Arsenic Lupin posted:

Relevant Twitter thread.

https://twitter.com/spiantado/status/1167918514851610624

Savy Saracen salad posted:

Massive age differences (10- 15 years) in marriage is extremely common across the world and if you travel the globe especially in the east you will encounter it a lot.

My niece whom was 19 met an 33 year old olympic swimmer on a trip to seychelles and absolutely fell in love with him. She got married without the approval of my sister whom disapproved of his culture and his religion but age was not a factor. When we finally got to meet him we found out he was a very nice man and we got to calling him philips because he was tall as a pine tree.

Age differences in marriage is pretty common all the way from morocco to the china. Hell one of the most celebrated rulers in the Middle East, the Hashemites of Jordan, married one of their princess (Haya) to another ruler also celebrated in the west, the ruler of Dubai Mohammed bin Rashid. And he was in his loving 60s while she was at best in her early twenties.

Siljmonster posted:

i could name a few names if yall want

achillesforever6 posted:

I think in a much better world where we've gotten rid of the punitive prison system it would be less that Brock Turner escapes consequences for his actions he would just be put in a system that would actively try to actual rehabilitate and restore him. But that's just the prison/cop abolitionist in me talking.

StabMasterArson posted:

Unlucky7 posted:

I don’t know if this has been mentioned but Jeremy Soule lawyered up and send Nathalie Lawhead a cease and desist

https://twitter.com/alienmelon/status/1170045954516373504?s=21

Steve Yun posted:

I don’t blame StabArsonMan for posting it because it’s the only comic out of that guy’s portfolio that can be interpreted in a way that I agree with.

Because I looked up the artist’s other stuff now I get that his intent was “sometimes predators pretend to be feminists therefore no male feminists are trustworthy” but before I had any context I took it as “sometimes predators pretend to be feminists therefore not all male feminists are trustworthy”

Grapplejack posted:

is she saying that zach's apology thing was fake or insincere? or is this just about his friend trying to cover for him

No. 1 Apartheid Fan posted:

This isn't a novel observation at all, both because that is a strategy willfully-malicious predators use to snare people, but also because it's just true of any group of people. Some feminists are rapists. Some queers are thieves. Some autistic people are murderers. Why? Because they're people, and no one identity variable is capable of fully explaining poo poo like violent crime. It doesn't mean those things even necessarily have a single thing to do with each other.

You're not wrong, I just don't know why this observation is anything special or useful. It's like saying there's assholes on every side of a debate without specifying percentages or what you mean by "assholes". Of course there are, there's assholes everywhere.

Endorph posted:

Because the thing that these people are pretending at (being feminist) is specifically tied into the things they're doing (preying on women) instead of just being a generic bad thing. They use the veneer to infiltrate spaces where women feel safe and then prey on them. Autistic people aren't especially known for being non-murder-y, and queer people aren't known for not stealing your radios. Autistic people don't use the power of their autism in order to get close to people in a space where they feel less likely to be murdered.

Peaceful Anarchy posted:

Most of them aren't pretending, at least not consciously. They just have a different idea of what feminism is, what consent is and/or how important it is for them to live up to their own ideals. Most of them are rear end in a top hat hypocrites, but they aren't infiltrating feminism or pretending that they believe women should be empowered. Their though process is probably more like "of course I believe women should have equal pay and equal rights and sexual freedom. And since I'm so great, they will of course use that sexual freedom to have sex with me." I assume it's more complex than that, but they do superficially believe themselves to be feminist, and may even be so in many aspects, they just don't see and/or care that their actions don't follow in other aspects.

The reason that comic is garbage is because the underlying implication is men can't be feminists, anyone who acts like they are is just a predator pretending. The reality is nearly everyone fails to live up to their own ideals in some way and there's a huge variety in how far they fall short and how they react to falling short and whether they even care. Normal good people see their mistakes, and try to minimize them going forward, make amends and make efforts to be better. Predators are inherently selfish, and so when they fail to live up to their ideals they either deny it to themselves, or make excuses why that doesn't count or why they're personally an exception. None of that means that they're faking their ideals, they just place themselves above their ideals.

There are sociopaths who do fake and infiltrate, but they are a small minority. The distinction is important not because either one is a valid excuse for their horrible actions, but because saying someone like Joss Whedon is a fake feminist, instead of a feminist who is also a lovely person who maybe doesn't really understand feminism and certainly doesn't live up to it, gives personal cover to all the other genuinely lovely self identifying feminists. Instead of thinking "hmm, I'm also a male feminist and I've done some lovely things, I should consider those things I've done and how I live up to my own ideals" they think "well I know what I believe, and my feminism even if it's not perfect is genuine, so obviously I'm not a predator because I'm not fake."

