Random Video Game Crap



Now, a little background first; Spice8Rack is mainly a Magic the Gathering themed channel by an English guy that's politics make me look like Rush Limbaugh, but he goes through some real issues with 4X games that deal with colonialism. Something I thought was appropriate this Truth and Reconciliation Day. His videos are usually very well thought out and entertaining. I liked the one where he goes through which Magic the Gathering legendary card would be the best friend of the bunch.
 


Now, a little background first; Spice8Rack is mainly a Magic the Gathering themed channel by an English guy that's politics make me look like Rush Limbaugh, but he goes through some real issues with 4X games that deal with colonialism. Something I thought was appropriate this Truth and Reconciliation Day. His videos are usually very well thought out and entertaining. I liked the one where he goes through which Magic the Gathering legendary card would be the best friend of the bunch.
Spice8rack is my spirit animal, I love that man
 
Really poor, inappropriate choice of words, especially for the reason why Frank posted this (Truth & Reconciliation Day).

So, in being called out, I find myself caught between two reactions. One is "That's silly, I'm not trying to demean anyone, it's natural to adopt language to mean different things" and "Wait, is this hurting someone? Maybe I should investigate." And so I've done some reading. Starting with that article, which... aside from spirit animal does anyone use any of those other phrases? I've never seen anyone call someone a squaw, maybe this is why I'm happy not to be on social media. But from what I can see, native peoples are rightfully protective of their culture, especially after how near-extinct colonialism made them, and so I'm going to have to retire that term. Which is a shame, because it's very well descriptive.

So now, Spice8Rack is my... yahweh? Eh, I'm gonna have to workshop this.
 
So, in being called out, I find myself caught between two reactions. One is "That's silly, I'm not trying to demean anyone, it's natural to adopt language to mean different things" and "Wait, is this hurting someone? Maybe I should investigate." And so I've done some reading. Starting with that article, which... aside from spirit animal does anyone use any of those other phrases? I've never seen anyone call someone a squaw, maybe this is why I'm happy not to be on social media. But from what I can see, native peoples are rightfully protective of their culture, especially after how near-extinct colonialism made them, and so I'm going to have to retire that term. Which is a shame, because it's very well descriptive.

So now, Spice8Rack is my... yahweh? Eh, I'm gonna have to workshop this.
Given how you've previously reacted to being called out on offensive jokes, I was honestly dreading your reaction. But I'm glad you thought about this.

As far as other terms, I've heard some refer to their group as a "tribe" before. And among the corporate world, I've heard "pow-wow" (not listed in that link, but another appropriated term). Not within my own company, as far as I can recall, but I've heard it used for meetings.
 
Given how you've previously reacted to being called out on offensive jokes, I was honestly dreading your reaction. But I'm glad you thought about this.

As far as other terms, I've heard some refer to their group as a "tribe" before. And among the corporate world, I've heard "pow-wow" (not listed in that link, but another appropriated term). Not within my own company, as far as I can recall, but I've heard it used for meetings.
Jokes are subjective, and sometimes the offense is the point, but I like to think we're all continuously improving people. What I found most interesting was the kneejerk reaction to want to be defensive. That's a widespread phenomena to be addressed another day.

Though, as a Jew I suppose I technically also come from a tribe. One of a dozen, in fact.
 
I don't think you can meaningfully say "tribe" is an appropriated word. there are tribes in Africa, there were Germanic tribes in Europe before we were assimilated into the Roman Empire, etc. Tribes are a form of community forming; it's as useful to say the word "city" comes from Chinese culture and shouldn't be used. For a word or concept to be even possible to be "appropriated" it needs to have (almost-) exclusively belong to a specific group.
Squaw is a good example - there's no reason to use that at all anymore, it's a word from a language being abused to mean something specific and, mostly, derogatory.
Pow-wow is a word I've seen used and die out in corporate speak over the years.
A harder example is dreadlocks: they are now being claimed by people of color as an appropriated hair style, but there's conclusive archaeological proof that dreads have been around since Ancient Greece, Egypt, and pre-Hindu India. So on the one hand, they definitely existed all over and aren't unique to a specific culture. On the other hand, they nearly died out (especially as "acceptable" hair dress) in the Western world (though not in India) and were re-introduced through slaves and servants owning their heritage. [Note that this is specifically about dreadlocks, not everything currently claimed as "natural" hair. I absolutely support the position that people should not be forced to try and adapt to hair styles for flat hair if they're naturally curly, whether it's an Afro (I'm sure this term isn't PC anymore but I have no idea what to call it), dreads, or whatever, As long as it's groomed, it should be considered OK and professional]

Anyway, while I do think "Spirit Animal" is probably an appropriated term, it's odd to say it comes from indigenous American tribes...Since it was first used, and is most visible, in oceanic tribes and was only later used to also comprise totems [another appropriated word]. I'll still have to think on what other term to use, though.

But I guess I'm being far too political for the non-political threads.
 
So, in being called out, I find myself caught between two reactions. One is "That's silly, I'm not trying to demean anyone, it's natural to adopt language to mean different things" and "Wait, is this hurting someone? Maybe I should investigate." And so I've done some reading. Starting with that article, which... aside from spirit animal does anyone use any of those other phrases? I've never seen anyone call someone a squaw, maybe this is why I'm happy not to be on social media. But from what I can see, native peoples are rightfully protective of their culture, especially after how near-extinct colonialism made them, and so I'm going to have to retire that term. Which is a shame, because it's very well descriptive.

So now, Spice8Rack is my... yahweh? Eh, I'm gonna have to workshop this.
I've heard the term squaw used my whole life, but I grew up in a small town surrounded by a lot of reserves. Squaw isn't even a word from any native language as far as a I know.
 
