Over on Return of Kings, one brave gamer dares to ask the question of our age: What will the world look like after the inevitable triumph of GamerGate?
I know, I know, just humor him for a few minutes. Because he has a rather, well, revealing notion of what triumph will look like, and it’s not one that’s compatible with the #NotYourShield propaganda that GamerGaters use to disguise its retrograde goals. Greendestiny, a veteran of TheRedPill and KotakuInAction on Reddit, sees in the video game “war” a new opportunity for gamebros to become Game Men:
It is my personal belief that, after GamerGate, video games will evolve to become a tool for raising a new generation of men. Our current education system fails horribly at providing real information on how the world works, what motivates people, and how to get laid.
Our education system is a disaster! Can you believe that not one college in the United States offers a major in Getlaidology?
More importantly, it pussifies men and turns them into starry-eyed believers in the Disney variety of life and love.
Huh. You know, there’s a cultural critic who’s made some interesting videos challenging the sexist tropes you can find in Disney movies and elsewhere in popular culture. Her name is Anita Sarkee… oh wait. Never mind.
The entire concept of sitting quietly and reading is meant for girls. Boys need the fight, the challenge, competition, and a test of their strength.
So why exactly are you trying to convince guys of this in a post you expect them to sit down and read? Shouldn’t your blog post be a video game or an arm-wrestling contest or something?
Games were always learning tools. Now they can become a tool for learning greater masculinity.
If by masculinity you mean “the proper sequence of buttons to push that will enable you to pull off an awesome combo.”
To become real men, boys must overcome challenges and find the true strength in themselves. Whether this is done in a virtual or real arena is irrelevant. By creating games that are consciously aimed at presenting a proper challenge, we can collectively make the world a better place for the next generation of men. And possibly help them get laid more.
“Hey, babe, I bet you didn’t know you were sitting next to a Level 90 Fire Mage.”
But seriously for a second: Yes, video games do teach gamers certain skills, and even something about the value of persistence. But why are the skills involved in, say, shooting dudes with maximum efficiency in Call of Duty any more intrinsically valuable, or “masculine,” than the skills involved in doing this?
Hmmm…
That kind of makes sense.
Still (if you aren’t fighting a Sith) if you can throw a bunch of droids and guns around, why can’t you flip a switch? If they never did finesse moves, I’d totally have just assumed that pushing things around was the limit. But we’ve seen finesse!
Floating fruit, playing with rocks, all that jazz.
I totally over-think things way too much. Maybe pushing is an easier gut reaction, even though potentially less effective?
(I’ll stop whining)
@kirbywarp:
Ooh, can’t wait to find out how this comes up!
In West End Games’ writeup for Luke about the time of Return, they gave him a couple of Dark Side Points. I think the mechanic was, when you gain a Dark Side Point, roll a die, and if you roll under your number of DSPs, bam, instant Sith, make another character.
Thanks, lith and grumpyoldnurse.
@Falconer:
*whew* Luke had some lucky dice rolls then. But yeah, that does seem to be the actual mechanic behind the dark side. Cumulative exposure makes it harder to resist, and its usually a single event that flips the switch and makes you the baddie.
@kirbywarp:
I get the impression that gentle snowfall has become rarer, and severe storms more frequent.
@kittehs:
If I were the praying sort, that’s the thing I would pray for. We need more diversity in Hollywood.
That fight is awesome and I defy anyone to say otherwise.
@Nequam:
Oh god I hope not. On the other hand, they did something to make Christopher Lee look like he could take two men less than half his age in a sword fight, and it looked okay.
@WWTH: After about two minutes of nuclear fireball it started to lose its impact. A lot of that looked like old test footage, which was interesting to see.
Actually, Christopher Lee is an actual badass, no special effects required. Yeah, he’s older now, but it’s entirely possible that he’s badass enough to handle the choreography, at least.
For the record, you all are quite awesome.
I’m also really digging this Exposure model for the Dark Side of the Force. I’m kind of imagining the dark side as trace heavy metal contamination now. Each exposure is rolling around some mercury in the palm of your hand: a little bit of exposure won’t kill you.
Keep playing with it (or keep living where some jerk has somehow put a arsenic, lead, antimony, and mercury varnish on all the hard surfaces) then it won’t go so well.
@kittehserf – He’s a MASSAGE therapist. So, he deals with the body, not the mind.
And, yes, he’s old-fashioned in many respects, including gender roles.
And we agree to disagree, because he’s very good at the massage therapy, and it’s hard to find anyone locally who knows it as well as he does.
Oded Fehr
Oh, yeah, I’d buy that ticket.
I’m loving the fellow Austen fans here.
And happy birthday, Arctic Ape!
