Gaizokubanou

I'm not posing this as a facetious question... could you point those out cause I'm just completely blind to it in this specific game due to its super fantasy-ness. It's so far removed from reality not just in setting (certainly futuristic sci fi or standard fantasy fictions can be offensive) but the world logic is also so unreal (you can cut your own head off to fly) that I can't see anything in it demeaning anyone.

Yeah I'm working with a designer on characters right now and it's really difficult (not impossible, I think we are onto something) to design women character that is beyond the range of 'cute-pretty-sexy'. Like to explain this better, say a character like Akuma from Street Fighter... he looks threatening, powerful, mean, etc. Trying to capture that theme on opposite gender is really difficult because of our cultural standard of acceptable women-ly look is so dang narrow. Well Akuma is almost inhumane so if you want more scaled down version, say like Kazuya Mishima from Tekken. Very difficult to capture that theme for opposite gender design wise.

If BoI isn't associated with all those issues due to it being hyper fantastical, then how can it get a 'free pass' from those topics? And besides you don't think trolls troll people using those topics? For example, fat shaming is real and I get that but some assholes would use that pretense to troll you. I had people giving me shit for explaining to another willing participant to a conversation about weight loss how I lost weight because they claimed I was contributing to fat shaming culture by doing something other than trying to tell them that they are perfect the way they are... Yeah that makes zero sense. They still trolled us with it. Same deal as how 'freedom of speech' is so commonly used by trolls, good legit causes get hijacked all the time (not as commonly as 'freedom of speech' of course cause that one is just really easy to abuse). I obviously don't have access to McMillen's personal inbox and whatnot but given his fame and the game's subject matter (regardless of how not grounded they are to reality) it shouldn't surprise any of us if he were to get lot of those trolls, enough to make it understandable that he would think that this crude April Fools joke was a good idea.

Hmm, you guys are probably right then. The jab was probably at 'PC culture' at large. Edit: But on topic of BoI specifically... I'm having hard time summoning sympathy for those who are offended by this hyper fantastical fiction, so I'm just having harder time viewing this jab in the negative as you guys are.

Tegan I think you are reading way too into that if that read as a very specific jab at "SJW" instead of poking fun at Nintendo.

Nice and interesting read

lol wtf I'm surprised he managed to get in the notion of class struggle in there. Too bad that it's buried within that... other stuff...

Yeah, he's one of few youtube celebrities who carries one of best view to sales conversion ratio at that scale. There are those who carry larger audience, but very few of them can actually boast that their video will help the sales substantially. Most extreme samples of this are "I am bread" (covered by larger channels but didn't show much correlation to any sales spike) compared to say, "One Finger Death Punch" (low fidelity smart phone port to 1000+ concurrent players after he does a video on it). Or if many others can match his sales driving power, they haven't openly advertised that fact the way TB does. Which would be an oddity as I would probably want people to know if I had that sort of market power. And on top of that, most developers' interaction with him is minimal to begin with. Supply him with review code or not. And even if he is complete ass, let's be real, many people do business with far worse people a lot. I would do business with people who are very up front about their discriminatory views against my racial identity if the business is good... I wouldn't expect that many people to abandon his platform for what he has said thus far. Afterall, best revenge is living well.

Looking good itsamoose!

Rob's thoughts on how this game with its spawning AI system doesn't challenge him gives me lot of pause on my own game's design... hmm... something to think about.

According to Christopher's linked video (good video, thanks Christopher), it's to prevent other side of conversation from derailing and fucking up in ways I did myself earlier. By focusing on his character, I gave him tremendous amount of leeway when it comes to his soundcloud stuff about PoE and transphobia stuff (oddly on stuff I haven't even checked out myself! what a tool thing I did, I should have checked out the soundcloud before saying much on the topic), and ultimately I ended up trying to somehow pass his behavior under much lighter scrutiny cause of his 'character'. I should have just focused on his specific action and stayed on point.

Hah, now we know your name! j/k looks sweet

Interesting discussion about nature of free speech and more I think about it, I was way off on censorship angle and kinda regretting the fact that I considered it as valid concern to this. This is just... too far off that 'free speech' concerns shouldn't even kick in cause it's nothing more than company responding to civil feedback. Like if people threatened Paradox with legal actions or violence or banning of the material then certainly, but this is same as any other criticism or disapproval. Edit: Actually there is censorship angle which is the threat that people complaining about that Batgirl cover recieved... not sure if anyone was threatened over PoE though, just seem to be lot of yelling.

