JonCole

I don't think the proven/unproven thing matters all that much, I think it's an even better point that there are people just as experienced as admitted veteran Dan Ryckert that just also happen to be women. I've been following Jenn Frank's recent troubles lately and it strikes me as insane that nobody is paying her to produce some of the amazing things I know she's capable of putting together. She's been in this industry longer than I've been following it and I know she can't be the only female with as much experience that's practically homeless as a freelancer.

The part that I actually find most damaging is that this seems to be validation of the part of the community that insists that anyone who wants female staff at GB is an outlier and doesn't represent the culture of the community in general. See the comments on the latest Giant Bombcast as a reference, they're really pretty gross calling Klepek a SJW and the worst thing to happen to GB, etc - http://www.giantbomb.com/podcasts/giant-bombcast-07-01-2014/1600-915/

Payday 2's tone and frankly poor-to-middling writing makes it really just seem like total caricature to me. Not to mention the mechanics are not extremely connected to the reality (kill a civilian or guard, put him in a body bag, and throw him in the back room of the nearby convenience store - does this even approach realistic?) and I find it very easy to play Payday 2 with no harm to my conscience.

So, there's a feminism issue I don't know how to parse. Some things like the political stuff are black and white to me, it's about rights and equality in an explicit way which is obviously easier to recognize and combat. But last night there was a ton of discussion around the hiring of Jason Oestreicher and Dan Ryckert at Giant Bomb. A lot of women in the games industry got quite angry about this hiring, as it essentially added two white males to a staff consisting of almost exclusively white males. I follow a lot of these women and agree with them almost always, but I find myself challenged to hold Giant Bomb at much fault in this. On paper, they are great candidates. Jason was a video guy at Game Informer and Dan was Senior Editor of reviews at GI; they're quite qualified and seem to fit the gaps of the most recent people who moved away from SF. When Vinny left, the lack of enthusiasm over at Giant Bomb West is what threw some people and I feel Dan will add a lot of "love of video games" to mix there. That said, I also had some hopes that they'd hire a woman like Cara Ellison or any number of great female freelance editors out there. That staff could also use some diversity - sure, they enjoy different genres with some crossover here and there, but there is something valuable to the experience of being a different gender, race, sexuality, age, etc than other people writing on staff. I guess the crux of the issue is that Giant Bomb could have made a major statement that would have benefit the feminist cause by hiring a woman to essentially fill the void left by Vinny. But, they didn't and made a safe, seemingly reasonable choice. Do they deserve scorn for this? I mean, someone eventually needs to be proactive for women to really have a better place in the games editorial space but does a publication's reputation deserve to be attacked over not being proactive in that fashion? For context, just browse the twitter feeds of Samantha Allen and Maddy Myers from last night.

Being a Raptr member actually got me something for once - I used 300 of their points (don't really know how I got them, maybe from playing games while having the app installed on my PC?) to get a 10% off coupon for the Astro Gaming website. Just picked up a Astro A30 PC headset, which should be nice for both my PC and PS4. Well, of course granted I actually understand how the PS4 controller's audio port works, accepting any four pole mobile-style headset and using it for game audio and chat.

A lot of Young Republicans are very socially liberal - I don't think it'll be a defining issue for conservatives in the future as these things eventually turn over, it's just that for now abortion and gay rights more closely fit the narrative of the GOP establishment (big government overreach) despite what part of their growing constituency believe.

So that was pretty fun. I'll probably be up for that again sometime soon. Put some points in skills and bought a new weapon, so I'm eager to try all that out.

I generally defriend if not family, or reduce the frequency they appear in my news feed.

Am I counting wrong or are there five of us? Nonetheless, it's good to have a pool greater than the number needed as I'm sure not all of us will be available every time. I need to actually install the game and get a hang of the mechanics before I'll feel comfortable hopping into MP. That said, I should probably be able to do that sometime soon so I'd be up for a game later this week/this coming weekend.

I think you get a NNID and a Miiverse profile, whatever the hell those things are.

Apparently pretty bad?

My point is that their 401ks for employee retirement included investments in companies that manufacture Plan B, ParaGard, IUD, and Ella. So sure, they can't pay for their employees to receive these drugs, but they can invest money in those companies to manufacture those drugs? Their opposition is indeed specific, but I believe to be far from sincere. I didn't mean any aggression, I moved it here because I thought you had a good point regarding what type of people tend to talk about this kind of topic. It's just silly to me that it is so, because healthcare should be a universal issue no matter who one particular part of it affects.

