Keyrock

I'm interested, because I'm obviously too stupid to grasp the nuances of this debate, You said it, I didn't. I would have used a different word, something along the lines of thick headed, but I'm not going to argue with you. They are expressing a satirical version of a United States city. I can only speak of my own experience and those in the United States (I was too young when I lived in Poland and West Germany to notice such things), but it applies well since every single GTA game since GTA3 (when the games went 3rd person perspective and took off) has taken place in the United States, or rather a satirical representation of a US city (Liberty City = New York, Los Santos = Los Angeles, Vice City = Miami, etc.). I am 38 years old, I have lived in the United States for 28 years. I've visited every single state on the east coast, a few toward the midwest, and California (mostly Los Angeles). In my entire life I have not met or even seen a single person who I was convinced of, or even suspected to be a male prostitute. Not one. Not a single one. I have seen hundreds, maybe thousands of people I was convinced were female prostitutes. Do male prostitutes exist? I have been told they do and I do believe that, on the other hand I have never actually met one in real life. Ever. Not a single time. In satire perception is reality. So the point is that GTA shows female prostitutes and not male prostitutes because in real life people see female prostitutes but they don't see male prostitutes (or if they do it's extremely rare). Edit: For the record, I would not be opposed to seeing some male prostitutes added to the game. It's not a big deal to me, because, as I've written, I've never seen one in real life, so not having male prostitutes in GTA is in no way jarring to me, but if they added some in, I'd be fine with that.

I think we should compile a list of the best active NFL player names. I'll nominate a few to get us started: Barkevious Mingo Frostee Rucker Ha Ha Clinton-Dix

/reaches for wallet When's the Kickstarter? How can I support this? I am looking forward to working through law practice and gaining skill in whose ass to kiss and sensing which political machine to back. Eventually I can work my way up to the Albany Regency and exploit the bejesus out of the spoils system.

I started playing The Talos Principle. I had played the demo earlier, so I already had an idea of what the game was like, but the full version, even in its very beginning stages, is already meatier than the demo was. In reviews, the game has been often compared to Portal. That seems like a reasonable comparison. The mechanics are obviously not the same, but you have the same 1st person perspective (you can switch to third person), puzzles sometimes require using items in non-straightforward ways, and there is a disembodied voice that talks to you from time to time, at least 2 of them, actually. Maybe my favorite thing about puzzle games is getting to a seemingly impossible situation, getting stuck on it for a decent while, unable to clear a mental hurdle, then finally having that aha moment where your brain breaks out of the rut its been stuck in, changes the way it approaches the problem, and the plain as day solution appears in front of you. Those moments, for me, rival (and sometimes surpass) even the greatest moments of overcoming an obstacle with twitch skill or careful tactical planning, and even early on I've already had multiple moments like that in The Talos Principle. I especially enjoy trying to hunt down the stars (extra goals beyond the sigils you are mainly collecting). Getting the stars often requires outside the box thinking, sometimes outside the puzzle thinking. The philosophical musings are also quite interesting, though they seem sort of, for the lack of a better term, scattershot so far. Hopefully, as I progress, they will start to congeal into a more unified whole. I'm starting to have ideas and theories, but they're based off minuscule scraps at the moment.

The Talos Principle

Minorities have been victims of society - are they off limits? Women have been victims of society - are they off limits? The differently abled have been victims of society - are they off limits? The poor and homeless have been victims of society - are they off limits? If the answer is yes to each, then you've got a game of white, rich men who have no disabilites... And therein lies the sad irony of the Social Justice Paradox. By attacking and harassing developers that include these (and other) groups in certain types of video games or portrayed in a bad light, Social Justice Warriors are making it impossible extremely inconvenient for said developers to include these groups in certain games. The very people that purport to be championing inclusivity in video games are putting up obstacles to inclusivity in video games. Edit: Ninja'd by TrueNeutral.

The Talos Principle launch trailer. It releases on Steam in about 20 minutes. PS4 version due early 2015.

@Gizmo - I love your festive Fallout power armor avatar.

