Hi! I'm a tech guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS and science of all stripes. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.
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I love old people ! (although none of them were really that old) The oldest lady, with the white hair, was the best !
I definitely appreciated the one lady’s rather intrigued-sounding “[criminal?] Well, I’ve never been one of them before…” reaction. That definitely sounded like an expression of the role-player’s instinct: “Hey, it might be fun to spend some time in someone else’s shoes!”
Generally, though, I have to admit to being more Saints’ Row IV than GTAV. It kinda removes the “…but must want to play as a cis het masculine male and take the whole thing at least somewhat seriously” vibe. When GTA lets me play as a big ol’ fruit with makeup to complement the beard and high heels (and a feminine French-accented voice while playing as a quasi-dude…), I might go cross-franchise. (…and yes, this kinda contradicts the sentiment of the last sentence of the previous paragraph, but I could go off on why I’m OK with that.)
Well, I’m nearly 50, and a ladeebrain to boot, so I’m pretty far outside their target demographic, but I’ll still get and play the game when I can afford it (i.e., several months from now at the earliest). I quite liked San Andreas, and this is back to the same milieu.
I’ve tried to get into GTA Games, but generally I get bored very quickly because I start killing random people and then the game becomes me vs the cops for the next five hours before I lose interest. I know because this is what’s happened in every game of GTA I’ve ever played (very rarely over the years). I recently went through Saints Row III (thanks to an online friend at the time who got it for me) and it was actually pretty fun for a bit, until I got to the part that the game starts, then I just killed a few people and kept killing the cops that ran after me. Usually that’s how I lose interest; I just start randomly causing murder and mayhem in completely unpredictable ways and then the cops chase me down and I just keep dying over and over, but not after taking out a few hundred cops and infantry or something like this. I usually can’t keep enough of a focus for these types of games. I could for the first Morrowind though =)
Also, when I heard the term Saints Row, after playing Saints Row III, this is what I thought of-and the video and music are mismatched but still go very good together.
I’m from a weird demographic, about midway between the “elders” in this video, and, say, you. I don’t have a lot of experience with console games, but I remember playing Castle Wolfenstein and Duke Nukem when they were new, but I was already a grown adult at that point.
What amazes me from a sociological perspective about gaming forums and threads is what I call The Game That Must Not Be Named. I’ve been playing it for a few years now, and I’m always baffled by how no one ever names this game in public fora. Even in discussions of gender, sexuality, and violence in computer/video games, it’s imperative that no one ever mention this game, despite the fact that it’s the most popular computer game in history. And yet, in any gaming thread of sufficient length, someone will make a joke about running in circles and peeing your pants, and everyone will LOL, knowingly.
Still, gamers must never, ever mention this game by name.
“No one knows it’s name, and those that have, dare not speak it.”
“So what’s it’s name?”
“Oh, I dare not speak it.”
Ernest: Dare I name it? I’m going to guess The Sims.
Gotta be Tetris.
Gotta be Dark Souls, no gender inequality since every character is equally pathetically squishy, killed by almost anything mercilessly and repeatedly and the most common reaction to seeing enemies like the Taurus or Capra demons is pissing yourself and running in circles screaming
I don’t want to be that guy… that does not know how to take a joke… but I guess I just have to be. I say this with the preference that I did laugh during the video and found it entertaining. Here are my other reactions though…
1) Why do I care what old people think? Am I supposed to think of them as “out of touch” in they way Bill Cosbey paraded kids around with “kids say the darnedest things”? Am I supposed to look at this old people in this sort of agest way and expect senile and or ignorant attitudes? Maybe it is just trying to look at “elderly” in a view that looks at the generation gap – which I think, is a valid comedy way to look at stuff… maybe I am just being to sensitive.
2) All the old people said things I would hear from anyone – so I did not see their age play into it. Many of the answers were pretty on point and hilarious. I may subscribe to the channel….
