cowuponacow

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Posts posted by cowuponacow

  2. Posted

    Alright, I have a couple "Does anyone know which episode has..." things, in increasing order of vagueness, and simultaneously, decreasing order of importance.

     

    1. The exact episode's not important, but what was the name of that board game they mentioned once or twice, in which you have to take control of a city (New York?) by like... manipulating different ethnic groups? All I remember is that it led to hilarious gross comments in-game like "Man, the Jews are a real problem for me right now." etc.

     

    2. The bit where Jake (I'm pretty sure) and Chris have a brief dialogue on how to smother a baby.

     

    3. This is super vague to the max, but I remember a bit where Nick was doing that Nick thing where he says he'll talk about something, then backtracks, then starts again, then says it's not interesting, and so on and so forth; and while he's doing this, the other guys are just dying of laughter, and Chris says in a strained voice, "What are you doing??".

     

    Also, comment on the current conversation: classic Thumbs are amazing. As much as I like the current era, there's a bit of magic in the early episodes that's not always captured in the recent ones. Some kind of barely-contained nonsense. And the memes were in full power, as well. I think the only one I ever really got tired of was "Have you heard about that game that lets you rewind time..." (paraphrased).

  3. Posted

    Earlier you pointed to KiA as being an example of a place to look for examples of what it is that gg wants to achieve, and I'll agree that compared to something like 8chan, KiA is the reserved and calm place to go. But as for understanding motives and desires, I'd like to point you towards the mod team that runs KiA. We Hunted the Mammoth pointed out that one of the mods of KiA also mods another subreddit that is dedicated to rape and bdsm fantasies featuring the conquest and humiliation of feminists, including Sarkeesian specifically. That same mod seems to run a Tumblr (that I won't link to) that features additional porn aimed at the humiliation and punishment of women.

    Looking at the mods was not something I had thought of. The rape fantasy subreddit gave me the first "you can't be serious" moment I've had on reddit in a while.

     

    Just to close the loop on this - donating to charity is a nice thing to do, generally, and a giving nature is often considered a redeeming quality in an individual. However, charities actively don't want to be given highly public donations by organizations in the headlines for the wrong reasons, no. It creates an awkward situation for them both ethically and in PR terms.

    This is a good point, and something that had not occurred to me.

    Twig and others seem to be taking the stance that the motivations behind the donation entirely dictate its moral value, which suggests a philosophical disagreement between myself and them which is... probably not surmountable in this venue.

     

    That's probably the biggest issue I have with CustooFintel's questions, because he asserts that the reasonable claims represent the "true" #GamerGate and unreasonable claims represent the extremist fringe. Why isn't it the reverse?

    Because the "reasonable claims" are the ones that I've observed using my meager investigative methods (described previously). Again, if you have better methods of discerning this stuff, I'm honestly interested in hearing them (thanks again to Bjorn for suggesting investigating mods). I'm aware that all manner of evil things are attributed to GG, including the many threats and doxxings (doxes? doxen?) that their opponents have endured; but since I lack the evidence to tie these actions to GG with a high degree of certainty, the principles I observe (also mentioned previously) require me to presume innocence on the part of the majority of GG supporters.

  4. Posted

    You're right. They do all of those things, too. So that they can further harass.

    Clarification: are you attributing this motivation to a vocal minority of GG, the majority of GG, or every member of GG? And, are you denying Hanlon's razor?

     

    There IS no redeeming quality of the GamerGate movement. Not a single one.

    Donating to the Pacer Center is not a redeeming quality?

  5. Posted

    This will be a partial response since this conversation moves pretty fast for me.

     

    Do they? It's almost universally purported to be, as you yourself point out, about journalistic ethics (quinn totally had sex for favors!), depoliticizing video games (feminism is ruining my video game!), and destroying nepotism (people who know each other shouldn't talk about each other!). I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone whose "goal" didn't fit into that set of categories.

    Certainly; but these aren't very specific. What would it look like (to a GG proponent) for journalistic ethics, etc, to be "fixed"? At what point has the movement succeeded? In short -- as kickinthehead and others have asked -- at what point is it no longer necessary to keep GG, as a movement, alive? Presumably, the proponents of GG don't want to keep emailing advertisers, debating people, and tweeting #GamerGate for years and decades to come.

