Then when "people" say that, it should be dispelled with fact. Not introduced into general discussions about huge swathes of heard-mentality (but ultimately harmless and possibly suffering from social anxiety disorders) neckbeards.

I hate to say this, but what I've seen of Ms. Sarkeesian's content has rather underwhelmed me. I read/watch a lot of feminist critiques of pop culture, and the quality of her output is definitely in the bottom tier. Rather sad she gets the limelight (ironically because of all the shitheads slinging mud at her) while people like Alex Cranz of FemPop go by relatively unnoticed.

I've tried watching her stuff as well, but to me she has the chemistry of a brick wall. Just blankly stares at the camera and speaking as if reading off a script. Not a very enjoyable way to spend one's half hour. However that is valid criticism, and a genuine reason not to watch her stuff. Deriding her as some monstrous "feminazi" and sending her death threats most certainly isn't. The acceptance of death threats, and such things, really should not exist on the internet. Yes everyone gets them, and yes 99.9% of them have no weight behind them, but that doesn't make it okay. Such behavior should be completely discouraged by any ethical user of the net.

This reminds me of another recent incident in the gaming community:
http://abc13.com/news/software-writer-i ... im/305170/

In the Minecraft community he was responsible for a DMCA takedown notice for a very popular mod, due to a disagreement over the licensing of his code for it. Completely legitimate reason. Nevertheless, some fuckwad out there (probably a young kid) decided to send a SWAT team over to his house. How is that even a thing? Swatting?

Yeah, "Swatting."

There's actually a decent VICE doc on it:

The comments on that VICE video are goddamned ridiculous. As if the law enforcement was the problem... the point really does fly over people's heads sometimes.

I think it's just the whole "fuck the cops" mentality that's informing the vast majority of the commenters there. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the norm on cop videos on YouTube.

That mentality makes for a great rap song, but not much else beyond that. Just really silly. Reminds me of the nude celeb leak a short awhile back, and everyone blaming the celebrities instead of the, you know, hackers.

Haha, I was literally going to post 'Sound of da Police' preceded by "this should be the only medium where unspecific pot shots at institutionalized police forces should be accepted."

To be fair, if SWAT teams didn't exist, and the concept of no knock raids were alien to police forces, there wouldn't be this phenomenon occurring in some circles of the internet. It's not ridiculous to say that militarization of police forces encourages this type of behavior from trolls. I'd argue that, far from being ridiculous to link the two or lay the blame on law enforcement, that it's absolutely the reason it happens at all.

These are the same kinds of people who would order 50 pizzas to someone's house...

I don't think guns are really the goal here. More just to fuck with someone they don't like because they're bored little pricks who thinks it's funny. If it isn't SWAT teams, it'd be something else (maybe calling a fire station and reporting a false fire). No, the problem isn't SWAT, who generally do far more good than bad. The problem lies on the cunts doing the "prank" calling, and the trolling. They are responsible. I can only hope cyber crime experts can track them down and give them sentences, so as to send a message to everyone that this shit is not acceptable. Then maybe it'll help cull it a bit.

Anyways this is all leading off topic for this thread. Maybe a new thread on this issue should be made? There's already plenty of video game threads and forums on the net interrupted by serious discussions after all, with the fun seeped away.

No-knock raids make perfect sense if they seriously expect the suspect to be armed and dangerous. The idea is to catch the guy off-guard and shock him into submission, not giving him a chance to grab his gun and get into a good defensive position or start destroying evidence or whatever. In most of these "swatting" cases, the people who call 911 make all sorts of claims about how the guy has hostages and he's about to start killing them, or he's gonna shoot at any cops he sees, or something like that. You don't warn a guy like that when you're coming in.

Really I think it's hugely to the credit of the police involved in these cases that no swatting victims have ended up injured or even dead (to my knowledge).

Oh man, I wasn't saying that at all. I was literally asking if this whole stealing money aspect was even real. No judgement made, just figured people here would know, because I sure as fuck don't feel like reading the whole massive backstory.

I hope that any people employed by the government who call themself "cyber crime experts" are immediately fired.

"Just let me slap on my vr-goggles and slip into my hacker-gloves so I can access the mainframe and websurf through the cyber-cpace in order to apprehend that nasty cyber-criminal scum!"

Thyber-thspaythe

Waaait a minute, that VR helmet isn't plugged into anything...

