Guess who is now curator on steam....

“Games with dynamic female characters, emotional impact or an emphasis on themes of cooperation, empathy or social justice.”
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/femfreq/curation

But hey, thumbs up to her for bringing Papo&Yo back in the spotlight. Instead of steam and if you want it drm-free, it's available on humble store:
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/papoandyo_storefront
If you've lived under a rock, it's a game about a south-american boy who gets beaten up by his alcholic father and to escape this, he invents a dreamy world copied from his daily life but it's not an episode of the "Care Bears" so things turns out darker as you progress. Games lasts 3-4 hour but you won't forget it!

I think I'll tweet her for some game suggestions to add to her list (after all, it's always publicity for devs)

The Cat Lady maybe? :) Seriously, without going into any social justice matters, Susan is a great female character.

Done. Replied to her with the Blackwell series, The Cat Lady and Cinders (all with attached trailers). Putting everything in 140 chars was tough :)

I think the last comment from the techraptor article is worth reproducing right here. It would seem most (or at least a substasntial %-age of) people - both men and women - see thru the deluge of propagandistic material that is at large and yet what I find puzzling is, why does the mainstream media (even taking into account all its faults and defects) continue to take the like of feminist frequency so deadly seriously?

I want to poke because you have this habit of being very quiet when something doesn't seem to fit your discussion. You mentioned in another thread that journalists should be able to write what they want, so I'll pose an obvious question after what I mentioned with Totilo and the GTA IV article. What happens when they publish a fake article? When a journalist gets sucked into a hoax because they didn't bother doing the most basic of fact checking?

Again, rape accusations can destroy a person's life. Not a conviction, an accusation, just because people will do the research on his name, and there it is, not to mention all of the court of public opinion's convictions. And the worst is that a lie on behalf of the 'victim' can make it harder for actual victims to be trusted, so why not do the full research before publishing an article? Where are the consequences of not even doing basic reporting?

And as for what I mentioned with the police...how many times, how FAST do you hear stories of an officer having to fire their sidearm before the full story has been even discovered, where instead of asking questions, they report just that an officer killed someone, for whatever reason? Or 'Police Raided so and so for 'illegal weapons' and have promised that more raids are due in the coming weeks', just to motivate more conservative people?

When I started reading that petition I actually double checked the url - thinking it might be the onion or something. But sure, when someone is that humorless and hellbent on their agenda there's a good chance they really believe "it's for their own good".

I don't believe I did say that. I said writers should be permitted to give their honestly held opinion. For example, if a writer thinks, rightly or wrongly, a game portrays values that are racist, sexist, homophobic, they should be allowed to express that. Obviously there are limits on that, if giving the opinion is defamatory or unlawful, and possibly other circumstances, see for example:

Eatock v Bolt [2011] FCA 1103

My issue is that many seem to suggest that, because they don't agree with an opinion or do not like it, many #gg'ers suggest the writer should not give that opinion, because the writer should be "representing" them and their values, such as this lady.

They should retract it and possibly apologise, depending on the circumstances.

I have heard being raped can be tough as well.

Why not do the full research before publishing an article? I don't know what you mean by "the full research", I don't know that there is a point where you can say "alright, now I have done the full research" but I agree that articles should be researched before published, particularly if they have the potential to damage a person's reputation.

What is the consequences of not even doing basic reporting? Again, I'm not sure what you mean by "not even doing basic reporting", but in Australia, if you publish an article that is untrue, the consequence would be that you would face a claim in defamation. We have fairly good defamation laws, however, in the US, not so much.

I can't say I often hear many stories like that.

Seeing as its question time, and we are discussing the police, I have a question for you. I think you are a supporter of #gg. You are against conflicts of interest between games writers and indie game devs, for example.

How do you feel about the same district attorneys who work side by side the police, who rely on the police support to maintain their jobs, particularly those who are elected, being the persons who prosecute those same police when they are accused of wrongdoing or being the people charged with putting together a case against those same police before a grand jury. Do you think that is a conflict of interest and do you have any problem with that?

Great article! And as so often is the case there are hidden gems amoungst the comments section, such as ... And of course what begs the question is if large numbers of average people can see thru the propaganda why is the mainstream media so feverishly supporting feminist frequency and other Neo-feminists?

The problem that's being faced with opinions is not a simple. If an article is labeled as an editorial, or an opt-ed, then picking the reasoning apart is fine for anyone. I have an issue when there's an obvious agenda across multiple opinion articles, but that's a personal choice, and I can choose to go someplace else. Hell I'm not even objecting (And a LOT of the people I'm talking to about this are the same way) to actual critiques and criticism, but the requirement there is to be informed, know what the fuck you are talking about or you are just blowing hot air and wasting people's time.

