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That's unusual, considering that Alienware wouldn't have a reason to exist if it wasn't for gamers.

Well, you know, AGG is not known for making sense. Their representative decided to become a full AGGro a while ago and said that.

A post on tumblr, which links to facebook as its empirical source, and has a bunch of stories which cannot be proven.

Move on guys. This is nothing to even bother with.

Someone on Steam beaten Hyper Light Drifter and found out Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn are in the special thanks credits of the game. The question is, why are they in the credits?

"I will address this simply: throughout the past 2+ years during development of Hyper Light, during shows at PAX, E3, Indiecade and events we have held at our own studio, we have met many people in the games industry. Almost every one of them has been lovely and kind. Many have offered advice, play tested our game, supported us with kind words of encouragement, reached out to us in various ways and our game is the better for it. There are no politics here; each of us on the team have different folks who have helped in different ways, and we wanted to acknowledge that.

I would greatly appreciate if this discussion does not devolve into something terrible."

- From the Developer, in that thread.

I honestly don't know what to think. If it's as they say, then why those two specifically? They've never been acknowledged in this way before… just some indie dev namedropping them as 'thanks'. It's so weird… I don't get it.

Maybe they're inspired by those people, or happen to be good friends with them?

So….Bioware hired Amber Scott, a as a writer, that previously had written a D&D adventure highly injected with agenda and also said that original BG was sexist

And now in the new Baldur's Gate expansion, there's a joke about ethics in heroic adventurring said by Minsc of all people. Also trans characters that tell you all about their sexuality when you ask them their name, and unironic usage of a term "mansplaining" by a minor character.

Oh good lord it's like the awkward writing in those infamous Fem!Thor issues.

"Also trans characters that tell you all about their sexuality when you ask them their name"

Seriously, can I pleas just get a trans character where them being trans isn't their one character trait? Okay sure even I may partake in joking about Poison's confusing history about if she's supposed to be trans or not (right now most of it's pointing to "yes," but Capcom doesn't want to say if she's gone through sex reassignment surgery or not, or in layman's terms "does she still have a dong and balls?"), but even so, in the games Poison is in, her gender identity isn't her one defining trait.

I mean shit even I'm not defined around here by my gender identity (I bring it up way more than I would like, only because we can't seem to go a single month without gender politics controversy erupting on this site). If anything most people around here know me as "that weird chick who likes inflation and vore, but is more articulate than you'd expect."

It would seem Japan, and in particular Nintendo of Japan, is more advanced on that regard than the west. I mean, as far as I know two characters in Super Mario games, Birdo, and a character whose name I don't remember, are officially transgender in the Japanese version, But that is not their defining trait, it is so not their defining trait that it could easily get censored in the West (A mistake if you ask me) without notice from players.

I mean, the problem with the current "inclusion", "representation", and "diversity" trends is that it is all about tokenism, the characters are made part of a group as only or primary defining trait.

A transgender archer is not "The archer whose arrows rarely miss, had a troubled life as a thief, lived as a bard for a few years after escaping jail and became an archer to follow the footsteps of a person she was in love with, also she is biologically male but nobody really cares and it is not even brought up during most fo the plot", but instead we get a character who is only "That transgender male to female archer, whose only backstory is all the emotional trouble of being transgender, not even relatives mentioned, just agnst."

It is the token black character all over again, but now with more token quotas to fill, which means now there is even less space for character development because every single character must be a token something.

I think we should stay calm and not make the first move. Let's just let it pass as long as the game is good. If they say it is not about politics let's give them the benefit of doubt. For all we know they interacted because indie gaming is a tight clique and they ended up very involved and even one of the devs befriended them. It does not have to be a big deal yet. I mean, we would not target Anita Sarkeesian's father for calling her on her birthday (Much likely she would be the one attacking him anyway.)

Thinking about Mr. Sarkeesian and how hard it must be to handle such a vile daughter, I feel sorry for the relatives, especially the male ones, of all those man hating feminists and straight "cisgender" male hating SJWs in general. I mean, just imagine the hardship of seeing one of your relatives being totally rude to others for something they are not at fault to be and is not a wrongdoing, or even being the target of their rudeness regardless of the fact that you carry the same blood in your veins.

My sister even joked at the possibility of people like Quinn, Sarkeesian, and similar SJWs actually displaying such hatred for men to cover their deep seated incestuous desire for a relative, maybe the father or a brother. But of course, that is a joke.

Finally a good reason to play a Chaotic Evil character then

>Indiecade

Now that's a name I haven't heard in a very long time.

