The latest Nerf Now sums up my reaction to the latest steam sales. It’s been, 4 days now and I’ve only bought 4 games and 2 DLC with I think a total sum of 25 Eur. There’s definitelly a lot of stuff I’m willing to buy but given the ridiculous backlog I’ve got already, I can’t justify to myself buying games at more than 10 Eur that I’m unlikely to play in the next year anyway. In that case, why not just wait until next year anyway and buy themthen when their prices are going to be sub-10?
Second, the right to offend is a two-way street. It means nothing if it is not accompanied by the right to be offended. Those who believe racism is fair game should at the very least understand that calling them on their racism is no less so. You don’t have to accept the accusation but if you want to be taken seriously then you have to take the accusation seriously and engage with it. To hide behind your right to free speech is little short of pathetic.
There are certain words that are applied to women specifically in order to manipulate them into compliance: “Slut”, “Bitch”, “Ugly/Fat” and of course, “Crazy”. These words encapsulate what society defines as the worst possible things a woman can be. Slut-shaming is used to coerce women into restricting their own sexuality into a pre-approved vision of feminine modesty and restraint. “Bitch” is used against women who might be seen as being too aggressive or assertive… acting, in other words, like a man might. “Ugly” or “Fat” are used – frequently interchangeably – to remind them that their core worth is based on a specific definition of beauty, and to deviate from it is to devalue not only oneself but to render her accomplishments or concerns as invalid.
Read the whole thing to get a good idea why throwing around the word “Crazy” against women is a sign of internalized sexism. “Hysterical” is the same btw.
Oh and since we’re on the subject, I want to address the hordes of misogynists that descended upon Anita Sarkeesian in an attempt to silence and cower her. You’re a waste of oxygen and I hope a lightning surge burns out your VGA and console.
From my reply to a reddit thread
So I’ve been playing Endless Space for something like a dozen hours by now. Still on my first game on a small universe. It seems to progress slower than I expected.
In general, I’m very pleasantly surprised at the quality of the game. I love how streamlined the empire building is and how you take decisions about your systems with very little micromanagement. It still ends up requiring quite a bit of system building in the end, since the AI governors are not very smart but it’s not that bad. I particularly enjoy how they managed to work with so low “population units” per planet in a way that is very simple and easy to grasp.
I also really like the ship design, how each ship type is better suited to different things, how resource abundance reduces costs (thus giving you a reason to trade) and thus making different empires focus on different technologies just out of what resources they end up having around. I like how the support modules are limited and give interesting effects.Needs more ship types/models though. I hope they’ll eventually allow people to make their own.
I like the Civ way of handling resources. That along with the bonuses for abundance or monopoly really promotes people playing more aggressively or diplomatically. The AI needs a lot of work though, as it’s ridiculously stupid in trades.
I don’t like that there is tech trading. I don’t know if there’s an option to turn that off, but I find that tech trading really cheapens science and research. Your hard choices don’t matter because you can just trade yourself to what you need and in multiplayer the absolutely best strategy is always to try to trade techs with other players as much as possible.
Combat is “meh”. I hope they improve it so that you can take a bit more significant choices rather than the “pick & pray” luck-based method they have now, that barely involves any strategy at all. I’m also not a great fan of the speed at which I need to choose my cards which requires that I learn them by heart before I go into battle. The cinematic gets kind of boring after a while as well. Nothing is happening except the same old “sit at opposite ends and pew-pew”.
Also combat is fairly straightforward. There’s no funky tactics to use. No weird weapons. I can’t make a boarding ship with tractor beams and boarding pods and the like. No big-ass Laser beams (ala Freespace), no Huge Mass Drivers, none of that (or perhaps it’s unlocked later on? I don’t know)
All in all, it’s very nice and if they improve combat and diplomacy it will be amazing!
Endless Space [Preview] – Streamlined Strategy(incgamers.com)
A Better Beta: Infinite Joy In Endless Space(rockpapershotgun.com)
Uh, ‘Endless Space’ Trailer, You Got Some Story In Your Strategy Game(multiplayerblog.mtv.com)
appreciate My Chemical Romance song titles better if i put “Mom” at the end of them
eg.
“It’s Not a Fashion Statement, It’s a Fucking Deathwish, Mom”
“I Never Told You What I Do for a Living, Mom”
“This Is How I Disappear, Mom”
I’ve made it no secret that I do not approve of the way most game developers are using kickstarter, that is, as a way to double-dip on their fans. I’ve also always said that something that is publicly funded, should be publicly owned as well, by which I mean that the end result should belong in the public commons, which at the moment means Open Source and Creative Commons for code and art respectively.
So to my grand delight I had the chance to put my money where my mouth is by supporting Haunts: The Manse Macabre. They are not only going to release the source as open source (under the BSD license) but also all the assets as creative commons. This is great news, both for the culture, which will be able to reuse and improve on that base, but also for the game itself which will open itself to be extended by the public.
The game has already been funded, and now there’s a few days left to put some money towards adding more content, which makes sense to support given that we get to use it in the game as well as to make it part of the commons.
So what are you waiting for. This is the kind of game that needs all the support it can get. I do hope to see this become the norm in the future as well as the benefits to me us a supporter increase exponentially the more such games are made and passed to the commons, given how easier it will become to see more games built upon those foundations.
