This episode is being referred to as gaming’s ‘Reefer Madness’.
Professional Victims Unit
Several weeks ago Lusipurr.com brought readers the rumour that gamers were set to feature in an upcoming episode of of Law & Order: SVU, and boy did that prediction ever come to pass. The episode attempted to make gamers look bad by basically parroting the criticism that has been leveled at us by our Social Justice naysayers, yet when it came to depicting these claims the SVU writers used no kind of discernment in their portrayal – they simply listened to and believed the Anitas and Briannas of the social media world. These people will tell anybody willing to listen that gamers are trying to chase women out of the industry because they hate them, and that gamers are worse than ISIS – and this is precisely what we got with the most recent episode of SVU, Intimidation Game.
Voltaire once famously stated:
“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”
And this is why one simply cannot begrudge this depiction of gamers, even despite all of its intended malice – it is simply too stupid. In the world of SVU female game developers are regularly beaten and groped [referred to as leveling up] at game conventions because male gamers are so in incensed at their mere presence, and said assailants are later able to brag about their endeavours on online forums to the universal acclaim of their peers. In the world of SVU a whitewashed parody of RogueStar, known as Acid Rain, abducts SJW game developer Raina Punjabi [herself an amalgam of Anita and Zoe] in order to teach her a lesson, and goes on to brutally gang rape her with his cronies, which they refer to as reaching level seventeen – a reference to their favourite franchise KOBS. This episode did nothing so much as demonstrate precisely how deranged the views of the Social Justice Tumblr crowd are, and the very icing on the cake of this historically hilarious own-goal came in the final minutes of the episode where a tearful Raina comes to the realisation that she was foolish to try and make it in this man’s world, and unequivocally states that the gamers have won and that she is leaving the industry – *boom-tish*.
The own goals did not finish with the episode itself, as one gamer tweeted the show’s writer, Warren Leight, praising the fictional game Amazon Warriors as an implied insult to Brian Wu’s own game Revolution 60 – Leight mistook this as a genuine compliment and retweeted it, much to the chagrin of the Social Justice mob.
“The Amazonian game already looks better than Revolution 60”
This farcical situation has also finally lead to some prominent game developers throwing caution to the wind by tearing strips from the unprofessional games journalism industry which has been demonising gamers for the better part of six months. Mark Kern, former team lead on World of Warcraft and developer on Starcraft, Warcraft III, and Diablo II, openly called out journalists [and particularly Polygon and Kotaku] on Twitter, stating:
“Just wanted to thank the GAMES journalists who have demonized our hobby and our customers to the mass media. NOT #LawAndOrderSVU @Kotaku
It’s hard enough as devs to make games without your “journalism.” K? Tks. @Polygon @kotaku #LawAndOrderSVU”
He later took to Reddit in order to further clarify:
“I am dismayed that this disagreement among gamers has resulted in a scorched earth policy by a few elements on both sides (and 3rd party trolls) that have made “gaming” a dirty word again…after all the work we’ve done to get past Columbine, Jack Thompson, etc…we really need to find a way to come back to a healthy mutual respect of our differences with an eye towards promoting gaming as the healthy past-time it is.
Thanks for listening and good luck.”
Bioshock‘s Ken Levine then took to Twitter to highlight the absurdity of a show featuring Ice T being used to smear gamers as misogynists:
“Next week on Law and order, they take on violent, misogynistic music industry. Can Detective ICE-T stop the fiends?!”
Finally, one of the writers of Watch_Dogs, Ethan James Petty, took to Twitter in order to affirm his support of gamers, and was promptly harangued by professional attention whore, Brian Wu:
“[Ethan]: I find it *very* clear that GamerGate is not a hate group. That’s a lazy smear tactic and an obvious lie if you look at their diversity.
[Brian]: Hey, @ubisoft. Your Watch Dogs lead writer @EthanJamesPetty doesn’t think Gamergate is a hate group. I’d love to talk http://www.bustle.com/articles/63466-im-brianna-wu-and-im-risking-my-life-standing-up-to-gamergate
[Ethan]: Am I worried about “losing my job” for having an opinion outside of work? Absolutely fucking not. Lets be real, people.
