Blarghagh

Fair enough. I'm asking because some breeds are more prone to health issues than others. Maine Coons, for example, and such have heart trouble so often their average life expectancy is counted lower than most other cats.

I know that feeling. Women and their cats, right? What kind of cat is it?

Last post last time.

Closed for length. New one coming up shortly.

If you guys don't stop sniping at each other this is going to get pruned.

Well-regarded?

Having similar revenue isn't the same as being considered succesful by the public, though.

I really enjoyed that one. Thanks!

I think that wasn't hypocrisy so much as a lack of reading comprehension because I'm pretty sure you weren't referring to his joke with your "spitting on consumers who've funded his company" but by his tendency to not deliver any finished kickstarter products at all.

I see what you did there.

Ish my birthday. Not celebrating it until a week or two though, crunch time sucks.

That's not what they think, Bruce. They're making fun of "SJWs". Here's what happens when someone hosts a party as such in the game industry: http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/28/game-designer-brenda-romero-quits-igda-following-party-with-hired-female-dancers/

Apples and oranges. Nobody died from female video game characters having large breasts either. You could call that institutionalized sexism, just like women in the middle east being opressed. Doesn't make it any more similar.

Perhaps the reason they take it so seriously because it's their main way of dealing with / getting away from that? Anyway, I think it's ludicrous that in the end, what you're saying here is "bad things are okay because there are worse things".

Not really. You used it as a response to a bunch of anger from the side of the debate that insists it isn't about any of those things. None of that is serious business to them.

Even that doesn't make sense.

Uh, that is the #GamerGate opposition, Barothmuk.

The recap is hyphenated, meaning that's not part of the recap but a response to it. If serious, it doesn't make sense as a response.

Yeah, that seemed pretty obvious sarcasm to me too.

I believe Anita Sarkeesian, the most high profile target, posted a week's worth of the abuse she gets recently. Was mostly people cursing at her.

Alum, your post is rather big so I'm not going to quote it. My only real response to it is that I'm acutely aware of the movement's size and the more unsavory elements of the movement and have actually received a fair amount of abuse from them myself. Yet as a game developer I have been much more guarded with my identity since this controversy started not because of 8-chan's wretched hive of scum and villainy but because of the other side. I've gotten internet death threats before and they don't worry me, what does worry me is anti-#GamerGate's tendency to contact peoples employers, send ambulances to people's homes and make false sexual harassment claims to the police. As a personal matter for me (so not immediately relevant to anyone else) I find that to make the industry much more unwelcoming than the white noise of chan culture. I also like to focus on the people in #GamerGate who actually do care about ethics because nobody else seems to be acknowledging them, favouring letting harassers guide the conversation.

You clearly have never worked at an indie game developer. Most people become game developers because they have a passion for it anyway. Here's an interesting point. I read that the average time people spend working in the game industry is 4 years, which is an incredibly low number especially factoring in your Carmacks and such that have always been at it. Instead of focusing on it being unfriendly to women, maybe it should be pointed out that it's pretty much unfriendly to everyone. Here's an example from a few years back that really isn't that far out of the norm.

I didn't say the fact they are women is irrelevant, just not the operative factor. It means that, as evidenced by Phil Fish, it's an ideological issue and not a gender issue. That ideology may pertain to gender, but the gender of the victims isn't the most important thing to focus on. You clarify yourself that they may decide to bolt because they see the gaming industry as an unwelcoming environment. Then you make a bit of a leap to say that it actually is highly unwelcoming to feminists. If the reason they see it that way is because of #GamerGate, then it's quite likely their exposure to #GamerGate has come from the media (i.e. "the narrative"). That's not even getting into the fact gaming fandom and the game industry are being conflated here. At most, from #GamerGate one could infer that gaming fandom is unfriendly to feminists. The actual game industry has remained largely unaffected (and silent) regarding #GamerGate. You were speaking about it with Longknife in the same terms of how there aren't enough women in STEM because the actual work environment is unfriendly to women. #GamerGate doesn't affect that in any relevant way I can see, if I'm totally honest. Let's think again in terms of the #GamerGate "sides". Perhaps it was for "PR" or "out of Spite", but the "pro-" #GamerGate has gotten several women's charities and games by female developers funded. They got games by female developers greenlit. They push the voices of female developers involved to the forefront, even if it is only those that agree with them. What about the "anti-" #GamerGate "side"? They tried to block all those things from happening, and actively marginalize female voices who voice their own opinion if it doesn't agree with them ("sockpuppets") - all of their own initiatives look to have failed, at least from my point of view. In terms of actually doing things that are friendly to female developers, so far "pro-" #GamerGate looks to be getting ahead? EDIT: Oh man, so many posts while I was writing this. I'm going to stop until I can actually focus on it, spent too much of my workday lounging around here.

That's why I phrased it as a question. The only one from his list I've actually read it Patrick Rothfuss The Wise Man's Fear - which I thought was very inferior to it's predecessor, The Name of the Wind, because I don't need fantasy books about a kid dealing with student loans for most of the book. I have enough of that in real life. An uninteresting story that was extremely well told because Mr Rothfuss has an amazing gift for prose.

I certainly think it's meaningfully different. The operative part in your post is "woman are chased away" with feminist being a qualifier but that doesn't work because the operative part is feminists, with women being a qualifier. What high profile feminist personality in the game industry actually left the game industry? Phil Fish. Who else? None as far as I know, but to be fair I'm not completely certain about Zoe Quinn and whether or not she's still making games. I'm not trying to defend the part of #GamerGate that harasses, I just think #GamerGate making the industry less welcoming for women as a whole at this point is a pretty unsubstantiated claim. I'm sure there are cases of the game industry being unwelcoming to women, but I haven't seen anything to justify a claim that it's symptomatic of the core industry rather than cases of individual sexism from men. I believe recent research showed that game development employs a lot more women than most comparable fields [citation needed]? I think there is a lot of hyperbole involved in gender discussions and it's more interesting to look if there are actual facts. Your friends seem to have been "chased away" by the "narrative" instead of anything that is actually relevant or true as far as I can see. I'm not saying the current situation is adequate, by the way. I'd love more women and minorities in game development. I'm just not sure the way some people are trying to go about it is helpful rather than damaging.