Gormongous

I thought about reading it in Italian, but there's no way I'd finish it in a month if I did. From the Calvino I have read in his native tongue, I can tell you that his economy is all the more impressive. Italian is a much more discursive language than English, I think.

That's an awesome first post, Almost a Hero. I agree most of all that Saarkeesian's list of citations should be the beginning of a conversation, not the end, especially if it's a conversation on what they mean, rather than if they're valid. Some examples of the Damsel in Distress are blatant (like you said, poor Peach) and some are subtle (I haven't played any Metal Gear Solid, but Meryl sounds like a tough nut to crack), but all of them should encourage us to interrogate the functions women perform in our games, narratively and otherwise. On a side note, looking at the Tumblr page again, kidnapping is a weirdly common phenomenon in many video game universes. Sure, most of those universes also treat murdering a thousand dudes as a day's work, so the bar for "dastardly act" is a lot higher, but still, surely there are better ways for aspiring villains to meet eligible women and torment their nemeses' psyche.

It's not really hate, per se. The design on display in the Wasteland 2 video just didn't come together as well for me as the Shadowrun Returns video. Like I said, it's probably in part because it's a bigger game and thus harder to epitomize, but I didn't get quite the same "oh man, I can't wait to make a character and play this game" gut punch.

I keep thinking that SimCity 4 sucked, but then I remember that I only convinced myself of that because the disk of it that I bought came scratched and I wanted to feel better about my missed opportunity. What are people's thoughts on SimCity 4 versus this? I know Tom Chick's started stumping for SimCity Societies on his site.

Wow, that's the best that a game's done rain in my memory. How's it look in motion?

Yeah, I agree that the UI and graphics seem to suit the game really well. I like the pace of the combat, especially the halfway system between discrete action points and XCOM-style "moves". Just about the only think I can think of to nitpick is that there's not much to grab onto with the items. Guns just seem to be guns, with no real sense if some are better or worse or if there's anything in the way of customization beyond character skills and player choice. I know that weapon selection and gear bling is pretty hard to show in a twenty-minute mission preview, but I hope it's there, regardless. Still, it makes a hell of a first impression compared to Wasteland 2, but maybe that's just because Wasteland 2 is so much more ambitious?

Yeah, I've been pretty pleased with how it's played out. The last half-dozen pages have so very little ad hominem or outright silencing, which feels like a dream, to be honest. Although... Blocking me because a post I apologized for right after is unpleasant to read and because you think my title is directed at anyone but me? I'm sorry to hear that. It wasn't my intention.

Yeah, I admit I really don't understand the culture of enjoying bad, cheap, or dumb things ironically, but it definitely exists and has influence.

Yeah, I'm sorry. It's three in the morning here and my dreams of finishing the last four episodes of Martian Successor Nadesico tonight have been shot to hell. I'll go to bed and leave sane people to talk this one out. Believe it or not, I've been really happy with the last couple pages of this thread. Though we sometimes disagree, we're having a mature discussion in good faith. It's far removed from last night, which left me feeling like everything was shit forever, myself included.

I think one can reduce the signifier without reducing the signified. When we talk about feudalism or the Renaissance or the Industrial Revolution, we don't lose grip of these vast, centuries-long processes just because the words that refer to them are short and convenient. In fact, having short and convenient words that refer to these vast, centuries-long processes aid in spreading understanding, because conversations happen much easier and quicker when we don't need to explain, say, the merging of civic and military commands in the former Roman Empire, the disintegration of public authority, the growth of affective power structures, and the ossification of the Germanic tribe into a system of vassalage whenever we want to talk about something involving feudalism. Anyone who knows the word will understand the significance and anyone who doesn't will benefit from an explanation. I don't see much difference here. When talking about race, gender, and class, a word like "privilege" that signifies the systemic advantages possessed by certain members of society allows for a greatly expanded dialogue on these social forces, just by reducing the verbiage common to all these subjects down into a single word. It's not meant as a label or an insult, which you seem to be concerned over, and anyone using it like that is doing it wrong.

All words are inherently reductive, so I'm not really sure why you would denigrate one for being especially so in your eyes. That said, I'm pleased to hear that you don't need a word like "privilege" as shorthand for the enormity of others' circumstances. You can't assume that of everyone, I assure you.

I think you're underestimating the gap in most people's heads between the starving African child that parents teach as some platonic ideal of poverty and the many people in our lives who have it worse off in countless ways, both big and small, beyond anyone's control. Building self-awareness of these different circumstances, gathered under the heading of "privilege", makes us more empathetic people with better perspective and better ability to be allies to others in need. The difference you speak of between knowing what and knowing how isn't as wide as you think. And who says you're not allowed to make your life better? That has nothing to do with privilege. Privilege is just the difficulty setting on the game of life. Has anything like what you're saying been suggested at all in this thread?

It's not a zero-sum game, Faegbeard. You can help people with less privilege than you while educating people with more or equal privilege, even if you don't believe that identifying and understanding privilege, which has been at the root of pretty much every injustice ever perpetrated on this green earth, is as beneficial to the latter group as the former. Edit: Also, really? Being reminded of the many ways in which people have it worse than you doesn't highlight problems or create empathy for you? I wonder.

