As a European who visited US recently I found this discussion even more depressing than the film itself. Perhaps due to being an outsider I perceived the film as a powerful criticism of the american society and a somewhat exaggerated but otherwise genuine attempt to picture what's wrong with it on great many levels.
For example, Arthur is a mentally ill person who doesn't get to see a psychiatrist - presumably because he can't afford to. He only sees a social worker and at some point even that programme gets axed because of lack of funding, so he loses access to any medical help or medication.
Meanwhile the ultra-rich live locked up in their ivory towers and try to steer clear of people like Arthur - and like the Waynes, not always succeed to do so.
To me, that alone sends two powerful messages:
1. no matter what you think about access to public healthcare (and honestly, among the developed nations, US is the only country where this is even controversial), you should at least make sure mentally ill people don't go around untreated and unmedicated because that's insane (pun totally intended)
2. if you push the "every man for himself" mentality too far, it ends up being horrible for everyone. The poor live in deprivation and lack access to decent public services. The rich can seemingly afford anything but in reality are imprisoned in their ever shrinking islands of luxury on an ocean of deprivation. Dare to venture too far from the island and you might get hurt. The middle class is practically non-existent or at least no longer strong enough to stabilize things.
Even if it is exaggerated, it does feel like a depressingly accurate depiction of what I saw in the US. And after all that, it turns out that "there was nothing to get" except for "we live in a society". We have two highly educated people discussing the film and they both seem so numb, so resigned to it, that they don't even consider that the director wanted to say anything or that anything could be changed. :(
@Salt_AU: Oh noes! What have you done! There's a panic in CDPR's office right now after they read your comment. "We got 92 at metacritic, sold 33 milion copies of the witcher games and have a great reputation with the community." one dev says. "We thought we were doing great but then Salt_AU said our writing, which we were so proud of, was in fact terrible and he discovered that the dozens of voice actors listed in the credits are actually just aliases for the 3 we've been reusing all over the game. We didn't think anyone would realize!". Insider reports say that the company CEO is considering stepping down since he clearly has no vision how CDPR could continue as a AAA developer up to Salt_AU standards.
@proceeder: Ehhh. Yeah, what kind of proof would satisfy you? I mean, as an academic you should be aware that there is objectively no way to prove that the atmosphere in the studio is good. Even if every single employee signed a letter saying that working in CDP is better than sex, you could still say that they were forced to sign it.
@Mogan: Rome II may have been the fastest selling but sadly it didn't make it good. Franchise games sell on 2 things: reviews and the quality of the previous game in the franchise. Since Shogun 2 was good and reviews were excellent (btw: WTF game journalists?), Rome 2 sold well. I bought it and despite my best efforts to like it I stopped playing it after a couple of weeks, without even finishing a campaign once - the first time it happened for me in TW game and I've been playing the series since the original Shogun. Rome II was just... boring. Campaign was underdone. Internal politics were a great concept with terrible execution. Diplomacy and AI was hot garbage and battles quickly devolved into one massive pile up. The result is that Total Warhammer was the only game in the series I didn't buy - and I won't until the price drops. I'll give CA the opportunity to earn my trust back but they won't get full price from me this time around. If the game is indeed good, it may just save the franchise for me. If not - it will probably be my last one. I doubt I'm the only one with this (or similar) attitude, so from that standpoint the video is spot on.
@BranKetra: Yeah, we all remember that books and films only achieved their "intellectual" status once they were no longer made predominantly by caucasian males... oh wait.
Sorry for the sarcasm, but your argument was so poorly thought out that I couldn't help myself. I understand what you wrote meant to be an expression of your values (which I actually share for the most part) but using obviously flawed arguments to promote these values tends to have the opposite effect. Also, saying that you hope that "gaming industry becomes more inclusive" suggests that the problem lies in the industry itself. Well, bad news for you, there are no bouncers standing at the entrances to the major game devs and stopping women or non-whites. Nor are there more subtle forms of discrimination in place - trained specialists in this business are way too valuable for that. They get headhunted aggressively if they're good and no one bothers what gender or race they are. The uncomfortable truth is that when you enter IT classes at pretty much any university in the world, the overwhelming majority of students are male. No matter how inclusive the industry might be, if women don't have the education and training to do the job, they simply won't be able to do it. And if they're obviously not interested in pursuing a career in IT, what are you going to do? Try to convince them otherwise? Because you know better than they do what they should be doing in their lives?
Hmm, no Lords of the Fallen? I kinda expected it would be a more high profile example than a relatively niche title such as Anomaly. Still, a pretty good list.
That's a every interesting and refreshing take from someone with real life experience. While the conclusions aren't very different from the gamers' consensus, I hope for more of these in the future.
The difference between Cam and Seb is that Cam is actually capable of saying something like "could we have remote controlled dogs" with a straight face, like he's actually considering the idea. Seb feels like bursting into laughter at what he just said.
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