4021

Plonk him so he can finally achieve release and you can spend your time more productively. Like hitting your own head with a mallet, for example. The bar is low.

4022

This is so weird…
I don’t play hearthstone at all, so I don’t really know what the deal is with it… but, ignoring the fact that there’s seemingly no reason for anyone to believe that this person isn’t who they say they are… even if you imagined that the story of the complex crazytown maneuver of two people pretending to be one person to play Hearthstone was true… why exactly would that be bad?

I mean, is there some special aspect of Hearthstone where it would be advantageous for someone to create some fictional female persona as a frontman for their play? I mean, back in ye olden days, Somethingawful would run stories of a guy who pretended to be a woman and then would con dorks into giving him free shit and stuff in WoW… but it doesn’t seem like any of that was even suggested here.

It’s like some people are like, “Hey, I think this person is actually a guy! WOOOOOOOOOOO!” Why would it even matter if that were the case? They talk about things like Blizzard investigating it and crap… why would blizzard give one fuck about it?

Like I said, I don’t actually know anything about the game itself, so maybe I’m missing some key point… but it seems like, not only is it a baseless accusation, but it’s a baseless accusation of something which isn’t even something worth anyone caring about anyway. What am I missing?

4023

Too true - sorry about that. I’m going to instead post about games, movies and books for a while, or use spare time to instead try to get through my (so far) 125 hour replay of Dragon Age: Origins and DLC (which I’m really enjoying).

4024

Really? Can you name one? Which game of ours didn’t deserve coverage? And have you bought or played Depression Quest?

Depression Quest resonated with a lot of people with depression, so they upvoted it on Greenlight. Many people have claimed it literally saved their lives. Who is anyone to say they’re wrong?

Many people? What constitutes many? 0? 1?

Besides, I have no objection to Depression Quest anyway. So you’re wasting your time constructing some strawman about it. My professional opinion is that it wouldn’t normally have gotten coverage except that ZQ did a good PR job on it which I also have no problem with.

Bringing Zoe Quinn’s sex life and personal relationships into this is just fucking scummy. There are infinite variables that contribute to the publicity behind a game, and there’s no concrete evidence that Zoe Quinn’s personal relationships or sex life caused Depression Quest to get more press than it deserved.

I agree. Are you attempting to knock down some strawman or something? I don’t think anyone in this thread has suggested that DQ got coverage because Quinn was sleeping with journalists.

What IS being said is that there are people who believe that is the case. I think they are wrong.

Bringing it up is just misogynistic bullshit. No male developer has ever received such horrific, deplorable scrutiny.

LOL.

How many posts are there on this thread? Do you have any idea how many forums allowed for uncensored, unmoderated discussion on that?

Now, 2 years later, we can only point and shame those who said the vile things in those threads but the fact is, when something that appears illicit comes up, people talk about it. It has nothing to do with misogyny.

And, once again, on the “Gamers are Dead” bullshit:

Yes, I can choose to believe it. Because someone else already did the work to look through all of those articles.

And I didn’t even need someone else to tell me what to think. I read the articles myself and formed my own opinion – colored by the fact that I personally know many of the writers and have been dealing with the gaming press for two decades as part of my job.

To re-iterate:

It’s the exact same thing that happens around the internet every day. Re-postings, commenting, re-blogging, whatever. There is nothing unique about this story that doesn’t happen with countless other stories every day.

Except, only one side of the argument was allowed to be posted on many sites. Multi-thousand post threads were deleted off Reddit and elsewhere.

What made this unique was that a small group of gamers criticized the gaming media, the media responded by throwing a temper tantrum and made massively broad strokes accusing gamers, IN GENERAL, of having misogynistic tendencies.

The basic problem with the gaming media is that some of them don’t realize there’s a whole world outside their bay area cocoon.

You’re just so fucking convinced there’s a devious conspiracy that that’s all you can see.

What conspiracy? That like minded people tend to react consistently to a particular issue is not a conspiracy.

4025

Typically zoolock attitude!

4026

Re nerds eating nerds

I’m not so sure about this. I’m actually friends with Stillgray (Ian Miles Cheong a very very vocal anti-gg) and we talked at length on this issue on the phone recently.

I think part of it is that you have the first two groups mentioned: the butt-hurt nerds (i.e. the ones who carry the resentment from HS long after) and the “regular nerds” being confronted by the drama club from high school who are latching on to something to get the attention they so desperately desire.

4027

That you are applying rational adult thought processes to teenage boys?

Back in 1998, in the what was then the notoriously rough and tumble world of competitive Q2 the top clan in the UK had a woman, with others in the community, and no one blinked. Maybe todays younger generations are just broken. Even the most obnoxious teenage twats inhabiting UK Q2 wouldn’t go so far as the personal attacks and bullying you see today.

