Bjorn

Trine 2 in co-op. Overall I thought the original was more charming and engaging. Some of the levels feel too long and puzzles too direct. Though the free expansion redeems 2 in a lot of ways, as the puzzle design is better and the mission length is shorter in the Goblin campaign compared to the main story. Still, worth playing if you like the first one.

And I wish I had a job that required a lot more than mine does.

I listen while I work. Most of what I do doesn't require a lot of brain power, so I listen to podcasts or NPR all day long.

That comment wasn't aimed at anyone here, when I said it, I was specifically thinking of some interactions I've had in Joystiq comment threads in the past. I say emotionally tied because those people I've interacted with seemed to care more about hating on PA than any other aspect of the situation. They aren't particularly well versed in the idea of rape culture. Prone to twist every single thing they could into yet another condemnation of PA (no matter how tenuous the connection might be). What mattered was being angry, and that everyone else should be angry with them. Of course, maybe that's just an internet thing, as the reaction to PA is hardly the only time I've seen it. But it's always online and never in person that I encounter it.

That was great!

The only serious time I've ever seen gaming journalists consider boycotting E3 was over SOPA, but never over the treatment of women. I've certainly never seen an outlet make an argument for a blanket boycott of Microsoft coverage. The point I'm trying to make is that the reaction to PA is different than the reaction to other companies, even when the volume of issues over time is similar. I think there are people now who are very emotionally tied to hating PA in a way that they are not emotionally tied to hating other companies. It's an interesting dichotomy to me.

Lots and lots and lots of ignorant boys and men do defend Microsoft. These are probably the same people abusing people on Xbox Live, defending PA and attacking the woman who made DQ. The extreme edge of the fanboys won't stomach any criticism of their platform, combine that with the already simmering misogyny of parts of the gaming community and yes, I've seen people attacking the critics of MS and defending MS' right to do whatever they want with Xbox Live (this was around a lot during the banning gays from Live thing). People don't donate to Microsoft's charity...but they do spend billions buying their hardware, games and accessories. Microsoft doesn't have it's own convention, but it does have Xbox Live, a community service that millions of people use every week, and around which many of its problems are centered. Microsoft is a member and leader of the gaming community, along with PA. And PA is a company the same way that Microsoft is. Other journalists boycotting PAX? Off the top of my head Leigh Alexander and one of the writers for Wired have also declared they are done with PAX. But remain silent on the subject of E3. I get part of the rage at PA. We thought they were one of us. We thought they represented us. They were a powerful voice in the industry that mirrored ours, one that could speak and be listened to. Which isn't try for so many people. And then they ended up being damaged, flawed assholes. It sucks. But the long term targeted focus on them has no other analog in gaming, even though there are other companies who deserve the same level of scorn and attention.

Angry, yes. At each individual incident. But every time a new bad thing is done by Microsoft, someone doesn't feel the need to reiterate every single stupid thing Microsoft has done in terms of women and gays for the last 8 years. Which is exactly what has been happening with Penny Arcade. Tell me where I can find the wiki or curated list of awful things done by any other company or individual in gaming similar to the one for PA. Games journalists aren't calling for boycotts to E3, the way that some of them have announced that they are boycotting PAXes. Why not? Is it because it is safe, journalistically and financially, to boycott PAX whereas boycotting E3 would cost too much? I don't think they are a scapegoat, so please don't put a word in my mouth I didn't use. I think they deserve much of what they get. A scapegoat is predominantly undeserving of its fate. But I do think they pick up extra heat, and draw a lot more ink from journalists particularly, for their crimes compared to the industry as a whole.

