Posts by Taylor

I don’t know if I really want to drag this into men’s rights because it looks a bit egocentric, but I will say male activism is in a really rocky place right now. Pretty much everyone will say they are a feminist, because its colloquial meaning is fixing injustices that society has dealt women. It doesn’t mean you necessarily subscribe to concepts like rape culture, gender being construct of society, history rewrites on suffrage, whatever the hell this is, etc. It just means equality, and only an asshole doesn’t want equality.

MRAs do not have this nice bedrock to build from, most people only become MRAs after being dealt injustice themselves making it a much more bitter and hostile movement, and even trying to raise awareness

. I wouldn’t deny men are in a better position, but they do have issues of higher importance than, say, video games and there shouldn’t be a severe social stigma associated with raising them... And with that I’m done!

Back to women and video games... One thread I saw a few times on twitter and reddit, during the latest media contriversy of Epic saying the Gears of War demographic would prefer male protagonists, was the idea of getting more women into the games industry to make the games they want to play. This was mainly met with a hostility and opposition that I found surprising - I’m guessing this is because it shows an unwillingness to be inclusive from men and/or because realistically this just isn’t going to happen any time soon?

I don't really gel with Starcraft but I still ordered HotS through peer pressure from friends. I only played WoL single player and my last save was 20/12/2011 until last night, where I tried to rush the rest of the campaign but fell asleep. Now I've got 6 hours to become a Starcraft master.

Not AFAIK, Injustice is their next game.

Heh, the game doesn't evaluate players separately so in a situation like a trade player 1 will win. It’s not actually a massive deal in practice and they have fixed it for Injustice.

Must make sure you're player 1!

FMPONE, I’ve read all your replies in this thread, including the one deleted, and you seem to have major baggage with feminism that you really need to leave at the door. I disagree with a lot of feminist "theory" and don’t like the professional victim style used by some of its proponents, but it’s not a unilateral movement and this doesn’t negate the points being raised here. It is clear women do get the shitty end of the stick when it comes to video game representation and this is not a justified balancing act with prostate cancer research, child custody, workplace deaths, and other male inequalities. Equality is about fixing everything for everybody.

The industry likes the statistic that almost half of gamers are female and aged over thirty because it shows a diversity and maturity they would like to be associated with. People on this board presumably realise from their own experience that the audience of core titles is a much younger and male-dominated space.

Anyway, talking about demographics reminded me of a post I was linked to written by Kelly Sue DeConnick in her Reddit AMA. It is, of course, concerning comics but much of it seems to parallel the games industry.

http://www.reddit.com/r/comicbooks/c…184q1?context=1

Err, guys, this is actually just the EOT thread now.

I'm not exactly agreeing with your sweeping assessment that the forum is a culturally ignorant echo chamber. The general consensus within the sensible boards seems to be sexism is a genuine issue, both from the perspective of game content and the industry itself. This doesn't mean that all commentary about it is immune to criticism.

Unless you're basically just talking about 1-2 bad posters, which wouldn't justify your idle threat... you do know we never get new members because this is a decade dead half-life 1 modification community, right?

Totally going to regret posting this in five minutes. Woo-woo!

You’d be hard pressed to argue with the core of what she’s saying. The damsel in distress trope certainly does exist for videogames, just as it does in every other storytelling medium, and is particularly prominent in older games not looking to have a complex narrative outside of some lazy justification for gameplay to happen. Likewise, her ultimate conclusion that being exposed to only this trope could perpetuate a sexist world view of weak, helpless women is probably true (though I think games are more diverse than that).

However, a lot of the evidence she’s putting forwards to back up this fairly innocuous point is rife with unfounded assumptions, cherry picking, and simply reading too much into everything. This is basically the criticism she gets on her other videos, though I believe voicing this makes you a troll. With a neck-beard.

For instance, her opening gambit about Dinosaur Planet makes a lot of assumptions about changing Krystal into Fox that seem unfounded. Maybe after they merged the troubled project with Starfox they decided to use the well-established, almost-titular lead as the main character for franchise familiarity and safer sales? Demographics seem a consistent stumbling point in her videos about toys as well. Marketing people don't have souls, let alone hidden agendas.

