The best FPPs are the ones that eat up 12 hours of your life

September 6, 2010 11:09 PM

Ice Pick Lodge is a game design studio renowned for its experimental narratives and its championing of loftier ideals in gaming. Its second game, The Void (link goes to Steam), was released in 2009 to critical acclaim. Quintin Smith writes about it in two articles at RockPaperShotgun, first with a review of the game, and then with a piece defending Ice Pick's use of nudity as artistic. (It's worth mentioning that Smith introduced Ice Pick Lodge to a larger audience with his brilliant three part article defending Pathologic.) Don't have the time or patience for The Void? CannibalK9 of SomethingAwful has you covered with a thorough Let's Play that covers the entire game in twenty-two lengthy videos (not counting the hour-and-forty-minutes two-video finale), expertly narrated, thoroughly examining every aspect of the game, including Easter eggs.

I know that's an exhausting amount of gameplay (though I'd like to restate how much CannibalK9's narration helps make the game fly by), so while you're reeling and exhausted, might I point you to the Let's Play Archive, wherein hundreds of games are narrated for your pleasure? There's the famous Boatmurdered recently mentioned on the blue; SA user Chewbot's LPs of Oregon Trail and Animal Crossing are among the funniest things you can find online, with the latter in particular standing out as just being astonishingly clever and hilarious; and if you haven't got enough of Ice Pick Lodge, there's an ongoing Let's Play of Pathologic that's almost finished the game with one of three characters.

To get some sense of how much time and effort the creators of these LP threads put into their playthroughs: That Pathologic LP started in December 2008 and was last updated in August 2010, and that thread spans 51 forum pages.

posted by Rory Marinich (43 comments total)

CannibalK9 is doing a fine job there. Thanks for posting this!
posted by nostrada at 11:57 PM on September 6, 2010

What's with this obsession that some people in the video game industry seem to have with artistic credibility? I don't mean to say that games are not art, but rather a lot of people in the industry seem kind of obsessed with arguing that they are. You hear a lot of talk about whether or not a game elevates video games as an art form, or whether or not they are bad examples that harm 'the cause' somehow.

But the video games industry is one of the largest entertainment industries out there. Bigger then music by far, and top selling games make more money then top selling movies. I don't understand why there's so much concern over this
posted by delmoi at 12:24 AM on September 7, 2010

Thanks. I don't know that I would have ever seen this.
posted by eyeballkid at 12:28 AM on September 7, 2010

There's concern over video games as art because there are respectable, intelligent people like Roger Ebert making categorical statements like "I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art". Nearly a century after a urinal came to be known as a landmark piece of art, it's baffling to understand what video games as a medium have to do to be considered in the same league. I've been made to laugh, cry, experience joy, aesthetic beauty, and wonder at the hands of video games. If there's any aspect of art which is not embodied in [certain] video games, I don't know what it is.

There are people who are making games that exist as much to be experienced as played, the same way an interactive installation piece might be, and to deny that those people are artists because they're in an industry that (at the top echelons) makes a lot of money is like saying paintings can't be art because Thomas Kincade licenses his shlock to Hallmark. The mere fact that people want to make sure that video games can be recognized by art implies that they see what they do as a form of artistry, and the people making broad-brush denials that video games can be art are like the early detractors of electronic music saying that if you're making the noise on a computer or a circuit, it's not really music.

Bottom line: if you care about innovation in human art, and I think you should, then you should care about denials of the potential of video games as art.
posted by 0xFCAF at 12:54 AM on September 7, 2010 [7 favorites]

I did not enjoy The Void. In fact, I actively disliked it, and uninstalled after an hour or so. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:52 AM on September 7, 2010

There's concern over video games as art because there are respectable, intelligent people like Roger Ebert making categorical statements like "I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art".

So what? What difference does it make? I don't see why a few comments from random people can have such an impact on the 'psyche' of an industry. My guess is that it's because video games are kind of new and in the beginning they were attacked by 'mainstream' society. But those days are over, and Video games are part of main stream society and played by many, if not most people (Especially if you consider how many people farmville)

I did not enjoy The Void. In fact, I actively disliked it, and uninstalled after an hour or so. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.

