djpretzel

Uh-oh, I find myself agreeing with Meteo and nodding my head reading his post... getting worried Since I'm a word freak: there's a difference between something BEING responsible for something else, and something being HELD responsible for something else. Based on your "scientifically proven" comment (it's more that it hasn't been proven that causation exists, not that it's been proven that it doesn't exist, FYI), I'm thinking you meant BEING responsible, not being HELD responsible, right? Also, conservatives have had their share of demonizing art & asserting its causation with undesirable behaviors; it's a bipartisan hobby Here's my point: I'm interested in good art. If that art speaks to the human condition, explores new ideas, and asks me to face complexity and think about things differently, we're all good. Even if that art CAN be "scientifically proven" to increase violence in 5% of the population, over a short period of time after consumption, what then? Even if it IS responsible - to whatever extent - should it ever be HELD responsible? Also, what other effects are you studying? Maybe there's a compensating short or long-term benefit? Difficult to know... you don't really want to go down this road, as it doesn't lead to nice places w/ regard to artistic expression. Anita walks all the way down the road, stops at the big door at the end of the road, and ALMOST knocks... but then reminds everyone that she's NOT advocating for censorship OR saying that the games she criticizes shouldn't exist. Therein lies the problem: the "reasoning" all fits a certain pattern, but it's being excused because of a repeated disclaimer, which seems disingenuous given all the vitriol & certitude... He's... not wrong; NativeJovian seemed to give objectification an "out" as not inherently being sexist, but only if that objectification was for characters that weren't JUST window-dressing. Well, either you're okay with mindless sexual objectification or you're not... you need to decouple those issues. Is all pron sexist? Only some? In some ways, as Meteo points out, it's WORSE if a meaningful, well-written character is also inordinately voluptuous... it was a rather meaningless stipulation, in my mind...

I believe there have been some studies that suggest (not conclusively, but being conclusive about something like this is VERY difficult) that heterosexual male gamers often play as female characters simply because they'd rather spend more time staring at a female body than a male one. Personally? Guilty as charged. No shame.

Well said; I just don't view it as zero-sum, nor do I view "hardcore" gaming as something that necessarily needs to evaporate to let the medium truly flourish. It can't be the standard-bearer for the art form, sure, but I don't think it really has been, for some time... I like the enthusiast car metaphor, because I see a lot of parallels. I'll temporarily invoke some biology/evolutionary psychology and put it out there that males are inherently more aggressive/competitive and enjoy tinkering away for hours on end if it means an inch or two gain in whatever pissing contest is going on. I view this as a double-edged sword; it contributes to disproportionate amounts of male insecurity, posturing, & resource waste, but it also motivates autodidacts & fanatics to push boundaries. You see this in enthusiast car culture just as you see this in enthusiast PC build/overclocking culture just as you see it in hardcore gaming culture, which is related to the latter. Most of us drive cars, and MANY of us are interested in different models & partake in associating our own identity with the brand of automobile we choose to drive - no field of advertising is perhaps quite as saturated with identity politics as automobile sales. Enthusiast car culture exists alongside mainstream car culture; the former is largely male, the latter is uniformly diverse, by necessity. Is this problematic? Can there be niches within cultures/mediums that simply tend to break down along gender lines, or any other demographic lines? I think the answer is a resounding yes.... the only problem is when the enthusiast culture mistakes itself for the mainstream culture, I suppose But see here, if you look at how Anita was expressing herself, it WAS zero-sum... her statements were very clearly NOT of a "gaming needs to branch out & diversify" breed (as Larry rewrote them to be) but rather of a "this type of game is wrong and bad and needs to go away" ilk... thus the reaction. It's one thing to tell an enthusiast culture to make room, that the medium is a big enough umbrella for all types of folks. That's a message I can stand behind. It's quite another thing to tell enthusiast culture that it needs to crawl in a hole and die; this is more or less what Anita and Leigh went with, and it's just NOT necessary, or even desirable.

