I need a new comic to read.

[luciazephyr]

Dear today's Penny Arcade! comic,

Gosh. It must be so nice to shrug shit like that off.

Check your privilege.

Unimpressed,
-Aunt Lucy



I am starting to dislike this thread in PA! that when there is controversy, it's simply people wanking over things we can't change. Duke Nukem Forever allowing you to spank women is not equivalent to Call of Duty letting you "murder, like, a million people." The two points have little to do with each other. War games do not mock their subject matter and belittle soldiers. DNF? It was already juvenile and reinforcing bullshit stereotypes about gaming's maturity level. This is not helping the case.

Also, guys? It's still homophobic to use "that's gay"/"you're a fag" as insults. You were wrong there too.

Comments

[thene]

The real kicker for me was the whole INTERNET DEATH THREATS wank; apparently someone making wanky jokes about crime is bad after all! Oh wait, it isn't. Oh wait, it is! Seriously if you're going to have a freakout about stupid internet death threats you can watch your own fuckiing mouth or shut the hell up.

I do think it's worth asking why we rate different crimes as having different levels of seriousness in entertainment media - and why we actively glorify wars and the military so much - but the answer is never 'lol just LIGHTEN UP LADIES'. (The weirdest part of all is that sexual violence a la DNF consistently gets rated lower than consensual sex. This is one of my laundry list of reasons why I am no longer giving my fics standardised ratings at all, only content warnings, and am considering removing all the ratings tags from mgs_f /troll mod is trolly )

[luciazephyr]

I totally agree that it would be prudent to examine these things we blithely accept in video games, including the glorification of violence. But, yeah, that doesn't make complaints about female portrayal in vidya any less legit.

The PA! guys do a lot of good. They made a great set of cons that welcomes industry and gamers alike. I'm a huge fan of their charity work. They made Jack Thompson look like a moron with the donation thing. But right now it's really hard to like them.