Awful Falafel

Ah, that explains it. Good to know it's not something I'd permanently miss out on like idk a tank with a thumbs decal which of course I now want. Just can't win sometimes.

I will never get tired of seeing sonicboomhauer or any pun based fanart really.

I had been meaning to try world of tanks for a while now and was curious about what the heck the exclusive stuff was but when I registered the code didn't work Anyone know what it was supposed to be anyway?

Ever heard of Ars Technica? Quality content without the pretentious rubbish! Only downside is they're sometimes late to the party on breaking news and their live blogs on press events aren't as nice as the verge but goddamn they're thorough and their site is easier to browse to boot! Though on second thought a latin name is kinda pretentious too but I'll take classy pretentious over indie pretentious any day edit: forgot to linky! here ya go! http://arstechnica.com/

See what happens when you don't funnel your players down narrow hallways?! you get maniacs with oranges! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

There seems to be this running theme that the gaming press and industry is the odd duck of entertainment and that other media have everything figured out. I think it's more that books, music, and movies have their own distinct audience with a different set of demands for content along with their own issues, for example, I still find most music reviews to be obtuse, impenetrable, navel gazing fluff. That's not to say gaming doesn't have incredibly glaring issues but it just always feels like an apples to oranges comparison, a different audience and a different industry obviously need to be handled differently. Clearly there's demand for better and since gaming is relatively new hopefully there's room for drastic changes. I'm pretty sure RPS started because it wanted to see those changes and I think the trick other than just putting up better, well thought out content is that they foster the community for it. The comments section are pretty well moderated with all the writers chiming in pretty regularly and feedback taken seriously. This obviously can't work for everyone, bigger sites just can't manage all their readers the way RPS have. That's probably why I'm not too cynical about how the Verge promised better but have fallen into all the same traps, I'm just sad that the Polygon seems to be headed in the same direction. I've thought pretty often about how to elegantly scale up a community without losing quality but no real solutions come to mind. The largest sites with quality content that I can think of are Ars Technica for tech and maybe Gamasutra for gaming but it's pretty industry focused so I'm not sure if that really counts. As readers the only thing we can really do is vote with our hits. Luckily I've been having my cake and eating it too though; RSS and selective ad blocking let's me get the latest content from the mega sites while only supporting the ones with quality content. It's not ideal but until Flattr goes mainstream there's no real way to send a stronger message. It's kind of like voting third party, it might not effect much change but I'm still proud to make it clear what I really want. BTW, while we're here we should share the sites with better content. I'm partial to the Penny Arcade Report, it's mostly editorials by Ben Kuchera, who used to run the gaming column at Ars Technica, along with links to articles from other sites that he feels worth highlighting. I wish I could also recommend the current Ars gaming column but it's clear Kyle is still learning the ropes. Edit: oh man what's the point in sharing without links? BAM! http://penny-arcade.com/report/

Funny you say that, those posters were in the general Knoxx DLC when Steele was dead and Knoxx was kind of the guy who hated doing his 9 to 5 and wanted to be ANYWHERE but Pandora. Since dealing with the valut hunters was such a chore he probably didn't give a damn about some posters. Anyway I wish I had time to catch up and make some solid arguments here but unfortunately I don't and some people are pretty weary of this topic anyway. I will say that I have been convinced that the marketing of this game was pretty demeaning in regards to Lilith which is a shame because none of that is really characterized in game. There she came off as this thrill seeker on a bit of a power trip. Since I gotta go though here are some articles that I think shed some pretty good insight on the whole debacle http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/sexism-as-inclusion-why-the-press-and-developers-have-such-trouble-talking http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/08/this-is-an-interview-with-randy-pitchford/ The PAR one is another great editorial from Ben Kuchera, the Kotaku one is a bit fluffy but still worth the short read.

Yeah, I just reinstalled and went through all the commentary, some pretty insightful stuff. Makes me wonder how it would turn out if Brendon had more time to iterate considering all the little things he would've changed in hindsight. All the same congrats Brendon, you've wrung almost 2 hours out of me on a 15 minute game and I loved every second of it.

