zircon

This is absolutely what I mean. Since we're doing the dictionary thing, 'discriminate' in this context means: These sort of lists make a distinction based on the class of 'hot women', emphasizing appearance over merit, and are prejudiced against women that are not hot. This goes toward the whole 'unwelcoming environment' thing I mentioned. I think you're interpreting what he wrote far too literally. The "loud and clear" message is not literally and specifically "you have to be in a BDSM-themed video". I find that reading to be extremely unreasonable and if you emailed the author I'm sure he would agree with what I'm saying. But I guess we'll agree to disagree. Yes, it is both justified and reasonable. If you read about the #1reasontobe trend I mentioned earlier or watch talks by female game developers you will see that there is a wide consensus among female developers about sexism in the industry. Why would anyone want to put themselves in an environment where they're in a minority likely to be discriminated against and made uncomfortable? It's okay for a company to make games that cater to men. I don't believe it's okay for such a company to be exclusive of women IN the company. Having such a poster at a *professional networking and industry event* is exclusive.

I searched "sexiest men in technology" and Google actually wanted to autocorrect to "sexiest women in technology". By the way, try searching: "sexiest men in technology" And not only are there literally only three results (three), but the 2nd one is for sexy women, not men. Now search "sexiest women in technology". 209,000 results. Speaks for itself. "hottest men in tech" <- 604 results "hottest women in tech <- 500,000+ results

This is perhaps somewhat telling but the only woman on OCR in the game industry, AFAIK (please correct me if I'm wrong), is Jill. We're generally on the same page about this stuff and I only mention that because she doesn't post frequently. That said just search for articles about #1reasontobe, for example... http://www.develop-online.net/news/43693/GDC13-Standing-ovation-as-women-devs-let-loose-on-sexism-in-games http://kotaku.com/5963528/heres-a-devastating-account-of-the-crap-women-in-the-games-business-have-to-deal-with-in-2012 http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2012/11/women-video-game-industry-twitter-1reasonwhy http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/29/1reasonwhy-reveals-sexism-gaming-industry_n_2205204.html Short version, female game developers on the whole seem to pretty much agree that there is rampant sexism in the industry.

Wow, that's.. quite a long response. I don't have the time to respond in turn to everything you said, but here's a few things... The article is intended to represent the views and positions of the website (RPS), so I think by "we" he meant "we [writers at RPS]". Yes, I'm sure that is what the intent of the list was. Hot chicks successful in IT, with some of the profiles using words focusing on their appearance. As the RPS author points out, you simply don't see the same sort of thing for men. By definition, that's sexism. If you don't think sexism like that is bad, okay, we disagree on that. But I don't see how you could characterize it as anything but sexist, unless you know of a "Hottest Guys in IT" list. I think your whole response to this really missed the obvious point, which was that the examples create an environment that is unwelcoming toward women, and reinforces the notion that IT/games is a field for men, by men. That's the message that is being sent. Again, the argument is that it reinforces the "by men, for men" stereotype of gaming and the game industry. And of course, there are women that have no problem with this stuff. At GDC, I went to the Riot Games booth and there was a giant 20 foot poster of this character: http://i1248.photobucket.com/albums/hh497/Kaiokhen/Leaguecraft/a2JjDh.jpg I don't have any statistics on this, nor do I think statistics exist, but you would probably agree that SOME people would look at that and have no problem, and OTHER people would look at it, roll their eyes, and write off (or at least look down on) Riot Games as a company that is pandering to men, and probably run by men. They might lose some or even all interest in working for Riot, or playing their games. As the author of the article points out, this stuff accumulates. You see a giant poster of boobs representing a company's professional presence at the biggest game industry networking event. Then you see 2 girls at another booth hired to do nothing but wear a skimpy outfit to attract attention to that booth. Then you look at a demo for Soulcalibur V and see Ivy's... everything, and so on, and so forth.