I'm finding the walk through videos kind of interesting. But the narrator makes the point that when he started there was a lot he didn't actually know about how to play the game. I'm finding the plot rather interesting. But the mechanics make it look difficult.
posted by delmoi at 2:18 AM on September 7, 2010

I've been spending a lot of time at the LP Archive. I grew up with Macintosh computers instead of PC, and other than the Gameboy I didn't have a console until the PS2 (though I eventually did play a lot of Super Nintendo games on emulator). Consequently, I missed out on a lot of historically-important, or at least interesting, games. And then there's games that are more recent, but that I never got around to playing for one reason or another, or never finished.

The LP archive is terrific for playing catch-up -- the screenshot LPs are great for in-bed reading on the iPad, and I've been watching video LPs on my second monitor while working on hobby stuff.

Some particular recommendations:
Blade Runner (screenshot)
Cave Story (video)
Yahtzee's Chzo Mythos games (screenshot)
Devil May Cry 3 (video)
La Mulana (video)
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (video -- if you only watch one, watch this one)
Snatcher (video)
System Shock 2 (video)
Uncharted (video, same guys that did MGS3)
posted by rifflesby at 3:11 AM on September 7, 2010 [6 favorites]

What's with this obsession that some people in the video game industry seem to have with artistic credibility?

It's the same as students working on their art degrees. Some of them do art - far more are obsessed with artistic credibility. Obsession with artistic credibility is The Holy Spirit of the trinity of what makes us human.

(Opposable thumbs are The Father and Currency is The Son.)
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 3:30 AM on September 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

I have a friend who totally doesn't get why I would spend time watching video of someone else playing a video game, so let me expound on my previous post a little:

Some games are old, and there's basically no way I could get them to run on my Mac Pro, yet they're something I'm interested in seeing (Blade Runner, Snatcher) or are basically a must-have-played (System Shock 2). So the LP lets me more-or-less experience something I otherwise couldn't.

Some games I could play, but I'm not very good at that sort of game, and it would be time-intensive and stressful. Alternately, I can watch someone who knows what they're doing play it for me -- like AccountingNightmare, who is a goddamn master of Devil May Cry 3, and she makes it look effortless on the hardest difficulty setting. It's a sight to behold.

For some games, the LPer brings a lot of extra knowledge to the table -- in the aforementioned Blade Runner LP, Scorchy is very familiar not just with the game, but also the movie and the novel, so he is able to provide additional insight into the plots of all three of them.

And then there's the ones that are just pure entertainment -- in the MGS3 LP, you've got one guy (Chip Cheezum) who is extremely knowledgeable about the game and all its ins, outs, and easter-eggs, and another guy (Ironicus) who has never played it before, and so is surprised and confused by all the surprising and confusing things that happen. And they're both very funny guys. It's just tremendous value for your entertainment dollar, so to speak.
posted by rifflesby at 3:39 AM on September 7, 2010

The video games as art meme is hardly as new as Roger Ebert. It is, rather, continuous with a nearly century-old effort to attain cultural respectability for a wide variety of "geeky" hobbies and lifestyle choices, notably science fiction - and ultimately respectability for geek identity itself. Science Fiction, after all, is notable for the way it created its own market and system of nurturing writers outside of the literary mainstream - going back to the magazines and letter-writing networks of the 1930s (Lovecraft, for one, wrote more than 100,000 letters in his lifetime, often in support of or communication with other marginalized writers like himself).

It is also no accident that many of Atari's early marketing campaigns featured slick dudes in leisure suits with a Chanel-clad babe on one arm and a scotch in hand, playing Pong or what-have-you in a swank 70s wood-veneer parlor. This was intended to communicate that video games were "classy" and cool in that inimitable 70s California way - and thereby to dilute the childish, nerdy, image of the midway.

Bushnell wanted to be geeky, AND hip. Gamers have had a chip on their shoulder about cultural respectability ever since.
posted by macross city flaneur at 3:54 AM on September 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

By the way, Bushnell's effort to class-up the amusements industry was heavily influenced by the self-presentation of the RAND scientists in the 1950s and 60s, who, through a series of profiles in, for instance, Life Magazine - tried to create an image of the scientific-industrial complex that was California cool. These profiles showed America's physicists and military strategists sitting around in ranch-style homes filled with the most modern furniture, smoking cigarrettes in their sock-feet (then an UBER cool thing to do) and discussing the possibility of nuclear apocalypse (danger is way cool).