Lt. Danger posted:

AAA-gaming isn't about monetisation/"casinos for pre-teens" any more than it was about Woozy's "open-world action game with RPG elements". At various times AAA-gaming has described: graphics-demo Quake clones; WW2 or modern military shooters; cover shooters; heavy use of cinematics; open-world mechanics; multiplayer mechanics; RPG mechanics; games-as-service. The common thread is that these trends are identified as "the next big thing" and get money poured into them on a massive scale, with commeasurate results. But even these trends are temporary and pass with time - now Gears 5 is the throwback!

The fading (not failure) of genres like the RTS, the wRPG etc. doesn't have a lot to do with AAA production - I would suggest many genres were dwindling in prominence before the mid-00s, when AAA games really took off. "Inherent flaws" is less about how levelling up is a bad mechanic (in this context, surely a positive? it's that Skinner-box effect that brought RPG elements into your Call of Dutys and Assassin's Creeds) and more about how the base attributes of those genres have made them obsolete or limited appeal. You used to play point-and-click adventure games because, despite the pixelbitching, the linearity, the nonsensical moon-logic, that was the only way to get a developed narrative in your game; when technology advanced enough that cinematics and in-engine cutscenes were possible in other genres, when design philosophies emerged that integrated narrative into the game in new ways, then point-and-click games found themselves without an ecological niche. See also interactive fiction for an even earlier example.

It's not that these genres are bad, it's that the medium and the audience as a whole changed around them, inevitably so. But this is a largely academic tangent - we already know grognard communities are full of alt-right bigots, and we know modern bigots have persecution complexes and a fear of change.

The 7th Guest posted:

not that I disagree but I thought gears 5's campaign has open world levels, sidequests and mild rpg progression

RazzleDazzleHour posted:

A huge contributor to the western perspective on RPGs is also where a lot of the people who were making these games were coming from. Back in the 80's, tabletop gaming was pretty much exclusively seen as a virgin basement-dweller hobby, but that's the primary influence for a huge portion of the early PC RPGs like Might and Magic, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Arcanum, Avernum, Ultima, you get the idea. A lot of the console games were more marketable to women simply because they didn't stem from this niche. Using PCs was already a nerdy hobby, but then playing PC games about Elves and Orcs was basically the ultimate social suicide. It wasn't that these games were just struggling to attract women, they were struggling to attract any diversity among men as well. This is why pretty much every one of these studios went under as soon as making games required a sizeable team and investment - the money wasn't there

ImpAtom posted:

There have been multiple sources including family and coworkers who have confirmed this was a thing. That is the best we are going to get.

Cease to Hope posted:

There's also the fact that Projared's "exoneration" video had a bunch of Kiwifarms-style digging bullshit about how one of the accusers had had a traumatic brain injury before to try to undermine their story

Yardbomb posted:

'History' games period are always gonna have different flavors of intolerable people in all the different nooks and crannies of the community, nowhere even close to limited to just nazis, I've run across a whole lotta Stalin apologists, theocracy lust and more in there too, that's unfortunately something that's just not getting fixed, a game with a focus on any given period of time where you can futz around with the events as any side is always going to have people who support whack poo poo skulking around, so as long as it's not pushing content that's just up front nazi poo poo or tankie poo poo or fundie poo poo then the game itself is fine.

Viewtiful Jew posted:

I feel like because some of these were pretty active voices in telling gamers not to be shitheads or fuckers, when it turned out that they themselves were...shitheads and fuckers in their own way that some people don't wanna bring them up because it would be like, okay, so were your words all this time just hollow poo poo? Like rules for thee but not for me?

Matt Conn for instance, over half a decade he spent trying to make himself a big name in LGBT Gaming. And it's like, how true were the things he said about wanting queer gaming to have a safe space to congregate if some of his actions contradicted that? And what does it mean if the people put in charge of the various stuff he founded after he resigned still support him and his personal claims in any capacity?

Wanderer posted:

I've actually tried to Google this and come up short. Did Burch actually do anything besides having his marriage blow up in a humiliating way?

Viewtiful Jew posted:

He's seemingly done quite a few bad things that people know of but a bunch of those are not their story to tell so most of the time all someone can do is warn others about him.

https://twitter.com/winnersusedrugs/status/1018327097528520704

Anthony being horrible in a bunch of ways is such an open secret that he'll seemingly never get prominent work in gaming ever again so most people at this point seem to just be content with sealing him in a box labeled "Seriously if you ever see this dude, do not trust." and filing it away.

Bust Rodd posted:

No, that’s why the Hollywood sex pest thread is readable and this one is like flipping through a yearbook from a school you didn’t go to.

Dr. Stab posted:

Gosh, it's like you guys didn't go on gametrailers every day after class.

dogstile posted:

I remember Anthony Burch because the motherfucker could not shut up about his personal life and came across as a massive tool, so i just wasn't surprised.

