#GamerGate, The Ratner Effect, and how to get rid of a SJW infection

I should be writing other things, but this #GamerGate thing currently causing some seismic upheavals in the videogaming community has burrowed into my head and I’m going to have to write something on it to get rid of the damn thing so I can get back to my other writing projects.  What is #GamerGate?  Uh, it’s complex.  In summary, a section of gaming community has risen up against a gaming press they no longer believe represents their interests.  A good summary can be found here.  And this piece here covers the background leading up to it.

This is something like my third or fourth attempt to write this.  On the previous attempts my utter loathing of Social Justice Warriors (SJW) - a group I despise for their intolerance, shocking hypocrisy, and quickness to censor and stifle opinions they don’t agree with – rose to the surface and drowned the piece in too much hate.  I do have a bias towards the #GamerGate side, but another screaming rant about interfering SJWs doesn’t really add anything new to the discussion.

It’s not about them anyway.  Oh, they play a part, but it’s not the full story.

After following the story on social media for a while, there seem to be several distinct complaints coming out of the gamer camp.

Some are unhappy about the corruption and cronyism displayed in the gaming press.  They think the relationship between some game devs and some game journalists is too pally and this is making the reporting untrustworthy.

Some are unhappy with the adversarial and condescending attitudes of some game journalists.  They’re fed up of going to read articles on their hobby only to be insulted and denigrated as “neckbeards”, “misogynists”, “manchildren” and other slurs.

Some are unhappy with the infiltration of the gaming press by SJWs.  They want to read articles on gaming, not political opinion pieces telling them that game they liked is sexist/racist and they’re a piece of shit for liking it.

On the other side, the gaming press think it’s about angry white males being misogynist assholes, again.  Which is why they’re in a lot more trouble than they realise.

I’ve followed it festering away in the background for the last couple of weeks.  It was when the main gaming sites all put out very similar articles announcing the death of the “gamer” within roughly the same 24 hour period that I sat up and took notice.

I’ve not seen this before.  I’ve not seen media declare war on their own consumers and viciously attack them, which is what the gaming press appeared to be doing.  The reason I’ve not seen it before is because it’s totally fucking insane.  Generally speaking, unless you’re a dominatrix running a BDSM parlour, insulting your own customers is usually a very quick way to go out of business.  A lot of the gaming press (and some gaming devs) seem to have completely forgotten this and are still in attack mode, not realising the only thing they’ll win from this fight is a pink slip from the audience they just alienated.

It reminds me of the Ratner Effect.  Before working as a software developer I spent some years working in the jewellery industry.  Most of my family still work in the same industry.  In 1991 Gerald Ratner was head of one of the biggest jewellery companies in Britain.  During a speech he jokingly referred to his product as cheap and “total crap”.  His customers took this as an insult and voted with their feet.  Within a year Ratner’s off-the-cuff joke had wiped 500 million off the value of his company and nearly destroyed it.

Ratner disconnected himself from his customers.  They wanted nice jewellery.  He told them it was tacky shit.  They went elsewhere.  He lost his job.

What’s happening with #GamerGate looks remarkably similar.  There is a disconnect between producers (gaming press and to some extent game devs) and a large chunk of their consumers (gamers).  Only in this case the relationship has become hostile and extremely ill-tempered.

This can be seen by how #GamerGate is covered.

Some sections of the gaming press have blamed it on misogyny because they’ve become unhealthily fixated on what they see as misogyny in gaming.  Unfortunately this has left them out of touch with the majority of their audience, who are currently upset about issues of content and transparency, and are well and truly hacked off with being branded misogynist for not toeing the media line.  (Not all of the people tweeting the #GamerGate tag are white males.  There are a lot of women and persons of colour.  The one thing they have in common is they’re all dissatisfied with the current gaming press.)

This is a problem I’ve noticed with people who are heavily interested in social justice (As an aside, I believe social justice is a good thing and a laudable aim.  I also think it’s a completely different thing from social justice warriors, who are basically scum), they’re not always aware that other people don’t share their interest to the same intensity.  For the worst of them, the ones that tip over into SJW-asshattery, they see lack of interest as evidence of sexism, racism, etc., and are quick to accuse others of it.  For most normal well-adjusted people that aren’t sexist, racist, homophobic or transphobic, being accused of any of these things is extremely insulting.  The typical human reaction is to lash back . . . and then you end up with the vicious trench warfare seen over the last couple of weeks.

Again it’s a disconnect between media and audience.  Imagine you and your friends are watching an awesome movie.  But you have that one friend that can’t help themselves and has to drone on and on about how the crew was mistreated, that the wildlife was disturbed, that one of the female characters is being objectified, that the foreign character is a negative stereotype.  At some point you’re going to snap and say, “Shut the fuck up!  We’re trying to enjoy this awesome movie here.”