I've been trying to figure out a coherent way of explaining why the anti-PA stuff bothers me. Ultimately, Mike is a relatively ignorant about these issues, with a big mouth, a bigger microphone and some mental health/self esteem issues. Combined, this is like a perfect recipe for hurting and angering people. Mike deserves to be criticized and called out for the dumb, hurtful things he says. And even more so when they can't keep elements of their community under control, or recognize the impact they have on that ignorant subset of their community. But, that said, I often feel that the big dumb target that he's painted on himself and PA serves as a stand-in target for all the other sexist, homophobic, transphobic, racist and other bullshit that goes on in the industry. Most of it is quiet. Not talked about, or has a million-dollar PR machine ready to grease over anything that might look or sound bad. Or it's just quickly forgotten about. Look at something like this article on the creepy, rapey E3. Unnamed rude, insulting AAA developers. Unnamed molesting indie dev. Multiple shitty PR reps and the unnamed companies they work for. And yet we don't have months long, hand wringing discussions and tublr summaries of the problems that E3, the ESA and the major supporters of E3 have had with sexism. Because everyone with power wants to sweep these problems under the rug. Or think about the litany of problems that Microsoft has had with women and gay gamers over the last 8 years or so. The recent sexist Xbox One letters. The E3 rape joke. The mocking of a transgender journalist at an Xbox One Europe event. Banning accounts because people identified as gay (sure, they stopped, but it never should have happened and it took 8 years from the launch of Live to have a policy that it was okay to be openly gay). Doing as little as possible (or nothing) to punish abusive and stalking accounts. People talk about safe and comfortable environments. Xbox Live is premium paid service, and I don't think you're going to find a lot of women or girls who would describe it as feeling safe or comfortable. It's toxic, and at times dangerous. And they can take weeks to bother banning accounts that threaten to rape people, and then only if you embarrass MS by pointing out to a whole bunch of people how laughably slow and unaccountable their system is. And that's just recent history stuff in the Xbox division. Let's not get into some of the weird shit that's gone on in other areas. Or inserting boob jokes into the Linux kernel. I would suspect that you could find one or more issues a year, every year, going back to the announcement of the 360 where Microsoft has been insulting or demeaning towards women and/or the LGBQT community. And yet, where is the hate for MS due to this history? Where are the calls for a boycott on them because of their actions? Sure, they apologized for most of this and changed a policy here or there. But it's not all fixed, and some of those apologies were pretty hollow. Much like how the PA guys apologized, and how they're trying to change policies. And lets not even delve into the endless list of terrible things said by individual developers, game journos and others connected to the industry. So my theory is that PA serves as a stand-in for all the other similar crap that goes on in the games industry. Because so much of that crap is faceless. And corporations do a very good job of not talking about stuff like this, except to issue a curt apology and then forget about it. But PA has faces, and voices. Faces and voices that don't know when to shut-up. And they engage with people (for better or worse), something else the faceless corporations don't like to do. So it makes them easy targets to get mad at, focus on and stay mad at. I'm not saying they don't deserve some of it, they do. But I think the anger and concern about these issues ought to be spread around the industry a lot more than it is, and focused less on PA than it is. Hopefully that makes some sense.

The Penny Arcade stuff has confused me for years. You can't really have a rational discussion online about it. If you appear to be on PA's side, you've suddenly become an apologist for them (and painted with the same brush that "white knights" get painted with...which is weird). On a lot of the sites I hang out on, it's become the cool thing to hate on them.

I have almost the opposite view of Katie. The family may have been disintegrating, but they are also growing, changing and learning to heal by the time she comes back. I think there's a fascinating contrast in how mundane her "adventure" in Europe was when compared to the lives her parents and sister were living in her absence (which while painful and confusing in some ways, were definitely not mundane). I think it drives home the idea that adventure is where you find it, not where you go.

He pretty much nailed what I always think of the men and boys who freak out about this stuff: "I know that in your head you’re putting somebody in their place, but all you’re really doing is running around and declaring yourself to be afraid and small and stupid…" They all just end up looking like they are terrified of women.

So I was reading through Joystiq's interview with Steve Gaynor, and there was this answer: I'd say he's working on a broken family simulator (because country music), but that seems a little obvious and repetitive. Whatever the influence of classic female country singers is, I'm excited for it. I hated that music when I was a kid, as it was all my grandad listened to when I was around him. But as an adult I've come around to loving it.

