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Also worth looking at is PowerQuest from Powerhoof: https://powerhoof.itch.io/powerquest

It's a name-your-price Unity plugin and I've seen it used in Intergalactic Wizard Force, which certainly feels AGS-y from a player's POV.

Oh wow, I had no idea this existed, this looks great!

Well you'd need somebody who has tinkered with all of them to really tell you, and I don't know how many people have done that given the time sink that making an adventure game is.

You're correct that collaborative work on programming is difficult in AGS, not impossible but requires some coordination.  I left a project in a huff when issues with SVN meant I was getting constant compiler errors.  Ideally I wanted guys to write the new code and give me references for where they wanted it copied and pasted but I got ignored.

There are a couple of other things about AGS that to me seem to suggest its hobbyist roots.  Maybe I'm just paranoid but I've always felt as though the global script balloons too quickly and had memory concerns over it. (I understand some devs make characters objects in a scene for this reason) Other than that drawbacks of AGS would be a lack of 3d support, the fiddliness of some of the in-engine tools (I'm thinking particularly about walking areas, I've always found drawing those awkward), no real cross-platform capability in engine (though I understand there are decent third party tools) .

Due to my limited experience with others, I can't say that much.  Sludge, as I recall was very lightweight and used some odd formats, but as it was a hobby from one programmer there wasn't a lot of documentation.  I see there have been some new releases from another programmer, and sludge is also apparently open source now as well as free.

A drawback to Adventure Creator to me is that can't look at screenshots without getting a migraine lol.  There are a lot of menus with a lot of stuff in them, God damn.  But seriously I'm sure pros would include Unity being a highly optimized modern pro engine, the full 3d support, COLOSSAL online support, full cross platform infrastructure, the graphical tools look very flexible, etc. I mean frankly it looks pretty great.  I'd be using it if I had the time to commit to learning from scratch, but as I said the number of menus is intimidating.

Downsides to AC is the entry price point, apparently the licences agreement is that if you make a big profit you give some to Unity, people say there is a general awkwardness to working in 2d in Unity, and my understanding is that AC doesn't support walk-behinds in the same way AGS does.  It may have changed but apparently you needed to create everything you walk behind as an object in the scene.  It's something that can be done very quickly in Photoshop, but it's still a bit of extra busywork.

A free general engine you didn't mention is Godot which seems to have the reputation as the hipsters Unity.  Godot is free and anecdotally has more intuitive features for 2d gaming.  It's very lightweight in terms of design and file size but also surprisingly feature rich.  I played around with it briefly following a platformer tutorial and found it surprisingly intuitive.  3d support as well, no cross platform built in, but apparently there are 3rd party porters.  The amount of engine support and community online seemed pretty healthy.

[The Maltese Falcon]

The only one leaping to mind is The Maltese Falcon. It was an odd progression. On a whim I read some Raymond Chandler novels and absolutely fell in love with his style and how wonderously overblown-to-the-point-of-camp the colourful hardboiled metaphors were. Now, every man and their dog on the internet seems to be agreed that Raymond Chandler is an absolute laughable amateur compared to Dashiell Hammett. So, given Maltese Falcon is by far and away Hammett's most famous novel it was the obvious one to read. I was pretty excited.

The book sucks. Oh my god does it suck. Sam Spade is the most godawful boring Mary Sue lead I've ever read, who effortlessly overpowers every crook he meets and bangs every dame. There's no real mystery - the four characters you meet near the start are about it, and they're all trying to double cross one another to get the stupid bird statue that they have no reason to believe is real. They just constantly meet up in different configurations, point guns at one another and get beaten up by Sam until... I dunno, they get arrested? Now, Chandler plots aren't Dickens but he wrote them well. But I didn't find any piece of Hammett's prose vaguely memorable. It was a staggeringly dull wash.

So I reasoned "Aha, it must be the film! The famous iconic film by John Huston must be so good that it made the book good by association!"

