Open Thread: Manfeels Park Dance Party Edition. No trolls, no MRAs.

@lensman Thanks for that link. What I always felt was that Adam was being ordered by the Galactic Federation to stop Samus. She’s stopped at nothing to do the right thing on multiple occasions and they were kinda sorta doing spoiler spoiler and spoiler. Given that in Metroid Fusion they actively DID work against her…

Not to make the funny pouch humans serious, but it’d make the abortion debate settle itself fast — don’t want a kid in your pouch anymore? Somebody wants a kid but can’t do the initial stages of cell division? You could have a kid swap basically!

Probably a ton of problems with that idea, but the idea of being able to transplant the fetus, in a way, sounds useful.

WWTH, on stand-up comics, are you familiar with Hari Kondabolu? He’s excellent at making liberal politics funny and punching up instead of down.

Louis CK has some good stuff, too. His bit about how miraculous it is that women go out with men despite the huge risk to our safety should be plastered on every Nice Guy message board forever.

@taitaisanchez

The theory that Adam was ordered to stop Samus explains Adam’s actions, but it wouldn’t explain Samus’ huge character derailment. It doesn’t explain, for example, samus’ breakdown in front of Ridley, a boss that she has defeated multiple times already over the course of the series.

If, however, you view it under the lens of an abusive relationship, things like Samus’ breakdown makes perfect sense. Samus without Adam is a strong and independent character capable of holding her own against dangerous aliens and living bioweapons. Samus with Adam is an infantilized, sniveling emotional wreck (in fact during the infamous Ridley-Breakdown Scene we see her thinking of herself as a helpless child) who can’t even keep her power-armor on for more than five minutes.

This wouldn’t be so bad if the game made it obvious that what was going on between Samus and Adam was twisted and sick but the story actively tries to romantisize Adam’s figure, and even shows the stars making a picture of him after the end-credits.

Seriously, Nintendo, WTF?

@katz

MattPatt of Game Theory made a very interesting video about the game industry’s lack of innovation and original ideas:

If you don’t want to go through the entire video here’s the gist of it:

-Game companies churn out sequels and enhanced remakes because they know people will buy them. They use the same narratives over and over because they know they have an established audience.
-Innovation is a huge risk. Most innovations fail and they come at a huge financial loss.
-However, when innovation works, it really pays off. The Wii is an example.
-How do you know when a new innovative idea will work? YOu test it and check reactions. This is why YouTube and word-of-mouth is so important.

To get back on topic, the problem is that game companies don’t know if a game where you control a captured princess will find itself an audience until somebody actually builds it. And because developing a game involves a huge amount of time and money, they won’t do it until someone else does so successfully.

But when this happens, others will soon follow.

RE: katz

(Full confession: I’m cribbing some of these ideas from Thomas Was Alone, which anyone who likes platformers should play.)

Congratulations, katz, you’ve gotten Sneak interested in another game. Platformers are our favorite, and zie really likes ones that don’t involve killing anything.

RE: Kim

If you wanted to write a game that was about the Nice Guy problem, but from the point of view of a woman or women, and exploring her/their feelings instead, how would you do it?

Loved. It is creepy as hell, and I love it.

RE: lensman

A game that details the horrors of being in an abusive relationship with a supposedly “Nice Guy” who uses passive-agressiveness and psychological instead of physical violence sounds like an interesting idea.

You should play Loved too. Basically, that’s the entire game.

Ultimately, it would be very interesting to see a game where you actually control the captured princess and try to take control of your own destiny somehow.

King’s Quest VII did a variation on this! You play both the princess’s mother, who’s trying to find her child, and the princess herself, who has been transformed into a troll and engaged to the troll king against her will. It’s AWESOME! Roberta Williams forever! (It’s also from 1994, which is kind of depressing, that it’s still groundbreaking.)

To get back on topic, the problem is that game companies don’t know if a game where you control a captured princess will find itself an audience until somebody actually builds it. And because developing a game involves a huge amount of time and money, they won’t do it until someone else does so successfully.

