Dear WarGirlGames

I am asking WarGirlGames a question about their planned release, My Little Dictator. Since KickStarter doesn't allow open comments on projects without pledging money, in case the creator chooses not to answer it publicly I'm also posting it here. I see Nazi imagery used so frequently in the games and comic industry and I'm just so tired of ignoring it, so, yes, I get angry. Who wouldn't?

Dear WarGirlGames,

I was wondering what possibly possessed you to think that this project could be okay.

So, Sims 4, am I right?

Right so I'm the type of Sims player where my guys are a high-end fish tank. I dress them up pretty, give them a home, pat them on the butt and send them on their way. I'll occasionally dip in and see what the haps are but for the most part it's just really making sure there aren't any inadvertent fires and that nobody is a vampire.

With that in mind, I'm still holding my breath with this new Sims 4 business. Death of the body mod sliders is cause for massive celebration, and the idea of favourites and preferences actually having any relevance is crazy ace, but I swear to goodness, EA, you touch my Create a Style and I will cut you up. You put that CAS back in there if you have to jam it in and ducktape it with code so sloppy even I can understand it's poor construction.

I'm psyched for the up-coming year, really, like I am everytime a new Sims pops out the oven. A year's a suitably long enough time for us to all get computers that can actually run the game, and hopefully in a couple of months we'll start seeing our first pudding-face simbabies.

I review Dragon Age: Origins and battle my on-going games related trust issues

Now let's talk about promises, Bioware.

I don't know if this was written first and then the game happened
or if they wrote the game then went
'oh, shit'

I don't really know what to say. I should've expected it, because nobody explicitly goes out of their way to deny anything unless there's a real good reason why people would think something. 

Sten and me are still pals though because he
actually is questioning his understanding of gender roles

What's frustrating is that in playing a game set in Medieval-esque times, I don't expect equality, really. Yes, I would like it, very, very much, especially when it's an Elves-and-Dwarves Magicathon. I'm even excited when games like the Elder Scrolls don't go out of their way to make me feel like I have defend my decision to have my ugly little sasquash dwarf throw her cheap ass sword around. In a world where physical strength can come from magic as well as muscle I don't really get the big deal of just letting me have my escapism, but whatever. Apparently that is a thing people like, having sexism in a game, so I'll just leave it alone when nobody pretends it isn't there.

would you like a story, Warden
would you like it to be about how 50% of the population suck

Don't get my hopes up. That's what makes me mad. That's what makes me hate your game where I'd have probably liked it in the way you do when you've played something for 10 hours and can't really not complete it anymore. I would have pretty happily chuntered along hearing about how I shouldn't have been forcibly recruited into this stupid blood death cult by a dude who tricked me when I was at my lowest by being nice to me in a world otherwise filled with suffering. I'll just hand in my sword, then. Oh wait, I can't. The game doesn't let me do that either.

there was no response option for 'THIS WASN'T WHAT THE CHARACTER 

CREATOR PROMISED ME'

Where was I?

you are right they technically didn't make me, they cultivated a bond of trust

that persuaded me to volunteer that they then shattered via death poison I was forced to drink

Right, right, betrayal. I guess I just don't really see what you thought you were doing when you lied to me like that, since in other games where there's covert sexism, like in the gender ratio that you don't really notice unless you're used to dissecting media, could probably get away with it, your game is so raging with it. 

where did that kid hear this from that he then repeated later
i am going to punch your fictional non existent NPC parents so hard kid

so hard

From every corner, and every race. Every dude comments on my characters beauty and near everyone has a sass to make about my having both tits and a greatsword. This isn't little bits here and there that come from someone at the fringes of society. This is a deeply imbued sexism that reflects our society. 

this was my first taste of Bioware equality

I CAN EVEN CHOOSE MY CHARACTER TO PROPAGATE IT. Which just makes me sad, you know? And I don't know if I should be even sadder, because this is what you think an equal society looks like. That even when men and women are considered equal, it's still just a 'fact' that women are weaker, more cowardly then men? 

Morrigan Explains It All

Whatever. I'm hooked, and I'm still playing Dragon Age: Origins. Your game, like Duncan, has given me minor Stockholm syndrome. 20 hours in and I will probably finish this game, eventually, if just for my dumb stupid brilliant wardog Beans and our shared character histories. 

Papers, Please

Papers, Please is a treasure, do you hear me. Fuck impartiality in games reviews. Papers, Please is a treasure and you should go and play it. I mean, all right, things went a little bit tits up and I may have ended up getting me killed and my family killed and the country going to shit but honestly when you give a humble boarder crossing guard that kind of responsibility you have to expect a little bit of rough sailing before the smooth, gentle seas of submitting yourself to totalitarian repression.

I'm probably moving too fast here for the guys not in the loop in regards to the latest indie simulator hit. Papers, Please, is a game by Luca Pope, also creator of 6 Degrees of Sabotage and the Republica Times. You play as a boarder inspector for the newly reopened Arstotzka Grenin gates and do keep up, because you are quickly going to have to learn on the fly, checking documentations and passports and being absolutely, concrete sure you're letting the right guys in lest you and your family pay the price.

