Nachimir

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Posts posted by Nachimir

  1. Posted

    Jupiter Ascending is a lot more fun if you imagine it's written by Tina from Bob's Burgers.

     

    I mean come on it's about a misfit who discovers they are a special person in a world just next to our own, but also has rollerblades, a royal wedding, and a magic tattoo.

  2. Posted

    Yeah that's the thing isn't it: the people left in GamerGate are clearly not getting better.

     

    That's true, but the reason I've withdrawn from almost all discussions about GG (like, everywhere, not just here) is the obsessive and relentless focus on figures like TB. Given how he and his audience respond, it feels like he and his words are not a target through which any of the social/internet/abuse/harassment problems forefronted by the emergence of GG can be resolved. Unlike other prominent gaters and sympathisers who aren't fundamentally embedded in or tied to video game audiences, and thus have moved on to an extent, he's there to stay. Focus on prominent individuals also feels like it's contributing more to maintaining "August never ends" than ending it. Amongst their awful habits, those who already have ignorantly or purposefully sicced legions of followers on targets with .@'s are unlikely to have any road to Damascus moments.

     

    There are people doing really good work, like Randi and Crash Override. Outside of directing people to that, it feels like the best I can do is signal boost people who need it, criticise myself, keep a weather eye on GG, and watch the backs of everyone involved in events I'm running. There's always guff and dead ends in group discussion, but on the back of the above my brain has started vehemently and automatically sidelining discussion of TB as irrelevant. I cannot recommend that habit strongly enough.

  4. Posted

    This New Yorker piece on torture and 24 is interesting. West Point Academy sent someone to specifically ask them to stop depicting torture the way they were, because they were getting students turning up to learn interrogation with a far from useful "Torture! Fuck yeah!" attitude.

     

    (The relevant section begins "This past November". Pretty sure I've linked it in other past discussions here, but the link has changed since)

  7. Posted

    Oh no... I was just thinking the other day that when he passes, a little light in the world would go out. And now it has, I guess. A quote from The Truth has always stuck with me - "Sometimes glass glitters more than diamonds because it has more to prove." I thought about that and his battle with Alzheimer's and how I devoured his books in high school at least once a week. I really admired him. Such good memories reading those books - they helped me through some rough times. Man, this is terrible. Just terrible.

     

    We were lucky to have him, and the last tweets he had someone else send were beautiful. I'm happy he managed to stay so coherent for so long with a condition like his, because I'd been absolutely dreading reading something like Mervyn Peake's last work. I'm sad that he's gone, but he'd studied death, talked about it in public, maybe accepted it, and he mustered an impressive amount of humanity and dignity these past years.

     

     

    Not to change subject, but I also just wanted to mention that I may have found a job in Halifax. Yay.

     

    Good to hear.

  8. Posted

    This is good news:

    http://singletrackworld.com/2015/03/british-downhill-series-offers-equal-prize-money-for-women/

     

    A lot of bike events offer smaller prizes for women, make women race shorter distances, give almost no coverage, and take the attitude that "More women should race if they want equal prizes/coverage/etc." rather than "We could do something to address this". Helps that the UK currently has some excellent role models in Manon Carpenter and Rachel Atherton too.

  9. Posted

    Hmm. In my mind, Rezzed is still held in Brighton, and I think "Maybe I should move to Brighton", when of course it is held in London now.

     

    I really enjoyed that one. Not that Gamer Network don't work on it for all of their events, but that one had really lovely atmosphere. I think it was a combination of the size and the place.

     

    Brighton, alas, seems to be in the gravitational pull of London's black hole. Hopefully it'll reach a stable orbit, but I've known a few people grow up there, love it, and find it difficult to afford to stay. It's a nice town. Everyone dresses ten years younger than most other places in the UK.

  10. Posted

    Gaizokubanou, paypal me ten bucks and I'll reply to you. Until you do that, I can only infer that my posts are worthless to you and that I should, as a rational economic actor, save myself the trouble. If any of this perplexes you don't worry, the invisible hand will be along shortly to clear it all up.

     

    In other news:

    After two days of solid harassment, 8BitBecca has locked her account and appears to be moving out of the games industry. Good job everyone!

  11. Posted

    Sure, people follow the money because looking at and talking about big numbers is easier than thinking about stuff. The "bigger than Hollywood now!" thing is still repeated, and has been for nearly a decade. At some of those times, particularly the ones further back, it's been a blatant fabrication or massaging of figures in a desperate effort to claw some validation from the rest of the world. Largely, that validation was lacking because the industry drove itself into a trough of appeasing teenage boys, and the resulting stigma is still clinging on.

