Reyturner

(sorry for being weirdly shitty for no reason I'll go now)

lol Blizz games have been sold like a service since WoW. StarCraft 2 is the same. I don't see how it's "unsavory" though. Are you someone who is offended by movie tie-in covers on novels? Vanilla Diablo 3 is not a thing they are interested in supporting as anything other than a jumping off point to Reaper. Edit: the lol is in reference to Murdoc's old man rage.

Are you allowed to make a good game if you design it to be played exclusively with the Nintendo Power Glove?

or "Accordion of Shit"

I think an artist should feel free to touch on contentious issues, but they should do so in an informed way and with a specific goal in mind. I don't think the issue is this imagery being used, so much as it is this imagery being used thoughtlessly as window dressing.

Luftrausers is an intensely aggressive and fatalistic game. It reads as the creation of someone who feels angry and frustrated and powerless. The fact that it was made at the same time Ridiculous Fishing got "fast follow'd" before it even came out isn't a coincidence (Vlambeer has said as much). It's a game about a doomed man taking revenge on his tormentors. Every session of Luftrausers is about the protagonist getting killed gloriously. I don't think it's a stretch to say that there are potential problems with dressing that narrative with WW2-era German imagery. I think it's fair to criticize Vlambeer's response as a bit of a "sorry you were offended" non-apology, even if you don't consider yourself wronged by them. We should maintain high standards for these situations specifically because we're all susceptible to finding ourselves stomping on the long toes of others, because we all have room to improve. Being empathetic isn't about being born with the correct feelings and visceral reactions, it's about recognising and acknowledging the feelings in others that you don't necessarily share and learning to take them into consideration in the future. Because our own lack of empathy is often invisible to us, we have to rely on others to make us aware of it. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking of people who aren't disgusted by the things we're disgusted by as monsters and people who are disgusted by things we're not as overly sensitive or irrational or dishonest. It makes insensitivity the quality of a villain instead of a human so that when you find yourself on the wrong side of the disgust gap, we want to deny it or minimize it or double down to protect our self image. The non-apology as a thing is the manifestation this self preservation in action. The takeaway of all this, for me, is that we are often taken by surprise by our own insensitivity, and that the only thing we can do is acknowledge it and learn to do better.

Speaking of podcasts, I'm just going to plug Bonfireside Chat, which y'all may enjoy.

Are you referring to

Open the spoiler to see my exclusive Black Gulch walkthrough:

On the topic of authorial intention vs. audience interpretation Vlambeer responds to criticism that Luftrausers indulges in Nazi-chic.

Trying to quantify "cool" on the internet accounts for a pretty significant chunk of our economy.

You aren't cool when you tweet a hashtag, you're cool when you start it. You're cooler when you ARE it. I don't think the affectation of ignorance even has necessarily anything to do with anti-intellectualism anymore (though it's indistinguishable from anti-intellectualism when this behavior gets brought into other spheres like the classroom). Neil Degrasse Tyson is cool.

I think the raise of the zeitgeist is a very recent cultural shift that was ushered in by the internet and the democratization of media. There used to be very real tastemakers who's coolness was unimpeachable, now the tastemakers are a gestalt of everyone. You can only tell who ISN'T cool. Making references marks you as not being cool these days. This is also why we are starting to see the affectation of ignorance as being cool.

I dont think pop culture references can, by definition, be elitist. I don't think "popular culture" is even that relevant of a term; it implies a type of class distinction that doesn't exists anymore. Zeitgeist is a better word for our media landscape than "pop culture". We have a very broad and shallow zeitgeist surrounded by niches that occasionally get absorbed. Indeed, financial success is usually predicated on that happening. I think that's why references are so distracting, especially when the work doing the referencing to still nichey; it demonstrates the author's lack of confidence in their work to be able to appeal to the zeitgeist on its own merit. It's like watching someone awkwardly squeezing every hand with every secret shake they know, hoping someone will notice and inform the gatekeepers. Being elite, being cool, in our society means being relevant to, and being referenced by, the zeitgeist. The brass ring is to be above the zeitgeist but not of it, to define it. A lot of accusations of elitism or pretention (used interchangeably) are a result of the audience noticing a lack of reverence and reading it as the author affecting their own relevance. It's not that they're trying to fake being smart, it's that they're trying to fake being cool. You can't choose to be cool, only the zeitgeist can grace you with that. You can, however, forego coolness for survival by paying reverence to the zeitgeist through reference (just don't expect any kudos from Famous).

The Colbert case is interesting. If the joke had been "The Fabulouth Foundation for Friendship towards Faggots or Whatever", would we be talking about intent and context? As I understand it, half the reason for the outrage is that there are Asian Americans who are tired of being considered the "safe" group to make fun of. Intent! It's Fucking Magic! In certain lights, I can see where the author of this article is coming from, in others it looks like it was written as a straw-man caricature of a SJW by someone on /r/RedPill. Does expecting an audience to take the intent of the author into consideration when they've been offended constitute enablement of oppression and/or victim blaming? Saying that someone's hurt feelings are ridiculous or suspect sounds a lot like a tone argument. I honestly don't know. You guys are way better at this than I am. Edit: 'Banzo Bag :tup: :tup: Edit Edit: I hope this isn't read as a "please teach me" derail.

Also, making the bars fill and the numbers go up is "fun" and "satisfying".

Denial of racism is just as bad as taking part in it. Racism is like water, flowing and crashing until it's dried up. It doesn't stop being bad because it changes shape, but you might have to adjust your approach.

Well "to reclaim" means the removal from of something from the wrongful owner to the rightful on, in this case from white people to black people. They want to slap the club out of the racist's hand. As long as white supremacy exists, its use by white people is a denial of that right of reclamation and by extension either the denial that racism exists or that it's bad. Reclaiming it doesn't remove its power, but it forces others to acknowledge that malignant source of that power. And acknowledging a problem is the first step to solving it.

Well, "nigger", when used by racists, is almost always, explicitly or implicitly, paired with "uppity" i.e. "you don't know your place within the white supremacists hierarchy". Similarly "one of the good ones" as a compliment implies that they do. African Americans using it with affection also carries the message "fuck white supremacy". "Anyone else" (aka white people) using it with affection carries the message "I deny the existence of white supremacy" even if it isn't the intent.

Well, if the sting of the insult comes from attacking the subject's suitability for occupying a subordinate role in a poisonous hierarchy, then making that a positive quality undermines that hierarchy.

It strikes me that so many gendered insults directed at women are attributing animal qualities: bitch, nag, cow, shrew, cougar, etc. I'm guessing the power behind these insults is that they are directed at the subject's presumed suitability as a mate to a man. Similarly, gendered compliments are typically aimed at how much a man wants to fuck or marry the subject. This tells me that the power of these insults only exists within the patriarchy and, as such, are ripe for reclaiming. Slut, cunt and the like only strike me as objectification and don't really seem like words that can or should be positive. I feel as though it's like trying to reclaim "slave". Or maybe that's all bullshit. I dunno, I'm pretty bad at this stuff.

I choose to be optimistic. We have two designers with great games on their resumes and a team capable of doing good work. Let's assume Amazon hired them because they want to enable talented people to make good games.

That's all I'm saying. SK's contribution is to blow the enemy up. Obviously staying alive is better than dying but building for survivability to the detriment of initiation is a waste of his potential. And, of course, this is all theory crafting in a vacuum. dota is super dynamic so nothing is set in stone.

Sand King is basically a suicide bomber who doesn't have a lot to contribute to team fights beyond his (phenomenal) initiation. It's best to all in on bursty AOE items like Shiva's and Veil to soften up the enemy team. Survivability isn't a big concern.