It's New. It's a League. It's for Gamers. It's the League for Gamers! (Video)
Intrepid correspondent Timothy Lord writes, "I talked at SXSW with Kari Hale of League For Gamers, an organization started just a few months ago by Red 5 Studios founder CEO Mark Kern. (Kern was also team lead for World of Warcraft.) League for Gamers shares some of the goals of groups like the EFF and EPIC, but — as you might guess from the name — is tightly focused on the world of gaming. The group owes its existence to SOPA; the money used to start it up had initially been budgeted for Red 5 Studios' appearance at the most recent E3, but E3 sponsor's Entertainment Software Association's support for SOPA led Kern to withdraw from the show. Kari gave a quick rundown of the origins of the League, what it hopes to accomplish, and what sorts of efforts it's so far undertaken."
I am intrigued by their ideas, and wish to subscribe to their newsletter.
Are they extraordinary gamers?
but E3 sponsor's Entertainment Software Association's support for SOPA
I suppose it makes sense, since E3 is slowly slipping into obscurity due to the internet.
Gaming Rights is apparently a thing, now?
Gee, how shrewd to place a girl as the frontman for a gamer group's propaganda video...
It's just a social activism site using gamers as it's engine. Nothing more. I'll bet you dollars to donuts the mission will evolve into all sorts of things we're not interested in supporting within a year or so.
Nothing like watching a beautiful women talking about video games to start the morning off right. Although, I'm thinking it may also be a subliminal advertisement for FireFall because that is what is most stuck in my mind, lol :)
Just because you're a cute, geeky, gamer chic does not absolve you of the necessity to not use the words, "Uh", "Um", or "Ah" every two seconds when speaking.
I realize geeks are not necessarily the most extroverted or conversationally eloquent, but when trying to describe what your League is about, not using the above words will make you a much better speaker.
Sidenote: yeah Obama, get your act together as well. Saying "Um" every five seconds is just as disconcerting. You're the President after all though at least you can form coherent sentences or read prepared speeches, unlike the last guy.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Title: Introducing the League for Gamers
Description: A voice for gamers and game developers
[00:00] <TITLE>
The Slashdot logo with "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." scrolls across the bottom of the view from left to right.
The view is of interviewee Kari Hale in a hallway, standing near exit doors - as good as location as any.
[00:00] Kari>
The League for Gamers is a non-profit organization that was started by our CEO at Red Five Studios, Mark Kern and it brings gamers and game developers together to give us a united voice and to support gaming rights.
[00:13] Timothy>
How long has the League been around?
[00:15] Kari>
It's been around for a couple of months now.
We were prompted to start the organization when all the SOPA things were going down.
We actually shut down our FireFall and Red Five Studios website and we decided we wanted to make this a longer term thing to pursue.
[00:29] Timothy>
What is some examples of what League for Gamers does?
[00:33] Kari>
What we do is we try to be politically active.
I can give two examples of what we've done in the past:
[00:38] Kari>
With SOPA for example I just mentioned we took our websites down, we started a petition where we got thousands of signatures from gamers and game developers to protest SOPA and PIPA.
[00:50] Kari>
Another one that we just successfully completed was for the Oklahoma Gaming Tax.
What Oklahoma tried to do was put a 1% tax on all games that were rated Teen and above.
What we did is we sent a petition out to our members and we protested it and the bill has since been dropped.
[01:08] Timothy>
How (? stateful)
[01:09] Kari>
A very interesting story, actually, Red Five Studios CEO Mark Kern, we had invested about $15,000 to attend E3.
When we found out that the ESA who puts on E3 supports SOPA, we withdrew the money, we canceled our booth at E3, and we took that money and we started League for Gamers.
In the future we'll probably be having memberships - within the next month or so - all the people that sign up now won't have to pay dues, but they're more than welcome to donate to the cause.
[01:39] Timothy>
Who should be part of League for Gamers?
