Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 2)

[NekoFever]

Hilarious to watch the wind go out of the Wolverine review thread the moment they see the 6/10 from IGN.

[benji]

How many different ways of "I refuse to explain my arguments" do they have?

Actually, it's about ethics in attacking the messenger and exposing what they really mean:

[Propagandhim]

He's right, if only people on the left had insisted harder that trans women are women and it's not up for debate.

👇👇👇👇

I would like this post a thousand times if Bdubs wasn’t such a pussy. 

https://www.resetera.com/threads/talarico-i-oppose-trans-athletes-playing-in-girls-sports-if-it-endangers-safety-or-fairness-update-doubles-down-on-transphobic-talking-points.1628977/page-9#post-160358719

I need a lot of the people here thinking about, ok so what sort of facts and statistics could you cite to shut this down to consider, the Kirby frame:

It's based on George Lakoff's observation that "negating a frame reinforces it." For example, when Secretary of the Department of Health Robert F Kennedy Jr says autism is bad and autistic people are a drain on society, there is a natural instinct among decent people to point out that those claims are wrong: actually many autistic people are very productive members of society, these famous people are autistic, etc.

But if you do that, you are stepping into their context. You are now having a discussion about the value of autistic people. When you negate their frame, your arguments are shaped like their arguments: if they say autistic people are costly, you cite economic statistics about work. You are responding as though they are acting in good faith, as though they are your audience, as though they might change their mind if you prove that what they're saying isn't true.

This is a trap. They will not change their mind and they are not your audience. They are lying because they want to do something. Your audience is not the liar, but other people hearing those lies. Your goal is to help other people understand what those lies are meant to accomplish.

To avoid the trap, you have to eat their frame. By "eat their frame," I mean respond with a frame that contains and explains what they're doing.

In this case: RFK Jr is pushing eugenics. He wants disabled people to not exist. He wants to accomplish that by letting them die, stopping them from being born, pretending they don't exist, and defining a "correct" kind of body: straight, white, male, cisgender, not disabled (where disability is defined as deviation from the correct body). That's why he's telling lies about autism.

In this frame we are not having a discussion about the value of autistic people. We are having a discussion about RFK Jr and why he is pushing eugenics. Instead of focusing on bad faith arguments, we focus on the people making them. We can still make sense of what he's saying: he's lying to advance the goals of eugenics. Having explained why he's doing this, we dismiss his arguments instead of treating them as valid points we have to refute. He is now in our context. We eat his frame.

And our argument is shaped like Kirby.

And if the implication of this isn't clear enough, the final example given:

Frame: Trans women have an unfair advantage in sports.
Negation: no they don't, these studies and stats etc etc
Kirby: THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT SPORTS THEY WANT TO ELIMINATE TRANS PEOPLE and they're actually very open about this.

Proper link: https://anthonymoser.github.io/writing/rhetoric/framing/kirby/2026/01/28/the-kirby-frame.html

Here are some examples from my running thread.

Frame: DOGE was a govt efficiency project to save money
Negation: Actually it made things less efficient and cost money
Kirby: DOGE WAS A PROJECT TO BREAK AND PRIVATIZE FEDERAL BUREAUCRACY

Frame: This public service costs too much, it isn’t making money
Negation: It’s actually very efficient and it could make more money
Kirby: THEY ARE ATTACKING THE VERY IDEA OF PUBLIC SERVICES

Frame: Des Moines Superintendent Dr. Ian Roberts is here illegally
Negation: actually his paperwork is in order
Kirby: THIS IS A RACIST ATTACK BY FASCISTS because a Black man is leading a school district. The better he’s doing the more they hate him

Frame: ICE is targeting criminals
Negation: No, they’re targeting ordinary people!
Kirby: THEY’RE WHITE SUPREMACISTS DOING ETHNIC CLEANSING which is why they’re saying everybody who isn’t white is a criminal

