Time the Crestfallen

I'm not going to beat around the bush here, the most prolific form of terrorism in the US has always been radicalised, right-wing white men but I seriously doubt that's what you're referring to.

Looks like I forgot how to read today. Now excuse me while I backtrack and pretend I did nothing wrong. Delete posts pls... Back on the topic at hand, this has got me thinking about how video games are designed and I can see how the addiction happens, but it's not as clear what the stem of the issue is and I'm curious as to what others think. Generally speaking, the source of addictive behaviour is the feelings that come from using the product and I'd personally say it's the sense of escapism combined with the fact that video games as an art-form are far more interactive than other forms of media.

Not really? Most NPCs you aren't even given any real opportunity to interact with. The portrayal of sex workers is a problem because they're elevated above other NPCs, but only to serve as background objects to make the game world grittier and for cheap sexual gratification for presumed straight male players while retaining the disposability of other NPCs. If there were also male prostitutes and strippers, I'd agree with you, but the fact that sex workers are almost always female and that the rare exceptions to the rule aren't anywhere near as sexualised ruins the point for me. Link for the video please? I'm fairly certain I know which video you're talking about, but I'd like to make sure. This is why I asked you to watch the second part of the video, because it talks about how far more often than not sex workers in games are portrayed as the perpetual victims of male violence as well as sex-objects. Personally speaking, if Anita's view on sex workers in video games comes across as consistently negative, I'm far more inclined to say that based on my experiences it's because video games that feature sex work often portray it in a rather negative light. I'm fairly certain I conceded this specific point, although I'd still say that those game's portrayals of sex workers leaves a lot to be desired. This also links to the second part of the video, because in terms of story sex workers are often portrayed as the victims of male violence. Which is a fair cop, because sex work does have some undeniably malicious parts of it, but these games often want to have their cake and eat it too; portraying sex workers as the victims of men in story but at the same time, reducing them to objects for the sexual gratification of straight males that you get bonuses for subjecting to the same violence they condemn depending on the game. And I'm fairly certain that the argument you'd respond to this with is that the same thing applies to murderous rampages to which I respond thusly; 1) Harming sex workers (and sometimes just women in general) is often portrayed as a particularly heinous act that designates when a villain is considered especially evil. 2) Even though most of them aren't portrayed as particularly murderous, none of the playable characters have any problem with killing. In fact, the fact that they only kill and more often than not detest drugs and other criminal activities is often used to portray them as more morally upstanding than others in the other characters in the game.

I'm going to preface this by saying I'm sorry if I come off as a bit dickish here. I've been on SD long enough to know you're a pretty cool guy, I just doing think I can get the point across if I'm sugarcoating it. To start off with, you're kind of moving the goalpost a bit. As seen here, your initial point framed Anita's arguments as if she were talking about all female NPCs, as opposed to a specific subset of them. This is what I meant when I sent people who don't fit into the hate-mob have their opinions coloured by her demonisation. There's more to it than just the fact that they exist though, it's also about portrayal and how they're inserted into the game world. I'd like it if you could watch the second part of the Women as Background Decoration, but I can keep going if you don't want to. The first part sets the ground work while the second part talks about said portrayal and how, in Anita's own words, "examine how sexualised female bodies often occupy a duel role as both sexual playthings and the perpetual victims of male violence." The gist of my point is that the inclusion of sex workers isn't the problem, it's their portrayal and implementation in gameplay. I'm extremely sex-positive myself, and I find the way game portrays the field to be rather disturbing for what it's worth. As I said above, this is a misrepresentation of her argument. The video wasn't about a comparison of all male NPCs to all female NPCs, but rather a specific subset of female NPCs who are used as nothing more than cheap sex-objects for player enjoyment that you are sometimes given incentives to kill. Yeah, but the drug dealers have guns and prostitutes don't. At least with drug dealers there's a certain level of risk vs. reward whereas with the prostitutes you're just mowing down defenseless sex workers. This is compounded by the fact that (to my knowledge, so please correct me if I'm wrong) in most GTA games, you can't actually buy drugs whereas sleeping with prostitutes recovers your character's health, upon which you are incentivised to kill them and get your money back. Perhaps, but I'd argue that the existence of the benefit at all is at the very least worthy of looking at, both from a feminist perspective and from a sex-positive perspective, since the way many of these games portray sex work leaves a lot to be desired. This video clip basically explains my view on this particular defence. I'd recommend watching it because he puts it way better than I could and I recommend giving the entire series a watch, but the gist of it is thus; Some guy called Jason Rohrer releases a game called the Castle Doctrine that was criticised it's wife mechanic, the way the game works is that you have to try and defend your family with security systems and if a thief gets passed, the wife will try to run away with half your money, upon which the would-be robber has to murder the wife to get the money. While this is happening, you are trying to break into other people's houses and murder there wives to take half their money. The game received some flak due to the fact that the sole female presence in the game was as a resource mechanic that you have to murder in order to get money, with no other way of going about it. Jason responded by saying that the game was supposed to be a critique of toxic male culture. The problem being that the audience had no way of knowing his intentions with the game, not to mention that his 'critique' was basically indistinguishable from being an 'example'. This is part of what irritates me about people constantly using satire, sarcasm, and the like as a defence, because 'satire' only works when you can tell it apart from the subject matter and a lot of the time people's usage of satire consists of playing what they're satirising straight and getting irritated when people don't read their mind and instantly understand their intention. My point is that if GTA's treatment of sex workers is supposed to be an example satire and/or social commentary, then they've done a rather bad job of it because their 'satire' is basically indistinguishable from being just a shitty portrayal of sex work, not to mention that this is only talking about GTA, and not the many other games with crappy portrayals of sex work that can't even begin to claim the shield of being satire.

