Crispy Gamer writes: "Given that videogames tend to be about wish fulfillment, about letting us be the soldiers/god slayers/pro athletes/heroes that we'll never be in real life, at first it's somewhat hard to fathom the success of the Harvest Moon series, which places you in the distinctly unglamorous role of an up-and-coming farmer. Once you begin playing, however, you start to realize that sometimes the humble goals are the ones that are the most satisfying when met, and that raising a prize chicken or harvesting a lucrative crop of eggplants can be just as exciting as saving the world. Also, the games are just so damn cute they're hard to resist. I mean, seriously, just look at those cows."
What's Hot:
-Tons to do
-Adorable characters
-Addictive, satisfying gameplay
What's Not:
-Characters with little to say
-Not much geography
Girly and feminine games sometimes get heat for being sexist or marketed towards females. Plus, the ongoing cry for stronger female protagonists keeps getting louder and louder, will the tough girl slowly replace these game types and characters I hold dear?
You're on the losing end of this spectrum.
See, here's the thing. Male gamers don't care what kind of games come out, so long as the casualization of gaming doesn't become an epidemic. Male gamers typically want games with some kind of challenge, a victory or defeat condition that requires skill to accomplish, and yeah even flashy stuff because we're very visual creatures. So long as we get our challenging games, it doesn't matter to us if frilly games marketed towards the more feminine women get made and sold (so long as they don't take over of course).
Your enemy is the Anita Sarkeesians, the Carolyne Petits, the Katherine Cross(es?) of the world. They are oblivious to the facts that, in their self-imposed crusade to nag gaming development and make changes no one asked for, they silence and/or ignore those gamers who actually LIKE the themes and styles that the SJWs don't like.
Say what you will about C.S. Lewis' involvement with religion, but he did make an incredibly good point.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
People who talk for you, who insist that they know what's best for you better than you do, who believe their narrative is the correct one, will suck the enjoyment of life out of everyone. These people are psychologically damaged and don't want you to be able to play the girly games. Not because it's bad for you, or bad for women, but because it's bad for them and what they think is appropriate.
If you want the girly games to stay, best way is to keep buying them.
You seem to have an agenda here. I can't claim to be an expert on Sarkeesian, but I've seen all of her videos on YouTube and she delivers intelligent and appropriate analysis of games media. The fact that people are now doing games media scholarship is a hugely good thing for the media and industry, but people like you desperately need to learn the differences between scholarship, criticism, and proselytizing.
Wow, I don't even know where to begin to tell you how wrong you are. Ok, so let's start here then.
"she delivers intelligent and appropriate analysis of games media."
Actually she doesn't. She consistently misrepresents the games she discusses, cherry picks examples which she then eliminates the context for, claims games impact real world behavior (a position Jack Thompson took, which was soundly rejected by a total of 9 federal courts which stated there is no scientific evidence to back that position), is a blatant liar, and would have people subscribe to the idea that blind faith matters more than fact.
"The fact that people are now doing games media scholarship is a hugely good thing for the media and industry."
Games media scholarships have nothing to do with her, and something that is a "hugely good thing for the media and industry" needs to have had consistent positive, quantifiable, and verifiable results before that statement can even be considered to be true.
"but people like you desperately need to learn the differences between scholarship, criticism, and proselytizing."
I challenge that statement and claim that you're the one that needs to learn the difference between those things. Seeing as how you claimed that Anita makes "intelligent and appropriate analyses of games" it's clear to me that you don't understand a lot of things.
See, you started off claiming you're no expert on Anita, well if you can claim that I "have an agenda here" then clearly you're doing so based on the fact that you've seen me discuss her at length (or if not, then you're making an ignorant statement), which means that of the two of us, I am an Anita Sarkeesian expert. So you'd try to come here, admitting your lack of insight, and make an argument against someone that's followed all of her videos, and the counter videos made against her, and taken in all of her poor arguments?
You've a lot to learn before you can make any successful argument on her behalf to me. That's not ego on my part, that's simply experience.
Meh. Anita's analysis is only intelligent and appropriate to those who don't know any better. And you just admitted to not knowing any better.
Sly.....Your delusional.
* A Calculus teacher could rattle of equation after equation and I wouldn't know if he/she were lying or telling the truth.
It's beyond my current comprehension level at the time I'm witnessing said thing.
* If you think what A.Sark is saying is legit, it's because you aren't properly educated on the subject.
YOUR THE EXACT PERSON who Politicians LOVE.
You get obsessed with the celebrity of one person and act like they can do no wrong.
They believe everything that person says, and never question them.
The EASIEST THING to see is how their followers NEVER QUESTION ANYTHING.
* Smart People ask questions....by more importantly, smart people ask questions that lead to the truth...
I don't think she can deliver intelligent nor appropriate analysis on the the subject of games when a lot of her "analysis" is skewed and taken out of context to further her agenda and gain a larger following. There are times she blatantly leaves things out about a certain game she is citing for being detrimental to women because if she mentioned it would totally go against what she is trying to promote.
Lets not forget the game idea she came up with the only way the heroine could be strong was when she abandoned her feminine traits and basically becomes a dude.
She gives half truths, uses provocative language and gives vague examples about games to piss people off about games who know even less about them.
I'm sorry, I don't think I formed my opinion properly (still pretty new to opinion pieces) but I do think my enemies are not males or "male" type games (which I enjoy wholeheartedly) I do think women like those (Anita Sarkeesian, Carolyn Petit, and Katherine Cross, etc.) would be the main reason these types of games decrease in numbers. They seem to have this idea that anything remotely feminine is weak and bad in some way and that strength can only be measured physically or in some way that is measured in a male sense; essentially saying everything feminine/girly is bad and its being sold to us, its wrong for us to like it. I 100% agree with you on that and now realize I need to get better at making my points haha. I really appreciate the reply and will keep it in mind from here on.
Oh, and I will keep buying and recommending girly games until I'm 80.
Oh I didn't mean to suggest that you personally though that male gamers were you enemies in this regard, I was just stating the general fact as to whom would actually and actively oppose the "girly" games.
For all of our passion in core gaming, male gamers may make fun of games like Barbie Horse Adventure or whatever, but we wouldn't actually try to stop those games from being made. We're far too busy playing the games we already have and waiting for the games we want.
The women we both mentioned however seem to think they have the right to nag game development and change the landscape to make developers make the games they want. There are all kinds of games out there for all kinds of people, only the SJWs seem to think there aren't any.
Hardcore Gamer: Natsume, best known as the developers of the Harvest Moon series, have a special fondness for plush animals. Whenever a new game comes out, they always make sure to pair it with one of their adorable plushes as a pre-order bonus.
Eurogamer: "It's been a while since there's been a portable Harvest Moon to rival Friends of Mineral Town, which was lodged in my GBA's cartridge slot for the whole of 2004. The series has ambled off in several different directions since, turning your farmer into a robot boy or or an island castaway or a spiky-haired amnesiac youth to spice up the process of building and tending to an agricultural empire, but it always loses something in translation. Every exciting new addition is tempered by some unnecessary annoyance, and they usually end up balancing each other out."