Frame: Food stamps are used by undeserving / Black people
Negation: Actually many people on food stamps are deserving / white
Kirby: THEY ARE STARVING PEOPLE ON PURPOSE. They are using racist tropes to justify it bc many people will find that persuasive. Everyone deserves to eat

Frame: These African women soccer players aren’t really women
Negation: Actually they were all assigned female at birth.
Kirby: TRANSPHOBES ARE ALWAYS RACISTS. They are trying to define whose bodies are acceptable. The National Women’s Soccer League must reject that project, not claim to meet its standards

Frame: Smart glasses are just like an iPhone.
Negation: no, they’re different in important ways.
Kirby: THIS IS A SURVEILLANCE TOOL. THEY WANT TO NORMALIZE CONSTANT SURVEILLANCE. They are making a bad faith comparison to try and move the boundaries of acceptable behavior

Frame: Estimates of AI water usage are exaggerated / less than other industries
Negation: actually these studies show it’s still pretty bad and it’s hard to make good estimates when they hide all the data.
Kirby: “how much water does it take to disrupt the careers of millions of people? how much water does it take to make deepfakes of underage kids? how much water does it take to exacerbate people’s mental health crises? is there a good number? is there an acceptable number?”

Frame: The humanities are an unprofitable burden to universities
Negation: Actually many depts make money, students with humanities degrees do very well
Kirby: IT’S AN IDEOLOGICAL ATTACK. Even if it’s profitable they don’t want people asking questions about society or imagining alternatives

This is funny because I can totally picture them spazzing out and screaming all of the stuff in all caps and everyone just being like, "What's your problem?"

[HaughtyFrank]

Just to speak to the first part you'd be shocked at where everything is at after even a year. Speaking to like, going from being able to do multiple chin-ups from hanging to struggling to hit a 90° angle on your arms, let alone the full lift.

What a convincing argument. Now lets look at how Lia Thomas' ranks changed when she competed with women

In the 2018–2019 season, when competing in the men's team, Thomas was ranked 554th in the 200 freestyle, 65th in the 500 freestyle, and 32nd in the 1650 freestyle, though these rankings have been called into question because they were based on an event that was not a full championship competition and Thomas did not reduce her training before the race to perform at her best.[21] In the 2021–2022 season, those ranks when competing in the women's team were fifth in the 200 freestyle, first in the 500 freestyle, and eighth in the 1,650 freestyle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_Thomas

But I'm sure she jumped up over 500 ranks because she didn't try hard enough as a man as that one desperate Wiki editor suggests  

[Chumbawumbafan69]

Wolverine being a 6 or 7 out of 10 game was the most obvious thing in the world once the previews of it came out. This looks like a game that would’ve been $40 at release 20 years ago but with pretty graphics. Very funny they didn’t see this one coming.

[benji]

It's based on George Lakoff's observation that "negating a frame reinforces it." For example, when Secretary of the Department of Health Robert F Kennedy Jr says autism is bad and autistic people are a drain on society, there is a natural instinct among decent people to point out that those claims are wrong: actually many autistic people are very productive members of society, these famous people are autistic, etc.

But if you do that, you are stepping into their context. You are now having a discussion about the value of autistic people. When you negate their frame, your arguments are shaped like their arguments: if they say autistic people are costly, you cite economic statistics about work.

...

In this case: RFK Jr is pushing eugenics. He wants disabled people to not exist. He wants to accomplish that by letting them die, stopping them from being born, pretending they don't exist, and defining a "correct" kind of body: straight, white, male, cisgender, not disabled (where disability is defined as deviation from the correct body). That's why he's telling lies about autism. 

I love how the example doesn't consider that "autism is bad and autistic people are costly" is a frame to argue for curing autism so they'll be normal healthy people. Instead it believes that the first instinct is for a person to defend autism as a good thing.

[benji]

This is funny because I can totally picture them spazzing out and screaming all of the stuff in all caps and everyone just being like, "What's your problem?"

