Deadpan

Hope you feel better soon! <3

I think it's fair to be a bit wary of people who see it as a way of hearing juicy details about terrible events, or still consider the police an unequivocally good and righteous force, since it's possible and advisable to develop a more critical view of police and court proceedings without coming into direct contact with the judicial system. Although, it is weird to say that you are now, after having completed jury duty, suspicious of folk who are all too eager about getting into it.

Sympathies for me are largely a holdover from the magazine days. They were a bit ahead of the curve on that, launched the first issue through a Kickstarter back in 2009. All those have been treasure troves of good writing, but they're not really focusing on that any more between hosting their own little conference and doing more website stuff. They still run a lot of interesting features though, and are pretty good about reporting on weird and cool games. I appreciate the mix I get from there anyway.

I'm never entirely sure if my involvement with games (writing about them in particular) isn't just some sort of big insecurity thing, like I'm trying to be the big fish in a small pond by focusing on a medium that's a) often not as sophisticated as others and so new that it should be easier to say clever things about it (because not everything has already been said).

Yeah, it's hard to justify under an ad-revenue model. Kind of neat to see more of these digital magazines consequently, something like Five out of Ten's profit share model is fairer for writers than general freelance pay, at least when it goes somewhere. I recently translated something that ended up on Kill Screen and the author let me keep the payment. All twenty bucks of it. One of these things is not like the others

That'd be interesting to see, but I doubt it'll happen. Plans they've announced in the past have also generally been "What we're going to do, except with Yahtzee" who is just an untouchable gold cow. They're honestly pretty starved for content at this point. Rob Rath continues his Critical Intel column, which is great, but feels misplaced at the site. Moviebob and that Loading Ready Run comedy troupe are also still around I guess, but besides that it's mostly been episode recaps for various geek shows and milquetoast game reviews over the last two years or so. I wish they'd get around to another full issue though. Not sure I like them getting into (scored!) reviews and conferences instead of more-long form work. It's more of the same high-brow games talk and not general news, but I also recommend Unwinnable, the Arcade Review, Five out of Ten and generally browsing Critical Distance for interesting stuff.

Speaking of things we hate, it's amazing how upset I get at the spiders in this game. They give me such trouble for how weak an enemy they actually are. Somehow their random skittering always leads to them either perfectly dancing between my shots, or predicting my sidestep and charging straight at where I'm currently moving. Plenty of bosses that I'd sooner fight than face a room full of spiders, particularly early on. They're just the worst. ... I've actually beaten this game many times.

Hard to know exactly how it's all gone down without being privvy to the site's inner workings of course, but the inofficial official version is basically that Macris conducted the GG interviews himself and then dropped them in Tito's lap to publish, who was left doing damage control. After that fallout, word from above was apparently to not discuss GG at all. I have a lot of respect for Tito. He went out of his way to establish a syndication deal with Critical Distance, like the one with Gamasutra, and to report from Critical Proximity himself. A lot of effort put into sharing more mature forms of criticism than the site's trademark angry Australian that, as he says, the community never really appreciated.

Welcome new best friends!

Reminds me of something I wrote a little while ago. My favorite is probably this.

In other news, Defy Media has apparently laid off a whole lot of folk from Gametrailers, Gamefront and The Escapist, including Escapist EIC Greg Tito (whom I've discussed a couple of pages back as being the only one holding the site back from going full gator). Considering the Escapist is one of the few sites that have come close to openly supporting GG, they should be none too pleased about news that they are doing poorly, but it seems they have unanimously decided to read this as owner Alexander Macris (whom you may remember for getting interviewees straight from the black heart of GG, and even talking to Adam Baldwin himself about all this) "purging" SJW influence from the site. Between this and Sterling leaving a little while ago, it seems likely the site won't be around next year. I used to get a bit sentimental about its downfall since the site's forums are where I started writing back when I was still a little baby who thought Yahtzee was the real deal, but at this point there's not enough decent people left there for me to really feel much of anything.

