alanschu

This seems appropriate. PIV is always rape, ok? | radical wind Quite possibly the most insane thing I've ever read. There's definitely extreme perspectives on all accounts. There was a Men's Rights Activist Councillor candidate in the most recent Edmonton mayoral election, and stated that his inability to win the election was proof that there was no "patriarchy" as he represented the manifestation of status quo for them, and they should have voted for him. Which is mostly facepalm worthy. The person in the link (a perspective that I absolutely do not support. It's an unfalsifiable perspective in that anyone that doesn't agree with her is just brainwashed by the patriarchy) has one perspective, but there's also the idea of the sex-positive feminist that is pretty fundamentally opposed to the entire idea of the wordpress post. Though we have to be careful to generalize from extremes. I can take a look at the guy that filed an FCC complaint against EA/BioWare for the Mass Effect 3 ending, and believe that most people are that extreme and use that as a justification that their concerns are maybe less warranted. But I don't think that that would be a good idea. Just like how I don't assume that any person that disagrees with my perspective is some extreme MRA member that says and does awful things.

No, not everything is about me, but unfortunately nothing exists in a vacuum. While you may enjoy the picture and quote, I see it used enough in contexts that I don't like. When I see it used, it's typically used in a dismissive fashion and often comes with an implication that "everyone should just drop the issue because all we're doing is whining. The primary reason why I respond to a post like that from a personal perspective, however, is to drive home the notion that people being dismissive to a group includes being dismissive towards me, even if that may not be the intent. I believe I've done so with Ghost of Anakin and Nephenthe on this particular topic, in part because I think people generalize a bit too much (myself included) and when I see a comment that is "seems all I see is <extreme position that I don't feel I represent>" it's done to point out that perhaps someone is being selective in their observations. I've done the same with people on BSN that would post about how EA is trash and needs to die and so forth, and I basically respond with "Thanks." I often get responses that are "well I don't mean you." If that's the case, it's really helpful to be more specific. I'll openly admit that I support it, in part, on grounds of being novel. I also support it on the belief that it'll help introduce more people into gaming, which will create additional markets and more novel content. I am perfectly okay if the AAA industry were to move away from a strong sequel bias. More from Activision than Call of Duty is a good thing. Well, there's studies about this sort of stuff, but smart people are often pretty good at creating barriers and defense mechanisms to protect their world views. Do you consider it speculation simply because you don't agree with it, or because safe language is used as determining causal relationships with human beings is a very, very challenging thing to do (yay ethics). If you require a complete and definitive study, you'll probably never find it. But I find this is an unfalsifiable position. Since the likelihood of us ever finding anything 100% unequivocally definitive, you can rely on this as a defensive in perpetuity.

If we're looking it from a historic perspective, your concern could actually be valid (although I'll admit I am ignorant to the prevalence of Chinese people in Europe, and would need to do some research). Though I have a feeling that that may not actually be the intention of your post. If you'd like, we could evolve this discussion into a breakdown of the value and contributions of women in medieval times and contrast them with minorities like a black or Chinese person, with the baseline of typical white males to be compared against.

The problem comes with, as far I'm concerned, how accurate our depictions of history actually are. Zoraptor made an interesting post earlier, although he met at it with a more cautious perspective, with respect to "women in the time were likely dressed as men." I am curious if, given the circumstances, if "you're a woman but you spend a fair bit of time needing to pretend to be a man" would be sufficient. It'd mitigate the concerns that Keyrock put forth, regarding divergent content. Must the content be significantly different? Or is it a convenient because some people have their impression on how the more minute details of history and anything that doesn't fall in line with those beliefs puts people on the defensive. I mean, for example, I would suspect that a lot of people would assume that women in medieval Islam were at best treated no better than a lot of Muslim states now, and possibly even worse. Though according to Labour in the Medieval Islamic World denotes that women were frequently in what we consider masculine jobs (construction, guild presidents), and were the first to actually have women physicians. (12th Century, although also surgeons by the 15th century) I think there's also a belief that women equality has tended to monotonically increase with time, when the Industrial Revolution saw women's rights increasingly marginalized. No, I'm not saying women in the 10th-15th Century were seen as equals to men, but I wouldn't be surprised if assumptions and biases predispose many of us to overestimate (I know I used to be a much more hardliner on this topic as well).