BECAUSE THEY WANT TO MURDER ME AND RAPE MY CORPSE AS PART OF MAKING BIBI THE POPE

[Snoopy]

I don't think cramming fast food down your throat counts as a chin up fatty

[Greatness Gone]

Still peddling “HRT has made me a weakling who can’t open a pickle jar, just like a real woman ” bullshit I see…Kyuuji is a 6ft muscular balding ginger btw

[benji]

When evaluating Kyuuji's chin-up story I think it's important to remember that he had to relearn how to walk at age 30 from trying to be like a dinosaur.

[jimmys13]

When evaluating Kyuuji's chin-up story I think it's important to remember that he had to relearn how to walk at age 30 from trying to be like a dinosaur.

This is the weirdest fucking forum I swear to God...

[Greatness Gone]

I predict layoffs at Insomniac for sure. 

The budget was leaked to be $305 million and it needed to sell 10 million copies to secure future projects.
A 77 Meta score in an already crowded holiday season isn't going to achieve that.

To put that into perspective, that's $20 million per hour of mediocre gameplay

How the fuck is Spider-Man 3 estimated to have a nearly $400M budget!!!! All 3 of the Spider-Man games out right now are nearly identical in terms of type of content and style. What could possibly necessitate so much money for what’s going to be the same thing for the fourth time?

[Lonewulfeus]

He's right, if only people on the left had insisted harder that trans women are women and it's not up for debate.

👇👇👇👇

I would like this post a thousand times if Bdubs wasn’t such a pussy. 

https://www.resetera.com/threads/talarico-i-oppose-trans-athletes-playing-in-girls-sports-if-it-endangers-safety-or-fairness-update-doubles-down-on-transphobic-talking-points.1628977/page-9#post-160358719

I need a lot of the people here thinking about, ok so what sort of facts and statistics could you cite to shut this down to consider, the Kirby frame:

It's based on George Lakoff's observation that "negating a frame reinforces it." For example, when Secretary of the Department of Health Robert F Kennedy Jr says autism is bad and autistic people are a drain on society, there is a natural instinct among decent people to point out that those claims are wrong: actually many autistic people are very productive members of society, these famous people are autistic, etc.

But if you do that, you are stepping into their context. You are now having a discussion about the value of autistic people. When you negate their frame, your arguments are shaped like their arguments: if they say autistic people are costly, you cite economic statistics about work. You are responding as though they are acting in good faith, as though they are your audience, as though they might change their mind if you prove that what they're saying isn't true.

This is a trap. They will not change their mind and they are not your audience. They are lying because they want to do something. Your audience is not the liar, but other people hearing those lies. Your goal is to help other people understand what those lies are meant to accomplish.

To avoid the trap, you have to eat their frame. By "eat their frame," I mean respond with a frame that contains and explains what they're doing.

In this case: RFK Jr is pushing eugenics. He wants disabled people to not exist. He wants to accomplish that by letting them die, stopping them from being born, pretending they don't exist, and defining a "correct" kind of body: straight, white, male, cisgender, not disabled (where disability is defined as deviation from the correct body). That's why he's telling lies about autism.

In this frame we are not having a discussion about the value of autistic people. We are having a discussion about RFK Jr and why he is pushing eugenics. Instead of focusing on bad faith arguments, we focus on the people making them. We can still make sense of what he's saying: he's lying to advance the goals of eugenics. Having explained why he's doing this, we dismiss his arguments instead of treating them as valid points we have to refute. He is now in our context. We eat his frame.

And our argument is shaped like Kirby.

And if the implication of this isn't clear enough, the final example given:

Frame: Trans women have an unfair advantage in sports.
Negation: no they don't, these studies and stats etc etc
Kirby: THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT SPORTS THEY WANT TO ELIMINATE TRANS PEOPLE and they're actually very open about this.

Proper link: https://anthonymoser.github.io/writing/rhetoric/framing/kirby/2026/01/28/the-kirby-frame.html

Here are some examples from my running thread.

