I like both, i find jim more entertaining, i find EC more informative.

keep seeing pretentious come up with EC, and, i don't know, i guess being informative is pretentious.

Gatx:
I was on the fence about Jim initially but stuck around cause he made good points, and he's definitely gotten better. For the life of me I cannot look at the pictures though, so I just listen to it as a podcast.

Naqel:
Jim has his feet on the ground, EC have their heads in the clouds. We need both for gaming to be "tall", so to speak.

That's beautiful.

Ditto

Num1d1um:
By that, you're actually taking their right of free speech away, instead of warning or protecting them.

And yet, absolutism in free speech will infringe on other rights. Especially if you can threaten to kill someone with impunity. If absolutism is the only way to live in a free society then we will never be free, because we can assert our freedoms as reasons to harm another, be it verbally or physically. We are not truly free because we cannot walk around hitting people, either. Do you believe that? Should free expression allow me to burn down your house just because I don't like what you're saying? Perhaps we could consider it a political statement. Hell, Westboro Baptist has successfully gotten away with PHYSICAL bullying because "free speech."

One of the landmark cases fathered the saying "My right to swing my fist ends at the other man's nose." I know, I know, you are arguing that the laws, the Constitution, and probably the SCOTUS are all wrong, but this is a very reasonable marker for the establishment of any right. You cannot argue the basic rights of one party at the expense of basic rights of another. Nobody should have the right to threaten another. Which, incidentally, is what most hate speech laws tend to come down to. This is why the KKK and WBC can still protest despite the so-called vast unfairness that people aren't allowed to "hate."

Since harassment is apparently a basic human right (as blanketed under free expression), you literally create the potential for a point where a woman (or anyone else for that matter) can be systematically stalked and harassed. Sure, they might have the choice to leave, but they do not really have any safe haven from someone who really wants to make their life hard. What is to stop someone from just following them? What right does someone have when literally cornered by free speech? None? That's just awesome.

Completely specious reasoning that seems only to favour one side (the aggressor) of an incident and ignore any basic human rights of the other, but hey, who cares?

If we must have absolute rights to be truly free, then we will never be truly free. And at that point, it seems the argument becomes utterly meaningless.

funcooker11811:

The thing that people who perpetuate the "sticks and stones" line of thinking forget is that humans are social creatures. The main reason we've survived as a species is because we've stuck together in groups, and have evolved to reflect that. Back then, those who were not part of the group tended to die, so being ostracized from a group was something akin to a death sentence. Despite coming such a long way since then, we still have those old instincts of "part of the group is good", because we still gather in groups, and socialize in a way that compliments that. That's why harassment and insults have such a dramatic effect on people, despite looking innocuous from the outside. They make that person feel as though they aren't part of the group, or that there's something wrong with them. You'd be hard pressed to find any study of human behavior that doesn't say that such feelings can, and frequently do, cause severe emotional distress, which again, just isn't fair, especially when the things they are being insulted for are out of their control (i.e. race, gender, sexual orientation). You can tell them to "just sack up or find somewhere else", but those kinds of feelings are hardwired into their DNA, and its not anyone's place to antagonize them like that.

Especially as this appears to be your first post, I just wanted to say I enjoyed your take and appreciate your particular insight.

Well, Jim has all the intellect of a puddle of mud and is about as enjoyable to watch as aforementioned caking dirt puddles. So I guess Extra Credits win.

Not like it was a hard fought victory, mind. Stalin would look charismatic and endearing next to Sterling.

Zachary Amaranth:

Num1d1um:
By that, you're actually taking their right of free speech away, instead of warning or protecting them.

And yet, absolutism in free speech will infringe on other rights. Especially if you can threaten to kill someone with impunity. If absolutism is the only way to live in a free society then we will never be free, because we can assert our freedoms as reasons to harm another, be it verbally or physically. We are not truly free because we cannot walk around hitting people, either. Do you believe that? Should free expression allow me to burn down your house just because I don't like what you're saying? Perhaps we could consider it a political statement. Hell, Westboro Baptist has successfully gotten away with PHYSICAL bullying because "free speech."

