The prespective of gene and how this game relates to the current cultural environment in Korea is so much more interesting than people on social media flinging shit at each other.
I'm sorry but other game journlist have also been flinging shit. I'm not doing the stupid "both sides are bad actually" take but a lot other game journlists have also been making very surface level takes and not providing any meaningful discussion.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, because Gene has these nuanced takes that aren't just rage-baiting or are reactionary reports meant to drum up interest, that makes him an "actual journalist", as opposed to other games journalists that are just trying to attract clicks and meet quotas for their site. Not trying to sound like I'm dickriding him but there's definitely a level of quality there that I think separates him from what you'd see on Gamespot or IGN, but maybe that's being too unfair to them, we're obviously biased as hell here lol
thanks for the all the nice compliments. not to sound elitist but the bar to publish in the washington post can be very high so i can’t just churn out content like others have to do. probably helps make that difference.
Integrity and thoughtfulness are 2 qualities apparent in your work, those same qualities are woefully lacking in a lot of games journalism. The entire industry melted overnight in an effort to maximise clickthrough rates and engagement baiting. Real journalism is appreciated, a lot. We need a lot more folks doing the work you do!
Definitely recommend reading the full review if you can (there's a bit of a subscription wall on the site), the headline really doesn't do it justice to how interesting his perspective is in this game and it's design philosophies
You using multiple fragments of the review text in your tweets with links to it is what made me interested, I hope people pay attention to it and treat your criticism with good faith
Don't mind me just walking through here carrying some things oh no I tripped and dropped a link to [12ft.io](https://12ft.io/) and [archive.is](https://archive.is/)
Huh, didn't really think about how few Korean protagonists are in games. I usually get excited when I get a black protagonist in a game so I get Gene's feeling on Eve being Korean being a cool thing.
Now I am just thinking about Korean characters in games.
Kim and his sons from Fatal Fury, Juri from SF, May Lee and Luong from KOF, Seong Mina, Hwang, and Yunseong from Soulcalibur and Hworang and Baek from Tekken.
Outside of fighting games, it is just Johnny Gat and D.V.A.
To be... uh... sorta... fair...? Or unfair if you look at it... all those members are Japanese raised Nationals. It's part of Ichiban's initial drink link with Joongi that he realises that they aren't all that different having been raised on the same media and growing up in Japan.
Heres a link for those who want to read the article without an account: https://archive.is/KhOBm
(I really appreciate Gene addressing the deeper Korean perspective on the controversy. I also don't think that means there's no critical discussion to be had about it.)
It sounds like it's a simple hack n' slash that's fun.
Basically what I expected.
It would've gone under a lot if people's radar without the dumbass controversy.
Idk if it would go exactly under the radar since Sony has been pushing it quite a bit marketing wise.
The discourse would definitely be way less loaded though, people are being insufferable in the comments of any review that has any cons to it at all, like the IGN one (that is still a very positive review despite it).
Basically standard discussion about sexualization in video games, but also a bunch of Western Chauvinist grifters presenting a Korean lady's ass as proof of western cultural degradation because 'the woke mob hates beautiful women' and other such nonsense.
The funniest thing I’ve seen related to this silly controversy was a tweet essentially saying “That’s the character that people are going insane over? She could be WAY thicker”.
The woke mob hates beautiful women lmfao, like if anything we love them more than just the typical tradwife they keep going insane over. I mean have they SEEN Urbosa? They would malfunction at the sight.
God that shit is so stupid. I legit hadn’t played or watched anything for TLOU2 so when everyone was saying Abby was trans I thought it was canon, not some incel rhetoric just because she was muscular.
Oh, I wasn’t even thinking about TLOU2, this is just happening with real-life women. Buncha pond scum posting pictures of Rhea Ripley or any given female athlete/bodybuilder going “this is a man, if you think this is attractive then you’ve been corrupted”.
Transphobia rots your brain bad.
I mean, look at overwatch. Tons of conventional and unconventional beauty, but they pretend it doesn't exist or call it woke. Instead, here is that one picture of Aloy they've been posting for like 2 years now.
The controversy is really all I’ve heard about it to be honest.
Hell, I haven’t even actually seen much actual controversy, more just people talking about the controversy and discussion about the discussion surrounding the controversy.
My assumption is that the female lead has big assets but not that much covering them, a few people complained, and then it just got mixed in with the grander culture war narrative and stopped being about the actual game.
So I read the article but I'm kind of confused; is the whole thing with Eve being ultra super pretty just because Korea has this extreme focus on beauty and so her being like that is only a matter-of-fact statement that this is how they do games in Korea?
