djpretzel
-
Posts
7,066 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
102
Content Type
Articles
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by djpretzel
-
-
What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.
-
I'm working on it, I've got about 30 seconds done and a pretty good idea of how to work out the rest.
However, it's not just my track - we also need additional art assets, and then a trailer, and then a website. We are working on these tasks in parallel and will be launching an art competition of some kind, probably through gamearthq, shortly.
The album really deserves presentation to go along with the music - people DO just books by their covers, even if they shouldn't, and we wanna do this one right.
-
What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.
-
The issue here is that advertisers cannot be expected to really appreciate the context and depth of the topics being discussed. So receiving a flood of emails from a small minority group is perhaps representing that voice disproportionately, as the advertisers are not inclined to evaluate both sides of the issue, and instead are reacting to the apparent volume of complaints (even if the overwhelming majority of visitors to these sites are not involved in the discussion.)
Okay, and you're right to point out the difference between a traditional boycott and what they're doing, but... with regard to a vocal minority having undue influence... isn't this then similar to the twitter shaming & mob mentality being employed against certain devs whose games aren't 110% politically correct?
The target is larger and the goal more explicitly fiscal, but in terms of curtailing speech, between scaring a company into not running ads and scaring an individual developer into not making the game he or she wants to make, which frightens you more?
Just to clarify, I don't think either act is censorship... but you made the claim that the GG ad campaign stuff is CLOSER to censorship, and to me that just seemed like a weird, partisan observation to make. When fire is being fought with fire, it just seems silly to criticize one side's flames for being 3 degrees hotter... Both actions can make speech riskier, and silence those unwilling to pay the potential price, but are still more indirect than actual censorship.
I agree. Calling all gamergaters misogynists is ridiculous, equating them to ISIS is disgusting, etc. TotalBiscuit, despite being something of a figurehead for the movement, has spoken very plainly that he thinks each side should treat the other side as people first. He strongly dislikes the "SJW" label and how it's being used, and it's unfortunate that the GG crowd isn't listening to him on that one.I prefer to think of TB as someone caught in the middle, who sees a balance of power problem in that the GG movement has no prominent voice of reason to interact with game journos. It just seems to me that he's diligently trying to squeeze SOME truth/progress out of a polarized situation.
You're a more charitable person than I am if you believe these people are honestly fighting for equality instead of merely using the appearance of such as a political weapon.Isn't being charitable a good thing, though? Anyways, that's not quite what I believe... I believe in the supreme power of self-delusion. It's a human thing, and not quarantined to any one side or demographic. It's not a question of whether people are "honestly fighting for equality" as long as they've convinced themselves that they are, as I think so many have. Once you've convinced yourself that your side is just, and righteous, and you've anchored your own identity to the cause, anything that looks, smells, or tastes like a compromise, however reasonable, smacks of ideological treason.
I find this explanation far more plausible than a loosely affiliated group of people on the Internet making a concerted effort to present a facade of arguing for equality as a political weapon. There might be some puppeteers like that out there, or folks who consider themselves as such, but self-deception is a lot easier and arguably more effective than intentional manipulation.
-
The irony of THAT belief is that currently one of KIAs most active campaigns is email carpet bombing advertisers to pull their ads from sites that GG doesn't like. For example, they successfully got Intel to pull ads from Gamasutra because of Leigh Alexander's article about gaming. THAT to me is far closer to censorship than someone like Anita making videos and putting them on YouTube.
Well that's a bit of a strawman, though, right? No one was claiming that either the act of making videos OR putting them on YouTube constituted censorship in any way... some, myself included, were simply pointing out that what Anita was SAYING - more specifically, the WAY she was saying it and the causations she was claiming - were similar to pro-censorship arguments made surrounding, for example, violence in games. Obviously simply making something and then putting it somewhere isn't censorship; this seems like an empty sentence/argument, to me. I'm not sure why you wrote it.
Furthermore, the alternatives to censorship in support of Anita's arguments that were proposed in this very thread included gamers "voting with their wallets" and simply not buying (i.e. boycotting) any games that featured sexual objectification, misogyny, etc. Isn't the GG campaign surrounding ads more similar in nature to that - a boycott of sorts... just from the other side? If you're going to condemn the method itself, that means it's off the table for your own "side" or perspective, otherwise we're wandering into double-standard land, where hypocrisy reigns supreme.... I'm a pro-regulation, pro-welfare guy who sees plenty of problems with unchecked capitalism, but even I think that ultimately the market ends up deciding many issues of this nature. Censorship is stopping someone from saying something - like the university death threat. On the other hand, refusing to give someone your time or your money - resources which you rightly control - because of what they're saying, well... that's freedom itself, no?
