willowtron

[willowtron]

We need to talk about Overwatch 2's latest concept art.

CW: mentions of rape and sexual violence, including the 2021 lawsuit against ABK.

On April 26th (UTC), the Twitter account Overwatch Cavalry - an Overwatch-centric games journalism account run by ZenofyMedia and Minkendorfer posted the following screenshot from the latest batch of Overwatch 2 concept art survey emails. It is one of several sets of skins in the latest survey (a collage can be found here), and features the characters of Mercy and Mei as "lambs", and Cassidy and Reaper as "wolves" - styled as costumes, of course, so as to retain the character's respective silhouettes. The response to these skins has been generally positive on Twitter, Reddit, and within my personal social circles.

Which is why I've come here. Because I have to be completely upfront; my immediate reaction when I saw these skins was "wow that's really misogynistic, right?"

Okay, just for the sake of it, what even is "Overwatch", and who are these characters?

Overwatch 2, compared to Overwatch... 1? "Overwatch"? is basically an identical game. The most notable thing, in my mind, is that the abandonment of a PvE-oriented successor to OW's original release, as well as the mothballing of all PvE content following the release of the Invasion missions has spelled the end of Overwatch as a lore-driven IP. Jeff Kaplan, the game's original visionary and the main proponent for the development of a wider Overwatch universe, has long since left the project; and while his successor, Aaron Keller, has weathered the storm of the Blizzard sexual harassment lawsuits, of Bobby Kotick's repugnant leadership, and of a merger into Microsoft's corporate empire, he's seemingly done this by being comparatively less unyielding than Kaplan. Overwatch still releases external media in the form of comics and short stories (in particular when acting as supplement to their latest skin drops), but the wider story is relatively stagnant in the current day - the characters of the world of Overwatch will never grow, develop, nor change from where they are right now, and what is left of lore exploration focuses on what they're doing and how they interact with each other, rather than how the world is actually moving forward. Where once the animated shorts such as Dragons promised a period of change and turmoil, the most recent animated shorts focused almost exclusively on the previously unknown stories of Junker Queen, Kiriko, and Sojourn - the last of which also acted as a lead-in to the Invasion missions which... went nowhere. In August of this year, it will have been two years since an animated short was released for Overwatch.

For this reason, many newer players (and even returning casuals) are relatively unaware of the original lore for Overwatch - and in the case of Overwatch 2's altered lines and interactions, may even be missing key characterisations for many of the heroes. Mercy in particular is noted as being more gentle, agreeable, "angelic" now, in a way that was previously hinted to be a false-front that acted as a shield against her stressful job, but has seemingly replaced her personality entirely (though still with weird little moments of being outright mean, seemingly for no reason). Where once we had glimpses of both the Overwatch agent Mercy, as well as the exhausted, overworked doctor Angela Ziegler, nowadays the woman is all but vanished. Without a better through-line from Overwatch 1 to Overwatch 2, these changes felt sudden and jarring - and fundamentally change how characters are perceived. Let's review the basics of the heroes shown in the "lamb vs wolf" concept art, so we're all on the same page about what I'm going to discuss.

Mercy (Angela Ziegler), a veteran of the international organisation Overwatch, has acted as both field medic and strike-team operative; she was one of the core agents operating under Jack Morrison during his time as Overwatch's leader, and she has a complex history with some of the game's more recent additions - especially Hazard - many of whom have less-than-favourable attitudes or histories regarding Overwatch's prior "peace keeping" activities.

Mei (Mei-Ling Zhou), a scientist under the environmental "Ecopoint" branch of Overwatch's operations, stationed in Antarctica before the fall of Overwatch and cryogenically frozen for nine years following a malfunction in the bases' systems. Following her awakening and return to civilisation, she now forms part of the core of Overwatch's new strike-team under the leadership of Winston.

Cassidy (Cole Cassidy), a former Blackwatch operative under the command of Gabriel Reyes that acted as an extra-judiciary branch of Overwatch's strike-teams. Blackwatch was shut down during the Venice Incident, and contributed greatly to the eventual fall of Overwatch as an organisation; Cassidy, for his part, went solo as a vigilante, and is currently forming a new taskforce existing parallel-to but not under the reformed Overwatch (see New Blood volumes 1-5).

Reaper (Gabriel Reyes), the former second-in-command of Overwatch and the leader of Blackwatch, Reyes is probably the game's most promising representation of patriarchy, masculinity, justice, legality, and corruption. His story is intertwined with that of Cassidy, but also Moira O'Deorain, the organisation of Talon (Masquerade; Code of Violence; Infiltration), as well of course as Jack Morrison, Ana Amari, and Overwatch as a whole. In the present day, Reyes is one of Talon's top operatives, and a primary antagonist to Winston and Overwatch.

To sum up these characters in a relevant way; Mei and Angela have both been presented as empathetic, compassionate, gentle women, and their roles in-universe as Doctor and Scientist stray from the typical jobs one might expect to see in a game about shooting people in the face. They are often heralded as some of the game's strongest traditionally-feminine representations, and have generally been portrayed as helpers more than fighters - in lore they have both shown hesitation towards violence, have both been shown performing selfless acts, and have both existed almost exclusively within the context of being good team-players. Indeed, their presence in-game has at times been an awkward thing to justify considering their personalities.