Harvey Birdman posted:

Anthony got bounced from Riot a while ago, iirc for an inappropriate joke in the workplace which considering it's Riot uh..... must have been pretty bad.

Accordion Man posted:

At least she actually has a successful VA career, so things are better for her.

Cease to Hope posted:

There's a lot of reasons #metoo doesn't really take off in games.

The uptick in gaming harassment campaigns since 2012-2013-ish also makes it harder. It's not so much that someone like Anthony Burch had the "right" politics and nobody wanted to speak out about him; generally people love tearing down hypocrites. The problem is that nobody wants to make accusations that might turn them into the target of a Gamergate-style mob, and that those mobs tend to kick up so much stupid or fake noise that it's hard for credible accusations to get any traction. When people are gossiping about Anthony Burch going on bad dates and being a huge annoying nerd, that makes it harder for credible accusations of abuse to get any oxygen.

Cease to Hope posted:

it's more "burch says the right stuff about other people, so it's more likely nobody will believe me or that he'll be able to turn things back on me."

Viewtiful Jew posted:

When I brought up Anthony in the "Internet Reviewers Thread" this past summer Dan Olson actually mentioned something I had never known about in that Anthony is apparently known for just like, taking credit from people who are on the same writing team he is. Like I know there's the "Dude literally wrote BL2 by copying Reddit Memes" meme itself but this was more like, no he'll literally say that an idea someone else came up with was his and he'll take the credit for it. And it was presented by Dan in such a nonchalant manner like it wasn't some new secret or anything It was seemingly something people in his circle knew so well that to him it was just like, basic knowledge and another reason someone shouldn't work with with the older Burch.

Viewtiful Jew posted:

The thread moves fast so it's probably bunches of pages back from the end at this point. Like, a month or two.

Star Guarded posted:

The current CEO of Failbetter responded with his personal thoughts on AK, with evidence. It's pretty damning, IMO, and distinctly lays out 1) what claims from others he has evidence for and 2) claims from others he believes based on his own experiences with him, along with a few examples (with evidence) of his own mistreatment:

https://medium.com/@wastebooks/alexis-kennedy-71044efc0ecf

Nessus posted:

For a while I was like, "see, you can write like Lovecraft without being a shithead" and welp, he's outshitted the old goblin.

Pulcinella posted:

Whoa what did Max Temkin do? (He was one of the co-creators of Cards Against Humanity and probably the most visible part of it for those who don’t know.)


Capitalism is lovecraftian. A vast, uncaring system that barely notices those it crushes and operates on a very different, often inscrutable, system of morality very different from our own. Also it can be ridiculously racist just like Lovecraft.

Wanderer posted:

Exactly what do you mean when you say "Lovecraftian?"

Patware posted:

yeah even if you judge the article as an attempt at sex-positive journalism it's still just... a bad job. she did a bad job. does kotaku just publish whatever the gently caress these days

Bust Rodd posted:

There’s also a creepy wave of male-feminism that basically sexualizes woman under the guise of sex positivity but it’s much more akin to fetishization and once you start to notice the difference you realize how often people just let it slide.

Kchama posted:

I mean in Harlan Ellison's case he totally did this, so maybe it's at least a proper term. Along with rapist.

He was also a big enough name to do stuff like put dudes in hospital pretty much at random and not get any sort of trouble. Like he ambushed the president of NBC and beat him to a pulp for having slighted him and everyone just shrugged it off.

Never mind him groping women on stage or bragging about all the rape he got up to.

kirbysuperstar posted:

That 9S fanfic they published was like, "yeah I think I'm done here"

Motto posted:

I think that whole episode was part of a vaguely patronizing effort to engage with fanwork, and they let whatever pass because fanfic is wacky and weird, right? That said I didn't read the corporate published 9S forcefem crossover fic beacuse why the gently caress

Kagaya Homoraisan posted:

It was but they absolutely should've been more careful about trans adjacent stuff specifically cuz like a month before it Danielle Rindeau went on one of her poo poo tangents and yelled at the red strings club for deadnaming a character (a game made by 3 people, one of whom was trans, and it was a deliberate and thoughtful statement) and people rightfully blew up at them. Their response was "okay we don't get trans stuff cuz none of the editors are trans but we will work hard to do this correctly". And then right after it's 9S force fem fanfic on the front page. After the fanfic poo poo their internal lesson was "okay never write about trans people again" which on one hand good if that's the alternative to pieces like that but otoh lol at being completely incapable of doing it without loving it up in the most fundamental ways.

Kagaya Homoraisan posted:

No she doesn't and she's also just a really obnoxious person who has a habit of speaking for people who don't want it. She gets to keep her job after going after people several times though so cool.

