LinuxMCE - User contributions [en]

The Games Industry Can t Grow While The Hangover Of Auteurism Lingers

2025-10-11T06:51:31Z

AlberthaSnipes: Created page with " "I want women to not have to fear retaliation from a powerful ‘auteur’ figure for speaking up," one ex-Fullbright dev told Polygon in a recent report on the studio’s toxic workplace culture. Said report largely pertains to alleged claims of harassment against Fullbright co-founder Steve Gaynor, who recently stepped down from the position of creative lead to focus on writing for [https://Hanhsi.com/ fpscorezone fps Gaming] the studio’s next game, Open Roads...."

"I want women to not have to fear retaliation from a powerful ‘auteur’ figure for speaking up," one ex-Fullbright dev told Polygon in a recent report on the studio’s toxic workplace culture. Said report largely pertains to alleged claims of harassment against Fullbright co-founder Steve Gaynor, who recently stepped down from the position of creative lead to focus on writing for [https://Hanhsi.com/ fpscorezone fps Gaming] the studio’s next game, Open Roads. While Gone Home , the studio’s first game, tells the story of a woman revisiting her childhood home and learning about her younger sister’s lesbian identity, Open Roads focuses on the relationship between a mother and her daughter. Both games are written by Gaynor, a cisgender straight white man who, despite insisting on telling women’s stories, has caused at least ten women to leave Fullbright in the last year alone. According to these women, the degree of micromanagement they were subjected to is disproportionate to how much scepticism the work of their male colleagues received. While this is in and of itself a grave issue, it also points to a wider cultural problem in the games industry: auteurism, or the belief that one person is responsible for the creative vision of an entire and, in this case, supposedly diverse team. Jessica Howard recently spoke to a similar issue for Paste Magazine , importantly noting that the games industry’s co-option of the term "director’s cut" only reinforces what is already a misrepresented and frankly toxic depiction of how games are made. While Sucker Punch doesn’t necessarily have a face-of-the-company figure for Ghost of Tsushima , Hideo Kojima - whose infamous Twitter bio purports that he is "70 percent made of movies" - certainly sees things differently. For the sake of transparency, I wrote in favour of the Death Stranding director’s cut not that long ago. I like Kojima, although I too can see that the way Kojima Productions centres itself around him - right down to the name - is detrimental to offering a realistic view of video game development. Aside from maybe Yoji Shinkawa, how many other devs can you name from KojiPro? Can you name a single woman who works there? Remember that these are the devs who wrote Quiet in MGS 5, a woman who will literally die if she wears clothes. Kojima is undoubtedly the worst offender in terms of portraying himself as an auteur - he’s the auteur-in-chief of an industry already obsessed with auteurism. While the repeated instances of "directed by Hideo Kojima" throughout his games often become the subject of memes, they are seriously harmful when considered from a wider industry perspective. Likewise, people often associate The Last of Us Part 2 with Neil Druckmann, failing to realise it was co-written by Westworld and Snowpiercer writer Halley Gross - not to mention 2,000 devs worked on the game . Cory Barlog, despite being probably the most vocally supportive triple-A director of recognising video games as collaborative, unwieldy projects that only survive because of the teams behind them, is synonymous with God of War to the majority of people who do not consciously immerse themselves in the [https://Hanhsi.com/ FPS games updates] industry. David Cage has been at the centre of fuck-up after fuck-up at Quantic Dream , which successfully won its case to throw out a lawsuit alleging the toleration of sexual harassment in the workplace back in 2018. Peter Molyneux has been accused of being a pathological liar who tends to over-promise and under-deliver. People still credit him for Fable , despite a Wireframe report clearly highlighting that Fable was largely the product of Ian Lovett and the Carter brothers. Even icons like Fumito Ueda, Tetsuya Nomura, Yoko Taro, Naoki Yoshida, and Shigeru Miyamoto work as part of extraordinarily large teams in order to make your favourite games a reality - not one single person living or dead is the video game equivalent of Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, or Andrei Tarkovsky. Yet this pervasive presence of auteurism - this hangover