agameofme:

Hi. I’m Carolyn Petit. You may remember me from GameSpot’s original review of Grand Theft Auto V. It caused a bit of a kerfuffle. I criticized the game for being misogynistic, and for this, users who objected to my critique flooded the comments with lots of hateful, sexist, transphobic garbage and a petition was created to get me fired for what they saw as the transgression of bringing my personal politics into the review. (Though my review was hardly “about feminism,” the reaction to it was nonetheless a great illustration of Lewis’s Law.) The conversation blew up a little bit, which I think was a good thing. For instance, Alyssa Rosenberg wrote about the reactions to my review in this post, “No, Analyzing the Gender Politics of Grand Theft Auto V—or Anything Else—Isn’t ‘Unprofessional.’” 

Now, because Grand Theft Auto V has been released on new platforms, there are new reviews being posted for it, and GameSpot has one. I think it is a good, well-written review that I don’t doubt honestly reflects the writer’s experience with and opinion of the game. 

There are at least a few comments on the review that praise it, in direct contrast to my review, for what those commenters perceive as its pleasant, appropriate lack of a political agenda. 

But there is no such thing as a lack of a political viewpoint when reviewing a game as deeply political as Grand Theft Auto V.

And what really frustrates me about the whole ongoing debate about “SJWs” and critiquing the meanings and values of games along with their gameplay and graphics and sound is not so much the politics of those who rail against “SJWs” and their “agendas” but rather is the fact that many of these people honestly believe that their position is neutral, apolitical, that it is not, itself, a deeply political agenda in support of the status quo and against anything that seeks to call the status quo into question.

This is a huge problem. I think the first step a person needs to take before they can have any chance of reasonably participating in this discussion is simply to recognize that their position is just as political as any other. Of course, if you are a member of the dominant culture, it’s easy to see games, by and large, as apolitical, when the worldviews present in so many mainstream games (not to mention films and television programs) mesh seamlessly with your own. The politics present in these media can be invisible to you. So you can end up feeling like Grand Theft Auto is apolitical, but that Gone Home is deeply political, when of course the truth is that these two games are just differently political. 

It became apparent to me that gaming culture is a deeply political space from the moment I started working for a major, mainstream gaming site. I was immediately faced with tons of comments making it clear that, to many, the mere fact that I was a woman and that I was transgender made me a transgressor in that space. If you’re a straight white man in that space, the politics of it may be invisible to you, but they could never be invisible to me. 

And it quickly became clear to me that there was a correlation between the politics of gaming culture and the politics of most mainstream games themselves. Straight white men were dominant in the online spaces and in the narratives of the games themselves. Women, people of color, and queer folks were marginalized in the online spaces, and in the narratives of the games themselves. Those who are attacking women in gaming spaces, attacking “social justice warriors” and the idea of video game criticism that analyzes the sociopolitical values of games, see people who engage in such criticism (people like me) as trying to bring about an imbalance to something that was already perfectly balanced and neutral. If they had the capability to put themselves in the shoes of people different from themselves more often, if media asked that of them or if their own ability to empathize and see things from the perspective of others was simply well-developed enough, they might better be able to understand that things are already deeply imbalanced and that we are trying to bring a little more balance to these spaces.

Grand Theft Auto V is a game about men and masculinity and violence and crime and culture and has things to say—unfortunate things—about how women and trans folks fit into this world. It is incredibly political. You cannot engage with or review the game apolitically. Despite what the commenters above may think, the new GameSpot review is not apolitical. It is just differently political from my review. Here’s an example. The writer says, “GTA V is sometimes heavy-handed with its satire, but there are few games that dare go as far as GTA does with its nihilistic commentary, and fewer still that do it with such conviction.”

That is a political statement, because satire must have some sort of political value. My political perspective on this issue is different. I don’t think the so-called satire in GTA is daring at all. I don’t think it “goes far” at all. I don’t think it takes guts at all to reinforce traditional notions of masculinity, to mock women and trans folks, to reinforce the status quo. I don’t think there is a single moment in GTA V when the average straight male player will find his worldview challenged, his notions about masculinity seriously called into question, when he will feel in any way threatened or caught off-guard by anything the game is saying about our culture.

It doesn’t take nerve to side with the powerful and to punch down.

