Deadpan

This seems like a fitting place to plug Liz England's upcoming game design book club. Also I'm doing something similar for game crit.

Cool, hopefully that works and you get these kids making games.

Of course, that view of defending games intersects with their view of what games are allowed to be to create a kind of No True Scotsman scenario that, in their mind, justifies attacking game developers in the name of defending game developers: real games aren't political, therefore what you are making isn't a real game, therefore you are an interloper and must be chased out. It's just another way of making sure they don't have to think about the politics of what they play and can instead focus on the really important stuff: yelling at developers because they don't like the ending to something (Mass Effect 3) or changes made to reload times (Call of Duty). Such immense concern for artistic freedom. Edit: Nah, this is old garbage. The talk you've heard was probably about a database of unethical conduct they've recently started to show the SPJ that they know what their talking about, and which lists such offenses as "was on a mailing list," "did not disclose friendship" and "didn't give game the objectively correct score" The site also uses people's pictures without permission (in order to make these profiles more convincing wanted posters I guess), but of course unlike the massively journalistic endeavor of having opinions on games, investigating people's lives is just a thing that regular people do and doesn't require any concern for ethical standards.

I only tested this switching from Firefox to Chrome on my machine, but it seems that so long as you don't enable html obfuscation (is that even an option in Twine 2?), you should be able to publish the unfinished story to an html file and later use "import from file" on the landing page of the editor to reverse that into an editable project.

It feels like I've forgotten more about Infinite Jest than there is to know about most books. It's been a while since I finished it, and while I do remember a lot of stuff from it, sometimes people mention specific scenes or even relatively important characters and I'm just like "never heard of that."

Congrats on the Kill Screen writeup, folks! Your weirdness pleases Chris Priestman.

I think that while talking about people being in charge of things, we tend to conflate two very different types of work that usually fall to these positions. I am in charge of a little site where people write about games, and although that does come with the platform of making official statements or setting policy that affects other people, a lot of the actual behind-the-scenes stuff I do is almost very vaguely similar to care work: checking in with writers, talking them through writing anxiety, making sure everybody is happy with the way things are going. So in the case discussed here men should definitely not become overbearing when it comes to the representational work, but taking over some of the thankless maintenance work so women get to devote more time to the former may actually not be a terrible idea? Anyway, Apple Cider already said great stuff and I'm gonna bow to her wisdom.

Understandably so! I missed a lot of this stuff actually going down being at an event, but it's all proper garbage and even the reverberations I caught were pretty gross still. Zolani and Soha are rad and deserve better than this and same goes for you.

That's fair, certainly in so far as a lot of dudes call themselves feminists but practice very questionable politics in reality. But also maybe men should have a limited amount of speaking power in feminism? Obviously nothing on the level of "Why isn't it called humanism? What has it ever done for me? *fart noises*", but in a very broad sense the changing of gender roles does as much involve no longer teaching boys they're expected to be strong as it does no longer teaching girls they're expected to be weak, and more specifically, as far as its intersectionality is concerned, feminism has some obligation to consider the needs of queer men, trans men, men of color, etc. You know, groups of men facing oppression that the actual "Men's Rights Activists" don't give a rat's ass about. This is just some gut feelings though and if anybody can articulate why it's wrong I'm not terribly attached.

I'm glad to see that folk here have already noted, as I wanted to point out after seeing this stuff tweeted around, that him saying feminists didn't drive him off Twitter kind of feels secondary to him saying that they totally do that kind of thing all the time though instead of fighting whatever his idea of "the cause" is. A professor in a Gender Studies course I did once defined the ideal role for men in feminism to "listen to women, talk to other men," which is the lets-be-real version of listening to people with more experience dealing with stuff and talking about it to people with less experience. I don't know if feminist or ally is the more appropriate label for that, although I do tend to use feminist for the exact purpose of hopefully demonstrating to other men that this is something they should actively (although not obnoxiously) support instead of just calling it a good thing from a distance.

