John Cadice, creator of Tentacle Bento, says that while the game is full of sexy girls, and a “horrid, tentacle flailing, slime oozing monster from outer space,” his game is not about tentacle rape, but rather tentacle…tickling. And cake baking. Anything but rape.
Cadice says the game is a satire of a “horrid genre of anime,” but I simply don’t see the satire. It’s cuter, it’s lighter, but that does not a satire make. So I am meant to believe that while the game is based on the genre of tentacle rape anime, it is not about tentacle rape. There’s clearly a fundamental disconnect between our consideration of inference and implication versus intent.
I got an email from Cadice not two hours after my initial article, and within 24 hours the Kickstarter was canceled. We had a dialog all along the way, which was a very curious process. First Kickstarter limited the game’s searchability. The game was now only viewable through direct links. At the same time, my article, as well as Kotaku’s, had given the game greater media attention, and after my article went up the project rocketed up from $23,000 to $30,000 in funding. Clearly, as we scrutinized and criticized the project, we also popularized it.
After the project was canceled at Kickstarter, I wondered to myself – while I felt I had struck a blow against a game I found to trivialize rape and molestation, had I also struck a blow for censorship on Kickstarter? In the end, I feel this project shouldn’t have been allowed on the site in the first place – most of the approvals process at Kickstarter happens at the front end – it’s allowed, or not, based on what Kickstarter decides. I think this one simply fell through the cracks, and simply got canned much later than it should have.
I’ve been asked by some what part of the Kickstarter terms this game violates. It’s entirely subjective, but it’s right here: “Offensive material (hate speech, inappropriate content, etc).” There are some who don’t find this game offensive. Its creator claims the game is clearly not about rape or molestation. I maintain, based on looking at the Kickstarter itself, that it is, he just has a much higher threshold for it than I do. You could also make a case for it glorifying acts of violence, depending on which side of the “does this infer rape” argument you fall.
In the end though, I couldn’t stop the game from getting funded. The project had moved to its own site, and appears to be well on its way to coming out. I still maintain that the game is a trivialiation of rape and molestation, and that those supporting it are supporting that mindset. Cadice disagrees. In the following interview, Cadice speaks his mind about his project, and where he says it’s really coming from. (more…)
A card game was recently brought to my attention. It’s called Tentacle Bento, and it is currently overfunded on kickstarter by $10,000. Go on and watch the video.
This is a game about tentacle rape – you are meant to “get your slimy tendrils” on as many girls as possible within the given number of cards. But there are other tentacle monsters out to rape girls before you can! And dastardly school officials who can get in your way! Just choose some girls (sexy, sporty, smart, et cetera), a location, and a “sneaky snatch” to grab them with.
The style is a cute, lighthearted, pastel-colored look at the wonderful world of forcing your way inside a female against her will. There are, to my mind, a lot of things wrong with this. (more…)
I am known among some circles as The Guy Who Is Good At Street Fighter and/or Starcraft 2. (These are invariably the circles that don’t play much of either. When I hang out with my friends that do play either one, I’m usually The Guy Who Isn’t Very Good.)
“It’s so competitive when you play against another person.”
“It’s too hard.”
“You have to practice so much.”
“There are just so many good players out there.”
I hear these things a lot. The person I am talking to–let’s call him Johnny Doughnuts–is making an excuse, even if he doesn’t realize it, for why he isn’t as good at Starcraft 2 as I am. Why he chooses to spend his time doing something else. And really, I don’t care. Some people want to get good at Starcraft 2, others want to get good at skiing or whatever.
But I do find it interesting that Johnny Doughnuts describes Starcraft 2 as an anomaly. As though it is practically the only thing challenging–in life, in video games, whatever.
One day, I mentioned to Brandon that I had done an interview about the Tales series and that I hoped to run it on Insert Credit.
He told me to go ahead — but conversation quickly turned to why I like the Tales series so much, when he’d never been able to get into it. We started to talk about it, but we both quickly realized I should write about it instead.
The in-your-face anime aesthetic of the series is what turned him off. This is comprehensible. It advertises what the series is about; it’s a stake firmly planted, and depending on where you’re at, it just as much says “not for me!” as it says “come on in!” to the people who like it.
I’ll start where I started: I like the series because of what it’s not. This all began for me in 1998, when I’d got fed up with the tedious, self-important Xenogears and, on a lark, followed it up with Tales of Destiny. I found it to be everything Xenogears wasn’t: cheerful, dopey, energetic, unassuming, entertaining, fun.
<If you are reading this strictly for tips on not sucking at ZiGGURAT, you can just jump down to the tip stuff here.>
I played a lot of Diablo II back in the day.
I actually didn’t get that deep into vanilla Diablo II, though. Beat the game on normal with a Conversion/Thorns Paladin, found myself woefully underpowered for Nightmare, and put it down until Lord of Destruction came out. That’s when I got addicted. Six months later, I had four high-level Assassins of various builds, a magic find Sorceress, and a Lightning Fury Amazon specced specifically for Cow Level runs. Yes, I made a character whose sole purpose was to mow down cows with alarming efficiency.
One decade later, I would reflect with some of my friends on our shared addiction to Diablo II. “Man, that game was addictive,” we said. Pause. Then I said:
Occupy Oakland is moving into an abandoned building. While I have mixed feelings about being in an enclosed space (out of sight, out of mind), it’s true that people need to not be cold, and it could be an interesting place for discourse about homelessness, cooperatives, and everything the occupy movement is about.
