Journal of Other Forum Analysis

[Uncle]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/im-probably-gonna-regret-asking-this-but-is-33-and-21-and-problematic-age-gap.769196/page-12#post-112795055

User banned (permanently): troll account

The logical end point of many arguments in this thread is the radical feminist stance that it's unethical for any man to be in a relationship with any woman.

these are always among the fuckiest of era bans

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aresetera.com+locke_21183

yeah ok, this user joined the site only to troll, has only ever trolled, was never interested in just casual conversations with people

the ban is "your take is so bad that you we must conclude you have only come here to cause conflict, and if you didn't then you should still be banned for sincerely believing that"

[benji]

They can't put themselves in the mind of a troll, or really anyone who can understand other people's points of view, so they think that kind of poster is a troll rather than someone like ClickyCal' or Melody Shreds who openly pit the staff and users against each other.

It's the logical end point of many arguments on that forum that people with different opinions are malicious actors with the singular goal of "antagonizing" people.

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/today-is-my-birthday.770051/

i spent it alone in my room. My birthday plans with my only fried fell through so I felt like I didn’t deserve happiness today. My entire year up to this point has been me failing so what’s another day.

I didn’t even do anything I enjoyed. I woke up, got drunk and passed out and then laid in bed as I drifted in and out of sleep for the remainder of the day.

Only person to call or wish me well was my mom and I felt so bad to lie to her and say I had these awesome birthday plans lined up so she wouldn’t feel like she raised a failure.

Honestly don’t know why I’m posting this. Self pity I guess? I’m not gonna harm myself or anything. I just want to feel happy.

[Boredfrom]

That is sad.

[Uncle]

that kind of stuff is only sad if you let it...what's the phrase, life is 10% what happens to you, 90% how you react to it?

some of my best birthdays have been completely alone at home doing whatever the hell I want, relaxing

what IS sad is them saying "my only friend," but the lack of people willing to consider themselves friendly toward you could be related to the same outlook on life that doesn't allow them to simply enjoy solitude sometimes

[benji]

My man, at some point you need to realize that other people have lives and your birthday is not a big deal at all. You spent the day getting drunk and passing out so it sounds like you did something you enjoy and nobody else was around to stop you from drinking, laying around and being upset at the universe for not centering you. Your mom doesn't give a shit about your "birthday plans" and you just made things worse by lying. How many birthdays do you think she's had that weren't perfect? How many other people's birthdays do you think she went above and beyond with an effort for that those people didn't appreciate because they assumed it's just how birthdays are supposed to be? What was your effort for your own? What were the "plans"? Announcing your birthday and expecting others to do something about it just because is not remotely rational. What effort do you put in for others birthdays? I know it's not a lot because if you did, you'd have a reciprocal response rather than day drinking.

[Tucker's Law]

That really sucks and I feel bad that they're in that state.  I also feel bad that it's getting posted at a place like Resetera instead of here, or really anywhere else, as I feel like we and others outside that craziness would have a far better chance of actually helping lift them out of that.

[Uncle]

also if you're genuinely sad and want someone to cheer you up, be vulnerable for a second and tell your mom what happened, maybe she'll get together with some other people from the family and do something nice for you to help make up for what you consider a bad birthday

you shouldn't be depressed if family "takes pity on you," family should be there to lift each other up, you'd probably do the same if she was feeling down too

that's toxic masculinity innit

[Boredfrom]

What effort do you put in for others birthdays?

Zing.

Feel bad for the dude but this also true.

[nampad]

Surprised I am the only one who does not give a fuck.

[Tucker's Law]

For birthdays I myself generally prefer lower-key affairs if there's any celebration at all, otherwise I actually am most often good with not doing much of anything different for the day than I would've done normally.  Maybe have a favorite dinner of mine or pour a really excellent whisky.

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/today-is-my-birthday.770051/#post-112822697

I haven't had a classically "fun" birthday in like four years. Nobody has time for adult birthdays and it's kind of a bummer, but eventually you get used to it.

The important thing is that you're still here.

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/green-day-to-play-the-halftime-show-at-the-110th-grey-cup.770036/

They actually perform live during the Grey Cup halftime.

