• Female game developer's $40,892 Kickstarter project goes unfinished, donates remaining funding to Fe
    367 replies, posted
People need to fucking remember that crowd funded things aren't a guarantee... you're not BUYING anything, you're investing. And sometimes investments fuck up. Yeah, she's a bitch, and this is dumb. But this is essentially pre-ordering an idea, and that carries risks.
[QUOTE=Scotchair;46625041]People need to fucking remember that crowd funded things aren't a guarantee... you're not BUYING anything, you're investing. And sometimes investments fuck up. Yeah, she's a bitch, and this is dumb. But this is essentially pre-ordering an idea, and that carries risks.[/QUOTE] This isn't a fuckup, this is a misappropriation of funds.
It feels like no one will sue her, considering I'm guessing a lot of feminist frequency people supported her game?
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;46625066]This isn't a fuckup, this is a misappropriation of funds.[/QUOTE] It's both.
[QUOTE=blerb;46623612]It's still about ethics. Have you watched feminist frequency? Looked at SJW rhetoric on tumblr? Do you honestly believe that 3rd wave feminism is progressive? I suppose it is, if you consider reversing gender roles and reversing sexism and racism onto white men social progress. I don't have a problem with them publishing their critique, but when it's used in social academia, it makes me sick. It's about ethics on a core level. Anita Sarkeesian and John McIntosh, two highly influential feminists/SJWs, are rotten people, just as their views are. Their influence is being felt all over popular culture, and it's only going to keep spreading. Go ahead and deny this, it really makes no difference. The only thing here to blame for that is your objective ignorance.[/QUOTE] I'd just like to point out that they're not representative of third wave feminism as a whole, which is really just backlash against second wave feminism. In other words, it's about primacy of the individual and recognising there are women from many backgrounds who don't share a collective experience of womanhood because of their social status. It's not about reversing gender roles, sexism and racism onto white men. Not that I'm defending the likes of Sarkeesian and McIntosh. They're idiots that are given a whole lot of credit they don't deserve, but blaming multiple opposing perspectives for their stupidity is a bit much.
[QUOTE=Raidyr;46624929]Right, I apologize. I thought we were talking about shit that actually mattered. [/QUOTE] You should apologize but for a wholly different reason. [QUOTE=Raidyr;46624929]Did you even watch the video you linked? They moved past the black history month conversation. [/QUOTE] "I won't call you a white man, and you don't call me a black man" "Stop talking about it" Doesnt mean "never talk about racism". He was talking about racism right there. That wouldnt make any sense. [QUOTE=Raidyr;46624929]Again, the viewpoint of "I don't see race, I see people" doesn't hold up with reality. [/QUOTE] Exactly how does "'I don't see race, i see people' doesn't hold up with reality" fit into this puzzle. Are you trying to justify racism now? [QUOTE=Raidyr;46624929]I didn't quote it because I was responding to Freeman, not you. That said though, why would you quote someone who disagrees with you? [/QUOTE] Im tempted to dig through your history to find instances where you've used quotes from individuals who later changed their mind or held some other idea you dont agree with, but that would be just stupid, wouldn't it? I quoted it for the quote, not the person saying it, welcome to basic discussion? [QUOTE=Raidyr;46624929]How is that a strawman argument? I'm asking for non-anecdotal proof of political correctness. [/QUOTE] It is a strawman by definition. You disagree with something that isn't my argument and claim it is. Your claim was im intending to show the full extend of PC through scientific rigor. My argument was that he similarly cannot prove that PC has no effect whatsoever, when it demonstrably dose have some effect on social discussions by the inherent fact that our 'social discussion' is now discussing it. [QUOTE=Raidyr;46624929]You probably shouldn't put much stock on ideas that can't be practically defended.[/QUOTE] I don't put any stock in the straw man you're attacking. Funny though, that line inserted into my quote would work much better.
