Dialogue
Edge readers share their opinions; one wins a PS Plus subscription
Never in front of friends
The author of the E3 blurb for Shenmue III
( E335) comments: “We’ve always been baffled by the furore over Epic Games Store exclusives: the outrage at a game requiring a launcher other than Steam presumably comes from people who keep all their food, crockery and cutlery in one cupboard.”
This is an absolutely wretched analogy. Permit me to sentence it to a well-deserved death by over-extension, and perhaps help explain some (by no means all) of the reasons why people might object to being obligated to install the Epic launcher for a game they were earlier promised on Steam.
Firstly, let us imagine that every cupboard you install comes with a door on the opposite side which may permit a burglar access to your house. The door is locked, and the company insists that they’ve worked out any problems that might have allowed a burglar entry in the past, but there have been some news stories that make you wonder… and you can’t help but notice that this new company hasn’t been in the cupboard business all that long.
Secondly, the new cupboard has a long list of rules for what you can and cannot do with its contents. You’ve sadly gotten used to this with your old cupboards, but you cannot help but notice that this is yet one more long list that you are somehow obligated to track for changes that the installer gleefully informs you it can make at any time. You are glumly aware that you will never really read through these lists multiple times, so you sigh and take a deep breath and sign the line as often as you are asked, hoping that you haven’t just signed away the contents of your cupboard and/or the deed to your house.
Thirdly, every cupboard eats a small chunk of your house’s floor space. They’re not too bad individually, but their doors all open in different directions, and somehow it always seems that they want to occupy as much space as possible, simultaneously, at the worst possible times, demanding that their contents be checked for spoilage or diminishment of style and exchanged for new versions.
Fourth, every cupboard is quietly observing how you use it. This is creepy, but it’s another thing to which you have become glumly resigned. But does the new cupboard seem a little more… intrusive, in how it checks on you? Perhaps even like it’s borrowing the observations of your other cupboards without asking for permission? It’s an uncomfortable reminder of the helpless extent to which you’re hoping these cabinet people both know what they are doing and remain on the up-and-up…
Fifth, the makers of the new cabinet seem uninterested in the fact that their cabinet has fewer shelves, squeakier hinges, and makes it significantly more difficult both to find what you are looking for and collect it to go on a picnic with your friends. Instead, they appear to be pursuing a course that you’ll damn well buy their cabinet and like it because they’ve made a deal with the local cheese shops, and you can now only buy Gouda and Camembert if you’re going to put it into their cabinet.
Sixth, while you’ve come to accept that you actually need a greenhouse to keep living plants and a closet to hang your coats, your house comes from a long history of being able to put whatever you wanted in it. When you got your original cupboard, it seemed like just an addendum to how you were using your house, even if a growing number of objects have become cupboarddependent. Now the company is telling you that you must have their cupboard, without really making a good case why. You are obligated to use their cupboard if you want
“You are glumly aware that you will never really read through these lists, so you sigh and sign”
to store particular, exclusive things, for reasons that have nothing at all to do with your utility or necessity, and everything to do with the company selling them.
As for me, I am well aware that my current small stock of cupboards has its own flaws. But they’ve made their cases for my accepting them and their flaws, mostly by working hard to make up for them in ease of use, variety of contents, and solid customer relations. I should like a company that wants – nearly insists – on installing a new cupboard to make a similar case, rather than trying to strong-arm its way in.
And I would appreciate those who presume to grouse about my choice in this regard to consider the possibility that my reasons for same have, in fact, received significant consideration, rather than being a peculiar and petty display of pique. Benjamin Kuhner
Dear god in heaven. Now it’s plain to see
A letter in the September issue ( E335) upset me enough that I stopped reading the magazine and came on to write you a letter.
Simon Brindle, who is criticising the warnings about flashing lights in games, has no idea what he is talking about! I know this for a fact because I was diagnosed with epilepsy and have first-hand experience of how that can affect someone.
Even if someone doesn’t have lightinduced seizures, flashing lights can still affect people. I don’t have seizures any more, but large flashing lights can make it hard for me to breathe and increase tension, almost like a seizure used to. In a game I am doing beta testing of, there was a stage where the whole screen would randomly whiten out to express lightning. That got me trembling and having trouble breathing. When I asked others who were playing it, some of them they said they were affected by it negatively as well. Luckily, the game company has responded to us and toned down that stage so it doesn’t flash so much.
I do feel those flashing light warnings should always be shown. Because of my long history of seizures, I have memory problems. When I came back to playing Final Fantasy IX on my PS4, I was thankful that it gave a flashing-light warning as the game loaded. It had been about seven years since I had last played it, so I didn’t remember it had a stage where there were flashing lights. I checked it out on YouTube and confirmed it won’t give me any problems, which makes me glad I got that reminder.
Finally; it isn’t only people with epilepsy that can be affected by flashing lights. People with autism and other problems can have reactions to visual stimulus. From within the autism community, I’ve heard of children that can get panic attacks triggered if they are around flashing lights. Someone with PTSD could have a meltdown or something else triggered as well.
If you want to stand on a soap box and preach to the world, you need to have full understanding of what you are preaching about. Sally Taniguchi
And sanity is at last restored, though probably only briefly. Enjoy your PS Plus subscription. When you become the enemy
Twenty-five years ago, politicians claimed videogames would normalise violence. Eventually it turned out that gamers hadn’t become monsters after all. We were justified in our belief that the content of games would have no social effects. While the expectations of violence were overblown, what about the normalisation of it? Speaking for myself and my friends, when we weren’t playing Mortal Kombat and Doom, we were destroying property and picking fights. Luckily, such antics quickly showed their real-world repercussions and it became obvious that we should stop.
Recently, the otherwise fine Extra Credits (a YouTube channel known for in-depth analysis) aired a video on the normalisation of Nazis (and terrorists) in videogames. Their target wasn’t games that featured such hate groups, but games that randomly assigned you to such groups, or arbitrarily made no difference between political factions. The theory goes: evil-doers were portrayed the same as everybody else, that might normalise the evil they stand for.
This video was heavily disliked and mostly featured comments in the vein of: ‘So playing a Nazi makes you a Nazi? You’re dumb!’. I understand this knee-jerk reaction. Past attempts of condemning games as social conditioners were belittling and wrong. But I do wish to make some things clear. We cannot deny that bigotry is currently being normalised; it’s all over the news. There’s no proof this has come from games, but it is worth asking ourselves how much of this stems from the way bigots are featured in them. It is not wise to immediately jump to conclusions because it looks like an older argument.
While conducting violence has an immediate effect on your surroundings, hate-mongering is more abstract. It takes longer to realise you’re actually doing it because it takes longer before the results come out. And as the history of fascism in different times and eras has shown, it usually takes years before support for (or apathy towards) them leads to oppression. By then it is already too late.
I’m not saying sloppy implementation of political factions in games will necessary have dire consequences. I am merely saying it is a theory worth looking into. Ultimately, I am advising people to not immediately get defensive. As touchy as a subject it might be, it requires nuance and a forward-leaning attitude to comprehend.
Robert August de Meijer
Call it love
Edge always acts as though the world is falling apart. Yet everything seems fine to me. Then again I do live in Australia.
John Nakhoul
Well, living in a land where nature is intent on killing you must afford a certain perspective.