The scientists at RAND were highly aware of the counter-culture and wanted badly to be seen as hip as artists and intellectuals.
posted by macross city flaneur at 4:02 AM on September 7, 2010 [2 favorites]

a few comments from random people

I'm not a gamer: I rarely play games, I rarely read about them, I almost never talk about them. However, that line above is a massive understatement. It's a staggering understatement. It's so, so, so much more than a few comments from random people - even non-gamer me can see that.

People want their work that they work hard on and believe in and take seriously, to be taken seriously. What's surprising about that?
posted by smoke at 4:28 AM on September 7, 2010

As with other forms of art, games are supposed to generate conversation. And they do, for instance in those Rock Paper Shotgun posts, and those Let's Play videos.

The creators are concerned about that conversation. If you fail to generate conversation with your game, that suggests you did a bad job of it. Some creators aspire to direct the conversation, to make people ask difficult questions and argue over the answers.

When Roger Ebert convinces vast swathes of people that video games are not to be taken seriously (simply by being Roger Ebert and saying that games are not art), it's likely that some of the people he's convinced to stay away are people who would have contributed something good to the conversation. Artists really hate that.
posted by LogicalDash at 4:43 AM on September 7, 2010 [3 favorites]

What's with this obsession that some people in the video game industry seem to have with artistic credibility? I don't mean to say that games are not art, but rather a lot of people in the industry seem kind of obsessed with arguing that they are.

Honestly, it's this facet of this whole argument that baffles me the most. "Why are these people saying what they are thinking?" Uh, isn't that what people do?
posted by dudekiller at 4:53 AM on September 7, 2010

Your own character, your soul, must constantly be fed if you want to survive.

Ugh, I actively avoid games where you have to feed your characters. Life is too small to feed both yourself and a virtual character...

unless we're talking roguelikes.
posted by ersatz at 5:47 AM on September 7, 2010

When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it Art ?"
posted by empath at 5:56 AM on September 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

I will have to check these out. A few years ago I had a period where I was watching Amiga 500 "long play" videos on youtube, but the idea of adding narration sounds great.
posted by Theta States at 7:20 AM on September 7, 2010

I will never forget the ten hours I spent playing The Void. It wasn't very fun at times, but it left me with a powerful impression, unlike anything I've ever experienced before.

One can't really describe much of it without spoiling it. Best to play it tabula rasa and struggle with its unforgiving world.
posted by mammary16 at 7:26 AM on September 7, 2010

I had come across some of these. Specifically the Sonic the Hedgehog ones. The cussing was gratuitous, stupid, juvenile and boring in those ones.
posted by Trochanter at 7:59 AM on September 7, 2010

I gave The Void an honest try, I can say that much. I found it a bit too opaque and unforgiving to keep going. (I made it as far as the first "boss" battle and realized that I was woefully unprepared for it, due to not knowing I was supposed to be preparing for anything to begin with or even how to. It's that sort of game.)

There's definitely a tasty nut of a game hiding in The Void's shell, but it's up to the player to find it and dig it out. While doing this, you will be alone in more ways than one. This is not necessarily a condemnation, just a warning.
posted by The Lurkers Support Me in Email at 8:10 AM on September 7, 2010

What's with this obsession that some people in the video game industry seem to have with artistic credibility? [...] You hear a lot of talk about whether or not a game elevates video games as an art form, or whether or not they are bad examples that harm 'the cause' somehow.

I assume it's because there are people who are, still, too quick to dismiss video games as being completely devoid of merit — compared to, say, movies — and people who make games are understandably defensive about that. There are a lot of ways in which an interactive game should give the creator more artistic freedom than the not only non-interactive, but also fairly tradition-bound, world of 2D cinema does. However, there are games people who feel as though they don't get the respect their craft deserves.

