As many of you are no doubt aware, I wrote an article on here yesterday which can be summarised thus: "Just chill out about Far Cry 5 a bit, yeah?". I thought it was a sort of reasonable point to make, and that the most controversial element was me being deliberately - and, I have to say, slightly tongue-in-cheekily - patronising to the current generation of games journos. The joke being that, y'know, I was/am a games journo, and I'm now a grumpy old man.
But nooooo! I walked into a whole minefield about politics in games, which wasn't my intent at all. I'm fine with there being politics in games! I just thought, y'know, does anybody dedicate 50% or more of a review of Transformers 7 to its lack of political content? That's what Far Cry games are; they're blockbusters, designed to appeal to the widest possible demographic. And just as I'd argue that Transformers films have their place - and are just as valid as, say, Speilberg's The Post - so I argue that it's okay to have these triple-A games which only require you to switch off your brain.
But no. It all kicked off; "Mr Biffo's a prick", "I hate him", blah blah. We had some cancelled Digitiser the Show Kickstarter pledges, and y'know...
The name-calling doesn't really affect me deeply - the second you resort to that you've lost the high ground - it just makes me a bit sad that people allow themselves to get so worked up about something which, ultimately doesn't matter. You're choosing the wrong battles, and picking the wrong person to have a pop at. What you're angry at and hating on isn't really me (or who you think is me, given that you'd don't know me) and I'm relatively confident that I'm neither a "prick" or really done anything that deserves to be hated.
Nevertheless it does make me sad. It's just such an ugly and depressing overreaction. I'm pretty sure I'm a decent person who treats others well, and - when I occasionally get that sort of thing thrown at me - it makes me want to wash my hands of human beings, and withdraw, because I just can't be arsed with it... Which isn't fair, because the majority of you are lovely and reasonable. But anyway. Hey - one week to go until the Kickstarter for Digitiser The Show ends!
Onto the Digitiser Friday Letters. Unfortunately, this week we had very few letters, and most of those we got were all massive. Brace yourselves.
If you'd like to appear here, or you've something you'd like me to give some attention to in our occasional Plug Zone, please send your filthy emails early to this place here: digitiser2000@gmail.com