On the opposite end, Gabriel and Cole are both former-blackwatch, have been shown to have little regard for the murder or violence they perform - in Reaper's case, actively adopting sadism - and are generally portrayed as, at best, morally dubious. They have both struck out on their own "lone wolf" style, are shown to struggle to work well in team environments, and fit the more typical characterisation of masculine characters in the masculine world of videogames - they are two sides of the same cool guy coin.

On the surface, then, this "lamb vs wolf" concept is perhaps a little on-the-nose, but ultimately in-character at least (as long as we ignore the fact that wolves are deeply social pack animals). And therein lies the problem.

The Sexual-Harassment Lawsuits

For those who wish to be critical of Activision-Blizzard-King (now owned by Microsoft), bringing up the lawsuits is often treated as an easy dunk. I've heard it repeated so many times now by those who haven't cared in the slightest to actually engage critically with what this meant for the employees in the different teams at Blizzard or how it impacted their games, as well as outright disregarded by people with a similar lack of willingness to actually inform themselves. Let's get it totally clear from the start: the workplace culture of Blizzard was unacceptable. Even Team 4, the team responsible for Overwatch and supposedly largely shielded by Jeff Kaplan, was impacted by some of the most egregious acts of workplace sexual harassment that you can read about. I've been making a point of providing sources so far, but I'll be honest, there is so much here to disentangle and so many off-handed comments that I simply can't reference it all; this is one you'll have to look into yourself if you want a proper understanding.

The basic facts are as follows: In July of 2021, following a two-year investigation, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard asserting that Acti-Blizz had maintained a "frat boy" culture of sexual misconduct towards female employees. This case was settled on December 15th, 2023, to the tune of fifty-four million dollars - and with no admission of wrongdoing. Many of the primary sources here are paywalled, but you can get a general overview of the case from the wikipedia article - the details are worth learning about, but... deeply unpleasant.

In the wake of the lawsuits, a number of executives, directors, and upper-level employees left Blizzard permanently - many of their own accord. The lawsuits and public reveal about the activities of the man Jesse McCree, for whom the Overwatch character Cassidy was once named for, also lead to the renaming of the character in-game; the legacy of Blizzard's ""allegedly"" abhorrent workplace culture has hung over the company for years, and rightfully so.

Let's cycle back around to when I referred to Gabriel Reyes as "embracing sadism", okay?

So what does this have to do with the skins:

In April of 2025, less than two years after the settlement of these cases, Blizzard has proposed a set of skins that portray two women as "lambs" - these two women specifically being the primary examples of soft, cute, naïve/defenseless or non-violent women that the game has. What has been perhaps a radical inclusion of not just women, but women who are both respected and not soldiers in a hero shooter title, has in this instance been inverted into a presentation of femininity as in-line with, and culturally synonymous to, prey animals; while two men, who are presented as murderers and individuals who frequently exist outside of, or in opposition to, justice - one of which is shown openly enjoying the act of harming and killing other people beyond a pragmatic belief that violence is a means to an end - are given the characterisation of "wolves".

Oh, and because I didn't mention it before, this isn't the first time Overwatch has had instances of implied sexual violence against Mercy performed by Cassidy. Ever wanted to play a gamemode where you shoot a woman and then the stand over her so that the word "raping", in full bold capitals appears on-screen? I know just the free-to-play action hero shooter for you.

Starting to see why this in particular is making me a little uncomfortable? Why I feel this one perhaps needed a second pass through content moderators?

And this is all without us going into the broader cultural implications; that even the perceived "logic" of gentle, feminine women as prey animals and tough, masculine men as predators is, in and of itself, a perpetuation of harmful stereotypes about men and women, and a direct contributor to the foundation of patriarchy; it's without us acknowledging the inherent kink and fetish play of predator/prey, of the "lone wolf"/"Alpha Male", and how sexualised particularly female characters in Overwatch have become in the cultural zeitgeist; of how it's so overtly and grotesquely an instance of female characters in a video game being presented as targets, as things to be hunted - and, by extension, that so are women in general, so are women who play videogames! This is all said without the proper analysis deserving to the idea that these skins can only exist in a patriarchal rape culture.

And the most maddening thing is, and I can't emphasise this enough, I've only seen praise for these skins!!! The biggest pushback I've heard from anyone else is "I better not see edaters using these"; like, fuck me, at least they're probably consenting to it! Are we really so quick to forget Gamergate? Are we genuinely at the point where Blizzard, of all companies, can make two skins for women and go "these are the lambs", and then two skins for men and go "these are the wolves", and everyone cheers?? I feel like I'm crazy!

I hope someone at Blizzard - specifically Team 4 - reads this. I hope they sit with me as I write about this from start to finish, and the skins are quietly dropped. That would be my biggest hope. But in the likely event that this doesn't occur, I hope that anyone who does read this walks away a little more informed about everything I've spoken about here; I hope it encourages people to engage a little more critically with these things - and I also hope it isn't used as another lazy dunk, that just ends up disincentivising people from actually caring. Cause this shit genuinely really matters.