Frame: DOGE was a govt efficiency project to save money
Negation: Actually it made things less efficient and cost money
Kirby: DOGE WAS A PROJECT TO BREAK AND PRIVATIZE FEDERAL BUREAUCRACY

Frame: This public service costs too much, it isn’t making money
Negation: It’s actually very efficient and it could make more money
Kirby: THEY ARE ATTACKING THE VERY IDEA OF PUBLIC SERVICES

Frame: Des Moines Superintendent Dr. Ian Roberts is here illegally
Negation: actually his paperwork is in order
Kirby: THIS IS A RACIST ATTACK BY FASCISTS because a Black man is leading a school district. The better he’s doing the more they hate him

Frame: ICE is targeting criminals
Negation: No, they’re targeting ordinary people!
Kirby: THEY’RE WHITE SUPREMACISTS DOING ETHNIC CLEANSING which is why they’re saying everybody who isn’t white is a criminal

Frame: Food stamps are used by undeserving / Black people
Negation: Actually many people on food stamps are deserving / white
Kirby: THEY ARE STARVING PEOPLE ON PURPOSE. They are using racist tropes to justify it bc many people will find that persuasive. Everyone deserves to eat

Frame: These African women soccer players aren’t really women
Negation: Actually they were all assigned female at birth.
Kirby: TRANSPHOBES ARE ALWAYS RACISTS. They are trying to define whose bodies are acceptable. The National Women’s Soccer League must reject that project, not claim to meet its standards

Frame: Smart glasses are just like an iPhone.
Negation: no, they’re different in important ways.
Kirby: THIS IS A SURVEILLANCE TOOL. THEY WANT TO NORMALIZE CONSTANT SURVEILLANCE. They are making a bad faith comparison to try and move the boundaries of acceptable behavior

Frame: Estimates of AI water usage are exaggerated / less than other industries
Negation: actually these studies show it’s still pretty bad and it’s hard to make good estimates when they hide all the data.
Kirby: “how much water does it take to disrupt the careers of millions of people? how much water does it take to make deepfakes of underage kids? how much water does it take to exacerbate people’s mental health crises? is there a good number? is there an acceptable number?”

Frame: The humanities are an unprofitable burden to universities
Negation: Actually many depts make money, students with humanities degrees do very well
Kirby: IT’S AN IDEOLOGICAL ATTACK. Even if it’s profitable they don’t want people asking questions about society or imagining alternatives

Frame: Trans women are women and should be in women’s single sex spaces
Negation: Trans women are biological men
Kirby: They just want easy access to women probably to rape them.

Hey looks that’s pretty easy, gonna give that a try

[benji]

How the fuck is Spider-Man 3 estimated to have a nearly $400M budget!!!! All 3 of the Spider-Man games out right now are nearly identical in terms of type of content and style. What could possibly necessitate so much money for what’s going to be the same thing for the fourth time?

It's presumably also a PS6 title, so including inflation the budget isn't too out of line with 2. They're also supposedly still making a Venom thing that's budgeted over $120 million.

Your whining about PAYING 👏 ARTISTS 👏 is noted as part of your Nazi record.

[Boredfrom]

The people who show up for Marvel will show up,

Why you guys keep repeating this shit when even Tokon is struggling. It feels like they are even proud on overestimating brand power.

[benji]

Why you guys keep repeating this shit when even Tokon is struggling.

That's because of the massively sexualized women characters turning away women (and allies) and the lack of Black women characters turning away people of color.

[Propagandhim]

They just don't have enough snyder cuts for the multiverse and they need to bring back the guy that plays Marvel cuz honestly the franchise hasn't been the same since the grogu and loki crossover and thats just how the endgame cinematic timeline crossover snyder cut continuity goes and thats on god

[Boredfrom]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/dead-or-alive-6-last-round-project-manager-reveals-koei-tecmo-is-dialing-back-the-games-sexy-costumes.1630138/

I fucking knew it. 

But they still want to pander to eastern markets that don’t care by releasing stuff like free to play DOAX.

[Let's Cyber]

When evaluating Kyuuji's chin-up story I think it's important to remember that he had to relearn how to walk at age 30 from trying to be like a dinosaur.

