BruceVC

You right, the correct definitions of words are important to me. But that's why I said to Volo " "gamers is in the context of this debate" So for the sake of the debate you have painted all gamers to be "white, male gamer who refuses to accept that the gaming demographic is changing and is very vociferous and obstructive". Congratulations. You suck at debating. No, just no. This is just the newest defence by some people in the SWJ crowd. No one is against more games with more diversity. This whole thing is about journalistic integrity and how some indie devs are sometimes literally in bed with reporters. Since they can't defend the act itself this is what they are doing: Gamers are bad. Gamers are misogynist. Gamers are sexist. Gamers are against change. It's bull****, bull****, bull****. I'll repeat this for the third or fourth time and it will be my last. The word "gamers" in this debate doesn't mean an attack on white, male gamers. Its an attack on white, male gamers that refuse to recognise and accept the necessary change that is coming the gaming industry. I can't be more clear than that

our iwd party were almost invariably a 4-man group as it resulted in faster leveling: a paladin, specialist mage (elf or human), gnome thief-illusionist, and half-elf ranger-cleric... typical with the cadaverous or skeletal undead racial enemy. the only problem with this group is that it were a bit over-powered once the mages developed a meaningful spell repertoire. the ranger-cleric were a smidgen less effective at turning undead in dragon's eye than a vanilla cleric would be, but the addition o' druid spells and the dual-wielding dervish o' destruction melee efficacy more than made up for the early limitation. dual-classing could provide a more powerful group, but we never had the patience to babysit effectively under-powered party members til they hit the dual-class sweet spot. our 4-man iwd group (and frequent bg2 group) were allowing us access to pretty much all the potential content in the game, while giving us an extremely capable group. HA! Good Fun! Manifested let me know when you start noticing the fact that there is no meaningful interaction with your party members. That was my primary criticism with the game

