Xelebes
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Posts posted by Xelebes
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Modernism took longer to advance to the stage of art.
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There was some blowback for that single 7.5 review, especially regarding the critique that accompanied it.
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The point is that it is as I originally said before you chimed in. Telling the developers to change their output is not an effective way to enact societal change. Not sure what you planned to get out of proving my point in some needlessly antagonistic manner.
They are not looking for societal change specifically. They are looking for a broader and as a consequence, fairer representation of women (and other minorities.) That is what the critics are doing. They are calling for such. And is why Bayonetta gets such low reviews (7.5, not 9.0 or 10.0.) The belief is that if you have a broader representation of women, you will not have adolescent men growing up, playing lots of video games and reading lots of comic books, with women represented in a limited set of tropes, especially the Virgin-Whore duality. Because these limited set of tropes are especially confining for women looking to play games and later make games.
Not sure why, I'm not really insecure on my opinions about media and I'm not going to give it more thought unless you have something substantial to counter with. Try human conversation, please.Because you interpret a botched ending is several magnitudes more important than flimsy character development.
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The Southern Poverty Law Center is keeping its eye on Gamergate as a hate group.
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/10/16/hatewatch-headlines-101614/
‘Gamergate’ reflects not an apolitical consumer movement, but a swelling of vicious right-wing conspiracism.http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/13/gamergate-right-wing-no-neutral-stance
The larger a mass, the greater its gravitational pull. This also applies to social media bandwagons. Gamergate, the months-long online consumer revolt, fomented by anti-feminist reactionaries and loosely held together by a Twitter hashtag, certainly wants to give the impression of being a planetoid, and as a result has drawn into its orbit a whole range of protagonists. Some have petty or personal grievances, others exaggerated concerns rooted in genuine issues. Some have just smelled money, or fear.There’s an element of symbiosis in the relationship between those involved. The worst – disingenuous ideologues, agitators, power-drunk vigilantes – are able to use the diversity of participants as a fig leaf for their agenda, while those with smaller axes to grind get to harness the energy and aggression of the extremists while simultaneously disavowing them. Marching under the incredibly vague banner of “journalistic ethics” allows bona fide neo-nazis to hold hands with ticked-off customers and claim common cause.
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First of all, your analogy fails insofar that poorly executed media (bad ending, plotholes, meaningless story mechanics) is not the same as media which has upsetting material (racist portrayals, misogynistic portrayals, careless or non-empathetic violence [see the game where you murder innocents as the premise]) in it.
I will let you dwell on that thought for a moment.
Secondly, as awful as the analogy is, it still favors my point. Yes, you can dislike the ending, but no one really gives a fuck if you want developers to change it. It's their game, not yours.Yup.
So what is the issue here?
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And Newsweek steps in, for whatever its worth:
Is GamerGate About Media Ethics or Harassing Women? Harassment, the Data Shows
So, is GamerGate really about ethics in journalism? Newsweek asked BrandWatch, a social media analytics company, to dig through 25 percent of the more than 2 million tweets about GamerGate since September 1 to discover how often Twitter users tweeted at or about the major players in the debate, and whether those tweets were positive, negative or neutral.In the following graphic, compare how often GamerGaters tweet at Zoe Quinn, a developer, and Nathan Grayson, a Kotaku games journalist. In August, GamerGaters accused Grayson of giving Quinn’s game Depression Quest favorable reviews because Grayson and Quinn had been in a relationship. The relationship was fact, those ‘favorable reviews’ were fiction. Grayson only wrote about Quinn once, for a story on a failed reality show, and that was before they were in a relationship, according to Stephen Totilo, the editor-in-chief of Kotaku and Grayson’s boss.
[graphic]
Twitter users have tweeted at Quinn using the #GamerGate hashtag 10,400 times since September 1. Grayson has received 732 tweets with the same hashtag during the same period. If GamerGate is about ethics among journalists, why is the female developer receiving 14 times as many outraged tweets as the male journalist?
