The Creative Act of Listening to a Talking Frog
Kermit the Frog gives a talk on creativity and creative risk-taking
We touched upon the subject of how taking no creative risks leads to creating content that is not only unoriginal, but also casually offensive.
Also, more often than not, the belief in effectiveness of tired formulas seems to go hand-in-hand with this weird conviction that anything an artist makes is inherently “creative” and therefore should not be criticized. Or revised. Which is, to say the least, a pretty damn disingenuous attitude.
~Ozzie
Given this week’s trend on showcasing games so generic that they can literally be using the same assets it seems appropriate to bring back these wise words from Kermit the Frog about creative risk taking.
Also to not-so-subtly hint that there’s a whole lot of potential for creative exploration in the realm of badass women who are not dependent on appealing to the male gaze or wearing ridiculous “armor” to show off that they don’t need armor.
Just saying.
– wincenworks
So apparently HiRez has revealed their newest addition to SMITE, the Celtic goddess The Morrigan… who looks suspiciously like they borrowed fan art from another character who bears the name Morrigan. The video does confirm that they at least read the Wikipedia page, but apparently had no concerns to come up with their own interpretation.
Of course, not all her skins revealed to date look like “empowered” fan art of Bioware’s Morrigan. There’s also one that looks like sexy fan art of Leliana (dressing up as a Dalish elf):
Of course, both are complete with strange woad body art (complete with them treating it as interchangeable with henna) and wear even less than the characters from Dragon Age do, and have zero items of traditional Celtic attire such as
In summary:
– wincenworks
This… is so far the most shameless SMITE got with a female character design.
Unlike with Nike who looks like a lovechild of Zarya and Mercy, no-one in their right mind can argue this Morrigan is an original twist on the mythical figure. Or that any resemblance to a character from a different game is coincidental.
~Ozzie
One of these is from satrical RPG parody game,one is a promo for a pornographic parody and one character from an Applibot game. Applibot claims to make “high quality fantasy” games.
When you’re more ridiculous than ridicule and more porny than porn, it’s time to reconsider your design principles and concept of “high quality”.
– wincenworks
As a follow-up to our last video post illustrating the amazing originality of “sex sells”-based game design and marketing, this week’s throwback is the reminder that arbitrary sexualization basically serves as its own porn and parody already, defeating the purpose of the real things.
Keep in mind that, as far as we know, Applibot does commission original “sexy” artwork for their games instead of stealing and/or asset flipping existing images, yet most of their designs fit squarely into the trend of generic impossible metal bikinis (and sometimes are just outright horrific – open the link at own risk).
So yeah, while directly ripping off someone else is obviously wrong, perpetuating generic sexyness with your own stuff does no good to the industry either.
And most likely will lead to having your generic stuff stolen by the asset flippers anyway.
~Ozzie
The image chosen to go along with this parody headline is so perfect…
Another example of how amazingly acute Point & Clickbait’s satirical articles are.
Let’s take a moment of thoughtful appreciation for the fact that they devoted an article to concisely sum up a huge chunk of our “creative freedom” tag.
~Ozzie
The ongoing saga of people getting outraged that Blizzard uses their beta period as a beta period and adjusts the game. It’s worth mentioning that Blizzard also removed a tasteless masturbation joke at the same time.
Perhaps one day, Blizzard will be the kind of company who upon declaring their game is to improve representation will fix these issues before they publicly showcases a beta with finished art.
– wincenworks
More on Overwatch on BABD | More on Blizzard on BABD | More satire on BABD
Ordinarily we wait longer before we bring back posts but it seems that there’s been a recent event involving a certain product we post about from time to time, and the response by certain demographics has been woefully predictable.
In case you missed it: Blizzard has revealed via a comic for people who enjoy Overwatch and want more fluff (x): Tracer lives with her female romantic partner. How did the aforementioned demographic reply?
(Best view on Twitter: here, here and here)
So yes, predictably it turns out that the people who are used to being pandered to constantly don’t actually appreciate creative freedom – they just think it makes a cool catchphrase (or magic incantation in some cases).
There was, however, a bright side: the response from women who celebrated that Overatch’s mascot character was confirmed to a lady attracted to ladies, and loudly reaffirmed their appreciation of as well as their right to representation. That was truly awesome.
– wincenworks
