up to think that little girls are made of "sugar, spice, and everything nice" while boys are made of "snakes, snails, and puppy dogs' tails." It seems more like she was taught that she's made of "sugary-snails and rainbows' entrails." That would explain why she's so comfortable in mixing the "feminine" pursuit of cheerleading with the "masculine" exercise of whipping a chainsaw through the air like only horror film anti-heroes have done before. To Juliet, those two things don't appear that different. They are both physical expressions of freedom, f??un, and mastery of one's personal space. We can assume she learned that from her folks.

Cordelia is Juliet's other big role model. She's Juliet's big sister and is even more gender-rebellious and adept at controlling her personal space. Whereas Juliet is all pigtails, a skirt, and tank top, Cordelia rocks an androgynous faux hawk and is pretty much covered from head to toe in an outfit that would look badass on either sex. She's also packing a sniper rifle, which gives her a greater range to control (or in this case, destroy) the world around her than Juliet is capable?? of. It's Cordelia who grants Juliet the chainsaw upgrade that allows her to take out zomb??ies from a distance. It's from her that she gains even greater control of her space and less reliance on the physical. The fact that this is someone who Juliet looks up to says a lot about her character.

Then we have Juliet's little sister, Rosalind. She works as Juliet's foil, filled with the same lighthearted, joyful enthusiasm and fascination with death and destruction that Juliet has, but unlike her big sister, she hasn't learned to harness it. That gets her in trouble a lot, and she's as close as the game comes to a "damsel in distress," although that's not saying a lot in a game as filled with powerful women as Lollipop Chainsaw. Overall, Rosalind is more like the Tasmanian Devil than Princess Peach. There is merit to living her life like that, as she's having fun and killing a lot of zombies, but without Juliet to clean up her messes, she'd probably end up dead, or worse, a hippy. Like most younger teens, she's pr??one to falling in with the wrong crowd (in this case, a zombie hippy and a zombie funk alien in a diaper). It's up to Juliet, who has a firmly established identity, to help bail her out of those situations.

Finally, we have the men in her life. Morikawa, her martial arts teacher, shares some of Rosalind's unhinged, youthful spirit, though there is more of a dichotomy there. He is both a lecherous pervert and a spiritual guru. His body is old but small like a child's, which makes his lecherous intentions less threatening. Juliet could easily overpower him physically if it came to that. Despite his relative harmlessness, he doesn't get away with being a creeper (which is another of Lollipop Chainsaw's themes). Morikawa's pervy ways are closely associated with his physical death, as he repeatedly bumps into into Juliet's bosom during his death throws. In the end, his spiritual?ity grants him safe passage to heaven, though strangely enough, his little boy'?s body still has a role to play later in the game.

Which brings us to the relationship that is most central to Lollipop Chainsaw, that between Juliet? and her boyfrie?nd Nick. 

Juliet vs. Nick

As I mentioned, Jim Sterling already wrote an amazing article on how Nick is objectified in Lollipop Chainsaw. I won't attempt to go over that ground again, since th?ere is plenty more to say about this guy. He may be the most interesting male in gaming today. Like Jim said, Nick is treated like an object in the game, but he's also a subject. He's the epitome of the ideal boyfriend and a role model for males who want to some day have a girlfriend like Juliet.

He'??s also a decapitated head. Make no mistake, these two facts are not unrelated.

Nick starts off as a regular guy, which in Lollipop Chainsaw means that he may turn into a zombie at any moment. Sure enough, just a few seconds into his first appearance, he's bitten by a zombie and is about to be turned into a cannibalistic, undead maniac, ruled only by his primitive drives. That's the exact kind of guy Juliet does not want to date!

Juliet takes matters into her own hands and separates Nick's head from his body, keeping his mind safe from the "impurities" that existed in every aspect of him from the neck down. Perhaps surprisingly, Juliet is not particularly unhappy with this turn of events. She may even see it as an upgrade. With just a head, she gets all the pros and none of the cons of having a boyfriend. She can still talk to him, joke with him, trade compliments with him, keep him close, and (as is hinted in the beginning of Chapter 4) do the things that women and men's heads sometimes do together, all without the troubles that tend to ??come from a male's body getting in the way.

I've been treated like "just a head" by prior girlfriends, so it was very easy for me to relate to Nick. I can also say that it's not so bad being just a head. S??ometimes you feel like just an accessory or like the relationship isn't entirely equal. The truth is, though, that no relationship is equal. What matters is that the love is equal, and that's what Nick and Juliet ?have, in spite of (or maybe because of) the fact that he's just a head. Still, it's not like Juliet is totally shallow. On those rare occasions that Nick gains a body for a brief period of time, she's quick to treat him like a star, even though he's obviously one of the most physically uncoordinated human beings "alive." That kind of blind love is something that I've experienced plenty of times, and it's nothing short of adorable to see it bloom between Nick and Juliet.

Love almost always leads to a melding of identities, and Nick and Juliet's love is no different. By the end of the game, Nick says that he wants to be like Juliet, no matter how dangerous it is. In order to do that, he has to take control of Killabilly, the?? ultimate representation of American lust and gluttony (again, more on that later) by joining his head with that monster's body. In order to destroy all the ugliness and instinct-ridden perversity that makes up a man's body, he has to full accept it by joining with it, then kill himself. He is every male that ever admitted to a woman that he is a pr??????????????????????????ivileged, disgusting asshole, and that he's willing to kill those parts of himself in order to become a better person.

His reward for his sacrifice is a second chance at life in a new body, the boy-like body of Morikawa-sensei to be exact. Due to some mystical weirdness, Nick and Morikawa become one, with Morikawa's soul somewhere in the cosmos, and Nick fully in control of his tiny frame. So in the end, Nick still escapes the curse of having a man's body. With the head of an adult but the nonthreatening body of a child, Nick can continue to be the kind of boyfriend who Juliet wants while gaining enough autonomy?? to have at least a limited amount of control over his physicality. For Nick and Juliet, that's about as good as it's going to get. 

End of Part 1

That just the start of some of the stuff I got from Lollipop Chainsaw. It's really a new take on relationships for Grasshopper, one that I find endlessly fascinating. Whereas Suda's prior title, Shadows of the Damned, was the story of a man (Garcia Hotspur) overcoming his relationship issues (fear of his woman being taken away by a more "well-endowed" man, fear that her sexual power over him would give her too much control, fear of her dying, fear that his penis would run out of bullets, etc.), Lollipop Chainsaw's narrative is largely about Juliet's immediate mastery over her relationships and her general sense of mastery over the world around her. It's her capacity to coexist withi??n the stereotypically masculine (chainsaw) and feminine (cheerleading) aspects of herself that allow her to gain that level mastery. That's something Garcia learns far too late in his adventure. Juliet has just about all those skills right from the start, and they only grow as the game goes on. That's just one of the ??many reasons why she's one of the few videogame characters I look up to.

But I'm getting ahead? of myself. In Part 2 of this two-part analysis, we'll ??be taking a look at Juliet's more violent relationships. It's Juliet vs. The Zombies, Juliet vs. Juliet, and Juliet Vs. A Male's Gaze, coming up in a day or two (depending on how much writer's block I have between now and then).

The post Talking to Women about V??ideogames: Lollipop Chainsaw Pt 1 appeared first on Destructoid.

_{[Talking to Women about Videogames is a series where Jonathan Holmes talks to different people who are women about the biggest videogame news of the week for some reason.]}

We shot this episode a week and a half ago, well before Dtoid's Allistair Pinsof, Jim Sterling, and Holly Green already wrote their respective posts about the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot. I'm going to try to take a different tact at discussing the game here, focusing on why people already feel this strongly about it. Despite the fact that it's a long way from release and that we only know the game from trailers and gameplay footage, Tomb Raider has already evoked a deep gut reaction in fans and non-fans alike. A lot of people I've talked t?o aren't even sure exactly why they feel so strongly about it. They just watch that trailer and, before you know it, they're pissed off.

That'??s probably because their feelings are confounded by separate but equally sensitive issues. With this new game, everything that Lara Croft represents as an icon, and as a woman, has been changed forever. You can't expect to make those kinds of moves without getting some blowback.

Before we get started, let's establish our terms. I think we all have a basic understanding of what the word woman means -- though we all surely have different understandings of the specifics around that -- so let's move on to icon. Though the term is often used as synonym for popular or legendary, it actually means something very different. An icon doesn't have to be well known, as long as it represents a specific idea or concept. The icons on your computer's desktop may not be famous, but they still do a great job of symbolizing bigger and more complicated things. The same goes for other familiar icons like a stop sign, a s?miley face, and the American Flag. Icons are all around us, though we often take them for granted. For instance, every letter in the alphabet is an icon. The shape of the letter "A" represents "A-ness", the letter "B" represents all "B-ness", the letter "P" represents.., well, you get the idea.

Icons need to be simple in order to work. They can't be too detailed or else their ability to clearly and quickly represent just one idea becomes hampered. That's true of both an icon's appearance, its design, and even narrative icons within a story. Too many details clutter the me?ssa?ge, slowing the icon's ability to show us what it means.

Lara Croft was originally an action-adventure icon; a detail-free surrogate hero for the player's consciousness to inhabit. Her adventures were our adventures. Her story was our story. She was a nobody, which allowed her to become us. With no details to make the character human, Lara?? Croft could easily become an extension of our own psyches. 

According to Crystal Dynamics, that's? all set to change with Lara's new game. With these additional details, her character is bound to lose some of its iconic properties. Now that she has her own story, she'll become an individual, instead of a "living" embodiment of the Action-Adventure ideal. It won't be as easy for us to see her as an extension of ourselves now that she's her own person. Her iconic face has been literally and figuratively muddied t?o the point where it's hard to recognize her.

This is a loss. Classic Lara was one of the few female leads in gaming to truly hit the big time. Though women make up the majority of the world population, they are still a minority in the world of action game protagonists -- undoubtedly, because so many action game consumers are male. Human beings are still primitive to the point that, on the whole, we have trouble identifyin?g with someone who doesn't look like us which is probably why so many of the people who like my videos are from Brazil, Uruguay, and Peru [Editor's Note: Don't forget our growing Lebanon audience!]

