aluminiumtrioxid

I don't think it's endemic to ME players.

That has to mean they're not real roleplayers, don'tchaknow?

Well, actually... (Short version: melanoma is eminently survivable as far as cancer goes.)

Didn't somebody round up all articles on these sites and found that about 0,5% of them ever mention these issues? The conclusion in the first paper, "He could be a bunny rabbit for all i care", states that gamers do not identify with the characters that they are playing. I feel compelled to point out that using a sample of people who are already gamers is probably not the greatest method of finding out whether the lack of diversity is alienating to people or not, exactly because the sample selection cannot contain people who feel that way. Also, as I mentioned it many, many times, the sample size used provides us with an extremely low confidence in these findings. Which is actually a perfectly valid reason in itself to not reference the study. Occam's Razor, anyone? If they are behaving as professionals, which i highly doubt they do. At this point, you're basically admitting you're arguing from bad faith. Which wouldn't be a problem if we were talking about something subjective (like, personal interpretations of the "gamers are..." articles), but issues of statistics and research methodology are pretty much as objective as they come.

It ain't no Watcher's Keep, that's for sure. Ha ha. Very funny. ...No pun intended.

So that's how the cool kids spell "****" nowadays, eh? I think NWN2 was also definitely worse. I'd peg it as about on par with Alpha Protocol, which is a game I adore. *blink* Cognitive dissonance? Care to elaborate? It ain't no Watcher's Keep, that's for sure. Still, the first thing coming to my mind when thinking of it is "it's almost 4 times as long as Dragon's Eye, but it still feels like far less of a waste of time". It just goes on to show how corrupt and unfit for purpose the degenerate games media has become! Their condescending preaching shows the absolute contempt they're feeling their audience, millions of diverse gamers now labelled as untermensch! Oh wait...

Good question! Lessee, from oldest to most recent: - D&D (3E, but I've become more accustomed to 5E lately) - Fate - new World of Darkness (mortals) - Orpheus (a somewhat obscure spinoff of Wraith: the Oblivion) - Dark Heresy - Black Crusade - Mage: the Awakening - Exalted Second Edition - Legend of the Five Rings 4E That said, a lot of these games happened years ago, and there are quite a few systems I have more immediate familiarity with than some of the more obscure games on this list. And some systems are just so plain bad I refuse to touch them again without very good reasons (Black Crusade and Exalted 2E are the worst offenders). For completeness' sake, I feel compelled to also note some of the games I garnered some amount of familiarity with through playing: - Eclipse Phase (a rather brief intermission in which I played an intelligent raven who was a violin virtuoso and a talented neurosurgeon; I was also preparing to GM it rather extensively, but that was a fairly long time ago and I'm not confident my preparedness would hold up) - Pretty much every other W40K line published, although my time with Rogue Trader was brief, and with Deathwatch, thoroughly unpleasant. Only War is pretty enjoyable in small doses, though. (Since the system is largely the same as DH/BC's, I'm pretty confident I could GM any of these. Dark Heresy is probably my single most GMed and most played game as well.) - Vampire: the Masquerade (I'm rather familiar with this one. Familiar enough to be able to GM it, in any case. Whether I want to is another question entirely, one I do not know the answer to. I have a complicated history with it, fraught with dominatrixes riding on giant winged skullz.) - I think I could pull off Warhammer Fantasy 2nd Edition as well. System's very similar to DH, and I spent some time reading through it. I'm not sure it has anything that can't be done with DH as well, though. - I have a pretty good working knowledge of Ars Magica's magic subsystem. The mundane parts I never really interacted with in depth, though. And finally, systems I have no experience playing or GMing, but I definitely want to try: - Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine: it's basically a Studio Ghibli simulator and probably the only RPG with which you could do The Last Unicorn. Pretty amazing. Not sure if practical. Also, the example of play is a thing of sublime beauty. Not to mention the task difficulty descriptions in the core. - Trail of Cthulhu: it's like Call of Cthulhu with more narrativist mechanics. Investigation skills aren't rolled, instead you have a pool of auto-successes to spend from. Also doubles as a spotlight management mechanism. Wanna see how it works in play.

Since the entire point of her article was that people outside of gaming are prone to attaching unpleasant associations to these words, it's not very surprising. Conversely, neither is it especially incriminating.

Even though they specified they mean a very specific subset of gamers? A subset with which people outside of gaming are very prone to identifying the whole of gamers? Alexander's piece was published in a very specific context, after all.

Also from the article of the very same title: It's even bolded for the convenience of the reader. It's really quite simple for anybody who actually read more than two paragraphs (Well, more than seven, if we want to be pedantic. But they're really short paragraphs.)

...You claim to just have read them. Did you disappear into some weird sort of alternate reality where there are different words on the screen than for the rest of the universe? I mean, they said a lot of mean things, yes, but to stick to the single one claim they blatantly and provably did not make... a certain definition of insanity comes to mind.

[pedant] Technically, it was there, in the quote box. [/pedant]

I thought the [pedant] tag made it kind of obvious I was being tongue-in-cheek. Although the presence of the sentiment is debatable as well.

[pedant] Well, technically, none of them claimed that gamers are "dead". "Over", yes (Alexander), the gamer identity as dead, also yes, but gamers themselves? Nope. [/pedant] Thank you for confirming that the 12 article media blitz was an attempt to force identity politics into gaming. Oh God, the stupid... it burns! IT BUUURRRRNNNSSS UUUUSSSS!

[pedant] Well, technically, none of them claimed that gamers are "dead". "Over", yes (Alexander), the gamer identity as dead, also yes, but gamers themselves? Nope. [/pedant] Nope. They did. Face the facts. And, they were DEAD wrong. Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over. Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra (Aug 28, 10:00am) Instances of the term "gamers are dead": 0. We Might Be Witnessing The 'Death of An Identity' Luke Plunkett, Kotaku (Aug 28, 8:00pm) Instances of the term "gamers are dead": 0. A Guide to Ending "Gamers" Devin Wilson, Gamasutra (Aug 28, 7:57 pm) Instances of the term "gamers are dead": 0. The death of the “gamers” and the women who “killed” them Casey Johnson, arstechnica (Aug 28, 5:00pm) Instances of the term "gamers are dead": half, I guess? In the title? If you squint? It's Dangerous to Go Alone: Why Are Gamers So Angry? Arthur Chu, The Daily Beast (Aug 28) Instances of the term "gamers are dead": 0. Gaming Is Leaving “Gamers” Behind Joseph Bernstein, Buzzfeed (Aug 28, 8:29 pm) Instances of the term "gamers are dead": 0. An awful week to care about video games Chris Plante, Polygon (Aug 28, 1:21pm) Instances of the term "gamers are dead": 0. The End of Gamers Dan Golding, Tumblr (Aug 28) Instances of the term "gamers are dead": 0. Sexism, Misogyny, and online attacks: It's a horrible time to consider yourself a gamer Patrick O'Rourke, Financial Post (Aug 28, 9:33pm) Instances of the term "gamers are dead": 0. Misogynistic trolls drive feminist video game critic from her home Callie Beusman, Jezebel (Aug 28, 4:05pm) Instances of the term "gamers are dead": 0. A disheartening account of the harassment going on in gaming right now (and how Adam Baldwin is involved) Victoria McNally, The Mary Sue (Aug 28, 1:30pm) Instances of the term "gamers are dead": 0. Feminist video bloggers driven from home by death threats Jack Smith IV, BetaBeat (Aug 28, 10:50am) Instances of the term "gamers are dead": 0. Anita Sarkeesian threatened with rape and murder for daring to keep critiquing video games Anna Minard, The Stranger (Aug 28, 6:00am) Instances of the term "gamers are dead": 0. Fanboys, white knights, and the hairball of online misogyny Tauriq Moosa, The Daily Beast (Aug 28) Instances of the term "gamers are dead": 0. Total instances of the term "gamers are dead": 0,5. But even if we do count it, "journalists, plural, were calling gamers dead" is still a false statement. Total effort required to find out the truth: clicking on a link and hitting ctrl+f 14 times in a sequence. Estimated amount of time necessary to do so: about 70 seconds. You should be ashamed.

