Worth Reading: 10/28/2014

Yes...I missed the roundup last week but we'll get it tomorrow.

You can always copy the text to a word file, select it and pres Shift + F3. Then can you read it without having your eyes bleed.

The planet money and Cara Ellison articles were great. I have no idea why you would post the video about Gamersgate though. It's inaccurate and it just brings up the whole debate again when the site has already made their stance known. Seems like unnecessary antagonism.

@whitegreyblack: Dead Space IS the game where people write notes in their own blood ... Though the nature of the hallucinations and mind-control the Marker gives off maybe justify it.

That game Dan and Drew played, Ghostship: Aftermath, is maybe the most hysterical. At one point the message "THE SERVICE TUNNEL IS CRAWLING WITH THEM" is written across a massive double pair of blast doors. Someone wrote "THERE ARE NO MORE ESCAPE PODS" in a stairwell, but the height they wrote it made it look like they had a ladder. Now I'm just picturing some guy halfway up a ladder, with a brush and a nice little pallet of human vintage.

Guilt by association eh? Condemn all for the idiocy of few, really cool Patrick really cool. Way to make someone not wanna come to a website they've loved for years.

@brodehouse: Ah I see. I have not played Dead Space due to my aversion to horror games, but it does seem the lore of the Marker can explain some of the blood-writing, as silly as it is.

I was not surprised by blood writing in that Ghostship game, that game is pretty terrible. I am glad, at least, to not see blood writing in a ton of modern AAA games like it used to be.

So I'm no Tolkien scholar myself, just a fan of the books who has done a marginal amount of research outside of their contents, but I find myself somewhat puzzled by Jason Fisher's reaction in that Mike Williams article.

How, exactly, did Williams describe the story setup to Fisher? Because Fisher's reaction to the notion of "Celebrimbor as Wraith" seems to be from the perspective of taking that information entirely at face value rather than looking deeper into the context.

Celebrimbor, as presented in the game, is not really a wraith by definition within Tolkien's world. However, despite being inappropriately labeled, his situation -- a spirit left wandering the world -- is supported by Tolkien's work.

Typically when an elf "dies" -- that is, their fëa (spirit) is separated from their hröa (body), as they can't "die" in the complete sense -- their fëa returns to the Halls of Mandos for a time before being reincarnated in another hröa, unless they choose to remain in the Halls and not be reincarnated.

However, on rare occasion an elf's fëa might refuse to return to the Halls of Mandos entirely and remain wandering in Middle-earth, though doing so tends to result in the slow erosion of the consciousness, and many such spirits eventually become evil.

Given the setup of the game, it seems at least somewhat plausible that this is what happened to Celebrimbor, possibly due to the tragedy of how he died and his specific connection to Sauron.

It may not align perfectly with Tolkien's writings (though it's a better attempt than most), but to say it's "not at all in keeping with the spirit" of them is going a bit far, in my opinion, and I'm generally pretty harsh on a lot of the "expanded fiction" that people have written around Tolkien's work, especially for games.

It just seems like Fisher heard the term "Wraith" and completely wrote the entire thing off, focusing too much on the terminology used, but since I'm not sure how much information he was actually given in the first place, maybe he didn't have enough context to see past it.

I loved the Mattie Brice piece and the Folding Ideas video.

Most of the graffiti I see has no discernible message (outside of a few marxist or fascist propaganda sprays), the only text scrawls that form a sentence are usually found on the toilet and those don't really make sense either. In games the majority of graffiti sprays are messages of some sort, warnings or whatnot. I can understand improvised warning signs being placed on known dangerous areas when people live around them but I don't think anybody would bother spraying a lengthy message on a wall when in acute peril. They'd yell a warning to people they see and run like hell.

I guess some idiots would send a tweet in such a situation but still, spraying takes too long for a panic situation. So maybe give players AR goggles that show tweets at the location where they were sent...

It truly is.

