Category Archives: Video Games

Sexism in Geek Culture, with a look at Comics

In the most recent Coming Out of the Basement Podcast, we discuss sexism in geek culture, with a bit of a closer look at comics (along with the Mass Effect 3 ending). For the first subject, I had enough sources and examples that I thought it made sense to do a post on the topic.

I meant to mention three areas:

  1. the portrayal of women in geek culture media (comics, games, RPGs, etc.)
  2. the treatment of women in geek culture in real life situations, and
  3. women in positions of authority in the industries (writers/artists/creators/editors/etc.).

Lots more below.
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COTB 003 – On Sexism in Comics and Mass Effect 3 ending

Carlos and BJ discuss various forms of sexism in geek culture including comics, video games, and professional competitive gaming. Finally they discuss the ending of Mass Effect 3 and all the drama surrounding this fan reaction.

[Edit from CJ: And a friend mentioned we might want to mention a trigger warning, which is a good idea and I apologize for not doing so in the first place. We do talk about violence against women, including sexual violence.]

Odds and Ends

Like I mentioned in our just-released Episode 2, I’m not nearly as good as self-promotion or promotion as BJ is. :P A book I worked on actually came out the day we did our first podcast, but I felt a bit odd about bringing it up (so didn’t):

Open Design’s Midgard Bestiary for Pathfinder, with lead developer Adam Daigle. Daigle is an awesome monster developer who worked on all of Paizo’s Bestiaries and a host of Open Design and other materials- and as of last month was officially hired by Paizo and relocated from Austin to Seattle. And although I am biased, I gotta say that the book is one darned cool monster book. I’d get it without my contributions. ^_^ (I did include the idea of kobolds riding giant sea turtles, though! :P As well as other stuff.)

On the Kickstarter front: A few hours for a Gaming Paper adventure (plus gaming paper, a nifty gaming resource), and a few days for this excellent looking Viking-theme video game, The Banner Saga. Both look super cool. And today was the launch of Open Design’s new Kickstarter-backed project, Midgard Tales, which is going to be awesome. The lead on this one is Christina Stiles, who is both a great designer and really nice. I’m definitely backing, and if I can make the time I’m definitely contributing.

Last minute Geek Christmas Gifts already?

Cripes, it’s Christmas already. What’s going on? Well, here’s gift suggestions- maybe for your geek friends, maybe for you.

Of course, I expect lots of folks around these parts are playing Skyrim or Star Wars: The Old Republic. I’m certainly doing the latter at the moment. The only problem looking at those as gifts is that it is incredibly likely your fans of the material already have them. ^^ But it wouldn’t hurt to check. Also, the Humble Indie Bundle 4 looks great, and half the profits go to charity.

Hey, look- The Guild Season Five is now out, just in time for Christmas.

Right Stuf Anime is having a bunch of sales. Of particular note is the remastered Utena DVD box sets. The series had been hard to find for awhile. It’s one of my wife’s favorites. I may have picked up the Soul Eater holiday package…

For the budding RPGer, or someone who might want a bit simpler rule set, Pathfinder’s Beginner Box has been popular. And the Bestiary 3 was just released! Another interesting up and coming d20 game seems to be Legend. It’s a little over the top at times, but it’s an interesting approach to mixing classes, races, and specialties via mix-and-match tracks. That is, you can take a bit of ranger, combine it with a bit of steampunk robot-making, and be a dragon. Or you can be an elven ranger with all of its ranger-y goodness. (I suspect the former option might be more popular, but ya never know.) ^_^ Plus, right now all proceeds go to the Child’s Play charity. Nice. And lest I forget, although I haven’t had the opportunity to play it, the 3rd edition of Mutants and Masterminds sounds fun.

For the eBook fantasy readers out there, check out B. Justin Shier’s Zero Sight and its sequel, Zero Sum. Check out Zachary Rawlin’s The Academy. Both are marketed YA, but fun reads. Of course, if you haven’t picked up Sanderson’s Way of Kings, that’s fun. And Rothfuss’s Name of the Wind and its sequel, The Wise Man’s Fear. If you’d like RPG tie-ins, Paizo’s James Sutter’s Death’s Heretic is really very good.