Well, the film is beautifully shot and the cast are excellent and the music is great... really, everything superficial is great but... it's a pretty faithful adaptation. And seeing Humphrey Bogart in live action just constantly, non-stop, with no effort at all overpower all these dudes who have guns when he's unarmed can't really be made not ridiculous. It's like if a weasel-faced uncle of yours made a vanity project film where he gets to be Jackie Chan. I guess these kind of pulpy pseudo-heroics were more passable at the time, but I found it hard to take seriously. The film is unarguably a classic, though, and it launched everyone's careers into the stratosphere so I'm an outlier.

Wow, I haven't logged on to these forums for at least a year, so I can't believe practically the first thing I see is a SBF fan game that looks amazing. Were you likely to need a hand with anything basic, such as testing, or writing some filler dialogue?

Man, I can't get over how good your pixel art is. Mine's really sucky and it took YEARS to get there. Do you also have a misspent youth fiddling around with MSPaint?

Simply speaking, perhaps not, but surely you can appreciate that it's one method by which it can be achieved.

Actually, no I don't. In order to actually add to gameplay, a verb needs to (1) meaningfully contribute to a number of puzzles, (2) get a non-trivial response from a large number of hotspots, and (3) be convenient to the player (which on a verbcoin it won't be). Otherwise you're just adding complexity for its own sake.

This is the aspect of the two-button argument I don't get, speaking as somebody who likes verb coins and other older interfaces that offer choices. To me, complexity for it's own sake sums up the classic adventure game experience in a way. I mean, most people who talk about liking adventure games will talk about the backstory, the setting, and the characters. The puzzles will come up obviously (especially in games like Day of the Tentacle) but most of the plot is fluff from a technical standpoint, because it isn't related to the gameplay. Being able to go through 30 lines of dialogue with some random guy in a bar is complexity for the sake of complexity. But that conversation, while extraneous, could be several peoples' favourite part of the whole game.

I don't see the verbcoin as inconvenient at all, either. It's a quarter-of-a-second click versus holding LMB for a half second.

I enjoy rapping a lot even though I'm not terribly good at it. Is that still open?

And I'd say that funding underdogs and un-names should be the major point of kickstarter (rather than the exception), so I don't really see "They don't have a finished product" as a negative. If people like the project, they'll fund it, otherwise, they won't.

I'm of a similar view, that's why I backed this KS for $30 shortly after posting - god knows how tough it is to make a career in any creative field. At the same time, a lot of people are wary about giving money to less experienced outfits and I understand that, too. I think they're entitled to know that when AM refer to their previous games they're effectively padding their CV a bit.

As for the debacle between Adventure Mob and Replay... the whole thing was horrible and disgusting. At conventions and conferences, there was no one more visible, vocal and enthusiastic about the LSL project than Oded Sharon. He and the Adventure Mob guys worked their tails off trying to get the game hooked up with a publisher, and when they hopped onto Kickstarter they worked doubly-hard to get the word out. Then when they were successful, Replay dropped them. I honestly had no words.

I have to say, the whole thing was really strange, as an outside observer. It felt even exploitative, because they used Oded and co's enthusiasm during the campaign to help sell it, featured them in videos and the story during the run of the campaign was always "these guys are going to be the development team". Shortly after all the money had come in they were gone, and, frankly, N-Fusion's work seemed pretty sub-par going by the finished product.

Looking back, my comment inadvertently implied a few things - such as that I thought Replay Games made the right decision (I don't have the info to properly judge that, but I suspect they didn't) and that I thought Replay Games were ethical in their behaviour in general. Considering the conduct of their CEO that is definitely not the case but I still have a lot of respect for Mandel and Lowe which is why I sought out their statements on the matter.

That said, Dave, your siding with Oded gives me a lot of faith for the project. I think in your line of work you must be an excellent judge of character.

Don't want to be too negative here, but the names 'Adventure Mob' and 'Oded Sharon' set off a little alarm because I'd heard them before. Nothing especially negative but they had been the initial developers for Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded but were ditched by Al Lowe and Josh Mandel about halfway through the project after they had made the prototype and the engine.

In Tel Aviv and during the due diligence phase, quite a few red flags were raised about the prospect of working with Adventure Mob. While we adored the demo work they did for LSL1, and while we had no reason to question their commitment to the project, we also had to acknowledge that, with absolutely no track record to look at, AM was going to be a very big risk for us.

