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I was never into the L5R CCG, I knew about the RPG, and really liked the miniatures, it was nearly the only supplier of Samurai figures in 28mm at the time.

As I understand it the narrative of the game was considered by the players, to be just as important as the deck building and playing aspect. With lore changes being impacted by organized play.

Sarkeesian would probably characterize that as a "male constructionist power fantasy" not regarding that one of the most powerful characters in the lore and game is a woman, and she would decry dragons as "deep seated fascination with phallic iconography", because of the serpent-like portrayal of Asian-style dragons.


... which is why we can't have nice things.

 Manchu wrote:
I agree it wan't a universally beloved tradition. But it was a tradition. It was something practiced to create a sense of unity and participation. It was successful for some and a non-issue for others. But it had never been a justification of 20th-century Japanese war crimes until one looney racist demanded that it was and a bumbling reviewer misunderstood this and rebroadcast it as an issue of cultural insensitivity. That is what killed it, not shy people who would prefer to avoid yelling in public.

The final cause of death isn't the issue, it's why FFG gave in so easily. Looking at how easy it was to kill something that wasn't very popular in the first place doesn't tell you how easy it would be to do the same against something that is actually popular. Try the same tactic against GW and demand that space marines be removed because having an all-male army is sexist and I guarantee that GW isn't going to care one bit about what the critics have to say.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
The end result is dismissing the severity of rape, looking for anyone to blame except the rapist.

Heck, right now, there's some people in Europe who are desperately being prevented from blaming the rapists.

Oh good, please explain what Europe is like...

Just for reference, in FFG's relaunch the same powerful female characters are still around and at least one important, powerful character was genderswapped to be female, without changing the character's love interest (making this character a woman sexually attracted to another woman). No complaints on my part, she (Doji Hotaru) is one of my favorite characters in new L5R (and I'm a Lion btw).

Ben2 wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Well this thread was ok while it lasted.

I thought the thread went how I thought it would go, and illustrates why there aren't a lot of female posters on Dakka.

Honestly we had female posters once, now they barely comment and usually avoid these discussion because what's the point really?

I can agree that GW is unlikely to budge on all-male SMs. The company is not vulnerable on that front. Extortionists have to pick their targets for weakness.

I'm not really feeling Tentacle Benito's pain.

You make a game that deliberately references tentacle Hentai and you're going to have problems, even if your game doesn't include nudity or anything in and of itself nasty.

You push the edge, it gets you free publicity and that usually works out to your benefit. But sometimes whatever private company you're working with decides they're not cool with it (possibly helped along by irate advocates), and that is their call. Find another venue.

Sorry. If you make a game that is called "march to the ovens" with an iron cross on it, you deserve every bit of hate you get, even if it is about a struggling early morning muffin baker.

KS did an instant 180 on Tentacle Bento. It had been listed as one of their promoted products in the morning and they pulled the plug by the afternoon.

As far as edgy goes, Tentacle Bento just wasn't.

 Manchu wrote:
I can agree that GW is unlikely to budge on all-male SMs. The company is not vulnerable on that front. Extortionists have to pick their targets for weakness.

But then what exactly are we supposed to be afraid of? If the "extortionists" can only change the weakest targets, the things we care the least about, why is this a major issue? Someone previously had it right. If you had to make a list of the top 10 threats to video games "no more bikini outfits" isn't going to rank anywhere near day one DLC and loot crates and such.

Who is this "we" that cares the least about XYZ?

I mean, presumably you don't care about XYZ but I do, or vice versa.

I backed Tentacle Bento and eventually managed to get a copy. This was a little game by a little (esp at the time) publisher. It being vulnerable to the flakeyness of Kickstarter doesn't mean "we" care the least about it.

 Manchu wrote:
KS did an instant 180 on Tentacle Bento. It had been listed as one of their promoted products in the morning and they pulled the plug by the afternoon.

As far as edgy goes, Tentacle Bento just wasn't.

Could be someone showed them a few select "tentacle" images and they realized just what the joke was. The rapid 180 suggests it wasn't a hard decision. I admit some concern about the power of internet pressure groups (like the Gamergate crowd for example, or Anita and co), but as you said, they mostly go after low hanging fruit.

kestral, I will certainly grant you that I don't think it is something that happens every day.

But it is memorably irksome when it does happen!