Did you see my post? they coordinated the 10 articles saying gamers are dead. And this is not new, this has been happening for years. When the first tropes vs women came out, idiots like me complained about it but we don't have a big voice, the media praised her (since now it turns out they are associated with her) and the gaming personalities either praised her or ingored her and remained silent. Doesn't it seem weird that some personalities that are very vocal (like totalbiscuit or angryjoe) never really talked about it, aside from maybe a small comment here or there? The ones that analyzed and critiqued her videos were people that had NOTHING to do with gaming, like Amazing Atheist (a guy that talks about atheism and other things) and Thunderf00t (a guy that does experiments and debunks creationists) sure those guys are gamers but they were nowhere near close to the "gaming scene" These people, that talk... more like demand "equality" "diversity" and "representation" in video games are nothing but a small club, a closed circle of 1st world priviliged white guys and girls that are all in bed with eachother and are completely corrupt, they work in journalism, in indie development and in PR and who knows how deep does this go. And they have to go, and hopefully will, because if what I know is true, these people have commited fraud and this might get legal. Boys, boys, boys... There is no gaming journalist conspiracy to control the direction around inclusivity in games. Its not real, its in your head. You guys must stop feeding each others ideas with these preposterous suggestions Firstly the idea of a conspiracy theory is that it needs to be done subtlety and surreptitiously in order to have maximum influence . If Elvis acknowledged he wasn't dead ...well it wouldn't be much a mystery would it and the "Elvis Lives" cult would die an early death. If there were 10 articles written the same day in order to influence us poor silly gamers this wouldn't be a very efficient way to get a message across secretly because just look at reaction from you guys? An effective conspiracy would have staggered the articles over a period of time, you don't kill people with a deluge of over information. So logically what does this tell us? All it tells us is that this is a talking point that many people want to support or at least read about. So now you have gaming journalists jumping on the band wagon and giving there opinion or pretending to really care about equality but its just being done to draw people to there websites, but this is no conspiracy theory....its simple self-preservation and a way to increase revenue. The only reason people like Totalbiscuit don't discuss it is because everything that needs to be said about the topic has been said in his view and he isn't prepared to comprise his journalistic integrity with some lame " hey guys I really care about equality " article. I respect this type of stance So where do we go from here ? People like me do care about equality and want to see certain changes in games but there is an inordinate amount of attention on this topic now from people who never cared about it in the past. Let the storm of media attention end and we can carry on discussing meaningful changes in games That's just it and that's exactly WHY this is so sick: because it is not a conspiracy theory. Look, conspiracy theories simply don't happen. You don't secretly plot to make everyone think Elvis or Walt Disney are dead for no apparent reason and then manage to fool billions of people. There's no motivation for it, no motivation for bing secretive about it and the idea of fooling that many people without anyone catching on is insanity. But this isn't a conspiracy. This isn't that they've been trying really hard to keep it a secret, this is just nobody thought to look into their little media group because who does that? What this is, plain and simple and black and white, is Anita and Co deciding that there is a problem with the gaming industry that needs adjusting, and now lo and behold they've all gone out on the same mission and all have a decent amount of sway amongst various journalists and game awards. No one is saying they sat down and said "mwahahahaha let's control gaming journalism to make all games about feminism!" We're merely saying that they're so intent on their little ideology that they don't even think to recognize that some of the connections going on are currently amoral. Likewise, having that amount of sway in the media is unjust. What can happen is, for example, Anita gets that little threatening chain of messages that every single one of us has seen at some time in our lives. She freaks out, tells her friends (who happen to have influence) and they all sympathize by writing articles about how terrible the gaming culture is. Bam, there's five articles. Other journalism websites, not wanting to be left out of the loop or appear behind on the story, also begin covering it. And just like that, she's indirectly controlling and holding a disproportionate amount of sway in the media to what she deserves. The only reason this is being likened to a "conspiracy" is because finding it all out required someone to actually sit down and connect some dots. I promise you none of these people involved would actually DENY their connections as their direct intent was never to actually gain more media influence than justified, but rather they simply wanted to express their voice and it's happened in rather amoral ways. As an analogy? Let's take for example the people who want romance in Pillars of Eternity. As it stands now, they're one voice and opinion on the matter, as it should be. They're free to express their opinion and people are free to provide counter arguments, and ultimately obsidian decides if they wish to include it or not. What that little media circle is doing could be likened to if a group of romance lovers zealously went out of their way to make romance-related topics in the beta forums rather undeniable in frequency, going on a campaign where they run out and tell everyone they know they should go complain about it by convincing them a game without romance will suck. Furthermore, some of those forum members - let's say four - have connections to gaming journalists and they all go complain to them about it and convince them a journalism story about how pillars of eternity and it's lack of romance is a massive dissppointment that could potentially ruin the game. And surely, at least one or two other websites would follow suit and cover a similar story on their own accord out of a belief the story is obviously relevant since it's being covered by others and they don't want to be left behind. See the problem here? Obsidian would suddenly be faced with all sorts of pressure and bad press that they feel COMPELLED to address by caving in and including romance. In reality, the romance camp is the EXACT same size that it already is, but because they're connected they ensure that their voice and their opinion gets broadcasted more. In congress, congress gets corrupted when someone has billions of dollars laying around and then uses that money in bribes to convince politicians that their voice and their vote is somehow worth more than other voters with less money. Here? Here it's simply an illusion that their opinions carry more support and carry more weight than they actually do simply by being connected. I doubt they had ill intent from the get go or that this was even intended, but that doesn't excuse that how it is now is outrageously bias and unacceptable. That little circle is now a minority group with a minority opinion effectively acting as a majority in some circles, such a IGF. I have to say Longknife I appreciate the way you always go to great lengths to explain your point, I may not always agree with you but I respect the fact that you participate in debates with such detail. So good work I agree with you and that analogy about Romance and promancers using there influence with gaming journalists would be unethical and unreasonable But what you guys keep missing, and I keep trying to explain this but I'm obviously failing, is this furore is no longer about Zoe Quinn sleeping with gaming journalists or the fact some gaming journalists are unethical. That is actually a separate debate, relevant but separate. This is about the vitriol and hate speech that was directed towards her because of the inexorable changes that are coming to the gaming industry, she started representing something bigger than her sex life. She symbolized the changes that certain people are resistant to. So you now find the majority of gaming journalists either have the same opinion or refuse to comment. And this is what you would expect because the misogyny we have seen is worse than the fact that her game may have got an undeserved review score. Now you may say " no the apparent corruption amongst gaming journalists is much worse than misogyny" but I don't think it is. And that's why there is all this attention around her and lines are being drawn

