The Last of Us

Some memes for your entertainment.

From Fedor

So because it's funny and a nice summary..........if the first 1 minute doesn't hook you I dunno what will.

Szlia said:

@Khane @Zindan The first game took about 15 hours to beat in a sprawling world with dozens of characters. I imagine the sequel will be in the same ballpark and we are talking (if I understand it, since I did not check the spoilers) about the design choice of a single character. Also, even if the whole synopsis of the game has been leaked, reading in 30 seconds a chain of events gives very little information about how you will feel about it once fleshed out over the course of a 15 hours game. At the end of the day, I find it silly to say "nope" over political/philosophical/moral/etc reasons, silly to say "nope" because the story will not be the one you expected it to be and silly to say "nope" by assuming a synopsis you don't like will result in a game you don't like. Well within your rights of course, but silly nonetheless in my book.

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And yet rejecting games based on political/philosophical/moral reasons is precisely what this creator and the people he turns to for advice preach. When you're up against an ideology that insists the personal is political, is it even possible to not make decisions on political/philosophical/moral reasoning in something as personal as art? Is it the fans forcing this issue, or the creators and activists colluding to appropriate artistic platforms for propaganda that are forcing the issue?

creative process is not about giving people what they want, it's about creating what you want and what you think people will enjoy, which is sometimes something people did not know they wanted. And from the other end of this relation, being a fan of a creator is not expecting said creator to do what you want or expect, it's to expect that what said creator will do will be good.

Now that I write this, I feel one of the key problem in this weird fans - creator relationship in pop culture is that people are not fan of the creators, but of the creations. The emotional links are with the creations, not with the creators through the creations, and, as such, there is a feeling they "own" the creations perhaps even more than the creators themselves, which leads to this bizarre sense of entitlement. Buying, playing and enjoying The Last of Us does not make it less of a Neil Druckmann game (even if the notion of authorship in such large collective efforts is a bit peculiar) and he is free to do what he wants with the IP and, given his track record, it will probably be good

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Take this sentiment and apply it to activists/ideologues and tell me why the sense of entitlement someone like Anita has, that art conform to her moral framework, is any different than the fans? Every criticism of the fans reaction can easily be leveled at the ideologues who Druckman actively says he listens to. So why shouldn't the fans also feel entitled to be listened to? Its clear the artist IS malleable through expectations of non-artists. So why should the people paying feel LESS entitled? This is half the problem with a lot of art in the age of the "personal is political", artists slavishly change their art to appease activist's expectations and then call fans "entitled" for wondering why their expectations were not considered.

In other words, entitlement doesn't come just from fans loving the creation--it also comes from the clear view fans have of others from outside the artistic sphere having massive input on the art (And what's worse, the artists often rub the fans noses in this by felating activists and organizations which "changed their art for the better"). If an artist is going to share his stage with an activist, illustrating he is open to shifting his art to meet their expectation of what is "good"--why shouldn't the people who literally pay him to produce said art not also feel entitled to the same thing?

Anyway, in the end, of course Druckmann is free to do with his art what he wants. He's free to listen to a ton of bad advice and create something some ideological fanatic thinks is "good". And the fans also are free to call it a shitpile and not buy it.

Found this video pretty funny:

Lithose said:

And yet rejecting games based on political/philosophical/moral reasons is precisely what this creator and the people he turns to for advice preach. When you're up against an ideology that insists the personal is political, is it even possible to not make decisions on political/philosophical/moral reasoning in something as personal as art? Is it the fans forcing this issue, or the creators and activists colluding to appropriate artistic platforms for propaganda that are forcing the issue?

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There is a lot to unpack here. First there is a false equivalence : people deciding to not play a game because there is something they find objectionable in it (Not enough diversity ! Too much diversity !), is not the same as academics analyzing a game and commenting it through the lens of gender and/or racial representations (something that has been done in other media for decades). Deciding before hand that some story is not one you want to experience (which is obviously anyone's prerogative) is not the same as analyzing a story and finding it lacking in some aspects that are your interests. So no, saying "I am not playing this game because of this gender ambiguous character" is not in the same category as saying "Games should do a better work when it comes to diversity and representations."