The less talked about side effect of GG being this impossible to pin down thing is that by extension, any concept of opposing the group becomes just as nebulous. The common assertion is that anything bad that happens to GG is the action of anti-GG, even though it's been revealed many times now that the group itself houses and is regularly used by people who clearly don't have any interest at all in its supposed goals and just want to hurt others. But the idea that the people who have been manipulating them from the start may benefit from keeping their army of vindicative pissbabies riled up doesn't cross their mind, and if you bring it up then obviously that's just because you're covering your ass. The idea of there being clear cut sides is disastrous to any attempt at conversation.

It's worth acknowleding anyway that Belfry Luna is clearly designed to be managable without really engaging invading players. Ringing the bell is a little tricky, but after that you can basically make it to the fog gate before anybody even shows up. It's complicated. The random invasions aren't the thing I like about the game, but they do add to the sense of braving hostlie environments that is. So as a way of keeping me on my toes while I'm learning about the threats in a new environment, they definitely have the intended effect. I just don't like the idea of making them the central threat rather than a looming presence. Although, to a degree even that complaint is pointless since the games probably benefit overall from having areas that people hate and then get to complain to each other about or feel so great for finally being out of. Like Blighttown. I definitely prefer the cooperative side of things though, and fortunately the random acts of kindness do outweigh the random asshattery for me. I think thematically, the Souls games are really about that perseverance and camraderie opposite a cruel world, like a Video game adaption of Camus' The Plague. The Undead Plague, I guess.

Still not sure how I feel about the belltowers. I get that it's fascinating from a design perspective to mush the divergent player expectations and goals into each other like that, but for me as a player that can get quite annoying. I mostly come to the Soul games to explore the world and slowly rise to their mechanical challenges, and encountering other players is usually just an unwanted disruption of my pilgrimage. It's not just because I'm bad at fighting other players, although I certainly am, but also because I always feel like I don't even get a fair chance anyway. Like, I tend to use really straightforward builds, rely almost exclusively on physical damage and very rarely dodge or parry where just blocking will do. And that serves me perfectly fine for getting through the game! But it doesn't work at all for fighting other players. Either they use some sort of elemental damage I can't block effectively, or they use some sort of magic I've not seen and then I'm dead. It feels like invasions just need an entirely different set of tactics from the rest of the game. Since they're also quite rare, however, it doesn't feel worth it to me to prepare myself for them either in terms of mechanical competence or equipment or skills or whatever. So instead, I just resign to getting my butt kicked by some rando every so often, who then nine times out of ten does that rude "What was that?" gesture. Like what, you're disappointed I didn't put up a good fight? It's not like I was looking for one. Even if that doesn't happen, no amount of bowing to each other beforehand is going to put me on equal footing to the person that's here against my wishes. That's just not intersting to me. And I guess nobody's really looking forward to being invaded in these games, but that's part of the reason why I always liked how Dark Souls 1 allowed you to opt out of all online play by just not going human. That's already out of the window with Dark Souls 2 allowing you to become human anywhere and consequently allowing invasions all the time since people could wait until they've completed the trek from the nearest bonfire to the bossfight that previously acted as the invasion window. But those random invasions were still pretty rare for me, so they're definitely not on the level of saying "This area is just invasion central and you have to go through it to continue." I did manage to ring the bell pretty easily and then just hoofed it to the fog gate on consequent tries since the gargoyles are not that hard to fight even without help, but I don't think I really like the concept of the area.

I'm not saying that this makes it objectively true, I'm saying it's pretty weird that you attack this article for making supposedly unsubstantiated claims without ever touching on that kind of substantial evidence. Like, your entire argument here seems to be that it's unfair to assume that what people are saying about the guy is true, even though an institution dedicated to making impartial judgements in such "he said, she said" cases has already reached the conclusion that why indeed he is. A flawed institution, yes, but so far you've said nothing that managed to cast even the shadow of a doubt on its verdict. So yeah, I think it's supremely weird that you act as if we're arguing on equal grounds here. I think he's a stalker, you think he's not, so let's agree to disagree? Yeah, right. Well now I just look silly.

We concluded that discussing his character is pointless not because it is somehow unethical to portray him negatively by repeating his own statements, but because his actions have shown his character plenty well already and flashy profile pieces only serve to unintentionally glorify the asshole. Wouldn't exactly call that agreement. I doubt I actually want to know what you think is worth discussing though. Pretty much.