I'm not sure I'm explaining my point properly, I try through a series of questions. Do you think hookers are victims of abuse in RL? As someone who is not a prostitute myself, nor do I closely know anyone who is a prostitute, I don't feel I can adequately make that judgement. I would guess that some are, maybe even many or most, but, unlike SJWs, I don't like to speak for other people and make assumptions for them. I can make guesses, but that's the best I can do. Just because it's possible to kill someone in a game doesn't mean you have to do it. Beyond the first hour or so of me playing GTA 3, way back in the day, and experimenting with the game to see how far the game would let you go, more out of curiosity than anything else, I've generally tried to avoid killing civilians, going so far as to drive carefully to not run people over unless it's a time sensitive mission and I am forced to drive like a maniac, and I certainly don't target specific varieties of civilians. If I wanted to, I could go around and only kill Hispanic looking people. I don't, but I could, the game allows for that. Similarly, if the game included children I could specifically go around and kill children. I wouldn't, but I would not have a problem with the option being there. GTA, while satire, attempts to portray a somewhat realistic society, touch on real issues, and do it in at least a somewhat realistic manner (as opposed to something like Saints Row which is almost as far removed from realistic as possible), in an effort to make social commentary. If you want to portray a somewhat realistic society and make social commentary you need to portray all of it. You can't shy away from the squeamish stuff or the distasteful stuff. Squeamish stuff and distasteful stuff exists in real life, it affects real people and is a part of real issues. GTA is a game, a sandbox, that allows you to play in a variety of ways. If you want to play as a savage psychopath, you can. You can also try to play as someone who is trying to do good and stay out of trouble, but gets dragged into situations where they have no choice but to do horrible things. That is your choice as a player. I also believe, and I'm not a developer on the game, so this is purely speculation on my part, grain of salt and all that, that Rockstar tries in its games to relay some of the horrors of crime in its games and speak about the sacrifices (whether in loved ones or ones own sanity) people make when they descend down the dark path of crime. (In this sense, I think Sleeping Dogs did a much better job of conveying the horrors of crime and the inner conflict of the person having to do horrible things to survive and move up in the hierarchy). Killing children is terrible, but it happens in real life too. How you react to killing children in a game is up to you. Would some people revel in it? Potentially yes. It could also serve to horrify the player and make them despair over the horrible thing that happened because of the crimes they've committed. If children were in the game, as they are in real life, then whether you go out and kill children in the game is up to you and how you react to it is dependent upon you. It's your choice. I'm pro-choice.

He actually makes a compelling argument and raises some cogent points Did you read the whole article because he answers your question, see below where he explains the difference between killing a hooker and killing other people "What I personally find repulsive about this game is the pleasure it offers in portraying the savaging of a class of people who are already victims, in real life. This is where GTA 5 shows a lack of judgment. I take issue with the portrayal of sex workers being abused and murdered, because sex workers are already victims, and it's just not right to take your fun in abusing victims. I know a lot of people desperately want to believe that killing a prostitute in GTA 5 is the same as killing any other character, but it's really not. Unlike gangsters or cops or business dudes or hot dog vendors, prostitutes, as a class, are despised, marginalized and abused in real life, all the time. This means that GTA 5 takes its pleasure in humiliating and abusing victims of humiliation and abuse. In what kind of world is that not worthy of debate, above and beyond the ignorant cry of "if you don't like it, don't buy it"? " He is basically advocating for Rockstar to remove the killing of hookers as they are already victims and it makes sense to me after reading that article. Its not unreasonable The game in no way encourages you to kill prostitutes any more than it does any other civilian. The "pleasure" the game offers for killing prostitutes is in the mind of the specific players deriving pleasure from killing virtual hookers. The game in no way indicates or encourages deriving any more or less pleasure from killing hookers than any other type of civilians. Some people may get off on killing virtual hookers, others may get off on killing virtual businessmen. The game does nothing to make that distinction, it is purely in the mind of the specific individual playing the game. The game is a crime satire. Criminals do nasty things, including killing people, thus the game allows you to kill people, anybody. Hookers exist in real life, thus they exist in the game. You suggestion to remove hookers from the game would, by definition, be discrimination. Same thing if you made them invulnerable. You would be treating them differently or excluding them altogether based solely on their profession. You may not find discriminating against people based solely on their profession to be unreasonable, I do. He is not suggesting you can't kill people, he is simply saying its in bad taste to kill groups of people who are already victims of society For example why not allow children to be killed? Okay. I don't. Don't put words in my mouth. How many male prostitutes are there compared to female prostitutes? I don't have any numbers to fall back upon, but I'm guessing the percentage of male prostitutes is minuscule compared to female prostitutes. So, if GTA wanted to do a relatively realistic portrayal of the real world and there are, say 200 female prostitutes in the game, there might be 1 or 2 male prostitutes. Hardly seems like it's worth making a male prostitute model that you're only ever going to use once or twice and is an insignificant civilian character. It comes down to it not making sense for the budget. (As an aside, Saints Row has male prostitutes. Score one for Volition) As for children. I would personally like to see them in the game. I imagine Rockstar and Take Two didn't include them because they already get enough flak for other stuff in the game, which is a shame. Here is the ridiculous vicious circle of the SJWs. Can't have group a in this game, they're already victims in real life. Outrage! Can't have group b in this game, it reflects poorly on them. Outrage! Why aren't games including group a and group b? This is discrimination! Outrage!