The fact that Lara was able to break that minority barrier was nothing short of revolutionary. Contrary to what the game's developers may think, Lara Croft was a character that millions of males were able to identify with at one point in her career (specifically, the part where she ran away from a Tyrannosaurus Rex). The fact that the developers of the new Tomb Raider are willfully throwing that familiarity away in favor of a torture-packed origin story has caused many to question? their judgement and rightfully so. 

Their decision to portray Lara as a constant victim is equally questionable. If the developers of the new Tomb Raider had been tasked to create Nathan Drake's origin story, would they have thought to have him constantly beat up, groaning, and abused at the start of his journey? Would they feel the need to dole out that kind of abuse on a male protagonist in order to "build his character" into someone who'd be "tough' enough to explore tombs and kill strangers? I don't get the sense that they would. It seems they're of the mindset that in order for a woman to become an action hero, she needs to go through an I-Spit-On-Your-Grave-style nightmare in order to break down the feminine boundaries&?nbsp;between being a regular woman and a wise-cracking, mass-murdering action hero.

All potential sexism aside, that's not the way to go about writing the story about a minority character that's made to appeal to the majority. Focusing on the differences only serves to make your minority character harder to relate with for the majority, and more importantly, it risks making your depiction come off as ham-fisted. Imagine if The Cosby Show had been called Funky Ghetto Doctor, or a?? game about a gay male that's filled wit?h, well, stuff like this. 

That would've only worked to insult the minority audience and give the majority a group of characters that they couldn't relate to. It's not that it's necessarily sexist to show Lara in dis-empowered positions or to imply that in order for her to become a hero she needs to be sexually assaulted first. It just feels like it does nothing to appeal to Lara Croft's strengths as an icon and as a character that both men and women can relate to. It's also in questionable taste to show a woman escape a near-rape to only have her cracking one-liners about "hating tombs" a few minutes later. I'm all for games taking on more grievous, genuinely painful subjects, but I'm not sure that's what the new Tomb Raider intends to do. It seems more like putting Lara into terrible situations in order to make her ad?venture seem more important, and by proxy, to make us feel more important for being tasked to "help" her.

Now, I'm not one to launch a huge criticism without offering some constructive pointers in tandem. So what could have Crystal Dynamics done differently with their Tomb Raider reboot? Remember what I was saying before about how every letter in the alphabet is an icon? That also applies to how they work together. As letters come together to form words, character icons can be put together to form something that is greater than the sum of their parts. Take the cast of the original Star Wars trilogy. On their own, Boba Fett, Darth Vader, and Han Solo are all simple??, one-note ch?aracters, symbolizing just one simple idea a piece. They had no back story, no complexity, and usually just one or two moods a piece. If they had more than that, it would have been a lot harder for audiences to understand what they represented, and to identify with them.

[Art by Mikey Turvey]

So alone, they are each a simple, easy to compute, one-note tunes, but put them together and the dynamics can get pretty complex. That's part of why everyone loves The Empire Strikes Back so much. All of the simple, one-note icons of the Star Wars universe come together in a blazing symphony of&?nbsp;sym?bolism and character.

This also worked for the Uncharted series, a set of games that are a big inspiration for this new Tomb Raider title. I'm not the biggest fan of the Uncharted characters, but it doesn't take a fan to recognize that the series is very well written. Each character represents one idea or two ideas at the most: Nathan the young alpha-male archetype, Sully the experienced, almost fatherly image of whom Nathan may become, Chloe, the exciting, lawless, instinct-driven outlaw, Elena the moral and just voice of reason, etc. Put all these characters together and the simple ideas each represents paints a picture filled with tension, chemistry, surprises, and excitemen?t, all while maintaining the veneer of realism that th??e kids seem to like so much these days. 

Picture if the new Tomb Raider showed Lara Croft as a brave, sometimes reckless, thrill seeking young woman who, like Nathan Drake, is comfortable with exploring everything the world has to offer. She may let a hot, smart, exciting equivalent to Chloe try to seduce her, as she may be seduced by the concept of using her skills and natural talents for exciting but ultimately unfulfilled ends. There may be another man or woman in her life that's like Elena, representing a less initially exciting path that is more emotionally challenging and, as a re??sult, will lead to stronger character growth.

Neither of those characters need to be romantic interests. In fact, it might be better if they weren't as it feels like almost every story EVER about women revolves around either motherhood or romantic love -- but they would still give Lara a nice set of icons to bounce her own character traits off. Would it be a little cliche? Absolutely. Would it be less cliche than the old "beat up a woman at the start of her story to make the viewer excited and concerned, then have her do a bunch of b??adass shit at the end of the story to show how far she has come"-routine? Maybe. It all depends on the execution (no pun intended). 

Like Holly said in her Tomb Raider interview, there are plenty of reasons to stay optimistic for the game. All we've seen so far are trailers, and while they have turned off plenty of fans (like this week's TtWaV guest), they are not indicative of what the new Tomb Raider experience will provide. If the fi??nal game sticks to the iconography and subjectivity of Lara while taking her character in interesting new directions, I'm sure it wont end up being the divisive, controversy-laden snake's nest that it appears to be at the moment. 

T??hat said, I'm expecting the worst at this point, as both the trailers and the comments from the developers show me that their thinking takes Lara Croft two steps back for every one step ??forward.

The post Talking to Women about Videogames: On icons & minorities appeared first on Destructoid.

New Super Mario Bros. 2 had a lot going against it at E3 this year. It's already been shown up by its better looking, more extravagantly adorned older brother New Super Mario Bros. U. It was only available for preview during select times at the show. As our man Tony Ponce pointed out, the game has ver?y little to show for itself in terms of visu??al identity. The list goes on. 

The game did have a few things going for it though. It has some cool new power-ups (Golden Mario and his insanely overpowered fireballs, the return of Raccoon Mario, and more), it seems to be more fast paced than prior New Super Mario Bros. games, and perhaps most importantly for the sake of its showing at E3, it was demoed by one of the most pleasant and likable people I've met in while. Her lack of knowledge of the Mario series may cause anyone who takes the notion of "game cred" seriously to cringe, but for the those us with any real priorities, there is nothing not to?? like about this human being. 

Thanks for talking to me about videogames, ??human being!

The post A cut??e as a button preview of New S??uper Mario Bros. 2 appeared first on Destructoid.

_{[Talking to Women about Videogames is a series where Jonathan Holmes talks to different people who are women about the biggest videogame news of the week for some reason.]}

A little while ago, brilliant game developer Jenova Chen (ThatGameCompany) said something that made me sad. I was actually more sad for him than anyone else, because it really sounded like he meant ityet didn't think it through when he said, "Sony has a more artistic and adult-focused taste. They care about how grown-ups feel toward their games. The player who owns a PlayStation 3 is more likely to be interested in artistic games compared to Wii and Xbox 360." This was right after the release of the Xbox 360-exclusive critical darling Fez and Sony's big announcement of a Smash Bros. clone. Eek.

I expected Chen to come out and clarify his statements shortly afterwards, with a "Oops! What I meant to say was that I find the games on the PS3 to be more evocative of 'grown-up' and 'sophisticated' on the whole, but I would never try to speak for an console's entire install base or game library! That would be goofy!" But instead of a half-retraction, we got Sony's backing up of Chen's original comment and expanding on it, stating, "Many PlayStation and PSN games have themes that require a user to think and feel about a deep, immersive gameplay experience, and we see that exemplified in the success of titles like Flower, Journey, and Heavy Rain. Titles like these can only be found on PlayStation, and our users enjoy the emotional and thematic sophistication of their games, especially with our digital offerings."

Seeing the words "artistic" and "sophisticated" getting integrated into the verbal weaponry used in the "console wars" is equal parts ironic and depressing. Claiming that "my art is bigger than your art" is just more e-penis boasting, usually reserved for talk of how many "AAA" games a console has or how many "graphics per inch" it can push on-screen. It's ;childish, closed-minded, and counter to the whol?e concept of art in general. One of the things that defines "art" is that, unlike sports, education, or pornography, it's not a competition.

It's especially disheartening to see these claims coming from Sony, which has a pretty poor track record when it comes to creative plagiarism. Everyone has their own opinions about what constitutes artistic integrity (more on that later), but most would probably agree that ripping off other people's ideas isn't as "artis??tic" as expressing your own. Whereas Nintendo consistently does whatever they want and Microsoft seems dedicated to finding new ways to speak to every aspect of the Western market, Sony spends a lot of its resources on directly copying other developers, both in terms of hardware and software.

When cartoon mascots were big in the industry, Sony churned out titles like Ape Escape and Crash Bandicoot. After Metal Gear, Resident Evil, and Tomb Raider made the "Hollywood" approach to game development popular, Sony dropped its mascots in favor of titles like Uncharted, God of War, and Heavy Rain. The fact that we have three Uncharted games on the PS3 but not one title from Team Ico o??n the console shows exactly where Sony's priorities are in terms of plagiarism v??s. originality. And don't even get me started on the current state of the PlayStation Move and its library.

That said, Sony has published some very original games recently and further in the past: PaRappa the Rapper, Jumping Flash, Twisted Metal, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Loco Roco, Patapon, The Last Guy, Flower, and Journey, to name just a few. The company also has the tendency to improve upon whatever idea it's ripping off (Uncharted 2 and God of War 2 are arguably the best "action movie games" ever made). That's why Sony is one of my favorite publi?shers today. I just wouldn't say that originality is one of their strengths.

Something I do think Sony is ver?y skilled at is making its fans feel better about themselves. It does that in a variety of ways, from providing them wit??h powerful hardware to brag about to, in this case, leading them to believe they are more "artistically minded, sophisticated, and grown up" than fans of other developers. Sony has always payed close attention to the surface-level traits of the games on its consoles, working hard to control the "image" of the PlayStation brand. In the early days, it discouraged Capcom and other developers from putting 2D games on the PS1 and PS2, as it didn't want PlayStation to be associated with "old games." Today, the company highlights "realistic"-looking PS3 games at retail, leaving more abstract titles like those developed by ThatGameCompany out of the spotlight, constrained to the smaller scale and profit space of PSN. It's all part of a plan to make the PlayStation name and PlayStation fans feel like suave badasses of the videogame world.

The focus on "realism" is just one of the ways that Sony attempts to dress its games in grown-up clothes. Other than LittleBigPlanet, it hasn't put many "cute" games on the P??S3 (presumably because it thinks "cute" means automat??ically "for kids"). It has also avoided putting too many "sexy" games on the console, maybe because it doesn't want to look like it panders to "horny teens."

