Zederick

Oh god, yeah, I saw that one. I can only imagine the toll it takes on a person, especially when it happens over the course of weeks. Anita Sarkeesian must be made of titanium. I didn't get any death threats this time*, but then again, I'm not showing the utter audacity of disagreeing while being a woman. * My team did get plenty of death threats when we were working on Fallout 3, including at least one very graphic comic. Eastern Europe takes its Fallout very seriously, but not as seriously as 4chan seems to take its misogyny.

I tried standing up to them on Twitter. It went... poorly. It's a very special feeling to be shouted down by randos on Twitter, with 30+ notifications per minute, where most of the people derating you have accounts that mysteriously are only 3 days old yet have over 1000 #GamerGate #NotYourShiled posts. I'm going to step away from Twitter and take a shower for a bit. Possibly while drinking a bottle of whiskey.

The really frustrating thing is that this is largely an orchestrated action of 4chan, which has been behind this harassment for weeks, back when it was just targeted at Zoe Quinn. There are screenshots of 4chan posts planning the whole #NotYourShiled tag as a "special jamming op" to have minority posters (and people who are experienced "shitposters" who with fake accounts) join together to undermine "Social Justice Warriors" in gaming. Which apparently means women in game journalism and anyone who defends them or points out how strange it is that they only seem to go after women.

I dunno. I keep asking myself that question when I go to work in AAA after all the studio layoffs. I just stick with it and try to improve things, but that's because games are a vocation for me. But maybe that'd be different if I had any marketable skill outside of narrative design.

I started poking my head out of my game of Civ about 8 hours ago, and made the mistake of kicking the beehive on Twitter. It's been a frustrating 8 hours. The thing that pisses me off about this--other than the obvious, general horribleness of harassment and driving off of talented voices in our community--is how many genuine (seeming) people were duped into supporting what has always been a sexist witch hunt from the start. Going back as far as when I first stood up for Zoe, I had a friend who was "just raising some ethics concerns" about Zoe Quinn, and I know he actually meant well. And even 8 hours ago, when I was looking on Twitter to figure out all this #GamerGate #notyourshield nonsense, there were rational-sounding, seemingly-human people were defending their genuine interest in journalistic ethics and intersectional definitions of gaming. And I agree, there are problems in games journalism, especially in how AAA plays most of the press. But there's plenty of hay to be made there, but somehow they're still just talking about a couple women (and guys they can try to use to shame the women). And now that there's evidence of 4chan planning the #NotYourShield tag as a "Special Jamming Op", with bullet points like "Equality is our word against the SJWs we paint as extremists." It might as well have a headline reading "Breaking News: These Guys Really Are As Horrible As You Thought." https://twitter.com/kunikos/status/507390649180508160 Anyway, the moral of my story is that I should have realized to just come to the Idle Thumbs forums for all my gaming news. *advertising jingle*

Theoretically, a multi-video of Spelunky could show each player on a single, static map of each level, with each of them running around that level simultaneously. But that would take a fair amount of video-editing to really compile: you'd want to construct a "background image" of the level from the footage of each player, then track their individual video-feed as they scroll through it, and then properly blend the video when their paths inevitably intersect. A good programmer might be able to automate such a thing. I'm sure if Derek Yu really wanted to, he could set up something that could make it easier (even if it was just releasing the maps the day after each daily challenge). Hell, if there's enough interest in something like that, it might be worth asking him.

There's only one way the Card Hunter pizza-girl storyline can progress: After all of Gary (the DM's) lies about what they're doing downstairs, Melvin (the jerky brother) needs to try to embarrass them by revealing that they're playing Card Hunter. Then Karen (the pizza-girl) can reveal that she's an expert Card Hunter player... and that it's so much more fun when you're playing it with a bunch of friends, as she introduces co-op multiplayer. Ball's in your court, Blue Manchu. Make it happen. =}

I know the '90s were a time of strange FMV gaming dead-ends, especially on the 3DO, but Duelin' Firemen seems like such a strange beast that Idle Thumbs must know about it. Yes, even despite the fact that it was never released and exists only as the strangest game trailer ever made: With cameos by Rudy Ray Moore, Tony Hawk, Mark Mothersbaugh, and Dr. Timothy Leary. All it needs is Jeff Goldblum.

