Gender Diversity / Politics in games (was Tropes Vs. Women)

[Alex W.]

Setting aside its role in the social dynamics of outrage and so on, Twitter allows a million small expressions of distaste to be aggregated and directed towards their subject. Imagine that there's a bell curve of responses to something someone says. With media like email you're going to see the little wedge at the end of the bell curve where people are sufficiently motivated to sit down and draft something out. With Twitter you get to see basically the entire curve, so suddenly people like Fry are getting response from the million people who were vaguely irked by something he said as well as the few hundred who are absolutely outraged.

 

Thing is, those sorts of responses are part and parcel of being an outspoken public figure. Jokes don't always land properly with everyone. It's just that previously you didn't have to bother with the responses of people who didn't get it, unless they were noted voices themselves, or you knew them personally. How do you deal with a medium that not only allows you but actually nags you to look at every single person's take on the things you say?

 

We've discussed out-and-out deranged hate campaigns like Gamergate here a lot but these subtler effects are much harder to get a handle on. I should probably read that Ron Jonson book next, I think.

[Alex W.]

25 minutes ago, Harsin said:

Hasn't Stephen Fry quit Twitter multiple times now?

 

That BBC article says it was just once, that he's threatened to leave before (who hasn't?) and that he had to go radio silent when he was travelling in a specific country.

 

I don't doubt that he'll be back on eventually, he's probably just a bit bruised at the unexpected response. It's very much his medium but I don't think he's had to deal with people not liking him on it.

[NEG]

30 minutes ago, Delargey said:

 

So why did they remove her stomach amour in the first place?

 

She was a ranger in life, so once Blood Elves became a playable race with their own city, designs and whatnot I'd assume the thought process was they took the blood elf ranger/archer design and adapted it to her (whom is leader of the undead, hence the skin colour) The Night Elf model above had always been seen as a quick lazy placeholder that looked unique enough from the rest of the undead to be deemed 'interesting' for it's time I'd imagine. (the rest of the undead/Forsaken are humans)

 

TL DR: Because Blizzard wanted her sexy/perfect like the rest of her race were represented in game. Even if she is, in fact, rotting flesh. As has been noted in the past, Blizzard has the 'put gear on female, gear is usually revealing on female' thing going on throughout Warcraft.

 

Edit: Problem with the belly armor is the colour to me. Needs to be more red like the rest of her gear, as is it doesn't look like it fits. Maybe there's lore going on, though. Maybe her belly has rotted off!

Edit 2: From a fan point of view it's worth remembering Sylv's design hadn't been changed in quite a while and her playable model in Heroes of the Storm is the belly model, so I can't blame some for considering that costume to be 'the' costume as that's all probably most people that play WoW/HoTS these days know, but nothing worth complaining over/nothing controversal going on. Unlike, say, SEGA covering Sonic in bloody sports tape and making his legs even lankier. Sigh

[Anne Summers]

2 hours ago, NEG said:

 

No, but much like the Steven Fry news today it's a weird old world that feels like it gets offended by anything and everything*. The road to political correctness of everything might not be as rosey as some imagine it to be.

 

*Not that I found that particular comment amusing myself either, but it's sad that it feels like every comment has the possibility to cause a shit storm today when people could be, I dunno, curing cancer? Do you really rather push political correctness on a person known to be suicidal many times during his life and has been a benefit to British entertainment constantly as a whole for however long now? Really? What a world.

 

So, did you feel the same way about the harassment Zoe Quinn got? Assuming you are aware of that particular issue (can't remember if you've mentioned it before). 

 

When all the stuff about Depression Quest came out, and people were getting offended about the fact that something which was "not a game" (by their own definition of the term) was getting coverage in the gaming press? Did you think "Yeah, I agree, fuck Zoe Quinn!" , or did you think "Actually guys this isn't important at all and why are you hating on someone who is obviously depressed?"

 

 

 

 

[PaB]

http://www.stephenfry.com/2016/02/15/peedinthepool/

 

It’s no big deal – as it shouldn’t be. But yes, for anyone interested I have indeed deactivated my twitter account. I’ve ‘left’ twitter before, of course: many people have time off from it whether they are in the public eye or not. Think of it as not much more than leaving a room. I like to believe I haven’t slammed the door, much less stalked off in a huff throwing my toys out of the pram as I go or however one should phrase it. It’s quite simple really: the room had started to smell. Really quite bad.

