alanschu

If I was rich I'd totally put in 10k hahahaha

Hah! He has been around for a long time haha. Not particularly active though haha. He is a "dev" but I don't know in what capacity.

I am pretty sure he has stated so in this thread (implicitly at least). There was a poster on the Wasteland 2 forums with special text named Brother None, so I assume it's the same chap from there.

He still states "We the audience are not allowed to have an opinion, it seems." SO at this point I have to disagree. I feel he is claiming just that. It's not without its costs (particularly with time). Moderation would have to be extreme, and it would just create additional scrutiny. Furthermore, it's beyond the scope of the project and isn't necessary. The discussions are already taking place. They don't need to have Anita present to occur. Anita's purpose in this is simply presenting her position for information sake. I have to ask, were you able to get some time to read the links that I posted in the much bigger post (I understand it's a wall of text. It's a genuine question I don't mean to state any sort of "did you even read my post?"). They actually posit that the presence of hostile comments may actually undermine a reader's ability to understand the article itself. That is, people demonstrated less understanding of the material afterward, while paradoxically rating their own understanding as higher, and taking on stronger, more polarized positions about the information. If this is actually the case, this is NOT a good thing. It means that hostile comments compromise the ability for people to learn from and understand articles that they read. Though obviously I'd like to see more research done, but it's certainly one of those interesting cognitive dissonant inducing, logic defying hypotheses. The 9% include the trolls (by trolling they are still considered active participants). By blocking "everyone's comments" she is blocking the 9% of the people that would comment. The other 90% don't comment so their commenting actions are completely unaffected (though I understand you argue they miss out because they can't read potentially insightful comments). This might not be true, though. The research is starting to show that people gain more from the discussion when comments are not present. I can understand the logical reasoning behind it (people may see something that is insightful that they otherwise would not have), but the Wisconsin study demonstrated that people demonstrated less understanding of the topic in the blog, despite the comments providing the same information (just written in a different way). Your example, "If a detractor with something more intelligent than "FEMINAZIS SUK BALLZ! LOLOLOLOLOLOL" wants to present a legitimate complaint about the video, they cannot do it directly" does make logical sense, but that something is logical doesn't mean it actually reflects reality. Furthermore, there are self-accounts from bloggers and writers that feel that the presence of comments negatively affects how they approach their own work as well. Many bigger ones have stopped allowing it because they don't feel it's productive, and is significantly more work for rather minimal gain.

There's probably rivalry the same way that Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley always went at each other, but were pretty much best friends off the court. I know Gaider is a huge fan of Avellone (I believe he even willingly would give Avellone the title of best Fantasy RPG writer too). I know they get together and hang out at conventions all the time and hang out after the events have finished up for the day. If you check Mike Laidlaw's twitter, there's a chat with him and Avellone (and some other designers) talking about the various things they should do at PAX East. I think there's a greater chance that they all respect each other since, as they are all game developers, they can understand the challenges that can come with making games. Mike has contributed to loads of Kickstarters, and I believe both he and Gaider are huge Torment fans to boot.

I actually made it through most of the video. He does state "We the audience are not allowed to have an opinion, it seems" as the first critique. Directly from his blog: What are you afraid of Anita? Why can't people have a discourse about your material? Why can't people make can't people make their opinions to your content known? Preventing comments or ratings does none of things he states in this part of his discussion. He then goes on about how there's a lot of misandrists out there that are also inane and stupid (which, in my opinion, provides an additional argument for why removing comments is a good idea. Those absurdities would also be present and, as we know from experience, the extremes are over represented and people are going to look at those people and make incorrect assumptions about the types of people that support Anita. Just as there are people that overstate that those that attacked Anita are representative of the gaming community at large, and more specifically the types of people that are against Anita's perspective. Actually, yes. It probably happens more than we think. I have seen a fair bit of discussion about it on places like Facebook as well as Twitter, in addition to many gaming forums. I think directing people specifically to a place to talk about it does two things: Creates an implication that she's responsible for moderating the discussion Just moves the polarizing and counterproductive conversations somewhere else. In the end, people still end up being negatively influenced by the hostile comments and perhaps end up taking away less from the video than otherwise. I emphasize "counter" in counterproductive, based on the idea that those hostile, polarizing discussions may actually compromise a person's ability to behave rationally It's a reality for sure, but I still consider it a copout. It's a huge fault with communicating on the internet, and if it ends up contributing to people incorrectly drawing conclusions from the articles that they read, perhaps comments are not a positive thing to have. If the internet is an extremely toxic place satured with trolls, in my opinion you have done little to convince me that allowing comments is actually a productive thing. Especially considering ideas such as the 1/9/90 split where such a small part of the audience (9%) actually is an active participant in things like comments. Perhaps we could apply CliffyB's article to the internet as a whole (the internet should grow up if it wants comment fields? LOL), though I imagine his article was focused on video games because it's Cliff Bleszinski. There seems to be general push back regarding comments now, and the idea that they aren't really productive (and perhaps counterproductive). I found it really interesting that the TED talk disabled comments in their own video. I don't think it's good to just let people have free reign (since it drowns out anything productive or interesting that no one will bother), but the moderating time to keep it clean would be insane. She'd have to set up her email to autodelete the Youtube updates! Hahaha.

