TychoCelchuuu

We could say Jerry.

Neither of those are academic - do you actually want academic stuff, or just good games writing? I don't know much about the former, but some links for the latter: http://www.critical-distance.com/ http://iam.benabraham.net/ http://nightmaremode.net/ http://this.isnotablog.com/freeplay/

There's still a twinge of weirdness for me every time someone on the Internet (outside of like, reddit or YouTube or whatever) mentions their age and they're younger than me.

AND FOR THE COVETED TRIPLE POST All of the things I and others have mentioned here are sort of just the tip of the iceberg: the worst part isn't anything Penny Arcade does, it's what gaming culture (and more generally the world) are like. As exasperated as I was to hear Mike say his greatest regret is pulling the Dickwolf merchandise, that's nothing compared to how sick I felt when I heard the cheers and clapping and roar of the crowd in support of him when he said they shouldn't have pulled the merch. I was watching a recording of a livestream or something and I alt + f4ed it in disgust. Had I been in the convention hall I guess I would've just had to walk out and never come back (although at that point I don't see why I would've been in the hall - I'm having trouble imagining a future where I'm ever at PAX again). Imagine being surrounded by hundreds (thousands?) of people who cheer at the idea of making the world uncomfortable for rape survivors just so that you aren't seen as backing down from something. Jesus Christ. This comic sums it up well.

Great find! Report back with information if you listen to it at some point. I'll download all the episodes and forget I did so, then some day remember. When I do hopefully I'll post here.

Also for people saying "I've been to PAX and it was fine" or "not a lot of issues are reported at PAX" (a group I can add myself to because I went to the first three PAXes) you have to keep in mind that the group of people who attend PAX are self-selecting. The kind of people who go to a convention run by a guy who tweets about proudly wearing a dickwolf shirt and stuffed to the brim with people who will defend to death the dickwolves and anything else Penny Arcade does are maybe not the kind of people most likely to have bad experiences at PAX. To push the example to the extreme, you wouldn't say a white supremacist convention was a safe space just because nobody there reported any feelings of racial exclusion. Why not? Well, because all the people there are white people. Anyone else would've felt hella crummy. I doubt a lot of rape survivors are showing up to PAX, seeing Mike say his biggest regret is pulling the "Team Dickwolves" merchandise from the store, and feeling shitty about it. Rape survivors who don't want to put up with that shit, who are hurt by that shit, aren't going to be at PAX in the first place to hear Mike drop that pearl of wisdom.

I KNOW RIGHT

For me, it's the transphobic stuff Mike tweeted that really encapsulates my issue with Penny Arcade. When people called him out on it, his immediate response was to go into defensive mode, get into a bunch of arguments. That in itself is not a big deal: I'd rather people weren't transphobic, obviously, but "men have dicks and women have vajayjays" is about the level of understanding a lot of people are at, and I'm sure he got some angry tweets so getting defensive is understandable. The bigger issue is where it went from there. He first posted this then later this. To make a long story short, his position is more or less "I have lots of friends, even a trans friend, and I've never hated anyone for anything. If I was an asshole it was your fault. People keep yelling at me about apparently hateful stuff I've said, but I don't hate anyone, so clearly they're wrong. I'll donate some money to a charity they like and then peace out." This basically encapsulates his entire approach to these sorts of questions. Say some hateful stuff, get into heated arguments with those who call him out for it, blame the people who called him out for being jerks about it (as if his hateful stuff in the first place wasn't its own particular brand of rudeness), claim that he's actually a good guy, and then ignore the whole situation. For a normal person I guess I wouldn't care so much. I'd think less of them and move on. But Mike is one of the top voices in video games. He and Jerry were on Time's list of 100 most important people or whatever a few years back. He prides himself on speaking his mind, telling it like it is, being beholden to nobody, and standing up for gamers. Penny Arcade started PAX because they wanted their own convention. They started Child's Play because they wanted the world to see that gamers aren't terrible people. They're the face of PAX and the face of one of the most popular gaming webcomics. People hang on their words and defend them with zeal and vigor in any conversation. For most of their life this has made sense, because they were the voice of the downtrodden. Gamers get shit! Nerds get shit! I can't remember which PAX it was, or if it was even a PAX, but I distinctly remember them giving advice to some poor, downtrodden nerd in high school, sad because he was unpopular: "when you grow up, you'll run shit" they said, or something like it, and everyone cheered. PAX is a safe gathering place for nerds to nerd out about games without people making fun of them. Mike and Jerry are the success stories, the unpopular kids in high school who grew up to become people who play video games for a living. Their message is all about nerd culture and what it can be. So when Mike goes around spouting sexist shit or transphobic shit and so on, and when he blames the arguments on people who engage him (in his words, "My reaction when I feel backed into corner is to be an asshole. It’s essentially how I defend myself") it has consequences. Gaming is not a safe place for a lot of people. PAX thinks it's progressive for banning booth babes. Having a policy against attractive women are used as bait to lure people into your video game booth is seen as some sort of stand rather than the only sane choice. What gaming definitely doesn't need is for its mavericks, the ones who tell it like it is and take no shit, to be dismissive at best and hostile at worst to marginalized voices. Those voices already get threatened with rape and death when they do Kickstarters for their video series or post their game to Steam Greenlight. They don't need Penny Arcade saying hateful stuff about them too.