One of the landmark cases fathered the saying "My right to swing my fist ends at the other man's nose." I know, I know, you are arguing that the laws, the Constitution, and probably the SCOTUS are all wrong, but this is a very reasonable marker for the establishment of any right. You cannot argue the basic rights of one party at the expense of basic rights of another. Nobody should have the right to threaten another. Which, incidentally, is what most hate speech laws tend to come down to. This is why the KKK and WBC can still protest despite the so-called vast unfairness that people aren't allowed to "hate."

Since harassment is apparently a basic human right (as blanketed under free expression), you literally create the potential for a point where a woman (or anyone else for that matter) can be systematically stalked and harassed. Sure, they might have the choice to leave, but they do not really have any safe haven from someone who really wants to make their life hard. What is to stop someone from just following them? What right does someone have when literally cornered by free speech? None? That's just awesome.

Completely specious reasoning that seems only to favour one side (the aggressor) of an incident and ignore any basic human rights of the other, but hey, who cares?

If we must have absolute rights to be truly free, then we will never be truly free. And at that point, it seems the argument becomes utterly meaningless.

funcooker11811:

The thing that people who perpetuate the "sticks and stones" line of thinking forget is that humans are social creatures. The main reason we've survived as a species is because we've stuck together in groups, and have evolved to reflect that. Back then, those who were not part of the group tended to die, so being ostracized from a group was something akin to a death sentence. Despite coming such a long way since then, we still have those old instincts of "part of the group is good", because we still gather in groups, and socialize in a way that compliments that. That's why harassment and insults have such a dramatic effect on people, despite looking innocuous from the outside. They make that person feel as though they aren't part of the group, or that there's something wrong with them. You'd be hard pressed to find any study of human behavior that doesn't say that such feelings can, and frequently do, cause severe emotional distress, which again, just isn't fair, especially when the things they are being insulted for are out of their control (i.e. race, gender, sexual orientation). You can tell them to "just sack up or find somewhere else", but those kinds of feelings are hardwired into their DNA, and its not anyone's place to antagonize them like that.

Especially as this appears to be your first post, I just wanted to say I enjoyed your take and appreciate your particular insight.

I don't remember saying that physical violence or arson was covered by freedom of speech. We're talking about SPEECH. Nobody claimed anyone should be able to burn down or hit anyone or anything because of freedom of speech.

On the other point, and I'll adress your alt's version of it too, what you forget is that anyone that is being harassed probably has a voice themselves. These people are not mutes. If the aggression is verbal, as you call it, assault, why would the victim not be able to counter? What makes you think the victim can't possibly talk back? As I said like three times now, it works both ways. And it's an insult to the victims to assume they're too weak to fight back, it's a generalisation, and it's a baseless assumption that forms the foundation of your argument. And I'm sick of people making that assumption. Just to draw from anecdotal shit now, I've been through the shit, I've been bullied, and getting up, turning around and hitting back takes not even half the balls people claim it does. By telling these victims they're too weak to fight back, to resist, you're actively insulting their abilities and their mental strength.

Once again, this is not about physical violence. I'm not arguing with your "fist ends at his nose" thing. No one here is. I'm not arguing that any group should be allowed to physically harm another on grounds of free speech. Anyone has the tools to fight back against "verbal assault".

And of course, we're not truly free. But we easily could be in regards to speech. The thing is, if you were to propose that we rename it to limited speech, the argument is over, and you can keep your constitution. Just don't pretend we have something we don't have. Don't call it freedom of speech if it isn't. But somehow I have the feeling that living with limited speech is gonna make a lot of people very angry now that they realized how limited they are. So we keep pretending.

Here's an alternate take on it, think of religons and ask yourself who deserves your respect the most out of Jehovah's Witnesses and a Frothingly Angry Street Preacher.

Both of them talk about spirituality based things a lot and try to spread the word as it were. But they go about it in two different fashions.

The Street Preacher shouts at the top of his lungs and tells everyone how they're all silly for believing in something contarary to him and they're all going to hell. The shouting and ranting annoy the public at large and they ignore him for his lack of manners and think he's a narrow minded fool along with the rest of his ilk.

The Jehovahas are very polite, friendly and engaging - albeit very strange. But everyone knows that they mean well. As such, they get more respect and will be listened to more than Mr Street Preacher. This is why I think that Extra Credits deserve more respect than Mr Sterling - on the grounds that they aren't hot headed and immature like Mr Sterling and as such, they make gamers look better.

It's better to be weak and rightous than strong but wrong. But that's just my two cents as the Americans would say.

Gunner 51:
Here's an alternate take on it, think of religons and ask yourself who deserves your respect the most out of Jehovah's Witnesses and a Frothingly Angry Street Preacher.

Both of them talk about spirituality based things a lot and try to spread the word as it were. But they go about it in two different fashions.

The Street Preacher shouts at the top of his lungs and tells everyone how they're all silly for believing in something contarary to him and they're all going to hell. The shouting and ranting annoy the public at large and they ignore him for his lack of manners and think he's a narrow minded fool along with the rest of his ilk.

The Jehovahas are very polite, friendly and engaging - albeit very strange. But everyone knows that they mean well. As such, they get more respect and will be listened to more than Mr Street Preacher. This is why I think that Extra Credits deserve more respect than Mr Sterling - on the grounds that they aren't hot headed and immature like Mr Sterling and as such, they make gamers look better.

It's better to be weak and rightous than strong but wrong. But that's just my two cents as the Americans would say.

Again. Assuming the rightous are weak. Insulting their ability. Falsely connecting force with evil. I'm not gonna argue about your analogy with Jehovah's witnesses, in my opinion they're just as obnoxious and just as fixated on money as any other sect. Sterling gets his point across with overdramatization and force. Claiming this as a sign of immaturity is quite frankly ridiculous, and as we all know, only kids care about being mature and grown up.

Welp I think that Jim is trying to be funny but ends up sounding smart. EC is trying to sound smart but ends up sounding funny. I like making fun of their style of writing like at the end of an episode "and who knows? Maybe someday blah blah yadda yadda." hahaha

Personally I think both of their opinions are valuable and the industry shouldn't ever listen to just one person. They should take into account different points of view. I'll vote both.

"Free speech" rights protect you from prosecution based off what you say. they don't protect you from being kicked off a paid service, or ejected from a building by the building's owners, or various other recriminations. It gets very tiring seeing people get this wrong all the time.

If you harass people online, the online service is well within its rights to censor you, because there are Terms and Conditions to use and, if you agree to them, you are subject to them. End of story.

As for which source I trust, I find EC to be a very measured view of the gaming sphere. Jim Sterling is a guy who is frequently wrong and much more of a pundit, and I do not trust pundits. I'm not entirely sure as to why his credentials make his opinion of any more value than anyone else's; that is to say, of nearly no value at all.

James Ennever:
Today I turned coats and ventured into PA to wach the weekly Extra credits, and there I realised something. That Jim sterling Knows more about the online gaming scene than the three of them combined.

Yes sexism in Xbox live is unacceptable and yes verbal jousting does cross the line, But If we followed the suggestions they say, it would be the death of free speech. Where is the line between sexism, racism and bullying and at what point does it leave the realms of hate speech and into just having a different opinion?

Jim sterling's theory of immaturity being a good way to deal with unlikable people is what happens online 60% of the time. Here is an example of how jims logic works.

In the end, you both have the ability to silence each other through the use of mute, and fragging them is always the best option. Every time I hear A racist 12 year old from Indonesia, I (1) mute them (2) frag them (3) unmute them to see if they will act civil now(4) if not mute then warn my teammates, no need to ban anyone just ignore them or If they are to young to be playing the game mock them about there age and how they should "really get of their mom's computer" .......simple

Edit 1
I like EC it is just that yesterdays episode contridivted jims earlier video.

EC is not "pretentous" It is sometimes biased but not uninteligable.

Different audiences. Extra Credits is trying to be a thought-provoking discussion of the future of game design and development. Jim Sterling is aiming to produce a humorous op-ed on various discussions happening in the gaming community. Like comparing apples and oranges.

I like both. i think they are different.
Jim looks at games from the consumer\gamer side.
EC are talking from the reviewer/critic's side, and sometimes they try to show the industry/developer point of view as well, but it seems to me it's mostly based on guesses.
Jim is trying to be entertaining.
EC try to be educational.

Djinn8:

But Jim is not a Frothing Angry Street Preacher, he is more like a Ayatollah using his faith and status as a false prophet to drum up funds for a personal war. Jim is for sale and obliged to plug games at the behest of his producer and the deals they have made (seems to be I-Phone games most of the time). His opinions change on the wind to ensure that he stay's in line with public opinion, and his entire persona is essentially based aroung strong, pre-existing memetic imagary for wide acceptance while promoting a sense of integrity through smugness. Thing is, it seems to work. Looking over this thread is proof enough of it. So to all those who believe Jim to be the voice of the people, go ahead and fly the black flag of gaming. just know that you are only a means to an end.

Interesting enough, even through all this onesided irrational hate and idiocy (Jim is a gamer, EC are journalists *cough*) EC are leading the poll by a landslide.

What does a cynic see in this? Maybe the fanbase of Jim is as loud as his persona...

James Ennever:
[...]Yes sexism in Xbox live is unacceptable and yes verbal jousting does cross the line, But If we followed the suggestions they say, it would be the death of free speech. Where is the line between sexism, racism and bullying and at what point does it leave the realms of hate speech and into just having a different opinion?[...]

Alright, I'll admit I'm biased on the EC VS Jim thing. I signed up to talk about EC, as soon as I saw "Get angry" in Jim's advert, as well as some pictures from his show, I instantly thought "Nothing worth watching." My standards are pretty high, as I haven't watched TV in what, 5 years? With some exceptions.

The part I quoted though, is what got me frustrated.

EC in their latest episode(I probably can't link it.) talked about how harassment online is completely and utterly unacceptable, this includes examples like "Get the fuck back in the kitchen, hope you die slutwhore."... Whatever, And, shit, I, me, a fucking tent has gotten insults like that. If I had a kid who wrote shit like that online, I'd lock him in his room while I took every piece of videogaming hardware and either tossed it out or locked it down. The kid would learn what it's like to be Amish before he re-found the videogame.

EC's suggestions, which primarily consisted of an auto-mute if your repeatedly ignored by so many people, (We'll say 100) is not an infringement on your free speech. It is a consequence. EC also suggested that having yourself unable to speak in the game until you've played for a while, but I also see why they didn't like that and didn't want that included.

You know what? Escapist actually employs a similar measure here. If a user gets warned, or banned, their post is automatically hidden. You need to click a link to see it. That is exactly what Extra Credits suggested in XBL. Because when you receive nothing but PM's stating "UR SHIT LOL" for the duration of a lucky-streak, that's actually pretty frustrating, and in my opinion, kinda unacceptable like the things we've seen in that show.

Believe it or not when you do shit like that, it actually effects the person on the other side. I consider myself as having a pretty thick skin too.

To stay on topic, I'll watch an episode... The latest one from Jimquisition.

Jim Sterling:
I make this industry a better place, just by breathing.

You keep on tellin' yourself that, Jimmy.
Capicha: good for nothing... Yeah... That's all I can say.

I don't think I'm biased anymore.

The EC crew is just pretentious. Jim does that "exagerated god-complex" thingy to create a fake persona, to make us laugh a little so we can view the point he is trying to make. Extra Credits are just pretentious.

Too preachy and never even admitting it. At least sometimes Jim does say that he either won't talk much about something because he is biased, or when he does, he says that he respects the people who disagree with him. Extra Credits never does this.

I liked EC once. I hated Jim before. Now he improved his show and trought His example he made me see what EC really were: pretentious douches trying to cover it up with false niceness and condescense. Thank God for Jim (hehehehe).

James Ennever:

Waffle_Man:

SmashLovesTitanQuest:

Extra Credits on the other hand? Fuck EC. Thats all I am saying.

hazabaza1:
At least Jim isn't pretentious as all fuck.

wintercoat:
The guys at EC are so far up their own asses it's unbelievable. Their "gaming is the wave of the future!" attitude grates on my nerves.

Did I miss the part where EC decided to start stealing people's lunch money? There are definitely reasons to dislike Extra Credits, but does it warrant such hostility?

I donated to that under the assumption that EC would stay on the escapist.....

Maybe Themis shouldn't be the utter cunts that they are. I don't watch videos on here anymore; the only good series were kicked out by Themis, i.e. Unforgotten Realms and Extra Credits. Apocolypse Lane ended, I have nothing to watch here now.

I'm going to go with Jim here.

Not because Extra Credits is bad or anything, rather their solutions just seem so very naive at times. Not to mention often utterly lacking in implementation.

Idealism is great for thinking about. But when it comes to acting I prefer realism.

Extra Credits probably comes off as "pretentious" to most people simply because it's presented in an academic manner. They're presenting their thesis and argument as if they were writing for a scholarly journal or something of that nature. This contrasts with Jim Sterling, who's pretentiousness is overblown to the point of hilarity, but at the same time looses some amount of focus in his arguments as a result.

Another note mentioned above that I agree with is that Extra Credits is not a topical show that talks about recent current events in the news; they talk about the future game design in general. Their goal, especially if you watch their initial episodes, seems to be to educating people who want to get into the industry. Jim Sterling on the other hand is more a comedy show that talks about current events in gaming and gives his opinion on it. Although they both talk about games, their aims are different.

I don't think any of these people are as high on their horse as Movie Bob though. He has good opinions, but he acts like he knows everything and has a better opinion than anyone listening, much more to the point than Extra Credits so it becomes grating but less than Jim Sterling so it's not funny at all.

JamesStone:
The EC crew is just pretentious. Jim does that "exagerated god-complex" thingy to create a fake persona, to make us laugh a little so we can view the point he is trying to make. Extra Credits are just pretentious.

Why? And when I say "Why?" I'm asking both "Why did you put the same thing at the beginning and end of that though" and "Why are they pretentious?"

Abandon4093:

Krion_Vark:

Abandon4093:

That's a bad analogy, do you want a better one?

"My Grandad likes shouting racist slurs. So we put him in a room where no one could hear him."

I can't find the video right now but there was an experiment done where a guy one night played a recording of drums really loud then a week later played a recording of a woman getting beat really loud. People came for the drums but not for the woman. So yeah his analogy actually works.

PS: If anyone could find that video I would be grateful because its a really good thing to watch.

WHAT? How does that make the analogy work?

There is no comparison between someone shouting profanities down a mic and someone beating a woman.

That's like saying 'They came for the Jews _{continue quote}' when someone get's arrested for paedophilia.

There has to be a level of comparability for an analogy to work, and there is NO comparison between someone being rude on a mic and someone beating their wife, just like there's no comparison between someone being persecuted for being Jewish and someone being arrested for molesting children. Regardless of whether or not people have the balls to call the police for domestic violence cases.

I jus.... I don't even. How can you look at that analogy and not cry from the sheer amount of 'does not work'.

It makes it work because if someone is just screaming obcenities into the mic EVERYONE tells them to shut up. Soon as they send it at a woman however no one tells them to shut up and pretty much go the way of NOTHING TO DO HERE and just ignores it.

I prefer extra credits, while they both make good points i think that the guys at extra credits do it better, Jim's "style" to me is boring, he makes good points and all but a lot of his stuff is just meh, He tries to hard to be funny. Also he swears way to much and when ever it does it sounds forced like unless i use the F word every now and again people will get bored, I wouldn't mind if he used it for humour but he doesn't. Anyway those are my opinions...

Num1d1um:

I don't remember saying that physical violence or arson was covered by freedom of speech. We're talking about SPEECH. Nobody claimed anyone should be able to burn down or hit anyone or anything because of freedom of speech.

On the other point, and I'll adress your alt's version of it too, what you forget is that anyone that is being harassed probably has a voice themselves. These people are not mutes. If the aggression is verbal, as you call it, assault, why would the victim not be able to counter? What makes you think the victim can't possibly talk back? As I said like three times now, it works both ways. And it's an insult to the victims to assume they're too weak to fight back, it's a generalisation, and it's a baseless assumption that forms the foundation of your argument. And I'm sick of people making that assumption. Just to draw from anecdotal shit now, I've been through the shit, I've been bullied, and getting up, turning around and hitting back takes not even half the balls people claim it does. By telling these victims they're too weak to fight back, to resist, you're actively insulting their abilities and their mental strength.

Once again, this is not about physical violence. I'm not arguing with your "fist ends at his nose" thing. No one here is. I'm not arguing that any group should be allowed to physically harm another on grounds of free speech. Anyone has the tools to fight back against "verbal assault".

And of course, we're not truly free. But we easily could be in regards to speech. The thing is, if you were to propose that we rename it to limited speech, the argument is over, and you can keep your constitution. Just don't pretend we have something we don't have. Don't call it freedom of speech if it isn't. But somehow I have the feeling that living with limited speech is gonna make a lot of people very angry now that they realized how limited they are. So we keep pretending.

Thing is though, although physical violence/arson isn't covered by free speech, the threat of something like that is still real. If we were living in your world where free speech is actually free, where we can say anything we want, then everybody on Earth would be paranoid because of threats being protected by the law. If we would allow people saying "I'm going to kill you" or "I'm going to burn your house down and your family with it" or even "I'm going to nuke your country", then chaos would be inevitable and the world would plunge into war at the drop of a hat. that's because threats are not supposed to be taken lightly, because there is still the probability that the threat can and will occur. If you're saying you'd want these kinds of things just because of a technicality of the word "free" then it's your choice, but I'm at least glad that you're not in charge.

Also, although people can still fight back in terms of words, there are still a lot of factors to consider when fighting back. Physical size of a person for example, are you saying that if a person much larger than you and could easily hurt you, insulted you, you would fight back? That you would easily conquer your fight or flight instinct and fight a person who has an advantage over you physically? That you wouldn't be intimidated by the repercussions you might incur to yourself the moment he does fight back? Yes, I do agree that no one should be physically harmed, but would you think that violence wouldn't be inevitable especially since your enemy knows he has the physical advantage and you decide to fight back?

James Ennever:

In the end, you both have the ability to silence each other through the use of mute, and fragging them is always the best option. Every time I hear A racist 12 year old from Indonesia, I (1) mute them (2) frag them (3) unmute them to see if they will act civil now

When has fragging someone in a game ever made them MORE civil?! 0.o

I like both, Extra Credits does come off as pretentious and I may disagree with them but they represent an ideal that is rarely done by game journalist, so I think there good to have around. As For Jim I agree with him more often then I do most plus his over the top self praise seems to make fun of other game journalists that seem to really think they're better then everyone else.

As for the auto mute feature make it an optional service for the listener, if you don't care to hear people who've proven to be douches on a regular basis then you agree to use it if not don't.