Then, trying to paint a gut reaction of rejection as some sort of rebellion against "creators and activists colluding to appropriate artistic platforms for propaganda" would be pretty laughable if this line of thought was not the one used to ban "gay propaganda" in Putin's Russia or forbid gender studies in Orban's Hungary. Not only are global cultural industries that are split in countless entities and sub-groups pretty much immune from the paranoid fantasy of some sort of dogma imposed on all creations, but, first and foremost, it's not the end goal of the Druckmanns and the Sarkeesians of the world (the Putins and the Orbans on the other hand...). People pushing for more diversity and better representations in video games and creators that find merit in their plight are not plotting the takeover of a medium. They are not in the business of preventing others to tell whatever story they want, they are simply working on what they see as the maturation of the medium based on the notion that there is much to gain for the stories told in video games to not be isolated from the world in which they are told. Obviously, trying to do that is not a guarantee that the result will be any good and people looking for pure escapist entertainment might not be interested and in fact even be deterred by narratives that explore real world themes and issues.

Lithose said:

Take this sentiment and apply it to activists/ideologues and tell me why the sense of entitlement someone like Anita has, that art conform to her moral framework, is any different than the fans? Every criticism of the fans reaction can easily be leveled at the ideologues who Druckman actively says he listens to. So why shouldn't the fans also feel entitled to be listened to? Its clear the artist IS malleable through expectations of non-artists. So why should the people paying feel LESS entitled? This is half the problem with a lot of art in the age of the "personal is political", artists slavishly change their art to appease activist's expectations and then call fans "entitled" for wondering why their expectations were not considered.

In other words, entitlement doesn't come just from fans loving the creation--it also comes from the clear view fans have of others from outside the artistic sphere having massive input on the art (And what's worse, the artists often rub the fans noses in this by felating activists and organizations which "changed their art for the better"). If an artist is going to share his stage with an activist, illustrating he is open to shifting his art to meet their expectation of what is "good"--why shouldn't the people who literally pay him to produce said art not also feel entitled to the same thing?

Anyway, in the end, of course Druckmann is free to do with his art what he wants. He's free to listen to a ton of bad advice and create something some ideological fanatic thinks is "good". And the fans also are free to call it a shitpile and not buy it.

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From my point of view this is also a false equivalence and a gross miss-characterization. The false equivalence is that while fans and academics alike are hoping games will conform to expectations they voiced, only members of one of these two groups react as if creators personally killed their dog if these hopes go unfulfilled. The idea that creators only listen to academics and never listen to fans is also, of course, absurd. Creators listen to everyone and chiefly themselves.

The gross miss-characterization is one I am also partly responsible of in this discussion : the idea that two homogeneous blocks are facing each others. Academics that focus on video games did not stumble their way there by accident. Gamers, just like readers or movie goers, have different tastes and expectations. So when a creator brings a franchise in a direction that is not the one you hoped, said creator did not "betray the fans" because there most certainly are fans that are happy about the direction taken or, at the very least, willing to be open minded about it.



On a side note, you will notice that people were pretty fast to bump this thread when it was believed the leak was caused by an employee slighted by the awful management at Naughty Dog, but now that it appears it was allowed by awful security management the thread stayed silent. Apparently, the credentials Uncharted 3 and The Last of Us use to connect to multiplayer servers can be found in the games code and be used to snoop around and, inexplicably, Naughty Dog uses the same servers to store some of their development material ! That's good for a laugh or three. Unless you are the person responsible for this at Naughty Dog that is !

most of us don't care how ND treats its employees or what the leak source was, this isn't a communist dictatorship if you don't like the way a company treats you, leave and get a better job (for you). Thats really why the discussion has died down, at this point until the game comes out there isn't much to talk about other than wait for more spicy memes about how silly this game has apparently gotten.

Druckmann posted a video. Harps on about the game and says he was crying after playing it

Szlia said:

On a side note, you will notice that people were pretty fast to bump this thread when it was believed the leak was caused by an employee slighted by the awful management at Naughty Dog, but now that it appears it was allowed by awful security management the thread stayed silent. Apparently, the credentials Uncharted 3 and The Last of Us use to connect to multiplayer servers can be found in the games code and be used to snoop around and, inexplicably, Naughty Dog uses the same servers to store some of their development material ! That's good for a laugh or three. Unless you are the person responsible for this at Naughty Dog that is !

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Threads quiet cause the memes ran out.

I'm pretty sceptical about this hacker story. I think a hacker would have dumped more stuff and the dates, builds and tools used in the videos scream somebody at ND with access to all that stuff. Why would a hacker play so many builds over these time periods? Utilize tools like geometry and mesh tools?