My personal feeling was that it was a risk possibly worth taking with our *own* money, if that's how we were funding the game. But we aren't putting our own money into the game, we're putting Kickstarter pledges into it. To me, we should absolutely not take this kind of risk with other people's money. I would love to work with Oran on a future Larry game, but not until AM has a track record, and not with Kickstarter funds.

To this, I'll add: AM has never shipped a game. Not a single one.

Paul was smart to have us all visit the company to confirm that they could actually do what they said they could do. After seeing their operation, we thought they had gathered some talented people for our visit, but the team had never worked together before, had little experience on AAA titles, and no one had managed a large team. We left Tel Aviv with a terrible feeling about the chances of them learning these things with our Kickstarter supporters' money. For the good of the game, we discussed our decision at length and did what we felt was right for ourselves, for the project, and for our fans and their funds.

Now they're fairly diplomatic so it's clear that there wasn't any indication of unprofessional behaviour or anything like that. But I just think it's good for people to know who they're giving money to on Kickstarter. I checked out Adventure Mob's website and they still have not shipped a game aside from a kid-target mobile app, all their other projects are 'coming soon' (And one just links to a failed Kickstarter).

I'll actually pledge to this KS because I like underdogs and would love to see these guys get off the ground with these games they clearly and dearly want to make. But I think people should be aware they have no proven track record and there is perhaps a bit more risk in this KS than average.

4) Carefully considering what your choice of attire communicates

The problem with this POV is that, no matter how much we'd like to shift responsibility to the victim, there's not a single article of clothing or lack thereof, not even full nudity, that communicates "Anybody who wants to fuck me gets to fuck me, no consent required."

I'm not saying it does and I'm not trying to shift responsibility. My point is that it's a factor because when women are clubbing and are looking to meet somebody they will often wear clothes communicating simple messages like "I want you to look at this great body of mine" and "I am interested in sex tonight". Guys who are confident, drunk, dismissive, id-centric or carrying resentments (and whatever other factors that makes somebody not be a law abiding citizen) will not read between the lines or make any effort to. They will see the woman as offering herself up and they want to take full advantage. They will ignore most verbal cues and focus on what they see - if they can be swayed it will most likely be by body language. So it's always safest to not dress that way unless you're capable of dealing with the worst kind of attention or unless you have friends to help you out.

I've seen assaults happen, too. I'm sure a lot of us have. Some idiot on a dance floor, right in front of me with the girl I was talking to - she was an 18 year old in a low cut top - he just grabbed her shirt and tried to pull it down. She was the younger sister of a girl at a hen's night, though, so she had back up and I told the guy to piss off, too. If he somehow got somewhere alone with her it's not hard to imagine what would have happened. I'll be the first to agree the single biggest factor in sexual assaults is guys being dickheads but there's no simple solution for that.

First: So not your fault, but actually your fault. You were asking for it. But I think there's a difference in the metaphor in that no mugger would rob a person and justify his actions to others by saying, "His wearing of an expensive watch communicated to me that he wanted me to rob him. His expensive watch implied consent despite the fact that I used force to get it."

Although the discussion was purely about trying to prevention factors. What happens in the courtroom is neither here nor there. Although if a case of theft makes it to a courtroom I understand a common defense is that the alleged victim actually gave the items willingly, which is a reasonable parallel.

Third: Neither of these defenses would fly in the courtroom, but the idea that the victim provoked the assailant into attacking by being too sexual is often asserted in the courtroom, or even that women who have a past history of having sexual partners have somehow lost the right to turn down their attacker.

As I said earlier in the thread I actually think this has a lot less to do with sexism than is believed...

The key piece of evidence in most trials are testimonies of independent witnesses. In most rape cases, they don't exist due to the nature of the crime and where it takes place. This means that we are reduced to the testimony of the accuser and the testimony of the defendant. The contested point is generally not that sex took place (rendering DNA evidence and most forensics moot) but that consent was given. This means in the majority of cases defence lawyers will tear apart the accusers testimony and portray them as a liar in court.

