Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)

I thought about including the sexual abuse, crunch, and other toxic workplace issues as well. But for that particular list I wanted to focus on what made these publishers' reps take dives among the customers who mostly only care about the quality of the product. Toxic workplaces do have an impact on this too, since unhappy employees aren't going to be able to do their best.

If you were to include those, then both Activision and Ubisoft would be guilty. EA oddly enough doesn't have similar horror stories being spread about its workplace culture.

Edited by M84 on Apr 16th 2024 at 2:23:07 AM

Today's episode is about always-online games, their lack of single player mode and the issues it causes when the game launches without their servers being ready or just being outright unfinished.

Today's episode is about the Fallout show, which I've heard much good about, and the Internet's reaction to the destruction of Shady Sands.

I think Steph is missing a point of the criticism.

It's not that people are upset that Fallout is changing and advancing the status quo of the world — it's that the destruction of Shady Sands is doing the opposite of that.

Bethesda seems very, very keen on making sure that the world of Fallout remains a bombed-out wasteland of rusty shacks and blasted landscapes forever, even long after the point where society logically should have rebuilt itself. Destroying the one modern civilization in Fallout is basically a Reset Button which seems to be serving largely to prevent that from happening, stymieing social development and returning the world to the same state it was just a few decades after the war. Which is good for Bethesda if they want to keep treating Fallout like a marketable post-apocalyptic theme park.

Edited by Zennistrad on Apr 29th 2024 at 2:39:50 PM

To be fair, given how Sterling seems to believe Shinra is the end-all, be-all antagonists of Final Fantasy VII and not the monster that one of their rogue agents created from the cells of an ancient alien from outer space, media literacy isn't a high suit.

Edited by Psyga315 on Apr 30th 2024 at 3:41:45 AM

I mean, megacorps destroying the planet is something we actually have to deal with.

Alien monsters aren't.

Shinra is sorta the Greater-Scope Villain that causes every problem in the game, though; even Sephiroth is a broken man who's trying to destroy the world because of them (and the way him and Cloud both handle that trauma is part of how the game contrasts them so sharply). In that sense I can see why- and even agree with them, to an extent- that Sterling would argue the company's the effective Big Bad of the game.

I digress, though. I should probably get around to watching the Fallout show, regardless of how little I actually know about the games or setting.

Edited by NesClassic on Apr 30th 2024 at 7:43:51 AM

Shinra probably aren't the Big Bad, but it is their fault that literally anything in the plot happens.

If they weren't trying to create super SOLDIERS, then Sephiroth wouldn't have been made. I also wonder if there was some self-serving research (because something something promised land) being done that resulted in JENOVA being misidentified as an Ancient. Or whether that was a genuine mistake.

Because I wonder if Sephiroth would've even had that initial snap into delusional godhood if he knew what JENOVA was from the beginning.

Edited by GNinja on Apr 30th 2024 at 2:08:02 PM

It's kind of both, I think? A lot of Final Fantasy fans like to joke the real big bad more than Shinra or Sephiroth is Hojo, since it was his project that created Sephiroth and he's directly hurt multiple members of the core team and has a body count bigger than Sephiroth's if you count the number of employees he's used and discarded for experiments.

That being said, Hojo couldn't have done it if Shinra hadn't actively rewarded employees for human experimentation. The mega corp isn't the final boss but their greed underlie all the problems created in the game.

JENOVA was frozen solid in ice until humans falsely assumed she was an Ancient and tried to create a new Ancient by experimenting on Sephiroth in the womb and on other adults using her cells.

And Shinra did that for their benefit - the obsession with the Ancients isn't for humanity's benefit but their own profits. They want to find the Promised Land to take all the mako they assume is there and convert it to energy for money.

Strictly speaking they aren't the Big Bad or the Dragon in TV Tropes terms - that's still Sephiroth and JENOVA - but they're the ones who caused the world to be endangered, something Rufus Shinra acknowledges explicitly in the sequel movie Advent Children (even while the remnants of Shinra were getting up to their old tricks).

Edit: In the original I don't remember if Sephiroth ever realized JENOVA was not an Ancient; one assumes he must have done at some point if he sees Aerith as his enemy even though she's the real deal. In Advent Children he definitely knows since he talks about JENOVA travelling the cosmos

Edited by Zalem on Apr 30th 2024 at 7:06:34 AM

& the rest Okay, that makes a lot of sense.

I expected a video about the Helldivers 2 debacle, but turns out it's about digital deluxe editions and how they're scams, either because they give cosmetics that are a detriment to the game experience (because you feel obligated to always wear them instead of something else you might find in-game) or because they give early game items that you abandon a few hours into it.