It's wireless. Duh.

Well I have no idea what they're actually called. The title of their job is irrelevant though. It's a massive issue that needs to be addressed lawfully, so that in the future people know that it isn't okay and that there will be consequences for doing it. Besides, the fact that people's lives are on the line certainly validates cyber crime as valid as any other, as far as I'm concerned.

basically, even on the ones where the cops are right people still find a way to turn it around and make it their fault. I have 3 administration of justice classes this semester, and one of my instructors will sometimes put on youtube videos of good cops and bad cops. I check the out when I get home and people are flaming away in the comments. as far as that site is concerned, the police state is either already here or coming. gotta laugh

No-knock raids do go wrong, almost always because the police fail to announce their presence and the victims assume they are being burglarized and open fire. Or the police go in hot-headed and injure or murder people inside. Family pets seem to be especially susceptible.

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/man-sh ... d-charges/
http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/kill ... atal-raid/

Granted those websites are obviously anti-cop, but the two cases are very similar.

But this illustrates that the practice of "swatting" is a very dangerous prank that could lead to innocent lives lost, whether it be a cop or not.

Yes, the practice no-knock raiding can be and has been abused plenty of times. However, that's a question of application, not whether or not they should ever be used in the first place. There are clearly plenty of instances when they make sense, as I mentioned.


Exactly, that's why I was impressed that no innocent lives have been lost so far. Really, it's these sheltered teenagers who have no concept of the actual, real-world consequences of their actions who are to blame. When you've had no real responsibilities and no real trouble in your life beyond studying for a test or your mom grounding you, all responsibilities and trouble in general seem to be at about that level, on an emotional level. It's like how people who've never owned a car tend to treat cars way worse than people who are car owners.

I'm of the thought that it's only a matter of time before one of these swatting pranks turns tragic. I expected to find several examples, but only could find no-knock raids that turned tragic with no mention of swatting.

I think it's inevitable. All it takes is for some live streamer to jump up out of his seat with a black controller in his hands, or some video creator like Angry Joe holding a fake gun prop, and it'll go south very quickly. As failsafeman has said, it's to the SWAT's praise that no tragedies have been committed yet, but such luck won't hold out forever. By then, it'll be high time for it to be taken more seriously by everyone.

I don't know if I could call it a prank. I would define a prank as having no ill-intent towards the recipient, where the effects of the prank can immediately be resolved by the prankster.

A prank would have the intent of boosting some camaraderie.

I wouldn't even call it trolling as trolling (at least successfully) is intended to get a major negative response with minimal action. Something like "My favorite Nintendo character is Metroid" Whatever response one gets from SWAT showing up is appropriate. If someone freaks out cause the cops break in, that's exactly how a normal person would react.

It's just malicious lying to the police and illegal activity.


Edit:

Point is games are fun. Whoever is so butthurt they have to file false charges to the police or complain non-stop about gamergate is missing the point. They fail in life and I wonder how the hell they possibly cope with real problems.

There would be no swatting or gamergate with me cause this is my response:

"I lost. No biggie. Next game."
"Game journalism's crap. That's why I prefer word of mouth reviews"
"LOL my ass kicking female character looks like a stripper"

So the people at my local gamestop convinced me to buy a ps4 destiny bundle today. Its not bad, after spending a while to setup and stuff I am starting to really like the ps4. And Destiny isn't too bad either.

Played Wasteland 2 for a few hours. It's nice! It's like a combination of Fallout 1/2 and XCOM!

Having an assault rifle/long range dude seems pretty essential.

It looks awesome. The combat looks cooler than Fallout to me, maybe? I'll have to check it out.

Now I have to check it out. I hate you...

It's more interactive and dynamic, very similar to the new XCOM if you've played that.

I always enjoyed the F1/2 combat, but I can see this appealing to a lot more people.

So Wasteland 2's hype has been worth it then? From what I've seen it does look cool. I've never played X-COM, but if it's anything like the first two Fallouts (which I guess it is) it should be right up my alley.

Don't really want to drop $50.00 on a game right now though, so I'll wait for a GOG sale or something.

I've only played a few hours, but I'm about to head back into the wastes again. So far it's been very fun, yeah.

HAHAHAH, the title screen had a "Red Boots DLC Only $49.95" box, clicked and it said "Just kidding, you didn't really think we'd have DLC did it?" Wonderful. Fuck DLC.

