Amentep

And blind devotion to the status quo continues the deaths of innocents that could easily be prevented. Wait, so not preventing a game from being made out is allowing the deaths of innocents? What?

When the lim x → ∞ = 0 happens in probablility, sure something might be possible, but the scenario is such an outlier that its near impossible to account for. Should Nobakov never been allowed to write Lolita? Should Lanzmann never been allowed to make Shoah? The problem with your theoretical hyperbole is that there are probably books and movies that already deal with the themes or incidents that you're talking about. And Japan has already put out games involving the rape of virtual minors.

Would you support a child-rape simulator? A holocaust simulator? How does saying the consumer should make their own choices imply support for any specific game content?

From the article: and How are these concerns any more legitimate that Jack Thomposon's concerns? Because this: Sounds exactly like the anti-game rhetoric of the 1990s when stores banned Night Trap from sale (after misrepresentions of what the game was about). And the correct response to retailers about concerns over "marketing adult products to children" is to get them to realize that video games aren't the sole propriety of children and to follow the ratings on games when selling and advertising video games. Not to get them to ban any video game that isn't playable by a child.

You would only be banned from australia if the country officially would not allow you in, not whethere anyone can or will take you there. Therefore you are not banned from Australia. If you were in Australia, you would not be banned from buying video games in Target Australia because you could walk in and buy them. Note that you are also not banned from buying Grand Theft Auto in Target Australia - you just can't because they don't carry the product. The product is banned from sale in the Target stores. You can't infer that. For profit organizations can and have done things against their own short/long term best interests with respect to profitability because it seemed like the "right" thing to do at the time by leaders of the business. No Target banned the sale of the game from their stores - all stock was removed and presumably in the process of being returned to the vendor. This would be different from discontinuing the item, since in that case the store would continue to stock the remaining supply but would discontinue immediately the further purchase of the item. If I'm wrong and Target Australia is just not stocking more but selling the remaining stock let me know; I'll amend my position to "Target Australia is discontinuing sales of GTAV". I know ban has a negative connotation but this mental calistinics to get around using the word is silly. If Target banned smoking in its stores would you be asking "So Target has banned themselves from smoking in Australia? Do I ban myself from smoking if I decide not to smoke?". If you go to take a standardized test calculators are banned from use. Would you ask "So ACT banned themselves from using calculators? Do I ban myself from using calculators if I decided not to use one?" Most movie chains have a ban on showing XXX films. Would you ask "So Regal Cinemas banned themselves from XXX films? Do I ban myself if I don't watch them?" Generally speaking this is true of most average people when given a choice between things they are passionate about and things they are not. Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) -Walt Whitman Most in-store bans I've seen get quietly reversed unless there's someone really passionate about the issue. The loss in sales will eventually triumph the public relations goodwill of not carrying that "evil devil music/movie/games/book". I remember when several chain box stores wouldn't carry CDs with explicit lyrics; most ended up doing so in the end. Given the stances I've seen, a lot of game journalists seem to have decided to eschew impartiality and instead embrace activism. IMO you can't be an activist and a journalist.

By that logic, a store that isn't wheelchair-accessible is also a hotbed of censorship - after all, they keep the limited public of wheelchair-bound would-be shoppers from ever seeing anything they're selling! No that has nothing at all to do with what I was saying, particularly since what Target-Australia has done isn't censorship and I even stated as much in my post. If a store wasn't wheelchair accessible they have defacto banned the wheelchair public from patronising the store even if accidentally, which was the whole point of the ADA in terms of requiring accomodations to allow access in the US to public spaces. I'd be okay with that statment as long as you can provide evidence the games weren't selling (which would be a factual component I have no way to confirm). I can confirm "Target Australia banned the game from sale in Target Australia stores". Who said it wasn't selling? I inferred it when you indicated the profitability, in the post I quoted. Again I can't speak to sales or profitablity and whether that played a role in the decision as I have no data with regard to that.

No I didn't miss your point, it was (and is) irrelevant to my point. I never addressed that choking was/wasn't warranted because it had nothing to do with what I was talking about.