Oh goodness, what fun twitter was in the early days, a secret bathing-pool in a magical glade in an enchanted forest. It was glorious ‘to turn as swimmers into cleanness leaping.’ We frolicked and water-bombed and sometimes, in the moonlight, skinny-dipped. We chattered and laughed and put the world to rights and shared thoughts sacred, silly and profane. But now the pool is stagnant. It is frothy with scum, clogged with weeds and littered with broken glass, sharp rocks and slimy rubbish. If you don’t watch yourself, with every move you’ll end up being gashed, broken, bruised or contused. Even if you negotiate the sharp rocks you’ll soon feel that too many people have peed in the pool for you to want to swim there any more. The fun is over.

To leave that metaphor, let us grieve at what twitter has become. A stalking ground for the sanctimoniously self-righteous who love to second-guess, to leap to conclusions and be offended – worse, to be offended on behalf of others they do not even know. It’s as nasty and unwholesome a characteristic as can be imagined. It doesn’t matter whether they think they’re defending women, men, transgender people, Muslims, humanists … the ghastliness is absolutely the same. It makes sensible people want to take an absolutely opposite point of view. I’ve heard people shriek their secularism in such a way as to make me want instantly to become an evangelical Christian.

 

But Stephen, these foul people are a minority! Indeed they are. But I would contend that just one turd in a reservoir is enough to persuade one not to drink from it. 99.9% of the water may be excrement free, but that doesn’t help. With Twitter, for me at least, the tipping point has been reached and the pollution of the service is now just too much.

But you’ve let the trolls and nasties win! If everyone did what you did, Stephen, the slab-faced dictators of tone and humour would have the place to themselves. Well, yes and they’re welcome to it. Perhaps then they’ll have nothing to smell but their own smell.

So I don’t feel anything today other than massive relief, like a boulder rolling off my chest. I am free, free at last.

[Anne Summers]

Pretty childish really. People who don't agree with him "smell".

I've managed to use Twitter just fine for years without offending anyone or having anyone call for me to be banned, or whatever. Ok maybe it's harder for someone like Stephen Fry, but ... surely he's used to it? Pretty much his entire adult life he's known that things he says will be used in the tabloid press, many of which have an openly anti-gay agenda. But really, it's not that hard to not say stupid things. And if you say stupid things, people are perfectly entitled to tell you that what you said is stupid. That's free speech too. 

[Alex W.]

Yeah, nothing really communicates that you're not leaving in the huff like writing a page about how the community you left doesn't deserve you.

 

I'm not sure he knows what "troll" means either, other than in a generalised sense of "bad thing".

[NEG]

1 hour ago, Anne Summers said:

 

So, did you feel the same way about the harassment Zoe Quinn got? Assuming you are aware of that particular issue (can't remember if you've mentioned it before). 

 

When all the stuff about Depression Quest came out, and people were getting offended about the fact that something which was "not a game" (by their own definition of the term) was getting coverage in the gaming press? Did you think "Yeah, I agree, fuck Zoe Quinn!" , or did you think "Actually guys this isn't important at all and why are you hating on someone who is obviously depressed?"

 

If it's a interactive medium it's a game. If it has gameplay merit to speak of is separate to me.

 

I don't remember the Quinn stuff but I'd imagine it to be a bit like how I disliked The Beginner's Guide last year for 'not being a game'. I simply left it at 'This is not something I need right now, I'm miserable enough as it is thanks' and got a refund. No fuss, no bus. Would I rant at the creators face (especially seeing as what the game is about - another kind of depression so to speak) about how crap I thought it was? No. But I can certainly express it elsewhere (because I will always admire the guy for The Stanley Parable so would always like to share what I think of his stuff) and if he chooses to read it, I can't stop him as I wouldn't know.

 

I'd be the kind of dev/actor/host that ignores anything anyone says, personally. If what I'm doing isn't resulting in a paycheck, it's then I change my tune. Would it be hard to avoid reviews/twitter whatever else to see what people are saying though? You bet. You'd just need to try and manage seeing a managable amount. Maybe 3 negative comments on the same page and you close that page and continue living, you know? You can't be for everyone, the best you can hope for is even a single person 'getting' you.

 

TotalBiscuit comes to mind when I say that.

[Alex W.]

