{"id":22737,"date":"2014-03-31T01:54:19","date_gmt":"2014-03-31T06:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=22737"},"modified":"2014-03-31T01:54:19","modified_gmt":"2014-03-31T06:54:19","slug":"assassins-creed-and-emotionally-resonant-mechanics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=22737","title":{"rendered":"Assassin&#8217;s Creed and Emotionally Resonant Mechanics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2bsxQZ5JDec\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2bsxQZ5JDec'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>As part of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.patreon.com\/errantsignal\">Errant Signal Patreon Campaign<\/a>, Chris promised that if he got above $500 he&#8217;d do some extra short-form episodes called short-wave transmissions<span class='snote' title='1'>These were originally called &#8220;Blips&#8221;, but since <a href=\"http:\/\/blip.tv\/errant-signal\">his vids are shown on Blip.tv<\/a>, that was kind of confusing.<\/span>, as a way of putting more content out there. He hit that target, so here it is. Except, it&#8217;s ten minutes long. Which means instead of doing &#8220;an additional short episode&#8221; he&#8217;s basically doing &#8220;an additional episode&#8221;. So everyone<span class='snote' title='2'>Except Chris. Apparently editing is time-consuming? Who knew?<\/span> wins, I guess.<\/p>\n<p>Going by the feedback I&#8217;m seeing on YouTube, I feel like I ought to build a little flame-shied for this episode. Someone already accused him of being a &#8220;Social Justice Warrior&#8221;. I see a lot of these kinds of responses from people consuming long-form critical analysis like the kind you get on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/SpoilerWarningShow\">Spoiler Warning<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/articles\/view\/columns\/experienced-points\">Experienced Points<\/a>, <a href=\"?cat=287\">Diecast<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/bunnyhopshow\">Super BunnyHop<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCm4JnxTxtvItQecKUc4zRhQ\">Errant Signal<\/a>, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCI3GAJaOTL1BoipG41OmfyA\">MrBtongue<\/a>. See, here&#8217;s the thing&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->I don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s an internet thing, a gaming culture thing, or a younger generation thing, but there always seems to be a cluster of people who don&#8217;t &#8220;get&#8221; the purpose of these conversations. They want to reduce opinions on a game to a binary good\/bad, and if you&#8217;re critical of something they want to boil your thoughts down to some sort of active agenda. The thinking seems to be that <em>games journalist = journalist<\/em>, and <em>journalist = news reporter<\/em>, and <em>news reporter = a clear and unbiased delivery of unambiguous factual information<\/em>. But I&#8217;ve never wanted to have anything to do with that sort of journalism. I&#8217;m not qualified or interested. I&#8217;m an engineer, and a huge portion of my head space is dedicated to identifying, diagnosing, and solving problems. A lot of these other pundits seem to behave the same way. We don&#8217;t talk about flaws because we want to bitch and moan and hate everything. We talk about them because that&#8217;s where all the interesting thoughts and conversations come from. <\/p>\n<p>Saying that the mechanics of Assassin&#8217;s Creed Liberation are dissonant or conflicting with the themes of the game doesn&#8217;t mean that the game is bad. It doesn&#8217;t mean the game shouldn&#8217;t tackle those themes. It doesn&#8217;t mean that the mechanics are bad. It certainly doesn&#8217;t mean that the game or the designers are racist. It just means that there&#8217;s something to think about and discuss. But no matter how many times Chris (or whoever is doing the analysis) says this, there will always be some madman trying to declare the discussion void because the overall product is &#8220;good&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p>But look. <em>The Two Towers<\/em> is &#8220;good&#8221;, inasmuch as it&#8217;s part of one of the most important pieces of English Literature in the 20th century. I still skip the pages of songs everyone sings about Boromir. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Adam: I love riding in this convertible, but the wind always messed up my hair. By the time I get where I&#8217;m going I look like Doc Brown.<\/p>\n<p>Bob: What is wrong with you? Riding in a convertible is awesome. Why don&#8217;t you give yours away if you hate it so much?<\/p>\n<p>Adam: I said I loved it. I&#8217;m just pointing out an inherent difficulty in riding in one.<\/p>\n<p>Bob: I&#8217;m sorry the laws of physics can&#8217;t bend to your whims to protect your precious haircut. Has it occurred to you that maybe some things are more important than whether or not your HAIR looks good? How stupid and petty are you?<\/p>\n<p>Adam: ?!?!?!\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And people getting worked up about it seem to be attempting to enforce some sort of system where you&#8217;re not allowed to point out imperfections without &#8220;balancing&#8221; them with&#8230; what? I have no idea. <\/p>\n<p>This is not a new problem. I&#8217;ve been thinking about it <a href=\"?p=1182\">for years<\/a>. I&#8217;m pretty sure there isn&#8217;t a solution. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Link (YouTube) As part of the Errant Signal Patreon Campaign, Chris promised that if he got above $500 he&#8217;d do some extra short-form episodes called short-wave transmissionsThese were originally called &#8220;Blips&#8221;, but since his vids are shown on Blip.tv, that was kind of confusing., as a way of putting more content out there. He hit [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dream-cast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}