As usual, she's partly right and partly wrong. The specific point you're talking about is something she gets wrong, but the game does encourage violence against women in some ways. GTA is used as an example, wherein prostitutes (which I'm fairly certain are always women as an added 'bonus') drop more money than normal civilians if I remember correctly. In some games, if not all of them, they also drop the money that you spend on them if you hired them. This absolutely incentives specifically killing women in some cases, since you can hire the prostitute for some cringe-worthy fanservice, and then immediately kill them to get your money back and then some There's also the fact that in Red Dead Redemption you get an achievement for hogtying a woman and placing her on train-tracks to get run over and that hogtying prostitutes in the same game results in them making sexual innuendo instead of any reasonable dialogue. Also, I remember this video and for the most part, it's mostly talking about female NPCs who are prostitutes, strippers, and the like being used as nothing more than cheap sex-objects. Thus, the point is less based around the inherent disposability of NPCs, and more-so based around the fact that such characters are given more traits that make them stand out from regular NPCs, but still remain disposable in that their only use is as objects in the background for the player's sexual gratification, often in incredibly sleazy and misogynistic ways, and that some games outright give you incentives to kill them specifically. EDIT: I started watching the second part because I remembered that there was something relevant to this in there and I found it, she outright defines what she sees as 'Women as Background Decoration' "The subset of largely insignifcant non-playable female characters whose sexuality or victimhood is exploited as a way to infuse edgy, gritty, or racy flavouring into game worlds. These sexually objectified female bodies are designed to function as environmental texture while titillating presumed straight male players."

This.

I'm not exactly disagreeing with you. Gender essentialism isn't the only thing I dislike about her critiques, by my general points were thus; 1. Anita is absolutely not hateful or regressive. The worst thing you can accuse her of is getting some of her critiques wrong, which by internet standards is the norm rather than the exception. Hell, I'd even go so far as to say that getting some things wrong is the norm of artistic criticism in general, but that's a discussion for another day. 2. The response to her is ludicrous in both how disproportionate it is and in terms of it's toxicity. I'd also add that some of the people who don't fall explicitly in that crowd would've had their opinions of her coloured by the vitriol. On that note, can you give me the video source for the Godfather one? It's not that I think you're wrong necessarily, I've just long since learnt to always double-check things when it comes to Anita.

11. Favourite gaming genre and why? 12. Favourite book/cinema genre and why? 13. Least favourite colour? 14. What was the last book you read and did you enjoy it? 15. What was the last movie you watched and did you enjoy it?

Are you taking the fucking piss? I'm being serious, are you pranking me? First of all, nice ad hominem. Second of all, you're judging a video that you haven't even watched yet. Lastly, if my views are on the same level as the Flat Earth Society, they should be pretty easy to disprove, no? So I'll ask again; Give me a fucking source! Give me anything you want! I'll take Sargon of Akkad/Stefan Molyneux/Thundef00t/youtuber of your choice videos, I'll take KiA posts, I'll even take a meme you find on fucking /pol/, just give me something! This is your last chance, if all you can give me is more of your other posts I'm just going to report you.