     

    But the only actions they ever actually perform are to harass people for being against them. Time and time again. It's not a mystery. They say they're about one thing, but all they really ever DO is shit down everyone's throat for daring to disagree. Sometimes that shit is rape and death threats, sometimes it's doxxing, sometimes it's astroturfing at advertisers, etc.

    I think it's unfair to say those are the only actions they perform. Wrongheaded or not, their attempts to educate themselves and others about this stuff, to engage their opposition in debate, to catalogue evidence that favors them, and to signal-boost their own side with objectively positive action (donations to Pacer Center) are not nothing.

     

    These are just the ones to which you give credence, though. It's important to be aware of your biases.

     

    GG being a reactionary movement is important, because reactionary movements routinely lie about what they want.

    In answering Gormongous's question about what GamerGate's concerns are, my investigative tactic has been to go to what seems to be the hub of pro-GG sentiment (KiA), see what the top posts are, see what people are agreeing or disagreeing with, see what sort of stuff they appear to self-police, see what sites and articles and people they're linking to, read the wiki (which serves as a sort of manifesto, as well as a timeline and repository of relevant links), and see what verifiable action they've taken. I have also attempted to do the same with the other GG-related subreddits (mainly /r/GamerGhazi), as well as a few forums, such as this one.

    In answering the question about what corrective action they've taken, I have tried to keep my eyes open for stuff which is verifiable, or which GG in general admits to, or which GG in general (or its more influential members in particular) seems to encourage (either explicitly, or implicitly via their culture). Unfortunately, this can get into pretty subjective territory. In all things, I try to employ the principle of charity, Hanlon's razor, and the presumption of innocence.

    It seems that Gormongous and you (and others) disagree with my assessment of GG's goals and actions. I am interested in hearing what your methods are for discerning GG's goals and actions.

     

    This is setting aside that games journalism is an inherently compromised field, being a field started as a PR move, and even today beholden to PR departments for information. Given that, games journalism's doing pretty well comparatively, with a reasonable effort to separate reviewers from PR influence and a strong belief in a divide between advertising and editorial. It's unrealistic to expect people to not become friends in a small industry, or even in a large one; that'll influence coverage, but then the games that people are interested in isn't a meritocratic process either. And as I think has been proven, objective game reviews aren't very useful as a decision-making process because beyond 'does the game work' assessing its quality means deciding on a heuristic for assessing that quality, which will inevitably be subjective. Which kind of fun is this game trying to invoke? Is that the kind of fun it should be invoking? Impossible to answer in an objective or systematic fashion.

    I agree with all of this.

  6. Posted

    Not at all, a reactionary movement is the opposite of that. A reactionary movement is about the retention of a changing status quo, or reverting back to a previous status quo that has been lost. That's specifically what the phrase means. Some people have misunderstood it, as they think any movement that is a reaction to something is automatically a reactionary movement. The phrase actually has a very specific meaning.

    Upon further reading, I see that you are entirely correct! I concede this point, and thank you for teaching me something.

     

    Okay, so I started to write a different response to some of your earlier posts, but lets back up for a minute. What do you believe the concerns of GamerGate are, and how do you think that pro-gg people have pursued corrective action for those concerns? One of the problems with having a discussion about any of this is understanding each person's frame of reference, and I'm not sure what yours is. Mine is pretty clear from even going back over the last few pages and seeing my thoughts about gg.

    Well... GG has the infuriating tendency to avoid actually agreeing on what, specifically, their goals and values are. And I try, as your name here said, to approach every pro-GG person with the thought, "oh look, a person with their own set of complex emotional experiences who has decided, for reasons yet unknown, to post with a hashtag." That being said, in following this stuff from a bunch of different angles, especially /r/KotakuInAction and its associated wiki, I've seen a number of ideas which are so consistently put forth by people who consider themselves part of GG that I think it's accurate to hold GG as a whole generally accountable for them (by which I mean, if you disagree with more than a few of these ideas, it's probably not accurate say that you're part of GG). Amongst them: the idea that there is widespread, malignant nepotism in mainstream games journalism; the idea that a relatively small number of people more or less control this journalism, and censor legitimate news and opinions which do not fit their own ideological narratives; the idea that many games journalists and reviewers are unfairly harsh or unreasonably subjective when covering games which they find offensive (and vice versa for games which validate their ideologies); the idea that reviewers in general are doing a terrible job of disclosing prior relationships with the makers of the games they're reviewing; and... I'm getting tired of listing these. I guess I can dig up some more if you want.