[Brian]: @ethanjamespetty What you don’t understand, Ethan: your terrible, uninformed opinion makes women ask, “Do I want to work for @ubisoft?”
[Ethan]: @Spacekatgal @ubisoft You are ridiculous.”
Perhaps the funniest thing to emerge from this whole sorry episode is the procession of hypocritical games ‘journalists’ who have been wringing their hands over the fact that gamers have made the industry look so bad. Fuck that. Game ‘journalists’ have had control of this narrative every step of the way, and they decided in their infinite wisdom that the best approach to dealing with gamers was to smear them as raging misogynist nerds. Congratulations, fucktards – this industry is now what you have made of it!
Look into my eyes…
Molyneux Gets Decimated
Peter Molyneux’s Godus is a mess. Molyneux took the money of PC gamers, only to prioritise the mobile version of the game ahead of the PC edition, later releasing a broken build on Early Access which is missing most of its planned features. Earlier in the week both Eurogamer and Rock, Paper, Shotgun ran stories exposing the fact that the winner of Peter Molyneux’s Curiosity gamewank has yet to receive his promised rewards, and has not even been contacted by 22 Cans within the last couple of years. He was supposed to serve as the game’s God for a period of time during which he would receive a share of the royalties – something rendered impossible by the game’s current lack of multiplayer. This prompted Molyneux to release a video update where he is seen to essentially wash his hands of Godus. Molyneux and team are moving on to a project tentatively known as The Trail, and are leaving behind a skeleton crew to work on Godus, which is headed up by Konrad, a Godus backer who talked his way onto the team after being so thoroughly dissatisfied with the release of the alpha build.
The release of this video only led to more fallout, which in turn led to Molyneux granting an interview to Rock, Paper, Shotgun – and it is here that something very special happened. Interviewer, John Walker, was prepared for Molyneux’s waffling bullshit, and immediately moved to nail him to the fucking ground, catching him out in lies time and again. One would almost feel sorry for Molyneux if he was not so brazen.
“RPS: Your lead developer on Godus said on your forum that, “To be brutally candid and realistic I simply can’t see us delivering all the features promised on the Kickstarter page. Lots of the multiplayer stuff is looking seriously shaky right now, especially the persistent stuff like Hubworld.”
Peter Molyneux: Well, let me explain that. That was Konrad, and he actually is a backer of Godus.
RPS: A backer who pursued the job at your company because he was so dissatisfied with the state of the game. That’s what he said on your forum.
Peter Molyneux: No. That’s not the case. He actually joined us before we released the version, so that couldn’t have been the case. So Konrad is one of the main architects of multiplayer, and back in late October we – me and Jack – announcing that in November that we would be at last getting through to multiplayer. And Konrad was super excited, we were all super excited, to get on to that. And then in the first week of November our publisher called up and said, well, sorry about this, but the server system that you use called Polargy, we’re going to close down and you need to re-write the entirety of your server code that drives Godus under this new system–
RPS: Just to clarify, five days ago Konrad wrote, “From the minute I played the alpha, I could see the direction Godus was heading in and I didn’t like it. It took half a year to develop contact with Peter personally before I was offered a design position, initially unpaid, and then another year working at 22cans to get a position there.” So just to be clear he says that he played the alpha and didn’t like it and then came to work for you guys.
Peter Molyneux: Yeah. And that’s fair enough. And he did something about it.
RPS: No, but you just told me that he started working for you before the alpha came out so that wasn’t possible.
Peter Molyneux: I think he had had a temporary– He certainly came to the studio– Let me ask. [shouting in background] Konrad!
[in distance] Konrad: Yeah?
Peter Molyneux: When did you first come to 22cans?
Konrad: [inaudible]
Peter Molyneux: December. 2013. Is that– No, that’s not before the alpha.
RPS: No, long after.
Peter Molyneux: I was wrong. But it’s not a lie.”
