Journal of Other Forum Analysis

[ComeAgain]

So thread locked and he was banned   A rogue, sane mod was finally tired of his shit

Edit: going around in circles = shut up EUROpeans, we don’t care what you think

[Straight Edge]

Jeff Marvel banned for the 30th time. Make it a perm!

[BIONIC]

User Banned (1 month): Dismissing racism, recent prior for female representation

I swear people just look for things to be mad about.

Just enioy the game, I doubt this meant any racism

“Recent prior” but don’t call them cops

——

User Banned (3 Months): Downplaying racism. Previous severe ban for downplaying antisemitism

:
Yeah, that must be what's happening here. People just looking to be mad.

Great take.

Sony shouldn't even take it out. It's just Americans, White Americans no less, upset about it.

This should be easy but here we are.

This virtue signaling dumbass was clearly being sarcastic and still caught strays. Amazing

[ComeAgain]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/why-women-criticise-sexualised-character-designs-ot3-make-her-look-more-corpulent-more-stuffed-where-the-eyes-cant-escape.275780/page-370

I feel like a lot of outlets are too afraid of the backlash if they even slightly hinted at addressing it as part of their reviews which is....tiring. It's very tiring to hear the same outlets preach "We need to make gaming more inclusive towards women", but by all means is the very reason why developers don't learn to do so because journalism tends to ignore it in favor of avoiding bad PR for even a nanosecond.

When I hear a lot of game journalism, that's not to say that all of them do this mind you, that "this is bad for women here" and "this is bad for women there", I'm always sipping my coffee with a "Yea, uh-huh...sure.." because they are increasingly terrible at remaining consistent about it.

Like, mad props to progressbar for doing it and taking the greater leap that so many others have failed to grip the ledge on, but they're only one outlet and we need a more consistent mindset calling out this shit to make any long-lasting waves. It's really sad that only one place so far has been critical about it.

This is what I was feeling, as well. It's certainly striking just how little people are willing to talk about it. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to be to be in that position given the online climate, but really they could do better.

I think another factor, disheartening as it is to consider, is that many reviewers ultimately don't view it as a problem or something worth marking down. If the game runs at 60 fps, has great pacing and exciting set pieces, what's a little bit of sexism to them? Thinking on it, how many reviews do we actually see have 'embarrassing fanservice' or 'problematic sexism' listed as a negative in the same way you would see 'performance drops' or 'lacklustre story' as one? I've come across very few myself.

The tears. They are bitter. It’s almost like it’s not actually a problem in this game!

[ComeAgain]

I honestly don't see why IGN are getting criticised for giving this game 1 point lower than it's current average score.

Do I disagree with IGN a lot? Sure, but people are being melodramatic. It's not like they've scored it 3 or 4 and I don't think they mentioned Eve's design once in their entire review irc. They talk about the characters being bland and lacking in any personality, which is a common complaint I'm seeing amongst other reviewers as well.

Who in that thread is truly criticizing IGN? Are we inventing a third boogeyman now after the first two didn’t work out?

[Snoopy]

Darcy

[Averon]

They are mad that even Polygon isn't attacking SB on sexualization:

I saw Polygon's this morning, which I had hoped would at least honestly deal with the issue, but nope. This is as far as I can tell the sum total of the discussion therein:

That is WILD coming from Polygon of all places.

Objectification doesn't exist and sexualization clearly only occurs when characters a literally fucking on screen. Duh. /s obviously.

[HaughtyFrank]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/why-women-criticise-sexualised-character-designs-ot3-make-her-look-more-corpulent-more-stuffed-where-the-eyes-cant-escape.275780/page-370

I feel like a lot of outlets are too afraid of the backlash if they even slightly hinted at addressing it as part of their reviews which is....tiring. It's very tiring to hear the same outlets preach "We need to make gaming more inclusive towards women", but by all means is the very reason why developers don't learn to do so because journalism tends to ignore it in favor of avoiding bad PR for even a nanosecond.