This is the weirdest fucking forum I swear to God...

I did something similar because I wanted to be Solid Snake. I did a lot of toe walking in my youth. I got beautiful calves now though.

This one weird trick will EXPLODE your calves, gym trainers HATE IT!

[Boredfrom]

Why you guys keep repeating this shit when even Tokon is struggling.

That's because of the massively sexualized women characters turning away women (and allies) and the lack of Black women characters turning away people of color.

Koei Tecmo sees Marvel Rivals: 

[Greatness Gone]

The people who show up for Marvel will show up,

Why you guys keep repeating this shit when even Tokon is struggling. It feels like they are even proud on overestimating brand power.

Tokon is the best ASW game since Persona 4 Arena too…feels bad bros 

[Disco55]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/spyro-a-realm-beyond-announced-releasing-2027-ps5-xbox-series-switch-2-pc.1543396/page-9#post-160287847

lol guy is getting ass mad cause purple scrimblo bimblo dragon got a slight update to show he's older.

[Jansen]

So I want to start off by saying that, accessibility options are a good thing, and Sony in particular have been doing great at providing a lot of options in their titles. In particular despite it's existence being criticized, The Last of Us Part 1 Remake was awesome in that it was able to basically back port all the accessibility options that TLOU2 did.



But honestly, that isn't exactly what we're talking about here.



Rather, it's something some devs have been doing, Sony devs in particular, where some of these accessibility options are being built right into the game design, so there is no opting out.



I think people really started to notice it when the one-two punch of Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarok released in the same year, Aloy often would spoil puzzles and keep reminding the player of their objective, and Atreus would often just tell you puzzle solutions really quickly. Now, having the option for the characters to give a hint if your stuck is one thing, but (at least at launch, since Ragnarok did add a toggle to reduce it) it's not something you can ignore.



And over the years since, we've seen more titles do similiar things and met with annoyance by audiences. And now we arrive at Wolverine, which seems to have taken this to it's ultimate extreme. A game that seems like it's so afraid to let the player be alone with their thoughts, that even in a linear path, they must outright show the player the route to a collectable. Like they couldn't trust the player to see the large ass cave off to the side and want to investigate, they had to draw a line on the ground (that you can't turn off), to show you .



The game also has QTE's that even if the player touches nothing, they will auto complete anyway. So why do they even exist at that point?



Here's the thing, no one was expecting Wolverine to be some hardcore experience or the like, but at the same time, it feels like somewhere along the line, the plot was lost. They started to assume they must design the game first and for most to the lowest common denominator. Again, it would be one thing if these were options in the menu that the player had to opt into, but instead it's always on.



Monster Hunter Wilds did a lot of similiar things. So much of the story mode was literally you forced onto the mount while the characters talk, monsters are shown on the map at all times so there is no need to explore, and you have a mount that will auto path you to the monsters. So much of it just removes agency from the player, they no longer need to think at all, the game is doing it for them. Like the Paintball system of the old games wasn't perfect, but there was still just enough of a learning curve there that players felt like they did have some agency, where they felt rewarded for exploring and figuring out where the monsters typically spawn or where they like to fly off to when they move.



And it just feels so bizarre. Like we're in a world where Elden Ring has sold over 30 million copies and here's the thing. It's not like Elden Ring doesn't tell the player what to do. They do, it's just not some big neon light telling you. It's the way the map is laid out, the way landmarks are positioned to draw the players attention to want to investigate them. And even in non-open world games, this kind of stuff is still super important, but it feels increasingly like it's being forgoes and will just give the player a bright arrow telling you where to go. Like I am someone who does think overall, the yellow paint stuff is overblown, but it does become a bit like parody when there is a clear and obvious path and yet they still put the yellow paint (or the game's equivalent) on the path.



It's ultimately the thing that I think increasingly more players want. It's not about the game being ball busting hard, but the game allowing itself to go quiet for a bit and letting the player figure out things on their own, letting them fail and learning from that failure.