It's hard to know whether it became about profit (in some meaningful and compromising sense of the word) at some point AFTER it exploded, but I find it very difficult to believe that it was about profit from the get-go... no evidence to support that, in Zoe's case it was her boyfriend that kicked the whole sad & sorry sequence of events into motion, and in Anita's case I find it hard to fathom that she was sitting there planning on death threats being a key part of her fundraising strategy. That's a bit much to swallow... whether, after the money started flowing in, there were some realizations about what was effective and what was not is a different story... but even that doesn't HAVE to be compromising, or of paramount significance... it can just be pragmatism. Is Capitalism on trial? I think the "safe space" concept is probably appropriate, and I think something like this was probably inevitable. As for the "gods of marketing" proclaiming video games (or anything else) to thoroughly belong to a given demographic, I don't really think it works that way. It's a pleasant fiction to think that there are cadres of misled businessmen pulling the strings of an unwitting public and telling us who we are & how to be, but I think things grow up & evolve a little more organically than that.

I had a longer response but I'm gonna try again... I don't believe this is an accurate description of Anita's views; her videos actually focus less on storytelling and more on presentation, and she's very plainly demonizing some things being unacceptable to her, instead of criticizing the lack of variety (i.e. well-roundedness). I honestly & truthfully believe that had her videos advocated for "more well-rounded storytelling for female characters in games," that she would not have received 1/100th the hatred and attacks. There would still have been some, mind you, but we know from experience that even posting free VGM arrangements will piss SOME people off, and there's an undeniable vein of misogyny both online (in general) and in the gaming community specifically. Nevertheless, I feel that it was quite specifically the demonizing, negative tone, questionable knowledge of her subject matter, inconsistencies, sex-negative attitude towards objectification, and re-hash of failed second-wave feminist arguments that fueled the flames. A thoughtful analysis on the lack of variety, a critical exploration of the potential impacts (not certitudes, as she expresses them) of certain behaviors/depictions, and a thesis that truly emphasized improvement of the medium... coupled with a stronger grasp of her subject matter... very difficult to see how that would have had the same effect. Her views, as she has expressed them, very plainly deserve a great deal of criticism. Well, there's some seemingly-deserved criticism about lack of creation & following through on the KS on Anita's part, is there not? Especially given the degree to which it was over-funded? Surely this specific criticism can be acknowledged objectively & independent of anything else... As for magically getting a following based on harassment... no, it helps when you are: A member of a group that is oppressed/marginalized in some fashion Doing work that arguably involves exposing/fighting this oppression/marginalization Are able to successfully publicize this harassment in a context relevant to your work That's NOT a list of criticisms/faults, but it explains why not everyone being harassed is getting a following, even if they are creators. If the work they are doing is perceived as somehow relevant to combating the harassment they are experiencing, publicizing attacks can dovetail very nicely into efficient fundraising. It's hard to fault anyone too much for this, as it appears to simply be the new reality - hatred can be monetized, for better or worse. My objection is that this might tend to create situations that make it very tempting to characterize ANY criticism of you or your work as being an attack, or representative of those who have attacked you, to discredit the criticism outright AND to provide further evidence of the challenges you face... which require continued donations. It's not a great situation for meaningful discourse when you continually give your worst, most ridiculous opponents a megaphone so as to make your OWN case, then lump ANY criticism from other outlets into that same group... It isn't admirable.

GG may not have been primarily about "ethics in game journalism," as it has been thoroughly lambasted for claiming, but it also wasn't just about being in "favor" of harassment in the abstract. More of a sociopolitical schism between gamers at large, who are a diverse lot, and game journos, who seem to not only lean hard left, but be okay with injecting that ideology into something that ostensibly should be a little more neutral... if you ask me. No need for a reductionist counterclaim... much of what GG has been associated with, accurately or otherwise, impeaches itself without the need for oversimplification. Speaking as a liberal, I think the medium is rich enough to support works that speak to many different audiences, with criticism & coverage to match. I'm all for resuscitating this thread and seeing where people stand, a year later... as for this movie, well... do video game movies ever work out well? Will nuance even be considered, or are we looking at a feel-good tale of "good" vs. "evil"?