[willowtron]

KCD1 steam review that went over the character limit

I was originally going to wait until I'd played KCD2 until I made a final decision, but after having replayed much of this on Hardcore and with absolute confirmation that there'll be no transfer of save profiles, I don't really see a point in waiting.

KCD1 was, largely, a proof of concept; and it shows. Even years after release there are some quests that are IMMENSELY buggy, to the point where portions of the game become unplayable if you make some (very easy to make) "mistakes" in the way you approach certain quests - if you don't want to cross-reference with the wiki to make sure you don't routinely lose hours of progress, then read no further.

Aside from the truly game-breaking bugs, KCD1 is also rife with just… jank. it is a game that is utterly lacking in cze- sorry, polish. Animations, both body and facial, can look goofy and amateurish; movement oftentimes feels clunky, especially on horseback and while crouching; many of the ways you interact with the world (brewing potions, picking up items, talking with other characters) have needlessly long single-animations, that Might make you feel more immersed, but usually just feel repetitive and out-of-place. Need to both boil water, and turn a sandglass? Unfortunately Henry is utterly incapable of using his peripheral vision and must look directly at everything he's doing at all times, so that's not possible.

Your body in-game rarely feels like an extension of your own limbs and capabilities; anything taller than an inch must be jumped over, and unless the obstacle is tall enough for the same "mantle" animation to play, you'll do a full-height squat jump every single time you need to traverse a small rock or plank. If you're crouching and walking, expect to get stuck on every single little thing, even the ones that are invisible. Some trees and shrubs can be walked through, others not, it's not always clear which is which - bad news if you're on horseback! Now you've fallen off and hit your head, idiot. These little examples of feeling like a human piloting a character, rather than feeling immersed as a human within the world, are the main things that really break KCD's spell; the game is Gorgeous, and when you just… stand there, and admire it, you really do start to feel pulled in. But then some random wayfarer, eyes glazed over, walks really slowly into your horse and yells at you about it, and the illusion is broken again.

It's not all bad (though we're not done with that yet); the game is beautiful visually, as mentioned, and also well-optimised - for a game that was pushing the limits of technical possibility on release, it still does a good job seven years later. The sound design and soundtrack are wonderful, and there are select songs I will go out of my way to listen to just in my day-to-day, which is always a good sign to me. The UI can feel a little awkward at times, the scroll bar just a little too small to make use of, but ultimately looks good and is easy to navigate; the only negative of it being that the animation to go from "menus" to "game", and vice versa, is really quite long - and the game doesn't pause During this animation, which can lead to some shenanigans while riding your horse and checking the map.

The thing that truly wowed me with this game, and that had me so invested in seeing the original vision fully-realised in the sequel, was the sheer number of mechanics this game has: there is a stealth system; there is a lockpicking minigame; there is proper archery with drag and drop-off on arrows; there is a developed combat system; towns and traders will be altered depending on crime rate, items sold, opinion of the player, etc; there is a developed alchemy system (my personal favourite); training your dog can give you more options (though I think Mutt is really poorly implemented); there are hunting spots that go hand-in-hand with the archery; the list goes on. The game is doing A LOT, even when you're not really interacting with NPCs. But these mechanics are often surface-level; which is to be expected of a proof-of-concept, but it's worth noting regardless. Yeah, the game does technically Have these systems, but many of them are… lacking. The more complicated it is, the less you'll be able to appreciate it; simple things like lockpicking and alchemy feel really good most of the time, but as soon as NPC interactions are added (villagers, guards, Mutt, game animals) the mechanics start to fall flat.

To give a couple of examples; hunting, and the "evolving towns". Red Dead Redemption 2 really gave us the prime example for how to bake Hunting into a videogame; when you go out for meat or skins or fun in RDR2, you choose an area with the desired animal, and have all sorts of options. Even when you're not using your tracking sense, you can still hear the specific calls of different animals, you can still set up bait, you can physically see the tracks in the world. Compared to RDR2, KCD's hunting mechanic feels like a 6 year old's best effort; animals spawn in a specific location (usually only while the camera isn't facing them), and then they just… wander away, usually in a group, in a straight line. "Hunting spots" in the game aren't where animals Gather, they're where animals Spawn, and if you miss them spawning? Well, wander away, and walk back again to prompt them to spawn again. It feels… like a game. Immersion breaking. These aren't animals in the world that you're choosing to hunt, they exist purely TO BE hunted, and the game treats them as such.