Side note, looking at the footage of Stellar Blade in this vid, I don't get what the complaints of removed fanservice are. It's very obviously heavy on it.

Edited by Resileafs on May 6th 2024 at 10:14:40 AM

Yes, it is indeed quite heavy on the fanservice. The thing is that it used to be even more so. It got toned down a tiny bit, and now the usual suspects are all up in arms about "censorship". Those dudes have absolutely no chill.

(EDIT: had to edit because I typed "absolutely zero chill", which is amusingly the exact opposite of what I was hoping to say.)

Edited by Kayeka on May 6th 2024 at 4:52:27 PM

There were two or three outfits that were even heavier in fanservice prior to the Day 1 patch, if you could believe it, though Shift Up and Sony appear to have left the most fanservice-y ones alone for now, though even the "censored" outfits are still pretty heavily fanservice-y. For example, one of the most popular outfits, the Holiday Bunny, is essentially a low-cut, skimpy one-piece bathing suit that got "censored" with a black lacy camisole to cover up most of the cleavage. It's still fanservice to the max, but with the way folks have been whining online you'd think they'd replaced all of the outfits with dowdy babushka clothing.

You know, now I kinda want a game to go for that aesthetic, though.

I'm gonna play Mild Devils advocate on the Stellar Blade censorship debacle to a degree, not that I think the asshole grifters are good, but while it might seem like a nothing burger, it probably would have been...had the games own marketing team online didn't the game would be uncensored in all regions 5 whole days before the game was released, only to censor it the day of the games release, and no, its not just outfits that were found to be censored. The Gore, which the tweet was most likely talking about for Japan's rating board due to their standards with Gore, was actually changed from the demo to the uncensored pre patch ver 1.000, the disc version. As for the Holiday raabbit censorship, the issue is that its a real outfit thats modeled and marketed without the need for any sort of cleavage covering because its an outfit marketed to adults in Asian countries, so people would expect it to be the same in a game also meant for adults.

Basically, what would have been a nothing burger can now be seen as a case of potential false advertising lawsuit labeled against Sony and Shift Up's marketing team. The devs even acknowledge it, and the official twitter account said that they hear peoples feedback and retweeted a fanart that uses the uncensored holiday rabbit as a basis, so there's some hope that at the very least they'll decensor the content via a Slider of some kind for the outfits and gore.

But basically, it all blew out of proportion because marketing fucked up.

God I want to see that lawsuit happen. "The Waifu isnt as naked as in the preview art" is gonna get laughed out of court so hard it'll be funny.

This is a world where Ubisoft gets away with the Watch_Dogs demo looking like a different game.

Edited by Ghilz on May 6th 2024 at 2:49:38 PM

Its not just preview art, its in game models too.

So no, there would be a leg to stand on there.

No there wouldn't.

But keep believing it. This is legit the funniest thing.

It's a little tiny peg leg

Edited by PhysicalStamina on May 6th 2024 at 10:29:08 AM

I have fallen into this trap with Fire Emblem. I got into the franchise through Awakening and ever since then, I abused the DLC to muscle my way through harder difficulties. I’m sure I’m not the only one who did this. I have no idea on the difficulties in entries before Awakening but it’s still the case now.

On topic of Fire Emblem, I do own and like art books for this series that were released as preorder exclusives. As much as I like reading and seeing the evolution of these pieces of media, the internet makes everything in these books available for free. On top of it, artwork can be easily implemented into the game itself at no extra cost (which many indie developers do.)

I’m sorry, Stephanie.

Edited by ChicoTheParakeet on May 6th 2024 at 11:48:28 AM

Ehhh, if anything physical goodies are what these deluxe editions should be like; in the first place those are targeted towards collectors, while what JSS is taking to bat here are in-game goods exclusive to said editions (hence the video being about... well, digital deluxe editions).

The Bribing Your Way to Victory maps from the 3DS Fire Emblem entries were definitely worth criticizing, but thankfully those haven't been a thing from Three Houses onwards.

x6 (Re:Stellar Blade): In fairness to the devs, they didn't censor anything in an Exact Words way: censorship refers to government-enforced suppression of speech or expression. A game's devs or publishers voluntarily toning their own content down isn't censorship; and besides, they promised the game would be the "same in every region"- hence the patch being present in every region.

That said, they still only have themselves to blame for the backlash here since promising "the game will be uncensored in every region" in your marketing is the kind of statement that's targeting a specific kind of chud. The ones that treats anime tiddie as Serious Business and get huffy over "the original artist's vision" and all that.