[QUOTE=Mattk50;46625103] It is a strawman by definition. You disagree with something that isn't my argument and claim it is. Your claim was im intending to show the full extend of PC through scientific rigor. My argument was that he similarly cannot prove that PC has no effect whatsoever, when it demonstrably dose have some effect on social discussions by the inherent fact that our 'social discussion' is now discussing it.[/QUOTE] If all political correctness means is "One time I made a joke about black people and someone got mad" then what even is the point of complaining about political correctness? People are going to discuss political correctness forever because there is always going to be that one guy who doesn't realize he isn't funny he is just being a racist or sexist or ableist asshole. It exists because someone called someone else out on some shit they said and instead of defending what they said they fall back on some vague sense that what they said is really okay to say and everyone else shouldn't be offended. [editline]2nd December 2014[/editline] Political correctness is a nebulous defense that people whose ideas or rhetoric have been intellectually challenged or socially criticized use when they can't sufficiently stand by said ideas or rhetoric.
[QUOTE=Raidyr;46625138]If all political correctness means is "One time I made a joke about black people and someone got mad" then what even is the point of complaining about political correctness? People are going to discuss political correctness forever because there is always going to be that one guy who doesn't realize he isn't funny he is just being a racist or sexist or ableist asshole. It exists because someone called someone else out on some shit they said and instead of defending what they said they fall back on some vague sense that what they said is really okay to say and everyone else shouldn't be offended.[/QUOTE] When you can just claim to be offended as a defense for real argument, that's where PC shows it's uselessness. If someone is being a racist asshole, point that out, offense isn't a valid response. Also "ableist" :v: in response to your edit: Blanket generalizations about how things are used is a bad idea. There are people who use it as you described, and those who legitimatley are being dismissed out of a misguided idea of pointless offense taking. I think this argument is over unless you feel that pointless and damaging offense taking doesnt exist?
[QUOTE=Mattk50;46625186]When you can just claim to be offended as a defense for real argument, that's where PC shows it's uselessness. If someone is being a racist asshole, point that out, offense isn't a valid response.[/QUOTE] Political correctness is only useful for the person being called out as a cloak against criticism. [QUOTE=Mattk50;46625186]Also "ableist" :v:[/QUOTE] Educate yourself. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ableism#United_States[/url] [editline]2nd December 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=Mattk50;46625186]I think this argument is over unless you feel that pointless and damaging offense taking doesnt exist?[/QUOTE] I don't even know what "pointless and damage offense taking" even fucking means.
[QUOTE=Mattk50;46625186]When you can just claim to be offended as a defense for real argument, that's where PC shows it's uselessness. If someone is being a racist asshole, point that out, offense isn't a valid response. Also "ableist" :v: in response to your edit: Blanket generalizations about how things are used is a bad idea. There are people who use it as you described, and those who legitimatley are being dismissed out of a misguided idea of pointless offense taking. I think this argument is over unless you feel that pointless and damaging offense taking doesnt exist?[/QUOTE] Its generally quite easy to prove when someone is being racist. Being offended has nothing to do with it, that's why most definitions of media classification make the distinction between 'harm' and 'offense'. Anybody can be 'offended' by anything, but for 'harm' to have taken place there must be evidence of some permanent physical, social or psychological damage. There's no such thing as 'harmful offense' and political correctness is not a defence, it can be good or bad, it's just a mechanism we use to gate content that may be inapropriate or offensive to some viewers as well as regulate content that is harmful to others (such as things that instruct in how to commit a crime).
[QUOTE=Zyler;46625258]Its generally quite easy to prove when someone is being racist. Being offended has nothing to do with it, that's why most definitions of media classification make the distinction between 'harm' and 'offense'. Anybody can be 'offended' by anything, but for 'harm' to have taken place there must be evidence of some permanent physical, social or psychological damage.[/QUOTE] Gee, it sure is good we can easily prove and disprove when a game is being racist/sexist/otherist, so that Feminist Frequency crowd won't be able to gain any influence after people take one look at it and realize they don't have a leg to stand on. It is easy to prove or disprove a specific case of racism when communicating with unbiased, reasonable individuals. Thats not the current world we live in as much as i wish what you're saying was true.
[QUOTE=Scotchair;46625041]People need to fucking remember that crowd funded things aren't a guarantee... you're not BUYING anything, you're investing. And sometimes investments fuck up. Yeah, she's a bitch, and this is dumb. But this is essentially pre-ordering an idea, and that carries risks.[/QUOTE] That's true. But you should at least be able to expect who you're investing in to follow the TOS.
