Blambo

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Posts posted by Blambo

  1. Posted

     

    I've been thinking about how you could generally defuse tension between authority and non-authority figures and it seems like the best way is to change how power is represented in the community, like somehow instilling the idea in authority figures that they are still part of the community they're serving. I wonder if just giving a different face and name to the police, changing the aesthetic and tactical philosophy could diffuse tensions and maybe make the police view their job as a service to a community rather than as a military with an enemy.

     

    A similar thing could be done to combat weird political parochialism and non-participation in politics, which is to somehow make politicians "us" instead of "them up there in washington".

  4. Posted

    Also seeing TotalBiscuit's rant was a little weird because he seems to judge Depression Quest as an objectively bad game, as if when compared to the Elemental Laws of Game Design it fails a test. You can sort of see that because before that he also says that it spreads an important message and does it well and that it touched him personally, but then went on to say that it's just a bad game. On top of the sexist undercurrents of the accusation, the accusation itself is made on the idea that games can be good or bad based on this abstract, absolute idea of what games should be, and that anything that isn't that is bad and shouldn't deserve any recognition (that Depression Quest is one of these games). The argument runs completely opposite of the idea of what art is. It's a dumb way of seeing things, and it's being used to smokescreen a more fundamental issue.

     

    It's fucked up that this layer, the sexist layer, the adolescent vindictiveness layer, and the weird amorality of these sort of arguments manifest themselves in a bad lasagna that is "gamers". It's hard not to generalize about these people (call them manchildren, nerds, etc) but jesus christ how can so many people be so wrong on so many levels

  5. Posted

     

    Quick update: thankfully at least a couple of people (including another female games journo) posted on that (ex, I now realise) journo's post, taking her to task. Her response:

     

    You can sort of tell how cornered somebody is based on how many questions they start asking themselves to make points.

  6. Posted

    Nah, it's fine. Remember that money is speech. If those reporters want to stand there, they just need to buy the property first.

     

    This is definitely off topic but since you brought it up, considering donations and money to be a form of speech is actually an important step in reform because that puts the effectiveness of speech on a sliding scale, giving some people "more speech" and indirectly inhibiting the speech of others. If this is recognized, at least people can bring it up in mainstream conversation and have it be an issue.

  7. Posted

    While death threats are definitely out of line, professional ethics do matter a lot.  Companies and industries are propped up on a basis of trust.  Given that the games industry seems to have a deficit of trust in general, the accusations alone are bad, much less if they are true.  Also, I understand that you're struggling with this stuff but we have to be realistic too.  "assholes stomping on every non-white, non-CIS male out there?"  Real people DO get hurt and killed but somehow I doubt that video games are the cause of it.  Plus, that level of cynicism is a bit defeatist.  Feminism, gender, and many other issues are beginning to break into the main stream of video game culture and even culture at large.  We are making progress, it's just that progress will never be as fast as we'd like.  

     

    Actually I think the point is that this specific case is a manifestation of bias against a certain people or type of media. Like Bjorn said, if this were actually a bigger question about ethics, the conversation would transcend constantly attacking Zoe Quinn specifically. The accusations of unethical behavior in journalism are there as an excuse to rant about the direction of the games industry or perceived nepotism or to push theories about a feminist cabal. Considering how fast this topic spread, it isn't this isolated case of potential conflict of interest that pushed the death threats and harassment, it was more likely an undercurrent of hate that ran for a while, except this time people are justifying it with an ethics argument.

     

    Edit: yeah what Jon said, sorry if I'm just repeating things

  8. Posted

    This might be completely off topic, but besides the obviously stupid paranoia surrounding the 4chan/reddit "feminist cabal" thing, how should actual incidents of conflict of interest in journalism be handled without invading somebody's private life and probably digging up sexist prejudices? Though I guess if the outlet itself doesn't try to be an "objective"  source of information, does it actually matter in any way?

  10. Posted

    Is anyone anticipating an easy retcon after things settle down, pinning the escalation of violence on the community? That way the story isn't "overzealous police makes a bad situation worse by jumping gun" but "accident sparks rioting and looting, police react accordingly"

  11. Posted

    I disagree. Patchwork reform that keeps police from shooting people with impunity is worthwhile. Holding police officers that murder people accountable doesn't solve every systemic problem in society but it should save innocent lives and is a worthwhile, reasonably achievable step towards further reform. Everything can't be fixed at once through the political process, but that's no reason not to fix what we can when we can.