And then the evolving towns. This was actually advertised pretty heavily in the game's marketing, that if you steal from towns and villages then the number of guards will increase, you'll be searched more often, villagers will be more suspicious; and all of this is exacerbated still by a poor reputation. This is really cool in concept; imagine a wealthy shop-owner awakening to find his most valuable merchandise has been taken in the night! Of course there'd be an effort to find the thief. Or a guard stumbles upon a corpse in a back-alley, the torchlight revealing a pool of blood and a sack of meat where once a person existed - of course they would double the guard! But in practice the system is over-simplified; guards will never search NPCs or be suspicious of anyone that isn't the player, and nobody but the player will ever commit crimes except for a random "pickpocket" event that, again, is just there for the player. You'll never see increased security or suspicion if Cumans or Banditry is prevalent in an area, and there are several farmsteads or villages that are raided throughout the game, but you'd never know by the way people react. So what ends up happening is this: if you commit no crimes, no guard will ever stop you for a random search, nor comment on you being suspicious. If you do commit crimes, even if nobody sees you, you will be searched frequently. This isn't intended to punish players for choosing a more rogueish Henry, I think, but it does have the same end result.

Finally, the elephants in the room; writing/story, and combat.

The game's story is… not uncompelling, but it does lose wind about halfway through. In general it does a good job of recognising that the player will be well-equipped and skilled before the game's conclusion, so it shifts from "rags to riches" to more "investigation and exploration", and that shift is subtle enough that I don't imagine a player being put off by it. You still get to fight bandits and Cumans, you still get to be Henry, so it works. However, I did find I just… didn't really care so much about the actual contents of what I was doing. There's a certain point where. following a large-scale battle, you defeat a major antagonist and sort of complete the "rags to riches" arc. You are at this point a skilled swordsman, known and respected by the nobles of the region, and presumed to have the financial means to basically do as you please; but you won't move on to the next antagonist you actually care about within the scope of this game. These next two sort-of-major antagonists are also the only gay characters in the story, and they're essentially portrayed as just shit-eating backstabbers and weasels, so... make of that what you will.

Actually, while I'm here and not on Steam, can we talk about women, queerness, and people of colour within the context of the game? I'm not someone who believes every game needs to explore themes of marginalisation, but you're telling me every single person you encounter is the exact same pasty white? That gay people only exist as ratty villains? I'm pretty sure the game goes out of its way to fail the Bechdel test, where even the "casual chatter" that townsfolk will have is almost always centered around either the player's actions or their husbands/brothers. Women in particular are portrayed almost exclusively within context to the men in their lives, which while accurate to the sexism that existed in the period, does leave the game feeling sort of... Male power fantasy? There's not really a single instance of a woman who is confident, independent, and level-headed, who does not also rely upon being saved by a man at some point in the story. The game addresses this slightly with the "A Woman's Lot" DLC, but man even Theresa and Johanka essentially just... they have their moments of independence, but largely facilitated by you, as Henry, giving them that ability. Anyway.

The latter half of the game's story is, far more than anything so far, obviously a set-up for the sequel; you can tell at this point that either this game is like... five times larger than you thought it would be, or that you're not seeing the conclusion to the story any time soon. The former is not the case.

Which brings us to the really big issue; the combat system.

KCD has, throughout its existence, walked a fine-line in regard to the actual controls; the game was designed to be both controller and mouse+keyboard accessible, and was released for both PC and console accordingly. This makes some things feels better or worse on different systems; stealth and horsemanship feel better on controller, where you can more easily control finer movement and speed, but feel bad on mkb because you can't do that; archery and the lockpicking minigame feel better on PC, on the other hand, because the mouse offers even greater fine motor control against the drag and sway the mechanics have.

Melee combat on a controller is always going to be a difficult thing to get right in a game that is styled as immersive and complex; there are a few examples of games that have tried in the multiplayer genre, like For Honour and Mordhau, and the classic souls-like examples for single-player games - but these games usually have to make sacrifices along the way (Elden Ring isn't exactly "complex" during a sword fight), or have combat as their main focal point with by far the largest amount of dev time invested into that mechanic.

KCD attempts to simplify this; combat with a sword can be split into 4 basic actions, with a little extra depth given to each one. You can slash, you can thrust, you can block, and you can dodge.

When slashing, you move your mouse or joystick in one of five directions to control the direction you slash from (up, right, left, down-right, and down-left - like the axes of a five-pointed star). The thrust is basically just a sixth option on the star. As you improve your skills, you can learn combos (which are only unlocked via level-up perks), that will allow you to chain together strikes into a Powerful Move (a little animation plays and you basically get one extra free hit in). These combos can range from three specific consecutive strikes (up, right, down-left) to five; the more strikes, the stronger it is.

Blocking, meanwhile, can be broken up into three "tiers", and can be done with or without a shield; you can block all incoming attacks by just holding Q, but you will not interrupt any enemy attacks and you'll still take some damage. The higher your shield or weapon's defense stat the less damage you'll take, but it's basically never zero, and not interrupting your opponents attacks will allow them to perform combos on you with ease. If you want a better block, you need to perform a "perfect block"; this is essentially just blocking early on in the attack. There'll be a cool little slow-motion effect, and you'll have the ability to perform a riposte, which can only be blocked by another perfect block from your opponent. And finally there's the Master Strike, which trivialises all combat.

