Blarghagh

They're going to be using little information brackets and summaries so you can still tell their opinion at a glance, but it solves the problem of having oversimplified scores (what on earth does "graphics" still mean nowadays?), shuts up annoying fanboys whining about how "everyone else gave it a 9 out of 10, you moron", means that culture criticism nonsense can't as easily still be mistaken for consumer advocacy that most people expect reviews are and most importantly, if others follow suit which they most likely will, it will hopefully take Metacritic out of the equation entirely as a factor so we will never have a situation like what happened with Obsidian and Bethesda's nasty contract over New Vegas metacritic score which ended up with many an Obsidianite losing their job.

Joystiq removed scores from their game reviews. Still on bad terms with them, but that's a huge step in the right direction.

Hah! Something Awful is My Little Pony land compared to places like /b/.

I know it's not literally what he said but my interpretation (and since he's a postmodernist douche, my experience is all that matters) of his tweets is a very clear "I am not Charlie because they had it coming."

It only just figures that a guy who wants the ability to murder taken out of video games supports real life murderers.

Looks good to me, I think they're trying to make this the Empire Strikes Back of the franchise. The first trailer focused more on the villain, this one more on character drama. I think if they release another trailer, it'll focus more on action. The first trailer was better than this one, though. Beefy Iron Man is Iron Man in Hulkbuster armor, which is the Avengers contingency plan for if Hulk gets out of control. Looks like it's not as effective as they were hoping. Since Hulk's eyes are so red, I'm guessing Scarlet Witch may have set him off or may even be controlling him.

He truly is just an awful person. "Je Suis Charlie" has nothing to do with race. It's about freedom of speech. Not to mention not all who were killed were white. And to no surprise also Gawker continues to be **** : http://i.imgur.com/herTaGK.jpg Quote from the article Gawker published about Charlie Hebdo: "Surely journalists should at least try to take some responsibility for how bigoted, ignorant people "take the joke"." Oh, is that what good journalists should do, Gawker? Take responsibility to for what they publish and how their actions are perceived? Take responsibility for what, for example, "a hate group" would do because of the things they publish? Also, that FemFreq tweet is absolutely awful. Arthur Chu tweeted something similar recently, too. And they call #GamerGate the "hate group". The gall of these people. Oh well, at least BasedGamer.com managed to get funded in time. Wonderful! Baby steps.

I fail to see logic in "it doesn't really happen" following after "I didn't notice it other poeple". I mean, if your posts are anything to go by you're not exactly observant, nor a people person. If you didn't notice it, it coud just as easily mean that you didn't notice it.

That's untrue, you've been ill. You've even said so in these threads. YouRE WEaK. WwwWWeeEEEaaAaaaKkKKKkkkkK!!!!!!111111!11! Oh, good! I thought I was going insane, because I could swear he was posting about being sick recently.

Hey #GamerGaters and non-GamerGaters, take my example and put your money where your mouth is - I pledged already. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/basedgamer-com #GamerGate initiative (spearheaded by Jennie Bharaj) to create a gaming version of Rotten Tomatoes named Based Gamer (that will aggregate youtube reviews as well as written reviews) - it's an enormously well established concept with a thorough business plan. It's a step in the right direction, there's only 12 hours left and with so much already funded it'd be a shame if this didn't happen. If it takes off, it'll solve many of the problems caused by Metacritic.

Is it because Italians have so much oil in their hair?

Wow Rosj, hope you feel better soon. Sucks that that happened to you.

I wish this was my experience with the online feminist community.

I am certainly hoping that there aren't that many tight corridors in most dungeon maps in PoE. It may make for interesting combat but it makes for frustrating navigation.

I think that since there's a part 2, this thread has outlived it's usefulness. Take it to part 2, guys.

I also need to buy a new PC, but I don't have enough cash to do so.

I believe wholeheartedly in the death of the author argument so I see no reason to disagree with what you're saying about there being enough evidence for the other viewpoint, but personally I don't see it. I can see little hints of it, but most of all I feel it's a tirade against people who enjoy games she doesn't approve of. Although you're going to have to excuse me, since it's been a while and it's not as clear in my mind as it was. Haha, isn't that the truth. I have more cause to care about games journalism than most since it affects more than just my hobby, and I think some of these people are going way overboard. Also, your post made me laugh so have a like. I wish modern day feminism wasn't such a contradictory mass of people with good intentions mixed with vocal idiots with victim complexes, though. Annette Kellerman must be spinning in her grave. And some of the attitudes towards feminism as a whole make me sad. I've seen really stupid #GamerGaters manage to say all variations of "you can't judge all of a group such as #GamerGate by the actions of a few jerks, you stupid feminists are all generalizing idiots" in 140 characters or less and the same vice versa. There's just a lot of hate from vocal idiots in every group on the internet these days.

Do we have any clear numbers on this? It's been my impression that most AAA titles don't break even. It's just the few runaway successes that keep the market going. Unity was lucky that it's part of a franchise which translated to a large amount of pre-orders and still they had to cancel all of their DLC (the premium moneymaker in game development these days) and give it out for free to pull off that return, but most games aren't that lucky. EDIT: This Gamespot interview with a developer says the same thing. Can't find any concrete data, however. http://www.gamespot.com/articles/just-cause-developer-says-aaa-game-development-unhealthy-unprofitable/1100-6417519/ EDIT EDIT: (This is messing up my quotation code like hell.) http://www.lazygamer.net/xbox-360/tomb-raider-needs-to-sell-5-million-to-break-even/ Industry analyst pointed out that Tomb Raider sold 3.4 million units, which is an enormous success as far as games go, but so much money was spent on it that it (and most AAA games, see quote) needed to sell somewhere in the unrealistic ballpark of 5 to 10 million units to make a profit or even see any return. That doesn't seem like "fit for purpose" for me. BioShock: Infinite reportedly had the same problem, and that's lead to Ken Levine leaving his own company and focusing on independent titles - publishers are currently not healthy.