As with all of Pope's games you play a fairly unimportant little man in a very important position. You have a lot of power, tenuoisly, and will inevitably turn somewhat into a monster as your family start to starve because you tried to do a one fingered salute to the system. There's big plot, and there's little plot. You have a lot of agency to play how you want providing you're prepared to deal with the consequences; sure, play the countries hero. Or you could actually make sure your son doesn't starve to death by earning the daily bread.

Right, facts. Lucas Pope does everything, and he should be applauded because this game is beautiful. There's been somewhat of a spate of games that are too dreary for my tastes, but Pope has a hard enough grasp of colour that while soviet greens, greys and sludges are the ruling class it serves to make the few splashes of vibrancy pop.

Papers, Please, £6.99 available on steam, GOG.com and Lucas Pope's personal website where also a class act demo can be found for the people that'll want to give it a bash before they commit.

ME AND DEAF IN CONVERSATION

I am temporarily partially deaf in one ear, which, while hilarious for me and a massive excuse to ignore people I think are talking to me, is incredibly irritating for almost everyone I come into contact with. 

MY STUDIO HAS A LOT GOING ON

ME and my boss only have a handful of years between us, which is something we're not talking about. What this means is that he listens to all those early 2000's albums which ring out to the roaring early 2000's when we came of music age. Morcheeba, Macy Gray, Ian Brown. Not that I don't love this daily nostalgia, sometimes it gets too much. I have to tag out from time to time. Plus, there is a reason I measure drawing time in terms of how many episodes of Angry Chef's Shoutie Angry Kitchen it took, all right, I need to get in the zone and hearing the pleas of a man intensely emotional over risotto is basically the only way it's going to happen.

Unfortunately our studio's this massive communal love fest so at any any one point someone will be giving me some very meaningful critique over my shoulder that I have absolutely no way of hearing. Because they haven't gotten used to the whole deaf thing yet they take one look at my headphone-less ear and chat away, wait for me to make some twitch of agreement and wander off. Most of the time this is harmless, but once I looked back only to realise that our Creative Director had assembled two 7" high shelving units on his own and bought everyone lunch. I mean, he could've been trapped under those things and I would have had no idea. He wouldn't have gone to Costa and we'd have spent the afternoon trying to de-corpse the air-con vents, which some helpful sod built into the floors* like they thought people wanted an air-conditioning unit that doubled as trap for all of our snacks and usb sticks.

WOAH MY COMPUTER'S BUILT IN SPEAKERS GO PRETTY LOUD HUH

SINCE headphones are out for me and my poor, crippled ear, my housemate's got to find out that I listen to MIA's BAD GIRL at 6a.m while I do yoga. I am sure she appreciates it.

I HEAR YELLING AND I'M NOT TURNING ROUND IN CASE IT'S A FIGHT

IT'D be weird to make an announcement that I've got reduced hearing, wouldn't it? do people really care about this stuff? I had a friend tell me she enjoys hearing all the little everyday stuff people do on tumblr and facebook even if she doesn't reply to it, but my experience of these things is that I'll tell people and by the time everyone's caught up, I'll be fine and the whole process'll have to be repeated.

Case in point: a large portion of my friends still think I'm vegetarian. I was vegetarian for about a year and a half when I was 14. I don't have too much of a problem with this since it means I get morality points for having the most ethical meal at the dinner table even if I am eyeing that steak filet, but I do feel like it's a little unfair. Guy, have I ever once been surprised that you didn't turn up dressed in a Boxcar Racer t-shirt and streaky black hair? Besides, if we're basing facts about current me based on the preferences of me as a 14 year old, I'd like it if we forgot that I'm too old and mature now to talk about Super Saiyans.

So between this and the fact that the amount I need to wear glasses is directly inverted to how much I remember to wear glasses, this leaves me is having a few solid weeks where I've been walking past people I know like they've got a scarlet letter on them. I know this isn't new, I get blanked by people all the time that're totally oblivious, but there's something more unsettling about not seeing or hearing someone because you're absorbed in your own thoughts or got headphones on and when you genuinely can't.

PPFFFCCCHHHHTTTTTTTTTTTT TTTTT

THAT'S pretty much all I can hear while you are talking unless we are in a completely silent room.

ADDENDUM: I am not going to kiss or fight you, I'm just staring at your lips in a vein attempt that I don't have to say 'what' every 30 seconds.

IT'S BEEN TWO WEEKS I DO NOT KNOW SIGN LANGUAGE

BECAUSE my school was a state school, I learnt some swear words in year 6. Because it was a state school in the quaint English countryside, these swear words were in British Sign Language. I'm not sure why we all learnt them, since it's fairly obvious when a 10 year old is being a dick. They could be speaking moon-speak. They could be underwater- not the shallow nice bit where Nemo hangs out at, we're talking the part where there's fish that're essentially waking nightmares, the depths of water that mirror humanities deepest despair kind of underwater, and you could know when a 10 year old was being a dick. But we did and now I couldn't ask someone if they were all right or needed help, but I could tell them to fuck right off.

Great.

* These vents grills can fit: usb sticks, trail-mix, weight-bearing screws from my desk, chip forks, wire coat hanger hooks. They can't fit my panic stricken sausage fingers down, or wotzits.