Most likely it's damage control on the part of Sony/ND.

Yeah I don't believe the hacker story either, and this is coming from someone who hasn't owned a PS since 2, and never played TLOU, so I don't give a shit about this other than the lulz. Hacker story is just a bait and switch to try and make this less about how they treat their employees.

That would be a pretty elaborate bait and switch considering the story does not come from them !

sure it doesn't, and ND and Sony have no pull to get something out there to make themselves look better, just like they aren't able to get YouTube to silence people. About this.

The disgruntled employee thing was just a bit of extra spice. The outrage "died down" because there was no point in repeatedly saying 'i hate this garbage tier writing from incompetent SJW hacks who have ruined another game'

Szlia said:

There is a lot to unpack here. First there is a false equivalence : people deciding to not play a game because there is something they find objectionable in it (Not enough diversity ! Too much diversity !), is not the same as academics analyzing a game and commenting it through the lens of gender and/or racial representations (something that has been done in other media for decades). Deciding before hand that some story is not one you want to experience (which is obviously anyone's prerogative) is not the same as analyzing a story and finding it lacking in some aspects that are your interests. So no, saying "I am not playing this game because of this gender ambiguous character" is not in the same category as saying "Games should do a better work when it comes to diversity and representations."

Then, trying to paint a gut reaction of rejection as some sort of rebellion against "creators and activists colluding to appropriate artistic platforms for propaganda" would be pretty laughable if this line of thought was not the one used to ban "gay propaganda" in Putin's Russia or forbid gender studies in Orban's Hungary. Not only are global cultural industries that are split in countless entities and sub-groups pretty much immune from the paranoid fantasy of some sort of dogma imposed on all creations, but, first and foremost, it's not the end goal of the Druckmanns and the Sarkeesians of the world (the Putins and the Orbans on the other hand...). People pushing for more diversity and better representations in video games and creators that find merit in their plight are not plotting the takeover of a medium. They are not in the business of preventing others to tell whatever story they want, they are simply working on what they see as the maturation of the medium based on the notion that there is much to gain for the stories told in video games to not be isolated from the world in which they are told. Obviously, trying to do that is not a guarantee that the result will be any good and people looking for pure escapist entertainment might not be interested and in fact even be deterred by narratives that explore real world themes and issues.

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You realize we have an entire thread dedicated to numerous times academics (Journalists/Media, too) no platformed, or called for boycotts/censorship right? Half the reason things like GG have happened is because academics (And Media/Journalists) moved out of the realm of analysis and into the realm of activism. Yes, analysis has been done for decades--but you're blind if you don't believe its grown fundamentally different in the age of social media and the full realization of the "personal is political". And within that mantra, this leap was perfectly logical--if you believe art can perpetuate things like rape culture, and thus cause enormous social harm, simple analysis would not be ethical anymore. Which is the primary problem with modern ideologues, they have fully embraced the belief that art is not separable from the political, and the political is not separable from the personal and thus, to stop harm on a personal level, they have to change art. (And I don't think you'll argue if I say you have as well--what is the point of diversity if you don't think art will improve social conditions? And if you believe the current social conditions are oppressive and harmful, or even deadly...well). Cancel culture grew within that academic framework--make no mistake about it.

As for the rest of this. First, almost no one is rejecting anything because of the collusion between activists and creators--they are rejecting it because the art is suffering from heavy handed moral messaging overwhelming the actual art. Take this forum--Mad Max had active, feminist consultation, and everyone loved it anyway because its clear the art was not obtusely crushed under the messaging--the collusion doesn't matter, the results do. But after knowing the results (And in this case, we know them), those people go on to hypothesize why the art suffered, and thanks to social media--the ability to piece together who was influencing the artist has become easier (Decades ago, people might have written it off as 'well, X artist just lost his spark). What activists, and more insidiously, corporate America has done is your line of reasoning--attempt to frame that rejection as the product of some fevered, oppressive conspiracy minded audience, using their analysis of the social influences as some kind of evidence that their rejection is a kind of character flaw, or even dangerous. Which is exceptional ironic given a primary thread in academic analysis is examining social influences. But its okay for them, I guess--it's only bad when the little people examine the influences between groups. I'm sure those proles don't know how to use such dangerous tools, and it could lead to an evil populist like Putin! (Jesus, good name drops--let me do a few of my own).

