Tuesday, November 20, 2007

The Hell? (Again)

Ok, as someone who has advocated "gaming as art form" in the past, can I just say KNOCK IT OFF, YOU IDIOTS.

The link is to Miyuki Jane Pinckard, one of the writers at GameGirlAdvance, who talks about a rather offensive comic that's going around portraying Jade Raymond--the (attractive and female) producer of the new high-concept Ubisoft game Assassin's Creed--as a ditzy broad who orally pleasures the fans to get them to buy her game. Not that it's unique; this whole bit about emphasizing Jade as a pretty girl (instead of a designer) has been part of the coverage of the game for ages.

Now, I'm going to leave aside being this being personally offensive to Jade and everybody at Ubisoft. What the hell are these idiots thinking? The gaming industry has been absolutely plagued with the perception that it's nothing but escapist bullshit for teenage boys, a stigma that has affected not just those who are in the industry, but its consumers as well. It's half the reason why that "gaming is for kids" stuff and "games aren't art" endures.

Why the hell would gaming fans, and journalists, who haven't covered themselves with glory on this either, be reinforcing this? I mean, yes, Dave Cheung is an idiot whose career appears to revolve around creating second-rate webcomics and third rate wank material. It's no surprise he'd be behind the comic. But Scott Jennings did a really good job of showing exactly how crap a job the gaming media have done on this issue, especially the various gaming blogs.

(Though, these days, I suspect the only difference between your typical blogger and your typical game journalist is that one of them knows English grammar and vocabulary. Hint: it's the blogger.)

It's sad. The industry, when faced with the real possibility of respectibility, clearly can't avoid shooting itself in the foot over and over and over again. Sure, all involved have the freedom of speech, and I still know that they don't deserve to be stamped with the censor's boot.

Damned if there aren't days, though, where they're really tough to defend.

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