The ability to say just that is the concept of "privilege" in a nutshell. You been incredibly lucky, as have almost all of us here. I don't think it's too inconvenient to acknowledge that and incorporate it into our thoughts & actions. Actually, let me put it this way: as a straight, white, cis-gendered, middle-class male living in the richest and most powerful country on Earth, I can assure you that being asked to feel differently about myself because other people aren't me is not exactly going to put me out. Just the opposite, it's the least I can do.

Does anyone remember the episode where Jake breaks one of Chris' chairs? Or the one where Jake rips up his own shirt?

I understand the line between abstraction and simulation is not a line between good and bad. But I think a lot of SimCity's gameplay problems come from simulated systems interacting with abstracted systems in ways that produce results more counter-intuitive than either on their own. It's kinda weird that simulated people that are discreet entities within the game world do not have discreet jobs or houses, but I can live with that abstraction. But why isn't there some kind of queuing system so that they all don't head to the same two or three jobs or houses, like Flynn says they do? It makes the detailed traffic model nonsensical, because the intermittent abstraction is forcing real-life networks to handle non-real-life demands. For that matter, why bother simulating traffic jams when the simulated cars are given no awareness of said jams? Some things just seem kind of half-baked, as the incredibly efficient one-road city demonstrates.

To date, my friend, who's a huge fan of the Uncharted series, still calls the main character "Drake Fortune". To be fair, it's a great soap opera/porn star name. But yeah, people tend to assume that the title of a work refers to the main character. If that's not the case, the results are tragicomic.

So at least some of the vaunted GlassBox simulation is smoke and mirrors? That's disappointing.

TP, it's probably these lines that make people think you hate it: Personally, I'm not surprised that these ten pages of argument have been about tone. Whenever women speak in public, it's not what they say, it's how they say it.

Hah, no. I got your criticisms just fine. I think you wanted a more granular analysis of the trope as it appears in a select few games, which I wouldn't mind seeing as well, but you're right to say that Saarkeesian's agenda seems to be something more general and basic, so it's probably just not going to work for you. That's perfectly valid in my eyes, which are the only ones that matter, of course. I'm more trying to call out the people who each list a dozen subjective things that seemed off to them (boring, unprofessional, emotional, monotone, unacademic, superficial, perfunctory, pedantic) and then imply that this is the fault of Saarkeesian's style or format, full stop. It's a weak critique that just presents a laundry list of failings without any idea of how to build on strengths to compensate for them. With every article I've ever submitted, the nightmare response from the editor is a "revise and resubmit" with no substantive content. Usually, they just don't agree with my argument or aren't interested in my topic, but feel they can't say as much, so they just write a brief sentence about how it's "not sufficiently original" or "methodologically flawed" and tell me to get back to them when I've fixed that. Thanks? I'm trying not to view some of the comments here in that light. It's okay not to like Saarkeesian or her videos, but the conclusion to make is that you didn't like her videos, not that she made a bad video.

That's nice, Twig. By the way, I'm waiting to hear what you and Luftmensch and everybody else saying, "It should be different, more _____," actually think this Youtube series should resemble, beyond just "not what it is". I think it's perfectly logical to equate the feminist analysis of certain tropes in video games with the critical analysis of certain motifs in cinema, but that's just me. My standards don't seem to be as high as some of the people giving such constructive comments here.

Yeah, I remember reading about several experiments related to that in an article explaining how fanboys happen. People were presented with two (effectively identical) postcards and told to rate various aspects of both numerically. Once done, they had to choose one to keep, were left alone with it for some hours, then were asked to change or confirm their numerical ratings before being allowed to leave. The upshot across the board for all participants was something like a forty-percent rise in the rating of the postcard they chose and a fifteen-percent drop in the one they didn't. It makes me feel really freaked out about my own brain.

Doing some real necromancy here, digging this thread up. Alpha footage has been posted for Shadowrun Returns and it looks pretty damn good. Personally, I think it's cool to see the subtle differences between this game and Wasteland 2, two Kickstartered games with similar systems and starting points.

I really don't know what people are talking about when they say that "critical analysis" should engage multiple viewpoints. Film criticism doesn't work that way. Literature analysis doesn't work that way. They all look at a work or a body of works through a carefully considered and constrained lens, doing so exhaustively if at all possible. A critical analysis of light as illumination and obfuscation in Strangers on a Train isn't obligated to engage competing analyses like reader response or new historicism on the same movie. Heck, it's not even obligated to engage counterexamples if they don't pertain directly to the critic's thesis. It just looks to me like "not academic enough" is an umbrella for a lot of little nitpicks with Saarkeesian's tone and goals, none of which are very substantive on their own. Like Chris and Jake said, it does what it needs to do. It's okay if that didn't work for you.

Nowhere did anyone say that that you like to oppress women or that you have a small penis. Maybe you were trying to complain about having words put in your mouth, but in the process you put words in other people's mouths. That's not calling out bullshit, that's stirring the pot. Raising awareness is an action plan. You aren't going to solve something as pervasive and entrenched as sexism and the patriarchy in a Youtube vid about games. Education has to be an end unto itself.