But remember the other thing in that eurogamer article? About there being a seperate skill tree in the works geared towards skill? I got the impression that the two trees were supposed to contrast with each other and provide something for the variety of play styles that you're endorsing. I got the impression that the Best Friends Forever tree was going to have skills for convenience rather than domination, I highly doubt the ricochet auto-aim bullets were all going to be free critical headshots, if that were the case then that would've been poorly balanced shooter design and I doubt veterans like Gearbox would make oversights that egregious. Also I don't think they ever set out to make a nuanced high skill ceiling shooter, the RPG element usually makes things err on the side of just becoming ridiculously powerful with the level and loot grind coming into play. Plus for what it's worth BL2 has been trying to sell us on the variety of enemies and behaviors so hopefully things will at least be more interesting to shoot at but they're definitely not going for a CS or TF2 level of precision design. Really rather than be disgusted at the prospect I was intrigued about how investing in both trees would work together and remember this class is still a work in progress. Sigh, I hope the good ideas don't get scrapped over this situation.

Wait, you can get past that load point in commentary mode? I crashed there 8 times before deciding to just wait for an update. Ugh, why does something so awesome have to be so crashy?

Heya guys! I've finally joined the forums because I just had to weigh in on the last podcast. Been listening since the early podcast days and also backed the kickstarter so I just want to say sorry for lurking for so long. I'm realy into cartoons, movies, spicy food, and shockingly video games, crazy I know. I'm not much of a forum guy but hopefully this one sticks since you guys seem like a cool bunch to chat with. Nice to meet ya guys!

Well to be fair he's gotten those responses regarding the girlfriend mode fiasco but nothing about whether the actual Borderlands game is sexist which is a different topic entirely, no? I can't speak for him but I think the part you quoted was pretty straightforward. Yeah, I'm interested to hear his thoughts on this whole situation on the next HAWPcast, hopefully he's at liberty to speak about it. Also man, two BMO avatars in one thread? I don't know if that's awesome or it just means we should be more original, heh.

But you can't get that nuance in a soundbite and you can't get the views/hits/ratings without the conciseness of a soundbite. It's a shame but there's just so much content and so little time that the world at large can't digest very much. Plus it's probably going to be really hard to avoid the eyerolls when any company makes resolutions to learn from their past mistakes. Blowing up scandals to large proportions has probably made most people cynical and untrusting of corporations. Man, this came off pretty negative but I really just can't think of solutions to a large scale cultural problem like this.

I bet it's because it's hard to throw your own guy under the bus like that. It's definitely the right PR move but pitchford isn't probably thinking like a PR guy, he's a CEO and probably thinks he should defend one of his own and the reputation of his company. Plus like you said, they're not REALLY being held accountable to owning up to what happened so where's the incentive to not play it safe and just belittle the whole situation? It's sad that this damage control is probably going to work and everyone will forget about it when something actually sensationalist does happen. Anyway I hopped on because I thought it was odd that Sean found borderlands egregiously misogynistic especially when I found it relatively progressive. Now I never noticed most of this stuff the first time around but I recently finished a complete play through of the game and the DLC since I was pretty hyped for BL2. It has some pretty strong authority figures like Helena Pierce, Athena, and Steele, although you could say Steele hardly counts since she was barely in the game. Also most of the women aren't sexualized and in fact one is horribly disfigured. Only exception is Moxxi but it could be argued that the first thing you learn about her is that she's between relationships and finds more satisfaction in running the underdome than in her ex husbands. that's gotta be some semblance of independence right? Is this game breaking the virtual glass ceiling for women in video games? Probably not but it's far from egregiously misogynistic. Maybe Sean is misremembering or he's conflating the crassness of the game with misogyny but it's definitely no Duke Nukem Forever. Also funny that DNF gets a pass for being from an older time but at least gaming has generally moved beyond that level offensiveness for however much that's worth.