from what should, but is evidently not, a bygone era of male-dominated game development - continues to perpetuate systemic harassment in the industry. Despite the fact that every modern job listing touts diversity as a core tenet of its respective company, reports of harassment - almost always targeted directly at marginalised people - are not only commonplace, but worryingly so. In the last two weeks alone, the government lawsuit filed against Activision Blizzard has revealed horrific and dehumanising accounts of misogyny , sexual harassment , and systemic racism . All of these issues were, until now, swept under the rug by rosters of predominantly male members of the games industry old guard. When asked by a female fan if Blizzard would ever consider creating female characters that don’t look as if they would appear in a Victoria’s Secret catalogue, an entirely male panel of developers publicly laughed at her suggestion, attempting to embarrass her for making a completely reasonable request in front of an enormous BlizzCon audience. They then asked what catalogue she’d prefer them to step out of. Not one of the reports on workplace misconduct against female developers is singular, and yet too often they are laser-focused on instead of being considered in tandem with every prior and subsequent report of the same abuse and toxicity. This, again, is compounded by the concept of auteurship - the man in charge calls the shots, even when the shots in question have nothing to do with a man’s perspective. The Fullbright case is no different - in fact, it is perhaps even more sinister than many others. Despite publisher Annapurna Interactive having to independently intervene in the development of Open Roads by contracting an external human resources firm, Steve Gaynor has not been taken off the project. This is, after all, the man whose own Twitter handle bore the company’s namesake for over a decade, only recently having been changed from "Fullbright" to "SteveGaynorPDX." - at the time of writing, searching for @Fullbright will still offer you the choice to be redirected to the studio’s actual handle or Gaynor’s new one. In this instance, Gaynor didn’t just see himself as the auteur behind Fullbright games behind closed doors - he was, publicly, Fullbright itself, with his social media presence juxtaposing his own personal views with those supposedly intended to represent the entire studio. Even the statement he released in the wake of Polygon’s report merely states that his "leadership style" was "hurtful," implying that it’s a subjective, stylistic issue as opposed to yet another example of a decades-old problem. How can people speak out against their self-proclaimed auteur boss when he has full control over the company’s relationship with the world? Yes, they can be granted anonymity to speak with journalists, but is that enough? No. The issue here lies solely with the auteuristic hangover from ‘90s and early ‘00s game development. Magazines may not feature sexualised shots of Lara Croft on the front cover anymore, but away from the public eye, the same problems persist. If anything, they are becoming ever more insidious because of the omnipresent gaslighting articulated to the world via social media. In the eyes of many fans, the auteur is not just the fact of the company - they (read: he) are the company itself, made infallible and immaculate by the games it makes. Gaynor, despite having cost at least ten women their jobs, is still working on Open Roads, a game that tells a story about women. While it’s true that his contributions are now passed to the team with Annapurna acting as mediator - which, let’s be real, what the fuck? - this seems more like a cosmetic reshuffling than an actionable stance against real toxicity. In spite of his actions, and in spite of his altered Twitter handle, Gaynor is, and at the time of writing will still be, the auteur he sees himself as. That is not conducive to creating a safer, more comfortable, and more diverse industry. It is the same thing that has happened time and time again as reports of misogyny become increasingly prevalent - by that metric, things are getting worse, not better. If things are to change, we need to reckon with the problematic nature of games’ male-dominated history repeatedly rearing its head. We need to reckon with auteurs if we want to see true equality across diverse teams, and, once and for all, put an end to the currently necessary assembly line of misconduct reports that, almost always, come at the expense of women working in an industry that continuously attempts to kick them out of it. Next: Do Not Cross The Activision Blizzard Picket Line During The Walkout