[Polident]

Comes down to age imo. Past like 23 or 25, only the decades have significance. Maybe 33 if you’re a fan of Jesus or Superman.

[AldusMoneyPenny]

[benji]

This thread is still going: https://www.resetera.com/threads/deep-rock-galactic-dev-explains-why-female-playable-characters-arent-being-added.768752/post-112700480

I believe I said not too long ago in a different thread that most men will not see something as sexist/misogynistic unless the dev themselves proudly preclaim to hate women.

This is less about this specific studio being harcore women haters (something I don't think anyone here is willing to argue, anyway) but the fact that playable female characters are pretty much always an afterthought to most game studios. This is an issue of the industry still being mostly made up of men and women having pretty much no leading positions in even smaller indie dev teams. If women were actually included in the entire process there would be less of these "oops, we forgot women" blunders that at this point, in 2023, are just embarrassing.

And it's exhausting to always have to make the most charitable and generous interpretation every single time when devs say "including women would take too much time/effort/resources".

So racial differences are more than just skintone.

To illustrate this you could google an Caucasian person with albinism and then Google an African person with albinism. it's not that hard.

And the fact that the default is to just slap a texture on a model as a is part of a
larger systemic issue entirely that is afflicting games around the world. Bearing all this in mind I still chose to focus on the topic at hand which is the surprising non existence of women. But people seem to be really buying the fact that a new head is too hard to do so I don't really have much to add. I wonder how other devs that have retroactively done it before accomplished it?

Gotta love all the male posters telling women here what is and isn’t sexism! Because of course it’s reasonable to forget about 50% of the population! And of course it always just happens to be women that get forgotten! All the men can’t be expected to think about women, they too busy with all their important men stuff!/s

Like a lot of the posts are getting very close to “why are this crazy women getting so upset” vibes

So you’re basically proving the point that just putting a female head on the same body would actually upset/annoy people

but why tho? there dwarf's, fictional characters.

Yes, I've seen these memes before. But it doesn't seem very related to what I said. The post I was responding to was implying the developers might be sexist because they think of men as the default. I was just saying that we're talking about dwarves, not humans. Everyone thinks of dwarves as default male because it's a fictional race with exaggerated masculine characteristics. If the developers think of them as default male I don't think it really shows as much evidence of bias as it otherwise would if we were talking about human player characters.

It is related, because you're using the fiction as the backbone of your argument, when you can do whatever you want with fictional races and characters. Seeing things as default male IS sexism. For example, if I didn't know your pronouns or your gender and I assume you're male, that's a default male bias. We all have biases. Being ignorant of them isn't helpful. Same with assuming everything default in regards to race or skin tone is white. That would be racist. And there are degrees to the sexism, like we're not even accusing the developers of misogyny. We don't need to get defensive when bias is shown or deny it's happening. It's just a sexist bias, that default is seen as male. Especially when it's not needed with dwarves, because in depictions of literature like Pratchett or Tolkien, there is little difference between the genders for dwarves.

read the poster’s comments that im quoting and replying to maybe? Not hard to understand

Sweetie you quoted me and me alone. A fuckin skin swap is bottom barrel effort.

The original complaint was about "lack of melanin", not about them not redesigning the Dwarves to more accurately look like Human races. I wouldn't say the Dwarf on the right looks like a Caucasian Human either besides skin colour. Of course, they've moved the goalposts now and doubled down in a way that they're seemingly somehow defending when the developers said "it's too much work" because they're not allowed "bottom barrel effort", so it's gotten super weird. Because that "super easy change" would simultaneously be "bottom of the barrel" by definition.

That being said the reason the devs give in the OP is BS, they don't need a new body type with redone skins.

but why tho? there dwarf's, fictional characters.

Because that's a "bottom of the barrel effort", which you're notably against.

Asking for actual black people instead is a step too far?

If the dev's vision for female dwarves is like the one on the left, then yeah, mega fucking oof on the dev's part.

I actually didn't think of that being a possibility before posting my original comment. I will leave this thread so that the women who deserve to have their voices heard can be heard here.

