Game-related ramblings.

Month: September 2014

The Witcher Adventures: Merry Witchmas

I’m playing through the bonus Adventures included with The Witcher. Read about the earlier Adventures, along with an introduction to the game, here. Also remember that you can click on images to view larger versions.

Well, this is it: the last Adventure included with The Witcher. To be honest, it took much longer to play and write about these than I expected. But they offered a great opportunity to write extensively about a very interesting game, and I was often impressed with what the fan community had created.

The final Adventure is called Merry Witchmas, and is also by Ifrit, the group responsible for The Wedding. After playing The Wedding I didn’t have very high hopes for this one, but it’s actually much better. Merry Witchmas takes us once again to Vizima’s Temple Quarter, but this time snow is falling as winter approaches. Geralt wants to make a little more money before retiring to Kaer Morhen for the winter, but gets more than he bargained for when he discovers it’s up to him to save (or destroy) the Witchmas holiday.

The Witcher Adventures: The Wedding

I’m playing through the bonus Adventures included with The Witcher. Read about the earlier Adventures, along with an introduction to the game, here. Also remember that you can click on images to view larger versions.

The next Adventure on the list is The Wedding, which was made by an entire team of modders known as Ifrit. The Wedding sets itself apart from the other adventures by having no combat whatsoever. In fact, it doesn’t have any of the myriad game mechanics showcased in the earlier Adventure Deceits, except for a few fistfights. It’s focused solely on conversations, aiming for a silly comedic tone.

Unfortunately, The Wedding also sets itself apart from the other Adventures by being terrible.

The Witcher Adventures: The Wraiths Of Quiet Hamlet

I’m playing through the bonus Adventures included with The Witcher. Read about the earlier Adventures, along with an introduction to the game, here. Also remember that you can click on images to view larger versions.

The next adventure on the list, The Wraiths of Quiet Hamlet, is by Krzysztof Wiśniowski and his brothers Adam and Jacek, and it earned an honorable mention in D’Jinni Adventure Editor Contest. Like the winner of that contest, Deceits, it repurposes the riverside village location from Chapter IV of the main game, and like Deceits it tells a tale of Geralt arriving in a small village and solving the locals’ problems. So I was surprised at just how different of an experience it is, by virtue of both its writing and its design.

“Gamers”

As usual, I’m a little late with this. Some truly awful events have occurred over the last couple of weeks that highlight the absolute worst of so-called “gamer” culture. A culture that is based on elitism, entitlement, misogyny, and hatred, and which has never truly represented those who love and play games. The people (actually, I might as well say “straight white men”) who adhere to this have falsely proclaimed themselves the “true gamers”, an idea which would have been ridiculous had the video game industry not courted and marketed to these very people for so long. They tend to react with violent outbursts of hate (anonymously, on the internet, of course, because they’re assholes) whenever it is suggested that a woman or anyone else who is not a straight white male might like to play or make games, especially if those games are not the kind of games these so-called “gamers” like.

In the last few weeks, these outbursts were directed at two women in particular. One, a game designer who had released a text game called Depression Quest which is conspicuously different from the standard AAA action games that these “gamers” so adore, was accused of having slept with a journalist in exchange for good reviews, and was therefore subjected to a barrage of online harrassment, including death threats and a whole heap of hate speech and baseless slander. No one harassed the male journalist, of course, because he’s a man, and he doesn’t make games about depression. Oh, and it turns out he probably never wrote a review of her game anyway, and the whole thing is complete nonsense. But no, the “gamers” decided the woman was guilty of some egregious offense, and proceeded to be completely and utterly awful.

The second woman has been harassed more or less constantly for the past two years because she dared to Kickstart and create a series of educational videos about sexism and misogyny in video games, which point out correctly and undeniably that there’s a whole lot of sexism and misogyny in video games. But her latest video (part 1, part 2) sparked the worst barrage of hate yet, up to and including some disturbingly specific death threats that caused her to leave her home out of fear for her safety and that of her family.

Yes, you read that right. These online harassers drove her from her home. This is not OK. This is reprehensible. This is shameful. And these are the people that the games industry courts. It has to stop.

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén