aluminiumtrioxid

actually quite unpolite and somewhat insulting towards the developers and I fail to understand why you have that impression. You do not seem to have much trust in the game that's beeing developed and their creators. Well, they repeated "Pillars of Eternity will be a combat-focused game" many times, so it's either gonna be chock-full of meaningless dungeons, or chock-full of meaningless wilderness fights. Probably a mix of both.

Which should be treated as par for the course, because...?

I don't really believe people are inherently incapable of voicing criticism without descending into a frothing frenzy of sh*t-flinging and verbal abuse.

My thought process went more like "game will probably be chock-full of meaningless dungeons, why did they have to cut out the one that isn't?"

On the other hand, when the agressiveness of the feedback becomes so overwhelming as to completely demolish one's desire to peruse feedback, the utility of having feedback is completely lost.

I'm literally incapable of comprehending the developer thought processes that went into this decision.

...Which would, presumably, be very bad, because...?

In all fairness though, what do you expect them to say? "Actually, we pretty much committed a series of most vile human right abuses and violated pretty much all international treaties on the matter for sh*ts and giggles?" Maybe mutter "mistakes were made, we're sorry", while hanging their head in shame?

...My knee-jerk reaction was "this sounds like a false generalization", but you might be onto something here. Intriguingly, I've observed a much less toxic atmosphere on most tabletop RPG forums I frequent. Tabletop RPGs placing an emphasis on cooperation and shared storytelling might be responsible for that (whether by actively shaping the way participants handle conflict, or by attracting the kind of people who are less interested in competition is up to the reader to decide). But this is highly offtopic.

Sounds fine by me.

False Patrick can turn anything D&D-able.

And if one's biggest worry is boob size on virtual women in video games... One does need some amount of class and education privilege to complete that gender studies course. That I really can't be any more clear on. Publishers have no obligation of 'fairness', they're inherently and fundamentally biased; but journalists do have that obligation. That really is the difference between the two, for publishers the status quo will always be "buy our awesome product!", for a games journalist it should be "(don't) buy this awesome(/ crap) product!" depending on the product's quality. I prefer to see publishers' role as "make sure the product we sell is awesome". I mean, a product being awesome and a product selling well are not mutually exclusive qualities - one might even argue that there's some amount of correlation between the two. There's nothing stopping you from talking about how male representation is horrible. Especially not from feminists, as long as you don't try to make a discussion that's already established as being about female representation about issues in male representation. Because that's just rude. What if it is just a worry ? One can multitask, after all. ...Do I really need to point out the fact that there are a lot of people on Earth who are more concerned about little things like, I don't know, basic survival, instead of video games?

On the other hand, oh the outcry when a game doesn't reward you more for playing one way over another! The combat xp debacle immediately jumps to mind.

Maybe. My opinion on this practice is strongly colored by the fact that I absolutely dread receiving gifts ("you haven't given me a gift, you've given me an obligation" indeed), so the very idea of gifts raising one's opinion is about as alien to me as the lovely geometries of the streets of R'lyeh.

And I think her article is long and rambling, but basically the gist of it? Exactly the opposite of what you're getting out of it - it's not that "gamers are all That Guy", but "it's long been an industry stereotype that most gamers are That Guy, but that's not true, times are changing, and gaming's never been more diverse than now - time to make video games for these people, too". There's evidence for this viewpoint in the text, just as there's evidence for your reading, too. But here's the thing, feminism has a long-standing tradition of what I'll now call "enthusiastic punching up" - the oft-unspoken assumption that as long as your target's more privileged than you are*, you're perfectly justified in throwing all kinds of abuse at them** -, so it's fairly likely that her overall positive message was colored by that tradition. Or, at the very least, more likely than the alternative interpretation, that she intended to write a condemning article but somehow a positive message creeped into it by accident. *and let's face it, privilege theory has its limits, but if one's biggest worry is that video gaming journalists are calling one bad names, it's at least hinting at having a rather significant amount of privilege. **Yes, it is morally questionable to an extent and it is an extremely counterproductive thing to do if one wants to convince said privileged groups about the validity of feminism, but please do understand that not all feminists think of that as a priority.

Point taken, but I'd argue that yours is a rather uncharitable reading of Alexander's article. Not as uncharitable as that of others in this forum, but I feel it's still missing the point.

Exactly and the context of those twelve coordinated articles was anti consumer and pro corruption, a direct attack on gamers for daring to ask for an industry that was fit for purpose, following a proven case of unethical behaviour. ...When 11 out of those 12 articles doesn't mention the very thing you're accusing them of mentioning, I find terms like "a direct attack on gamers" somewhat baseless.

I find it telling, though, that the first instance jumping to your mind is from a game that was published 17 years ago.

And as I've stated a dozen times in response, that simply didn't happen. It's a popular myth propagated by gamergate, but that doesn't make it true. There were 12 articles written on the subject, with only one of them using the phrase "gamers are dead" - and that was a post on a personal blog. Also, one of them was titled "the death of gamers", but haven't used the phrase in the article itself. But it did happen by your own admission, gamers are dead means quite simply that recreational gamers are dead, there is no arguing this fact. You admit it yourself. If it's published on a personal blog instead of an online gaming publication, that usually means it's one person's opinion that doesn't reflect on the wider journalistic community. Also, there's a little thing called "context". It generally tends to have an effect on how you're supposed to interprete something.

I think we can all agree that it's never really been implemented in any CRPG in a manner that made sense.

And as I've stated a dozen times in response, that simply didn't happen. It's a popular myth propagated by gamergate, but that doesn't make it true. There were 12 articles written on the subject, with only one of them using the phrase "gamers are dead" - and that was a post on a personal blog. Also, one of them was titled "the death of gamers", but haven't used the phrase in the article itself.

...Your point being?

...Yeah, I'm not sure it's an especially strong argument in favor of how Witcher's done things. Don't get me wrong, I love that game, but... damn.

What I don't get, though, is why are you so willing to accept the status quo on the publisher side while railing against it on the journalist side. I mean, nobody ever took games journalism seriously before gamergate. The popular opinion was that they're useless as a source of reliable information, and it's always been that way. Then they write a piece about the era of the gamer stereotype giving way to a more diverse market which gets misconstrued as an insult against gamers and then they suddenly matter?

Oh, it will start with a roll. "Roll me Speed defense." Remember that gun from the cliffhanger?