These are all issues of style, not so much of substance. With the software from ThatGameCompany, Sony has touted how much the games "looked" like fine art, saying little about how much artistry is involved with the actually gameplay design. With Heavy Rain, Sony seemed to make an effort to tell everyone how many "un-game" activities the title featured -- stuff like shaving, using an inhaler, and yelling a child's name repeatedly in real time. Then there was the whole "realistic acne" thing.

None of these details have any relationship to how "artistic" a game is. Interpretation of art is a personal, subjective thing that can't be measured by how much a game looks like a pa??inting, how many cutscenes it has, or how big its pimples are. For me, a game's level of artistry has a lot to do with how much integrity it has. I'm guessing that's true for a lot of people, though "integrity" is also a pretty subjective term.

That's why I get more out of the Animal Crossing series than something like Journey. Both games are about relaxation through simplicity, the appreciation of minutia, and interacting with both the environments and with other players through a minimalist, conflict-free focus. It's just that Animal Crossing does all that via a combination of low-intensity, non-sexual pornography (hunter-gatherer porn and "cute little cartoon animals that look like babies" porn to be specific). In fact, the first thing I thought after playing Journey was that "it's like Animal Crossing for hipsters." I was half joking in that assessment, but I still felt that there is some validity to it. I really felt like it was valid after I heard from Jenova Chen on Twitter that Animal Crossing was a "big inspiration" for Journey. That's not something I think you'd hear So?ny talk about.

_{[Artwork by 8WholeBits]}

Like I said in last week's post, I think that there are basically four types of human communication: art, competition, pornography, and education. I don't think ??that mixing any of those forms of communication dampens their integrity in any way. Art + pornography = erotica, a worthwhile sub-genre of communication all its own. Education + competition = spelling bees, and spelling bees are totally rad. Combining forms of communication can strengthen all components involved, resulting in something that is greater than the sum of it's parts. There is no loss of integrity there. Sense of integrity is only lost when you lose a feeling of sincerity and honesty.

Journey feels more pretentious to me, like its developers were just as concerned about looking like artists as they were about making art. Animal Crossing's artistic merit comes off as a byproduct of its developers' insane desire to make a game about nothing. It almost feels like art by accident. On the other hand, Journey feels like it's trying so h???ard to look deep that it sometimes forgets to actually say anything.

Most of that boils down to design. There are so many little life metaphors in the Animal Crossing experience, from the game's cannibalistic Thanksgiving holiday to the way it rewards the player with bags of money, grand pianos, or even NES games for shaking random trees, and they seem like direct comments from the game's designers on their perception of the world. Journey is more about unobtrusive, linear design. Its emptiness permits the player to project their own thoughts and feelings into the game, taking in very few ideas directly from the developer. It feels a little like a cop out, like the pla?yer is tricked into thinking it's ?"deep" because of the depth they're permitted to project from themselves into the game's world.

That's part of why Journey's priorities don't totally fall in line with my own as much as Animal Crossing's do. When something speaks to you, when it seems to reflect your own perspectives and values, it's always going to seem more sincere and legitimate. We're going to be biased towards the things we like and have a tougher time seeing the value in things that we aren't compatible with. It's very easy to call a game that you don't like "pretentious," "less artistic," "a sellout," "sexist/racist/stupid," or some other disre?spectful modifier. It's also great for people's egos to apply that kind of disrespectful, sour grapes thinking to the tastes of others.

That's why it would a misstep for me to come out and say that the games I like are more "artistic" than the games that other people enjoy. The only thing I??'d really be saying in a statement like that is that I think my taste in games makes me a better person than others. I ?don't see the point in thinking that way (though it is sometimes tempting). It's much better for us to take a close look at why certain games speak to us and why others don't, remaining focused on speaking only for ourselves. We should stay away from labeling some games as more sincere, sophisticated, or artistic on some objective level, because that will only work to close us off from looking at those games for all that they are.

When you're truly "sophisticated," "grown-up," "artistic?," and "confident" with your various endowments, you won't feel the need to brag about them or belittle others for being different th?an you.

The post Talking t??o Wome?n about Videogames: Art has no e-penis appeared first on Destructoid.

_{[Talking to Women about Videogames is a series where Jonathan Holmes talks to different people who are women about the biggest videogame news of the week for some reason.]}

The debate over the artistic merits (or lack thereof) of videogames has been going on for years. Every time I think it's over, it pops up again. The passion on either side of the argument never seems to die down, while those on the outskirts are just desperate to put the whole debate to rest. Any topic that leads to this kind of endless impassioned debate (and debate about the debate itse??lf) must have some greater? meaning.

I think that meaning can be found in the deeply contrasting perceptions found on each side of the argument. Talking to someone who doesn't think videogames are an art form can feel like talking to a Predator (the "Arnold Schwarzenegger hating" variety, not the "to catch a" variety). It's like their eyes just don't see the same world that mine sees. Where I see a face, or a sunset, they might see a random swirl of colors, or a bunch of amorphous blobs. That leads them to desperately try to convince me that there is a blob setting in the west, while I'm yelling at them about the breath?taking symphony of colors exploding in the sky right in front of us. We're both sure that what we're seeing is reality, and that schism between our two realities drives us nuts.

I've found the best way to deal with situations like these is to take on the differing perspec??tive. From there, you can mentally team up with the person whom you're "arguing" with, and try to guide them over to your way of seeing. They may not ever share your perspective, but by engaging with them, you can at least share the same reality for a little bit, and that can only lead to good things. So let's take a look at why some people can't see that videogames are an art form, and help to get them on the right track!

They're blinded by the porn

That's a big part of what keeps people from seeing gaming as an artistic medium. Videogames can be so many things simultaneously that it's easy to get cau??ght up on focusing on just one aspect, missing out on the potential artistry in the process. Most videogames work as some combination of art, pornography, education, and competition all in one, and pornography is usually ?the most eye-catching thing out of those four.

I've talked in the past about how I think all forms of communication can be split int?o those four categories: art (appeals to our humanity), pornography (appeals to our basest animal instincts), competition (determining our relative "worth" by comparing our objectively measurable skills to others), and education (to learn and/or t??each information, techniques, and/or skills). I'll briefly go over that idea again, as it factors pretty deeply into everything else going on here.

By my definition, "humanity" is anything that appeals to the unique frontal lobe structures that most human beings share. I'm talking about the interpretation of absurdist comedy, high-concept empathetic experiences, agonizing years of disappointment with oneself and others, the capacity to appreciate non-sexualized beauty, and countless other cerebral functions that only human beings seem to fully exercise. Art is anything that takes your brain and gets it going through those processes,? while reflecting the psyche of the artist along the way.

Of course, sometimes art is naturally occurring. Remember when I was talking about how some people just see blobs where I see a sunset? I was actually ta??lking about my cat. My cat doesn't appreciate sunsets. Why would ??she? Sunsets don't help you survive, reproduce, or know your place in the social order. Therefore, cats have no use for them. Cats can understand pornography (usually about eating mice or porking another cat), education (usually to learn how to catch mice or crap in imitation sand), and competition (usually focused on who'll get to eat a mouse or crap in the imitation sand first), but they don't understand art. One could even say that's the definition of art -- anything cats don't like.

On the surface, many videogames appear to be about those kinds of cat-friendly, pornographic pursuits: eating, fighting, porking, etc. Then again, so are most movies, books, and TV shows. Anything made to appeal to the lowest common denominator is going to try to grab us by our drives.

What's important is what happens after they've grabbed us. Most people first took notice of No More Heroes because the idea of killing a bunch of guys with a lightsaber grabbed them right in the... alpha male instincts. From there, it's the series' self-depreciating comedy, surrealist symbolism, and parody/tribute to action gaming and gamers that causes people to love it. They came for the porn, but they stayed for the art. In that way, No More Heroes isn't all that different from the Mona Lisa, or any of the other painting that throws some ??cleava?ge right in the middle of the picture. Catch their eyes with the boobs, then keep their attention with the symbolism and artistry.

If is it "art" when da Vinci to does it, then why can't vide??ogame??s do it too?

They think art can't be interactive

Speaking of the Mona Lisa, that's a great example of artwork that's lauded for its ability to make the viewer feel like they're interacting with the art. No matter where you're standing, it always feels like the Mona Lisa is making eye contact with you. That's all down to how the painting is composed. It's not that the Mona Lisa is always looking you in the eyes. It's that the painting is designed to keep you coming back to her eyes.

Videogame design is no different. Most games are designed to move players' eyes (and the rest of their nervous system) to where the designer wanted them to go, if the player knows it or not. It's just that with videogames, there are many, many more potential levels of interaction beyond the two-dimension??al, non-time-based planes of drawing and painting. Games use incentives like scores, goals, and linear storylines to guide players through experiences, as well as visual design and other cues to get them moving. Painting and game design are both about building the same thing. Game design just has a much bigger tool box to build with.

For whatever reason, some people (even some game designers) think that videogames can't be art because they use those extra techniques to guide the player/viewer. That's a maladaptive, narrow perspective, one that can only serve to limit how people experience games as both designers and players. Those extra tools should?n't diminish games' legitimacy as an art form. If anything the more tools an art form utilizes, the more potential it has to move us.

They think games are toys

Pac-Man is another example of a game that guides your eyes around the picture plane in the style of a well-composed painting, taking your brain to various places in the process. The similarity between the study of Pac-Man'??s design and the study of compositional painting is pretty clear. So why do many "art scholars" overlook this fact?

My guess is that it's partly because Pac-Man is something that you "play" with, as opposed to something that hangs on a wall. Though there is clearly some simplistic symbolism in the game (food, death), most people didn't play Pac-Man for its "deeper meaning." They played it because it was fun, like a toy or a puzzle. Therefore, it couldn't be "art" to some people. As brainy as a lot of art scholars m??ay be, they're also prone to s??ome automatic, illogical thinking.

A very common schema among adults in America (scholarly or otherwise) is that anything that you play with is a toy. These same people are also the types who often think that toys are only for children, and even worse, that children can't appreciate art. I disagree with all three points. Children often appreciate amazing art (My Neighbor Totoro and E.T. immediately come to mind); toys are not always just for children (baseball bats, Richard Pryor, the NSFW Accommodator, etc.); and many things that people play with are art (Joseph Cornell's boxes, Dave Cooper's Furry Girl, and so on).

