Pepyri

Well I just sat in my bathroom for a solid 45 minutes because 80 Days is amazing. This is one of the most unique gaming experiences I've ever had, and I literally had never heard of it, seen it, or really had any way of knowing it would've existed before. I am just so pleased right now.

Glad to see someone collected all the bullshit GG posted and proof of how bullshit it is. It's a quick way to shut down that line of crap.

Perhaps, but those are some pretty faulty numbers in many ways. I then also look at TB, and in the past week alone he got 6,000 followers. Now, it's pretty difficult to determine how many were GG supporters, but he's been pretty inactive for the last week with him being in the hospital and all. And, he's one of the ones who isn't, well, constantly spewing fairly obvious hate. The 'attractive' option, if you will. I don't have a lot of confidence in the numbers I presented either. I wish I could go back further in time on his account there, but I'm not about to shell out money to see if there's a correlation between the two. I'm just saying that I don't have a ton of confidence in those numbers, since they are more or less with the most extreme voices on the side of GG, and do little to differentiate how many follow ZQ to find something new to not like about her(which if there's one thing the internet's taught me, people love a good outrage). Edit: I'd also add, being able to get $70k to TFYC and $5.5k to that anti-bullying campaign also don't exactly tell me small numbers, though I also fairly doubt the $70k number and feel like the $5k number is a lot more in line with reality, since most everything I've seen TFYC claim so far has been pretty damn close to hogwash.

This might very well be the case, but I just try not to assume things about the number of people that believe a certain way. I'm too often out of the loop to have any confidence in that without hard numbers of someone who has real evidence either way.

Note that this is just a theory of mine of course, but I'd like to think it's an educated one based on politics in the last decade or so. The thing is, think of the entire thing like a land war between two countries back in medieval days. Sure, at the end of the day you're going to have the cities- the die-hards, those who can't possibly give up the fight unless all is lost. But there's a lot of land between- i.e., the undecideds/uninformed parts of society. These people come from far and wide and have extremely varying points of view of the two sides/cities in question. But whoever gets to them first, whoever manages to talk to them and show their point of view, gets a bit of a hold on the person. Sometimes, it even turns them into a full-on zealot. Now, as more and more people are claimed on one side or the other, you find even the diehards will lose their luster when they see their side losing too much. The closer they are to the battle line, the easier it is to lose the will to fight. The deeper and more secure you are in opinion/knowledge, the more you want to do/say something. Thing is, in this case GamerGate got out there and spoke to those people a lot more than we did. We were a bit elitist about the whole thing, and honestly didn't reach out to the people who just pay attention enough to know what game to get excited about next. There's a variety of reasons behind this(many of them even good), but at the end of the day I really do think that's why it seemed like GG just kept growing and growing. But now, it seems like more are mobilizing on our side, are actually speaking out, getting shit written, educating people as to our point of view. I still don't think it's been done as well as it should, but it's a hell of a lot better than we were doing 3-4 weeks ago. And it shows- sure, there's plenty of GGers still on their side, but I've seen a lot less posts supporting GG across the whole of Reddit in the past couple weeks. And not just because mods are cracking down- even in places like KiA, the fervor isn't quite what it was. Also, many are simply getting tired of the fight- in which case, whichever side is asking less of everyone(which in this case, is us- we just want harassment to stop, after all), ends up winning to them, because that side is inevitably seen as more reasonable by those who are just tired of it all. Sorry for how long winded I am, and how convoluted my metaphor is. It just is how I think of this stuff, though admittedly I've never been in a place of power in any major 'political' wars like this.

