Consent in Gaming (ft Tim Schafer)
Added 2023-02-06 21:18:02 +0000 UTCHey all! I did a new video discussing consent in video games over on Gamespot. It’s another fun video that I did a lot of interviews for; including Tim Schafer himself! I’m rather proud of this one and I’d love comments and your thoughts ❤️, especially considering sadly there’s always the not-so-nice ones over on gamer sites, especially the transphobic ones today for… reasons.
Comments
Great video as always, Jessie! A note on the Sims 4 sexuality thing - to my knowledge, most players didn't take issue because they didn't want to see gay representation in their games. I would argue that the player base is pretty queer, though there are bigots in every fandom. Usually the outrage is aimed at EA's poor execution of a new feature. In the communities I hang around in, it was because sims went from basically being pansexual to being completely uninterested in anyone by default unless you manually changed their orientation in CAS. As I understood it at the time, EA added sexual orientation but didn't assign any orientations to existing sims, so they were set to none rather than both, or exclusively women or men. At least, that was the complaint I saw in the days following the patch. Players were upset that it made storytelling a bit more tricky without their intervention and wanted to go back to the original default or turn off the new feature. I'm not sure if it's been patched since or if it's something that MC Command Center fixed, because I had no problems having my lady teen vampire sim take Cassandra Goth to prom this week. As with most things EA adds to The Sims, it was a good idea with poor execution at first, similar to how they/them pronouns were grammatically incorrect in game for a while and made for awkward popups like, "They is doing satisfactory work at school." Or how neighborhood stories (still) make families infinitely spawn babies and pets so that you end up with households full of babies and dogs all over the place. ETA: In the most recent patch they added medical devices, but it takes up an accessory slot, so if you give your sim hearing aids, your sim can't wear earrings. It's a game that I have almost 6000 hours in, but man do they create more bugs every time they change something and it's usually up to modders to fix them.
Comrade Cat Lady
2023-02-07 16:31:36 +0000 UTCI think the problem might be that it's on Gamespot's channel, so Gamespot's team is likely handling comment moderation. Gaming can, unfortunately, attract a certain type of unsavory character.
Comrade Cat Lady
2023-02-07 15:58:07 +0000 UTCI've also been a lot more aware of "my" actions in games in VR... Beware minor spoilers, and unspecific mention of self harm and mental health in the rest of this comment. Two experiences stick out (neither involving sex): The first was my first play through of Super Hot VR, where to proceed past a point early in the game you have to "jack out" of the stylized world you are in via self harm. I stopped, took the headset off, and really took a self inventory; is this something I am willing to do in a game? Am I sure this won't trigger anything in me IRL? I did eventually continue, but I was honestly glad when after some introspection the devs patched it out a few months later. The other experience was playing Firewatch in VR through a mod. It's a very linear game; you begin the game separated from your wife who suffers from a degenerative mental disorder. About halfway through the game I really started to question how reliable my experiences are as a narrator, and wondered if the devs were going to spin it around to where I was actually the one with the disorder. I again, had to stop and really assess where I, personally, was in a way I haven't ever felt I needed to while gaming on a monitor...
Newsom J Gibson
2023-02-07 04:19:21 +0000 UTCDo you have someone moderating your comments for you? Honestly I would consider getting a friend or someone to delete and block toxic accounts. It's less of a toll on them (especially if they're cis) than it is on you. At the very least I hope you're making good use of the block button to weed out repeat offenders.
Violet
2023-02-07 04:00:15 +0000 UTCI had wondered if you were going to discuss consent in multi-player games, but I can see clearly why you didn't bring that into this particular video; this was a tight set, and it would have been a distraction that took away from the "this is a good thing" message and tone. In particular, the steps that Meta has taken in Horizon in response to virtual assault (starting with a togglable personal space bubble), and also the Fallout 76 Enclave group that took RPing policing toxic behavior too far to the point that it itself was toxic.
Newsom J Gibson
2023-02-07 03:59:09 +0000 UTCAbsolutely excellent video. Really well thought out, and did a great job of explaining your thesis. The comments were already toxic; I'm really sorry on behalf of men...
Newsom J Gibson
2023-02-07 03:40:55 +0000 UTCWatching this now. Glad to see you getting some crossover views.
Newsom J Gibson
2023-02-07 02:14:58 +0000 UTC
