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djpretzel

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Posts posted by djpretzel

    3DS Must Play?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Nothing new to add, just throwing in some personal dittos for:

    • Fire Emblem: Awakening (because THARJA!)
    • Super Mario 3D Land (because SPECIAL WORLDS)
    • The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

    All three are fantastic; I'm playing ALBW at the moment and while I'm not very far, I'm loving it...

    Tropes vs. Women / #GamerGate Conspiracies

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by djpretzel

    I'm actually going to defend Sarkeesian, here. What she says (starting at around 12:10) is that the result is typically a homophobic or transphobic joke, not that the character design is in and of itself homophobic, which seems to mesh with your "with a giggle, but without malice" take on things.

    I agree that the treatment is comical... but phobic? To me phobic implies malice, on some level... this is exactly what I'm trying to get at; forget the discrepancy between character designs and usage for a second - considering both, in the examples provided and numerous other examples you can think of, does "comical = phobic"? Not in my mind... Cross-dressing and homosexuality are often played for laughs in what I'm sure Anita would consider "heteronormative, conformist shlock that reinforces socially-constructed gender roles" - when it's something like the effeminate prince being tossed out the window in Braveheart, I agree that it's pretty blatantly & legitimately homophobic. When it's Gene Hackman dressing up in drag at the end of The Birdcage, well, isn't that more of an embrace of the culture? Or take something in between - when Joey & Chandler pretend to be gay in a Friends episode, or something mainstream like that. I mean, that show was actually pretty progressive in having Ross's lesbian ex-wife figure prominently & respectably. Do we really think kissy jokes between the straight male principles in the same show is homophobic, then?? You can play something for laughs because you're afraid (phobic) of it OR you can play something for laughs because you're completely embracing it and almost, in a sense, making FUN of people who DO find it uncomfortable or immoral... I've never really felt like the ubiquitous trans- and homo- characters in more esoteric Japanese games were particularly "phobic" in design OR utilization... you're saying she's right, and that you do?

    To me, the words "homophobic" and "transphobic" need to have more teeth & carry a bit more weight than this, because this usage dilutes the labels and distracts attention from the very real demographics that exhibit these behaviors & hold these views...

    Tropes vs. Women / #GamerGate Conspiracies

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by djpretzel

    So in that sense, I can certainly see the value of calling attention sexism where it's present and calling it out as a definite negative. The problem with Sarkeesian's approach is that she has impossibly broad definitions of what constitutes sexism -- ie, everything that isn't explicitly and aggressively combating sexist attitudes. I appreciate the "if you're not part of the solution then you're part of the problem" mindset when it comes to cultural change (you need to have people actively opposing societal norms if you're ever going to affect any real change), but applying that attitude to major made-for-profit media is short-sighted; you're not going to change anyone's mind by attacking games they love, like Mario and Zelda or Mass Effect. You're especially not going to change anyone's mind by attacking games that get it 99% right, like Mass Effect or Beyond Good & Evil, by focusing entirely on the 1% where they stumbled. If even legitimately good examples of "how not to be sexist" are held up as failures for not being perfect, without regard to how close they get to it (and the fact that they're a damn sight better than most games on the market), then you're sort of shooting yourself in the foot. The perfect is the enemy of the good, and all that.

    I feel like in order to make her points resonate, she DOES have to talk about more popular games... but the whole thing would seem like less of an attack and more of an analysis if, instead of peppering her rhetorical landscape with overgeneralizing, hyper-ideological one-offs, she just calmly explained potential risks and offered a couple quick & concrete examples of how deviating from the trope could result in better games... or at least games that are in no other ways diminished from such modifications. Also, since the series of videos isn't particularly rocking a "scholarly academic," vibe to begin with, I think it would be sooooo much more persuasive to her target audience if she talked a bit about which games she liked, had enjoyed playing, etc. and even shared some anecdotes once in awhile, when a given game was personal to her in some way. It wouldn't help prove her point directly, but indirectly it would again make it seem like less of an attack from the outside and more of a poignant analysis from the inside. As-is, she comes off at times like the type of person who would staunchly refuse to sit through any game that didn't appease her ideology in full; even with her standard disclaimer that you can still "enjoy" games/media that have these alleged issues, at no point am I genuinely persuaded that she has, or would...

