Super Professional

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[tsfrce]

ON STEVE ROGERS #1, ANTISEMITISM, AND PUBLICITY STUNTS

JESSICA PLUMMER 5|26|16

[SPOILERS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA: STEVE ROGERS #1 BELOW]

Yesterday, Marvel released the first issue of Captain America: Steve Rogers by Nick Spencer, Jesus Saiz, and Joe Caramagna. It’s a pretty boilerplate (albeit beautifully depicted) story of a rejuvenated Steve Rogers back in the field…right up until he tosses an ally to his death and declares “Hail Hydra” in a final page splash. The whole thing is intercut with flashbacks to his childhood of a neighbor inviting Steve’s mother to a Hydra meeting, thus implying that Steve was indoctrinated as a child and has been a sleeper agent of Hydra all along.

This is comics, right? Unleash a shocking twist to get readers to pick up the next issue! Make everything All-New All-Different for a few months until things settle back into the status quo! Have a character behave so incongruously that fans just have to know why!

Except.

Except this is different than having Superman be a jackass to Lois and Jimmy on the cover of some Silver Age issue of Action. This is different than a kiss or a death or a resurrection. This is even different than the usual “wildly out of character” stunts that would normally have readers up in arms, like Batman using a gun.

Quick comics history lesson: Captain America was created in 1941 by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby as a superpowered, super-patriotic soldier fighting the Axis forces. He was famously depicted punching out Adolf Hitler on the cover of his first appearance, inCaptain America Comics #1—which hit stands in December 1940, a full year before Pearl Harbor and before the United States joined World War II, making that cover a bold political statement.

You probably already knew that, but I’d invite you to think about it for a minute. In early 1941, a significant percentage of the American population was still staunchly isolationist. Yet more Americans were pro-Axis. The Nazi Party was not the unquestionably evil cartoon villains we’re familiar with today; coming out in strong opposition to them was not a given. It was a risky choice.

And Simon and Kirby—born Hymie Simon and Jacob Kurtzberg—were not making it lightly. Like most of the biggest names in the Golden Age of comics, they were Jewish. They had family and friends back in Europe who were losing their homes, their freedom, and eventually their lives to the Holocaust. The creation of Captain America was deeply personal and deeply political.

Ever since, Steve Rogers has stood in opposition to tyranny, prejudice, and genocide. While other characters have their backstories rolled up behind them as the decades march on to keep them young and relevant, Cap is never removed from his original context. He can’t be. To do so would empty the character of all meaning.

But yesterday, that’s what Marvel did.

Look, this isn’t my first rodeo. I know how comics work. He’s a Skrull, or a triple agent, or these are implanted memories, or it’s a time travel switcheroo, or, or, or. There’s a thousand ways Marvel can undo this reveal—and they will, of course, because they’re not about to just throw away a multi-billion dollar piece of IP. Steve Rogers is not going to stay Hydra any more than Superman stayed dead.

But Nazis (yes, yes, I know 616 Hydra doesn’t have the same 1:1 relationship with Nazism that MCU Hydra does) are not a wacky pretend bad guy, something I think geek media and pop culture too often forgets. They were a very real threat that existed in living memory. They are the reason I can’t go back to the villages my great-grandparents are from, because those communities were murdered. They are the reason I find my family name on Holocaust memorials. They are the perpetrators of unspeakable, uncountable, very real atrocities.

It’s easy, especially if you’re not Jewish, to think that anti-semitism is a thing of the past. It’s not. It flies under the radar, mostly, until suddenly it doesn’t: with graffiti in Spain, hateful party games in American high schools, vicious threats being flung at Jewish journalists for criticizing Trump. With physical attacks—with deaths—in France. Nor is neo-Nazi rhetoric, which hews closer to 616 Hydra’s shtick, a goofy make-believe thing. Not when the Republican presidential nominee spouts fascist ideology that echoes Hitler’s rise to power and spurs a literal rise in hate crimes against Muslims.

But writer Nick Spencer and editor Tom Brevoort are more concerned with making this “something new and unexpected”; with having “fun” and getting readers “invested in Hydra characters.” Because what’s more fun than downplaying genocide?