Not that there really was much of one to begin with, but here goes any chance whatsoever that I'd ever spend money on Divinity:
http://orogion.deviantart.com/journal/S ... -380891149
What a moron.

So a single visual artist's personal opinion on a certain subject is to be held as representative of an entire game or even company? A company which decided to hire a female writer (which effectively doubled their number of employed writers) for Divinity: Original Sin and all future products primarily because they were worried that gender bias was seeping into their games? A move that is depressingly STILL rare in the video games industry today? (I'd be willing to put money on almost every single game you hold dear was written primarily--if not entirely--by men.)

Hey, I bet I can find someone somewhere who worked at one point on one of the Souls' games may have said or done something somewhere that could be considered sexist? That means that I, as a person who doesn't support sexism, should never purchase any of their games, right?

Good grief.

I finally got around to buying the season pass for season 1 of Tell Tale Games' The Walking Dead. I just finished chapter 4.

You know what I might say is worse than Tetsuya Nomura? The current ongoing kiddie art style Square has been doing for years now, ie Bravely Default, Crystal Chronicles, FFIII and IV DS, etc. Is it just me? I can't stand the way this stuff looks and it's a huge turn off. I'm not really knocking on cartoony aesthetics or anything, I can dig that stuff (just finished Ratchet & Clank Crack in Time, etc). But this stuff...

This chibi art style has got to go. Lame sauce to the max. So when the art isn't about belts, it's all about fat midgets?

Nice butthurt strawmanning, knew I could count on you for that.


I don't know if I'd go as far as to say it's worse... but yeah I cannot stand it myself. Funnily enough I loved Yoshida's art in FFT and Tactics Ogre, but it's absolutely awful in Bravely Default, and though I played it to completion, I cannot stand the look of the DS FFIV with the horrendous low-poly chibi models. In fact we were just talking about that in the IRC chat, I was comparing the PSP version of FF4 to the DS/iOS/Steam one. The latter has these gorgeous remade sprites, and includes the After Years stuff, but instead, Steam gets the shitty low-poly 3D port. Lame.

Just look at that and weep:




Could have released that on Steam.... but instead, you got this:


Fucking barf.

What the fuck is that. GODDAMIT Squeenix. Soon if they remake FF again, they will remove the random encounters like they did in Dragon Quest.

Speaking of dragon quest, spending a good amount of money to own every Dragon Quest/Warrior game. Sentimental connection, Dragon Quest was my first video game series

Yeah, FF4DS' art style was bullshit. But at the very least, it's the most hardcore character-meat-grinder version of the game, so if you're looking for a goddamn challenge, there ya go.

I honestly don't recall struggling that much with this game (certainly never grinded), but everyone says it's hard....? Maybe FF4DS is to me what Ys was to you or something.

Wait, how did I strawman you?

I mean, I guess I got it wrong when I said 'visual artist', because he's apparently Larian's head animator? Which, btw, is a profession that concerns itself more with mechanics than aesthetics.

But I'm still not seeing the strawman. Didn't you specifically say you wouldn't spend money on any Divinity title at least in part because of the dumbfuck sexist ramblings of one of their employees on his personal blog?

Also: didn't you accuse me of taking 'pot shots' at Dark Souls (which I never did, because I like Dark Souls in spite of the shoddy PC port, an unwieldy inventory system and restrictive environments because the combat fucking slays and that's basically what the whole game is about anyway), and yet you've so far posted: a piece of concept art you disliked (which I did as well) and the aforementioned sexist blog ramble (which I also disliked) as genuine reasons for why you'd never have any interest in any Divinity title? You are aware the primary draw of Divinity: Original Sin is its turn based tactical combat, right?

Your dislike of Divinity seems to stem not from informed, impartial opinion but rather from confirmation bias. Did you really hate the Divinity 2 demo (AFAIK, the only Larian product you've actually tried and evaluated yourself) that goddamn much? I mean... I'm sure it would've been pretty bad, especially on consoles (I only played the game with the fully patched Dragon Knight Saga edition, and on a fairly beefy PC at that). But. I dunno. It just kinda seems like you really want to hate their games, and I'm not really sure why.

And if I'm misinterpreting/misrepresenting anything, please correct me. I have absolutely no desire to be the mindshadow of The Video Game Thread. (expecting a 'too late' in 3... 2...)