Oh dear. Don't take it as a personal attack, I am just telling you that the argument you are making will not be appreciated around here. Unless you mean to suggest that you are your own audience. 1) Bad social skills only imply autism if you conflate the two, which is a pretty shitty thing to do. 2) "bias" LOL 3) Are you genuinely surprised that writers pick from their material the sections that are actually relevant to their argument? 4) As a writer: all individuals you quote are unreliable sources. You quote them to show a specific perspective on something, not objective truths. In this case: how "normal" abusive folk can seem to their friends. 5) The contents of Gjoni's character have been made abundantly clear by his actions. This is not "positioning him as an obsessive stalking sociopath." There is a literal restraining order that shows he is a stalker. It does, but I think it also speaks to the twisted perception of abusers. Like, it seems we're getting most of this approval filtered through Gjoni, minus that friend who thought it'd be good mental hygiene and didn't understand it was built to blow up in somebody's face. And people like him will misconstrue a lot of things for support. People go "Yeah, but" not wanting to antagonize them, and they just hear "Yeah!". Like, remember all those GG tweets along the lines of "When I told my mom about my plans to purge SJWs from gaming, she suddenly got very quiet. She obviously understands how important this is!"

I doubt you'll find anybody here even remotely interested in hearing any kind of defense, justification, rationalization or apologia for what that guy did, and continues to do.

This has been incredibly taxing to read and I can't imagine how it must feel for those who've experienced this shit more directly. Apparently some people outside of games have found this eye-opening re: the fucked up petty vanity and anger that inspired months of pure evil, but I don't think I ultimately approve of how flashy portrait pieces romanticize the literal crimes we are talking about here. That kind of coverage promotes the notion that ruining somebody's lives makes you interesting, like oh what a fascinating twisted person you are and what a chilling story to read. ("Gjoni even has a new girlfriend now." Oh no. No, no, no, nooooooooo. Glob, I hope she'll be safe)

That's maybe specific to the DLC then? I've played through all of Dark Souls 2 three weeks ago and it was still quite busy. Oh dear. No fond memories of that place. Figuring I might go back to this soon, any advice for enjoyable non-standard builds? I've always run straight physical damage so far, and a bit of sorcery or pyromancy maybe. Time for a miracle caster perhaps.

Congratulations everyone! This has been a lot of fun and even pretty productive, even playing to lose as I did, with paper deadlines and A MAZE smack in the middle of everything.

Thanks for saying hi simbiotik, it was really nice to meet you. I guess we didn't end up running into each other again, but I hope you had a good time there <3 Only regret at the moment is that I waited until the last day to try Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes: it crashed after 30 seconds and there was nobody left at the exhibition who could fix it.

Heya! If you don't mind something that is lighter on the theoretical aspect, I've actually been putting together a group like this recently. We haven't started yet, but surprisingly a lot of people have signed up for it, so it should be good for the discussion aspect. We will be reading formative games crit and sample works alongside game studies though.

No episode title for me, screw the game police! I'm working on one of my unfinished Twine games, although less out of nonconformism than lack of time. I'll probably only be jamming today since I got a paper to write this weekend, so it doesn't make much sense to start something completely new. If I do find time next weekend, I might surprise y'all with a second thing. Anyway, the idea here is that you play the person on the other end of a Batman-type vigilante's earpiece, answering their calls, getting them all those door codes and building plans they ask for and making a couple of choices to jazz out how you feel about their "punch crime in the face" version of justice that doesn't change anything systemically. Political agendas everywhere! I counted at least eighty feminisms in my design document! So far the game covers you entering the manor of your enigmatic employer, making yourself a cup of tea (featuring 432 combinations of different types, with various kinds of milk or without, and other extras), a random roll determining the pronoun used for your employer, heading down to the Not-The-Batcave, a title screen, and a boot sequence for the Not-The-Batcomputer. Next up is calling up your boss and being briefed on their antics before kicking your legs up for a bit on a quiet night.

No more progress on this project, but I did download Unity and successfully follow one of their tutorials this weekend. So as far as my goals for this jam are concerned, I've been vaguely successful on both counts.

If you're using the desktiop version, you are using 1.4.2, i.e. old Twine. 2.0.4 is the online version.