I’m not going to pretend to be cool here. I’m emotional. This is emotional. Captain America isn’t even my usual guy to get incandescently angry over the erasure of his coded Jewish history— that’s Kal-El, the Moses of Krypton—but reading this comic made me feel sick to my stomach. Reading the flippant responses of many non-Jewish readers—including friends—has brought me to tears. Somehow a community that gets up in arms about whether or not Batman has a yellow circle behind his logo seems to think that being angry about this is stupid, or indicative of a lack of experience with comics.

So let me be very clear: I don’t care if this gets undone next year, next month, next week. I know it’s clickbait disguised as storytelling. I am not angry because omg how dare you ruin Steve Rogers forever.

I am angry because how dare you use eleven million deaths as clickbait.

I am angry because Steve Rogers’s Jewish creators literally fought in a war against the organization Marvel has made him a part of to grab headlines.

I am angry because the very real pain of the Jewish community has been dismissed since this news leaked on Tuesday night as “Twitter outrage.”

If this story doesn’t hurt you? Good. I’m genuinely glad. I don’t want anyone else to have the gorge rise in their throat when they read the entertainment news. I love comics. I don’t want them to make people feel angry and betrayed. But understand that not feeling that way comes from a place of privilege, and don’t dismiss the concerns of those of us who are upset just because you have the luxury not to be.

I’ve been trying to think of how to finish this post, but I don’t think I can say it better than my friend and fellow Panelteer Sigrid Ellis did here:

And knowing that this wound is temporary, that it’s for the sake of sales and money and a story beat, that just makes it hurt more, not less. How little we must matter, the people who needed Steve to be the defender of the underdog and the weak, how little we must matter if betraying us for a story beat is so easy.

How little must we matter. The people who created Captain America, and Superman, and countless other heroes like them. The people who need him. The people whose history and suffering and hope, as we stood on the brink of annihilation, gave you your weekly entertainment and your fun thought experiment, 75 years later.

I hope it was worth it, Marvel.

X

[superprofessional-blog]

Just so you know, The Amazing Atheist has discussed what happen to the money for "Not Productive". But you know it's a lot easier to condemn people if you ignore the facts.

The post you’re questioning was made in November of 2013, roughly. At the time, there was nothing out there as to what happened with the money, trust me, I checked. 

If you want, you can supply me with the details and I might consider relooking into it.

[unicornlordart-deactivated20190]

Anybody suprised at this?

Indie developers being pretentious fucks?

no?

[deejaymayday-deactivated2020053]

What’s next? “We are writers, not readers?” 

[supernugget42]

I’m a director, but I don’t watch movies.

[thesinsofscience-blog]

I believe the phrase is “Never trust a skinny cook.” How can we as consumers trust your vision of an artform if you’ve never experienced the artform?

It’s the same reason any writer will tell you that you HAVE to start out by reading the classics. Learning the rules. What worked, what didn’t, and creating a niche for yourself by experienced what’s come before. 

If you don’t even attempt to be a part of the consumer base you’re providing for, how can you expect the consumer to trust your vision as an experience worth their money? What with all your competition perfectly willing to be a part of the culture.

In the light of recent news, I think this quote should say everything.

Take a note from Nintendo, the backbone of the gaming industry since inception. A love for the art will help create the best art. You don’t have to play every game, be a part of the mainstream, but outright shunning the idea of being a gamer? That’s not a sustainable rationale if you have any interest in being an artist, or having a healthy career. You’ll hate every minute with that attitude. Whereas people like Iwata-san will absolutely love the fact they get to be a part of the community AND a content creator.

[superprofessional-blog]

So I actually watched the highlight of Rami’s talk, instead of just looking at this photo from a Twitter feed. It’s neatly put in this 11 minute highlight video HERE.

It’s a super interesting talk, in which he’s not saying what you lot are saying. In fact, he goes into Orson Wells, who - in Rami’s words - talked a lot of shit about movies, so went and made them himself. He also then goes on to say that you don’t say to someone who hates movies, who makes them, ‘you need to be a movier’. This section of the talk is about labels and how the games industry doesn’t treat you like adults.

Before this bit, he talks about how Naughty Dog’s development video diary on the motion capture in Uncharted is presented like magic, without any explanation of the hours of work that went into rigging the models, cleaning animations and putting a pencil in a character’s hand, because that doesn’t ‘magically’ appear in the video game.

