Censorship? There is no censorship!

[Akratus]

If you're so entrenched in the idea that the other side is ignorant, how is proper debate even possible? I might agree with you're stances but I would never say you don't understand the fundamental basics of what I'm saying. I also wouldn't say that a few times when you post a less than completely reasonable response, that it is evidence of a complete and utter lack of understanding of something bigger. It says that you're picture of the opposing view in this thread and the previous one was not once correct in understanding any of your points for almost 100 pages now over what, 2 months by now? I'm willing to entertain the idea that I'm pretty retarded, but hey, I want at least a little credit bro.

You've demonstrated for 80 pages that you don't understand the actual argument. You just don't. This is not based on a few "less than completely reasonable" responses, but your entire post history on this topic. You genuinely, fundamentally do not understand what I'm saying, as you keep demonstrating through the fact that basically every single one of your responses is aimed at a straw man version of my (or other feminist's) arguments. That's just reality.

 

[TheWesDude]

explain how this happens. ( sexism and misogyny and racism are not factors )

In the broad sense, sexism and racism are exactly why that happens. As I've explained.

you have NOT explained.

women + minorities receive more pay raises

women + minorities receive more promotions

women lag behind men 2.9%

minorities lag behind whites 5.1%


pay raises are by the step scale within that GS grade. so its not a situation where they give X $100 and Z $115. if X and Z start at the same grade and step, then both go up a step, their pay would still be the same. the only difference would be their "cost of living" for their zip code or county, which is another fixed value.

go ahead and use small words if you want.

 

[Akratus]

That Adam Sessler award show is happening right now. And anti-gamergate is nooot happy!

Hah!

 

[TorontoReign]

Why does everyone hate Totalbiscuit again? Gamergate bullshit I guess?

 

[Akratus]

I guess for supporting the discussion on ethics in gaming journalism, thus supporting part of gamergate, thus being worse than hitler.
He also made this: https://soundcloud.com/totalbiscuit/oh-youre-upset

Edit:

Spoiler

Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

 

[Tagaziel]

Why does everyone hate Totalbiscuit again? Gamergate bullshit I guess?

http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2oe7t6/totallybiscuit_apparently_thinks_that_openly/

He is not making valid points, he is disguising his discomfort with LGBT themes under the vaguely noble term "good writing". Do heterosexual characters receive comparable criticism when displayed as, say, wearing clothes that nobody would wear in real life or voicing dialogue that basically amounts to sexing the player substitute? Man, what's the point of these badly written characters! You might as well replace them with gay ones, at least then they'd challenge the perceptions of a lot of gamers!

Games are all about having characters that are larger than life in the way they act and express themselves. In fact, I'd say a vanishingly tiny fraction of game characters act like "normal people" or "real humans". This is absolutely okay and a simple consequence of the game's creators attempting to express things through characters or fit them into gameplay mechanics. Having characters emulate realistic interactions and allowing players to empathize with them as real humans is certainly a part of good writing, but claiming that it's the only measuring stick by which LGBT characters should be allowed to exist or not is rather stupid and short-sighted.
Besides, where is there a game with gay characters that mention they're gay in every single conversation? Could it be that's a strawman concocted by TB for his argument? I suppose you could mention stuff like God Hand, but that's more an example of Japanese homophobia on broad display. Or My Ex-Boyfriend the Space Tyrant, but I'd argue there it's 100% intentional. The simple truth is this: TB is fishing for an excuse to dismiss LGBT characters and limit their inclusion, except this argument is so blatantly stupid that he has to resort this boogeyman of "minority quotas", an unrealistic concept for which no real example has been given ever.


If there is any question of diversity in the current A+++ development climate, I guarantee you that in the vast majority of cases it's not the writer sitting down at his desk and sighing "Oh man, I have to write another black gay character". It's quite the opposite in that if you want something apart from the generic stubbly white male protagonist and accessory female love interest, you'l have to fight every inch of the way to push it past skeptical executives, disinterested shareholders and intensive focus testing. That is the quota that video games currently suffer under, and that is what TB is unconsciously supporting here.

The issue is when people not a part of my community try to explain to me what I should want, like TB doing when he talks about how 'on the nose' stuff is actually bad. Like, he has zero perspective on that so him talking about how 'on the nose' characters are actually insulting comes from a place of nothing but assumption. It's like if I started going on about what kinds of black characters black people REALLY want in media. I'm perfectly able to say 'yo that black dude in that game was super racist' or 'I thought that black guy in that game was a cool dude', but I really have zero perspective of what the black community 'needs'.

Read the thread, it's an apt summary. Take it from the horse's mouth and ignore Akratus and other GG people.

