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Jonathan Blow Twitter Drama, E3 and Violence

GinoFelino said:
Nope, but it's a pretty gross example of modern clickbait culture. You really can't choose both sides in this.

'Look at all this violence being celebrated. Disgusting/awesome!'
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I don't think they're in the wrong simply for presenting two disparate mindsets. Plus, you know, they's gots to get paid too.
 
Violence in a video game is very different from violence in real life, there is no way both should be compared in any way at all. One is real the other is not real it's time people like blowhard realised this, as for Notch well he just kinda likes an arguement i suppose, best he kept out of such twitter spats.
 
Yagharek said:
There's nothing wrong with violence in games.
There's nothing wrong with wanting more ways to interact with a game world than through violence.

There's nothing wrong with showing a bit of sensitivity or awareness of what you show after an event like the Orlando tragedy, even though the event is unrelated to E3.

This doesn't need to turn into a reactionary, rude twitter debate.
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Not sure what that would mean in practical terms, when the only 2 games you have to show that aren't sports games, are shooters.

They could've acknowledged the shooting on stage, but it's debatable if that would've been more or less tasteful than just doing their thing.

("Really tragic that all that people died... now let's move on with advertisement and hype folks! It's a party!").

I think the ribbons they had at the Bethesda conference, were probably the best way to go about it.
 
I think it really sucks that the default interaction for so many games is a gun, and I don't know why people are happy or complacent that the default interaction of this medium is so violent.

It's a bummer.
 
ferrasvansen said:
Violence in a video game is very different from violence in real life, there is no way both should be compared in any way at all. One is real the other is not real it's time people like blowhard realised this, as for Notch well he just kinda likes an arguement i suppose, best he kept out of such twitter spats.
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Yeah exactly.

Seriously were they supposed to fucking delay E3? Stop making violent games? Is society supposed to like it less?

This kind of stuff pisses me off pretty bad tbh.

It's fine to make the argument that gaming could use more nonviolent games but that's not the real argument being made here. He's making passive aggressive shit judgements of anyone who enjoys violence in media.
 
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Ohhhhhhh snaps sonnnnnn
 
I have had this debate internally many times because I'm conflicted.

I don't think there is an answer, but the conversation helps to check yourself.
 
UrbanRats said:
Not sure what that would mean in practical terms, when the only 2 games you have to show that aren't sports games, are shooters.

They could've acknowledged the shooting on stage, but it's debatable if that would've been more or less tasteful than just doing their thing.

("Really tragic that all that people died... now let's move on with advertisement and hype folks! It's a party!").

I think the ribbons they had at the Bethesda conference, were probably the best way to go about it.
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Look, if Bethesda only had Doom to show, there's no shying away from the fact it is violent. They could address the elephant in the room by advising that they were about to show something graphic so people could go make a cup of tea or leave the room instead. Something like that would be reasonable.

If it were a militaristic FPS, maybe they could instead focus on vehicle based combat instead. Battlefield has that again, does it not?

It doesn't have to be all or nothing. A little compromise, a little awareness, and people will still accept the developers' pride in wanting to show off something with some technical and artistic work underpinning it.
 
I love that Indie development community aren't afraid to stand up for what's right but please Notch and John, just stop it.

Triggerhappytel said:
Businesses are going to business. When The Witness 2 sells as much as Assassin's Creed maybe we'll see more non-violent games.
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It could happen if they make The Witness a puzzle hybrid ala Uncharted. The fact that the game is console exclusive for no reason is amazingly dumb, but it's not my game so I can't judge him.
 
And I continue to never buy a game Blow makes due to him being a pretentious douchbag. Thought I couldn't dislike him anymore when Sony had him come out at the E3 that the ps4 was first shown. After showing some ps4 games, he came out on stage and said very sarcastically "How could I compete with all those explosions!".
 
Nugg said:
Boy Notch sure is deep in his asshole phase.