I really like Felicia Day. I wish this shit would just die down already so that people I like can just be happy again.

I think it's also worth remembering that the death scene at the start of Guardians of the Galaxy played a major role in the movie. Not only at the end, but throughout the movie. The mixtape we hear throughout the movie, at times has an emotional resonance and means something because we know it's connection to Peter. The moment where we see how Peter would even put his life on the line for that mixtape was important. I just don't believe that the importance would be as significant as it was if we didn't see those final moments Peter had with her. You take that scene out, or even the context of it if you want say that it plays into the "death of a parent" trope and therefore just remove the detail about Peter's loss...I think you'd lose way too much of what makes that movie good.

@decaped: but those people that he demonized didn't act like fucking monsters like he was saying. He really only said that they were on the other team so fuck them.

@kdr_11k: I prefer the "no discernable message" graffiti that is there just to give you more insight into the world/environment/setting. I can see "helpful" messages in situation where it is warranted/rational (such as a locked door in a zombie game with a message of "don't open - dead inside" scrawled on it) but I like graffiti as just an enhancement of the setting, personally.

I think your idea of a game where you can view virtual messages from people in the game world by using a set of AR goggles is neat.

So, I guess I'm a bit late into this gamergate thing, but what proof do we have that these people are actual gamers and not just part of an elaborate scheme to destroy the gaming culture?

Are any of these persons' identities known? I imagine that they can't be without making themselves vulnerable in the same ways that they are exploiting to attack these women. But without some sort of proof of who each person is then there's no proof that they are actual gamers.

@originalyellow: @murderbunny: Can you elaborate on what specifically you view as straw men arguments?

That Dan Olsen video is based on a lot of baseless assumption by random people on the internet. When you start taking your "points/facts" from places that have no credible source. Your conclusions will not be correct.

The use of LW "codeword" was not meant o dehumanize those people, it was meant to be used as a way to get those who are more aggressive to leave them alone. It wasn't the best way to do it, sure, but trying to herd cats is very difficult.

Also about the fallacy about everyone being in or out and there being no outliers for those in gamer gate. That's completely false. You can throw something under the bus by being a falacy, but that doesn't stop the issue from being something worth discussing.

Just because a handful a rogue anonymous users are doing things outside of the core group of gamergate, does not pollute the entire movement.

As an example, there are plenty of religious extremists, many of which consider themselves to be part of said religion, yet those religions are not demonized as terrorist groups because of a group or groups of radical extremists of said religion. If you're having trouble understanding what gamegate is about, than that's on you. I cannot educate you about the movement, because most of your minds are already made up.

So I'll say this. Look at both ends of the spectrum. Patrick's view on gamergate is very biased, and I would ask you look at all angles of this situation. The good, the bad, and the downright ugly. Before coming to your own conclusion.

Horror game graffiti is definitely over-done, but I feel like complaining about it is kind of over-done as well now. I just don't think it's a real problem for games.

@budwyzer: That would require journalism.

Well, see, this is the sort of point I was trying to make. Even your short comment devoted more time than his entire article did to justifying his point of view. He just said "these examples are bad and these are good because of how authentic they feel to me," without any other real rationalization. You're right that it was better done in Up than in GotG - there are innumerable reasons. In my opinion, that's the realm of the critic - I don't know what use just regurgitating opinion for opinion's sake alone is. I mean, I feel bad for the guy, sorry for his loss, and all, but he's basically written a blog post.

@snickersnee: Let me quote one of their most popular videos: "Is there really a targeted effort on the part of the white male dominated gaming culture to exclude women and minorities from participating, or is this a ruse perpetuated by a bunch of scam artists and perpetual victims for their own fame and glory and financial benefit?" (This is in an ad for their own movie, by the way.)

No, I am Spartacus!

Contrary to popular belief, Playing Games isn't an inherent attribute, so there's no such thing as an 'actual gamer.' People can have as many culture wars as they want over media. This isn't the first time it's happened, nor is it the first time women have been the majority targets, nor will it be the last of either.