The conclusion in the first paper, "He could be a bunny rabbit for all i care", states that gamers do not identify with the characters that they are playing. I feel compelled to point out that using a sample of people who are already gamers is probably not the greatest method of finding out whether the lack of diversity is alienating to people or not, exactly because the sample selection cannot contain people who feel that way. Also, as I mentioned it many, many times, the sample size used provides us with an extremely low confidence in these findings. Which is actually a perfectly valid reason in itself to not reference the study. Occam's Razor, anyone?

*shrug* I suppose the reaction to it heavily depends on how much one likes cheesy 80s sci-fi.

[pedant] Well, technically, none of them claimed that gamers are "dead". "Over", yes (Alexander), the gamer identity as dead, also yes, but gamers themselves? Nope. [/pedant]

Story never was a strong point for BioWare. I'd settle for "not facepalmingly awful." They have managed that much with Jade Empire and KOTOR at least. I really liked ME1 on the story front. KotOR was a crude, soulless campbellian thing, Jade Empire was cartoonish bull****, but ME1 managed to not take itself seriously without making it impossible for me to care.

So? It's a qualitative study as it often is in social studies, then the amount is not important. What the hell is that even supposed to mean? The amount of what? Amount of people interviewed. Okay, whatever, call it a qualitative study (my experience with those is solely limited to individual case studies). But literally the first thing I was taught about qualitative studies that they're descriptive, not predictive. Treating one as if it did have any sort of predictive power is even more of a bumble than scope insensitivity! And let's not forget the ethical side of this whole thing, because we're still talking ethics. The main thrust of Sargon's video was "the feminists are lying and intentionally burying the study because it doesn't fit the agenda". Faulty understanding of statistics and/or research methodology I'm okay with, throwing ****-flinging hissy fits based on that faulty understanding, not so much.

So? It's a qualitative study as it often is in social studies, then the amount is not important. What the hell is that even supposed to mean? The amount of what? Actually, I did, multiple times, over the course of the many, many incarnations of this thread, and I'm getting real tired of constantly repeating myself on the issue. So I hope you'll excuse me if I won't do it again, just to have some imbecile ask the same ****ing question two weeks later. These threads are archived. Read back.

Really? How is Not aimed at gamers? What Alexander's article did was say "All those people we don't agree with and don't like on the internet - they're 'gamers' now. We're not gamers. So lets start making it so their POV is ignored." Well, that's a supremely unkind reading - I mean, she specified very particular behaviors that characterize the subset of the gaming demographic she was writing her article about. More to the point, by "it wasn't aimed at gamers" I meant it in the "intended audience" sense. Gamasutra is a website specifically for developers. Therefore "she turned on her own audience" is a colossal misreading of the situation, since gamers were never her audience to begin with.

Thanks but I'm fine with picking from Sergiy's 5er list. Well that's fine and dandy, but when I said "choose whatever you want" I meant "choose by the end of Thursday if possible", because I work best when I had time to prepare.

Based on the blurb, I'm pretty sure the story will be DA:O-esque utter garbage though, which pretty much kills my enthusiasm in the crib.

Yes, yes I did. Well after the fact incidentally since for various reason I was mostly off the 'net for about 5 months which overlapped the period in question. And in the first article by Alexander, I was called "obtuse ****slingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers". The entire screed was an attempt to force identity politics(An utterly poisonous and vile piece of groupthink) on gamer culture so that all the little people can be pegged into their small divisive holes. It was a part of 12 articles posted within about 8 hours all on the same subject. And yet somehow this WASN'T a coordinated attack? Way to miss the point, dude. Yes, Alexander's article contained some inflammatory language. (Incidentally, it was not aimed at gamers - surprise surprise -, making the other popular gater talking point, namely "games journalism turned on its audience" kind of moot.) Yes, there was another essay titled "The End of Gamers" by a certain Dan Golding, who's neither a games journalist (he's a dev), nor did he publish it on a gaming journalist website (it appeared on his personal blog). The other 12 articles - with the exception of a piece written by Arthur Chu - are mainly quoting these two and noting that people have reacted to them violently. Mentioning what other people are talking about and the reaction it gets isn't a coordinated attack. It's news reporting.