Reviews are an interesting beast, but let me ask this as a question, if I take say, any old game, and instead of giving a review, decide to inject my politics deeply into that, regardless of the content of the game, maybe it's only relevant by the vaguest of virtues, is it still a review of the article? Am I putting too much of myself but not doing my job of informing people what's in the game? Hell, can I be a critic still and not know what I'm talking about?

The problem with defamation lawsuits in the US is they've pretty much been made almost impossible to actually bring into court. You have to prove that they knew the report was false, and that it was published with reckless disregard ('Actual Malice'). I count only 10 cases in the past 60-70 years, and that's just cases that went to court. Wikipedia was my only source for that due to google being a bitch and I might simply not know what the right words are to get the information I Want.

The rising surge of clickbait journalism is also just this, outrageous articles and claims that involve getting people fired up and filled with rage. How Gawker thinks that publishing some people's nude pics or sex videos (Even with a judge ordering them to take them down), but then turn around and say that others are bad. Or publish Sony's hacked emails.

But where? Is it fair to stick them say, using newspapers as an example, on page 17 with articles that no one reads? As with the Kotaku article, just on the article which is so old that said update will probably NEVER be seen? What good are they if no one's going to see them?

I'm going to assume that you don't know about the UVA thing that the Rolling Stone Magazine published and was basically boosted along the internet and the media. Basically an article came out about a girl named Jackie who said that she was raped, the story described the rape, named the fraternity that it was from, when it happened and what event, described the person, but never gave a name.

Now to explain the lack of research, the journalist basically made an agreement NOT to get any sort of a statement from the fraternity, or look for this rapist or any of that in order to protect the victim. Now, I'm sure anyone can tell where this is heading. There were protests in front of the fraternity house, people were basically forced to flee from it, etc.

Where the story goes pear-shaped? The party this happened? There was no party on that day, the event described was something that was done 6 months prior. The rapist was supposed to be a lifeguard...and no member of that frat was actually a lifeguard that year. At the least she lied about 2 major facts, at the worst? Made the whole thing up, and it's almost impossible to tell now what's a lie and what's the truth.

Now, should the reporter made the deal? Is what she did enough research? There's never just one side to a story, no reporter should ever in their right minds think that this is a good idea. I mean, I can understand protecting a victim of a crime, but at that point, you're believing a completely one sided story and basically promised NOT to question it.

Now, I think rape should be punished, harshly, I won't deny that. But I have a problem with this kind of reporting, it does harm to people before any sort of falsehood is recognized, and there are places that would rather close shop then print an actual retraction, maybe just a tiny update hidden somewhere where it won't be noticed. Now what happens if they named someone, who would then have his life destroyed because no one would see the retraction? Should we allow innocent people to be harmed as collateral damage, or should we do our due diligence?

The Court of Public Opinion however is quite cruel, far crueler then us, I saw an article about someone who was a victim of statutory rape...who is now being pressed by the courts to pay for child support. Said event happened when he was 14, and there were people in the comments saying he deserved it.

Now, go back into the GTA IV article, the update states that there were plenty of red flags that went off in his head. So why didn't he check up on them? Is the surge in clickbait journalism that bad? Is this 24 hour news cycle simply doing more harm then it's ever going to do good?

My view of that is that if this is a person that has a more personal relationship with the cop that is being prosecuted should be recused and not allowed anywhere near the case. Otherwise, I believe that people can have professional relationships that are based completely on work. They're allowed to be cordial, polite, hell even friendly, but there's a difference between friendly, and friends. There's simply a separation there between 'I work with this person all the time, and I get along with them' and 'I work with this person, and we go drinking all the time, we go to sports events, we hang out on a regular basis'.

And even then I'd be happier if it was someone else altogether. It has the appearance of a conflict of interest and that's enough for me. But that still has very little to do with games journalism.

As for the stories, then you're lucky, that's pretty much all I hear when it's on the news. Very quick to push officers into the public's angry eye for whatever reason, regardless of the full story, because the public outrage will be there. Sometimes they deserve it, others they don't. But you don't see a lot of positive press for the police, just a lot of negative stuff.
There's a few reasons, none of them that has to be ideological, the main reason is that it's the kind of story that sells. People still have this urge to protect women, it's a natural instinct that evolves to protect a species, and we haven't gotten to a point where that will fade (And never will). It's basically about what stories will sell, instead of what stories will be correct, and that's become an insanely difficult problem to deal with, especially since it inevitably involves attacking the Mainstream Media. blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2014/11/gamergate-abc-reporter-admits-they-chose-harassment-coverage-over-corruption /

Yes.

Interesting that someone who claims a superior understanding of subtlety, nuance, language, etc would associate cowardice and bravery with being "tough". Consider reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" sometime.

In your own words, you crafted your analogy to show how "judging all #gg'ers by the actions of certain #gg'ers" differs from "judging all gamers by the actions of certain #gg'ers". Had that been your actual intention, you could have used any denomination of Islam (Shiite, Sunni, etc) to demonstrate this point without offense and without connecting it to a moral argument.