To call for an absence of “political agendas” in video game criticism is itself a deeply political agenda, one in defense of a very imbalanced status quo that many perceive as perfectly balanced. It is also to hope for the impossible, since most games are inherently political and therefore any review of such a game, whether by choosing to discuss the politics of the game or choosing not to, is assuming a political position of some kind. When people say “get politics out of my games and game reviews,” what they really mean is “Keep making games that reinforce my worldview, stop making games that challenge my worldview, and stop questioning the political values of the games that reinforce my worldview.” 

I don’t know how we do it, but I think getting people to understand that there is no politically neutral position here may be the essential first step if this conversation is ever going to move forward in any meaningful way. 

adamatomic:

I self-identify as a feminist. I self-identify as an SJW. I’ve been on some 4chan lists (I mean who hasn’t but still). I am involved in some short- and long-term initiatives to improve diversity in the videogame industry.

Also, I struggle to cope with a lot of ideas about minorities that have been ground into me basically forever, and I want to unpack them real quick. Because they’re surprisingly simple and frustratingly dumb and powerful.

Ok, so: in an ideal world, the world that a lot of people (including myself) think we live in, the playing field for everyone is completely level:

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ohdeargodbees:

After a long uphill battle since getting Greenlit in January, Depression Quest was planned to, and approved for, launch on Steam today. Literally minutes after we got the notification, beloved actor Robin Williams was found dead from a suspected suicide after a long struggle with depression. We were all ready to hit the big red button the minute that the news broke.

So now I’m left with the question - do we launch, or not? I turned to twitter and my most trusted friends for advice because I can see going a few different ways. It’s not an easy decision.

The game is available for free online using a pay what you want model including absolutely nothing, with a portion of the proceeds going to charity to combat the stigma and culture of silence around this debilitating disease. A question that held up the porting process on Steam was the question of how to implement pay-what-you-want in a backend that doesn’t support it. The two ways we could ape it would be in app purchases (microtransactions) or through providing DLC that had different payment tiers. Both of these seemed suboptimal. The microtransactions require getting a secure server that I don’t have the money to maintain while praying that those who have already been very vocal about wanting to destroy both myself and my work wouldn’t be able to take it down, in addition to adding in ugly interface elements that hurt the design of the game. So that’s not really an option. The problem with adding in DLC with nothing that really offers much to the player is that is a good way to breed misunderstandings, and I don’t think it would be ethical to charge someone knowing that there’s a percentage of people who would feel ripped off or misled. I don’t want to take that chance.

So then the choice becomes do we charge or not? Many people were pushing me to charge, citing the help we could offer charities and the value of getting paid for your hard work and taking that money and making more things that could help people.

But none of that felt right. When making something you have to ask yourself what’s the spirit of the thing you’ve made. Why have you made this particular thing? And with Depression Quest, the answer has always been clear as day.

Depression Quest has always been an attempt to make a tool to help people understand depression and reach out to others living with the reality of this disease.

There is no way, in my mind, to ethically put something intended to be a tool for helping people behind a paywall. None.

This was the same guiding principle behind putting the game back on Greenlight after withdrawing initially due to threats and harassment. It’s a really really fucking hard thing to accept - that you have made something that can help someone else, especially when you yourself suffer from depression and have a very hard time accepting that you could do anything for anyone and aren’t totally worthless. But I’ve heard from too many people, heard too many stories from you wonderful fucking people, to ignore that. I love all of you too much to discount your lived experiences, so I accept that the game can help people seek help. Someone getting help or even feeling understood when they feel like an alien on their own planet is too rare of a thing to gamble with, too important to flinch from because you’re worried what people will think of you or say to you.

Similarly, that is why today leaves me conflicted. Majorly, massively conflicted. The last thing I want for the game is for the launch to seem opportunistic or like it is capitalizing on a massive tragedy like we’ve seen today. So again, I’ve turned to you. I’ve thought through a number of possible scenarios, and I feel like I have a responsibility to release today. I know there may be a worst case of people assuming the launch somehow is trying to capitalize on tragedy. However, I would rather have those people hate me than the people who are currently quietly suffering with this illness sit at their dinner tables tonight and hear the discussion of today’s news, hear people not understand how someone who had so much could kill themselves, and lack a resource they could have needed right then to point to and say “this is why”. I’d rather have people flood my inbox with threats again and call me a monster if it means that one person who was shocked by today’s news and maybe thinking of trying to reach out and get help could use this tool I’ve made to take the vitally important first steps towards clawing their way out of the hell that is this disease.