     

    What corrective action they've pursued: other than simple discourse and signal-boosting, GG has taken a very concentrated hit-them-in-the-wallet approach. This includes boycotts and, more significantly, email campaigns encouraging companies to pull their ads from sites which they perceive as being part of the problem (mainly Gawker-owned sites), with an extra push any time someone not on their side says something injudicious on Twitter.

     

    I think that answers your questions.

  7. Posted

    Do you disagree with literally everyone else's supposition that you're drawing a false equivalence between GG and "anti-GG"?

    It's not my intention to paint them as equivalent. I know people don't like the label "anti-GG", but I don't know what else to use. I simply mean, people who are engaged in this conversation and believe GG to be wrong.

     

    Isn't this kind of a loaded question, since we'd be "proving it right" by disagreeing with it?

    No. You could very effectively disagree with it by showing my examples to be false, or by providing comparable examples of the opposite behaviour (GGers disallowing dissent, and the opposition allowing dissent).

     

    I disagree with that supposition. Gamergate is the one targeting women and launching campaigns to punish outlets by pressuring advertisers to pull advertising from these sites because they wrote something they disagree with. Banning that sort of activity on message boards and comment sections is hardly illiberal.

    I'll have to refer you to my response to Bjorn in my previous post.

     

    Quite frankly, no. So long as someone isn't an active member of #GamerGate, they're generally left alone by those who oppose #GamerGate. There are several examples of people and websites directly involved in the games industry being called out for their silence, but that sort of thing happens as part of a dialogue, not harassment as in the #GamerGate's interaction with Anil Dash. If they refuse to engage, that's the end of it. No one's lives get ruined by me or people like me for refusing to take a side. Meanwhile, I oppose #GamerGate alongside people whose beliefs on feminism and journalism I sometimes disagree with. For instance, Twig's a great guy, but the Feminism thread on the forum is full of us disagreeing about stuff. If this were #GamerGate, one of us might hound the other out of the movement, but since we are both just people opposing misogyny and harassment, it's not even an issue. There's no reason for us to enforce orthodoxy because the only thing we all have in common is our support of diversity without fear.

     

    I also take issue with the idea that banning #GamerGate discussions on certain forums reveals intolerance. What you've discovered is simply the paradox of tolerance. Tolerant people must be intolerant of intolerance, because intolerance threatens the existence of tolerance and the good it brings. It's not hypocrisy, it's a fact of life that reactionary movements have taught us time and again, since the Second World War at least.

    Well, there's intolerance, and then there's intolerance. Right? I mean, banning anything is inherently intolerant of that thing, using the strict definition of the word. But that's not necessarily bad. There are things that should not be tolerated, such as harassment.

     

    My supposition is that it's not only stuff like harassment and doxxing that's not being tolerated, it's also people trying to (more or less calmly) explain and discuss why they think GG is right, and that this happens at least as much as what you describe ("#GamerGate has shown very little tolerance for heterodoxy..."). My further supposition is that, although this is not necessarily wrong (both because of the paradox of tolerance that you mention, and because privately-owned websites are perfectly free to moderate as they see fit), if it's done, we ought to keep in mind the negative effects that can come with it.

     

    EDIT: Minor edit for wording.

  8. Posted

    That's just a side effect of GG's desire to rope in as many suckers to their side as they can so that they can continue to make excuses for the shittiest people in their group, or pretending they don't exist because they have these other people who don't do that sort of thing.

    I have a hard time condemning any group for permitting dissenting opinions, regardless of their motivation in doing so.

     

    At least in a few instances of gg being totally banned, there was plenty of proof of organized harassment and/or sharing doxxing information.  It's not even a question whether or not you ban that shit, and if it dominates the conversation, then just ban the whole topic.  I'm not sure what else you would expect a mod to do. 

