Vainamoinen

If that is the case, kudos to the guy for being an Academy Award winning level of actor off the bat. I think it's mostly real here – but I'm uncertain whether he really was on his way to Wu's house. That part he may have constructed for himself after the crash.

Yeah, it's "real". The guy really threatened Wu on twitter, the guy really crashed his mom's car, the guy really said he'd bring weapons to her house ("just to scare her"), the guy really thought Wu just bought a motorcycle to "race him", he probably really went through some US army service, and now he thinks Wu tried to kill him by somehow manipulating his car into slipping on ice, which in the US is something cars usually do not do. Is "welcome to gamergate" too cynical here? Because Patrick might be one hundred percent accurate in his assumption. To top it all, I've already seen the conspiracy theory that Wu has staged the whole thing.

Not that the whole "gamergater kidnaps developer" scenario is altogether improbable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYPC-YMdJFI (Warning, CONSIDERABLE shock value)

This is a difficult spot to just "hint". But the goal you've set for yourself is pretty spot on already. Well, by now you will have figured out that The effect of this is that That's pretty good, but how could you enhance that even more? If that doesn't have any perceivable effect for you, That's... as far as I'll go in hinting. Just remember what you're after here:

I have you know that all 80s movies are glorious perfection and Drew Struzan the finest artist alive.

Yeah, kotaku. Far too tabloid for me. In other news, FeministFrequency's first annual report was, not unexpectedly, a field day for gamergaters. Conspiracy theories abound. I'd usually assess gamergaters to be in their 30s and 40s, because the 'outsider' gamer identity was of course created most strongly in those times when NOT everybody and her brother was somehow gaming. However, I find myself continuously baffled with reaxxion's articles. There can not be that many adults writing articles on that site. Their article on FF's annual report throws so many punches into thin air, I just had to have a little sit-down trying to untangle the many ways "Steve Alexander" speaks about stuff he does not even remotely understand. FeministFrequency is a not-for-profit organization. The article begins with that statement, but later shows an embarrassing lack of knowledge about what that means. "Presumably Intel is expecting to see a return on their investment from Feminist Frequency", Alexander fantasizes. Oh, yeah, right, they want a cut of the profits from the not-for-profit organization because of their donation. Good luck with that, Intel! Of course, the whole "will Intel get their money" bit is more or less just a segue into the allegation that backers of the Tropes versus Women Kickstarter would never receive their physical rewards, while the series would not deliver on its promise. Now, I personally would assess that that the main Kickstarter promise was to raise awareness about a lack of diversity in games, and it fucking delivered the shit out of that promise. Alexander would rather wreck his brain on elementary math: Sarkeesian supposedly, as of yet, only made three videos from the Kickstarter list with 12 items. That is of course first grade miscalculation. She has only covered three topics, but made seven videos. And of course the series profits from being stretched out over time, welcomed by backers, because of the awareness it raises. As to the fifty-one future recipients of physical rewards, to whom Alexander touchingly explains Kickstarter regulations, they will probably receive their DVDs with about as much delay as the thousands of Broken Age backers. What Alexander doesn't comment on: ( A ) the list of expanding activities Sarkeesian has planned for 2015. This should make any honest gamergater bite their own toes off in anger. I'm really looking forward to that stuff. And of course, ( B ) the statistics show $64,000 total expenditures in 2014. Compare that to the ca. $50,000 Owen and Aurini have as of yet received for their "Social Justice Warrior" "documentary" without delivering. Heh, I think Sarkeesian plans that project a bit better. I am not even that certain that the huge influx of about $400,000 Sarkeesian notes for Q4 2014 is really already Intel's money. There may be other investors still, and the initiative was only announced in January 2015. Intel's diversity strategy has its faults, I'm not a big fan of hiring quotas, but here their money seems well spent. "Vote against corruption with your wallet" are Alexander's closing remarks. Where was Alexander when god distributed brains? Gamergater wallets fortunately can't vote Sarkeesian away – while customer wallets unfortunately can't vote for more diversity in their games.

Awww hell, Campo Santo Metroid would have been great. But if Firewatch is a huge hit, maybe... OK, strike that for the moment. The game is really shaping up, and I'm looking forward to it. Sean talks about Firewatch a bit like Jim Sterling talked about Spencer Mansion (Resident Evil) a week ago – the idea being smaller, more personal, more immersive and more memorable game spaces. Which may actually be something quite similar to the adventure games of the past with their unforgettable and always unique environments, and maybe also similar to what Red Thread Games attempts with Dreamfall Chapters. The pure feeling of you are really there which sandbox games often lack completely. Still, also looking forward to more (Sean's favorite and at the same time least favorite word upcoming) game-y parts of Firewatch and of course all the wacky stuff that seems to go with it. How mystery goes hand in hand with a Surgeon Simulator type clumsiness in handling objects, that I have yet to understand. That glorious moment when the penny drops, hopefully not too far in the future.

I've kinda had enough of that mixup on the Telltale forum. Oh the conspiracy theories. I once received a PM from Gavin Hammon Adam Harrington even ("It's you Sean isn't it"). That was the good part though. In any case, I think I was there first.

The logic possibly is that Bain supposedly keeps his political opinion pieces and his game reviews separate. ...as if.

Oh, don't get me wrong. The direct-to-game startup was actually excellent. I'm not sure whether that was in the original game already...

The LucasArts logo is intact and in there during the intro. It doesn't appear upon restarting though, quite opposed to the DF logo.