There's a difference between killing cartoon monsters with traps and mowing down hundreds of humans with a full arsenal of guns.
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To me both are completely make believe. They are pixels on a screen in the shape of a human being. They don't feel pain. They don't have families. Most portrayals of death in video games involve someone falling over like a toy doll. The problem is when people can't distinguish between reality in fantasy or aren't taught the difference.
 
Yagharek said:
It doesn't have to be all or nothing. A little compromise, a little awareness, and people will still accept the developers' pride in wanting to show off something with some technical and artistic work underpinning it.
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But....why? There's zero correlation between irl violence and games, the onus is not on them in the slightest. Just gonna reiterate what I said earlier:

Comfort Jones said:
Yeah I cant take that article seriously at all. With lines like this "To close the event, EA showed a trailer for Battlefield 1, a visually realistic recreation of World War 1, which resulted in 17 million deaths. Tanks, planes, and dozens of soldiers with guns obliterated one another, and the audience, once again, erupted with pleasure. For that tragedy, horror is no longer horrible." it feels like he's saying all of this stuff is completely immoral but he's not willing to say it. Reminds me of Anita complaining about people cheering for Doom's return, like I guess we can't be rational adults and enjoy it? Also makes me think of the whole "no one is asking for censorship" argument because no one used the word censorship.

Even though there's absolutely literally nothing tying videogames to real life violence I'm supposed to be drawing some kind of connection here because reasons? Fuck right off with that shit. It's judgmental and asinine.
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But w/e according to some hipsters I'm being trained to be a mass murderer oh wont someone think of the children.
 
Armadilo said:
Its Interesting to see Developers opinions, However I just can't agree with E3 being nothing but violence and if it was true that it would be bad ..
Every year game journalist bring this subject up during E3.
The thought that Video Game Violence leads to real Violence is just confusing to me but You believe what you want to believe.
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I don't think the point is that videogame violence leads to real violence, but more that it's apparently so that game violence is 'normal' or better: violence and fighting is more or less 'normal' or 'the norm'. If you'd compare the amount of nudity and sex in games vs. the amount of gore and violence in games, you'd see it's skewed towards violence: we accept that that's present, while it's not acceptable / normal to have the same amount of nudity / sex in a game as there is violence.

It's more a reflection of what 'we as a society' think is 'normal' and acceptable: it's OK to be exposed to a tremendous amount of fighting and violence. How we all arrived at that point is food for conspiracy theorists, but it is IMHO silly to deny the violence isn't there or worse: try to explain it away like it doesn't mean anything.

I'm not saying it should be removed, mind you. Games allow the player to enter a world s/he would otherwise (hopefully) never be in, and why wouldn't a violent hostile world be one of these? As long as we all know these worlds are fantasy worlds and not real and above all: violence/killing people in games on its own doesn't make it entertainment. I think Blow has a point when he means violence/killing people in games slides towards becoming entertainment on its own, if not at least glorifying it.
 
whats troubling is that what were they supposed to do exactly ?

Chris PlanteVerified account
‏@plante
Number of conversations overheard at EA press conference about how much game publishers should comment on today's tragedy
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I think his tweet was more along the lines of all of the games included violence and killing. Not that they are going to make people into murderers, he just worded it wrong.

I took it as a complaint of the lack of variety in the games. That may just be me though.
 
Blow is right. We should aspire to make games about more than killing. Not that I associate them in any way with shootings or even think they shouldn't be made - I play them all the time - but I think the medium can think beyond the very simple pleasures of just shooting people over and over again.
 
Heckler456 said:
I don't think they're in the wrong simply for presenting two disparate mindsets. Plus, you know, they's gots to get paid too.
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I don't know.

They didn't tweet 'Opinion: We shouldn't 'sell violence' this soon after tragedy occurs'

They tweeted 'How do you sell violent games after a tragedy? Pretend like it didn't happen'

That's "The Verge's point of view", because they're not prefacing it as an editorial/opinion piece.

