Pictured here is what is known as a lawn jockey. They were sold by the truckload to people in bygone eras so that they could delight in a racist depiction of a minority. It is racist not only in its portrayal of the black person as an individual, but it is racist in that it is part of the complex fabric of racist history, both reminding and reinforcing racist tropes of black people as sub-human, simple, and generally not worth the same rights and respect of white people. They still exist, some people even still display them on their lawn, although they don’t exactly fly off the shelves like they used to. For the most part, we recognize that people who display these icons are racist throwbacks. We understand that if someone displays something like this on their front lawn, they can be expected to spout off unsavory jokes, obnoxious opinions, or flat-out, undressed-up racist bullshit. We nearly break our arms patting ourselves on our backs that the people who still own lawn jockeys are cultural outliers whose poisonous beliefs have not had much chance to advance to future generations. We are happy that people don’t profit off of selling such racist crap anymore. Well, almost anyways.

If you like games that portray women as nothing more than bubble-headed fucktoys, you are a sexist, just like someone who thinks that lawn jockeys are funny is a racist.

If you buy games that portray women as objects to be consumed, fucked, abused, etc, you are a sexist, just like someone who bought a lawn jockey is a racist.

If you sell games that portray women as no more important than how much the player wants to fuck them, you are a sexist, just like someone who sells lawn jockeys is a racist.

If you troll feminist websites, writing bullshit about how loathesome women are, you are a sexist in the same way that someone who writes about how black people are backwards and violent is a racist.

If that’s fine with you, just remember, history will judge you. Years from now, you will be looked down at with the same scorn that we look down upon people who display lawn jockeys. But as long as you’re fine with it…

Mighty readers, I don’t make it a secret that I used to be a Sonic fanboy in my youth and thought that the series was better than anything Nintendo could throw at them, because the Blue Blur would prevail.

Of course, after the Dreamcast, we got stuck with titles that should have been violently ripped from the Sonic Team studios and cleansed in the fires of Mount Doom in Mordor, except that they weren’t even able to gift you invisibility or trap you in greedy paranoia. The only title worth keeping an eye out for would be Sonic and the Dark Brotherhood, and that’s because Bioware is handling the story. You can’t go wrong with Bioware for good writing.

What I am about to reveal is worse than the upcoming Sonic Unleashed, not only because it’s so bloody ridiculous, but because it also rips off the Playstation 3’s hotly expected title, White Knight Chronicles. For shame, Sega.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ugh.

A new game about to be released for the PSN called Fat Princess is a TF2-like capture-the-flag game where the point is to feed your princess enough cake so that she grows really fat so that the opposing team can’t carry her back to their castle.

Honestly, the “core game mechanics” are brilliant, and if I didn’t care one whit about the objectification of women or fat-bashing, I would think this was the best thing since… well, Team Fortress 2. And I’m quite sure that this describes 99% of the PSN players out there, so I’m sure the game will do very well.

But here is another game mechanic:

Instead of running out into the forest to find cake to fatten up the princess with, why not go out and find gold (which is a lot heavier than cake) to stuff into a treasure chest. The more gold in the chest, the heavier it would be, and the harder it would be to carry.

Oh, but that’s not as “cute” as cake and fat chicks. Right.

So how about layering, Karamari-style, a bunch of random shit on top of the chest, like shrubbery, rocks, bison, etc, that would also weight it down. That could be cute, and silly, and not reinforce nasty stereotypes about women and the obese.

Update: Shakes has caught wind of this, and she is pissed.

Update again: Can you believe just this afternoon I was wondering when my next outbreak of herpes trolls would be?

I’ve been doing a lot of travelling lately (hence the light posting), and this morning, as I was getting myself together in my hotel room, I had the TV on to the Today Show for reasons I’m not entirely sure of but probably owing something to a lack of caffiene and coherent thought. I tried finding the video but could only find a feature on What They Play, which is a good, nonjudgemental parent’s resource for video games and not in any position to be slammed by the likes of me.

No, the feature I caught it midway through was on online predators getting to your kids through their game console. We’ve seen this before.

They’re subject matter expert was spending a lot of time blurring the lines between the threat of gaming online and the actual content of videogames. She would say things like “Nintendo is very family-friendly and their games are safe.”

Erm, no… I’m sure I don’t need to tell anyone here that games like Manhunt and Resident Evil 4: Umbrella Chronicles are not appropriate for young children. And while she may have been trying to say that Nintendo’s otherwise maddening online matchup service guarantees that your child will not be contacted by some nasty pederast; to me it came across as “Nintendo is only for little children and will never betray you.”

…And that sentiment applied only to the online facet of gaming would be a point well-taken if a bunch of early-morning, blurry-eyed parents who are trying desperately to educate themselves on how to deliver age-appropriate games to their children happened to catch this and think that anything marked “Wii” was acceptable for the children to consume.

So when those parent do pick up House of the Dead or No More Heroes because it’s for the Nintendo and ergo must be safe; it just means that they’re going to feel that much more betrayed when they walk in on their kid hacking up zombies with guts and gore spilling out, and that shit worries me, because then they feel that if the game companies are so dead-set on betraying that trust, then there “ought to be laws.”

A few things from last week I’ve been “holding onto” for this upcoming Trailer Tuesday.

Nintendo has a new franchise, it’s something that’s been rumored about for a while, but no one had any idea that it would be this… bizarre. I give you Captain Rainbow!