The majority of rape cases are ugly 'he said, she said' affairs, with the defendant and accuser and sometimes character witnesses of dubious worth. Whenever a defense lawyer has carte blanche to throw his resources at character assassination of a sole witness, ugliness is going to ensue no matter what case you're dealing with. And rape cases will offer the perfect opportunity to prey on whatever prejudices juror's may have about women. It's like a perfect storm of ignorance.

And studies have shown that people believe this: if you were dressed too sexy, you were asking for it. Amnesty International did a survey in the UK a few years back, and the blue bar here is the percentage of people that think the victim is partially responsible, and the red how many people think they are totally responsible for their own rape

It's probably depressing that I was not at all surprised by these figures. There are often rape scandals here in Australia and the victims are rarely given a good hearing in the media. I am not sure I can conceive of a scenario where the victim could have even partial responsibility in my mind.

Sure, there are things you can do to be safer. But I think clothes have less to do with it (and actually sex has less to do with it too) than issues of power and entitlement, and I still stand by the statement that no article of clothing or lack thereof ever communicates "I am sexually available to you, regardless of whether I give consent."

I don't think many people will contest the point, and I was never making that argument. I just think that there are preventative steps that can be taken that will lessen the odds. Not being paranoid or letting your guard down or just wanting to live your life will never constitute responsibility for somebody else's crime, though.


Tl;dr - we agreed all along. I think

Well you hear a lot about rape prevention. Unfortunately the comments are always that they should have prevented it by dressing like a Hazmat worker or forgoing any kind of social life outside of large swarm-like crowds of female friends escorted by armed guard.

I've never heard anyone phrase it like that - maybe I'm in the wrong country. I know this can be taken as 'entirely terrible' sentiment, but isn't there a seed of a good idea in there, at least? Surely steps such as

1) Drinking in moderation unless you are with people you know and trust
2) Taking a friend with you to places / to see people you do not know well
3) Setting clear boundaries if you are feeling uncomfortable

And yes

4) Carefully considering what your choice of attire communicates

would be the most effective steps to prevention? I know that a lot of these things are considered infringements on lifestyle choices, but at the same time I feel that the crime of rape is such a personal offense that discussion of it gets somewhat muzzled by all the emotions involved. The triggers of rape are behavioral and psychological, so the best steps to prevent it run along the same lines - this doesn't mean that people who are victims are not 'behaving properly', or that it is their fault, which I realise some people idiotically hector them over (even women, particularly here in Australia)

And, because I really think this needs clarification - I am not saying that women cannot expose themselves as they want (within the law) with their clothing. I think that they need to be considerate of what they express, and that dressing with the intention of garnering sexual attention is best done when they are confident in how to deal with that attention. (And, say, if you don't want people staring at you between the club and the station you can always throw a coat on. Just saying)

When I said Shermer isn't going to court over this, I was referring to the rape, not the "libel".

The only possible defense Myers has is to successfully prosecute a case against Shermer that is deemed sufficient proof that he is a sexual predator. Unless there is a settlement outside of court it's going to get uglier than it already was.

Now, to make clear what I'm saying: if a person is the victim of a sex crime, it is a good thing to go public.

I agree. It is important that there is awareness of sexual assault and the circumstances in which it can happen.

There might be no witnesses, the evidence might be long gone, it might have been decades ago, but it doesn't matter. Sexual predators should be outed as such, so other potential victims are warned.

And this where I disagree. In principle, there is nothing objectionable about the idea but, again, it relies on somehow having 100% certainty of the veracity of a testimony.

As Calin says, false rape claims are not common. If we go with the low end of that estimate - 2%. BUT there are 250,000 cases of rape per year. That would make 2% 5,000 which is not, in my opinion, an insignificant number.

You might say - "So what? If they're innocent they can prove it!" Actually, not really. The reason we have a system of innocence-until-proven-guilty is because PROVING innocence is far more difficult than proving guilt. Think about what a presumption of guilt really means. A lack of witnesses is irrelevant. Inconsistencies of motive or testimony are also irrelevant. Evidence of the presence of somebody else on the scene is not evidence of innocence either, as that could simply be a hypothetical accomplice. Basically the only to actually PROVE innocence is if you have an iron-clad alibi.. and THAT relise on a precise time for when the crime took place.