Any updates? Gotta keep it going!

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Let's do it again, then. And we'll try and organize some prizes, too! Indeed, if you look at mixes submitted/posted, albums released, and total engagement over social media, things are great. The MAIN thing we're seeing less of is forum activity, and almost ALL of my plans for the future of the site surround the forums and what we can do with them, so I'm not too worried.... I just need the time to implement these changes, and support from staff in planning it all out. I've actually been thinking about how that might work. Does anyone have experience doing comment aggregation and representation across multiple social media platforms? On its surface, it seems like a CRON job that does API calls and caches results back to a table we can use to then present the data on the mix page... would actually be kinda cool... just not at the top of my priority list at the moment...

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

It'd be great if more people responding actually focused on those two questions My personal answer to the first question is that I do a writeup for every single mix I've VERY interested in ideas for enhancing feedback & number of reviews.... but here's my current thinking: We upgrade our forums to IPS 4.X We build the workshop out to integrate with the rest of the site We thus allow content creation & promotion on two tracks - the instant gratification, "look what I made" track for anything posted on the workshop AND the featured, canonized track for accepted mixes We automate the submissions process via the forums All of these changes serve to reinforce the forums and the benefits of registering & participating We consider some form of trackable reputation points or awards or whatever for the most active/helpful members who are reviewing content and offering feedback in the workshop forums as well So we WILL be modernizing, quite a bit, and hopefully that WILL help... I sense some defeatism, here, and I can see where it might stem from, but this is when we need people stepping up, not stepping back, because big changes are in store and we'll need all the help we can get to implement them. In the meantime, every review helps!

Nothing in our Submissions Agreement prohibits this, so you're good. With regard to the general question, here's my personal two cents: I think it's less effective BUT a bit more honest/direct to have the "Download" link be separate from the "Donate/Support" link, to make it explicitly clear that the music in question is being offered for free. My understanding of Bandcamp's policies is that you have X number of credits/points (or something like this?) before you can no longer offer music for free... this bothers me, as does using Bandcamp as a platform for free releases, because they're ultimately a for-profit company, they're motivated by $$$ (not a bad thing, just saying), and they don't seem like a great PERMANENT home for free releases because of these reasons. Nevertheless, they're easy, and they're popular...I just hate to think of a future years from now where people single-sourced their free stuff on Bandcamp and because of changed policies or expired accounts or running out of credits, it's no longer available.

Just chiming in to say: great album name!

Some good ideas, and we didn't do as many as we wanted, so perhaps a couple more surprise floods before the end of the year!

As a side note, I've contacted ReMixers with mixes tagged solo-piano asking for sheet music & MIDI files - we'll see what comes up!! RadicalDreamers, with regard to standards, do you think you could start drafting something very basic that lays out what we might prefer in terms of standard formatting, etc.? Guidelines, in other words? I'd like the idea of quality control and canonical, perfected, standardized sheet music, but I think we're also going to want to encourage as much contribution as possible without overloading folks with requirements. Nevertheless, having some basic guidelines would be great...

It definitely interests me, and actually we (OCR) would potentially be interested in carving out an area of the site to accommodate sheet music. We're ALSO interested in getting sheet music for ReMixes (primarily the solo piano mixes, at least initially), and attaching/presenting it in context with the actual ReMix.

IPS 4.X is responsive, so the need for a separate mobile skin goes away. We'll be upgrading this year, and it will provide the foundation for many exciting new features that we've been promising for years, so I'm pretty psyched. You can preview how it looks, more or less, @ https://community.invisionpower.com/topic/217868-the-world-cup-2006-thread/ You'll notice that on phones, you still get first / prev / next / last, BUT you can also click on the "Page X of X" and go directly to a specific page. After we upgrade the forums, we'll also be upgrading the whole site to be responsive... that should also be this year, so it's going to be a very busy fourth quarter for yours truly!

