Question Of The Week [September 11th 2024]

Q: What video game genres will you absolutely NOT PLAY?

A: I usually will play anything and everything. I grew up in the late 80’s and early 90’s where pretty much every video game was appealing to me, and moreover, marketed to me. My parents let me rent a video every week at Blockbuster or our other local rental places, and so I got to try out tons of different video games. While the scope was vast, with many different genres like “Platformer”, “Top Down/Side Scrolling Shooter” & “Action Adventure”.

But with modern gaming, and self making/publishing of video games, it’s become so much more than that. I’m continually blown away by the vastness of the Gaming. It’s been both a blessing and a curse, as the great Mr. Adrien Monk would say. With all those self published games, the genre of games have exploded into sub-genres and sub-sub-grenes, very similar to the music industry. Which I’ve always had a distaste for. Don’t get me wrong, as I really do think separating differences into categories is needed and justified. But when it digs so deep as to where those minute changes are now categorized into its own genre that has nothing else in it.

So what genres are ones that I won’t touch with a ten foot pole?

Before this year, I would have said Multiplayer games, but since I’ve been streaming, I really have enjoyed the Multiplayer Madness streams we’ve done on the channel. But there are two genres that have become much more prevalent over the past 8 years or so, have left such a bitter taste in my mouth that I can’t contain my hatred for it anymore.

1. Sexually Explicit Anime titles.
There has been a massive boom in the anime genre of games, mostly in the form of Visual Novels, which is the first type of genre that sprang into my mind. But there are good visual novels out there. Most notably the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney series. Those games are fantastic, but that whole visual novel genre has become oversaturated with anime girls who barely wear anything and their heaving bosoms have been thrust into the frame and is just an excuse for pathetic players to see fake drawings of softcore pornography. It’s disgusting, vile and like I said, pathetic. It’s given the whole genre a bad name.

2. Agenda Based Games… aka… “Woke” games.

This one has been creeping up so very slowly, it took me a moment to think about. Over the last 10ish years or so, but more in the last 5, because of self-publishing more developers are creating games that they can make that “speaks to them and others like them”. This is a much bigger issue than what I’ll get into here, but this is the basics. With the push for ESG and DEI diversity hires in AAA game publishing, those very small minorities have a huge sway within their companies due to government funding and money. So these crazy people now get to say what gets put into and pushed into the games we play. Now we have games where things like pronouns or pride flags are not only encouraged but now forced into the game. Following formulas encouraged by companies like Sweet Baby Inc. to race or gender swap characters to fit a carefully crafted formula.

There is a reason why every villain is a rich white man. There is a reason nearly all game protagonists are a non-white raced strong independent woman. This is the type of game that I no longer will even semi-engage with. Two stand out titles are Suicide Squad, the new Rocksteady game would have infinitely be a number 1 game of the year for me given my love for their previous Batman Arkham games… but with the DEI directives and push for gay agenda everywhere in the game, I won’t ever play it… not even out of curiosity. I want nothing to do with that trash.

And it’s all come to a head with a game called Dustborn… oh man, if you could boil every awful current culture thing into a game, it’s Dustborn. Where the main character is a sociopath who’s main game mechanics is “Cancel” and call people racists. Instead of the character actively making their world a better place, every interaction results in everything being worse off. It’s laughable how insane this game is, and how the developers truly believe the main character is justified and correct in their hatred.

These are the games that are ruining our hobby. The gaming industry isn’t better off because of these games and ultimately worse off because of them. If every one of these titles disappeared from history, gaming would absolutely be better because of them.