Faegbeard

If I actually wanted to talk about morality properly and not just in passing I wouldn't have used an umbrella term like that. I fail to see how being reductive allows for greatly expanded dialogue, at least in depth or meaning. Agreed. I also want to point out that my Original Beef™ (Not to be confused with Historical Beef) with Tycho's comment was mostly over the, "Anyone who disagrees with a single word she said needs to reevaluate their life, basically," as I feel like that's an extremely poor way to approach a pretty much anything, especially in an open forum of discussion.

It seems counter intuitive to be that reductive about it when you're trying to get people to understand that it's a complex thing. Like I said, I'm naive and believe most people are inherently good.

That seems like a cop out. If the gravity was so great it would be explainable. See, like that. It's explainable why women don't like that and it's not particularly difficult to explain. Using the word privilege in that case is just a lazy substitute for a better explanation. As for examples, I feel like when people use it in the pejorative sense they use it as, "You're better off than me and I think I have problems, but you can't understand them so I won't even bother explaining." Heck, sometimes they even call me a straight white male as if it were an insult. The African child was a an extreme example. My bad I guess. Privilege as you're describing it seems like a pointless label though. I don't need to know how 'privileged' someone is to want to help them, I don't need an imaginary banner-word to recognize that people are different to me. I don't see how that makes people more empathetic if they're thinking, "How well off is this person compared to me?" Assigning a value to a person like that seems like the opposite of understanding and compassion to me. Compiling the infinite complexities of another human's life under a single word like that just seems really, really, well... Silly, for lack of a better word. I misread something. My mistake.

I doubt there's many people in the first world who don't know that there are lots of people whose lives are terrible compared to theirs. People don't need to be learn about that, they need to learn to give a shit. Furthermore, just because people have it worse than me isn't an excuse for me not to try to make my life better.

Yes, and? If that's all 'privilege' is then it makes no sense to use it as a pejorative against people who were luckier than you. Just as it would make no sense for me to make fun of some starving African kid. I've done very little to earn my living thus far and they have probably done nothing to deserve to starve. Throwing the word privilege around does shit all compared to actually helping people; all it does is create another way divide people by class. Also being white and living in China isn't exactly a privilege. :3 And if I had a way to change that for them I would but I can't so I don't let it bother me because if it did I would be sad all the time. That doesn't explain why people (often from other first world counties, mind you), use it as a pejorative. None of which is accomplished by telling me that people have worse lives than mine. Everybody knows that.

To put it bluntly, and this is going to sound much meaner than I intend; It is not my problem. I try to treat everyone I meet with respect, I try not to discriminate based on anything, and so on. However, there is no onus on me to feel any better or worse about myself as a person just because someone else got the short end of the genetic stick or because they were born into riches or squalor. I can't speak about limbs, disabilities or gender identity, but being gay has not been that difficult for me and I would never ask other people to feel differently about being straight just because I exist. I heard Melbourne was full of Hipsters and really left wing people. Is there any truth to that? I was going to go to PAX and find out for myself but they sold out of 3 day passes really quickly.

Huh. I didn't get that feeling from it at all. Perhaps a little condescending since it's mostly common sense, but no more than that. True. Especially that last part. I think it's important to point out though that people who are against things like Affirmative Action or feminism aren't necessarily perpetuating that behavior (racism, sexism etc), but are possibly just against their methods or are misinformed about them. Edit: The concept of "Privilege" is also a thing that doesn't really exist here. I'm lucky that I wasn't born into squalor and that's about it.

I live in Australia near a decent sized city. I guess sexism is less prevalent here, which is somewhat ironic because people here are known for using the word 'cunt' in every other sentence.

The only one of those that as ever applied to me was being careful walking around less than desirable areas of town at night, and that's got more to do with being robbed/beaten/assaulted in general, guys avoid walking around there was often as possible too. Personally, I have never heard anyone make excuses like that for rape. If people imply that it's the woman's fault (and not in jest), they must be a very small and vocal minority, surely. Edit: This is getting somewhat tangential to video games (but I did ask, I guess).

What in the actual fuck? That seems completely insane to me; I've never been told not to get raped, literally or metaphorically.

I'm naive and would like to think that the majority of people have at least some basic common decency. I'll read the links in the mean time. Edit: Not doing much for me I'm afraid. The fozmeadows stuff to me seems extremely opinionated and subjective to me and at times completely silly bordering slightly insane. I still don't know what "rape culture" is supposed to be. The advertising stuff I mostly agree with, it is kinda gross, but for the for most part doesn't really exist inside a work of fiction and thus isn't entirely relevant. The science direct thing looked promising but I have to buy it to actually read it apparently, which is a shame.

To me (and again I may be wrong and stupid), that says that there is an accepted culture of sexism to some degree and that influences the amount of sexism in games, not the other way around. I don't think that sexism in video games feeds back into society and therefore it is harmless, much like violence in video games. I don't think it normalizes actual sexism any more than it normalizes actual violence.

Does it though? That same statement doesn't really hold up for violence or anything else. That sounds that a problem in broader society than a problem with video games. That said, this is coming from someone who has experienced next to no violence or sexism in their life, so my view may be somewhat skewed. I would also like some sources for things like the "tangible bad effects" you talked about.

This may just be a difference of opinions (or maybe I'm just an asshole), but I don't equate objectification of a fictional character with objectification of an actual person or sexism directed at an actual person. Similarly (this may be a bit of a leap), I don't equate violence in video games with violence in real life. Ripping a dudes head off or shooting at ambiguously brown terrorists forever is just as gross and crude, but I don't find it morally objectionable because it's being inflicted on a fictional character.

I sorta disagree with that. It's crude and silly, sure, but I think it's a valid plot element for a crude and silly game. Considering the game consists pretty much entirely of beating up every thug in the world forever, punching and kidnapping a questionably dressed woman is no more "regressive" than the rest of the game.

As a kid I dressed up as Link for halloween or something and everything kept calling me Zelda. Fuck that right in the neck. Maybe I'm the minority on this, but when I play games seeing myself represented is something that I really don't give a damn about at all. I want more diverse characters in games, but only because it'd make games more diverse and interesting as a whole.

Upon reflection I am very confused as to why this generated such strong positive and negative hype/discussion/backlash as it did.

I might be a silly person, but I don't remember much being addressed in the video at all beyond, "This trope exists and here are examples."

This seems kinda surface level and pretty basic for something that had $160,000 behind it and took 9 months. It also doesn't really seem to say anything despite being 23 minutes of talking. It's not bad per se but I don't see why it needed a kickstarter and all that jazz; it just seems like an average youtube speech.

The fact that each character in Karateka has a little cutscene and different movesets made me purposefully lose the last bossfight as the Monk so that I could see the Brute. I was not dissapointed with the brute ending.

Planetside 2 Thumbs Platoon when?

I wasn't thinking about the announcer when I said that. I am silly. Odd that voice lines from early builds are still just sitting in there though. Also that they actually recorded good quality dialogue about a joke.

I was leafing through the voice files for Lich and there's one that's just, "Shitty Wizard." It seems out of place because I don't remember there being any straight up swearing in the game. Thumbs reference or am I missing something?

Yeah, the disparity between the award nominees and the absolute garbage filler stuff was really strange, I was expecting Blops 2 and Halo 4 to get awarded everything. It also seems odd that Jackson's whole shtick existed even though he was MCing for what appeared to be a room full of adults and people in the industry. The whole thing left me feeling baffled and ill.

Jake should have backed into Samuel L Jackson's arm.