Mostly I was just yankin’ your chain, Armorer. The Ferret hissing at The Bear and getting reminded why hissing at the Bear isn’t that smart a recreation. But there is a little more to it than that.
All true, well mostly. The target demo is skewing higher, like comic books. This is a Mature (M) rated game---so it’s audience isn’t 12-20 but 18-35. Maybe I’m still in the wrong with you since you’ve got Prodigal Son and PS’s Best Bud in mind, and, no, I didn’t link to the game as you’d just reach over the Internets and choke me, that’s to what the ESRB says about what an M game is. The same people interested in buying Pl@yB0y and other adult things are the target audience of the game and the party in question. And yet, this outrage is over goats and b00bies(PG-17 spelling), something maybe not that far removed from the toga party that inspired the toga party in the classic ‘Animal House’, and not nearly as bad as the lewd costumes and behaviour one can run into at anime or gaming conventions or even in rather pedestrian anime.
(more after the jump)
--ry
A dead goat? Is that what it takes for people to pay attention to game content and what happens at parties? The outrage industry that is PETA working up to full honk is when we get all bent out of shape about marketing parties(where, as one recent party had game execs firing everything from glocks to sniper rifles in the Nevada desert while taking drinks served by bikini clad beauties, likely because the Outrage Industry didn't make noise about it.) and game content? That seems like a non-sequitor and uncritical thinking to gollum, but gollum is often wrong on matters social, not to mention plain odd. It just strikes me as the same faux outrage as that we experience over Imus. Sure it’s offensive. Sure it’s annoying and tempting of children to misbehave, as misbehaving is seen as kewl. But worthy of the level of scorn heaped on it? Ich kenne nicht.
This is sooo a niche activity and audience. We’re only talking about it because PETA and other animal rights wet blankets got upset. Not because any one really notices how whacked out these parties are whether it be for club openings, album or game launches; or the content in many of the games. Nobody even noticed the guns, booze, and bimbos extravaganza that was the industry introduction to the Marcinko title. Nobody said much at all about the launch party of $0.50’s launch of his atrocious, Thug Life glorifying game or the game itself(largely because it sold like piece o' crap it was). That’s annoying. Yes, we, the small number of gamers are to be the fall of Civilization as we know it. All because some marketing joker who’s likely never picked up a controller, but attended lots of parties for the rich and famous, decided to be fashionably outrageous and included t0pl3ss womins and a dead goat we will be ones who left The West open to the Scimitar. How horrible we are. We’re worse than NAMBLA.
I guess you could say my pique is that we’re kowtowing to the outrage industry. That’s never a good thing. Sure, they’re proll’y right this time. Maybe, since I think we’ve all gone to parties of one type or another that are racier than dead goats, offal, and b00bies since we broke the hallowed age 18 barrier---it’s an M rated game after all, the same as an R rated movie. But that just means they’ll feel better about throwing paint at someone, or trying to close down my local Kentucky Fried and the local to you Australian Outback sometime in the future (the wastards).
Yeah, it’s a bit much, a bit indulgent, and a bit done in bad taste even for a theme party based on the game---about a guy trying to kill Greek gods for the cruelty they show in tricking him into slaying his own family. But it is intended for the same aged audience as Pl@yb0y, slasher flicks, and racy beer commercials---not kiddies or even HS kids. If it does get parents to actually pay attention a bit more and, to look just beyond the ESRB rating when they buy for their kid then it’s a good thing. But pissed over a dead goat and b00bies, small potatoes, at a launch party is a bit of the hypocrisy I loath so much. I don’t agree with it, I’m not one for enjoying fashionably outrageous stuff in the first place (the game that spawned the party in particular, or art for that matter), and a sign of the industry getting way out there(as was the extravagance of the now cancelled E3)? Sure. But artists are always this weird and barely tolerable. I get annoyed when we jump in time to the tune called by the outrage industry instead of being smart about how we get annoyed at the gaming industry and its practices.
There’s worse stuff out there too. The game itself is a bit more troubling to this gamer than the party, particularly how many kids wind up playing the dang thing. The game is a blood orgy. This game is horrendously, gratuitously bloody and violent enterprise. The Wife is in love with an M rated series that deals with occult subjects that drive me from the room. The GTA series, while groundbreaking in open-ended story telling, is a macabre celebration of being sociopathic---but the people criticizing that are scolds, donchaknow, while protesting a dead goat is a fine moral stance (the cool celebrities who are part of PETA said so.). The content of much of the more recent games is much more bothersome to me than the avant garde party for the small number of ‘cool people’ that actually got invited---which I wouldn’t be surprised wasn’t much of a gamer crowd but a partier crowd staffed with celebutaunts and ‘artists’.
So, yeah, I hear ‘ya Boss(and a lot of other parents). It isn’t what you raise your kids to aspire to. But if you want to really see the problem of the industry rifle through someone’s game (or DVD) collection, and pay less attention to the party. It’s the right reaction….to the wrong target. –ry
(ry can be reached at Ultimatewhinner at aol dot com for questions about videogame content. I only check that one about once a week so be a little patient, please.)