So what you and Calin are saying basically amounts to "dear raped people, keep your mouth shut unless you can prove it". And of the people who are going to keep shutting up because of this hostile attitude, pretty much 100% are actual victims.

Not at all. I have seen several people (in other fora, not here, obviously) accuse the story emailed to Myers of sounding fishy, using weasel words, etc. I dislike this point of view because just as Michael Shermer is entitled to a presumption of innocence this anonymous lady is entitled a fair, neutral hearing of her account. The best way of handling everything, though, was to go through the proper authorities and due process - if it happened as described it was abominable that conference organizers ignored her account, but it should have been reported to police right away. If the accusations were found to have basis those same organizers would be in the firing lines to get sued to Hell and back and I think that would have sent a much more palpable message about rape culture than this blog post has so far.

Obviously, this did not happen. But this doesn't mean she isn't allowed to speak up - she has the right to discreetly advise those of her contacts she feels need to know about Shermer's behaviour. This may have been why she contacted Myers in fact, and may have trusted him to handle things more discreetly himself.

Shermer's victim went public because she had kept quiet for years but had heard that other women were speaking out about open misogyny and harassment. And she used PZ to do it because his voice carries much weight, and people will rightly assume that he isn't going to do this on a whim.

What I have read suggests that he has done this out of gut instinct rather than any true certainty involving the details of the alleged sexual assault. Whether that's better or worse than doing so on a whim is up to the beholder, I guess.

[probably]

We are all aware that Shermer is never going to see an actual court room from the inside over this,

Actually, it's likely that he is. He's pursuing legal actions against Myers for defamation of character and I think he has a pretty good case.

Calin started this thread by asking "should women use other tactics such as potential libel and slander in order to protect themselves and others?"
And I'm answering "yes, and here's why", at least as long as he's referring to actual victims and non-libel.

This doesn't really make any sense, though. If they are an 'actual victim' can only be determined through evidence. Likewise a damaging accusation is libel unless it has facts, admissible in a court of law, to back it up. If you mean to say that this is okay as long as, as you apparently have decided in this case, the guy being accused is probably guilty I can appreciate (but not agree with) the sentiment, but surely you can see that this is totally unworkable?

It really is a good example of why our system works the way it does. Absolutism of the law has its own problems (most prominently on display in rape cases) but if you are to have a system where people are, in the eyes of the law, gauged differently under a reasoned probability of their guilt it would entrench and worsen all the prejudices that affect the justice system.

This case made me think a bit about the problem of rape and the view expressed by some that the treatment of rape cases is down to patriarchy and misogyny. They certainly rear their heads (particularly in cases here in Australia involving footballers and in the horrific Steubenville case) But I think far more so from the media and often the vox pops than anyone in an official position. I think the unfortunate nature of rape trials is down to a few factors that, if not impossible to remedy, are down to one important factor - witnesses.

The key piece of evidence in most trials are testimonies of independent witnesses. In most rape cases, they due to the nature of the crime and where it takes place. This means that we will have the testimony of the accuser and the testimony of the defendant. The contested point is generally not that sex took place (rendering DNA evidence moot) but that consent was given. This means in the majority of cases defence lawyers will tear apart the accusers testimony and portray them as a liar in court.

It is indeed unfortunate, but I think it ultimately has very little to do with sexism - it appears to because rape is generally a crime where a female is the victim due to physical differences between the sexes that should go without saying. I imagine male rape victims receive very similar treatment on the rare occasions that the case is reported and followed through to the courtroom.

The figure in my avatar that you can barely see the detail of is a sprite I was pretty proud of, even though he's largely a paint over of a Street Fighter III sprite. (Yun, if you were wondering) Oddly enough, at the time I was working on the idea of a Street Fighter knock-off called Space Fighter, where loads of sci-fi characters fought possibly in MUGEN. I cannot remember most of the roster now but for whatever reason I included two characters from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series - the Mule, and Hari Seldon, which is who the sprite is meant to be. Somehow. He comes from a planet where everyone knows Kung Fu so I figured he'd dress like a Fu Manchu pimp, I guess.