It's definitely hard. I've tried building them three times. There are many ways to mess it up, many parts that can be broken with the wrong pressure being applied. Every case is different, sometimes drastically so. Parts can be incompatible with your case, or each other. Stevo (who builds computers practically for a living) spent like an hour the other day just figuring out how to swap a hard drive from my current machine, and he's about 10x better at this stuff than I am. It's definitely not something that anyone can do, even if they're technically-minded. If we can all agree that I'm not a moron with computers then it only takes one example like myself to disprove the argument. And as Crowbar Man said, almost nobody hooks up their computer to a TV. The majority of households in the U.S. are not wealthy enough to have a primary use computer and a secondary gaming computer. Even if they HAVE a gaming computer, it's unlikely that it will be in their living room. Jill (my wife) reads 2-3 home decor magazines monthly, and watches an enormous amount of home decorating shows - and I've joined her on many occasions - and do you know how many households, even pre-fancy-decorating, have computers in the living room? Zero. I've never seen a single one in hundreds of episodes/articles.

Great article on RPS about issues with women in games & the game industry. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/06/misogyny-sexism-and-why-rps-isnt-shutting-up/ Worth a read.

Yeah, pitch correction really does go a very long way... but I still loved the videos.

Ad hominem and attacks on her Kickstarter campaign aren't really arguments against any of her points, not to mention much of what you said has already been addressed repeatedly or debunked. * The point about "tardiness" has been repeatedly addressed. The overwhelming majority of overfunded Kickstarters do not launch on time, or anywhere close to on time. Period. The "excuse" is that everyone always underestimates the time it takes to do whatever it is they are raising money for. Doesn't matter if it is a video project, a physical object, a CD, game, whatever. The fact that it launched when it did was actually earlier than at least 25% of Kickstarters. QED. * Production quality. I look at videos like this... ... and compared to her newest one, the quality difference seems pretty obvious. No, there's no fancy CG, but the video & audio quality is markedly improved even at lower resolutions. Plus, from my experience working heavily in audio/video professionally, my guess is that some of the money went to behind-the-scenes upgrades that wouldn't necessarily show, but would make the production process easier (ie. better/more computers, better storage setup, etc.) If I made that much money on a Kickstarter, that's the kind of stuff I would buy. * Whether the video is full of "poor writing" is obviously up for debate, unlike most of these other points. * A better question regarding controversy is why you have such a problem with her making a controversial video. People, especially in the game industry, write or produce bold and controversial content all the time. It's not a crime to have a strong opinion. She wasn't advocating anything extreme like violence or racism. In fact, relative to the stuff people post on NeoGAF or Kotaku all the time, I'd say her video was downright tame. But again, if it wasn't, who cares? Why is that a problem? * I want to harp on the controversial thing more. You seem to be taking personal offense that she has a strong opinion on a controversial topic, and (gasp) used that for publicity. This is what basically all games journalists do, along with folks like the Jimquisition, Extra Credits, Kotaku, Dtoid, Joystiq, whatever. You will get more readers and attention by tackling something that people care about, especially if you have a strong opinion. Now as to your claim that she KNEW she was going to get harassed and used THAT for publicity... * The comments section. As has been pointed out, the harassment started after the Kickstarter video. She wasn't the target of abuse and harassment prior to that - the Kickstarter is what got her so much visibility. Feel free to Google the chronology of this and see for yourself. It's insane to think that she would have been able to predict the waterfall of vitriol levied toward her, especially since she had not experienced that level of harassment previously. It's also really amazing that you continue to not blame or condemn the people that did the harassing. It really is the definition of "blame the victim". It's like in the Steubenville rape case, all the people who blamed the girl who got raped and attacked her. You're doing the same exact thing. Even if she did predict the harassment, it's still NOT HER FAULT for being harassed. By definition, the people responsible for the harassment are THE HARASSERS. If there were ever such a thing as justifiable threatening and harassment, it wouldn't be over a fucking Kickstarter video on the internet. * Back to the delay again. Even though the delay is exactly in line with the majority of overfunded Kickstarters, she did publish numerous updates to backers throughout the process. Again, I'll point out that there are many, many projects that have NOT done this and who have stayed mostly silent. It's practically par for the course. Her communication has been very thorough in comparison.