Totilo has received 1,708 tweets since September 1—more than Grayson but fewer than Leigh Alexander. Alexander got 13,296 tweets, nearly eight times as many as Totilo. And Alexander’s only crime was writing an op-ed critical of so-called gaming culture—GamerGate hasn’t even accused her of any malfeasance.
The discrepancies there seem to suggest GamerGaters cares less about ethics and more about harassing women.
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You can. It's just feedback, insofar as you don't rage about it.
And yet there was rage when Mass Effect 3 had a poor ending. What happened after those who raged expressed their rage?
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The societal acceptance of women's portrayal, I'll say again, is a problem deeper rooted in the cultural mindset. If you want to fix it, you can't try to tell game devs not to do what they want.
No. If you think a game has an absolute disappointment of an ending, do you tell the developers that the game has a great disappointment of an ending?
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Sexual objectification is not wrong. It just has to have its place. If you are marketing a game for a broad audience, you will want to tone down the sexual objectification. Not everyone wants to play a game that also acts as erotica. I certainly don't. Game developers in Japan know this but can get away with it in Japan because it is such a male-oriented society. When they sell games in North America, they have to redact the rape scenes that they are fond of inserting into in Japanese games. Because apparently, there is a lot of rape scenes glibly put into Japanese games.
Men want to be sexually objectified; women want to be sexually objectified. Just not all the time. And most certainly there is a large audience that wants their games to not be solely in the province of catering to sexual objectification. And certainly there is a large audience that wants games to not serve the monomania of adolescent male fantasy.
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Well, if we're gonna use the word "obnoxious"... your entire response is obnoxious. "Hey buddy"?? You can't just accuse someone of cherry picking, by the way - you have to show how the data being cited is incomplete or is being carefully selected from a larger pool of data with less clarity or competing/conflicting results. You haven't done that, uh.... let's see.... at all. You've just made the baseless accusation, and then called the writing style obnoxious, and then said "hey buddy"...
Oh, this is precious.
Also, uh... there's no specific hard & fast START date on third-wave feminism. So being glib and saying "Hey buddy" while in the same sentence asserting an unprovable point ("been around since the 70s") seems problematic. The term "third-wave feminism" itself was coined in 1992 as per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_feminism. The article also says:Oh I know what the wikipedia article is. It is also wise to note that many of the arguments that comprise third wave feminism were being put forth in the 1970s. Basically, Third Wave Feminism is meant to address the issues of "Hey, we now have jobs, what is the next issue we have to deal with?" They coined the term in the early 90s because they realised what was happening. Looking for writers working on the concepts of this so-called third wave need you to no further than to look at the work of Joan Wallach Scott and Charlotte Zolotow.
Basically - and I've really kept this civil and not personal as much as possible - you're full of shit. At least with regards to this specific post. Go now and become less full of shit in what way seems best to you.Sorry, the post was written impromptu while I was at work. So it was written and edited in small parts, in short spans. Call what you may about the shit I write, might you take the time to smell your own perfume. Thank you very much.
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First three pages read exactly like cherry picking ("oh, and look at this! this supports my theory! oh and look at this! this too!") A very obnoxious style of writing with little explanation of how they are congruent and whether or not the theory he espouses has been modified to account for the phenomenon he reports on. Will continue reading, but I hope he breaks out of this pattern because it is not pretty.
Edit: at page five, he starts to recognise Third Wave Feminism. Hey buddy, Third Wave Feminism has been around since the 70s. Glad you're just cluing in. (refering to the author.)
Hm, this book was written during the crisis in evolutionary psychology in 2000s. That was during the time professors were kicked out of schools for academic chicanery (Kanazawa) and certain major proponents were explicitly supporting exceptionally reactionary causes (Charles Murray, Rushton's Pioneer Fund.) In fact, I am begining to see why Pinker's work would be dismissed by various academics including scientists in the harder sciences, as something beset by strawman fallacies. He scarcely demonstrates whether or not he has an understanding of the arguments made by those he pillories.
