You either die a Metroidvania developer, or you live long enough to become an action-RPG-with-random-dungeons developer.

“Players need that context to understand why they’re in the city fighting those Al-Qaeda people. We are going to provide that context, but keep in mind that we can provide that context without making a political statement, or without in any way disparaging the service of those who are actually there to fight.”

As others have said, it’s more distressing to me that this video game that’s likely glorifying the largest in a series of war crimes probably has a sizable audience at all. At some point I fully expect the publisher to lean into this controversy with marketing along the lines of “Wanna really own those libs?! Preorder…

I can’t disprove a counterfactual, and will not get bogged down in something as useless as hypothesizing about what-ifs. The facts in front of us is

The gall to follow all of that up with an accusation of faux outrage is actually impressive.

It’s weird to me that the guy says “No one wants to play as an Iraqi civilian” because I’ve felt for awhile now like a “role reversal” situation could potentially make for a very solid survival game.

“Look, of course the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany is seen as somewhat controversial nowadays, but people forget that most of the deaths during WW2 were the result of people defending themselves.”

there would not have been any deaths in the Iraq and Afghani campaigns if we simply hadn’t invaded. the fact that you miss that point to argue, that “well acktually” it was only our destabilization of the region that caused the deaths, and not all of it was directly due to our soldiers murdering civilians...is…

It’s also nonsense since people like playing all sorts of things. Papers Please and Firewatch come to mind as games with unique playstyles. What an utter tone-deaf comment that, yup, betrays how he thinks games are all about shooting and killing I guess.

And as other people have commented already, the other side is... survival horror in the most literal sense.

Tamte contradicts himself immediately. He says no one wants to play as an Iraqi civilian, but then says people love playing survival horror games. I can personally tell you that surviving through a war (in my case the Bosnian war) is very much a “survival horror” experience that was beyond what I had in my normal life.

My thoughts exactly about his line saying no one wants to play as an Iraqi civilian. I mean, for one thing, This War of Mine did very well for itself and almost certainly sold more copies than this war crime simulator could ever hope to.

Ya, the way he treated them was really uncalled for. What a complete asshole. I know there’s a lot of anti cop sentiment around these parts, but in this case they really were trying to do their job in an incredibly stressful and sensitive situation. And honestly the cops showed pretty remarkable restraint in kicking…

If police are involved, I want more cameras, not less.

Not to mention that we would now have to travel further back in time to see Back to the Future as a new release than Marty had to travel to seduce his mom.

Yea, the fact that in the year 2000 we were closer to Back to the Future’s original release, than we are right now to the year 2000 is really fucking me up.

The most troubling thing about this is what all these lengths of time used to feel like. 2000 is a pretty clear year in my memory, and it’s easy to remember how old things from 1985 already seemed to me - Back to the Future, Super Mario Bros, Wrestlemania. My brain won’t stop rejecting ideas like “Resident Evil 4 is…

Seriously. All these kids talking about PS2 games they loved “as a kid” that came out around the time I went to college just makes me feel even older.

This. What Sharon means is that she judges them on whether they’re nice - that is, play up to - her.

Google’s own reputation for being cancel-happy on new projects represented a significant barrier to entry for me. I did take advantage of their “free” Stadia Pro bundle for YouTube Premiu subscribers to get a controller and Chromecast Ultra though.