Blarghagh

Did they also cause 9/11? Anyway, I just feel like this wouldn't be an issue if we'd seperate state unions and religious unions. You know, seperate church and state? Or we could just abolish marriage alltogether since marriage doesn't actually mean anything anymore. The only married couple I know that is still together/never been divorced is my parents, who only married for the state benefits. Marriage seems like a good way to break up your relationship to me.

Publishers, yes. Publishers are the problem. I remember that the devs of Remember Me had to fight tooth and nail to get a female lead into their game. The publishers literally said "you can't have a female lead in your game" and kept objecting to things like a female lead kissing another character ("you can't make a dude do that, it'd be weird!") as if only boys played video games. Jim Sterling had a great video on the subject, I'll try to find it. But the point is, the image that's created is that development is a boys club ("that's why they never make good female characters!") when literally the marketing and research departments of giant conglomerates constantly veto that stuff - the developers actually want to make more interesting characters. Literally every developer I've ever spoken to in person is tired of the grizzled brown-haired warrior. But instead of attacking Ken Levine because they didn't put Elizabeth on the box of Bioshock Infinite, maybe attack the people who actually have a say in that? Essentially, as all things wrong with game development, publishers are at the core. It's not even just that they think only boys play video games. Consider the Galbrush Threepwood thing - you give a female character actual flaws and the publishers run screaming for the hills because it might (who am I kidding, will) offend someone. Publishers are risk averse and in the current atmosphere actually putting women in your games is a bigger risk than not doing so. EDIT: Here's Sterling's video:

If a woman experiences sexism in the industry and nobody is around to be sexist, does it actually happen?

Housing is going down, clothes are going down, vehicles are going down (weirdly the cost of maintenance is going up. You'd think as cars get more replaceable the cost of fixing them would go down, but nope. I don't have a car personally so that really surprised me.). The only thing people really need that is going up is food, but food in general is really cheap; a bit of an increase in the cost of food is pennies compared to the lowered costs of housing. And yet, if some people are to believed, we're all doomed unless we collectively switch from eating meat to munching on crickets and mealworms. As far as I'm concerned, they can have all the crickets and mealworms they want. I'll make do with chicken, thanks very much. I love me some chicken, but have you tried a fried cricket? It's delicious. Mealworms not so much, rather boring and tasteless, though I doubt I'd have a problem with it as a supplement to fill out pastas and the like. I want to try spider some day.

The soundbyte with Joey is actually my wake-up alarm. The dark of night has disappeared!

Who would you agree with? Joey or Rachel? I'm squarely in Joey's camp. THE MORNING'S HERE!

You know what makes me happy? Red pandas.

+1. I'm comfortable with the amount of change we've had and I don't think GamerGate is going to achieve much more. The only thing I'm hoping for is that it keeps the push for basedgamer.com going so we're entirely rid of metacritic. EDIT: Haha, this article is so overblown it cracked me up, and it's somewhat relevant here: http://dailycaller.com/2015/05/12/the-media-is-losing-the-waronnerds/

I'm the person with the power here, I don't need to be polite. I stand up for other less fortunates by removing bad speech!

That's it, you're out!

That's fine, I got a refund for DAI. They lost $59.99. Right now the people at Bioware are regretting every decision they made as they watch the success of Witcher 3 cast a vast shadow over little, itty, bitty DAI and all it's mannish, ugly women. Skyrim completely destroyed DAI in sales, now Witcher 3 will completely destroy Inquisition in sales. What does Skyrim & Witcher series have in common? Beautiful women and/or the ability to allow the creation of beautiful women. It just goes to show, making women look like men and lecturing gamers on transgenderism hurts sales. HEY BIOWARE, don't give in to political correct LGBT and feminists. Go to Anita Sark and beg for your balls back, she keeps them in a jar on her shelf at her desk. Every time you post this, another female model gets a masculine jawline.

So you'd silence certain devs to keep the bad guys from silencing certain devs?

I'm with melkathi here, I think the focus on character arcs in fiction is overblown. Not every character needs one. Max and Furiosa work perfectly fine without one. Some characters are the rocks that other people have to steer around.

I haven't played any Witcher games, but I just googled those names with "Witcher 3" and I've gotta say, I think they're straight into the uncanny valley. Creep me the hell out.