You right, the correct definitions of words are important to me. But that's why I said to Volo " "gamers is in the context of this debate" In other words you can't use the dictionary for this particular word because the word doesn't represent the End of the day I'm trying to get you guys to understand this is not an attack on white, male gamers. Its a campaign against people who don't want to accept that things are changing in the gaming industry. Now you really only have two choices around how you view this change You can continue to intentionally misunderstand what people are saying and create a problem where there isn't one. You can vent and lambast every gaming journalist but that won't change the reality of what is going to be considered acceptable going forward around inclusivity in games You can see this change as something positive which doesn't really effect you in any meaningful way. You will still have your entertaining RPG, FPS and you will still have your GTAV type experiences. But as far as the major publishers are concerned there will be an expectation from them that there games represent the fanbase fairly and realistically. Its not complicated or unreasonable I would think you would prefer the second point?

As I keep maintaining the only realistic way that you will get Russia to change its course is through sanctions, not military action by the West. They will take time but they will be effective. People may say " Putin doesn't care about sanctions", this is absolute nonsense as every country in the world cares about its economy and the effect sanctions will have. The real sanctions haven't even been implemented yet and what we are seeing is just the preliminary lack of investor confidence Most of you probably remember the defiance and intransigence we saw from Iran who " would never let there sovereignty be effected by Western powers"...and after several years and the stepping up of sanctions they came to the negotiation table because of the exact pernicious impact of sanctions But Gromnir I want to ask you something, you have alluded in the past that Obama is weak because he hasn't used military intervention is several conflicts around the world, like Syria . Do you think how he is dealing with the Ukraine crisis makes him weak? Should he do something different?

How about the outrage that for past 3 or so years a group has hijacked game media and injected their political agenda? Every argument started by feminism can be traced back to people involved in this scandal. The opposition has moved on from Quinn's infidelity any abuse she gets is from fringe elements, you know like the ones feminist have but seem to have a blind spot for, specially on matters like this one. The only reason that her name is being brought up is because she is the departure point of most of the investigation and seem to be well connected. The last video (if you watched it) was about Maya and the one before that concerned with Patricia Hernandez, Ana Anthropy and Steven Totillo. I mean, what they did would have gotten them fired on any other job. No company would put themselves on the line of fire for an employed that misbehaved, heck they wouldn't do it for one that's just suspect of misbehavior. So why is it that the gaming media has rally for them and against gamers? Plus, is hard to feel they're doing this out of some sense of respect for the integrity of those involved in the scandal since they haven't had qualms in the past of ruining developer's careers with accusations of misogyny and the like. Even going as far as publishing personal information and taking a stand against them. If words matter to them why don't they police their speech better, certainly you have seen how they use the same rhetoric they claim to despise with the same childish glee as their alleged abusers seem to do. When you say "won't try to defend or understand the indefensible", what exactly are you referring to? Foul language against the Indie media and developers or the fact what they do is inexcusable and their double standard is as clear as glass. Because I'm really having trouble seeing how are gamers the bad guys here. If what you're saying is that a positive outcome of all this might be that we would get a better class of journalist, one that can enrich the medium without politicizing or deriding it, I agree. I'll respond to this later, I have to go to work

Incorrect, the definition of a "gamer" refers to any white, male gamer who refuses to accept that the gaming demographic is changing and is very vociferous and obstructive to any perceived changes to how games incorporate the entire fanbase. Now these changes are reasonable and are just about inclusivity and equality. This does mean our games will be destroyed or changed to the point where they don't offer us entertainment. So this is nothing to be fearful of, this is a good thing. A example of his change would be something like Assassins Creed Unity having a female and male protagonist. This really shouldn't be a big deal? Do you have that Forbes article? Because obviously no one is above not being criticized and your gender shouldn't make a difference. So I wouldn't agree with that if that is what the article says

" new age hipster nonsense" That made me laugh

I'm not sure about that,.....surly the hotness of women characters in a game does matter on some level....

Volo you understand what the definition of the word "gamers" is in the context of this debate? What do you think word means to you when people say "gamers " are dead?