Agreed on T3. I figure the idea is that this is Alternate Universe Reese so I can buy the different actor I think (and the different T-1000)

I think that games journalists should be allowed to have their own unique opinion with regard to this issue; I don't see any reason why they should be made to conform to any particular line of thought. That said I think most people who are "pro" gaming should get worried when retailers start taking arbitrary stands over the content of individual games (while I disagree with it, removing games from shelves that have specific ratings is, IMO, no different from a movie theater chain deciding not to send "XXX-rated" films along with the G, PG, and R films to their multiplexes.) I'm sure each games journalist has their own "feel" on the matter. RE: Censorship, technically McIntosh is correct, its not censorship - censorship edits content and then distributes the remainding approved content to the public. The described scenario is a banning, pure and simple - which keeps the public from ever seeing it (in this case the limited public of Target Australia shoppers). Well, we can, but shouldn't we then also say "Target banned [insert game whose distribution isn't profitable for them] from sale in its stores, too"? I'd be okay with that statment as long as you can provide evidence the games weren't selling (which would be a factual component I have no way to confirm). I can confirm "Target Australia banned the game from sale in Target Australia stores".

I think the term being looked for is "platonic love" not "platonic romance". Plato defined love as being two types, Vulgar love and Divine love. Vulgar love moves the person to the physical (beauty, sex, reproduction). Divine love is a love that moves a person to the spiritual. Hope this helps.

How would the police know he had existing medical conditions for that to be a consideration in whether they used a proper response to the situation? Choking someone, was not a proper response to the situation. That wasn't what aluminiumtrioxid's point was, his point was "accidently killing a dude through the compression of the chest which triggers a host of existing medical conditions"; thus my point is to question whether unknown pre-existing medical conditions can be considered at all before an action is taken by the police. Because they can't by definition; they're unknown. This does not mean that taking the action is valid (or invalid) by necessity. Just that I don't see how the pre-existing medical condition can change that validity/invalidity of the action. In essence, it was either right or wrong to choke/restrain the man or it wasn't. The medical condition couldn't have been known at the time so can't be a factor in determining the rightness or wrongness of the action.

Ban is a generic term. Ban is not specific to governments. Rather than arguing semantics, can we concede that (a) Australia has not banned the game from sale in Australia (b) Target has banned the game from sale in Target Australia stores

How would the police know he had existing medical conditions for that to be a consideration in whether they used a proper response to the situation?

Looks interesting to me, but I think I might be the only person who actually liked Terminator: Salvation.

"You've got your facts in my paranoia!" "No you got your paranoia in my facts!"

The deliberations were what I meant; reading the evidence and thinking there is/isn't enough for a conviction as an individual may be enlightening but it doesn't really tell us what went through the heads of the grand jury at the time the debated and decided.

The major difference is that you aren't playing a Qunari of the Qun, but someone who was born outside of it. Sten says that women do not fight, in a conversation with a female warden, because their duties do not adhere to fighting (male ony) and is confused as to why women would want to be men. I suppose you could view this as the Qunari living in denial over women's inability to fight, but if that's the case then Sten wouldn't have changed his mind or viewpoint at all during the game, and the Arishok would certainly not recognize a female Hawke in DA2. It's more or less just dedicated bias towards the Qun that places Female Qunari in roles such as, merchants or farmers. I think it is meant to be taken as such; Their abilities to fight wouldn't mark them as 'female' by Qunari standards, it's basically the overall point of the conversations with Sten. There were some stupid backpedaling in regards to the functions of the Ben-Hassrath, which I did find quite jarring. Sten is actually shocked and confused a woman would want to be a man; why would this be if the Qun acknowledges that a fighting woman - who is seen as male per Iron Bull - would exist in the Qun, if rarely? Its clear this is something he's never heard of, much less experienced. I agree with Gromnir; its a distinct retcon to the Qun's roles as set up in DAO. Not that I care - for all we know the Qun leaders took Sten's report on the Warden and/or female companions and decided that maybe some women could be men in the 10 years since the Warden ended the blight.

Valsuelm makes a fair point with regard that a DA has a vested interest in not alienating the people they work with by providing vigerous prosecution. But as Grand Jurys are secret, we'll never know if there wasn't enough evidence of if the DA presented a weak case to ensure his future cases don't get sabatoged.

