Nachimir

Yeah, one of the most insightful things I've seen in relation to them was someone likening their talking points to the function of scripture for true believers.

Oh, sorry! I should have explained myself clearly: I didn't mean framing or highlighting GG as bullies, I meant targeting vulnerable gamers with support in completely separate contexts. Pretty much like I've seen with hackspaces, board gaming, and other quite nerdy hobbies I'm into, they attract a higher proportion of young men who've been bullied. The resulting vulnerability, loneliness, desocialisation and potential victim complexes make it easy for groups like GG to hoover them up and galvanise their negative emotions into support for a cause, while fulfilling their need for belonging. Getting to bullied kids first with pragmatic and compassionate support would go a long way to deny things like GG legs in future, before they can really build inertia. It'd only be long term if it produced results at all, but the socially challenged aspects of video game audiences have been a long time in the making too, and by peddling the fantasies it largely did from the mid 80's until very recently, I see the industry as partly responsible for those problems. Does that make sense? (and, for clarity: we're in total agreement on the importance of representation and diversity). Yes, though the weirdest thing about digging around in GG stuff over the past week has been seeing gaters refer to various extremists, including the Westboro baptist church, by name and as their enemies (Perhaps one of the things they have in common is that they don't see themselves as extremists). When people say GG exhibits cult like behaviours, they're right, but as a movement it currently allows too much multiplicity of thought to really be or become one. (Also a little weird: seeing some adopt 'gater with a ', especially following conversations I've had with people who chose to avoid the term for fear of alienating moderates).

Some damn fine techno: I don't have GTA V, and found it through this Jon Hopkins Radio 1 mix: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04p24ht It's well worth tracking down if you can't access that due to country restrictions or it being more than a month since it aired or whatever.

I saw the jumping discussion and it was sort of fabulous. Especially the way that, once corrected, one of them settled on "Ok well it's not as bad as I thought but it's still totally ridiculous". Way to misunderstand the cause you were championing mere hours ago. The thread carried on to try and eviscerate them as "not a real charity", try to poke holes in everything they do, and slag off some of the things they do as being "Just for PR purposes". While whining about how "anti-GG" is the enemy of disabled people now. Yeah, it's a current I've been aware of, and as a result I think one of the most productive long term interventions would be for games industry bodies to fund anti-bullying initiatives. A lot of gaters are beyond hope, but we could diminish any current of future supporters by offering good support to marginalised, bullied and desocialised people.

The charity saw the KiA thread and just ditched them pretty hard. They're mad. I enjoyed/was astounded by this comparison of a charity wanking festival to hypothetical Nazi's curing all ills:

What gets to me is that they take that, run with it, and end up at "Yeah, so stop complaining everyone, white dudes are just the best option!", and then detour into "Actually I wish people would stop victimising us white guys". It fascinates me that that person quoted gets to the idea of anyone exhibiting a minority characteristic being unfairly called upon to represent "their people", then closes it by ascribing that as an act of his ideological enemies rather than a widespread circumstance of the societies we live in. I'm finding it slightly fascinating to watch a divide with identity politics on both sides. Sure it's absolutely laughable to arrange such structures around an identity as constructed as "gamer" and that leads to all the ridiculousness I've quoted above, but the one hope it gives me is the prospect of anyone involved with identity politics examining their own beliefs more closely. As in, identity politics that are easy to pick apart might help to weed out and eliminate weak arguments and blind spots from other kinds. Edit: Gulfs kind of appear and disappear in GG too. There's an absurd string of comments discussing Terry Pratchett and Margaret Thatcher here.

Finally, a rationalisation for video game protagonists being white dudes: So close to an epiphany! I've heard representing minorites fairly is even harder than animating women. It's also totally fine to offend people as long as you didn't intend to, because intent is a special form of magic. Yeah. Why are they never robots, aliens, super-soldiers, genetic hybrids, ghosts, insects, cartoon animals, Russians or Muslims, eh? Don't sweat it though, I'm sure the writers didn't intend to offend you.

Second thing: Thread about "gaming once being a utopia" Yeah gaming has always been a egalitarian utopia, unless the other gamers found out you were black or had a chuff. Now you can barely throw around casual rape jokes without someone oppressing you. I'm pretty sure you just have to fight your way around the next corner to get to utopia. Just burn down a few more people's lives and you'll definitely be really, really close. I've heard the bandwidth on 1984 internet was really bad, and when a bunch of racial slurs came down the line it meant you could hardly ignore them at all. We have to just let harassment happen because otherwise really bad things would be happening to this guy in the dystopia he's imagining.