When I hear a lot of game journalism, that's not to say that all of them do this mind you, that "this is bad for women here" and "this is bad for women there", I'm always sipping my coffee with a "Yea, uh-huh...sure.." because they are increasingly terrible at remaining consistent about it.

Like, mad props to progressbar for doing it and taking the greater leap that so many others have failed to grip the ledge on, but they're only one outlet and we need a more consistent mindset calling out this shit to make any long-lasting waves. It's really sad that only one place so far has been critical about it.

This is what I was feeling, as well. It's certainly striking just how little people are willing to talk about it. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to be to be in that position given the online climate, but really they could do better.

I think another factor, disheartening as it is to consider, is that many reviewers ultimately don't view it as a problem or something worth marking down. If the game runs at 60 fps, has great pacing and exciting set pieces, what's a little bit of sexism to them? Thinking on it, how many reviews do we actually see have 'embarrassing fanservice' or 'problematic sexism' listed as a negative in the same way you would see 'performance drops' or 'lacklustre story' as one? I've come across very few myself.

The tears. They are bitter. It’s almost like it’s not actually a problem in this game!

Remember when they were all like "Oh man, I worry for those poor reviewers when the chuds come after them for giving the game a bad score"

Now the reviewers are chuds as well I guess

[Boredfrom]

That is WILD coming from Polygon of all places.

[ComeAgain]

All of this honestly. The obsessive need to inject oversexualisation into the game ends up, unsurprisingly, running to the detriment of good, interesting parts of it. It's not only unnecessary but it serves to cheapen everything by thinking it needs to harvest fruit that's on the ground in order to be appealing.

Just a few pages prior

I'm glad to have seen screenshots with several outfits I like on top of the ones I already knew about. Nice to know there will be others.

That’s our favorite hypocrite!

[Snoopy]

2013. Oh God. A whole new low. It’s like finding out Doggy Destroyer runs a jazzercise class. Can we get Bridie to contribute?

[ComeAgain]

Oh Tachy has a ridiculous body model in the demo intro too. But she definitely has a sense of chemistry and charisma from the start.

Are they…not aware the Eve body model is based on an actual woman? Literally saying here that a real life woman has a body that’s apparently not real.

[Hap Shaughnessy]

Once again, white Americans thinking they are the center of the universe.

User Banned (Permanent): Dismissing concerns of racism, account in junior phase. Upgraded after review

[Daffy Duck]

Jeff Marvel surely can’t cop a perm for that lmao, oh please make it happen.

[JoeBoy101]

Regardless, this is why it's important to have a diverse staff. Diverse doesn't apply to only color either.

Unless of course it’s a developer or department head cultivating an all-black staff specifically avoiding hiring whites or white-adjacent ethnicities.

But that would be crazy though. Nobody would do something that racist.

[kaleidoscopium]

Jeff Marvel being perma banned over attempting to virtue signal for stellar blade… incredible. Need to see what he’s tweeting now

[JoeBoy101]

Not sure why unintentional is in quotes when it's a pretty American slang term for a racial slur.

Why is unintentional in quotes

Did y'all read past the thread title?

"Unintentional" is in quotes because it's literally quoting Sony's response. It's in the first line of the article.

Yes, it’s just coincidence he used that word like that quoting it in his title. 

No more than the ‘Hard R’ is a fucking coincidence.

[benji]

I just think it's absurd how clearly the games industry compartmentalizes this stuff. They (developers, journalists, corporations) all talk about diversity and inclusion and then turn around and give this game 80+ and an enormous marketing budget.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/stellar-blade-review-thread.852417/page-4?post=122074041#post-122074041

But these things don't have anything to do with each other?

Right? As if there hasn't been a concerted effort to spread this kind of language worldwide since the advent of social media.

There has?

A lot of members would do well to better their understanding of sexism and all its insidious systemic forms within our favourite hobby (and beyond really). We are not good at identifying it and worse at discussing it. Perhaps worse yet is that many of us are bad at listening and then another large portion fall silent and let things get worse and boil into a bit of a silent boys club feel. I understand being tired of everything but effort is needed and appreciated. If you don't know how to navigate these threads and these feelings. If you fear you might get banned when posting. If you don't understand why evoking your wife who doesn't even play games' opinion is inflammatory. If you feel attacked. If you cannot read past the venting. If nothing I say makes a drop of sense. It might be worth reflecting on this and scheduling some time to try and work out why. No one knows everything. We are all ignorant of everything until we learn.

Sounds like a lot of assumptions about other people you don't know anything about.

Now they are pulling up the South Korean version of Wikipedia that gives the definition of the N word to prove they are in fact racist.

Third sentence of the first section. If an SK developer wanted to be a racist little shit, it would take MINIMAL amounts of research to find this stealthy alternative.

Considering the very similar "BOO_B" graffiti from another section of the game, it's not hard to believe that the environment artist was using this as a way of inserting edgelord shit.

This is reaching a level of desperation that they didn’t even reach with Cyberpunk.

Why would someone do any "amounts of research" for a racial slur "alternative"?

This thread makes me think of the random theory of life creation. That if you throw enough shit together enough times, you will eventually get life. Yeah I am sure that could happen with a super specific racist term. But I doubt it.

Shit happens WAY to often, folks just love to tell people being pissed on that it's just raining.

Slayven coming out against abiogenesis and the theory of evolution. You love to see it.

[BIONIC]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/why-women-criticise-sexualised-character-designs-ot3-make-her-look-more-corpulent-more-stuffed-where-the-eyes-cant-escape.275780/page-370?post=122080650#post-122080650

You're talking about a bunch of people who are very good at imagining things. No score, good or bad, is going to stop them from forming their own narrative.

[ComeAgain]

I read that end paragraph thinking I completely agree lol so I re-read the quote and think I mistook it. For me, yes, I'd much rather be talking about the interesting elements of the game but instead we have to have this discussion because the developers couldn't resist pushing the sexualisation to an absurd degree. It's an important conversation to have and it should be the one we're having, and are having, now as a result of that. It is frustrating though because it's so easy to see how improved the game would be without it all, how unnecessary it is. You have sexualised designs in the game that, while may elicit discussion, aren't beige bodysuits and landing lights. There's already a game there with a feminine female lead, nice outfits, great combat and sound design, etc. Yet they couldn't resist taking it to such an extreme to where it's hard to see little other reason than to provoke for easy marketing. Which is just another side of the coin when it comes to cheapening the product as a whole, since the visual flair on the combat, animations and less egregious outfits would easily have carried this into people's interest.

Again, as you proceed to spend 40+ hours playing it.

[ComeAgain]

Anyone who thinks numerical scores and metacritic averages are worth seriously debating probably doesn't have much to contribute to this discussion anyway.

Your ilk were literally praying for low scores

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/senate-passes-95-billion-package-sending-aid-to-ukraine-israel-l-taiwan-includes-repo-act-tiktok-after-months-of-delay.852096/page-4?post=122066544#post-122066544

User Banned (1 Week): Ignoring Staff Post

The population of Ukraine is like 7x Palestine and there's been hundreds of thousands of deaths in Ukraine, I don't think the Israel conflict is deathlier at least in terms of deaths

You can decide if this changes your point or not, but you might have accidentally just searched "Palestine population" instead of "Gaza population". The West Bank is not contiguous with Gaza and has around 3 million people (including ~600,000 settlers) to Gaza's ~2 million. Though there is violence in The West Bank with perhaps almost 400 deaths since Oct 7th, it is not subject to bombings in a similar way to the geographically separated Gaza Strip which has since lost almost the majority of its buildings. A more accurate but still conservative ratio of affected populations would be perhaps 15x. You can then go to the Casualties of the Russo-Ukrainian War Wikipedia page and use the largest estimates for Ukrainian civilians and soldiers killed and not get to that ratio. You might be able to add 350,000 dead Russian soldiers to the figure to "even the score" but I'm not sure if that's in the spirit of things and that only makes the proportions more or less commensurate with each other anyway. Regardless, that also ignores that the Russo-Ukraine war has been going for 26 months compared to six months since Oct 7th and that Ukraine and Russia are much closer to a militarily symmetrical conflict than Israel and Gaza.