What he’s actually saying about this slide is that when he became a developer through Vlambeer, he dropped the label of ‘gamer’. He was no longer in the consumer base like everyone else, because he was making stuff and he doesn’t consider anyone within that spectrum of people under the banner of ‘gamer’, because you aren’t anymore. You’re removed, even if you love games. 

Games are a vastly different medium to film, literature and music. It’s a medium that seems to have a lot of people who live and die by labels, who cling onto them for some reason, because we aren’t treated like adults. It’s a medium based around computers, design that might not work and a whole other number of various factors. 

I’m not and I definitely Rami isn’t, saying you have to agree with this point, but maybe in future listen to what a person is saying. I admire Satoru Iwata, but the quote from that talk you’ve got that image from, is pretty much a nicer way of what Rami is saying, because he says that he’s still a ‘gamer’. He still has that label and you guys identify with that over Rami’s ability to let it go, because it means nothing in the greater vision of being a developer, a creator of video games.

No one should care what you call yourself. I write, produce video, podcasts and run a student outlet about them and have resent the term ‘gamer’, because on a personal level, it’s a marketing term we adopted as our own. 

Pretty much, those maybe, 3-4 minutes he is on this slide and awkwardly moving in and out the spotlight, is about how a label doesn’t define who you are in this business. 

[kamiyatweets]

[superprofessional-blog]

Mr Iwata

We've been talking about how weird it is that in video games, we put business men in such weird prolific places in our minds. But Iwata was different. He'd been in the trenches, he'd risen up and understood what makes Nintendo, what makes games. The reason we all saw Iwata the way we did, was because he levelled with us. Sure, through tactful PR, but he made sure to host Directs. Iwata wasn't above it all. He cut his salary so others could keep their job. He did many things that altered Nintendo radically. You'll never see another Iwata in the video game industry again. He understood, even if it never went our way.

[pixel-shed]

Yoshi’s Woolly World Review

BY JOEL LOYNDS

There’s something spectacular about Yoshi’s Woolly World, with the looks and oh-so-good Yoshi gameplay, that you start to forget about the insidious nature that backs it from Big House of Nintendo.

Keep reading

[superprofessional-blog]

Here’s the review of that Yoshi’s Woolly World. 

[superprofessional-blog]

relaxing on the beach~

[superprofessional-blog]

Eat the damned burger, Shinji.

[joel-is-at-superprofessional]

Pixel Shed do E3!

[superprofessional-blog]

pixel-shed

Here’s the best videos we did for E3! I hope you enjoy it!

[superprofessional-blog]

We made a recruitment video for our Pixel Shed thing.

[jammrlammy-deactivated20150722]

no need for edits, paul blart is already in a half life game

[superprofessional-blog]

Exclusive images of Kim Jong Un being carried up that mountain.

[superprofessional-blog]

So I did the biggest thing I'll probably do for a while:

I got to interview Peter Molyneux. You can listen to us talk about ex-PR, Godus, Student Backers and how he's stepping away.

[superprofessional-blog]

Getting lost in a Bizarre Adventure

I've not really written anything in a couple months, so I've been fixing it with this (hopefully regular occurring thing) to do with JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. 

It's just a thing on why I love it so much. It doesn't go into too much detail and you'll have to excuse some of the more basic stuff, but I have to cater to a larger audience than usual. 

"That’s what I love most about the series. It never takes into account how your mind works, just how Araki wants to see it play out. Sometimes it feels like he’s just written up that on the spot and rolled with himself, but in the end it weirdly works out for the better. Yes, the dog just loves to chew on coffee chewing gum and of course Baron Zeppeli will make razors out of wine to hurl at a now zombie-vampire-thing that was Jack the Ripper."

[superprofessional-blog]

Polygon's 'Provisional Reviews' are a bit daft

Arthur Gies, Polygon’s reviews editor has recently updated the way Polygon runs their reviews and will be implementing the new system with Evolve. They’re called Provisional Reviews and they’ll essentially introduce a little thing indicating that you should be cautious.

I like Arthur, he’s vividly opinionated and an excellent writer, but the way he and the team have laid out the reviews for Polygon is an absolute mess.