I rather liked how the old sensei fought in Kung Fu Panda. Old body, but all that knowledge meant he knew JUST where to exert pressure, and how little was really necessary.
@contrapanglos:
I read that as “smiting farter” and I think I really need a nap. Also, now I want to watch Mystery Men.
Ah HA! HA HA HA! HAAA, I KNEW IT!
The voice actor for Mr. Ping, the noodle shop owner, also did Covetous Shen in Diablo III!
…
I just made the connection.
…
*ahem*
Now back to your original programming.
Also Chi Fu in mulan, the grumpy accountant dude.
@kirbywarp:
Says who? And why all the
http://youtu.be/mACnGsmBZJQ
then?
@contrapangloss:
In the Dark Forces Jedi Knight computer games, you can target foes’ weapons with Force Pull, and that’ll yank the blaster out of a stormtrooper’s hands, but it won’t work on the Sith you fight. Presumably your enemy is on guard for flipping switches.
Given that, whenever you’re knocked down and drop your lightsaber, it extinguishes, I’ve always thought there’s a dead man’s switch on the deadly things, and they work as long as they’re squeezed, or something.
Of course, the actual answer is people want to see vwoom vwoom kssssh and shortcuts are no fun.
RE Star Wars, my assumption was always that the Jedi were following some sort of Bushido-like code, since the whole thing is based on samurai, and that therefore they can’t cheat when they’re fighting each other because that would be dishonorable. Sith would ignore bits of the code because, hey, dark side, but if the code has been trained into you since you were a child the sense that there are certain things that we just don’t do during a fight against an opponent we respect would remain. The little insignificant people who work for you, otoh, them you can choke with your mind.
(It’s an honor code, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t classist as hell.)
@kirbywarp, coming from an ‘older gen’, I remember him from Bladerunner, The Golden Child and Big Trouble in Little China.
@cassandrakitty:
Beloved and I were talking about the high officer promotion rate aboard Vader’s ship. We came up with the idea of, what if there’s an officer who’s engineering his promotions by feeding his rivals and selected higher-ups to Vader?
It’s dangerous to be the messenger around Vader, what if this guy was making sure that his targets were the ones to deliver bad news?
We never worked out how he might manage this, but we did decide that Vader wouldn’t take kindly to it if he figured it out, but Palpatine would be greatly amused.
I also conjectured perhaps there’s times when someone gets really lucky and manages to injure Vader. This would probably be more frequent at the start of the purge, when there’s plenty of Jedi to hunt down, and less frequent towards the start of Ep IV. I figured Vader’s the kind of guy who needs to project an air of invulnerability all the time, lest he invite laser daggers in his back, so woe to whichever poor junior officer got a glimpse of him in his distress.
Then I speculated that maybe, occasionally, Palpatine gets rid of some political threat by letting slip some weakness of Vader’s, thereby inducing said rival to commit suicide by grumpy Sith.
@Falconer:
Source:
I think what this means is that the breather aparatus Vader had was necessary, but not sufficient, for him to keep going. He also needed dark side healing forces to keep his lungs in a state that the breather could then respirate.
This adds another twist too. Apparently there is an idea of redeeming a jedi who has fallen to the dark side, if they perform a selfless act of heroism without use of dark side powers. Vader pretty much does that, which would imply that he moves away from the dark side in the end, which means he no longer has access to the powers that had been sustaining him, which means it’s much more understandable why he knew he was doomed to die even if his suit were to be fixed.
See, I dislike “maintain intense concentration” setups because he gotta sleep sometime. I guess that’s what the pressure chamber was for. Sure does explain why he has no time for all this bullshit, too.
I thought that was fairly accepted. Certainly that’s the way most of the RPGs have trended. I think WEG’s game then made you work off the Dark Side Points somehow.
I loved the Robot Chicken view:
@Falconer:
I know what you mean. Still, it does appear to be part of the mythos. What’ll really bake your noodle is one of the sith lords who’s body was basically a bunch of fractured pieces, held together merely by the force of pure hate energy. Essentially immortal.
If it takes “intense concentration” to maintain a couple lungs, I can’t imagine what it’d take to sustain every single bone, organ, and piece of skin on your body.
Good thing he never met Decartes. “I think therefore I am, huh? What happens if I don’t think? …” *crumble*
I think it was “Shadows of the Empire” which had a scene of Darth Vader trying to heal himself with the Force, so he could breathe without his armor/mobile iron lung. He couldn’t maintain the rage required by the dark side long enough to manage more than a couple short seconds.
http://img.ifcdn.com/images/3bdae20b4df1693318d31dbb6fd3acbc734054fb894dfb5b5fd6bf5b04bf08e1_1.jpg