The dissent suggests that this ruling is not narrow at all, despite what Alito said in the opinion - The full opinion can be found here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-354_olp1.pdf

Source: Vox I'm so angry. Both the healthcare system and political system are such in the US that some of Hobby Lobby's 13k employees don't get access to basic health care. Problems: Since healthcare is provided by employers, they are a chokepoint of access to people. Hobby Lobby didn't care about their religious rights until 2012, when some hotshot lawyers thought they could get a lot of money getting HL riled up to fight. Evidence: the company's investments EVEN NOW put millions of dollars into the pockets of contraceptive companies. Somehow the law is such that a company run by less than 10 people somehow are allowed to impose their casual religious preferences on the lives of thousands of people. For some reason, people think that this is even a religious argument to begin with, when contraceptives like "The Pill" provide tangible health benefits to women beyond "irresponsible use" for birth control. Sorry if this is the wrong place for this, I usually don't talk about political stuff on the forums but this is a little overwhelming this morning. I moved this from the Random Thought thread mostly because I expect most people would prefer it here, not because I particularly think this is a "feminism" issue. Frankly, anyone who cares about healthcare should support contraception for women, not just people who care about women's rights.

Edit: I took Bjorn's advice and moved my discussion of the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision to the Feminism thread. Side note: I got a parking ticket today, for parking in the same place in my front yard that I have been for upwards of two years. Today is the worst.

So, I spent more than I had intended to ($0) but I ended up getting games that I either wanted ahead of time and was planning to buy at some point or that were so ludicrously cheap that I figured they were worth a shot. My haul: Impulse purchases Octodad: Dadliest Catch - gift Risk of Rain - $2.49 Battleblock Theater + Castle Crashers - $2.49 They Bleed Pixels - $1.99 Giana Sisters: Twisted Bundle - $3.59 Fortix 2 - $0.99 Defy Gravity - $0.29 Retro/Grade - $0.99 Wizorb - $1.49 LYNE - $0.74 Ultratron - $0.99 Wanted before sale prices corrupted my judgment Wolfenstein: The New Order - $29.99 Payday 2 - $5.99 Saints Row 4 - $4.99 (Amazon price match + promo) South Park: The Stick of Truth - gift So at $57.04, I got all those games cheaper than a single AAA game at full retail. I really wanted to save what I could and put money towards my next big game purchase, my PS4 + Destiny bundle, but I actually feel like I can beat most of these games in that window and get my money's worth so I don't feel too bad. It's just now I can't afford to buy anything else until that $450+ expenditure.

FFVII benefits from having a somewhat analogous world to the modern world. It's a little easier to take proper nouns when they're referring to that big city with skyscrapers over there or that mega corporation will billboards everywhere, because that's not too different from what we have to do on a daily basis. Seems like this go-around the PS3/PS4 is likely to be the platform for JRPG fans, is the only Wii U JRPG the upcoming Xenoblade title? I honestly can't think of any others at the moment.

I'm up for organizing a time. I'm usually available from 5PM Eastern/2PM Pacific to about 10PM Eastern/7PM Pacific on most weekdays, and open whenever on weekends granted we schedule and not do it spontaneously. Of course, if you see me online you're also welcome to invite me but I won't promise anything. My Steam profile is in my signature.

I just think that JRPGs would do great to focus on mechanics in Act 1 and ramp up on story in Act 2. It's like casting a line and pulling a fishing rod as hard as you possibly can as soon as you catch anything. I think it's why FFXIII was so intolerable for many, because not only did it weigh players down with an overly long tutorial where the mechanics were painstakingly explained but at the same time they were throwing ponderous plot details at you about cities you don't care about and people you don't know. The only reason Persona games get away with this is because they actually have moderately realistic characters and stories set in the "real world" that manage to be interesting to most people who like mystery/thriller things.

The Tales games are cutscene-heavy to the point where they almost seem satire. Watching my wife play Tales of Xillia, probably like 80% of the first couple hours of the game are either cutscenes or skit-style dialogue scenes. Add to that the fact that JRPGs love to introduce a vocabulary of in-universe jargon right off the bat and you're swimming in mediocre at best writing that you can't skip because you literally won't understand anything that's going on if you do.

Oh no, Prime Trilogy is indeed expensive. Here in the US, it was sold along with Xenoblade Chronicles at Gamestop at full retail years after launch. I believe it's still selling for $50 pre-owned, which is fairly hilarious since the quality of most used goods at Gamestop is middling to poor in my area.

I still haven't beaten DS1, so I'm going to hold off of DS2 even though I want to buy it so bad.

Figured it'd be worth it to revive this to wish a happy birthday to the thread's creator, toblix!

Alamo San Antonio did not require reservations when I went about 2 years ago. Maybe it's because I'm an introvert, but I pretty much decide to see a movie weeks ahead of time to mentally prepare myself to encounter a group of people larger than ten. Reservering that far ahead to get the perfect spot sounds delightful.

I don't believe how that works anymore. The first Tuesday of every month they'll put two games per platform on the service. At the following Tuesday, six new games will go up and all the old ones will go down. I believe this started in June, so all the previous semi-permanent PS+ offerings are gone.