General Video Game Thread

[Tyche]

@packrat said in General Video Game Thread:

This is not people being 'oppressed', it is misogynistic man babies who wail and shit themselves because they feel they are not being utterly pandered to and solely accommodated as they believe is their natural due. Anything that they even think looks like it is not specifically designed to fit their particular narrow world view is a fundamental attack on them and a sign of wicked prejudice.

There's a female option in Battletech!? What the hell? That's ridiculous. Girls can't play Battletech.

[Thenomain]

@tyche said in General Video Game Thread:

Girls can't play Battletech.

Knowing that you're being sarcastic, it hit a "This Makes Me Think Of".

This makes me think of the Battletech Mush that was out for, oh, a very long time. Many of the key players who made it possible, from the math to the coding to the players, were women.

@jaded said in General Video Game Thread:

Just goes to show how much a vocal minority can put a ruinous spin on something.

This is the sound of my whimpers of pain as I bite my tongue so hard from this setup.

[Deleted]

I demand an option in games to disallow other players to play the game any way other than mine.

I have the -right- as a white male to enforce my Christian worldview on others and demand that they conform to -my- desires.

Anything less is discrimination and proof that white males are the true victims of oppression in modern society.

[Wretched]

@admiral said in General Video Game Thread:

I demand an option in games to disallow other players to play the game any way other than mine.

I have the -right- as a white male to enforce my Christian worldview on others and demand that they conform to -my- desires.

Anything less is discrimination and proof that white males are the true victims of oppression in modern society.

Finally someone said it. We need more symbols of the Great White Christ on my battle mechs.

[Jaded]

@wretched
Well...Comstar was a psuedo analog for Christianity, substituting Christ for Blake.

[Wretched]

@jaded said in General Video Game Thread:

@wretched
Well...Comstar was a psuedo analog for Christianity, substituting Christ for Blake.

I honestly haven't played any of the games since like the early 90's on my Tandy 1000

[Thenomain]

@wretched

That version was really pretty fun. It wasn't just a series of arena battles like the current version.

"But Theno, Battletech is all about the arena battles!" And yet the 90s top-down game managed to make it more, much more. (Okay, they managed to make it an anime storyline, but this was before animes were a big thing so I'm giving them credit.) CarWars managed to do something similar; you did have to do literal arena battles but on the road the battles felt a whole lot different and getting from place to place served a purpose and was fun. "Hahahahaha you almost stopped me from getting to this town limping on three rims and one blown tire and half an engine on fire but now I'm back for revenge motherfuckers! HAHAHAHAHA!"

Ahhem.

I always wished I could play as Comstar, the only group to apparently have their shit together.

[faraday]

@thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:

"But Theno, Battletech is all about the arena battles!" And yet the 90s top-down game managed to make it more, much more.

Yeah the early Battletech stuff was anything but arena battles. Quasi-feudal politics, urban warfare, epic battles with dropships and aerospace fighters... the family drama of the Crescent Hawks story, the hardscrabble mercs of the original Mechwarrior. Ah, nostalgia.

[Thenomain]

n.b., when I say "arena battles" I mean the field that you're playing on is an "arena" in concept, not literally. It might as well be, for all that it matters. I am (we are) comparing this to BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Revenge, which was a story surrounding the lore. As much as I've enjoyed Hare Brained Schemes' interpretation, the bits where I'm not engaging the lore is so much random tabletop scenarios. It's not bad, it's just not as good.

[faraday]

@thenomain Oh I thought you meant literally the Solaris arena stuff :). I get what you mean.

As an aside...My view is probably slanted by both Crescent Hawks and the inherent RPG/strategy mix of the way my family played even the tabletop game. It never had an arena feel. But I admit my experience was probably an outlier.

[Thenomain]

This post is deleted!

[ThatGuyThere]

@jaded said in General Video Game Thread:

@wretched
Well...Comstar was a psuedo analog for Christianity, substituting Christ for Blake.

Complete with Wars of Reformation when you factor in the Word of Blake faction.

[Tyche]

@thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:

@tyche said in General Video Game Thread:

Girls can't play Battletech.

Knowing that you're being sarcastic, it hit a "This Makes Me Think Of".