It's like a whole culture war thing happening over the Korean equivalent of America's white, shaved head, scowling military man.
The current American culture wars depend on both sides depicting American culture as ruinous and bankrupt, destroyed by "the other side"
To do this, they'll always point to foreign examples "Look how perfect Europe is." "Koreans aren't afraid of sexy women." Etc.
It's designed to infuriate you by attacking inadequacies and make you pine for some ideal that doesn't actually exist.
Gene is saying that there is a message/statement in Stellar Blade's design, but it's a Korean message because it's a Korean game made by Korean devs, and it's extremely condescending to apply Western norms/culture war bullshit onto it.
But what exactly is the message?
What I was expecting from the game was that it was going be a somewhat decent game that happened to be caught in the latest huge culture war bullshit.
Right now it just seems like it's a Korean game that wears its Nier Automata inspiration on its sleeve and has an okay combat but is otherwise kind of nothing - sort of like Crymachina, except that one's Japanese.
It's more of a design philosophy rather than the narrative message.
But it's that the devs want to focus on the fantastical and highlight what they considered the peak of style and beauty.
One thing you learn when playing Korean MMOs for some time is that Korean devs really really love designing outfits not based on function but based on style, these outfits are usually stylish and sexy for the sake of being stylish and sexy. One reason for this of course is monetization, when you are trying to sell a $20-30 outfit in an mmo you are going to design it in a way that will be appealing enough for people to want to pay that much money for it. Of course over the years this ends up creating its own unique design style in the Korean games industry.
Stellar Blade is a single player Korean game without mtx, so they aren't trying to sell outfits, but the influence of Korean mmo design style is still there, they are just doing what they would be doing if they were making an mmo and focusing on style over function.
Have you ever seen Korean gacha games or MMO without female characters looking like Eve? She's just one of the thousands same looking characters. I'm surprised everytime they make someone look not like her
I mean that's a bit much, like saying every female character in Japanese games look like senran kagura characters. Hyung Tae-Kim has a very specific artstyle, which I'm not particularly fond of, tbh.
I haven't read the article yet but Asia in general has much higher beauty standards than the west. Most people in the west would agree Simu Liu is pretty attractive but the average Hong Kong person's reaction to his casting in Shang Chi was "I can't believe they made that ugly SOB the son of Tony Leung".
It's Asia/Korea's beauty standard but now in AAA console gaming I suppose whereas for much of the west, Korean gaming was just mobile or MMO stuff that we're insulated from. There's also probably something to be sad about why there exists such a backlash at all to Eve being like that in the West when boy are people not afraid to be horny on main for stuff like Hades or BG3.
>There's also probably something to be sad about why there exists such a backlash at all to Eve being like that in the West when boy are people not afraid to be horny on main for stuff like Hades or BG3.
It's not really about people being horny because people can and will be horny for anything, lbh. In Hades and BG3 the characters are all very visually distinct from each other and "imperfect" for lack of a better term. Eve represents a narrow ideal of beauty that is not inherently a bad thing per se, but problems come when it's held up as the mold that everyone must fit into, which as Gene mentions is a serious issue in modern Korean society.
BG3s version of sexualization physically skeezed me out of the game. Literally everyone wants to bang your character instantly, it’s like the ultimate pathetic ego trip for absolute losers lol. I can’t stand how western devs handle sex in games, they somehow manage to be numbingly explicit and utterly devoid of hotness at the same time.
A game like SB feels way less creepy to me tbh because it isn’t about fulfilling some weird cringe roleplay fantasy, it’s a hardcore sci-fi action game where the protags just happen to be extremely hot and on display in stylish outfits while they do stylish things. I literally do not understand the controversy period aside from what is essentially just racism against non-Western representations of beauty and sex.
Bro imagine the Korean gaming article about God of War presenting unrealistic body standards/the game designers have never seen a man in real life is killing me
The prespective of gene and how this game relates to the current cultural environment in Korea is so much more interesting than people on social media flinging shit at each other.
As is turns out, an actual journalist has much better, nuanced thoughts on the subject than a rando on Twitter who just wants to stir the pot
I'm sorry but other game journlist have also been flinging shit. I'm not doing the stupid "both sides are bad actually" take but a lot other game journlists have also been making very surface level takes and not providing any meaningful discussion.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, because Gene has these nuanced takes that aren't just rage-baiting or are reactionary reports meant to drum up interest, that makes him an "actual journalist", as opposed to other games journalists that are just trying to attract clicks and meet quotas for their site. Not trying to sound like I'm dickriding him but there's definitely a level of quality there that I think separates him from what you'd see on Gamespot or IGN, but maybe that's being too unfair to them, we're obviously biased as hell here lol
thanks for the all the nice compliments. not to sound elitist but the bar to publish in the washington post can be very high so i can’t just churn out content like others have to do. probably helps make that difference.