     

    Yeah but, there is an issue with presenting concrete reforms to short term problems as the be-all-end all solution. Look at the attention and spending focused on using military force in the war on drugs rather than observing and manipulating the environment that facilitates a drug economy, analyzing international trade policies that affect economic conditions elsewhere that contribute to crime in the US, and considering essential social and economic inequalities that are the root of our problems. The conversation for reform mostly ends when the focus is on immediate, short term problems. No politician has been elected because she has a ten year plan to slowly address problems, but plenty have been based on pacifying short term concerns.

     

    EDIT: Though in this specific case police accountability is a long time coming...

  13. Posted

    Then again there are probably legitimate, extremely rare times when military equipment to some extent is necessary, and maybe the best short term course of action is forcefully instilling a sense of discretion in police forces. Unlike an armed civilian population, regulating weaponry use in a police force should be easier and more direct, right?

     

    ...right?

     

    I feel like even if these kinds of police just had billy clubs and tasers we would see the same frequency, if not magnitude, of violence and brutality. Also the tendency to take excessive force might have some internal, systemic cause next to the political and social ones. I'd be interested to see how separated from everything, just being a police officer with the pressure from implicit quotas, supervisors, and employment have to do with this kind of behavior.

  14. Posted

    I wonder if something like the compstat system in NY is widespread in the US. It seems to encourage immediate preemptive action over necessary reaction, and places the perception of effectiveness (and thus the value and funding of a precinct) on the number of arrests one can make.

     

    Also I wonder how easy it is to dismiss officers based on their behavior, and if management is reluctant to replace sections of their force because it consumes too much time and energy . The police seem to be interested in protecting itself as an institution as cabal of individuals rather than an institution upholding an ethic of law enforcement, and passes that off as an interest in preserving a body responsible for law and order.

  16. Posted

    Watching this rendition of Rigoletto, it's interesting to see the work treated as musical performance over theatrical performance, with minimal set and costume design, where everything is sort of abstracted to "white suited guys are main characters, Rigoletto is in black with weird joker makeup". I've not seen many operas at all so I don't know if this is a common thing (or even a noteworthy one). It kind of reminded me of that discussion in thumbs about how pro quake III players made all player models just the untextured red or blue figures so you can focus on the dynamics of the actors in the scene. I wonder if this is a thing anywhere else in some other analogous form.

  17. Posted

    Thanks. It lasted a year, though we were close friends for a long time. I think the thing that ruptured it was the fact that she left for a while and we started a relationship long distance. She essentially found a new life that didn't include me, and decided to be more autonomous. I'm happy that she feels more independent now, but that definitely casts our past relationship in a weird light, as if she had perceived herself to be chained to me in some way. I dunno. Maybe I haven't been the best boyfriend, maybe it's the emotional/psychological baggage she brought into the relationship.

     

    Eugh gross feeling.

  18. Posted

    Just ended a relationship. She recently moved back to Russia and felt like she wanted to leave her old life behind and I can respect that, but she also tells me that she wants to be independent and self-reliant. That last bit disappoints me because I had been under the impression that she was staying with me as an independent, free person and the relationship had no semblance of codependency. But I guess she was mostly with me for the sake of having someone, and looking back the relationship was pretty rocky because of dependence and jealousy problems. I'm coming to realize that I was basically there to provide validation and that she didn't see anything concrete in me to begin with.

    I guess it's for the best but it's a weird sensation to have my perception of the relationship over the last year change so drastically. I had totally thought we were engaging in a weird sartrean mutual relationship but I guess not.

  21. Posted

    I found it a little weird as well, although I expected it because of another Midroll-handled gaming podcast I listen to. The game being free-to-try alleviates some of my negative reaction, but a cast member having played and enjoyed the game talking candidly about their experience would've been much more palatable than just reading the copy. That being said, I want Idle Thumbs to exist and be successful, they put out editorial gaming content and editorial gaming content has always come alongside gaming ads. Also, I imagine they feel as weird about it if/when asked to do something that disrupts what the cast is about as we do listening to it.

     

    I dunno, I feel like they indicated that the game was just a sponsor and didn't seem to offer any opinions or present it as a genuine recommendation according to their own tastes. It could've easily been replaced with an ad for mountain dew or...I dunno, laundry detergent. Though I guess people coming in expecting game recommendations and interpreting the ad roll as that might interpret it otherwise.