SecretAsianMan

I think that's a reasonable view. It used to be acceptable to substitute sufficient experience for a degree but that's becoming less common these days. I've worked with people before who did not have a college degree and yet are in senior positions above me. According to Wikipedia, John Carmack went to college for 2 semesters before withdrawing to work as a freelance programmer. I imagine this is not an entirely unique case within the games industry.

I think it also means I'm stalking you by proxy. This turned out way creepier than I intended.

I honestly have no idea what my relationship with the Thumbs is, or even what I want that relationship to be. I've met most of them in real life (the exceptions being Nick because he wasn't at the PAX meetup and Danielle because she wasn't an official Thumb yet). I've put money into paintings made in their likenesses. I send them candy on a fairly regular basis. I have most of them on my Steam friends list and I follow them on Twitter. They seem to be aware of who I am (at the very least Chris and Sean know my name and Sean knows what I do for a living). But I've never hung out with any of them for more than a couple hours and never played any games with them. Really I feel like a creepy stalker who knows what Steam games they're playing, eavesdrops on Twitter conversations, sends them unmarked packages, and listens to recordings of them talking once a week.

Yeah, I think we're starting to approach convergence here. What I'm trying to emphasize is what your last line says. I'm not trying to use any of the hypothetical women in our examples as a representative of all women, that would be absurd. Nor am I saying that if she says it's sexist, then that's all there is to it. There's always more to it. Obviously you want to understand the how and the why. What I don't see is how my understanding of a single person's perspective does not contribute to my understanding of the entire concept. Gormongous touched on the idea that the entire "system" is composed of people. What's the point in solving the systemic problem if we ignore the individuals? Clearly one person does not represent the whole, but they are still a part of that whole and thus their experience is relevant, even if it's an outlier.

Wipeout's been around for a while (six years according to Wikipedia) but I know what you mean about seeing someone you know. A girl I went to high school with was on Survivor: Fiji (Michelle Yi). It was very weird because I mostly remember her as being pretty quiet and soft spoken but then to see her on TV was incredibly bizarre.

The thing is, I don't think any of us was saying either of these. I can't definitely speak for anyone but myself, but I never meant to imply that thinking critically about sexism is bad and that a broader social definition has no meaning at all. I probably didn't convey it very well, but what I mean is that in a personal, face-to-face situation if a woman tells you the thing you just said was sexist, then it is for her regardless of what any other person or groups of people say. That doesn't mean the research, reasoning, and critical thought are meaningless. Likewise the research, reasoning, and critical thought shouldn't render her opinion invalid if they don't agree. It also doesn't mean she can't later change her mind after a discussion or that the offending person can't have their mind changed by the same discussion. It doesn't mean that the discussion shouldn't be subject to debate and scrutiny for the better understanding of everyone. What it does mean is that for her, at that moment, it is sexist and no one except her should have the authority to tell her she's wrong. It's a complicated topic and using any ONE definition is naturally going to be limiting the scope. You seem to have interpreted our discussion as "you're wrong, we're right" and I don't think that's what's being said at all. I frankly agree with most of what you've said, at least in concept if not the specific words. I think almost everyone is mostly saying the same thing and we're arguing about who's saying it better.

I've been there. It is indeed quite terrible. Hang in there man, this too shall pass. And I didn't even mean to make that a pun.

I suspect you're both right but as an intellectual exercise I'd still be interested in the results. Of course that would require someone to actually do it and given the shit that most female writers already catch I would never ask anyone to volunteer for something like that just to satisfy my own curiosity.

In contrast to my last few posts, I finally got a bit of good news. One of the more significant issues with my project seems to have been mostly resolved. It doesn't fix everything and there's still a ton of work to be done, but even this small degree of forward progress has done wonders for my morale.

I think in the end we're all mostly agreeing and are getting bogged down by semantics and extremely fine details which are naturally going to vary from person to person. That seems to be the conclusion most of the arguments in this thread reach.

