Your video, Leeroy Jenkins ruins the hostage rescue, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I must be the only one in the nation that doesn't go ga-ga for Superbowl ads. I would have to be held hostage for a year to regress to a point where I would find TV commercials interesting. TV and pop culture is nothing but disposable retreads, but people keep chasing that first high. Gotta keep "pushing the envelope" with high production values, shock value, celebrity cameos, and everything else you learn in Publicity Stunts 101.

During Carter's single term in office, Iran became a fundamentalist terror state, Saddam began his coup that led to the Iran-Iraq war-Hostage crisis?? Hello?? He gave the Sandinista cash for their fun-in-the-sun-OH-He gave away the Panama Canal, right? Claimed that the Soviets were no longer a 'threat' and they marched right on into Afghanistan. He set-up foreign policy for the next wave of presidential failures and shills for the assholes who really run the show, you know them by their smell, the richest gadjillionaires in the world, who have stolen humanity's hope for anything but anarchy or global fascism and world-government control and surveillance-state, in the form of what the world is fast-becoming. Yeah, the old peanut farmer was was a real piece of work.

Wake up people, the United States presidency has been a ruse for close to fifty years.

Yeah, those jets were hard and annoying. I didn't get far. Didn't those hostages remind you of Lode Runner? Did you play the arcade port? That was cool.

Over here, the union of railroad engineers is currently showcasing what a union was supposed to be doing, and almost the entire establishment is fuming. You just got to love how a proper strike reveals so many of them for what they are: corporatists who couldn't give a shit about workers.

"How can such a small group of people exploit their positions to grind an entire country to a halt? How can they hold us hostage like this?"

Ironically, it's the same people who (partially-)privatised our railroad in the first place. Railroad engineers used to be civil servants, no risks of strikes there.

The press is demonising them, brass from both government parties is demonising them, laws are proposed to practically strip them of their right to go on strike...

All major unions have been in bed with corporations for so long now that people barely remember what it looks like when a union fights for its members. They used to fear union leaders like Otto Brenner (Otto the Great, Iron Otto), now they're playing golf with his successors.

@Asmo

Except my daughter doesn't want to play other games--she wants to play Mario Brothers games. They have excellent game and level design. Why should she have to go elsewhere? Are you trying to say Mario Brothers games not for girls?

All my daughter is asking is to be allowed to play as the Princess--maybe after you free her from Bowser. That doesn't seem like much to ask, as it would have exactly zero effect on gameplay.

Personally, I'd go much farther and say when a game series continuously sends the message that women are helpless victims who need to be defended by men, when they're continuously objectified as trophies to be passed from player to villain and back to player again, then something is very wrong with that game and things need to change. Yeah, other games may be great, but why should that prevent people like Sarkeesian or myself from pointing out the games that aren't? Why should the trend itself not be pointed out when we can find examples of it outside of the Mario series?

No, it's not required that every game have a male/female playable character. It is, however, good business sense not to insult potential female customers of a product by portraying females (playable characters or NPCS) in sexist ways (or homosexual characters in bigoted ways, or ethnic minority characters in racist ways, while we're on the topic). This doesn't seem very difficult to understand and clearly game companies DO understand it because most are making great efforts to be diverse and more realistic in their portrayals of characters. However, just because some are trying doesn't mean we shouldn't point out the bullshit in those that don't. Games like the Mario platformer series, for instance.

You disagree with the way Sarkeesian presents her message... okay. I don't have a problem with that. I think everything you wrote grossly misrepresents what she's saying about games and gamers, but you're entitled to your opinion there.

Moving on... sorry you felt insulted. That was never my intent. But your comments on this issue are written in an extremely emotional manner as if you've somehow been personally wronged. If you don't want people to take it in that manner, you might want to think carefully about the tone your posts on this topic take. I have no idea what that link you provided was supposed to prove, so I'll just leave it alone.

On "Damsel in Distress," it's "your trope" because you've been--throughout this thread--defending it as if it is some bastion of literature that must be preserved. You are quite literally the only person I've ever seen actually try to defend it. And as I said, if it is that dear to you, you can have it. Games will still get made using it.

Other media,though, have long since moved on from it. Take the movie Die Hard as an example. Yeah, the main character's wife gets taken hostage by terrorists and that provides a nice emotional hook to move the plot forward--damsel in distress, right? If it were a game, though, we never would have heard from Holly Gennarro McClane again until Bruce Willis killed all the terrorists. Or maybe a video recording of her would show up after every "boss fight" where she tells John McClane, "Sorry honey, but I'm being kept in another part of the building."

But that's not what happens is it? The character of Holly is central to the plot of the movie and she appears nearly as much as John McClane does. She tries actively to subvert the terrorists by hiding her true identity and by taking responsibility to make sure the hostages are treated well during their captivity.

In other words she's portrayed as a real human being with personal agency throughout the movie.