The slagging Quinn was getting didn't, for the most part, refer to her game at all.

[NEG]

No one deserves that, indeed.

[Straps]

Lol at the idea that someone like Stephen Fry got "hounded off Twitter". He's being a total fud over such a non-issue.

[jon_cybernet]

1 hour ago, NEG said:

 

If it's a interactive medium it's a game. If it has gameplay merit to speak of is separate to me.

 

I don't remember the Quinn stuff but I'd imagine it to be a bit like how I disliked The Beginner's Guide last year for 'not being a game'. I simply left it at 'This is not something I need right now, I'm miserable enough as it is thanks' and got a refund. No fuss, no bus. Would I rant at the creators face (especially seeing as what the game is about - another kind of depression so to speak) about how crap I thought it was? No. But I can certainly express it elsewhere (because I will always admire the guy for The Stanley Parable so would always like to share what I think of his stuff) and if he chooses to read it, I can't stop him as I wouldn't know.

 

I'd be the kind of dev/actor/host that ignores anything anyone says, personally. If what I'm doing isn't resulting in a paycheck, it's then I change my tune. Would it be hard to avoid reviews/twitter whatever else to see what people are saying though? You bet. You'd just need to try and manage seeing a managable amount. Maybe 3 negative comments on the same page and you close that page and continue living, you know? You can't be for everyone, the best you can hope for is even a single person 'getting' you.

 

TotalBiscuit comes to mind when I say that.

 

It's a nice ideal, but as someone who's made a game that had millions of users, I can tell you that your imagined approach is basically impossible in real life when people are shouting at you through your customer support channels, your review pages, your personal email, text messages, twitter, facebook, etc. 

 

And that's just when people are annoyed at something in your game, without even the horrific gamer gate misogenistic hate campaigns on top. 

 

I cant imagine how awful it must have been for Quinn. 

 

 

 

[Rudi von Starnberg]

50 minutes ago, Straps said:

Lol at the idea that someone like Stephen Fry got "hounded off Twitter". He's being a total fud over such a non-issue.

 

For at least the third time, too.

[NEG]

29 minutes ago, jon_cybernet said:

 

It's a nice ideal, but as someone who's made a game that had millions of users, I can tell you that your imagined approach is basically impossible in real life when people are shouting at you through your customer support channels, your review pages, your personal email, text messages, twitter, facebook, etc. 

 

And that's just when people are annoyed at something in your game, without even the horrific gamer gate misogenistic hate campaigns on top. 

 

 

 

 

Would you say the unavoidable critique from either side or general goings on in the rest of the industry affects a teams decision for something like clothes? To the point it stops being the game the team envisioned on paper?

 

That's the thing I'd mostly want to try and avoid. The Nintendo type thing where being oblivious and focusing on fun can turn out for the best.

[rafaqat]

Zoe Quinn forced to drop the charges against her ex, because the system is atrocious:

http://blog.unburntwitch.com/post/139084743809/why-i-just-dropped-the-harassment-charges-the-man

 

[emoji20]

Can someone summarise why she's been forced to drop the charges?

It reads like she just thinks she won't win. Or doesn't feel the system will get her the result she thinks is right (boyfriend being a dickhead/harasser/abuser).

I realise she's upset when she's written that but it's just this torrent of "the system is corrupt" "cops kill black people" rant.

[Anne Summers]

She isn't the best communicator I agree. 

[jon_cybernet]

40 minutes ago, NEG said:

 

Would you say the unavoidable critique from either side or general goings on in the rest of the industry affects a teams decision for something like clothes? To the point it stops being the game the team envisioned on paper?

 

That's the thing I'd mostly want to try and avoid. The Nintendo type thing where being oblivious and focusing on fun can turn out for the best.

 

Most of my work has been in puzzle games, so it's not really my field of expertise. 

 

I think that if your game design requires sexualised outfits for women to be a success though, you probably need to work on your game design. 

[Alex W.]

raf: it sounds like she's decided that the process amounts to forcing herself to continue interacting with him, and each interaction just gives him an opportunity to demonise her, stoke up the hate mob and play the martyr. The benefits of winning the case don't seem to outweigh the emotional cost of continuing it, and it does sound like it would go on for a long long time.

[NEG]

4 minutes ago, jon_cybernet said:

 

Most of my work has been in puzzle games, so it's not really my field of expertise. 

