thefncrow

This is really true. I screenshotted this exchange I saw from Jeff Gerstmann's twitter feed that's kinda the same thing. Two of these people are haranging Neil Cicierga after he mocks the whole "scandal", and one of them tries to invoke Jeff Gerstmann's name as some sort of evidence for the idea that bribery is commonplace in game reviews, and Jeff jumps in to burst this guy's bubble: I just find that exchange amazing, from invoking Gerstmann just to have Gerstmann himself jump in and shoot it down, only to then post the Keighley Doritos image as surefire evidence of review bribery without any clue of who Keighley is or what he does. It's like there's some other motivating factor behind being upset about "journalistic ethics" that has nothing to do with actual journalistic ethics.

The DLC sale over this last weekend got me to dip in and get the DLC maps, because I'd been looking for an excuse to play more Titanfall. I think I like the second map pack better than the first, but I also think the first pack has my favorite level in the bunch, with that swamp level. Wall-running on all those trees to make a fast escape way above the ground is just an awesome feeling. It's weird, because I feel like I'll play Titanfall heavily for a period and burn myself out, but give it a few weeks and I get the itch to come back to it. Even when MW1 and 2 came out and I played a bunch of those, I never got the itch to come back, it was just playing it hardcore for a while and then I got tired and basically never touched those games again. The last time I got that with a game was Syndicate (the Starbreeze one), until I finally had to give up the dream because no one was playing that game online anymore. Also, that Call of Duty-style game mode seems like a really weird decision. I kinda like the DLC pack for Battlefield 3 where they did that with the game, but that was coupled with maps that played to that gamestyle. Nothing about any of the current Titanfall maps seems like they would be fun to play like that.

I read that Slate article and it was really bugging me and I was trying to put together why in words. This is pretty much spot on. Thank you for coming up with precisely the thing that I couldn't quite express. I've had this lingering thought as this whole situation drags on, and I can't help but compare Kotaku and their new anti-Patreon policy to the whole mess with Shirley Sherrod being forced to resign from the USDA a few years ago. A firestorm starts over a controversy that ends up being bullshit, but while things are shaking out, a group makes a decision to act hastily in the name of being able to say they've done something, and in the process makes a boneheaded and easily avoided mistake. That Slate article just brings it back to my mind again because it's the process of events that happened with Shirley Sherrod, now with the added bonus of mirroring where the decision to act didn't calm things down at all and instead just served as justification for everything that happened before. "See, I was right, because <Kotaku/the USDA> wouldn't have done anything if nothing was wrong!"

I do this a bunch with ARPGs. Diablo 3 and Marvel Heroes are games where I basically start them up, set the sound as low as possible without muting it, and then I listen to podcasts while I play. I also do this a lot while laying in bed and playing something on a handheld. My routine the last week or so has been to lay in bed and play around 30 minutes of Vagrant Story on my Vita while listening to podcasts, but it's not just that game. Rogue Legacy, Olli Olli, pretty much most of my Vita games outside of Lumines or Hotline Miami, stuff where the audio is either integrated to gameplay or just so good it'd be a crime to mute it. And, before anyone gets on me, Rogue Legacy was decidedly on this list until I just had my fill of the music.

Additionally, a ban on just Patreon, like Kotaku did, seems extremely shitty. If there's something wrong with the concept of funding a game developer (or journalist, like in the example of Cara Ellison and her campaign to support her embedded journalism series) in order to get works from them is deemed ethically unacceptable, then shouldn't Kickstarter be off-limits too?There's very little daylight between Kickstarter and Patreon from my perspective. Personally, If I were in the shoes of someone setting ethics policy at game writing sites, I wouldn't ban either, but if forced to, both would be gone.

On the topic of The Fine Young Capitalists, I've been really wary about that whole topic ever since the initial allegation, because the guy from TYFC who makes the claim strongly insinuates that Zoe Quinn used her Gaming's Feminist Cabal connections to have them blacklisted, which is an immediate red flag. He also has timeline problems since he seems to try to insinuate that their contest was attacked to preserve interest in Rebel Jam, Zoe Quinn's planned game jam. Rebel Jam became a thing in the aftermath of the Game_Jam debacle, which happened around a month after she spoke out about TYFC. It's not directly related, but this reminds me a lot of my basic theory that the root of a whole lot of anger and conflict coming from members of the societally preferred class who are lashing out about losing that status basically stems from projection. They can't actively admit that the favored group has received preferential treatment, but at some unconscious level they do accept that it has happened. Their fear, which causes them to lash out, stems from the belief that the new order that will be established when they're not in control is going to behave like they did, except this time they get to be on the wrong end of the marginalization and harassment. Thus, you have the folks who are harassing Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian because they fear that the end of the reign of patriarchy in video games will lead to them being marginalized and harassed like women are today. The same goes for MRAs with gender issues outside of just the scope of video games, and the same goes for white supremacists and their fears of the loss of white dominance over culture. (And if you ever get stuck in a place playing awful right-wing talk radio, as I have been from time to time here in Texas, looking at their arguments through the lens of projection can be very instructive and a way to stay sane.)

Hey guys. Been a listener since the post-The Idle Thumbs Podcast break and finished my backlog basically just in time for the kickstarter to come around (which I backed). I came and browsed the forums a few times but just never got around to signing up until now. Lizzyinthesky, while I certainly didn't have the same experience on the site I'm sure, I've also rather soured on Something Awful with the way those forums have been changing. There was always an incredibly shitty contingent to that site, but for a while it seemed like there was an agreement that they could have their corner of the site to go be awful to each other in and the rest of it would get the chance to evolve into relatively reasonable communities. It feels like the tide has turned and things are going back the other way now.