Ron declares he is working on a new Monkey Island

1916

In my opinion, this distinction is irrelevant, because rules (either formal or informally developed as a reaction to social pressure) are also part of culture.

Culture, like language, doesn’t really care about rightfulness nor its goal is to conform to what some subgroup of people likes or dislikes. Culture is a fuzzy agglomerate of inherited habits and social behaviors that evolves in many ways, some of these ways include the effect of organized movements that propose rules that some people will dislike and will resist. And that’s part of culture too.

It’s difficult for me to provide practical examples of why “Is X offensive or are we told it should be considered so” is in my opinion a misleading framing of how topics like this one can be discussed, because I’m afraid I could fall into rhetoric fallacies that would invalidate my argument.

But if you observe some profound cultural changes of the past, related to how a class of people or some specific behavior slowly became more accepted, you’ll see that for today standards something has become offensive also because many years ago there were social movements that started to shout that it should be considered offensive.

That’s why I think that “is X offensive or we are just told it is” is a false dichotomy when observed on a large temporal scale: you can’t exclude that “being told to” is a positive instrumental tactic, employed today, to define what will be considered offensive in the culture that will develop a few years from now…

…which nobody has to like.

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1917

Ok, but my opinion is that most of the time people are forgetting intent. And they’re doing it on purpose, to pass the message that “there’s no way this isn’t offensive” to shut down all discourse about that, while I feel intent is a big part of what makes a joke “wrong but innocuous” instead of offensive.

A stupid example: the good old “Sardinians are all shepherds who also love to have intercourse with sheep”. As I’m Sardinian, and I’ve been used this stereotype against me in all sorts of fashion when I was younger.

Is it offensive? Yes… but also no. If someone jokes on that because they actually believe it and use the stereotype as a way to insult me, suggest that I have less dignity than them, lessen my people’s worth in some way, then of course it’s offensive.

But if someone jokes on that because they know it’s a wrong stereotype, they’re not joking about me, they’re literally joking about the joke. If one doesn’t just stop at the stereotype but analyzes the intent, it’s often easy to understand whether using the stereotype was actually meant as a satire of the stereotype itself - and so the joke is at the expense of those who believe in the stereotype.

Now, people’s sensitivity differs. I love dark humor, politically incorrect humor, and I have loads of self irony. But some people don’t, so even if someone is joking on the stereotype, some people may be offended by it and that’s perfectly valid, but there’s a difference between this is offensive and this offends me. In the latter case, I apologize and move on, in the former case I’ll disagree.

But I’ve seen so many satirical comments (you’re Italian, you know Spinoza for sure) being misunderstood and mistaken for insults, to care about what the general public labels as offensive or not. Because most of the time they’re sadly lacking either the will or the skills to analyze in depth the intent behind the joke.

Maybe we should open a topic about this.

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What is "offensive"?
1918

I’ll reply later, but I think this deserves its own thread. it’s just that I feel guilty I started this

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1919

I feel that the idea that all minorities should be protected from criticism or ridicule, qua minorities, is dangerous.

(to be clear, this is not a response to any of you :slight_smile: )

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What is "offensive"?
1920

Culture is an interesting thing. Very hard to define, and depends greatly on who is doing the defining (usually those in power).

1921

I’ve seen a person on Twitter saying that they hadn’t a good way to play RtMI, so they bought a Switch specifically to play this game.

Let’s pretend that our life choices didn’t lead us to own a device able to play the game… would you purchase either a PC or a Switch just to play this single game? :slight_smile:

I’ve thought about it and my answer is “yes”, considering also that I might take the opportunity to use the device to do other stuff as well.

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1922

I’d Switch to a Wii, if the mood took me. Right in the toilet. When you gotta go, you gotta go.

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1923

Uhm. I think there are more levels of interpretation, just like in toon movies for kids today. You know, when there’s a gag which is innocent and makes children laugh if you see it with a kid’s eye, but conceal a deeper and more adult meaning, and makes all the parents in the cinema share a smirk and a knowing look.

Back then my first reaction was “I got ripped off. That blind old fart gave me the wrong clothes”. Largo is not a cross-dresser, and the fun is in the mistake of the laundryman (Guybrush himself justifies the short-range of the voodoo doll stating “the ingredients weren’t perfect”).
But, on another level, you might laugh because you discover Largo IS a cross-dresser indeed. Overly macho outside, but with the little habit of wearing lady underwear in secret. That is undoubtedly funny, as long as you don’t think about the sensitivity of some people who has or has had the very same habit and lived it as a suffering.

And, let’s be sincere: the gag is SO MUCH funny exactly because it raises in the player mixed feelings. They know they’re laughing because of prohibited matters, and their mild sense of guilty enhances the effect.

But I’ll discuss this aspect in the other thread.

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1924

I have bought an Apple Watch after Ron said it was the only platform, and later regretted it.

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1925

I played most of the old P&C adventure games on my PC (I mean the ones made by Lucasarts, Sierra… even the most recent ones made by Daedalic to be frank) but I recently fell in love with the Switch. It’s mostly because I’m a parent and the Switch is, for me, the perfect console to play everywhere and for a small amount of time.
I was honestly never a big fan of PC gaming.
It seems like Ron, Dave and their team put a lot of thoughts about being able to play the game with a controller – it’s not gonna be a last minute addition, like with other adventure games ports.
So even though I played and finished all the first five MI games on PC, (I remember how fun it was to discover Secret on my old Windows 95, in the 90s) I want to play this one on Switch.
I guess it might be an unpopular choice for an old adventure games player like me, ha ha. :slight_smile:

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1926

I’ll probably play it on my touchscreen. (Laptop, but still.)

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1927

I already was in that situation. I wanted to play The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles but it was available only for Nintendo Switch.
I ended up in purchasing a Switch Lite, only to play that single game. And I have not regretted it.

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1928

PC. I’m a mouse and keyboard type of guy. And a PC is much more versatile than a Switch. For example I can write letters and program it to do fancy stuff – like simulating how it would be if the PC cloud make coffee …

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1929

What day is today? :grin:

And above all, how many more clips can Ron show each monday without making too many spoilers? Not many, I think. Is the release near?

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1930

I’d upgrade my PC to be able to play it in 4k but I would be surprised if that were necessary.

(i7-4790 with RX 580, so aging but still quite capable.)

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1931

WE must wait until at least 16:00 CEST, when on Ron’s time is around 7:00

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1932

Thought of the day (until Ron releases the next clip).

Ron said playtesters were thrown off (=taken by surprise?) by the art style at first, but by the end they only had praise for it. I wonder how the playtesters were chosen. Were they likely to be hostile or benevolent :slight_smile:

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1933

There were two classes of playtesters:

  • People who love Ron and who would praise the game no matter what.
  • The same subgroup of enraged people who insulted Ron on his blog but, deprived of anonymity, praised the game no matter what.
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1934

I thought Ron just opened his front door and dragged the first guy he saw on his street into his house… :thinking:

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1935

Maybe a better question is: how should they have been chosen :slight_smile:

If you choose someone who doesn’t play adventure games, you risk criticisms that’s misleading. If you choose someone (like me) who has played monkey2 to the death, you risk criticism that’s misleading. It seems you can get any result you want, by cherry picking the testers…

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