This is why some gaming sites are in real trouble.

Gaming sites have disconnected from gamers.  Gamers wanted cool articles about gaming.  They got academic and political analysis that didn’t interest them.  Gamers wanted trustworthy reviews they could use to determine where they should spend their money.  They got hints of conflicts of interest and possible corruption.  Gamers raised concerns.  They were told they were “dead” and irrelevant.  Gamers will go elsewhere.  Some journalists will lose their jobs.  Some sites will die.

How do you get rid of an SJW infection?  Same way you get rid of any business that no longer serves your needs in a free market – you stop giving them money and they go bust.

While sections of the gaming press are still trumpeting about the misogyny problem (and attacking their readers), their former audience has stolen a play from the classic SJW manual.  They’re boycotting the sites, journalists and game devs they believe no longer speak to them.  Not only that, they’re contacting the advertisers to these sites and telling them they will also see a reduction in business and brand damage for associating with the broken sections of the games press.

By the way, the above, way way more effective than impotent rage-fuelled death threats.

I’m curious to see how this will all pan out.  It could be a seismic change that completely changes the landscape.  Or it could be another one of those internet things that has plenty of sound and fury, but fizzles out after a couple of days and is forgotten after a couple of weeks.

The current web traffic stats for the more hated websites make for interesting reading.  The expression “falling off a cliff” comes to mind.  I’m cautious about reading too much into those graphs (you can google them – alexa + [name of site]) as I don’t know the seasonal variations in web traffic for gaming sites.  However, they do appear to show a sharp downward trend.  I wonder what will happen if these sharp downward trends are still happening a couple of weeks from now.  Will we start to see personnel changes and grovelling apologies?

“Hey gamers, you know when we said you were dead.  We didn’t mean it.  Please come back.  Pleeeeeeeassssse.”

Remember that xkcd cartoon about free speech.

It doesn’t only apply to bigoted old duck-whistle guys.  Insult your audience and they will show you the door.

I wonder if we’re at the beginning of what will be known as The Great Gaming Website Cull of 2014?

UPDATE

I found a link to an article that came out just after mine that comes to the same conclusions, but is much better sourced.  There are more links there explaining the background and also to the articles that detail exactly where the gaming press committed collective suicide.  The writer also keeps a more detached tone (I've had too many run ins with unpleasant SJWs to be able to remain totally objective on that subject unfortunately).

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/09/gamergate_explodes_gaming_journalists_declare_the_gamers_are_over_but_they.html

Hero (Monster Girl Quest 3D) - It's the constraints and realistic expectations, stupid!

So after comprehensively stomping all over someone’s puppy I should try and say something positive about the whole 3D Monster Girl Quest (probable) trainwreck.

To be fair, the dude seems pretty good at modelling.  The new Alice model looks pretty good.

But again there’s the time and expectation issue.  How long did it take to make?  What are the range of facial expressions?  What movement animation does she have?  Is she just going to sit there and wag her tail a little, because if that’s the case what is the point of using 3D over Kenkou Cross’s already expressive artwork? 

And remember, there are another 150 monster girls to go after this...

It’s constraints and realistic expectations.  Small game companies and indie developers make very good games because they’re fully aware of their limitations and work within those constraints.

A good example of using 3D graphics to good effect is Pretty Warrior May Cry.  It’s an eroge Dungeon Keeper.  Obviously they didn’t have the budget or team to make full eroge Dungeon Keeper that wouldn’t suck to play, so they abstracted the gameplay to what they could do and stuffed the eroge elements into 3D H-scenes showing exactly how their minions slow down the marauding heroes.  (The lilith animation is available in the trial).

The original MGQ does the same thing.  It’s a RPG with exploration and branching paths replaced with a linear Visual Novel.  This frees them up to concentrate on other things like the story and puzzle(ish) battles (and of course the sexy bad ends).  Violated Hero constrains the player to a Dungeon Master-style Grid.  Desire Dungeon does the same but makes the map a straight line and throws in a chest/loot mechanic.  All the RPG-Maker clones already have most of the RPG mechanics provided by the game maker they’re using.

Hero, Monster Girl Quest 3D, has no constraints.  It’s trying to build everything from the ground up.  In the original MGQ the Succubus Village is abstracted away to a few background pics.  Hero built the town in 3D.  Cool.  But what are they going to do for the Plansect Village, the Harpy Town, the Slime Cave, the cities, the underwater segments, the Demon Lord Castle...?  We’re in George Broussard and Duke Nukem Forever territory here.