 Peregrine wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
I can agree that GW is unlikely to budge on all-male SMs. The company is not vulnerable on that front. Extortionists have to pick their targets for weakness.

But then what exactly are we supposed to be afraid of? If the "extortionists" can only change the weakest targets, the things we care the least about, why is this a major issue? Someone previously had it right. If you had to make a list of the top 10 threats to video games "no more bikini outfits" isn't going to rank anywhere near day one DLC and loot crates and such.

We're supposed to be afraid of the patriarchy, duh.

 Manchu wrote:
kestral, I will certainly grant you that I don't think it is something that happens every day.

But it is memorably irksome when it does happen!

I'd have been irked if TGG2 had been axed. Although not having received my figures yet, maybe they would have been doing me a favor.

 Manchu wrote:
Who is this "we" that cares the least about XYZ?

The community. You've given examples of a niche-market game that still got published, and FFG killing off something that, by your own admission, most players didn't care about. Yeah, it sucks if you're one of the minority who does care, but change happens all the time and sometimes people don't like it. The hobby as a whole will continue on, and is in no danger. It's not like the community stopped to consider the feelings of the people who enjoyed loot crates when they were celebrating killing them off by lobbying EA into making changes with a massive bad publicity campaign.

So "community" means "the majority." And while it sucks that minorities lose out, it does not ultimately matter so long as the majority is on board. Is that the argument?

 Manchu wrote:
So "community" means "the majority." And while it sucks that minorities lose out, it does not ultimately matter. Is that the argument?

No, community means the community. A majority of the community didn't care about the chant. And no, it doesn't really matter when small parts of the community lose out, not compared to the hyperbolic claims of impending censorship and destruction of the hobby. This is not an existential threat to the games we love, it's the normal changes that happen all of the time. Some people don't like them, and there's nothing you can do about it. You might as well complain that GW giving in to criticism and making conscripts 4ppm was the dystopian future we have all feared, where the poor martyred IG players have lost everything.

You say 'no' but don't offer an alternative explanation. In fact, you doubled down on the irrelevance of minorities losing out. I think we probably effectively agree on that issue when it comes to, say, FFG having a different scale for Legion compared to Imperial Assault. I guess it sucks that people who wanted to use their Imperial Assault models in Legion feel like they can't but it doesn't matter to Legion's success.

But that's not the issue to hand, regarding the use of radical political tactics to embarass companies into doing whatever it is some activist wants. On that point, I think it's also not an existential threat, at least not directly, but so long as we're talking about community, where that term includes everyone and not just the majority, the indirect threat of hyper polarization resulting from such tactics bothers me.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
So into this fragile time and in the context of a backhanded review we blunderinly inject a potential narrative explosion via an influenced with a relatuvely huge following. No one put a gun to Christian Petersen's head but the situation was clearly, this is not a hill we should die on. Esepcially since the hill was a molehill that could easily become a mountain.

But you can also look at it the other way around. FFG was in a delicate situation with a customer base wary of their beloved game's future. Why pick removing the chant as the hill to die on and accept a backlash from their existing customers?

I think the issue is the whole idea that something as stupid as "banzai controversy" could become "hill to die on".
"Banzai" simply means "hooray" and has nothing to do with Japanese crimes against humanity in WW2. In fact whole expression is originally a Chinese custom.

One could just as well argue that "For the Emperor!" in 40k is also promoting Japanese imperialism. Where do we draw the line that this claim is too stupid?

Part of me can't help but respect Anita for keeping this going. I remember back when "those" videos came out. It just looked like badly made content, with cherry-picked studies and examples and would thus quickly head into obscurity again. The fact that she's still a thing so much time later is frankly baffling.

It is a shame that she's invading Tabletop now tough. She inevitably turns any sort of environment into one where there are only two sides, and everybody is left dumber for it.

On the other hand, it probably shouldnt be too surprising. It was only a matter of time before this whole stupidity dipped over from video games into practically everything else you can imagine.

 Manchu wrote:
You say 'no' but don't offer an alternative explanation.

I did. "Community" means all of the players, not just the majority. The majority is a subset of the community. The community, surveyed as a whole, did not care about XYZ feature.

But that's not the issue to hand, regarding the use of radical political tactics to embarass companies into doing whatever it is some activist wants.

