Nabeel Ansari

Find the quotes, I will send the money! I need not say more, comparing my position on sexism in games to what you conjecture my position on gun control is (I've never once expressed to you my position on gun control, so not sure how you formulated it) is really cheeki breeki. Yes, but there is a difference between forcing people not to make sexist media and actually changing their mind about how they view gender/sex differences so that they don't feel creating sexist media is appropriate or something they actually want to do. A very tangible way of doing that is boycotting or otherwise discouraging the consumption of said media. Since a lot of motivation behind these depictions are the effervescent "sex sells!" adage, proving that wrong to content creators who use that as a primary motivation is a great start. Taking the game off the shelves as a "no-no" to content creators, on the other hand, is not as much. This approach doesn't stifle sexist expression; it removes the creator's need and perhaps even desire for it (in the specific circumstance where the need is motivated economically rather than... artistically)

There is no actual shred of english-mounted logic you can use to support this statement. I genuinely feel at a loss trying to explain to you that the conclusions you draw are not actually mathematically correct. There is nothing you can do to equate: "Raising people to be less okay with systemic sexism is more effective than policing systemic sexism" with "Systemic sexism is not a problem" the only functional equivalences of the former argument you're allowed to deduce within the english language are these: 1. "Policing systemic sexism is less effective than raising people to be less okay with systemic sexism" Oh, there's only one. You can argue that I'm wrong, sure, you can argue that raising people to be less okay with systemic sexism is not more effective than policing it, then you're actually holding a contrary opinion that makes sense in the context of the discussion. Instead you're bringing in these whacko equivalence relations and absurdem fallacies. So now let's get to when you do in fact do that. You seem to have gone a long way to put literally shit tons of words into my mouth about "internal people" and "the real me" and misrepresenting an argument you supposedly think I was trying to make (again, no quotes you can find to support that I said any of those things). The last thing I said on the subject was that a sexist society reinforces sexist media. This is something you agree with, which is that sexist people, defined on your terms by people who perform sexist actions, do in fact perform sexist actions, in this context creating sexist media. We're not in disagreement here. You can't disagree with tautology. My counter-claim is that sexist media ("sexist actions") does not instigate, influence, or otherwise partially encourage previously non-sexist people (on your terms, people who do not perform sexist actions) to become sexist people (to then start performing sexist actions). So policing it is ineffective, because it's trying to stifle an effect that doesn't actually exist. Any further deliberation on your part to pick apart the words of what is a "sexist person" vs. "a person who does sexist things" and similar dealings is just derailing the conversation into an argument of semantics instead of actually talking about anything productive. If the latter is your goal, please say so so I can promptly ignore you.

That's not the implication at all; the implication is that people creating sexist media is entirely symptomatic of a sexist society. I'm saying that people are doing sexist things because society is sexist, and that policing sexist actions to try and fix the sexist society (what Anita is trying to do when she judgmentally casts gamers as sick people because they enjoy this stuff) will not work, but that treating the sexist society at the root of its sexism will in fact work. Treating the symptoms (policing media representation) does not treat the illness (people creating sexist representations because society raised them and allowed them to grow up into sexist tendencies and thought processes without consequence). When I point out that correlation does not equal causation, it's not to support the claim that society is disconnected from products of society; it's to re-enable the consideration of a potential conclusion that is the reverse of what Anita suggests (so the correlation may be causation, but the cause and effect are reversed). Anita says that sexist media is what reinforces sexism. I think that's backwards, I think a sexist society reinforces sexist media, and whether both are equally valid or not, I hold the latter is a more practical way to view the issue, and is more reconcilable with trends in the history of human sociology (which is that deep rooted tendencies manifest themselves in expression, not that expression creates deep rooted tendencies). To clarify, I don't fully agree with DJP's view on the issue, which is that these depictions and whatnot in media aren't necessarily unhealthy for society; I think he's got a valid point, but since these depictions and representations bother sums of people, their voices need to be heard as well. And if we want to do something about it, we shouldn't follow Anita down this judgmental pseudo-censorship rabbit hole, because that's a waste of time and human resources.

