Argobot

But 1886 has a rad lady character, so there's that at least. So is 1886 the year that game is theoretically set in? If so, I'm surprised that they didn't go with 1888, because then Jack the Ripper could have been in the game (probably as a super werewolf). But speaking of lady video game characters, I'm a little embarrassed over how enthusiastic my reaction to the Princess being a playable character in a main Mario game was. I'm excited about a game that I will never play, on a console that I will never own, because the developers decided to make the easiest step toward being move inclusive. But the fact that the last time Peach was a playable character in a Mario game was in 1988, the same year I was born, holds more significance to me than it probably should.

I generally am really bothered by this type of question because it is either used as a thinly-veiled attacked against feminism -- equality makes everything too complicated, women won't let me open doors for them! -- or it tacitly lumps all women into one amorphous blob and doesn't account for individual tastes. Some women like having doors held open for them, some don't, and that's ok. Social relationships are inherently difficult to navigate (if they weren't, no one would write music/books/movies about how hard relationships are) and there's no magic answer for how to treat women, because not all women are the same. Do whatever you want, treat women however you want, but don't be a jerk about it.

I enjoyed the post-episode confession regarding the ongoing (imagined?) war between Giant Bomb and Idle Thumbs.

My mistake. Still gross.

Yeah, that was the one thing I managed to make out in the deluge of tweets I saw this morning. Super gross, especially since it was scripted.

I just started reading Ellen Ullman's (infamous By Blood author) first book The Bug. It's a fictional story about a 1984 tech startup that borrows heavily from Ullman's own experience as a programmer. Personally, I really enjoyed By Blood, but I know it was one of the less popular Idle Book club picks. But The Bug doesn't seem to have any of the same issues that By Blood did, plus it's a really fascinating look at early computer programs. There's a completely bonkers scene where a programmer complains about this new mouse technology and how complicated the right click, left click interface is. It's a worthwhile read, I think, for people who generally liked By Blood, but were maybe unsatisfied with the prose and the characters.

I don't really understand why it's controversial or wrong for consumers to criticize a company for having anti-consumerist policies. That's part of the 'freedom' of a free market: consumers can choose to not give a company their money and can also choose to explain why they're not supporting a company. In this case I really do believe that Microsoft's proposed policies are anti-consumerist and deserve to be publicly criticized. (Also, not really interested in getting into a discussion on European political economy, but the lack of a 'free market' is not what caused the current problem in Europe. And the US hasn't operated under a 'laissez-faire' economic system for almost 100 years now.)

The naming discussion was pretty fantastic. Over the past few days I've been seeing tons of people rave about The Swapper and how good of a game it is. But every time I hear the name, I unintentionally switch the word 'swapper' with the word 'slap' or 'clap' and I've started to associate this game with slapping and/or clapping (the clapper?), which makes me not want to play it. It's completely irrational that I do this, but it demonstrates the weird ways we subconsciously process information and how much of an impact names can have on our interpretations of a thing. Conversely, I still cannot believe that the title 'The Name of the Rose' isn't a direct reference to anything in the book, because they are both such a perfect compliment to one another. (Also, sorry Jake that your 100+ episode streak ended.)

Oh cool, I hadn't heard this! Did they talk about it on the DOTA cast? I hope this means you can play as female heroes as well. The Kickstarter video was a little unclear (for me) on those details. Edit: Nevermind, found a link to an interview where Muir talks about this: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/06/06/how-kickstarter-got-gay-marriage-into-massive-chalice/ The whole thing seems pretty amazing, and makes me more excited to play the game.

In the video they definitely do, but that civility does not extend to the general public, sadly http://jezebel.com/if-comedy-has-no-lady-problem-why-am-i-getting-so-many-511214385

I am legitimately horrified by the matryoshka dolls in the Double Fine game Stacking. Dolls in general kind of give me the heebie jeebies, but something about the Russian-style nesting dolls moving around on screen is extra terrifying to me.

Which reminds me that I've been sitting on that Solnit book on Muybridge for way too long.

Writer Lindy West and comic Jim Norton have a debate on the use of rape jokes in comedy and it's actually completely fascinating: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=GtUb_E1qUHA It's astounding to me that in 2013, it's controversial to have someone suggest that not all rape jokes are created equal and that maybe comics should have a little more nuance beyond: "lol, rape women, fart."