Ironically, installation art is something that gets a lot of respect in the "fine art" world, and it's almost always something you can play with. Though most installations are built to guide the attendee through a particular space, it's up to the antendee to determine where exactly to go and how to get there. That type of exploration for exploration's sake (and the potential discoveries that come with it) is my definition of "play," and there is no reason it should just be for children. Jane McGonigal's new game Superbetter uses play to make recovering from serious illnesses fun. The iPhone app Zombies Run takes sprinting ??to the point where you may vomit and turns it into an adventure. By? and large, fun makes things more involving and worthwhile. Why can't that include art?

Of course, if a game is focused on being fun in the same way all the time, it could come off like a one-note tune. For me, a great game, or any other kind of art, can have the potential to be fun one second and frustrating the next, then calm, or suddenly hilarious, with the potential to leave you in tears by the end. A great videogame wouldn't necessarily need to use cutscenes or voice acting to pull that off. Pure gameplay experiences like Super Meat Boy or Bit.Trip Complete have definitely giv??en me that range ?of emotion without leaning on cinematics or traditional storytelling.

Of course, in order to experience that range of emotion, you have to be willing to a?ctually play the game. That's probably the most common barrier that prevents people from ex??periencing videogames as an art form.

They can't play them

When people don't understand something, they almost always don't like it. When people don't like something, they almost always disrespect it. That's where a lot of the disrespect lobbed at gamers and gaming comes from. The amount of people who don't understand how to play even the most basic (by Destructoid reader standards) games is astounding. I've recently tried to introduce some 35-50 year olds to the 2D Super Mario Bros. games, and they were too complicated for most of them. "Move and jump, and sometimes hold down the run button?" they'd say. "That's too hard. I'll stick with Angry Birds, thanks."

The problem with that is, when a game is simple to play, people often lose respect for?? it for other reasons (see the earlier point about toys and things made for children). That's when you get people saying that game??s are just "time wasters" or "pure entertainment," as if "time waster" and "art" are mutually exclusive. Art can be a very entertaining waste of time. In fact, I'd go as far as to way it's the most entertaining waste of time. There is nothing "productive" about analyzing art, but it's just as rewarding as anything else adult life has to offer (assuming you enjoy that sort of thing.)

That's part of why games like Journey and Flower are so special in today's gaming landscape. They found a way to escape the "pure entertainment" and "time waster" stigma without being too intimidating or hard to understand. Despite being fun and simple to play, they are still largely recognized as art, or at the very least, as "more artistic," by all who are willing to give them a try. A big part of that is because these games look like "art", though they often play like glorified interactive screensavers.

Now that's not to say that screensavers aren't art, or aren't "real" videogames. It's just that in terms of actual game design, there usually isn't too much complexity or ingenuity going on there. If you don't appreciate that type of design, you might call it "shallow." If you do appreciate that style of design, you might call it "minimalist." Either way, that style of game is still art, as are Tetris, Super Mario Bros., God of War, and Halo.

That brings up a lingering question: Are some games more "art" than others? If so, what standards do people use to determine how artistic a game is? We'll be talking more about that on next week's episode. In the meantime, I'd love to hear why you think people can't see tha??t videogames are art. Is there something I'm not seeing? I'm willing to bet that there is.

The post Talking to Women about Videogames: They can’t see the art appeared first on Destructoid.

_{[Talking to Women about Videogames is a series where Jonathan Holmes talks to different people who are women about the biggest videogame news of the week for some reason.]}

People are talking about how gaming needs to grow up. Some are even claiming that their games are more grown-up than the games the other guys are making.?? These are well-meaning, intelligent people whom I have a lot of respect for. That doesn't change the fact that they are being totally silly.

There are so many things wrong with the statement "videogames need to grow up" that it's hard to even know where to start. Why would videogames "need to" do anything? Last time I checked, videogames were doing pretty damn well for themselves as it is. More people are playing games than ever before, and the variety of games being developed has never been more expansive or more vividly original. We live in a world where Fez, the Bit.Trip series, Sword & Sworcery, and Lone Survivor stand alongside more mainstream titles like BioShock, Super Mario Galaxy, Halo, and God of War as cri?tical and commercial successes. That's a pretty awesome world to live in. The only thing videogames as a whole have to do is keep doing what they're doing, because it's working for just about everybody. 

And "grow up"? What does that even mean? By what standard? Grow up compared to what? Sports? Movies? TV shows? Popular music? If videogames ever "grow up" to be a primitive exercise in schadenfreude like Jersey Shore, or whatever derivative pop song about sex/bravado/grumpiness?? that is topping the charts at the moment, then c??????????????????????????ount me the hell out. 

No, I don't think the problem is that vide??ogames aren't "grown-up" enough. I think it's a bigger proble??m that a lot of grown-ups aren't "videogames" enough.

Let's sta?rt by makin?g one thing perfectly clear: videogames have already grown up.

Play, fantasy, and the expression of biological drives are as normal for adults as they are for any other age group. Just like mainstream movies, music, books, sports, comics, and websites, mainstream games are made to appeal to our baser instincts because everyone has those instincts. Sometimes those instincts will be explored and exploited in relatively intelligent ways, but they are still being exploited. In film, you may get a cerebral examination of the alpha-male instinct, like in Fight Club. In games, you may get something like BioShock. In pop music, it might be the Beastie Boys. They're all arguably "sma??rter" than their more simple contemporaries, but they're still playing the same tune. They're just doing it with a more complex arrangement.

Fight Club probably has more layers to it than Bad Boys II. BioShock probably has more intended symbolism than Modern Warfare 3. Re?gardless of how "smartly" these games and movies may be delivering their ideas, their themes are still just primitive, working on our instincts in the exact same ways. As su??ch, just about anyone over 13 is likely to find this type of material appealing. That's what appealing to the lowest common denominator is all about.

Videogames shouldn't be penalized for trying to be appealing. Instead, they should be applauded for effectively challenging millions and millions of consumers who are increasingly accustomed to passively allowing everything to be handed to them. By their very na??ture of demanding commitment and personal involvement from the audience, videogames are intrinsically more "grown-up" than any film or TV show. They personally involve and challenge the player in w??ays that require more personal responsibility than existing passive forms of communication.

Children sit back and let their parents (and the world at large) do most things for them, as they are unable to do things on their own. Adults do things for themselves. In videogames, you have to be the adult, even if you're in a child-friendly world. Mario may spend a lot of time in a colorful land filled with talking animals and magical plant life, but he??'s still a grown-ass man (hence the mustache). That mushroom kingdom isn't going to save itself.

Where I think people get confused is the idea that adults aren't suppose to play, or engage in fantasy, or use their imaginations at all. Our culture tells us that once you've reached a certain age, you're supposed to focus only on real situations, and should only spend your energy on fixing real problems. In reality, adults are the group that are probably most able to effectively utilize play and fantasy in productive ways. Adults are more likely to have the life experience and conceptual thinking necessary to fully analyze a modern fairy tale like Metal Gear Solid or Mass Effect. From a practical standpoint, the outlet and perspective that modern fairy tales offer to adults can make a big difference in their lives, much larger than they might for children. Who needs a harmless escape and/or an outlet for their psychologically complex life more than a stre??ss??ed-out executive, or a parent of four who is desperate for just a few hours to themselves?

So if videogames are so clearly and plainly appropriate for adults, why would so many people say that they need to "grow up"? As much as it pains me to resort to the "B" word, I'm going to have to call it a bias. If you write about videogames, make videogames, or have otherwise intertwined your identity as an adult with the videogame industry, chances are that you're going to have a vested interest in videogames' relative level of respectability. It's a similar feeling that leads people to start thinking in terms of "gamer cred," except this "cred" is for gaming in the eyes of the rest of the world. For a ??lot of people, it's a childhood dream to work in the games industry. They'll do just about anything to make that dream come true. Once they do, ??the script often gets flipped. That's when they start thinking it's time for the industry to start changing to suit them.

That desire for credibility can take on many different forms. Sometimes it's out of a desire for game developers and "journalists" to feel like they're doing something important with their lives. Sometimes it's because they simply want the industry to match their internalized image of their identity and role in the world. Sometimes it's because these gaming-industry types want? more respect from their non-industry peers. They want videogames to grow up in the eyes of others so that they themselves will appear more grown-up in turn. I can't help but guess that this last one?? often has the largest impact on most people.

As I've said many times before, I know what it's like to be in a group of 35- to 50-year-olds and announce that you write for a videogame blog. You're going to get stared at. You're going to have strained conversation with people who clearly wish they were talking to a rock star, a medical professional, or even a store clerk. Videogames are ??grown-up, but they haven't been accepted by a lot of grown-ups. I think that's the discrepancy that those who are still calling for gaming to "grow up" may have missed.

The whole situation reminds me of how animation was perceived in the '80s and early '90s. At that point, animation had already "grown up," although most of America didn't seem to realize it. Ralph Bakshi had brought us films like Fritz the Cat, Wizards, and Fire and Ice. Bugs Bunny had impersonated Hitler. Jan Švankmajer had used two animated pieces of meat to show us how to laugh at life, sex, and death. Those films didn't reach most people, though. In the minds of most adults and children, animation was still Mickey Mouse and G.I. Joe -- simple "all-ages" entertainment ?at best, or cheap commercials f?or action figures at worst. Sure, people knew that "alternative" animation existed, but few people gave it a chance.

Then The Simpsons came along, and everything changed. By combining universal themes of school, work, family, and interpersonal relationships in a package that was equal parts smart, stupid, cute, and crass, The Simpsons showed the world that animation could be for "normal" adults, too. As a result, we got Ren & Stimpy, Beavis and Butt-head, South Park, King of the Hill, Family Guy, and an entire late-night schedule of programming dedicated to animation for "grown-ups" in Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. Later, films that might have merely been "cult hits" in Bakshi's day -- such as Pixar's Up, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, and Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away -- managed to capture the respect and attention of American culture at large. It's all part of how The Simpsons single-handedly changed the way pe??ople see what animation is, what it ?can do, and who it's appropriate for.

When people say that they want the videogame industry to get its own Citizen Kane, they're? looking in the wrong direction. They're looking for respectability, in the same way a teenage boy might think that growing a mustache or losing his virginity will make him an adult. Trying to prove that you're an adult is not the path to true adulthood. Bragging about how grown-up you are only makes you sound more like a kid.

