Codicier

just read those after making my last post and... Well it makes me feel worried that perhaps there really is nothing we can do, that somehow one of the largest expression of the positive aspects of games has become something that has a entirely different meaning to a certain sub section of its male audience who's motivations i can't even begin to understand, because the sickening feeling i get when i read that second article isn't something they will ever feel or attempt to come to terms with. That talking to them wont work, and that boycotting them wont work.

"why even bother waiting for them to change?" My stance isn't that when someone acts wrongly we should wait for them to change (that would be futile), it is that we should try to directly engaging with them with the intent of making them understand their problems and make the decision to change for themselves. I suppose I'm uncomfortable with the framing I'm seeing of the boycott by sometimes. Not as a tool to try and make another human being reconsider their past behaviour and to create change in a wider community, but as a punishment that has to be used because they don't understand any other language. I hope PA hasn't hit that point of no return yet, where their opinions are so embedded nothing will work. Though if what Leigh says at the bottom of her article is true and that they consistently refuse to engage then perhaps they have passed that point. Certainly I'm not going to say that people aren't entitled to decide that for them personally PA has passed that point, but i don't think it's a position that should be taken lightly or without regret. Would a boycott even be effective? "Speaking with your dollars" will work only if a company acts rationally, and I'm not sure a small company headed by a few individuals necessarily will. Also is PAX something PA does because it makes them a lot of money? I remember a lot of big cons folding over the years, and penny arcade use volunteer staff at PAX right? which doesn't exactly suggest that raking the cash in is the primary reason PAX exists. And finally (& most gloomily) what happens if a well publicised "mass boycott" takes place and but fails to make any impact on PAX's attendance ? Once you've framed the idea of non attendance as something more than just a individual choice, I feel the msg that a unsuccessful campaign could send would be terrible. I think ultimately small scale side note: is any of Leigh's SVGL stuff archived on her new site? obviously the old sites vacant now but wonder if she brought it over to the new place

I guess Patrick that on a simple emotional level, i just don't want this to be true. I don't want to see the world and the people who live in it as unchangeable. That I don't want to give up hope that making things better is achievable objective. It just seems such a bleak way of looking at things. But then again i say this from a position of privilege, he's not directly hurting me with his idiocy. Perhaps in the end your right and that we need safe spaces because direct engagement might not work now. I hope however that direct engagement remains a aim for people to strive towards, that we can keep faith that things will get better.

I don't think you can underestimate the amount of infrastructure a equivalent event would need to match PAXs scale from a standing start. But that's not even my problem. As I said earlier, isn't the big aim here to change minds? To make things better? Why not work towards uniting the community, instead of dividing it even if that task is far from easy. Shutting ourselves off from those people who's attitudes may at times dismay us isn't going to help , if we aren't careful we end up just preaching to the converted.

I'm not sure I wholey agree with what your saying though I do get where your coming from, after all there's a certain twisted logic in saying that if we live in a patriarchy those most able to effect change are the patriarchs. But even if that's true, it feels like the way forward would be to change the way those patriarchs self identify first. now of course getting someone who is really stuck in their ways to change isn't easy. To make them see themselves not as "a man" but just as "a person", to see what they have in common with other humans regardless of sex and not their difference is not going to be a short journey. But perhaps it is one which could start with them feeling that being a gamer is more important to who they see themselves as than whether or not they are a a man. That once they no longer see their sex as their defining feature, a very small step has been taken down a road that might lead somewhere good. Edit: & i suppose that's why I feel instinctively I feel boycotting PAX isn't productive. Its supposed to be show for gamers, about celebrating what brings us together as a community. (note: it must be mentioned at this point that I've never been to a PAX & as someone living in the UK i'm never going to go to a PAX so it's the potential of the show i'm talking about rather than a concrete experience I've had).

The names you mention are certainly doing a good job raising awareness, but in some ways the more prominent someone is the more "other" they feel to people, i just feel that the best hope of getting through to someone like the PA guys is that someone they are close to them spells it out to in a way which makes them at least want to try change. It's particularly sad to hear the one on one approach has been tried and failed, it just feels so strange to think that someone could be face to face with someone and hear about something so distressing and not be moved.

The thing i worry about now is that the conversation seems to be shifting strongly towards the idea of boycotting PAX. Now i could be quite wrong about this, but i feel that no amount of boycotts or harshly worded articles criticising them is going to change PA's founders behavior. And that's the end game here isn't it? Change? (and as they say change has to come from within) What would (I feel) make them think twice and maybe genuinely self examine, is hearing (face to face) from someone who's been affected by the issues, or if next time they make that sort of comment, they get booed. As long as they think the response they are getting to their comments is a attack from outside they wont change. The more people who are boycotting PAX the less likely that they will get called on their BS or meet someone who will change their perspective. Idk perhaps i'm being naive, but i don't want to think of them as irredeemable.

I just finished Oh Edo Rocket, very glad it was recommended and along with some Saints Row 4 it's provided enough absurd humour to my evenings get me through some tough work. Thanks everyone. Really enjoyed the Dub too, but i was wondering do the other readers generally prefer English translations scripts like this where it feels they are trying to capture the spirit of the work rather than stick to it word for word, or tend to be happier with more literal ones?

Do you know think the live action Kenshin is likely to make it onto any of the streaming services (anime or otherwise) in the EU? Living in the middle of nowhere means the chances of getting to see it in a cinema are effectively zero. Just watched the first episode of golden boy & weirdly it feels like both those statements were 100% correct. I think tegan had a good point about the protagonist being a good person, it's just he's one with a weird combination of a uncontrolled id and innocence, but it does still fall firmly under the "never want a partner/ family member to walk in while I'm watching this" category of anime. Which brings us back to Oreimo which I took a peak at to see if it was as bad as some had suggested & yes the premise is more than a little cringeworthy, but there is definitely a budget behind the animation. The prevalence of brother/sister combo's etc. in anime and manga is something which I remember making me think that Japanese culture would always remain really alien to me in some ways no matter how much anime i watched. It still does, but having watched From Up On Poppy Hill last year I now kinda get that there is a whole set of historic circumstances behind that cultural fixation, and it feels a little bit more understandable.

I have a soft spot for Advanced Wars series due to the many hours I put into it's Dual Strike iteration & I remember being surprised how robust it was as a tactical game, but I've never given the original a whirl so sadly I can't give you any help regarding the final battle. Side note: That image from the polycount VG remix competition is wonderful, and would love to play a modern tactics game with that sort of aesthetic.

+1 I think you've hit the nail on the head about the problem, the optimal way to do it is basically to utterly ignore the games advice and just get up speed & bounce around the city. The same is true of the TK Mayhem activities where i just ended up grabbing one of the balls then run around using it to bump into pedestrians and traffic using super speed. I think when i comes down to it, the problem with both of those activities normally is that there is not enough target density to really make them fun, the game is at its best when your in a environment where pretty much everywhere you look there's something to smash, or shoot.

Finished tonight, and i think the most obvious compliment to may at this point is that i'll be diving back in to 100% the challenges. It can be a little jerky sometimes, when huge amount of enemies but overall I've found its much like any platform game & that when you get a feel for the rhythm of it it starts to flow naturally. That said I'm absolutely hopeless at the insurance fraud activity which feels like it should be a lot more fun than it is.

Thanks for the recommendations fellow readers. Of those titles suggested i think the only ones which were new to me were Oh Edo Rocket & Golden Boy. Of those i think the former sounds pleasantly absurd and the latter a bit creepy.

Both Witcher games are on sale at the moment for next to nothing this weekend, if there's anyone teetering on the edge deciding whether they want to take the plunge with these games I'd suggest now as a excellent time to do so.

Just fired it up this evening, and my word its just plain glorious. It got a honest to goodness lol while I was still on the character creation screen, and by end of the intro I'd started cackling like a hyena. It's addictive isn't it? Think I finally get what people loved about Crackdown.

