burnttoast

Isn't the damsel in distress sexist against men too? It is a shared male-female relationship troupe. It says that men need to rescue women to feel good about themselves I think. That a guy needs to be a hero.

And that is a cultural or genetic reality I think (take your pick for whatever offends you less, I don't care which one). Men feel good in being a hero, and feel good having a pretty women. I would argue that women feel less needy to be the 'strong' one, to 'save' someone else (again either culturally or genetically).

So you have boys and men who play games (the type of games that have damsel in distress are majority male consumed and designed that way, facebook/mobile games do not have this troupe as much) who need to feel powerful and good about themselves. They need a positive feedback loop to move forward in the game.

Thus, damsel in distress is really judging the nature of the males who play it more than it is being sexist to females. Say a boy is given toy trucks with all male figurines to play with. The primary sexism is that the boy is being told that he should be enjoying trucks... it is much more secondary that all the figures in the trucks are guys.

I actually believe it is possible for anyone to love anything someone else loves or to hate anything someone else hates. We all have similar mechanisms for experience music, art, the world as humans. You can easily learn the language that makes modern art enjoyable to some (and it is a dense vocabulary there I am sure, as it matters all the pieces in history before to understand one). Or you can enjoy the catchiness of a justin bieber song, if you let yourself minimize the history/identity/musical context that has you opposed to it.

I think people should more often realize in criticism, in discussing any sort of artistic endeavor, that 1. it doesn't matter. It really doesn't mean much to feel some way about some art. And 2. in feeling that way or saying something about that art you aren't being clever or smart or seeing through to reality. Obviously, it is a opinion, it is a statement that might be true but true only to how that art reacts to one personal history and disposition.

I posted my frustrations a bit ago when my subscription auto-renewed (I did not expect that and GB does not refund ever).

I check my billing on this new site and guess what, I was set to auto-renew even though I am 100% sure I turned that off months ago.

I honestly do not feel that like spending time and effort on this, just to say that it is obviously a extremely negative practice for this to have occurred and I want to give everyone a heads up to make sure that you check your account.

This statue certainly doesn't warrant as much coverage as it is getting. Either you like the statue and you buy it or you don't like it and you don't buy it. I don't like it and I wouldn't buy it. But why does it make sense to try to make big statements about what it means or its morality. Its not politics or academica, its entertainment. Let people find whatever entertains them.

Articles like this speak to a desperation to be 'real' journalism. This idea of coming in as the mature and enlightened game journalist who can dredge up the gems of indie, throw off the shackles of corporate big business gaming, and lead the man-child and child-child gamers to a better mentality.

And I honestly don't have much respect for game journalism full stop and its a joke that it thinks it can matter in the way news journalism matters. It is another form of entertainment, it is like entertainment tonight or tabloids. That isn't negative necessarily, quick looks are straight entertainment and sometimes amazing. But to think that articles like this do matter, or should matter is silly. Go make the art you want if it doesn't exist or don't buy what you don't like. But don't try to make moral criticisms about entertainment and act like it matters.

I think covering several games within a theme (rather than quick look/review of a particular game) would be the type of content that isn't represented at all on the site currently. TheSolution mentioned best/worse for a concept, I would find the historical more interesting. "Where was the first AK47 ever in a game", "How did the introduction of a second joystick on a controller change the type of games that exist"... maybe not the best example but you did similar stuff for screened I think.

This would be the produced content version of the sites game database.

I wasn't bothered by the characters, they were not very fleshed out. The most offensive thing they said was 'from my dads black card to my black card' and some cocky smirking, and if you get offended by that I think it must be you have preexisting issues with what you imagine those people to be. I found it slightly humorous as they were a bit atypical the hero/protagisnist types.

What I found more bothersome was the sexism. There is not a single female shooting a gun in the whole game. The two girls you rescue scream and drive, the two guys you rescue during that point both fight back I believe. I thought games at this point need to have at least one tomboy/hard girl to show they aren't sexist.

citra if anything propagtes that idea that she can't fight, she needs a real man to do that, even though she is the strong female character

I wish there would stop being layoff news stories, its hardly news about gaming. They also happen so often that it seems at times that 25-50% of all news is this sort of stuff.

Does anyone really find this sort of news feed worthwhile or interesting? Does it match the tone or goal of news about games? If I was buying company stock it fits the tone, if I am buying games I don't think it does.

Moreover it is always in the style, which I find slightly aggravating, of a sad lament for the people laid off. Like sure that sucks if it was a friend of a friend or something but being sad for strangers is held to a higher bar isn't it? News that is sad about strangers is plentiful and normally is a hell of a lot more impactful then someone needs to find a new job.

@MB: yes, my email was very nice. No anger on my part at all, just 'hey, didn't mean to rebill'. Got an email from Ryan saying no refunds and linking to the faq page. My follow up email was not responded to.

Check around on the site, they do the same for everyone. In this very thread keithfreitag is relating the same story.

@yoshimitz707: @MB

Fine guys, you are right I am not a lawyer. I do not know what 'capable of being retained' means, though I assumed it was an email and not a TOS. But neither are you guys lawyers (I presume). I was going mainly off the text I was reading from those other sites.

http://venturebeat.com/2011/04/18/ask-the-attorney-the-auto-renewal-conundrum/

is an attorney listing things to be in compliance with the law and of that list what GB does not do for sure is:

Don’t use the negative option (GB is the negative option)

Provide acknowledgement of automatic renewal (GB does not do this 'after the purchase' as mentioned in the article)

Give ample notice (GB gives no notice in the days before charging)

I am not going to get in an argument of what is legal or what is not by pointing to that bill. Perhaps I was incorrect to do so. But I will point to that article and say it seems like GB is not doing it legally, because they fail to follow so much of that. I will also say it is really shitty to deny a person a refund who emails the day it is billed. Clearly that is not someone being abusive to GB. Maybe it is the comsumer's 'fault' but good companies, I believe, step up more then they are required to for stupid customers. That is the big idea of the refund which many companies do honor even if its by your bad choice.

@MB: I don't see how that is relevant to me posting this, or is relevant to the law. The automatic billing is mentioned in the FAQ section of the site too (which is more accessible than the TOS) and I wouldn't say that changes anything in what I have said.

I would say my posting has been accurate, careful if anything. Unless you are somehow not saying that I shouldn't post but rather that the rights under the law are waived under the TOS?