No, what these people calling for "maturity" and "sophistication" in the gaming industry really want is for the videogame industry to be understood and recognized for the wonderful medium that it is. That's the point of being an adult. It's your time to finally be your true self and find your true fit in the world. That's why videogames would be better off with finding its Simpsons than its Citizen Kane.

That said, some would say that videogames have already found its Simpsons. It could be Tetris, Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter II, Doom, Wii Sports, Minecraft, Angry Birds, World of Warcraft, or some other game that has captured the hearts and minds of millions, and we just might not have noticed. I wouldn't put it past us to miss the fact that we have changed the world's perception, since we're completely preoccupied with self-loathing and ?a desperate need for acceptance.

Personally, I'm happy with where we are as an industry, but there is always room to grow. There are plenty of "alternative" developers out there today who are "sophisticated" and "about real issues" whom I'd love to see go on to become gaming's Matt Groening. Jason Rohrer, Jasper Byr??ne, Young Horses, Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya, Phil Fish, Edmund McMillen, Jonathan Blow, and Auntie Pixelante are all successful enough, but what if one of them ?created a game that went on to sell 100 million copies? That would be pretty amazing.

That wo?uldn't mean that gaming has learned to grow up, though. It would just mean that grown-ups have learned to videogame.

The post Talking to Women ab??out Videogames: Who needs to grow up? appeared first on Destructoid.

_{[Talking to Women about Videogames is a series where Jonathan Holmes talks to different people who are women about the biggest videogame news of the week for some reason. Get the album featuring celebrities from the world of game music here.]}

At a recent, post-screening, Q&A session for Indie Game: The Movie, co-director Lisanne Pajot was asked if she is a "gamer." Upon being approached with the question, her posture immediately changed. Her head went down, she took one step back, there w?as a small pause, then she lifted her head, let out a nervous giggle, smiled, and said something about how she didn't play a lot of games before making her movie, but that now that she's learned so much about the game development process, she's gotten into gaming in a whole new way. Her answer was genuine but tense. There was more tension there than she should have been made to feel. 

To me, asking Ms. Pajot if she was a "gamer" after watching her incredibly heartfelt film was almost as irrelevant as asking her to wear her hottest outfit to a job interview for Maxim. It would be one thing if the question was asked lightly (as I'm sure it sometimes is). In this case, though, the question was put out with an interrogative tone, as if the quality of Ms. Pajot's work woul??d be partially determined by her level of "gamer-ness."

Some of us have come to believe tha?t we can gauge someone's worth based o?n how much of a "gamer" they are. That is a foolish, narcissistic perspective that can only lead to bad things.

It makes sense that a lot of people who have identified themselves as "gamers" would succumb to the same type of&n??bsp;elitism that has led them to feel bullied by American culture in general. Bullying begets bullying, and elitism is just b?ullying slathered in a sort of salty, passive-aggressive soy sauce.

As an adult who is firmly entrenched in the 35-to-50-year-old demographic, I can't even go a day without hearing someone say something disparaging or disrespectful about videogames or the people who play them. It might be on TV, ?the internet, in conversation, or on a billboard, but it's always there. Though gaming is more popular than ever, the generation who runs our entertainment industries, our political systems, and even our health care system still largely see gaming as a waste of time at best? and as a problem at worst.

When the world tells you that you're wrong for liking something, it's natural to strike back. The more the world tells us that our level of respectability, attractiveness, and general "goodness" are all relative to how little time we spend playing videogames, the more we're going to tell the world that we ope??rate on an inverse equation. When the world tells us that val??uing our time with videogames is a bad thing, our instinctual response will be to prove that the opposite is true.

That becomes a problem when "gamers" take that defensive measure on each other. It's that insecurity and need to show that gaming is valuable that has helped to bring rise to "gamer cred" mentality, "console fanboy" wars, and the "hardcore vs. casual" split (all of which only work to instill more brand loyalty and make more money for Apple, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo??).

In the process of trying to prove to the world (and to ourselves) that playing videogames is an "Achievement," many of us have lost sight of the fact that you can't measure how much a human being is worth based on that measure. I've been told before that my reviews are meaningless because the Wii is home to my favorite games of this console generation, and therefore, I am "not a real gamer." Some of my colleagues in the gaming press have been told that, because their gamer score is lower than their audience's, they have no right to be working in the games industry at all. I've heard plenty of hosts (usually women) of various gaming-focused TV and internet shows tell me that their "gamer cred" has been "tested" by their fans in order to assess if they can do their jobs or not. Never mind if they are intelligent, well-spoken, and passionate about their work. Some think it's more about if they can do a 132-hit combo in Killer Instinct or are w??illing to spend hours on end trying to catch every Poké??;mon.

What these folks fail to see is that there are different ways to show your love of gaming. Writers, podcasters, and video producers may choose to express their love of gaming by creating content about games. For instance, right now, I actually wish I could be playing Lost in Shadow, an excellent game that I've been meaning to play through for years. Instead, I'm trying to express my love for gaming and gaming culture by taking advantage of the opportunity that Destructoid has given me to create content for this site. In writing this article and creating the video seen above, I had to actively choose not to pla??y a videogame. The trade off is I got to interact with you, the gaming community. I don't think the fact that I chose to interact with you instead of play a videogame makes me any less of a "gamer."

That's exactly what Lisanne did in risking her professional, financial, and emotional future by co-directing Indie Game: The Movie, except times a thousand. She jumped into the world of gaming head first, kept an open mind, and always worked to resp??ect the opinions of others, despite the surface-level differences they shared. That's what allowed her to become an expert on what small-scale game development is all about, and in doing so, to become the co-creator of a film that may go on to be the new f??ace of gaming culture.

She didn't get into the world of gaming for purposes of escapism or to try to become an elite member of some giant counterculture club. She did it because she was truly passionate about videogames and the people who make them. That's more than you can say for a lot of "hardcore gamers," even the ones who have "prestiged" more than 10 times in Modern Warfare 2.

I think we're lucky that Lisanne and James chose to create this movie, especially seeing how closed gamer culture can be. To go back to the story I opened this feature with, to imply that Lisanne might not be "qualified" to make her film based on her "gamer cred" is like saying a master painter isn't qualified to create a nude portrait because he or she doesn't spend enough time hanging out with naked people. What matters is how much the artist works to do justice to the subject matte?r. How much time they've spent wallowing in the more base aspects of that subject matter should be ??secondary. 

This is particularly true of anything involving videogames, where you just can't tell how much someone loves gaming as a medium based solely on how much of their lives they've spent with the pastime. Maybe someone loves videogames as an art form, but because they are too uncoordinated to play them very well and are selective about what games they play, or because playing videogames for more than a few hours a week just feels unproductive, the'll never have as high of a gamerscore as you. That doesn't mean their opinion is invalid. Likewise, plenty of people I know who spend a large chunk of their spare time playing videogames don't really care about videogames. They care about escapism, and vidoegames are just a means to that end. Just because you've read every romance novel ever written doesn't mean you're an expert on literature. You are not an expert on television production just because you've never missed an episode of One Life to Live. 

That's just part of why I think that, as a group, we need to start welcoming those with whom we might d??eem to be "non-gamers" into our little club with open arms. That's the only way that gaming will ever grow in physical size, breadth of philosophical ideologies, and potential meanings. Gaming is the greatest artistic medium that we have, but it's going to take a lot longer to reach its ful?l potential as long as "gamer" culture is a closed society. 

So let's get rid of the idea of "gamer cred." Let's stop judging each other based on how many g??ames we've play??ed. Let's stop segregating gamers based on meaningless terms like "hardcore" or "casual." That way of thinking only works to unfairly devalue the perspectives and preferences of others, and in doing so, destroying any potential for constructive discourse between those of different backgrounds, interests, and tastes.

It may not be easy to let go of. That kind of elitism can provide a short-term, artificial ego boost that many find addicting. In the end, though, I think you'll all find?? that the "gamer cred" mentality is not worth what it costs us in unity, respectability, and capacity to accurately perceive what's really important to gamers and gaming.

In short, if you immediately thought I wasn't worth listening to because I mistakenly called that Dead Rising achievement "Zombie Apocalypse" instead of "Zombie Genocide," then you're going to have a hard time at ever making anything as awesome as Indie Game: The Movie.

The post Talking to Women about Videogames: Gamer Cred appeared first on Destructoid.

_{[Talking to Women about Videogames is a series where Jonathan Holmes talks to different people who are women about the biggest videogame news of the week for some reason.]}

As a horny old blind man once said "Just when I thought I was out, the?y pull me back in". I was so sure that I was finally done with the Talking to Women about Videogames album, but when the lovely and talented Chainsaw (composer on such modern classics as Ms 'Splosion Man and The Maw) asked if he could contribute a song to the thing, I could not say no. Chainsaw is joined by other game music all-stars such as Matt Harwood (Bit.Trip, Homefront), DannyB (Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Isaac), Souleye (VVVVVV), Jesse Hopkins (Gratuitous Space Battles, Mount and Blade) and Dale North (Dtoid Editor-in-Chief, The One Ups), making this album one of the biggest game composer crossovers of all time. I still can't believe all these highly ??talented people were willing to contribute to my weird projects. I don't deserve you, dudes. Seriously.

Once again, the album has seen some incredible contributions from the Dtoid community, including this infectiously catchy re-imagining of the Sup Holmes theme (by LolShin), a kick to the balls version of the same song (by Torzelan), and even a song about talking to me about videogames (by Carnivorous Forrest). I also added about 7 new tracks to the album myself to make sure that Chainsaw's debut here had all the support I could give it. These tracks include tributes to songs of my youth, a cover of a Bee Gees classic, a song created with the cat toy from the original Rhythm Tengoku, and much more. They are mostly dumb, but I put my whole hea??rt ?into them all the same.

The album is up to 46 tracks now (including the 6 secret tracks)! To celebrate all this new content, The album will go on sale for $.99 starting today. The sale will last ??for a week, unless it's really successful. Then maybe I'll do something else. Thanks again to everyone who contributed! You put the magic in my magic stick. I love you forever.

The post The Ultimate Tal??king?? the Women about Videogames album 3! appeared first on Destructoid.

[Update: Due to popular demand, the sa??le will continue until Monday 01/29/201??2, 10pm EST. Yipee!]

