aluminiumtrioxid

What I left out, essentially, boiled down to "this can be misused in a manner that results in utterly stupid outcomes" (ie. replacing all uses of the word "black" with "person of color" would result in incredibly stupid-sounding dialogues, but I'm pretty sure nobody was advocating for that). Whereas the subject was introduced with the header "IGDA IS PROMOTING SELF-CENSORSHIP IN THE NAME OF (sic) CULTURALIZATION". I don't think it's unjustified to call the latter sentiment a paranoid farce while agreeing with the point expressed in the former.

I suppose it's related to the ages-old idiocy with the Space Succubus. Which is an argument that looks utterly stupid on the face, too (it's a Space Succubus! that's a trope older than dirt with a cybery reskin!), but after listening to the SJW side, they actually had some really good ideas about tweaking the monster in question to be less about "evil space vagina things are hunting you down for your sperm". In any case, that argument has been resolved, so we got cute and fluffy purring little monsters instead of seductive toothy vagina-womb monsters. Which is actually pretty much the farthest thing from the other side's suggestions, but ah well. "Hey, you can do this and make moar moniez" is not exactly "pushing cultural sensitivity on you". That is how it would be seen by those with an opposing view, though, no matter the intention. And this mentality is not to be exposed, mocked and ridiculed for the paranoid farce it is, because...?

I very much agree with this. Both disillusioned young people and young people who just want to look cool by rebelling will take any chance they get to appear anti-establishment, giving real neo-Nazis the perfect hook to get their claws into young people. In all fairness though, this line of thought very strongly hinges on the assumption that people become neo-nazis in order to look cool, and not because their life is **** to the point where "looking cool" is the least of their worries, at which point the nazi rhetoric with its image of racial enemies who are responsible for making their life **** appeals to them. I'm not sold.

Funnily enough I was reading through that last night really wanna run that thing.. For Roll20 though i'd need to have a "Mentor Subscription", and i'm considering it... maybe when i get paid in a couple of days.. As for this week, unless something random and unpredictable pops out of the realm of time, we should be on track with Numenera tomorrow. Watching Star Wars Rebels really made me want to play EotE. As for the mentor subscription thingy, there's a less flashy free version too, if I remember correctly. Dice are a pain, but I've heard nothing about expanded diceroller in the mentor subscription either. Guess we could translate manually from the table in the corebook, or use this. (I'm perfectly happy with not rolling for myself, if accountability is seen as an issue.)

So, when are we planning to try Edge of the Empire, btw?

Perhaps, but the idea that you need to document decisions if someone wants to complain that it was culturally insensitive...? It's advice. Sound advice, at that (documenting decision-making processes both creates accountability and might save your ass down the line when that decision is contested by somebody with much lesser insight into the entirety of the issue). Nobody said you need to do it.

True, but considering the source of all this, it's also quite possible that you're primed to see things that simply aren't there. My field being medicine, it's quite obviously not

I don't think my opinion that the idea of "the western gaming industry is bad because the industry is trying to appease all the feelings of cultures nobody cares about" is literally the most insanely idiotic thing I've heard today is even debatable, much less "constitutes as a personal attack". (error, maximum quotes exceed. Well, shucks). If my opinion is the most insanely idiotic, then you truly live in an ivory tower :D Today's most insanely idiotic But really, I think gaming is bland because the publishers do everything in their power to only cater to a single, very specific subsegment of gamers they think holds the largest purchasing power. This is literally the direct opposite of what you think is the reason for the same phenomena. Since no studies I know of support either point, I'm happy to agree to disagree on the matter.

In all fairness, I'd also argue that there isn't any meaningful anti-black sentiment in my country because we have a very low (<1%, if I had to guess) percentage of black population. Would this reasoning be faulty?

Emphasis mine: They actually ARE saying that. But what I'm not seeing is them saying is that culturalization should be done across the board in all cases. There are some premises where it's simply not possible; in these cases, you simply skip the whole process and resign yourself to not have any of the phat dollahz of the people who are offended by the premise. Or you decide to scrap the entire project and invest in something that has a wider market appeal, based on a detailed cost-benefit analysis of both courses. Not to the plot per se, but being a fat slob who eats and drinks in terrible ways is important to who Homer Simpson is. But here's the point: subsisting only on a diet of donuts is also a textbook example of eating in terrible ways. The characterization is not harmed by the exclusion of hot dogs. Quite the opposite, actually: because in the targeted cultural environment, "eating hot dogs and bacon" signals something different than "eats and drinks in terrible ways", I think it can be argued that authorial intent is preserved by excluding those. But it changes the fact that Homer will eat anything (and has in the show done things like ate leftover lard from a fryer) that he is, in essence, a glutton with no discrimination or self-control. Well, in this case, you just have to decide what distorts the original authorial intent more. *shrug* Nuances are always lost, even when people from the same culture are viewing the same thing. Ah, back to being a **** again, what a shock. The field in question is development right - this is a document for technically minded people. And if your English skills are so poor or perhaps you are just too dumb to pick it up, the teasing of Humanities fields is just that, teasing. While STEM is more useful to me, humanities people never fail to get upset and angsty over mocking their majors, so it's pretty good return. My point still stands. You are utterly sure you're capable of discerning hidden motives from the text, but I think you lack enough familiarity with the jargon to pick out subtext. I don't think you have any more reason to be offended by me pointing this out than by me pointing out that you probably aren't also a skilled potter, or carpenter, or what-have-you. I'm honestly baffled by how hostile your response is.