Molyneux is obviously unfamiliar [and a little taken aback] at actually being nailed for his bullshit. His response to this is to time and again make emotional appeals to try and disarm the interviewer by acting the martyr, a tactic that Walker was having none of:
“Peter Molyneux: And then later on I came out and said it would be six months. And I said that again and again. What are you trying to do? You’re trying to prove that I’m a pathological liar, I suppose, aren’t you.
RPS: I’m trying to establish that you don’t tell the truth.
Peter Molyneux: Let me just ask you one question. Do you think from the line of questioning you’re giving me, that this industry would be better without me?
RPS: I think the industry would be better without your lying a lot.
Peter Molyneux: I don’t think I lie.
RPS: Let me just quote you from the Pocket Gamer–
Peter Molyneux: Well no, and and– Yeah, OK, you can carry on quoting me. Obviously I can see your headline now–
RPS: I don’t think you can see my headline now.
Peter Molyneux: Well I think I can.
RPS: What I want to get out of this–
Peter Molyneux: What you’re almost going to get out of this is driving me out of the industry.
RPS: No, what I want–
Peter Molyneux: And well done John, well done! And if that’s what you want, you’re going about it completely the right way.”
In the interview Molyneux is regularly hammered for asking Kickstarter for less money than he knew he would require for the project, along with not actually employing someone to manage the development and rollout of backer rewards and other such commitments, such as with the winner of Curiosity:
“RPS: No, but it’s frustrating. Let’s go back to Bryan Henderson. The Eurogamer story revealed that you ignored him for nearly two years – that’s awful. And you’ve apologised, but how can that even have ever been a thing that happened?
Peter Molyneux: You’re right, John. It’s wrong. It’s one of those things where I thought someone else was handling it and they were. It was someone – and these are excuses, it’s pointless me writing these excuses – and I thought they were handling it. They left and I assumed incorrectly that they had handed their handling of Bryan off to someone else and they hadn’t.
RPS: But it never crossed your mind to talk to him or anything like that? You were changing his life.
Peter Molyneux: It’s terrible, it’s wrong, it’s bad of me, I shouldn’t have, I should have checked on these things, but there is a million things to check on, John, and that one slipped through. There wasn’t any intention not to use him, or not to incorporate him, but we needed the technology before doing and I am truly sorry and we are writing a letter of apology to him today.
RPS: OK, but only because Eurogamer chased after you.
Peter Molyneux: They, they, they actually did make me realise that I hadn’t checked up on it, it’s true. I am a very flawed human being, as you are pointing out, and I totally accept that I’m a flawed human being.
RPS: Everyone’s a flawed human being, that’s not my point at all.”
Oh, it was incompetence to blame? Well that is alright then! It is so rare to see someone as blithely irresponsible as Peter Molyneux actually being made to give account through some honest to goodness games journalism. Incidentally, Peter Molyneux has subsequently sworn off of giving interviews after being squashed flatter than a pancake. Now if only someone could put John Walker into contact with Tim ‘free money’ Schafer.
This travesty was eminently avoidable.
Capcom Producer Thanks Fans for Making REmake a Record-Breaking Success
Capcom has long been residing over the bizarrely false narrative that horror-based Resident Evil games can no longer be successful in today’s market. This line of thought appears to have taken hold during the GameCube era when Resident Evil 4 was such a smashing success for the company, yet this reading of the situation is not supported by the actual numbers. Viewed in context on the GameCube, Resident Evil 0 and the Resident Evil remake sold four-hundred thousand and under three-hundred thousand copies fewer than Resident Evil 4 respectively. There is every reason to believe that if these games had been released to the PS2 then they would have performed proportionally well, especially given the performance of Resident Evil‘s re-release on PSN.
This week the Resident Evil remake’s producer, Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, has thanked fans for helping the game set sales records on PSN. The game is PSN’s highest ever selling digital release, and it was the month’s top selling PS3 and PS4 release. For the first time in a long while there is the faintest glimmer of hope that Capcom may see this stunning success and realise that is a genuine appetite for this sort of game, though as Lusipurr.com’s Mel points out this may just convince them that there is an appetite for lazy re-releases.