Come to think of it, I can recommend books forever. =P

Oh, and I did pick up Betrayal at House on the Hill, for board gaming goodness…

And who can go wrong with a squishable Narhwal? (Picked one up for Q, it’s great. ^_^)

Other suggestions?

Board Game Updates

My wife and I were married on Halloween 8 years ago, and yes, we had a costume wedding. Every year since then we’ve had a themed low-key Halloween party where we often play games and provide chicfila and other food and drinkstuffs. She’s really great at both costumes and decorating, while I’m mostly along for the ride in those areas. Last year she made a giant glow in the dark monster octopus which hung from the ceiling of our entryway, tentacles spreading through all over, gaping maw towards the front door. It looked pretty awesome under the blacklights. ^^ Halloween is our favorite holiday.

I and some friends have picked up a few board games that were recommended by several people, among them our resident boardgame expert (who owns hundreds of games, including many antiques). One of them was a game that Derek mentioned awhile back, Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer. Interestingly, it also has an iPad app, which has been really useful in learning how to play the game. (Slight aside: recently acquired an iPad, and I’ve been using it constantly. Used it as my sole computer at a conference in New Orleans, and it worked out beautifully. Looking for more apps, so feel free to offer suggestions.)

Some friends of ours picked up Ghost Stories. Cooperative games are relatively rare, so they were pretty excited to get this one. The couple that bought it have been trying it out on their own, and they say it’s been fun. I like the premise- your group needs to stop an evil undead creature from resurrecting in this Asian-themed game, and you cooperate to fight off waves of invading spirits. Looking forward to it. The other coop game they’ll bring is Pandemic, which we’ve had fun with in the past, fighting off virulent disease outbreaks around the world (hmm… we could show Contagion in the background when that comes out…)

I also picked up Elder Sign (go cthulhu!) and Nightfall (horror competitive card game), but I haven’t had a chance to play them yet. ^_^ We’ll probably break ’em out at the party itself.

One the video game front, I’ve been playing League of Legends… eagerly awaiting the Old Republic, though!

A Long, Strange Trip.

As mentioned here, my laptop has been angry with me for going on 4 months or so.  This cause me to retreat away from my usual comfort space of Team Fortress 2 and MMOs, and try to find ways to amuse myself.  I went two totally different directions – Facebook games, and diving back in the Xbox 360.  It’s come back now, in time for me to test SW:TOR and get back in to WoW for Cataclysm, but the damage has been done.

Facebook games are what they are.  I found a couple nice card based ones that occupy me well enough (Eredan and Urban Rivals, primarily, though Clash and Tyrant are in there too).  It’s the 360 part that’s really interesting to me….

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Blog Hijack!

I know, I know.  I post a burst, talk about how I’m gonna do more, and disappear.  Then return to hijack.

I do actually have a post coming up on the strange trip I’ve been on for the past 3-4 months.  See, my laptop (an ASUS G50vt from Best Buy) went wacky on me.  Of a sudden, possibly tied to power issues, possibly not, my laptop started get hot.  Like, super hot.  When I bought it, it had a warning that said “This is a notebook, not a laptop.  Don’t put it on your lap.  It’ll light your junk on fire.”  Something like that, I forget the exact words.  Maybe it said don’t put it on a flat surface.  Whatever. 

So it’s always run hot.  It’s a gaming laptop.  I expected it to be hot – it’s cramming a fair chunk of power in a portable(ish) box.  But now it was going up to 200-220 degrees pretty much instantly on launching a game.  Mass Effect 2 was unplayable due to stuttering.  I could play maybe 10 minutes of TF2. 