U wont

I will actually PayPal you $10 if you can show me a specific quote that shows "actions" =/= "behavior" (something I never talked about, ever). Otherwise you're doing what you usually do in discussions on OCR, which is derail them by taking sarcastic, unsubstantiated shots and strawmans at everyone you disagree with.

detractors employ statistically correct logic, how tragic

I got a snerk out of this.

I... don't understand what you're saying, I'm sorry. How is "impact" excluded from "causation"? Are you saying that while correlation is absolved from implying causation, it is not absolved from arbitrary degrees of "affecting"? I feel like that undermines the whole point of the distinction between correlation and causation, which is that just because you see two things share a pattern does not necessarily mean they have anything to do with each other. That's Statistics 101 (like, it actually is, you learn that in Statistics 101).

Not if the former is the champion figurehead that spawns the latter. Going after simply the symptoms and outliers does not overall a cure make. Not sure who you're targeting with this, but for one, I don't really disagree with her about her observance of tropes (tropes are tropes after all), I have issues with how poorly she conveys them and makes herself (and by extension the feminist cause) an easy target for harassment ("look how fucking stupid Anita Sarkeesian is feminists make no sense").

We're not disregarding it, we're more or less saying "make a better argument before we join you". Burden of proof falls on the people making the claim; if someone is making a claim, and they can't substantiate it, that doesn't make the claim wrong, no, but just because the claim has the potential to be right doesn't mean we should go ahead and validate it without the proper thought. Is women's portrayal in games a problem? Abso-fucking-lutely. Even if you argue that there's nothing wrong with objectification, there are people who feel attacked by this kind of stuff, and their voices need to be heard. Pretty much anyone besides white males has the potential for having a problem with their representation in media, and that's fine, because it's okay to want a fair equal society. But that's not the issue we're attacking here. Anita is making a claim that we can't validate, which is that the stuff we see in games is translating to sexist thought processes and solidifying the poor treating of women in society. Is this an outlandish claim? Absolutely fucking not, it's absolutely plausible to believe that could be a thing, knowing what we know about human society and how much media can affect us on a deeper level. It's also an incredibly strong claim with profound implications, so it needs to be treated as such and scrutinized as such. So don't spread it around if it hasn't actually been proven and mask it as if it has been proven. That's stupid. Because even if you get the dregs of Tumblr following your shitty logic, you won't get people who know how to think twice to follow you. I'm not a fucking asshole, and if it needs to be said, if there was evidence (that Anita mentions but never shows) for her claims, I would say "yeah, that's kinda messed up. I'm on your side." Instead I don't really take her seriously because while her intentions are good, I can't really have a peace of mind that the specific details of what she's doing are in any way valid or helpful. I don't really right now personally think that fixing game representation is in any way going to have any impact on commonplace social misogyny in real life, so I don't really care about fixing games. Because ultimately, it will do nothing, because my understanding of art/history serves me the idea that art is symptomatic of cultural problems (absolutely the opposite of being one of the roots, if not the root). It could be a feedback loop (between art feeding culture and culture feeding art back) in some circumstances, but again... the claim that big boobed characters somehow connects to passive breeding of real life misogyny seems like something that needs some serious review. She disagrees, but is offering nothing I can latch onto for her to persuade me. The "we don't need you anyway" argument is laughable. If you're trying to do good, and you need to build a cause, you need all you can get. So that's a bad thing if she's right all along. Because damaging her credibility damages her cause. I think she has her causation backwards, and I think she has her cause backwards. I think to fix game representation, we need to focus on methods to fix misogyny in society. Things like improving education for kids and whatnot, both in clinical/health areas and better social conditioning. The art will naturally improve by consequence.

It's more fun when you can say "it's my business to know the competition" A lot of composers need to hear this.

