Bjorn

Ha, that makes me laugh, as I'm the same way. There's no fun in just looking on eBay and buying it, fuck that. You have to find something for sale in the real world and have that sudden jolt of surprise and wonder when you stumble across it.

Clyde's original solution was to just give them their own island with a gaming monastery they could live in, free from the evils of the real world.

Blambo, we need you! Watched the segment of the Colbert Report over my lunch break, that went really well! Actually better than I expected even. I'm starting to wonder if that picture isn't actually mocking gg. Is this an army of angry, pasty faced, identically anonymous soldiers backing up the "heroes"? And the hydrapus appears to be chained with razor wire, meaning that feminism is a dangerous beast you must keep cruelly chained up lest it escape? Picture is fucking weird the more I look at it.

I'd bet money it is so you can experience the call without having to dial it (outside the US, shitty low minute plan, etc).

Yep, and there's a couple of youtubers in there I'm not familiar with (Sargon and MundaneMatt). This YouTube comment (about that picture) kills me though: "Hey Colbert, they're lying to you about #notyourshield, ask this white guy for the truth!"

HEY! There's a purple skull faced guy, that's diversity! Also, there's two women, the character on the Pegasus is a woman. Actually, are most or all of those based on actual people? Boogie is in the bottom left, Milo is the statue looking character with the laurel wreath? Edited: Oh yeah, and that's IA there in the middle with the wig, duh. They guy who owns 8chan is holding the 8chan banner. Don't recognize the rest. Edited edit: Pretty sure that's supposed to be Sommers on the flying horse.

Woah, new show! It's like Christmas in Halloween! I really like listening to professionals talk about the craft of game design and their history in the industry, so this is something I fully support.

My wife just told me she's, semi-jokingly, worried she won't like my face if I shave. She hasn't seen me clean shaven since '94, when we met. The last time I shaved completely clean was probably in '99 or '00, and she didn't see me in that brief window (we didn't get together as a couple until about 10 years ago).

The ebay listing is pretty amusing.

I'm going to do the opposite, I'm shaving down for a Halloween costume (probably, if I don't chicken out). Figured as long as I was doing that, I'd go for No Shave November and try a different style of beard by the end of it, plus make a charitable donation or two. I'm not actually all that familiar with the various varieties of Movembers, Noshembers, etc. I just know it's a thing, and usually associated with male cancer awareness.

I am on board with that, looks sweet.

It is the only core/numbered RE game I haven't been able to finish, not even in co-op. I can't say I hate it, I just found it to be disappointing and it didn't do anything that made me want to play it more.

Tim, thanks for jumping in, we all obviously have a fondness for The Last Night thanks to Danielle. I don't know that I have time to address all your points, but perhaps I can help explain the reaction several of us had. First this point: This is something that we've discussed in these forums quite a few times, and people here have a range of reactions. Some people agree with you. Some people think that the creators opinions matter a lot, because any work of art is a kind of relationship between consumer and artist, and you can't separate personal views and emotional reactions from that. For me, there are some issues I have much more powerful emotional reactions about (feminism being one of them), and I'm more likely to take a creator's views on those subjects into account than I am if they have views I disagree with but don't have a strong emotional connection to. Now, looking up at the tweets of yours I posted, there are several that seem to show pretty problematic opinions, and those are what caused us to have the reaction many of us did. With Sarkeesian, claiming that she says that games are making people sexist is a twisted interpretation of what she actually says, and it's a common misinterpretation used to try and discount her views. Her point is that we live in a sexist society, are born and raised into it. All of us are sexist to some extent. Video games are just one cultural reinforcer of certain sexist ideas, and if you're not aware that our media can affect our beliefs, then you are actually more likely to be more strongly affected by media shaping your beliefs. As an example, someone recently looked at the gender representation of the top 1000 video games (determined by a mix of sales and review scores). Among other things, they found that male characters outnumbered female characters 4 to 1. I feel like what I'm seeing out of your comments about Sarkeesian is that maybe you take criticism as condemnation? The series of videos is about women and tropes, of course it's mostly going to focus on the negative aspects of that. I've never once watched one of her videos and felt like she was condemning games or painting the culture as negative (I've been gaming for 30+ years, fwiw). I think she's highlighting the ways that games handle gender in shitty ways. Because games often do. Is every example perfect? Maybe not, but that doesn't undermine the overall message. And if you take just one or two examples, and decide that the rest of her data or arguments are invalid, haven't you cherry picked examples out of her work in order to judge it? Then there were you tweets about culture being a free market. I don't see culture as working that way. Our culture is dominated by mass media, and the mass media is in turn mostly controlled by middle aged or old white guys. Our modern culture doesn't reflect what people want, it reflects what corporations thing will be most profitable. It's a market in which being an established power, or having lots of money, controls how much influence your voice has. The internet has made things somewhat better, and crowdfunding is helping even more. Except we see what happens when voices the status quo doesn't like suddenly get some attention. Sarkeesian's high visibility is, in many ways, thanks to her unexpectedly huge Kickstarter. Fuck yeah! That's the market at work, people found a voice they thought was interesting, funded her and promoted her. And since then she's been literally demonized by elements of gaming culture. She's the boogeyman for some folks. One of the primary counters to her that appeared is a documentary project run by a couple of racists and misogynists (having actually watched and read some of their work, I'm pretty comfortable labeling that). Take a look at some of her biggest critics, and ask yourself if those people are natural allies for you. I'm really hoping they aren't. Okay, I gotta get some work done. Thanks again for dropping and best of luck with your work. Edited to add: I'm obviously speaking from a very American viewpoint, and can't speak for what the experience in other cultures is.