@decaped said:@snickersnee: "Is there really a targeted effort on the part of the white male dominated gaming culture to exclude women and minorities from participating

I don't think the last 30 years of game culture has been a targeted effort to exclude women and minorities, it was simply that the white dudes doing it had no idea that other people might be into their thing that was already pretty exclusionary.

The last 3 months of game culture has absolutely been a targeted effort to exclude women and minorities, as /r/KIA promotes actively removing funding from sites whose writers discuss social issues in the context of games. What they call ethics is simply agenda-free writing. Or, to put it more accurately, writing that reflects their agenda - where social issues are never discussed, where a perspective outside their own is never considered. By actively attempting to defund these sites, the message is clear: this kind of content should not exist. It's not that GamerGaters don't want to read those perspectives, it's that those perspectives have no place in my video games - not "this content isn't for me and I should read something else," but "this content isn't for anyone and shouldn't be read at all." Promotion of any agenda is not ethics. This is not a campaign about ethics.

It's pretty easy to "boycott" Polygon and Kotaku, I've been doing it for years because I don't like the writing. I am not actively attempting to destroy Polygon or Kotaku, because I recognize that this content exists for someone who is not me. So I go somewhere else to get what I'm looking for.

There are plenty of places that remain "neutral," in that their reviews are not personal opinions shaped by the experience and perspective of the writers. That's IGN, Total Biscuit, GameInformer, and maybe (though certainly less in the past few years) GameSpot. It sure isn't Giant Bomb. A site may not be for you, and that's OK. If there are no sites for you, maybe you should start one.

TotalBiscuit's one of their most vocal so.

Plus, Occam's Razor. If suddenly a movement calling themselves gamers appears, it's a good bet they're gamers. Plus, the attitudes expressed are nothing but an amorphous, ugly blob of stuff we've heard and seen plenty of times before in games. There are, however, a shitton of opportunists in and around GamerGate who previously had nothing to do with games (if not outright insulting them).

This is another good article.

I don't get what the big deal about Felicia Day's address being posted was. It's not like she is hiding behind an alias, and back in the old days you could look up everybody's addresses in the phone book. The ability to look up someone's address on google using a few bits of information about them is just an extension of the old yellow-book, and it is a fact of life in our internet connected age.

If anything it is only going to get worse. Privacy is dying on the internet, especially with the push for real names. Plus, everything someone does online is pretty much tracked and archived. It's all a big business at this point.

@zironz: would you be cool with someone posting your home address for everyone to see, including those who may wish you harm?

The ease of the action isn't as terrifying as much as the act itself. Posting someone's address and information is pretty much just like painting a giant target on their head and calling for your friends to round up the posse. Plus, while VG writers and other public figures straddle this weird grey zone of how much of their info is out there, plenty of bloggers who have tried to keep that stuff private have had significant breaches related to the goings-on.

@fcdrandy: No I wouldn't, but at this point I think it is inevitable that we are entering a world where everyone knows everything about everybody else.

@zironz: I don't know your home address, and Felicia Day's home address was presumably privileged information a couple of days ago. The post-SkyNet future does not excuse things that are bad today.

I continually really enjoy the pieces that Cara Ellison puts out. Never thought of graffiti that way. Also those Boss Fight Books seem like a pretty neat idea.

Actually, a lot of the loudest voices in GamerGate aren't gamers. Milo Yiannopoulous, who "exposed" that gaming journalist mailing list, wrote an article in August that called gamers creepy rapists and blamed a school shooting on video games. Christina Sommers, who they call "based mom", doesn't play games. Mike Cernovich, who they now call "based lawyer" or some shit, had this to say about gamers in August. And openly admitted to being able to take advantage of nerd audiences.

It's a bunch of assholes taking advantage of a bunch of deluded people to make themselves famous. And people within GamerGate are too far gone to realize they're being manipulated.