Sure, but you've already got several things on your side: You're on twitter, the heart of this mess. You're following specific game developers, which means you're probably more educated about the industry in general. You're following enough of them that you see a consensus. Now look at the common GGer's twitter account: Often following under 100 people, most are barely reaching 60. Many of those they follow even then are other GGers, which means that before twitter they likely followed ~30-40. They likely got their news from the most populous web sites for gaming content- Reddit, 4chan, etc. And what was the centralized message on those boards in the early days? To combine my response to both comments: So we're all already well-established people in the community. We know who are voices of authority, we've done our checking out of the journalistic voices of the scene, we know who has a history of good criticism and who isn't. We even already know who our favorite reviewers often are, or at least our favorite outlets. We're against people who honestly just aren't as well-educated in the community as us. They see a multi-billion dollar industry rivaling movies, but they don't see the severely underpaid workers who make the games, or the journalists who basically live on peanuts. They also have only really heard of indie devs who have huge success- the Notches, the Jonathan Blows of the world. So when they heard a female indie dev was sleeping with someone for positive coverage, they thought She must be after that money! So they have an automatic assumption. A bias, even. But then when they go to check it out, they find tons of people arguing for one side... and only disparate fringes of conversation on the other, some of the conversation even the exact thing the Gamers got so insulted about(which furthermore, was couched in language far surpassing what the average gamer was coming into this prepared for, such as in the case of Leigh's Gama article), that honestly, we just didn't provide them what they needed to find landing on our side. Now, we finally are getting more to write about it, and to explain things away, but they're not hitting the hard truths that really tear apart the GG machine. Partly because they don't want to drag Zoe's name back through, or inspire another crusade against Anita or Leigh. But you've gotta remember- social media is almost exclusively those most heavily involved, and the most likely ones to both get shitty information and then respond as if it's gospel(ie, perpetuate the lies and/or contribute to light, insulting harassment(not death threats)), are those who are involved enough to care but not involved enough to do the homework themselves. And those are the exact people whose job it has always been for the press to educate, and frankly, no one bothered until now. I just hope it isn't too late(and from what I've seen so far, it doesn't seem to be).

But yeah, I'm proud of Jeff for writing that. One of the first comments on the reddit thread to it spoke to "How could a victim of the exact ethical issues we're talking about take a stance against us", which felt kinda good to see. Maybe this one will break through. But I also think silence in regards to some shouldn't be automatically condemned. Some people try to assume the best in everyone, and want to properly do their homework on something before completely going to one side of an issue. I started out on the anti-GG side, but I wasn't speaking up for the first few weeks other than wanting the harassment to stop. It wasn't until I did my research that I then came to discover, oh shit one side has nothing to stand on. The problem is, the anti-GG side has done an altogether terrible job of laying out talking points, in actually pointing out the lies and hypocrisy of GG, or explaining why this diversity is something that you really do want, or any of the things that seem obvious and rote to a feminist but to most people seem like an overexaggeration. This isn't me making excuses for GamerGate, that shit's been tarnished the whole time and is a serious shitheap. This is just in defense of those who did keep quiet, because frankly we didn't do a good job helping them learn why GG is so full of shit. She!

I think it's worth discussing why this is worse than a Hotline Miami, a GTA, or Postal. I think it's worth codifying exactly what makes this worse, how a similar game can be used to explore themes or ideas that haven't been explored and may be thought provoking in their own right. Furthermore, I think responding so vitriolically to people just because they're not as angry about something as you is pretty childish and shitty. Sure, if they thought the game was fine, go ahead. But you're talking about people who had nothing to go off of but the trailer itself, hadn't done more research(which isn't some cardinal sin, considering when they made those posts most of the research hadn't been done yet), and then jumped so thoroughly down their throat that I don't even know how to propose the idea that you can learn from bad, terrible things to you.

There's a guarantee they won't be bringing it in a worthwhile direction- look at the marketing, the messaging, the people making it- they are not interested in having a conversation on the nature of violence in media. They're interested in using neo-nazi tropes to create a climate of controversy so they can get sales. They're hacks, plain and simple. But I also don't like the idea of just dancing around their name. Sure, I don't want to link it on social media and spread it around, but dancing around what everyone is talking about is a sure-fire way to intellectual masturbation in a conversation. what you can't deal with my ANIME AVATAR?!?!?!?!?!?! this right here this is real oppression YOU'RE THE RACIST BLAMBO ...but nah I just like independent anime art and super cute things so I went with this. I've been a Thumb since early podcast days but my old account broke in the migration to new forum software a year or two ago. Edit: I'm not sure I can agree. I'm a pacifist, but I also must acknowledge that people will inherently disagree with me- some thing killing people, whether it's a shot to the head or lethal injection, is an appropriate means of justice. I don't think that makes that person more prone to violence(if you listened to my language I say to myself during a particularly heated League of Legends match you'd see that- I never chat it, but I definitely say it out loud when I'm alone), I think it just is a place where we disagree. I also think that death and violence have places in stories, that they can explore feelings and relationships that are generally only at the fringes of life, or society. I'd love to play a game where it was a character story about a psychopathic killer- don't glorify what he does, but get into his head, show the places where it's broken and fucked up. I watched Downfall(the movie all those Hitler memes came from) for the same reasons- seeing the places that make these people human remind you that anyone, anyone at all, can fall into those lines of thinking given the right circumstances, so don't make these people into monsters, make them into case studies of how to avoid turning to hate and violence as a means of expression. In the process, I think killing in games is fine. I think it's even more fine when the killing is just a quick metaphor as a means to exact gameplay mechanics- it's why I find the violence in Mordor so over the top and deplorable, is that it doesn't have a gameplay correlation, it's nothing but violence for the sake of gore.

