Ninety-Three

Pugging as in PUG, Pick Up Group. Basically pubbing, yes.

While that is certainly usually true, I think you're being overly cynical to say that all corporations are doing it for financial reasons. When Chick-Fil-A makes some public statement of homophobia, they're doing something they have to know will reduce their earning potential. If Chick-Fil-A is so anti-gay that they're willing to cost themselves money in order to make a statement, surely some corporations can be pro-gay enough that that's their motivation.

So this Polygon article adds up the race and gender of everyone on stage at E3, and to the surprise of absolutely no one it was an overwhelmingly white, male show. However, the article seems to criticize companies for their failure to put women and minorities on stage, and I'm not sure that's a fair criticism. The videogаme industry (people who make videogаmes, not people who buy them) is overwhelmingly white male. I don't have numbers on how white it is, but I believe the industry overall is actually more heavily male than E3 was. Can we criticize E3 for not being diverse enough when it accurately portrays how diverse the industry is? (I'm not trying to shut down criticism, we can of course criticize the industry itself for not being diverse, but it seems weird to ask that E3 be more diverse than the actual industry.) EDIT: Maybe this belongs in the E3 thread? It's relevant to both threads, this is hard.

I don't know how to feel about this, because everything Absolution did was either garbage, or done better in Blood Money. The correct fusion of Blood Money and Absolution is 100% Blood Money, and I dread them adding any Absolution DNA. Really though, the answer is probably that the statement is spineless marketing speak designed to generate maximum interest by appealing to people who liked Blood Money, and people who liked Absolution. Similarly, the completely gratuitous bikini shots in the trailer don't exactly give me hope that this one will be any better with female characters than Absolution, but on the other hand, I'm not sure how bad a sign it really is, as I can easily imagine the marketing department shoving those scenes in whether or not they were at all representative of the game. Post-script: Actually, Absolution's contract system where players could essentially make challenges for each other was neat, that can stay. Otherwise, I stand by Absolution being strictly worse than Blood Money.

I understand your point Clyde, but I think the problem is that banning Ultimate General: Gettysburg is clearly and demonstrably wrong, and that undermines the whole statement. The mere existence of people who were unjustly affected by the sweeping ban will mean that everyone, even the actual racists, can point to the unjust examples and say "This was a bad thing and Apple should undo it. See, look at Ultimate General: Gettysburg!", and they won't be wrong. It's a hell of an "ends justify the means" collateral-damage-a-thon, which can be satisfying, but I think the phrase "ends justify the means collateral-damage-a-thon" indicates why it's not actually good.

I had to hear "Anna Anthropy" dozens of times across several years before realizing the name was setting up the stealth pun "Miss Anthropy".

Having recently replayed Myst and Rven, I vote Myst 1. Riven felt like it had too many challenges which were about simply finding an interactable element of the environment, as opposed to putting brainpower towards solving a discrete puzzle. Those challenges aren't especially satisfying to succeed at, and they're downright miserable to get stuck on, because the element you're missing could be anywhere on the entire island. I recently learned about this Kickstarter (somehow missed it when it came out), and I'm hoping they go more Myst than Riven for that very reason, has anyone that's been following the KS updates got any idea what sort of gameplay direction they're going?

Perhaps they were just being mean-spirited, intent is hard to judge, but I can imagine someone writing that piece because they wanted to get to that concluding paragraph, and this thesis-statement in particular:

Am I the only one who's amused by seeing those videos? I don't watch them (good god no), but I always get a giggle from the absurdity of video titles like "Anita Sarkeesian vs Marilyn Manson" or "Feminism vs FACTS (Anita Sarkeesian DESTROYED!)" So much of that stuff is indistinguishable from a parody The Onion would write.

Sure, it's not a literal crime, but my point was that it seems like an action which harms no one, and is therefore not a bad action. So to use the rock and roll example again, black musician A invents rock and roll and gets no credit. If black musician B hears it and popularizes rock and roll, getting the credit for himself, he has not committed cultural appropriation, but if white musician C does the same, he has? The idea that the race of the actor makes an action bad or not is crazy to me.

The idea of looking at it as a sort of intellectual property brings up a bunch of weird problems for me. To take a specific example, rock and roll. Rock and roll wasn't invented by all black people collectively, it was invented by a finite number of black musicians. Let's say black musician A has a hand in inventing rock and roll, but doesn't get much recognition because of system racism. Black musician B hears A, decides he likes it, and so does some rock of his own. B also gets little recognition because of systemic racism. White musician C comes along, hears A, does some rock and roll, and becomes famous for it. Cultural appropriation as IP law seems to say that what B did was fine, but what C did was wrong, and I don't understand that. Just because B is part of A's culture, he's more entitled to the rock and roll IP than C is? Why is that bad though? It's not good, but it's not directly harming anyone, and it's not IP-style taking profit that should be someone else's. It seems like a victimless crime.

