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Polygon pulls a Polygon


Mr.Vic20

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8 minutes ago, Man of Culture said:

 

It's a nothing burger of an article with a guy projecting his own insecurities into written form for the public to consume because he just happened to have the misfortune of being born with a disability that has exaggerated interpretations in media since time immemorial and a game developer he interviewed -who was designing a game that does anything but be "sensitive"- essentially brushed off his concerns. "Woe is me, I guess I'll continue to feel like a sub-human because a guy who made a game failed to represent people like me in a more positive light for once."

 

That sir, is what we call a bitch.

 

Remember when you feigned outrage that I would assume you used the slur of a disabled person when in fact, you proclaimed, it was a real term used in musical composition? 

 

Yeah I’m not going to debate a person who doesn’t argue in good faith. 

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6 minutes ago, Man of Culture said:

I was outraged because you maliciously misrepresented me and I still think you're an absolute piece of shit for it. I have absolutely zero desire to e-thug over it though, so :shrug:

 

 

Edit: I bet you think I hold disdain for disabled/disfigured people because I don't hold back on idiocy when I see it just because they're disabled/disfigured, how quaint.

I’ll drop it. 

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4 minutes ago, Man of Culture said:

I was outraged because you maliciously misrepresented me and I still think you're an absolute piece of shit for it. I have absolutely zero desire to e-thug over it though, so :shrug:

 

 

Edit: I bet you think I hold disdain for disabled people because I don't hold back on idiocy when I see it just because they're disabled, how quaint.

You seem to be a really angry person. I hope it is just your fake Internet personality.

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21 minutes ago, Man of Culture said:

 

It's a nothing burger of an article with a guy projecting his own insecurities into written form for the public to consume because he just happened to have the misfortune of being born with a disability that has exaggerated interpretations in media since time immemorial and a game developer he interviewed -who was designing a game that does anything but be "sensitive"- essentially brushed off his concerns. "Woe is me, I guess I'll continue to feel like a sub-human because a guy who made a game failed to represent people like me in a more positive light for once."

 

That sir, is what we call a bitch.

I don’t think he’s a bitch. I think he IS a guy with real insecurities about his deformity, made those insecurities known to the company directly, felt it was taken in earnest and then was disappointed when it didn’t actually happen. I think it’s more brave to speak out about it than to not. And I also think it’s lazy design. 

 

I actually roll my eyes more often than you might think about similar stuff like this, but I find the push back to articles like this a lot more gross a lot of the time, and groups that I REALLY disagree with use stuff like this to recruit impressionable young men to their despicable views.

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1 hour ago, Chris- said:

 

Sure, I suppose. But that just rolls into the points @SFLUFAN has been making: it's lazy writing/design, and there is no reason there can't be more balanced representation when it comes to protagonists.

 

I just don’t see what’s so lazy about it.  

 

If offending anyone like this Polygon writer is to be avoided, the best option is to come up with an apparent defect so fantastical that no one could complain.  Basically to go full on Picasso.  I really wouldn’t want that in most games.  It’s more of a creative limitation if it gets taken too dogmatically.  And it becomes harder to humanize that if it’s ever the plan.

 

Also, like I said, ‘balanced’ representation of visual deformities is just straight up unattainable in most action horror games.  Remember, you’re typically killing thousands of these things.  That’s always going to create cognitive dissonance with humanizing it, even with a positive representation of it in the game somewhere.

 

 

 

 

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12 minutes ago, Duderino said:

Soo.... where does this leave Sloth in the Goonies?  How lazy of a writer is Steven Spielberg...right?

 

(No one at Avalanche is lazy. Find a better term.)

First of all, I’m not sure that’s true, but it’s besides the point. 

 

A thing can be lazy design without the person who did it being an outright lazy person. 

 

Like, I can say a smart thing even though I am dumb. 

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30 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

A thing can be lazy design without the person who did it being an outright lazy person. 

I very much doubt the designs in Rage 2 were a product of laziness.  For a topic about understanding it's a pretty inconsiderate way to describe the developers work.

 

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2 hours ago, Man of Culture said:

And? A nothing burger is a nothing burger.