Like ironically enough you got these games that people have called: "Friendslop", like PEAK, REPO, and Lethal Company which actually give way more trust to the player. They don't throw players into a river without a paddle, like in PEAK's case you have a book showing you all the tutorial stuff and you can try stuff out in the lobby. But once your in the game proper, you have to figure out what to do. Is this fruit going to fill my stomach or is it going to poison me? The player is then allowed to fail that, but now will know and ideally not make that mistake again. It's stuff like that which helps the player feel like they are improving at the game. But when your not allowed to fail... You don't feel that.



I want to say it was FF16, but I could be remembering wrong, but I recalled that the game would often give like a tutorial box to explain how to kill an enemy as a new one shows up. As if they couldn't trust the player to figure it out, they needed to just explain it.



Wardogs just came out and sold already 1 million copies in a single day and while it's not some super hardcore shooter, it's far from ARMA or Tarkov, it still is more willing to let the player decide what to do. You get into a match and the game only has one simple objective, take the Control Zone, but otherwise gives players a sandbox to figure out how to do that. The maps are big enough that players can build their own bases to try and secure a safer route to the Control Zone. Or you can play almost totally passively and take the roll of someone who drives people from the base to combat and your rewarded for that.



I get it, some games have super big budgets and they want to appeal to as many people as they can, but it gets to the point where in their desire to appeal to everyone, they start to appeal to no one.



Sadly, I feel like some devs are going to take a long time to figure that out.

Autism
Autism everywhere

[Potato]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/marvels-wolverine-review-score-prediction-thread.1623058/page-13#post-160350184

This is why all professionals are still biased humans at the end of the day, the game isn't being rated on its own merits and I can guarantee many people will eventually say that this is better than Spiderman 2 which got a 90.

Honestly I don't know what reviewers were smoking that they gave Spiderman 2 a 90. No surprise that Insomniac got lulled into thinking their formula needs to adjustments

The first Spidermoon game was boring as fuck. I turned it off after an hour and never went back.

[Vertigo]

I'm buying this just to see Vancouver properly represented in videogames. Hopefully you can turn the trail off completely, I'd be surprised if that wasn't an option. Plus I still have my copy of Origins to keep me warm at night.

Remember when this guy was one of the most feared janitors on Neogaf. Multiple requotes people begging for him to come into threads to do one liners when banning someone, usually an Xbot. 

Now his just a face in the crowd. Life comes at you fast.

[TylenolJones]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/we-have-made-the-difficult-decision-to-step-away-from-collaborating-with-kojima-productions-on-its-project-physint-sony-xbox-picks-up-the-game.1629049/

MGS SUCCESSOR DAY 1 ON PC

REE SOYNY PONIES ON SUICIDE WATCH 

Why did Kojima have to go and commit a genocide?

I'm fucking crushed that Kojima is going all in on Xbox but I'm not budging

I'd rather cancel my project even if it meant I'd have no job then sign a deal with Microsoft

It is possible he didn't know. If it wasn't mentioned on Era I probably wouldn't have known what MS is doing.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-bds-movement-calls-for-a-boycott-of-xbox-and-microsoft-gaming-products-over-its-parent-companys-complicity-in-the-genocide-in-gaza.1155057/page-37#post-160359223

[DavidCroquet]

What I'd be more concerned about is the flip flopping. This the same guy who responded to "name something you love" with "trans kids".

I know, politician who panders, news at 11, but usually it shouldn't be that blatant

Not smart to say when Donald Trump is your opponent 

I laughed out loud at "what the hell does he... he wants to 'beat meat'???"

[Chumbawumbafan69]

[DavidCroquet]

This is a really weird way for Lobster Roll to tell everyone as unmistakably as he can that he is constantly active at "the old place", to the point that he is cross-referencing X posts and NeoGaf activity down the actual minute of activity.

Uh, Mods, we're really gonna let someone who's this active at the old place drag their shower elf convera-rapist stink all over Era?

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

if critics can criticize games, why can't we criticize critics?