The Powkiddy X2. A bunch of emulators stuck in a knockoff Switch frame. It's tat and you already knew it was going to be tat but I'm mainly posting this because I think @bhamv3 might get a kick out of the translations (or be reduced to a frothing homicidal rage over them).



I can kinda see the reasoning behind Metal Gear Ghost Babel being called Alloy equipment Ghost Tower or Battletoads becoming Ninja Frog, but Mario being called horsepower? And guess what game gets translated as Alien War?

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker
 
The Powkiddy X2. A bunch of emulators stuck in a knockoff Switch frame. It's tat and you already knew it was going to be tat but I'm mainly posting this because I think @bhamv3 might get a kick out of the translations (or be reduced to a frothing homicidal rage over them).



I can kinda see the reasoning behind Metal Gear Ghost Babel being called Alloy equipment Ghost Tower or Battletoads becoming Ninja Frog, but Mario being called horsepower? And guess what game gets translated as Alien War?

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker
If you're wondering about Mario, it's probably because Mario is often transliterated as 馬力歐 (ma li ou) in Chinese, and the first two characters 馬力 literally mean horsepower.
 
The Powkiddy X2. A bunch of emulators stuck in a knockoff Switch frame. It's tat and you already knew it was going to be tat but I'm mainly posting this because I think @bhamv3 might get a kick out of the translations (or be reduced to a frothing homicidal rage over them).



I can kinda see the reasoning behind Metal Gear Ghost Babel being called Alloy equipment Ghost Tower or Battletoads becoming Ninja Frog, but Mario being called horsepower? And guess what game gets translated as Alien War?

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker
I can speak from experience that if you want an actual good handheld emulation machine, like at nearly anything produced by anbernic. I've got a couple of them that I love:
IMG_20210904_201600.jpg
 
Steph Sterling has been bigging Anbernic up on their podcast too.
Oh really? I don't listen to their podcast, I really should add it to my rotation.

One caveat is that being a Chinese company, they still come when a bunch of preloaded ROMs of questionable quality. Chuck those and use your own, maybe flash a custom firmware while you're at it because there's a ton of great options. But it will work just fine out of the box too
 
Apparently in some "unofficial" talks with devs, a few of the online WoW content folks (Bellular for one) found out this was actually something the team wanted? These are decisions by the current team (who have been apparently fighting years for this) to remove content they didn't feel represented them or their vision of the game anymore. Now that most of the old guard is out, they can actually remove this stuff.
 
Apparently in some "unofficial" talks with devs, a few of the online WoW content folks (Bellular for one) found out this was actually something the team wanted? These are decisions by the current team (who have been apparently fighting years for this) to remove content they didn't feel represented them or their vision of the game anymore. Now that most of the old guard is out, they can actually remove this stuff.
Some of these can be chalked up to being made in the early 2000's. But some of these races were only added in the past few years.
 
Some of these can be chalked up to being made in the early 2000's. But some of these races were only added in the past few years.
... yes, all while the previous leads were still with the company and calling shots. WoW's had a "grognard developer" problem for years. Remember, this is the company that has previous had one of it's major team members say "You may think you do, but you don't" in regards to WoW Classic, which in turn became more popular than WoW Retail for awhile.



This was a team where it's old guard could say, do, and get anything they wanted. If they wanted flirty shit, they got it. Dick and fart jokes? They got it. Everyone else just had to play along.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
While I agree 100% with this statement, I think it was probably more an issue of consent.

--Patrick
Was female dwarf's uncle's consent required to talk about his brass balls?
Whose consent was violated by her talking about how she kills her foot fungus with flatus?

Troll: "I heard if you cut off an extremity, it'll grow back a little bigger... don't believe it." Come on, this one is a model of what a /silly line should have been. There's nothing explicit about it (he could be talking about an arm really), there's no dated pop culture references, the only thing I could think of that anyone could object to is the fake Jamaican accent, but if that was the problem, they wouldn't be removing specific lines, but redoing the entire voice acting library for the character.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I meant more that people would spam the lines at other players, sometimes to the point of harassment.

--Patrick
If only there was a proven and easily implemented method of preventing the repeated spamming of input that games had been using since online gaming became a thing.

Nah, probably impossible. Best to just rip out as much as possible, and replace it with tepid, safe, Helen Lovejoy-approved content that surely wouldn't be spammed in the exact same manner.

I suppose it's all moot anyway, WoW, like Blizzard in general, had its day and really ought to just be shepherded into the light.
 
If only there was a proven and easily implemented method of preventing the repeated spamming of input that games had been using since online gaming became a thing.

Nah, probably impossible. Best to just rip out as much as possible, and replace it with tepid, safe, Helen Lovejoy-approved content that surely wouldn't be spammed in the exact same manner.

I suppose it's all moot anyway, WoW, like Blizzard in general, had its day and really ought to just be shepherded into the light.
Keeping dick jokes in WoW isn't a hill I want to die on. If it's a case of WoW has a new team of people and they're embarrassed by this cringy shit then I understand completely. Because it's sophomoric.

If you get mad at people deciding they want to change things, you end up in a situation where nothing can change. And outrage over small dumb shit like this is pointless. Because overall, what happened?

1: They quietly removed some voice lines they felt were problematic.

2: THE DISCOURSE OF OUTRAGE STARTED.

I don't mean to point this at you, Gas. I know you know it's dumb. But every time any little thing happens and the capital G Gamers get mad over nothing I just want to drive my face into a brick wall.
 
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