Indeed is not a conspiracy since it doesn't involve aliens or the government, I mean is just a group of people in collision coordinating to commit unethical acts. That isn't the definition of conspiracy! (it is actually) If you're going to dismiss every fact because some speculation you would be doing yourself harm by denying the truth. Which is that these people have a ties with each other that run across more than one media group and haven't been shy in using those connections. It certainly merits investigation and that's what was being hoped from real journalists; the man we thought Eric Kain to be, but every media outlet seems unwilling to take the story or even take the opposing argument. That kind of singular thinking doesn't strike you as odd? That the whole of gaming media has a shared opinion on gamers at the same time that they decide to investigate them? No I don't see it as odd, you guys must realize the real outrage about the misogyny and abuse hurled at Zoe Quinn is just completely unacceptable for most people. It was too much so now most gaming journalists have drawn a line and whether its due to the fact they really don't support this type of bigotry or they are doing it because they know its popular to discuss this type of thing the end result is the same. No one is prepared to defend or justify the detractors of Zoe Quinn and frankly I don't blame them I have been saying this since I joined these forums, but words matter and what you say about someone does matter. And now you have a group of gaming journalists deciding that they won't try to defend or understand the indefensible. I would rather have too much attention on this topic than not enough. This is just a social adjustment around what people are prepared to accept and what people are prepared to say. Its healthy and something which in the long term I believe will have a positive outcome for the gaming industry

http://dangolding.tumblr.com/post/95985875943/the-end-of-gamers Guys here is a good article that is similar to the Leigh Alexander article on Gamasutra. But its less hysterical, less aggressive and more cogent IMO. You may have read it before but it articulates the whole " the gamer is dead " perspective and explains it in way that is more reasonable In summary " On the evidence of the last few weeks, what we are seeing is the end of gamers, and the viciousness that accompanies the death of an identity. Due to fundamental shifts in the videogame audience, and a move towards progressive attitudes within more traditional areas of videogame culture, the gamer identity has been broken. It has nowhere to call home, and so it reaches out inarticulately at invented problems, such as bias and corruption, which are partly just ways of expressing confusion as to why things the traditional gamer does not understand are successful (that such confusion results in abject heartlessness is an indictment on the character of the male-focussed gamer culture to begin with)" Do you guys think this is a fair perspective ? The only criticism from my side is at the end he says " EDIT: This post does not do nearly enough to acknowledge that women have been playing, making, and thinking about games throughout game history. The stats that I quote above about adult women outnumbering teenage men could fairly be read as an erasure of this fact and for this I apologise unequivocally. Women are here now and they have always been here, but they are often deliberately made invisible for cultural, financial, and bigoted reasons. It is everyone’s job—perhaps mine especially given this post—to reverse this in history, and the present. Perhaps the most important lesson to be taken from all of this is that women’s voices are more important than ever: something that this post does disappointingly little to address" I think this is unnecessarily obsequious, he is pandering to any women who is reading this article. He made his point in a good way without having to add this last paragraph. I just think its overdone as he must have received some critique after making this blog

Did you see my post? they coordinated the 10 articles saying gamers are dead. And this is not new, this has been happening for years. When the first tropes vs women came out, idiots like me complained about it but we don't have a big voice, the media praised her (since now it turns out they are associated with her) and the gaming personalities either praised her or ingored her and remained silent. Doesn't it seem weird that some personalities that are very vocal (like totalbiscuit or angryjoe) never really talked about it, aside from maybe a small comment here or there? The ones that analyzed and critiqued her videos were people that had NOTHING to do with gaming, like Amazing Atheist (a guy that talks about atheism and other things) and Thunderf00t (a guy that does experiments and debunks creationists) sure those guys are gamers but they were nowhere near close to the "gaming scene" These people, that talk... more like demand "equality" "diversity" and "representation" in video games are nothing but a small club, a closed circle of 1st world priviliged white guys and girls that are all in bed with eachother and are completely corrupt, they work in journalism, in indie development and in PR and who knows how deep does this go. And they have to go, and hopefully will, because if what I know is true, these people have commited fraud and this might get legal. Boys, boys, boys... There is no gaming journalist conspiracy to control the direction around inclusivity in games. Its not real, its in your head. You guys must stop feeding each others ideas with these preposterous suggestions Firstly the idea of a conspiracy theory is that it needs to be done subtlety and surreptitiously in order to have maximum influence . If Elvis acknowledged he wasn't dead ...well it wouldn't be much a mystery would it and the "Elvis Lives" cult would die an early death. If there were 10 articles written the same day in order to influence us poor silly gamers this wouldn't be a very efficient way to get a message across secretly because just look at reaction from you guys? An effective conspiracy would have staggered the articles over a period of time, you don't kill people with a deluge of over information. So logically what does this tell us? All it tells us is that this is a talking point that many people want to support or at least read about. So now you have gaming journalists jumping on the band wagon and giving there opinion or pretending to really care about equality but its just being done to draw people to there websites, but this is no conspiracy theory....its simple self-preservation and a way to increase revenue. The only reason people like Totalbiscuit don't discuss it is because everything that needs to be said about the topic has been said in his view and he isn't prepared to comprise his journalistic integrity with some lame " hey guys I really care about equality " article. I respect this type of stance So where do we go from here ? People like me do care about equality and want to see certain changes in games but there is an inordinate amount of attention on this topic now from people who never cared about it in the past. Let the storm of media attention end and we can carry on discussing meaningful changes in games

