[Mr. Mechanical]

That's called a LIMIT BREAK.
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[Adilegian]

[Adilegian]

[Brooks]

Adz that was awesome

It amuses me that MRA and NRA are but a letter's difference and by that account, the motivating emotions for both groups are very similar

[Takashi]

If anyone had any doubts about the nature of the beast, gamergate people were high-fiving themselves over this reply later today.

http://i.imgur.com/g0jAzHe.png
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low-end.net | Whimsy (soon) | Serfdom 2.0

[Loki Laufeyson]

why would you want to read totally objective writing about videogames? the gamers quarter was so excellent because every article in it was so personal to the writers.

also, the only previous time i've seen the phrase "cultural marxism" used is by white supremacist groups on facebook
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http://lunaticobscurity.blogspot.com/ - newest post: Snezhaja Koroleva (Arcade)
http://lunargarbagehell.blogspot.com/ - newest post: Batman: Digital Justice

[Takashi]

[Adilegian]

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

That's from the unceasing avalanche of fuck which makes up the most popular thread at The Escapist forums. It started off as paranoid ramblings on ZQ and steadily degenerated from there. But because sites like NeoGAF and I guess also Reddit are showing some degree of sense in moderating threads on these topics, that 700+ page shitshow is possibly the most visible online discussion outside of 4chan.

[Adilegian]

OK. Yeah, I saw the page count and the clean page layout, and I wondered.

Thanks DAIS!
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[Mr. Mechanical]

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2003/summer/reframing-the-enemy

This is the first I'm hearing of "cultural Marxism" as well and this was the first non-wiki, non-right-wing blog link google spat up.
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[Corinth]

[diplo]

[Adilegian]

Boss class response.

EDIT: I mean Schafer's.

I saw him at PAX and thought, "Oh shit. Tim Schafer." Then I left the man alone.

Somehow that non-encounter and this Twitter conversation feel part of a dreamlike continuum. Help.
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[parker]

[schroeder]

[Corinth]

[schroeder]

[skelethulu]

[schroeder]

[Adilegian]

[Schwere Viper]

The twitter account for The Best Gamers, a parody games review site/program, broke kayfabe a little while ago. Whoever's behind it poured their heart out for hours upon hours. It's a pretty honest rant, and represents a disillusionment with the hobby that I can totally understand.

[Adilegian]

[mauve]

https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13fftyjopfahdvz504cdldh0zr1j52o12w

like usual i find myself relating most to measured developer statements

and yeah that twitter rant is... what are they even lashing out against? there is so much identity politicing going on here. it strikes me as a culture war more than anything else
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twit

[Schwere Viper]

[The King]

THEBESTGAMERS sounds kind of like he feels the industry has a responsibility to cater to his specific tastes, though he does seem to project his taste in games as some sort of ur-gamer taste. In fairness I guess he's saying developers and press are responsible to their audiences which is not an unheard of argument; If we grant that though, his idea of the audience and what they want seems very skewed, and his idea of the ways the creators and press are responsible seems slightly off as well.
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[mauve]

people have no idea how much work it is to make a game. it's raw, hard, work and it will grind you to the bone

if someone wants to make something and shove a $15 price tag on it why not. if people are willing to pay it, that's fine too.
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twit

[The King]

[mauve]

i actually sort of take offense to the idea that games have value and that like "random crap people make shouldn't be sold for this price i think it should." that's not how economics work.

in fact a lot of smaller devs are better off overcharging for their work, because they will not sell much to begin with...
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twit

[CubaLibre]

Plus even if you grant the premise I don't see what's "destroyed" by the release of overpriced, crappy games. Does Call of Duty not make 8 trillion dollars any more? Are there fewer indie games available for sale, or more, compared to the pre-SJW-crappy-game-tidal-wave era?
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Schwere Viper]

Thinking on it a bit more, another possibility is that people feel so threatened by this huge event/discussion/clusterfuck because it talks about games - moreso, the direction that games should develop in - as an absolute. The idea that games, as a medium, should "evolve" in a certain way that would leave recent and long-time enthusiasts out in the cold. The idea that a few prominent developers dislike games as they are and have been for a long time, and as "gatekeepers" (that's the buzzword of the month, right?) are duty-bound to guide the sovereign vessel of gaming as a whole away from such primitive, archaic genres as the "shmup," or the "first-person shooter."

