Blarghagh

Levine is a pretty good one, but on a whole I'd say those are the classic rock guys who keep touring, not big hit rockstars (to keep the analogy coming). How can we really know what the contribution of women towards game development is when we don't really know anyone's contribution to gaming development anymore?

In my personal experience (so I don't know if this is game culture standard) I don't think I've met a lot of female gamers in pickup groups, open world, random games etc. if I meet them, it tends to be in clans, guilds, that kind of thing. Perhaps they don't like speaking up in open channels, as Malc said, or maybe it's just easier for them to make friends. Or whatever.

To be fair, Aerie had a lot of weak points in her writing, but there were also strong suits. Many detractors say the romances are "press buttons - get sex" minigames, so I always found it interesting that Aerie had a written moment where she could be pressured into it and would completely freak out about it afterwards, ending the romance. I liked the concept of her myself, if not the execution (romance =/= therapy).

Bruce won't go see a movie that hasn't passed the Bechdel test. Interesting point. Are there any rockstar devs like Romero at all anymore? Devs that most of the gaming community is familiar with?

Actively silencing is a problem (I agree with TotalBiscuit that abusing DMCA takedowns and ignoring fair use is a ****ty thing to do) but ignoring it is most definitely not. If a site does not want to report on this thing then it is their perogative not to report on it as it simply does not have any news value regarding to gaming. What someone did or did not do with their private parts belongs in a gossip magazine, not on a gaming website. We are not old housewives with nothing better to do.

That is mostly what I did, there was just a lot of them (dancing game) and the software the company had (definitely nothing as advanced as 3DS Max) wasn't as easy to work with.

Yeah, and how about Driv3rgate? Or Homefront devs getting caught paying for good reviews? Or that publishers are often pulling ads from websites giving them bad reviews? These scandals are commonplace and nobody cares. Most recently YouTubers have been caught giving favourable or more coverage to games they have received from devs.

We already have several threads on this subject. Please discuss it there.

As the person who instated the official romance thread, I can tell you that this was not a developer initiative and I have, in fact, not spoken to any devs about it. If anything, it makes it easier for devs to read as it is not all over the forum, hijacking other threads and not filled with nasty flamewars obscuring the intelligent discussion as the other threads were.

Thread pruned. Settle down. No more personal attacks on each other's intelligence.

I once spent an entire week animating proper boob jiggle onto existing animations. It lost most of the charm on the first day.

I'm gonna have to agree with Malc here. A lot of supposedly feminist gamers have been real morons in this situation. Case in point is the amount of abuse Total Biscuit has gotten making him out to be a "mysognist thug" and such. For reference, here's the single post Total Biscuit made on the subject: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1s4nmr1 The tl;dr version is: "Using DMCA takedowns for censorship is bad, critics who give higher grades for any type of favour abuse their readers trust, and I'm not touching the rest of this discussion with a ten foot pole." He literally said nothing at all specifically pertaining to Zoe Quinn being female at all, it was never a factor in his post and his criticisms were fair and just as easily apply to men as they do to women - essentially the definition of equal rights. Somehow, he's had a huge storm of criticism labeling him as a mysoginist, accusing him or perpetuating rape culture, etc. not because he was sexist, but because he spoke of something a woman did negatively. I am all for equal rights, and that's not it. They are doing an almost coordinated job of removing the credibility of everybody who has legitimate concerns about gender inequality.

Yeah, I agree that this is not a great idea. However, I'd love to see something like Wild Magic implemented in another (optional) way because Wild Mage playthroughs are hilarious.

I'm not sure if Obsidian knew this was a controversial issue. I'm not sure if it IS a controversial issue. Both sides on this board seem to be a very vocal minority thus far. I've read every post in the recent romance threads as they are my responsibility and it's mostly the same people on both sides making the same points. Occassionally a new member comes in, makes one or two angry posts (on both sides) and stirs up the debate again, but it's not nearly as huge as people make it out to be.

Ouch, Amentep. That's harsh.

A better question would be "who cares who accepts video games as art and who doesn't?". Art is subjective. I don't consider a lot of modern "art" to really be art, even if others do. I don't care if they do, it's my personal definition that matters to me. I don't feel the need to convince anyone. I'm mentioned before that Amnesia: The Dark Descent makes me feel stronger emotions than any painting or movie. Games are art to me. As more women become gamers, more women will find an interest in gaming and how it's made and will become game developers. I've mentioned before that I know several and I haven't really seen them having any problems integrating at low level indie devs firsthand, and one of my friends was briefly on at AAA Studio Guerilla (Killzone) as a concept artist and didn't report any problems there. I honestly think this "problem", if there is one, will solve itself eventually. Women, on a whole, are just starting to break out of gender roles. More women are becoming writers, filmmakers, game developers. I have complete faith that whatever "boys club" exists, if it does, will fade away without memory.

I have to correct you on something, the official announcement that there wont be Romance came months after the game was funded. Up to then we were still debating if Romance would be in. Most promancers, like me, assumed they would be in the game on some level Is that so? I was under the impression they would not be there from the start. I wonder where I got that, then. Thanks for the correction.

The RPG Codex explanation is nonsense, as you would (and should) expect from that site. I especially enjoy how it says TotalBiscuit teamed up with JonTron to fight Zoe Quinn, when TotalBiscuit has publicly distanced himself from the entire thing from the get-go.

