anthonyRichard

I think most of them are saying "Scooooops!", which sounds like booing. [Edit:] Beaten. So anyway, a silver lining is that with all this intense scrutiny on the games press these past few weeks, there hasn't been any confirmed incidents of corruption unearthed. I think this raises some other disappointing problems with them, but anyone who wasn't already sure can now rest easy that corruption probably isn't something to worry about in the games press. Doesn't really seem worth it, though, like finding a dollar in a bucket of shit.

"It's cool guys, in response to your concerns we've banned our writers from supporting people they like, and now have 'full disclosure' of the most trifling bullshit imaginable", meanwhile the person who is bearing the brunt of the attack, who should be the least able to do so, does actual investigative reporting & exposes the real conspiracy. Cool, cooool [edit:] That's not actually fair of me. The enthusiast press doesn't have apparatus to do investigative reporting. It's not in their remit as it actually practiced, so it's not really fair to judge them for failing to do any. It's still massively disappointing, though.

That was in relation to fantasy settings that use history at set-dressing, picking & choosing which particular elements of history they want to use in their version, but always 'coincidentally' picking the elements that happen to be sexist or where white people are the most powerful. If we are talking about a setting that is supposed to be the literal real world, then I don't think that's an appropriate argument to use. The 'this is how it actually is' argument is perfectly valid in the context of a story set in the real world. You might use a different argument, like 88% is not 100% and that's still plenty of room for a minority protagonist. However, I don't think that developers should be expected to write minority protagonists for every single game until the representation problem is completely solved (this point is not directed at you, tegan), that seems like a naive understanding of the underlying problem & the plausible potential solutions to it. It's a problem if that's all a particular dev ever does, but I think it's obvious that's not the case here.

I appreciate the sentiment, but boy do they have a track-record to overcome.

I have reached a point now where I can only feel sad for these people. My anger has all burned up for this thing and now whenever I see some new idiocy I just feel a sharp pang of sadness.

I almost didn't read the other books in the series after reading this one, I just assumed they weren't going to be for me. I'm really glad I kept going. This is the weakest book in the Culture series, by far. Don't be afraid of jumping around a bit, these books aren't really serialized, they are mostly standalone books that happen to occur in the same universe. Read Use of Weapons.

That doesn't seem like that big a deal? A community where anyone, regardless of actual expertise, felt like they could take critical discourse seriously and engage with it without fear or anger actually seems like a huge step forward from where we are now. I wish that were the big problem we had to solve.

There is a part of me that thinks that if we were more able to be visibly critical of whatever aspects of Sarkeesians videos we disagreed with, while still visibly & explicitly supporting her, then some portion of these people would see that it's actually okay to disagree with her while still supporting what she is doing. That you don't need to internalize absolutely everything she is saying 100% uncritically and still be able to think she is doing something valuable and admirable. The other, more cynical, part of me thinks that this could never work & people would misinterpret any kind of disagreement or criticism as endorsement of their harassment & permission to continue shut her down however they can.

Disappointing, though not surprising, I suppose. I guess he decided to go back to ranting about abortion.

Richard Dawkins retweeted someone supporting Sarkeesian/linking to that polygon article about her death-threats. We live in a weird world. What is going on.

Yeah, I agree. Personally I think disclosure of Patron funding is silly, but probably necessary for pragmatic reasons, seeing how many people seem to have concerns with it. But a blanket ban? Crazy. Bullshit, even.

I've noticed more girl avatars than guys, but it's probably indiscriminate. I think I just remember more girl avatars because of the extra mental effort of 'wait, is this a girl saying this misogynist shit? oh, wait, right'

@MadJackalope Ignoring the appallingly tasteless & off-base Ferguson analogy and the comment that 'OF COURSE' Patreon is an investment, as though that were settled or uncontroversial, you just think that there should be more disclosure? How much more? Polygon & Kotaku have already updated their policies in regards to Patreon, the Kotaku one in particular being pretty stringent. Is that enough now, or are you insinuating something else going on?