And that's the point that you seem to be missing. That doesn't happen often in games despite the fact that it does happen in every other form of media (or at least in the examples from media that we generally consider "good"). When we are talking about the "Damsel in Distress" trope in games, THAT is what is being critiqued. Not the fact that someone was kidnapped to provide an emotional hook, but that one particular gender is always targeted and--to add insult to injury--is presented as weak, helpless, and without any agency of their own. They exist for the sole purpose of being rescued.

Thanks for the pro tip, BTW. Had no idea you were a pro at being a patronizing git but I'll take your word for it.

If there are enough idiots shouting loud enough to take media hostage over political correctness, I'm pretty sure there are enough idiots to shout loud enough for the polar opposite.

Virtue lies in the middle.

I disliked how Hedges said that capitalism fails to self-regulate.

I think the big intellectual mistake that is made nowadays is to assume that the invisible-hand is a purely market phenomenon. Capitalism's self-regulation operates on a society-wide basis and requires feedback from people, governments, social-institutions (i.e. religious, cultural and academic) in addition to the market. I don't think it is too hard to argue that financial institutions currently hold a disproportionate amount of power relative to other institutions. One could even say that Wall Street has taken capitalism hostage.

However, this point is usually lost on people and forces them into "for" and "against" camps.

I know a lot more has been going on, but this is how I see it. 3 Israeli teens were taken hostage and then killed by Hamas.....1 Palestinian teen throwing gas bombs at police was arrested and beaten by the Israeli police.....Hamas launches hundreds of rockets at Israel costing Israel millions of dollars to shoot down. Egypt asks for a cease fire and Israel agrees...Hamas launches another rocket that kills an Israeli soldier....Israel starts launching there own guided missiles at suspected Hamas rocket locations.....killing 100's of Palestinians......This is how wars are started....the rest of the world is just the same.....we all are! Hamas stared it and if the Palestinians want Israel to stop maybe they should kick Hamas out....

I doubt a Swedish Pressbyan (it looks like the one in Central Station) has protective glass shielding the clerk, and the brief snatches of her behind seem to confirm this. It's not a locking door trap - which is why the guys are needed to keep it closed. It's almost unheard of to have that kind of protection in anything other than petrol stations, bookeeper's (betting shop) or off-licences (liquor stores). The most likely explanations include, in his urgency to get out, he didn't consider it. Or he just wanted money, and didn't actually want to commit violence. Or he knew that taking a hostage would result in a much more serious criminal penalty. Given its a train station, there is almost certainly police nearby and the incident is probably being observed on CCTV by at least transport security - so he didn't have a lot of time to get control of a hostage, convince the people blocking the door he would hurt her if they didn't open the door and then to make a getaway.

Couldn't he use that woman as a hostage to escape?

Worst kind of presentation -
it fails;
the presenter makes it all about them (instead of an idea, a lesson, an event);
they don't know the reason they're talking (what? Agriculture?);
they talk inside baseball (the time they have left, they don't know what they're talking about;
holds the audience hostage for their own amusement (that awkward clapping at the beginning).

Shudder shudder shudder.

Every generation
Blames the one before
And all of their frustrations
Come beating on your door

I know that I'm a prisoner
To all my Father held so dear
I know that I'm a hostage
To all his hopes and fears
I just wish I could have told him in the living years

Crumpled bits of paper
Filled with imperfect thought
Stilted conversations
I'm afraid that's all we've got

You say you just don't see it
He says it's perfect sense
You just can't get agreement
In this present tense
We all talk a different language
Talking in defense

Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear
It's too late when we die
To admit we don't see eye to eye

So we open up a quarrel
Between the present and the past
We only sacrifice the future
It's the bitterness that lasts

So don't yield to the fortunes
You sometimes see as fate
It may have a new perspective
On a different date
And if you don't give up, and don't give in
You may just be O.K.

Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear
It's too late when we die
To admit we don't see eye to eye

I wasn't there that morning
When my Father passed away
I didn't get to tell him
All the things I had to say

I think I caught his spirit
Later that same year
I'm sure I heard his echo
In my baby's new born tears
I just wish I could have told him in the living years

Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear
It's too late when we die
To admit we don't see eye to eye

@VoodooV

what strawman?
if you are going to accuse someone of using a deceptive tactic at least understand the terminology bubba.

and you are correct.
i did just make a statement and did not clarify my reasons.
so let me clarify:

you compared the imminent threat of hostages who are in danger of physical harm or death to a possible dissident who may..or may not..be plotting harm in the future sometime as somehow being similar.

this is a logical fallacy.
your analogy is flawed.
and it does not stand.

i didnt feel i had to point this out due to the fact that @Yogi had already given you an example of executive abuse of powers.

i mean really..how do you surrender to a drone?

i apologize if i stepped over some imaginary line,or if you think i am attacking you in some fashion.

i am not....but ill refrain from engaging with you in any fashion if that is your desire.

Because a hostage-taker is a verifiable imminent threat, and there is documented evidence of how the police ends it, evidence that is then reviewed for any wrongdoing.

The US government's take on imminent threat and evidence is "we just have to use that magic word 'terrorist', and we can kill anyone: citizens, civilians, women, children -- no problem, man!".