 

Deus Ex Human Revolution - Man nearly loses his entire body and becomes the poster child for augmented amputees.

 

Sly Cooper (Bentley) - Paralyzed Turtle and super genius modifies his wheel chair and uses his brains to aid Sly Cooper in his adventures.

 

Hell Blade: Senua's Sacrifice - A female warrior suffering from severe psychosis tries to save the soul of her dead lover.

 

 

I just named these right off the top of my head and I'm sure I'll find more if I actually take the time to do some digging. They're all well received titles with well liked characters. You're being a retard about this.

 

Ending this argument with using the word “retard” is fantastic.

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Hey, finally an outrage topic for me seeing how I have rather extensive facial scarring! Should I read the article and report back? 

 

To clarify, I was mauled by a dog and, among other things, had to have the bottom of my left cheek re-attached. I tell women I was a victim of trench warfare. 

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43 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

What do you all feel about the recent trend of fat zombie types in games?  Lazy devs for being insensitive?

 

Honest question. 

Oh no - the developers aren't "lazy" for using fat zombie types in games.

 

The developers are "lazy" for using zombies in the first place!

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21 minutes ago, Duderino said:

I very much doubt the designs in Rage 2 were a product of laziness.  For a topic about understanding it's a pretty inconsiderate way to describe the developers work.

 

Are derivative or uninspired any better? What would you have us call it? Again, it doesn’t mean the person himself is lazy / unoriginal / whatever. It’s just a *whatever applicable adjective you prefer* instance. 

 

I’m a fan of many lazy works, and I can still call it out as such and respect the creator at the same time. 

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38 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

What do you all feel about the recent trend of fat zombie types in games?  Lazy devs for being insensitive?

 

Honest question. 

Is that recent? It’s been around for ages. As far as insensitivity is concerned though, it depends and it’s a sliding scale. 

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24 minutes ago, Bloodporne said:

Hey, finally an outrage topic for me seeing how I have rather extensive facial scarring! Should I read the article and report back? 

 

To clarify, I was mauled by a dog and, among other things, had to have the bottom of my left cheek re-attached. I tell women I was a victim of trench warfare. 

On second thought, I'll retract that. I don't have the energy for arguing in these kinds of threads. 

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1 hour ago, SFLUFAN said:

Oh no - the developers aren't "lazy" for using fat zombie types in games.

 

The developers are "lazy" for using zombies in the first place!

 

Yup, perfectly okay with that takeaway.  That kind of laziness is a bigger issue in games than being culturally insensitive, generally speaking.  Even then, zombies aren’t so bad, really.

 

I don’t think Rage 2 lacks identity or a creative spark.  So maybe it’s just that because of that, this cleft lip thing is what gets fixated on.

 

1 hour ago, Paperclyp said:

Is that recent? It’s been around for ages. As far as insensitivity is concerned though, it depends and it’s a sliding scale. 

 

I’d agree context matters.  I’m reminded of RE5’s controversy over setting the game in Africa.  I think they had creative standing to do it, in spite of the charges of racism that came. Or other countries banning war games because of who gets the heroic/liberator treatment.

 

But generally, I think the decency line is pretty far out with monster designs, and that’s a good thing.   They’re monsters.

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I...quite like Polygon. Chris Plante seems like a totally genuine and frankly terrific human being if you've followed his career and content. I find it hard to believe the guy is posting this disingenuously as seems to be suggested in this thread. 

 

I often wonder if the reputation - Polygon being Polygon - just becomes common "knowledge" among message board users who aren't actually terribly familiar with the typical content of a website. The only person I consistently disagreed with or thought was out of line at Polygon was Arthur Gies, and he has been gone for some time (he wrote their infamous Witcher 3 review). 

 

This also isn't a vague article written editorial-style. It's a very specific opinion from a very specific person, who documented not only specific (long-past) conversations, verbatim, about how he addressed his feelings to the creators, but his immediate hopefulness following that conversation. There's an arc to this that is completed with this piece. It's not a contrived click-baity thing concocted just at the game went live. 