What a wacky coincidence that the venues marginalized folk choose for expressing themselves (i.e. Twine) and trying to get by (i.e. Patreon) always become the focus of such debates about legitimacy, right? The people who need to hear something the most are also the least likely to listen. It's pretty cool that you're trying to educate people on the matter. I've generally turned my back on other forums over this stuff. Get enough shit on Twitter as it is. In general though, think it's rad and important for people to insert themselves in these environments and the conversations that are happening there.

Not sure I have much to say about Stephenstown. Two games in for me, it confirms the trend of paper artwork set against more technical, polished elements (in this case mostly the font I suppose). Although about suburbia, some of the things in there definitely remind me of growing up in the smallest of small towns.

Inspired by four popular critics leaving the Identical Guy Network to take to Patreon, here's a thread for sharing other campaigns which maybe need support a little more strongly than said famous guys. To the best of my knowledge, no such thread exists yet. For instance, I think Critical Distance is super important, which is why I'm their German language correspondent I guess. Their curation work provides a great resource for keeping up with games discourse or introducing new people to it, and even if you don't read the weekly link lists yourself, there's a good chance a critic you like once went through them to look for other perspectives on a game before writing about it. I do that all the time! Also you get pictures of Kris' very adorable cat if you pledge enough. Forest Ambassador is an equally cool resource on the side of curating small games, which somewhat fills the hole that Free Indie Games left (R.I.P.) Also a big fan of The Arcade Review, a magazine by Zolani Stewart that does arts criticism about video games, to put it briefly. Very detailed examination of weird stuff. This one also only takes money quarterly, so you can give three times as month money as you would to a monthly campaign! I'm sure you're already familiar with everybody's favorite video game vagabond, but it bears repeating that Cara Ellison's Embed With Games series also deserves funding. I have yet to actually read the last couple of articles, but I'm sure they are every bit as fantastic as the ones before. Those are some of the greats, feel free to add more.

You can always tell a good correction by how much time it spends talking about other sites and why don't they clean up their mess, Mom. UGH! On a related note, here's a fun thing I found inside BasedGamer's official material.

It's also frequently suggested that women earn less because they're not negotiating for raises as forcefully (without looking into where that learned meekness might have come from). On the flipside, women who do act that way and make themselves heard in meetings and such are often seen and described as overly aggressive and pushy (usually in less nice terms). Same behaviors, different interpretation. Anything that argues that there's a reasonable, objective explanation for why things are this way is worth a couple of grains of salt at least.

Nothing particularly wrong with wanting parents with breasts to be able to stay at home and breastfeed. Feminism's all about giving people the opportunity to make their own decisions outside of discriminatory systems, economical pressures, etc. It gets a little weird when you suggest that it has to be done though, even at a detriment to your career. I understand you are interested in what's best for the child in this situation, but there's a lot of folk wisdom, contradictory views and outright humbug floating around about what's best for children, and that stuff is often used as an excuse to shame women for their decisions or meddle in the affairs of parents. Like, if you're not always with your child, you're neglecting them, but if you are always with your child, you're an overbearing helicopter parent. The other thing I wanted to mention is that the you should keep in mind that the justification given for a problem isn't necessarily also the actual reason for a problem. I don't want to say that what your company says is inaccurate, but companies in general are not necessarily going to be cognizant of what's going on, let alone be willing to admit it. Like, which company in the world has ever admitted that, oh, a lot of women quit their jobs here because we have a really sexist office culture and they didn't appreciate how we continually ignored them when it came to promotions and downplayed their complaints about the comments their coworkers made about their appearence? A lot of this stuff might take very insidious, indirect forms, women being interviewed might not feel comfortable bringing up certain things, etc.

