this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Running With Scissors is a "legendary" developer?
Postal was a violent mess that didn't age well.
Postal 2 was a buggy mess that also didn't age well.
After that, it was just legitimately bad games on top of the humor not aging well. (They literally don't even acknowledge Postal 3)
Seriously, who the fuck would label them legendary? They've been a broken mess for over a decade.
I'd label them legends in the sense that they're probably one of the game studios I know by name the best even though that's all they have to show for it. Postal 2 for as bugged and edgy as it is, is an extraordinarily famous game.
Sure
Ehh.... Even putting aside things like Nintendo.... Let's just say I know the names of actual developers on several small studios, including bad games, and I have no idea of a single person who made Postal
The Titanic is a legendary ship, but it wasn't a very good ship
But everybody has heard about the Titanic.
People who agree with their stance on DRM.
Theres a definite trend of people elevating the value of opinions of those they agree with. It makes any kind of intelligent discourse very hard to do.
They didn't release the third game, it was done by a third party (I believe with some licensing shenanigans?), which is why they don't acknowledge Postal 3. They didn't make it. Which is why they (somewhat recently) have given the A-OK to pirate that game.
I'd assume that last part is why they say legendary.
No one said the legends were good.
You're not the target audience, the target audience is edgy teenage boys. Postal 2 was the perfect game for 13 year old me.
You're right labeling them as "legendary" is just weird tho.
For clicks and to bait comments exactly like this one.
While I'm not fond of the company, and perhaps legendary is a bit excessive, they're still a big name that made remarkable videogames. With Postal 2 they nailed it, can't say about the other 3 because I've never played them.
All this serves to prove is that you have fucking god awful taste
I'm thinking that's gonna be a bit of projection on your part.
I'm honestly disappointed to see people disrespecting two absolute classics in such a way.
I can understand not liking the first postal, but postal 2? I'm afraid there is no hope for you
Glad to know you never grew out of your edgy gamer bro stage. Being able to pee on things is peak gaming, amirite? /s
I'm literally saying this as one of the few people who watched the Postal movie more than once simply because it had David Foley in it and I'm okay with bad movies.
Pretty much, yeah. I don't feel the need to posture as somehow intellectually superior to a game that is designed to be fucking stupid. I appreciate and recognise all art for exactly what it is.
It's more that there's actually games that rise to the level of great art that are designed to be fucking stupid, like Katamari Damacy, which leans hard into absurdism, and is often quite funny, but more importantly the gameplay is original, brilliant, and fun. The art direction in KD is also off the charts quality, especially the music, all of which was written for the game.
Look, I loved Postal 2 back in the day (I always sort of rolled my eyes at Postal, but 2 seemed less serious and more tongue-in-cheek). I might even replay it someday, but it's not great art. Especially now it's ugly, it's clunky, more importantly it continues to be a buggy mess. Not even a Gary Coleman cameo could save it. They were fun games for what they were and for the time they existed in, and it's okay to remember them for that, but it's a little absurd to just act like the world hasn't moved on and that they were great art to begin with. Art direction was bad, level design was bad, there was a lot of bad stuff about the game, beyond even getting into the edgelord shit.
Bad art is okay. I love B-movies, but we don't have to pretend they're anything other than what they are: B-movies.
I'm sorry but that is exactly why postal 2 is good. Unpretentious, offensive, provocative, unpolished raw art designed to generate chaos - whilst simultaneously having that certain charm which is impossible to put into words (hence the cult following) - which is exactly what it did. All of that without punching down (OK there was a bit of dodgy stuff, but for the time period it isn't too bad). Truly one of the greats and you can't change my mind, so we'll have to agree to disagree.
Yeah, it's fine to agree to disagree, but just one caveat
Man this game came out two years after 9/11 and went whole hog on the "all muslims are terrorists" stereotype. It punched down quite a bit.
Just my opinion, but that was an intentionally outrageous caricature of the narrative being served by the US government, and in fact the way many americans viewed Muslims at the time. Or it could be outright racism/sectarianism but idk I haven't looked into it at all. Thats the beauty of postal 2 I guess
I actually agree with you here, but I had a serious experience years later that changed my mind on the whole thing. It's perfectly fine for folks like us who have any kind of media literacy to understand that it's maybe not meant to be making fun of Muslims, but rather America, but...
GTA 5 has this torture scene, right? It hit me like a brick wall one day when I met people who read that scene way, way, way differently than I did. I had read it as an indictment of torture. The problem is, there's way too many people who think that scene is cool as fuck and want to do that kind of shit in real life. It's like the people who look up to Scarface from the movie Scarface. Like these characters aren't good people or people to look up to, but because America is full of violent uneducated fucking yokels you had a bunch of absolute fucking idiots taking the exact opposite message from it. ( I mean, just look at Trump voters...)
You can't control how others interpret your art, and if you're not clear enough, you might end up in a similar position as the people behind Postal 2 and GTA 5, where you have a lot of folks totally misinterpreting what you're trying to say, and then deciding it means vile, horrible things are not just okay, but cool.
It's actually something I worry about a lot in life, because I've had so many times where I thought I was teaching a person one thing, but it turned out I was accidentally teaching them something horrible. In a country with basically no media literacy and an average 7th grade reading level, we can't actually take it for granted that absolute fucking morons might misunderstand us.
The problem in particular with Postal 2's caricature of the views of Muslims in America is that functionally, most Americans who played the game never understood that intent or cared. So when it came down to it, they further entrenched those ideas in the American consciousness, instead of them being read by most people as a critique. Was that their intent? No. Does it matter that the opposite happened? Yes.
That's a valid take, and actually explains why a large number of people will never understand the nuances or even primary message of art. For example, conservatives discovering the true meaning of "killing in the name of" by rage against the machine.
I suppose RWS knew the consequences of this, which reveals the nihilistic backbone of the game's theme.
I'm not sure they knew the consequences, I think at the time, like me, they actually had more faith that the majority of Americans would read it as what it was. As a young person, I definitely thought there were more thoughtful people.
It's easier to critique now, 20 years on, because we're not experiencing the same things the video game industry was at the time. From the insufferable Jack Thompson to Hillary Clinton wanting to ban GTA over the leaked Hot Coffee code that wasn't in the main game, but locked away in files inaccessible to most, the industry was under attack and being blamed for all Americas ills. Several games, but mostly GTA and Postal, were holding up a mirror to American society and saying things similar to what I said in my last comment: "America has a bunch of ignorant violent gun-toting people living in it, and they were there before video games were, it's a violent consumer and celebrity obsessed society, so America maybe you need to sort your problems first before blaming us." At the time, a fair stance to take, but 20 years on, a decision that lead to a lot of negativity and more mixed feelings on the legacy of the game due to it.
It was easy to think back then that acceptance of gaming in the mainstream wasn't a given, but games now out-profit movies, and some of the biggest "blockbusters" are games. We were honestly probably worried over nothing.
I piss on people who talk shit about Postal 2 and then I throw a cow head over their fence. If they dare to continue I get the cat ...
Poor cat, his hole can only take so much