I'm personally surprised Intel caved like that; I have to think it was more of a question of not wanting to get involved than of any explicit/implicit endorsement.
Do we want to discus Leigh Alexander's article? Because I think it was extremely stupid, insulting, poorly-timed, and irresponsibly fomented things beyond where they needed to go...
Ultimately it is really a shame how entrenched the GG camp has become. At this point they're just as guilty of dehumanizing as anyone else. I've seen people link to tweets from "anti-GG" people or "SJWs", saying in response that Gamergaters are simply superior, and that they "think differently". The SJWs "will never think like we do", etc etc. It's disturbing.It is, but my point was that it was a two-way street, with BOTH sides entrenched and incapable of acknowledging even an iota of validity in the perspective of the "other".
-
And I couldn't agree more with your bold final point. Gender equity is a noble cause in my book. But I find myself needing to step ever so carefully when discussing a viewpoint that deviates even slightly from "poor Anita/Zoe/women", while witnessing dehumanizing language casually thrown at anyone affiliated with #GamerGate. It's frustrating. Can people not even contemplate a scenario in which their opponents are not pathetic incarnations of evil, but living breathing people who may actually have a point or two?
Here's a meta-irony for you, then:
Often, those fighting for equality fail to realize that they've really already achieved it: they have become equally as convinced of their opponents' lack of humanity & worth as vice versa.
-
What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.
-
If that's all you've got, I think it's unclear whether a coherent argument can be made and received and it's not worth arguing one way or the other. I'd rather people just make the argument.
I feel like I have, actually. I feel like I could distill my posts on this very thread into a "greatest hits" album that more-or-less summarizes what I believe a coherent argument - primarily aesthetic in nature - would be.
I honestly feel like if I expanded on it, dressed it up a bit, and put it out there, I'd be told to "check my privilege," and my entire position would be discredited on the inarguable grounds of "heterosexual white male"... no? Too defeatist/cynical?
Ideas need to trump identity. How do you make THAT happen? That's a MUCH bigger quagmire than our little niche... and in that specific regard, both sides of this dogfight are terribly, horrifically flawed.
-
Looks good!! I'm hoping that Nintendo will realize that projects like this only serve to promote & celebrate their brands. Graphics look slick; hope the gameplay/mechanics match 'em!
-
Sure that's how it starts. And we can say we don't have the climate where that can happen, but I think that's just an unfounded assumption. I haven't seen anyone try something at the scale of the Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series that offers that more coherent message. I don't even know of anecdotal evidence of something like that being attempted and failing.
It's an assumption, agreed, but it's not unfounded. If you're looking around and seeing an atmosphere receptive to discussion, that hasn't been further polarized beyond what I would (again) assume was an initial starting position, I'm not sure what you've been looking at... my assumption is founded on personal observation, the observations and statements of others, and the vox.com article I linked.
I don't think anyone here disagrees with this point. The discussion has been more about whether Anita Sarkeesian should bear the brunt of the responsibility for all the nonsense that followed after she started her video campaign and the rest of #Gamergate.Is that an interesting question, the answer to which - if conclusively obtainable - will provide actionable insight of any kind?
- I believe she has polarized gamers, that this was entirely avoidable in conveying most of her message, and that stripping away the dated/fringe ideology and armchair psychology would ALSO have made her points more persuasive.
- I believe that there's a demographic discrepancy between game journalists and gamers at large, and that most game journos lean left to varying degrees, whereas gamers at large are more ideologically diverse.
- I believe it was probably inevitable, to some extent, that this discrepancy would result in a schism/conflict of some ilk.
- I believe that Anita probably played some role in expediting that schism.
Whether she's "responsible" or not doesn't interest me, personally. I can believe all of the above while not seeking to assign the brunt of responsibility or blame to any one person or thing.
- I believe she has polarized gamers, that this was entirely avoidable in conveying most of her message, and that stripping away the dated/fringe ideology and armchair psychology would ALSO have made her points more persuasive.
-
http://www.vox.com/2014/11/1/7136343/gamergate-and-the-politicization-of-absolutely-everything
Pretty much, this.
So many earnest folk want to make this a war of ideas. So many mock #Gamergate's claim that "it's about ethics in game journalism" without realizing that there's also not really a counter-position... just a counter-identity.
This has all been about identity, the whole time... which in turn makes it the same sort of polarized mess that has come to characterize American politics and public discourse, which in turn means that any position of nuance that acknowledges complexity is doomed from the outset.