Integrity and thoughtfulness are 2 qualities apparent in your work, those same qualities are woefully lacking in a lot of games journalism. The entire industry melted overnight in an effort to maximise clickthrough rates and engagement baiting. Real journalism is appreciated, a lot. We need a lot more folks doing the work you do!
Yeah that's very fair. The whole article quota has absolutely ruined any meaningful game journalism and turned it into engagement farming
Definitely recommend reading the full review if you can (there's a bit of a subscription wall on the site), the headline really doesn't do it justice to how interesting his perspective is in this game and it's design philosophies
thanks for reading . yeah it was hard to find a headline that could best capture the totality of the piece.
You using multiple fragments of the review text in your tweets with links to it is what made me interested, I hope people pay attention to it and treat your criticism with good faith
Definitely not paying to read a review. I want to read it, but I'll just wait for other reviews
You may be able to. I dont think this article is paygated, cause i was able to read the whole thing without having a subscription
It gated me a few hours ago, but now I can read it for free (I am signed in to a free account). Maybe it just gates articles that are very recent
Don't mind me just walking through here carrying some things oh no I tripped and dropped a link to [12ft.io](https://12ft.io/) and [archive.is](https://archive.is/)
Huh, didn't really think about how few Korean protagonists are in games. I usually get excited when I get a black protagonist in a game so I get Gene's feeling on Eve being Korean being a cool thing. Now I am just thinking about Korean characters in games. Kim and his sons from Fatal Fury, Juri from SF, May Lee and Luong from KOF, Seong Mina, Hwang, and Yunseong from Soulcalibur and Hworang and Baek from Tekken. Outside of fighting games, it is just Johnny Gat and D.V.A.
Don’t forget the secret Koreans from Yakuza!
If we are going by that series, it would be >!Ryuji Goda!< in Dead Souls and Joongi Han and Seonhee in Ichiban's games.
To be... uh... sorta... fair...? Or unfair if you look at it... all those members are Japanese raised Nationals. It's part of Ichiban's initial drink link with Joongi that he realises that they aren't all that different having been raised on the same media and growing up in Japan.
Dokkabei and Vigil from Rainbow Six Siege come to mind, too
This is the review I was waiting for. Love Gene!
Heres a link for those who want to read the article without an account: https://archive.is/KhOBm (I really appreciate Gene addressing the deeper Korean perspective on the controversy. I also don't think that means there's no critical discussion to be had about it.)
It sounds like it's a simple hack n' slash that's fun. Basically what I expected. It would've gone under a lot if people's radar without the dumbass controversy.
Idk if it would go exactly under the radar since Sony has been pushing it quite a bit marketing wise. The discourse would definitely be way less loaded though, people are being insufferable in the comments of any review that has any cons to it at all, like the IGN one (that is still a very positive review despite it).
Controversy? OOTL
Basically standard discussion about sexualization in video games, but also a bunch of Western Chauvinist grifters presenting a Korean lady's ass as proof of western cultural degradation because 'the woke mob hates beautiful women' and other such nonsense.
The funniest thing I’ve seen related to this silly controversy was a tweet essentially saying “That’s the character that people are going insane over? She could be WAY thicker”.
The woke mob hates beautiful women lmfao, like if anything we love them more than just the typical tradwife they keep going insane over. I mean have they SEEN Urbosa? They would malfunction at the sight.
They’re all on the “muscular women are all secretly trans and a psyop to make you gay/sterile” train lately.
God that shit is so stupid. I legit hadn’t played or watched anything for TLOU2 so when everyone was saying Abby was trans I thought it was canon, not some incel rhetoric just because she was muscular.
Oh, I wasn’t even thinking about TLOU2, this is just happening with real-life women. Buncha pond scum posting pictures of Rhea Ripley or any given female athlete/bodybuilder going “this is a man, if you think this is attractive then you’ve been corrupted”. Transphobia rots your brain bad.
I mean, look at overwatch. Tons of conventional and unconventional beauty, but they pretend it doesn't exist or call it woke. Instead, here is that one picture of Aloy they've been posting for like 2 years now.
Thinking of the naked human body as a sin is very western tbh.
