You’re right; I have been unclear. Allow me to try to clarify.

My issue is specifically with the headline here using the word “political.” This implies, whether by design or accident, that this inclusion in the game is BioWare specifically making a political stance to push some sort of politically-motivated agenda.

This is, 100%, not the case.

BioWare is a subsidiary of EA; the only agenda they care about is making money. This is not making some kind of political statement; this is pandering to ensure free media coverage and to attempt to appeal to what they see as a currently valuable demographic. Fucking blast them to hell for that, blast them to hell for their poor writing—whatever. But calling this political is doing exactly what I stated before: allowing the conversation to happen on the terms of gamergate/right-wingers who insist that anything in the entire fucking world that doesn’t specifically cater to their own individual interests is somehow inherently “political.”

edit: typos

I understand that, but my point is that there is no shortage of shoehorned comic relief characters, or awkwardly placed fanservice, etc. Critique the actual fault at play, bad writing, rather than letting the gamergate right-wing nutsos have the benefit of having the conversation on their terms. Make the headline “DA:tV falls short in the writing department, here are some examples” and include the flimsy way the character is written as the valid critique. Games are going to pander to us, that is what I was saying; when we place special emphasis on this particular type of pandering all we’re doing is letting the right define the conversations we’re having.

I guess I should add that I’m not speaking to this game specifically since I’ve never played it. I really enjoyed Dragon Age: Origins but frankly felt like I got everything I needed of the world from it and haven’t been interested in any of the sequels. So I won’t be playing DA: The Veilguard, but that reason has absolutely fuck all to do with the inclusion of any social politics.

I feel like I have a outside the norm third-take opinion on this topic, tbh.

I think including the hot social topic of the day often time is pandering.

But I also don’t think pandering is a problem. The muscles on the main character is also pandering. When McDonald’s does market research and then releases a new product, that is pandering.

Games are a sales industry; they are going to pander to potential buyers, period.

So yes, a potentially trans-centric storyline in a game is unnecessary. But so is including a longsword, or a tavern, or a comic relief character. Unnecessary doesn’t mean bad; all of those things are likely only adding to the depth and value of the game.

So all this to say that when crazy right-wingers talk about SJWs and pandering and all that nonsense don’t waste your time trying to fight them on the irrelevant bits - go ahead and acknowledge the pandering aspect and fight the real fight by telling them it’s not negative pandering and minorities deserve to be pandered to and represented just as much as anyone else. They just don’t recognize the market targeting the white male demographic as pandering because it is the sphere of normal under which they operate.

The whole thing is full of that kind of “drink their own kool-aid” propagandist thinking. It’s wild they expect anyone to take them seriously here.

I blame Meta. My Oculus Rift CV1 was working great until some random software update and now for some reason it won’t read my sensors as being connected via USB3.0 cable despite them being so, instantly rendering my expensive VR device a giant paper weight.

I’m still salty about Oculus starting out crowdfunded then selling to Facebook. What a fucking betrayal.

I can’t speak to the new update, but the pre-relesae version lets you face and beat the main boss multiple times just like in Hades 1. However (and I’m trying to avoid spoilers here), there is a “second path” in Hades 2 that didn’t exist in Hades 1 which currently only allows you to get partway through before you receive a “thanks for playing Hades 2!” win screen obscuring the rest of the game.

Random guess, I’d say the game is like 60-70% playable to players right now, but as the game is larger it’s already close to equivalent to Hades 1.

No monopoly, other storefront exist and Valve isn’t performing aggressive anti-consumer actions to try and stifle them. Valve is simply offering the best product, so it is the most popularly, but the field is still very much open for any other good guy that wants to sweep in and make an honest living in the field.

Exactly this. My steam account is 20 years old and I have effectively no complaints with Steam or Valve. Are they a profit-driven corporation who will thus still make profit-driven decisions? Sure. But Valve has never specifically done wrong by me, and in fact has a number of times gone against the trend to maintain their status as a comparative good guy.

Far as I’m concerned, Valve is one of the best, most trustworthy corporations I know.

We ain’t a monolith bro, and you don’t speak for me

Deservedly so, imo

Meanwhile I have 3000+ hours in Civ6…

I will give Eric/ConcernedApe all of the patience and grace he asks for. Man is a good guy and legend of game development.

Fr. Even if CA stopped development on SDV today and never developed another game, he would still be a legend in my book for the amount of love and talent put into SDV. Stardew is without question simply one of the best returns on investment (it’s only $15!) available in gaming.

I’m expecting an animated show that uses the characters as props, basically like if Robot Chicken was a single setting show instead of a variety program

Ah, I looked it up. I watched TNG growing up with my dad, but it was so distant to be very hazy in my memories.

DS9 was my Trek.

I don’t get this reference.

Conversational language should inherently be different than journalistic prose. It was considered good form (really necessary form) for the vast majority of my life to fully define any non-ubiquitous terms in the text before using them. It only seems recently to me, and especially in games journalism, that they’ve decided to eschew the defining part of the process and just give the reference undefined.

Like it’s okay, useful even, to say things like “Like ARK, Palworld utilizes X mechanic to achieve Y by doing Z.” That’s a great way to use a touchpoint for increased clarity to readers! But to just say “Palworld’s combat is ARK-like,” without defining what ARK-like is, is lazy and unhelpful to anyone outside the know already.

God I wish we could force game journalism to never use to comparison again. It’s basically impossible these days to parse the media on any given game without having to know an entire library of previous games first.

In this case, I know Bioshock, but my point still stands. Remember when Palworld came out? It was effectively impossible to find any review/preview/commentary on the game that didn’t include something like “Palworld isn’t a Pokemon-like, it’s actually ARK with cute pals,” which is worth exactly fuck all to anyone who isn’t familiar with ARK.

Like I know we’ve been calling games journalism lazy for a long time, but it’s gotten to the point where people don’t even talk about game features or mechanics, they just list a bunch of other games with similar ideas instead.

Fuck, I might even prefer crappy ChatGPT articles to modern game discourse.

Important caveat: I did not watch the video and am only responding to the headline which clearly got under my skin for some reason, apparently.

Blizzard has been dead for at least a decade. Anyone who is still interacting with the ghoul that is inhabiting Blizzard’s corpse is a fool.