Worth Reading: 12/02/2014

That Amiibo article was interesting. I think the toys are pretty cool, bought Mario over the weekend, but the future seems like a mystery for those things.

That Dan Crawley/VentureBeat stuff is basically a retread of a feature Polygon did earlier this year(or last?).

How I wish Bayonetta 2 was not on Nintendo. How did Bayonetta end up on Nintendo? So sad. :( And pole dancing is always a good thing, whatever your age!

Oh holy hell, my tweet showed up here!

Explanation: I'm designing and 3D printing the plastic parts of a controller for a school project. It's going to be Saturn-esque in some major ways, particularly the d-pad, so I was reading up on Sega patents while mulling over the possibility of an actual for-sale version of it at some point in the future. More tweets as the story develops I guess? I'll have pictures of the class project prototype early next week.

I expected to be disgruntled at that "25 list", but it was actually fairly well represented. Most of those I could not argue with. That said, there was a LOT of redundancy on those points.

They paid for its development (at least partially). Bayonetta 2 literally wouldn't exist without Nintendo.

The list wasn't too bad considering other than number 11. In what world can you use whatever tone you want (regardless of gender) and not have people react accordingly? That one in particular stood out to me as "we couldn't come up with 25 things so don't look to close at this one." I'm no Sarkeesian fan, but a video that calls out problems that aren't hyperbolized or used to say all men are evil is a welcome change.

Lord no. She's like the third best character of the party. People just be like "Eww she's a pro-Circle noble lady" and get all upset that she speaks like a member of nobility aught to speak like. She's great. And that she's able to beat the worst character (Sera) at her own game is even more great. Viv doesn't have time for the lowly people, but at least she's honest about it and also good at killing dragons. She's totally right that the Circle is a good idea. I mean, mages don't have the best track record in Thedas.

I despise Vivienne; just outright hate her character. Bad for her I guess but kudos to Bioware for making her so...polarizing. She just seems like a hypocrite to me. Between her and Sera, it's become a battle to see who annoys me more in that game.

That being said - Apparently they are both extremely powerful if built properly so, jokes on me I guess?

I usually just roll with Varric, Dorian and Blackwall these days...

I literally face-palmed at the irony of number 8 in that list of 25 benefits video. They have quite literally been asked to speak on behalf of their gender--that's what the video is.

Someone should buy them all dictionaries and highlight the word privilege for them. All I see is a bunch of privileged people trying, and failing, to be morally superior.

The only point in that list that actually holds up is point 6: that games media is male dominated. And who is to blame for that? A bunch of people in this video bare a lot of that responsibility seeing as that is their industry...

GAM GRAMPS!

@abendlaender: That whole block of text about Vivienne was pretty cringeworthy.

Rorie is a Tankaholic.

I absolutely disagree with your final statement. As I see it a big part of the problem with the modern civil rights movements or equality movements or whatever you want to call them is that those involved in them have built silos where their issues are the only issues that are important. Feminists may give lip service to racial issues and civil rights activists may occasionally comment on women's issues, but when it comes down to it they are all fighting against each other for limited public mind share. People can only care about so many things and there are so many causes competing for attention that they inevitably resort to sensationalism and develop an "Us vs Them" attitude to retain supporters and influence the public. In exclusively promoting their own message and cause various groups today are working against each other and accomplishing little while the general public ignores them all.

I believe it would be far healthier and more productive for most of the social activist groups to join together and form a movement based on fair treatment and equality for all instead of being divided along lines of women's issues or racial issues or gay rights and all the others. If everyone who cared joined together with a unified message of equality for all it would be far more powerful than jumbled mess of causes we have today. It would also help with actually getting stuff done. Instead of "This is a women's issue" or "This is an African American issue" various groups could join together and say "This is a human issue and we want to improve it for everyone." A great mass of people working together on a few issues is going to accomplish a lot more than hundreds of small groups working on hundreds of issues. And it would help with dialogue between different demographics. Another problem I see in today's equality movements is that members of one demographic will often use their cause as an excuse to vilify and alienate members of another demographic. By expanding their focuses beyond a single demographic equality groups could make their movement more approachable to those currently on the outside who may agree with the cause but are driven away by the narrow scope and potentially hostile tones of the current message.

@thatpinguino: Huh. And I played both those games. Thanks for pointing that out.

Patrick, why would you repost that 25 reasons video? I thought Giant Bomb's stance was to be above all of the sexism and shit flinging on twitter. Every part of that video is engineered to rile people up, either in disagreement, or support of it. If anything, everything from the title onwards comes off as somewhat condescending rather than informative, and won't sway the minds of anyone. Posting it on Giant Bomb is just asking for trouble.

For the record, I am not a part of gamergate or any other online garbage camp. I just don't want Giant Bomb to become another place which stoops to the level of twitter banter. Gamergate feeds off of people paying attention to them and trying to justify themselves. The only solution is to ignore them, you won't change their opinions by telling them what to think; and you certainly won't help Giantbomb's image by trying to take a side on this matter.

@renegademike: I don't agree regarding minorities getting treated slightly better. Heck, casual racism tends to be accepted more in society than casual sexism. People call out casual sexism all the time, then go on to say something casually racist themselves.

That was the only negative opinion I had. I was often left thinking, "that's the same thing as the previous one," so it was less than 25. I think they stretched it thin because they probably had more people willing to participate than they actually had invisible benefits to point out.

Hoo boy. PSAs, well meaning though they may be, put me off. I kept expecting someone to tell me what my brain looks like on sexism.

If all the people who know me got together and had a meeting to determine which human qualities I find the most abrasive and annoying, and then put all of those qualities together into one person, that person would be Vivienne. Also her hat is fucking stupid. Any person who would wear that is an asshole.

@bdead:

I'm sorry but this just reads as a "I'm not a racist but.." post. At not point are any of the feminist frequency videos telling you to be ashamed. They are a call to arms for things to be better and for you to stop and think that the situation is shitty for women. Ignoring it is the worst thing you can do, it is the same as pretending it doesn't happen. When women are being bullied into silence the response is not to be silent.

I fuckin' lost it at Ariados Grande. Also at Lou Girafarigno.

It would be straight forward if Tim Schafer said "hey listen I like playing games and I bet you do too, so next time you hear a female in voice chat understand that she is a regular person just like you and me. I have a daughter and hope that when she grows up she doesn't have to feel hesitant about using chat in games, lets all try to make the gaming space better for one another." Instead it was a "I don't have to worry about my skill in games being judged based on my voice, get it, like women do."

It's 25 intelligent guys reiterating the same point in a roundabout way with a thousand mile stare going on like they've just come back from 'Nam.

@professoress: Congratulations! For some reason, I find that news incredibly awesome.

@sergio: I guess it depends on what you are personally exposed to.

I don't know if this counts, but Aveline is probably my favorite Assassin's Creed protagonist and I'm a huge fan of Lee from Walking Dead Season 1.

@courage_wolf: I wish that were the case, but it does not seem to work out that way. As you mentioned all of the social progress movements are separated by cause. If we could get it all under one system maybe we would get more traction.

That list video seemed condescending to me, but, if it opened someone's eyes to issues they'd been blind to, then I guess it's a good thing.

@bdead: Did you even watch the video? Cause what you wrote has barely anything to do with what the video covers and it sure seems like you are just mad at feminists speaking up at all about games. Also saying "I know there's a problem, but shut up about it" is not a great way to solve a problem.

Best part... I don't think most players have seen a Tauren in full Dragonstalker riding an original Kodo in years :P

(I also still had a quiver full of arrows)

That 'Into the Deep" video is simply brilliant.

Fun stuff! Thanks a lot.

I'm still bummed that I can't play Dragon Age: Inquisition because the version I got gifted is in Polish. I don't speak polish so it would be difficult to appreciate the characters in the game. *sigh*

Seeing the ludicrous statements FeministFrequency makes, it's becoming increasingly harder for me to take anything seriously that they put out.

@thatpinguino: I think there's a knee jerk reaction to anything produced by Feminist Frequency. Anita has done a sub-par to adequate job on previous videos, not just the ones related to gaming, but tends to get praise as if she did a great job, so there tends to be push back on anything she puts out. The brand is tainted for some, while others will always give it an automatic pass. I think this was by far the least problematic video they've produced, so I don't get some of the complaints.

I got a good laugh out of that scissoring section of the Jen Frank story.

@sergio: Sure, her videos are far from perfect. But lashing out against everything she puts out, without exception, is not especially worthwhile. She address some real issues, even if she goes about it in a ham-fisted way sometimes. It seems like people take every Feminist Frequency video as a cue to air the same handful of grievances over and over again, without intellectually engaging with the particular new video in question. It really gets tiresome.

I found this video to be especially pertinent because it condenses a whole lot of what keeps most women from being comfortable in gaming down to 5 minutes. There's no grandstanding or pontificating. Just example after example of things guys usually don't have to worry about when playing games. It seems like some people in this thread find it condescending, but then I guess every PSA is condescending to someone by that logic.

If it's for PC on the game info page on Origin you can download and automatically install the english voice pack (i did this because i prefer the the original voicework over the usual veeeery sub-par italian dubs). I haven't looked for it, but i imagine there is an option to change the text language in game too.

You're noting "earned" privilege, where the video concerns "inherent" privilege (which can play a heavy role in earned privilege).

That seems more like a great method of enabling dissenters to ignore every problem of inequality simultaneously. Crowdsourcing a message in that way leads more often toward "We Are The World" than "I have a dream." Everyone gets to nod their head, feel great about how tolerant they are, then return to behaving exactly the same way.

Presenting a diverse of opinions - in what goals we aim to achieve, in how to achieve them - is valuable for granting the ignorant an emotional or an intellectual route to supporting causes of social mobility. Generally, I'd agree that activist organizations should work in cooperation, but insisting that they present a unified message to the public dilutes the human element of their arguments and makes it more difficult to specify tangible objectives in lieu of universal platitudes.

I'd also be wary of neutering a message for fear of alienating the people who are least likely to hear your case. If the content of an argument won't convince them, there's little chance a change of tone will.

Yeah I have the voice pack, but in the options I can't seem to change it to any other language for the text. Someone on another forum also said that the Eastern European versions might have their language locked due to the "fight against key sellers" and such.

But, what happens when things don't change? Isn't that the point of talking about it?

@thatpinguino: While I don't think it's worth rehashing some of the same arguments that some people bring up, I think it's valid to remain skeptical of her work until she's not only improved her work, but done so on a consistent basis.

I feel like the last video has more to do with "casual gamers" rather than the "hardcore ones". sinc emost of the online games today are shooters like COD the people that play those probably only play those games so it might be them who still do not accept woman in gaming culture. just a thought

I'd say it has to do more with developers and publishers. A lot of those points were directly related to marketing.

Casual gamer and hardcore gamer has nothing to do with anything in my opinion. It's bad people and good people. I won't lie though, there is a stark contrast between how a woman is addressed in online games as opposed to a male. The mute button is a very very very crucial button for women. I'd say that making it easy to mute, flag, and block individuals who are harassing you is about as far as we need to go with these subjects. It's the perfect defense mechanism for this stuff.

Whenever I play online games, as a male, I use the mute button for anyone that I don't want to hear as soon as I hear it. Not until after I confront the person if they're being a bigot and ask them to apologize though. It's incredibly easy to make an online environment that is unwelcoming a lot more welcoming provided the developer gives you the tools to do so.

Vivianne can't be romanced? The wiki says both male and females can have sex with her, is Giant Bomb... wrong?

That 25 list video was one of the most condescending things I have ever seen.

@humanity: Actually it's not a stare because if you look at their eyes, they dart back and forth. They're ALL reading from a teleprompter. Not one could be assed to learn their lines or, even better, come up with a point of their own and speak from their heart.

Thank you for posting the Feminist Frequency video Patrick.

@jdci: I think you have a very good point, but I would say that one issue does not need to replace the other.

Ideally, we would start to see more minorities in games as well, and not only in games like GTA which do tend to reinforce stereotypes (CJ is awesome, but he is not the most original).

We will have to take The Walking Dead and AC 3 for now... while hoping for more!

also, edit since I just saw someone else answered to your post and provided a very interesting insight. But also, don't take it as a criticism of your point, I think they agree with you as well :)