Back from the post-holiday hiatus, Scrivonaut and Norayla return for more hot takes on the woke gaming world in a new episode of Splash Damage!
The collective internet mocked Kotaku after they published an article claiming that Halo: Infinite hurts players’ feelings by tracking individual scores. We join in on the mocking and also discuss Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard, people claiming it’s racist that a Dead by Daylight cannibalistic murderer wears a black victim’s face as a mask, Bloomberg’s complaint that games are sexist and Horizon Forbidden West is not because its hero is ugly, Kotaku’s angst that non-black people are making a game with a black protagonist, a G4 host’s tirade about sexist gamers, Polygon really wanting Frodo and Sam to be gay, and plenty more.
It's been a few weeks, but you can listen to this new episode here or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks, as always, for supporting us!
Standard Disclaimer: I'm not Scrivonaut and I'm not affiliated with the podcast, I'm just a fan that wants to give it a signal boost
My takes on the topics:
They actually touch on this in the podcast, but the whole beef about scoring in Halo totally smacks of "participation ribbon" kids' sports. Renata wants to make Halo into something it objectively isn't.
With regards to DBD's Cannibal, I just have to laugh about it, because it seems like the default stance for a hint of someone who is white putting on anything black over the face is to scream "RACISM". Nobody tell these people about white guys wearing black ski-masks in the middle of winter, eh?
Regarding the Bloomberg article, it makes me feel like someone just discovered Sark's YouTube videos and is trying to apply that "logic" to the uggifying of vidyagaem women. It's the same old woke sexist song and dance, where any hot woman in a video game is there for the male gaze, any hot dude is there as a male power fantasy, and it's more woke to virtue it signal up by calling anyone who notices the now-ugly female protag in a sequel a sexist incel manbaby.
Oppression gymnastics abound over the black female protag written by whypipo, and the whole thing boils down to "more black people in positions of power at gaming companies". Film at Eleven.
I'm not going to bother commenting on the Indiana "Foreskin" Black debacle over at G4. We've beat that to death over here already.
The resurgence of Frodo & Sam Are Gay is the same old shit where these people who do nothing but sit in front of their keyboards all day writing slashfic (the majority of whom are women) are warped in their perspective. They harp about toxic masculinity, but the instance two guys show a bit of deep friendship their default mindset is "Oh, they're gay and fucking". They don't get the concept of having a bro who is your ride-or-die and you would be there for them any time, any where, so they only view it through the lens of homosexuality. It's pretty sad, really.