     

    It's done some good, but led us to a point where, say, major games organisations still think "art" is putting something in a frame then on the wall, that they can absorb aesthetics of respectability by doing that without having to put time or thought into what they do beyond their existing production process. We're left with an industry that has a massive tantrum when someone says its commercial products aren't art, yet has (for instance) persistently ignored or marginalised a history of computer arts going back to the sixties as irrelevant.

  12. Posted

    Go tell it to the poem industry, Gaizokubanou.

     

    By calling everything part of the "industry", you build up the GGer perspective that video games are Products, not weird art things, and that they should therefore appeal to the Average Consumer (the young white cis male, of course).

     

    Where does the industry end and the rest of the world begin? indie developers? games press? games writers in mainstream media? enthusiasts?

     

     

    My experience at the moment is that "industry" is too deeply embedded in everyone's psyche to have a distinct boundary within games. The term automatically rolls off everyone's tongue, including mine, still, sometimes. You have to go a very long way out to the fringes before you find someone who feels any kind of hesitancy over the word, let alone pride in non-industrial work. Most routes toward developing the skills required to craft video games also happen in contexts that are heavily biased toward industrial output too.

     

    IMO one of the symptoms of this is a lack of appreciation and respect for support roles, such as the archivist above. Mature industries have, understand and value these roles. At video games industry events, people still assume you're either a developer, a journalist, or maybe a musician.

  13. Posted

    She specifically mentioned GG affecting her (edit) universities employers view of video games and willingness to fund games archiving related study and projects. She's now getting widely and simultaneously shat on by GG, GGhazi, and assorted mansplainers, and you guys are busy picking holes in her here too.

     

    I think I'm done with this thread. For sure this discussion.

     

    A week or two ago someone said here they were uncomfortable with the constant exhausting dissection of whether people were good people or not, and I've been strongly feeling that too. It is deeply unempathic and I absolutely despise it.

  14. Posted

    Some of the things people are saying are certainly melodramatic and come from limited perspective (in her case, of one academic department and some horrible shits on Twitter), but take a spin through her mentions and you'll glimpse an awful shitstorm:

    https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%408BitBecca&src=typd

     

    I'm significantly less reassured than you.

     

    For my part, I still regularly meet people who don't play games at all and, for instance, scoff loudly when they hear a friend of mine just completed a PhD in video games and the sublime. Similarly, I deal with hundreds of developers and not many of them have any understanding of culture or how video games work as a medium outside of industry. "Industry" is deeply coded into their vocabulary, go to phrases and habitual discussions. Nearly every conversation gets dragged back to the selling-focussed methods and perspectives that often alienate non-industry people who work in fields such as academia and art.

     

    I'm glad your work and careers seem to be going well. Maybe things are different in your neck of the woods, but when the audience for games and the industry that feeds it are both largely impenetrable and occasionally hostile to outsiders, it's dispiriting. In 2004 I saw an immature industry that didn't really take care of itself or understand its need for a wider foundation. A lot has changed in the intervening decade, yet not that.

  17. Posted

    I can't stop reading. I know there's no point in schadenfreude, and that it's tantamount to gossip, but it's so good. Here are some more choice quotes:

     

    Thank you. I don't have the stomach to comb through them, but you cheered me up on a terrible morning.

  20. Posted

     

    After 24 hours, I almost thought reaxxion would simply ignore the Aurini/Owen breakup. The takedown piece is online now, tellingly by reaxxion "ethics officer" Sam Roberts. I assumed they'll crucify Owen, but I could not even imagine how low they would stoop. In Robert's view of the world, Owen has committed blasphemy by questioning almighty reaxxion site owner Roosh V.'s ability to convince women to sleep with him.

     

    I think my biggest laugh was at the phrase "Owen was on track to be a successful movie producer"

  21. Posted

    Itch.io just announced their revenue model:

    http://itch.io/about/what-is-itchio

     

    Starting now, itch.io will utilize an open revenue sharing model. As a creator you can now pay what you want to itch.io: the revenue split between the seller and itch.io is configurable by the seller. Set it to 10%, 30%, or even 0%.

     
    You might be saying “well that sounds pretty risky, what if everyone sets it to 0?” We think that’s a risk we’re willing to take in the spirit of encouraging the generous and supportive community that’s already developed around itch.io.

  24. Posted

    My visits to KiA are a lot less frequent, because fuck them and probably a lot of the harassment will move on from it. GG are effectively spotters for a smaller group of vicious, dangerous bastards at this point, who only operate partially under the GG label if at all. If anything GG forums like KiA might be useful as early(ish) warnings of who or what will be targeted next.

     

    I enjoyed listening to that Sarkeesian effect guy explain that the truly moral thing for him to do was fire the other one and keep all of the money. Super ethics there.