You absolutely cannot follow that up with a 'coolest violent E3 trailers' article 'to show both sides'.

Take a stand, be honest about it and don't grab those trailer clicks. This is just stirring up controversy for clicks and also making sure to grab those 'normal' trailer recap clicks. It's gross.

If someone's pretending like it didn't happen, it's Verge.
 
Armadilo said:
whats troubling is that what were they supposed to do exactly ?
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"Hey guys even though we have nothing to do with it and everyone watching this should be mature enough to separate reality from fiction we're really sorry this completely unrelated tragedy happened. STAY TUNED FOR BATTLEFIELD ONE!"

You know, the horrible tragedy that's no longer horrible according to Plante which I guess is a bad thing? Like soldiers themselves don't play shooters?

What year is it again?
 
Armadilo said:
whats troubling is that what were they supposed to do exactly ?
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"We're deeply sorry for this completely unrelated tragedy." ...?

Hell knows why they should comment at all, unless Bethesda was going to reveal that Prey 2 has you playing the part of a homophobic psychopath.
 
We know the difference between real violence and virtual violence. What has happened is awful but I won't let terrorists put down this event for me, give me games with guns, give me adventure games, give me puzzle games. Jonathan Blow didn't need to put this tweet out.
 
How awful would it be to put what has happened into a videogame conference? EA's not accountable for anything that has been done. They were absolutely professional and would it not trivialize those events to make them a part of a videogame conference? Fucking gross.

Kinyou said:
Everyone from Bethesda wearing a gay pride ribbon seemed like the best approach to me.
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Have not watched it but that's the way to handle it.
 
It occurs to me that most of the people who heavily object to the violence seen in video games are Americans, and not just directly after tragedies.

Is America's relationship with violence and specifically gun violence to blame here? Are Europeans less concerned about violence in video games because actual real world violence is far less close to home?
 
brianmcdoogle said:
I think it really sucks that the default interaction for so many games is a gun, and I don't know why people are happy or complacent that the default interaction of this medium is so violent.

It's a bummer.
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People like action games, like they like action movies ect. Despite the moral the afwulness of it in real life, fictionall violence is fun.

Also, it's not like nonviolent games don't have huge sucess in the industry. Notch and Blow both made games with little violence and got rich from it.

EA might have shown Batllefield but a lot of their conference was dedicated to sports.
 
imagine a timeline where twitter never existed

where it never verified our failure as a species

it's these thoughts that keep me going
 
I don't get some reactions here. Blow doesn't say "ban violent games", he deplores that almost all big budget games revolve around killing dozens of people. I love my Dooms and Uncharteds as much as the next guy, but it's true we could use some more variety. Indie games are great at that, AAAs are still very one-dimensional.
 
Relativ9 said:
It occurs to me that most of the people who heavily object to the violence seen in video games are Americans, and not just directly after tragedies.

Is America's relationship with violence and specifically gun violence to blame here? Are Europeans less concerned about violence in video games because actual real world violence is far less close to home?
Click to expand...

Maybe there is more gun violence in America and most videogames are about gun violence?
 
So funny to see the game industry turn on itself on this issue. Since when did people within the industry think violent games leads to people shooting up places?
 
Relativ9 said:
It occurs to me that most of the people who heavily object to the violence seen in video games are Americans, and not just directly after tragedies.

Is America's relationship with violence and specifically gun violence to blame here? Are Europeans less concerned about violence in video games because actual real world violence is far less close to home?
Click to expand...

This isn't a problem for the grand majority of us, but when there's so many people packed in one place the minority opinions have more numbers to make noise with. I don't think you're even drawing off any real stats here either way tbh.

Also lol Europe has dealt with more direct violence than this country has ever known. Guess the UK should be disgusted with any fun WW2 games since they got hit pretty hard by that right?
 
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