Is it mostly for people in the industry?
Is it meant for ordinary people?
Who should really be concerned about this?
[1:47] Kari>
I think League for Gamers actually casts a pretty wide net.
You have the gamer who doesn't want their rights taken away, they want to be able to express themselves freely online.
You have the indie game developer that's not properly being represented by organizations like the ESA, that tend to represent the bigger companies.
But also, we really do try to work for First Amendment rights, and that's something that applies to anybody who uses the internet and supports free speech.
[02:13] Timothy>
One more thing, a question I didn't have until just now, but it's from a game company [...]
[02:19] Kari>
Yes.
[02:19.5] Timothy>
[...] basically, the background, [...]
[02:20] Kari>
Yes.
[02:20.5] Timothy>
[...] and, does it benefit everybody in the industry?
Is it tied to [?] companies?
Talk about how political or apolitical the industry tied it is.
[2:33.5] Kari> ... we're not politically affiliated in any way.
The League for Gamers?
Well, I can say right now, we're not tied to any
We're just a group of people that want our voices to be heard.
We're not lobbying, we don't have people in Washington that are lobbying for us right now.
It's really an organic organization that really does support the smaller gamer that right now - his voice is being lost
[02:54] <TITLE>
The Slashdot logo with "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." scrolls across the bottom of the view from left to right.
That /. can post some interesting stories about gaming from time to time, yet has a gaming 'slashbox' that looks like it has not been updated in about 8 or 10 years?
Silence is a state of mime.
I associate the name mdash with HTML authoring, not the world of gaming, so I would not have guessed that. :-)
"Uh" is natural for any human being not speaking from a prompter.
Does does League of Gamers differ from the Video Game Voters Network?
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
it's 2012. It is not only no longer 'shocking' or 'amazing' that women are gamers, it's not even relevant.
GTFU
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"I'm an internet athlete!"
*farts, scratches bedsores, inhales entire bag of Cheetos*
I don't say uh in conversation
I'll hazard a guess that by this, you have learned to pause silently instead of saying "uh". If so, do you often get interrupted in such silent pauses? The other possibility is that you have trained yourself not to make such pauses at all. If so, how did you do this?
If you find yourself tempted to say "umm", don't say anything at all. Make it a pause instead.
In my experience with family members, every pause opens me up to being interrupted before I can finish my sentence.
No larger image available? What gives? I thought /. had betters standards than this...
Looks cute in the thumbnail...
It's just a social activism site using gamers as it's engine. Nothing more.
Really, nothing more? Look what an activism organization composed of people who shoot real guns can accomplish, the National Rifle Association. Now consider an activism organization composed of the more numerous people who shoot digital guns in video games. If you can get the digital shooters to show up on election day and vote in a manner supporting their cause quite a bit could be accomplished.
The real currency of politics is voters, not dollars. Like petitions, dollars are just a tool to influence voters. The real power, the real influence, is with the people who show up on election day. They are the *only* people that politicians listen to. As proven by the National Rifle Association (NRA), the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), etc. Getting gamers to realize this is a good thing.
I might be more inclined to believe the claim if "give a crap about communicating" didn't fly out the window as soon as the medium was the written word.
The nature of the written word edits out pauses in typing by the time you read it. But the medium of this article is not the written word; it is a video. Such edits to a video create jump cuts that violate continuity.
I've found that I can eliminate most pauses in my speech by thinking a few words ahead, the same way that you can read aloud from a book without faltering by reading 2-3 words ahead before you actually speak.
Coming up with ideas and turning them into words is a lot harder for me than translating symbols that are already there into words. This is true especially if I'm deep in thought or reading and asked a completely unrelated question, or if I have to think of how to analogize a particular assertion to meet a family member's known unfamiliarity with the more intricate parts of a subject. It's like the difference between streaming a video over the Internet (buffering...) and trying to render CGI in real time.
Did she have a face? Cause all I noticed was her chest.