Yeah that tokenism really bugs me. Granted tokenism can make for some amusing humor in a comedy (for example see Token in South Park, straight up a parody of tokenism down the unsubtle name, or Neil Patrick Harris' character Lance in Undercover Brother, where he played the "token good white guy" in a blaxploitation parody), but if we're talking about a SERIOUS character, then tokenism just comes off as a stupid, pandering attempt to seem diverse when really you're not even trying.

I only linked it because I had someone post it up that I know in FB. I wanted to say something but every moment I have ever attempted to counter that viewpoint, I've gotten dog piled. The more scary idea for me is that people will take a post on tumblr as evidence or gospel. She was quoting sections like this woman was fighting the good fight but my only thought the whole time was 'how does so much shitty behavior / problems happen to or around the same person so much?' Either we live among some really wretched scum and she has some really shitty luck or this is just more outrage culture / 'gamers / men are evil and rape-y' etc.

A victory that's related to GamerGate, as it is about video games and video games would not exist without programming!

This may be the week the SJWs lost it all. At least in the programming/computer tech world.

Other semirelated news to Gamergate:

Satirical Overwatch petition to remove guns from game since boomsticks are triggering

Oculus datamines everything you do because facebook

and…
the Panama Papers are causing a scramble of censorship worldwide. Currently there's too much involvement on multiple international parties on this scale, but It'll be fun to see if there's any fallout with major investors.

Cherry on top of Baldur's Gate Agenda of Dragonspear issue:
Beamdog bans people for "hatespeech" and "perpetuating a false narrative and engaging in a campaign of harassment":
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3 (User is banned for one of his last posts. All of them however are just polite criticism of sloppy writing, and some times even defense of Dev's stance

Stumbled on this in Steam

Now with all these controversies about politics I am starting to wonder where should one draw the line regarding politics and video games. If you ask me the primary issue is not politics on its own, but the fact that SJWs do commit two mistakes when handling politics in entertainment.

First mistake: Coopting an already existing IP. That is something you should never do. Create your own IP.

Second mistake: Poor writing. Make sure your story is compelling, depp, and not preachy, otherwise you get your work full of preachy nonsense, double standards, sloppy dialogs, and misused memes.

I've said it before, I'll say it again.

Less this:

More this:

And it works so much better.

Also, the Daily Dot asks Is Gamergate too powerful? (The answer is "this isn't even our final form").

opinion

Oh that's rich. The Daily Dot states that Gamergate "victories" are just claiming other's work, and says that Allison Rapp wouldn't have been fired if Gamergate hadn't drawn attention to her.

insert masking scooby-doo villian meme here

The lady was posting sexy pics and advertising her second job on her company linked twitter account, the one that represents her and the company. And, looking at her past complaints before the exposure happened, she was being pulled off of her marketing representation for it.

Edit: It further goes on to claim Gamergate is going to go after those associated with Rapp to get them fired. (Klepek, maybe?) I believe the reason Gamergate goes after the associates is if the do something considerably bad to videogames like half assed writing to push an agenda or having evidence that they arent a good person. You know. Unethical behavior that's a firable offense.

Long story short, read it for the keks.

end opinion

(Apologies for no links. I am posting from a potato)

"Sexy pics?" That's a pretty wild stretch, don't you think?

Candids then. Point is she was trying to promote her Adult work.

It would seem political commentary on entertainment has degenerated from something written using intellect and freedom to something written with feelings and dogma.

It's all but impossible to include a trans character in most any story and it not wind up being tokenized or shoehorned in.

To write a character like that well is so that it's not a defining feature, right? Well, the problem is that if you do that, then there's no point in even mentioning it. Which then there's no real reason for having them be so in the first place. While they may have a better back story and/or do not behave in some stereotypical fashion, them being trans becomes something that was just slapped on there like it was an afterthought, or got shoehorned in.

The only reason they'd have to be trans is if there was some sort of point to it, which at that point it becomes a defining feature. I'm not saying it's impossible to write one, but the situation would have to be very specific. So much so that it would be obvious that you wrote a lot of everything else to fit around it. It also doesn't matter what the reason is, there's no chance that you'll do it in a way that will please those who really want that in there. Even if they're not of the SJW hoard, they'll find something wrong with it.

Really, the whole thing boils down to this: a story has to make sense; real life does not.

I dare to dissagree

I have no idea what I just saw, but it was so absurd that I can't tell whether or not it proved my point or if it proved that I said "almost" for a reason.

Kotaku Japan shut down permanently.

Archive.

Wow, who could have imagined that establishing a branch of company that hates Japan in Japan wouldn't work out?

It fits more into your "almost."

My point was more that I don't want it to be the SOLE defining aspect about them. It can still be a major part of their character, showing things like how they've struggled with things like "just… who am I?" and such like that in the past, or maybe they've faced legitimate prejudice by people who saw them as "sinful nutcases."

