#autumn rambles | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

autumnbrambleagain · 2 months

Text

edit: rant edited to reflect how Snoot Game treats gender identity b/c i hadn't really done more than look at a few convos about it

I'm GBH, Goodbye Volcano High got like, the worst fucking shake

Disclaimer, I haven't played it (there is a very special irony in this that i'll get into in a bit), but I've watched people on youtube play it, and I think it's. Fine? It's fine. But everything surrounding this game, everything that happened to and around it, it's fucking wild. I've never seen a game get such a poor serve-up on the tennis court before.

It gets put up on the big console premier along huge AAA budget games. That's rough. A small intimate-scale VN about the end of the world as a metaphor for growing up and leaving highschool and changing and also a non-metaphor for the world ending as itself a metaphor for the new generation entering into what feels like an absolutely hopeless, pointless future (spoilers: the future is pretty fucking dire (the present is already fucking bad))?

Those are some rough themes! That isn't doomchief and master slayer punching guys! And not to denigrate doomchief! These are some ROUGH themes and the trust that those themes will be handled WELL isn't something you want to give out so readily! Those are themes that are easy to fuck up! Fair! But still. Oof!

To have your relatively small scale game put up as a launch title alongside mass-consumption AAA games. Ouch.

I'll admit: the art style was pretty rough, it's really rough on first look. I made fun of it too.

Then it comes out the MC is enby, that it deals with queer themes, and 4chan-esque folk go nuts over it. Snoot Game comes out which, apparently, seemingly, actually not bad! A lot more ironic but with serious themes handled, apparently earnestly, and it's overall... good!? Even some critical accounts suggest it isn't, at least, bad? Whichever: it comes out faster than GVH does, so it now has a parody-competitor dealing with the same themes, but not just as a JOKE but actually putting effort into it too. Like. That's the thing. Snoot Game DEALS with strong themes of growing up, of becoming a person, it DEALS with the themes GVH is saying it will deal with... and it uses the characters to do it too.

And it does it, by some accounts, WELL.

Ouch!

Granted Snoot Game is from 4chan and apparently I'm now reading one of the themes is Fang accepting they're a woman and they were just being enby to try and be different, and while it seems like it DOES handle it very seriously, and like, the game seems to penalize you for being shitty about their gender, and like, detransitioning IS a thing! I don't want to give TOO much trust to a 4chan-derived game either. I'm literally enby, but I also wasn't always enby, but like. Having a game where the message of "you were only trans because you were pressured into being different", it's, ehhhhhhhh not great no!

TBH without going through Snoot Game I can't really speak about it but Snoot Game overall isn't the main point, the main point is:

Some people are already now primed with associations and expectations, you already have a doppleganger as your competitor. OUCH.

So like.

Pretty rough.

And while Snoot Game, from the compressed summaries of it I've seen, seems to actually have honest heart and love in it in its final form, a lot of people just seem to be along for the hate-ride against GVH at this point because "eww the alphabet rainbow furries."

And then the writer has to step down because they found out she's into child por--wait, it was just 3d animations? That someone else made? That she was watching and criticizing as part of an article on how dumb video game porn is?

Oh. See, there's a difference between "the author is an active pedophile" and "the author watched a Harry Potter porn animation to write an article on the concept of video game porn," but in our modern era there's really never a distinction. Drawing something bad is the same as doing it in real life. Looking at it at all is the same as doing it in real life. If you see a woman's ankle on the street, make sure to head immediately to confession or God will judge you for the rape you have committed in your heart.

We live in such a media-literacy dead-end zone that people are calling the original Lolita book child porn. We live in such a media-literacy dead-end timeline that people are saying the only media that should be permitted to exist is happy comfort fluff where nothing bad ever happens because if you make bad things happen in fiction it means you're an evil villain :3 i'm not an evil villain, though, i don't watch bad media!

So of course it's fine to ruin careers because that's not EVIL. I didn't look at the BAD media so I CAN'T be evil. So you know, we have this modern purity pandemic of people thinking they're heroes for getting people to kill themselves because they drew or wrote "the wrong kind of thing" and are therefore EVIL and we're in a post-DnD world the cultural well got poisoned by DnD's secular take on evangelical protestantism's absolute morality of saved-vs-nonsaved. You're Lawful Good, you know you're Lawful Good. Whatever you to do Chaotic Evil people? That's fine. You can do whatever you want to them. You're Good.

