Monday, February 5, 2018

Cuphead, “casual” modes and hypocrites

I don’t want to spend too much time on this, so I’ll just rant a bit about the recent nontroversy around the indie title “Cuphead”. This is off-the-cuff, blog post stuff, with minimal editing. You’ve been warned. 
So, Cuphead, the charming 2D shooter that impressed everyone with its retro-cartoon presentation during E3 2017, has somehow become the center of discussion regarding difficulty in games and the value of design vs accessibility. 
Or so games media claim, because make no mistake, before I write down anything else; the only reason the usual suspects opened their mouths to shit out the usual pseudo-intellectual, arrogant drivel is because this entire thing started when the Internet got wind of one journalist, Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat, having trouble with the tutorial of Cuphead during the last Tokyo Game Show. 
Let’s also get this out of the way: Dean, dude, I don’t know you. I dislike what passes for games journalism these days, but I’ve never read your stuff or heard of you before. The mockery towards you for that Cuphead footage was, as far as I’m concerned, unwarranted. I don’t have the context to support or condemn you for it; it was during a con, it was an earlier build of the game, the footage looked a little pathetic, but I really don’t know. So, I didn’t say anything against you, but I’m sorry for the shit flung at you.
The problem is that the primary reason this shit even became an issue is that the representatives of games media and their indie hipster buddies started this years ago; and in the last few days, they seem hell-bent on widening the gap between media and gamers in the worst way possible. Blame GamerGate or whatever, but we all know the mocking of journalists’ gaming skills became popular when Polygon posted that pathetic footage of their playing 2016′s DOOM and failing spectacularly at what’s a very basic shooter.
It wasn’t on a whim, either; we’re talking about an entire part of the industry that for years pretended to be an authority on video games; they talked *over* their audience, they talked *down* to their audience, they mocked, they demeaned, they insulted their audience; because they thought they “knew better”. Nobody would’ve really paid any attention to Polygon’s DOOM footage and all that it represented, if Polygon wasn’t a publication that gave “Tropico 5″ a 6.5 by first prefacing the score with the claim a city-builder game should’ve included commentary on dictators and banana republics and authoritative regimes. Nobody would’ve care about Polygon’s DOOM footage (nobody would’ve even seen it, really), if a few years back Arthur Gies hadn’t literally body-shamed 2.5 points off of “Bayonetta 2″, fucking Platinum Games out of their bonus. Polygon are representative of the state of games media right now and they’re not the only ones.
No better proof of all this than how suddenly there are “editorials” on Rock Paper Shotgun and Polygon and Twitter threads by indie game devs that spend most of their time pretending they’re the bastions of intellectuality in game design, whenever they don’t spew shit at their annual circle-jerk that we refer to as the “Game Developers Conference”. John Walker of RPS, when commenting on “Assassins Creed: Origins” new “no-combat” mode, was quick to point out that gamers are hell-bent on maintaining the challenge of harder games, because they are exclusionary. Then, RPS published another article about Cuphead’s “Simple” mode (which prohibits the player from getting the true ending); oh, they were quick to note that it was “satire” toward sites like Kotaku, but any knowledge of RPS or Walker, a senior editor, raises questions to the validity of that claim. Then, Walker himself decided to challenge the term “gameplay” on Twitter because it’s a vague term, apparently never occurring to him that his criticism is pretty fucking vague in itself. Typical overcompensating with which games journalism is rife at the moment.
Rami Ismail, an indie developer who has yet to say a single thing that could be deemed correct or valuable to anyone outside his industry bubble, was quick to link that piece of shit editorial and argue for providing players with the freedom to play a game how they want. I must’ve missed that memo when the market was being flooded with third-rate crappy-looking pixel-art platformers and walking simulators. Suddenly “freedom” and “choice” matter.
Unless it’s the “Mass Effect 3″ ending; if you want choice to matter then, you’re just “entitled”. 
Here’s the rub; there’s no discussion to be had. This isn’t an interesting topic or a new discovery for games development. This is as old as gaming itself. Player freedom exists within the developer’s freedom. Player agency is a component of game design, not a handicap. When someone makes a game, they don’t feed data into a generator and then the machine farts out a complete project. Every weapon, tool, and slope or bottomless pit in a level have been designed to complement each other. Difficulty options aren’t bad; quite the contrary. But they’re limited and they can harm the game’s artistic vision irreparably. Do you have any idea how many games I played and found boring on easy mode years ago, only to return and really appreciate them now that I’ve improved? That’s why Walker got shat on for his challenging the term gameplay; his criticism was off-base. The art in games is in the mechanics. Gut the mechanics and the art is degraded to popcorn shit.