That would be "the everything bundle", which includes their entire line of... well, everything. All 4 Albions, the whole BML line, all of Sable, all of Mural, eDNA 1-4, all their one-offs and specialties, etc. It's like the "elite british orchestral komplete". Spitfire recently has actually toned down to be in the realm of "super expensive but not ridiculously expensive" ever since they stopped being so incredibly secretive and "VIP club" towards specific composers. I think Albion used to be around $1000 (and actually, back in the day, so was Komplete regular). Even if you're not interested now, in the future their offerings might be useful to you and each big product is usually in the range of $400-$500, so you don't need to immediately write them off. For something like Sable Vol I, it puts it in the same price tier as stuff like CS2 and CineStrings, so you can judge and compare accordingly.

wow, that's a pretty shitty world view man. :/ there's more at stake here than your arbitrary standards

I mean it comes down to the question of should a noble goal be carried out with crappy or shaky methods using things like bad rhetoric or logic? I personally don't think it should, and I think that sets a precedent that allows people to be taken seriously regardless of what they say is sound (and if they don't happen to be supporting a noble goal, then that is actually a problem). I don't agree that only the conclusion matters. That's ultimately an "ends justify the means" kind of thing, and as kind of obviously follows, the world is more complicated than can be summed up in single clever sentences. I think the means matter, even in cases where the conclusion isn't expressly pushing for a call to action. That's because if you set an idea in motion using bad rhetoric, people will listen to you, and it will spread, most times at an equal or lesser rhetorical validity as you. If that idea is a bad idea, regardless of whether it's calling to action or not, it certainly is spreading shitty opinions. And when the non-call spreads around, someone is going to feel strongly about it, employ a new call to action, using the bad rhetoric they've been served, and now headaches all around, because now someone is trying to actually do something about it, blow the issue out of proportion or otherwise target blame on the wrong aspects of it. The other people who take it more seriously and look into it get cast aside, as is usually the case with fact checkers being rendered incapable of keeping up with viral internet spreads. And that's drum beating in a nutshell; the internet is an echo chamber, and it is a problem even if it doesn't affect how people do, because it affects what people think. To be specific, actually and irresponsibly correlating behavior in art with behavior in real life (I'm all for believing it if it's been shown or verified, but it hasn't as of yet) and stopping short of saying "let's do something about it" is still bad. Because even if she doesn't say it, someone will, and it'll gain traction. Her goal is noble enough, so why doesn't she bother putting in the effort to solidify her communications? It can only serve to help her.

Well, firstly, I don't think he was saying that, I think he was offering useful information to other readers since threads aren't in a vacuum. Albion ONE is $367 in their cyber sale that's happening in a couple days. How is that more expensive than OE1 and 2 combined? I'm talking about Albion ONE (remake of Albion Volume I, which by the way just came out, so you should go watch the videos for it) which is just the first out of 4 and the only one you need (the rest of the volumes are specific use-case and additional expressions). I'm not saying you have to go and get it, in fact my advice is always to buy something only if you're going to use it. But in terms of features, sound, and price, it is overall a much better option than OE1. If you feel like you're trying to get bang for your buck here, you should at least look at it, because I personally think OE1 isn't really a solid option at all. I'm a little more cautious probably because I've been burned by dropping money on seemingly good libraries that just don't really hold up after I start using them. Albion ONE I have used extensively, and it is the one library I recommend to people for "easy orchestra" because 1) it can be as simple or flexible as you want, 2) Spitfire's mics and hall are amazing, 3) the programming and articulations are excellent, and it even has polyphonic legato, 4) it covers the orchestra in a lot of useful subparts. OE1 by comparison 1) is kind of too simple, 2) has no sound mixing options, 3) doesn't have the same breadth of articulations and the programmig is more dated and 4) kind of traps you in some weirder, specific multis. However, I will say that if you want OE1 not for writing orchestral music but for the "one key full orchestra", then yes, it's a better option. Albion doesn't include any patches for cross-family writing.

I know this isn't answering your question, but if you're looking for a multi library, and unless you're on a tight deadline, I strongly recommend waiting for some extra cash and buying Spitfire Albion ONE (the new one) instead. It's like Orchestral Essentials in design, but was released a few months ago, by an arguably incredibly superior skilled company (Spitfire is the elite of elite), with way better sound quality, mic options, programming, articulations, and extra goodies (it has "epic" percussions too, along with hybrid synth stuff, etc.) It is the holy grail of all-in-one multi libraries. It does not have choir though, if that factors into your decision. Just some advice on what's out there, arguably always good to know before making a purchase.