ErIog posted:

This is because Patrick's byline should most accurately read, "Correspondent, NeoGAF."

Hub Cat posted:

A.M. Darke who is Zack 'Jick' Johnson's ex-wife did a response thread to his post on the Kingdom of Loathing forums. She also tried to post a response directly in the KoL thread and her account is locked down because I guess Jick is just petty like that.
https://twitter.com/prettydarke/status/1180574308885598208?s=20
https://twitter.com/prettydarke/status/1180933553908924416?s=20

Edit:She deleted her twitter I attempted to summarize in a post below.

dogstile posted:

It's a cover your rear end thing. I assume he's been caught out before and is now covering his rear end on everything. "I like this but only if its not problematic i hope its not" is usually a sign of that.

Wanderer posted:

The smart thing about Sarkeesian's critique in general is that she couched it in terms of audience exposure, that basically, there are women playing your games, and playing games in general, but maybe there'd be more if a good 75% of the games on the stands weren't some kind of rear end-soaked cleavage festival for what amounted to no reason.

You definitely started to see a sea change about that around 2015 or so, and I feel reasonably confident in saying that Sarkeesian was a factor. I don't think she'd have been if not for, as noted upthread, the Streisand effect; without her profile going up as high as it did, I figure her end destination was probably as a producer at an indie studio making female-friendly games.

Endorph posted:

A lot of female devs on games she criticized in her videos reached out to ask if they wanted to like, interview them or something for her show and got completely stonewalled. I definitely remember one of the animators on skullgirls feeling kind of hurt by the complete radio silence she got in response. And she usually didn't even bother mentioning if a game had a female developer or if a character had a female designer. Obviously that doesn't mean those things are automatically feminist but in a feminism 101 thing you'd think that'd be worth bringing up in a 'feminism is complicated and people can have different views or goals when creating art' way.

And she kind of just did a poor job researching what games had female fanbases. There's a fair few times where she just takes a game's fanbase being majority male as read even though it has a fairly evenly split fanbase, or even majority female. (JRPGs in general, whenever those came up in her videos.)

It's not the literal worst crime ever committed by man but in something that's going to be a lot of people's introduction to this kind of critique it set a weird precedent in terms of how people handle those angles, especially in terms of, like I said, guys who are ostensibly well-meaning but really dopey and bad at nuance. Which isn't her fault directly but could have been alleviated some by taking a more broad 'here are some of the angles women see these things from' approach and talking to women who have different takes on the use of sexuality in games.

Of course a lot of this could also have been avoided if there was just more of this kind of critique in general at the time so again, not really her fault wholly. At worst it's like, mediocre criticism with a lot of blindspots that got elevated to absurd importance through no real fault or action of her own.

EimiYoshikawa posted:

There's a reason I skipped straight from Blood Money (played when it released, absolutely loved it) to Hitman (2016) and Hitman 2 (bought both at the same time).

I'm very glad that IOI seems to have gotten over its weird gross sexist bullshit adolescence, so thank you to Ms Sarkeesian if she had any influence over their doing that, or even if she didn't.

Hub Cat posted:

Its not just sex crimes, financial abusers will tell you all about how their victim is bad with money so they just have to keep it safe you see? Physical abusers, Well she said mean things and maybe she shoved me so I had to hit her it was just self defense and even if it wasn't she deserved it!. And So on and So on Its part ego defense and part deflection.

The Jick's and Alexis Kennedy's of the world are just skilled enough writers to mostly hide it behind their language.

baka kaba posted:

there's a pattern to a lot of these apologies, where it becomes more of a generalised thing. Acknowledging bad, systemic things and owning up to (maybe) being a part of that. Spinning a lot of woke language and sadness about the general situation, like they're someone unrelated to these specific incidents but who wants to say something, because this is important dammit

It's all very carefully written to avoid copping to the specific accusations levelled at them, which is why you rarely see anyone go "I did the thing and I am so sorry about it", which is why it sounds like lawyer speak. A lot of the dudes mentioned ITT are professional writers too, so it's not just clumsy expression or an inability to put what they need to into words. They're capable of injecting humanity into what they write, but they're carefully stepping around the whole subject and directing it into critiquing society instead. And who among us does not live in a society?

Was it Jick who had that line that went something like "I alwys believed I was the victim of abuse in that relationship, but now I see that maybe I wasn't perfect myself" very magnanimous

CainFortea posted:

Her videos reminded me a lot of hashtag environmentalism. With the same kind of attitude of "So what if this point is wrong, global climate change is real!!".

Just because her overall points were right, doesn't make it a decent critique.

dogstile posted:

This dude 100% has weird poo poo in his closet and i'm just waiting for it to spill tbh