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I wouldn't call it "Obama's plan" per se.

The individual mandate (arguably the worst part of the legislation) was actually suggested back in 1993 by Republicans in response to attempts at health care reform by the Clinton administration.  The Republicans have since attempted to pass several such acts requiring individuals to purchase insurance (notably, the "Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act," the "Consumer Choice Health Security Act," and the "Healthy Americans Act").  Presidential candidate Mitt Romney actually implemented the individual mandate in Massachusetts, so to believe that this wouldn't have happened nationwide if he had won the presidency is ludicrous.  The current "Affordable Care Act" is in fact modeled after the Romney plan.  Obama has historically been opposed to the individual mandate.  The Republicans did not begin to oppose it until after Obama was convinced to accept it himself.

Unfortunately, better (more liberal) plans like the "United States National Health Care Act" (also known as "Medicare for All", and similar to universal health care plans in Canada and the UK), would not have passed through the Senate because of opposition from conservatives.  The Republicans have consistently gone out of their way to oppose the President, and the current shutdown of the government is no different.

Sadly, it doesn't look like there is going to be any change in the law, and the "Affordable Care Act" will be going into action.  This means that I will be forced to pay for unaffordable health care, or be taxed an amount I cannot afford for refusing to purchase.  I live in Georgia, which has rejected the expanded Medicaid.  I cannot afford to pay (8% of my income is a lot of money to me), and even an inexpensive plan with subsidies would not cover my deductible, leaving me paying for both insurance and my heath care costs (as far as I can tell from the information I've gathered).

Having said all of that, I am against the "Affordable Care Act" on the grounds of the individual mandate alone.  It is otherwise a good plan, but of course, nowhere near as good as the "Medicare for All" plan, or similar universal health care plans.  I would like to see the individual mandate stricken from the law.  Better still, I would love to see the "United States National Health Care Act" implemented.  I believe that health care is on par with police and fire services and, as such, should be offered universally to all Americans.

Oh, and I'd love to move (preferably back to Canada, where I was born), but I can't afford that either.

Things like being aware that getting too drunk to take care of yourself makes you extremely vulnerable to sexual assault

Of course, no-one has ever had their moderate amount of drinks spiked...

That's a completely separate issue.  But, one way to handle this would be to not leave your drinks unattended.

This is a track I made last year
Original

and here is the Evolved Version

That's really well done!  The original was already pretty cool, but you've done a good job 'evolving' it. 

I was about finished with mine, but I think I'll take the time to tweak it some more now that I see what the competition is like.  Still a couple of days left!

It's a really cool competition, and I guess I don't understand the desire to have so few of them.

Once it becomes a regular thing, every month or every other month, people will start to disregard the event thinking I'll join on the next one. Each contest having fewer and fewer contestants until it turns into the low popularity turnout of MAGS (which I still think should be an every other month thing, but that's a different conversation).

Once a year tops it should be. I have spoken. It is done. Make it so.

OK, I can see the logic of not having it too often, but once a year is too much in my opinion. 

MAGS is our regular OROW. Except you can have more than one room...and more than one week.

OROWs happen when they happen. We've just recently had one, though, so it might be a while before the next one. Or not.

Once or twice a year is the usual.

So it's the same, only completely different... 

There's something quite unique about OROW.  There's no theme beyond One Room.  There's only one week, so it feels more like a fast paced game jam than a monthly project.  One Room games also have a certain charm.

I wouldn't say that last one was recent, it was at the beginning of July.  That was 3 months ago!  I'd like to see it at least twice a year, personally.  It's a really cool competition, and I guess I don't understand the desire to have so few of them.

[Preference]

This was tough.  So many good entries.

1. Preference - Tabata
    - Absolutely beautiful work, especially with the colors coming off of the candle.  Overall, just gorgeous.
2. Message - Khris
    - The world as I'd like to see it as well.  This is a great piece on its own, but I love the message here.

I'd also like to give a personal honorable mention to Stupot+, gameboy, and selmiak.  You guys did a wonderful job, and made voting require some thought.

Having said that, I think everyone did really well.  I'm happy to see such good work here.

The discussion isn't whether women can/should protect themselves - there are tons of ways for women to defend themselves against rapists - the issue is that those tips people like to bring up "don't dress challengingly", "don't be flirty" etc keep being used in courts as circumstantial evidence against the victim. Saying that we need to change focus here has nothing whatsoever to do with misogyny.

I think that it is vitally important to remove these prevention tips from being used as a rape defense in the courtroom.  They are not meant to be used in that setting, and doing so effectively puts unwarranted blame on the victims.  The tips are useful, but should the victims choose to ignore the tips, there is not suddenly an excuse for rapists to conduct their abuse.

I don't think that all rapists are necesseraliy sociopaths - I think many are born in the heat of the moment; sexual frustration, peer pressure - how lonely, angry men communicate with each other, and lots of other factors that originate in a patriarchal society. I think it's excellent that we turn the table around and direct rape prevention "tips" to the potential perpetrators instead of the victims.

Take a look at certain extremely male-chauvinist developing regions, where rape is a basically a means of warfaring - are all those men sociopaths, entirely beyond education and improvement? Or is it a matter of attitude towards women? Of objectification?

I agree here, and I think this further highlights the need to identify the psychology and behavior of potential rapists in order to better fight against rape culture.

I'm pretty occupied these days. What about the others? How about we organize ATC for the next year's summer holidays?

That sounds like a good plan.

And while we're tossing ideas around, I'll suggest another SWARMAGS.  If anyone wants the task of organizing it, I'd certainly join.

As for OROW, I'd love to participate.  I think we should get one going again soon.  I'd love to see it as a more regular event.

