More troubling than curious is how little I’ve seen stated about how casually misandrist Kim’s original article was from top to bottom. I wonder why that is?

That doesn’t mean there aren’t any bad design decisions in the game, though. Notably, the tutorial stops about halfway through, before it gets to things like the jump button or the stamina bar. This is the sort of information that, when withheld, gives players a worse experience. (Virtually every new player I talked to ended up with the same heavy-armor-and-spear setup, because all the others are not well explained.)

It could be easy to see my comments as me “betraying the sisterhood” in a way, but that would be insinuating that feminism is a monoculture, that we all think and feel the same, and that there’s an importance to towing “party lines”. Which is dumb. Women’s views in feminist spaces are just as varied and wide-ranging as women’s views outside feminist spaces.

I’m not going to get into whether anyone was justified in their offence, that’s not my place (or anyone’s place). But it’s worth saying that I hear the concerns raised by the women involved, and I respect them, but in this case I don’t share them.

That’s not any value judgement on what happened, it’s not dismissing it, it’s not saying “because I wasn’t offended by it, you shouldn’t be”, it’s just that in this case I wasn’t offended. I didn’t share the concerns about sexism. (And since this article is noting my views on the subject, that’s why I’m putting them out there like this. I didn’t put them out there on twitter or a blog post because I didn’t want to be seen as dismissing anyone’s feelings.)

The reasons for me feeling this way are twofold.

1) I’ve always considered Adam a feminist ally in my local games space, so to see him labelled a sexist pig was quite startling. I’ve seen him stand up against misogynistic bullshit. That’s not to say you can’t done goof every now and then, so I looked into it.

2) His article had condescending moments, no doubt about it. My eyebrow lifted itself up at a few points, thinking “Wow, he’s really getting into this…”. I feel like his response was going to be the same regardless of the gender of the author of the piece he was responding to, though. When I RT’d the original article (because I fucking loved it), we had a short discussion on it on twitter. He wanted more from it, he wanted more depth and for it to be long-form and really explore the idea behind the correlation between the NiceGuySexVendingMachine and BiowareRomanceOptions. Such is his wont, he’s an academic. He loves to explore the ever-loving shit out of something until it’s died of death. That’s what academics do. I told him that I felt like the article served its purpose, to point out that the two things are linked, mention that it’s a little creepy, and get people to think about how similar the two things are and go from there. I read it as a jumping off point. I feel like Adam wanted more. So he wrote a reply, basically wanting to discuss it in more depth. His irritation at wanting more from the original article came through in his, I think.

Perhaps the way he went about it could have been a bit less heavy-handed, it’s not my place to say. But I honestly took it as his passion taking hold, not his want for telling these “little ladies” how it is. I saw it that an idea was thrown out there, he wanted more, so he started a discussion, the tone wasn’t great and therefore wasn’t appreciated and then the discussion on the (super interesting) topic was shut down. Which is a real shame.

All in all it’s an unfortunate clusterfuck, and I think everyone would agree there. My feelings aren’t important here, though. The only reason I’m sharing them is because the article has referred to them. The main thing I think we can take from it is everyone sitting back and thinking about how their words affected others, respect that, not dismiss it, and try to see it from their point of view.

I’d also really like to talk about how totally creepy it is that games so often rely on grinding for romance options… It’s a discussion worth having for sure. I never put two and two together and I love that it’s now something in my consciousness.

Basically, the source of the reaction is that the article has disrespected its readers, intentionally or not. Once that happens the content barely matters. If you don’t feel disrespected, your best option isn’t a defense of tone, but to respond to the content and make the arguments you allude to, because nobody in the angry mob is likely to pick up the pieces and continue discussion.

They become my reward for a very busy, very painful day, a way for me to unwind and forget about my illness, if only for a little while.

After becoming ill you really do have to relearn your limits, relearn your body, nothing is effortless anymore.

Some games work better as this sort of coping mechanism naturally, but I’m sure I wouldn’t have coped the past few years as well as I have without games to propel me forward to be the constant when everything else was transitionary.

Whether I behave good or bad, make the right or the wrong decisions, in the end it does not matter.
This makes me as a player feel kind of helpless, because I had the impression, that my choices would matter.

So, it’s not only about marketing, but about disappointing customers by making wrong promises.

I can even understand, that making a branched story is of course much more expensive and inefficient, because most players will only see so and so much of it.

On the plusside, and that’s why I am not really angry on Telltale, the story is strong and emotionally intense. So, overall, they did a great job.

They could do even a greater job by making a branched story. A really good example is Wing Commander, and I mean the original one from the nineties. There were basically two possible endings, a good one and a bad one, but with the results of your missions, you could change between the tracks, making it harder to change by the end of the game. And it had of course a high replay value.

I guess that would really shoot the bird.