I honestly think that after getting it's extended edition the PC version of the Witcher 2 is the best RPG I've ever played. Think i'm going to give it another run before number 3 comes with the dev made combat mod, is there any news yet of a more definite release date than just "2014"?

right ladies and gents I could do with some help, I've got a big chunk of work to do and it's leaving me too exhausted to think straight, and too stressed to deal with heavy subject matter. So I need a nice simple, light, fun, high energy series (ideally with some humour) to mainline 3-4 episodes of at a time in the evening. Something available as a complete series, whether as a box set, a complete arc available on streaming, or fansubs if needs must, would be ideal. The sort of thing I'm after: Cowboy Bebop, Railgun, Baccano, Gurren Lagann, Nodame Cantabile, Honey & Clover, FLCL, Excel Saga Side note: I'd normally not ask this, but anything with a decent English dub would be a bonus

Came back and finished the game off this evening. First off congrats to the whole Fullbright crew for telling a really affecting and compact story. However I got quite frustrated at some of the game's choices about what parts of the environment I could or couldn't interact with (is "fidelity of interaction" the right phrase for this? I feel like it might be but not sure if there some more formalised term lurking out there) especially early on. Too many times it felt like I was actor thrown onto a set with no idea which props I was supposed pick up and make use of, and which were a glued down and immoveable part of the stage. Which is a shame because there were some purely static environmental elements which worked great and since there was only ever a few elements apart from the notes I felt I really gained anything from manipulating . So looking back I feel all my early frustration from finding elements I wanted to interact with but couldn't didn't lead to any great benefit. I can't remember who, but I remember a few years back someone talking about fake doors in video games, and how that the first time you attempted to use one (and discovering that it didn't react) drags you completely out of the immersion. Well that feeling happened time after time to me in the first hour or so of Gone Home (not with door but with notes and a dozen other little things), to the point where I had to walk away from the game in frustration. It just seems strange that after Dear Ester showed that you can do great storytelling with a very static environment without running into these problem that the Fullbright guys decided to take this risk, especially when there's great examples static environmental storytelling here too . I think I'd still feel more comfortable showing Dear Ester to a non-gamer than I would Gone Home, even though Gone Home definitely tells a more accessible unpretentious story. Now I know things like Bio-Shock and the Deus Ex reboot have done very similar things but perhaps the lines in these games are more clearly drawn. I know people criticise the "glowing" effect that's used sometimes, but I feel the trade off for designers between jarring moments of non-interaction and unrealistic visual effects is one that slightly favours the glow if only because the jolt or non-interaction can completely knock me out of immersion while the glow annoys me but at a far lower level of irritation. Still all in all despite those gripes I'm glad someone has tried to tell a very normal, very universal love story (& several interesting sub-stories), rather than settle for the normal bombastic shooting gallery, and for that I can more than forgive it struggling with some issues that effect many other games.

I'm just under 2 hours in and I'm really having a very mixed reaction so far. Think I'm just going to call it a night and give it another go tomorrow. I'm worried my expectations are killing this for me. I have liked a lot of what Steve has done and has had to say in the past about games, and perhaps this has led to me subconsciously expecting some sort of Citizen Kane of games. Will talk more when I'm done, hopefully the parts of this I love will make me forget the parts I'm finding frustrating.

someone's bound to bust the bargo sidenote: the thought just popped into my head that nothing would be quite so strange/awesome if somehow IGN ended up publishing the first Gone Home review under the title "The scoop on Gone Home: It will blow you away".

Popped onto steam to see if the game had unlocked yet & noticed this in the screenshot section which made me smile

that is genius

just been watching that myself, seemed awsome

In the end I think everything being said here is still coming from a good place, everyone just wants more pods being cast even if we disagree on the details. There's nothing wrong with feeling "I think the way thumbs is talk about games is really interesting" + "i love game X" multiplied by "no one else is talking interestingly about game X" equalling "I'd really love thumbs to talk about game x" Even if it's something I don't personally agree with. I think I and some others just care far more about the first part of that equation than we do any of the rest. That not saying there aren't things i'd love to see done, I mean I'd love to see Danielle doing a Mass Effect 3 stream with Chris (because i fondly remember her & tom chicks conversations about mass effect 2, and because I remember Chris saying he'd picked it up as his free game with Simcity), but if things never line up that way it wont bother me in the slightest. Besides guys don't worry there will be AAA talk! after all you there's a AAA ghost game coming out on the 15th called Gone Home

I'd always assumed "hipster" related to someone who's taste was dictated by their wanting to belong to a particular peer group and not their own feeling for something (ie: wanting to be part of the "hip" crowd), almost the exact opposite of someone who follows his/her individual taste. But I guess it means different things to different people.