No abstraction = too much work = vapourware (or seriously shitty end product that leaves players feeling like someone took a dump in their mouth after eating a foul homemade vindaloo)

Where 3D could really shine is if combined with the combat and Bad Ends.  A Monster Girl Quest with the sex battles/Bad Ends depicted in a similar way to the animations in Pretty Warrior May Cry could work really well.  Aside from the obvious being-ridden-by-a-succubus scenes, various different struggle scenes as Luka is dragged deeper into a slime girl, plant girl or similar enemy would add a lot more to the game than the simple bound/unbound pictures that are used now.  I think a game like this would pick up a lot of interest and have no problems getting indie funding (although it might mean going through offbeatr and smaller dlsites).  It's the difference between going for a niche audience that will definitely come, or jumping for a mainstream audience and falling flat on your face when they don't show.

Again the marketing adage applies: Don't bother trying to appease people that aren't interested in your product anyway.

Hero. Monster Girl Quest...in 3D!

3D Monster Girl Quest, sounds interesting, right?  When I found out an indie developer had picked up permission to make a 3D version of Monster Girl Quest in English I had to check their site out.  3D Monster Girl Quest, got to be awesome, right?

Well...

What I read left me with misgivings.  Major misgivings.

First off is the plan to take all the sex out of the game.  I can see how this might be forced as they want to try and raise funding off Kickstarter.  The problem is Monster Girl Quest is a sex game.  I’ve seen raging fights break out on various parts of the internet (including TVTropes’s shameless decision to redirect the MGQ page to something completely unrelated rather than delete it and lose the inbounds) where people have tried to defend the game along the lines of: “Yes, it’s a porn game, but it’s not bad, really.  It has an actual plot, real characters and it’s funny!”  All of which is true, but...

Here is a simple truth.  Some people are prudish.  They are extremely uncomfortable around any kind of media featuring graphic depictions of sex.  But the thing is, no one actually ever wants to own up to being prudish because prudes are seen as a bit repressed and totally uncool.  Instead they’ll get all haughty and critical.  “It’s boring.”  “It’s shit.”  (You will have read many many movie reviews along these lines – there’s a reason why talented filmmakers like Ken Russell, Paul Verhoeven and Jess Franco end up stuck making tiny indie films in the latter half of their careers)  And to be fair, most things with graphic depictions of sex are shit, because the creators know sex sells and get lazy.  Monster Girl Quest is not one of these things, but it won’t matter because it’s a sex game and they’ve already made up their mind.  It doesn’t matter if you take the sex out, they’re still not going to be interested because they know it was based off a filthy sex game.

Marketing 101: Don’t waste time appeasing people who aren’t going to buy your product anyway.

Another simple truth.  People that say “I’m here for the funny plot and well-written characters.”  Lying.  They’re there for the sex, they just don’t want to admit they’re there for the sex.  MGQ is a sex game.  Taking out the Bad End H-scenes will not stop it from being a sex game.  It’s a world where all the monsters are female and want to hold down the main character and suck out all his cum.  Yes, there’s plenty of funny dialogue between Luka and the others, but most of that is about sex, because—you guessed it—MGQ is a sex game.  Sanitising MGQ by taking out all the sex is not going to leave much behind and certainly not much of what attracted people to the game in the first place.

There is the mention of putting the sex back in for DLC, but that’s even worse as it guarantees the mainstream markets they’re aiming for will banhammer it for being a sex game.  This is a bad start.  In trying for a mainstream audience they’re going to leave themselves in limbo with a game that isn’t a sex game to the people expecting and wanting a sex game, while still being dismissed as a sex game by the people that weren’t that interested in the first place.  For the small funding they’re trying to raise they could have gone straight to offbeatr with the adult version and raised five times that amount in half the time.

Maybe.  It wasn’t the only concern I had.

Graphics come up next.  The reason for 3D seemed very much to be “2D, that’s so last century.  3D modelling is far superior!”  Not really.  Basic 3D artwork usually looks far worse than 2D artwork.  It only starts to get the edge if you want to show complex animations from multiple camera angles.  And you’d only want to do that if you were planning to make a more open world game, which brings me to the next point of concern...

Hydra, just picture it, Monster Girl Quest in a fully open 3D world like Skyrim, wouldn’t that be totally awesome?

Yeah, it would, but we’re in la-la land.  A game like Skyrim has hundreds of developers and a budget of squillions of dollars.  This is a tiny indie developer trying to raise a few thousand on Kickstarter.

And then there’s the demo.  Whoa boy the demo.

If you’re thinking of funding this, please do yourself a favour and play the demo first so you’ll at least know what you’re buying.

The succubus village looks nice, but to be perfectly blunt it’s a horrorshow to play.  It doesn’t look like much thought has been put in to translating the turn-based RPG combat of MGQ into a 3D game.  Press button to swipe at oncoming succubi, die if you’re slightly facing the wrong angle. Brainless button-mashing for the roaming sections wouldn’t be so bad except the controls are horrifically fiddly.  The special skill wheel, while looking like a good idea in the video, plays very poorly in execution.  Then there’s the odd choice to switch back to turn-based for the boss battles.  The mechanics are a mess.