    Regarding opposing societal norms... some norms need to be outright opposed, others simply need to be deobligated; it's not that girly girls and manly men and bows and pink princesses and "traditional" gender roles need to rot in a pit of hellfire, it's just that people shouldn't be compelled to follow them, or shamed when they don't. It's not a question of discouraging conformity, but rather of encouraging tolerance for non-conformity. You don't need to attack the status quo, in this case, to justify any number of valid alternatives, and in doing so you only alienate the demographic that most desperately needs persuading. And yet that's the very tired & self-defeating trap that's being repeatedly fallen into...

    Did anyone catch her brief labeling of certain feminized men as being homophobic? Did that sit wrong with anyone else? She used footage from a beat 'em up with a drag queen, and drag queens (and mustached YMCA policemen of various ilk) show up all the time in Japanese beat 'em ups. And then there's Cho Aniki... but is "homophobic" the right word? To untrained Western eyes, I suppose I could see where it might come off that way, and I'm no expert on Japanese culture, but the inclusion of transvestites & transgender characters in Japanese games always struck me as more embracing (with giggles, but no real malice) than demeaning or condemning. A lot of this content got censored/localized for NA release; I never got the impression that it was being altered out of respect & deference to drag queens, but more of an attempt to sanitize/remove those elements from games entirely, which to me is FAR more homophobic. Any thoughts on this?

    Tropes vs. Women / #GamerGate Conspiracies

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by djpretzel

    New video - "Ms. Male Character".

    Just to vary it up, rather than talk about the things I DO agree with, I'll talk about a couple things I disagreed with...

    :) I'll try and reciprocate towards the end...

    Anita talks about how the "gender binary" is an entirely artificial and socially constructed division. I think that is very far from the truth. I understand that "sex" is used to describe biological differences and "gender" is often used to describe cultural or social differences. But can we really say that ALL gender differences are ENTIRELY cultural or social? Doesn't that ignore everything we know about evolutionary psychology?

    I'm curious, do you think you would have honed in on that specific line & the dissonance with evolutionary psychology (and in my personal opinion, common sense) before having participated in this thread? Because you picked the EXACT quote that I would have isolated & dissected and did my work for me - now I've got nothing to say :nicework: You certainly may have, I'm not saying this thread has been an epiphany or singular revelation to you or anyone else, I'm just glad that not only can we agree on something, but that you've picked out the specific bit of overgeneralizing, unmitigated ideology from a haystack of relatively unobjectionable material - she does a good job of mixing these statements in & camouflaging them, which is pretty much the only way of getting reasonable people to listen to them at all... there's an admirable marketing prowess to that, to be sure, but there's also a certain intellectual... dishonesty? Or I suppose you could call it "calculated restraint" if you wanted to be less negative...

    I also have to wonder what the alternative to the trope is, when you're talking about simplistic games with minimal graphics and story. For example, say we're back at a time when Ms. Pac-Man doesn't exist. Is it better to not create a female character at all? I guess not? Given the limited number of pixels you have, how else would you differentiate them other than things that are universally viewed as largely feminine...?

    It's a minefield of Catch-22's, trying to be politically correct when creating fiction of most any kind... I think it's more productive to approach this challenge from the perspective of trying to improve the actual art form - functionally & aesthetically - than trying to make people happy and avoid offending them. I've been consistently saying that the simple pattern analysis & identification of repetition that she's doing *IS* beneficial, but would be even more effective if, instead of inserting regressive (to use a word she throws at the poor old Pac-Man creator) feminist ideology, she simply pointed out the ways that variation & contemplation can improve the medium. Whenever she gets to the "This is WHY this is bad..." part of her monologues, I just cringe.

    There's a counterargument to be made, as well, that characters being "baseline" male actually DILUTES any meaningful notions of "masculinity" - in other words, it's not that these barely feminized characters are "Ms. Male," it's that their counterparts are barely "male" to begin with. To use her Koopaling example - what does it mean to be female? It's apparently meaningful ENOUGH to justify it being the salient characteristic for an entire character! What does it mean to be male? Nothing! The other Koopalings are defined not by their masculinity, but by their different characterizations, as she quite correctly points out. But while she sees this assumptive masculinity as liberating and powerful, I think you could make a half-decent counterargument that it basically means that masculinity is, in and of itself, not good enough, not worthwhile, not interesting... and so the point remains that Wendy is problematic, but not necessarily because the "men" are being favored, per se. To be fair, focusing on the "false dichotomy" of "binary gender" is actually playing both sides, and Anita does explicitly phrase it this way, to her credit... but she just can't help herself from only seeing (or perhaps only caring about) half the picture, even though dichotomies are, by definition, DUAL.