Because it’s E3, we’re getting a lot of good trailers for major releases, like Fable 2 (out in Mid-October for the 360:

And yes… a new Mirror’s Edge trailer — more Parkour than you can shake a stick at …!

Final Fantasy XIII will be released on the XBox 360.

A lot of goodies have been coming out of E3–including another 360 price drop. But this one is a major shakeup.

Sony has clutched at a series of exclusive titles to keep sales of their console up. Titles you can play no-where else but on a Sony console: God of War is one of those titles, and titles like Little Big Planet and Heavenly Sword have managed to spark interest in big black. But the absolute monarch of the Sony Killer Ap Title Department has been the core Final Fantasy series. Spin-offs like Crystal Chronicles and Chocobo Dungeon on the Nintendo lineup aside, the promise of exclusivity to the most anticipated RPG title of this generation has had Sony sleeping easy at night, knowing that the moment FFXIII was released, a legion of bishie-loving gamers would gladly plunk down several hundreds of dollars to secure access to the title. But now you don’t need to buy a PS3 if you want to play FFXIII — you can play it on your 360. So that’s one less title that Sony has to say “you need our console.”

As someone who has been miffed at Sony for their obnoxious marketing practices, I won’t lie and say that I’m not delighted at this news. And Sony’s locking up future Rockstar exclusivity doesn’t make me too sad for them — they can have their Grand Theft Auto and I can have my Final Fantasy. Everyone’s a winner!

But what was the reason for this? Is it that Square-Enix is concerned about the PS3’s flagging sales? Is it the constant comparisons between PS3 and 360 graphics on multi-console releases that indicate that Microsoft edges Sony out time and again? Is it the massive before-you-can-even-play-the-game downloaded patches that PS3 games require while their XBox counterparts suffer from “insert disc, play game?”

We all know what it’s like to be having a pleasant conversation with someone, getting on with them fine, and then bronk they say something unironically offensive, usually about immigrants, or minorities, or promiscuous or strident women. And then you think, ohhhh–kay…. and look for ways to extricate yourself from their company, and never talk to that person again.

But let’s talk about non-traditionally socially awkward moments–like finding out the person realllly like Terry Goodkind, or thought I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry was a laugh riot, or they’ve never made a meal out of fresh ingredients.

Have you ever had someone tell you some that made your whole brain screech to a halt and think “wait, they just said what?”

Note: anyone who says “finding out someone likes American Gladiators” will be immediately banned

So I have intimated in previous posts that I’m a huge fan of American Gladiators. I love it on feminist principles (the women have always been able to compete as well as the men, even though it’s segregated, it’s a lot more than you see in most televized sporting events), and I love it on pure campy “I’m going to get drunk and cheer and laugh my ass off” principles. And I love Hellga and Crush. And it turns out Wolf used to be a Rodeo Clown. Which is awesome!

So normally I wouldn’t watch a show like Celebrity Family Feud if I could help it, but since the Gladiators would be taking on the cast of the The Office I managed to catch it on NBC.com. Bless her heart, Venom isn’t that bright. But that’s ok, because on the question “Name something you blow up,” Jet freely admitted she used to blow up mailboxes, and after Kevin suggested “balls, like beach balls,” Al Roker had to turn to the big board and shout “SHOW ME BALLS!”

If I had been drunk in the evening instead of working and streaming, I would have pissed myself laughing.

It’s been a long time since I’ve bought a new game. Well, long for me. When I found out a month or so back that a sequel to Etrian Odyssey was released by Atlus games, it was hard to keep my vow of video-game purchasing-celibacy while we dug out financially of the first salvo of house-related expenses. However, a week back, we found ourselves drawn into a GameStop like moths to the flame… and while angrymob picked up a discounted copy of the latest Guild Wars expansion, I found myself unable to resist the siren song of a classic RPG dungeon-crawl.

The game is little more than an expansion itself — the graphics and gameplay are nearly identical to the original, with a grid-based forest-dungeon explored by a team of five customizable heroes, and you have to make your own map. The changeups are small and easily-mentioned: you have a handful of new character classes (you start with Ronin and Hexer, unlike the last one where you had to unlock), and now, instead of going down into a dungeon, you’re instead working your way up. Some of the other changes are a little more welcome: like for example the mid-level suspend-saves which makes the game a little more casual. Read the rest of this entry »

As things are slow here at Cesar’s Palace (the unique replacement for “Chez Pony”), but I have nothing to say regarding gaming news or news of any kind, save for the good news that Ingrid Betancourt has been released from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia during a surprise raid by the Colombian Army, I thought I’d pose a couple of quick questions for us to talk about.

I will admit it openly: I torrent game, or at some points, just the No-CD cracks off the Internet for the games I HAVE bought legally, to bypass security protection or for games that I owned the CD for, but lost. These include Fallout 1 and 2, Civilization III, and Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, to name a few. Do you do the same? More? Less?

A second topic of discussion: now that 4th Edition D&D is coming out, I’ve noticed that their alignment system seems to be something like Lawful Good - Good - Neutral - Evil - Chaotic Evil. Anyone who has adhered to the “moral compass” of law-chaos and good-evil, with all in-between, can groan with me at the stripping away of moral ambiguity inherent in the alignment system. At least for those of us who roleplay our alignment and not merely use it as a weapon against the GM… So I was pleased to find an alignment test that you can answer in-character (or honestly if it was you on the line…) to see where you land on the spectrum. Answering it as myself, I was shown to be Lawful Neutral. Looks like I need to help people more.