He's also wearing a santa hat because I changed my avatar for Christmas and couldn't be bothered to change it back.

I tentatively disagree. She's high profile and people are aware of her, but her arguments are often poorly constructed and researched which is unfortunate. These are things that do deserve to be discussion points, but when she offers up extreme arguments that are easily countered (strawman arguments, if you will) it's difficult for her to be taken seriously by a lot of people.

People often say this. I really don't see it, but maybe I'm missing something. Could you give me some examples of which arguments you think are poorly constructed/researched?

One that really got me was using Hotline Miami is an example in her videos, as a 'damsel' that needs to be rescued and one that is 'killed off'. It doesn't make much sense aside from the most superficial level, where a guy rescues a woman at one point. Rescuing the woman is not the goal of the game (the level takes place near the start of the game and your assignment is actually to kill everybody in the house) You play a demented sociopathic killer who decides, seemingly arbitrarily to take mercy on the one character (who, yes, is the one female character in the game) It's worth noting that she doesn't express direct gratitude for the rescue - she stays in the hero's house since she apparently has nowhere else to go, but avoids him for half the missions and sleeps in another bed. She IS killed at the halfway point, but literally every single character in the game dies so using that as the basis for any claims of sexism in the game is ridiculous.

Another one leaping to mind is her strange argument that Elaine Marley is not an example of a positive, feminist character because she is not a playable character. Elaine is one of my favourite characters in the world of gaming and could definitely carry her own game and is always both a feminine AND strong character. (The only time you can argue she wasn't was in COMI where she does genuinely need rescuing but it's due entirely to a bizarre set of circumstances that is 100% Guybrush's fault)

Many people have noted factual errors in the stories she recounts. The main one I remember is her story of the development of StarFox Adventures being riddled with errors - the game was to have dual protagonists, and it was not co-opted into a new StarFox game because of 'fears gamers would not play a female protagonist' but simply because the StarFox creator liked the look of the game and wanted to put his own characters into it.

A lot of the targets she picks are also beyond soft. It's been pointed out that Dragon's Lair (if that was the title) was a very strange example, since the knight himself is scarcely a positive male character. Now, I understand that there is a rare, justified double standard here - that rounded female characters are of MUCH more importance to fiction than male because they have been so rare. But I think regardless you need to evaluate the role of males in a game's fictional world before condemning it's portrayal of women - some, in fact over the years probably most, games have simple, cartoonish visions of all humanity. Yes, in Double Dragon the girl exists purely to get punched in the stomach and kidnapped - but Jimmy and Billy Lee likewise exist solely to punch other men who look equally as lopsided and troglodytic as themselves. The recent Dragon's Crown has received a lot of attention for the Sorceress and Amazon models being grossly distorted and oversexualised, while the barbarian and dwarf models are just as bad.

I'm also slightly dubious about the 'massive campaign' against her. Maybe I stick to the more genteel areas of the internet, I don't know, but I've seen basically no abuse of Anita Sarkeesian. I've seen plenty of well constructed posts countering and debating things she has said and a couple of joke images (Her with some tangled up Christmas lights and a message saying "I bet the Patriarchy did this" - stuff like that) but nothing genuinely hateful. Due to the fact that she's done so much work disabling comments I can't evaluate for myself - I don't want to be unkind to her but I'm sceptical whenever somebody makes complaints about 'trolls' and 'abuse'. Having put up with plenty of abuse myself I have little patience for thin-skinned people and most people are prone to exaggerate the level of trolling around.

Again, sorry, I'm a little confused. Are you saying that because you haven't seen it in your circles, it doesn't exist? All this is documented on her website: http://www.feministfrequency.com/2012/07/image-based-harassment-and-visual-misogyny/

No, I'm saying that it's hard for me to judge because I've only heard references to it from her. I'm glad she saved it on a page so I can actually read it and evaluate it. I feel I stand corrected, as she has legitimate grievances here. Particularly here in Australia the media tend to over-react to online 'trolls' so I take these claims with a pinch of salt, but the domestic abuse simulator is quite sickening.