This article has a tremendous analysis of Kickstarter 'ethics.' Best quote: "People who succeed on Kickstarter aren’t people with no contacts, no networks, no access, no nothing. They are people who have substantial amounts of social capital, looking to trade it for actual capital capital." I'm not bothered in any way by the second DF Kickstarter, but I don't think Kickstarter is going to be a reliable funding model for them or any other medium-sized developer in the long-term. At some point that well of social capital is going to dry up and KS -- at least the model of KS that we currently have -- will no longer be a viable source of financial support. (Also, thank you Mington for correcting the thread title)

Alien 3 has the dubious honor of being the only movie I've ever stopped watching and never finished. I'm not sure if I watched the original edit or the Assembly Cut, but I am sure that it was awful. (The plus side of having such a terrible experience with Alien 3 was that it finally convinced me to watch Se7en.)

Excuse me, I think you should correct the thread title to read: MASSIVE CHALICE

You could always do what I did -- delay having to make any meaningful decisions by going to a foreign country and teaching English for a year. You get to travel, not worry about your future, and have people think you're doing something important when really you spend the majority of your day watching Hey Arnold! reruns in Russian. Of course the downside is that eventually your visa will expire or you'll really start to miss peanut butter (Russia doesn't have peanut butter), which will force you to return to America where all your college friends have either already moved away, started grad school, or landed a dream job working with the Dept of State, while you struggle to find a full time job and rent an apartment. But after a few months of floundering, you eventually figure some stuff out, and even though you still don't have a solid plan for your future (which for a Type-A person like you is kind of terrifying), you feel pretty comfortable with where you're headed and have learned to stop comparing yourself to others. Got all that? (My real advice is to stop asking others for advice. No one can tell you what you should do except yourself; the sooner you realize and accept that, the easier your life will be.)

I always thought the line -- "I wish you would step back from that ledge my friend" -- was a weird lyric to put in your video game theme song though.

"I want you to kill me if I become a cliche." *Raises gun* "Woah, wait. What are you doing?" "Isn't asking someone to kill you for being a cliche, kind of a cliche itself?" "Hmm, maybe we should have put more thought into this narrative point." And scene.

Yeah, I'm actually really looking forward to some positive examples (especially after this most recent episode, because, jeeze). I wonder what the criteria for the third video will be: Female characters who are never damseled? Gender flipped damsel in distress? Damsels who rescue themselves without the aid of the male character? At the very least we can probably expect Samus to make an appearance (so hopefully angry commenters on the Internet can stop using her as a trump card that disproves any kind of skewed representation of women in games).

Ah, ok, I get what you're saying. Yeah that's a fair point. I still think that even if the wife/girlfriend character lives, the fact that you have to fight her at all (even if she's literally a monster) is part of the larger problem that Sarkeesian is pointing out, but I can see what you're objecting to. I'm going to have to watch it again to see which girlfriends are actually alive at the end of the game (Probably a few, that seems like a really popular cop out in these kinds of narratives. The player is emotionally manipulated by having to kill their lover but then TWIST, it all works out in the end because she's actually alive so we don't have to touch on any of the emotional baggage that would necessarily come with killing your girlfriend.)

Hmm, I think I get what you're saying, but I honestly don't remember the explicit examples. Are you trying to say that when the protagonist has to kill their girlfriend/wife that sometimes the woman explicitly asks to be killed and sometimes she doesn't, but either she ends up dead? That makes sense to me, if it's what you meant, and you're right, those two examples should probably be separated into different ideas/tropes.

Re: games causing domestic violence. I don't think she was actually trying to make the argument that the "kill lady to save lady" is a cause or justification of domestic violence in real life. I think she more was trying to draw the parallels between women 'asking for it:' in the case of games, women are literally asking to be killed by the protagonist; in real life, 'she was asking for it' is used to defend all kind of violent actions against women. My interpretation wasn't that this trope is a mirror of domestic violence, just that it has some gross similarities, and that games writers should think more about those similarities when they're writing this kind of plot.

I liked this video very much! I think she got over some of the stiltedness that was in the first video and seemed much more comfortable (and enthusiastic) in her delivery. I thought the counter-examples would be in the second video, but given how long this one was, it makes sense that she'd split this trope into three part videos. It was a really great follow up, and pretty damning evidence of how overused the "wife dies, must rescue daughter" or "wife is killed, soul is capture by Satan" plot line is.

Here's a great review of the fourth season on the AV Club: http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-complete-fourth-season,98241/ The AV Club article makes a big deal of how groundbreaking -- if flawed -- the structure of this season is, and makes me feel a little more motivated to watch the rest of the season. But even if you agree that Hurwitz's idea to focus each episode around one character is groundbreaking, you have to acknowledge that the only reason the show is structured this way, is because they couldn't get the whole cast together at the same time. It was a situation of fans expecting more episodes (which at this point, everyone should know to not listen to fans) and Hurwitz's and co basically worked with what that had. Sometimes that can lead to something truly exceptional and well-released, but I don't think that's the case with Arrested Development. Anyway, speaking of shows that have been long dormant but are coming back soon: New season of Venture Bros starts this Sunday.