This happened 12 months ago or so, when it was under warranty, and I sent it off to Asus.  They fixed it (they blew it out and reapplied the thermal paste from what I can tell).  Now it’s not under warranty.  So it’s been sitting idle (mostly) for months, which led me to the land of Xbox Live (a scary place), found me a spectacular new community (Sword and Shield Gaming, aka SSG) that Im proud to have become a part of, and gotten me a new gamertag (SSG Wookiee) – but that’s for later.

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In an RPG State of Mind

We’ve been pretty poor at updating the Basement, and for that I apologize. I’ll try to do some more posts, particularly since I’ve recently found myself scrutinizing the RPG industry quite a bit, recently. I’m in three games at the moment, and even at 1/mo each, it’s a lot to balance with work and school and publishing and all that jazz. Gaming wise, I’m in two 4E Dark Sun campaigns, and I’ll soon be running a Pathfinder game. Some interesting things in recent days:

*WotC’s character builder is going online-only in a Silverlight based application tomorrow. I have the luxury of being a yearly subscriber, for now, and this change doesn’t really directly affect me. It does affect other people in my gaming group, however, and I’m not sure what they’re going to do. (And Silverlight? Really?) Judging from the posts on WotC’s and some other sites, a lot of people aren’t very happy about this change. Even I have to agree that WotC’s communication has been pretty abysmal. I’m pretty sure this is due to Hasbro’s corporate structure, but I have to say I prefer the communication from Paizo. Speaking of Paizo…

*I don’t know if I wrote about this before, but I had been running a game for the females in one of my groups of friends, who decided to ditch the guys and do their own thing for awhile. It was a 4E game, and I like to think it was pretty successful. A new baby/move and work have taken two of the six players, and we’ve gotten one new player in the game. With that change, we decided to start a new game, and we’re going with Pathfinder. I’ve been dying to play Pathfinder for awhile now, and the CB change has made it so that they don’t feel that they’re particularly tied to 4E. I started a campaign site on Obsidian Portal; you can see it if you’re my friend there. I picked up a whole lot of Pathfinder RPG material in the last few days, after subscribing to their latest Adventure Path- and that is a fascinating business model that I’ll ask you all about some time. It looks like I’ll be mixing in some Arcana Unearthed/Evolved in the game as well. Speaking of Arcana Unearthed…

*Met Monte Cook again at an event hosted by Dragon’s Lair this past weekend. Qyandri often accuses me of being a Monte Cook fanboy, and as I was trying to decide which books of his to take to DL for him to sign, I had to somewhat agree. =P (I decided on Monte Cook’s Arcana Evolved, Monte Cook’s World of Darkness, and Ptolus.) I also expected our very own Basement’s Michael to show up with his and Derek’s AE publications at some point. ;) Monte Cook was quite nice, and I also met or saw a host of other game designers that are apparently living in Austin. Chris Pramas, Adam Daigle, Brandon Hodge- all seemed like very cool folk. Speaking of Monte Cook…

*I unfortunately hadn’t been paying enough attention to my dungeonaday.com charter membership since I hadn’t been running anything regularly, but went back to it in preparation for the PF game. It looks like Stan! and the folk over at Super Genius Games are taking over a lot of the day to day activities there. Monte Cook assures everyone that he’s still contributing and ultimately going over everything, but I wonder what that particular change portends, if anything… Speaking of changes…

*Playing WoW again, in the library guild on the Aerie Peak server, with Qyandri. We’ve also brought along our housemate and a bunch of other friends, so Austin is currently a bit overrepresented in the library guild. ;) The Cataclysm changes have us worried, though, so we’ll see how that goes…

How Games Talk to Us

Been meaning to respond to Enrique’s comments on what appeals to us in games for awhile. Finally found a moment to breathe and decided to post this up rather than, you know, breathing.

It’s a breakdown of what I see as the four core tasks that constitute most gaming experiences. I’ll leave a link to the full article, but for  a tease, here’s the Cartesian graph that finally let me start wrapping my mind around where I was going.

Four Key Gaming Tasks

Look forward to any comments.

How Games Talk to Us.