Or it could be that I just really, really, really don't want to be having THIS discussion in the year of our lord 2018. Also, I love how you've come in here throwing out some very slanderous accusations and when I say 'Could you watch this video and then we can talk about this', you explicitly refuse to watch it and then have the fucking gall to call me the ignorant one on this subject. Fucking where? Show me anything Anita has said that could be considered hateful or regressive? I'm not the biggest fan of Anita myself, I consider some of her critiques to be somewhat gender existentialist, but hateful and regressive she most certainly is not. By offering feminist critique of the medium? Leaving aside the fact that critique is a necessary part of any artistic medium, you do realise critiquing the medium beyond 'the gameplay is good, the story is a bit bland, ETC' actually elevates the medium, right? Because she's treating it as something other than something kids and teenagers play around with? As for the 'vitrol' bit, are you really going to blame her for the online hate-mob she's recieved the wrath of purely because she, at the very worst, offers criticism that people don't like? I don't particularly enjoy Jim Sterling's criticism either, but I don't send him messages telling him I wish he'd kill himself.

I don't see how a constant, never-ending stream of rape and death threats are 'fair and nuanced', but I'm just going to assume that you literally know nothing about her other than what 4chan and Reddit told you. As for Anita yourself, how about you watch this video and then we can have this discussion.

And not just left-leaning, but socialists too! It's almost like the only thing he cares about is that they're white.

+Atk/-Res easily. His base Atk really needs the boost and while -HP would be better, -Res can be rather safely dumped as long as you're careful about putting him near mages.

That's exactly what I'm afraid of though. Assuming that Trump does in fact, wind up impeached, I can see the GOP strategy being two different things; the first (and the most likely to happen should he be impeached) is that they start bitching about the 'deep state', saying that it was all just a witch-hunt to get Trump out of the presidency. The second is that the GOP completely disavows themselves of Trump; saying that they didn't know about it and that they were just trying to work around him to accomplish what their voters wanted, and then using 'Trumpism' to distance themselves from the man and people like him, even though their actions and politics are what enabled him to get into the presidency in the first place. Then it won't be a matter of the GOP being a problem, it'll just be that a few people in the party are 'too much like Trump'.

My only worry is that the entirety of this will be pinned on Trump, and the GOP will remain (relatively) blameless when all is said and done.

It's because he's ignorant and knows nothing about what makes the Nordic countries great. All he knows is that they're considered great places to live and are full of white people, and that's all he gives a shit about.

Pretty much; it's the low-hanging fruits that get written about multiple times, whereas things relevant to the investigation can only be written about once or twice because we don't really know a lot about the internal workings of it. Compare how much will be written about Bannon's subponea compared to Bannon's involvement with the Fire and Fury book.

I wound up with 4800-ish points using Micaiah, PA!Azura, Ayra, and Dorcas. Having taken a long hiatus from the game, I don't have any high-merge units. Working up enough points to climb the ladder and stay there is a bit of a pain, but I'm managing.

The Medievil remake. There hasn't even been a proper trailer for it yet, but the original is my favourite game of all time and I'm gonna love the remake even if it's complete garbage by all accounts.

Yeah, fair enough. I won't cast any speculations about Omni himself or his motives because I don't watch his channel, but he his points aren't necessarily wrong. I know Heroes is considered to be the kindest gacha by a lot of people, but at the end of the day it's still a gacha game. There's a certain amount of stuff that you just kind of have to accept as a part of the genre, and it's certainly not a genre for everyone.

6. Damage, Tank, or Healer? 7. Opinion on MMOs? 8. Tea or Coffee? 9. Winter or Summer? 10. Have you ever played a sport competitively?

That's because you can only write about Bannon being Subponeaed once, maybe twice if you really stretch it whereas Trump's shithole comment is an easy five articles.

You don't even have to ask, you normally see what their up to in the news the very next day. It's almost funny how regular this is.

1. What books/movies/games do you like that most people seem to dislike and why do you like it? 2. What books/movies/games do you dislike that most people seem to like and why do you like it? 3. What books/movies/games did you used to like, but dislike now and why the change? 4. What books/movies/games did you used to dislike, but now like and why the change? 5. Why is Adam West's Batman the best version of them all?

Nothing Trump is doing himself is irreparable (unless he decided to go for the Nuclear Winter route with Kim), but the damage he's done to the US' public image may well be irreparable. He's exposed US politics for being the massive shit-show that it is and people are gonna be wary about dealing with the US in the future because they have no idea if the GOP will go mental again and elect another person like him, especially when one of the more noteworthy features of Trump's presidency is his insistence on dismantling everything Obama did that he can get his hands on.