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When I think of bad Polygon writing, I think of that infamous Nier 1 article. Or the Mario Kart sales analysis one.  Being stubbornly clueless or overthinking things is part of the stereotype.  Even before getting to an article like this (which isn’t really offensive to me, I just disagree with the sentiment).

 

Maybe it’s not totally fair to say, but I do have more respect for sites like USgamer that haven’t ever sunk to the same lows.

 

Then again, a lot of sites have come close...

 

 

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I get the impression he's more upset that he spoke to the developers, felt a sense of empowerment off the fact he thought he was going to shape the next game and they were going to make changes based on his remarks, and is now more outraged he feels ignored.  He specifically said he got emotional after speaking to them, feeling he was using his position of being able to speak to developers to make a difference.  Is he really that outraged at the character design, or the fact the developer didn't find him important enough to change their entire game over.  

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This mediocre ass game simply isn't worth any sort of emotional investment from any angle. I would absolutely describe the entire thing as lazy. I think it's totally possible to be overworked in constant crunch and still make a lazy piece of shit. Hell, you're more likely to take the lazy route after you've been working nonstop and just want it fucking done.


Sure, he didn't change the game for the better by talking to the developers, but it looks like no one at any point in the creative process changed the game for the better at all, so he's not exactly in an exclusive club, disabilities aside!

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I am fat. Fat people in games are often evil, vile, and rapists if they aren't the jolly santa type. I am more than fine with it and there is no reason to stop it. I get that being fat isn't the same thing, but eh. And as a fat fuck, I don't want to play as a fat MC either, nor do I have a desire to play as an MC with birth defects.

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Polygon has some hot takes, but I'm not so sure this is one of them.  Some of the creature designs straight-up look like caricatures of someone born with a cleft lip (The part where he said the mutants look exactly like his baby pictures was hopefully exaggerated though, yikes). 

 

There's literally hundreds of ways to portray an enemy mutated creature without basing their creepiness off an existing medical condition that causes someone grief. It's insensitive and uncreative.

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3 hours ago, Man of Culture said:

Where, in your mind, does offense, insensitivity and uncreative design end and quality, well done and thoughtful design begin?

 

 

If an enemy has a twitching animation, you risk offending people with tourette's.

 

If an enemy speaks to "people" that clearly don't exist, you risk offending people with schizophrenia.

 

If an enemy has an exposed spine, you risk offending people who suffered through spinal bifida.

 

There is no winning for developers when it comes to this game of perpetual offense for otherwise innocuous design decisions that make no actual attempt to denigrate people who might actually suffer from any potential malady that a designer sees fit to attribute to their enemy designs. Context and intent do matter here.

 

There's plenty of creative decisions that can be made to prevent any of that stuff coming off as weird/uncomfortable.  In this case, have some characters who aren't intende to be deranged, cretinous mutantmonsters have cleft lips as well.  Don't use creature design in a way that contextualizes the appearance of a cleft lip itself as something that should be a source of horror.  Tons of ways to tackle it more empathetically without effecting the gameplay at all.

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6 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

Are derivative or uninspired any better? What would you have us call it? Again, it doesn’t mean the person himself is lazy / unoriginal / whatever. It’s just a *whatever applicable adjective you prefer* instance. 

 

I’m a fan of many lazy works, and I can still call it out as such and respect the creator at the same time. 

 

"Lazy" would have to be an armchair critic's preferred term.

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3 hours ago, fuckle85 said:

 

There's plenty of creative decisions that can be made to prevent any of that stuff coming off as weird/uncomfortable.  In this case, have some characters who aren't intende to be deranged, cretinous mutantmonsters have cleft lips as well.  Don't use creature design in a way that contextualizes the appearance of a cleft lip itself as something that should be a source of horror.  Tons of ways to tackle it more empathetically without effecting the game at all.

 

This solution is still inadequate considering you’d still be killing hundreds of cleft lip horror monsters.  This idea that a few good guy npcs with it could change the tone of all that slaughter is naive.

 

If the goal is to be culturally sensitive, the only real option is to take it out.  Also, all traits a person with a disfigurement, disability or marginalized trait could be offended by if portrayed as horror.

 

At that point, I doubt such monsters would have many humanized traits at all.

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