I tentatively disagree. She's high profile and people are aware of her, but her arguments are often poorly constructed and researched which is unfortunate. These are things that do deserve to be discussion points, but when she offers up extreme arguments that are easily countered (strawman arguments, if you will) it's difficult for her to be taken seriously by a lot of people. It's equally unfortunate that there's a perception among some of her supporters that taking issue with any of her videos is a sign of misogyny (a word bandied about far too readily these days)

I'm also slightly dubious about the 'massive campaign' against her. Maybe I stick to the more genteel areas of the internet, I don't know, but I've seen basically no abuse of Anita Sarkeesian. I've seen plenty of well constructed posts countering and debating things she has said and a couple of joke images (Her with some tangled up Christmas lights and a message saying "I bet the Patriarchy did this" - stuff like that) but nothing genuinely hateful. Due to the fact that she's done so much work disabling comments I can't evaluate for myself - I don't want to be unkind to her but I'm sceptical whenever somebody makes complaints about 'trolls' and 'abuse'. Having put up with plenty of abuse myself I have little patience for thin-skinned people and most people are prone to exaggerate the level of trolling around.

[Hotline Miami]

Whether you agree with Anita or not,  her decision to disable comments on her videos after being publicly funded to make them was/is a pretty 'meh' thing to do. Telling people how it is and closing off any chance of a debate is not the logical nor the mature way forward imo. Sure, she is likely to receive some bad comments but this also stops those who agree with her to share their thoughts, too. She has put herself on a public platform and should be scrutinised just like everybody else. I'm not saying she is wrong in her beliefs, she makes some valid points - I just feel that the conversation shouldn't be so one sided. Maybe I am wrong? I'm glad she's passionate about the whole thing, it's good to be passionate about something.

I couldn't agree more. The series was mooted as something to provoke discussion, so it's unfortunate that she is actively blocking it. Yes, she's had a high amount of negative response on YouTube but passing it off as people online being misogynistic and hostile as she has isn't strictly true - although Anita makes some good points she doesn't give any time or credit to the opposing argument (at least that in the five or so videos I have seen) so her work ends up being basically an editorial rather than any kind of exploration of the issues.

I haven't seen the third video yet, and it's partly because her second video was.. quite poor. It was largely a list of female damsels who had been killed in video games, presented as evidence of a misogynistic streak in writing. There are several problems with this:

1) The death of a female character, particularly those she lists, is generally intended to provoke a negative response from the player and motivation to partake in revenge and give the player a sense of agency. Obviously real world violence against women is deplorable, but the purpose of fictional violence against fictional violence has no connection to it.

2) Violence is the main means of interaction in video games. This is itself for sensible reasons - for a game you need obstacles to overcome and the most immediate and relateable are physical threats of violence or other danger. Over the past decade the amount of violence driven games has remained steady (possibly even increased) but storytelling came back into the fore as an expected feature for any game. They vary widely in terms of quality BUT they generally fill their goal of tying the plot and gameplay together. So, if you have written a violent game, it's going to be a violent story, surely?

I think this is demonstrated when in her list she included Hotline Miami. There is a big problem with this...

Spoiler

..and it is the fact that EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER who appears in the game is killed over the course of the game. Yes. Every single one. Including BOTH player characters.

[close]

3) The list was very long... but all that proves is how many video games have been made in the past decade. Without any measure of context or comparison - say, what percentage of AAA titles featured a woman graphically being killed - the list is absolutely meaningless. To prove this (to myself largely, but I had been contemplating a vlog) I sat down and, off the top of my read, wrote down the male characters killed off to give the player character motivation over the same period of time in video games. It wasn't THAT easy since I'm a PC exclusive gamer, but I got 30 games and I'm sure there's a bucketload more on XBOX and PS.

As I've said, with violence the main means of interaction and agency, there have been just as many cases (if not more) of supporting male NPCs that the player forms a bond with who are then killed off. There are a lot of cut corners in making game storylines because they often have one writer who needs to turn it over quickly - it's more symptomatic of the industry than any particular view towards women.