[QUOTE=Mattk50;46625368]Gee, it sure is good we can easily prove and disprove when a game is being racist/sexist/otherist, so that Feminist Frequency crowd won't be able to gain any influence after people take one look at it and realize they don't have a leg to stand on. It is easy to prove or disprove a specific case of racism when communicating with unbiased, reasonable individuals. Thats not the current world we live in as much as i wish what you're saying was true.[/QUOTE] That's why I (and most legal institutions) make the distinction between harm and offence. If Feminist Frequency went to a courtroom they would be pretty much instantly denied, Jack Thompson tried the same thing and it didn't work out so well. That's why they instead put pressure on indie developers to change their content or else they and their journalist friends will write nasty things about how they are all rape-apologists and stuff and cause them to lose business, when in reality the issue is that they themselves are offended (not harmed) by the content and that means next to nothing. The biggest thing to come out of GamerGate is that actual indie game developers that make actual games have less pressure to conform to social pressure and make 'safe' games or ones that have an awkward, faux pas sense of moral superiority that only people who study gender theory can like or even appreciate. One of these games is a sidescroller called Aerannis, where you play as a Bulgarian trans-woman fighting against a oligarchic secret society made entirely of women. [QUOTE] While Earth was torn apart by war, and populations wiped out by other unknown causes, only one isolated city survived unscathed: Plovdiv. It remained a peaceful city dedicated to freedom and equality for its entire all-woman population. But who controls this city? Why did only Plovdiv not only survive, but thrive? These are questions that few, if any, consider. Life is good. The streets are safe. Crime has all but vanished. But is it true? The image of stability is thanks to assassins hired to take out any dissidents before they become notable. These assassins aren't simply hired by the government, but any person or organization with a dispute and willingness to pay up. It's a prevalent but unacknowledged concern within Plovdiv. Our heroine, Ceyda Farhi, has been marginalized by society since day one. As a Bulgarian Turk and trans woman, she was often not seen as a true Bulgarian before the revolution, and not a true woman after it, which led her to life of crime in order to make a living. [/QUOTE] This game was funded partially due to GamerGate supporters who pointed it out to eachother. Feminist's hated it because it depicted a post-feminism dystopia society (doesn't matter that it's about gender identity and the main protag is a trans-woman, it's anti-feminist and GamerGate likes it so it's bad): [url]https://medium.com/@jkeating79/aerannis-gamergates-true-anti-feminist-colours-fce17f31f8d2[/url] Anti-GamerGate supporters also attacked the female developer of a game called SeedScape and told people to mass downvote it on greenlight because the developer was Pro-GG. [url]http://techraptor.net/content/untimely-gamer-attempts-boycott-seedscape-developers-political-views[/url] Ironically, by attempting to boycott the developer's game based on political reasons, untimely gamer ended up causing the game to be greenlight when GamerGate caught wind of the situation and therefore noticed the game that was being greenlit (a case of the Streisand Effect, and also free advertising). Contrast this to before GamerGate was a thing and developers were frequently boycotted or not allowed coverage because a journalist disagreed with their political views. They just didn't get coverage and that was it. Do you remember how much coverage and buzz there was about Fez, Gone Home and even Depression Quest as opposed to say Nidhogg or The Binding Of Issac: Rebirth. Journalists control the discourse, they control what people talk about. Now that cycle has been broken because Gaming Journalists lost what little credibility they had. [url]http://mitrailleuse.net/2014/09/19/intellectual-bullying/[/url] [url]http://www.littletinyfrogs.com/article/457741/GamerGatethe_free_ride_is_over[/url] [QUOTE]Now, quick background on myself: I’m actually not very political. But I have been blogging for 15 years so there’s plenty of fodder available. I believe people should be able to do and say what they want as long as they’re not hurting anyone (and I don’t count “feelings” as hurting). What most casual observers don’t realize is just how close knit the various aspects of the game industry really are. We really are a close knit group with one key distinction: We aren’t physically located near each other. As a result, forums, mailing lists and social networks are how we converse. This has created a lot of cliques. For the past half decade, those cliques focused on “social justice” have been insulting, smearing and misrepresenting individuals or groups they decided