The Last of Us

Or Mass Effect 3's ending, which is still a banned topic to this day.

Things like Mass Effect 3's ending or One More Day have been fully released and covered extensively by countless people and critics. One could still argue that you can't have legitimate criticisms of those things without experiencing them yourself, but at least your ability to decide that something won't be for you is backed by sentiment from people who have actually played/watched them.

Edited by GNinja on May 7th 2020 at 9:15:42 AM

Is it? I'm pretty sure I've seen it discussed plenty in the years since. Pretty sure it was only banned temporarily because of the massive flame wars that erupted when it was fresh on everyone's minds.

It's still listed on the banned topics list in the thread rules page.

This is the video in question that i mentioned earlier. The bulk of it is that it mentions how Naughty Dog's priorities slowly shift towards being more PC. That's fine and all but it feels they do that for browny points instead of truly caring about it and going so far as to contradict themselves sometimes.

This was done way before the leaks. Like around 2 years ago so a lot has changed since. For example, i'm pretty sure the crunch accusations hadn't come to light yet.

I mean, pretty much all companies do it for browny points. None of them really care. They see a shift in media and demographics (mainly among generation z, their current and future player base), and decide to capitalize on it.

I just don't see why ND specifically should be called out on it.

Edited by djoki996 on May 8th 2020 at 11:20:29 AM

The success of these projects tends to be VERY hit or miss. Sure you get a few nice articles, but that doesn’t translate to sales, and people can and will call out shallow rep.

As they should. But calling out ND specifically on not caring when, honestly, none of the the AAA game devs don't (indie devs are another matter) seems just silly. Not to mention that whenever you accuse them of adding diversity for browny points opens you up to accusation of siding with capital G gamers (alt-right, chuds, anti-sjw, whatever you wanna call them) since that IS their talking point.

But maybe that's just me.

Edited by djoki996 on May 8th 2020 at 12:00:58 PM

The are a lot of vocal people that criticize ND for that. I believe the legit criticism we can give the company besides the obvious shitty working culture is where they place their priorities.

Also there is that conspiracy about Neil Druckman being the one that kicked Amy Henning out because he didn't like her or something but that's just unrelated to whatever is going on right now.

Personally the only thing i dislike is their statement about fun. Surprisingly a lot of people play videogames to have fun, who would have thought

And at that point they use shallow rep as a shield. “You don’t want to buy my game? Are you a sexist? Homophobic?”

I play games to have fun. This is why I laugh at what comes off as really edgy, “feel bad for the sake of feeling bad” writing. Resident Evil 3 doesn’t say you’re a bad person for shooting zombies, so I would rather play that.

Edited by Beatman1 on May 8th 2020 at 3:10:50 PM

While I'm pretty sure that Naughty Dog as a company doesn't care, I'm not sure that the writers don't.

Edited by jjjj2 on May 8th 2020 at 4:07:59 AM

Speaking as a writer who has gay, trans, and other characters.

Depicting that they exist and making them the protagonists is "not an agenda."

If it's an agenda, it's being realistic and not being a bigot as there's no reason not to have them as existing and sometimes the protagonists.

I fear we have reached a point where we can't add minority characters without it becoming a circus. People on both sides of the debate see an easy way to get clicks.

The problem with mass released product from the (sigh) "Triple-Ayyy" gaming industry is that you don’t know what’s done for a genuine attempt at representation and what’s merely being done to appeal to Twitter and online journalists in order to protect a product from negative reviews and low sales. Everyone suspects a bit of insincerity on all sides of the argument.

And does that actually work? For some reason, I doubt it. There are a lot (relatively speaking, anyway) of video games- and other media, for that matter- that got absolutely trashed by critics.

Well, speaking as a writer that had some modest success (this is anecdotal), out of 5000 reviews/ratings for the Rules of Supervillainy on Audible, I got a percentage of 1-star reviews that listed PC, SJW, and my "agenda" as a reason for them.

My take on these are, well, they're bad-faith reviews.

Because the depiction is the sole thing they hated. So, there's no winning these people over.

The mere existence of a minority character especially one of atypical gender or sexuality is enough for people to label it an agenda.

I remember this one show, sci-fi show so it has a lot of future tech & robots & shit. One of the main characters is explicitly gender-fluid & ya just look down in the comment section of the site of where I was watching the show & ya got all these people just bitching about it. Ya got all this whining about the show being ruined by SJW’s, that gender-fluidity doesn’t exist, yadda yadda, just fucking shit you hear when a little kid cry’s.

All because of one character.

Edited by slimcoder on May 9th 2020 at 1:22:13 AM

I will say that all things being equal, the intentions of an author writing a book are easier to see as genuine than a big company given the degrees of separation. It’s not that you don’t want people to genuine about representation, but big companies don’t have great reputations when these sorts of things occur. It’s done to have something to browbeat consumers with, to use as a shield, etc.

Not to mention given all the other nonsense, Naughty Dog has earned no benefit of the doubt in being genuine about anything.

Edited by Beatman1 on May 9th 2020 at 4:38:48 AM

Was it gen:LOCK?

Edited by jjjj2 on May 9th 2020 at 4:36:11 AM

I'm just wondering if the rumors about Neil Druckman getting rid of Amy Henning being true. Probably not but her departure is still a shame.

That’s the one.

OK, wow, this has been a mess, reminds me of when I first played Chrono Cross.

But regardless of the circumstances, we all agree sending death threats is a step too far, right?

Out of morbid curiosity, what's the name of the manga you mentioned?

Edited by HailMuffins on May 11th 2020 at 4:55:18 PM

Is it bad that since it’s just Druckmann saying this, I...don’t believe him? Twitter crazies are unfortunate, and no one should be threatened over media, ever. I just don’t trust him.

This whole thing has soured me on Naughty Dog as a company. And it’s hard to trust anything a company says when that happens (I’m referring to the crunch culture and what happened to their employees).

That being said, if it’s true, then it absolutely is too far and anyone who thinks that’s an acceptable way to vent frustration needs to get some help, because it assuredly is not.

Edited by Beatman1 on May 11th 2020 at 4:04:10 AM

Wolf Guy - Wolfen Crest.

A manga that infamously has the main love interest gangraped for over 10 chapters.

I think I know that one, the comments on mangazone disincouraged me to read it.

Pity, art looks nice.