aluminiumtrioxid

That... wouldn't be much of a progress from an artistic standpoint, would it. No. But the figurative Call of Duty that symbolizes the male dominated AAA and is the constant target of critique isn't an artistic masterpiece either. ...I thought we wanted better, not "roughly the same amount of crap, but now in pink".

I think, as a person who regularly interacts with people you lot would dub SJWs, I do get to claim to know juuuust a tad more about how certain words are used in the context of those conversations, though. Which is pretty much the only context that matters here.

Well I don't think it's very realistic, but hey, we can dream.

Well, duh.

That... wouldn't be much of a progress from an artistic standpoint, would it.

Indeed I don't need to explain squat. Your metaphor was jumbled and made little sense in context, your usage of the word "toxic" was inadequate and spoke of a fundamental failure to understand the context in which it's employed by those you seek to mock, it was just plainly bad satire. Not much to explain.

Well, problem is, someone would need to fund the development of those games before their non-adolescent target demographics could throw money at them, and the industry culture has been steeped in this very... strange mindset where they blow impossible amounts of money on developing and marketing a game, so they need to be absolutely sure it's successful and just can't afford to take risks. Any risks. At all. Of course it's likely to backfire spectacularly sooner or later, and maybe something more balanced will come out in the end when the current model becomes unsustainable, but "oh the industry will just fix itself, given time" isn't really reassuring when we've had about a decade of the industry doing the same thing over and over again, expecting something to change. As far as I perceive, based on my somewhat cursory reading of the topics in question, those who are keen on very specifically the current, ridiculously inadequate implementation of romance, are rarely integrated deeply into the forum community, and are mercilessly mocked for their position.

As a general principle, failure to understand what you're attempting to satirize does have the tendency to cause your satire to fall flat.

On one hand, yes, the product you enjoy doesn't necessarily reflect on you. On the other hand, don't we all like to smugly pretend we're better than "those romance-crazy Biodrones" over there? And in all fairness, if someone said to me that, say, the Transformers series is their ultimate cultural touchstone, I'd have an opinion of that person's level of education, if nothing else. Moreover, this issue is made even murkier by the fact that as long as the industry does everything in its power to associate the "gamer" label with "hormonal teenage boy", self-identifying as a gamer reflects negatively on all of us in the rest of the world's eyes. Personally, I'd very much like my hobby not to be a source of embarrassment I'd rather keep quiet about, thank you very much. I'm afraid we'll have to differ here, based on what we consider to be adolescent: I would consider what the AAA gaming industry considers to be "romance" in games to absolutely fall into this...in fact, I'd go a step further and say it comes across as practically infantile to me. Nevertheless, such so-called "romance" implementations definitely have their proponents even here on these forums. But as far as I'm aware, they're widely seen as fair targets of ridicule by the community itself, aren't they?

It's heartening to see that we don't need to plumb the depths of reddit in our search for hatred and bile, we have plenty of it here as well

Can't help but imagine a harpy made of corn syrup now.

I dunno, in my experience, the kind of people whose favored pastimes include a mockery of MRAs generally tend towards more of the "point and laugh" variety instead of the "torches and pitchforks" crowd. (And make no mistake, MRAs richly deserve being mocked.)

Well the way I see it, its entire point is that this - "a generation of lonely basement kids" - is what the industry itself has seen its audience (despite the fact that teenage boys have long since been ceased to be the biggest gaming demographic) since forever, and it doesn't have to be this way. The pushback to the article has always been baffling to me - we're on the Obsidian forums, I'm pretty sure nobody here wants the gaming industry to be dominated by games that cater to the tastes and sensibilities of adolescent boys to the extent it is dominated by them now. Yeah, but this kind of hinges on the very flawed assumption that the preferences of the person in question are inherently apolitical and shifting away from that is "bringing politics into gaming". But really, much of the "pressure to change everything" boils down to innocuous things like "maybe have some more black or female protagonists", which is completely orthogonal to how a game actually plays like, and therefore should be, I dunno, low on the priority list of things to complain about?

I think this forum is a great idea. I appreciate the opportunity to see what's in people's heads. I'm sure they'll show everyone how "different" they are from the people they say they criticize. Erm... wat.

Sorted out the problem, session will be held as usual. Our adventures in the rose garden continue!

Okay, and I specifically said enlighten me in that very post in regards to that very subject. That was post-edit Anyways, "gamers are dead" is an oft-repeated phrase that was never really said. Anyways, here's the article that spawned the meme, you can check it out for yourself - it's really not what GG wants it to be. I find it especially interesting that it condemns traditional gaming journalism with just as much fervor as the opposing side, actually. Not to mention the "demonization of gamers for taking a vested interest in the ethics surrounding their side of the hobby", because I've never even heard that one.

Bro, do you ever fact-check? Ooh, that's constructive! It's hard to be constructive when you hear even otherwise level-headed people repeat the atrocious and provably false misinformation of gamergate. I mean, seriously, it takes, like, five minutes to look it up!

While I realize this may sound a little antagonistic, I can't help but react thusly: bro, do you ever fact-check?

Well I think the majority of posters here doesn't really give a **** either way. They're fine with the status quo, but they're also fine with changes as long as they get what they're looking for in gaming. "Having your protagonist be male or female", I'd venture, isn't really a meaningful change from that perspective. Neither would be "having interesting characters in the game be male or female". Which is, incidentally, why I really don't get the violent pushback to the notion that maybe we should change things around a bit; such changes are unlikely to affect the core experience of whatever game we're looking at.

Well I'm sure you're not fine with that, but I'm also pretty sure you couldn't get the majority of the posters here to agree with the statement that women are under- and/or misrepresented in games, much less that this is something that should be changed. Hence "most of you guys are basically fine with the status quo".

Well, what Bruce said was: ...which I don't think is something the majority of posters here would disagree with. I mean, I can hardly imagine Meshugger, Orogun, Fighter or, say, Calax loudly proclaiming how mainstream gaming is full of sexism. Or are we talking about a different post?

Well, interesting is kind of in the eye of the beholder, innit?

So my PC is kind of misbehaving. Situation seems to be under control for the moment, but if I'm not in the game by, say, 21:30, tops, it's very likely that the problem's more persistent than I thought. Killing Skype seems to have solved it, though, so don't freak out if you can't reach me there.

Not to unduly influence you or anything, but the halfling racial class is pretty cool. You get dual-wielding goodness and the ability to spend luck to boost others' rolls.

Well, the death of the rest can be arranged...