I'm thinking about shaving my beard off to start fresh for No Shave November. Anyone else do it? It kind of scares me. I haven't been clean shaven for at least 15 years, and I'm not sure what my chin looks like.

Baseball is kind of weird and arcane, compared to a lot of other sports, which is one of the things that makes it charming. To be honest though, I'm really glad the series is over. I was pretty baseballed out. I usually go to a handful of games a year, and watch a few more on television. I've watched more baseball this month than I usually do in several seasons. Perez' leg was the first thing we were talking about as soon as the game was over. But we all pretty quickly agreed it ultimately doesn't matter, no reason to run it into the ground. Guys get hit, hurt, strained and it affects them, or not. No way to know. It would have been a storybook ending to have him be the winning run though. Dude's been the rock of the team all year.

I'll watch the whole episode tomorrow during my lunch hour, but apparently it includes a bit where Anita can't name 3 misogynistic games (clearly intentionally joking), but ggers are losing their shit on twitter taking it seriously.

I think he would have been thrown out barring a bad throw or knocking the ball out of the mitt, but I agree, it would have been the better finish. Oh, and fuck Joe Buck. The massive wave of mockery and derision he's getting right now provides some minor solace for the loss.

Thanks, the worst part was actually the triple there at the end, giving us hope. Ultimately this has still been the most successful and exciting Royals season in my adult life and the Royals proved they can go toe to toe with anyone in baseball. It's been a ton of fun having a reason to be a Royals fan and watch this city go nuts over the last few weeks.

fuck

You know you're leading the good life when you end up in the place with a lot of excess cat vinyl.

Wow, that's...some justification there.

Nach, that's awesome!

Five minutes into the episode, and it's already sending me down a weird rabbit hole. Here's that New Zealand interview.

I've been thinking about the history of women challenging men on the sanctity of their traditional spaces. In the golfing world, there have basically been mini-gamergates going on yearly for...literally as long as I can remember. I started golfing in the early 90s, and I can't remember a year that has gone by since then that there hasn't been a sexism scandal (and backlash). At the very least, there's always a little one around the Master's, since it's still a private, male only club. Sometimes the specter of journalism ethics has even been used to silence critics. But there are usually other's as well, like Vijay Singh saying he'd boycott an event if he was forced to play with a woman. The sexism of golf is particularly interesting when you tie it into the professional world. There's lots of business, or at least networking, that happens on golf courses, and barring women from being members at clubs is not just about having a space for men to pal around and enjoy their hobby, it's also de facto about making sure women don't have access to one of the professional resources that men do. Today, the Daily Beats pondered whether other geeky male habitats like Magic might have their own -gates waiting in the wings. I wish I had more time for writing and research right now, I'm sure there's a fascinating piece tying gg back into the history of what happens when traditionally male spaces start to become less so.

Terminator Genisys *fart noise* :fart: :fart: :fart: