Bjorn

?? This is a new one, I don't think I've ever encountered that phrase before.

My gut reaction agrees with you. I'm sure that there are still some reasonable voices left, and Denial is right that some people are still being dragged into it against their will. But an awful lot of people have just completely disengaged from any public discussion on it.

This blog post kinda explains it. Some of the tweets have been deleted and one of the co-founders of GaymerX deleted his Twitter account, so it's not entirely clear. But it sounds like some (and don't quote me on this, I'm piecing it together) gaters tried to rope GaymerX into #notyourshield, the GaymerX twitter hem-hawed and called for peace or took a centrist/middle ground stance, and then everyone lost their shit, Milo jumped in, and they got attacked by both sides pretty heavily. And just remember how the gaters are all about being inclusive, non-harassing and not insulting....and that they do such a good job of policing their own. Edited to add: I'm spoilering these, as Milo uses an anti-gay slur in his tweets.

Not sure if we have an actual FFXIII thread, so I'll just drop this here. The Steam port came out this week...and it sounds underwhelming as a port. It needed Durante to swoop in and fix the resolution with his Geo-fixer-something tool, same as Dark Souls and Deadly Premonition, as it is fixed at 1280x720 resolution. Also, no graphics options, compressed cut scenes, a whopping 49GB download and apparently hitting ESC just quits the game, rather than bringing up a menu.

I use bluehost, but it's pure inertia keeping me there at this point, I have no idea if they are still a good deal compared to their competitors.

Yes, at least at times. The Ferengi are the worst, simply being caricatures of Space Jews. And while the Federation is a celebration of diversity, the rest of the universe is mostly made up of species who are defined by a few traits, from which they are rarely allowed to deviate. It's the same problem that SBM described with LOTR, making an entire group share the same stereotyped traits and personalities.

I keep thinking that it would make a fascinating project to note down the IDs of a hundred or so gaters (ones who are using established Twitter accounts, or some of the Facebook accounts that have shown up, etc), and then try and talk to a bunch of them about a decade from now, see how they feel about #gamergate 10 years down the road.

I remember downloading it to try it out, faffing about for maybe 15 minutes and deciding that it was garbage and completely unnecessary given that Worms 2 (the best of all Worms) already existed. Edited to add: Just did some reading on Worms: Armageddon. I had no idea that it has continued to receive support, including a patch as recently as last year. Apparently Team 17 have let a pair of fan programmers continue to patch and expand it all these years. The only reason I favored 2 over WA was that there were some options that WA was missing on release, but it sounds like it's the unquestionable best version now.

Totally watched this tonight. It was like being 8 again.

I'm semi convinced that someone from the thumbs forums has to be responsible for this. No ********* Left Behind

Thanks for those links. I had seen a mention of the Kotaku editorial direction change, but hadn't actually read it. I never really cared for Kotaku, something about them historically rubbed me the wrong way. But the pieces being written there and the decisions they've made in the last few months are genuinely changing the way I think about them. The editorial change in particular should be interesting. The rare time I really get hooked for deep, extended amounts of time on a game, one of the things I love about the communities around those games are the things we keep learning for months or years after release. And that's the kind of stuff that communities know, but that the games press or general fans don't.

I hate to drag actual ethics into this thread, but hey, it's in the title. Forbes has a breakdown on various reactions to the contracts some YouTubers signed to get their hands on Shadows of Morder early. And though I've been generally avoiding the Escapist lately, Jim Sterling actually got a copy of the contract and calls out the worst shit in it (the amount of expected control over final content is insane). And it doesn't look like many places are talking about this. Neither Joystiq nor Polygon (my main two sites for vidya game news) seem to have posted about it. And a quick look at #gamergate doesn't seem to pull up much discussion either (to be fair, I only looked for about five minutes before getting disgusted and moving on).

I'm surprised they didn't go with Pokémon style branding given the slightly different color schemes. Super Smash Bros Fire and Super Smash Bros Ice.

Someone else mentioning The Room 2 sale earlier this week got me to finally start playing The Room last night. My wife and I curled up in bed and played it for about an hour. It's neat! And a perfect little game to play with someone else.

Yeah, I'd agree with Merus. The structure of the game is that you can have average performing fruit who are easy to manage or children who may excel or fail, but are harder to manage. You could substitute robots or use drugs to modify kids behavior instead of *********s, but honestly the absurdity of using fruit feels more appropriate to me than going with robots or drugs. Either of those is getting a bit too dark.

If you're looking for the proper attire to wear while hosting a Twin Peaks watch party, here's a guide to all 118 sweaters featured in the show.

I'm ridiculously self-satisfied with stumbling across this, not gonna lie. Also, yeah, it looks like a game with some surprising potential.

socialjusticewarrior.club is obviously the best. I'm shocked that socialjusticewarrior.exposed isn't already taken.

I got really excited reading a couple of articles about the developments of the all women Ghostbusters 3 movie (writer of The Heat hired!)...then I read the comments and wanted to puke.

Separating genre and setting make a lot of sense. I guess I tend to think about genre as a way to think about structure, not as a way to label or pigeonhole something. One of the defining elements of soaps is focusing on character relations, particularly romantic relationships, and the drama that ensues from those relationships. And tracking multiple relationships simultaneously as they evolve over multiple episodes or even seasons. Prior to Twin Peaks, that kind of narrative structure was usually (though not always) reserved for daytime soaps or their big name evening counterparts like Dallas.

I'd argue that Twin Peaks is really about using weird to enhance the soap opera genre. In a lot of ways, I think that's the really important legacy it left behind. There are an awful lot of modern shows that we identify as different genres, but really have their roots in the soap opera (see Battlestar Galactica), and Twin Peaks did a lot to show that you could take the structure of classic daytime soaps and do something wonderful with that.

When Danielle says something about the dadification of games, Jake is just barely audible saying "Oh, I know" or something. So good.

Johnson County becomes the first county in Kansas to begin issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples. Fuck yeah.