I'm not saying it's a step too far, I'm just pointing towards the double standard where you're okay with saying "but why tho? there dwarf's, fictional characters" when it comes to women, but not for other representation.

They definitely have the workforce at this point to add a variety of faces, and should, but the picking-and-choosing of who should be represented accurately and who should be "there dwarf's, fictional
characters" is the callout.

I'm not picking or choosing, I'm just curious after all the free content they've given this game over the years why it's impossible for them to add a POC or a woman, and that there excuse is the same one this industry been running and hiding behind for years.

I feel like I shouldn't have to point this out, but marginalized groups do not always face the same issues. Women being ok with dwarf women looking like dwarf men does not mean black people are ok with black dwarves looking like white dwarves with a color slider.

They are whatever skin color the player decides they will be.

Since the main issue at the end of the day in this thread, is that they created a rig that would only work for 1 body type in their character creator, i really don't understand what you are trying to get at here that was not already spoken for with the criticism that this approach make it unlikely they could add women dwarves.
If the issue is that there's no characters with black skin tone in the game, then you can make one with the character creator.
If your issue is that they have no set black characters, that goes with the fact that there is no living non-enemy npcs in the game (Except the mission control voice that do not have a model.)
If the issue is that the generic body type makes even darker skin tone character not represent black people correctly, then it is a fair criticism, but it would have the same reason and response from the devs that was given about why there is no female playable characters. (That they limited themselves to 1 rig at the start, and made changing this a bigger time and money sink as time went by).

In the end, i don't think there is much we could hope except that in their next game, they do a more robust character creator that gives more control, in order to not always end up with the cliche dwarf ethnicity, as thought by Tokien in the 30s.

bein a pallet swap isn't the comprise some of you think it is.

This quote is from neoxon smash bros thread in reguards to color swaps.

Yes, they do have dark-skinned alts, & those are most certainly appreciated (especially Villager's, who got theirs at the last minute......resulting in an unfortunate scenario that I'll talk about later). But they're nothing but a band-aid for a gushing wound within the context of Smash's current situation, basically table-scraps. To better describe what I mean, I'd like you to imagine a scenario where Injustice 2 didn't have any characters who were Black by default. In said scenario, the only ways we would get Black characters would be through John Stewart (an alternate costume for Hal Jordan), Black Lightning (an alternate costume for Raiden), & Vixen (an alternate costume for Cheetah). Are these alternate costumes with unique voice lines appreciated, oh most certainly. They even went as far as to give them unique dialogue interactions with the other characters. But are they substitutes for Black characters who are the main event with movesets centered around them, hell no. If anything, Black Lightning & Vixen should have been the defaults (John as well, but one could make an argument for Hal). Here, we're basically being given scraps & are expected to be happy with them. Well, they aren't enough, far from it. Alternate costumes are no substitute for characters who are primarily & inarguably Black. And if I may go on a tangent, Sakurai needs to stop beating around the bush & honor the wishes of Aya Kyogoku & Co. at Nintendo EPD Group 5 by bringing the Villager more in line with their modern proportions from New Leaf onwards. New Horizons has a slew of unique hair options that can & should be pulled from, especially afro-centric hair styles.

Kind of feel you did not read my post if that's all you took from it, since i was talking about the case where pallete swap is not representation in the second and third point.

I read it and don't agree with it since we ended up with 4 playable white guys, and after years of updates and that's the best they could do, and as I said before these are the same tired excuses trotted out anytime inclusion is brought up it the gaming industry. I'm done giving benefit of the doubt

I'm telling you there isn't a standard colour for them they can be what they want there aren't any white characters unless you make them, there aren't any black characters unless you make them.

weird how they just happen to be all white on all the marketing

quotes six separate people making reasoned arguments

See, this shit right here is what makes discussing thing like this fucking EXHAUSTING.

"Vitriol", "raked over the coals", "eating our own", "spewing venom"..... like, where are you all seeing that? I sure ain't. I've seen annoyance, mild criticism, piss taking jokes but I haven't seen anyone really getting heated. And I know damn well that yall haven't either, know how I know?