Not really I guess. Angry the way a kitten gets angry and then falls over. Journalism includes more than reporting. That distinction isn't wrong, but I don't think it's what this general conversation is about. Most of GG's complaints aren't about news writing, they are about the integrity and objectivity of their precious reviews, which is where those fields intersect. Don't have to tell me twice about the lack of money in this field, but then again, it doesn't have to be like this. I don't think it's important to argue about the distinction, which is fairly arbitrary to begin with: a lot of people I know have worked both fields and continue to do so as gigs come up. I think the divide is important because it lets you see the historical continuity leading up to the current cowardice of big sites: their game of musical chairs for big name white dudes, them being asked to do something about their comments, them making fun of how the disenfranchised try not to starve, etc. etc. There's a long standing history here of them doing shitty things while people who'd know better than to say certain stuff are right there, going "Just give me a shot!" So just as a general way of being productive about their failings, I think it's important to not only get ineffectually mad at them for a while, but to promote other voices. Don't just link to a silly article Kuchera wrote, link to somebody who has written a better article on the subject.

On the flipside of reading Doug.zip in contrast to the rest of the collection, here's me actually starting out with this one. Really not sure what to make of it except feel thrown by this shortest of short narrative experiments. The hospital seems to be the only way to end the game, and the message cut short does lend itself to reading this as a game about a life cut short. Things that I noticed and that haven't been brought up yet: The soundscape: I loaded this game up from the collection and it was just instantly a cacaphony of bleeping and wailing, to the point where I had to turn down my sound a whole lot. This might be evidence of a haphazard mix perhaps, but it's also suitably distressing and lends itself to reading the moving colored blip on alternating sprites of the car as a siren. After remaining still for a while I got the impression that the sound intensified but I'm not actually sure that is the case. The walk animation: As far as I can tell the little paper person we play is moving forward my continually wrapping and unwrapping, which, especially after pushing them up against a wall in the house and observing it outside of actual movement, gave me the impression that they were repeatedly doubling over in pain. Probably more food for the hospital interpretation, as if more material for hapless extrapolation was required. Not a particularly memorably first look at the series I guess, just enter stage left, read a line, exit stage right. Oddly enough, in trying to mess with it after a couple of repeats, I learned that the game space doesn't actually seem to have any hard boundaries. You can walk out of frame and walk back in unhindered. Judging by the amount of time it takes you to get back, there's just an endless void out there, but your perspective is fixed to this little one-piece diorama. I don't know.

Okay, not to get angry at you again for something I mostly agree with, but that sort of depends on your definition of game journalists. I agree that big sites haven't responded well by actually caving to some of their demands for pointless updates to ethical policies. GG goes "Prove to us you aren't lizard people!" and they go "Well, maybe we really haven't been clear enough on the us not being lizard people matter." It's super weird! But a lot of people outside of those sites have found deservedly harsh words for this hate group since its inception. Thinking of folk like Lana Polansky, Katherine Cross, Zolani Stewart, Jenni Goodchild, Maddy Myers, Brendon Keogh, etc. etc. You can say that those are critics and bloggers, not journalists, but the distinction is fairly arbitrary. It's almost a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: they're not journalists (or appear at big sites) because not enough people read them, and not enough people read them because they're not journalists (or appear at big sites). As someone who moves in those freelancer circles, it gets kind of infuriating after a while that people are forever wondering why big sites - with their nonthreatening dude writers and their nonthreatening opinions - don't do x or y, but never looking at the people who actually do those things and desperately want to be noticed, to climb up the ladder. The biggest concern for a lot of people I know isn't so much GG, fucking gross as it is, but that they have to deal with it on their own while the existing structures continue to leave them out in the cold.

Cool then, I hope I did not appear disrespectful.