Okay one more set:

One of the weird things about having a twitter account is a personalized feed of reactions to things that generally accords with my views because I follow people who I tend to agree with: The idea of a safe space run by Mike Krahulik is so funny that you'd think it's a joke Penny Arcade is making. That guy is a walking unsafe space. That's his entire schtick.

Brütal Legend Quite good! The controls seem a bit clunky - I'm not sure I ever want to play a strategy game via anything other than the traditional RTS interface, or maybe some kind of touchscreen thing - but aside from that I had a ton of fun. The art design is peerless, the voice acting is wonderful, and Tim Schafer's script is fucking hilarious. It also helps that the whole game is set to a kickass soundtrack. I would recommend it to everyone.

People who knew that all of video games culture is an open sewer!

If they closed down everything she'd be out of a job The link about the address is from here from someone who understandably didn't post more because they didn't want the info spreading around.

My dailies, including the one where I miraculously don't die on that dark level to the spider:

That's what I do. Then later when the episode goes up on YouTube I can check the timestamps and just skip the spoilery parts. Perversely I haven't listened to the parts of the cast where they talk about The Last of Us because I don't own a PS3, because maybe some day many years in the future I'll play through it somehow (borrow one from a friend or something).

haha, in the place you died I stood still a little longer and was fine (died on the jungle later - I'll upload my run soonish). I'm interested to see if anyone bothered going for that crate that you and I both ignored.

GREETINGS SPELUNKERS I JUST REALIZED THIS THREAD EXISTS I've been recording my dailies since the very first one I played (I bought this in the Steam sale) for another group of spelunkers, then I accidentally made the first few videos public and my YouTube subscribers liked them, so now they're all public. but I'll of course just post my latest one right now - I did a bit better than some of you, which is comforting because sometimes I feel like I'm the worst at Spelunky.

Yeah because on Internet car forums or Internet knitting forums or Internet cooking forums people flip the fuck out about women and harass them constantly.

I'm actually pretty interested in this game, having never really gotten into the whole Minecraft genre at all, but I'm going to wait plenty of time for it to be more developed before hopping in.

Apparently someone hacked the twitter account of the Mighty No. 9 lady (or something like that), found geotagged info in some tweets (or something...) and posted her address online so that's great. Hooray video game culture.

the fucking robots can drive themselves anywhere they want now this sucks

Why are there two of these?

Fine.

Briefly, cassette tapes, but really what killed them were CD-ROMs.

Yeah I mean it the art is really pretty but I can't tell what is going on or why it might be fun.