Thanks for putting the critic's screw to Guardians, @patrickklepek! Though I liked the film, something about it seemed kind of flat, to me, and I couldn't completely put my finger on it. Only that I had seen it before. And Serenity was better.

But I feel like a lot of it had to do with what you were talking about... This kind of casual stroll through the adventure that never really seemed to have any impact.

There was probably a likewise bodycount in Serenity... and though it wasn't Joss' finest use of death in his works (one particular one was definitely pretty heavyhanded), there was some weight there, to it.

Nicely written, as usual.

The real scary thing here is that it's so hard to actually locate the people doing this stuff (with regards to the doxxing and whatnot). There are only a handful of people who are actually doing real damage and sending real threats, and tracking those people down requires federal authorities to reroute resources and manpower into something they might not even consider worth investing their efforts into. Somebody sending out death or rape threats and posting personal information publicly should be at more risk than they actually are right now, and the few people that are doing it can just kind of keep on doing it until they get bored of it. We can talk about battling back against the fear-mongering as a 'community' or whatever, but at the end of the day, a 'cultural atmosphere' of general positivity still wont stop a handful of crazies from doing way more harm than the rest of us can do good.

One of my favorite things to do in games is exploring and reading the jargon that someone, somewhere took the time to create. Whether its splattered graffitti, magazines, art, movies, vending machines, im at awe of the detail and time that is spent for what is only noticed by less than 5% of the audience.(GTA, Fallout, Saints Row, Bioshoch series as examples). I think Dave Lang told a great story about a designer who took 6 months to build, i believe, a safe cracking mini game which was perceived as nothing special. When the guy received a complement in a game review he ran up and down the office yelling, "Someone cared, someone cared". Some people have been gifted with talent while most of us only can offer an opinion. I for one will always side with the talented people who build and create the worlds in which i enjoy escaping.

Another article on how to deal with the whole "Gamergate" thing.

Might be worth reading.

I was interested in seeing a Tolkien expert catalogue Shadow of Mordor's various transgressions. I left disappointed.

As a kid while that Mega Man 3 commercial aired I once looked out of my living room window to see the teenager living across the street climb out of his bedroom window, grab a duffle bag hidden in some bushes, and climb back in. I was of course convinced he had clandestinely received a copy of Mega Man 3 and boy was I jealous...

The best option in this "battle" is to not participate. Call the movement out for what it is, leave it at that and don't get involved. The only chance they have at winning is for people to engage them, take sides, and compromise their own integrity to discredit an opposition without any integrity of their own.

Occam's Razor in this case would more likely dictate that the people involved in "Gamergate" are largely well-meaning individuals who feel they have legitimate grievances and are simply being taken advantage of by con-artists and shit-stirrers because they were the only people willing to listen (albeit for their own nefarious purposes) rather than a shadowy cabal of conspirators hell-bent on eliminating all women and minorities from video games.

Movement started with harassment and continued to harass by mostly targeting women and people with more left leaning politics. How is this thing seen as something you want to support?

There are really two types of people who support GamersGate. The huckster misogynists pulling the strings on places like KIA and 4chan, and the well meaning buffoons who somehow got conned in to thinking GamersGate was about journalistic integrity, or even video games. It's really sad to watch, because at some point in the future a lot of people involved in GamersGate are going to wake up and realize they were effectively indoctrinated in to a cult, a cult that did and said some really crass things in their name.

@borstalshark: Sorry to hear about both your losses. That's a rough year.

That Mega Man 3 commercial is simply the best.

Wow, more people on both sides should read this, and more people in games journalism should be writing similar things. This has been my biggest problem with GG. From almost the very beginning there was a line drawn in the sand, and people have only looked at that line to talk at one another. Both sides trying to play a holier than thou mentality. Whatever side you are on, if you have this mentality and refuse to listen to what the other side is saying, and you don't believe the other side has anything of value to discuss. Then you too are part of the problem.