He actually makes a compelling argument and raises some cogent points Did you read the whole article because he answers your question, see below where he explains the difference between killing a hooker and killing other people "What I personally find repulsive about this game is the pleasure it offers in portraying the savaging of a class of people who are already victims, in real life. This is where GTA 5 shows a lack of judgment. I take issue with the portrayal of sex workers being abused and murdered, because sex workers are already victims, and it's just not right to take your fun in abusing victims. I know a lot of people desperately want to believe that killing a prostitute in GTA 5 is the same as killing any other character, but it's really not. Unlike gangsters or cops or business dudes or hot dog vendors, prostitutes, as a class, are despised, marginalized and abused in real life, all the time. This means that GTA 5 takes its pleasure in humiliating and abusing victims of humiliation and abuse. In what kind of world is that not worthy of debate, above and beyond the ignorant cry of "if you don't like it, don't buy it"? " He is basically advocating for Rockstar to remove the killing of hookers as they are already victims and it makes sense to me after reading that article. Its not unreasonable The game in no way encourages you to kill prostitutes any more than it does any other civilian. The "pleasure" the game offers for killing prostitutes is in the mind of the specific players deriving pleasure from killing virtual hookers. The game in no way indicates or encourages deriving any more or less pleasure from killing hookers than any other type of civilians. Some people may get off on killing virtual hookers, others may get off on killing virtual businessmen. The game does nothing to make that distinction, it is purely in the mind of the specific individual playing the game. The game is a crime satire. Criminals do nasty things, including killing people, thus the game allows you to kill people, anybody. Hookers exist in real life, thus they exist in the game. You suggestion to remove hookers from the game would, by definition, be discrimination. Same thing if you made them invulnerable. You would be treating them differently or excluding them altogether based solely on their profession. You may not find discriminating against people based solely on their profession to be unreasonable, I do.

The time travel RPG Meantime interests me quite a bit. I start getting giddy at wacky possibilities of a western take on essentially Chrono Trigger. Van Buren, not so much. Acquiring Van Buren doesn't make any sense to me. To what end? InExile already owns Wasteland, an IP they just recently successfully revived. Why create another new post-apocalyptic RPG IP when you already own a successful post-apocalyptic RPG IP? The only thing I can think of is Fargo & Co. possibly taking the story and ideas from Van Buren anf essentially incorporating them into Wasteland 3.

Ah, bugger, thanks for pointing out that I'll be thirty by then as well... You young whippersnappers, I'll be 39. Why, I remember when we didn't have your fancy iDoodads and robot phones. If you wanted to talk to someone across the country, you used a carrier pigeon. Now, get off my lawn!