I listened to the soundcloud and yeek, he really goes in there. So yeah, you guys were probably right that combine that with his unapologetic behavior I'm probably going way too lenient on the guy and way too strict on those who criticize him for that. Oh Twig, you never disappoint

Fair point. Apologies on misuse of gender pronouns. That was a fuck up on my end. I didn't say what he said would get a free pass. It's not the "what he said was transphobic" that I wanted to address, but rather the "he IS transphobic" type of statement. And I get that behavior is what defines a person, but not every single behavior defines the person as a whole. I lied, you lied, we all lied at some point in our lives, but we don't go "but hey you are a liar" to each other all day cause yeah, we fuck up sometimes and we get it. Maybe he did cross that threshold of 'common mistake' ground, and maybe it's just me here who is unable see that. But that's where I'm viewing this from so apologies if all this came off too flame-baity as that is not my intention. Edit 1: Also, this might be a big deal but I did NOT listen to the soundcloud yet, I was basing this off his twitter feed alone. Going to listen to that now cause it looks like he said some weirder stuff in there. Edit 2: Oh dang he does go really really off in there

One related note though I don't think the TB is trans-phobic and I don't think it does anyone any favor when that word is just flung at anyone at first possible opportunity. For those of you who followed Starcraft 2 might know a pro-gamer "Scarlett". She is a transgender and as you can expect, gets slew of shit thrown at her from various anonymous commentors. I've seen him personally moderate the shitheads out of chatroom (and addressing them specifically that those behaviors were not tolerated) that were constantly spamming transphobic slurs about her., and every interaction between the two seem to be one with respect (I think she is the only 'foreigner' to have stayed at such location, which is a huge boon as you can really really good training opportunity) and no BS shenanigans. Now I get that being nice to one person doesn't create immunity, but neither does one questionable (and I say this because I can see where the concern about censorship is coming from(even if some of you may think that reasoning is troll-ish)) incident regarding the topic.

It was on the topic of crude 'joke' made by KS backer, strongly hinting of trans-phobia, in Pillar of Eternity. And I don't recall TB actually made statements that are trans-phobic in and of itself, the problem is that contextually it is just really... 'dense' to put it kindly. Like people got upset at the 'joke' and on one end there was a petition I believe to get that 'joke' removed. TB then said something along the line of "I support devs right to put those fictional characters in a game". I mean purely theoratically speaking, yes, I get that fictional world can contain villains who does heinous things without it reflecting poorly on the author's own moral compass because, well, they are designed to be hated and whatnot and it's part of plot device (like, would anyone serious claim that Ed Boon is some sick bastard for creating MK? maybe but probably not most of us). But that response is 'dense' (again, putting it kindly) because it serves no real purpose and is just... hitting too close (same way perhaps most modern mil shooters may be to those living in, say, Syria) to real shit people deal with (unlike say, MK). I'll put the gist of the 'joke' in spoiler Edit: Fixed a really embarrassing typo concerning gender pronoun.

Rami currently nailing risk of AAA games right now on twitter, so fucking good.

The whole "is Obama actually eligible for presidency" line of trolling is a fucking national shame. Hopefully people will remember it for what it was - thinly veiled smear campaign largely driven by racism. But yeah this is going off topic.

Oh wow talk about a major brainfart on my end! My apologies, yeah what I quoted was just completely redundant XD

Sup?

Yeah that's a good insight. This is the quote if anyone is having trouble finding exactly where it is. And it's just spot on. Problem isn't that Joker is being creepy or that Batgirl is captured... it's that the cover just defies everything about Batgirl as a character to the comic itself. She's suppose to be brave crime fighter but her terrified looks betray that. New series carries lot lighter tone and this sudden difference in tone isn't explain at all other than paying homage. And that's what makes this 'fictional nastiness' actually bad. I don't think the artist was intentionally trying to do disservice to women and Batgirl, but was blind to how unsuitable his method of paying homage was.

One way, no traffic lights til volume of traffic has been thinned out through high speed exit ramps. Think of how Manhattan handles GWB. That thing has like 20 exits and none of them have traffic lights to slow the main flow down.

Do they make pachinko machines? I hear that's kind of big deal for lot of old Japanese game publishers (SNK as perhaps one of more infamous example)

Are you suggesting that the storefront in question only advertise early access title to users who qualify, or that it's not even accessible for the users who don't qualify? If it's first, then yeah Steam could do the thing they did with DLC (which used to really poop on New Release section, coughtrainsimulatorcough), which is by default have Steam check it off so only those who actively choose to seek out that content in front page will see it. If it's latter then wow that's really bizarre new landscape and not sure how it would even work. Indeed, same with alpha, beta, pre-alpha (isn't that prototyping?), whatever the heck people want to label a game as. BTW Rob laying down some much needed wisdom bomb on how lot of internet rages are more of silly postures from customers who will probably buy into the next hype again... also another one on how 'everyone loves winners' syndrome where popular things get more popular cause they are popular and noone can really affect that snowballing. Double wisdom bombs. Whoah