But game companies are doofs, because movie companies put millions of dollars into their films and even they are more willing to innovate, because in the long run taking risks is a better fiscal strategy than doing the same thing over and over until everyone gets bored of it.

RE: emilygoddess

Her admitting to being a chaser of trans men didn’t help, either.

Urgh, don’t remind me. Trans guys can be just as misogynistic and obnoxious as cis dudes; we are done no favors by being treated as magical hybrid men, with twice the mileage and half the guilt. It just encourages trans guys to feel entitled and like they’re somehow above being assholes.

RE: lensman

the problem is that game companies don’t know if a game where you control a captured princess will find itself an audience until somebody actually builds it.

But they DID. Twenty fucking years ago! King’s Quest VII! And about ten years ago, there was Narbacular Drop! You know, made by the developers of Portal? And those are the things I know despite being really out of date on the gaming scene; I’m positive there have been more that I don’t know about.

So these games HAVE been made. And they did have an audience; I loved KQ7 growing up!

Yeah, but IIRC, KQ4 you weren’t captured, you were trying to save your dad from illness. Still an awesome game, but not quite an escaped captured princess. Just normal princess.

It gives me grief the number of folks who don’t know about Roberta Williams these days. *grumpy face* She was awesome! And though she wasn’t directly involved Laura Bow II is still a weird game where all the female characters (except yours) is bisexual. I’m not sure why, either, it’s not mocked or anything, it’s just… kind of there. Running gag among the dev team, maybe?

Just played Loved and it’s very intriguing. Interesting mechanics too; I like how the spikes follow you.

RE: katz

You get captured at the end of KQ4.

Oh! I didn’t know that; I was really bad at the text interface so pretty much never got anywhere in KQ4. Thanks! I think Edgar makes a comeback in KQ7, but am not sure.

Glad you liked Loved. It’s a shortie but a goodie.

RE: lensman

King’s Quest VII is the one King’s Quest game I haven’t played yet. It’s currently not supported by ScummVM, and I still haven’t gotten it to work under DoxBox.

Aw, that’s too bad. Unfortunately, I can’t help; I still own the old CD-ROM and play it on my Windows 98 laptop. I was always rotten at getting DosBox to work…

Was the game successfull in America and the rest of Europe?

Dunno about Europe, but in the USA, yes; King’s Quest VIII was the game that sunk the franchise, because it introduced dreadful 3D graphics and lots of gore and combat. King’s Quest VII apparently gets hated on, but I’m sort of surprised; I thought the Disneyesque graphics were a cool departure and the interface a wonderful break from Sierra’s unforgiving nature. The game isn’t quite as good as KQ6, but you can’t get locked into unwinnable situations, and the simplified interface means you don’t have the “wait, I need HAND to walk through a door, not WALK?” problem. The complaints I hear about the UI being “too simple” sounds more like needless nostalgia, in my opinion, since games later on have a basic ‘interact’ key and it’s considered industry standard now.

The puzzles are still difficult, just less so because you don’t have to worry that you may have missed an item at a now-inaccessible area. I don’t think the game is “intended for little kids” which apparently was one of the complaints. You still have the morbid humor of dying in a hundred ways, you go to a fucking land of nightmares for Chrissakes, and I feel the game still has the emotional pull that the prior games have had.

Furthermore, King’s Quest VII is an adventure game, a genre which, up until very recently, was considered dead and burried by the video game industry.

*sigh* More’s the pity. Platformers and adventure games are basically the only game genres I ever had much taste for.

I got KQ7 to work on ScummVM.

Kim — but if the pouch human doesn’t want to // can’t feed the human joey, then the artificial pouch comes into play.

Frankly, I’ve thought for a long time that all the people screaming about how every fetus deserves to be born (no matter what), well, then they can raise the kid.

Damn you, autocorrect! Pinjar is all one word.