Pure Gold. I'm I the only one bothered by how ignorant this person is of Greek mythology? If they actually wanted to criticize Medusa they would had brought out the fact that her origin story is that she was raped by Poseidon and then Athena cursed her because of victim blaming. I'm pretty sure it's satire.

I very much doubt Ms. Sarkeesian dislikes judging an entire culture. In fact, I'd argue that judging others, including entire groups of other people, is very much her modus oerandi.

The dream of a 6-10 division winner lives! We're getting close. Please let this happen!

I can't speak for anyone other than myself, but I've broadened my horizons, yes. Censorship is a cancer eating away at freedom and I say down with the sickness! Sorry, that was cheesy, it was the best "humorous" Disturbed reference I could come up with.

I'm on a hardcore puzzle game kick this week with Cap'n Toad and with The Talos Principle coming out Thursday (I'm in like Flynn on that game). Hopefully Cap'n Toad sells well for Nintendo, because I'd love for them to make more of them. The question on many people's minds when this game was announced was: Sure, most people liked the Toad mini-games in Super Mario 3D World, but could Nintendo really make a full game out of that? Answer: Yes. Yes they could. And it's pretty damn good. There is a shockingly high amount of level variety and quite a few different mechanics introduced throughout that Big N mixes and matches excellently to create a whole bunch of different feeling levels. This is also the best use of the gamepad I've seen. Nintendo really needed a game like this much closer to launch to show people "You see, this is why we have a touchscreen gamepad". Anyway, I'm most of the way through Book 3 (the game is divided into 4 books). I've gotten 100% completion on every level in Book 1, probably 60% of the levels in Book 2, and more than half of the levels I've finished so far in Book 3. Once I finish Book 3, I'll likely go back and try to 100% the remaining levels in Books 2 & 3 before heading onward to Book 4.

It sucks, but this is a better alternative to pulling an Ubisoft and releasing the game in the state AssCreed: Unity released in. It's obviously an insanely ambitious game, so this sort of thing was bound to happen, either that or they'd have to cut scope/features or release a mess. I've waited this long, I (begrudgingly) can wait a few more months.

Thank you for answering A question, Bioware like all companies is expected to make profit. And obviously there gaming formulae of inclusivity is working because they continuing with it so that must mean sales of there games are good. So don't you think in fact its not a vocal minority that want inclusivity, like the LGBT crowd, but the majority of fans who are happy with the direction that Bioware is going? Because surly if the majority of fans were unhappy with Bioware games they wouldn't be supporting them financially? Here are my suspicions, and this is purely going on my own gut feeling, I have no empirical evidence to back this up, so grain of salt and all that. I imagine there are 5 general groups of people as it concerns LGBT romance options in Dragon Age: a) Are happy with LGBT romance options being added, does sway their purchasing decision b) Are happy with LGBT romance options being added, not enough to sway their purchasing decision c) Don't give care either way about LGBT romance options being added, obviously doesn't sway their purchasing decision (I fall into this group) d) Are unhappy with LGBT romance options being added, not enough to sway their purchasing decision e) Are unhappy with LGBT romance options being added, does sway their purchasing decision My guess is that overwhelmingly most people fall into groups b,c,d and that group e is no larger than group a, or that the difference in the size of group e and group a is so insignificant that it's worth it for BioWare to include LGBT romance options because of the press it will get them.

He may have even been playing against his future team this week.

The Factory of Sadness is back in production.

If this is true, that's even more deplorable! At this point, I shouldn't be surprised any more, I guess.

Absolutely deplorable. I honestly have no words. Taking money from disabled people... Jesus ****ing Christ. Charity organization not participating in some event because of reason that people didn't found acceptable seems to be good reason to DDOS said charity organization and remove their home page, I am quite sure that this absolute ensures that disabled people now get their money... https://twitter.com/AbleGamers/with_replies That's pretty ****ed up. Whoever did this, whatever side they're on (if they're on a "side" at all), and whatever their rationalization, I fully condemn such a deplorable act.

I say take the high road and go with a positive speech. No need to stoop to SJWs level.