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Movie execs are capitalists. They'll make whatever people will open up their wallets for.

Which would be good, except that they have no idea what people will pay to watch.

So being mindful of the bottom line, they chose to keep pumping out movies they perceive as carrying lesser risk of failure, i.e. remakesof old previously successful movies (eg Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), sequel after sequel of tired franchises (Scary Movie 2 anyone?), and any movie with excessive violence, explosions, gore, profanity or sex, preferably all of the above.

Which is not to say such movies cannot be fun, mindless entertainment on occasion but watching this steady unending stream of clone movies is the equivalent of living on a diet of popcorn and soda exclusively.

This could grow tits on a frog.

Hmmm .... so, do you mean that like growing a human ear on a mouse so you have an actual breast growing out of the back or a frog?

Who cares about such monstrosities? Now, a real human female breast growing out of the top of a computer mouse would sell like crazy.

Please, people, don't rush in providing links to images of existing breast-shaped mice.

This could grow tits on a frog.

Hmmm .... so, do you mean that like growing a human ear on a mouse so you have an actual breast growing out of the back or a frog? Or do you mean a whole new market of cosmetic breast augmentation for frogs?

I'm just asking. Either way, I'm sure it would fast become a popular kind of porn for some people. ;-)

Cheers

Rule 34 strikes again...

This could grow tits on a frog.

Hmmm .... so, do you mean that like growing a human ear on a mouse so you have an actual breast growing out of the back or a frog? Or do you mean a whole new market of cosmetic breast augmentation for frogs?

I'm just asking. Either way, I'm sure it would fast become a popular kind of porn for some people. ;-)

Cheers

Spot on. In fact, I would assume the less trivial the knowledge, the more scrutiny applied by Wikipedia users and the more reliable the information. For example, who really cares about how accurate Wikipedia is regarding the science of farting? For that bit o' trivial knowledge I go to kizworld: http://www.kidzworld.com/article/473-the-science-of-farting.

'Cause I said I wouldn't play another FPS until after I finished Duke Nukem Forever. Guess I need to get back to my Barbie Horse Adventures now.

This could come horribly unstuck for Nike. You can play soccer barefoot. I assume that it is a slightly more dainty and skillful game: you cannot just lash out at the ball and expect your boots to protect your toes. Nevertheless it is a game so restricting the equippement used doesn't favour on team over another, it just leaves the players with more money to spend on beer afterwards.

There is quite a tradition of playing rugby barefoot. Perhaps letting the players talk via a website on whether to spend money on expensive equippement could end up transferring revenue from Nike to Coors.

Think how this poor mouse must feel...

Because we can breed them with the mice that have human ears growing on them, and they can sit around all day thinking "Does this ear make my butt look fat?" (yuck warning, don't view when cranched.)

There are the old witches in Zelda 64, all those strange round headed middle-aged women in Wind Waker, tiny wisps of anime girls in RPGs, Princess Peach's strangely bell-shaped body...

You're right about the Zelda games, the females are pretty diverse there. In most anime RPGs, the girls are sexy, though. And you're wrong about Peach: Her skirt is bell-shaped, but she's definietly hot. You'd know if you'd played a Mario Party game or NBA Street 3 :-)

There's Samus. Hot, but completely hidden from view.

Yeah, but still hot.

It's really a pretty decent variety. I'd say it compares favourably to movies.

Sure, movies are even worse, but that doesn't make games better.

There's also a purely anatomical problem. Women do have breasts. Breasts are fairly obvious things. Even when they're tastefully hidden in a game like Beyond Good and Evil, they're pretty obvious. Women also have hips, and you certainly can't hide those when you've got a character jumping all over the place in a third-person view.

Aw, come on, I hardly ever see a girl with breasts as big as Jade's. Most girls aren't slender like Jade (even sportive ones), either, and BG&E is one of the better games in that regard.

The issue there is that a woman's anatomy is inherently considered a symbol of sex in our culture. There isn't an equivalent thing to do for men. If you try to imagine some way that you could create a game that equally exploited the visual sexual possibilities of men, I think you'll find that the only images that come to mind have a certain flavour of homoeroticism.

So you're saying that sexism is Okay because games are aimed at males, anyway?

The question to consider are these: How would you create a game in which none of the women ended up being accidental sex symbols?

That's not necessary. It would be a good start to not have almost all of them being sex symbols.

