Incline Josh Sawyer appreciation station

[Butter]

Imagine how embarrassing and demoralizing it must be to work under this guy at Obsidian. A Twitter addict who posts selfies like a post-wall spinster drinking herself to death on boxed wine.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Imagine how embarrassing and demoralizing it must be to work under this guy at Obsidian. A Twitter addict who posts selfies like a post-wall spinster drinking herself to death on boxed wine.

Should lock him and Pompi together in the Phantom Zone.

 

[Roguey]

Imagine how embarrassing and demoralizing it must be to work under this guy at Obsidian. A Twitter addict who posts selfies like a post-wall spinster drinking herself to death on boxed wine.

I'm fairly confident that all the younger employees are more embarrassing than he is.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yup, let's face it, this lesbian grandma is still the least effeminate Obsidian employee.

 

[GamingConnoisseur]

Has Sawyer met with Vavra yet?
Heard he had a meeting with Warhorse.

https://twitter.com/WarhorseStudios/status/1733048640862658807

 

[caffeine]

He did start lifting not too long ago https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FbE12OJWIAAkp4x?format=jpg&name=orig

Didn't he get blood clots not long ago? he should be careful with this stuff, even if he's just lifting girly kettlebells

 

[Sinder Velvin]

While reading old interviews, I finally found the key to understanding Sawyer.

It was lying in plain sight back when no one knew who he was, and then it was forgotten because it was on a website that stopped existing after the year 2000.

Behold...

Source.

 

[mediocrepoet]

While reading old interviews, I finally found the key to understanding Sawyer.

It was lying in plain sight back when no one knew who he was, and then it was forgotten because it was on a website that stopped existing after the year 2000.

Behold...

Source.

What amazes me is that Sawyer was just as cringe 30 years ago. I thought he was just a man broken by time, but apparently that was giving him too much credit.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Many such cases.

 

[Old Hans]

While reading old interviews, I finally found the key to understanding Sawyer.

It was lying in plain sight back when no one knew who he was, and then it was forgotten because it was on a website that stopped existing after the year 2000.

Behold...

Source.

his B.A. studies are like a bunch of skills you randomly pick in an rpg, and you're like "I bet this demonology will come in handy"

 

[Hagashager]

"Dragonish"
"Impish"
"Centaurian"

Yeah, these are good Primary Skills.

 

[Roguey]

What amazes me is that Sawyer was just as cringe 30 years ago. I thought he was just a man broken by time, but apparently that was giving him too much credit.

Even as a student of gender, he could be pretty level-headed https://www.amazon.com/review/R3UNW2W14RYSIA

 

[NecroLord]

He did start lifting not too long ago https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FbE12OJWIAAkp4x?format=jpg&name=orig

Didn't he get blood clots not long ago? he should be careful with this stuff, even if he's just lifting girly kettlebells

Sawyer gym videos when?

 

[Late Bloomer]

For those with a broken link

Customer Review: Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts
J.E. Sawyer
2.0 out of 5 stars an insult to those who suffered
Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2000
As others have written, Barstow's book lazily glosses over exceptions to her theory of witch-hunting as woman-hunting. I find this book to be disappointing on an academic level and a personal level. The most common figure one will find in this book lies in the quantitative data presented at the back of the book -- 75%. According to Barstow's sources, around 75%-80% of the people tried and killed were witches. Was there a bias against women? Certainly. Much like the bias against women that made them likely to be mystics of affective piety (something which few men ever were declared). Was witch-hunting woman-hunting? No way. Witch-hunting crossed gender lines, class lines, and religious lines. If witch-hunting were woman-hunting, we should see 100% listed for female prosecutions and executions across the board. To claim otherwise is to cheapen the deaths of thousands of men in a way that, quite frankly, disgusts me. In simple terms, Barstow seems to be unwilling to do what talented academics like Ginzburg demand that we do -- discriminate on the basis of microhistory. If you want to get a good grasp on witch-hunting, read Kors & Peters' compilation of primary source materials ("Witchcraft in Europe,") Edward Peters' "Inquisition," Joseph Klaits' "Servants of Satan," Wunderli's "The Drummer of Niklashausen," Hsia's "Myth of Ritual Murder," Ginzburg's "The Night Battles" and any other book that treats the subject with respect.

 

[Lagole Gon]

What amazes me is that Sawyer was just as cringe 30 years ago. I thought he was just a man broken by time, but apparently that was giving him too much credit.

Dude, c'mon.
All the weird rapey stuff he wrote for games was a dead giveaway he's a male feminist.

 

[Hace El Oso]

I always got the impression (never having taken one in university myself) that a university ‘Gender Studies’ course back then was, for a guy like Sawyer used to be, thought of as a way to demonstrate open-mindedness, interest in the feminine perspective and an even-handed attitude. It is interesting and probably no accident how those courses changed and he somehow managed to keep pace with them long after he’d left.