And even if it isn't a gameplay conceit, I then wonder to myself if having reasons is in fact a good enough thing in itself. At least if someone has a reason to kill/murder/maim, we can make it logical- we may not agree with it, we may find it deplorable, but at least it's internally consistent. To get rid of that is to show chaotic insanity with no hope for turning the person away. Often we can say, "This character killed for his family" or "This character killed because he was driven by a terrible upbringing". Having nothing there makes it just a depraved, sick act. Reasons matter. Intent matters.

Y'know, maybe it's because I'm an ignorant white kid, but back when I was in high school and everyone was getting up in arms about GTA3's violence, I feel like a game like this would've been fine because it was so absurd. (On reading what I just wrote, yeah, I was definitely just an ignorant as hell white kid) Now I feel like it's just horrific, offensive, and should be taken out back by whoever is funding the company. I'm almost at the point of welcoming censorship, but then I remind myself why that isn't always the greatest approach. It's still reprehensible as hell though, the two executions with the people talking to you in that trailer really just make me feel disgusted.

I thought this post was a good summary you could always link people who start throwing a bunch of the usual rhetoric at you: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=134397896&postcount=12285 I got more heavily involved in posting on it today than I have before. It's starting to feel like the misinformation GG has been putting out there has started to falter, especially in the face of such wanton threats as what Anita got.

Yeah, but that's why qBittorrent is used these days! It's essentially utorrent pre-buyout.

Woah. I had seen some places they were giving him reverence, but I thought he was just another random hacker that tends to get worshiped by the tech crowd because he served time for hacking. This is just woah.

Web dev here(Rails/Ember/cetera)(not trying to be a dick and claim any authority, I am not an expert in web hosts, just using it to qualify how odd it is to still say what I do). You can actually do a hell of a lot with a tumblr page, you just have to get familiar with how they want to pull from their API. I personally though really would recommend Squarespace. I used to use them back with v4-6 of their stuff, and v7 is actually pretty bosstacular. $8/mo is a pittance for what you get- they've got all the tracking/SEO shit all set up for you(believe me when I can say that professionals lose days/weeks to getting shit set up as well as they have it out of the box), and you can do the rest of the HTML fun yourself. The only time I wouldn't recommend a SquareSpace site is if you're wanting to get serious about your Javascript interactions, in which case you get into serious development land. I mean, for what you're doing, yeah $8/mo seems like asking a lot, but if you were going to buy a domain and otherwise host yourself from there, the cheapest host I've seen is Digital Ocean, and what you get for $5 from them is seriously great. Except then, and on any of these hosts, you have to: Fully spec out/set up your HTML from the ground up Set up a web server Figure out how to insert tracking Lock down the server so no one hacks you and subtly injects malicious code in places Keep software updated all over the place for a huge variety of reasons(and I guarantee there'll be things you're unaware of that have security fixes that you don't think to update, because that's always the case, even as pros) And even after all of those, the site will still be slower than a Squarespace site, your larger file size images can cause a slowdown for other people using your site(i.e. you should have a CDN), and, you personally have to think about SEO. At this point, I think between Tumblr and Squarespace, no non-professionals should be using anything else because at that point you just get into realms of "Yeah I'm saving $3 a month but I have to spend an extra 2-10 hours a month doing things with my website that don't have to do with the reason I put the damn thing up". Edit: You could use Amazon's free tier, but keep in mind that's only for 1 year. After that you pay, though it'd likely be very minor. However it still has all of the above caveats.

My issue is, all the survival games seem to me to miss the point of what survival actually is. DayZ started getting at it, but the zombie elements and the way that the popularity killed what it was at first nixed that possibility. And everything since has seemed to try to just be Minecraft but dark and without blocks. This seems to actually understand that survival is about doing everything you can to maintain your health and head off the right kinds of catastrophes, which is interesting.