It wasn't a matter of "think of the children"; They never declared that people who enjoyed the game were morally unfit or harmful to society. I think they just find a tone of ridiculous violence to be gross and off-putting to them, which is their prerogative. Also, while the plot of Borderlands 2 is (deliberately) shallow, I give it seriously high marks for quality of writing, humor, and character. Anthony Burch and his team did some excellent work and made it far surpass the original's half-done tone and clumsy references.

Oh, there are huge differences between BL2 and SR3, definitely. I'm just saying that they both share a common tone of "self-aware ridiculous violence" which they simultaneously embrace and critique. How well they may succeed at doing the latter while so gleefully doing the former is a subjective matter left to the player. Personally, it's a reason I enjoy both games, but then again, I'm a big fan of postmodernism like that; in the same way the Old Spice ads used absurd extremes of "manliness" to advertise to both those who were irritated by such ad campaigns and to those who didn't see them as a joke, or the way fans of the Colbert Report include both people who love satire of conservatives and conservatives who don't realize it's satire. Anyway, I remember the Thumbs saying they were turned off of Borderlands 2 because of the early scene where you kill a bunch of bandits and Claptrap responds "Minion, what have you done?! These were human beings with lives and families and--I'm totally kidding. Screw those guys!" If that sort of tone will put a person off of Borderlands 2, they're probably not going to enjoy the tone of the Saint's Row games.

And even more than that, each outfit is available for either gender, too. But I can see how the ridiculous violence and gleeful dumbness could turn people off, despite all of the other positives. If a person doesn't like Borderlands 2 for those reasons, they're probably not going to like Saint's Row, and that's their choice to make.

That's a totally legitimate reason to be put off by the series - it is ridiculously violent, to a degree that I'd call "cartoonish" if it wasn't so gory (much like Borderlands). Of course, the sociopathic feel is perfectly in keeping with the story and overall theme of SR3, which is all about the ridiculous power invested in celebrities - with people starstruck to see you on the street even as you pile-drive their friends, or police demanding that you "sign and put down your gun." Also, their use of music is consistently good throughout; the "Power" use is spot-on for the theme, but one of the endings also makes amazing use of Bonnie Tyler's "Holding Out For a Hero."

The thing about the Saint's Row games (particularly 3, and hopefully 4) is that their story and gameplay perfectly mesh, in exactly the way that GTA's never do. Saint's Row has every bit as many weird activities and bizarre results of playing around in the open world, but rather than try to tell an unrelated story of renouncing violence that flies in the face of the gameplay, it tells a story about runaway celebrity and fame, and the excesses and distractions that come from them. Even more importantly, Saint's Row is entirely aware of how much of a self-parody it is, and it owns every moment of it - often while sneaking in subtle humor between the big, blatant dildo-jokes. If you're even slightly interested, I recommend giving Saint's Row 3 a chance (especially if you pick it up through the Humble Deep Silver Bundle). If you don't get a kick out of a tutorial mission where you help a movie star prepare to star as you in your own bio-pic by taking him on a bank robbery where you hide your identity by wearing Mardi Gras masks of your own faces, then I suppose the series just isn't for you.

Is it just me, or do these three trailers just read as "Here are the three types of players we hope to target: middle-aged guys who feel smothered by real life, 'urban' youth, and trolls"? Don't get me wrong; I'm sure it'll be a good game. But I'm pretty much a Saint's Row fan for life, so maybe I'm a little biased.

Brought over from the Episode 101 thread, since it seemed more appropriate here: Are we at a point where we aren't spoiler-tagging the ending yet? I feel like someone coming to this thread ought to know what they're getting into by now, but I'll tag it just to be sure. I mean, I totally dig that it's a good emotional end, but by the laws they've established, it just doesn't work.