Bonus points:

<snip>

The sheer lunacy of your attempt to put GamerGhazi in the same category as MLK and Ghandi destroys whatever argument you are trying to make better than anything I could write. Bravo.

 

[BigBoss]

Once again, you fail to realize the point. Comparing people or leaders is not what I was attempting to do.

 

[Sander]

pay raises are by the step scale within that GS grade. so its not a situation where they give X $100 and Z $115. if X and Z start at the same grade and step, then both go up a step, their pay would still be the same. the only difference would be their "cost of living" for their zip code or county, which is another fixed value.

go ahead and use small words if you want.

Sexism and racism are not limited to explicit, overt, individual discriminatory decisions. Which is why I specifically said "in the broad sense". I am no expert on this specific situation, but that study's authors themselves note that differences are in part due to larger societal issues that occur before people enter the GS system in the first place, and IIRC they also note that society at large affects women's choices, which affects pay grade. That is sexism (and analogously, racism).



TotalBiscuit ain't a bad dude, he's just clueless. And he's displayed progressively more cluelessness as this whole shitstorm has gone on. Stuff like this really gets me.

Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that EA games in general do a good job of representation, that's fine. That's great, and I hope more companies do that,when it's appropriate to the story. Don't just shoehorn diversity in for diversity's sake. Do it because you believe in it and because you can write good characters that are diverse. Like, use that diversity. Don't make it token.

Yes, of course characters should be appropriate to the story. Of course they should be full-fledged, good characters. No one's arguing otherwise! No one's saying "hey just make this one character gay and then we're all good, k bye". It's about people seeing their world, their perspectives, their lived experiences reflected -- and for cultural products to reflect the actual world, and not just that one perspective we see all the time.

More than that, though, the insistence that it's fine if you do it, but only if it's "appropriate to the story" is dumb. Fundamentally-misunderstanding-the-way-stories-are-created dumb. Not because characters shouldn't be appropriate to the story: characters should always be appropriate to the story. It's dumb because stories are consciously made to be appropriate for their characters and vice versa. If a writer looks at a story and sees a lack of diversity, she can fix that. Consciously. In the same way that she'd fix a story if she found that the ending wasn't delivering the emotional punch she was going for. Or if she felt a character was too one-dimensional. Or if she felt that a plot twist was contrived. Or if she felt that the lack of gay characters in a wide-ranging, epic story with dozens of characters is not a reflection of human experience.

And, of course, the "tokenism" accusation is always applied in a fundamentally unfair way. When a character is poorly-written or doesn't feel right in a setting and the character is straight and white and male, it's blamed on shitty writing. But if the character dares to be a little diverse and is poorly-written, then people like TotalBiscuit blame that on "tokenism". It can't just be that the character that is gay is poorly written. He has to be poorly written because he was "shoehorned in". Somehow, when it comes to non-straight-white-dude characters, they're held to completely different standards.

 

[TheWesDude]

pay raises are by the step scale within that GS grade. so its not a situation where they give X $100 and Z $115. if X and Z start at the same grade and step, then both go up a step, their pay would still be the same. the only difference would be their "cost of living" for their zip code or county, which is another fixed value.

go ahead and use small words if you want.

Sexism and racism are not limited to explicit, overt, individual discriminatory decisions. Which is why I specifically said "in the broad sense". I am no expert on this specific situation, but that study's authors themselves note that differences are in part due to larger societal issues that occur before people enter the GS system in the first place, and IIRC they also note that society at large affects women's choices, which affects pay grade. That is sexism (and analogously, racism).

my mom was one of the bra burners in the 60s and 70s. she was and still considers herself a feminist.

she worked in the GS system and retired after 23.5 years across multiple professional groups focusing primarily in accounting and HR.

i showed her a link to that study on the GS system. she worked her way up from a GS 4 step 0 to GS 11 step 10.

she said the reason for the pay gap they saw was not racism or sexism, but rather because of work ethic. as part of her job in Army ROTC "HR" was to review pay gap studies and send them out to multiple groups for comment since the mid 80s. and then submit those reports up the chain with comments from those groups.

so she dealt with this very issue multiple times a year between 1988 to 2012. in the GS system. would you consider her an expert?

she said that so many of these studies leave out "work ethic" metrics because of what happens once you do.
1) zip code
2) job responsibilities ( not title or professional job classification )
3) productivity stats

whenever reports were generated that included those breakdowns, very different results showed than when you left them out. she said that sometime in the mid to late 90s no wage studies were including productivity stats because they were told not to, and even curtailed tracking of productivity stats.

the pay gap they found in this study is because they omitted those productivity stats.

but you keep going with your mantra's of sexism and racism and misogyny.

you go ahead and keep denying the truth. just know that deep down, you do not fix a faulty escapement by replacing the glass cover on the face.