Like I approximately said earlier, the problem there seems like society's failure to recognize nonwhites, not white people using elements of other cultures. I hear a lot of people talking about appropriation condemning specifically the appropriators. Is the idea that cultural appropriation is bad for roughly the same reason as copyright infringement: the thing belongs to those who invented it and so others shouldn't profit from it?

You missed one of the most perfect setups the world has ever given us. "No, this is super metal." It's even a double meaning! I hope you're arrested by the joke police for criminal negligence.

I'd like to ask about cultural appropriation. I've heard a decent amount about it, and I have a clear picture of what it describes, but I completely fail to understand why the actions described as cultural appropriation are considered bad. I understand the principle that society frowns on nonwhite people expressing their culture in ways that it does not frown on white people appropriating that culture, and that's bad. But the problem there is clearly society's double standard, not white people using elements of other cultures. How is anyone harmed by a white person wearing dreadlocks, getting a tattoo of a Chinese character, or putting a Buddha statue in their room because "it looks cool"?

A strange premise, the sequel to a game that starts with F? Hellblade is Frog Fractions 2. I think Frog Fractions 2 is the new "Half Life 3 confirmed" joke and I like it. Oh god, what if Frog Fractions 2 is Half Life 3?

I've heard the trading card thing brought up a lot, can someone explain why it's a big deal? I know what Steam trading cards do, how they drop, and my experience tells me that you're lucky to sell them for twenty cents, so why do people care if someone games the refund system to get a few trading cards? Is it just that it slightly devalues them for everyone playing fair? Also, isn't Depression Quest free?

I tried Hearthstone recently, and I found the client intolerable. It's pretty and functional, but the animation pauses made me want to tear my hair out. Time to draw my card for the turn, wait a second while it animates flipping off the deck and popping into my hand. Time to attack with three creatures, wait a second for each attack animation to play. I quit the game after half an hour when I realized there was no "disable animations" button. I'm not sure why this particular instance of a game not respecting my time drove me to quit so quickly, maybe it's because I'm used to the Magic Online client which has no animations, and so plays as fast as possible. I realize that what bothers me is often not what bothers other people, so I thought I'd ask the forum: does that annoy anyone else?

For a solid five minutes there, I confused Ninja Theory and Team Ninja (the team behind Dead or Alive and Other M). Since misery loves company, I invite you all to share my mental image of what kind of Hellblade Team Ninja would make.

I think it has to do with acceptance. The word-for-word recaps of press releases are lousy, but they're a bog standard lousy that everyone's used to. People are less bothered by it, and they're probably less hopeful that it will ever change. I agree that not inviting Kotaku is dumb (surely they've invited much less notable sites), but who should get to make that decision if not the publisher? Who else is there to make that decision?

I think that Steam definitely counts as The Man, so given that they managed to get pulled (temporarily) from Steam for what they were doing, does that make them anti-establishment?

Is being anti-establishment more about effect or intent though? Because I'm certain the Hatred devs considered themselves to be sticking it to... someone, by making an offensive game to be despised by many.

I like to think of that as an amusing commentary on Skynet's grasp of human interaction.

Link is broken. Fixed version.

I'm not sure about the notion that articles can be written if they're just timed differently. That certainly would have helped the Hatred devs less, but it brings up the question of "Why bother at all?" What is accomplished by an article that says "Hey, you know that game Hatred that came out last week/month/whenever? It's a terrible evil game." Everyone who will accept that either hasn't heard of Hatred, in which case I'm not sure what the point is; or has seen Hatred, in which case they already know. EDIT: To clarify, I'm talking about the pointlessness of saying "Hatred is a terrible evil game". Being John Walker and saying "Hatred is a bad game four out of ten" has obvious purpose.

So they're kind of jerks, and they used a piece of rhetoric Gamergate likes, and that's what it took for you to assume they were anti-feminist jerks who want people to praise Hatred? Despite the fact that the post could only be clearer about Hatred not deserving praise if it used the literal text "Hatred does not deserve praise"? Oh it's certainly plausible, it's just that I often see people stating it with certainty, which makes me wonder what information they have that I don't.