    I'm sure that's true in some places, but I'm guessing only the minority. I'm going on what I've personally seen, so I definitely could be wrong. But my suspicion is that most places banned GG talk for other reasons.

     

    Not to mention that in response to a conservative movement like GG, it's only natural for the liberal opposition to say that neutrality supports the status quo because it's literally true.

    Isn't GG a reactionary movement? Doesn't that mean they're inherently anti-status quo?

     

    Does anyone disagree with my supposition that anti-GG is at least as intolerant (if not more so) of dissenting opinions than GG is?

  9. Posted

    #GamerGate has shown very little tolerance for heterodoxy unless it's the superficial kind that can be used to score points.

    I really don't know if the opposition has been any better, though. Has it? Pro-GG discussion has been banned on many sites since the beginning of all this, including unprecedented amounts of moderation on 4chan. I've seen numerous comments by anti-GG (and none by pro-GG) to the effect that fence-sitting, silence, or attempts at neutrality are bullshit. The top pro-GG subreddit allows anti-GG comments, while the top anti-GG subreddit does not allow pro-GG comments.

  12. Posted

    Both Gamergate (inasmuch as Gamergate can be said to say anything), in a PSA poster they created, and now Totalbiscuit have said that the advice from law enforcement is not to share the fact that you have been threatened, but neither has said where this advice actually comes from.

    This is a fair point. I did some googling and was unable to anything published by law enforcement on the matter. I'd be interested in knowing what TB's and the poster's source is, or whether it's one of those things that someone sort of remembers reading somewhere once.

     

    That said, I'm inclined to agree with TB's logic. The downsides of publicizing threats (whether or not the threats are "real") seem to me to be more definite and clear than the upsides. But, I'd really love to see a take on this issue that was backed up by some sort of professional expertise or hard data.

  15. Posted

    I think what TB was implying to be unethical was Alexender's piece itself (e.g., the "'Gamers are over'" article). It's confusing; I think Chris misinterpreted one of TB's tweets, and TB then responded to the misinterpretation without clarifying his previous tweet.

  16. Posted

    "What ethics were breached?" - a question Chris asks regarding an opinion piece (Leigh's) that TB never, ever answers. Instead, TB just keeps saying something about past articles or some shit.

     

    To be fair, TB actually did answer that question. I can't figure out how to properly embed a Twitter-generated quote in this forum, but his response was,

     

    "the one where you misrepresent large portions of your demographic as wailing hyperconsumer misogynists."

  17. Posted

    To others trying to read the converstion: I don't use Twitter myself, so it took me a while to figure this out. Here's a custom search that shows the entire conversation between @chrisremo, @Totalbiscuit, and @gormanate (though it does not show Chris's initial link to the article in question, since Chris didn't mention @Totalbiscuit in that tweet). To read the conversation, scroll down until you see TotalBiscuit's response to the article (the one that ends with "thats bollocks"), then read upward.

  19. Posted

    Here's an old Destructoid rant about the d-pad, including some pictures of the actual parts.  It's not particularly helpful because he does more complaining than explaining, but at least you can see some comparisons to other pads.

    Aye, I've seen that article. The expletives did little to convince me, but the pictures of the innards are interesting. I guess the main mechanical difference between the 360 D-pad and others is that the extra distance between the plastic you touch and the actual metal contacts — which is presumably what contributes to it feeling vaguely like a joystick.

     

    Also, given that most controllers nowadays have both a joystick and d-pad, if you really want more smooth diagonal progression you can just use the joystick. Having a d-pad like the one on the 360 is effectively narrowing the gap between a d-pad and joystick and I don't really see why we need something in between.

    Regardless of the quality or nonquality of the 360 D-pad, having to use a thumbstick for non-analog input is a fate I reserve for only my very worst enemies. (I know what you're all going to say to that: "Then why would you use the 360 D-pad, which is so much like a thumbstick?" My answer is that the crucial difference is whether there is a clear tactile difference between pressing it and not pressing it, which there isn't with a thumbstick.)

     

    Try playing the original Zelda on a 360 pad to see the effect of the diagonal problem at its absolute worst. In order to make a game playable on a 360 d-pad the developer needs to de-emphasize the effect of hitting the diagonals as much as possible, so games that straight up ignore diagonal input, like LoZ are hit the hardest.

