This week's show is a cluttered and slightly overlong one, but I think you'll quite enjoy it. It veers dangerously close to insightful relevance at times (the Shadow Complex discussion), suddenly switching to our typically nonsensical sex jokes until finally arriving at one of the best games-unrelated conversations I think we've ever had.
You can listen to the thing here, as usual, or you can subscribe to us on iTunes.
Oncomouse won the Dtoid swag bag this week. Send an email to podtoid@destructoid.com with your mailing address and we'll send you stuff.
[I was gonna use SuitCoatAvenger's great picture of Bo Abobo as the header, until the situation changed. Still,
it's good.]
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Destructoid is an open discussion community. You don't need to "audition" to post a comment - just speak your mind. We respect differing opinions on the site, so have at it. Be smart, funny, insightful, clueless, or cute -- but back it up with substance. Keep your cool, keep it fun. We only ask that you act respectfully and above all: don't be a troll and ruin it for everyone else. Don't bring down gamers or we'll, you know, gently shoot you in the face and stuff you into a flaming mailbox. Each comment is your opportuntity to make this community awesomer. Is that even a word?
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Contest:
1:00 PM on 08.26.2009
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"In 1984, James Oliver Huberty killed 21 people and wounded 19 others at a McDonald's in San Ysidro, California, in what became known as the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre. Three years later, in 1987, his widow, Etna filed a USD$5 million lawsuit against McDonald's, claiming that the massacre was triggered by her husband's consumption of excessive amounts of Chicken McNuggets. She alleged that monosodium glutamate from the food interacted with the lead and cadmium that had built up in Huberty's body after 14 years as a welder."
Adam Dork hasn't been welding for 14 years in his spare time, has he?
@Char
LOL
This was a good episode.
Damian Chapa directed the 2009 biopic Polanski Unauthorized. Damian Chapa plays Roman Polanski in the movie. Damian Chapa played Ken Masters in the Street Fight movie. Damian Chapa is probably a pedophile.
you disagree with everything will wright thinks, because he supported mccain? (do you really even know any of his political positions? though he keeps it to himself, he is basically a libertarian. does that mean you now oppose everything jim sterling stands for?)
people are bad for not caring about this pretty trivial issue? (i dont mean gay rights, i mean OSC's involvement in shadow complex)
all dems are good, all repubs are bad?
we have to make a big deal about everything in every game or else games will never be taken seriously?
you congratulate yourself constantly for how open-minded you are, but you seem to view everything through a pretty specific prism.
The idea of being punitive towards chair is actually what you want to do in this case, not to keep the $ out of card's hand from the non-purchase of the game but also to discourage chair or other companies from employing him in the future. When it comes down to it chair made the decision to employ card in the creation of shadow complex and that is something that they have to deal with- sure I feel bad for the other people that worked on the game, but it would be the same issue if you worked at someplace like JC penny or target or any other company and it came out that they had a racist or sexist or homophobic ceo- the fact that it is a video game company doesn't realyy make it any different.
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Carrying Chicken McNuggets around in steel briefcase is pretty much all you can do with them.
Samit adds more to his spreadsheet today.
You can be open minded and still hate Republicans. Quit being such a whiny baby. In politics, you pick a side and the other side sucks. That doesn't mean you don't hear the other side's arguments and consider them thoughtfully. It just means that after thoughtful, open-minded consideration, you've come to the conclusion that the other side sucks and you don't need to censor yourself in saying so just to protect their precious feelings.
The simple fact that in the same show we get to hear a debate about boycotting a game based on the "quasi-author" being against gay marriage and then jump to double down chickenburgers & alluminum briefcases filled with obsene amounts of McNuggets is mind boggling!
Ive got a question for you: Should every biggot in the world buy Shadow Complex simply in order to support that crazy nutcase called Orson Scott Card ?
u can't hate Rs and be open minded. U can hate certain politicians, or certain positions, or policies, but to hate that whole party is the very definition of bigotry.
And it's quite a jump to call my post whiny. I get annoyed when people think everything should be viewed along the axis of R vs D. It shows a lack of thoughtfulness, and wasted precious minutes in The Greatest Podcast Ever! Contrary to Bush and Cheney, the world is not 2-sided.
Just cuz most fuckwads pick sides like it's ur hometown football team doesn't mean we all should.
BTW, gay marriage is coming, we just have to wait till more people like OSC die of old age. (that is a descriptive statement, not a prescriptive one!)