The Master Strike is essentially the Perfect Parry from other games; you press Q at just the right time, and an animation plays where you both block the enemy attack, and hit them with your own at the same time. It's very easy to perform, and there's no way to block or avoid it once the animation starts. This can also be performed on you, at any time, if you choose to attack with a slash, thrust, or riposte. This has two major consequences;

Performing long chains of attacks for a powerful combo becomes essentially impossible against an opponent who can perform either a Perfect Block or a Master Strike, and those combos are a waste against enemies who can't (they'll be weak little peasants who you can just bully anyway). Landing one good hit isn't enough to knock your opponent "off balance", nor drain their stamina enough to prevent them from blocking, so you have to just be really lucky basically; if a Master Strike is performed by your opponent at any time during your combo, it is likely you'll take more damage than they will have.

Attacking at all becomes kind of... pointless? You can just stand there and press Q at the right time, not touching the rest of your setup at all, and you're literally unbeatable. Compare that against the risk of having it done to you, and the combat becomes a game of pressing one singular button over and over.

There are other gripes, too; the stamina mechanic, which is used both to prevent the player from wildly swinging and also to mitigate damage from incoming attacks, oftentimes feels clunky when facing opponents. Master Strikes and Perfect Blocks are really cheap, stamina-wise, so defending is always better than attacking in regard to your stamina economy against an opponent with any skill at all; even if you've hit them with three or four solid attacks in a row, that they weren't able to block regularly, they can still turn it around and injure you by performing a Master Strike.

We also need to talk about the FOV, camera controls, and combat against multiple opponents; your Field of View, as the game is designed for both PC and Console, is very limited. You basically don't have peripheral vision. Enemies will abuse this by just sort of... awkwardly jogging through your player model when fighting multiple of them, and then attack from your sides or from behind; behind, fair enough, but in real life the attacks from the side would actually be visible to you and you would be able to react to them. Not here.

You may have also noted a while ago, that if you need to move your mouse/joystick to control which direction you slash from, then how are you meant to move the camera? Well, you don't. During combat the game will lock your cursor onto an opponent, and that lock can only be broken by sprinting - the game does technically have an "unlock camera" button during combat, but it's not a toggle, so it just immediately locks back on again. Against multiple opponents you have to use the scroll wheel to individually cycle through each opponent until you're locked onto the right one; try blocking attacks from specific enemies when you have to go through that. To really drive home how frustrating this can be as well, the game doesn't really do verticality in attacks. You're always just swinging directly ahead of you, with no regard for elevation - even relative to your opponent.

The player camera also moves in uncontrolled ways when you get hit; the harder you get hit, the more your camera gets thrown about. Realistic perhaps, but with the limited field of view and lock-on camera, you spend most of the time in combat utterly powerless to control how you look around. In my opinion, this is the thing that makes the game the least accessible; you genuinely have to be pretty resistant to motion sickness for this to not feel awful every time. Combine this with a "fade-to-monochrome" effect when your stamina is low, as well as low-res blood effects when your head is bleeding, and the visual experience in combat is just abysmal (and exacerbated by the, yet again, limited field of view if your helmet has a visor).

On the other side of this, however, opponents will awkwardly teleport around in order to block your attacks; if you land a hit and see your opponent flail to one side, leaving their other side entirely exposed, this doesn't actually mean that side is undefended. They'll just... teleport back into place in order to block your next attack as well. Against opponents who are actually out of stamina but still blocking this weird little side-to-side teleportation can occur over, and over, and over again. This for me is actually the main dealbreaker for the combat not feeling immersive or realistic; the game strays away from the animations and visuals actually mattering in these moments, instead opting for a more casual experience - but it only applies to your opponents. And don't forget! The especially skilled ones will perform a Master Strike and now you're taking damage, actually. Idiot.

The final nail in the coffin, putting aside how attacks work out of combat and the awkward clinch mechanics, is how the game reacts when you try to run. One of the game's tips during the loading screens is to "run away, live to fight another day"; but! Would you have guessed it! Enemies have a sort of... gravitational pull. Even if you manage to break the camera lock, and have enough stamina to start sprinting away, enemies can perform weird little animations that just suck you back in; like being grabbed and pulled around, but while their hands are full. No amount of strength can prevent this from happening, and certain animations will also hurt you in the process - if you want to slash at me while I run that's fair enough, but it feels bad when my character, clad in full-plate, then just... turns around and looks at the enemy, camera lock kicking in again. Against multiple opponents they might drag you about for several seconds at a time, being pulled by one counting as you moving out of range for another, so the animation triggers again; and all of this contributes significantly to the feeling that you have no control over your camera or your movement, as the camera is thrown all over the place during these animations.

To top this off, you can't surrender to most opponents; Cumans and Bandits alike only want you dead, you can't just... offer your valuables for safe passage. The only people you can surrender to are guards, and they only attack if you commit crimes and are wanted, so 90% of the time your choices in combat are:

Fight, usually in a 1v3 or 1v4

Run (can't, they'll suck you back in)

So really, until you have good gear and levels, your only option to avoid boring or frustrating combat is to just... avoid it. If you have a horse you can try mounted combat (which is basically just doing a weak little sword swish), but your first horse spooks so easily that you'll get thrown off if you're anyway near an enemy (which is usually instant death). And did I mention the game does surprise ambushes at random points along the road? Good luck avoiding combat, bucko :)

Oh, and you need an expensive consumable item to save.