 

I think that if your game design requires sexualised outfits for women to be a success though, you probably need to work on your game design. 

 

Depends. Would you change Bayonetta? Of course the gameplay works without the sexualization, the outfits and implied everything. But just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

[jon_cybernet]

3 minutes ago, NEG said:

 

Depends. Would you change Bayonetta? Of course the gameplay works without the sexualization, the outfits and implied everything. But just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

 

I wouldn't change Bayonetta, because I never would have designed it that way in the first place. But the debate isn't about changing existing games, it's about being more thoughtful about the games we make going forward, and trying to have a bit more balance. 

 

I'm happy for them to make as many Bayonettas as they want - I just wish that 90% of female characters weren't dressed like her. I mean, I like Russ Meyer movies, but I don't want every movie to be a Russ Meyer movie, y'know? 

 

Things are are slowly changing though (Life is Strange being a good recent example) and that's great. Society changes and evolves, and culture does too. It's easy to read this all as political correctness gone mad - but it's really just social awareness gone sane. 

[rafaqat]

1 hour ago, Alex W. said:

raf: it sounds like she's decided that the process amounts to forcing herself to continue interacting with him, and each interaction just gives him an opportunity to demonise her, stoke up the hate mob and play the martyr. The benefits of winning the case don't seem to outweigh the emotional cost of continuing it, and it does sound like it would go on for a long long time.

 

Yeah I figured it was something along those lines.  Too tired to carry on battling.  I can see why that seems the only way out at this stage.  A shame. Would have been good to get a judgement but I guess that's easy for me to say sat here on my sofa not getting abuse.

 

I wonder if this'll give the people abusing her hope that if they harass her long enough whatever she does they'll effectively silence her as she'll decide it's just not worth the hassle anymore.

[NEG]

2 hours ago, jon_cybernet said:

 

I wouldn't change Bayonetta, because I never would have designed it that way in the first place. But the debate isn't about changing existing games, it's about being more thoughtful about the games we make going forward, and trying to have a bit more balance. 

 

I'm happy for them to make as many Bayonettas as they want - I just wish that 90% of female characters weren't dressed like her. I mean, I like Russ Meyer movies, but I don't want every movie to be a Russ Meyer movie, y'know? 

 

Things are are slowly changing though (Life is Strange being a good recent example) and that's great. Society changes and evolves, and culture does too. It's easy to read this all as political correctness gone mad - but it's really just social awareness gone sane. 

 

Not every game has to be hyper sexualised/damsels/no personality and that kind of thing being more mainstream than other kinds of representations till recent years is a good way of putting it, indeed.

[The Bag]

12 hours ago, Hexx said:

 

That's the change mentioned above if anyone's interested

 

11 hours ago, NEG said:

Edit: Problem with the belly armor is the colour to me. Needs to be more red like the rest of her gear, as is it doesn't look like it fits. Maybe there's lore going on, though. Maybe her belly has rotted off!

 

Looking at the image it's the same colour/material as round her arms at the elbows suggesting a flexible material (leather going by the colour).  Not that it has any real relevance to the thread, but it does fit the armour's design.

[NEG]

Flexible, yes, but not red enough/not fitting to me. Putting it another way they added a 4th colour to her stuff. Red, Silver, Black and now Brown.

 

Imagine that bad ass silver/red armor around the belly instead. Now that would be sexy

[The Bag]

On 2/15/2016 at 5:37 PM, NEG said:

I'd be the kind of dev/actor/host that ignores anything anyone says, personally. If what I'm doing isn't resulting in a paycheck, it's then I change my tune.

 

Im honestly not trying to pick on you, I meant to respond to these last night.

 

The conversation you're having with Jon, the how much effect does it have is a retred of one from last year when you got responses from Spacehost, S0L, Scriblor (I think), and myself.  And as usual it remains complicated.

 

What do you do for a living, if you don't mind me asking?  You're statement there is a very strong one, but put yourself in my shoes I'm an indie developer I have to make enough from my games to pay the rent, pay bills, buy food, etc.  In reality I also do contract work every so often to build up the war-chest, so I can make the games I want to.

 

Or put yourself into AAA dev.  You have a budget of $80m, of someone else's money, your job and that of everyone in the studio, maybe even the future existence of the studio all hang on the success of the game and the decisions you make.