Would it be bad form to name the album after one of the songs? We TEND not to do that, but DAMN if some of the song names wouldn't make great album names.... specifically: "The Road is Full of Dangers" "Seeking Dreams Through the Window of the Stars" (or just "The Window of the Stars") "Celebrational Melody" "Delightful Adventure" ...and then, it would probably be too lolz, but another idea is something that plays off the very conversational source titles, such as: "The Album is Full of Music" "Let's ReMix SMRPG!" Like I said, probably too lolz... Other ideas: "On the Road" (Kerouac ref) "Road to the Stars" (incidentally, a 1957 Soviet Sci-Fi film) "Hit the Star Road!" Personally, I really like "The Road is Full of Dangers" and "The Window of the Stars" as legit album names... and "Delightful Adventure" has a certain Zen simplicity to it, as well...

Having a PS Vita without PS+ isn't HALF as good as having one with; like Brandon, I've got a ton of freebie games, Sony has kept things interesting, and since I shilled out for the 64GB memory card (ugh) I've got a walking arcade. Recommendations? Some duplicates based on what's already been covered, but: P4G P3P (PSP) Jeanne D'Arc (PSP - best strategy RPG EVAHHHHHH) Wipeout 2048 BlazBlue EX LittleBigPlanet VIta (one of the best in the LBP series) Rayman Origins Killzone Mercenary (wins my award for best handheld graphics, plus actually seems a bit more FUN than other KZ games) Tearaway Danganronpa I don't think you can go wrong with any of those, personally... I love my Vita, it lets me game in short spurts where I may otherwise not have the chance, the battery life is pretty darn solid, and resuming RIGHT back where you left off makes the whole thing pretty seamless. Where did Sony go wrong? Capcom not porting SF4 didn't help, for one...3DS version is so gimpy... a shame.

A review of Xenon 'Xoldin' Out for a Xero' by a user named Xenonetix is the pinnacle of Xenonnery; achievement unlocked

Yes 1-15 - Memories of Dali Arranged by: Jean Of mArc, Solveig Giffin, Christine MacIsaac Source: Village of Dali

Does this help? http://ocremix.org/info/ReMix_Changelog Otherwise I can code an SQL query of some kind to get just the gaps, in CSV/XML or whatever works I'd love to add MusicBrainz references for all the mixes, on our side... is it possible to get a spreadsheet/CSV/XML of the full list? ReMix URL should be enough for an ID, and then the MusicBrainz URL? Really appreciate the meticulous & thorough work!

I didn't find the drums thin, just intentionally clean & ambient, so I won't focus on that. The core issue is lack of variation/development, I'd say... I see where Flex is coming from, and I don't agree with Larry that it's not an issue... this is dynamically a pretty static experience, and if you jump around from minute to minute randomly, you'll hear the similarities. But, I mean.... it's a chillout/ambient piece. It's a meditation on the source and it's definitely going for an aesthetic where nothing is supposed to really stick out or ramp up in intensity... in other words, the stasis is intended. I think production's fine, but my personal thinking is... what if this went on for another 3 minutes? 5? 10? We would draw the line somewhere, if the level of development & change remained at this pace... while one can compare the last minute to the first minute and hear clear differences, the level of structural self-similarity is pretty durn high. Not too high, though... ultimately this fits within my mental framework of a ReMix that uses its time well and isn't excessively static... but it's either on the threshold, or at least in the proximity, of being problematic, in that specific regard. Otherwise, fine stuff. This concern is mostly a genre thing, but I'd encourage the artist to attempt to evolve things a bit more over time. YES

Congrats! Enjoy the sleep deprivation As for what I've been up to... well, FF9 release, obviously... but also looking into taking some grad classes, & getting my basement studio set up so I can work in isolated peace, away from the hubbub of 21mo. old daughter! Edited thread title since it didn't really convey intent of thread...

That's truly great to hear; I appreciate the feedback, & since I wasn't sure if folks would get what I was going for, it's rewarding to know that at least a few did