As far as critical thinking and Valve is concerned, abandon all hope. That's one of the more concerning side-effects of Gamergate: The "censorship" (or whatever else you want to call it) is as strong on Steam as anywhere else, and still the majority of gamers seem to be in complete denial about that and always group Steam as one of them/the good guys. The Stockholm syndrome is simply too strong in these people.

Well, yeah, of course we work differently. Some people of our century seems to not understand that we are not completely alike, we as humans have more things in common than differences, but we're not the same.
I think there's nothing to be ashamed about when talking on this matter, is not about being sexist, is about being logical. Each sex have its pros and its cons, the common example being the man having more strenght (not my case, indeed) and women more agility.

It's ridicolous the idea behind women and men being equal, we're not equal, some of us will be naturally better at some works due to how our brain or our body works. And before anybody tells me, no, I'm not telling that women belong to the kitchen (indeed, most of the famous chefs out there are men).
Western society must understand that equal rights it has nothing to do with us being equal, but with us having the same rights and duties. The sooner we understand our limits and the advantages of the opposite sex that can help us, the better.

Yo, Tropico 5 review on Polygon is up. Full of social considerations as expected :
http://pastebin.com/wamNFnXP

How fitting.

It's almost a great review. I'm debating whether this is a matter of opinion or his lack of comprehension, but he seemed to be a step away from writing something I could get 100% behind.
Here's the deal - I've been playing the original Tropico recently. While (I assume) the series is supposed to be fun to play, it's not a parody (thank the Logos - I HATE most parodies). It will not go "Oh, look - you're doing something EVIL, but that's OK, since we're making fun of bad people :D!". On the contrary - it takes the admirable route of trying to present in the most convincing way why actions of a dictator can seem rational and benevolent to him. It puts you in someone else's shoes. You initially know that you are supposed to be the bad guy, but one step after another - your actions MAKE SENSE to you. Your character doesn't see himself as evil, irrational. It's not the cartoon villain that twirls a mustache while tying a damsel to the train tracks. Apparently Tropico 5 is SO CONVINCING, that this particular reviewer, in spite of all his convictions, got seduced. He felt the power, the satisfaction, he did all the things his position demanded... only occasionally snapping out and going "No! What have I become D:?!".
What this shows is that you can learn A LOT MORE from Tropico 5 than if it was a shallow parody. It's not clubbing you over the head with ridicule of "obviously evil" things. On the contrary - it shows you the other side. It shows you a different way to look at things. It challenges simple beliefs. To come out and conclude "I've seen it, I understand it now, but I still disagree" is a more enlightened stance than "Haha - we've made fun of what I've already disagreed with. Good one, game!".

She's involved in developing Mirror's Edge 2? How?
I didnt understand the last paragraph on steam's curator program. Could you please elaborate? And what should we do? Boycott steam?

Right, it's so frustrating. For example, with the Witcher games, I really expected to find some kind of detailed laundry list of what she hates about it after seeing her tweet that the games are full of misogyny.

Like I really REALLY expected her to complain about the sex cards (which were really silly) or the fact that so many women are willing to sleep with Geralt if he does trivial tasks for them (which was also silly). But she doesn't even touch that, at least in the video I saw (I could only find one video where she mentioned the Witcher games).

Instead, she shows a clip of Carmen asking Geralt to protect some of her friends from the thugs that have been randomly killing people throughout the game. Carmen is the original character with the most detailed story arc (aside from the characters who were from the books). That horrible priest from the Outskirts was her father and she grew up with that crap, and then he kicked her out of the house accusing her of being a whore so she became one (probably couldn't get any other job with the limited skills and education she had from living in that kind of household). But despite going through all of that, she's still a nice person. And she falls in love with Vincent, even knowing that he's a werewolf, because she knows he's a good person too and she loves him anyway. That side-quest to help her out and cure him is one of my favorite parts of the game because it's so sweet.

But no, apparently Carmen is just background decoration.

Or with Witcher 2, it would have been the obvious choice to bring up that weird scene where Mottle explicitly offers Geralt sex as a reward for saving her life. But instead, Anita brings up the scene on Iorveth's path where Loredo is threatening to burn the elven women as a diversion so that he can escape.