Well this is exciting! The recently released Talking to Women about Videogames album just got five brand new tracks. Actually, that's not exactly right. The remix heard above by Cartoon Food was secretly added to the album a little over a week ago. It was supposed to be on there from the start, but I flubbed. That means that if you downloaded the album within the past week or so then that song wont be new to you, but the new track by Jim Sterling and Raik Hohendorf will be new to everyone. It is a rock and roll song. For the troops.

There are also two new bonus tracks (including an alternate take of Jim's song), as well as cover of The Zombies classic The Way I Feel Inside. If you bought the album before, you should be able to re-download it again with all this new content for no additional charge. That said, I wasn't sure if that would actually work, so I dropped the price for the whole 34 track album to $0.99 for just this weekend. I figure the five new songs are worth at least that. As for the rest of you, you can grab all these songs for the first time for so cheap. It's ??less than 3 cents per track! C'mon n??ow, people. 

C'mon now. 

On top of all that, we've got the music videos for Sterling's song and the Podtoid tribute hidden bonus track Muddy Buddy waiting for you below. Buy the album here if you want. Either way, it's a great ti?me to be aliv??e!

The post Nudity: TtWaV album gets new tracks, temporary price ?drop appeared first on Destructoid.

Sup Holmes is a live stream videogame-focused internet talk show and podcast that Conrad Zimmerman, myself, and many others are currently trying to get off the ground. There will be topics, special guests from the world of gaming, and a whole lot more. It's a pretty ambitious project with a lot of variables, so a lot could go wrong. It's daunting, but in the words of Chevy Chase in National Lampoon's Vacation, "I'm gonna go for it."

If you want to get involved, there are two things you can do right now. The first is?? you can email a question via text, voice, or video to HolmesSupHolmes@gmail.com. There is a good chance that whatever you send could be used in our first show, which will most likely be about the strange world of videogame "journalism" and what it's like for both developers and game writers to navigate through it. Staying ?on topic would be good, but if you have an off topic question that you think is so awesome, then you might as well run it by us.

The second thing you can do is give me some feedback on the show's theme song. I wrote the song and hobbled the video presented below in about ten minutes, so I wont be hurt if you hate it. The final version of the song will be set to an animation created by Linzb0t and will be used in the intro to every episode. If you want to try to make the song better, either by telling me what to play, or by playing it yourself, then go for it! There is nothing I like more than teaming up with you guys. 

The post Sup Holmes is coming: You must get in on it appeared first on Destructoid.

_{[Talking to Women about Videogames is a series where Jonathan Holmes talks to different people who are women about the biggest videogame news of the week for some reason.]}

So here we go! Talking to Women about Videogames, that weird show I was doing every week for a while there, has given birth to not one but two music videos and double length albums of amazing music (available here). Contributing artists include Danny B (Super Meat Boy, HAWP), Dale North (The One-Ups, Dtoid EiC), Souleye (VVVVVV), Jesse Hopkins (Mount and Blade, Gratuitious Space Battles), Matt Harwood (Bit.Trip, Alien Hominid), and many many more. I know you're probably tempted to just jump to the artists you know, but I highly recommend that you also focus on the stuff from the album's up-and-comers. This track by Mike Pugliese is a perfect example. It chokes me up eve?ry time. So bea?utiful! 

A portion of the album's sales will go to charity, as quite a few of the artists who contributed music to the project have asked that their share of the profits go to a good cause. If you want to contribute to the album too, it's not too late! You wont get paid, but if you want to record something for it just for fun, let me know. The album never needs to stop growing. If you need help, see the attached sheet music via @FallenDux.

As for the videos, they are a labor of love and have already proven powerful enough to enrage some and enrapture others. The one seen above features the unplugged mix of the TtWaV theme, the one below features the XXX mix. Like the songs they represent, the videos share a lot of the same content but are still pretty different. If it weren't for the creative magic of Sir Tobbii, McNyers, Linzb0t, Captain Carrion, and McFlyGold, none of it could have happened. You guys?? nailed i??t. I love you.

Now, onto the potentially profita??ble stuff?? for you! It's contest time! Details below!

So yeah, if you can name everything I have in the case, and every videogame that's represented in one way or another in the two  TtWaV videos, then you'll win a bunch of stuff. To be frank, I don't think that will be possible for anyone to do. There is just too much stuff in the case that's partially obscured from view. You'd need to get into some serious "back and to the left" action to see it all. 

That said, it doesn't hurt to guess, and you can guess as many times as you want. U.S. adresses only though. Sorry! You have until Feb. 14th 2012!

Just PM me with your list of stuff that you've found, and whoever has the most right answers will win:

• That giant Oshawott plushie seen in the video and the Skyward Sword review from the Dtoid show
• Five Flynn's Arcade tokens
• Something from "the briefcase"
• A picture of E.T. and a giant phallis
• A $20 3DS eShop points card
• A VHS copy of Ed and his Dead Mother (starring Steve Buscemi's eyes)
• This Roll model from Kotobukiya
• Some Cooking Mama bling
• An unopened copy of Urban Reign for the PS2 (featuring Tekken's Paul Phoenix and Marshall Law)
• A Pokemon Black/White themed DS carrying case
• A Wii Sports Resort frisbee
• A shirt that I wore on the Dtoid show

Two runner-ups will get:

• One of the Tetris wall stickers from this video
• A drawing of anything you want

... and whatever other stuff I can find lying around the house that I think you might like (for both the winners and runner-ups). I'm also going to try to put together a special CD/DVD of the TtWaV series and album, but no promises on that. I'll do my best, thoug?h.

So that's that, the end of one era of TtWaV. Thanks again to everyone for watching and b??eing involved with this thing. I love you all for real!

The post Behold! The TtWaV videos, album, a??nd contest ALL FOR YOU appeared first on Destructoid.

I hope you're ready for a bunch of weird Talking to Women about Videogames crap, because Talking to Women about Videogames: The Album is set to go live on Bandcamp in just a few days. The three "main songs" from the prior album will be joining over 20 new tracks by the likes of Danny B (Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Isaac), Matt Harwood (Bit.Trip, Homefront, Alien Hominid), Souleye (VVVVVV), Dale North (Christmas Crooner, Uncharted PS Vita reviewer), everyone's favorite pedophilia inquisitor Jim Sterling, and many, many others.

I could not be happier with how this whole thing has turned out. The fact that this thing exists makes me feel proud to be? alive. It also got leaked a few days ago for a about a day. That bummed me out at first, but the people that accidentally stole it said they liked it, so in the end I felt pretty good about the whole thing.

We've also shot two music videos to help promote the album (one for the XXX mix and another for the Unplugged mix), so expect those to laun?ch the same day or shortly after the album. On top of that,? we'll also be running  a contest themed around the videos, so there will be the opportunity for you to win stuff too.

In the meantime, enjoy the public service announcement regarding Super Mario seen above, and sample of a track from the TtWaV album from the great Mark Byrom belo?w. It's the perfect dance anthem to rock in the New Year. 

Eat my dust, Dick Clark.

The post Get? hy?pe: The full TtWaV album drops on January 3rd appeared first on Destructoid.

_{[Haven't heard about the Talking to Women about Videogames music video and remix project? Click here for the details. It could make you famous!]}

Good news! The prior remixes in this ongoing sound/video experiment have now been joined by a majestic metal/chip tune remix of the Talking to Women about Videogames theme song by the Order of Tyr, and man is it good! This week also brings us a serious, heartfelt cover of the song by the great Sir Tobbii, and an electronic sound journey jam by the one and only Kaggen. Heads up -- Tobbii and Kaggen are both from European countries where everyone sounds cute when they talk. That's right, we're talking about two sexy hot European dudes that like to play videogames and make music. Start drafting up those marriage proposals now ladies. Get in there before some other lucky filly snat?ches that gravy up!

As for the music video and remix album, we're still on track for finishing both of them up next week on December 21st, so there's still time if you want to get in on the action. Remember, any sort of visual art is acceptable for consideration for the music video; still pictures, drawings, animation, video, whatever. I'm pretty sure we're going to squeeze a little bit of Flashbeagle into the finished product, proving once and for all that anything goes?. You might as well whip sometime up this we?ekend and run it by me, right?It never hurts to try!

The same goes for remixes/covers/re-imaginings of the theme song. Throw something together and send it my way! At best, you'll become rich and famous for your effort, and at worst, you'?ll make me incredibly happy. It's a win/win situation, dawg.

The post TtWaV video and remix update: Enter the Metal appeared first on Destructoid.

_{[Haven't heard about the Talking to Women about Videogames music video and remix project. Click here for the details. It could make you famous]}

The community remixes for the new Talking to Women about Videogames album have been hitting at steady pace, and I couldn't be happier with the results. Above we have what is probably my favorite remix yet, a cover of the unplugged version of the son?g as performed by Kermit the Frog (illustration by the illustrious Linzb0t). I love it so much. 

While the remixes from the community have been popping up pretty quickly, the work from the "celebrity" videogame composers and sound designers hasn't been as easy to come by. All six of the secret celebrities have asked for more time on their songs, and who am I to say no? For that reason, you can expect the Talking to Women about videogames music video and remix album to hit closer to December 21st. I'll keep you posted.

That means that if you were thinking of contributing a remix or some art/animation/live action footage for the music video, you have more time to do that. In the meantime, here are a couple more remixes. The first is song called Talking to Videogames about Women. It could very well go on to be the theme song for Max Scoville's awesome new maybe-ongoing series thing. Then there is the great Alphadeus, creator of the Dtoid Community album series. He's got a TtWaV track to share as well. Finally, we hav??e a great chiptune dance remix called Dancing with Women about Videogames. It's by Mr Foetus. It features t?alk of Pinball machines. It is very good. 

Continue rocking. Over and out.

The post TtWaV videos and rem?ixes REPORT: Extensions and Hot Jams appeared first on Destructoid.

So, we've a?ll seen what happens when Jonathan Holmes goes around Talking To Women About Vide??o Games, but what happens when I'm alone. In my apartment. Talking to video games. About women. Alone.

This is just something I threw together in my spare time. Haven't really decided if I wanna do more ?or not. Lemme know what you guys t?hink!

The post Talking To Video Games About Women! appeared first on Destructoid.

That is an 11-month old girl ??dancing to a song I wrote. Life doesn't get much better than that. 

Do you want to see babies dancing to something you wrote and/or made too? Then get involved with the latest Talking to Women about Videogames project! We put out the call last week for remixes of the new theme song(s) and short clips to be used in the upcoming music video. So far response has been excellent. Still, there is plenty of room left for more songs and videos, so if you want to get in on som??e of this potential fame and fortune, here's your chance.