But that wouldn't have served your anti-GG agenda: We cannot blame all Sunni Muslims for the actions of ISIS, so it wasn't enough to accurately relate GG to one of the broader factions of Islam, and you instead chose to make the leap to identifying GG with a "hypothetical" criminal subsect that you "jokingly" named ISIS.

You can claim that you weren't making a moral argument as much as you like, but the fact is that you did make it a moral argument as soon as you invoked beheadings and the name ISIS, regardless of your "disclaimer". As I showed, that moral analogy isn't simply "imperfect", it fails completely. You seem to have known or at least had some sense of the failure of the analogy even as you posted it, but couldn't resist making the comparison, and thus attempted to cover your ass by claiming that you weren't comparing GG with the real-world ISIS but just a "hypothetical" example.

Trying to worm your way out of your mistake instead of simply admitting your fault and apologizing... Blaming others for not comprehending your "subtlety" and "nuance" instead of owning up to your own failure to render a logical point in plain language... Yeah, I'd call that cowardice.

I agree with this, but I suspect we have different views on what amounts to being informed.

I think it is a review of the game, but it is a review that deals with one specific aspect of it from one specific perspective. I don't have a problem with that. Someone might read the review and not get the information they would like, but I don't think they would be misled about what the game is about.

Regrettably, the justice system in the USA is bad on so many levels.

The retraction or apology should have the same prominence as the article. If the article was on the front page of the website (or newspaper) so should the retraction or apology. In terms of electronic media, my view the article should contain the retraction, and there should be a separate article dealing with it on the front page of the website for the same length of time as the initial article was there.

I know about it. I think the journalist did the wrong thing by not investigating the allegations and I don't think she did enough research. I think I agree with just about everything you have said on this topic.

I actually don't know what the GTA IV article is about.

So we disagree here. To me, that is a classic conflict of interest. It is very hard to aggressively cross-examine, accuse them of lying, etc, if you have any kind of relationship with them, professional or otherwise. In addition, the DA relies on the police for his own job, his own interest is in ensuring that the police are on his side, without their assistance, he will lose his job. I don't see how he can be expected to balance his interest in keeping the police on his side and prosecuting the police for perceived wrongdoing.

We had a recent case in my State. A prominent prosecution barrister was accused of murdering his wife, who was also a Registrar of the Supreme Court. Because the lawyers in my state recognised the conflict of interest, a prosecutor (and team of lawyers) and Judge from other states were flown in to prosecute and hear the case.

In most States in Australia, we also have independent bodies that oversea the actions of police. Sometimes allegations are made that those bodies are too enthusiastic, but the end result is that our police are kept (relatively) honest.

Hey welcome back tough guy. Tequila Mockingbird is one of my favourite books by the way.

It was necessary for my analogy to have a bad guy. You'll recall that the discussion I was having with 227 was about the comments made in that article relating to"guilt by association". Its pretty hard to discuss guilt by association, if you don't have someone who is guilty and someone who is associating with that guilty person. Some might say that those two elements are essential. In my view, without a guilty party, the analogy would not really have been analogous.

If you think its appropriate to describe Shiites or Sunnis as guilty of something, that's your opinion. Personally, I thought, in the context of the analogy I was responding to (involving Islam) a good example of a guilty party would be a hypothetical group who committed atrocities. There could be no question that some persons in that hypothetical group were guilty and then the discussion could be had about whether others who stayed in that group, but did not commit the atrocities, would be guilty by association.

I don't know how you feel about Sunnis and Shiites. I don't know why you would think it would be appropriate to use them in an analogy about "guilt by association", but I would be interested in reading your analogy. Are you able to comprehend that? I hope it isn't too subtle or nuanced for you.

Really? That's your response? To accuse me of having something against Shiites or Sunnis? *yawn* I'll keep this brief since you seem to be outright trolling at this point.

That's exactly my point: Either group would have been a more accurate comparison to describe GG in relation to gamers as a whole than ISIS, and since neither Shiites nor Sunnis as a whole should be blamed for the actions of extremist terrorist groups within those broad groups (such as ISIS), the comparison would have made obvious why GG as a whole should not be blamed for the actions of a few despicable individuals.

That you avoided it and instead attempted to compare GG directly with ISIS (or a "hypothetical ISIS") indicates an obvious lack of intellectual honesty on your part.

I think he's a kind of lawyer, I assume he's conditioned to not give an inch by his professional practices. That said, although I just did the same, I'd suggest psychological insight about others might be better avoided, particularly if the perspectives offered are uncharitable. ;)

PS Tequila Mockingbird is pure gold... :D

But what relevance would that have had to giving an example of guilt by association? Why are you ignoring that? That was the sole point of our discussion. Do you think you are being intellectually honest by ignoring the single point that we were discussing?
You're welcome.