 

[PlanHex]

Hah! Wow. Really? This is where we are now? Ok.
So ITT: Sander and Tagz defending Bioware writing.
Well. Good luck with that, I guess. You're gonna need it.

I'm pretty damn sure that if you asked TB about the same issues in regard to NV, he'd be ecstatic. No one complained about Arcade or Veronica, because they had actual characterization beyond their sexuality. Holy shit, actual characters!??!?!?! WHAT EVEN IS THIS, IS THIS A VIDEO GAME?!!??!? BAN THIS SICK FILTH!!!

I've never seen Obsidian create a race that's primarily introduced to the player through a romancable under-age paedophilia-pleasing surrogate. Maybe they should get on that before the industry leaves them behind.

edit: Also, once more for the gamergaters too: This is what happens when you read random shit on the internet and accept it as fact because it's presented by people "on your side".
THIS IS YOUR BRAIN: <b>
THIS IS YOUR BRAIN WITH ECHO CHAMBER: b<>
ANY QUESTIONS?

 

[Gnarles Bronson]

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN: <b>
THIS IS YOUR BRAIN WITH ECHO CHAMBER: b<>
ANY QUESTIONS?

Yeah, I don't get it.

 

[PlanHex]

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN: <b>
THIS IS YOUR BRAIN WITH ECHO CHAMBER: b<>
ANY QUESTIONS?

Yeah, I don't get it.

I'd feigh surprise if it wasnt pointless.

 

[TheWesDude]

well it really is attempts at censorship and the hugbox and the echo chamber.

for all their statements in favor "diversity" and "inclusiveness" that would mean more variety?

if you try to ban/stop GTA 5 and even games like Hatred, that is restrictive. thats the problem.

there has to be acceptance for games like GTA 5 and Hatred for the same reason there needs to be acceptance of Barbie Dress Up 2015, Candy Crush, and even Farmville. the same diversity and inclusiveness that allows niche titles like Wasteland 2, Fez, Minecraft is the same reason for "games" like Depression Quest and Gone Home.

you want to know how I tell a developer if i think their work is worthy? i buy it.

GTA 5, Farmville, Depression Quest, Gone Home, Fez, Hatred, and Candy Crush do not interest me. i dont buy them. i would question why developers make games like those. but i would not try to get them banned or get developement of them shut down. for entertainment, we must allow the free market. sure they should be restricted by age. it would probably not be a good idea to sell a game to people under X age for Y content. just like we have for movies and tv.

so, the problem is you dont want people to have the option to buy these games.

fuck you and your fucking high horse. if you want to follow in the footsteps of the Nazi's by burning games, dont think for a moment i will defend you.

disguise all your efforts by using words like sexism, misogyny, rape culture, and other shit like that. to that i direct your efforts to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixr5GSUWwEw

the more you idiots shout those words, the less power they have.

it is NOT about sexism
it is NOT about misogyny
it is NOT about racism

 

[BigBoss]

pay raises are by the step scale within that GS grade. so its not a situation where they give X $100 and Z $115. if X and Z start at the same grade and step, then both go up a step, their pay would still be the same. the only difference would be their "cost of living" for their zip code or county, which is another fixed value.

go ahead and use small words if you want.

Sexism and racism are not limited to explicit, overt, individual discriminatory decisions. Which is why I specifically said "in the broad sense". I am no expert on this specific situation, but that study's authors themselves note that differences are in part due to larger societal issues that occur before people enter the GS system in the first place, and IIRC they also note that society at large affects women's choices, which affects pay grade. That is sexism (and analogously, racism).

my mom was one of the bra burners in the 60s and 70s. she was and still considers herself a feminist.

she worked in the GS system and retired after 23.5 years across multiple professional groups focusing primarily in accounting and HR.

i showed her a link to that study on the GS system. she worked her way up from a GS 4 step 0 to GS 11 step 10.

she said the reason for the pay gap they saw was not racism or sexism, but rather because of work ethic. as part of her job in Army ROTC "HR" was to review pay gap studies and send them out to multiple groups for comment since the mid 80s. and then submit those reports up the chain with comments from those groups.

so she dealt with this very issue multiple times a year between 1988 to 2012. in the GS system. would you consider her an expert?

she said that so many of these studies leave out "work ethic" metrics because of what happens once you do.
1) zip code
2) job responsibilities ( not title or professional job classification )
3) productivity stats

whenever reports were generated that included those breakdowns, very different results showed than when you left them out. she said that sometime in the mid to late 90s no wage studies were including productivity stats because they were told not to, and even curtailed tracking of productivity stats.

the pay gap they found in this study is because they omitted those productivity stats.

but you keep going with your mantra's of sexism and racism and misogyny.

you go ahead and keep denying the truth. just know that deep down, you do not fix a faulty escapement by replacing the glass cover on the face.