represent “the other”. Because they received little or no push-back, they wrongly believed they represented the majority opinion on a given issue. As someone who’s maintained a blog for 15 years, I’ve written a lot of words. Some of those words have made these guys angry and thus, at some point, they decided I was some sort of crazy right-winger. I’m only a “crazy right-winger” if objecting to one group coercing another group is “right wing”. I don’t like telling people what to do and I don’t like being told what to do. Long story short: Once these guys decided I was “the enemy” it’s been a never-ending stream of misrepresentation. For people who think Zoe Quinn has had it bad for these past few months, come talk to me in 5 years. That’s about how long I’ve had SJWs stalk me around, misrepresenting what I’ve said, written and then distributing it far and wide to their like-minded friends. Sounds a lot like the stuff they’re saying about #gamergate with regards to the people they’ve decide they don’t like. The threshold required to become “the enemy” is very low. Feel free to look through my tweet history or my blogs. You won’t find me telling people to “fuck off” or “die in a fire” or calling people “pieces of shit”. or anything of that nature. I post my musings on any number of topics – from beekeeping to taxation. That’s isn’t to say I’m not sometimes mean. I can be a real jerk sometimes. On the other hand, if you rely on what others have claimed I have said or done, you would think I’m a monster. That’s how comfortable with distorting words they are. I suspect some of you who have watched #gamergate are now quite familiar with how comfortable the so-called SJWs are with making things up, sometimes from whole cloth, in order to make someone look horrible.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]I always wanted to write a book and I did. It’s a fantasy novel. I.e. Humans, Orcs, Elves, etc. type stuff. Random House even published it. Pretty cool eh? WRONG: My book was nothing but a thinly disguised racist screed on the need for building a border fence to keep the darkies out. At least, that’s what I’m told. What? How the hell did a light fantasy book become a political book? Enter the SJW clique: self-described SJWs on a particular forum I participated in decided that my non-progressive views (I’m socially liberal, fiscally conservative, generally believe that people should be free to do what they want as long as they’re not hurting other people) were unacceptable and harassed me to the point that the moderators banned them. And to be as fair as I can be: I wasn’t posting in some political thread. I was posting on a game forum in a thread about a game I was working on. They had followed me to this thread and were being abusive and off-topic and they got banned for it. So the wife of one of the people who got banned (who was, btw, the original editor-in-chief of Kotaku – I must have missed the article with the headline “Former Kotaku editor banned for stalking, harassing game developer”), wrote a fake review of my book which claimed that it was a racist book in which the heroes were building a fence to keep dark-skinned people out. Only one problem: My book has no fence and there are no dark-skinned people in the book. They made it up. Completely.[/QUOTE] The issue is less with the content being developed or the relevance of the offence that some people get from it, it is entirely due to the control that a single group of journalists, bloggers and indie developers have over who is successful and who is not, and GamerGate has turned that around by drawing light on the situation. One final thing to remember is that this is a very specific and small group of journalists, bloggers and indie game developers. They do not represent the wider Social Justice community and especially not Feminism in general, which is a complex and multi-faceted ideology (regardless of what I or anyone else think about it).
I'm genuinely surprised this thread hasn't had a single person attack her gender identity or misgender her. I applaud you guys. Also this bitch a fucking cunt.
[QUOTE=T-Sonar.0;46625649]I'm genuinely surprised this thread hasn't had a single person attack her gender identity or misgender her. I applaud you guys. Also this bitch a fucking cunt.[/QUOTE] Pretty sure all of those people got banned ages ago.
Well at least we'll know for sure that the purple Lego drill is sexist
The very first thing she labels herself as everywhere is that she's a transwoman...
[QUOTE=Scotchair;46625041]People need to fucking remember that crowd funded things aren't a guarantee... you're not BUYING anything, you're investing. And sometimes investments fuck up. Yeah, she's a bitch, and this is dumb. But this is essentially pre-ordering an idea, and that carries risks.[/QUOTE] Backing a Kickstarter isn't investment. Investment at this scale is illegal. You gain no share in their company, you gain no equity. Kickstarter is a donation. This is wrong and potentially dangerous information.