So frankly, I find it a little frustrating that she makes videos with such odd, one sided arguments when there is definitely a solid argument of sexist attitudes in games and the gaming community. It feels like she resorts to strawmen on occasions when it really isn't necessary.

Sadly, doesn't look like it's going to make it, which doesn't surprise me a lot. The pitch video was a bit weak (almost entirely Sierra nostalgia - everything on the game itself looked good but you have to wait about 4 minutes to get to it), their rewards aren't amazing, and the whole series has become fairly cult on the gaming radar. Though Jim Walls kept working until relatively recently he hasn't been involved in any games with an X factor, and the SWAT games (the closest frame of reference to the Jim Walls games for modern gamers) stopped coming out seven years ago. The average internet-goer will only be aware of THOSE games if they've watched Spoony's LPs.

It's a shame, because this looks like a pretty good game to me and I've a soft spot for Police Quest.

I'm picturing the entire dance floor being covered with industrial-sized pallets of beer kegs.

If this was their plan all along you'd have thought Tim never would have put out a release date for September this year. Likewise, if he had no idea how long the development would have taken that he wouldn't have thrown that figure out there. To state the obvious, there wouldn't be controversy over the delay if there was no delay. If they had said "We can't promise a release date at this stage, we need to work out the scope of this project, bear with us" I imagine that wouldn't have been massively popular but it would have made all this 'bringing it forward from June 2015' easier to swallow.

That's the thing, all the backlash comes from a very intangible place. It "comes off" as incompetent, it "feels like" a waste of money, it seems "a bit unfair."

I think that owes more to people being polite because they, like me, have a lot of respect for Schafer and his work so it still doesn't feel 'right' on some level to criticise him harshly, even when he, yes, seems to be screwing the pooch like you wouldn't believe. People who are unhappy with Schafer's handling of this know what their issues are and will have solid basis. Stuff like

*Clearly holding this announcement back until the Massive Chalice Kickstarter has closed
*Promising a certainty of Part 2, funded off the back of part one, when your studio has a history of financial disasters
*Appointing a buddy as producer who obstinately refuses to actually acknowledge the reality of the schedule
*Appointing another producer to cover for the fact that the first guy isn't really doing his job
*Set out to make a 2D adventure game with one animator on the team, then give most of the hard work to [what appears to be] an unpaid intern
*Hiring a team of artists with specific tasks in mind but not actually assigning them to these tasks

True, we're seeing all this through the prism 2PP is giving us and possibly they're making it look more chaotic than it is for the sake of creating drama. But there has been a hell of a lot that smacks of plain old incompetence and none of it has been made up.

The argument of "Hey, we'll get a better game, what's the problem?" is fine. To a point. What about the industry? If this game flops Double Fine will tank. The ideals that have come with the Kickstarter wave about wresting control from the publishers will take a battering. They are, after all, trying to put themselves on the map as a now totally independent studio but it's looking like an unattainable dream - every time they find a new revenue stream they sink it all into this game.

Really.. it even feels like a little bit of hubris. Ultimately Tim Schafer has taken the 'make exactly the game I want to make' notion to heart to an extent none of the other Kickstarters so far appear to have. All the others have involved a lot of compromise. Hear the burden of extra money just gets shouldered by the rest of the studio..

Man, people are really forgiving when it comes to Schafer. The money people at Double Fine (Justin and the other lady, can't remember their names) should've been running this from the get go. What seemed to be little 'kinks' early on in the 2PP docos are clearly crystalizing into big blunders.

I can imagine a lot of the shortfall comes from poor management and poor planning. From episodes on art eyebrows were raised over the fact they had four concept artists and only one animator. Furthermore, the entire game was meant to be in the 'style' of one particular artist. Yet he was not art director for the project and quickly got moved off of doing actual background art to colourise scenes by other artists to maintain his 'brushwork' and keep the style. Even though this was all done digitally and, wait for it, using software he had no experience with!

As has been said, look at the work coming from Project Eternity and Shadowrun Returns. It's... it's like it's in another stratosphere. Those guys look like they know what they're doing.