But it’s only a demo, you might say.  Yeah, but this is supposed to show the game off and get the punters excited enough to break out their credit cards.  They’re supposed to play the demo and think, “Yeah, I want some more of this.”  All it did for me was raise the alarm bells to deafening levels.

I don’t know what to make of this.  They have a slick promotional video, but not much in the way of a game.  The cynic in me thinks this is a scam.  They’re using the name and a 3D model of Alice to drum up interest before crapping out a turd and running off with the cash.  The more charitable part of me (a very small part floating around in a sea of corrupt black brain cells) wants to give them the benefit of the doubt.  Their heart’s in the right place, but they’ve pledged to deliver something they have no realistic chance of building.



To be honest I don’t really like putting on the steel toecaps and putting the boot into someone’s pet project (unless they are a filthy scam artist!).  Especially as they seem to be a small developer with limited resources.  But there has to be a some common sense.  If you’re a single developer with a four figure budget, don’t try and make Dark Souls, because the results are not going to be pretty.

Here are some cold hard facts.  MGQ as a game is really just a linear visual novel with some simple RPG combat bolted on over the top.  It still took Torotoro Resistance and multiple artists many months to get part two out.  They haven’t even finished part 3 and it’s been over a year.  This is for a simple linear game.  I don’t want to imagine how much work it would take to remake it as a 3D game with open roaming sections.  There are nearly 150 different monster types in the two chapters.  Most commercial big-budget RPGs don’t have that many!

I wish the developer well and I hope they prove me wrong, but I don't think they have a prayer of pulling this off with the resources available to them.

This was was where I was going to try and counter all the Donny Doom negativity with some helpful suggestions on how this could work.  This post has already run on far too long though.  I'll see if I can get a follow-up post out before the weekend.

Some Monster Girl Roguelikes in Development: Seduction Quest and Noxico

By and large Western Audiences aren't well-served when it comes to sexy hentai games because depicting two adults graphically having sex in any form of a media is usually a one-way ticket to career suicide.  Unless you're insane (me), don't have a career to lose (me), don't give a fuck (again, me) or E.L. James (not me.  I'd be living the high-life in the Caribbean, knee-deep in hookers, if I had that much wonga.  Hmm, wait a moment...)  Anyway, with fenoxo's Corruption of Champions and also Fleshcult, things are getting a little better for English-speaking fans of sexy monster girls.  And here are a couple of roguelike's in development that might be of interest.

So, what's a roguelike?  Roguelikes are super-stripped down RPGs.  The GUIs are about as basic as you get, where your main character might be represented by a '@' and that 'O' running at you could be an Orc or Ogre depending on the colour.  This means some (a lot) of imagination is required.  There aren't going to be a lot of pretty (dirty) pictures, but it also means a small development team or even a single person can put a game together without bankrupting themselves on artist commissions, and they can also make the world huge and random.  If you've ever played NetHack or Dwarf Fortress you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

The first game is Seduction Quest.  The game's programmer, Codex, brought it to my attention a couple of days ago.  They're only at the alpha stage at the moment.  You can check out the demo at their site to get an idea of where they're going.  It's a roguelike in a large procedurally generated world with wandering succubi and other monster girls out for the player's...juices.  The demo is fairly rudimentary and the player can't die currently, but it gives a good impression of the game mechanics.  Their plan is to boost the battle strategy and obviously make the various attacks more descriptive and naughty.  They also have some interesting ideas to get around the 'Euww! What's that fetish doing there!?' problem by giving the player some choice in how the world is set up before starting a game (all female monsters, all male monsters, etc).

Seduction Quest - Yuki-Onna Alraune sandwich

Currently they're running an Offbeatr campaign to raise some funding for the game.  You can check out the details and maybe give them a vote here.  Also, if you have any suggestions or questions, you can get a hold of Codex at codex.seductionquest@gmail.com.

One of the links on their site pointed to another roguelike that's a little further along in development: Noxico.  This one is a little more like Corruption of Champions with both sexes present, furries, and possibly a whole load of weird sexual shit going on.

Noxico - Starting Village. All those letters are people.

I say possibly, because I haven't got that far into it.  Mainly because I'm quite possibly the worst player of roguelikes on the planet.  Each of my characters is born with YASD tattooed on their forehead and has a life expectancy of maybe five minutes if I happen to get lucky and find one of the less monster-infested regions of the map.

Actually, reconciling the Bad Ends of MGQ with the permadeath ethos of roguelikes will be an interesting design challenge for the developers.  The fun part of MGQ is deliberately making Luka lose to see what the monster girl does to him afterwards.  In a roguelike the penalties for dying are often brutal as it means you lose everything and have to start again.  Maybe a sexy Bad End scene is exactly what's needed to sweeten the pill.