    As for the sentiment that all gender is socially constructed and that notions of male and female are completely arbitrary, etc., as you mention, it's nature AND nurture, and perpetuating the egotistical myth that human beings are somehow the only species on Earth that has created cultures of behavior completely independent of biology is poppycock, and perhaps also balderdash. Anyone arguing that humans exist in a magical vacuum outside of nature is just as misguided as those claiming that X or Y behavior or identity "isn't natural"; neither worldview is complete, and both smack of extremism. To say that any dichotomy between male and female is inherently "false" is to sidestep the question of whether meaningful differences - not polarizing, not extreme, not inflexible or absolute differences, just meaningful ones - exist.

    It's intellectually lazy, however well-intended.

    Happily, many of her arguments in this video don't even hinge on it, though... "Put a bow on it" has served its purpose and may still be just fine for certain contexts, but I think more variety in terms of gender differentiation in games is an idea whose time has come. There are plenty of good reasons it should be explored and encouraged that exist outside Anita's make-believe world where all human behavior is socially-constructed.

    (That was the "me agreeing with her part," in case you missed it :smile:)

    OCR Ad Fail

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Obviously we're having fun, here, but RE: adblock - site operations DO really run off of advertising $$$, and it's been that way since the very beginning. I'd like more relevant ads as much as anyone, but I don't think it would magically make those currently using adblock stop using it for this site. Hopefully you can find other ways of chipping in because historically Google AdSense has been the one consistent source of income to offset hosting costs. At some point we plan on having donation buttons/pleas appear instead of ads, if you've got them blocked, FYI.

    JIMMY WALES.

    OCR Ad Fail

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    There's one reason and one reason only that we run those ads:

    Because those are some awesome games, and they're not for females, and only males should play them.

    ...

    Or probably because it's what Google AdSense seems to think fits best & gets the most clicks. Go figure; I'd like more relevant & less embarrassing ads on the site, but it's pretty low on the laundry list at the moment, given a full slate of albums, mixposts, an eventual site redesign & forum migration, etc. We'll make this a goal for 2014 and leave it at that - it should be doable, but I'm not losing sleep over it atm. Is anyone else?

    Opinion: Commercialism on a FREE site

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by djpretzel

    But in my opinion, that was never the spirit of what this site was about.

    I'm definitely not in favour of this site "selling out" ... and though I may have donated previously... I never will buy the Mega Man album.

    I just don't agree with it.

    Well, first off, even though I don't agree with the content of your post, thanks for starting the discussion, because I DO think it was a topic that needed to be hashed out. ALSO, thank you for your previous donations to the site. Donations have trailed off considerably in recent years, even BEFORE we launched the FF6 kickstarter, FYI. And heck, thanks for registering all the way back in 2003 and remaining active enough to post something ten years later, too.

    I'm disappointed you won't consider purchasing the album on the basis of not agreeing with it on principle, and that you consider this ONE foray into the world of commercial albums as "selling out". As to the spirit of what this site is about, you're partially correct, but only if you take this one album to an extreme conclusion - our Mission Statement reads:

    • Appreciate and honor video game composers and their music

    • Encourage artistic expression and development through fan arrangements

    • Preserve and promote video game music of the past and present

    • Provide resources and connections for the game composers of tomorrow

    • Distribute great, free music to the world

    So if we stopped distributing free music (or great music ^^) to the world, you'd be absolutely correct - it would be against the spirit of the site. However, a SINGLE commercial album, especially one made in partnership with a game publisher like Capcom, is (however awesome it may be!) a drop in the bucket compared to 44 free albums, 2500+ free mixes, and 13+ years of countless unpaid staff time. I have made a massive, uncompensated sacrifice of time & energy to this community for over a decade - I don't expect that to make me instantly "right" or buy me sympathy points, but I do expect some benefit of the doubt & a fair measure of respect/trust. I'm not sure I'm getting either of those from you, based on your comments. As they say, respect is earned, and trust is earned, but... well, it's been me running the show the whole time, and I guess I thought we'd done a pretty decent job earning both of those.