The nature-nurture debate is not one with a tradition of fair play. Rather the standard practice has been to present a fairly complex and nuanced version of your own side of the debate, while setting up and demolishing a straw man as the opponent. In his latest contribution to the ongoing debate, Stephen Pinker cites numerous examples where his opponents adopt this strategy. However, he seems oblivious of the fact that he is responding in kind, beginning with his title, The Blank Slate. One might expect an author putting forward new ideas on a topic of such vital interest to choose a title giving an appealing characterisation of his own theory, rather than a pejorative label for the opposing viewpoint.Perhaps in the 10s, the science has improved considerably. In fact, I think the 00s have been a revelatory period. You might want to use more recent works in the science than something that is twelve years old.
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Oh brother, it has come down to this? Really?
College rape is a serious issue in the United States (and Canada.) There are perverse incentives to not investigate and prosecute incidents of rapes on college campuses. Of the biggest perversions is the brand massaging done by college administrations to play down the number of rapes that occur on their campuses lest they have their brand impaired by accusations of being unsafe campuses. This is especially a big problem on private campuses, less so on public campuses and is one of the biggest reasons that the discussion is most agitated around private campuses. Public campuses, your community college and your state universities, have given indication that they are working on this issue.
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Someone actually hired a marketing company to create a successful viral campaign against 4chan and timed it with Emma Watson's speech and raise more support for feminism... just to take down 4chan?
SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT
I don't even know who the root for in this fucklewit debate anymore. It's so ungodly stupid and aggressive and insane that I can barely finish this sentence.
No, it was a viral campaign to draw clicks onto their site so they can make a bunch of revenue. Troll-dweebs making a quick buck.
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I was led to this site during high school. I didn't have any friends after high school so who was I supposed to draw in? I met someone back in 2006 who was already a member so I couldn't draw him in already.
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Why is it ok to have gratuitous violence in gaming, but not sexualized content?
Sexualised content is okay if you intend to target the audience that finds that sexualised content okay. Problem is that target audience is smaller than the maximum audience. The problem is that when you are going after the maximum audience for maximum ability to recuperate the costs of production and marketing, you have to cater to the much smaller audience first lest you make them veeeeery angry.
And that is a problem in the industry.
The American recording industry had a similar problem in the 1950s. You could have black artists recording but they had to cater to white audiences and, more often than not, those given AAA release budgets were white artists. It just was the way things were done. Capitol and Atlantic (and later A&M) Records came along releasing at first what was called rhythm and blues and later rock and roll with integrated artists. This created much acrimony and people frustrated that they had to integrate this music and it was this controversy that propelled those labels into becoming the largest labels around.
What you are seeing now in the North American and European game development industries is the emergence of companies are that are gunning for the largest markets which now include older women. The share older women take up in the gaming market is as much or larger than younger men and the industry is beginning to recognise that. My mom now plays more videogames than I do. You know what, I don't care that they play games more than I do.
This shift is important and it requires a rethink of how one designs their games, especially in the visual side of the game. That is why in Bioshock Infinite, despite the distributor nudging the cover art to exclude Elizabeth despite the prominence of that character in the game, it does not dress the female characters impractically. And you know what, it does not take anything away from the game.
If you're given an AAA budget to produce a game and you only go after half the potential market, you really have to go after it. Do not be lazy and assume that what you did ten years ago for a market that was much different than now is going to fly so well. Eventually, you're going to face pressure from investors giving you those budgets.
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Realistic & refreshing compared to Tolkein or pretty much all OTHER examples of fantasy, i.e. realistic in its genre...
Mm, you have one point that I agree with. It is most certainly refreshing and it is most certainly different from the D&D/Tolkien based fantasy. But I have to say that simply including sex does not make it more realistic, especially if the sex depicted is not itself realistic.
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I honestly and truthfully find it ethically HELPFUL and informing to see things depicted as I suspect they really were; a palpably barbarous past should make us appreciate our present, by contrast, much more. Unless, of course... we are impressionable imbeciles... I liked The Borgias for this reason; of course Game of Thrones is fictional, but I think it actually depicts a more realistically HUMAN past than most works of historical fiction manage.
There is something to be said for the power of COUNTEREXAMPLE. Unless, of course... you're Anita...
Hm, interesting. I don't find Game of Thrones all that realistic. I find it rather seeking the salacious and only the salacious from a generalised single view point, to the point that other salacious events are either subject to caricature or otherwise downplayed. In other words, same as it ever was.
