Funyarinpa

I want to rip or break or kill something. This worthless nation elected Erdoğan AGAIN.

Confession: I'm rereading Umineko, I'm in Episode 1, and I relate to Rosa extremely deeply. I'm not happy about this because Rosa is an emotionally (and even possibly physically) abusive mother. And I see how I behave, think and feel in everything she does (in terms of my relationship with my little sister). -She's kind to a fault. Same here. (Except for one person she gets angry at extremely easily, which others don't know about. Same here.) -She doesn't fare well when placed under personal scrutiny. Same here. -She is infuriated by a relatively innocuous trait of her child Maria (tendency to say "Uu- uu!" before and after almost every damn sentence), to the point of shouting at her, telling her to repeatedly stop it, and ultimately shouting at her face and slapping her over it. Same here. (Rosa's justification for this is that this causes Maria to get bullied at school. I can relate to that feeling.) -She can't help but escalate the arguments between her and her child. Same here. -A few hours into the VN, Maria and Rosa have an argument in a garden (Maria's looking for something that's not there and throws a tantrum), and it escalates to the point Rosa keeps shouting in Maria's face while she's on the ground and continues to slap Maria. This fight ends in Rosa shouting "Fine then, look for it yourself!" and going back indoors, right when a downpour starts. And Rosa hasn't actually done this to hurt Maria any further- she's left Maria alone because she fears she'll hurt Maria even more in her current state, she leaves Maria to keep herself from harming her daughter. And this really, really fucking got to me because that's what I've wanted to do for a while, get away from my sister as much as possible so that I don't end up hurting her. It's depressing to see this character (Rosa) hurt someone extremely deeply, and understand and relate to (almost approve) what they've done, all the same. And just as depressing to know I think and feel and act the same way and that I won't change.

y'all posting Yasunori Mitsuda ignore Soul Sacrifice. smh, it's fucking excellent

I hate that I'm even saying this but sakura spirit

The House In Fata Morgana Edit: I'm serious, not saying Fata Morgana just to meme. It has incredible music (on par with Umineko), gorgeous art, some of the best characterization in the entire industry, and it avoids anime tropes so masterfully it's easier than any other VN to convince someone that it wasn't made by Japanese devs (it was). It's original, it's daring, it's tactful, it's a reasonable length (25-30 hours long), it's very well paced (perhaps except the first chapter).

Who did you wrong in a previous life jesus fucking christ

What're you all buying this sale? I've dropped quite a bit of money on Steam recently (Prey DLC, Nioh, Higurashi Ch. 6, Yakuza 0) so I won't buy much. I'll get Umineko (both Questions and Chiru), and maybe an indie called ECHO.

make that three.

Cool, keep us updated!

Project Psync is probably going to get some actual info. Mmmmmm yeah. (new project by the creator of Zero Escape and Ever17)

Easier to understand when playing VNs that aren't structured around wooing/bedding/kissing different girls. With a visual novel that branches into routes depending on your choices (not a girl), guiding the player down different paths creates suspense, mystery and excitement. In almost all VNs though, something just has to give. There need to be answers, there needs to be resolution. And that often means that the game designers will make the audience experience that catharsis as the last part in a playthrough (because the truth kills the suspense), which leads to locked paths. Some justify this through the plot, some don't. As for the "some VNs push one girl blatantly over another" idea, I think that's more of a fault of the "girls get routes, make choices to try and get into the route of the girl you like" story archetype.

I am playing Prey. The most fun FPS that I have ever played, and it is amazing in so many ways

Some games deserve to be bought twice, and this game is one of them. Not that I bought it the first time around (thanks once again, bats)

The House In Fata Morgana tackles relationships in general in a very unique, very insighful, very tactful and very emotional way.

THE FUCKING HOUSE IN FUCKING FATA FUCKING MORGANA VITA/PS4 LIMITED RUN JUST WON E3

Favorite fucking aannouncement so far is actually the Prey DLC (except the price).

That's the thing. Racism and sexism, even in the form of shitty asset flip games, isn't harmless trolling you can just ignore. They cultivate a culture that cares more about glorifying works (games) that gloat about needlessly offending people, to say the very fucking least. And I'm not calling for censoring fucking everything. And no, it doesn't have to be a slippery slope. Valve just needs to take a stance to say that bigotry is not welcome on their platform. That's not too much to ask. And that doesn't endanger your cheesecake. What I'm talking about isn't censorship. It's called deplatforming. Hate speech and bigotry adds nothing. Even if it'll just "extremize them even more" or something, not allowing bigotry in the public sphere keeps bigotry from becoming normalized. You know what happens when you handwave bigotry by calling it trolling? Racists who say racial slurs on stream have an audience with millions of impressionable children. And if your takeaway from that situation is to protect your lolis on Steam above all else, I don't have anything else to say.

