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"Apologia"
Feb. 8th, 2021 03:27 pmSo, first, I saw the Penny Arcade comic. (EDIT) (with no associated blog yet, as of the time of this post, though I expect one soon and may edit this with that later). Well, there is a blog now, but it says basically nothing about the content of the strip itself before moving on to unrelated things, so meh. (/EDIT)
Then I read what the guy actually said. (Here is a preemptive archive.org version of it, in case the original disappears someday.)
And now, I'm just asking why the fuck is he apologizing? Because some people got their widdle fee-fees hurt (e.g. some of the people replying to him in that ResetEra thread)? Nothing he said was wrong. Not a single damn thing. It wasn't a "mistake." He didn't "screw up." Unless you count the apology, which was indeed a case of him screwing up, because the only thing that was a mistake was the idea that he needed to apologize in the first place. Honestly, if he'd just issued one of those throw-away "I'm sorry you were offended" non-apologies, it actually would have been more sincere, in this case, given that he said nothing requiring a real apology.
While, yes, I was okay with Fable when it came out and am okay now with No Man's Sky (still haven't bought Cyberpunk 2077 yet), I still completely agree with him in that those developers promised the moon and then instead delivered only a stinky wheel of cheese at initial release (and still, even now, have yet to actually achieve anything even remotely resembling the moon that they promised). The fact that Hello Games got flooded or whatever or then later spent years adding to the game at no extra cost does not, in any way, even a little bit, excuse the fact that Sean Murray lied his ass off before the game was released. Same as how the fact that Fable isn't actually a bad game at all doesn't excuse the fact that Peter Molyneux lied his ass off before the game was released, because the Fable that actually exists, while still a good game on its own merits, is rancid dogshit compared to everything Molyneux lied that it would be.
(For that matter, really, it's not just why are gamers so eager to trust and even forgive the snake oil salesmen? It's why are human beings in general so eager to trust and even forgive the snake oil salesmen? I mean, just look at the last four years of Donald Trump as POTUS to see that shit in action, too.)
Then I read what the guy actually said. (Here is a preemptive archive.org version of it, in case the original disappears someday.)
And now, I'm just asking why the fuck is he apologizing? Because some people got their widdle fee-fees hurt (e.g. some of the people replying to him in that ResetEra thread)? Nothing he said was wrong. Not a single damn thing. It wasn't a "mistake." He didn't "screw up." Unless you count the apology, which was indeed a case of him screwing up, because the only thing that was a mistake was the idea that he needed to apologize in the first place. Honestly, if he'd just issued one of those throw-away "I'm sorry you were offended" non-apologies, it actually would have been more sincere, in this case, given that he said nothing requiring a real apology.
While, yes, I was okay with Fable when it came out and am okay now with No Man's Sky (still haven't bought Cyberpunk 2077 yet), I still completely agree with him in that those developers promised the moon and then instead delivered only a stinky wheel of cheese at initial release (and still, even now, have yet to actually achieve anything even remotely resembling the moon that they promised). The fact that Hello Games got flooded or whatever or then later spent years adding to the game at no extra cost does not, in any way, even a little bit, excuse the fact that Sean Murray lied his ass off before the game was released. Same as how the fact that Fable isn't actually a bad game at all doesn't excuse the fact that Peter Molyneux lied his ass off before the game was released, because the Fable that actually exists, while still a good game on its own merits, is rancid dogshit compared to everything Molyneux lied that it would be.
(For that matter, really, it's not just why are gamers so eager to trust and even forgive the snake oil salesmen? It's why are human beings in general so eager to trust and even forgive the snake oil salesmen? I mean, just look at the last four years of Donald Trump as POTUS to see that shit in action, too.)