Sorry, that was Dexie and Derrit, not you Brush. The claim that she's releasing slowly to make more money makes no sense because she's not monetizing the videos. And even if she were, again, who cares, since tons of other people do the same thing (etc). It's like saying game developers who raised $xx million can't try to sell their game because they Kickstarted it. Dumb and nonsensical on many levels.

I don't know the whole history for an absolute fact but I'm pretty sure that she started blocking comments AFTER her Kickstarter gained attention, not the other way around. This blows my mind. You're literally blaming the victim. You're saying she's the bad guy for having an opinion and putting it out there, and vilifying her instead of the people who sent death threats, called her a bitch, threatened to rape her, photoshopped her with porn, made games about beating her up, etc. People post way more 'inflammatory' things every day all over the internet. Almost nobody gets the sheer level of harassment that she did, and certainly nobody deserves to. Also, again unless I am grossly misreading dates, you are GROSSLY wrong on the history. The Kickstarter ended WAY before her TED talk. Regarding all the rewards, timeline, etc: this is the nature of Kickstarter. The MAJORITY of projects seem to not ship on time, especially when they're overfunded. This is true from personal experience and observation. http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/07/17/only-25-of-kickstarter-projects-ship-on-time/ Note some of the stats here. Only 25% of overfunded projects ship on time. After EIGHT MONTHS, 75% have shipped. Through my experience on Identity Sequence and FF6 I can confidently say that there is an incredible tendency to vastly underestimate the logistical requirements of physical rewards. Keep in mind Anita's original goal was $6000. The logistical difference between shipping for $6000 worth of backers and over 10x that is simply immense. Bottom line - her post-funding Kickstarter performance is very much in line with many other overfunded projects. It is needlessly hostile to attack her personally for something that happens to pretty much everyone else. I follow sites like Cinemassacre, Nostalgia Critic (tgwtg) and Spoony weekly if not daily. I've never seen the amount of criticism and vitriol for those creators as Anita has received for this. Again people like you (arek) and Brush are basically just making shit up about ad revenue, among other things. There are no ads on her site and no ads in the YT video, so she's not making money from that. And again even if she WERE, who cares? That would make her #10000001 among people creating videos on the internet for money. General note: It makes no sense to accuse me of 'fanboyism' or being overly defensive. If you are accusing the video creator of "money-grabbing" or whatever else, the burden is on you to back up what you said (and again even if were true, as Bleck pointed out, it has no bearing on the video content - and even THAT has no bearing on discussion of the trope itself).

Yourself excluded, it seems like the only people complaining are people that didn't pay, and don't even like her material much. Would you fault me for taking 4+ months longer to release FF6 than I had originally planned? Surprisingly, almost nobody has complained about it, because they know it takes time for high-quality content, and the end result will be free to the world. I think Anita is getting undue criticism of this for no reason other than that people don't like her personally. You have people like Arek repeatedly attacking her personally when no other video creator would get the same kind of treatment.

How is it "troublesome"? The vast majority of internet video creators I can think of don't give a timeline for their videos and many of them just release whenever they want. They're not obligated to work on any schedule but their own. Again it's been less than one month. Are you really so spoiled by free content (that I'm sure none of the critics here donated to) that you DEMAND a release timetable? By the way with regards to the stupid comments about money, her website has 0 ads and as far as I can tell, from any browser, this video is not being monetized with YouTube preroll ads or popups of any kind. She's not using affiliate links, not selling some promoted product (like many channels do, ie. Epic Meal Time), etc. That kind of shoots down the theory that she's just shooting for YouTube ad money. However, even if she WERE doing that, again, why the hell does it matter? Virtually ALL internet video creators do EXACTLY that, so why not demonize Spoony, AVGN, the Escapist, Extra Credits, etc etc etc?

