Reply All: #105 At World's End

September 22, 2017 5:41 PM

Phia helps a listener track down a mythical, vanished video game.

For now, the game is playable at this link

posted by bq (7 comments total)

Huh the game is not at all what I expected from the podcast. It's a sort of sim-lite, you build and craft and farm and stuff. The slavery thing comes right at the start, the way you buy worker bunnis.

I liked the podcast OK but I would have preferred 3x more about Newgrounds and less about this particular game and the story of the woman who was looking for it. I mean it's poignant, but there's a zillion stories like that. OTOH Reply All is uniquely good at telling those stories so it does play to strengths
posted by Nelson at 5:00 AM on September 24, 2017

I liked that they talked about the way a lot (maybe the majority) of people play games. The game itself sounds like misogynist crap but also love that they shared this story where, as happens in the complicated real world, this sexist game was really meaningful to connecting in a female friendship!
posted by latkes at 1:53 PM on September 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

I felt...dissatisfied with this story. Normally the "Reply All goes searching for something" leads them down interesting, windy rabbit holes, but this one not as much.

I'm a little confused about the stripper bunni. So the game had two love interest bunnis and the Australian guy turned the true love bunni into a stripper bunni and the original guy just said ok?
posted by radioamy at 5:31 PM on September 25, 2017

Yeah my interpretation was the game featured two sexist trope bunnis: Bunni one just wants you for your money, and true love bunni who is a sexy stripper. Apparently, ostensibly non-sexist game writer guy went along with Australian coder guy's sexist interpretation of the bunnis.
posted by latkes at 5:50 PM on September 25, 2017

I don't think the game writer felt he had a choice, since he couldn't code, and the coder seemed flaky enough as it was...
posted by rikschell at 5:57 PM on September 25, 2017

Yeah, I got that vibe too, although at least the way the interview was edited, he seemed kind of passive about the situation.
posted by latkes at 5:59 PM on September 25, 2017

I really enjoyed this program.

The idea that someone would spend hours making a crudely rendered bunny do a strip tease seems really weird. I can't entirely justify that claim: making a crudely rendered bunny farm carrots, or engage in bunny-banking, or fly from a hang-glider doesn't seem nearly as strange. Perhaps it shows an unhealthy division between erotic and non-erotic activities in my own head, but an animated strip tease seems cheesy in a way the other activities don't. (That the two female characters in the game are awful sexist stereotypes is a much bigger problem, but so common it somehow seems less cringe-worthy than the strip tease detail.)

As someone just a couple of years too old to have been engaged by Newgrounds, that part of the story is fascinating. I can't tell whether I'm just a jaded asshole, or whether the world really has changed significantly since 1998, but the idea that a flash game in which you click a mouse to club baby seals would be considered shocking seems adorably quaint.
posted by eotvos at 12:26 PM on October 2, 2017