I didn't say it didn't. But there's two factors, one is who the boss hires and the second the woman's choice to be an assistant in the first place. Having applied for secretary/clerical jobs, having interviewed for secretarial/clerical jobs and later in my career having hired for clerical jobs my experience is that the vast majority of the applicants are women. At least in one case I was the only male applicant (possibly true on other occasions, but I know of that one). My point was to address this preponderence, not the motivations of the hiring official. As an aside, you really want to go with someone with knowledge whose personality & work style fits yours rather than looks. Someone who looks good who but is a terrible fit for your work style and personality is a headache a day waiting to happen.

I am quite sure it was overstatement, however dont you thing that most PA's are female? I wonder why its like that... Having worked as a secretary/executive assistant, my experience tells me that this is generally because most guys have better paying minimal education* options available to them. I'd have made more money (short term) as a laborer, a ditch or gravedigger, or similar than as a secretary; most women aren't interested in being a general laborer (but some are and can be as good as anyone else) or are focused on the benefits of a steady clerical job (which can be a very stable profession). This is aside from the stereotype that clerical work is better suited to women (at least post-1940 or so). *Obviously having an education widens your ability to get a job whether its clerical or laborer provided its an education that provides desirable skills (like carpentry or medical records) Edit Regarding "Female Privledge" - One only needs to look at the wide lattitude given an attractive woman to understand that our society does give women certain perks; many seem to have a double edged swords. I've known some very attractive women who struggled to find work post college graduation for no reason beyond - as far as I could tell based on the information I had - not because they weren't well knowledgeable in their field of study, poor interviewers or anything but simply because people struggled to believe that a really attractive woman could also be intelligent.

^I thought that was the case but wasn't 100% sure if my memory was faulty on that or not. I seem to recall some skills/talents having a cooldown period in DAO (IIRC that ressurection spell Wynne had was on a long cooldown) but again not sure if my memory is accurate.

I think there are. The hell kind of opening to a thread is this ? I think its some kind of summary of what the OP believes should be in this thread.

I don't really get what the big deal is, to be honest. If I lost sleep everytime some game that looked like i'd enjoy came to some system I didn't have I'd never have slept through the 90s. Because a lot of people enjoyed ME3, as hard as that is for some to fathom, and suddenly placing a series they enjoyed out of their reach is a pretty dickish move ("just buy a console" is not a reasonable argument). This is entirely different from a franchise that is console exclusive, in which case I'd agree with your point. Well the original Mass Effect WAS a console exclusive (it was a year before the Windows port was realeased). And computer gamers were mad about that at the time as well - that a new franchise had an uncertain future with computer gamers - so the idea that this is simply because people liked a multiplatform series that is "suddenly" console exclusive isn't true. And I imagine many of those PC complainers about ME1 would have been happy to tell console gamers to "buy a computer" had ME1 been a PC exclusive.

I haven't played any MMORPG. Hence, it's kinda hard for me to say what exactly are the "MMO parts". The exploration didn't feel to me particularly different from BG1 and ME1, for instance. Ah, I assumed it is well known how MMORPG work. The MMO parts are simple grindy quests that ask you to bring X of something or kill Y of some creatures. They are also about combat being full of cooldown based skill and respawning monsters. Oh and collecting crazy numbers of components. I've found no required quests that require bring x/kill y. There are some side-quests that follow this model, but are usually easily done just through the normal wandering-fighting-harvesting in my experience without a lot of need to go further (the only real benefit seems to be increasing influence, so I'm not sure if later I'm going to feel I should need a higher influence for the Inquisition). So far the only respawning monsters I've seen make sense (bears...omg metric tonnes of bears. Bears who follow other bears. I got a TPK because I attacked a party of mercenaries and then we all were attacked by two bears. ****. Bears). Combat does involve cooldowns, but that's very much like how DAII worked, so if you played that you have an idea of how cooldowns work. I've not found a real need to collect a crazy number of components either (although I also don't feel a pressing need to have the ultimate tricked out equipment, either). Most components are easily found in good quantities during your adventuring.

Which was my original point. Even if Kickstarter indicates that a product is expected, not delivering becomes a civil matter most likely and if the kickstarter originator doesn't have any money pursuing it further isn't going to get you your initial investment back.