The only thing I need to say is that her video inspired a 35 page discussion here that has been one of the most civil and informed on OCR, a few stupid posts notwithstanding. Not to mention the gender roles thread in PPR that got split out. Unless you think everything is so peachy and rosy in the world of gender that we're all worse off for having discussed it at all. This is really, needlessly hostile, aggressive, and baseless. Nothing Anita has done merits this kind of accusation. There's literally 0 evidence for it whatsoever, so it only speaks to your own bias. As for the schedule: there are plenty of YouTube and internet video celebrities who release videos far less often than once a month. Off the top of my head, the AVGN comes to mind. I love his material of course but in 2012 he only did a handful of episodes, and obviously he is making far more money than Anita. It hasn't even been a month since the first episode came out.

OC ReMix Presents Final Fantasy III (meaning VI): Unbalanced and Ruined Contact: press@ocremix.org FAIRFAX, VA--djpretzel, McVaffe, myself and the rest of the OCR staff are happy to announce the RELEASE of the FF6: Unbalanced & Ruined album! Everything has been worked out with our boys at the Squee, and we're really excited to finally share this with the community! We're raised money to fund the physical production of the FF6 arrangement album Unbalanced & Ruined, directed by myself and McVaffe and featuring the talents of over 10 amazing OC ReMixers. The goal was to produce a superb-quality physical album containing every track from the album, gorgeous artwork, and a FIFTH disc (DVD) of bonus content. That's right: whereas the bonus DVD was previously a stretch goal, it was now included by default! However, we ran out of funding in the middle of production, and had to cut a lot material from the final release. DVDs are expensive. HOWEVER again, we'll used some of the funds raised to record studio musicians for various tracks, as well as professional mixing/mastering as required. Lastly, we covered royalties for each physical copy of the album. Everyone wins! Despite delays in getting the new Kickstarter off the ground, the project was still on course for a Spring 2013 release, and is available as a free download to all. You'll also notice that the new video features MANY more previews from the project, which has been progressing really well since the first preview. On behalf of the entire Unbalanced and Ruined team, I'd like to thank EVERYONE for your patience and support over the last few months. If we could have gotten a liiiiittle bit more Kickstarter funding, we could have afforded lossless encoding. Sorry, brah. Maybe next time/ zircon Preview it: http://youtu.be/iWhGpo4XG6Y Download it (2 mirrors!): http://is.gd/ocremixff3 / http://is.gd/ocremixff6 Comments/Reviews: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=43488

Sadly I am starting to really struggle with keeping to an every-other-day schedule for my cardio workout... I'm down to 1-2 a week I think I'm demoralized because I'm just not seeing any results. Not losing weight, not really feeling particularly better overall in terms of energy level. I know I have to do it for heart health but it's very hard to stay motivated. I'm also starting to really believe the theory of a "set weight" or "set point" that we are constantly fighting against (those of us who are overweight, anyway). In the last year or so I have started working out (trying to, anyway), switched to a ball instead of a desk chair which I bounce on all day, stopped eating fast food completely, increased my consumption of lean meats vs. everything else (chicken, turkey), switched to eating eggs some days for breakfast instead of cereal, etc. I stopped buying candy and fatty desserts pretty much entirely. I don't drink anything except water. I don't eat chips, pretzels or other junky snack foods. I don't get pre-processed microwave dinners, and I don't eat out much at all. I cook the vast majority of what I eat with basic ingredients. I also switched over entirely from 'white' carbs to whole wheat over the last couple years.. brown rice, whole wheat pasta, whole wheat tortillas, etc. Yet despite this mountain of changes I haven't lost any weight. It sucks.

Part of the problem is - let's be honest - that academic composers just have no business sense. They're not trained to think of themselves as freelancers or entrepreneurs. They are brought up and educated in an extremely insulated world where most if not all of their professors followed the same career paths. It's a little sad, really. If you are going to make it in music, you NEED to have an entrepreneurial mindset. There's another book on the topic which was written with conservatory students in mind called "Beyond Talent": http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Talent-Creating-Successful-Career/dp/0195382595 I highly recommend this one as well, though it is again more oriented toward folks who went through a traditional music education. I think it does a great job of bringing up all the practical issues that most people just fail to consider at all.

If you're a composer of academic / concert music then yeah, you're going to have a bad time if you want to do nothing but that as a living. On the other hand, a career in music is definitely possible even without a major label deal. There are plenty of people who make a nice living as composers and producers. They're not famous but they support themselves doing what they love, which is the definition of 'success' in my book.

This is a great read if you're interested in becoming a professional musician: http://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Jungle-Success-Manual-Freelancers/dp/1458474496 It's less about the technical end of things and more about all of the "common sense" advice that really isn't common sense for a lot of people. Jim was a mentor for me as a student and the book distills a lot of his best wisdom, so I highly recommend it.

Beyerdynamic DT-880s. Miracle headphones http://www.dansdata.com/images/dt880/dt880640.jpg

Compression has been used as 'glue' on the master bus for awhile, predating the loudness wars by many many years. To me, it really does just that... it glues the sound together in a very pleasing way, particularly for dance music. It's not a matter of using it to balance out levels, but for example, a nicely-compressed mix will have the kick pumping pleasingly in and out, while bits of air from the snare are brought up higher than usual, and the occasional shimmer from an arpeggio shines through. You can in theory achieve all of these things by carefully automating and sidechaining dozens or hundreds of individual tracks but ultimately, it's a lot easier (and frequently more musical) to compress everything together.

Actually I'm pretty sure that's a different recording of the theme. If you A/B it: It sounds way higher fidelity and some of the sounds like the EP aren't exactly the same. Not sure if Jake remade it but I wouldn't be surprised.

I don't consider a small piece of Ab's post to be minimodding. On the other hand, one-liners and "I agree." posts really don't add anything to the thread. He's right. I've been agreeing with Ab (and Monobrow, Vilecat, Tensei, etc.) for basically the whole thread but you don't see us just posting "+1 agreed" and nothing else in response. This has been a very high quality discussion so far and it would be good to not crap it up with posts that literally add nothing. If you agree with someone, try to expand on why you agree or add something new to the discussion. If you want to discuss this further take it to PM with me, I'll continue to delete posts that are outside the actual discussion.

I'm not sure if there is a significant promotional benefit... but being able to upload more music and have better embed options & analytics is nice.

That's a really cynical point of view. Tons of Kickstarter projects have been well-worth it, particularly artistic ones. I used Kickstarter myself and it was a fantastic experience. Everyone who backed it was VERY satisfied with the prizes and results. Of course the FF6 Kickstarter was also very successful and I think people will be equally pleased when we release the album. When you say "pocketed all the money" you make it sound like she did something wrong. People donated money to her. Did you expect her to donate everything over $6000 to charity? Even some of her critics have pointed out that it is not cheap to work on video production full-time. She has posted pics of all the games she purchased for research purposes and obviously she has been hard at work on the series. Seems like she is definitely delivering on her promises and I look forward to the other 11 videos. Honestly, this REALLY seems like you're just trolling to get a rise out of people, or you're not comfortable with the idea that maybe the status quo of video games isn't really fair or respectful to everyone.

There are definitely people here who don't think sexism is a problem in games. Well considering that's the crux of your statement... you should be saying "Oops, you're right and I was wrong." There really is an ENORMOUS group of people online who just think everything is fine and dandy and anyone trying to change the status quo is wrong. Look, you're pretty much saying "Why bother trying to educate people on YouTube". YouTube has the widest reach possible. What are the other alternatives? It's ridiculous to suggest anything else. No, not every potentially affected or interested party is going to watch her videos, but that's not the point. It's not POSSIBLE to reach everyone, or even close to everyone. And "preaching to the choir" isn't even necessarily a bad thing. Multiple people in this thread who already agreed with Anita conceptually found the video interesting and it showed a different perspective. Remember that for things to change, people have to actually DO SOMETHING. You can have the opinion that sexism is a problem but not be motivated to do anything about it. Maybe watching a video like this puts you a little over the edge. This is, quite simply, how change happens.