They did catch her lying. Spare the rod and all that.

Oh hey, another worthless soul making easy money off of stupid internet drama. Why do people keep giving money for this stuff? Give ME some money instead if you've got that much left over for nonsense.

Nope, just twice. And yeah, so far it's not doing great, because that 150m budget was only production, it doesn't even factor in the film's massive advertising campaign. General rule of thumb these days is that you have to make back double your production budget just to break even.

Do "we can't afford funeral arrangements" count as unclaimed?

Yeah, that entire fight with the Sand Snakes was so poorly coreographed and directed. Not sure how a show with such high production values could have ruined that so much.

He said in a relatively recent interview that he's been too busy, being involved in multiple projects, but he's planning on continuing.

Barely. Not enough to justify the surchage unless it's actually filmed using 3D cameras like Avatar was. The basic 3D conversion process isn't that hard and usually studios don't go further than that.

Yes it was, it just didn't happen to Sansa. Sansa and Jeyne Poole have been merged for the season so they didn't have to introduce another pointless character and an established character actually appears. That by itself is an improvement on the book. Sucks for Sansa, but I guess she's always been the chew-toy.

That was one of those cruel moments where I just go "why do I watch this show again?" but thankfully it was preceded by some awesome Arya and Tyrion stuff. Although the much publicized Sand Snakes are a huge letdown. At least it had the line about dwarves and merchants who sell parts of them.

Some of you guys may have seen this, the recently restored 1980 Fantasy short film Black Angel. It played before Empire Strikes Back in movie theatres. After that, it disappeared and the negatives were lost. Somehow they turned up again and the director restored it: I didn't think it was great, but it had beautiful locations. Some old school fantasy stuff. Reminded me a little of Excalibur.

Continued from here: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/78374-journalism-and-bias-in-the-gaming-industry/page-38 For the uninitiated: The 'Gamergate' controversy was sparked in early 2013, as the release of Zoe Quinn's "Depression Quest" was criticized from gamers who believed that the game had received a suspicious amount of attention in relation to it's quality and scope. Eron Gjoni (Zoe's ex boyfriend) wrote a blogpost accusing Quinn of having had an affair with Kotaku journalist Grayson, prompting the critics to conclude that the attention and success of "Depression Quest" was due in part to unfair bias and nepotism in the industry. Several articles from both sides of the issue has highlighted inconsistencies in the stories of both Grayson, Quinn and Eron as well as the many other examples that have followed. Gamergate is wideley seen in the public, as a culture war over the diversification of gaming, artistic recognition and social criticism of video games and the gamer social identity. For the posters in this thread: Many bloggers and populists have tried to steer the discussion into areas they feel are the underlying issue - ranging from simple bias, to widespread misogny or misandry. I would however prefer that we keep this discussion as objective and clean as possible and so I will be keeping an a extra close eye on this thread. This certainly does not mean that you may not discuss any issue you feel, but rather that you should be thoughtful of how you discuss it with those you disagree with. Especially in regards to these three guidelines: Discrimination: Obsidian has a zero-tolerance policy with regard to racial, ethnic, gender, religious, disablement, and/or sexually discriminating remarks. Harassment: We ask that the users of this board treat one another with respect, even when opinions differ. Personal attacks that are intended to cause unwanted attention, embarrassment, or harm will not be tolerated. In addition, Obsidian does not tolerate disrespectful and/or slanderous posts about its competitors, developers and publishers. Such posts will be subject to editing or deleting, with its posters censured or banned. Objectionable Content: The use of abusive, vulgar or profane language, even if hidden through the use of symbols or other characters is not tolerated. Intentionally posting workarounds to our language filters are prohibited. Posts may be edited or deleted at any time by the moderation team, and depending on the severity and frequency of said posts, the poster may be censured or banned. Any posts in violation of the Forum Guidelines will either be removed or modified and authors of such posts will receive warnings and/or have their content placed under moderated review. PLEASE CHECK YOUR IMAGES FOR PROFANITY. IF THE IMAGE CONTAINS UNCENSORED PROFANITY THAT THE BOARD WOULD NORMALLY CENSOR, WE WILL REMOVE YOUR ENTIRE POST.