Thanks, I'll reply to your older post via PM. We can cut to the chase it seems: Is either of our opinions on the historic nature of journalism true? Both? Neither? Somewhere in the middle?

You are smart guy, you should be able to see where I will eventually get with this line of questioning... the only way to reject objectivity logically implies a rejection of truth external to ourselves. Now me, I'd say rejection of truth external to ourselves is a perfect argument from absurd for why objectivity actually is, even if unattainable in practice, despite human and so natural denial of our mortality and place in the universe. But maybe your opinion on metaphysics / aesthetics is different to mine... again ;) Anyway, given the above, no wonder I commonly see what I'll now term egotistic myopic ethics in the opposing camp - for all lip service to universality, the logical foundations mean the ethics will be rotten, and ineffective to boot. The roots are in emotion, in pathos, they are pathological ethics - literally.

@htown1980: its not enough to say its obvious when a journalist is being subjective. Its should be labelled. Period. Its through this kind of limboing under and tap dancing around the rules that this thing happened in the first place. If its something that is admittedly subjective; it doesn't take much for the writer to write down that extra disclaimer as well. One must not forget that most game journalists do critical work (its like 40% reporting on news and 60% reviewing from most; I think) and hence; as a critic in addition to being a journalist; they owe it to their consumer (as any critic does) to clearly disclose any bias they might have.
@anti #ggers: I menationed this before but didn't get a reply. I don't know whether its because you accept and are reluctant to show it; or don't have any argument to contradict it (which is the same as the first then) but here it is again:

The fact that people can bash a game with a linear story because it doesn't have a female protagonist is ludicrous. Al linear story in a game means THE CHARACTER HAVE SET PERSONALITIES AND GENDERS. Its like making a Sherlock Holmes game and giving the player an option to choose between a male and female Holmes. And since the characters already have set personalities; there is equal detachment for everyone from the character because a persons' personality is more likely to resonate or not resonate than a stupid factor like gender. Here; a very sensitive and empathetic male player may find it more difficult to relate to Trevor than an non-empathetic female player. You are basically taking a part of what makes us who we are (taking ONE thing out of empathy; sympathy; world views; experiences; gender etc) and saying that one factor alone will ruin the experience for female players. This is ludicrous; as its implying females have nothing more to them than their gender.

PS; can we stop with the downrate thing? I'm not asking because I was downrated. I wasn't. People here; especially those with 1000+rep achieved that through dedication to DRM-free and to the GOG community. Lets not destroy it with anything that isn't even unique to GOG yes? Best for both sides.

mmm, I think it's funny actually .... Passing the 500-rep level makes it quite a game in itself for me. Pity we don't have the list of downraters (and upraters too), I would remember them during giveaways :o)

Full disclosure because I like honesty ^o^
Only downrepped 2 people since 2009 (Zoidberg for being a constant whiner & KasperHviid for his "torpedo" title thread)

i feel like noone willing to participate in the discussion needs to be downrepped, no matter which side they are on. Discussion is the only way to progress. Denying others the right to speak because they are on the opposite side are a no no. What does warrant downreps is aggressive ad hominem moves.

For ex Fever and htown do not seem to share many (or at least a certain portion) of my views, but they have been civil in the debate and open to the discussion so I would definitely not downrep them. Debates are only fun when there are people with different viewpoints but open mind participating.

In these cases the debate becomes a battle of the arguments, facts and wits, where there is often no winner. Instead both sides often leave with their original stance being (slightly) twisted.

Should the other not be open at all or aggressive, it devolves n a mudslinging contest which ends when you realize there is no point and give up.

ps i sometimes look back and when i see a downrep post that does not warrant a downrep i uprep it to counter

*groan* Yeah, OK the GG autoblocker IS one of the most mis-guided things I've seen in a while, and yes it does seem to exist https://github.com/freebsdgirl/ggautoblocker
*double groan* at her (I assume freebsdgirl is a girl) actually using the term 'sheeple' I hate that word - reminds me of chemtrailers
*triple groan* at her using that term while, at the same time asking people to give a whole chunk of their agency to decide who to block and who not to on Twitter over to her!