Great episode. I appreciate the head-on discussion of the horrible shit that is going on. It's a pity Danielle wasn't here this week.

As an aside, I was unaware of the FYC until this whole thing, but that these have quickly become the public faces of the 'reasonable gamer' push-back against the corrupting SJW influence is just ... I lack the words to describe how incredibly perfect it is. Sometimes caricatures are real, folks.

There is no practical sense in which it could matter whether or not it is a gift. The functional purpose of regarding the acceptance of large gifts as being unethical is that it may influence the opinion of the writer about the game or company. An E3 ticket isn't from a specific game or company. It is from an organization representing the entire games industry (or some significant portion of it). There is no plausible situation in which the opinion of the writer could be influenced in favor of any specific game or game company by the 'gift' of an E3 ticket, and so it is ethically neutral. A PAX ticket is arguable, I suppose, since PA has been involved directly in a few games. I would not be impressed by the argument, though.

@singlespace I'm not necessarily arguing that Patreon & Kickstarter contributions shouldn't be disclosed, but I do think that they don't fall under the current ethical guidelines. I think that if we try to contort the current standards to fit these things then we end up broadening definitions so much that they become too open to interpretation, which plausibly might have the effect of lowering standards in the long-term. However, it seems clear that a lot of people have concerns about this and it might be a good idea to update the guidelines with new rules that are specifically tailored to these models.

I think Jake joked in the episode that it should link to http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/cool

You mean like the literal definition of investment? You need to have an expectation of profit for it to qualify. It doesn't have to be monetary, necessarily, but the expectation of enjoyment or the expression of support seems like a pretty big stretch to me.

I guess if you fear women/feminism will corrupt or change beyond recognition your beloved hobby/personal sanctuary, then an ostensible scandal where a woman is accused of having sex to get her way is probably something that is going to push all your buttons like crazy. I feel like there's some deep insight to be gained with this widespread obsessive focus on 'nepotism' that I am simply not smart enough to discover. Some articles have come close (I particularly like Matthew Burns'), but nothing is really nailing it, I don't think.

@MadJackalope OK, I was sort-of on board with the disappointment at some of the rhetoric and online behavior of some of the people who are nominally the good guys in this situation, but holy shit man, have some perspective here. Every single allegation is totally unsubstantiated and, worse, even if substantiated would be disappointing but not that big of a deal. Spending so much time worrying about potential nepotism and not about why the heck there is such a huge and terrifyingly aggressive reaction to the mere rumors of (pretty bland) misbehavior of a single marginally-high-profile woman gamedev, seems ... misguided, at best.

Steven Pinker (Linguist & Cognitive Scientist): 10 'grammar rules' it's OK to break (sometimes).

Prometheus I can suspend disbelief for all the sci-fi fantasy shit, but I could not accept those people as real human beings, let alone as the best and brightest scientists. Each and every one of them were stunningly idiotic. It's like the writers had specific plot points they had to hit to make the story move forward to the desired ending, or to get some specific Cool Scene, and the characters just had to do whatever would lead them there, even if it made no sense at all for that ostensible person. Anyway, this episode has made me want to watch all 4 of those movies. I'm not sure if I ever watched the second one before, I think I might just feel like I have because I've played a lot of video games.

The WoT ad was weird for me, not because it was a video game ad, but because it was just awkwardly read. Almost all the Thumbs ad reads are actual endorsements (some enthusiastic, some less so) of a product or service, as opposed to this ad which is just reading advertising copy about a thing nobody on the cast is interested in. The geek trinket-trash subscription ad felt similarly weird to me. Even the ad for that TV show was about how that period in history is actually really interesting so maybe the show could be good (it wasn't), which was fine. BTW, by 'weird' I don't mean that I have a problem with it, just that it made me briefly uncomfortable. If you continued to do it, I wouldn't be that bothered.

Not being a console gamer (since the Mega Drive), this Vine marks the first time I have ever seen the Blades interface. It seems fine.