I feel like I have a responsibility to those who could be helped. Depression Quest was never ever meant to be just a game, and it has definitely done more than a traditional game might. I get regular emails from therapists who use it with their patients and families of depression sufferers to build a dialog and a bridge to understanding. It’s been used in classroom settings, people have played it with their parents and significant others to start showing them things they had a hard time verbalizing. Not taking those stories and those people seriously and accepting the role that this game was able to play in their own massive undertakings of self care would be disrespecting those people’s struggles. And I can’t do that.

There’s something here that people who don’t live with depression might not understand. When you suffer from this, the small windows of opportunity you have that you feel like you have the energy to and self-worth enough to try and take steps to change things, to want something more than feeling like you barely have your head above water, those chances and that motivation is fucking *rare*. I can’t in good conscience hold back offering someone something that could help them start making real changes in their life or even just offer a temporary relief or better understanding for the sake of reducing the risk of offending people or hurting my own reputation. If I was sitting down across a table from someone who asked me “how could you release the day Robin Williams took his own life” I would know how I could answer. I’d know why I did it, even if I felt conflicted about doing it. But if I sat down across from someone who asked “How could you hold back on releasing this game when I needed it” I would feel ashamed.

So I am launching the game. Quietly. I will not be promoting it until a respectful time later. But I want it to be out there and available in all the ways I can make it be available so that if someone needs it, they have it. After agonizing over it and asking the general public, they’ve overwhelmingly responded with pleas to release it. Especially among depression sufferers.

I never feel like I know what I’m doing, and like all I can ever do is do what feels right after consulting with people for outside perspective. This isn’t an easy choice, but I think it’s the right one.

Please, please, please take care of yourselves. Tell the people in your life you love them. Don’t stop pushing for more understanding and better care of those battling mental illness.

The game is available for free/pay what you want in the following places:

Web version is here at www.depressionquest.com

Itch.io downloadable version is here at http://the-quinnspiracy.itch.io/depressionquest

Steam version available at http://store.steampowered.com/app/270170

I love you all.

lifeoutsidethebinary:

In my time being active in the nonbinary trans community I’ve received countless questions that were something along the lines of “does _______ mean that I’m not trans?” I feel like a lot of these insecurities come from the fact that people just don’t know how common these feelings are among other trans people. So I wanted to make a post clearing up some very common insecurities I hear from trans people that don’t mean anything about your gender identity.

_________________________________________________________

1) I keep misgendering myself - does that mean I’m not really trans?

Unfortunately, you don’t get to just un-do however many years of brain wiring the day you decide you want to live as a different gender. Your brain forms pathways from use, and the only way using your chosen name and pronouns becomes natural is through repetition. Accidentally referring to yourself as the wrong name or pronouns doesn’t mean anything about your gender, and it’s not uncommon for someone to slip up and call themselves the wrong name even when they haven’t spoken it for 5 years! Your brain just misfires sometimes, don’t beat yourself up about it.

2) I’m having second thoughts about HRT or surgery - does that mean I’m not really trans?

Physical transition is a series of life-changing medical decisions that need to be treated with all the seriousness of any other medical decision. The idea of surgery terrifies some people, as it would be such a huge and sudden change to their physical form, not to mention the months of painful recovery and risks of complication. The prospect of going on hormones also means coping with change and risks of complication. There are so many valid reasons to hesitate about taking the next step, and I think that if you don’t have even a little bit of hesitation you’re probably not grasping the seriousness of the decision you’re about to make.

It’s normal to be hesitant about change or nervous about any medical intervention, especially one as radical as transition. Of course, there are also people who get to the point of starting their transition and then start having second thoughts because the realize it isn’t the right decision for them. You should step back and take some time to think about whether your anxiety is about the actually process of the change (anxiety around surgery, sudden changes to your body, recovery, worried it won’t turn out right), or if it’s because you actually just don’t think those changes are right for you.

It’s perfectly normal, even for 100% binary trans people, to have to postpone surgery or starting HRT until they can work through their anxiety around it, and then wind up doing it a year later and say it was the best decision they ever made!