...That too.

Says the person who holds the whole field in contempt, would probably not understand a word if I posted a quote from, say, Derrida, yet for some incomprehensible reason, still maintains the idea that he knows better what people mean when using a jargon he doesn't speak. The Dunning-Kruger effect is in full swing, it seems.

Not to the plot per se, but being a fat slob who eats and drinks in terrible ways is important to who Homer Simpson is. But here's the point: subsisting only on a diet of donuts is also a textbook example of eating in terrible ways. The characterization is not harmed by the exclusion of hot dogs. Quite the opposite, actually: because in the targeted cultural environment, "eating hot dogs and bacon" signals something different than "eats and drinks in terrible ways", I think it can be argued that authorial intent is preserved by excluding those. ...while "culturalization" is not. So that particular problem seems to be a non-issue, dontchathink? If the characteristics of a character is (are?) sacrificed, maybe. See my point above re:different things signaling different characteristics in different cultural contexts. Which is surely an opinion you could support with textual evidence; please do so. I don't think my opinion that the idea of "the western gaming industry is bad because the industry is trying to appease all the feelings of cultures nobody cares about" is literally the most insanely idiotic thing I've heard today is even debatable, much less "constitutes as a personal attack".

The trouble there is the same as with all sort of 'cultural sensitivity' type stuff. Who is getting offended, what is the threshold of offence, whether practical benefits outweigh the costs of second guessing everything you do, selective application etc. "Hey, you can do this and make moar moniez" is not exactly "pushing cultural sensitivity on you". Of course I'd be utterly unsurprised if it turned out that they have nothing but the (on the face, sound*) logic of "western markets aren't the only markets, and if you offend people, they won't give you money" to support the assertion of this being the path to moar moniez. *Then again, libertarian logic is also sound on the face; it takes a more detailed economical analysis to unmask it as the giant farce it is, so it's not like this is saying too much. ...I'm honestly confused. Is eating hot-dogs and bacon such an instrumental plot element in the Simpsons that the authorial vision is meaningfully harmed by their exclusion? Also, what do you mean by "monetary wise it's just lame"? Again, them suggesting this practice will make publishers more money should not be conflated with "they want to enforce this direction on the medium". ...What. Snark aside, I'd be grateful if you could elaborate on this... fascinating... line of thought. ...And where does this line of reasoning end? Is anybody who wants to enjoy, say, a Japanese movie, but watches a subbed or dubbed version of it is, mentally, a child? Because, y'know, a fairly huge part of a translator's job is to make the movie comprehensible to as wide an audience as possible, and this, at times, means completely rewriting stuff that makes no sense in the cultural context of the West.

Wow, you really have no idea what any of those words mean, do you? Translation: "here are some techniques to make your game appealing to different markets". This is, apparently, of the devil.