1) you would have quoted them instead of hiding behind this subtweeting nonsense and

2) the one thing they've been accused of that even approaches unfair criticism - wanting sexed up thirst traps for their women - got dogpiled to the point that the person that did it apologized and edited their post. I fucking KNOW that if anyone else did the same we'd be off topic yet again all over that.

Like seriously, can yall just knock it off with the woe is me poor dev shit, it's getting to the point where I feel like you're infantalizing them. They sound genuinely like they realize they fucked up, can you just let people say their piece without trying to take bullets for them like weird Elon stans or something

All games (by all devs) going forward should have female and she/her be the default implementation (and in game character default). It'd soon make the Rigs, animation and other issues disappear when they have to include male as the secondary choice. It would make the decision makers (primarily men) take notes on fixing these issues... who am I kidding they'd just gaslight the men the same as they do women.

Lots of dudes here talking about stuff.


They haven't included a female rig because for them a female rig is a sexualized dwarf with the sexualized walk. When female dwarfs have, to be fair, never been much of that. They simply don't want to put the work in because they see male players as default. Why are people here defending the devs? They can be good faithed and still be misogynistic.

"Jumping down their throats" "Vitriol" men really do not like when the focus is on something that goes against them, my oh my

Games had the option to create a black character for years. Yes they have started to diversify their marketing which is nice but your original point was way off, you just keep moving goal posts at this point.

No, where goin in circles cuz you think a pallet swap is sufficient representation for black characters in games and it isn't

I think people just genuinely don't understand what you're asking for.

Are you asking for actual black human persons in this dwarf game, or are you asking for black dwarves?

If it's the latter, do you have any examples of what that's supposed to look like? Like what the proper way of handling it, considering dwarves are a fictional race?

That's my point, there a fictional race only bound by there creator's imagination and the best they could do is 4 white guys, a pallet swap and a no girls allowed sign, and that's not even going into the well documented history of the high fantasy settings working hard to exclude black people.

While white is the default, my skin tone is sittin next to orange and blue, like some goofy unrealistic color.

There are 4 default colours 2 White and 2 Black.

Race isn't a skin color. You can’t just take a white character, darken it’s skin, and get a Black character. That’s not how race works. That’s minstrel show shit.

No shit but these aren't humans they don't even look "white" lmfao. Have you seen the customization options in the game? Have you seen what each template looks like? How would you make them black dwarves from what they are right now?

By changing their faces structure like how humans have. its the kind if thing an artist can do without much issue with out it being racist if they actually stop and think about it. Plus coming up with a lore reason would expand the games world building in a meaningful way and automatically make it stand out from other dwarf games.

There is 0 reason why you can't have traditional dwarves and come up with new types to coexist. It's simply the devs didn't want to invest in that work at the time much like how they obviously chose to not have women at the start of the project.

Don't act like its impossible to imagine.

I understand and agree with the developers. I’m not female, but I am gay, and I get beyond frustrated when lgbtq+ representations is added to things and it’s super half assed just to check a box. I want it done right or not done at all.

This is just setting up for women to never be represented until some arbitrary definition of"perfect" by a bunch of men is reached. "Half-assed" is not including women characters in a multiplayer cast the first place. They aren't writing some harrowing narrative from a woman's perspective, they are animating and voicing a character model. We aren't that alien of a creature to figure that out.

If they had included a dwarf woman from the get-go and, for some reason, something was wrong with it, they could at least receive feedback and fix it, instead of saying "yep, too bad, maybe next time when we get it perfect".

I understand and agree with the developers. I’m not female, but I am gay, and I get beyond frustrated when lgbtq+ representations is added to things and it’s super half assed just to check a box. I want it done right or not done at all.

And what's right? What's their vision?
Until they let us know I'm just gonna call bullshit but their "next time WE HOPE to make it right" does not fill me with confidence.

The game barely has lore as it is for the type of game it doesnt need it either... the dwarves aren't even characters they are straight up just classes to play. And each dwarf has very different facial structures they certainly aren't "white based" I don't see what more could be added in that department and what facial characteristics you could want since literally everything on each dwarf is very exaggerated.

again they came up with four dudes who look real white, you can't just subtract there skin tone cuz there fictional characters. Is the dwarfen princess from the lord of the rings tv show not black cuz she a dwarf?

