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so not liara u mean

The A10 isn't a GPU, it's an APU -- it's a CPU/GPU combo. It'll be outperformed by pretty much any dedicated GPU, so if you're building a system for gaming, don't bother wasting your money on one. If you're just building a PC for casual web browsing and maybe some very light gaming an APU is a decent choice -- I've got an A10 in my laptop.

AMD and Nvidia are different companies and there's no one difference between them. If you're choosing between the two, just take a look at benchmarks for the GPUs in your price range, and choose what gives you the most bang for your buck.

I KNOOOOW it just looks so fun ;;

I agree! Say what you will about Aisha Taylor's sense of humor but it's clear that she genuinely loves video games (and she's quite an activist for representation in them which is awesome), so letting her actually put the controller in her hands would be amazing. I mean the scripted multiplayer sessions they show are funny in a kind of "wow this is so awful" but what made LBP3's showing so much fun is just how real and honest it was. I hope there will be more of that in years to come.

Yeah I agree that Sony could have shown more gameplay at the conference, but a lot of the games shown there had more gameplay shown during the floor show (like The Order 1886).

I agree actually! Objectively speaking, Nintendo did the best job -- they came prepared with a lot of great stuff and had so much to show. I'm not a Nintendo fan really, so I wasn't invested in the things they were talking about (while I was very invested in some of Sony's titles), but Nintendo definitely took the crown this year.

Well the problem is that you are talking from an inherently privileged perspective, as a (correct me if I'm wrong) cisgendered white male. You haven't experienced the lack of representation that women and people of color do, at least not in a ubiquitous and systematic way -- so for you to say that it doesn't matter to you is a privilege. Which is okay! You're not an evil person for this, it is something you can't control. But acknowledging that privilege is an important step in being apart of feminist and egalitarian conversation.

Moving forward, you can't deny that video game protagonists are, overwhelmingly, (white) males. There are exceptions of course, and as we conclude in the podcast it is improving, but it's important to continue to put pressure on companies like Ubisoft to be more inclusive in their games, and attempt to reach that state of equality that you're describing. Bringing attention to feminist issues is important! That is what we're trying to do, because historically the rights & voices of women and other minorities have been excluded from the mainstream. Feminism is an egalitarian movement that's fighting for exactly what you're describing: a world where we don't have to worry about the race or gender or sexuality of a protagonist, where people are open to experiencing and relating to the story of any person, and where everyone is represented. But that's not the world we live in today, and we have to acknowledge that and work to correct that. It's great that you can relate to female characters and are open to more female protagonists -- that, despite what you may think, separates you from a lot of other male gamers!

Likewise, I skipped Nintendo -- our discussion of it will probably fill you in on the highlights of their conference if you haven't caught up yet. Glad to bring another listener back in!

chill af

Oh well of course if challenging those conventions isn't well-done then I won't be happy about that, but if it is, that's an additional layer of depth that the author or writer has elected to tackle. It's something new and unique and, potentially, revolutionary. But one can occupy either end of the spectrum: by embracing the feminine, like in my Knights of the Old Republic 2 example (though it's not as overt as that), or by reclaiming some traits not usually given to women (Katniss in The Hunger Games). The marriage of this is, actually, central to modern feminism (not using the term fourth wave just yet). Second wave feminism was very much about extolling the value of the feminine, and in more radical forms, why it was "better" than the male; third-wave feminism focused on breaking down those gender distinctions altogether. I believe that the two can co-exist and should co-exist -- we can have characters who are traditional women and are strong, who are non-traditional woman and are strong, or who are a little bit of both. Again, the tumblr quote I posted above...

I'm sure you're not intending this but this statement is absolutely part of the problem. You're assuming that the main character is male and that the actress would be redoing all of the lines. Again, I'm sure this is unintentional, but it speaks a lot about the male normative with protagonists, particularly in video games.

You're right, gender really isn't a thing in Mass Effect at all -- I do think that there's a lot to talk about with gender in Mass Effect, good and bad, but a woman being this amazing military leader isn't really notable within the game's setting -- but it is in ours, so it's important. We cannot remove Mass Effect from the context and reality that the player lives in. Female Shepard is not the military leader that 21st century America is accustomed to, so my experiences with and my society's notions of gender are undeniably going to influence my experience and feelings about the Mass Effect universe. This is true for all science fiction and fantasy -- even if the character being female or black or anything isn't necessarily important within the scope/context of the work, it's important to the audience, and that can't be understated.