Doesn't seem like a new thing, though. I think a good analogy would be photography versus traditional visual art (painting, especially) in the late 19th into the mid 20th century. There was a long period (broken up by wars and a number of big shifts in the art world) where photography worked its way up into a respectable art form. Today, I doubt you'd find many credible people who would come out and say that photography isn't, or can't be, "art" in the same way that a painting is (although there are certainly shitty photographs, just like there are shitty paintings). Eventually, I suspect that games will achieve the same status.

But in the same way that you can go back and find photographs and photographers who displayed a certain amount of self-consciousness as they were working out their relationship to traditional visual arts, I suspect that eventually you'll be able to go back and point to certain games which display a lot of self-consciousness, even discomfort, with their own medium compared to that of cinema. (Although I'm not totally convinced of it, I've heard people make the argument that the pre-rendered cutscene is one example of this, and that its demise in favor of game mechanics which don't require the player to step back from the controls and become a passive observer while a deus ex machina takes over, will be a necessary next step in the evolution of interactive games as their own medium.)
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:30 AM on September 7, 2010

The juvenile, stupid, gratuitous cussing in the Sonic the Hedgehog ones was the entire point of the joke. (It's not a very good joke, but it's still done with some self-awareness.)

Don't tar all Let's Plays with that brush.
posted by Fraxas at 9:41 AM on September 7, 2010

My favorite Let's Plays:

Let's Play DnD - Not a videogame, but uses software for a map and player tiles, etc. Good fun, since there are lots of people involved, compared to a videogame LP, and because tabletop RPGs require interaction between players.

Giant Bomb's "Endurance Runs" for Persona 4 (my favorite) and Deadly Premonition (the Vinny and Jeff "VJ" ones are much better than the Brad and Ryan "BR" ones). Click the "Endurance Run" tab under the "Videos" tab.
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 10:17 AM on September 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

It's not a very good joke

Very much so, and it just kept going. Every once in a while, he would drop the pose for a moment, and the clever young fellow underneath would appear, whom I would have enjoyed listening to.

I guess I came off too strong, though, because the walkthroughs were quite fun to watch in a nostalgic way.
posted by Trochanter at 10:23 AM on September 7, 2010

I've always thought games should have a mode where they play themselves. That way you could see the whole thing unfold as in a "Let's Play," but firsthand. This should be mandatory like dvd commentaries on dvds.
posted by jcruelty at 10:32 AM on September 7, 2010

This reminds me I really need to go back and give the Void another go. Like other people I kind of gave up when I found it too difficult (it doesn't help I am genuinely awful at games despite it being a major time sink of mine).

I do think The Void needs to be difficult to work though. I'm not going to engage too much with the whole art debate, but I will say it is one of the few games that has made me feel part of the world through game mechanics (as opposed to plot). As mentioned you have to feed your character to survive and scarecity means you constantly feel the despiration involved in this act and almost experience hunger in a way.

The LP archive is indeed excellent. My current favourite (or at least most impressive) won't be up there for a while (if ever); SA's Grey Hunter is playing War in the Pacific . This is a highly grognardy strategic wargame about guess what, where one turn represents one day.

He started on dec 7th last year.

He is posting one turn a day.
posted by Erberus at 11:35 AM on September 7, 2010

What's with this obsession that some people in the video game industry seem to have with artistic credibility?

There are still too many social circles in which people look down their noses at an adult whose hobby is playing video games. People who wouldn't consider criticizing an adult whose hobby is watching baseball games or playing golf or collecting stamps.

Those of us who think video games are at least as worthwhile as movies or television or sports or a whole bunch of other hobbies that count as acceptable adult behavior think it's past time for people who look down their noses at video games to be met with the same eye-rolling as someone who self-righteously announces he doesn't own a television.
posted by straight at 11:49 AM on September 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

"The Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing" one deserved it's own thread.
posted by yoHighness at 1:10 PM on September 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

The Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing" one deserved its own thread.

This.

After following the link, I read the whole thing in one gulp, weeping with laughter, well past my bedtime. It's one of the most entertaining things I've ever read on the topic of video games.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 1:14 PM on September 7, 2010

Sadly, it seems to be behind a paywall now.
posted by Trochanter at 2:04 PM on September 7, 2010

It's true: American video games are increasingly on a similar level of quality with American films. Also sad.

And yes, let's call out film for being "tradition-bound" while we play the 20th or 30th Mario game in our collection. Let's also please remember that films have been 3D since the 19th century.