She's black because she's played by a black actress. The characters in DRG are avatars for the player, who decides what skin color they will be. Their features are borderline inhuman, they are not white or black or any human ethnicity.

When you look the game up online one the first images you see is this guy
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/deeprockgalactic_gamepedia_en/images/6/69/Scout.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/200?cb=20190315230848
If you skip the character creator and jump straight into playing this class your playing as this guy, he's the default, but he's not white cuz there's an option to change his skin tone?

They gave pretty specific reasoning why making any retroactive changes to the character models involves an intense amount of time and labor, and this point has been confirmed by just about anybody with even a little bit of game dev experience in this very thread. This isn't a TV show where they can just cast an actor and call it a day, they would have to completely redo every cosmetic in the game (there are thousands) for every new model or face they would add.

They were an extremely small studio running a live service multiplayer game, they in fact did not have the ability to do "whatever they wanted" and probably had to be very careful about how they used their time, which is not at all an infinite resource in game development. Maybe they will have a more robust character creator in their next game and you can pick more human features to your liking, but they didn't build the game that way and they can't just press a button to add that in. Maybe they will add more dwarves that closely resemble humans and represent human ethnicities, but again that's not as simple as just making new faces and putting them on the old bodies.

I get that they started out small and had little to work with, but after years of updates to this game there excuses ended up being we didn't think about it and it's too hard, excuses which are par for the course when it comes to inclusion in the gaming industry. So for me it's more about there actions rather than there word.

I don't understand. A dwarf with white skin "looks white" becayse you can't substract their skin tone, but a dwarf with black skin doesn't "look black"?

I think this whole thing is going in circles, and won't stop going in circles until you clarify what you're asking of the devs here 😅

The reason this is going in circles is this: you and that other dude are making a semantic argument, like the nature of race and what that means when talking about non humans.
What commander quackers is trying to get you to understand I believe is more like: show that picture he posted or any in-game shot of the dwarves to a regular ass person off the street who doesn't know shit about this game. Maybe they have a passing knowledge of tolkienesque fantasy. Are they gonna think "oh this is clearly a fictional being and I need to shed all my preconceived notions and ruminate on how non humans might decide to classify themselves" or would it be closer to "why are you showing me a picture of some short stocky white dude that looks like a dwarf"

That's fair, but it doesn't really answer the question of "how do you represent black people properly in a game about dwarves". Unless the answer is "you should not make a game about dwarves", but I don't think so. What is a black dwarf? I assume there are good examples of this being done, so I would genuinely like to see them to understand what's being asked of the devs. For example, from what I can see, Baldur's Gate 3 is fantastic about representation, but dwarves are still... dwarves. You can give a dwarf black skin, but they're still a dwarf, not a black person.

I really doubt you're gonna get a satisfactory answer from anyone on a gaming message board about this because you're brushing up against institutional bigotry at this point. Dwarves aren't by nature "white people", but they were created in a society that considers "white people" default and that absolutely affected the classic design that people are familiar with. Until you get more black creatives actively involved in making things like this that actually become well known, you're gonna have this same issue pop up - just like how having more women involved at the ground level might have prevent the own goal problem they're having now.

Ok here is "any in game shot of a character". They would say this a stocky white dude?
https://a.l3n.co/i/dwH9G0.png

This type of shit is annoying. You realize you're making my actual point for me here right? You can change what I said to "black guy" if you like, because my fucking point wasn't "all dwarves are white dudes no matter what", it was "people in society are gonna attach a human race to your fictional character regardless of your wishes". Did you have something else or were you just here to try and make a shitty gotcha?

You’re on point. People need to learn about coded characters.

Well that's the whole reason I brought up institutional racism - it's not about what they did wrong, it's about them not doing anything to push back on that. That's the whole point of it, it perpetuates by people just sticking to the status quo. Nobody is here saying it's their job to fix it or that they're bad people or anything. Cards on the table here, I honestly didn't even care about the racism angle. It's so common in my life to see the extent of a dev cater to us as "here's an afro and some skin tones, now leave us alone" that it barely registers to me unless someone actually makes an effort. The only reason I even bothered starting to respond was because I get what quackers is trying to convey and didn't like seeing him get dogpiled. I'm not mad at the devs, I don't get the impression that he is either tho I don't wanna speak for anyone... it's just like the only thing to do now is point it out in some way and hope that someone actually pays attention.
It's just exhausting and depressing sometimes to know that your inclusion somewhere is based on projected profits or some shit.