Yeah.. and the observation that any real "misogynists" worth their salt, would have drawn the line at "female" before "they".

This makes me think of the Battletech Mush that was out for, oh, a very long time. Many of the key players who made it possible, from the math to the coding to the players, were women.

It doesn't surprise me. Over my career, I've noticed the number of female programmers has been declining. I thought it was anecdotal... maybe just in the industries I worked in. But it's a statistical fact. In 1984, 1 in 3 programmers were female. Today it is 1 in 5. So perhaps thirty years of teaching little girls that they can be whatever they want to be... worked!?

[Arkandel]

@tyche I only have anecdotal evidence here, but for example at my company's 'IT floor' we have something like 80-100 people working... every one of them male.

When I talked to our recruiters about that, who are people I know and trust to be impartial, they simply said we get very few female applicants in the first place and those who were interviewed just happened to not meet our (objectively high) standards.

The other facet of it is that it would be kind of awkward - and I'm probably underestimating the effect - to be the only woman in the entire floor surrounded by nerds. So that should be considered too.

But, as I said... anecdotal.

[faraday]

@arkandel said in General Video Game Thread:

But, as I said... anecdotal.

There's actually been quite a lot of effort lately put into studying this phenomenon. Various studies (here's one, and another) have examined the impact of stereotypes and culture in tacitly discouraging women from pursuing fields in computer science. There's also some research into the interesting effect that the introduction of the PC (which was initially marketed primarily towards men/boys) had on the gender distribution of the computer industry. The issue you're describing is very real: I can say from experience that it's sometimes hard being the only woman in the room.

So it becomes a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: How do you motivate more girls when they know that's how the workplace will be - especially given the high-profile reports of misogyny, harassment and discrimination all over the headlines? It's an interesting problem.

[Packrat]

I work for an engineering focused aerospace company and it is a huge issue here, only 15% of the entire workforce are women and they are skewed heavily toward administration type roles that by and large are not paid that well compared to engineers. That then reflects into senior management, though to be fair they are making significant efforts to recruit and promote women, take on women as apprentices, etc.

It was nicely refreshing today that one of the presentations I attended was being given by a 27 year old woman who was a team leader running part of a cutting edge research project. I mean yes, she is probably free of prejudice in employment here, the company is really good about that kind of thing and absolutely stamps down immediately on discrimination. But the pressure she must have faced to go through the whole years long education path to become a materials engineer in such a gigantically male dominated field must have been huge.

[KDraygo]

@wretched said in General Video Game Thread:

@admiral said in General Video Game Thread:

I demand an option in games to disallow other players to play the game any way other than mine.

I have the -right- as a white male to enforce my Christian worldview on others and demand that they conform to -my- desires.

Anything less is discrimination and proof that white males are the true victims of oppression in modern society.

Finally someone said it. We need more symbols of the Great White Christ on my battle mechs.

The Crusader mech should be your ancestral mech, with a large Red Cross painted on the chest over a white painted background.

[Misadventure]

@faraday You bite the bullet, hire if someone appears equally capable as other applicants, let them know the numbers on sex, race, etc, let them know management is particularly aware that un/undertested culture may result in issues and while learning they will also not be ignoring, create mentor programs so new employee groups can be successful and hopefully transition members of that new group into mentors when they are ready, make sure your product includes and/or is marketed towards said groups, monitor groups for retention and markers of success or difficulties, expect better of your current culture, ask not that a new group be treated carefully rather that their ability and contributions be recognized like everyone elses, crush any form of harassment or retaliation no matter the target.

Least that's what I was shown. Company went from 16% to 20% in three years, which isn't terrible given the high overall retention rate.

[Ganymede]

@kdraygo said in General Video Game Thread:

The Crusader mech should be your ancestral mech, with a large Red Cross painted on the chest over a white painted background.

Given the physical appearance of the average Great White Christ acolyte, the Urbanmech is more appropriate.

[faraday]

@misadventure Those are all good things, but I was speaking more in general about the workforce, not about a specific company's strategy. The root of the problem is in the pipeline -- getting more women to even consider computer science as a field of study and then career. You can't hire people who aren't applying in the first place. Given the groundswell of "girls who code" organizations and the increased interest in kids programs, I think we'll see the numbers start to creep up in the next generation.