Tom_Scherschel

@ajamafalous: See, this is an argument I can understand. I still feel like enough stuff is posted to justify my sub, plus it means I don't see ads and support the site, but I can understand the point you're making. Does anybody know if the staff, aside from Rorie, actively engage in the forums though? Because otherwise they're never going to hear these concerns.

It would be cool to make this a subscriber feature (the removal of ads/trailers) but I don't think they would do it, or especially roll it across the entire site, because they know a certain percent of people who see those links will click them and that's a good thing; it may not directly translate to ad revenue but it does increase certain metrics that get shown to potential advertisers* (how long on site, how many pages viewed, avg length of page view, etc) so exposing them to everybody who comes here helps them.

*I could be completely wrong about that, but it's what I've pieced together from things I've read across various journalists twitter feeds.

How long is the list supposed to be? 5? Okay.

1. Wesker

2. Wesker

3. Wesker

4. Wesker

5. Wesker

@fluttershy_xxx: @joshwentmakes great points about the source article/data. Also, while seeing the percent of female game developers rise would be nice, I think that most people would rather see the culture of game development (and gaming in general) become more inclusive/welcoming to women, period. Just last week we saw a major tournament for a hugely popular game banning women participants, and a quick google search will reveal volumes of female devs relating their horror stories from interactions with game development/marketing/enthusiasts (that's the ones who choose to speak out. There is also a well documented problem where female devs/journos feel that if they speak out they will be putting their career or personal safety at risk). Honestly, there is a weird knee-jerk reaction that a portion of the gaming community (for lack of a better descriptor) has as soon as you start talking about including more women in this sphere (your opening line "despite the demands for change from the feminist world" is a great example). At the end of the day it seems like one side of this argument is just saying "this industry could treat women better, and that might make the industry better" and the other side gets very indignant at the suggestion.

Unlike other concerns about GB voiced recently, I never can see another perspective on this one. It comes up every so often, always the same issue of not enough content, always around this time of year, I think. Honestly, I do not see how people cannot see how engaged the staff is in making this website as awesome as possible. Jeff is doing Q&A streams from his bedroom in the middle of the night for crying out loud! And when you throw in a line like "eventually people are going to run out of excuses" it just makes it seem like you are rooting against the site rather than lodging a complaint.

Also, the staff has posted 11 separate quick looks/encyclopedia bombasticas/patrick-deep-dives-on-a-hard-game-thing/UPF Freedom Streams in the last 6 days (i'm not counting Sat/Sun because they don't work those days). That seems like a lot of content to me.

@darkstalker: Thanks for linking to that study. It's interesting and I think it speaks to a negative trait about humans in general: we don't like to work for things. The article says that explaining why people in the study preferred the spoiled versions is beyond the scope of the study but posits that people can understand the story better if they know where it is going. However, I feel like that really means "when they don't have to think about or internalize what they are consuming because they already read the Cliff Notes". Your understanding or feeling about a story will be a lot different (and the study supports this, I think) depending on if you know the ending ahead of time, and I think that speaks to how much of an impact a spoiler can make. It's hard to talk about this in respect to video games though, because most games' have terrible, worthless stories that are just a series of "this happened then this happened then this happened". The real spoiler for video games seems to be explaining a puzzle to someone who hasn't solved it yet or telling them about a great setpiece; the moments that, when solved, give the player that dopamine release and satisfaction.

@cretaceous_bob: Regarding female only tournaments making a culture more accepting...

Historically, segregating a group out from society has not made that society more accepting of the segregated group. It has exactly the opposite effect by encouraging everyone else to see them as "the other" or somehow fundamentally different.

There is a long post at Badass Digest today addressing whitewashing in Hollywood blockbusters. Midway through is a paragraph that seems particularly appropriate to this conversation:

I want to take a quick aside here to address a point that will, without fail, be made in the comments: yes, the skin tone of an actor should be as important to their casting as their hair color. Yes, performance capture technology is bringing us to a future where any actor can play any race, gender, age or species thanks to the magic of technology.But that's utopian stuff, things to consider once our society has stopped getting broken down along tribalistic lines, lines often demarcated by skin color or place of origin. We don't live in that world, and that means we have to be vigilant to make sure that the people we're seeing on film reflect the people sitting in the audience.

That's really all that one side of this issue is asking for: a diversity of representation in games journalism/coverage that reflects the diverse audience that plays games. If the mere suggestion that a woman or minority or LGBTQ person could bring a perspective that is valuable and different from 9 other white men enrages you, look inside yourself to figure out why because its probably a symptom of something pretty unhealthy.

The full article at BAD has a lot of other salient points on the topic of representation in media, I would encourage people to take five minutes and read it: http://badassdigest.com/2014/07/02/wil-ridley-scotts-exodus-be-the-last-whitewashed-blockbuster/

@tdot: Is there an easy way to send one person a video clip? Then assemble them into an apology video or something? Put it on youtube and turn off comments. Something.

@sarisa: Do you think organizing some kind of actual apology, written/photo/video, would be too much? It feels shitty to just leave things as they are, but I understand your point.