3) I want to transition but I only want to change X and not Y or Z - does that mean I’m not really trans?

There are trans people who don’t transition at all, so of course only wanting to transition in one way but not another doesn’t make you less trans! Gender dysphoria manifests in different ways and in different severities for every person, and it’s important that you listen to your body and your feelings and lead your transition in the direction you need it to go! You’re not just running through some pre-set A-to-Z transition narrative, this is YOUR transition and YOUR body and you need to do exactly as much or as little as it takes for YOU to feel comfortable. Don’t worry about anyone else’s ideas about how you need to transition, this is your journey, not theirs.

4) I don’t want to transition at all - does that mean I’m not really trans?

Plenty of trans people choose not to transition for a myriad of different reasons and every one of their gender identities is as valid as anyone else’s. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!

 5) I’m having second thoughts about my decision to come out - does that mean I’m not trans?

The first while after you acknowledge being trans and come out can be scary, because it makes you feel isolated from the people around you, your culture, your media - so many things that used to make you feel welcome before now no longer reflect or represent people like you. you don’t know what your life is going to be like, if you’ll be able to find a job or an apartment or friends or a partner - you feel like you’ve signed up for a one-way ticket on the Freak Train and think maybe it might be best to just jump off before it starts going too fast. Humans don’t react well to change, even if it’s good or necessary change.

It’s important to take a time out whenever you’re feeling anxious about anything like this. Assess where you’re anxiety is coming from - are you anxious about what life is going to be like for you as a trans person, or are you anxious that you might not actually feel like the gender you thought you were? Answers don’t come quickly. Take time out for introspective thought. 

_________________________________________________________

The idea that in order to be trans you have to be so sure about every aspect of your gender and transition right from day one, and that there is no room for self-doubt, is just part of the gate-keeping rhetoric designed to make trans people doubt themselves and deter people from transitioning, and it’s reinforced by trans people who are insecure or defensive about their trans identity (because of the harmful rhetoric they’ve been fed). You’re still a human, and you still have every right to feel the natural anxiety and hesitation that comes with serious decisions and changes in your life. In fact, it’s healthy! 

Just breathe, remain thoughtful and self-aware, and everything will work out alright.

-newt

mikebithell:

Hehe, I seem to be acquiring a coder team for Volume now.. which is fun and weird and cool and scary. I spent years as a designer within big companies, handing off documentation to coders, it’s odd to be back in that mode again, but fun.. like riding a bike, you don’t really forget this shit.

Design docs serve a simple purpose: communication (if your design doesn’t need to be communicated to anyone else, writing a doc may well be unnecessary). They’re a foundation which sets up the conversation, clearly defining a thing that needs to exist. They speak (largely) in absolutes, and don’t leave gaps for missunderstandings (usually). They are also massively changeable, and will likely be rewritten a few times based on coder feedback and realising the proposed design doesn’t work.

All that said, for folks who’ve not done the whole big studio design thing, it’s likely a thing you’ve not seen examples of, or had drilled into you.. so, fuck it, here’s a couple of pages of design documentation on Volume’s trigger system for VO samples. A first step, it’ll likely be a different system in final game, but try not to focus on the design itself, just how the doc communicates it, hopefully clearly. Hope this is useful to some of the students following me. Sorry for redactions, gotta keep some stuff secret ;)

————————————————————————

Design Spec: Shoutouts

Objectives

The player spends a lot of time around enemies in Volume. They cannot be killed, and are therefore around for a long time. The arcadey mode of the AI means they’ll see the player a fair bit, but go back to their routines quickly. Shoutouts are therefore key to making them read as living creatures. Ditto on player shoutouts, they give a sense of Locksley being a human being in between scripted moments.

Shoutouts do:

• add flavour

• imply intelligence on the part of the enemy

• reinforce behavioural cues presented graphically

• provide characterisation to the player character

Shoutouts don’t:

• provide any gameplay information not also conveyed visually

• convey any essential story information

• occur often enough to become irritating, or to repeat too often

Shoutout triggering

The shoutout system should operate from one global system, so as to avoid conflict.. its role is to listen for events that could trigger voice clips, decide if they should play, then trigger the audio at the correct point in 3D space, using the existing audio manager.