He starts the explanation (which you can read yourself, here) by stating that “video games don’t release the way they used to”. He’s completely right. With the latest generation of consoles and a heavier emphasis on Early Access on PC, games are releasing either broken - or broken after the public have overrun it - unfinished for curious eyes or in a way that will see them continuing to be updated after the finished product has released (whether that’s through DLC or the like).

Video games have changed entirely. So should reviews, but not like this. Polygon is known for their ‘updateable reviews’, in harsh terms, means the scores don’t mean sod all unless you or they themselves know the game won’t catch fire after a couple days of being in the big wide world.

Now reviews have been in this weird state for the last year or so, with people tackling how to cover Early Access or again, these situations where games are straight up broken. IGN have been running ‘review in progress’, which is essentially an updatable review without a score on a game that hasn’t had time to be properly reviewed or isn’t ready for that ‘definitive’ score. PC Gamer and their Early Access reviews are clearly stated and have no score at all, presumably another review might be written up later should it actually need it or to just formalize it.

I’m one against review scores. I find them distracting and during our online module for university, I discussed at some length about how unnecessary they actually are. If you cannot convey how you feel about a video game in words, then what’s the point? If your main body of text is going to be ignored for the score, then what’s the point? A numerical or starred score is an old review trope that no one can let go of, especially Polygon and they desperately need to.

I understand the need for a score on some websites. Sometimes it brings order and glancing audiences can quickly check what a review might entail from an arbitrary number.

Gies mentions that they’re doing these new types of reviews to combat situations they run into with Metacritic. After giving it a 9.5 and then SimCity ultimately collapsing for weeks and months on end, they lowered the score from 8.0 to 4.0 and back to a 6.5. Metacritic however still lists their review as a 95 and the original review quote. When your scores are ever changing, they mean little and it’s confusing as to why they’d be courting Metacritic anyway.

Polygon isn’t a website that ever needed the type of publicity that Metacritic brings to smaller sites. It has a Vox Media backing, some of the best people in the industry and a whole load of traffic pouring in from their stances on things - however daft they sometimes come out as. Websites like them and in their position, should rid themselves of such a thing. It isn’t needed, because everyone works on different scores. If we had something similar to Rotten Tomatoes, which just determines a positive from a negative review and generates a score based on facts and figures, instead of random numbers (I seriously still don’t understand how anyone can decipher a 3.5 to a yellow box and then a 65 also gets a yellow box), then yes, I’d probably leave this well alone.

By introducing a ‘Provisional’ tag to the reviews, it also eliminates the idea of a review. It’s a recommendation to the consumer from supposed - for lack of a better term - ‘experts’ in the industry. If I see ‘Provisional’, I’m going to deter myself away from that and check somewhere else with a more solid foundation. It turns reviews back into previews with bolted on scores.

You’re no longer recommending a game to me through the medium you intend to. Why should I trust your review and argument for a product I might lay down £40 for, when in a couple days you could easily just change the score and say “Nah, forget about it.” Ditching my attempts at clawing into the industry for a moment and speaking as a consumer, that’s fucking ridiculous.

If I come for a review and find just a limp excuse basically saying “oh, we don’t know yet”, then maybe Polygon should look towards how they’re handling themselves and shift away from reviews all together. Maybe they shouldn’t be publishing things that aren’t ready.

At the end of the day, once I put on my business hat, I can see why they’d want to include this. Reviews on websites such as Polygon, need to go up as quick as they can to bring in the most traffic so it can sustain as a business. It’s why they’re still clinging to things that should be gone. So by attaching these excuses, they can do what they do and still get away with it.

I know the Provisional tag won’t be attached to every review, because not every game will need it, but if we as an audience, don’t know what the fuck you actually think of a game, then why should we continue to read your reviews? What’s the point? If a game is busted out the gate, then give it a bad review. There's no need for tags or updates. The consumer needs to know and if you haven’t got a solid answer, then don’t bother.

[superprofessional-blog]

We're back with another episode of Pixel Shed TV!

Puyo Puyo Tetris! 

Enjoy!

[superprofessional-blog]

We started doing a playthrough of The Wonderful 101! Go have a look!