I've never been interested in anything other than responding to specific arguments & ideas with analysis... I do not believe Anita's arguments & ideas withstand analysis, nor do I believe they represent the more pragmatic & egalitarian voices of third-wave feminism. They are a regression to a vein of discourse that was tried before, was highly polarizing at the time, and whose wings melted when it flew too close to the Sun of censorship.
What I'm seeing now is that even reasonable voices (who otherwise see the myriad faults in Anita's points) wholeheartedly support her simply because the sides have been set, the identities have been cast, and it's no longer about specific ideas... just a vague set of principles that can be argued around in circles until each side is even MORE convinced of the irredeemable stupidity of the other.
There's a vein of optimism recently expressed on this thread that suggests that Anita's started a fire, and however imperfect that fire may be, it's up to us to carry the torch forward.
Okay, let's just say that's true... doesn't that mean we should START by improving on what she's saying, pointing out the fallacies, and recrafting a more modern, coherent message?
Ask yourself... is this the climate where that can happen? The situation on the ground now seems to me to more closely resemble polarized cults of groupthink, where questioning Anita is synonymous with supporting death threats and hating women.
The only context in which torches are carried in an environment like that is by a mob, toward whoever's going to be lynched next...
Count me among the pessimists; we don't need polarizers, we need unifiers.
What could have been a conversation about improving the medium has become a war of identity; if you think that's a good thing, I question your sanity.
-
What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.
-
What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.
-
What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.
-
What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.
-
I downloaded the torrent on a machine that had never had OCReMixes on it before, and only one of the files came out with the wrong tags (as opened in Rhythmbox, Ubuntu's default music player). I don't know how it could have happened unless the file was wrong in the torrent, or somehow, the file still contained old tags that would only show up in Rhythmbox. I'll have to try to open that same file on that machine tomorrow.
EDIT: Found it by using a HEX editor: at 0x00011ea2, i.e. 73378 bytes from the start of the file, it says vgmix.com. A few bytes ahead of this, it says "APETAGEX", followed by the same info I saw in Rhythmbox, so I guess it's an APE tag (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APE_tag). Never heard of it before, but it looks like it can exist side-by-side with the ID3 tag in the same file and that Rhythmbox gives it higher priority than the ID3 (which, according to Winamp, starts at byte 73423). Since this was the only file that Rhythmbox treated differently, I'm guessing it's the only file in the torrent that has an APE tag.
Interestingly, Winamp can supposedly read APEv2 tags, but they don't show up for this file. Maybe the tag has been corrupted somehow, or it's an APEv1 tag? I guess leaving it in won't exactly hurt (unless someone else uses Rhythmbox and reports the same thing I just did), but for consistency, it would be better to remove it, whenever time so allows.
Is it the same file? The Terminal Velocity mix? Or something different?
-
Who would argue the other side of that, though? Who would say "sexual objectification is just fine" in the gaming climate we have now?
I was planning to
Right now, the topic is basically too charged to have a real, civil discussion about it, because both sides are looking for anything to latch onto and lash out at. Hell, I fully expect someone to scold me for even mentioning the possibility of an argument with the above paragraph. So I don't know if going into a debate on both sides of the objectification issue, and how both men and women contribute to it, is doable at the moment... or at least doable without it degrading into snide comments and insults.Are you talking about this thread, or the larger discussion? I was just talking about this thread, and I was just talking about sexualization/objectification in games, specifically, and more generally in art, but NOT in everyday life. I'm one of those folks who thinks people are actually rather GOOD at compartmentalizing, which seems like a dirty word and/or a foreign concept to would-be cultural critics in the gaming world at this moment in time. They need to catch up with cultural critics of other art forms, who more or less let this ship sail & put on their big-boy/big-girl pants decades ago, realizing that objectification in and of itself is a valid form of expression and has been since art itself existed. The CONTEXT of said objectification CAN be misogynist, offensive, sexist, etc., but the objectification itself should not elicit the knee-jerk reactions that it does, which embarrass both the medium & other more legitimate grievances surrounding the topic.
It's funny, because I think a lot of reasonable people would look at video games with scantily clad female characters and just dismissively say "grow up!!" - which is fine by me, this stuff is often just immature & silly. But for the others who choose to make a big academic fuss and get all up in polemical, righteous arms, my response is identical: "grow up!!"
-
Are you gonna back up any of this or just say 100+ word sentences and hope no one challenges you on them? You're expertly employing loaded argument tactics, bravo.
Explain how the comic of a guy getting robbed relates to an abandoning of the scientific method and thus a poisoning of the youth mind in regards to news consumption. I'm curious. Don't just string words together in big fluffy sentences. Get to your damn point.