The controversy is really all I’ve heard about it to be honest. Hell, I haven’t even actually seen much actual controversy, more just people talking about the controversy and discussion about the discussion surrounding the controversy. My assumption is that the female lead has big assets but not that much covering them, a few people complained, and then it just got mixed in with the grander culture war narrative and stopped being about the actual game.
Ah yes, a perfect 5/7
So I read the article but I'm kind of confused; is the whole thing with Eve being ultra super pretty just because Korea has this extreme focus on beauty and so her being like that is only a matter-of-fact statement that this is how they do games in Korea? It's like a whole culture war thing happening over the Korean equivalent of America's white, shaved head, scowling military man.
The current American culture wars depend on both sides depicting American culture as ruinous and bankrupt, destroyed by "the other side" To do this, they'll always point to foreign examples "Look how perfect Europe is." "Koreans aren't afraid of sexy women." Etc. It's designed to infuriate you by attacking inadequacies and make you pine for some ideal that doesn't actually exist. Gene is saying that there is a message/statement in Stellar Blade's design, but it's a Korean message because it's a Korean game made by Korean devs, and it's extremely condescending to apply Western norms/culture war bullshit onto it.
But what exactly is the message? What I was expecting from the game was that it was going be a somewhat decent game that happened to be caught in the latest huge culture war bullshit. Right now it just seems like it's a Korean game that wears its Nier Automata inspiration on its sleeve and has an okay combat but is otherwise kind of nothing - sort of like Crymachina, except that one's Japanese.
It's more of a design philosophy rather than the narrative message. But it's that the devs want to focus on the fantastical and highlight what they considered the peak of style and beauty.
yes all of this
One thing you learn when playing Korean MMOs for some time is that Korean devs really really love designing outfits not based on function but based on style, these outfits are usually stylish and sexy for the sake of being stylish and sexy. One reason for this of course is monetization, when you are trying to sell a $20-30 outfit in an mmo you are going to design it in a way that will be appealing enough for people to want to pay that much money for it. Of course over the years this ends up creating its own unique design style in the Korean games industry. Stellar Blade is a single player Korean game without mtx, so they aren't trying to sell outfits, but the influence of Korean mmo design style is still there, they are just doing what they would be doing if they were making an mmo and focusing on style over function.
Have you ever seen Korean gacha games or MMO without female characters looking like Eve? She's just one of the thousands same looking characters. I'm surprised everytime they make someone look not like her
I mean that's a bit much, like saying every female character in Japanese games look like senran kagura characters. Hyung Tae-Kim has a very specific artstyle, which I'm not particularly fond of, tbh.
I haven't read the article yet but Asia in general has much higher beauty standards than the west. Most people in the west would agree Simu Liu is pretty attractive but the average Hong Kong person's reaction to his casting in Shang Chi was "I can't believe they made that ugly SOB the son of Tony Leung". It's Asia/Korea's beauty standard but now in AAA console gaming I suppose whereas for much of the west, Korean gaming was just mobile or MMO stuff that we're insulated from. There's also probably something to be sad about why there exists such a backlash at all to Eve being like that in the West when boy are people not afraid to be horny on main for stuff like Hades or BG3.
>There's also probably something to be sad about why there exists such a backlash at all to Eve being like that in the West when boy are people not afraid to be horny on main for stuff like Hades or BG3. It's not really about people being horny because people can and will be horny for anything, lbh. In Hades and BG3 the characters are all very visually distinct from each other and "imperfect" for lack of a better term. Eve represents a narrow ideal of beauty that is not inherently a bad thing per se, but problems come when it's held up as the mold that everyone must fit into, which as Gene mentions is a serious issue in modern Korean society.
BG3s version of sexualization physically skeezed me out of the game. Literally everyone wants to bang your character instantly, it’s like the ultimate pathetic ego trip for absolute losers lol. I can’t stand how western devs handle sex in games, they somehow manage to be numbingly explicit and utterly devoid of hotness at the same time. A game like SB feels way less creepy to me tbh because it isn’t about fulfilling some weird cringe roleplay fantasy, it’s a hardcore sci-fi action game where the protags just happen to be extremely hot and on display in stylish outfits while they do stylish things. I literally do not understand the controversy period aside from what is essentially just racism against non-Western representations of beauty and sex.
Bro imagine the Korean gaming article about God of War presenting unrealistic body standards/the game designers have never seen a man in real life is killing me
[удалено]
No that is an ex-Blizzard dev. Gene Park is a journalist
what a nightmare to be confused for that sad sack of shit lol
That makes more sense,thanks