On the other hand #LetDevsSpeak is a misleading hash tag because, as I see it, it's not really a freedom of speech issue - everyone should have the freedom to say what they like but no-one has the right to force anyone to listen - people have the right to turn their back on a speaker if they like, even if they have decided to automate the process based on some criteria, no one has been forced to install GG autoblocker - look at me, I don't use Twitter at all, does that mean that I'm 'censoring' everyone in the world who might want to communicate with me (or someone of my demographic profile) through it?- No, no I'm not

Buuuuut... imagine if someone WAS forcing GG Autoblocker on people - like a government, for example, that would be the most Orwellian EVA! (Well... it would be pretty Orwellian anyway) - I wish I could get everyone who has decided to install this thing to imagine that right now...
Erosion of personal choice, power and freedom for greater safety and security 'for our own good' sounds like sinister stuff a lot of governments are up to right now too

In the blurb for the app freebsdgirl DOES sound pretty young and naive, another poster on here had a theory that the people who had sent death threads to Anita were just kids being dumb too - I start to wonder how much of the whole thing is adults getting dragged into playground arguments between stoopid kids being stoopid (and now I feel about 100)
Yeah, I've hemorrhaged about 20 rep since I felt in the mood to come over all political personally but poor old Vainamoinen - I keep trying to up rep because some of his individual posts are ending up 'Low Rated' and I don't *think* he's saying things that are a whole lot more controversial than I am! Heh - maybe its a sign I should try harder :-D

*edit* I just checked back and, turns out, that a couple of my post ARE now 'low rated' Go me! (I sound like I'm goading now but I'm really not - please cut it out!)

both sides suffer from those. Rebellious teenagers thinking they can do whatever they want send death threats. On the other hand you have teenagers believing noone with any sort of privilege has the right to speak. Which makes me wonder why ben kuchie and leigh alexa as grown ups keep tossing gasoline onto the fire and napalm upon all who dare disagree.
This makes it so hard to get the voices that are in a civilized way calling anitas arguments bullshit to be heard.

PERSONAL ATTACK WARNING
TRIGGER WARNING
DEFYING OWN RULESET WARNING

"Yeah, I've hemorrhaged about 20 rep since I felt in the mood to come over all political personally but poor old Vainamoinen - I keep trying to up rep because some of his individual posts are ending up 'Low Rated' and I don't *think* he's saying things that are a whole lot more controversial than I am! Heh - maybe its a sign I should try harder :-D".

you pointed out something very important here: " I don't *think* he's saying things that are a whole lot more controversial than I am".

Important point: the things are similar, but is the way? ah

You seem open to listen, not instantly dismiss every single argument made by the other side. You do not dismiss everything because below politics may be involved. You keep on the point and you do not keep repeating the same lines over and over again, ignoring every part of the discussion made. You refer from personal attacks like the one I'm making right now. You do not deny evidence or arguments because you don't like it.

I look at posts on a case to case basis,without thinking of the writer, and yet, I feel like discussing with you and htown still has any form of merit. I'm sorry, but with Vai this is simply not the case. discussing with him feels like discussing with a wall.


AND I WOULD REALLY CALL FOR PEOPLE NOT TO DOWNREP ANY CONSTRUCTIVE PART OF THE DISCUSSION, INCLUDING THOSE ON THE OTHER SIDE

since a signed up with GOG I've been a casual observer here

and frankly my dear (lol) it took me effin' months to make ass or tail out of this shit

maybe me am as fick as a brick but I think there a lot of misunderstanding about all this #Gamergate stuff

the point is that there's likely to be a problem with people repping who dont realy understand the debate-argument-warfare going on here and twitter and all over the place

I'm still amazed at how I missed it for so long its amazing when suddenly something that was hardly in the edge of your "radar" is suddenly in your face

I think that's your avatar that keep you "safe". When vaguely looking at it, it reminds of the communist red star and thus for "rebels", it reminds Che Guevara & co so maybe that's why you get some unconscious sympathy in this perpetual popularity contest ;) Power to the people! ^o^

If we may look forward; there will most likely a growing split between the medium sized indie studios like Stardock and Taleworlds and smaller AAA devs(AA devs) will continue to make good games, then the AAA devs will still attempt to cater to both sides by making shooters with female characters which will lack good shooting and character depth. The message focused indies will make games with messages without good or any gameplay and conduct Polygon Game awards to make them seem good. So yah; we have a split coming up; IMO.

It's not wrong in the sense that NO, every game shouldn't be giving you the choice to build you own character with choices of gender, skin colour etc. That would turn everything into an homogenized narrative gruel.
But to think that's the entire topic of gender in games neatly wrapped up and solved is sadly blinkered, at his point I'm going to hand over to Jim again - please listen to what he has to say, especially if you think that game designers currently have a free hand when it comes to gender depiction in games and feminism is trying to 'stifle creative freedom' or whatever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wnTunPrQJo

While I don't want to see an 'Anita's Law' passed where every game has to have a choice of character genders and ethnicities or it gets banned on the grounds of discrimination (or whatever keeps gaters awake at night) I also don't want to see Anita vilified to the degree that people like Jim here can't say important things about gender politics without being tarred with the same brush and being included in the witch hunt! (not that I don't think Anita raises some interesting points herself from time to time)

Yeah? I thought that would have counted against me, especially with that one guy who was accusing feminism as being anti-capitalist because its a leftie thing, or whatever he was on about!
It's actually a 'Rage Against the Machine' album cover so you're actually mostly right - I wanted to find a photo of the lead singer Zach de la Rocha looking awesome and shaking his dreads but I could only find me looking a bit douchy, dorky or posing with the other guys so I went with this album cover because I thought it was a strong image despite my misgivings about the communist overtones.
This was back when I decided to go full anti-GG SJW the first time, I mellowed after that and changed it to something else but then GOG rolled it back for me in one of their forum hiccups so I guess I decided it was fated or something...