Step 1 - voice requests

The player character object, Alan, and all present enemy objects, should send a message to the shoutout system whenever they enter a behaviour that could be accompanied by a shoutout. These behaviours are:

Alan

• Level completion

• Player Death

Player character

• Level load

• Level completion

• Death

• Pause game

• Play game

• REDACTED

• Random chatter (should be fired off randomly between two interval durations which are available in editor.. so, say, once every 5-10 seconds)

Enemy character

• Investigating sound of interest

• Attack player

• Return to patrol

• Knocked out

• REDACTED

• REDACTED

• REDACTED

• Blind firing

• Runs to alarm

• Loses sight of player

• Taunt (should be fired off randomly between two interval durations which are available in editor.. so, say, once every 5-10 seconds.. ONLY OCCURS AFTER SPECIFIC ENEMY HAS SEEN PLAYER FOR FIRST TIME)

Step 2 - pacing of audio triggering

So the system listens for all these cues. It’s very possible to over design this, but in the first version, I suggest a simple probability of triggering based on time since last shoutout played system (as I say, we may need to go back if this sucks).. this should create enough variation in pacing to feel natural, and avoid clustering. So:

1. At the start of the game session there is a 100% chance of a shoutout being triggered if a request is sent to the shoutout system.

2. A shoutout is therefore immediately played when requested.

3. There is then a 0% chance of a shoutout occurring for x seconds, where x is the duration of our longest shoutout, so, somewhere around 6 seconds for now? (again, editor visible please)

4. After that period, the probability of a shoutout being triggered goes up by x% per second (editor visible, but let’s try 5% a second as a picked out of thin air first example)

5. Every time a request is put in, we roll the dice based on current probability value.. if it’s a go, we play it, and go back to step 3

That core loop should, in theory, offer enough variation to be not shit.. those numbers will obviously need some play.. or we’ll realise it’s shit and rebuild from scratch ;) I want to try simple first.

Step 3 - triggering of audio

Really simple, thanks to the existing audio manager.. once the system has decided a voice clip needs to play, we just ask the manager to pick a random clip that matches context (that’s built in) and trigger it in 3D space (if it’s an Alan or Locksley clip, we just do it 2D). We can also pick a small pitch shift and time scale for each enemy character at level load, and adjust their audio accordingly, so as to give a little variance to their voices (not much.. again, leave these variables adjustable in editor).

The audio manager should handle everything from there :)

patrickklepek:

I’m sure you’ve heard about Ryan Block’s recent chat with Comcast about trying to disconnect his service. In short, the rep refused to disconnect the service without a reason from Block. This conversation of attrition went on for about 20 minutes, some of which was recorded. Listen to the exchange here.

The representative (name redacted) continued aggressively repeating his questions, despite the answers given, to the point where my wife became so visibly upset she handed me the phone. Overhearing the conversation, I knew this would not be very fun.

What I did not know is how oppressive this conversation would be. Within just a few minutes the representative had gotten so condescending and unhelpful I felt compelled to record the speakerphone conversation on my other phone.

Like many others, the call infuriated me. But I switched my tone after reading “Sympathy for the Comcast Rep From Hell” by John Herman.

If you understand this call as a desperate interaction between two people, rather than a business transaction between a customer and a company, the pain is mutual. The customer service rep is trapped in an impossible position, in which any cancellation, even one he can’t control, will reflect poorly on his performance. By the time news of this lost customer reaches his supervisor, it will be data—it will be the wrong data, and it will likely be factored into a score, or a record, that is either directly or indirectly tied to his compensation or continued employment. It’s bad, very bad, for this rep to record a cancellation with no reason, or with a reason the script should theoretically be able to answer.

[…]

Of course, it’s absurd that a company like Comcast is able to force two humans into combat like this in the first place. If you don’t take the existence of a near-monopoly company like Comcast for granted—and why should we?—the situation is as clear as can be: The rep didn’t abuse Block, and Block didn’t torture the rep. Comcast, the organization, is tormenting them both.

I can’t help but applaud Herman’s final line.

I hope this tape gets played in front of Congress.

apollosprophet:

I completely blame thejudge for this. Well, I wrote it, so it’s really mostly my fault, but I still blame him.

Spoilers for OneShot and OFF abound below the readmore. Approximate length: 2,000 words. May or may not do more with it at a later date.

OneSwitch

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