 

In these situations the "oh well, no one likes it, guess I'll change" attitude won't get you very far.

 

I think the problem is one of perception and you're overestimating how much of an influence the outside world has.  Most developers say they listen to the fans, but being brutally honest if the fans want something the developers don't, then it's just not going to happen.  Unless you are making something purely for yourself then you have to consider your audience.  In some cases that will be this is the target audience so X, in other cases it's just how to best convey information to the player.

 

How you teach the player the game mechanics is considering your audience.  Providing an alternate UI representation for colour blind player is considering your audience.  

 

My last game, MMA Manager, (an mma management game, surprisingly) came out last year.  That's a game myself and my partner built because we wanted to play it, and no one else has made it.  Now given it's a game I want to play built by me I still have to constantly think about the player - what's they best way to display this information to the player, I know what's going on here because I designed the systems but will the player understand.  When we launched it we told people to give us feedback, there's a button in the game to send us an email.  When developing a game I find it very easy to lose track of what's good about it and only see the flaws.  It can be good to have the views of someone who hasn't spent the last 9 months focussed on nothing but this game.  We're not looking to be told what to do but we are open to suggestions.  Most of the suggestions we've had are ideas we've already had and put to one side for time, others are things we wouldn't do as suggested but kickstart the thought process from another angle that may lead to a change/addition - all outside suggestions to any dev would get filtered through the lens of knowing the game inside out and what the aims of it are.

 

Theres a great piece of advice about listening to user testing which applies to a lot of feedback/critique too - pay attention to the problem they are having/have identified, it will be an issue, and ignore the solution they suggest, as it will be wrong.  There's a far snappier way to phrase that but I can't remember it right now.

 

Blizzard would have covered her midriff because that's a decision they have taken. Some fans may have called for it, but if those in a position of power at Blizzard didn't decide it needed to happen then it wouldn't matter.

 

Making changes to MMOs & live multiplayer games does involve listening to player feedback, because in those instances you'll make changes that you believe will have an certain effect based on the design and testing, but when it gets out to the real users it ends up having a whole different or unintended effect.

 

On 2/15/2016 at 7:59 PM, NEG said:

 

Would you say the unavoidable critique from either side or general goings on in the rest of the industry affects a teams decision for something like clothes? To the point it stops being the game the team envisioned on paper?

 

Games evolve during development, things change all the time.  That great idea on paper might not actually work in reality, for any number of reasons.  It might evolve into something else.  At what point does it stop being the thing envisioned on paper?

 

Nothing exists in isolation.  I've written before in this thread about the whores in Fable 2 and why they are there and why I wouldn't put them in now.

 

Here's an example from reality of the rest of the industry affecting dev.  GTA's Hot Coffee incident happened during the development of Black & White 2 (first game I worked on professionally) & The Movies at Lionhead.  Activision, publishing The Movies, made everyone sign a statement saying they hadn't hidden any content or Easter eggs in the game.  EA didn't demand anything like that from us, but we did drop a couple of dodgy Easter eggs off the schedule.

 

Or with MMA Manager we changed one of the lines my partner had written due to the gamergate crap.  In the game the fighters tweet, it's a way to add some character and give the player information.  One of the lines complaining about the accommodation for the fight read something like "everything about this trip has been terrible, even the ring girls have better rooms that me. #dontask #agentlemannevertells".  Given everything is seen pro and anti gamergate go to war over, even though we're an extremely niche game I though it better to change the line rather than run any risk of our game getting caught up in any of it - this is after seeing Lionhead get caught up in it.  So I changed the hashtags in the line to something like "#careerchange #roundone" which I also think is a better gag for the line.  So there you go, I let GG affect the content for my game despite there being next to no chance of anything happening - if you're wondering what I was worried about, it just someone tweeting that line saying "I don't think it's appropriate" and then suddenly it's and issue for GG and the defenders of free speech.  I know people who had worked on things that had happened to and seeing the daily Twitter firestorms, I wanted no chance of that happening to us.

Edited February 17, 2016 by The Bag
fixing late night typos

[TehStu]

The hand waving explanation for the Night Elf -> Sexy Blood Elf -> Armour-clad Blood Elf is a bit daft, really. I mean, look at the way they stand while idle. They're designed for titillation, pure and simple. 

 

Source: years and years spent as a member of the target audience for WoW.

