y i love their hamburgers i can eat 3 of those everyday and i am not even remotely fat @ 140lbs that's only like 750calories and tastes so gudJigglyWiggly_

I had a friend who thought the same thing. And he was right as well! He wasn't fat!... Of course he did end up needing heart surgery, but that's fine since he wasn't fat. :P

I have a 12gb model which I've just recently upgraded. I did some research beforehand and it seems like there won't be any games that you'll be unable to play if you buy a hard copy, but it is very frustrating to be so limited in how many you can install. You also won't have space for much PSN stuff, and there are even some things that are too large to download even if you clear your drive. I didn't think I'd care but it turned out I did, especially after I learned about PS+.

That being said though, it's probably still better to get the 12gig version and then upgrade it yourself.  Shop around for a bargain and you can get more than 500gb for less than sony are asking. I ended up with a 700 (750 according to the packet) hard drive and saved myself about £30 over sony's 500gb version.

Surface is Microsoft's tablet PC (link).

As far as using second screens with RTSs, I think one of the most helpful application is seeing a snapshot of the entire game map where tapping on an area on the tablet will take you there in the game. 

The_Rick_14

Thanks that does sound very helpful, though still a long way from the facility of a mouse.

Anyway, I didn't mean to derail the thread this much so back to the actual topic... I really dislike this gen's trend for open world games. It works really well for some games but I feel it detracts from others, and developers seem to veiw it as a definite positive they can use to advertise and sell more games.

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People are always going on about how mouse and keyboard is a better input method for all sorts of games, and there's a whole genre that basically requires it, so why don't they make consoles that can use them?

The_Last_Ride

What's surface? I've tried googling but haven't been able to work it out.

As for the Wii U gamepad: it makes things easier but I imagine for RTSs you'd basically just be playing on the little touch screen instead of using the TV.

The article I'm talking about starts with "SPOILER WARNING: This feature discusses major plot details of The Last of Us."

http://uk.gamespot.com/features/the-last-of-us-and-grading-on-the-gender-curve-6411051/

I'm not sure the industry needs 'a justification' to be honest as that implies that the current state of things is somehow inexcusable simply because it is androcentric (look at my literary critic example to see why that line of thinking is actually destructive and disrespectful). Can there be more variety? Sure, but Carolyn is looking for it in the wrong place (games made largely by and for men) and then taking issue with it;Articuno76

Perhaps I phrased that badly. Game companies are private businesses and it's up to them what games they choose to make, but the gaming community is far more diverse than the games that are being made for them and there seems to be no good reason for this. It's not game designers or buyers that are keeping it this way, but rather a small group of company execs that decide what gets made and what doesn't. They're not making androcentric games because they enjoy them or even care about games at all, they're making them because that's what they think we're most likely to buy. This attitude is clearly demonstrated by their attempts to remove Ellie from the cover of TLOU, and we need to let them know we want other types of games too. They could be making more money and widening their consumer base, so I do think they need to justify themselves, at least to their shareholders. 

that comes across as destructive rather than constructive criticism because Carolyn sounds like she is asking for the eradication (change) of these games to suit her needs rather than a widening of the types of games out there to suit everyones' (constructive criticism). Articuno76

I can see how it could be interpated that way but I also think she might just be saying that she's still waiting for a game that goes further than the last of us. That doesn't necessarily imply that games like TLOU shouldn't be made.

Again, I haven't read the article in a long time so I could be off here but I do recall thinking that when I read it. The game isn't being showered for praise just for portraying women as people, but all characters as people. This is a big deal and IMO very praise-worthy when you consider the following; games normally treat characters either as a narrative device or a gameplay function; rarely as a cognizant whole. Remember unlike movies where characters only have to fulfil a narrative function, in games they also have to fulfil a gameplay one and have their personality and experiences reflect their in-game actions. For that reason what TLoU does with it's characters is indeed praiseworthy.

When Carolyn zooms in to exclusively look just at the female characters in the game she ignores all the above and so her comments come off as if uttered in a vacuum where videogame characterisation and narrative integration are far more advanced than they really are. I seriously think Carolyn should step back and ask herself what the state of narrative and character integration in mass-market games as a whole is like before deciding it is already a given and that only women are the exception.Articuno76

I agree with the bolded part, but TLOU did get a lot of attention for its female characters so I think it's quite reasonable to write a piece that focuses on its portrayal of women. Yes, there is room for improvement elsewhere as well, but I do think that the portrayal of women is generally even worse than the portrayal of men.