 

[Artyoan]

I always got the impression (never having taken one in university myself) that a university ‘Gender Studies’ course back then was, for a guy like Sawyer used to be, thought of as a way to demonstrate open-mindedness, interest in the feminine perspective and an even-handed attitude. It is interesting and probably no accident how those courses changed and he somehow managed to keep pace with them long after he’d left.

If he was taking a class as a way to demonstrate some part of his own ego as a progressive social ploy, then he was always the type of person who wanted attention for the same reason. Which explains why he remains among the cult.

 

[Atlantico]

I always got the impression (never having taken one in university myself) that a university ‘Gender Studies’ course back then was, for a guy like Sawyer used to be, thought of as a way to demonstrate open-mindedness, interest in the feminine perspective and an even-handed attitude. It is interesting and probably no accident how those courses changed and he somehow managed to keep pace with them long after he’d left.

If he was taking a class as a way to demonstrate some part of his own ego as a progressive social ploy, then he was always the type of person who wanted attention for the same reason. Which explains why he remains among the cult.

It's probably a joke

 

[Roguey]

Sawyer making the claim that it was retailers who killed classic RPGs in the early 00s https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/1736828629517316570

watching digitalfoundry talking about the death of e3 and dark1x mentioned it was tied to retail and I completely forgot how big a deal it was for best buy/walmart/etc. buyers to see your game which determined your shelf space and thus your sales. completely memory holed lol

it was extra special how walmart would act incredibly prudish about certain types of content but would throw all of that right out the window for GTA.

i think the worst thing was the self-fufilling vibes about a certain genre or mechanic or whatever not selling well, so the retailers wouldn't stock games with it and thus they wouldn't sell. the early 00s were so brutal for this, one reason why that era was so homogenous imo

Yep. The death of "iso" party-based RPGs on PC imo.

BioWare made Baldur's Gate, which sold well, and BG2 sold very well. Black Isle made Icewind Dale, which sold also sold well, but after BioWare announced Neverwinter Nights, retailers decided that 2D iso games were dead. Temple of Elemental Evil was the last for a long time.

People seething about not being able to truly "own" digital games in quite the pickle here. All the new RPGs likely wouldn't exist if PC games were still stuck in the physical realm.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

----------

i think the worst thing was the self-fufilling vibes about a certain genre or mechanic or whatever not selling well, so the retailers wouldn't stock games with it and thus they wouldn't sell. the early 00s were so brutal for this, one reason why that era was so homogenous imo

Yep. The death of "iso" party-based RPGs on PC imo.

BioWare made Baldur's Gate, which sold well, and BG2 sold very well. Black Isle made Icewind Dale, which sold also sold well, but after BioWare announced Neverwinter Nights, retailers decided that 2D iso games were dead. Temple of Elemental Evil was the last for a long time.

I can't stress enough how often I'd hear a retail rep declare a genre/style/look was dead with zero supporting data. Truly vibes-based forecasting, which resulted in self-fulfilling prophecies.

"See? The thing we refused to stock didn't sell. No one wants these games anymore."

Yes. The only way we were able to make Pillars is because of our backers on Kickstarter.

There was a perception that 2D iso games were a dead end from a tech investment standpoint. I was a huge critic of 2D games, mostly on the choppy nature of sprite-based animation vs the potential of 3d-spherical linear interpolation. The render pipelines were also very heavy

Sure, though ToEE addressed the sprite issue with a 2.5D approach that I thought worked quite well, personally.

It's interesting you list ToEE, as - at BioWare, at least - that game's failure was really what caused the nail to be put into the proverbial coffin, as I recall. Suddenly, iso and turn-based both were simply... off the table

 

[Roguey]

Turn-based was never on the table at Bioware.

 

[0sacred]

maybe some were in favor of TB, but were always overruled?

turn based NWN

 

[Roguey]

maybe some were in favor of TB, but were always overruled?

turn based NWN

Yeah.

Ohlen and Ray Muzyka butted heads over combat in Baldur’s Gate. Muzyka loved the Gold Box games because they had been predicated on turn-based combat, just like Dungeons & Dragons tabletop games. Turn-based systems allowed players to think through their moves before taking action. Ohlen appreciated the classics, but insisted that turn-based play was outmoded. Real-time strategy titles such as WarCraft II and Diablo proved that the future of gaming lay in fast, think-on-your-feet tactics.

They reached a compromise. Baldur’s Gate would play out in real-time, but players could pause the action during fights to take stock of their situation and queue up orders for their party to carry out when the action resumed. "You got the finer control of turn-based, but at the same time, you got the kind of exciting action of a real-time [strategy game]," Ohlen said.

 

[Atlantico]

Turn-based was never on the table at Bioware.

2D and/or turn-based were out everywhere in the early 2000s. Bioware was no exception

 

[Roguey]

2D and/or turn-based were out everywhere in the early 2000s. Bioware was no exception

Irrelevant to the point I was making about Gaider's statement