You'll find that with women it's very hard. It would have to be the primary goal, the goal of a zealot. With men it's a piece of cake, practically automatic. This is clearly a bad thing, but it's not a problem with games specifically. I highly doubt the solution will come primarily from the world of games. We aren't sticking to stereotypes, we're lacking in archetypes.

You're right, of course. Most game designers don't start out by saying "let's make a sexist game". And you're right, it's not only in games, it's everywhere. But that doesn't mean we can just pretend it's not there.

Contrast this with games and xenophobia. Movies are sometimes xenophobic. Independence Day, War of the Worlds, the Hunt for Red October. Games are xenophobic almost without exception. There's generally some group of sentient beings which is by definition abominable, and of whom you must kill as many as you can.

True, that's another problem, and possibly a worse one than the sexism, but the article was about sexism, and that's why I wrote about sexism, not xenophobia.

Give it fifty years. If games are lagging behind society then, we'll have something to address. In the meantime, let's not sit around navel-gazing and trying to force a visual equality where none yet exists.

Nobody wants to force a visual equality where none exists. I would like to see a conceptual equality: Male and

No, it's a clown fish: here

... took the Godzilla out of the World Series.

Indeed. Most people don't realise it is actually physically addictive.

Adenosine is a chemical messenger that tells cells to slow down. Caffeine, being structurally similar, can block adenosine receptors in the brain, and thus prevent this slowdown.

However, your brain cells compensate to prolonged exposure by creating more and more adenosine receptors... meaning that you'll be really tired unless you block them with caffeine. Repeat ad addictum.

Check here and here for more info.

On a more personal note, I always find that drinking something with tons of sugars in it keeps me active far longer than caffeine alone. Caffeine just makes me burn through my energy reserves faster, resulting in me being even more tired after a while.

April on Despair's 2004 calendar is 'Potential'

I've only been back to work for 3 months, after spending 7 months unemployed, but I'm not of the holier than thou belief that someone owed me a job. [yes, I was fired because of someone's napoleon complex, but I didn't think that meant I should just get an instant job out of it...more that he should lose his for having done it].

There will always be a need for a wide variety of professions, and we can't just go shooting telephone sanitizers out into space, and we're not all going to get jobs playing video games.

I think it's a problem with both society, in thinking that people are 'owed' a job, and in education, for teaching fixed subjects, without focusing on how to improve an individual person in a way that will make them a more productive person in society. [oooh....he can add...and can write papers.... sure, that's useful, but if they don't care, they're not going to apply themselves well... find a way to center the curriculum around them...maybe 'math for people who enjoy fixing cars' or such]

I'd like to see programs in training people fix those important, but overlooked jobs in society. Sure, there are classes for learning computer programming, or even system administration -- but what about manning a helpdesk? [and I don't mean, get them off the phone anyway possible], or even computer operations [handling computer backups, monitoring systems for oddities, aka. playing computer games while babysitting computers]

Millions of hungry Americans welcome their Canadian liberators!

What does Walt think about technology?
Let's thaw him and ask! :) From the strange-but-true department here... Walt Disney was fascinated with technology. It's no wonder the creator of Mickey Mouse had his body frozen. Immediately after his death on December 17, 1965, Walt Disney was placed into cryogenic suspension - in other words, frozen. The theory goes that anyone suspended and preserved can be brought back to life, if or when the cure is discovered for whatever that person died from. Technology will be able to revive them from cryogenic suspension. And so Walt Disney waits for the day he'll be brought back to life.

I agree. The side-effects he mentioned are historically associated with juicing (taking anabolic steriods), not with creatine.

A rotary disc on the surface of the mouse
are we going to do when we run out of space mouse space ????

How about human shaped body parts? Searched around google and this was the only article with a photo that I found. Kinda cool.

Right now, people just drive over the crabs when they cross roads during there yearly crab migration. Apperantly, the inhabitants don't even think about a solution. In Holland we have special little viaducts for wildlife roadcrossing. On Chrismas Island the red crabs are killed by millions every year. What will this spaceport do the population? Is there even being thought of the consequences for the crabs?

More on Christmas Island crabs:

http://www.kidzworld.com/Frameset/reloadframe.asp? s=102&p=http://www.kidzworld.com/site/p820.htm

http://www.markuskappeler.ch/fot/fots/ch_crabs.htm l