Nope. Actually I hadn't even thought of that.

I do give props to Colin for this tweet I know Gaider didn't consider it a criticism either, but perhaps some of my time on BSN has me take "interactive movie" as too much of a pejorative. Much easier to rally behind "Dragon Age and us do something different, and we want to leverage the advantages of our gamestyle to its fullest in a way that can be more challenging for Dragon Age."

The level of failure will be hard for those that contribute to said project, but when that failure occurs (and it will happen) is important. If it comes after 42 successful projects, it's less of an issue that if it's the first or second big project.

Precisely why I find Kickstarter intriguing. I feel there's a lot to be gained if they can knock the ball out of the park with their games.

I disagree with the notion of "we are not allowed to have opinions" (I almost didn't continue on past his blog post, and I ended up jumping along for the much of the video). He mentions "But so what?" in response to the fact that most comments would be bad. He also implies that people do not get their "fair say" in the discourse. His blog post actually undermines his assertion that dissenting views can't be presented, as he is literally presenting one with the blog post. Here we are, having opinions and (mostly) interesting enough discussion here. Comments and voting statistics for likes/dislikes on youtube aren't particularly meaningful. What you're going to get is people voting yes/no not based on the content, but based on their perception of the whole Anita Sarkeesian drama. This isn't isolated to Anita by any means. Research is actually being done to determine whether or not comment fields are a negative contributor to the content of the article. In the linked article, it makes reference to a study done by the University of Wisconsin and how excessively negative comments polarize readers and gave the readers a different understanding of the material presented (it typically polarized them and made them believe more strongly in a particular perspective, despite not really having the knowledge or capability to take such a position). The article also breaks down other issues with comments (many see them as vitriolic, and the "sensible" posters have already started moving their conversations elsewhere, leaving only the trolls). Some bloggers stopped comments because they found that it had an impact on how they created the content for their blog. Xark shut down their comments because he didn't want to be bothered with dealing with the vitriolic stuff (nor did he want his blogs associated with any of the trolling), and since very active moderation is required to keep the page clean it became easier to simply shift his discussions to Facebook or Twitter. Even TEDxTalks recognized that comments wouldn't be fruitful and explained why they blocked them on . The Youtube channel acknowledged that fruitful and interesting discussions can still take place on whichever social network the viewer felt like taking it to. I work for BioWare, and while I am reasonably active on the BSN, I don't need to go to the BSN to find criticisms of BioWare though. I've seen Mike Gamble step into a thread to make an update in the wake of ME3 and just get jumped on by dozens of people for reasons completely unrelated to Mike's post because people were upset and the BSN was particularly vitriolic in the wake of ME3. Anita doesn't need to have comments on her Youtube to find criticisms towards her videos, and anyone expecting any sort of meaningful response or discussion in the comments of her youtube are being quite optimistic of what would have occurred there, in my opinion. As for the voting type of statistics? Cooper Lawrence had her book routinely voted down on Amazon because she was associated with the Mass Effect sex scandal. I'm sure as gamers we can all feel a piece of schadenfreude as gamers "reviewed" her book with the same level of scrutiny that she had given Mass Effect (by not actually experiencing it). Though the fact still remains that the votes on her book had absolutely nothing to do with the book nor the contents within it. Useful feedback for both the author and others looking at the book was lost in the sea of gamer rage. The low scores weren't a reflection of the quality of the book in the slightest. Metacritic user scores are another good example. Gamers don't typically use it to properly review materials, but as an outlet for disappointment which leads to further polarization. Some people "bombing" the score only leads to others trying to prop it up to counter it, and it's not productive. If the Wisconsin study conclusions have merit, it arguably undermines the understanding people have of the actual game. I actually consider this a very serious issue with the way internet handles communication. People often see it as a license to effectively behave in ways that they typically wouldn't treat people in person. I find it very polarizing and those polarizing perspectives carry on to the other aspects of these people's lives. The irony here is that the vitriolic response to Anita's kickstarter pitch led to the hateful reaction, which ultimately helps fuel Anita's decision to not allow comments and the statistics. She gets told that she should suck it up and not censor, when the reality of the internet is that opinion is pretty much impossible to censor (here we are expressing our opinions). I'm curious if Anita would have still blocked comments if the discourse around her kickstarter was decidedly less toxic. I'm sure there will be the standard defenses of "that's just the way the internet is" which I think is a copout. Part of the reason why I opted out of a particular discussion in this thread is because I'd felt some level of a cognitive dissonance where I felt carrying on the conversation wasn't even unproductive, but rather counterproductive.

