The word "BioWare" does not appear in a recent Change.org petition asking EA to "save Mass Effect", which has gained around 220,000 signatories as of writing. The nearest the petition gets is an allusion to "recent revelations" that have "cast a shadow over its future", which is a remarkably gentle way of saying that the parent company shanked the creators to balance their books, after going into historic debt.

Still, one can hardly reproach the petition organisers for not mentioning BioWare - after all, EA announced that they were closing BioWare a whole four days ago, and the funeral baked meats must coldly furnish forth the pitchdeck. There are other videogame studios, aren't there? Just get one of them to make the thing. Maybe Owlcat, developers of the Mass Effect-flavoured The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, who've shared the Change.org petition on their socials.

I'm sure the HashtagSaveMassEffect petition was written out of sincere love for an absorbingly written epic sci-fi soap opera in which a charismatic group of weirdos unpick a wonderful cosmic conspiracy. Doubtless, many recently laid-off Mass Effect devs will be touched by their enthusiasm. Doubtless, I am being a pissy old crank. Still, the officious and press-releasey, 'gamer CEO' language of the petition makes my skin crawl. It reads like it was written by three 12-year-old boys standing on each other's shoulders inside a pinstripe suit.

"The decline in dedicated resources and ambiguous development plans from Electronic Arts (EA) threaten to leave this beloved series at a standstill, jeopardizing its incredible legacy," it pines. "Fans around the globe have invested thousands of hours exploring the galaxy, forming deep connections with its multifaceted characters and compelling storylines.

"It is a franchise that has transcended the typical gamer experience, creating a community that advocates for choice, individuality, and shared adventure," the petitioners write. "The potential cessation of new developments in this universe is a devastating prospect not only for fans but for the diversity of narrative-driven games as a whole.

"Therefore, we are urgently petitioning EA to take decisive action by committing to the continued development of Mass Effect," it continues. "This commitment requires proper funding, adequate staffing, and time allocation to maintain and advance the high standards the franchise is known for. Alternatively, EA could consider licensing the Mass Effect intellectual property (IP) to another studio that shares the passion and vision to keep it alive and allow it to flourish anew."

Getting a third party to make it? I'm sure the idea has never occurred to EA, and nor has it ever occurred to them that they could get a third party to make it for cheaper. Although if the testimony of former employees is any indication, it's likely they'll just end up sitting on the unfinished Mass Effect 5 forever.

I don't think either the Change.org petitioner or the signatories are genuinely devoid of all sympathy for the BioWare devs who lost their jobs last week. I wish them the best getting the credit-sozzled chatbot-humpers up the ladder to keep developers in work, though I do have some words of advice: the execs will not be impressed by your homages to go-faster marketing terminology like "passion", "vision" and the "investment" of your leisure time. They will regard this only as proof that they've successfully mind-fucked you into thinking like them. They will applaud your language's tendency to hail products as eternal and workers as interchangeable.

Still, shying away from even mentioning BioWare, while freshly jettisoned devs air their abandoned plans for Mass Effect 5, is just kind of weird! If you have such a "deep connection" with these games, the least you can do is name the people who made them, and maybe talk a little about how things got this bad.

https://xcancel.com/AndrewJ626/status/2095263470807830595#m

also xcancel seems to be back

Red Echoes: Berlin is a narrative-driven turn-based strategy game in which you join the German "November Revolution" across 1918 and 1919, during the final days of World War 1. Over the course of three chapters, you'll play as three budding agitators from different walks of life, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. You'll move your subversives around a beautiful Berlin map inspired by "classic Weimar-era graphic design", deploying their special abilities against the minions of the state.

Red Echoes: Berlin - Game Announcement Trailer

Several endings await, "from full on defeat to a successful revolution". The developers, Morningrise Games, are a new studio who say they were founded by somebody who "has previously worked on titles such as Suzerain and its DLC". That's Suzerain as in the best game you missed in 2020. It certainly looks similar. Morningrise's founder has yet to publicly identify themselves, however, which removed me a bit.

Update: Morningrise's founder has got in touch to identify himself as Stijn Verstraete, "Torpor's 3D Artist (and also did some writing) from 2021-2025". Quite why I was unable to determine this earlier eludes me. Anyway, consider me unspooked.

Original article continues: "As the world reels from the destruction and pain caused by the Great War, the voices of those calling for change grow louder and louder," the Steam page explains. "In Berlin, almost everyone has lost someone, and shortages of goods are widespread. While the Kaiser's armies are away fighting his enemies abroad, revolutionaries on the home front, inspired by the events in Russia a year earlier, sense an opportunity."

I think I studied the November Revolution at school, but that particular wodge of GSCE exam revision has long since burst into dust, along with everything I ever knew about Bismarck (the statesman, not the biscuit). I'm quite eager to rediscover it all. Red Echoes: Berlin will last you around 3-4 hours, and is pencilled in for launch later this year. While we're talking Suzerain, here's Julian's interview with Torpor Games about future games in that setting.

https://xcancel.com/hasanthehun/status/1943174672981364937#m

Makes you think

And also within the G#mer Community. but we already knew that, anyways:

The announcement of The Witcher 4 with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's Ciri as protagonist has attracted a bit of discussion. Some of the reaction is online toddlers waxing wroth about a video game having a (somewhat older!!!) woman as lead character, and especially, shock, a video game in a series that has hitherto starred a man. And some of it is people commenting more thoughtfully on whether Ciri genuinely makes for a suitable Witcher protagonist, given that she isn't the product of the typical Witcher genetic modification regime (which is heavily tailored towards men), and given that, without spoiling too much, she has gifts that make crumbly old Geralt's sword-and-sorcery skillset look rather paltry.