I consider hers to be one of the chief offenders, yes. Here's the thing, I think (it's been a few months, I could be wrong) only one of those articles specifically redefined the word gamer. You can infer from some of them that when they say "gamer" they don't mean the average, garden variety video game player but that guy we all hate shouting obscenities into his microphone every goddamn match*. But they don't redefine it, so "gamer" is just "gamer", person who plays video games. I hold a rather uncharitable view on the internet in that it doesn't do subtlety. I'm not even that much of a gamer anymore, but when I read those articles, already miffed by the inflammatory titles and tone, my blood started to boil a little and I'm usually a pretty calm individual. As you can see about a page back, even my frustration takes the form of long, overthinking walls of text. I very much understand that people took it personally and let's not forget, as Leigh herself likes to point out, these people are professional writers. They know what tone does and how to convey it, so I think there is very little possibility that this was not the intention unless they are complete idiots, although to be honest that could also be the case. But even so, if people would have been allowed to voice their displeasure about the articles, even that would have blown over. *I'd like to point out that, yes, I ****ing hate that guy. I've had many an argument here with people about why that guy should be banned by the game developers, and I have sent many developers messages about it. Most gamers hate that guy. That's probably why they felt so strongly about their identity being associated with that guy.

Alum: While I concede that not all of articles were as bad as some people make it out to be, some of them were that bad and several of them were nasty and inflammatory and made sweeping statements about how "gamers" are wailing hyperconsumers that hate women, specifically condemning the practice of going to gaming cons and midnight launches as well as liking to play AAA titles. It's very easy to see why a lot of gamers would take it personally, as they did attack major parts of their identity. Someone (could have been you? I forget) recently posted a thread about fanboyism, where fanboys take criticism of things they love personally because they equate it with their identity as it replaces their actual identity that is rife with low self-esteem. Attacking those practices is perceived as attacking the gamers themselves. It's really quite simple to see how it ballooned into this. Then there's the "Death of the Author" argument. Nonek: Publishers are fit for making games and profit? You are kidding, right? If anything, Ubisoft has proven this year alone that publishers are not fit for making games and Square-Enix has shown that they are not fit for making profit either, sinking so much money into the Tomb Raider reboot that it sold more copies than projected and it was still considered a failure. Even if those weren't true, I've made a lot of (true) points about how the modern games journalist and the clickbait outrage culture they permeate is an enemy of artistic freedom for developers, but I will concede in a second that the publisher is by far the biggest enemy of artistic freedom of the developer. Publishers aren't really fit for anything but lowest common denominator Call of Shooty baloney. It's why everyone rejoiced when the Pillars of Eternity kickstarter was such a rousing success - no publisher. Note: I'm exaggerating a little bit, the failure of many kickstarter projects shows that a publisher pushing a game developer can be a good thing in moderation, but overall they're just amazingly terrible.

I've noticed that I've been more ornery on here since I changed my signature to this. Maybe I should change it back. It's a nice in-joke to the claims that I was a "roach infiltrator trying to subvert the human race" (it's a quote from the "bug" from Men In Black) but it's very negative. "Now we can relax" was a much more calming statement. In other news, I'm making plans to tour German themeparks with a bunch of friends in the summer. Super excited since Germany has Phantasialand and Europa-Park, which are by far the best theme parks in Europe.

I don't accept that publishers have journalists in their pocket. I accept that it's what they want, but it's still the wrong situation to be in and in the long run hurts the publishers because it destroys trust in the journalists that they paid so much to pocket. I think games journalism would never have gotten this way if the publishers weren't such dicklebags. Plus, if we remove the old there's nothing to stop the publishers from turning the new into the same damn thing. There should be some kind of ombudsman to prevent this stuff from happening, which is why I'm hoping the smarter elements of #GamerGate will continue the slow development into a media watchdog and take on the publishers.

I bet you can ask a hundred GamerGaters that question and you'll get a hundred different answers. I took games journalism seriously when it came to indie games, myself. They're also a good source of news about upcoming games. I think some of it was like you said, just a case of it being the "straw that broke the camel's back" so to speak. Games journalists have been a spectrum from snide to openly hostile to their core readerbase for far longer than this and they were pretty widely seen as being terrible, as you said, and then they made it "personal". Although honestly, to say the articles were what set gamers off is probably incorrect. I think it's mostly the censorship, the censorship on gaming forums, on game sites' comment sections, the censorship on Reddit, and the radio silence that followed. It's got all the hallmark symptoms of Internet Backdraft via the Streisand Effect. Even as early as the "Quinnspiracy" incident that preceded it. Even if there was no collusion, no conflicts of interest whatsoever (which I find unlikely considering the amount of other cases that have been uncovered) I think the removing of all discussion of it was enough to make the majority of people trying to verify their own information think it was all true. I maintain that early on, stopping #GamerGate was just as simple as allowing moderated discussion and updating a few basic ethics policies. I'm pretty sure that in the entire history of the internet, trying to censor it has never paid off. It always does the exact opposite of what you intend. It was, simply put, by far the most stupid thing anybody could have done and they all did it.

That's true, the new testament is lovely compared the old testament.