Of course, games should be free to develop in whatever way they like. There's nothing wrong with more narrative-based games that value emotional and story-based content over reaction and skill-based content. Let them come; let them develop alongside long-standing genres and tropes, and let audiences differ and segregate as they would in any other medium. Don't leave anyone out. There's a game for everyone.

Though I say again, I completely understand where THEBESTGAMERS' is coming from when they voice dissatisfaction with full-priced "experiences" that, say, consist entirely of walking around and picking up pieces of paper. Coming off of years' worth of games released and countless developers working tooth and nail to make things happen, we already have a name for that. It's not "game." It's "filler."

[mauve]

"A developer should not be rewarded simply because they chose to develop a game. " huh what? Where did I even say that?

When your target is niche and you know that it is of value to that niche, you can charge appropriate to that value. Simple supply and demand. It would be true of any field.

It's up to the consumers to decide what has value to them. If you overcharge relative to the actual interest, that's the developer's fault. If, despite warning signs everywhere, you pay more for something you don't want, that's a problem too.

It's still better than it was in years past. Overpriced LJN tie-in games from the NES era, fuck yeah
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twit

[Brooks]

Thing is if a given audience is a mire of backward-ass attitudes re: minorities they probably should be left out in the cold

[Schwere Viper]

[The King]

In simplified form the present system is;

Creator gets to choose the price.
Customer chooses to pay or not pay.
Market decides what the optimal prices are; sometimes low prices catch enough customers to be optimal, sometimes high prices catch enough from each customer to be optimal.
Hard work and talent result in a better game, which increases either the number of customers, the amount they are willing to pay, or both.

I have no problem with that system.

Some people don't like that system because they believe there is an inherent universal value/quality to every item and the price should be the dollar conversion of an inherent quality of the product.

I am ok with the system as is because I think value is subjective.
How much we like things is personal. How much we choose to pay for things, is going to be dependent on factors including how much we like the thing, and how much disposable income we have i.e how much we personally value the money that it would cost us. Likewise how a creator/owner chooses to price something is either personal or business, either how much they feel people should pay, or what price will achieve optimized profit.

If LJN chooses to price their game at $60.
That's ok, it's their choice.
If I choose to buy it, that's ok, it's my choice.
If I choose not to buy it, ditto.

In my view the only room for anything to even be 'wrong' in a moral sense is that a product could have misleading marketing.
If a creator advertised the product in a misleading way to increase sales, that would be bad.
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[analogos]

"I want to have the exact same relationship with videogames and their extramedia content I had when I was 10 years old, but please don't make me be introspective about this problem for even a second" -THEBESTGAMERS, 2014

re: Gone Home:

-- Who exactly is determining how much effort went into the game's development compared to anything else; how [and why] are they doing this; how [and why] is it relevant?

-- Attempts at [objectively] determining the price-to-value of a thing you personally have zero interest in is the most baffling thing. Engaging price-to-value at all in a generalized way is the most baffling thing.

[analogos]

[Adilegian]

[schroeder]

Evidence-free, armchair psychologizing speculation on the roots of gamer anger:
Mainstream major game companies are increasingly indifferent/hostile to their customers - see novel DRM, microtransactions, bailing on classic series and blaming their fans (Capcom...) - and the internet makes it harder than ever to ignore. Developers crash for no apparent reason and publishers are constantly bemoaning their barely-solvent finances. It can feel pretty dire to be a fan of AAA/'core' gaming.

On the indie side, though, they see developers producing tons of new games that seem to cater to their fans' desires, in politics and subject matter as well as form (those forms broadly failing as substitutes for AAA titles). They've got writers who are genuinely enthusiastic and the buzz (not necessarily accurately) is that things are constantly, rapidly improving.

So on the one hand, megazillionaire corporations are pleading poor and trying to charge more for less, while broke-ass indies are getting talked up to the moon for making not-even-games and are apparently just swimming in money (Notch! Fish! Sarkeesian!)). So obviously something shady has happened, because it looks like people think indies are doing a better job than big studios and that's just not how it works.

Ergo, riot.

[CubaLibre]

Which is crazy. There are, objectively, more games for cheaper in every mainstream genre and tiny niche than ever before. This includes genres (shmups, platformers) that used to be mainstream but were pushed out of the market by modern AAA mashup games - which have only sur/revived because of small and indie developers. I don't get it. Are there not enough Assassin's Creeds, CoDs, Battlefields, Gearses, GTAs, and so on forever and ever to satisfy "core" gamers? This is madness.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Adilegian]