Reality arguments are a red herring. The player character is never just "some character" in a setting. The prevalence of women performing acts of significance would be reflected in the entire setting, not the particular gender/sex of a single character. That said, if the development team isn't providing women because they prefer to focus on other things than the challenges that that provides, then (though it may be unfair) that's the prerogative. Not all games are going to allow for a man or women to be playable characters. If, however, the reason for not adding them is for reasons of being "realistic" then its a problematic situation. Unless people are asking for significantly more women in power throughout the game, it's a pretty bull**** excuse and those justifying that a single character can't be a woman because of realism need to step back and take some perspective. When you draw analogues to unicorns in space (even in jest), you're going to draw attention you're probably not intending to.

Looks like Lebron was able to get to the net, including some tough shots with heavy contact, while Durant was able to hit better from beyond the arc. With KD having small leads in steals and rebounds, and James getting to the line a bit more, I bet I'd be hard pressed to see two players contribute about as equally as these two did tonight. Strange game though. Storm out to huuuuuuuuuge early lead, and end up losing by almost 20.

I don't follow basketball too closely. I'm getting the impression that Cousins is probably closer to Rasheed Wallace crazy as opposed to Charles Barkley crazy? EDIT: Jesus KD's range is pretty stupid. Pulling up for 3s a few feet behind the line :S

>.> I'll look to finish 'er off on the weekend!

Well, then my boy Nash earned his \m/

This actually made me garner looks from office mates from confused co-workers as I actually snorted! XD I get that you're trying to point out to all the Lebron haters that he was undervalued for not winning championships, but unfortunately no matter how much you may not want it to be in this case, the regular season MVP award is highly correlated with statistical performance during the regular season. It's not really a "most valuable on a particular team" but mostly just an award for "which player had the best season."

So you're of the opinion that they are just misguided and are being wasteful of their ammo? (which *is* a valid perspective, if that's what you think)

Armor maybe? The pragmatist in me just sort of sees the "if it's just a waste of ammo, why would they use it?"

The context by which Stephen Fry makes that comment is in response to people that get their knickers in a twist because he says something that others find offensive. Would it seem that the best analogue for whom he'd be talking to about this, are those that get pissy simply because people speak out about what they'd like to see in the game as body types? If it makes you feel better, then sure, I'm whining. But in response to your picture my response is "well so ****ing what?" The irony is that those that post said picture are espousing the very thing that Fry is pointing out as having no meaning. You're annoyed at a particular topic, and effectively whining because maybe it's not a topic you find interesting nor want to take part in or whatever, and make a passive aggressive dig at those because of reasons. Note that Fry isn't saying that people cannot have their grievances. Just prior to that specific comment, he talks about the overuse of the word "respect" and makes reference to how it's overused, taken from the very understandable historical usage of black americans seeking respect (including self-respect) in southern United States. He actually makes a snide emphasis on the word "respected" when he says "it has no reason to be respected as a phrase." He's saying that the word is overused and that people feel that simply saying "that offends me" has weight behind it. I'm not offended by the prevalence of inhuman body types. I just find them absurd and an overused crutch, that may potentially have unfortunate implications when applied and coalesced with the greater cultural influence of society. I'm not simply saying "I'm offended" and leaving it at that. So while I'd agree that the picture has relevance to the discussion, I'm not sure I'd agree with you on who it'd be applied to. And for those that are whining about me continuing the discussion: well so ****ing what?

True. Though my jaded self-pity has long since convinced me that I am not a special little snowflake. Granted, much of the critiques I see regarding body types comes from people that don't like whatever game they are critiquing, so they may just be looking for as much ammunition as possible in fueling their critique.

it's not like both shots are guaranteed to hit the exact same spot (from what I understand there's the idea of cold barrel vs. hot barrel accuracy as well). Though admittedly it's just from things I have read and the like.

You're seeing some of it in this thread. I'd be surprised if it was exclusively women that gave the feedback for Wildstar.

