Mento

So far the notifications have acknowledged two mentions and a friend who posted a blog. Everything seems to be working on my end. (Innuendo jokes.)

It's kind of annoying that they stick around though. Someone (hey Rorie!) said that they vanish 30 minutes after being acknowledged but one of them's been there for over an hour. Eh, since I don't expect to get too many I doubt I'll run into any congestion problems. The engineers need more problems to fix like Bruce needs another hole in his head.

@zombiepie: They changed the lists? Well, it still doesn't let you embed links in the individual entries (though my solution to get around that was probably a lot more convenient) and it still crashes if you remove an item and and add another without saving first.

/Edit: Sounds like the only big difference is you can't make ordered lists with over 100 items any more. So yeah, I'm really jazzed to make new lists.

(D'aw, I'm just being a jerk. Any engineer attention being given to the lists is good news.)

Thanks for all the work, man. I guess this means Giant Bomb can go back to being Europhobic again. Not that they really stopped for your sake, but...

I'll see what I can do about making the site implode so badly that they'll need bring you back. So many schemes.

Look forward to seeing if the notifications for new blogs/reviews from friends works. If so, that'll be a huge boon to the content-producing community that's been feeling isolated ever since the site came back. Hopefully some of the people who have left us since then will wander back. It's tough being one of like four guys who ever plays JRPGs around here.

I'd suggest making everything default ON for notifications (except maybe the wiki sub approved/rejected one) and default OFF for emails. I can't imagine people would be too happy with a sudden influx of email spam from the site.

@video_game_king: You know, we often see Mitsuru dressed up like that and yet we never see her horse. I wonder what happened to it?

As for me, just the usual monthly commission work (though I don't really like to call it work) and a list of end boss music. The heat's sapping my will to do anything more involved right now. Next week will be different! I hope!

In other thread news, people might want to keep tabs (or a tab open, as the case may be) on the GOG sale thread. Because today is GOG's enormous Solstice sale - during which every daily sale happens simultaneously - a link would be timely.

One of these. Don't make me choose.

@epicsteve: Heh, when I wrote that there was only one other comment. Guess I spent too long waffling. I'm content to support any movement of this sort because I'm friends with enough people who feel alienated by sexism and misogyny in the industry frequently enough that I get agitated by it, as I'm sure is also the case with many posters here.

I can definitely see how it's worth keeping a level head with all this though - a new scantily-clad female video game character isn't as much of an issue as ongoing abuse during online games or death threats sent to Anita or comic artists deciding what genders people are allowed to be. Even so, I'm not going to bother objecting to those "scantily-clad female character" stories because they're still smaller pieces of the same big problem.

While there might be a few women out there trying to push an indirectly-related selfish agenda (being unqualified for a position and claiming it was gender discrimination, for instance), a lot of well-meaning people of either gender see the semi-recent furors regarding Sarkeesian's work and #1reasonwhy as evidence that there's finally some real traction to improve the game industry's stance on women. It's a bit like (and this might be a tad hyperbolic so bear with me) how riots or even revolutions sometimes start because one person was brave enough to put themselves out there for their principles and is followed by the many, many others in a similar boat who just needed an excuse to get involved or a concrete cause to get behind. It's hard to repel something like that, even if you have valid reasons to be skeptic about some of it.

I can understand somewhat the desire to push back. It's a movement asking for radical change, and there will always be people uncomfortable with any sort of shift like that regardless of how necessary or morally correct it is. I can't begrudge this panel too much for being wary of the many articles on the matter, but they're going to need a really damn good excuse for wanting to stand in the way of equal rights and more respect for women both in the game industry and those who play video games in general (not to mention the other maligned groups they're bringing into it). The idea that games are beyond reproach because they're mere playthings is ludicrous: if these game journalists think their medium is ultimately devoid of significance then why the hell are they dedicating their careers to cover it?

But yeah, the big PAX boycotts are largely because of Gabe's comments about transgendered folk. Trans people already have an uphill struggle with getting the cisgendered to understand their stance on gender and identity but I've noticed people are usually happy to accommodate their views when they've been clearly explained to them, or failing that will simply refer to them with whichever pronoun they wish in order to be civil. When people are instead actively dismissing their views and making fun of them on a soapbox where millions can read the vitriol I imagine it's extremely disheartening. It's that whole "can I enjoy Shadow Complex knowing what Orson Scott Card says about homosexuals?" dilemma again.

I'm generally bewildered as to why anyone would want to support Penny Arcade even before the controversies, but that's just me.

I hope you update this a year after it's done so we can see how many of these predictions came to pass. Meanwhile, I'll keep adding Famicom fortune-telling games to the wiki (honestly, are there any left? Are there SNES ones? This requires some additional research).

I love M&M and all (especially the one where all the heroes are filled with peanuts) but I'm more curious about that Daedalic bundle. The QLs that have arisen from those games were usually gold (though not always because the games themselves were sterling, I guess it's worth keeping in mind).

Eh, I have no money and the Longest Journey games (and Primordia) are sitting in my Steam library. If I need a new point-and-click to play I'm already set. Something in this GOG sale is going to make me fold, though. I just know it.