What I'm saying is this: When you start up the game, you see the Double Fine logo, and you are then taken directly to the last saved location. I love that I can play GF again! But the LucasArts logo would have been more appropriate.

That may be the problem. The 43 minutes of the regular LAEC soundtrack, engraved in my brain. But the cutscene music? If that's what DF's changes focused on, I find it quite understandable that I'm a bit underwhelmed.

I'd still be thankful for some kind of detailed tracklist with changes. Nothing DF will hand out, I guess.

Today's gamergate short story: Nintendo decides to take 40% of YT Let's Player revenue "Pewdiepie" blogs to ever so politely remind them that Let's Plays drive their sales Polygon unfortunately titles "Pewdiepie attacks Nintendo" Pewdiepie justly claims that there has been no attack whatsoever Polygon takes the article down (or at least there's only an archived version of the Jan 30th article left) for some hard to understand reason, gamergaters find themselves victorious in the fight against corruption and declare Pewdiepie a worthy ally in their cause.

Hmmmmm. In January, J.F. Sterlingson had a twitter conversation with Bain, but no retweets – one Sarkeesian retweet though. The topic of the twitter conversation was fans telling Sterling how wrong he was in his Evolve review. Which goes to ethics in the industry and the defense of critical game journalism. It is here that Bain, maybe unbeknownst to himself, still disagrees with first wave gamergaters. As stated above, his opinion on games and even on corruption in the industry was welcome to me until he started to post buttloads of imbecile social commentary and tweeted fuel into any hate war he could find. It is inherent in the gamergate victory conditions as proposed by Aurini et al. that reviewers flaunting their political opinion around are to be put out of a job (while the definition of the 'apolitical' is in the hands of gamergate). That explicitly includes Bain.

After playing the entire game, I'm pretty certain that "the entire Melbourne Symphony Orchestra" was needed for the intro bit mainly, somewhere between two and five minutes of recorded music total. I'd really love to have a comprehensive list about what tracks were changed and in what way... wouldn't be a long list in any case. : (

I finished Grim, and trying to really see through any kind of nostalgia. The puzzles themselves were comparatively easy and logical, and I still like them. I consulted a walkthrough in the middle part because I thought there was a bug - based on the occurrence of other bugs in the Remaster before. So there's that, which is frankly bad for a 16 year old game. It wasn't a bug eventually, I had just missed a hotspot. Which is all too easy when the hotspot name is not displayed on mouseover (a huge design flaw e.g. in Broken Age too) and is adjacent to another hotspot. *Sigh* There's still a lot of work to be done on the point & click controls. The inventory icon is often displayed when it shouldn't - leading to a crash when you click on it. Sometimes only the tank controls will bring you out of a given scene because the P&C do not give you the opportunity. After going through the concept art gallery, it is of course striking how boring and sterile the background renderings often look in comparison. This would have been THE opportunity to improve Grim Fandango, frankly. The initial design is brilliant, but the execution failed 16 years ago already. Hand painted backgrounds or at least something approaching it would have added more soul to the whole thing. Not much could have gone wrong there, I insist – a real pity that it didn't happen. On the whole, I'm really glad that I'm now in the possession of a functional version of Grim Fandango again. But apart from the somewhat functional point-and-click, one really has to treat this as the mere re-release that it is. The Double Fine logo upon starting the game is undeserved.

I really can't say.

He has made a single video talking about journalist ethics. Then again, he repeatedly asks his viewers to at least listen to Sarkeesian's arguments Notably gave an interview to gamingaswomen that talks about sexism in games at length made an entire video about how "gamers" have created the phenomenon Sarkeesian for themselves called out Quinn's harrassers ("the wacky harrassment blame parade") remarked on how it delights him to be called a Social Justice Warrior called gamergaters crazy people called out the gamergater lip service of his own employer made a video satirizing the rampant homophobia of Dragon Age Inquisition critics The list goes on. Make no mistake, gamergate hates him with a passion. That's why I'm laughing myself in circles about the discussion I was witnessing. Obviously, Sterling is too cool to think anything bad of the cult. So let's just believe he's neutral, mmm-kay?

Meanwhile in the forums of the largest DRM free game publisher, gamergaters seem to agree that John Bain and Jim Sterling are "neutral" towards gamergate.

I love how the following comments prove you wrong.

You pray for Double Fine to make an executable patch one of these months, then pray for GOG to upload it a few days later.

Probably, yes. But they still were drawing with a computer over hand painted background art. Plenty of sacrilege there.

Yes, of course. Law and Order has always been notorious for trying to portray modern technology and failing hilariously (as actually parodied in Telltale's L&O series). I don't think the authors have much of an idea as to what online harrassment means. For female devs, for video game journalists, for feminist game critics and for indie developers, threats that happen online can ruin lifes even though the harrasser doesn't follow through with his threat. Their life is taking place online, their professional career is taking place online. They get harrassed "in their workplace", so to speak. Law & Order will not portray that - because the authors do not understand it for one thing, and because it's impossible to understand for the target group of the series (and boring also). The episode will be about real life assault on a video game developer. In real life, neither law nor order is able to understand or prepared to deal with this kind of problem, as Zoe Quinn recently remarked. It would be a god damn miracle if Law & Order got it right. "The very bad thing" is of course that with this false portrayal of the problem, the gamergate cult finds its actions justified – the TV series likely only portrays what has never happened to date. Everything pales in comparison to real life, physical assault, including the whole fucking online culture war. (I like the series, though!)