It's pretty much the best example of a mature, nuanced characterisation not only in it's genre but also the industry. And her response to it came off as a disinterested shrug that felt like she wasn't giving the game full credit for what it did do and instead zeroed in on the few minor points of what it didn't. To be fair I think part of that is that it wasn't clear that the article was part of a running series that looks specifically at games under a particular lens (I haven't seen another article like that since) so it came across as an off-the-cuff 'hey, lets be really picky and tear a game apart!' type of thing when it wasn't intended to.

To her credit, she did open my eyes to the concept of an androcentric frame. But what really bothers me is it almost sounds like the article is saying that is in and of itself a problem. Any work of art will necessarily have the view of those who make it infused in it (whether they be pro-life, right-wing or what have you) so it is inevitable that a game made by men will speak to and from their experiences. If she was seriously taking issue with the game simply because it is told from an androcentric frame then I think she is being a little too harsh and applying standards to videogames that no other medium has.

The expectation that piece of media that is created androcentrically should look, behave and respond as if it isn't is kind of absurd when you think about it. You wouldn't see a literary critic criticise black literature for not fleshing out its white characters when they are most likely not the focus of the story and so aren't given enough varied situations to tease out character dimension. Any critic making that kind of criticism would be called racist for looking at things exclusively from the lens of their values at the cost of the message and viewpoint the writer was trying to convey (doing so suggests a kind of self-superiority/target inferiority as the critic is essentially saying that their values/viewpoint should supersede those of the creator).

I think at the end of the day that Carolyn isn't wrong in her critique (her points are mostly spot on), she is simply wrong in making it in the first place;she is the white literary critic who missed the point. When more feminists in videogames realise they are playing with boys toys (albeit mass market boys toys) the methodology and viewpoint put to work when these critiques are carried out will be revealed as misguided.

edit: Though now I think about it I don't like the idea of people not challenging or asking questions about character portrayals in games either (they totally should).  But more people should take into account the viewpoint a game is told from and respect it rather than imposing their values over it as the creator's perspective is somehow not worth giving full attention to.

Articuno76

To avoid spoilers I only read the intro and conclusion so perhaps I'm way off, but it seemed to me she was using TLOU as a way of examining the industry as a whole. I think she's right that there's something wrong when a game gets showered with praise simply for showing women as actual people. My view is that there is nothing wrong with a single game doing whatever it wants, but games aren't just for boys, and some boys like games with realistic female characters, so there's really no justification for things to remain as they are with regards to the industry as a whole.

Edit: But I do feel it's important to praise a game for taking a step in the right direction so I agree that her article would have been better if she'd been more positive about TLOU.

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Well I've just returned to gaming so I can't really comment, but perhaps the fact that I find myself really excited to be going through the back catalogue of ps3 games speaks for itself. Though I am dissapointed that RTSs haven't made there way to consoles yet; if they need a mouse, why not just use a mouse?

The_Last_Ride

I'd guessed that might be the case, but it's still only half the story. People are always going on about how mouse and keyboard is a better input method for all sorts of games, and there's a whole genre that basically requires it, so why don't they make consoles that can use them?

Edit: Of course they must have a reason. I'm just dissapointed is all.

I just can't take these analysis serious, if it's from research or a professor with some merit behind it i will. But not for someone that has changed their gender. The_Last_Ride

What about a research professor who changed her gender? It's ridiculous to think that having a sex change invalidates a person's opinion, but these kinds of articles are supposed to provoke thought so it doesn't really matter who they're written by. Considering what she's saying won't stop you disagreeing.

Well I've just returned to gaming so I can't really comment, but perhaps the fact that I find myself really excited to be going through the back catalogue of ps3 games speaks for itself. Though I am dissapointed that RTSs haven't made there way to consoles yet; if they need a mouse, why not just use a mouse?

Thanks for the reply. I contacted customer support to see if there was an alternative solution and it turns out you can purchase them (for free) and then download them later, so problem solved.:)