Don't worry, when you first buy it you'll regret it until you realize you're thinking about it in the morning and at night and then at lunch at work and then during work and then what's work again and you'll still be really bad at the game. By the way, I beat a level 6 AI today! Yay!

So, I finally got some help on this from others. Turns out, we're just doing it wrong more than likely. First off, slow down: You're just wanting to combo at the pace of the animations. Go into training mode to see how fast you can make that, but don't spam. Bad plan. Second, the up/down part only matters for the final(fourth) hit. If you're still holding to the side, you'll do a wide slash to the side. If you're holding up, you'll do an up-slash that's similar to a smash. If you're holding down, it does the fast-attacks that seem to add up to 10% in just that part of the combo alone. So if my numbers are correct, the combo total should do ~23% when done properly if you don't go through your enemy.

Can anyone explain to me why Marth/Lucina's side-B attack sometimes just seems to fizzle and not do anything at all? Like, they'll swing once, maybe twice, aaaaaaand then nothin'. Spam the hell out of the button, turn it up/down, nothin'. It seems to randomly choose when to be a combo and when not.

I think I didn't properly explain what I meant by mediocre combat- I mean just the combat, not anything surrounding it which is what makes it more of a strategy game for me. That's the part I love- having to figure out how to get in, look for tools to help me distract the other orcs so I don't get an army after me, and still leaving enough so I can properly take out my target(suddenly this is sounding like the game we all wished Assassin's Creed was). On the other hand, the core combat to me feels like it lacks depth or any true finesse(which is good, if only because it's so easy to be inaccurate with, say, who you're hopping over). And for the record, I found it super simplistic in Arkham too. I know it's unfair of me, but I'm comparing it to something like a Ninja Gaiden or a Devil May Cry, to describe it as simplistic and mediocre. But I also don't think that core combat is the point- the systems and your manipulation of them seem to be the point most of all to me. Which is why I can't quite leave my computer right now and get work done.

It's definitely what elevates the game. It makes the mediocre combat suddenly really interesting- or as Polygon put it, it turns an action game with incredibly simplistic combat into a strategy game of how to systematically take down and weaken an enemy army.

My issue with Twitter primarily stems from their bait-and-switch on developers for their API. I've sunk $300 into App.net over the past few years just because at this point I'd do near anything to tell Twitter to go screw themselves, but it's the only social network that actually encourages being social and talking to people so I use it anyway. And I think most of the complaints about Twitter's harassment stuff has more to do with the fact that blocking and reporting in cases of harassment require filling out long, involving forms, making it more difficult than it needs to be to protect yourself from harassment. I don't think it's even a case of scale, it's more a case of a bad toolset and there's been no movement on it for years, in the same amount of time Twitter's overhauled the profile page three times.

This isn't me endorsing everything they've ever done. It's saying that it can be done better, and could possibly be a good business model.

Yeah, I died to him 4 or 5 times in a row trying to be quick about it. I am about to go to bed, but now this Gorfel guy is in my head. I want him dead. He's immune to ranged, stealth, fearless, gets pissed off over pretty much everything, has a posse that always includes 1 other Captain, he's a berzerker(two axe guys that you get the yellow guard symbol from, I don't know what that is but if I guard there he punishes me for it), and if I fall below 25% health when he hits me, he says "Yeah I didn't think you were worth it." and walks off. He doesn't even bother killing me! He just humiliates me repeatedly! Seriously I'm gonna stab him in the eye

Overall I have never really enjoyed the Arkham-style combat system(Asylum for me was held up by an insane art style, and City I just hated), and while I still don't like it here, the way it's incorporated as a means of letting you decide how to approach a fight is really great. I love having to figure out where these Warchiefs are by interrogating fools, then when I find them, take out their support guys so I can go in for the direct kill, usually trying to get the big man alone for me to do it. I could go in sword-flying every time, but it just feels more fun, more effective, to skulk about, gather information, weaken enemy forces strategically, then strike hard and fast. At this point, I just wish combat was slower, more deliberate with each enemy, with fewer enemies and more combat intricacy. Oh, and that it wasn't a LotR game, 'cause I'm just not big into that series. Edit: And any real difficulty. Taking on 20 Orcs by myself shouldn't be so easy. I want to be punished for going against numbers like that. Edit 2: Nevermind on the difficulty. Got another 2 or 3 hours in, and now one Orc is consistently kicking my ass. And taking on groups of 20+ is suicide from the pure variety of enemies and things to consider. SUDDENLY ADDICTED.