Chris

Idle Thumbs 172: http://malaise.ennui/ Pleased to present this podcast to placate the people that prefer Thumbs... Pleased. Thanks. Past the part that permeates the pod (the Playable Teaser) presenters take polite turns pontificating, talking, pushing their played titles. Parse this peculiar transmission, permitting the playful talkers' preposterous tiresome palaver. Things Discussed: P.T., Silent Hill 4, Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill, Probability 0, Lovely Planet, Zombies Ate My Neighbors Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes Subscribe to the RSS Feed

Thanks folks!

Unfortunately, no video was taken.

I'll take an invitation if folks still have any

I'm going to a signing/interview event with David Mitchell later this month, in support of The Bone Clocks' release. Looking forward to it!

Welcome, even more new folks!

Of course this is true, but noting that something makes historical sense in context of a good faith effort to couch something in a believable period is not the same thing as saying that everything MUST hew to a normalized average of all historical factors. In our case, Henry is who he is for a lot of reasons that I'm not going to talk about halfway through development on a web forum; I'm simply saying that it to me does not seem at all unreasonable that a game set in 1989 Wyoming is about a white dude. All that aside, to be honest, it's kind of frustrating to address this stuff at all because in my opinion the work should simply speak for itself once it's actually out and none of this should matter because if we do our job right the characters in this story will be honest and will ring true based on what's in the text.

I totally understand where you're coming from. But I do think the "historically accurate" fallacy, at least as I understand it, has a lot more to do with settings that are in fact NOT historical, with a thin historical veneer applied. In this case our game is actually set in Wyoming in 1989. Not a fantasyland that's like 1989 Wyoming, but actually 1989 Wyoming. Of course it's still fiction so we could make the game and the characters be anything we want, but if we were to make Henry a black man (for instance) in this part of the country at that time, that in itself would be a pretty significant decision that would, if we are taking our job seriously, significantly change the premise of the game. That would be a totally valid and worthwhile thing to make a video game about; it's not what this particular video game is about. Sean has written a game about a black man in the South who takes charge of a young mixed-race girl, and those were significant choices that I believe were justified. I don't think he can fairly be accused of a lack of thoughtfulness in this arena. Sure, there are lots of decisions like this that get made without consideration, but I would hope that ours are not assumed to be that, based on our history.

lol

Haha I think I saw someone retweet an account that just posts lines from that. Super good.

Welcome, new folks and old jokes!

This is a privately owned site, buddy. You can say whatever you want on the forums that you own. It's 100% our right to moderate such that we cultivate the kind of community we want to be responsible for.

"She revels in it" http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/27/6075179/anita-sarkeesian-says-she-was-driven-out-of-house-by-threats Yeah, I bet she loves it. Not feeling safe in your own home is awesome, I bet. A revelatory sensation. Let's, for the sake of insane argument, say she does "revel in it." How much of a sin would that be, relative to the nonstop abhorrent harassment her most vocals perpetrate? Although, for the record, I don't believe for a second she welcomes or invites any of it. Her tone and language is immeasurably more moderate and calm than that of her rabid opponents.

The people we are talking about are the people who are being disgustingly abusive. If what you took from this is "I would like to hit anyone who reasonably disagrees with Anita Sarkeesian," you're not listening well enough.

We talked it over and decided we didn't want to merchandise this, even if all profits were donated (which they would be, obviously). Olly just put the design up so anyone can print their own if they want.

Because that guy's existence doesn't threaten the self-identity of the people getting angry.

She's fucking exhausted and angry and defensive and utterly sick of this bullshit. How do you expect her to act? No normal human could possibly maintain composure and decorum under the constant hum of death threats and shitty guys showing up at your house to threaten you.

Welcome! Do you happen to know Aaron Contreras? He's a former coworker of mine who was an Ubisoft level designer before and after I worked with him.

I haven't seen a single thing that Zoe Quinn did that ACTUALLY breaches journalistic ethics (OR WHATEVER) in any material way. Her own personal life is her own personal business. That's it. All the allegations I've seen people make about betraying the public trust or whatever have been utterly without merit. None of it holds any water as far as I can tell. It's infuriating to keep seeing people raise this vague specter of "Well, let's not let the harassers or misogynists distract us from the shitty things she actually did in reality" because all of the "shitty things" people keep talking about are either 1) fabricated, 2) largely or entirely speculative, or 3) not actually relevant to anyone except to her and the people directly involved.

Welcome, even more new folks and returning old folks!

Is the problem we're discussing a class issue, or is it that "games dev and journalist peeps are tight"? It feels like you're just shotgunning a whole bunch of issues in every post. Just because things are related doesn't mean they're all equally relevant to the situation at hand. EVERYTHING is related somehow. But it's difficult to have any kind of meaningful conversation about everything at the same time. I don't agree that there's anything particularly harmful going on because of the closeness of developers and journalists, at least not in the context of anything people are making accusations about, such as inflated review scores or whatever--those things have a totally different source in my opinion. If you have an argument to make about this, instead of just saying it's a problem, go for it. (Although that's probably outside the scope of this thread at that point.) Also, Kotaku did address the situation officially. The editor Stephen Totilo made a post about it fairly quickly. Before that point, there was no need for Kotaku to address anything because there was nothing to address. (There still isn't, but people decided to start acting as though there were.)

Yep. It was a fairly big one but there have been no deaths. Most of the damage is up in Napa, which is closer to the epicenter and also not as extensively retrofitted as San Francisco, where buildings are at this point pretty well equipped to withstand earthquakes. I was woken up due to my bedroom shaking around but that was it.

This is absolutely true but none of it has anything to do with anything that's been going on with any of the accusations this week. Nobody calling for Quinn's head (or making any of the other ridiculous accusations being made) are concerned about the factors you're talking about. That doesn't discount the points you raise, I'm just saying it's not what I was responding to. Nepotism isn't the same thing as general class disparity and racial privilege, it's more specific. The subjects of nepotism are weighted in various directions because of those other things, but so is everything else, because it affects everything.

Regardless of anything about this (I have no idea about it), it doesn't really have anything to do with the merits of the piece that was linked.

I would struggle to call most of what goes on in video game industry hiring "nepotism." People know who you are because they met you at an event or because a coworker is friends with them or something (important news: this happens with all jobs ever), but you aren't getting hired unless you can do the thing you're getting hired to do. Generally speaking the actual people who work in the video game industry are smart and driven. There aren't a lot of game developers getting hired just because they're someone's buddy. I'm sure that stuff is a little looser in game journalism, simply because the skills involved are somewhat more subjective and it's easier to take a chance on someone who might grow into it, but the pay is such garbage that I can't take seriously the notion that there's some kind of big racket going on.