Alright, we got the secret phrase again finally!

Also lots of experts coming in saying it will only take time, money and resources to do and demanding the developers explain everything:

The character rig thing is 100% total bs. They could very easily just edit the male body and head mesh and apply it to the exact same rig, actually shouldn't even take much effort.

Even the cosmetics wouldn't be a big issue, it would just take the time needed to produce the new models. They don't NEED to do anything from the ground up.

I'd love to hear what is so complicated about their setup that would require "gutting and changing" things just to implement female characters.

What exactly is their vision of a "female dwarf" in their universe that makes this task so astronomical? They have provided zero details, just keep saying it would take too much work to do and that they want to do it right not half-ass it.

What needs to be done? What requires gutting and re-doing from the ground up?

As someone who has worked with Blender since it had a game engine built into it, and Unreal Engine since 3, I'd say I have enough experience to have a decent understanding of various aspects of the game development process. I've mostly done animation work, creating and setting up rigs and hand-animating them, but I've also done a bit on the programming side of things.

Damn, my earlier comments are even more moot now. Seems more and more like an experience issue on the dev's part.

"Skill issue" -

[kaleidoscopium]

Spending their Saturdays arguing about female dwarves, love to see it

[Uncle]

if messy's art example of female dwarves is what they want, then just assume the existing dwarves are already female

[benji]

Spending their Saturdays arguing about female dwarves, love to see it

Also dwarf races. I see you erasing them, you knew exactly what you were doing. 

[benji]

if messy's art example of female dwarves is what they want, then just assume the existing dwarves are already female

AND WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO ABOUT OTHER PLAYERS NOT ASSUMING THIS??? JUST DIE?

[Boredfrom]

Also lots of experts coming in saying it will only take time, money and resources to do and demanding the developers explain everything:

Or saying: they should have implemented this before their indie game blow up in popularity.”

[Besticus Maximus]

The dwarves aren’t black enough 

[MJBarret]

"How dare those degenerate artists make even a single brushstroke without our pious hand resting atop theirs!"

[NekoFever]

Ugh, it’s not complicated to add a female option and here’s a six-page debate explaining why.

[HaughtyFrank]

if messy's art example of female dwarves is what they want, then just assume the existing dwarves are already female

Has anyone even asked those dwarves their pronouns? Pretty gender essentialist of RE

[Potato]

also if you're genuinely sad and want someone to cheer you up, be vulnerable for a second and tell your mom what happened, maybe she'll get together with some other people from the family and do something nice for you to help make up for what you consider a bad birthday

you shouldn't be depressed if family "takes pity on you," family should be there to lift each other up, you'd probably do the same if she was feeling down too

that's toxic masculinity innit

They probably cut the rest of their family off based on some Resetera advice for an imagined slight or for wrongthink.

[Polident]

“You don't turn your back on family. Even when they do.” - Dominic Toretto (Wild Speed Euro Mission, 2013)

[Snoopy]

You don't need family when you have the cult of ree hovering over your shoulder.

[Straight Edge]

Reee hates secondary sex characteristics unless they're acquired through HRT

[Eric Cartman]

I believe I said not too long ago in a different thread that most men will not see something as sexist/misogynistic unless the dev themselves proudly preclaim to hate women.

Yes, absence of any evidence is generally not considered a 'smoking gun' or cause for further suspicion

So racial differences are more than just skintone.

To illustrate this you could google an Caucasian person with albinism and then Google an African person with albinism. it's not that hard.

The Phrenological difference is quite marked, sirrah

I don't know the context for this image, but in a vacuum it looks an awfully lot like satire of the arguments that dipshits like messyeggo are making unironically in that thread.

"Child bearing hips" isn't street slang for 'super bangable' - its literally referring to biological realities of an ideal partner being one that won't fucking die perpetuating the species