It’s with that in mind that I direct you to this. Anna Anthropy (aka Dessgeega from IC forums/Select Button) proposes adding an arcade machine to the new space, and will make a new game specifically for it. To do so, she needs funds. Unfortunately, the project was rejected from kickstarter, and now has four days left to meet the goal of $2,000. If you felt like it, you could help make an original occupy game happen in a rather interesting moment in a massive movement.
Here are some words from the project organizers that you can read: “Every community center needs a game room to draw in the general public, to give people some respite and lighten spirits, and to give people an excuse to meet others in their community. And every good game room needs an arcade machine.
…if all goes will, the OAK-U-TRON 201X will be an official member part of the Winnitron Indie Game Arcade Network, showcasing the true, independent, DIY spirit of game developers around the globe!”
I joked to my fellow insert credistas a while back that I wasn’t any good at those weekly “What Are You Playing This Weekend?” staff poll pieces because my answer would be the same practically every week. Dark Souls? Call of Duty? Nope, just StarCraft 2, every week for a good 9 months or so.
Needless to say, I don’t play that many games these days. But I do play good ones, and I do play bad ones, so here we go: Patrick Miller’s Top Games of 2011, starting here. Note that I don’t really give a shit about things like release dates, so if you’re expecting a strict analysis of the 2011 videojuego canon, that’s not what you’ll get here.
In the chaos of the Great East Japan earthquake, there was a story that understandably drew little attention. It’s a story about a small game development team within its publisher, Irem. The team makes a series called Disaster Report – video games about surviving natural disasters. Just after the quake, the most recent game, Disaster Report 4, was cancelled, and all the previous Disaster Report games were removed from Japanese shelves, almost without comment.
But despite the garish way they’re marketed in the west, the Disaster Report titles were really quite slow and respectful games. Their subtlety is immediately visible in the trailers and Japanese boxart, which is soft and innocent. They don’t promise the thrills or graphical punch of some games. They only promise that they will try and show you what it is like to be a person escaping from a beautiful and welcoming environment that has suddenly become hostile.
In the games, you try to help people, but sometimes they die. There may be something you can do about it, something difficult and frightening. But often there isn’t. Coming to terms with this is evocative – it is not great art, but it is sincere. (more…)
I was a particularly nerdy kid, growing up. I was raised by a single Dad who was plenty nerdy himself, and I usually opted out of sports-related activities in favor of playing as many video games as I could get away with. I have this excellent picture from my 8th grade Little League baseball team. On the day where everyone got action shots, I asked to have my picture taken on the bench, math binder in hand, since most of my game time was spent there doing homework. (I’m pretty bad at math, too.)Never in a million years did I think that I would be the kind of guy to watch other people play video games, cheer wildly, and yell “OH MY SHIT DID HE JUST DO THAT”. In other words, I never thought I’d be into sports. Until I went to Evolution 2004. That mass of roaring people cheering Daigo on? I’m in there, somewhere.
I imagine that attending Evo is, for a few brief days, a taste of what it’s like to be any average guy with a beer belly, some gym shorts, and a profound devotion to ESPN. A basketball fan can walk into any sports bar in the world and mouth off about how terrible the Warriors are and start a conversation. They can watch The Big Game with a crowd of people and not feel self-conscious about spending their time watching big guys play with big basketballs. And when they’re at work, they can say “So, how about them Knicks?” and everyone else is obligated to reply with “Hell of a team, gonna go all the way this year” whether they pay attention to basketball or not. Well, fuck the Knicks. Here at Evo, the name of the game is MAHVEL, BAYBEE.
Basically, it’s a brief trip into a world where taking games seriously is totally fucking normal.
Grasshopper Manufacture once did a lot of work for hire — the Shining Soul games on GBA, Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked for PS2 — but in its post-No More Heroes rebirth as an iconoclastic and very independent studio, it seemed likely those days were behind it. Huge publishers like EA (Shadows of the Damned) and Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment (Lollipop Chainsaw) have engaged the studio to create big-budget original IP. Why go back to making anime games?
Anime games like Evangelion 3nd Impact, released this week for the PSP in Japan by Bandai Namco Games. (“3nd“, by the way, is a play on the word “sound” — “san” being Japanese for “three” and, of course, the Third Impact being a big event in the Evangelion universe.)
Is it the stewardship of Akira Yamaoka, who has recently taken the title of chief creative officer? Is it just the way the Japanese market works, where studios rarely turn down paying work that in the west would seem undignified? It’s not clear, and unfortunately, I didn’t think to pose these questions to Yamaoka when I spoke to him at the Tokyo Game Show.
I was very curious about Evangelion 3nd Impact itself, however. It’s a music game based on the popular series’ recent Rebuild of Evangelion film series, which includes Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone, and Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance, and it came out this week in Japan. The Q&A, conducted at TGS, follows.
Can you tell me how the idea for Evangelion: 3nd Impact came up? Like, how you started making it?
Akira Yamaoka: So how it all started is that Namco Bandai, they just threw out: “Evangelion — is there anything that we think we can work on together?” And so Grasshopper actually came up with a few other concepts, including the one that now is 3nd Impact. “So an action RPG, and what about this music-based, rhythm-based game?” And from there on, everything just kind of moved forward.
Are you a fan of the original show, or the new movies, or anything?
AY: I don’t think I’d say that I’m a huge, huge fan. Not crazy about it. I just like it normally.
John Cadice, creator of Tentacle Bento, says that while the game is full of sexy girls, and a “horrid, tentacle flailing, slime oozing monster from outer space,” his game is not about tentacle rape, but rather tentacle…tickling. And cake baking. Anything but rape.