This is probably one of the funniest updates I've ever seen on a game on Steam. I wish I would have seen the results before they made the changes. It actually makes me curious about the game. I wonder if they tried to make dong physics like some games make boob physics.

An "Art" genre on Steam would be worth hours of entertainment. Oh how the butthurt would flow.

Quite!

I know I used it the same way earlier, but technically this isn't nepotism, as no relatives were involved. What is actually being talked about is more commonly referred to as simply networking if viewed in a positive light, or cronyism if viewed in a negative light. Cronyism is a hard one. If you asked me tomorrow to put together a team for a project or new business, I would seed it with at least some people I've worked with before, and I would ask those people that I trust for recommendations for additional candidates. Not necessarily because they are unquestionably the most talented at the jobs, but because I have an understanding of how they work, an intimate knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses and I trust their judgement. I would value that knowledge over the uncertainty of working with an unknown person, at least for a portion of my team. This would all technically be an example of cronyism, as I would certainly bypass other qualified candidates in the process. Things like this happen all the time in business and academics, it's often viewed favorably and most of the time no one even thinks about it.

I'm in my late 30s now, and quite enjoy video games still. But I have gone through two very long stretches (one in my mid-20s and one in my early 30s) where I basically quit playing games completely. I try to have some more moderation now. I find that if I go for a couple of weeks of not playing anything, my overall enjoyment of games improves. When my default action most nights is to fire up a game, I begin feeling burned out on them.

Fullbright announces that they are partnering with Peter Molyneux to deliver the most realistic Jeff Goldblum Simulator the world has ever seen. Molyneux says, "I realized that there was no reason to develop but a single world with Godus when I was presented the opportunity to design my very own Jeff Goldblum. How can an entire world compete with Jeff?" Molyneux promises to develop social marketing game that will award one player the opportunity to ACTUALLY become Jeff Goldblum.

And that's the crux of it. There is precedent for barring speech that incites people to violence. So if a KKK blog were to begin providing instructions and encouragement on how target a black man, kidnap him and lynch him, you would have a legitimate case to censor that site. I really think that some of the MRA sites come very close to encouraging sexual assault when you consider the whole of their content (particularly when you factor in the repeated insistence that most rape claims are false, reinforcing the idea that rape isn't something that happens). But it's a damn fine line to prove.

The one thing about genre that drives me batty is Steam (and probably other places) classifying things as being in the "Indie" genre. What does that even mean? If Indie is a genre, why isn't there a AAA genre, or "Traditionally Published" genre?

That certainly addresses many of the minor complaints I had about the game. I was hoping that there would be even more traits, or that some of the existing traits would get changed to have more than a cosmetic impact. I would love it if virtually every trait had a significant impact (positive or negative). Actually, the thing I really wanted was for traits to stack for 2-3 generations, so that it was more than a one-off impact on the game and that there might be the chance for some bonkers crap to happen if you combine the right/wrong traits (like what would happen if a descendent had both the Giant and Dwarf traits).

I think those arguments are ultimately just a thin veil for being being upset that she's an outspoken feminist and a woman. Nepotism is baked into our job culture. Your odds of getting a job skyrocket when you have a good friend or family member at a company. And the games industry is FULL of people who did not have a ton of experience with a particular character or franchise prior to being hired to work on sequel. If it had been a 25 year old guy who had never played a Mega-Man game and got hired because his girlfriend already worked at the company, no one would have said a word.

A selection of quotes if anyone is interested. I had to look up the Depression Quest stuff as well. This shit depresses me (literally no pun intended). My daughter is a sophomore in college and working on a computer science degree with hopes of getting into game design. I know that she's only a few years away (or even less if she decides to share any of her student work) from having to potentially deal with this crap.

I troll through some of these sites on occasion. It's a bizarre place. I suspect that some of the writers and site creators are more sociopathic than anything. They know that there is a market amongst some men for this shit, and so they create it to cash in on a demographic that someone with morals wouldn't touch.