[willowtron]

man this culture war bullshit has gotten ridiculous what do you mean idubbbz is more supportive of the queer community than Stephen Fry

[willowtron]

Is Mike Tyson a mascot for Western Apathy? The Age of Ad Revenue.

I have a really bad habit of trying to make my "first" posts really special and good, so this time I'm going to break that habit by talking about something I really don't care about.

Okay, so Paul vs Tyson; probably the least exciting boxing match that could be conceived, where a semi-competent novice takes an easy and gentle win against a heavyweight champion from thirty-five years ago - where said novice has gained fame purely from being a large enough dickhead on the internet that people started giving him money, and the fifty-eight year old former champ seems both depressed and in poor health. Regardless of who you thought might win, the whole point of this was quite obviously just for Jake Paul to be able to say "I beat Mike Tyson!" (who really seems like he actually, genuinely, couldn't care less about losing).

This is at the same time as president-elect Donald J Trump (part 2!) has announced some of the most brainrot cabinet choices possible. I'd like to say they're smart grift choices or whatever, but it's pretty clear a lot of them are just people that built their career on being loud and divisive - and, most importantly, are disliked by most everyone on the left. Elon Musk, a man who earned his wealth through a combination of inheritance from slavery, scams, fraud, and cryptocurrency is going to be in charge of a government department named after a meme that stopped being funny almost a decade ago - and he's not even getting it to himself, it's a shared position. Matt Gaetz, who alleges he is technically not a pedophile, will also hold a position in government; as well as RFK Jr, failed presidential aspirant, who is (supposedly) largely opposed to Trump's political stances and perhaps very existence, but likes the idea of being involved in government enough that he still endorsed Trump to be president in the 2024 election.

About a month ago, around October-November of 2024, YouTube (owned by Google and ran by CEO Neal Mohan) quietly updated the way it serves ads; "unskippable, longer, more" seem to be the three main elements of YouTube's new ad direction, and this most recent change appears to be one of the most aggressive yet. Even in minor territories like the Isle of Man, where licensing small print has previously lead to a small amount of ads served, the number of ads has dramatically increased - all while YouTube's copyright systems remain famously unequal toward actual content creators, and ads themselves retain a high probability of breaching YouTube's terms of service.

After a series of aggressive acquisitions lead by CEO & Chairman Satya Nadella that had EU, US, and Chinese governments regarding the merger as anti-competitive and monopolistic, Microsoft successfully bought ownership of Activision-Blizzard-King; while the ABK name is perhaps most famed for titles such as World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and Overwatch, it is actually Swedish partner King who owns the title Candy Crush Saga and the infrastructure to make strides into the mobile gaming industry for Microsoft. While the ownership of titles like Call of Duty unofficially "ends" the console wars (with Xbox's Halo and (sort of) PlayStation's CoD now being under the same company), minor aspects like this haven't been major factors in the gaming sphere since the more wide-spread adoption of PC gaming and handhelds like the Nintendo Switch. even so, in my opinion ABK as an acquisition pales in comparison to the purchase of Mojang's Minecraft, now just over ten years ago, which to this day retains a chokehold on the market of "games for children".

Minecraft, initially released in 2011 by Swedish company Mojang, and created by now-disgraced game designer Markus "Notch" Persson, has made a lasting cultural impact that I genuinely believe to be impossible to quantify. To try and provide even a slight amount of perspective, the iconic Steve "oof" has not been present in the game since Beta - which was now around fourteen years ago. And hey, remember King? Markus Persson used to work there. Anyway, in 2014 Microsoft acquired Mojang, and Minecraft with it, and has now owned the title for a decade. Perhaps one of the most controversial changes to the game (perhaps second only to... voter interference in the Mob Vote? Okay. Sure.) is the introduction of Microsoft's global chat-report moderation; regardless of whether you are in a public or private server, players have the ability to report any chat message from any player, and if deemed appropriate, Microsoft will then temporarily or permanently "silence" this player across every server.

I have a lot of love for Minecraft. If you took my playtime from every other game I've ever played, combined it, and doubled it, you still wouldn't reach my playtime in Minecraft. I was a child during its Alpha, I helped my school friends bypass security on school computers so they could play it, some of my closest friends were met on servers in that game, and there'll probably come a time where I write all of my thoughts about it properly. For now, all you need to know is that I don't look down on the title by any means, when I say Microsoft, and the capitalist elite, have ruined Children's gaming.

Every now and then, I think about the "Decline of children's spaces online" Reddit post on r/tumblr - the comments I feel are worth including in this, so forgive the link to reddit. I don't disagree with any aspects of the OOP or Reddit OP's collation by any means, but I feel it frames the problem from the perspective of people very much... more terminally online than myself. Not once have I ever thought "grah, these kids are taking my space away!" when I see a badly censored swear word or my favourite content creators lamenting demonitisation, I just think "wow advertisers fucking suck". Because they do, and the need for increased "family-friendly-ness" in an endless quest to make ad revenue actually profitable is killing all forms of social interaction online, be it via social media, video games, everything.

Shortly after the full acquisition of ABK by Microsoft, there was a large wave of permanent chat and account bans for players of the game Overwatch, due to the sending of swear words in chat. This caused uproar on social media, but was also largely seen as so ridiculous as to be funny; in a game where one of the characters will say "wanker", out loud, in game, you can be permanently banned for saying "fuck" or "shit". To my knowledge this has been reduced, but is still technically punishable. In a game where you go around, killing people, blood flying off their model as you hit them with your fists or shoot them with bullets, or electrocute them to death as they yell in agony, saying the fuck word is a bannable offense now.

On January 7th 2023, YouTuber and Twitch streamer RTGame posted the video "Youtube is Restricting My Content" in response to a back-and-forth with the media giant regarding a subtle and ambiguous alteration to YouTube's Terms of Service, and monetisation guidelines. This was, at the time, the latest in a string of ad-restriction changes that included requiring content creators to not use any foul language at the start of the video, requiring content creators to not use excessive amounts or severities of foul language, not show real actual human death, gore, and mutilation (which is still apparently allowed generally, but will cost you ad revenue. ???), etc. Three years prior, on March 23rd of 2020, YouTuber Tom Scott uploaded the video "YouTube's copyright system isn't broken. The world's is." The video highlights how copyright law and systems of enforcement have been outdated for years, in no small part due to the ability for individuals to make a living for themselves creating content and uploading it, without any form of corporate support beyond host websites like YouTube and Twitch. Ad revenue is the driving force behind an entire industry of online content creation - even things that utilise regular payments as part of a streaming service do so, typically, for the purpose of allowing the consumer to avoid ads. YouTube, Twitch, Spotify; all allow for individuals to post their own individual content, as long as the services themselves get a cut.

And as more and more of our infrastructure has moved online, and ads have become a tolerated nuisance tightly integrated into using basically any online service, we've been hit by the emergence of the largest obstacle yet; AI.

"AI" is not just ChatGPT. I do not say the term "AI" and refer to DallE or Grok or whatever other nonsense environment-killer is the Monster of the Week for anti-AI proponents. In many ways, the insinuation that these even count as "AI" is offensive to me as someone who grew up with the belief that the only true AI is one that deserves to be recognised as sentient. ChatGPT is not sentient. None of them are.

AI is ChatGPT, but it is also the way mobs move in the game Minecraft; it is also YouTube's content ID system for copyright; it is also the myriad of bots that operate on the stock market. It has been part of your daily life for years, much longer than it's been used to generate soulless art from the stolen work of actual artists - AI has served to remove the human element from the things too tedious or too numerous for humans to actually manage. Ads and copyright are right up there on that list. Which ads to serve, who to serve them to, and automatic filing of copyright claims have all been part of YouTube for long enough that I'd wager most people don't even really know the term "Content ID" anymore

"oh but those aren't really AI" yeah neither is a thing that just collects sentences and tries to blurt out something similar. They all just do data collection and then try to find trends, and no that's not the same as being neurodivergent, we're getting off track just trust me that they're the same for the purposes of this post. All you need to know is that your ads are served by AI, and probably largely generated by AI, and the entire content creation industry (be it social media like Twitter, live streaming platforms like Twitch, or hosting services like YouTube) is built almost solely upon ad revenue.

Games like Overwatch haven't been sanitised because children are stealing the spaces from adults; people don't censor swear words on posts because they care about the children; RTGame isn't replacing all cursing on his videos with literally the word "YouTube" just because he finds it funny (it is, though). Sanitisation occurs because ad revenue demands no limitations; because corporations that pay for ads don't want to hear about how the videos they have their ads on aren't appropriate for certain audiences, they don't care about the actual content they help pay for. They just want their cut - for their ad to reach as many people as possible.

I really didn't want to have to, but... I have to at least mention it. In a world where user consumption, clicks, ads viewed, and time watched are the primary metrics for financial success online, TikTok is the primary driving force behind a lot of "foul language focused" sanitisation. Censoring of the words kill, die, fuck, shit, sex, etc, etc, etc. It's... depressing. And the permeation of these habits onto other sites does make it feel like the only internet spaces available are baby spaces for people who can't handle a swear word or innate parts of the human experience. TikTok drives a significant amount of online discourse, both niche and mainstream, and acts as both a means of escaping real-world issues like genocide, poverty, and the horror of having a meaningful vote in the world's leading democratic nation, as well as a source of news and information in a world full of unacknowledged bias, misinformation, and five-second attention spans. TikTok has made the dystopian vision of a humanity that is both apathetic and powerless seem closer than ever by proving that, given the choice, a significant proportion of the population will not resist attempts to misinform them and dull their ability to process long-form information. TikTok is evidence that if your algorithm is good enough, then morals, beliefs, and self-respect are all secondary.

And that's the really important part. People do not think critically about the information they consume because the internet bombards you with a constant stream of it; this isn't TikTok specific, or even particularly restricted to just online content. It's about how accessible good, reliable sources of information are; it's about how trustworthy megacorporations are in regard to humanity's best interests; it's about whether ads are trying to serve the consumer, or trying to manipulate them. And most importantly, it's about how much people care - how critically they think about the information they receive and the content they consume, and how parties who don't want that can disincentivise it as much as possible.

Being unable to traverse the sheer expanse of opinion, information, and style that exists across the internet is just one barrier for uneducated and uninformed westerners. Partisan and tribal politics, distraction techniques targeting minorities and scapegoats, a skew towards conservative and reactionary political leanings from most every major news outlet, as well as a general sentiment that the world is "speeding up" - no time to rest, no time to think, just have the right opinions and work work work! - all contribute to the hostility of nuance and accuracy. "These people hate you and want to destroy your way of life" is a lot easier to understand than "well they don't actually hate you specifically, they just have a built up resentment for the systems that support your way of life due to the disenfranchisement of minorities and the working class - and they don't so much want to destroy your way of life as they want to help you understand that your way of life is actually harmful to you as well, because it's designed to only benefit the ultra-rich capitalist elite" when the people you're talking to have intentionally been given a biased and low-quality education (if any at all). FOX news likes stupid people; but those people don't like being called stupid (understandably) - and unfortunately there's no easy way to say "your preferred news source appeals to the uneducated" without it being insulting, or failing to get the point across.

It is both a societal and an individual responsibility to be educated and provide education, but I digress.

Remember Paul vs Tyson? and Donald Trump's cabinet? It's been a little while since we started, but I promise I didn't mention those for no reason.

Twitter (or X if you're a loser) is currently seeing a mass migration over to competitor Bluesky - a mix of Elon's appointment to Trump's government, as well as some unpopular changes regarding the block function, have spurred people to move away from Twitter once and for all; but it remains the world's largest social media site.

Overwatch has had global chat, the "looking for group" system, and the "unfiltered" text chat option all removed from the game - things like the in-built LFG or "Guilds" were promised, but never delivered. They likely never will following Microsoft's acquisition.

YouTube's largest channel is currently MrBeast, with T-Series, Cocomelon, SET India, and Kids Diana taking up 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Three of these five are aimed at children (aged 15 and under, per my arbitrary definition); The remaining two are multimedia brands. While PewDiePie is a controversial figure, his dethronement from the top of YouTube in 2019 fully signalled the end of YouTube being a site for individuals and its transition to being a site for brands, with more focus on ads and marketability.

TikTok's parent company ByteDance reported a revenue of one hundred and twenty billion dollars in 2023. US$120,000,000,000. The "Usage" section of TikTok's wikipedia page makes for... enlightening reading. By all means, check the original sources, but there's a lot there.

As time has gone on, major corporations have killed human interaction online. Limits on video length on sites like TikTok, limits on characters for sites like Twitter, removal of "undesirable" (not advertiser friendly) kinds of interaction from online gaming, a continuous push for the most profitable content to be the most supported content. News outlets, media platforms, all of them exist as businesses with the sole driving motivation of making as much money as possible - quality, truth, and the betterment of humanity be damned. Scratch that, sacrificed.

In a pre-match interview with Jazlyn Guerra, posted to YouTube channel Jazzy's World TV, former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson is seen scoffing in bewilderment - the five minute long interview between the fifty-eight year old and the fourteen year old is... awkward, pretty much the whole way through, as the interviewer does her best to empathise with the weight of nearly six decades of a life she could not possibly comprehend. She agrees with statements on adversity in childhood and throughout life, dressed in designer clothes at 14; she asks what Tyson thinks of Jake Paul, who responds that he just thinks "he's very funny". In a question about legacy, Tyson responds bluntly "who the fuck cares about me when I'm gone. - I'm dust. I'm nothing." Tyson does not care about who his opponent is, or why he's fighting, or even seemingly what comes next. When Mike Tyson stepped into that ring he stood for nothing at all; when Jazlyn Guerra heard his fatalism she simply accepted it; and Jake Paul can say "I beat Mike Tyson!". Apathy, marketability, a legacy of vanity. That is what we teach young people in the modern day.

So when you see Donald Trump choosing the most "memeable" people possible for his cabinet - when you see the most powerful person in the democratic world slotting their country in as a cog in the machine that is mass-media consumption - "brainrot" is truly the most appropriate word for his decision making. The President of the United States has been determined by how much money he generates for media corporations, while the populations of the Western world become less and less savvy to nuance and complexity; all while the concept of "legacy" is eaten away by a pervading sense of apathy present in every online space, even in spite of generation-spanning crises regarding climate change, the capitalist system, and global inequality.

None of this is coincidental. It has simply been determined that nuance isn't profitable; that even skill isn't profitable.

This is the age of ad revenue.

[willowtron]

Oh wowie look at this

I kept thinking "I really want a personal blog so I can write about the stuff I keep wanting to make video essays on but I'm too unaware of how to make videos to make video essays on them, but making my own website feels so unsafe! I guess there is no solution to this" and then I remembered this website exists and also nobody I know will look here anyway. My genius is mystifying.

Anyway I'll probably write about anything that draws my attention. Do not expect coherence.