In case I didn't make it clear before, you can write an original TtWaV-inspired song instead of doing a remix, or just do a piece of fan art instead of a video clip, or something else entirely that I could have never imagined. The only rule here is there are no ru??les, so just go for it an see what happens!

I've also added some new greenscreen photos for you budding directors/animators out there. Any of you guys like Pikmin? How about Boglins? If so, you're in luck. You can use these pics in conjunction with photos I dropped off last time, or in any other way you want, to make a gif or short video clip, and I'll try to fit it into the music video. The deadline is still set for December 14th, but A LOT of people have asked for an extension on that, so don't be surprised if the deadline ends up getting pushed ba??ck. 

If you have any other questions, don't be shy about emailing me or dropping off a ques?tion in the post. I can't wait to see what you come up with!

The post Reminder: You can be a part of the next TtWaV p??roject(s) appeared first on Destructoid.

[Image by Linzb0t]

Hey everybody! Remember that Talking to Women about Videogames thing I was doing for a while? Yeah, that was pretty weird. Even weirder was the fact that a lot of people who watched the show told me that they really liked the opening theme. Some people even sang it in the shower! Naked! I was touched, so touched that I decided to write and record a full version of the song (in both Wildly Produced and Unplugged mixes). After that, I threw the original theme and some other stuff in with it, and called it an "album". You can get it for dirt cheap right now at Bandcamp. It come??s with a bunch of pic??tures and a secret bonus track.

That's just the star?t of it though. I've reached out to a few of gaming's best and brightest composers and asked them to remix the song. I've heard some of their work??s in progress, and I couldn't be happier with how things are coming a long. 

We're also working on a music video for the full length version of the song, which sounds like overkill now that I'm actually typing it out, but whatever. It's still going to happen. So far we're about halfway done with patching it together. This clip, created by the one and only McFlyGold, is just a sample of what the full video h??as to of?fer.

Want to get involved with a remix and/or the video? H??it the jump for more details.

[Image by Captain Carrion]

So the plan is to have the video and the remixes done by December 14th. If you want to do a remix and you can get it to me before then, then it'll be in the running to be released along side the "celebrity" remixes on the Talking to Women about Videogames: The Remixes compilation. If you make the cut, your song will be put up on Bandcamp with the rest of the tracks on the a?lbum, and all the profits from the sales will go directly to you (other than the cut that Bandcamp takes, which is a lot smaller than the huge chunk that iTunes claims from every sale). The songs will be sold for $.50 minimum, but it will be up to the buyer to decide how much they want to pay. Oh, and you'll need a PayPal accou??nt to get paid. 

As for the video, it's a similar thing. We're hoping for the final product done by December 14th, to be released alongside the remix album. The video is going to be like a cross between We Come Together by Goldfish and the classic animation Lesko's Revenge by Neil Cicierega. That leaves a lot of room for little 2-12 second animations. Do you want to make one? If so, go for it! I can't guarentee we'll be ab?le to use it, but I'll do ??my best. Unlike with the remixes, contributing to the video can't be a profit deal, but if your contribution makes the cut, you will definitely be credited in the credits. 

I've provided a few free tracks on the Bandcamp page for you remixers. All that's up there right now is the instrumental version of the unplugged ?cut, and the "clean" recording of the vocals. You can use them in your remix, or write something totally origina?l and just call it a remix. You can do whatever you want! It's entirely up to you. Anything goes! That said, it would probably be good if you mentioned talking and videogames in your song somewhere, but that's by no means a perquisite for success. If you need something more specific for your remix, email me at jonathan@jbsgame.com and I'll do my best to help you.

For you video people, I've supplied you with a pictures of myself looking expressive. Do with them what you will, and if you need more, let me know.  If you want to ??make me look like a terrible person, that wont be held against you. The most more interesting, expressive, and appropriate for the song your clips/animations are, the better. If I look bad in the process, that's totally good! You don't have to use the pictures either,. Make your own drawing, sprite-based graphics, cut-out animations, whatever you want! Just try to keep between 2 and 12 seconds long. If it's longer than 12 seconds, we'll probably have to cut it down or not use it at all.

To submit a remix or ?video, drop a link to your creation in this post, or email me directly. I promise to listen to and/or watch everything submitted, and will do my best to give feedback on your work, regardless of if it's?? used or not in the final product.

I'm really excited about the prospect of teaming up with you guys. Le???ts hope this all works out!

The post You are invited: Lets make some TtWaV music an??d/or videos appeared first on Destructoid.

[Talking to Women about Videogames is a series where Jonathan Holmes talks to different people who are women about the biggest videogame news of the week for some reason. Get the album featuring celebrities from the world of game music here.]

From the very start, I thought that making a show called Talking to Women about Videogames was probably a bad idea, but I couldn't help but give it a try. Ten episodes later, I am extremely grateful for both the women who were willing to be on the show and for the people who were willing to watch it on a fairly regular basis.?? If it weren't for them, I would have never had the opportunity to interview the amazing woman in this video or have all the great times that this series has brought me, regardless of how scared I was that it would suck.

More than anything, that's what I hope people take from this series. Getting out there and wearing your love of videogames on your sleeve can lead to good things, no matter how ridiculous, geeky, politically incorrect, wrong-headed, and/or strange you fear you may appear to others. Of course, there is a lot more I hope people take from the show, like the psychology of gamer culture, t??he inherent tension between the genders, the potential baggage we bring to the discussion of both of those things, and tons of other stuff. Oh, and I hope the show was funny, at least to somebody every once and a while.

For the most part, that's all I really want to say about the show right now, especially seeing that we're almost definitely doing a second season of the series. I hate to "?explain the joke" and potentially ruin what's to come. Still, I asked you to ask me questions about the show, and it would be pretty lame of ?me to not do my best to answer them all. 

So here we go! Let's talk about Talking to Women about Videogames!

" 'Reflecting gamer culture back to gamers' sounds a lot like mocking gamers. I guess that's what TtWaV is about. I'm not offended! Dude, don't you play a character in your videos? You're an exaggerated version of a overreactive gamer, right?" - Cordoroy Turtle

It was never my intention to mock gamers with TtWaV. That said, a lot of people have told me that's what they've taken away from the show. If that's all they get from the show, then that's depressing, but if the "gamers" in question go on to take a look at why they were offended in ?the first place, then maybe that will lead to something good.

What insecurities are they bringing to the table? Why ar??e they seeing something in the show that bothers them that others "gamers" don't necessarily see? The answers to those questions may be pretty interesting.

One of the strengths of ambiguity&nbs?p;is that the less you tell people, the more you leave open to interpretation. The more that's left to interpretation, the more people have room to project themselves onto the show. I find that leaving room ??for people to project can lead to more revealing and thought-provoking things than I could ever come up with.

"Oh hey, what was the most fun about making your TtWaV videos?" - Tladyga

I don't want to risk making the guests who were willing t?o be on the show look bad in any way or have a bad time at all. They were nice enough to help me with this weird, unknown video s?eries, and I would not want to do any of them wrong. Thankfully, all of them have told me that they were happy with how their episodes came out and would be willing to come on the show again.

I think?? it's?? hard for anyone else to look bad on the show compared to me.

And of course, it makes me feel great when people enjoy ??watching the show. I ??like that part a lot.

"My question for you was were there any ideas you had originally for the series that you took out? Are there any ideas you would like to add in for the next season?" - Vlad Zhao

The post Talking to Women about Videogames: Why am I doing thi?s? appeared first on Destructoid.

_{[Talking to Women about Videogames is a series where Jonathan Holmes talks to different people who are women about the biggest videogame news of the week for some reason.]}

Next week, the Talking to Women about Videogames written editorial and video are both going to be a little different. They ?mark the end of what we're calling "Season 1" of the show, which feels like as good time as any to answer your questions about this thing. Since the show first started 10 weeks ago, it's gotten an amazingly wide breadth of reactions, but almost all of them were tinged with some element of uncertainty. Some people hate it, some people like it, but either way, almost everyone who has talked to me about it has asked "is that what you were going for?"

I hate to lose that ambiguity, but I also don't want to be one of those jerks who wont answer questions about the stu??ff that he's doing. That's why I'm promising to answer as many questions about TtWaV as possible, assuming you guys have anything you want to ask. ev??en if it's a really mean. Actually, I'll make sure to try to answer just as many mean questions as nice ones (again, assuming you guys have anything you want to ask at all). Mean questions are sometimes the best questions.

So yeah, ask me things! Right now! In the comments of thi?s post! I want to talk to you about talking to women ab?out videogames.

Oh, and there is another teaser after the jump. Just couldn't resist rescuing that conversation from the trash ca?n, ??regardless of the bad audio.

Past Episodes:

Talking to Wo??men about Vi??deogames: 3DS 2nd nub panic

Talking to Wome??n about Videogames: Gear?s 3 isn't perfect?

Talking to Women about Videogames: Sexy vs.? sexist?

Ta?lking to?? Women about Videogames: What makes you want?

TtWaV teaser: Sony's online sucks now?

?Tal??king to Women about Videogames: I'm not a real gamer?

Talking to Women ??about Videogam??es: Fear for the future

Talking to Women about Videogames: Going mains??tream

TtWaV teaser: Battlefield 3 Vs. Modern Warfare 3

Talking ??to Women about Videogames: You! Like what I like!

TtWaV Teaser: Should Skyward Sword be rated M?

Talking to Women about Videogames: The? ESRB has failed

The post We need your questions for the TtWaV finale! appeared first on Destructoid.

_{[Talking to Women about Videogames is a series where Jonathan Holmes talks to different people who are women about the biggest videogame news of the week for some reason.]}

Grand Theft Auto III was originally released in 2001, starting the reign as one of the most popular videogame series today. Fast forward to today, and we have millions of 20-25 year olds who have grown up playing the games, yet we are not in the midst of a social apocalypse. We have a generation of children brought up on a game where the name itself is a crime, a game where hiring then murdering prostitutes is made to be "fun," yet the world is still standing. Actually, these GTA fans seem like pretty well-adjusted people overall, as evidenced by the steady drop in? the crime rate throughout the country since 1995.

There are also millions of "underage" kids today that absolutely love the Call of Duty series, despite its M rating. In fact, going by the reaction to the last TtWaV teaser, there are quite a few people out there under the age of 18 who would be more interested in playing the next Zelda game if it was rated M.