The part about Princess Peach also seemed problematic. All the times she is a strong, capable character are said to just not count, this includes all the spin-offs like Mario Kart and Mario Party where she’s on equal footing with the other characters, Super Princess Peach where she rescues Mario and Luigi (I have never played this, so maybe it does do some silly stuff - she says she will discuss this later but does not in this video), and SMB2 in the main series was vetoed because her appearance was “accidental” – a claim with no evidence at all. Pointing out it was a Doki Doki Panic reskin doesn't prove anything, her art was unique and they could’ve added a male character instead... And I’m not trying to say here Peach isn’t a contender for the trope! She’s the quintessential example even with these exceptions so why try so hard to bury them?

It’s hard to say more without hearing the other part, particularly her highlighted exceptions, but I think the main problem here is a lack of creativity.

Damsel in distress is from the French demoiselle en detresse and it means damsel in distress.

Much like Psychonauts everything but the game part was fantastic.

Edit: Game part wasn't actually bad, just didn't meet the standard of everything else.

You're not the only one

One of my friends has sang all the praises of DotA2 at me, but I'd mainly be playing solo and playing a MOBA by yourself is borderline masochistic. I also find the mixture of delay, turn speeds and slow animations make it feel very unresponsive to me.

Quote from AlexM

One issue I have with LoL is that a lot of the balance patches are knee-jerk reactions or based off designers preferences For instance the lead designer Morello has said many times how much he hates Irelia and Eve and they have suffered for it. They took everything unique away from Eve and for 1 year essentially annexed her to underpowered, only to patch her after that year taking away everything that was fun about her.

While they have nerfed Irelia constantly she is still in a good spot because her kit does so much (mixed damage, heal, very mobile, CC mitigation, etc.). As I understand it Morello was against having champions that have such diverse skill-sets more than anything else, as they are hard to balance... But then they forgot about all that and added Rengar, Kha’Six, Vi, etcetera anyway.

I was never around for the Eve rework, but I’m kind of amazed Karma and Sejuani have been in a bad state for so long. It doesn’t seem like something that would take this long, and even some better numbers until the reworks happen would be beneficial. Sejuani is still full-price too, so I can’t even be cynical about the monetisation aspect.

These are all amazing.

Publishers are getting increasingly worried by digital distribution for some reason!

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Grab bag of random peeves:

• QTEs remain terrible in general, but a special grumble for QTE’s that are randomised each time. Mainly because it highlights the button presses are completely arbitrary as they are not even tied to a corresponding normal function.
• Any mechanic that uses randomisation in a way you cannot actively play around or account for.
• Randomness left unregulated in a competitive game. Ex: Critical Strike streaks.
• Ridiculously strong comeback mechanics in competitive games that do not have a lame-duck scenario.
• Publically visible win loss ratios that discourage people from actually playing competitively through fear of ruining their accounts and/or giving the douchenozzles that populate online games ammunition.
• Scoring systems where optimal scores are simply about putting in the most time.
• Scoring systems based entirely around a ridiculously large modifier that bombs on a mistake and ruins the entire run immediately.
• Puzzles that give you a hint two-and-a-half seconds after you walk up to it, because of gross/insulting misconceptions about the intelligence and attention-span of the average gamer.
• Boss encounters that are a QTE (or even simpler interaction) in-between fighting three waves of mook enemies you’ve already been fighting all game.

Quote from Thrik

I know it's been said before, but better AI is what I want to see during the next generation. With more computing power than ever available, that means there's a lot more possibility to have enemies react in very clever and surprising ways. It's very rarely a game's AI genuinely surprises me, like when I first played FEAR and they were crawling along the floor and shit. If most games shun such innovations for the sake of even prettier graphics I will be so disappointed.

I feel this is one of those 'be careful what you wish for' moments. Ex: A common desire from players is that enemies are smart enough to "sneak up behind them," but in practice walking down a corridor and suddenly going horizontal as you get shot in the back of the head would be rather infuriating. It is stupid that soldiers hide behind rocks with half their body visible and shout every time they reload or lob something at you but, as the pattern detecting flesh units we are, detecting patterns and figuring out the most appropriate response is how we overcome challenges. I certainly think AI can be improved, but I think it generally should remain predictable.

Why are you on Kotaku?