I thought it was strange too. I would have expected a big stink if he asked for a couple million dollars, but that's not even six figures, and that includes double damages and legal fees. Not to say that it's not a significant sum, but especially in light of the Gamasutra survey, it's basically the average salary for someone in his position. From what O'Donnell said about the way he was fired, it seems like Bungie fighting it the way that they did caused them more trouble than it was worth.

I dunno, you're pretty good at it. Unlike myself, who by and large doesn't actually know what they're talking about and is mostly speaking out of my ass. And here comes a pretty good example of that. I read the article Sarah linked as well. I didn't even glance at the comments because I'm already too mad at things in my life but the topic did get me thinking again about an idea I had a while ago. Would it be a completely terrible idea to have a well known male and female writer/journalist/blogger put up posts written by themselves but with the other person's name attached for some period of time before revealing the truth? I'm not trying to suggest that a woman should hide her identity behind that of a man's or anything like that. But I would be curious to see what the results of comments and reactions would be. Would the comments be more civil just because a man's name was on the byline instead of a woman even though the words themselves were written by a woman? Would the people who make horrible comments under the articles with a female author's name suddenly reverse them if they found out the thoughts were actually those of a male?

I was writing a response but in the midst of copious editing Gormongous preemptively put up a better one so I'll defer to that.

I don't like where my head is at these days. Between stress at home and stress at work, I'm finding that I'm becoming irrationally angry at everything, which is in turn leading me to be argumentative over little things, which is in turn leading me to create disagreements in my mind when in fact none exist. I'm finding myself saying and thinking things that I don't actually believe just for the sake of arguing about them because I'm mad. It's only afterwards that I think "What the fuck am I talking about? I don't actually think these things!" and I realize I'm just looking to pick fights even with people who agree with me. Being aware of it doesn't seem to be much help either. I'm going to take this moment of lucidity to apologize in advance if I say something in the next few days/weeks that is unnecessarily belligerent or offensive. I really don't mean it, I swear I'm actually a nice guy.

Bungie and Marty O'Donnell have settled. Marty will be paid a little over $95,000.

The Urban Thesaurus maybe, as shitty as that place can be sometimes.

The thing I don't like is trying to come up with a blanket definition for any of it. Nothing is absolute, especially when it come to socially defined matters. But I think if you say something to a person, whether they're a man, woman, white, black, gay, straight, WHATEVER and it's something they find offensive or uncomfortable, then you have to accept that it is to that person. That includes groups like MRAs. They may be idiots and assholes (and I'm pretty sure they are) but they're allowed to have that belief no matter how much you dislike it. I'm not saying that sexism is SOLELY defined by when a woman feels that a thing is sexist, but I am saying that if they genuinely believe it is then the bottom line is that it is sexist to that person and that's just as valid a feeling as any other.

The thing that complicates it is even if you do take all that into consideration, it could still be sexist because you're not the one who gets to make that call. If the person you say something to genuinely finds it sexist, then it is. Trying to justify it by saying you didn't mean it that way is mansplaining your mansplation. That's how I see it anyway. But I'm a straight, non-white male so 2/3 of my opinion shouldn't count.

My favorite was the spellsword, especially with the chakram. That combo let me clear the entire map on NG+++ in one life. But yeah, once you see all the enemies/areas/classes that's basically it. After a while all the rooms are mostly the same.

Atari announces LGBT-themed Pridefest game Yay?

I feel that way about potato salad.

Are you looking for ?

No worries. Like I said, not mad at anyone at all, just frustrated by life.

I organized the meetup last year and completely failed at finding a sufficiently sized space to hold everyone. I won't be going to any PAX this year unfortunately so someone else can ineptly try to organize a meetup.

I beat Shovel Knight. Mostly good. Definitely hits a lot of nostalgia points without resorting to super blatant references. The controls felt a little sluggish to me. You can sort of explain that away as part of the nostalgia but I feel like it wouldn't have lost anything with a bit more modern movement control. Maybe I've just been spoiled by games like Spelunky though. Also the majority of the items were pointless to me other than the section of the level you get them that forces you to use it. Those are relatively minor gripes and I'd still recommend it overall.