Heyo!

My name is Joe. I joined these here boards because I don't really know many online communities where the majority of people both embrace and distress over geekdom and all its unfortunate trappings. I'm genuinely impressed that members here possess and actually utilize their critical faculties because I was under the impression the internet doesn't usually come in that flavor.

Anyway, I suffer from the same love-hate affliction so here I am! I am pretty okay, really.

So! In line with my geekiness that I both celebrate and reject, I have a simultaneous throbbing admiration for / crushing disappointment in the games industry and have therefore made a bunch of silly, trollesque videos about recent game crapola. I posted this stuff in the Skullgirls thread but since (quite sensibly) not everyone may go in there, it was suggested I throw the links at more of you in a new thread. A good handful of folks have thus far said they are funny! Really!!! A few people have also compared my stuff to The Best Gamers, which I am totally not against, though I genuinely didn't even find out about the existence of TBG until like last month so this wasn't on purpose. I must've just plucked the style from the collective online unconscious.

Anyway here are links to all the silly junk I've been up to so far:

Skullgirls EPIC Web-Video Review

E3 2012 Conferences EPIC Web-Video Reaction - 1 - Microsoft

E3 2012 Conferences EPIC Web-Video Reaction - 2 - Sony (& Ubisoft)

E3 2012 Conferences EPIC Web-Video Reaction - 3 - Nintendo (& EA)

Tomb Raider Trailer EPIC Web-Video Reaction

Hitman: Absolution Trailer EPIC Web-Video Reaction

And here they all are in one playlist if you prefer that and trust me that much:

EPIC Web-Videos Playlist


I do hope you all enjoy and I look forward to hanging out around here! Thanks!

As you've been told, you're awesome and deserve to be more well-known. And I don't give out that bit of praise lightly. However, I personally think that this belongs more in Miscellaneous than in Video Games. You know, since Miscellaneous is for showing off your personal creations. Mostly, anyway.

Whoops! Sorry. Okay, should I start it anew over there or can mods just do that for me or something? Mods?! MODDDSSS???!

Fuck Shmeckie, HAVE ME INSTEAD! I declare my e-love for you.

Those were incredible. And so are you.

Done, your majesty. Got any other demands you want to make while you're at it?!

Sorry, I didn't mean to snap. The Boss just slashed my bonus to pay off something. I think it may have been Shmeckie's sex-reassignment surgery.

Still don't know why I had to have a surgery to change who I have sex with... HAY-OOOOH!

Anyway, as I said, I was genuinely surprised at how funny you were. Greta, great shit, and I look forward to more.

"The art... is beautiful. Look at the real story."
I fuckin' died, dude...

Awesome! I will e-whore myself up the food chain. But how will I break it to Shmeckie...?



Well, goodness. thanks.



Thank you! The service here is beyond reproach. I have want of nothing else unless it is possible to view the thread upside-down or to change the last word of every post to "butt."



I have some ideas of things to do next but not loads and some of them would be very far off so if anybody knows. Anything. I should do. I am "game" (get it, like a video game?) to possibly try.

Thaaaaaanks,
butt

Polygamy? Just claim it's part of your religious beliefs. Hell, if Shmeckie is with you, that's just less competition for Paragon after she turns 18.

As the others said, I rather enjoyed these.

I know I'm a little late to the party, but I just want to say that your Tomb Raider reaction video had me in stitches!

If you know what I mean.

Man, you think gaming reviews are over when THE BEST GAMERS split up, but then this guy shows up and everything is beautiful again.

We're desperate after they split up with us of the internet. Really, we'll jump to anyone who will fill the empty spot in our hearts.

Hey! I "run" listentome.net, that website nobody cares about. Did you e-mail me there like a zillion years ago? In regards to the film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Because if it wasn't you, someone else is running around with your internet name. But if it was you, and my assumption at the moment is that it was, it's a small internet after all! How very odd.


And I am glad people are enjoying the things!