[QUOTE=T-Sonar.0;46625649]I'm genuinely surprised this thread hasn't had a single person attack her gender identity or misgender her. I applaud you guys. Also this bitch a fucking cunt.[/QUOTE] The FP community is pretty civil. It's not /r9k/ or /pol/, but it's not RPG.net or Jezebel-tier either.
[QUOTE=Zyler;46625576] Contrast this to before GamerGate was a thing and developers were frequently boycotted or not allowed coverage because a journalist disagreed with their political views. They just didn't get coverage and that was it. Do you remember how much coverage and buzz there was about Fez, Gone Home and even Depression Quest as opposed to say Nidhogg or The Binding Of Issac: Rebirth. Journalists control the discourse, they control what people talk about. Now that cycle has been broken because Gaming Journalists lost what little credibility they had.[/QUOTE] These are the Google Trends results for The Binding of Issac, Gone Home, Fez, and Depression Quest. [IMG]http://puu.sh/deXxm/44498e755b.png[/IMG] I seriously have no idea where people are getting the idea that journalists are actively trying to deny certain games coverage and exposure.
[QUOTE=Wowza!;46625889]These are the Google Trends results for The Binding of Issac, Gone Home, Fez, and Depression Quest. [IMG]http://puu.sh/deXxm/44498e755b.png[/IMG] I seriously have no idea where people are getting the idea that journalists are actively trying to deny certain games coverage and exposure.[/QUOTE] I'm talking about how much media coverage these games receive not how popular they are. All this goes to show that people shouldn't be threatening and harassing indie developers and threatening to boycott them because it obviously doesn't work. What you've posted doesn't prove that they have not, do not and don't continue to attempt to boycott developers they disagree with even now during the whole gamergate debacle, which I've posted evidence of. Also it's a (relatively) small group that are doing this with a very specific ideology like I said before. They are trying to control the media, it isn't working.
[QUOTE=Zyler;46626027]I'm talking about how much media coverage these games receive not how popular they are. All this goes to show that people shouldn't be threatening and harassing indie developers and threatening to boycott them because it obviously doesn't work. What you've posted doesn't prove that they have not, do not and don't continue to attempt to boycott developers they disagree with even now during the whole gamergate debacle, which I've posted evidence of. Also it's a (relatively) small group that are doing this with a very specific ideology like I said before. They are trying to control the media, it isn't working.[/QUOTE] I just wanna quickly interject and say I've heard people talking about Nidhogg for years. If RPS didn't talk about it as much as they did for a period of time, I might have thought it came out and then got swept under the rug because it had a pretty long development time for what it is.
[QUOTE=Zyler;46626027]I'm talking about how much media coverage these games receive not how popular they are. All this goes to show that people shouldn't be threatening and harassing indie developers and threatening to boycott them because it obviously doesn't work. What you've posted doesn't prove that they have not, do not and don't continue to attempt to boycott developers they disagree with even now during the whole gamergate debacle, which I've posted evidence of. Also it's a (relatively) small group that are doing this with a very specific ideology like I said before. They are trying to control the media, it isn't working.[/QUOTE] The Trends results reflect the number of hits a topic receives on Google, which is influenced by the amount of coverage the topic gets on news sites. Nothing that was linked before had any evidence of journalists targeting specific game developers. Pretty much every site that Gamergate has focused on has covered Binding of Issac and Nidhogg extensively: [url]http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/the-binding-of-isaac/[/url] [url]http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/Nidhogg/[/url] [url]http://kotaku.com/tag/the-binding-of-isaac[/url] [url]http://kotaku.com/tag/nidhogg[/url] [url]http://www.polygon.com/game/the-binding-of-isaac/2768[/url] [url]http://www.polygon.com/game/nidhogg/14161[/url] RPS in particular has written more articles about Binding of Issac than Gone Home: [url]http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/Gone-Home/[/url] I keep hearing about how certain gaming websites are blacklisting games they disagree with, but I've seen zero proof that this is actually happening.