It's perfectly reasonable to make a blanket statement in regards to disliking a particular political party, so long as you acknowledge and dislike the elements of that political party when they appear in something you support. I can make a blanket statement about hating the grand old party because I’m aware of what their platform is, and I find it contemptible. Certainly not every Republican adheres to the platform verbatim, but for example, I will not accept them for being a pro-choice republican while being one that condemns gay marriage. It’s not closed-minded to dislike things that are morally incongruent with progressivism. Further, I will dislike the Democratic Party when the party commits to supporting likewise transgressions – which it is guilty of more often than not.
Sure, legal gay marriage is coming, but why should we just sit on our hands and wait for these guys to die? These people aren’t going to just die. They’re training their children and grandchildren right now to be just as intolerant as they are. The conservative Christian youth movement is becoming a real problem here. Guys like Card are some of the main purveyors of this kind of backwards logic. I can accept that no matter how I spend my money, a person I would dislike will probably benefit; however, I have a harder time accepting that within the sphere of videogaming, which I had hoped would avoid associating with this kind of person. There are plenty of other non-bigoted, moderately high-profile authors that could write entertaining associative material for a videogame.
Boycotting the game would definitely show Chair that the gaming public won’t accept material whose profits will benefit a bigot. It may not affect anything in this particular instance, but it could send a message to developers who might’ve considered working with someone like Card in the future.
Also, I said "I can't breathe" exactly the same time as Adam (was it Adam? I think it was)
the dominance of conservative christians is far overplayed, the demographics dont support that theory now, and their relative numbers are only declining. perhaps you bought into the hype rove and bush were all too happy to let their opponents create for them, to make them this fearsome monolith. Much good it has done recently, no? perhaps the bigots arent losing influence as fast as you would like, but every anti-gay person doesnt need to disappear to allow gay marriage to become law. even here in california, it was a relatively close vote to keep prop 8, and the larger support came from democrats than from republicans (hurts to fathom such, i know)
and considering your other statements demonstrate intelligence, i dont understand how you think the number of boycotters involved in shadow complex will make any difference. again, its a matter of scale. a boycott only works when the boycott is clearly the reason for poor sales. an xbla game would not know whether poor sales came from a boycott or the hundreds of other more salient factors to sales. that is why i said a handwritten letter to chair and epic would mean much more. if you somehow managed to organize a large, visible boycott, then you might have an effect. but then you would have to reconcile that with the consequences of all the civilian casualties you caused for such a small victory. OSC is a small-timer in the antigay movement.
and for fucks sake, none of this marriage business would be an issue at all if progressives and conservatives hadnt colluded to give the government control over the definition of marriage to begin with. why is it less insane for the government to control marriage than it is for the church? its funny to me that conservatives think the church should define marriage, and progressives think it should be the government. its so convenient that they side with the groups that they think will impose their will.
I didn't use the word "dominant" or any like phrase. If the influence of anti-progressive Christians on politics and social welfare exists at all, it is a problem. I can't speak with any certainty on California, but I would definitely say that Christian conservatism is "dominant" here in Texas and will continue to be for some time.
Also, why do you feel it would be more feasible to organize hundreds of people and get all of them agree to write a letter to Chair or Epic than it would be to get those people to just not buy the game? Chair or Epic could easily ignore the letters or assign some lackey to sift through them and maybe even generate some generic responses. It'd be a lot harder for Chair and Epic to ignore the money that isn't appearing in their pockets.
Daniel Mustard of Chair has already acknowledged the existence of the boycott. Chair knows that they have made a good game, and every gaming site has stood behind the game's quality. The XBOX dashboard is pushing the game pretty hard as well. At this point, if the sales are poor, a boycott is damn near the only reason for it. It's not as if there's a vast sea of great/high-rated games on XBLA.
The point of this is that Chair chose Card. Chair isn't developing one of Card's pre-existing IPs. The Mustards sought out Card, a known bigot, just as they did for Advent Rising.
It has been made apparent by the developers that Card is involved. It's not like a faceless food or clothing corporation where the CEO and/or BOD are similarly faceless. Card is the devil we know, as such we have an obligation to at least sit down and think about whether or not we can reconcile his involvement. I didn't boycott the game, but I can certainly sympathize with anyone who did.
This is all conjecture at this point, as the game was "was the top selling Xbox Live Arcade game for the week within its release, and furthermore was one of the top ten played titles for all of Xbox Live." This is not to say that a boycott was ineffectual. Only that gamers as a community (at least those that participate in the comments, forums, message boards, etc. - which is actually quite a few) decided that they could accept Card's involvement and the money he may receive for every sale. The important thing is that none of us sat on our hands. We actually thought about it for a second, and many of us hit the comments with what we thought. We didn't have to march on Chair's offices. We just needed to step back for a second and assess the situation and come to terms with the ramifications of our purchase. It's a consciousness raising effort, and one that I believe was moderately successful. I think we know now that we have some power if we ever find a cause worth exercising it over. That's what's important.