Very poetic, I like it

You need to be more like me Ros, I never derail threads under any circumstances

Actually from what I have been seeing he doesn't want to conquer the whole of Ukraine but wants a corridor through Ukraine from Eastern Ukraine to the Crimea which Russia has already illegally annexed

And if you don't have all the content, get it from GOG for pretty cheap. Also in the GOG forums on the IWD forums there is list of the best Mods to use in a topic right in the beginning of the post list. I played IWD recently and I recommend the suggested list, its only about 4-5 Mods and most of them are bug fixes.

Volo that's a silly suggestion and you know it is

he did not need to work very hard to find, "bizarre, explicit and controversial comments." in fact, we bet it would be impossible to enter a da:i forum other than news and announcements and perhaps multiplayer, and find a single page w/o at least one thread containing, "bizarre, explicit and controversial comments." a comment from a bsn poster reacting to the video that is honest 'bout the degree o' bsn bizaro http://forum.bioware.com/topic/512557-dragon-age-inquisition-bsn-in-a-nutshell/?p=17218164 HA! Good Fun! Even if each page on BSN contains one thread of " bizarre, explicit and controversial comments" there are on average about 25 topics per page , that means 4 % of the topics are " bizarre, explicit and controversial comments" This is a small number of the total number of " normal " posts. I stand by what I say, you guys are exaggerating when you suggest that most of the comments on BSN are like the comments in the video. And then even in a topic like Iron Bull not every comment in that thread is going to be about people wanting to have sex with him which brings down the total number of " bizarre, explicit and controversial comments" even more

Yeah that was funny No, it's not. It just means that Bioware's forum consists of two groups of deviants, one who take it seriously and second who are way too creative in their trolling to be normal, either. No I don't see it like that at all, what the guy did is obviously trawl BSN and look for the most bizarre, explicit and controversial comments he could find. We know these exist on BSN but we also know there are thousands of normal posts about DA:I. So we can't generalize and say this video represents all the people on BSN, that's an unfair characterization of BSN. And I know you know this

http://www.polygon.com/2014/8/30/6084477/how-a-video-game-helped-save-my-sanity Here is a feel good story about a guy that beat the demons of alcoholism through gaming

Whats funny about it? Is it the fact that some of us have integrity? And no I didn't look at the pictures and have no intention of doing so

Yeah that was funny

I always like to read the menus of restaurants that people post, this place looks very cool Tell me Shady why is it that your wife and friends don't want to go to the Buckhorn Exchange restaurant? What is the reason you can't gather support for this type of gastronomic experience, the restaurant looks amazing. Imagine eating Buffalo and Elk http://buckhorn.com/suppermenu.php Yeah, nobody is really lining up to go try it. If they go they'll probably just get something normal like a steak and since there are better steaks to be had elsewhere... Also, I've had both buffalo and elk before and I'm not real big on either :/ I am mostly curious to try alligator or snake but not curious enough to go by myself Okay makes sense

So let me get this straight, you are telling us we must ignore the input of the qualified archaeologist, TMZuk, who actually works with excavations and believe you around the point that there were no significant female Viking fighters? And what do you do for a living again?