Now sure there is some media where the fact a major character is trans is a major part, but that's more because that's the point of the piece of media as a whole, like the webcomics Venus Envy, Trans Girl Next Door, or Trans Girl Diaries. Difference between comics like those and something like "Assigned Male" though is that the first three comics I mentioned do a much better job handling their subject matter and making the characters relatable to the intended audience, and even having stuff non-trans people can enjoy (Trans Girl Next Door is very "slice of life" humor centered, for example).

When you write a trans character in such a way that they feel like their only character trait is "RESPECT MUH PRONOUNS YOU CISHET SHITLORD" then I'm like "get a better fucking writer."

I'll grant I didn't word my original post as well as I could have and should have instead said "it CAN be a major part of who they are, but it doesn't need to be the ONLY thing."

Well, they listened, and they made it better.

Haha, I love Kelso.

Change ain't so bad amirite?

Hunh, you know I'm rather surprised that no ones really done a compare contrast of Baulder's Gate like with #torrentialdownpour. That is have cited proof of how the expansion is crap on top of complaining to the devs.

I have no doubt that the expansion is trash (I never played it for two reasons. One, I was relatively young when a version came out on the PSwhatever when my friends were talking about how good it was, and every search for BoulderGate didn't lead me anywhere. Two, When I saw the game being played by my friend I was wondering who would want to play a game when you couldn't make heads or tales of the landscape [I only saw mud brown and deep purples. I think I was in single digits at the time.]) but if you pull proof of the bugs, crappy writing and cringeworthy gameplay, it should lend more sway to what the developers are denying. Plus I find it super odd that the Devs are using the excuse of the expansion pack is to be more inclusive for the modern day in a fantasy setting, even though the original source material that's needed to be understood to get it is, by the developers admittance, not ideal for the current tone of the expansion. Plus the expansion is for the niche that has played the first game and the second and wants to find out what happened in between. Royally screwing whomever thought launching this (buggy, badly written and poorly executed) expansion was a good idea

It's quite possible that comparison has happened and I haven't seen an archive of it yet. Or the reason why It doesn't exist now is due to the fact that no one wants to play it long enough to justify the screencaps and get their money back.

Honestly, I think that the reason it is not compared to Torrential Downpour is that the new Baulders Gate expansion has alot more important issues rather than the script, such as game breaking bugs and poor quality graphics, say what you will about Fire Emblem Fates, you can still say it functions effectivly as a game

Ah nuts. Looks like Fem Freq's Ordinary Women got fully funded

I'm guessing there'll be a few investigations into the donors list and more ethics.

A fool and their money are quickly seperated as they say

Is that Lex Luthor?

True, It's just amazing how they managed to make 40,000+ dollars in less than four days to meet the goal just in time.

people are mindless sheep, that's how

people are mindless sheep, that's how

So I guess now we're going to have to have a lot of history and science buffs come in to defenestrate her cherry picking bile and outright lies.

Lovely…

All evidence will be of course ignored or dismissed

All evidence will be of course ignored or dismissed

More likely she just donated her own money so to not lose face.

Given how much of that was funded by FemFreq's rich buddies (Temkin, Schafer, plus assorted hedge fund & Goldman Sachs cash.) I'm not impressed.

Anyway I'm now waiting for "history is dead, history doesn't need to be your past anymore" after Anita's bullshit gets criticized harassed by the evil womyn-hating HIStorians.

@robertman2

It's Professor X.

@Hrom

Her rich buddies bailed her out.

I honestly didn't even know Sarkeesian had a new series she was funding. Now watch this one also go through the same deadline issues Fem Freq. suffered from (all videos out by December 2012) and then each video picked apart for research errors or flat out lies (the infamous "Hitman Absolution" one is still a major sticking point for me, because in Hitman games you are PENALIZED for killing civilians and non-targets, and how the fuck is anyone "compelled" to drag around the dead bodies of strippers unless they're doing it for something like a gag video such as, say, Sanity Not Included).

Well it looks i am back from outer space.
So what happened, besides Rapp nonsense.

Baulder Gate shit

A TotalBiscuit video where he talks about hypocrisy and games media (it's the second half of the video) after a bit about VR.

He ends with the beautiful quote: "Games media doesn't have to be your audience. Games media, as we know it, is over."

Slightly related, but every once in a while someone doesn't get Ben "Yahzee" Croshaw's Joke from about 8 years ago of the "PC Gaming master Race" and does a hit piece on it much like the re-emerging "Gamers are dead" narrative that crops up from time to time.

Turns out it's become such a meme that there's now a market for it

Star Ocean 5 character's underwear made bigger for a number of reasons

Hardcore Henry Director Stomping an SJW

Ordinary Women in Context

"Hardcore Henry Director Stomping an SJW"

""