there's a proper thread for GamerGate, please go there and take this argument with it, its not for this thread [url]http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1421478&p=46577317#post46577317[/url]
[QUOTE=Wowza!] The Trends results reflect the number of hits a topic receives on Google, which is influenced by the amount of coverage the topic gets on news sites. Nothing that was linked before had any evidence of journalists targeting specific game developers. Pretty much every site that Gamergate has focused on has covered Binding of Issac and Nidhogg extensively: [url]http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/...ding-of-isaac/[/url] [url]http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/Nidhogg/[/url] [url]http://kotaku.com/tag/the-binding-of-isaac[/url] [url]http://kotaku.com/tag/nidhogg[/url] [url]http://www.polygon.com/game/the-binding-of-isaac/2768[/url] [url]http://www.polygon.com/game/nidhogg/14161[/url] RPS in particular has written more articles about Binding of Issac than Gone Home: [url]http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/Gone-Home/[/url] I keep hearing about how certain gaming websites are blacklisting games they disagree with, but I've seen zero proof that this is actually happening. [url]http://techraptor.net/content/untime...olitical-views[/url][/QUOTE] [url]http://www.littletinyfrogs.com/artic...e_ride_is_over[/url] [QUOTE]Long story short: Once these guys decided I was “the enemy” it’s been a never-ending stream of misrepresentation. For people who think Zoe Quinn has had it bad for these past few months, come talk to me in 5 years. That’s about how long I’ve had SJWs stalk me around, misrepresenting what I’ve said, written and then distributing it far and wide to their like-minded friends. Sounds a lot like the stuff they’re saying about #gamergate with regards to the people they’ve decide they don’t like. And to be as fair as I can be: I wasn’t posting in some political thread. I was posting on a game forum in a thread about a game I was working on. They had followed me to this thread and were being abusive and off-topic and they got banned for it. So the wife of one of the people who got banned (who was, btw, the original editor-in-chief of Kotaku – I must have missed the article with the headline “Former Kotaku editor banned for stalking, harassing game developer”), wrote a fake review of my book which claimed that it was a racist book in which the heroes were building a fence to keep dark-skinned people out. Only one problem: My book has no fence and there are no dark-skinned people in the book. They made it up. Completely. Having labeled my little fantasy book a racist screed, they immediately created forum posts and Reddits (like this one) [url]http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comme..._book_about_a/[/url][/QUOTE] [url]http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/13/69...2-review-wii-u[/url] [QUOTE]This is a knife that cuts both ways. Developer Platinum Games has once again gone for broke, creating an action game of spectacle so big that it's occasionally incomprehensible. Bayonetta 2 is the kind of game where you might ask, seriously, why you're not allowed to strap a massive multi-bladed scythe to your high heels. It's extravagant, like the golden age of Japanese action games never ended, like that arms race just escalated on and on. It's also the kind of game that left me asking how many times and how many different ways developer Platinum could run a camera up the main character's spread legs and cleavage. On one side of the knife is a character action game that refines the incredible combat foundations of the original Bayonetta and avoids the lack of variety that dragged it down in the last third. On the other, the deliberate sexualization and objectification on display serves as a jarring distraction from the creativity and design smarts elsewhere.[/QUOTE] [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy[/url] [QUOTE]The Gamergate controversy began in August 2014 and concerns misogyny and harassment in video game culture. While many supporters of the self-described Gamergate movement say that they are concerned about ethical issues in video game journalism, the overwhelming majority of commentators have said that the movement is rooted in a culture war against women and the diversification of gaming culture.[/QUOTE] I don't know how to show you this any more without meeting you in person and smearing your face in it. It isn't a large concentrated movement, it is an agenda pushed by a very small and dedicated group of people trying to push game developers to make what they want made in the style of culture jamming and intellectual bullying. [url]http://mitrailleuse.net/2014/09/19/i...tual-bullying/[/url] [QUOTE]The discrediting of voices in intellectual discourse is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes, when a person holds a position that is indefensible and plain wrong, they should either accept that they are wrong or have their soapbox revoked. Most of the time it isn’t this clear. Different opinions are held by disagreeing parties, and silencing dissenting voices requires tactics that are a little more underhanded. The tactic of dishonestly re-framing a viewpoint into something outrageous in an attempt to discredit those who hold the viewpoint is known as intellectual bullying.