[NEG]

9 hours ago, The Bag said:

put yourself in my shoes I'm an indie developer I have to make enough from my games to pay the rent, pay bills, buy food, etc.  In reality I also do contract work every so often to build up the war-chest, so I can make the games I want to.

 

Or put yourself into AAA dev.  You have a budget of $80m, of someone else's money, your job and that of everyone in the studio, maybe even the future existence of the studio all hang on the success of the game and the decisions you make.

 

In these situations the "oh well, no one likes it, guess I'll change" attitude won't get you very far.

 

Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't. It's the ideal I'd go for. The main difference between Indie and AAA is having more freedom and not as many folks livelihoods at stake, in my view. But having a big team doesn't disqualify you of going for what the team automatically, just that it'll be no doubt more political as a result of being what they are.

 

9 hours ago, The Bag said:

I think the problem is one of perception and you're overestimating how much of an influence the outside world has.  Most developers say they listen to the fans, but being brutally honest if the fans want something the developers don't, then it's just not going to happen.  Unless you are making something purely for yourself then you have to consider your audience.  In some cases that will be this is the target audience so X, in other cases it's just how to best convey information to the player.

 

If I'm overestimating that's great to hear and part of the reason I asked the other dev, it's good to hear more stories overall (and I appreciate your own in this post, btw)

You'll mention it again later but yes obviously we're always influenced as development is happening outside the realms of our computer screens, nothing is set in stone and certain gameplay quirks can turn out rubbish. I'm not stupid enough to not realize a draft doesn't stay that way. Faithful was perhaps the better word. No amount of money or politics muddying it up, so to speak. This also applies to things like deadline crunches, not releasing shit in as early a state as Street Fighter V has currently.

 

9 hours ago, The Bag said:

How you teach the player the game mechanics is considering your audience.  Providing an alternate UI representation for colour blind player is considering your audience.  

 

My last game, MMA Manager, (and mma management game, surprisingly) came out last year.  That's a game myself and my partner built because we wanted to play it, and no one else has made it.  Now given it's a game I want to play built by me I still have to constantly think about the player - what's they best way to display this information to the player, I know what's going on here because I designed the systems but will the player understand.  When we launched it we told people to give us feed back, there's a button in the game to send us an email.  When developing a game I find it very easy to lose track of what's good about it and only see the flaws.  It can be good to have the views of someone who hasn't spent the last 9 months focussed on nothing but this game.  We're not looking to be told what to do but we are open to suggestions.  Most of the suggestions we've had are ideas we've already had and put to one side for time, others are things we wouldn't do as suggested but kickstart the thought process from another angle that may lead to a change/addition - all outside suggestions to any dev would get filtered through the lens of knowing the game inside out and what the aims of it are.

 

Theres a great piece of advice about listening to user testing which applies to a lot of feedback/critique too - pay attention to the problem they are having/have identified, it will be an issue, and ignore the solution they suggest, as it will be wrong.  There's a far snappier way to phrase that but I can't remember it right now.

 

Focus testing is important indeed as you are trapped inside your own bubble for however long, but only to a select few and not the wide internet in my view. In Nintendo's case for example, I wish they'd listen to their American offices more before pitching their console plans (from console name to software plans).

 

9 hours ago, The Bag said:

Blizzard would have covered her midriff because that's a decision they have taken. Some fans may have called for it, but if those in a position of power at Blizzard didn't decide it needed to happen then it wouldn't matter.

 

Making changes to MMOs & live multiplayer games does involve listening to player feedback, because in those instances you'll make changes that you believe will have an certain effect based on the design and testing, but when it gets out to the real users it ends up having a whole different or unintended effect.

 

The thing with belly armor is that it's a laughable idea that Blizzard would choose to cover it because of tropes/feminism or whatever (as with many of the things GGer's seem to point to, it seems). Mainly because it would solve nothing in terms of the wider game (you can't fix it unless you do a WoW2 at this stage), how Warcraft has been represented to this day, it making sense Sylv gets an updated model now and then as shes a faction leader, so on and so forth.

If, by some miniscule small chance, someone at Blizzard thought they'd be helping the tropes issue by adding leather (that's not the right colour!) to her armor, they're more stupid than I realized. But again, that thought wouldn't even occur to me. It's amazing it does to others.