I've already expressed my profound appreciation for the artistry that goes into these videos in the Skullsluts thread, but I'd like to say again that you do some darn good work. I watched your E3 press conference recaps earlier, and all three were straight-up hilarious (not to mention unexpectedly insightful). Keep up the good work, comrade.

I don't remember what I said.

Thank ye kindly, sir!

Somehow I never thought of calling it Skullsluts...



I've gotten so few e-mails over the course of my unillustrious internet career that I pretty likely still have yours if you're very interested in seeing it. But I think the gist was that we both agreed that the Tim Burton Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a lot less good than the original film adaptation.

Ok. Then that's me.

LONG TIME NO SEE!

(on the internet)

Same here. It's cool that you're here.

For those interested, I made one more of these things about the impressively atrocious Hitman: Absolution trailer.

In creating this video, I tried my best to get into the mindset of the type of person who would be really into the Hitman: Absolution trailer. This is maybe the stupidest, strangest thing I've openly admitted to putting on the internet.

Pretty sure I cracked up through that whole fucking thing.

Haha, violence against nuns.

Mission accomplished!

Now I will sit back and reap the simple pleasures of retirement.

I wouldn't recommend it. I think that Joan might go Annie Wilkes on your sorry ass if you stop making these. Of course, I'll be in line to do so after her and Shmeckie.

Don't even joke about that. You're far too funny.

The world needs more laughter. I just can't help thinking how nuns are originally against violence so it feels weird to these "nuns" go over board with it.

Okay well I will not actually retire but I am very old and retiring is really, I must say, a lot easier.

Video game-related stuff (and possibly videos on the whole) MIGHT be on hiatus-ish for a while though so I can make other trash. But that LP of a game nobody has ever heard of will still keep getting uploaded. And then various things. Will come. Gradually.

Thank you for your suppoooorttttuh!

That made me laugh. A lot.

What other "trash" do you make, exactly?

I write! I have a FUCKED UP sci-fi story coming out in an anthology which I would be happy to alert you people to whenever it's available. And I make music but lately I've been really behind on the whole finishing actual songs thing so that's kind of what I want to do next. But other than that I'm just planning to do videos that are different from the whole EPIC video game whatever stuff.

Some of it might be VERY different if I can get it all organized and such. But hopefully worthwhile and interesting.

That video was funny and all, but I don't know why you'd make fun of such an awesome trailer. It had everything! It had Bald Hitman Guy, it had guns, it had an explosion, it had sexy nuns getting killed... I don't even play the Hitman games and I just preordered five copies online.

Anyway, I look forward to your future multimedia ventures, whatever strange and erotic forms they may take in the future.

Hee hee, erotic.

Incidentally, I only just looked into it and was glad to note that there actually WAS some controversy for the trailer closer to when it was originally released because of all its exploitative violence-sex. But what doesn't really seem to come up is that this trailer and the rapey Tomb Raider one both speak to bigger issues in the industry of developers having literally NO IDEA WHAT THEY'RE DOING (actually, Yahtzee, good man that he is, did make some note of it). They're seriously just grabbing random visuals and concepts they saw in movies once and haphazardly dropping them all over their games with no regard to tone or sense.

To quote the director of Hitman: Absolution: "We just wanted to make something cool, it wasn’t the intention to stir up anything."

Basically, developers just want to be sure that you NEVER look away from their games because something cool is ALWAYS happening, whether it be ultraviolence, upskirts, or (new this season!) rape!!!

You can tell games are evolving because now we got da rape.

Yeah, what is it with the apparent violent hatred of women this season? I'm no feminist, but first Tomb Raider, now this trailer (and I'm feeling like there's more I'm forgetting)... I can't help but feel like there's some real creepy shit at work here... Like, "thank god I don't know any of these developers in person" kind of shit.

I can't begin to imagine the pitch meeting (or whatever) for that new Tomb Raider game.

