Some of you already know I don't like Moviebobs Game Overthinker and Extra Credits.
For those who don't know, Extra Credits is a series of rants by a group of college students with nebulous ties to the games industry. (eg. One is a 'graphics designer', but that could be making the game graphics, or designing a letter head) The gist of which is to take games seriously as an artistic medium. They do rants on how games need to be less sexist, how indie games should be funded, free speach in games ect.
Moviebob is an internet film reviewer who became famous (at least with people I know) for this hillarious Transformers 2 review.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/797-Transformers-Revenge
He is also did a series called the Game Over Thinker, which is very similar to Extra Credits with rants where he says we all have to stop being mindless, unthinking halo fans.
Alot of their stuff (imo) is condesending, old news, nieve wishful thinking, hyporcritcal, ignorant of the subject matter, simply wrong or all of the above. A perfect example of this is Moviebobs recent video where he accuses Halo of promoting fascism and racism. Fans of them though hold them up as infalible and do a service to gamers by giving a voice to the more thoughtful gamers.
However, just because I disagree with them 99% of the time does not mean I instantly hate anything they say simply because I'm against them, and this is one thing I want to talk about.
In one of Moviebobs videos he reviews the film Black Swan. If you've not heard of it, think of it as the lesbian version of Brokeback Mountain with a ballet and horror themes. In the review he raises the point that going to see a film for the one super sexy scene is no different then seeing a film for it's twist ending, or a cool fight scene, ect.
This goes neatly with the idea that adult games are the most juvinile, and sex in games is limited to women with big tits and porn.
This got me thinking. What is the differece between playing Bioshock for it's atmosphere, playing Mass Effect for it's story, and playing DoA for the boobs? I have played a bunch of really dumb games recently. Alien Shooter, Aliens Vs Preditor (2010), Frontlines, arguably Halo counts. However, while they are frowned upon by most, I've had much more fun with said games then I ever had with Braid or The Void. Some say games should takle polatics and gay issues more. Why? Blacksite and Iji did polatics and philosphy and came across as really dumb because of it. What's wrong with the Halo/Bioshock method and having that stuff as a part of the narative without beating the player round the head constantly?
As Livejournal user Siege said
"Those games which do tackle politics and social issues without breaking immersion (provided immersion is a goal of the game) do so by not focusing specifically on cramming the content in your face; rather, the content is always there in front of you, and the design of the game has you work your way through it for yourself rather than telling you outright what conclusion it wants. Just like a written story built on obvious moralizing isn't as readable as a story where the decisions and consequences make sense (despite an outcome where the bad guy actually looks like a bad guy by the end of it)."
Given the option between 2 games, one bad but full of gay rights issues, or a good game out nothing in particular, I know which I would have.