I won't dwell on it any more since it's both approaching a tangent topic and it's morbid to be doing comparative math with death tables.

[ComeAgain]

All of this. Sad part is there's nothing wrong with sexy games. They couldn't even get that part right, though. These are self-inflicted wounds.

Based on the good reviews, there are no wounds. 

[Alpacx]

ZeoVGM should've put on some trans armor.

[BIONIC]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/why-women-criticise-sexualised-character-designs-ot3-make-her-look-more-corpulent-more-stuffed-where-the-eyes-cant-escape.275780/page-370?post=122082627#post-122082627

Fuck, save us from the "Stellar Blade has developed quite a fan art following" thread.

Nah, it would probably hit the Boys Club ruling pretty fast, judging how people have acted in previous "look at these sexualized women" threads, lmao.

[tweet]https://twitter.com/cendotharl/status/1782232578960830682?s=46&t=JPGKEBNYMJUqJDkxKVmPjA[/tweet]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/cendotharl/status/1782302572763644009?s=46&t=JPGKEBNYMJUqJDkxKVmPjA[/tweet]

[Hap Shaughnessy]

ZeoVGM got two weeks.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ign-stellar-blade-has-unintentional-racist-in-game-graffiti-will-be-patched-out.852468/

User Banned (2 weeks): editorializing op title on sensitive topic

[Boredfrom]

Not sure why unintentional is in quotes when it's a pretty American slang term for a racial slur.

Why is unintentional in quotes

Did y'all read past the thread title?

"Unintentional" is in quotes because it's literally quoting Sony's response. It's in the first line of the article.

Yes, it’s just coincidence he used that word like that quoting it in his title. 

No more than the ‘Hard R’ is a fucking coincidence.

Being fair, the same article does the same:

Sony says it will remove Stellar Blade artwork that appears to reference racist slurs, claiming that the phrase's inclusion was "unintentional."

[Snoopy]

Oh no. Tom Holland’s going to be very upset about this

[HaughtyFrank]

They replaced Hard R with Crime R. 

SAY WHAT YOU REALLY MEAN SOUTH KOREANS

[benji]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/senate-passes-95-billion-package-sending-aid-to-ukraine-israel-l-taiwan-includes-repo-act-tiktok-after-months-of-delay.852096/page-4?post=122066544#post-122066544

User Banned (1 Week): Ignoring Staff Post

The population of Ukraine is like 7x Palestine and there's been hundreds of thousands of deaths in Ukraine, I don't think the Israel conflict is deathlier at least in terms of deaths

You can decide if this changes your point or not, but you might have accidentally just searched "Palestine population" instead of "Gaza population". The West Bank is not contiguous with Gaza and has around 3 million people (including ~600,000 settlers) to Gaza's ~2 million. Though there is violence in The West Bank with perhaps almost 400 deaths since Oct 7th, it is not subject to bombings in a similar way to the geographically separated Gaza Strip which has since lost almost the majority of its buildings. A more accurate but still conservative ratio of affected populations would be perhaps 15x. You can then go to the Casualties of the Russo-Ukrainian War Wikipedia page and use the largest estimates for Ukrainian civilians and soldiers killed and not get to that ratio. You might be able to add 350,000 dead Russian soldiers to the figure to "even the score" but I'm not sure if that's in the spirit of things and that only makes the proportions more or less commensurate with each other anyway. Regardless, that also ignores that the Russo-Ukraine war has been going for 26 months compared to six months since Oct 7th and that Ukraine and Russia are much closer to a militarily symmetrical conflict than Israel and Gaza.

I won't dwell on it any more since it's both approaching a tangent topic and it's morbid to be doing comparative math with death tables.

So they banned this guy for actually doing the work to check someone's claim and not the person who made the claim?