    Here's another way of thinking about things: TONS of people use iTunes, some of them exclusively. Ditto for Spotify and many other streaming services, and Amazon, Google Play, etc. If we can't release a commercial album every once in awhile, we have no presence on these storefronts, which impedes our ability to promote VGM and deliver on the OTHER aspects of our mission. Just a thought - sometimes releasing exclusively free music is actually at odds with other aspects of our mission.

    we just did a little thing with the capcom. it's coooooooooooool, man. still plenty of free music

    Plenty = understatement :nicework:

    Also an opinion:

    Ocremix has been providing thousands of remixes, dozens of albums and lots of other entertainment for free for over a decade now... and now that they're offering something even better in exchange for helping keeping the site running, you snob them out of "philosophy"?

    Not better, just different :wink: Honestly, I don't want to send the message that BECAUSE this is our first commercial album, we consider it "better" than our 44 free arrangement albums. It isn't about that, and I think many of those albums... Balance & Ruin, for a recent example... exceed the quality of the majority of albums I've EVER purchased, personally.

    I agree with Brandon that we don't need to antagonize people. No reason for it. If you don't have something constructive to add please don't post for the sake of dogpiling on someone.

    ...

    Part of the reason for doing this is to reach new audiences who ONLY consume music through Amazon, iTunes, Spotify etc. and it's already succeeding at that.

    Quoting both points for agreement & emphasis!

    pciql.jpg

    LOLz. As mentioned though, donations have trailed off. It's ironic, but past "Support OCR Month" fundraisers helped this site a LOT more than the FF6 kickstarter could, and probably more than this MM25 album ever will, from a financial perspective. And both FF6 & MM25 were a LOT more work, too. Oops? :nicework:

    I've paid money to listen to VG remixes from The Megas, VikingGuitar and the Oneups, so this isn't entirely new to me. Now, as long as the money goes to the site and not to Dave's "pretzels" business, then I'm fine with it.

    But I'll fucking rage if the FFII and Sonic CD albums end up selling out

    My business IS the site; the two are inextricable, and neither are motivated primarily by profit. All funds for OC ReMix are kept in separate bank accounts, and all ad revenue, album revenue (now that it exists), donations, etc. go directly into these dedicated accounts so that everything can be tracked. If you've got specific questions about this, let me know, but I don't appreciate insinuations that I've got a "business" that is in some way separate from the site itself and from which I directly profit.

    None of our albums in the works have any plans to be commercial, and it's something that would need to be clarified at the outset and would require a motivator like Capcom's involvement. Nevertheless, any threats to "fucking rage" in response to anything we ever choose to do won't really impact our decision-making process. We do want to make people happy, but walking on eggshells to avoid haters and those prone to knee-jerk, volatile reactions is both restrictive and generally a waste of time.

    OC ReMix's First-Ever Commercial Album! For Everlasting Peace: 25 Years of Mega Man!

    in Announcements

    Posted

    I have a question on how proceeds from album sales are distributed. I assume it's split amongst Capcom, OCR, and the contributing artists, correct? If so, can you share the details? I'm just curious how much of my money is directly supporting OCR and the artists themselves.

    Regardless, I'm buying the album. I just listened to the full soundcloud preview during work. Amazing stuff guys, congrats!

    I want to be transparent, but it also worries me when people get too caught up in the money - that's the reason it's taken this long for us to do something like this, and while I'm responding to the legitimate curiosity in your question, I'm concerned & cautious when people start dissecting fiscal matters, as it's often a breeding ground for drama. That's my very strong disclaimer.

    • Capcom gets a fair and relatively standard cut (can't say more, as per contract)
    • OC ReMix gets 10% (goes to the site, and is used to cover promotion of the album as well)
    • The remainder is being split up equally 25 ways by:
      • Tracks x 21 - ReMixers on a per-track basis (even when multiple artists worked on a track, we pick a "primary" and they sort it out themselves)
      • Support Staff x 3 - Shariq, Larry, and myself each get the same percentage as a single track for our respective roles as Director (Shariq) and Larry & I as Executive Producers
      • Artwork x 1 - rnn, whose artwork counts the same as a single track

    We can talk about this here if there are a ton of follow-up questions specific to this topic, but it might get split to another thread depending on the scope.

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