I kind of wish I'd been infiltrating KiA just so I could ask, all indignant, "What about gay porn? Where's the gay stream? Hey we're #notyourshield!" From what I read, the pornstar seems to have her own reasons for doing it, and they mentioned not being able to explicitly name it as a stream for gamergate. Also, in a simultaneously horriffic and hilarious way, someone assumed it would involve a woman dressing up as their mascot. Comments spoilered because, the horror: "SHUT UP we can do whatever filthy things we like to the fake gamer girl we invented. Stop being so wank-uh, I mean sex-negative. I can't get it up for charity when you're limiting my freedom of speech like this!"

I didn't realise Russia was in some financial trouble. What stuck out to me though was this quote:

Oh man. So sorry to hear all of that I hope you, and the bike, are okay.

Judging by my feed on Twitter, the stream went down for loads of people. For me, it cut out just after "Ten"

Not very many games excited me this year, and I had a massive bias toward local multiplayer. My GOTY without a doubt was Towerfall Ascension; local multiplayer with a lot of discoverable systemic interactions at the same kind of level as Spelunky. I wasn't sure about the things added over the original at first, and some of them (e.g. bolt arrows) change the play a lot and take some getting used to, but it's just such a refined game. The design goes above and beyond that of most similar games. Me and friends screamed and laughed by far the most with this during 2014, and it often broke the ice with strangers at events too.

I reviewed a load of cameras for the latest issue of Singletrack. It's not online, but in issue 94 if you're interested in mountain bikes or action cameras, and you can see a scan of the page with my face looking stupid at that link.

Ooh, I read a few issues of Chew and always meant to go back to it. It seemed fun. I picked up the trade of The Wicked and The Divine recently, it's gorgeous. I always wait for trades now; singles take up loads of room and look ugly on shelves. I think the only things I've kept in that form are King City and The Tick, and I'm kind of scared to go back and read The Tick. I found it hilarious as a teenager, and wonder if it'd hold up now.

He definitely peaked with Kindergarten Cop

(Ooh, thanks Megaspel; useful link. I get sick of FB showing me the same post I'm not interested in for days at a time). I went out with friends tonight, and one of them is a builder who told me an excellent story about someone he's working with: He was paid to fit a bathroom for someone in a house they were renovating, and they agreed an amount in advance. On the last day of work, they customer tries to haggle and get a day for free. The builder says "You can go get me all of my fucking money right now, or I'll start ripping out the things I've installed". The guy goes and gets the money and drops it off, but when the builder counts it, it's five pounds short (an odd amount to be short, as most cashpoints and banks dispense in denominations of ten pounds, it's not an amount you're likely to mis-key, and five pound notes are a very different colour to other banknotes, so it was deliberate). His last job before leaving was to hang the bathroom door and fit a door handle, which he did… but he put the hinges on the top edge Imagine trying to explain that to whoever you call in to fix it without saying "I tried to fuck over the last guy".

I found it particularly annoying that the first shot is so well set up to be edited as a Wes Anderson thing, and instead they put bad typography over the top.

Regarding the block list, I don't think many people are aware of this, but it's important.

I think AAA writers often mistake referencing things for actually talking about things. I hate it; it's probably the worst tendril of games trying to do things better but actually doing worse. There was that developer who said something like "If you hate social justice you'll hate some of the things we've put in FC4", but everything I've seen has made me think "That's it? Just a bunch of nods at things?"

Yeah, on first watch I actually really liked how muted the colour palette is.

This is an incredibly rad cello and chip piece which you'll probably enjoy if you enjoy Steve Reich: https://soundcloud.com/innovadotmu/tristan-perich-formations

I'm on the list too, but that's no surprise as I've engaged with and detracted from GG quite a lot. I tried one last time the other day with an alt account, and the tone has definitely shifted. They're really obviously True Believers now, and think their cause is so righteous that it excuses abuse, or somehow means it's not actually abuse if they're the ones doing it. Several gaters piled on to me, kept jumping topics and avoiding giving any answers while continually demanding proof of anything I said. In response I posted four links in a row showing documented abuses and lies committed by GG, and it prompted them to suddenly switch to becoming incredibly verbally abusive, with several immediately resorting to copying the hashtag back in to try and instigate a pile on (not just an interpretation of their words; it was a specific exhortation from them). What really stood out to me was that, a few tweets before that, they'd been talking about "GG is against abuse". I'd concluded a while ago it was useless to engage, but that confirmed it for me. I saw these tweets this morning: and I hope I didn't make anything worse for anyone. What she says is spot on though: engagement from non-targets doesn't distract or sway them, it fuels them to go after their targets harder. Actually put my palm on my face.