    Edit - See also: Sonic games, where the previously rock solid dependable spin-dash becomes a finicky nightmare to perform.

    I have! I've beaten the original Zelda with a 360 pad. The controller never bothered me. The Wizzrobes did, though. NES Zelda with a strategy guide and savestates is still harder than Twilight Princess with neither.

     

    That's right. I've never had a problem with equivalent actions on the PS3, but with 360 games I have frequently found myself trying to press one direction and somehow ending up accidentally hitting another.

    This is all fascinating to me. For a while now, I've assumed that my comfort with the 360 D-pad was probably just due to having used it so much. But this thread is making me think there's something about my brain or my hands that just prefers a different from what most people prefer. I can even remember when I first picked up an original Xbox controller S and tried that D-pad and thought, "Oh, they've invented a better D-pad! I hope everyone uses this now." (Luckily for you lot, I don't think any console designers were listening.)

     

    ...as I think about it, though, I don't think it's the internal design of the controller that affects me. The main thing I like is having a whole circular disc with a raised cross on top, rather than just the cross, or just four separate buttons. Having four separate buttons especially irks me. It makes me feel like I'm not allowed to move diagonally.

  20. Posted

    Thrik and Griddlelol: So you're saying that you frequently find, with the 360's D-pad, that you press the bottom portion of the raised cross, and the game hears something other than "down"? Or you press the right portion of the cross and get something other than "right"? Or you press the bottom-right indented portion, and get something other than "down-right"?

     

    (Btw, I really hope no one thinks this is an attempt to troll. I am honestly curious about this situation and I'm enjoying this conversation.)

  22. Posted

    Social Justice Barbarian: People often bring up that Sega controller in discussions of best D-pads, which is curious to me, since it looks so much like the 360's D-pad.

     

    I honestly don't consider it a proper d-pad if you can mush the diagonals as a separate button. I feel like the purpose of a direction pad is to have an outlined up, down, left, and right, and you push two together if you need a diagonal.

     

    I guess I don't see why diagonals should be any more cumbersome to push than cardinals. I feel like the purpose of a D-pad is to give you exactly eight inputs, any one of which can be pressed at any given moment.

     

    Anyway — obviously I'm not going to try to disagree with anyone's subjective experiences, nor does this issue have any particular significance. I'm just fascinated that my experience is so abnormal. For instance, I've played at least a hundred hours of Spelunky, all with the 360 D-pad, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've had an accidental diagonal.

  23. Posted

    coaxmetal and spork armada: Are you saying that you have trouble feeling the direction on the 360 D-pad? Or that the D-pad seems to mechanically favor diagonals to cardinals (e.g., you press on the downward bit of the D-pad and the plastic slips into one of the diagonal positions)? Or that the D-pad seems to electronically favor diagonals to cardinals (e.g., you press on the downward bit of the D-pad, and the plastic moves in the correct direction, but the controller nevertheless inputs a diagonal)?

  25. Posted

    This is an honest question, because I honestly have not been able to figure it out. The amount of dissatisfaction is incredible. It's so consistent, it's taken for granted.

    I've never owned a 360, but I've used the same wired 360 controller on my PC for about four years now. I use it for everything you could reasonably use a controller for, including Super Meat Boy, Spelunky, The Binding of Isaac, and a couple of retro games via emulators. Before I had this controller, I used an original Xbox Controller S with a homemade USB adapter and 3rd party drivers. I absolutely love my 360 controller and, other than some tentative yearning for the Steam controller, have never felt the desire to replace it.

    There are basically three arguments I've heard against the 360's D-pad:

     

    1. It's unresponsive.

     

    I simply have never experienced this. Is mine unique?

     

    2. The internal parts are constructed in irregular ways.

     

    This may be true, but does not affect my use of the controller.

     

    3. It's too easy to hit diagonals.

     

    I have always considered this to be a great advantage of Xbox D-pads. They're the only D-pads I've used where diagonals are just as easy to hit as cardinal directions. I compare it especially with Playstation controllers, on which you effectively have to hit two buttons simultaneously if you want to input a diagonal.