Don t Starve Series Characters Ranked

2025-10-09T06:51:57Z

AlberthaSnipes: Created page with " Don't Starve is an incredibly unique survival game rife with a stunning amount of depth. Ever since its release in 2013, the game has been highly-regarded for its art-style and crushingly-unforgiving gameplay. There's a ludicrous amount of depth here that the only way to understand is to play the game. Part of the depth in the game comes from different playable characters you can unlock. Each character plays quite differently from the rest, an..."

Don't Starve is an incredibly unique survival game rife with a stunning amount of depth. Ever since its release in 2013, the game has been highly-regarded for its art-style and crushingly-unforgiving gameplay. There's a ludicrous amount of depth here that the only way to understand is to play the game. Part of the depth in the game comes from different playable characters you can unlock. Each character plays quite differently from the rest, and certain players will have more success with some than others. While there's no possible way to have a definite list ranking the characters in Don't Starve since it's mostly up to personal preference, this list is a decent starting point: 10. WICKERBOTTOM via: dontstarve.wikia.com Wickerbottom starts the game with two Papyrus in her inventory. She can also craft items that require some tier of Science Machine at a lower tier than every other character, giving her access to better items much faster. She also has the unique ability to craft books from Papyrus, each of which gives a different effect when read. Reading the books costs her a hefty amount of Sanity, but the effects given from the books can be super-useful. Wickerbottom suffers from insomnia and prefers fresh food more than other characters. 9. WOLFGANG via: dontstarve.wikia.com Wolfgang starts with a higher maximum Hunger than most other characters, and for good reason. The fuller Wolfgang is, the more damage he's going to do, the faster he's going to move, and the more Health he's going to have. The lower the hunger, the opposite the effect, until he's much less useful than other characters. Wolfgang is scared of the dark, and in it loses extra Sanity, as well as when he's around monsters. If you can manage to stay close to full most of the time, Wolfgang is an astonishingly powerful character. 8. WX-78 WX-78 is a robot and has the unique ability [https://Hanhsi.com/ redirect to Hanhsi.com] upgrade himself incrementally. By eating Gears, WX-78 can upgrade his health to 400, his Hunger to 200, and his Sanity to 300. However, certain weather effects can have a drastic impact on WX. If uncovered in the rain, WX-78 will take constant damage. When struck by lightning, WX will gain a slight glow for a little while and will be able to move a bit faster. WX can eat stale and spoiled food without any negative effect. 7. MAXWELL via: dontstarve.wikia.com Maxwell starts with quite a few items at his disposal, the most useful of which is the Codex Umbra. The Codex allows Maxwell to spawn up to three Shadow Puppets of himself, all of which do his bidding. Spawning each of these Shadow Puppets decreases Maxwell's maximum Sanity by a good chunk, but when they die he gains the Sanity back. Other than the Codex, Maxwell spawns with his own fighting gear, along with some other valuables. Maxwell also constantly restores his own Sanity. 6. WENDY via: dontstarve.wikia.com Wendy loses less sanity in the dark and while near monsters. She can also summon the ghost of her dead sister Abigail to aid her in combat, at the cost of fifty sanity. Wendy starts with Abigail's Flower in her inventory, and when it blooms, it can be placed to summon her ghost. To summon her, a mob must die near the flower. Wendy deals less damage than normal, greatly increasing the value of having Abigail around to help out. 5. WILSON via: youtube.com Wilson is the default character in Don't Starve. His only unique ability is the beard that he grows, giving him some respite from the cold in the winter. Wilson can shave his own beard and collect the beard hair. Stat-wise, Wilson is the default from which every other character deviates, meaning he's not particularly bad at anything, but not particularly great at anything, either. 4. WILLOW via: dontstarve.wikia.com Willow starts with a lighter in her inventory, which works like a less-useful torch, though it can burn indefinitely. Willow is immune to fire damage, and when she's close to a fire, she'll gradually restore her sanity. The bigger the fire the better, and don't be afraid to get up close and personal to it. Once Willow reaches sixty or less Sanity, she'll randomly set a fire at her own feet. While this can't damage her, it could potentially turn your life's work into ashes, so keeping her Sanity higher is an absolute must. 3. WOODIE via: dontstarve.wikia.com Woodie starts with Lucy the Axe, which can cut down trees faster than a normal axe and has infinite durability, though it deals half the damage of a normal axe. If Woodie gets a little too busy chopping down trees, or on a full moon, he transforms into a Werebeaver. While a Werebeaver, Woodie cannot access the map, his inventory, or see his stats. Over time he'll return to his normal state, but at fifty Health, thirty-seven Hunger, and fifty Sanity. This could be an increase or a decrease depending on what you were at before, but if you return to your normal state at the wrong time, it can be a death sentence. 2. WES via: dontstarve.wikia.com Wes really has nothing going for him. His Hunger drains faster than normal, and he deals less damage than average. Wes spawns with a Pile o' Balloons, which cost five Sanity each to blow up. The Balloons have a small chance to distract mobs and will pop when they're attacked or another balloon near it pops, dealing five damage. Wes was created for a bit of an added challenge, and in this endeavor, he succeeds with flying colors. 1. PLAY WHO YOU WANT via: steamcommunity.com And, please keep in mind, this is not even remotely a definitive list. Most characters have strengths and weaknesses, just like most players. Some of you may absolutely love playing as one character with their strengths fitting perfectly into your playstyle, while others may find that character completely and [https://Hanhsi.com/ FPS games updates] utterly useless. My best advice would be to try each character out a couple of times and [https://hanhsi.com/ FPS games Tournaments] give each of them a legitimate chance to surprise you. Figure out what works best for you, and above all, have a good time experimenting! Next: 10 Facts About Don't Starve Characters

User:AlberthaSnipes

2025-10-09T06:51:54Z

AlberthaSnipes: Created page with "I'm Alvin and was born on 11 August 1985. My hobbies are Jogging and Shortwave listening. my blog post [https://Hanhsi.com/ Suggested Internet site]"

I'm Alvin and was born on 11 August 1985. My hobbies are Jogging and Shortwave listening. my blog post [https://Hanhsi.com/ Suggested Internet site]