You're right and I meant to leave that open in my post -- Shepard is whatever the player chooses to define him or her as. If the player chooses to make their Shepard feminine within their head, that's awesome and part of their experience with the game, even if it isn't expressed at all through the game's mechanics! People invent entire backstories and characters for their Shepard, whether just through headcanon or fanworks (fanart or fanfiction etc.) and the freedom to do so is what makes Mass Effect -- and any book, movie, game, or what have you -- so compelling.

The fact that they are side characters is part of the issue. I find Ubisoft pretty uninteresting so I don't know much about the characters you've listed, but what I have read about them names them as extremely guilty of fridging their female characters.

It's not complicated at all, really. All you need to do is write a believable, powerful, nuanced, three dimensional character and make them female. Tackling issues like society's conception of femininity (like Katniss in The Hunger Games to an extent), the position of women (like marriage in Austen's novels), or defying the gender binary in general get you bonus points, but there doesn't have to be a difference in writing male and female characters.

If you're familiar with the show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia there's a great story behind the character of Sweet Dee. Dennis, Mac, and Charlie are all fun and unique characters, well-written for the genre. When the actress who plays Sweet Dee (can't remember her name atm) auditioned for the role she told them that she found it frustrating that Sweet Dee had comparatively few lines and was under-developed in comparison. When she vocalized this, she was told "we really just don't know how to write female characters" to which she told them you just write them as you would a male character. The show underwent a number of revisions after that and Sweet Dee is, again for the genre & compared to the male main characters, a "strong female character."

The idea of the Strong Female Character doesn't necessarily mean she must be some badass. One of my favorite tumblr posts of all time:

http://madlori.tumblr.com/post/51723411550/rebloggable-by-request-well-first-of-all

A number of male protagonists could easily be female with little to no changes to their character -- which is an issue of representation as much as writing good characters. This is why a series like Mass Effect, where you can play as either gender with little to no changes to the storyline or character of Shepard, is so important. I find female Shepard more compelling because of Jennifer Hale and being in lesbians with Liara because the idea of a military woman leading the galaxy through a war with the Reapers has far more power, to me, than a man doing it, because it rejects the typical notion of military and masculinity (not to say that female Shepard is masculine or feminine, that more depends on the user's choice). But point being, there's objectively no difference in the character being male or female -- so why not have both -- and therefore a nuanced, well-written Shepard is a Strong Female Character. It's a similar situation for me in Knights of the Old Republic 2, where you can also choose between playing male or female, though female is the "canon" option. The importance of the Exile's character is that she

Spoiler: KotOR 2

easily forms connections with people through the Force, is a naturally compelling, charismatic, and empathetic person through Star Wars mumbo jumbo I won't bore you with

Empathy is a traditionally feminine trait and having her embrace it and be empowered by it, again, gives more weight to her character for me. So gender can be of consequence to the character if the writer would like but it's not by any means mandatory.

Edit Another great example to talk about here is Orlando by Virginia Woolf; it's a loose biography of her friend and lover Vita Sackville-West, a woman, but the main character (Orlando) is a man. The themes of gender and sexuality are therefore central to the work (as they were to Vita Sackville-West and Virginia's relationship with her).

http://www.shmoop.com/orlando-woolf/

I meant more the dashboard. I've not played a GTA game besides San Andreas nor do I really care to, just commenting on what I'm seeing in the video. They look like something out of the racing games I used to play on the PSX lol

The car interiors look laughably bad on the PS3 version.

You'll probably get the same answer then, depending on when it is. Assuming it'll come after trying out the system for some time, then we'd be even closer to deprecating KHV8. Again Alex might want to play with it but the bar is already a "just for now" type deal.

It's up to Alex but speaking as the primary styler on the website it's mostly moot at this point. The new designs I'm working on for displaying the ratings/other post information are shaping up quite nicely but it's not really worth it to hack them together for a style that's nearing legacy status.

There's no reason to believe they won't do something similar for the worldwide release y'all :)

That's how it's being displayed for KHV8. Future styles will have something different.

It's related to an add-on. It won't be there soon.