Speaking to Eurogamer this week, game director Sebastian Kalemba and narrative director Philipp Weber responded to a few of these comments, and also shared a little about Ciri's situation at the start of the game.

The specific section of the interview in question begins with Weber noting that, in the original Witcher books from Andrzej Sapkowski, Ciri is repeatedly described as a witcher, so you're all out of luck if you're arguing against her protagonism on the basis that it disagrees with the source material. He and Kalemba acknowledge that, yes, fair enough, Geralt is a good laugh and some people would love to have him back, but Ciri is already playable at points in The Witcher 3, and CD Projekt want to see what more they can do with her.

"I think for me, and I think for all of us [at CDPR], it's also just really exciting to see all the opportunities that Ciri brings us, both with her character, and also by just virtue of who she is, what we can do with her in terms of the gameplay as well," Weber said. "So I think the best answer for us, for those people that really are worried right now, is basically to show them, when we are ready, that we really do this well and with care."

Did CD Projekt consider introducing a custom Witcher 4 protagonist, Eurogamer asked, as in Cyberpunk 2077? "I think, honestly, this character-driven storytelling has been always in the DNA of our Witcher games," said Weber. "First with Geralt, and then, of course, we started setting up Ciri as a second protagonist in The Witcher 3, and now we want to continue with her as well."

Weber added that what makes Ciri an intriguing choice of protag is partly that she isn't quite a witcher. She might not be a fully customisable character, but she has room to grow where grizzly Ger had already nailed down his Eastwoodian outsider persona by the time he became a video game leading man.

"One of the things that makes Ciri into an interesting new protagonist for us is, of course, also that she is at the beginning of her journey as a witcher," said Weber. "So as an example, Geralt was very, very experienced already. He went through so many things. And, you know, he created his own code, his value of neutrality, he created through so many experiences. And Ciri still has to make many of those experiences. She has to go through so many of these things.

"So in a way, even though Ciri is, of course, a defined character, with her, players will have the opportunity to still define her quite a bit more, specifically define the path that she will take on her way to becoming a witcher, and basically also what kind of person that will make her."

Naturally, Ciri also promises to bring a fresh perspective to the broadly misogynistic, alternately sensitive and pervy universe of The Witcher, a video game series that once let you collect porno cards for female characters, and still loves to make a spectacle of its nubile sorceresses.

"I mean, I would say the world of The Witcher is a really dark one that's really inspired by, of course, dark fantasy folklore," Weber commented, when asked about the game's portrayal of gender politics and sexism. "But also medieval to early Renaissance history, and that is a world that was tough - tough for many different groups, women among them. As an example, in The Witcher, we also deal a lot with racism when it comes to non-humans, and this is something that we want to keep up with The Witcher 4. I think it's something that has always been really important.

"We make games for adults, and it also means that we tackle some difficult topics," he suggested. "We tackle them in interesting ways. We tackle them without giving easy answers, but often opening difficult questions that players have to answer. And I think some of those questions might be going in this direction as well, because, yeah, Ciri is a woman, and as a witcher in this world, this is an unusual state. So I don't think it's going to be this story everywhere, but since this is a part of this world, and we want to tackle so many of those different themes, it's definitely also going to appear there as well."

There's also the tiniest snippet of hand-wavey commentary on the question of Ciri's various supernatural capabilities, and how they might disrupt the quest design and slash-dodge-aard combat of The Witcher 3. Will Ciri begin The Witcher 4 in a low-power state, without the talents she displayed towards the end of the previous game, enquired Eurogamer? CD Projekt don't have anything to share for the moment.

"No, we cannot tell you exactly how," said Kalemba. "But we can tell you just, like, believe us: that was one of the things, or first things, that we were solving, to make sure - the way we develop here, we do not leave anything without a clear answer." OK then.

Previously codenamed Polaris, The Witcher 4 is the first of several new Witcher experiences. You can read more about it in our announcement post. If you're still pining for Geralt, you might prefer to read about The Witcher 1 remake in development at Fool's Theory. I wouldn't be surprised if it did away with some of the original game's laddier elements.

Chuds do be touristing all over the place smdh

the only smart G#mer on Stormfront

K (189?–?) Soviet pioneer. From Kazan, Tartarstan, USSR, K was diagnosed as a ‘transvestite’ in 1937.

She was given permission by the People’s Court to wear female clothing, her identity papers were changed to her female name, and her name was removed from the military recruitment rolls.

She was featured in a 1957 gynaecology textbook.

M.G. Serdiukov. Sudebnaia ginekologiia I sudebnoi akusherstvo. Moscow: Meditsina 1957: 47-8.
Dan Healey. Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001: fig 24.

source

Please help donate to Palestinians who just lost their home thanks to the zionist fucks

Join our public Matrix server! https://matrix.to/#/#tracha:chapo.chat

As a reminder, be sure to properly give content warnings and put sensitive subjects behind proper spoiler tags. It's for the mental health of not just your comrades, but yourself as well.

Here is a screenshot of where to find the spoiler button.

mutta olen niin nuutunut aamuisin

and if so any suggestions? i have like 6 on my windows

Amazing game with some great ideas. Awful gameplay and thus no one will ever copy those great ideas