I swear, the day I hear someone call out real life as passe and boring because you can't FLY, like you can in the awesomez gamez, I am going to have to seriously consider checking myself into an asylum, because my own conception of reality will be so different from the norm that it will qualify me as stark-raving mad.
posted by macross city flaneur at 10:09 PM on September 7, 2010

the same eye-rolling as someone who self-righteously announces he doesn't own a television.

I'm an avid player of video games (note I didn't say gamer), but I also recognize that the childishness, rampant misogyny, and lack of emotional, political, or sensuous sophistication in most games all qualify them as an immature form.

If you are more concerned about people's attitudes towards gamers than you are gamers' attitudes towards people, you deserve to be looked down on.
posted by macross city flaneur at 10:18 PM on September 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

"The Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing" [...] seems to be behind a paywall now.

It's archived here for posterity. However I think the last few on that site are non-canonical, and aren't done using real screencaps, but instead just (quite impressive) drawings.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:33 PM on September 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

I assume it's because there are people who are, still, too quick to dismiss video games as being completely devoid of merit — compared to, say, movies — and people who make games are understandably defensive about that.

Not defensive enough to reflect critically on the need to make more games with themes that go beyond power fantasy and escapism, and bring them to market.

After all, isn't it much easier to turn the judgment of games and gamers into some kind of horrible stigma?

Tsk. So many groups made up of predominantly white males are persecuted in our society today, it makes me wonder when the gamer holocaust is coming. Cinema uber alles!
posted by macross city flaneur at 10:33 PM on September 7, 2010

The video games as art meme is hardly as new as Roger Ebert. It is, rather, continuous with a nearly century-old effort to attain cultural respectability for a wide variety of "geeky" hobbies and lifestyle choices, notably science fiction

Century old? I can see this going back to D&D in, when, the 1970s? And by the way Ebert is a huge sci-fi and even Anime fan. I would hardly call him an anti-geek.

People want their work that they work hard on and believe in and take seriously, to be taken seriously. What's surprising about that?

Lots of people do take them seriously. I don't see why it has to be everyone. I'm sure there are people who, for example, don't take episodic television seriously as an art form, but you never hear people get defensive about whether or not LOST is just a tedious mind game or Mad Men is just a classed up soap opera. At least not to the extent you do with video games.

When Roger Ebert convinces vast swathes of people that video games are not to be taken seriously (simply by being Roger Ebert and saying that games are not art), it's likely that some of the people he's convinced to stay away are people who would have contributed something good to the conversation. Artists really hate that.

I don't really understand that. There are millions of people who spend countless hours conversing about video games on the Internet. There's no shortage of people who want to talk about games. To talk about video games, you have to play video games and no one (or at least very few people) are going to say to themselves "You know, I was going to play bioshock but Roger Ebert says that Games are not art so I'm going to go back to watching TV.

But anyway, I just disagree with your theory. It doesn't make sense to me that 'artists' are so worried about 'the conversation' not being good if people don't all think of "Games" as "art" It's not enough to explain the kind of paranoia.

There are still too many social circles in which people look down their noses at an adult whose hobby is playing video games. People who wouldn't consider criticizing an adult whose hobby is watching baseball games or playing golf or collecting stamps.

I'm sure you can find people who would look down on all those things.

---

I'm an avid player of video games (note I didn't say gamer), but I also recognize that the childishness, rampant misogyny, and lack of emotional, political, or sensuous sophistication in most games all qualify them as an immature form.

I've been playing Starcraft II lately but I really had to just laugh at how (spoiler alert), er, male-centric the plot was. I mean. The 'main' plot thread is literally to: save the universe from your psycho ex-grlfriend. Another plot thread (which I played first) is to save 'colonists' from a zerg infestation, but the colonists leader is a hot chick who falls in love with you after you save her people. All the female characters are totally one dimensional, while the male main characters get much more play and complexity (I mean not a lot, but you at least don't always know their motivation)
posted by delmoi at 2:39 AM on September 8, 2010

Not defensive enough to reflect critically on the need to make more games with themes that go beyond power fantasy and escapism, and bring them to market.