The game has portrayed Loredo as a despicable person with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and then it puts the player in the awkward position of having to decide whether it's worth letting innocent people die in order to take him out. How much do we hate him? How likely is it that he might kill even more people if he gets away? Does preventing that potential future atrocity justify allowing these people to die right here and now?

And the scene also has an interesting commentary on the themes of racism that have been building up in the whole chapter. Previously Loredo had been manipulating the human residents into hating the non-human residents. This is the moment where he shows his true colors to everyone and they realize what a monster he really is. They could have just been like, "Meh, let the elves die," but instead they literally beg Geralt to save the elven women. In contrast, Iorveth dismisses their lives, claiming that they're willing to die just because he doesn't want the mild inconvenience of waiting another few minutes while Geralt saves them. That emphasizes that things like compassion and heartlessness aren't neatly divided along racial lines. This blurring of the lines contributes to the "shades of gray" morality that is the central theme of the game.

But nope, that's just background decoration too, right? XD

It would be like if someone saw this link on her site below the video:

Nearly 1 in 5 Women in U.S. Survey Say They Have Been Sexually Assaulted by Roni Caryn Rabin

And then purely based on how it looks written that way they started complaining that this Roni person is horrible and needs to be stopped XD That's how it feels watching her misrepresent games.

Yeah, exactly. So far I haven't experienced anything really negative (usually people are just surprised), but I'm also careful about talking about games with people I work with (and when I do mention it, I'm careful about which games I say I played). It doesn't have anything to do with my job and I don't need people making assumptions about me based on which games I like. Now that I think about it, this might be why adventure games seem to have larger female audiences. No one's going to accuse someone of being a self-hating woman if she says she likes a nonviolent game about solving puzzles XD

That's an interesting point. I never thought of that, but I hope you're right and she does learn something from the experience. I like the first Mirror's Edge but I like purely because of how awesome the keyboard/mouse controls are, along with the artistic style of the buildings. I didn't really care about the story or the characters, so I don't think there's too much Anita could do to ruin the game for me. What will potentially ruin it is if they simplify the controls, and I don't see why she'd have any say in that so I'm not going to blame her for it if that happens.

I was on the Steam forums for almost a year before I figured out what "jarateed" meant XD The forums have always been heavily censored, so this doesn't surprised me either. My opinion of Steam is purely based on Steam itself, not the forums. If the client's working and there's a good sale then I'm happy.

Very interesting. I picked up the first few Tropico games awhile back but haven't gotten around to playing them yet. I think they just moved higher up the queue :P

*rofl*

Very true.

I don't know about the rest, but if you pick up the first one - READ THE MANUAL BEFOREHAND. There are few things as frustrating as having the perfect plan and the initial funds, and everything going to hell because you forgot to hire more people to build stuff and haul stuff around... or the guys working at the docks live half an unpaved island away and don't load the cargo to the ship for ages, putting you in debt over goods that have been ready and waiting but didn't get exported quickly enough x_x.

Thanks! I'm used to newer games where the manual is useless or doesn't even exist, so I probably wouldn't have thought to check for the manual first. You probably saved me a lot of trouble :D

No points for guessing how I ended up in my predicament in the first place ;P. Yeah - I made the exact same assumption. The older the game, the worse of an idea that tends to be...

***
In vaguely #GamerGate related news - GOG has been mentioned in one /v/'s musical piece at the end of yesterday's news recap. It's glorious.

For a second I thought you meant me, but yes, that's exactly the point. It's far easier to bitch about people making the "wrong" kind of games than it is to make ones that are "right." Especially if there's no demonstrated market and games can be rather costly to produce.

That's always a good idea.

Yes, but how? They already have a strangehold on the gaming industry. It would be awesome to use something like an adblocker to block the curator section in the steam client, but AFAIK that doesnt work on the client itself, only on the website.

After watching some youtube video i feel we need to have one ore more places where we tag corupted devs and journalists with small list of informational links on what bad they did so it would be info with proof.

Anyone agrees?