Ahahahaha I always enjoy a gameplay vs. narrative divergence discussion. I do agree that I'd find it increasingly fascinating if the characters in RPGs, including BioWare's, were more autonomous. I'm not in any way suggesting BioWare is exempt from a lot of things that I critique in this thread. Part of it is the belief that, if a game doesn't have sufficient combat encounters and the like, players will disengage. But, is this really a problem or as I suggested earlier, is the perception of the problem actually the problem. But AAA isn't a great place to find shifts against the standard conventions because the level of money and risk involved is very high. If the game strays and epically bombs, people could conclude that it bombed because of how it tried new things (which may or may not be true) and swaths of people risk becoming unemployed. I'm really hoping a game like Torment (despite the reservations I had against it) can be absurdly successful because of the narrative focus it has, over fairly standard combat gameplay. I think that indie/smaller scale projects are more empowered to try pushing boundaries, and could really benefit from it.

I actually think that they like it too. I don't mean to say "People like it exclusively because it's marketed to them." As you say, marketing failures still exist and even if a game has high quality marketing, if the game isn't to quality there may be high initial sales but it won't have the staying power (nor the sequels). But I do think that there's still the influence of "Hey, give this game a try. It's what the cool kids are doing" that help with that initial hook. Although this is starting to slide a bit tangential to the discussion of body types. I find plenty of men are increasingly speaking out against the stereotypical body types of both men and women in video games.

Well, it is complicated because at this point it's probably reasonable to say that that is what the target audience wants. Although I also think that there's a perception issue, to the point where developers/publishers and even some marketers believe their own buzz and go "that's what they want" even if it may not necessarily be something all that sought after. But people are also fluid. I mean, Call of Duty is something a lot of people want, but most posters on this board, I'd argue, want little to do with that type of game.

Just curious if you had a chance to read over the (longish) article that I linked? It was just interesting to hear the recaps from some marketers and how video games were in many ways marketed as a family thing in the Atari days (although the Atari days pretty much killed the games industry. Is this a contributor?). Nintendo, in the wake of that, decided to focus very specifically on making the game a toy for boys, and catered their marketing towards that particular demographic. As an aside, now that I think about it, most of my experiences with the Atari console was actually in a family setting as my babysitter (when I was 4) would pull it out and we'd play games together with the 6 of us (my babysitter, her husband, her son, her daughter, and my brother). It's also interesting that (as Bruce echoed, as I read his post too), at least according to the testimonials from some Atari developers, the idea of "this is a game for a boy/girl" was kind of foreign, although there was a bias towards male developers as the science/engineering bias still existed then. I would love to somehow set up an experiment to see if the one marketer could make good on his word (claims that he could make it so men wanted to buy tampons and that it wouldn't be impossible to make the next Call of Duty a game that was highly sought after by women - note that he doesn't say universally sought after by men and women). Obviously he's a marketer and has confidence in his craft, but I mean Santa Claus' image is ubiquitous because Coca-Cola made it so, or when that little girl went viral as she expressed confusion as to why girl toys are pink and princesses. I know some people do think that pink, for example, is innately more appealing for women (I remember discussing this very topic on this board with a poster), but it's not something I believe. That said, "games for boys" and "games for women" aren't made in isolation, and will still have the other cultural influences. This is why a future Atari CEO can suggest that a woman programmer would equip them for making games about interior decorating and cosmetics.

I dunno man looks like he hit a *bit* of rim on that shot.

Hah, I just use my friends. My volleyball team was my party in M&M 3

That would depend on whether or not perceptions have biased developers and publishers to believe their own marketing that there really just isn't a potential market of women playing video games (I do think this is the case and I do think that it is a problem, especially as budgets have gone up and made people risk averse). I actually just read this interesting article which details some of the evolution of how games have been marketed since the Atari days. It examines the idea that maybe our perception of the problem is the problem.

Agreed, and it's sort of a chicken and egg problem I find. So really one way to change that is for those that want it to let people know.

Is that the original? I don't recall a Brenda's Lab in the second. (If so, what's the original like compared to the second?)