The only thing I can give it credit for is the moral ambiguity of the characters, otherwise it is just a bloody soap opera. A very fun soap opera though.
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The fact that this thread has jumped the shark from Sarkeesian is probably a good thing. Outside of her first video, which I guess to throw her supporters a bone might have gotten the "conversation started", she hasn't really provided any thought provoking discussion.
Does sexism exist? Sure it does. I don't have any hard data on whether or not it is still as legally and professionally pervasive as it was pre-feminist movements, but on a micro-,individual level it's still very much alive and well.
Does sexism in video games exist? Well first what the hell does that even mean? Are we talking about sexism in the industry itself or in the content in question? If it's the latter, then context is absolutely key. Otherwise we're just handling the problem superficially, and when has that ever been a good thing?
Is Sarkeesian necessary to keep this conversation going? Not really.
Does OCR have a like button around here or something?
All that said, I have real grave suspicions about #gamergate. It is one of the lamest scandals I have ever tried bothering time with. Ugh.
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Command & Conquer: Renegade
- Loved the game to bits but I never made it past the Mountain Chalet, I think.
Kiss: Psycho Circus
- I made it at least halfway. Beat the first two realms and stuck at the third realm with the fourth realm unaccessible.
I want to mention Will Rock because I almost made it to the first boss. Almost.
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How about some understated European jazz?
Lars Danielsson:
Esbjörn Svensson Trio:
Tord Gustavsen Trio:
Jan Garbarek:
Eberhard Weber: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUsQNXIGR1M
Also, for Xelebes: if you don't like horns, have you tried piccolo bass? (No, not the electric variety...)
Ron Carter:
Isao Suzuki:
All of those examples were great. Thanks.
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While this thread is alive, I'll use it as another place to push OCRemix's newest group!
https://soundcloud.com/wiesty/the-guru-the-oc-jazz-collective
What do you think of horns now?!
More subdued which is what I like.
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See, the cool thing about horns are their wide timbral spectrum. The variety of tones allows for an incredibly expressive performance; it's why we often have horn leads. Synthesizer leads generally strive for the same kind of effect - heck even guitarists go for a squeal at the peak of their solo.
Not that this text is going to change your mind or anything.
Well, it isn't about changing my mind. It's about seeking those who are not so hot about horns.
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suppose i can relate to what you mean, an evening at a jazz bar (not that i've spent many) can get tedious when the brass overindulges in one excessive solo after another. Same goes for other instruments to a degree but the forte sound characteristics of e.g. piano or bass are less in your face.
That said, i like all of it in moderate doses. Truth be told i love so many cliches. Orchestra Hits forever!!
I can love many cliches, but the unpleasantness of the squeal can make it unbearable. I'd love it if there was a subdued horn craze or strain.
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I think that is over generalizing things. Sure, every instrument has it's own traits which may be considered harsh or annoying, but only "cliche" players will exploit these cliches to a maximum. The best players know when to be melodic and when to turn it up a notch. It's all about what emotion they want to convey.
Over-generalising? Sure. But it makes it really difficult when trying to find decent works with good solos, especially when the characteristics I listed are so highly desired by jazz fans, apparently.
RIP Isao Tomita
in General Discussion
Posted
Isao Tomita passed away on the 5th. He was 84. If you like videogame music. . .
*crickets*
If you like anime soundtracks. . .
*crickets*
He wrote the soundtracks for numerous anime movies from the 1970s on but more importantly was a pioneer of the synthesiser in Japan much in the way that Wendy Carlos and Laurie Spiegel were pioneers in North America. He covered many classical pieces on his albums and would in the 1970s get some of his classical albums on the US Billboard classical charts. He was instructive for many synthesisists including Ryuichi Sakamoto of Yellow Magic Orchestra and establishing the sound pallette of Japan including our beloved greats of Koji Kondo and Nobuo Uematsu.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2016/05/08/music/isao-tomita-japanese-pioneer-of-synthesizer-music-dies-at-84/#.VzIsYNIrJph