According to some, none of what you just said matters because all you did was provide a personal story or account. If there are no links (in which would be dismissed anyways), then that huge post was a waste of time.

 

[Gnarles Bronson]

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN: <b>
THIS IS YOUR BRAIN WITH ECHO CHAMBER: b<>
ANY QUESTIONS?

Yeah, I don't get it.

I'd feigh surprise if it wasnt pointless.

Oh, less than b greater than, b in echo chamber is less than greater than. Of course, of course, forgive me for being so silly.

 

[Tagaziel]

Once again, you fail to realize the point. Comparing people or leaders is not what I was attempting to do.

Sure you weren't. Likening Akratus to MLK or Ghandi happened totally by accident, you didn't know what you were writing. Temporary insanity, guvna.

Hah! Wow. Really? This is where we are now? Ok.
So ITT: Sander and Tagz defending Bioware writing.
Well. Good luck with that, I guess. You're gonna need it.

I'm pretty damn sure that if you asked TB about the same issues in regard to NV, he'd be ecstatic. No one complained about Arcade or Veronica, because they had actual characterization beyond their sexuality. Holy shit, actual characters!??!?!?! WHAT EVEN IS THIS, IS THIS A VIDEO GAME?!!??!? BAN THIS SICK FILTH!!!

Hex, do you actually read what is posted? Your rambling response is missing the point by a margin wide enough to contain the whole of our solar system.

The point was that people like TB force double standards on games. Anything that's not white, straight, and male (or the mandatory female love interest, because the world owes you women) must be well written or it's tokenism. It's this insane double standard that perpetuates the mandatory quotas of Default Character (white, straight, male) game appearances.

I'm not sure why you're even bringing New Vegas up, because it's an example of diversity in action, where characters are treated on equal terms without pandering to the Default Character quota.

I've never seen Obsidian create a race that's primarily introduced to the player through a romancable under-age paedophilia-pleasing surrogate. Maybe they should get on that before the industry leaves them behind.

I'm curious as to which race and character you're referring to, because I don't recall any such instance in Bioware games.

 

[BigBoss]

The Asari for one...

Also, I wasn't comparing people. I was comparing your misrepresentation and hatred of the people behind/supporting the cause, not the leaders. Once again you put words in my mouth and carry this argument right the fuck back to square one. Any hope of progress being made here is doomed to fail.

 

[Sander]

well it really is attempts at censorship and the hugbox and the echo chamber.

Nope. No one's advocating bans on games, or any kind of content, or censorship. This is just not true. I know you guys keep repeating it, but it is completely false.

Also your other post was neat, but anecdotal evidence from your mom don't mean much. Big Boss be correct, even if he was being so mockingly.

Hah! Wow. Really? This is where we are now? Ok.
So ITT: Sander and Tagz defending Bioware writing.

...no? I mean, BioWare's writing is usually pretty blurgh, but that wasn't the point. Video game writing in general is usually pretty blurgh. Tagz be correct: going "these gay characters are badly written because they're gay" is a double standard -- straight white dudes are "allowed" to just be shittily written, but when a character deviates from that and is still shittily written, suddenly it's tokenism or shoehorning or whatever the fuck bullshit instead of just more bad writing.

 

[Akratus]

Hah! Wow. Really? This is where we are now? Ok.
So ITT: Sander and Tagz defending Bioware writing.

...no? I mean, BioWare's writing is usually pretty blurgh, but that wasn't the point. Video game writing in general is usually pretty blurgh. Tagz be correct: going "these gay characters are badly written because they're gay" is a double standard -- straight white dudes are "allowed" to just be shittily written, but when a character deviates from that and is still shittily written, suddenly it's tokenism or shoehorning or whatever the fuck bullshit instead of just more bad writing.

Nope. No one's critiqueing characters because they are gay, or any kind of sexuality, or diversity. This is just not true. I know you guys keep repeating it, but it is completely false.

I don't know why I even try.

Me trying to cope with the level of contradictory logic in all of sander's posts:

 

[Sander]

Nope. No one's critiqueing characters because they are gay, or any kind of sexuality, or diversity. This is just not true. I know you guys keep repeating it, but it is completely false.

Correct. Instead, people are holding gay and other diverse characters to different standards: complaining about their gayness/blackness/femaleness/whateverness when they're not well-written, instead of complaining about the writing. That's what TotalBiscuit did.