How is that any different from anything else people do to drive change? I mean, angry gamers used the same tactics to force EA to drop loot crates from the latest Battlefront game. They blew it up into a huge PR debacle, pressured Disney with the threat of bad PR to encourage them to say "drop loot crates or lose the license", and forced EA to give in to their demands. And yet this is celebrated as a victory for the community, with no concern for the people (few as they may be) who liked loot crates and are sad to see them go. Do you think that this was inappropriate, and the anti-loot-crates players should have made their own game instead of complaining about the game someone else likes?

On that point, I think it's also not an existential threat, at least not directly, but so long as we're talking about community, where that term includes everyone and not just the majority, the indirect threat of hyper polarization resulting from such tactics bothers me.

So what, people should just shut up about things they don't like about a game because it might be polarizing if they are honest about it? What happened to this supposed free speech issue, where pressure to stay quiet about something is bad?

Stuebi wrote:
turns any sort of environment into one where there are only two sides, and everybody is left dumber for it

Yeah, this is my concern. The GamerGate controversy was overhwhelmimgly a bad moment IMO.

IME it's not a bad thing to stay quiet about something you don't like so long as the only way you can think to express yourself is by slandering a lot of other people. In a world with only two sides, I have to pick which of the slanderers with whom I am least embarassed to ally? No thanks, I will pass on this false dichotomy.

And I think vague terms like "community" are code words for that dichotomy.

Stuebi wrote:
Part of me can't help but respect Anita for keeping this going. I remember back when "those" videos came out. It just looked like badly made content, with cherry-picked studies and examples and would thus quickly head into obscurity again. The fact that she's still a thing so much time later is frankly baffling.

It is a shame that she's invading Tabletop now tough. She inevitably turns any sort of environment into one where there are only two sides, and everybody is left dumber for it.

On the other hand, it probably shouldnt be too surprising. It was only a matter of time before this whole stupidity dipped over from video games into practically everything else you can imagine.

Eeeeh. She tried to run another crowdfunding scam involving an animated series about women in history but people had caught on by that point so it wasn't very successful if I recall. (Edit: Iwas wrong, she raised $200,000 for "post-production". What is wrong with people?)

She's probably decided to hit up the tabletop game market because no other activists have really managed to get their foot in the door the same way as she did with the video game industry. She's probably looking to get hired as a "consultant" like EA did when they hired her to talk to DICE.

Backfire, I guess the line in question is not a line in the sand between reasonablness and absurdity but a line drawn between two points, having your good name threatened by radicals and defusing the blackmail, and that line is going to be the shortest distance/path of least resistance, which can come out to caving to ignorance and racism and absurdity.

 Manchu wrote:
IME it's not a bad thing to stay quiet about something you don't like so long as the only way you can think to express yourself is by slandering a lot of other people. In a world with only two sides, I have to pick which of the slanderers with whom I am least embarassed to ally? No thanks, I will pass on this false dichotomy.

Calling it "slander" implies that the criticism is not true. This is clearly something we do not agree on.

And I think vague terms like "community" are code words for that dichotomy.

Do you have a better term for "the group of people who typically show up at a L5R tournament and participate in activities related to it"? Because it sure seems like "community" is the correct word there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, do you have any comment on the EA/Battlefront example? Was this a glorious triumph to celebrate, or an example of extortion and bad behavior that we should condemn?

SimLife, I think you are on the right track. Smells like career development.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think the people who buy your product and participate in your marketing events are best described as your customer base. That probably makes the 'only the majority matters' argument a bit clearer.

I have laid out the difference between what I call extortion and product criticism. The EA example clearly fits in the latter category.

 Manchu wrote:
I think the people who buy your product and participate in your marketing events are best described as your customer base. That probably makes the 'only the majority matters' argument a bit clearer.

That's not really the same, because people in the customer base don't necessarily participate (especially in the context of organized play events). For example, a person buying L5R as a gift is in the customer base but is not part of the community. Inversely, a person who has a bunch of old stuff and keeps playing without buying new products is part of the community, but not part of the customer base.

I have laid out the difference between what I call extortion and product criticism. The EA example clearly fits in the latter category.

So, making a massive show of outrage with the explicitly stated intent of giving Disney a PR debacle to deal with, hopefully resulting in Disney telling EA to cut loot crates or lose the Star Wars license as the easiest means of defusing the PR debacle, is just "product criticism"? How is that any different from the things you call extortion?