The Void might be pretty but it's certainly not an escape from male power fantasy. I mean, from what I've seen so far of the videos it's almost a pure distillation of it. It almost reminds me of Dave Sim's crazy ranting. I mean, he called women the void and men "the Light". And in the void women take sustenance from your male (complete with visible penis) avatar's life force.

But the void (the game) also portrays men negatively, as monsters (the brothers). It's interesting and I'm watching some more of the videos. But this is clearly not a feminist work of art (at least not that I've seen so far). It almost seems like an abstract (and interactive) dramatization of a fucked up relationship.
posted by delmoi at 2:49 AM on September 8, 2010

I'm an avid player of video games (note I didn't say gamer), but I also recognize that the childishness, rampant misogyny, and lack of emotional, political, or sensuous sophistication in most games all qualify them as an immature form.


Favourited so hard.
posted by Theta States at 6:12 AM on September 8, 2010

delmoi: "I've been playing Starcraft II lately but I really had to just laugh at how (spoiler alert), er, male-centric the plot was. I mean. The 'main' plot thread is literally to: save the universe from your psycho ex-grlfriend. Another plot thread (which I played first) is to save 'colonists' from a zerg infestation, but the colonists leader is a hot chick who falls in love with you after you save her people. All the female characters are totally one dimensional, while the male main characters get much more play and complexity (I mean not a lot, but you at least don't always know their motivation)"

Yeah, I enjoyed playing the single player of Starcraft II, but I knew I was in for an awful cliche-fest space western when the main character shot out the television in the first cutscene. I enjoy it but it's b-grade scifi, at best.
posted by graventy at 6:20 AM on September 8, 2010

Well, I watched the whole LP series. I thought the narration was excellent, except for the very end, where I grew impatient with the discussion and was put off by the choice made regarding it. But overall, entertaining.
posted by Menthol at 12:52 PM on September 8, 2010

I'm an avid player of video games (note I didn't say gamer), but I also recognize that the childishness, rampant misogyny, and lack of emotional, political, or sensuous sophistication in most games all qualify them as an immature form.

I am very concerned about the rampant misogyny in our culture, but to pin it specifically on video games is exactly the crap I was complaining about.

Here is a list of games I've been playing in the last several months: Mirror's Edge, Torchlight, Deus Ex, Mario Sunshine, Myst Uru, Plants Vs Zombies, Burnout Paradise, Caster, Defense Grid, Fuel, Far Cry 2, Mercenaries 2, Penny Arcade: Rainslick Precipice of Darkness, Endlesss Ocean 2, Beyond Good & Evil, Titan Quest, Trine, Zelda: Wind Waker, LEGO Star Wars, Aaaa...aaaA, A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Alien Swarm, Robotron, And Yet it Moves, Donkey Kong Country 2, Audiosurf, Bookworm Adventures 2, Trackmania United, Crimsonland, Chromadrome 2, Warning Forever, Irukandji, Research & Development, Every Extend, Everyday Shooter, Peggle, 7 Wonders the Treasures of Seven, Ikaruga, Progear, ESP RaDe, rRootage, Cho Ren Sha 68K, Gyromancer, Sin & Punishment 2

I defy you to find misogyny in that list of games that is remotely as bad as the commercials in any given hour of prime time television.

And sure, most of these lack "emotional, political, or sensuous sophistication," but so do golf, football, skiing, hiking, stamp collecting, most TV shows and movies, most popular music, and a host of other things adults do for fun.
posted by straight at 1:28 PM on September 8, 2010

I am very concerned about the rampant misogyny in our culture, but to pin it specifically on video games is exactly the crap I was complaining about.

I do not think they were pinning all misogyny on video games. More that video games seldom transcend basic misogyny.

It's not about which is worse, but finding any games that are actually redemptive and don't just rely on misogyny as a design crutch.
posted by Theta States at 2:14 PM on September 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

My point is there are lots of games without any misogyny (there are plenty of games without any gendered characters at all) and to smear all video games as misogynist is like saying all TV is misogynist or all movies are misogynist.
posted by straight at 3:21 PM on September 8, 2010

I'm an avid player of video games (note I didn't say gamer)

Can you explain the distinction? I don't understand the point you're trying to make, there.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:18 PM on September 8, 2010