So well done.
geekdom
Romance ALL the things!
Richard Cobett talks about Bioware’s continuing evolution of sex ‘n romance in their games:
With each game though, Bioware has gone out of its way to Do Better, and not always by heading down the obvious path. Dragon Age 2 for instance infamously made all of its romanceable characters (the entire party save for Varric and Aveline) bisexual so that any player would be able to get with anyone they wanted. Dragon Age Inquisition and Mass Effect 3 reverses that approach, deciding that sexuality is an important part of the characters and that it can be as jarring for everyone you meet to be an option as to be politely refused. Some characters are still bisexual. Most now have their preferences, with Dragon Age expanding on gender to factor in species as well. Qunari especially seem limited in who they can give the horn.
From a Watsonian, in-game point of view I can understand this, but from a Doylian, gamer point of view I’d rather the gaming world did reshape itself around my romance preferences. One of the greatest disappointments coming to the Mass Effect series years after everybody else and hearing so much about the incredible romance options –some of which may have been sarcasm, in hindsight– was finding out that actually, my options as Femshep were either Kaidan, the Dullness that Walks Like A Man, or Liara, with no options to woo Garrus, let alone Ashley. From a game playing point of view, for games like this, I’d like the option to romance everybody, even if this doesn’t make that much sense from within the game world. I don’t want the game to decide for me who is and isn’t romanceable, just like I don’t want the game to do decide what I look like.
That’s the whole point of open world RPGs like the Dragon Ages, Mass Effects and Elder Scrolls after all, that freedom to create your own character within the larger storyline. Freedom of romance fits in with that.
And no, the idea that everybody you romance has to be bisexual if you can romance them in both your female and male persona is wrong, though an understandable error. It’s just that in one leg of the trousers of time Ashley happened to be gay, in another straight…
Actual black nerd problems
Privilege is also, not having to worry about shit like this when going to conventions:
How the fuck is it that my Friday night Comic Con experience is hijacked by me doing the math on if I could get to my car with a giant, cartoonish sword strapped across my back? Why is this something that concerns me at all? It sure as hell didn’t concern the cool white dude who showed me his Levi-blade earlier. If I ran into him again and if he asked me if I picked one up myself, I wouldn’t know how to tell him about my reluctance to open myself up to possible harm. I wouldn’t know how to engage him on a level that says, “I’m glad we met and share an affinity for this same piece of art, but because I’m black and aware of the world around me, I don’t feel comfortable indulging myself at the same level you do.” It’s a tough conversation to have. It’s a tougher situation to articulate. It’s toughest though, just trying to live with that doubt in your head.
GamersGate: Intel lets spoiled manchildren think they’re important
So GamersGate. A bunch of petulant man children from the open sewer of the internet got roped into some creep’s crusade against his ex-girlfriend under the banner of “objective gaming journalism”, spewed the usual mix of rape and death threats against her, but Zoe Quinn, their intended victim, turned out to be smarter than the lot of them and had infiltrated their main planning channel for weeks. These losers are still sputtering on, the 101st chairborne brigade fighting a losing war against the forces of social justice on blogs and Twitter, a tweet too far.
What kind of lame company would let themselves be roped into their campaign and feel pressured to withdraw advertising from a gaming site just because they say so? Intell, that’s who:
GamerGate’s ballyhooed success with Intel reveals them to be a movement for “journalistic integrity” that is willing to use major corporate sponsors to dictate the editorial content of a website for no reason other than the fact that they disagree with it. As a “consumer revolt,” it has shown itself to be a neoliberal nightmare wherein large corporations are the heroes and plucky independent journalists are the “elite” villains who need to be toppled.
(Incidently, the habit of Feministing here to blank out the Twitter accounts sending death threats in their screenshots but not those of the victims of said threats is mildly annoying.)
By giving in to blackmail, Intel has enabled the most whining, dumbest and aggressive part of videogaming “culture” to terrorise more women and the websites that publish them, in exchange for much more negative p.r. than it would’ve had, had it refused to play ball. The LoserGaters are a noisy and obnoxious part of gaming, but they’re only a minority. Normal people, sane people, want nothing to do with them.
You had me at “retro space sim”
Wings of Saint Nazaire is “a retro space combat sim in the vein of Wing Commander and X-Wing” and the alpha version can be played right now if you have unity installed in your browser, or downloaded in Linux, Mac or Windows versions. X-Wing and Tie-Fighter were games I played a lot as a kid and a new space sim like that would be welcome indeed.