If we're making ridiculous allusions to potential end games of our views, as you have done--then let me remind you, Pol Pot, Mao, Lenin, Stalin were all radicalized in academia through academic analysis of culture, society and economics (Its ironic the only right wing asshole wasn't an academic critic but an actual artist). They first attempted to alter art and literature to spread their messages before growing frustrated the "people" were not responding fast enough, or were pushing back against them (Or the government was) and so they incited rebellion and eventually mass exterminations to achieve their utopian societies, where people finally obeyed their moral, social and economic frameworks. The idea that academics are immune to the desire to control and dictate, is just...its laughably naive. If history has taught us anything, it should be quite the opposite; more tyranny, censorship and misery has grown out of academia than populism, its not even close.

From my point of view this is also a false equivalence and a gross miss-characterization. The false equivalence is that while fans and academics alike are hoping games will conform to expectations they voiced, only members of one of these two groups react as if creators personally killed their dog if these hopes go unfulfilled. The idea that creators only listen to academics and never listen to fans is also, of course, absurd. Creators listen to everyone and chiefly themselves.

The gross miss-characterization is one I am also partly responsible of in this discussion : the idea that two homogeneous blocks are facing each others. Academics that focus on video games did not stumble their way there by accident. Gamers, just like readers or movie goers, have different tastes and expectations. So when a creator brings a franchise in a direction that is not the one you hoped, said creator did not "betray the fans" because there most certainly are fans that are happy about the direction taken or, at the very least, willing to be open minded about it.



On a side note, you will notice that people were pretty fast to bump this thread when it was believed the leak was caused by an employee slighted by the awful management at Naughty Dog, but now that it appears it was allowed by awful security management the thread stayed silent. Apparently, the credentials Uncharted 3 and The Last of Us use to connect to multiplayer servers can be found in the games code and be used to snoop around and, inexplicably, Naughty Dog uses the same servers to store some of their development material ! That's good for a laugh or three. Unless you are the person responsible for this at Naughty Dog that is !

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Again, I think the problem here is you're attempting to ignore the last decade of change in academics and media/journalism (Or hell, other periods of academic insurgency/activism). Ideological frameworks like rape culture that actively say art supports oppression and harm, are specifically about tying political motivations to personal passion and emotion. I've seen academics treat the wrong kinds of expression as as a religious affront, wishing tons of awful things because X product of culture was clearly adding to the suffering of the oppressed within their simplistic moral framework.

As for 'creators only listening to academics'--I never said they only listen to activists. I said your idea of fans being "entitled" was silly and hypocritical given creators do clearly listen to non-artistic sources, and when fans see those sources clearly influence the art they pay for, of course they are going to feel like they should also have a say. Sometimes they do have a say, plenty of art is created for fans--patronage has a long history, and crowd-sources patronage is becoming more responsive than ever. This is not a bad thing. Just like its not inherently bad that creators listen to academics. What IS bad is this idea that if PAYING fans are passionate and demanding, they should be dismissed simply as entitled, or man babies, but academics who are passionate and demanding, should be seen essential to the artistic process. The hypocrisy here is the problem--not any one side, but the hypocrisy that tries to shame "little people" as if they aren't allowed to participate in such high minded critique like the academics (Academics who believe people will be raped if the art is bad...but god forbid someone should feel like their childhood got shit on!).

I largely agree with you on the rest, these things are not homogeneous; there are plenty of academics, for example, who are disturbed by this new trend to move from analysis to activism, especially in Journalism and other professionals were dispassionate, objective analysis is so important to society, simply for the trust it engenders from all of the various outlooks in our heterogeneous pool of views. And there are many fans who cheer on the activism because it coincides with their views. Its all the more reason why arbitrarily saying "your passion and feedback is bad", while also saying "your passion and feedback is good" is silly. And yet, as said, the hypocrisy within a lot of media and academia on this subject grows stronger by the day as this extreme hostility toward the fans rejection of various ideological factors continues. Entire groups are being dismissed as 'others', and its no surprise those groups are going to turn around and do it right back.

Szlia said:

People pushing for more diversity and better representations in video games and creators that find merit in their plight are not plotting the takeover of a medium. They are not in the business of preventing others to tell whatever story they want,

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How could you possibly believe this at this point? Have you read the GG thread?