Difficulty isn’t just challenge and it’s not just a means to frustrate the player; it’s a tool and it’s a component a lot of the time. The better developers know how to use it to the game’s benefit. It’s also something that’s an umbrella term; what’s difficult for one person and what’s acceptable in terms of challenge differs for someone else. Yes, I’m kind of bumped out I cannot play the Souls series; it seems like it has very interesting combat mechanics, but sparse checkpoints are a no-no for me. I’ll take any challenge you throw at me, but don’t make me retry the same thirty minutes of game all the time. Should I send an angry letter at FromSoftware for not neutering their game for my benefit? I wager those checkpoints are integral to the Souls experience; so, they can stay and I can fuck off to Twitch to watch a stream about it. 
Accessibility, for that is the right word and not “inclusion”, is a moot point in this day and age. There are many games to choose from, in different genres, from different developers. There are countless people talking about them and about as many streaming them. The consumer is instantly and easily informed about the specifics and they can make an informed purchase. The notion of being “owed” game progression because you bought the game is ridiculous. Am I owed my money back for not liking that new cocktail I decided to order? Am I owed to see my team win the Champions League (google it Yanks), because I paid for a season pass? 
Going back to Walker, after the butthurt for being challenged on his idiotic remarks regarding gameplay, he tweeted that he’s only trying to make gaming accessible. The problem is that gaming, as a whole, is extremely accessible; more now than ever before. All you need to do is download a free game on your phone and lo and behold; access. If you want something more serious, have a look at the simplified, free-to-play MMOs, some even published by AAA companies. The point is, there is not even an admission price to gaming anymore. One niche game for one niche audience isn’t going to turn people away from gaming. What the fuck are you even talking about, John? Nobody in the history of gaming has suggested all games should be Cuphead or Dark Souls. All they suggest is that we make whatever we want and choose what suits us best. You keep raving like a lunatic about “gaming culture” and “toxicity” and “gate keeping” and you’re the only assholes out there to consistently shout, pull rank and cause problems. You are professional trouble-makers, John!
What is fitting is that Ubisoft did indeed announce they intend to add a “skip combat” option in the upcoming “Assassins Creed: Origins”. Is that a good option? I honestly can’t tell, because I’m not familiar with the AC games. I’ve never played one, so I lack the context. If the Assassins Creed games provide a semblance of engaging gameplay by skipping combat, i.e. if exploration is as integral to the AssCreed experience as combat is, then it’s an acceptable compromise. After all, even Minecraft has a casual mode, because hiding from Creepers isn’t the point of that game; mining resources and building shit is. 
When the indie portion of the industry started making its mark, we were all delighted; more choice, more games, more space for original ideas and variety, away from the boundaries of AAA publishers. But now, no; now we have a social issue in our hands, now we’re talking about how making the game you want is a matter of “culture” and it’s a discussion that we surprisingly never had before, not even when shitty Twine text apps somehow made it to Steam. Curious that.
“Inclusion” has been the industry standard since at least the days of the original Playstation, when gaming went truly mainstream and turned into a ridiculously profitable industry. The alternative is bad business. There is a reason we now have context-sensitive UIs for everything and why there are more tutorial messages than there are lines of dialogue in so many AAA titles; they want their games sold to and played by as wide an audience as possible. The indies can do something different. 
What’s really getting on my nerves in all of this is the hypocrisy; Souls? Fine. Super Meatboy? Fine. Megaman 9? Fine. Bloodborne? Fine. So many hard games, but no, now it’s a “discussion” because a bunch of self-involved writers decided to shit-talk gamers and developers alike for clicks. Again. Fuck, even these very outlets reviewed Cuphead well; but then they found the chance to latch on to a bunch of innocuous tweet and demean their audience again, because presumably their traffic went down. Again. Alas, playing video games isn’t a social issue. The bullshit presentations at GDC that tell you you have a social responsibility when designing video games are lying to you. If you’re a journalist, nobody owes you shit. Do your market research before you buy and let people create and enjoy whatever the hell they want. 

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