What?! You said you were on The Other Side podcast for Skullgirls though! Damn it Shmeckie, WHAT ELSE IS A LIE?

At least uh... I think you did?

I may be forgetting others, but the only candidates that stick out in my mind for violence-against-women-is-the-new-cool-thing were Hitboy: Absolut and Rape Escape Feat. Lara Croft.

I've actually grown hesitant to label stuff as straight-up sexist anymore because I feel like the term has gotten so broad (haha, like a girl, get it?) and means so many different things to different people. I think it's more productive to note the feelings that people are getting off of these games. I mean, like you said, it's creepy and, I've become a broken record about this lately, but I truly do think it mostly comes down to the idea of tone and the fact that most developers seem to have no concept of it whatsoever.

Like, though it wasn't all against women, I feel there was a trend of just insane fucking ultraviolence this year. Still, I think a trailer like the one for The Last of Us was actually really great, but that's because someone over at Naughty Dog knows what tone is. They establish the game as grim and brutal so the violence, while still managing to be kind of cool and EMPOWERING(???), is also visceral and dark and kind of cringe-worthy, but in a way it's totally supposed to be. It's a game that makes violence feel cool while still making you feel kind of bad about it. The last game I played that pulled that off was the first Condemned. I felt like taking a shower after every time I played.

But then you have total shit like Hitboy and Tomb Raper where they want you to be aroused in one second, disturbed in the next, in support of horrific violence, then freaked out by it or maybe aroused again??? I'm not sure... And this is the issue because they really just pile on exploitative stuff until you have no idea what the hell they want you to feel and, in interviews with the people behind these games, it becomes clear they have no idea either. To reiterate, it feels mostly to me like they just want you to stay on the game ALL THE TIME and think you have to be engaged with some kind of stimulus every single moment like you're a puppy or something. It gets exhausting and, eventually, even bewildering.

SO few companies get the idea of pacing and tone. Valve, for example, knows how cool and important it is to have moments of action-movie craziness tempered with quieter search and exploration segments, but, sadly, they're pretty much the exception.

It's kind of like the adult version of that condescending idea TV execs have about children where you have to have shit and noise going on CONSTANTLY or the kids will tune out because they're all mindless screaming snot machines.

I mean, yeah, some of them are, but they're not THAT stupid. Same idea applies here. This idea that you need to have this mindless sex appeal and violence with no rhyme or reason to it all in order to hold some mindless idiot's attention is just pathetic, really...

Part of it also has to do with being "edgy" and mistaking it for being a bunch of immature crap. Then thinking this makes your work more daring and better.

Hopefully we'll never see the video game equivalent of U.S. Angel Corps.

Yes, you're right. There is a misguided notion of "edginess" in there, as though putting in an attempted rape on Lara counts as video games addressing mature issues, but, again, this edginess needs to be properly integrated. If you're going to put in an "edgy" issue you need to know WHY you're doing and if/how it fits into the overall narrative and (AGAIN!) tone of the work. I think the way that Crystal Dynamics guy completely fucking backpedaled after the controversy came up and just plain claimed that "oh wait, actually, j/k, we didn't put any sexual assault in the trailer or anything that looks and sounds a HELLUVA lot like it" hugely highlights just how thoroughly unprepared they are to handle these issues. I get the feeling they slapped the scene in with little more than the idea of being "edgy" since they were later so quick to dismiss it as being not "edgy" at all and how could you even think it was attempted rape, hmm? Don't be silly.

People need to take their sexual assault cues from Silent Hill 2. Nobody got all mad at that game for its rapey bits because, in a fucked-up psychological horror world, Pyramid Head is completely permitted to force himself upon a freak-mannequin or two.

Edgy is a title you earn, not give yourself or blatantly aim for. *cough*Dark Brain Comics*cough* It's a lot like being metal/badass, it wrecks of too much effort when you try. I couldn't agree more with what you said.

Everyone of those videos were hilarious.