I don’t really want to know what people are saying, I wanted to know what the real story is.
Again, I was kind of hoping for something other than assertions.
It’s terrorism now? Wow.
Dunno about you guys, but I’ve had sex with a person who likes* me.
- liked
Cite?
Dude, Depression Quest is no Spec Ops:The Line 
[del]Tits[/del]Scrotum or GTFO.
Bingo. Now, I personally have not “played” it per se. I gave it about 10 minutes, then said “fuck it, this sucks, I’m going to go do something else”. It’s perfectly valid to say that something fails at what it tries to do. And what I keep hearing over and over is that it’s bad even by choose-your-own-adventure book standards - let alone the standards of narrative storytelling that your average visual novel, book, or game has. Sure, something can be unpleasant, discordant, and harsh, and still be good art. But it can be all that and just suck the big one. It’s just that when you fuck it up badly, you can hide behind the “artsy” motif and baffle them with bullshit in the knowledge that your average person wouldn’t know the difference between Oliver Messaein and a cat walking on the keys.
I gave up on it after 10 minutes, and I felt the entire time, “Hang on, if I didn’t have a pretty good understanding of psychological depression already, this guy would just come across as a horribly entitled douchebag who needs to pull his shit together”. And then I think of all the people who have real problems in addition to their depression - who aren’t surrounded by loving, supporting people, who don’t have jobs or are worried about having a place to live… No, I’m sorry, this game does nothing to help those without a clear picture understand depression, the music is incredibly repetitive and grating, there’s absolutely no contrast whatsoever (I don’t care if you’re doing it on purpose to make a statement - it still makes for shitty narrative design), there’s nothing at all visually appealing about it… I guess that’s the point, but again - shitty art design to make a point is still shitty art design, and while bucking the trends when you know what you’re doing can be revolutionary, in this case it’s just simply pretentious.
On a side note, anyone else find it funny that despite the glowing reviews from the news sites, there is not a single legitimate positive review on the steam page? Like, not a single person was willing to stand up and say, “You know what, I liked this game”?
A dessert should not make you throw up. Cooking a dessert that makes you throw up and calling it a commentary about eating disorders doesn’t make it a good dessert.
You said it as if quoting other people, and now you’re using “entertaining” much more broadly than most other folks use it. That’s not me straw-manning, that’s you equivocating.
If you’re going to use “entertaining” in such a broad way, such that works like Piss Christ or Night of the Electric Insects count as entertaining, you need to understand that that’s not how many folks use the word, and you can’t therefore take reviews that say the game isn’t entertaining and assume they’re meaning what you think they mean.
Edit: I want to be clear that I’m not saying this game is good, that it succeeds by its own measure, that it’s worth playing. I’m about 99% sure I won’t ever play it. My objection is limited solely to the idea that reviewers who say it’s not entertaining are saying it’s not good. It appears to me that some reviewers are saying it’s not entertaining, but that it is good. That’s a legitimate viewpoint.
“All the animals come out online - trolls, whiners, tweeters, memers, doxers, weeaboos, white knights, fanboys, console fags, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the 'net.”
— Turnip Bickle
-
It’s not true that Depression Quest in an objectively horrible game. Some people like it - some don’t. It’s not a pew-pew video game, but a large part of this episode is devoted to reinforcing the notion that only proper videos games are mario and call of shooty clones. Tastes vary. Gamers vary. It’s a strength - but some people are choosing to react as if they are being threatened by that.
-
It’s not true that there are no positive reviews on steam for it. Go here -
Depression Quest on Steam
scroll to the reviews and click on “only positive” to see the positive reviews
3. I mentioned previously that some big name review sites appreciate it, while still being aware of its issues. (This is called proper criticism, in other artistic endeavors. Here are those links directly:
Ars Technica - What Depression Quest taught me about dealing with mental illness
Text-based choose-your-own-adventure game a powerful look at a daily struggle.
Giant Bomb - They Made a Game That Understands Me
Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Mostly Indescribable
Not that any of this matters. It's just an attempt to dismiss Quinn's output as not being a "real" game by a "real" designer.This is just me being nitpicky but the first two articles aren’t reviews, they’re editorials that discuss the themes behind Depression Quest. And the last article is just a news story announcing it’s release.
I just read the Giant Bomb article, and it’s absolutely a review–it describes the game and offers opinions about how well the game achieves its ends. What more does it need to do to qualify as a review?
Edit: and the Ars Technica article is a review, too. Not sure why you’d think otherwise.
Just spitballing here, but I would venture that it should probably be published in Giant Bomb’s dedicated “Reviews” section: http://www.giantbomb.com/reviews/
EDIT: And again, for Ars, all reviews are tagged with the word “Review” in the title.
What people are saying -is- the story.
Here’s Quinn’s twitter feed:
https://twitter.com/TheQuinnspiracy
Sarkeesian
https://twitter.com/femfreq
The #gamergate hashtag
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23GamerGate&src=tyah
There -is- nothing other than assertions. The ex, Eron Gjoni, asserts that she slept with a bunch of people. That’s it. She doesn’t really deny it. But the rest of it? Ruining video games and destroying the poor innocent folks at Wizard Chan and killing the Fine Young Capitalists, raping people at a wedding? They made all that shit up. There’s nothing at all for proof of any of that. All the rest is just bullshit. Notice who didn’t provide any links? The OP.
Then the 4chan trolls doxxed her, harassed her parents, and spread nude photos of her around.
And then, they claimed she was making it all up for attention and money
Meanwhile, Anita Sarkeesian has had to leave her house because of death threats -
Also last night, people started mailing her child porn - you can see that at her twitter above.
Yes. The object of this exercise is to silence female criticism and participation in male-dominated activities online and in video games.
Events have rather overtaken us but last night, Quinn revealed that she’d been lurking in the 4chan IRC channel where they discussed all this, specifically as plans to terrorize women on the internet. You can read about it here with more links and screengrabs -
https://storify.com/strictmachine/gameovergate
And here -
and at Quinn’s Twitter. The FBI is involved in tracing the people who’ve been hacking her, by the way.
That’s silly, in my opinion: rather than looking at the content of the article, you’re looking at its tag. A review is a discussion of a work with opinions about its quality by someone familiar with the work. Both articles qualify on that count; if they’re not in the “review” section, it might be because typical elements of reviews, such as numerical scores of graphics etc., don’t work very well for something like this game. I don’t know why they’re not in the review section, since they’re indisputably reviews.
You’re right. That’s just you being nitpicky.
But I posted those in response to Budget Player Cadet’s assertion that not a single person had anything good to say about Depression Quest.
In the end, it doesn’t matter if Depression Quest is good or not or who likes it or finds it useful (or not). We could both list dozens of crappy video games without having to justify if they’re even games or if the people who made them are really gamers. Focuses on whether Depression Quest is a game is a way to dismiss Quinn’s relevance to the video game industry.
Even if he just donates enough to get on your public donors list with the alias JewMustDieLOL? You don’t think maybe the exposure from telling him to bugger off and show his Reichsmarks up his bum, and getting his alias off the list, would be worth more than the money?
That’s a decision for the charity to make, and in virtually all cases I won’t try to second-guess them. They know their needs better than I do.
Welcome to Game Maker text adventure!
You are sitting in the office of mega-game-journalist Jim Wilson discussing your latest game.
What do you wish to do:
EAT THE Grue.
I rather eat grue than discussing this with with a gaming journalist.