 

9 hours ago, The Bag said:

 

Here's an example from reality of the rest of the industry affecting dev.  GTA's Hot Coffee incident happened during the development of Black & White 2 (first game I worked on professionally) & The Movies at Lionhead.  Activision, publishing The Movies, made everyone sign a statement saying they hadn't hidden any content or Easter eggs in the game.  EA didn't demand anything like that from us, but we did drop a couple of dodgy Easter eggs off the schedule.

 

Or with MMA Manager we changed one of the lines my partner had written due to the gamergate crap.  In the game the fighters tweet, it's a way to add some character and give the player information.  One of the lines complaining about the accommodation for the fight read something like "everything about this trip has been terrible, even the ring girls have better rooms that me. #dontask #agentlemannevertells".  Given everything is seen pro and anti gamergate go to war over, even though we're an extremely niche game I though it better to change the line rather than run any risk of our game getting caught up in any of it - this is after seeing Lionhead get caught up in it.  So I changed the hashtags in the line to something like "#careerchange #roundone" which I also think is a better gag for the line.  So there you go, I let GG affect the content for my game despite there being next to no chance of anything happening - if you're wondering what I was worried about, it just someone tweeting that line saying "I don't think it's appropriate" and then suddenly it's and issue for GG and the defenders of free speech.  Know people who had worked on things that had happened too and seeing the daily Twitter firestorms, I wanted no chance of that happening to us.

 

I'd keep the easter eggs and lines. You could debate that there is also such a thing as all publicity is good publicity. As long as it feels right to the majority it's hurting no one (dev/publisher-wise). There will always be players that hate your guts. All art as good or shit, my contribution ends when the game is made. People can war over it all they like. Being a developer makes us just as much public figures as Bob Hoskins these days, alas. Drama comes as part of the job, but at least in my 'ideal bubble scenario' it comes at the end and not during.

 

Again, appreciated the input.

[smac]

Quote

None of the above is a criticism of Quinn

Yes, it is.

 

This is pejorative. Subtly so:

 

Quote

And I mean she literally has promotional photos of herself looking sad and victimised:

Edited February 17, 2016 by smac
Reformatted broken quotes.

[The Bag]

That's photo is also quite old.

[Alex W.]

26 minutes ago, sir_shrew said:

 

Not to play devil's advocate, (ok, to play devil's advocate) surely a lot of that will be perpetuated by her book. And the film. And her continued public appearances.

 

The difference is that in those situations, her ex will just be another member of the heaving, readily-ignorable mass of morons and not an active participant as he currently is in the legal case. Yes, she does think it's unlikely she'll win due to the legal process:

 

Quote

Then Elonis v United Statesoffered little hope that a court wouldn’t skirt the issues of how domestic violence manifests online. Then Steph Guthrie and her co-defendant lost their case, the transcripts showing equal parts “she was asking for it” and “how did this get in there i am not good at computers”. Going to court is like rolling the dice, the precedent you established isn’t up to you, and I didn’t want to risk becoming a tool in the next Creep Throat’s arsenal if we lost. I have have worked with enough lawmakers, law enforcement officers, lawyers, and judges at this point through our work with Crash Override to know that education is sorely lagging behind on these issues, not to mention the cultural biases that come with any cases like that.

 

However she also thinks the restraining order is counterproductive as I explained:

 

Quote

Ironically, getting a restraining order against Creep Throat was the least effective thing I could do in terms of getting him out of my life for good, and for protecting myself. I’ll discuss the hot mess of problems around that experience at a later time. Without getting into a long, complicated blow by blow, every time something happened or the case was updated, he’d run back to the mob and make promises and jokes and pleas for more money. The mob would respond by going after me, my family, and anyone else they decided was involved. The mythology surrounding me would expand, conspiracy charts would “prove” I am secretly rich and really deserved it all along, and inspire more threats, stalking, and abuse. The cycle repeated itself endlessly. People kept getting hurt for being close to me, for a poorly worded restraining order that did nothing.

 

Quote

This cycle was so vicious that I even vacated the order myself once he appealed, hoping to make it end. I gave him the legal relief that he’d asked for. [...] [H]e actually *showed up to object to my motion to vacate the order and hand him a win*. The court dismissed him, and the order has been dead for months, and yet he’s back on Kotaku In Action chumming the waters about the oral arguments they’re hearing on a nonexistent order next month.

 

These aren't "assumptions" or "misrepresenting", this is what her post actually said.