I wish you the best with resolving this... All I can say is that I see you as a dear friend and as someone to look up to in countless ways, so I really, really think you deserve better, especially from yourself. You deserve to love and admire and cherish yourself boo.

You bring up some legit points when it comes to asset flips and the like- though I personally believe not helping people profit off of them is better. But, regarding this, regarding formalizing "good"- in my opinion, "good" here is basically "not being designed to promote bigoted ideology". Asset flips aren't anywhere as actively harmful as the entire "it's good and it's fun to be racist and sexist to people as long as you do it through jokes" mentality that not just prevails in games but in general. That's my main beef.

Let me take this idea one step further: Anything besides one-sided curation by Steam itself is going to fail miserably, no matter the tools. Why? Because this sexist/racist/homophobic/"hurrrr SJWs" games trend originates from within the gaming community itself. It's ingrained into the damn culture. People who publish moral turds (again, Slave Tetris) aren't outspoken outcasts. What they do is condoned, supported and disseminated in countless gaming circles. The principle of free speech was established to protect people who were under threat from those in power for their opinions. Now it's being used to legitimize acts of silencing the very people free speech was intended to protect. I believe the "censorship" argument is invalid for this very reason.

You and I engage deeply with Steam and online content in general. This is not so for the majority of Steam's users. Furthermore, I think it's more of a problem for developers than consumers.

I feel that this stance would have more merit if we didn't already have half a decade of exactly that. And we've seen the outcome: Massive oversaturation that hurts indie games, an entire culture of asset flips, a failed attempt at implementing user curation (Greenlight) that was perhaps due to the environment fostered by Valve's hands-off approach in the first place, outright bigoted games (anyone remember Slave Tetris?). Especially seeing as there are already huge swathes of the gaming community who are the sort of people who raise hell over a woman on a game cover or who stir shit the moment a gay character appears in a game, I'd say we've seen enough to know that neither the developers nor the consumers have the sense to fully regulate themselves in this regard (Bloodbath Kavkaz was greenlit), both in terms of the quality of the games on the store, and in terms of not promoting bigotry. There isn't much that the free market can do to decide right now. Many people don't know GOG or itch.io even exist, and even if they did, in terms of game availability, local pricing, networking (GOG's only recently rolled out a profile system) and other factors, nothing faces up to Steam. The only way to see if the market decides one way or the other is to make Steam implement curation and see how that affects the industry. Not that I believe following the money trail is necessarily the most wise, helpful or ethical choice in this regard.

I don't think I can overstate how much I adore Sora's route in Ever17. Her character has a lot of depth in my opinion, especially compared to the other characters in the VN (which are all oddballs or obnoxious in some fashion). And her route both has most of my favorite scenes and a really emotional ending (which, incidentally, is the moment where Karma became one of my favorite VN tunes of all time). In a (strikingly) similar fashion, Luna END from Virtue's Last Reward really fucking got to me. Likewise, it's cemented Blue Bird Lamentation as one of my favorite songs ever. Same goes for that VN's true ending and 999's true ending. Also, if we're counting chapters/arcs as routes, Watanagashi (Higurashi's second chapter) is a standout. It's a great story from beginning to end, and it's only even more harrowing once you get to Meakashi and understand what's really happened.

I'd be perfectly fine with it myself. Somehow, NieR's combat is clunky but not boring in 5 entire hours. I even enjoyed the sidequests I did, which is fucking crazy to me. Even Automata, which had very fun gameplay and a lot of story revealed through sidequests (Gathering Keepsakes, Jackass' Research...), didn't engage me anywhere as much with its sidequests. I don't know why.

I kind of wish they hadn't done this. "Illegal or trolling" is too low a baseline for admission onto the world's probably most influential and popular video game marketplace. It's this very stance that got games literally about shooting LGBT+ people and the like onto Steam. (And the fact that Valve removes (some) of such games upon public outcry doesn't redeem its appearance on the store in the first place.) It's too easy to disseminate bigoted content this way, and all Valve needed to do was to create a policy that says "Games made for the purpose of mocking a(n oppressed) demographic, or games that endorse such content, are not allowed on Steam.". Steam is not the entire internet. If someone's just fucking dying to distribute racist, homophobic or sexist games, there are other avenues. Steam doesn't have to, and in my opinion, mustn't give a platform to such games. Steam isn't responsible for giving every single game a fair chance. And, of course, any actual quality vetting policy would also catch the myriad asset flips, barebones Unity turds, shovelware and copyright-infringing works. But I'm honestly more miffed about the political angle (a game called Feminazi: The Triggering doesn't really have a right to be put on the Steam storefront).