Just finished the third installment of the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness and it was good. Even though I’m not particularly impressed in the faux 16 bit graphics, the mechanics were solid and the game was enjoying to play. With that experience in mind, I tried playing Cthulhu saves the world, which comes from the same developers and I got disappointed. The game is missing all the improvements that made the RSPoD game enjoyable and just turned into an annoying grind. I tried playing in hard to have a challenge (because in RSPoD normal was too easy for me) and quickly found out that hard in this game doesn’t mean more challenging encounters, it merely means one needs to grind more to proceed. I just spent 1 hour sitting in one spot in the map and doing random encounters until I realized that the game is just not interesting enough to worth doing that. The battle is not even as interesting as RSPoD. Half the time I didn’t know why I lost, and that, combined with the fact that you can actually lose the game and thus from minutes up to hours of play as well (if you forgot to save and didn’t have “continues”.) Combine that with the fact that mana points carry over from one battle to the next and first town was so designed that I needed to travel one minute to refill my MP, and it was just an exercise in frustration.
Perhaps the game would be not so annoying had I not played in hard, but if your only difference between the modes is how much grind you need to do, then that’s bad design right there. I hope they reuse the engine of RSPoD to more games because the ones they had before just don’t grab me in the slightest. Not in gameplay, nor graphics not even story.
Meh.
It’s not that I don’t have a sense of humor, it’s that you’re unoriginal and sexist.
Ha ha, what a funny joke, right?
No.
That’s a pretty shitty analogy. It only holds if you already accept the conclusion. I can come up with several that make just as much sense, but would lead to different conclusions.
If you have a pencil that can be sharpened by any sharpener, you have a normal pencil; if you have a sharpener that will only sharpen certain pencils, you have a shitty sharpener.
A man who can ride any horse is a cowboy; a horse anyone can ride is a good horse.
A function that can be computed by any machine is a simple function; a machine that can compute any computable function is a Universal Turing Machine.
A man who’ll dance with anyone is fun at a party; A woman who’ll dance with anyone is fun at a party.
A better way for you to have phrased it would have been “look at it this way: ‘ I approve of promiscuous males, and I disapprove of promiscuous females.'”
Emphasis mine. Face it, the joke is only funny if you’re already a misogynist who is against female promiscuity.
And if someone says that to you, and reason is not an option just retort with this:
“Sooo… you’re about two inches long and often found in the hands of authority figures? Sounds about right, from what I’ve heard.”
Should women take it as a compliment when men catcall them or stare at them? No!
In response to this comment, SRSister Kelderwick replied:
Not sure if “subjugate” is actual transcribed word or a totally clueless yet perfect mis-remembered “objectify”. (Despite shitthatneverhappened.txt)
But okay really dudes. Thought experiment thing time yeah? You are at the gym, running, and your workout clothes are somewhat showy and fairly form-fitting. In the mirror you notice Jane Random Runner inspecting you – awesome, says you. Okay sure, whatever. What if JRR is still staring at you ten minutes later – are you still fine? That’s not intrusive at all? Now pretend her expression isn’t neutral – she’s obviously interested. Doesn’t say a word, just stares at you or takes long glances. The whole time. You are still not affected at all by this? She keeps watching you.
Sure. Now, it isn’t just JRR anymore. Now she has 10 peers all using machines behind you. Some of them don’t look, one of them stares like JRR, some of them take the odd glance. One of them wrinkles her nose in disapproval because she doesn’t find you attractive, or so she whispers to her friend beside her. Thinks she’s being quiet, probably, but maybe not? Wait, was that a camera her friend just slipped away? Hmmm. Oh well.
But now it’s not just JRR and her peers, it’s your female co-workers. Most of them are decent enough folks and don’t bother you. But Gwen does. She leans in too close when you talk, she watches you a bit too long when you wear shorts. Whenever you go to office parties Gwen always corners you and tries to make conversation. She doesn’t take well to rejection. But she’s nice enough most of them time, right? And she’s never, you know, said anything – she is married, after all. Definitely hasn’t done anything either. Well okay there was that one time she put her hand… It doesn’t matter, she was a bit upset that day (home stuff and all that). Besides, you talked to Stephanie and she figures you just over-analyzed the whole thing.
Okay. But now it’s not just JRR and her peers and your female co-workers and Stephanie. Now it’s women on the street. Some of them whistle at you. Some are rather more lewd. Usually you’re too tired or too determined and just ignore them. But if you flip them off and reject them, sometimes they get mad.
They get real mad.
And their friends get mad too.
Now listen, you bunch of shitlord smugfucks who’ve never experienced fucking anything like this, who have no comprehension of the experiences of women who are subjected to this very predominantly male behaviour, get a fuckin’ clue: they are people out there. They have to fuckin’ live a whole life in this context. You, you who felt so stung about getting called out, or vicariously felt so, or were so morally stoked by the thought of such happening that you made it up to circlejerk with your like-minded shitlord friends like a bunch of fucking leeches writhing in a pool of liquid fucking manure, fuck off. Your little sting, that was nothing – one hair pulled out from the arse of an elephant. There is no thing, no habit from women or overbearing cultural narrative and tropes, there is no thing that gives you any fucking perspective on this.
P.S. You, shitlord, do not think this means that gender-flipping situations will be a good tool for analyzing every situation. It is not.
This is actually a very common complaint from men and a prime example of how male privilege works. For us that we have never experienced anything like this in our day-to-day lives, it’s impossible to intuitively comprehend why staring/leering/creeping at random women is not flattering to them. The thought process above is exactly what is meant when one asks us to “Check our Privilege”.
/inb4biotruths
So straight off the bat, anyone who says they refuse to get angry about rape culture because that’s what everyone else is doing – or, to use Tycho’s words, because they “don’t do compulsory” – has, much like the hipster racist, completely sidestepped the issue of whether bad things are genuinely happening in order to try and look cool. Which, yeah, no.
On a related note, reddit is still shit (surprise, I know). I think my comments got in the negative hundreds in /r/games when I posted this article for discussion. Redditors were falling over each other trying to explain how not-offended they are. Ugh.