These are just a few of the reasons why I think it's clear?? that the ESRB h??as failed.

The ESRB has two jobs: to determine what games are appropriate for what age groups and to deter people from the "wrong" age groups from playing the "wron??g" games. It hasn't succeeded at any of that. The E, T, M, AO system does not properly divide games into what groups should be playing them, it does not properly describe the content in the games it classifies, and it also encourages players of the "inappropriate" groups to be a??ttracted to the games they aren't supposed to play (for obvious reasons).

It's not all the ESRB's fault, though. Society as ?a whole has the wrong idea about what is bad for kids to experience. When it comes to children, people's fear of harming the child or potentially shaping them into a "bad" person often blinds them from common sense. Take people's fear of swearing, for instance. Hearing people swear won't hurt kids or make them more inclined to repeat the swears they hear. If that were the case, then every kid on the planet would be swearing constantly, as there is literally no escape from swear words in today's world. Kids can hear all the swears they want and oftentimes do. What's important is how the children are taught to understand the meaning of those words, and if and when it's OK to use them. Same goes for the nudity and violence that they see in movies and videogames. As long as the child is prevented from experiencing something that will disturb or traumatize them?, all that's left is to help them to learn not to repeat the dangerous or harmful things that they've seen.

In general, I would say that it's the minor violent actions that are physically and morally easy for children to repeat that are the most dangerous for children to witness. The fantastic, ultra-violent stuff is almost always presented with serious consequences within the given context of the event. While that stuff may be overstimulating to a kid, or even disturbing, it's not likely to teach him or her to be "bad," not in the ??way that more minor, seemingly "harmless" violence can.

Here's a story from experience t??o drive home that point. When I was a kid (probably between five and seven), I got really angry at my mother, but I can't remember why. It was probably something about Care Bears. Regardless, I was really upset, but not in a tantrum way. This time, I wanted to express my anger in a more "real" way, but I couldn't think of a way that would show her the dep?ths of my anger while remaining relatively harmless.

Enter Tom and Jerry.

There is one episode of this extremely violent cat and mouse kids' show where Tom (the cat) pretends to prepare a place at the table for his owner as part of his evil plan. He politely pulls the chair out for her, only to yank it from beneath her right as she's about to sit down. Since this is a "kids' show," Tom's owner wasn't seriously hurt. We wouldn't want to make the kids feel bad, now would we? Instead, his owner just hops right back to her feet and chas?es Tom around with a ro??om with a broomstick, leading Tom to jump into a vase to hide, transform into a carpet under his master's feet, or something else whimsical and exciting.

That was perfect. That was exactly what I was going for. From there, I set a plan in motion to? repeat the "prank" that I learned from Tom. I made my mom some toast, set her a place at the table, politely pulled the chair out for her, and yanked it away at the last minute. Much to my horror, a fun and lighthearted chase scene between my mother and myself did not follow. Instead, my Mom and I were both in tears. She was crying in emotional and physical pain, while I was crying in guilt, shame, and empathetic sadness from my betrayed parent. If she had come down any harder, she could have ended up in the hospital. I think we both?? remember that as one of the all-time low points in our relationship.

Now, keep in mind that by this age, I'd seen plenty of action, horror, and sexy movies. I'd watched Stripes, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Porky's, and endless reels of gangster movies and episodes of the Twilight Zone. I'd also played all of the most violent videogames on the market (except Chiller). None of them did the same damage to me that Tom and Jerry did, because in Tom and Jerry, there were no serious consequences for the characters' actions. In other media, I saw that sex and violence were possible but emotionally trying experiences that were definitely a bad idea for a kid like me to try to repeat. That wasn't the case with Tom and Jerry. There ?was absolutely noth??ing in the show there to teach me that I should not repeat the behaviors I witnessed.

In my personal experience, I've heard of the same kinds of things happening with modern videogames. I've heard of children jumping on turtles and kicking them down the street, expecting them to innocuously retreat into their shells like they do in the Mario games, only to find them crushed into a bloody pulp under foot. I've heard of kids making disgusting food and getting extremely sick to their stomachs because of what they learned from Cooking Mama or even starting fires due to their young culinary ambitions. I have never heard of a kid stealing a car or beating up a prostitute because they saw it in Grand Theft Auto. I have never heard of a child becoming sexually active purely after experiencing the world of romantic failings and foibles through the lenses of Catherine and We Dare.

In fa?ct, when it comes to corrupting our children, I think that videogames are probably the least of our problems. It's stuff that's happening in real life that we should probably w??orry about.

The research that Drs. Cheryl K. Olson and Lawrence Kutner utilized for their book Grand Theft Childhood echoes those sentiments. Their research showed that behaviors that were difficult to replicate or were shown to have negative repercussions were less likely to be repeated by children. Kids played Grand Theft Auto to blow off some steam after feeling bullied at school and actually felt less aggressive afterwards. Games with a lot blood or were generally more disturbing to children, and as a result, children were less likely to want to reenact violent acts they witnessed in bloody games. If Mario had a blood code, we may have had a lot fewer dead turtle??s in our country. 

Of course, that's still just a generalization. The key thing to take away here is that there is no way to guess how all kids will react to the same content or how kids' parents wi?ll help them to process the content in question. There is no universal truth when it comes to this issue. It's all dependent on the individuals. All we can do is try to remind people to take responsibility for their actions as parents and as people. 

This brings us back the ESRB, which doesn't seem to have much of a grasp on that concept. Instead, it works to determine what kinds of content is and is not harmful to children regardless of some sort of universal standard, the context, or how the content is implemented. Does it actually think that raising a child is that black and white? What's even weirder is that most in the industry just pretend that the ESRB matters, all while millions of parents buy Modern Warfare 3 for their 10 year old?s, fully aware that the game will be relatively harmless to the hearts and minds of their particular offspring.&nb?sp;

Part of that is because things could be a lot worse. If Leland Yee had his way, the world of videogame content ratings would be a police state. It's better to just let the ESRB pretend that it's doing a good job than to get rid of it, potentially permitting a much worse power to come into control. Another part of the problem is that we expect too much from the ESRB. It can't be our co-p?arent, and we shouldn't want it to be. The fact that it is so powerful in the eyes of some people speaks more to the desperate hunger parents feel for "expert adv??ice" on child rearing than anything else.

So if the ESRB can't do much to help us parent our kids, then what is it good for? Well, I guess it could serve the purpose of helping us know what kind of content a game contains, if it really wanted to. I guess the ratings could serve as sort of a mini-review system, ?but instead of addressing quality, t?hey only address intensity. That might help people to weed out the games the games that might gross them out or give them nightmares, right?

Even that is a little unnecessary, though. For the most part, kids will naturally be disturbed or otherwise repelled by any content that they aren't ready for. Kids feel pain, emotionally and physically. That's not something to be sad about. That pain helps them to instinctively avoid things that will hurt them. As I talked about in a past Constructoid, kids won't play games that are too much for them. If Resident Evil 4 is too intense for them, they'll go right back to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Water tends to find?? its own level, as does the mind of a chil?d.

Still, for the co??mpletely oblivious, I guess it wouldn't hurt to have a heads-up about the kind of content a game contains before they spend $60 on it. That doesn't mean that it's good for those labels to contai?n the completely arbitrary labels of "Everyone," "Teen," "Mature," and "Adults Only." I know plenty of kids who only play M-rated games, and plenty of adults who would never bother with anything rated T or above. Age doesn't really have that much to do with it, especially when it comes to something like videogames where both the graphics and interactivity send a constant message to the player that the events on screen are not a reflection of real-life events.

People (usually) always have control over the events of a videogame. They can change the script to the story with the punch of a button at any time or just put the controller down and end the story right then and there. That helps to remind players that none of i?t is real and to keep things from getting more intense than they can handle. The exit door? is always close by. It seems like society as a whole is still figuring that out.

In the meantime, if the ESRB still insists of rating how disturbing or offensive various videogames are, then I think it should come right out and say it. Don't tempt kids to play M-rated games by dangli??ng the ever-attractive "mature" label in from of their noses, and don't imply that certain games have more mass market appeal by saying they are for "everyone." If you think a game is potentially disturbing to kids or adults, don't put an age label on it. Just call a spade a spade. Change ratings the ratings from E, T, M, and AO to B (Benign), PO (Potentially Offensive), PD (Potentially Disturbing), and PT (Potentially Traumatizing), in that order. Not only is this less likely to attract kids to the "wrong" kinds of games (assuming that the "wrong" kind of games even exist on some objective level of measure), it's also just more honest.

If a father isn't able to determine on his own (after doing some research of course, like every good parent does before buying a game for their child) that a thoroughly silly and joyfully taboo-bending game like Shadows of the Damned may not be a good fit for his easily startled, Hugga Bunch-loving little boy, I don't see how the the M rating is going to help him to understand it any better. I wonder if "potentially disturbi?ng" might do the job though. Maybe that label will help drive home the fact that a game where you run ar??ound on top a giant replica of your naked girlfriend's body, only to have her ;disembodied head call you all sorts of swear words later on, might be a little to freaky for his son. Hey, if thats what it takes to help him be a decent parent, who am I to complain? 

As someone who's been playing videogames far longer than the ESRB has existed, it's easy for me to see how much better it could be, assuming that we nee??d the ESRB to exist at all. That's just me, though. How about you guys? Has the ESRB ever helped you to avoid a game that was too mature for you to handle, or otherwise aided you and yours in avoiding being emotionally or psychologically damaged by videogames? 

Past Episodes:

Talking to Women about Videogames: 3DS 2nd n?ub pani?c

Talking to Women about Videogames: Gears ?3 isn't p??erfect?

Talking t??o Women abo??ut Videogames: Sexy vs. sexist?

Talking to Women about Videogames:?? What mak?es you want?

TtWaV teaser: Sony's online sucks now?

T??alking to Women about Videogames: I'm not ??a real gamer?

Tal??king to Women about Videogames: Fear for t?he future

Talking to Women about Videogames: G??oing mainstream

TtWaV teaser: Battlefield 3 Vs. Modern Warfare 3

Tal?king to Women?? about Videogames: You! Like what I like!

TtWaV Teaser: Should Skyward Sword be rated M?

The post Talking to W?omen about Videogam??es: The ESRB has failed appeared first on Destructoid.