Vainamoinen

The political perspective on gamergate means nothing to me, really. In these aspects of games media, narratology and sociology, changes don't happen via legislation. They happen in the heads of people. Same goes for the things we can and should do against harassment. In that sense, I spend a lot of time arguing that opposition to gamergate has nothing to do with political ideas, strictly speaking (especially not when those political ideas are explained within the US political spectrum). Gamergate, I hope and think, is less a left vs. right issue and more a science vs. conspiracy theory one. Rosenberg isn't helping to keep that distinction clear here. Instead, it seems to me that essentially apolitical, international proceedings are compared to political and national ones. I'll... think about that article for another bit.

No cigar.

Yup. Death threats for Jim Sterling. I wonder why...?

In all probability, the vanished sister has nothing to do with the prior threat, but it's still disheartening to see that these threats happen. Thankfully, I would assume that this guy will be thoroughly investigated by the police now, which is only fair and just. I'd like to see what ideology the alleged extremist is ACTUALLY tied to though. If it's a form of feminism, it's a form feminism! If it's some kind of cry for social justice, so be it! If it's loosely tied to the 'black lives matter' hashtag, that's all possible and we desperately need to shed a light on these possible sources. But there is no "anti gamergate" as an ideology, that's just a stupid artificially constructed enemy identity like "SJW". Being against gamergate is incidental to your ideology, yet gamergate needs a nemesis to function.

Those are the same people insisting that Yiannopoulos should 'debate' Anita Sarkeesian... though Yiannopoulos' not exactly an expert in all the relevant topics: tech, media, games, narratology, sociology... we'd basically see a repeat performance of the Airplay strategy: DERAIL DERAIL DERAIL.

Official Tecmo Koei reaction: https://twitter.com/koeitecmoeurope/status/671690313912598528 No need to read the replies below. It's like gamergate's collective reading comprehension is on a preschool level. Tecmo: "This guy has nothing to do whatsoever with our company strategy" – comments: "NO BUT YEAH BUT NO BUT YEAH BUT SJWs DID IT".

Not to eager to get back to THAT topic, but it may boil down to this: If there is some kind of unwritten contract between publisher/developer and the press, a code of honor if you wish, I definitely think kotaku has broken it. But neither Bethesda nor Ubisoft can answer by breaking it themselves, because it would put other journalists at a considerable advantage, hence foster favoritism. The early access for journalists in itself isn't an exertion of power – yet limiting the access to the journalists you see fit, that's opportunist and possibly corrupt.

Thank you, Mr. JFSS. Your finest hour.

Not much you can do when they start drying out. The Citadel paints I got in the early 90s closed like a safe. Very hard to open, and the latch thingie usually broke off. But they were still OK 15 years later.

To my knowledge, it IS a version with english subtitles and screen text. Meanwhile, the original Dead or Alive series creator Tomonobu Itagaki – who isn't part of the company any more – has stepped to facebook with a series of particularly difficult to decipher statements. One thing is clear: He doesn't exactly blame "Social Justice Warriors". In the course of his postings, he focuses more on gameplay issues, with lack of innovation and the removal of the Jetski activity being his core criticism.

Silenced! By the SJW!!

High hopes for Monday's Jimquisition. Though I have the feeling JFSS is fed up with the topic already.

Yup. The strawman that feminism is sex negative celebrates ample revival parties in gatertowns these days. Unsurprisingly. It really doesn't get less sophisticated than "Oh noes, the damn SJWs would actually have criticised this game had it ever been published in our region!". As Sarkeesian focuses more on clear cut narrative tropes these days, as reviewers definitely do, and as Dead or Alive doesn't exactly place its characters in an extended narrative context, even that assumption – even that – is a bit far fetched.

Not so much 'want them to be' as 'prefered if [far] more other options existed'. If it's Humble's loyal duty to spread Steam keys in the world, so be it. But yeah but no, I don't have to like it. But let's leave it at that. It's off topic enough, and there's no shortage of actually gg-related discussion material right now. I think it's fairly obvious that, strictly speaking, they don't know what's been going on for the last year. But that mirrors the gamergate problem, the supporters of the movement also do not know what's been going on. Gamergate's founded on ever promoted, purposeful misunderstandings of the diversity/inclusion discussion. If companies particularly in Japan see, but do not understand the discussion, they're likely to import gamergate's purposeful misunderstandings instead of the actual scope of the discussion. Play-Asia/Koei Tecmo know gamergate – but they are unable to understand it. May be one of those cultural misunderstandings, but frankly, I don't give a damn. As was apparent with companies like AMD, people don't usually apologize for supporting gamergate. They are, of course, forced to apologize when they insult the movement, which would bring us back to GOG/CDPR (whom I still DO support!). Strange how this supposed "SJW outrage" achieves nothing while gamergaterism seems to turn the tides for definitely suffering developer teams.

100% for me. So? Correct. That's the problem. Key reseller, not publisher.

Well, almost. I see Humble as primarily an S/O/U key reseller, and I think we need less of those, or rather more of the other, for a healthy market situation. And that's all there is to it right now.

Aye. Also, I won't get into my criticism of Humble here. Play-Asia consumers now post pictures of their order confirmation emails. Which is hilarious, because it means they're falling for the Tecmo marketing ploy. As if people gave a shit about their purchase. Eventually, they have spent 70+$ for importing a game they probably won't even like, just to give their fictional enemy a sad face. That'll rather teach them! Heheheh. Wailing hyper consumers buy shitty imports now.

Meanwhile, GOG has just stardocked a little too much for my taste. I'm in a pickle here, because Humble just plain sucks and my entire DRM free bet now is on the little Polish guys.

(Cross posting, sorry) The devs of Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 have stated that they won't release the game in western territories because of, let's be as precise as possible here, "issues happening in video game industry with regard to how to treat female in video game industry". What exemplary imbecile hogwash is that? A game is sold in western territories if adequate sales are to be expected and that's fricking that. DoAX2 in 2006/2007 was received poorly. Why? Because ( a ) it featured impoverished, luck based, arbitrary game mechanics as opposed to the regular DoA series and ( b ) for the reviewers who were into the softcore vibe, the breasts didn't wiggle realistically enough. In other words, the developers could not satisfy their core, decidedly non-"SJW" audience in western territories. In anticipation of bad sales and the very same criticism, DoAX3 remains in Japan. The devs are now testing how much controversy they can drum up by riling up the gamergate supps. If the mob responds accordingly, they'll get their DoAX3, sure enough. Another great victory for gamergate in bringing actually bad and unwanted games to the western market. But let's not get real here. We all know it was the Social Justice Warriors, or rather: the mere anticipation of the Social Justice Warriors' oh so frightening reaction which scared the poor developers into tearfully cutting a billion potential customers out of their calculation in what surely must be an act of "censorship". http://playeressence.com/dead-or-alive-xtreme-3-isnt-coming-to-the-west-because-of-social-justice-warriors/ I have seldom seen a more obvious attempt at instrumentalizing gamergate as this one. And boy do those outrage saps fall for it. Seldom have their trigger terms applied any less. Gamergate supporters should be furious about this blatant marketing attempt. Their backlash should be directed at their actual abusers, their puppet masters, not their fictional enemy. Take a good look at Jim Sterling's ask.fm today. The gaters are up in arms and fighting their ever anonymous foe.

Sure. http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/02/showbiz/quentin-tarantino-gawker-hateful-eight-suit/ These specific kinds of leak aren't great for anyone, and a site that proudly specializes in them is... not desirable.

Interesting. I bought coffee at Starbucks once in my life (it sucked, as did the service) and have never owned an Apple product to my knowledge. Still, social justice rocks.

You're right, they ARE out there. But in my opinion, less on journalist websites and far more in customer reviews. The earliest customer review, after all, gets most seen and most voted on. Steam, Amazon, Metacritic – ASAP reviews for maximum exposure. Nothing looks more rushed than reviews written when the game is actually out. The embargo ideal, then, is mutually beneficial, and better reviews come from it. I of course see where we're running into trouble with that ideal, and developers have more opportunity to twist this goodwill and cooperation to something that benefits them disproportionally. Despite the ever growing number of "I only buy discounted games" type of gamers, pre order culture and gamer gratitude still haul us into the setting you describe – the setting Leigh Alexander described much to the uproar of a certain movement. Still, sites do take their time with reviews after all. I don't know if it's still the case, but Telltale's routine always was to hand out keys to journalists pretty immediately before an episode release (because, well, the episode just isn't finished before that time). Some journalists would do an all nighter just to push something out the next day, but usually reviews only surfaced days after release – to the detriment of the developer certainly. The other case I've witnessed recently was Dreamfall Chapters. As RTG was working late into the night to even get their release version out, their first episode reached journalists on release day at 11PM at the earliest. Their problem, their fault – reviews only started surfacing days later, a week later on major outlets, which was less than ideal to put it mildly. The situation is fairly different in the AAA world, of course, but here the rule pretty much is that journalists get the game fairly early. Here, journalists are somewhat expected to ignore some crucial bugs though... which also isn't ideal.

I'm thankful for embargos (some of them at least). Publishers can play less favors, and reviewers have the time to actually PLAY the game they're supposed to review. If this becomes just that mad dash to the finish line... I don't really want to imagine what kind of 'reviews' we'd get then. It's a good example of the give and take that is necessary between dev/publisher and press: We're giving you guys our games ahead of time, but you're not supposed to publish a review or screenshots before this date please. That's in no way enforceable. That's a matter of trust. And I do think that kotaku has violated that trust in some of the examples Schreier enumerates.

/double post