You call it intellectually dishonest, I call it simply wrong. It's almost as if scholars of the humanities have always had a great and long-standing tradition of disappearing into their own asses upon reaching a sufficient singularity point of meta-analysis. Oh wait, that tradition totally exists! Again, what you call "****ing insane" I'll call "meh, yet another academic disappearing into her own ass. must be Thursday." (Also, small logic issue: if it's an emergent use arising from thoughtlessness, it can't also be intended. Just let it go.) I mean, conclusions such as this are not uncommon in academic analysis. I once read a paper (written by a perfectly intelligent, capable and reasonably nerdy person) on The Matrix trilogy being a metaphor for the trans* experience. Basically, the line of logic in this case goes like this: by showing sexualized female bodies as objects to be acted upon, the game contributes to an overall culture of seeing female bodies as objects to be acted upon. When people are not paying attention to do otherwise, they usually default to their cultural conditioning in their decision-making. This cultural conditioning is very multi-faceted and games are only a small part of it (individual games even smaller), but the influence these games have is still there. Hence, it achieves a misogynistic outcome not due to authorial intent, but as an emergent property of how human minds work, and an immense media presence of similar messages. The problem is never with individual games, but in aggregate, they become an influencing factor in unconscious decision-making (ie. the effect can be counteracted by making a conscious effort to cancel one's biases). It's a valid line of logic. It's pretty much accepted that unless cognitive effort is expended, people are prone to defaulting to unspoken assumptions, and there is reasonably "hard" research supporting that these assumptions do exist. (Will find them for you, but for some reason, I only have research showing unconscious racial bias bookmarked.) You're making a few assumptions in bad faith here, I think. First off, gender is a social construct. Sex is the biological component. And this biological component is made of smaller components (chromosomal, genital, hormonal, etc.) that don't always match. The separation of gender identity and biological sex is an eminently reasonable thing, because "biological sex" is sometimes just not very useful or easy to determine. You don't need to be an "extreme liberal" to see that, just have an above-average knowledge of DSDs. Second, because it's socially constructed, it both has no inherent bearing on will (you can negate it with sufficient cognitive effort) and is impossible to ignore (because the required cognitive effort is huge, and you'll never be able to perfectly get rid of your biases). Third, while it explains how it becomes gendered, I'm not sure the explanation is relevant to the discussion. Brad Wardell has become a notorious example http://wiki.gamergate.me/index.php?title=Brad_Wardell#cite_note-1 There is the scandal of judges having financial ties to games that they judge at the IGF https://archive.today/04Qsh I'm not sure what Wardell is an example of. SJW harrassment and death threats, sure. But his career doesn't exactly seem ended to me. And as for the IGF article, I recognize none of the names of the investors who allegedly manipulated the award show as "SJWs". No, I think I got your point just fine. You made a claim of Sarkeesian being invited on panels by big publishers is a proof of how far her influence extends. I contest your claim, citing how they're essentially paying lip service to her ideals while sticking to what they do - something you seem to be agreeing with -, which, to me, doesn't exactly scream her having an influence at all. It isn't sheltering or pandering so much as selling a house to a convicted pedophile is. While it is disturbing, it also legal (which shouldn't be IMO, not just the possession or distribution but mainly the manufacture) If you believe the extreme that pedophile should be executed even when they haven't had any sexual relations with children then there isn't any room for compromise. But as a reasonable person I understand that free speech will support some expressions that I find negative. Yet the legality of it isn't my expertise or burden and I try not to impose my morals on others. As to how it discredits GG, it would be the same as saying that because you live in the same neighborhood as a pedophile then you must support him/her as you haven't kicked him out. I find this to be an intellectually dishonest line of argument. Selling house to a convicted pedophile is somewhat different from providing a platform for said pedophile to look at sexualized imagery of children. Main difference being that needing a home to live in is pretty much universal to humanity, whereas looking at softcore kiddie porn is really, really not. I also dislike the insinuation that me not being okay with providing such a platform for pedophiles hints at a desire to execute them even when they make a conscious effort to suppress their desires. I'll assume in good faith that it was just an unfortunate use of "general you", and you meant nothing of the sort. Re:this discrediting GG... not so much. But I do think it reflects on them. It's not really guilt by association, it's more like "your ideology is seen to be just as undesirable in most communities as sexualized imagery of children is". Yet you don't seem to view this as strong enough evidence to post the same link here, am I mistaken? I'll file this under "good argument against the existence of video game scoring systems in general", then.

I fully expect you to abide by the same ethos when next sex-scandal between a politican in Brussels and a wife of a lobbyist of an Israeli arms dealer breaks the news. In my country - and I assume in a fair number of other countries, too -, people serving in public positions don't have the same rights to privacy that private citizens do. Hence, I find drawing parallells between the two to be a very strange endeavor. Call it cultural bias, but I don't think equating these is mandated. On one hand, this is slightly idiotic. On the other hand, PAX is a private entity and their management has a right to enforce as idiotic rules as they want to.

Meshugger made a post about the ancient history of the whole Quinn business before Gamergate was even a thing, which gave off an impression that discussion on corruption was unfairly closed down, much to the chagrin of ethically-minded people everywhere. I pointed out that back then, the discussion was less about ethics and more about the sex lives of certain people, a discussion I find not-unreasonable to close, because seriously, have some respect for privacy, people.

Well, certain sites are more permissive about discussions regarding the sex lives of private individuals than others. Personally, I can see no way how a discussion about the perceived tightness of Ms. Quinn's vagina (based on the nude photos that were posted) has any inherent value for any site, but obviously, I'm not a moderator at the sites in question. Indeed it does. Then I hereby clarify my point a second time: I was talking about the original thread on Kotaku or the Escapist or whichever site has ended up banning the discussion first, and apologize for any confusion that might have arisen from me not being clear enough.

Yeah, that too. Which is doubly hilarious because it hinges on taking at face value the account of a person who, by his own admission, posted the entire screed with the explicit purpose of encouraging MRA-types to doxx and harrass her - something I'd definitely categorize as manipulative and sociopathic. That said, I'd still assign a non-zero probability to her being a thoroughly unpleasant person to be in a relationship with, but given that this particular problem does not concern me in any way, shape or form, I consider it to be irrelevant. Please don't do this. I made it quite clear that I'm talking about the original thread on some gaming journalist site that was closed because the posters were being horrible, not because it contained evidence of collusion. Strawmanning lowers us both.