I don't understand when people say it's a lie to say it will be like Baldur's Gate if it doesn't have romances. Baldur's Gate 1 had no romances. None. Zero. In fact, the only Infinity Engine game that really had romances was Baldur's Gate 2, and it was a small part of an enormous game. That means that if you say it's inspired by Infinity Engine games, romance is one of the tiniest fractions of it. As to romances being "discarded", they decided not to add romances because they did not have the resources. Not enough time, not enough writers budgeted. A good romance takes time because romances are difficult and Obsidian decided that if they couldn't do it right, they wouldn't do it. Nobody lied about anything, Obsidian has been upfront about this since the kickstarter. It's quite possible that a sequel with a bigger budget will have them.

Fedora has recently become a term for "filthy, unwashed geek who thinks he's cool and important" that I thought it was specifically associated with that specific type of 4chan type misogynist, that guy who is scared that girls playing with his toys hurts his masculinity. Apparently both sides use it on each other, though, so it might just end with the bit in quotes. I'd hesitate to call it a leak, the ex was the journalist and he was essentially [word for promiscuous woman]-shaming her. The fact that the supposed "Kotaku" review that Zoe Quinn apparently slept with a journalist for to get doesn't even exist doesn't seem to deter anyone. This was a jealous ex-boyfriend publicly shaming his ex and the public picked up on it and twisted it into their own agendas, upon which everyone freaked out and now everyone involved is trying to milk it for publicity, including Quinn herself and that Phil Fish dude. It is a soap opera that ridiculous fundamentalists have decided to be violently angry about. There is no issue here, it has nothing to do with inclusivity in games. It has to do with sexism, but not with sexism in games. At most it is a note that some journalists may not have integrity - big whoop. Journalists haven't had integrity since before I was born. There is no right side to this debate and the whole thing needs to be dropped like a hot potato as other people's sex life is none of our freaking business. I didn't care when Clinton got a BJ, I'm sure as hell not going to give a hoot when some lady whose name I did not even know before this nonsense made it into mainstream media gave one.

It was not my intention to be misleading, if that's what you think. In a sense, you could say I do not "know better" - it's completely normal for me, which is why it always boggles my mind when I see comments such as some of the ones I quoted. It seems strange to me when people say things such as "women only play casual games" when they do not really do any social things where they would meet gamers. I'm not denying that male gamers who play "hardcore" (if there is such a thing, I loathe to give credit to that concept) than there are female ones, but it is flat-out ridiculous to me to suggest that female "hardcore" gamers are not statistically (or otherwise) significant when you can find them in spades without even trying. I am aware that my personal experience is biased (this forum is making me hyperaware of it) but I was watching my mother play Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty when I was 4. I have been literally shaped by woman gamers and it is just strange for me to imagine not knowing any.

But it does affect everyone because these people have influence and a political agenda and is not just one critic but a series of issues that have been outright dismissed in favor of that agenda. It would be hyperbole to say that they might turn every game into an "inclusion-fest", but there is no denying that AAA has sought compromises towards appeasing them. Yet is the lower end indie developer who suffers as they have no way to market themselves and in a lot of cases their exposure comes from these websites. It directly affects game developers and game development because people listen to these news and if they are all publishing the same one it is going to come off as fact. Also, the people freaking out about it are not relevant to the argument. They are not bound by a professional code of ethics, they are not writers or required to be professional and their insults don't change the facts. Yes, but the sexism nonsense got added to this particular ****storm later and is neither here nor there when it comes to what caused this and how it really affected anyone. It is dumb people being dumb. Originally, this was about one journalist claiming a female dev slept with journalists for better publicity, not politics and agenda. This was all stuff that got added after the fedoras began chastising her and the SJWs began championing her. This is when that agenda came in, forced upon it by other people who were already pushing that agenda. It's nonsense that doesn't matter to anyone. I can't believe I've had to resort to both the terms fedoras and SJWs in a derogatory fashion to explain myself. It's ridiculous. Anyone who seriously believes in these terms are anything other than demonizing nonsense is below talking to. I apologize for using them.

Yet a lot of filmmakers and actors date critics, journalists and editors? Plus, studios buying good reviews or "quotes" is pretty standard practice in mainstream movies, so it'd be just as niche at the point where journalist-filmmaker interplay really starts to matter. Look, I'm not saying a conflict of interest doesn't exist, I'm just saying it doesn't really affect anyone as far as I can see. It's extreme overthinking by people without the capacity to overthink well. Unless you are the kind of person who only listens to one critic and then that critic happens to lack integrity, you are not going to be affected by this. And really, if you are that kind of person, I have some millions I'd like to transfer to your account if you just give me a thousand bucks first as a deposit. Plus, I really, really doubt the people freaking out about it have a lot of integrity themselves, judging by the amount of abuse that got hurled around. EDIT: Added "as far as I can see" to "it doesn't affect anyone" because hey, maybe I'm wrong.

What I wonder is if this had been a big deal if it had been an indie filmmaker and a film critic. I do not care who bones who - that belongs in a soap opera.

I used to be the exact same way. The only thing that changed is it no longer tells people when I've done an edit. Which I have already done to this post. I'd like to point out that this includes edits Tale might have made to any of YOUR posts, members. I tend to show it just for fairness sake. Nobody else has this luxury, why should I? See: