Anita Sarkeesian, as quoted by The Verge:

One of the most radical things you can do is to actually believe women when they talk about their experiences.

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Falsehoods about me are initially pushed by detractors who use them to post to 4Chan and Reddit to rally more people to the cause. It’s bouncing from Twitter to Tumblr to Facebook to YouTube and back again. Once the cascade reaches a critical mass, it no longer matters what the facts are. It becomes a viral meme.

I really wish I had the privilege see Sarkeesian speak. Such an inspiring and perseverant woman. Opening and closing to a standing ovation at the XOXO Festival. Amazing.

Zoe Quinn, as quoted by The Guardian, on Gamergate:

I think right now the well is incredibly poisoned: it’s likely a losing battle and that’s incredibly disappointing. I also feel like discussing ethics and fairness is antithetical to a campaign originated in and motivated by a fair bit of misogyny and harassment.

Does it say anything that my Twitter usage, gaming news consumption, and overall web browsing is down by a considerable amount?

It is exhausting to think that digital mobs and trolls may never be stopped due to the anonymous and unquantifiable nature of the digital space. I was young and dumb too, saying things in Quake and Starcraft chat rooms that were likely horrific by today’s standards. But I was an in monitored child. It wasn’t until real classroom debate, introduction to socially aware music and film, and being called out for my idiocy in person by a respected peer that I wised up.

Is that what we are dealing with? Are these children? Adults? Are they bluffing for fun? How many are there? A handful? Dozens? Hundreds? What failed their social growth?

In the real world, we can identify the source of seemingly monstrous shadows. In the digital world, shadows are the source.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Lw-2ZGvyLw

WillFerrellHatesCancer.org:

Hello people of the video game universe…its your friend Will Ferrell!

How would you like to join me for a delightful evening of playing video games together? The only appropriate answer is YES!

I want to throw one of the coolest video game events in the history of mankind, possibly even dating back to the time of the dinosaurs, and I’m extending this challenge to gamers: Raise $375,000 for charity and children with cancer and then I’ll host the event on October 26th…AND, one lucky winner (aka one of you reading right now) could join me for this life altering moment in beautiful San Francisco!

I’ll bring the roll of quarters, all I ask is for you to make a donation in support of children and families suffering from cancer.

Sounds like a good contest/kickerstarter for a great cause. Head over to WillFerrellHatesCancer.org for more information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FktsFcooIG8

Daphne Bavelier, TEDxCHUV: ‘Your brain on video games’:

Now, at this point, a number of you are probably wondering well, what are you waiting for, to put on the market a game that would be good for the attention of my grandmother and that she would actually enjoy, or a game that would be great to rehabilitate the vision of my grandson who has amblyopia, for example?

Well, we’re working on it, but here is a challenge. There are brain scientists like me that are beginning to understand what are the good ingredients in games to promote positive effects, and that’s what I’m going to call the broccoli side of the equation. There is an entertainment software industry which is extremely deft at coming up with appealing products that you can’t resist. That’s the chocolate side of the equation. The issue is we need to put the two together, and it’s a little bit like with food. Who really wants to eat chocolate-covered broccoli? None of you. And you probably have had that feeling, right, picking up an education game and sort of feeling, hmm, you know, it’s not really fun, it’s not really engaging. So what we need is really a new brand of chocolate, a brand of chocolate that is irresistible, that you really want to play, but that has all the ingredients, the good ingredients that are extracted from the broccoli that you can’t recognize but are still working on your brains. And we’re working on it, but it takes brain scientists to come and to get together, people that work in the entertainment software industry, and publishers, so these are not people that usually meet every day, but it’s actually doable, and we are on the right track. I’d like to leave you with that thought, and thank you for your attention.

I’m currently playing Valiant Hearts: The Great War. In speaking to the colleague that recommended the game, I told him it feels like perfect edutainment. An extremely engaging action-puzzler, rich with gorgeous music and gut-wrenching narratives, that also aims to teach the historical significance and effects of World War I. A new brand of chocolate.

Peter Berkman and Ary Warnaar, Anamanaguchi:

There’s a big community of people who will take old Nintendo’s from 1985 and use them as synthesizers; people in Sweden, New York, Japan, London; taking apart these old video game consoles and old home computers and using them as synths instead of game consoles. They’d write software specifically for producing music on them.

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The appeal isn’t necessarily using the actual console. The appeal is the limitations. You get such a shortened language of electronic music. It really simplifies the idea of how to build the sounds that you want from the simplest building blocks. It’s kind of expanded to using this language of simple digital music but applying it to everything else as well.

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The cool part about the NES as a sound chip thingy, you get all this bit-quantization which means it has 16 values for volume. When a note fades out, it looks like stairs instead if a diagonal line.

First off, Song Exploder is a brilliant podcast by Hrishikesh Hirway. Rather than explain it in my own words, here’s the official description:

A podcast where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.

If you’re not subscribed, do so now.

I have been a fan of Anamanaguchi since hearing Another Winter in the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game demo in 2010. The song sent my mind racing back to the NES era gaming. There is such a comfort in 8-bit sounds.

Anamanaguchi has put out two EPs, a series of singles (including my personal favorite, Airbrushed) as well as a debut full-length in the form of a kickstarted double LP titled Endless Fantasy. Last year, I had a great time writing up an experimental dual-review of the record against Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City which you can find here.

Give this Song Exploder episode a listen. It’s fascinating to learn what goes on behind electronic (namely chiptune) music.