[/QUOTE] [url]http://daemonpro.tumblr.com/post/976...die-dev-on-why[/url] [QUOTE]My name is Christopher Arnold. I am an aspiring indie developer. My company, Crowned Daemon Studios, is currently working on its first game, ”Freak”. I don’t have a vast body of experience in the industry, so I can’t attest to any major corruptions in the indie scene. What I can definitely attest to is an extremely toxic, overly critical environment prohibiting fledgling developers from making games about personal issues and that this environment is being actively encouraged by gaming journalists and critics. I don’t want to go into specific examples regarding websites I’ve seen approaching topics wrong or even individual people. Suffice it to say that seeing a new game get ravaged for supposed sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, etc. seemingly every week makes me feel less inclined to want to write characters like Tinker, Hannah, or the many others who will be playable in our game. To these people and publications, all I have to ask is: is this what you want? Do you want people to be too afraid to make inclusive art? Because whether that was your intent or not, it’s what’s actually happening. It’s hard enough investing all your money and time into making a studio, working for years on a game that will eventually be judged by both critics and consumers without then also having to be worried that those same critics will sensationalize your game in order to make a few more big articles.[/QUOTE] [url]http://techraptor.net/content/interview-daniel-vavra[/url] [QUOTE]I’d first like to personally thank Daniel Vavra for allowing TechRaptor this interview. For those of you that do not know, Daniel Vavra is a game designer and writer that has been in the industry for about fifteen years. Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven was the first big project he led back in 2002, where he was both director and writer. He returned to help with the writing on the sequel as well, Mafia II. Most probably know him now for the successful Kickstarter campaign attached to his newest project, Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Kingdom Come: Deliverance has since gained a lot of attention, with many people following the development vlogs quite closely. It is the first game for Warhorse Studios, a development company based in the Czech Republic that Vavra helped found. The industry is much better now. We can be independent. We can self-publish our games, even on consoles. We can speak directly to our fans through social networks. There are new ways to fund development. All that is awesome and ideal for growth of the scene and more original games. There are also many more communication channels – social media, Youtubers, bloggers. Back in the day, the Internet was very small, paper mags held all the power, and the journalists asked boring questions like “how many weapons/cars/levels are you going to have?” I was trying to write a sophisticated mature story, and most of them wanted to know if it’s going to be possible to drive over people. Now, when I am trying to make mature realistic historic game, some people ask why we don’t have female knights. I grew up during communism, when comics books were prohibited as capitalist decadent propaganda, western movies were censored, any book that could be in conflict with socialist ideology was prohibited and you went to jail for saying what you think. So I am allergic to any kind of censorship in the name of any ideology. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I would like to give all the ideologues a piece of advice – If you want something to be made, do it yourself. Everyone will be happy. The funny thing is, that when you ask actual female developers like Amy Hennig (of Uncharted fame), they will tell you they never had any problems. But the people who are constantly talking about this issue are journalists and bloggers who have never actually even worked at a gaming company. And the funniest thing is, that when you look at how many women are actually working at those magazines criticizing gaming industry for sexism, you will realize that it’s the same as in gaming companies, 10-20% at most. Polygon has 21 editors and only 5 of them are women. And when you look at their audience it’s 80% men. What a sexist magazine! I don’t think that there is one goal. It’s just a lot of people which are not happy with the state of gaming journalism. So I am going to talk about my personal motives. It took me two years to start a company. We almost went bankrupt several times. I think that what we are doing is really something no one has done before, and we are really trying to do it as well as we can – a realistic, historically accurate depiction of medieval Europe with a mature story. And then we are called racist because there are no people of color in our medieval Bohemia world, because there are biblical illuminations in our country with Queen of Sheba (who happened to live in Africa 2000 years before our game). And on top of that we were called sexist, because we had a stretch goal to add playable female character into our game. As if it was costless to write and implement a whole new questline into the game. All this when the game is in an early stage of development, and they don’t have a clue about the actual story. Do you think that anyone would want to be involved in such absurd discussions during a campaign on which his existence as a studio depends? This happened to many developers. Assassin’s Creed had 5 different articles about its lack of a female character on the front page of an industry website in one day. Five! Next to each other. And we can continue: the Far Cry 4 cover “scandal,” Stanley Parabble was accused of racism, Wildstar was accused of sexism, God of War, Hotline Miami, Bioshock, Divinity Original Sin, Witcher… Nobody ever dares to argue or protect his art, because it would mean instant accusation of misogyny/racism/homophobia/sexism… And then you realize that the people who are accusing others everyday have terrible conflicts of interests and very weird ethics. The pot calling the kettle black. I don’t know and I don’t care. The biggest problem we have is, that there is a group of people that think they know what’s right and what’s wrong and that they have a mission to make the world a better place and protect the oppressed by any means. They don’t even care what the “oppressed” people think. They censor any feedback they don’t like. They try to censor Twitter. They think that they are better than the rest. It’s funny that they are absolutely unable to have any discussion or provide solid arguments. Have you ever seen any of them in direct confrontation with their opponents? I guess you didn’t, because they only know how to bark at others from behind the fence and then how to play victims when somebody barks back. And they will never be happy. If you don’t have a gay character in your game, you are homophobic, if you do have gay character in your game, you are homophobic, because they don’t like the character. If women in your game look good, you are sexist, if they look bad, you are sexist, if you can fight with them, you are misogynistic, if you can’t fight with them, you are using them as objects, if you don’t have any women, because there is no correct way how to have them, you are misogynistic. It’s a witch hunt and it’s affecting my artistic freedom. When you look at the moral standards of some of those people. When you see them calling respected people with different opinions “Faded crackheads, shitlords and misogynistic basement neckbeards”. When you see that one of the biggest gaming sites (Polygon) has a blacklist of people they don’t like to hear from, what would you expect? Many people also don’t go deep into the issue and they make an opinion just based on the hysteric reaction to anonymous threats, while the whole thing is about something absolutely different. Yes I do think that some of the journalist will not like me and our game. I believe that some people may start thinking that I support people who hate women even though I absolutely do not. I may lose some friends. But I think that fighting for freedom of speech and artistic freedom is very important. And I think that some of journalists just crossed the line and somebody should say that. Leigh Alexander, who writes for several mainstream magazines, has a PR agency at the same time while she is an editor at Gamasutra and threatens people that “She is a megaphone that could destroy them” and says that Adam Baldwin is a “washed up crackhead”. WTF is that? How could she still have a job? And that same person is teaching us about ethics and writing articles about childish misogynistic basement trolls? Give me a break![/QUOTE] [img]http://i.imgur.com/YGSZ9Hj.png?1[/img] [img]http://imgur.com/NVWe4Hr[/img] [thumb]https://i.imgur.com/WBNlwzN.png[/thumb] [thumb]https://i.imgur.com/VbGF9iM.png[/thumb] [thumb]https://i.imgur.com/bqVFtDc.png[/thumb]
[QUOTE=Sableye;46626208]there's a proper thread for GamerGate, please go there and take this argument with it, its not for this thread [url]http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1421478&p=46577317#post46577317[/url][/QUOTE] that thread is not good for constructive talks since you'd just get mobbed for saying anything remotely negative about GG the discussion has all but died here though so it's a moot point
The fuckin' shit happened in here?
kind of crazy how such a morally inept person even had the inclination to donate any money at all, let alone that ridiculous amount.
[QUOTE=Venezuelan;46626361]that thread is not good for constructive talks since you'd just get mobbed for saying anything remotely negative about GG the discussion has all but died here though so it's a moot point[/QUOTE] bring up strong points and you generally don't get dumbed.
[QUOTE=ZakkShock;46626372]The fuckin' shit happened in here?[/QUOTE] People used the ties between 'female game developer' and 'foolishly donated to a feminist group under bad circumstances' to rant back and forth between GamerGate and feminism. Yet a-fucking-gain.
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