I kinda liked his worksheet, personally. Better than the comic strip, which is a pretty terrible metaphor for anything related to the thread topic, in my opinion. There's an implicit message of censorship that it conveys - if you're arguing for something you feel is important, and others arguing for the same thing are using means & methods that are unethical or even downright despicable, you have a duty to shut the hell up?? I don't agree with that at all...
I'm not sure, but I think he was being sarcastic in the first paragraph, and earnest in the second.
I'm a little bummed that once this thread went GG, it seems like discussing Anita's arguments became uninteresting to everyone. I feel like we did at ONE point have some pretty staunch supporters of EVERYTHING she was saying, including arguments about sexual objectification & sexualization in general. That would have been the time to really dig into Paglia & the failures of second-wave feminism in arguing against pron, but it never happened, because all those folks either left or were eventually persuaded that Anita is full of crap a significant % of the time...
Does anyone want to mount a serious "Sexual Objectification is WRONG!!" argument? Does anyone have that in them? Is anyone besides me even interested in that topic?
-
What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.
-
What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.
-
IMO, The Onion nailed it. Gamergate on the whole is getting nothing productive done so far.
.I don't understand... you give Anita credit JUST for getting people talking about a topic, being an "agitator," "agent of change," etc. even when you acknowledge that there are good reasons to have numerous objections to both the form AND substance of her actual work. If she's been productive in getting people talking, surely #gamergate has been productive in getting people talking, too. As for anything substantive/tangible, well...
-
What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.
-
Why are you using that line on me? I don't believe it's 100% trolls/harassers.
I don't know how large the group is, but there's definitely a segment of GamerGate supporters who:
1) aren't harassing people;
2) aren't threatened by female game developers or more diverse depictions of women in games;
3) want a higher standard of ethics in games journalism.
But the ethical people in GamerGate who have had 0 to do with the trolling and death threats should probably ditch #GamerGate as a hashtag and move to #GamerEthics or something new so that they can continue that effort without the baggage of the trolls who use it as smokescreen to harass.
I don't want to derail TOOO much (I find myself saying that a lot... maybe that's a bad sign?
), but... couldn't one use this logic to say that Christians should abandon the name of "Christianity"? Or Muslims Islam? Or (secular example), feminists feminism? Or, based on North Korea being the only officially atheist country and being terrible, that atheists should look for a new banner, too?Plenty of movements/ideologies/whatever had completely ridiculous & unsavory origins and STILL have fanatical, extremist groups within them that make up some percentage. I think leveling objections and directing discourse at specific actions and ideas is preferable to urging name change as any sort of catharsis, but that's just me.... we've remained OverClocked ReMix since the beginning; there's something to be said for name recognition. Mobilizing a group to reinvent themselves under a new brand requires the type of leadership I'm not sure exists, in the case of #gamergate?
That being said, I don't really feel comfortable equating #gamergate with any of the above, because I'm still cloudy on what the overall agenda is at this point in time. I'm not sure a cogent enough distillation exists to really grok what's being rallied for and/or raged against. What would #gamergate "success" even look like? Anyone?
-
Thanks for all the feedback, everyone - and props to timaeus for the breakdown, too!
I didn't want to ramble on for too long in the writeup, but one of the reasons I wanted this to be #3000 is because I feel like it was kind of a risk, for me. It's not a genre that's rocket science, perhaps, but it's hard to get the details right with emulations, entirely in the digital realm. It's also not really a style I've done much work in, period, although it's the type of music I listen to all the time.
At any rate, I wasn't exactly sure if people would dig it and see in it what I see in it - the allure of the core idea of doing "Dark World" as a laid-back, somewhat trippy 60's rock groove. I'm really glad it resonated with more listeners than I thought it might, and it really motivates me to do more music in general. I may never return to this particular style ever again, but I'm glad I gave it a shot, and I'm glad it found an audience!
Tropes vs. Women / #GamerGate Conspiracies
in General Discussion
Posted
You spent the whole time talking about how shitty Jack Thompson is and how stupid GG is for supporting anything he says, without actually mentioning... what he said. Ad hominem is not a substitute for substance; what did he say? However much I oppose his actions in the past, I'm not going to disagree with him on principle without actually knowing what I'm disagreeing with...
I take the impression you're too lazy/busy to read this thread, and have seen fit to lump me in with one side of an argument that I've criticized for being unnecessarily polarizing & too much about identity as opposed to ideas, thus proving my point. You've also implied that your personal anecdote trumps anyone else's while managing to insult the hypothetical "mouthbreathers" who you foresee objecting to your not-yet-achieved accomplishments. Sorry to be blunt, but there it is.