 Manchu wrote:
Backfire, I guess the line in question is not a line in the sand between reasonablness and absurdity but a line drawn between two points, having your good name threatened by radicals and defusing the blackmail, and that line is going to be the shortest distance/path of least resistance, which can come out to caving to ignorance and racism and absurdity.

Back in the '90s some people raised a fit over demons and occult symbols in Magic: the Gathering. As a result, WotC removed all cards with the word 'demon' in it, pentagrams from card art and any card which mimicked occult (like Contract from Below).
Nowadays demons are occult references are back. What changed? The people who were offended by those cards still exist, WotC simply decided they were no longer important enough for their opinion to matter. It was no longer trendy to raise moral panics over occult references.

 Manchu wrote:

Stuebi wrote:
turns any sort of environment into one where there are only two sides, and everybody is left dumber for it

Yeah, this is my concern. The GamerGate controversy was overhwhelmimgly a bad moment IMO.

IME it's not a bad thing to stay quiet about something you don't like so long as the only way you can think to express yourself is by slandering a lot of other people. In a world with only two sides, I have to pick which of the slanderers with whom I am least embarassed to ally? No thanks, I will pass on this false dichotomy.

And I think vague terms like "community" are code words for that dichotomy.

It's not the term that's the problem. It's the fact that we've reached a point where a single line, post, tweet or response labels people forever.

I agree, GG was awful. Not because I disagree with either side. But because ever since there has been a big trench in the middle of places I used to go for discussing things. Everyone is either red or blue. You're not allowed to be yellow or green.

You're either a big smelly basement-dweller, dedicating every fibre of your being for hating women, and fighting to ensure that they continue to be objectified, threatened, and kept out of certain hobbies. Or you are a screeching White Knight/Feminist, doing the exact opposite by hating men and destroying everything they love.

I remember back when "Echochamber" forums were the exception, not the rule. I also remember a time when I could go Online without being put into a box and labeled a variety of insulsts by people who have never met, or talked to me.

Not being terribly up on "Gamergate" or this Anita Sarkosian person, I googled "Worst Anita S quotes" to see just how bad she was After all, if you want to know the worst about someone, you can be sure their enemies will have the dirt on them. This was the first result:

https://ageofshitlords.com/the-10-dumbest-things-anita-sarkeesian-has-said

Uhh - well, I wasn't that impressed by the outrage. I didn't see her saying "All gamers are sexist" or "All men Suck". While I can see why some of those quotes might trigger a person who is big into men's rights, they are overall pretty minimal. If they're freaking you out, you must have a much tamer female friends on facebook than I do.

Then I considered her possible threat to my hobby. Not gonna lie - I like my 28mm heroic boobs, although I disapprove of 35mm ones.. It is quite likely she wouldn't approve of some my armies on any one of a number of grounds. So what? My grandmother wouldn't approve either. Does it mean either she or I is an awful person? Not really. Might she argue that miniatures companies should produce more sensibly dressed female figures or even, (Horror of Horrors) no topless ones? Sure. Here's the thing though - when I first started collecting sketchy miniatures I had to work at finding them. Now I can't even keep up with the steady stream of companies vying for my tiny harem budget. More sensible heroines? Sure. I like more realistic figures in some contexts. I very much doubt my access to smexy 28mm figures will be curtailed even slightly while more sensible ones are produced in addition. I think it will improve the range of figures I have access to. Miniatures companies are gonna keep expanding to reach more markets - both the topless and the sensible.

Could she or her pals dox me, spam my topless heroines over my work account and cause me serious problems or even ruin - eh, maybe. But that is pure gamegate crap and the kind of risk you run doing anything on the internet even vaguely off color.

Is she gonna trash Manufacturia and Brother Vinni? Probably. And they'll be crying all the way to the bank from the free publicity. Try Ebaying "28mm Female" and see what comes up. And frankly, although I sort of like some of their stuff, it isn't unreasonable to trash them. The day somebody can't say "Gee, I find Manufacturia pretty sick" without being accused of trying to destroy a hobby is a sad day. Might she try to run Manufacturia off of Ebay? Sure. Might slow down their progress to becoming millionaires a bit. I think people have a right to speak up about what they see as objectionable as long as it stays at the "speech" level. Society can, and collectively should, enforce some standards through peer pressure. Does that mean I'll never feel comfortable parading my ladies at the local art show? Sure, and that bothers me not at all.