That's fantastic!  Thanks for posting this playful version!

This whole "teach men not to rape" type stuff is insulting, foolish and ineffective.
It's insulting because 98% of men *don't rape*.
it's ineffective because you can't "educate" the other 2% of sociopathic nutcases.
and it's foolish because it teaches women that their rapist might have just made a mistake and they didn't fully understand because they hadn't been educated on the issue. Women might be much more likely to report their rapist if they knew he has almost certainly done this before and will do it again.

It's not so much that we need to teach men not to rape as it is that we need to learn to identify the sociopathic behaviors of sexual assailants before they take action.

And now onto the topic of blame and cause.  If a rapist is present, and they are looking at potential targets, it is true that they might choose anyone regardless of their attire.  Rape occurs in countries like Egypt where many victims are covered considerably by western standards, so provocative dress itself is not going to cause someone to rape you.  However, if one potential target is dressed or is behaving considerably more provocatively, they might be more at risk than the others.  Their choice of outfit is not going to cause anyone to rape them, nor are they to blame if they are raped, but they may have been a less attractive target had they chosen to dress or behave more conservatively.  It's a sad and unfortunate truth.  I'm a supporter of a woman's choice to dress and act as she sees fit, but I also have the protective instinct to warn them of the potential consequences of their choices should a sociopathic sexual assailant be present.

Good interview, thanks for posting!

Very informative and interesting.  It's nice to get in the heads of those who are successful among us.

[ALWAYS]

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 don't think that this is an attempt to blame the victim, or shift the responsibility on them.  The assailant is always, ALWAYS to blame.

I see this as an effort to help them identify what makes someone a more likely target.  I agree that there is never a choice of clothing that invites rape, but there are certainly choices that look like a bulls-eye in the eyes of a rapist, and people should at least be aware of this.

Also, I'll emphasize that these tips should only be one part of a larger effort against sexual assault.

As I said before, rape prevention tips for potential victims are certainly helpful.  Victims are not always women, so it would be nice to see similar tips for men and children.  There should also be more encouragement to speak out against attackers.

The issue with a campaign targeting rapists is that there is currently no effective method.  As a society, we should continue to examine this so that we can come up with something that works better.  We need to get to the root of the problem.  Simply saying "don't rape people" isn't really helping anything.  I don't think that first poster is particularly effective (actually, I find it to be an attempt at humor that makes light of rape).  The next posters are better, because they can at least empower others to take action where they might not otherwise, but they still don't do the job.  I don't think this is an issue that can be solved by posters.

Either way, I don't think there is a problem with continuing to educate people that sexual assault is unacceptable.  Teaching potential abusers (not always men) not to rape will always be a valuable service, and in the future I hope that the results will improve along with the methods.

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?

While I largely agree that these will help to stop women from being victimized, the issue is that these are rape prevention tips for the victim.  They are all completely valid, and as Snarky points out, they mirror tips that we give to people to prevent their victimization in a variety of contexts.

But shouldn't we be targeting our rape prevention efforts on the perpetrators as well?  We make efforts to identify the causes of other crimes, but there doesn't seem to be as much discussion of this in regards to rape (although I have seen more of this recently).  How do we prevent people from raping others (aside from making it illegal and shameful)?  How can we discourage this behavior, or teach that it is unacceptable?  Is there a way to identify possible rapists and perhaps offer them an outlet for their sexual aggression?  Are there triggers that cause this behavior to manifest, and if so, what can we do to eliminate them from society?

Many would say that our culture is over-sexualized, and that the media is a large contributor, but I've read that sexual assault is far more prevalent in China and India where the media isn't nearly as openly sexual as it is here.  In both countries, sex is still quite a taboo topic (although that has been changing in recent years).  Those countries also have much larger percentages of men vs women (thanks to population control efforts), and while correlation cannot be said to be causation, this gender ratio could go a long way to helping us to understand the situation.

Anyways, I don't have any solutions here, merely observations.  But I feel that the responsibility of fixing this problem lies as much with the rapists as with the victims, if not more.

Do you have any evidence for this claim? (I can't imagine why anyone would want to play an adventure game in a window, any more than watch a movie in a window.)

I just hate the black stripes on the side of the screen.

I like the immersion of playing in full screen, black stripes or not.  I hate seeing my desktop around the game, it's distracting.

This is indeed sad, but sadder still is the cancelled 1313.  Not as relevant to these forums, I'm guessing, but all the same it is a shame.

Unity does seem to have a culture of commercialism that other engines don't. I assume that's down to the fact that the unity devs made a "Marketplace" system available very early on.
It's a culture I don't find very friendly though.

Agreed, especially with all of the costs of just getting a full version of Unity with relevant licensing.

I do applaud the effort, however, and hope that this is successful.

PHEW! It's getting hot in here!

Magnificent.

It's easy to say "she should have gone to the police instead".
Whoever thinks that, did you ever hear/read why victims don't do that, especially not right after? I'm not going to go into it, because if you haven't, why are you participating in this discussion...?

Which goes back to my point that we should work to eliminate these stigmas.  People should not be made to feel shame, or self-blame, or any other negative feelings for reporting such a crime.  People should not be villainized for reporting a rape to the police.  I feel that this is impeding due process and perhaps even exacerbating the instances that this thread is debating in which public, mostly unprovable statements are made far after the fact.

I'm glad she found the courage to finally say something, but it is a shame that it may be too late (or lack sufficient evidence) to convict, and that it may be possible to convict her of defamation of character.

I can see a definite improvement with the newest version.  It seems brighter without sacrificing the dark feel you were going for.