[This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Kris Ligman on topics including why the game industry shouldn't live in fear of Penny Arcade, Metro 2033's subtle morality system, and more.] The Kid gets up. She checks her email. She sees the date in the corner – Tuesday, it says. She knows it's that time of the week again, and she ain't puttin' it off any further. It's time, the Kid said. It's time for This Week in Video Game Criticism. It started like this. The good folks at The Border House rounded up all the words worth reading about the Tomb Raider reboot. Yannick LeJacq sat down and spun us a worrying tale of the state of virtual ownership. An' Tina Amini wrote a response to Reality-Breaker McGonigal, on her own experience with a game helpin' bring back a thing she had lost. But it ain't always so good. Someone somewhere's always gotta take up a cause he ain't quite ready for. That's what happened to JP Kellams. But I'll let Mattie Brice do the telling for that story. And the Kid don't mean to start anythin', but while she's on the subject of folks bitin' off more than they can chew, she'll just leave this here:
"Penny Arcade as a brand has grown to monstrous levels and their fan base have displayed such blind devotion to the pair that the video games industry, including game companies and journalists, have become fearful of crossing them. In the past, they have proved their power of crippling people and companies with a mere mention of their disapproval. If a game is featured (for good or bad) in their comic strip, this has more effect on sales than any number of reviews. When their long-standing anger comes bubbling up to the surface, it is a powerful weapon. A weapon that is starting to damage parts of this industry."
Now, the Kid knows a lady by the name of Katie Williams, who you mighta seen 'round these parts pulling the same Crit Distance jobs the Kid does. Well, she and the Kid went to E3 a few weeks back, and Katie came back with some stories of her own to tell about the right condescending folk she found there:
"It's unbelievable that this is still happening. If this is how PR people feel about women's capabilities, no wonder the promotional side of games is so sexist. No wonder marketing people still think it's, on some level, OK to have a trailer feature a man ripping into a band of sexy nuns. No wonder we're seeing it filter down into the developers, who implement in-game achievements for looking up the skirts of 19-year-old women dressed like schoolgirls. No wonder we're watching it filter down into the gamers, who tell the ladies amongst us that they can't possibly know anything about the online games that they play. After all, what proof is there of that when women are not allowed to speak on an authoritative level?"
Stick around – you'll wanna read her follow-up too. Deep in the marshes of Medium Difficulty, the Kid found another kindred spirit: Lana Polansky. Who could put six shots into the word 'censorship' before it hit the dirt:
"What [Beckles]'s saying is that the media which displays problematic material for the sole purpose of using it to entertain, or does so uncritically, has this nasty habit of normalizing or trivializing the thing it is portraying. As a result, this feeds into our perception of those concepts and informs our worldview. This has been true of all human culture since time immemorial. On the other hand, we self-censor all the time. This is not a call to 'bowdlerize' works of existing art—that is to say, have undesirable material actively removed from art by some nominally moral authority that isn't the original author—but an acknowledgement that most or all cultures have taboos, golden rules, and social contracts. Sometimes these exist as a result of hegemonic influence or self-preservation, but just as often they exist because without them the social fabric would be disrupted, members of society would be harmed, and society itself might ultimately devolve into a form of chaos. Part of this includes the act of self-censorship. Sometimes we don't say or do things because we understand them to be harmful, hurtful or destructive. Sometimes we don't tell our friends some of the less-than-gracious things we may be thinking about them to spare their feelings. Tangible or intangible, we do it to avoid negative consequences for ourselves and for those we care about. So why are we getting so worked up about the effects of strong criticism on a larger scale?"
But Lana the Gun isn't done yet. I dunno what a Tentacle Bento is, but Lana knows what it ain't – 'satire'. In life we all make choices. The Kid makes choices – sometimes tough ones. Developers, well, they gotta make their choices too, even if Rohan Verghes thinks they can end up makin' bad ones:
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