3) Why was everyone white? Get some damn color in there god dammit!
4) Do we really have to laugh at hookers getting beat up after you took their services?
5) Yoooo.. that white lady, I swear was about to say “Thug,” before she stopped herself and asked why we glamorize criminal beahvior and have to look at “black things.”… I was like.. whoa lady… WTF is you tryn to say?
With that.. I liked it.
I’ve got a few decades before I reach their league yet, but I thought there was some wisdom there. I liked the guy who said, “Whatever you do, you take a little of it home with you.” I remember playing Evil Genius when that came out — if I was going to pretend to be a criminal, that’s the kind that would appeal to me.
I just can’t play any of the GTA series after having found Saints Row. Being able to play a female orc with a french accent and orange skin who slaps people with a tentacle bat and using superpowers to kill aliens while The Touch by Stan Bush (the one from the animated transformers movie in the 80’s) plays in the background has spoiled my ability to appreciate “serious” sandbox games. Also having your pistol look like Mal’s from Firefly, your SMG is Robocops gun, your Rocket Launcher is a potato gun and your sniper rifle is from minecraft, and you also wield an abduction gun but like to occasionally swap it out for explosive wubs from your dubstep gun. Also, Zinyak is best video game villain I have encountered in a good long while.
Life imitates bad art: a man in England was beaten and stabbed for his copy of GTA5.
http://www.mail.com/int/news/uk/2338700-man-mugged-copy-grand-theft-auto-v.html
As one who has never played the game, I just don’t see the appeal. I’ve always wondered, though, if GTA was a response to the Atari arcade game, “APB / All Points Bulletin”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APB_(1987_video_game)
Well, I do play the game, have since GTA III, including Vice City, San Andreas, and all three parts of GTA IV.
What do I like about it? The thrill of trying to outrun the cops is one of my favourite bits, and doing so with a clever trick even more so. I don’t involve myself in killing people outside the game story, though I know a lot of people do. The thing I like best, though, is the open world-ness of it: that I can choose what I want to do next, and if what I want to do next is take my motorcycle and see if I can jump across the East River, then I do that. I like the challenge of the races in the game, too – how crappy a car can I take and still win the race (I’m genetically pre-destined to be good at racing – my father and grandfather both raced, cars and motorcycles respectively, and I’ve done some rally racing myself). I like the challenge of figuring out how I’m going to get out of a situation where I’m surrounded by gang members, and I’ve got only a golf club and three grenades.
And since San Andreas, I’ll admit I’m a sucker for an interesting storyline for the protagonist. In SA, the protag for the first time wasn’t white, and his story was pretty awesome. In GTA IV, both Luis and Niko (The Ballad of Gay Tony and GTA IV main game respectively) are fascinating protagonists, both trying to find a way to not have to do the thing they’re really good at, and being trapped by various people and circumstances. I loved the redemption of Niko at the end of IV, how he was actually giving up the criminal life and heading for respectability. I liked the story of Johnny in The Lost and the Damned, a motorcycle gang member, much less well, and I’ve not actually finished that one because of it.
And for those who don’t know, I’m a 47yo lesbian grandmother of four, so I’m hardly in the target demographic.
There’s also the subtle but quite bruising treatment they give the right-wing in the games; while the left takes a few hits, the right is more or less constantly bombarded with jokes and parodies at their expense, which I’ll admit tickles me (Mike Whitely…WEASEL News).
Plus the soundtracks; in IV, there were 10 radio stations, each with a decent playlist of 12 or more songs, ranging from dub reggae to world music to classic and new hiphop and rock. I’ve found a fair bit of new material for my iPod playing GTA.
In no way do I fail to see its flaws, but being a feminist means being willing to make bargains with problematic material, or giving up pop culture pretty much entirely. So I roll my eyes at the immature stuff and the misogyny, and try to enjoy the parts I do love, while minimizing my time with the things I don’t.
“Take a look at the crime rate!”
What? Dropping?