Gross misrepresentation. Anybody who actually read that thread and had a shred of human decency would have made the same call. Back then, it very much wasn't about "corruption" and "ethics". Most of the talk was about the degree of sluttiness Quinn has exhibited, and whether the nude pictures somebody pulled from somewhere made her worthy of receiving the **** of the posters.

Oh my, it's almost as if it's always one or the other, and there is no place for a case-by-case analysis. Oh wait, that would be stupid. Still, point conceded re:"never" assuming authorial intent. (I'll assume in good faith that you could find me an example if I asked for citation.) (I maintain it's a rare occurance, though.) ...That sounds like an enormous misreading, though. You seem to be ignoring the possibility of games promoting violence against women as an emergent feature of gameplay, due to the mechanics being set up in a way that makes violence the only meaningful way of interaction with the gameworld. This requires no authorial intent, merely thoughtlessness. I think the logical basis of the statement "the claims of a genre having an inherent gender imbalance regarding representation and importance are refuted by pointing out that a completely different genre has a similar, but inverted gender imbalance" is shaky at best. As I've stressed earlier, misogyny is rarely the product of authorial intent. The gender imbalance doesn't go away just because it's an emergent feature of market forces (earlier) and cultural inertia (later). I'd be grateful if you could provide me with examples. When the opposition ask for a termination of a successful business model you don't give them what they want. You make a half assed show of solidarity that makes it seem like you care. You know, just like now they treat cows humanely before they kill them because people don't want to feel guilty about eating them. So even in your analogy (if I'm reading you correctly), you equate SJWs with cows and big publishers with being the butcher. This doesn't really reinforce your earlier claims of them wielding disproportionate influence. Actually, it's almost as if you were conceding my point of them actually not having any meaningful impact on big-profile game development at all! Actually I visit 8chan frequently, child porn isn't allowed. What is found there in droves is child models posing and dancing in the same sexualized way that seems to be the standard of the adult fashion industry. You seem to be oddly unconcerned by the fact that the only people to whom sexualized imagery of child models appeals are the very child porn enthusiasts we're talking about. That said, "sheltering" was a poor choice of words on my part; should've said "pandering to". You mean "the very website we just agreed on is pandering to child porn enthusiasts". I mean, I can understand the mentality of "it takes one to know one", but maybe that community shouldn't be treated as a reliable source on the matter, given the stigma involved with this particular fetish and the corresponding strong interest in "evening out the score", so to say, by "proving" that the opposition is just as dirty. Well, I don't mean to sound insensitive to the plight of game developers (and I'm fully aware that SJWs can have mind-bogglingly idiotic complaints at times), but just because SJWs have "attacked or made them feel threatened" doesn't really mean it was objectively as big a deal as they're making it sound like. I mean, I remember the plight of the Larian artist who cried censorship and feeling threatened over being asked by his superiors to re-draw a concept art, an occurance that, I'd hazard the guess, is pretty commonplace in the industry for non-SJW-related reasons.

It's obvious from her attitude. What the else are you asking if you want this negativity towards the game in the review? "The game promotes treating the female gender as playthings for male amusement" -- But, no, totally nothing here is suggesting she wants the game to be marked down. Well, not really. I mean, what is clear is that she finds the game to be in bad taste. We have no information about her thoughts on the scoring system being an accurate representation of what the game is about, it being a valid vector of influence, or a cost/benefit analysis of extending influence in this manner on her part.

Well, vague exclamations about people "foisting annoyance on others" in a discussion that was entirely about whether gaming journalism having a market segment for spitting acid has legitimacy or not does sound like accusing the acid-spitters of harrassing others with their annoyance. I'm sorry, but the onus is on you to express yourself clearly. To you, sure. But you're not exactly a bastion of objectivity in this matter. I brought up two other alternate reasons for this outcome earlier in the discussion, for example, that seem equally or more likely to me. Then again, I'm not exactly a bastion of objectivity in this matter either. The article only mentioned a person asking a known "internet scholar" on people of color in medieval Europe whether the game's depiction of racial distribution was correct. I fail to see this as proof of intent to change someone's creation. But even if it was, wanting to change a game set in medieval Europe to actually reflect the realities of medieval Europe is hardly an "attack" in my view. And where I come from, if people are unsure whether they managed to express exactly what they wanted to express (with tone being hard to convey on the Internet and the whole "not a native speaker" thing going on, I think I have valid reasons for assuming this process is not infallible), they usually clarify their intent.

Spare me. She'd be happy to see it marked down for "sexism". Which you base on what exactly? Because it's not textual evidence as far as I can see.