I imagine there's some level of distribution for the bulk of the writing, but I'm not really worried about having "too many cooks in the kitchen" so to speak. They'll likely still work together and peer review the work to help deal with thematic consistencies and whatnot.

It's not even just due to social pressure. A lot of it is straight up ethics. It's hard to set up an experiment and replicate the experiment precisely the same to properly control all the variables. This is why a lot in the physical sciences can scoff at the social sciences as being "a science" because, despite attempts at being empirical, there are challenges that make applying the scientific process more difficult when you start dealing with living creatures, especially human beings.

This is probably why she only asked for $6000, and that it was mostly for her time, not for equipment and the like. Disliking her for getting funding to do some research is silly. If you do that, then you have to chastise any University out there.

To echo this, she does straight up state in her video: "Just to be clear, I'm not saying that all games that use the damsel in distress as a plot device are automatically sexist or have no value." She also states that she has been a fan of the Mario and Zelda franchises for most of her life.

What's this?

I'm not sure what the acronym stands for, but attempts certainly are made to try to isolate bias as much as one can. The big issue is that of replication. It's not possible to take a life and run an experiment, then reset that life and isolate for all variables and introduce the change you wish to observe.

It could very well be that games don't have any responsibility. I doubt Anita concludes that, but it could just simply be a case of "Aspiring gamers would like better representation and depiction in the media they consume" with respect to what level Damsel in Distress has.

Agreed. Part of the issue of social science is that it's a "science" in that it tries to employ scientific method (i.e. empiricism) but with serious handicaps in terms of trying to set up experiments without bias influencing it. Natural science can have bias too, obviously, but gravity typically doesn't decide to false report due to social pressure

I guess Arrival serves as something of a counterpoint to my idea that content is the bigger focus? I actually haven't played either of the DLC, but the idea that all parts of the DLC make up a significant part (whether they be "never before done" or not).

Fair enough. My point was to just illustrate that the content was still core to LOTSB success. It just means that Citadel is more easily accounted for (i.e. ignored) for whatever ME4 attempts to do (the endings are 10000x bigger fish to fry than Leviathan).

I agree that Arrival wasn't as well received (and potentially too significant to the main story). Somewhat interestingly, though, ME3's start still "worked" for me because I was under the impression he was grounded due to his affiliation with Cerberus in ME2. (I knew nothing about Arrival until after ME3) Still, with LOTSB, I think you might be understating the content aspect. Story (and the perception of impact) where big things for Mass Effect IMO, and having all the things you list with a blank, meaningless story would have a greater effect on its overall quality than removing some of the other elements. Citadel is considered by many to be the LOTSB of ME3, and it doesn't really do much new (there were some aspects with a party), but it's the content itself that resonates most strongly (just to preemptively comment, I understand it's probably less well received than LOTSB and there are people that aren't happy with what it delivered).

LOL I never actually had that weapon. I loved having my own civilian helicopter for the "gun run" when low on ammo. I also loved having my own attack helicopter when **** got real <.< One of my favourite memories was with my friend. We had to assassinate some executive type, and he was awaiting helicopter pick up. I flew in with a civilian helicopter, as my friend flew in with an attack helicopter below the tops of the buildings. As soon as the guy got into my helicopter, I jumped out as my friend popped up over the ledge, where I base jumped off the helipad as my friend lit it up with rockets :D

Though Edward is pretty creepy too haha.

I think that there's also still some level of experimentation that is happening. Although it seems to me that "social" is dying down somewhat.