4028

So, Lum has offered himself up to the gods of justice, and leapt into the volcano known as gamergate and KotakuInAction. Something to do with Mark Kern, which frankly I don’t care about. (the Mark Kern/VG247 spat that is)

I spotted this little nugget though.

DqqznMf.jpg961×73

4029

You’re behind the Meta. Mech Mage.

4030

Thanks gamergate for making this stuff so common and so closely associated with gamers.

4031

Anyone can quote idiots.

but it takes a bit of additional thinking to use those quotes to run a counter-t-shirt t-shirt campaign*. For charity.

  • #gamergates outrage du jour are the anti-gamergate t-shirts.
4032

Fist off, I wrote that before I noticed your PM to me. It doesn’t change my response, but I just figured you should know.

But back to the fray.

No. My response to your lame analogy would be “we can’t stop murder until we actually recognize that people are killing each other”. You get your hackles up and cry ‘racism’ whenever anyone even mentions anything about race, and that the white, male point of view is the dominant one in our society. You can’t even begin to be more inclusive of alternate points of view and cultures until you recognize that one, simple fact. Much of the time, people (myself included- I’m no better, but I try to be) are so wrapped up in their world, they don’t even consider that there could be another one, or a thousand, a million other ones. The only way to make those known is by speaking up. I’ve said it before, the sooner that there stops being an outcry from conservatives every time the world tries to be more culturally inclusive, the sooner comics like that ‘Thor’ issue you posted will cease to be written.

4033

Anita Sarkeesian spells out what she’d like to see change in video games. Long, rambling article about her presentation.

tl;dr

  1. Avoid the Smurfette principle (don’t have just one female character in an ensemble cast, let alone one whose personality is more or less “girl” or “woman.”)
  2. “Lingerie is not armor” (Dress female characters as something other than sex objects.)
  3. Have female characters of various body types
  4. Don’t over-emphasize female characters’ rear ends, not any more than you would the average male character’s.
  5. Include more female characters of color.
  6. Animate female characters to move the way normal women, soldiers or athletes would move.
  7. Record female character voiceover so that pain sounds painful, not orgasmic
  8. Include female enemies, but don’t sexualize those enemies
4034

Right. And that’s her comment on it.

Really, if some of the people here actually read film criticism, or literary criticism their heads would explode. There’s a LOT of back and forth on this sort of stuff. Debate is good.

PS, the Three Act Structure is lazy, janky and boringly predictable.

4035

To briefly way overstretch myself here, I think the way Desslock and Brad et al. brag about putting me on ignore(and then like, hilariously, hold little cheerleading parties about that) is part of the gamer psyche.

If you can’t answer the question, “What, exactly, is it that you’re angry about here?”, well, the obvious response is to throw the controller and rage quit. Blame the game, not the player. It’s UNFAIR that I asked that question.

4036

I’d probably agree with all those points to some degree or another. I’ve always hated boob armor and been annoyed by every female being a super model for no good reason.
1,2,3,6 and 7 would all be pluses across the board as far as I’m concerned.

4037

Some of these could make stories better, others are useless. Adding a female character of color would quickly result on a trope, is quite literally asking for a “token female color”.

Good luck having womens and not sexualizing them. Are we talking about stories for human beings, or she want these stories to be wrote for aliens? Sex in New York and Fifty Shades of Grey are two of the most popular “for womens” stories on recent pop culture, there sex is central… This seems to me more political than practical or even honest, more like feel good recomendations?

4038

I tend to agree on the “females of color” end of things. Though it can be done more than it is (which is basically not at all). I think the danger of Tokenism is a real one.

As far as not sexualizing, that’s a tougher call. I think it can be done pretty easily, and it has been done many times. I guess I don’t see it as a real issue for the most part. Pulling from anime: Is Esdeath from Akame ga Kill less awesome because of her sexualization? I don’t think so. Is Revy from Black Lagoon sexualized? Not really… but kind of? But not really.

As far as video games, most are fairly sexless in most cases. Unless she means “don’t make them all have their tits hanging out everywhere for no reason” in which case it really goes back to point #2. Sex is part of what makes people people. Sure it shouldn’t be everything, or even the main focus most of the time, but to say you shouldn’t have it at all feels kind of arbitrary.

Now I’m trying to think of female antagonists who are “sexualized” and drawing a blank. I mean there must be some out there.

Um… the Darkspawn Broodmothers? I mean… maybe if you’re into… whatever that is. But they’re also kind of, well, Broodmothers. If I have an ant queen is that sexualized because she just exists to breed more ants? That’s kind of how the whole thing works.

4039

Heheh.

4040

Also, I think she missed an important point:

Stop giving reptiles breasts.

Seriously. It’s stupid. If I see another lizard/dragon woman with tits I may lose my damned mind.