This thread is just a bunch of people yelling at each other and not reading each other's posts

Male is a sex, not a gender

Hmm, I'm not sure this makes sense to me. In what context can you "if and only if" equate the words "official" with "government"? Official has a broad class of meaning, and if you limit it to authority, certainly you could say the artist is the authority of their own work, and their official examining of their own work in light of Sarkeesian's (honestly really poorly constructed) critique in order to please her and her followers as a consumer, that's definitely altering for objectionable content. It has to do with the motivation. If the artist feels a certain way, and then changes his/her mind, then yes, that is not censorship. However, if the artist changes the art not because of how he/she feels but because of outside pressure, that is censorship. Consumers don't really want X, as evidenced by the loud reactions against Sarkeesian's movement. Sex sells, it has never not sold, and it always will sell so long as our culture is motivated by money and gratification. A business purely motivated by economic considerations, as you try to pose here, would realize that they'd sell far more if they "sell out" and go for the cheap objectification. It would take someone who genuinely cares about progressive principles to make a progressive game; the economics will never justify it so long as our culture is the way it is. Feminist Frequency hasn't changed the consumer behavior all that much, in fact it more often than not has created a negative default reaction by gamers and has kind of ruined progressiveness in games because now people are going to complain that progressive games are politically correct, affected by the "feminist cult" and boycott/spread hate about them because they'll correlate stuff like her show to a decrease in the media they like. That's not a step forward, it's a step backward. She's alienated the people that she's supposed to bring to her side (if she actually wants to change cultural impressions and change what consumers want in their games).

He's claiming Anita herself says it, not just people on the Internet.

If that's the case then the primary disagreement here is not anything to do with free speech principle, it has to do with the fact that he claims to have proof of the explicit admission of calling for banning games and you claim there is none. It seems the burden of proof is on him. @Shadowe: can you please provide actual links to the behavior you're talking about? The conversation can't really advance beyond if one person is saying "they're doing it' and one is saying "they're not doing it" ping ponging at each other.

In the interest of free speech, criticism that tries to silence other criticism invalidates itself as passive speech and solidifies it as being used for an agenda. Game critics can criticize games. Game makers can criticize critics (for reasons like how they criticize their games). No one disagrees with that. However, when game critics try to censor, ban, or otherwise encourage the removal of certain games, they are transgressing what freedom of speech actually protects. Simultaneously, when game makers try to silence or harass critics to encourage them to stop, they are also transgressing beyond what freedom of speech actually protects. The gist of it is that you're allowed to say what you want to say. You are *not* allowed to (insofar as "allowed to" meaning "not protected as an express right") go and remove what you don't like by taking action, and that action can just as well be classified as propaganda, slander, and misrepresentation (the critic side) as it can be as targeted harassment, banning speakers (the GamerGate side), etc.

If you look at it as a system, you're bounded by the error of the person who transcribed the MIDI. In other words, if the person gets it wrong in the MIDI, and you go off the MIDI, you're now arranging that person's false interpretation of the original music. Subjectively speaking, there's absolutely nothing "wrong" with this, but it would behoove people to train their ears to the point where they understand that sometimes game music is written a lot more complicated than it sounds, and the complicated writing of the original music gives far more room to work with and create interesting music from than simplified stuff done by "tone-deaf noobz". In other words, nothing better than the original, and train your ears first obviously, then trust your ears.

The issue doesn't lie in what you're saying, but rather how you're saying it. You're saying it incredibly pompously and dismissively, as if you're anyone who's deserving of trust on career advice in the musical realm. Yes, VGM covers is hard. You can tell someone "VGM covers are not lucrative for xyz reasons so I discourage pursuing it as a main career" instead of "lol good luck being dirt poor sorry-not-sorry for being a fucking asshole". In short, stick to facts, anecdotes, stats, etc. when your word alone isn't credible, generally don't dismiss people who have genuine questions, and save the "sorry kid, not gonna happen" attitude for when you have insightful career advice to give someone and it is an appropriate counter-attitude to the way the advisee frames the question (i.e. if the person asking is also an asshole, you could finagle a justification for your response).

This is pretty terrible advice and has creepy anti-intellectual subtext. For shame, Timaeus.