Anyway, then it gets delayed to remove all her influence from the game, because at this point, even admitting you know what sex is online seems to be enough to ruin anything you touch tbh. Humanity's doing great, btw.

Like I can find twitter posts of her apologizing for "hurting people" by having seen harry potter porn. Your species is insane, just btb.

GVH finally comes out quietly and everyone's so fucking. MAD at this game. Hardcore 4chan whateverfolk hate it because there's queers and highschoolers. Other people dislike it because Snoot Game already came out and now GVH feels like fanfiction of THAT to them. They already met these characters, enjoyed them written like they were in Snoot Game, so how they come off in GVH feels worse. And you know, sure! That's a rough fucking shake when a fanfiction comes out before your actual release and it's good! For others it's tainted because a ""sex perver"" had worked on it. For others the art style and that it premiered alongside big name AAA games as a launch title was enough to slot it firmly in the derision zone. For some, because the queer community cannot NOT devour its own tail, it's doing queerness wRONG (Fang's parents MISGENDER and DEADNAME them!!! you can't put that in a game that deals with gender as a theme!!!!)

And then you have people who don't care about ANY of that, who are upset that everyone dies in the end and "your choices didn't matter", despite your choices affecting your relationships with the other characters. Granted? Sure! More actual endings beyond the end-of-the-world concert would be great! But comparing it to Mass Effect 3 where NOTHING mattered because the Reapers destroy everything and you pick one option at the end and their implied consequences before like 4 different changes to the ending came out to retcon "oh yeah everyone in the galaxy is stranded, everyone probably dies anyway, you accomplished nothing everyone's still dead" ? ?

The world's ending. That's the point. It's what you do with the time left that seems to be the point? Yeah? No? I'm not saying it HIT that theme well, and I'm not saying it actually failed at it either. I honestly think it did FINE. The criticism i keep seeing is "everyone died so nothing mattered." Buddy. Buddy. YOU ARE GOING TO DIE. Please do not let that convince you that nothing you ever did mattered.

Among all that it came out buggy, apparently, and the music minigame isn't like. Super. Good. Doesn't matter too much if you do well or not. Not greatly designed? So you know. The game also has just general internal problems too mechanically, so people without a dog in the race just don't enjoy playing it? Like, the art style was all on the creators, like, it's... it's not GREAT I'll be real! It's really weird. It's humans in those latex dolphin masks the memes weren't off base even i was laughing at it and groaning at yet another piece of media whose theme was "leaving highschool is like the world ending"

but like.

GVH isn't like. I dont' think this is some great amazing the best game ever. The art style's grown on me but in the way where you learn to ignore how it looks. But like, I see people complaining it's too whiny--wait, the characters aren't depressed ENOUGH about the world ending--honestly, honestly,

I think I like it? I haven't played it but I've watched it and I think I like it. I'm not like, this is probably the last day in a while I'll ever even think about the game, it isn't going to stick with me for years and years, it didnt' make a big impact on me--but I liked it well enough???

At this point, my default assumption at this point is if someone strongly openly firmly dislikes this game it's not at all for any good reasons--or rather, that it's not on the value of the game in-and-of-itself. This poor game was saddled with all this WEIGHT on top of it. Can you even dig it clear of this external context and examine the game itself for what it is anymore?

I'm writing all these words and like. I haven't PLAYED it i've just watched other people play it. I'm not even BIG into the game it's like... it's okay!

But oh my god I cannot get over what a fucking. BAD serve-up the game had leading to its release and just beyond. Oof. Ouch. God. That's real rough, buddy. I have never seen something get this POOR a serve. What an absolute rough, ravage, unfair birth for a thing into the world!

I think if the game congealed out of the aether (and maybe with a more... better art direction?) it'd be fondly remembered in small quantities?

Instead it's just... the actual game itself is just BURIED under all this mess.

It's fucking fascinating to me, honestly. It's far more fascinating what happened to this game than the game itself at this point, and that, too, isn't very fair to the poor game. I, too, am here not to talk about the game, to care about the game, to have anything to say about the game. I am PART of this problem I'm talking about. Instead of addressing the game I'm talking about the context that was built around it.

I'm here because I remembered the drama, looked into all the drama, then went to watch the game and, after seeing ALL of that, EVERYthing I read through to get to the game itself, actually seeing the game was just... like... for this? All of that, for this?

Huh.

#long #autumn says things #autumn rambles

12 notes · View notes