That is a great video and its obvious women are excluded from key activities that men in games can; like appearing on the cover or being able to initiate a relationship. But we can't call that out as a problem of the audience. As a reply to Jim's arguments; we have :
Bioshock Infinite: We know Ken Levine formally asked Bioshock fans and gamers in general not to sexualize Elizabeth. He begged people not to create nude mods (as if they somehow added something) for BI. It can certainly be argued that that was his mindset when advertising BI. Look at all of the paid (lets agree to this, IGN was paid for this; really, its too obvious) hype pieces on IGN- none of them mention Elizabeth very much. I think Ken wanted to keep the audience free of people who would want to sexualize Elz from knowing much about her. And that isn't sad; because no matter how good of a community you have; there will always be people like that. He himself said Elizabeth was like his ''daughter'' and he obviously has emotional attachment to her; and wanted to keep out everyone who had any sort of interest in her. I say that keeping in mind both genders can look at a sexually attractive member of the opposite gender and still respect them. Proof is lacking to that argument; but I'm sure anyone can see that isn't wholly unsound.

The Last of Us: really; thats just naughty dog being irrational. Game publishers still use PR and target market analysts from other markets and accept their BS no matter what they say. Either way; that isn't to say the opposition to put Ellie on the cover was justified. I agree with you; there was no reason not to do that; and no one who are people who play games will object to it. There is no rational explanation for why someone opposed this other than some corporate ritual.

Remember Me: this is a truth; but I think there is a complex argument to be had here. The Publisher refused; said male gamers won't like it. Other such publishers take down critique on YT; use the whip on developers; cancel controversial games; milk studios for DLC and discard; all believing they are in touch with their audience. We can clearly establish a baseline that PUBLISHERS KNOW JACK SHIT ABOUT ANYTHING THEIR AUDIENCE WANTS OR LIKES. What I think is that the publisher REFUSED BECAUSE FEMALE CHARACTER IN GENERAL CAUSE CONTROVERSY because of the media and they wanted to avoid the controversy as the skunks they are and raise a stink so they can escape. When was the last time any mainstream media agency reported on a positive female game character? When was the last time they blew up an insignificant one? Similar to Ubi; they believe in feeding lies and just used their audience as a scapegoat to avoid controversy.

Imho it's a big ethical difference too.
Method A sets the own opinion so far above every other, that it defines itself as the ultimate truth.
This is what Vaina is doing all the time, everyone who disaggrees there is just a conservative/plutocrat/*insert hate filled term of current agenda here*. There is nothing to gain here, it is simply destructive, but people like the leaders of certain hate movements need such a mindset in their followers to avoid scrutinising.

Method B emphasizes, that we are all on the same level, even if the opinions are far apart.
This way misunderstandings and doubtful jugdement via prejudice, lack of information or disiformation can be solved.

I'd bet a bloody lot of this is adults getting dragged into playground arguments, even indenpendend from the people acting like children, but I think some of the worst ones may indeed be quite young.

Regarding the downrepping:
I've lost about 100 points on this board by now because of downreps for my opinion but I had this in school too just in form of mobbing for I always were a minority indeed.

I haven't lost nearly as many points here than I have lost because of the vegetarian/veganism threads though, the tolerance here is actually way better although I've lost quite a bit here too.

Regarding Jim Sterling:
I don't have a problem with him, I linked his video about Shadow of Mordor because it was good and important and I accept his opinions about the whole gamergate affair and gender diversity stuff, I even agree with him in some points although they don't affect me much since I'm not into AAA gaming anyway but into indie stuff which offers more diversity gameplay wise anyway and it's mostly about gameplay or storytelling and not about indentification for me, I never identify with some video game character and can't understand how and why people do this.

Brace yourselves gamers and prepare for a full tilt wave of abuse to hit you. The lies and fascist propaganda are about to be unleashed in the form of GTFO: The Movie. A "documentary" (yeah right) designed to destroy your self-esteem as both a human being and a gamer.

The hate-piece, directed by Shannon Sun-Higginson and funded by her acolytes via kickstarter is said to be a series of cherry picked annecdotal stories of women claiming harassment and abuse for being female gamers. How original!

GTFO premiered March 14 at this year’s South by Southwest film festival, held March 13-22 in Austin,Texas. If you wish to see it, then the privalege will cost you between $695 to $1745.

Somebody hold me back. I can't wait! X-D