That's slightly stretching it then, isn't it, unless they are actively dragging you into those conversations. I definitely hear what you're saying about engaging them, I've stopped a long time ago and had to unfollow folk like Jenni Goodchild a couple of times because she made me go back in there when I saw something exceptionally silly, but I'm also not super comfortable with setting hard and fast rules for what needs to be done about x or y. I mean, more power to you if you want those things out of your life, definitely use whatever tools you have to be rid of it, I just think that it can be useful even if you don't instantly convince any gaters to drop their crusade. One thing to consider is that they are making those conversations visible for the benefit of observers. That's a bit of a problematic aspect of Twitter I guess, the way we often treat arguments there more like bloodsport than conversation, where you enter the arena mainly to score meaningless zinger points against the other side and ride the high of your own side's favs and rts(which I am not a fan of catching myself doing, but I guess if it helps others cope it's still somewhat okay). There is a way to do it productively though, I think, to walk people who are passively sitting on the sidelines through the arguments you commonly get. Maybe it seems weird that anybody worth talking to should be on the fence about GG, but it wouldn't put it past them to (ignorantly but not actively maliciously) think that "that one point they made was kind of okay" or "Didn't they run that charity thing too?" and that can be a way to show them why that's bullshit even if they are wary enough of the open misogyny of the movement to not want to ask those questions themselves. There's also the question of when exactly these arguments bear fruit, because in my experience of learning from discussion, it almost never happens during the actual argument. Nowadays I guess I'm generally mature enough to admit that I don't have all the answers and I might have to mull that one over for a bit, thank you for your time, but plenty of times in my forum past that'd just start a spiral of increasingly verbose posts insisting that it's like this, and then days or weeks or months later the argument comes back to bite me in the butt, and I begrudgingly admit to myself that they totally had a point there. Which is to say I know from my combined experience of internet arguments and coming around on feminism that just because you don't convert a guy on the spot doesn't mean you haven't planted the seed in his mind, that will eventually grow into a beautiful tree. Maybe I'm being overly kind by assuming that some of these people are on even a remotely similar plane of emotional maturity, but I think it's still possible. I hope so. Two cents on why I don't think it's pointless to waste your time arguing, if you feel like you've got time to waste. Though I strongly support your decision to do what is best for yourself <3

Porpentine's stuff is so good. I haven't had time to look at the recent With Those We Love Left Alive, but always a dear spot in my heart for Until Our Two Alien Hearts Beat As One.

Here's some words that are relatively close to how I feel. There will be no more racist caricatures from the victims, but racist caricatures in general have not stopped (their circulation has sped up, if anything), because the culture and attitudes that produce them do not disappear if you silence some of their voices. I'm just not sure how you think that particular message, "We stand for free speech," is harmed if you prelude the statement with "Those cartoons are awfully racist." Why is it necessary to spread them around in order to show how unafraid you are? I can easily condemn the violence without having to adopt the message spread by those under attack, yet instead of differentiating like that, people are taking to Twitter in an "I am Spartacus" fashion to point out that they, too, are Charlie. If, glob forbid, something like this happened to Stormfront or Westboro Baptists, would people be tweeting "I am Stormfront" or "I am Westboro" now? Even if people were doing a better job of distancing themselves from the comics, the fact that they are talking about this at such length at all is evidence of the fact that this event has been given the terrorism treatment on the news, detailed live coverage and speculation, regular updates, all that jazz. Meanwhile, news around here had not a word on the attempted NAACP bombing, and when comparing back called this attack the worst since 2004 subway bombings, neglecting that in between those two the right-wing extremist Breivik killed over 70 people in Norway. Racist notions about how terrorism only or disproportionately comes from particular groups (religion of hate, and all that) are forever reinforced by other kinds of violence never being given that label. It's not terrorism when a white guys does it, to be very blunt. The same media that are now making certain connections instantly will later tell you that the motives for one of the many attacks on asylum seekers around here are "yet unknown."

This event is sadly marred by a noticable lack of The Great Game, though it did have Isaac, which was nice, and also featured the first lady speedrunner I saw. Things speedrunners say, apparently: "pixel-perfect," "frame-perfect," "niiiiiiice!," and "so optimal!"