I am so tired of speaking against Six Days. I just want to make videogames but gosh does it suck to not just oppose the game amidst the disingenuous arguments & harassment, but also have to lament the lack of proper coverage and the lack of Arab voices afforded a platform.
You want to know what my messages and email look like every time I speak because otherwise I fear the silence? Messages of hate. Images of violence & torture & illegal prisons. Blurry videos of civilians being blown up and worse. They say they can't wait to buy the game.
It took Al Jazeera to actually put two Arabs and a journalist on a screen. The devs bowed out as far as I understand - I guess they couldn't sustain their marketing narrative under pressure.
I'm not press but it didn't seem that complicated to set up not-"let's talk to the devs"
How do you fight this when you have to fight from the ground floor amidst hate while the people that exploit the destruction of your fellow people get the biggest platforms in games to interview them. It's been 8 weeks. Why are we fighting for a voice instead of against the game.
I'm tired. I'm so tired. Please, I want to make some games but how could I be silent when so many of the largest platforms in the medium have been too quiet about this game, or have been unable or uninterested in actually boosting the affected voices. Please.
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For over 2 billion Muslims around the world, Ramadan is about to start around April 12th. As I do every year, I'm going to run you through the basics of what my understanding of Ramadan is, what it isn't, and answer as many questions you might have about it as I can.
First things first: "Ramadan" is simply the name of the 9th month of the Islamic "Hijri" Calendar - which is a lunar calendar. Where the Gregorian calendar is a solar calendar - based on the Earth's orbit around the sun, the Islamic calendar is based on the phases of the moon.
The month before it is called Sha'ban and the one after it is Shawwal. Just like the Gregorian calendar, the Hijri calendar has 12 months - but because the lunar months are slightly shorter than Gregorian months, Ramadan actually "moves" about 11 days in the year every year.
Folks, I've been receiving the usual hatred and absolutely disgusting videos and images and a wide range of photos of pork products - and at this point I'm so used to them that they're barely worth mentioning but
I just wanted to share this guy because this is a new one
Can anyone tell me which school of internet bullshit this falls under because throwing slurs around and going "I might have money might have photoshop double bluff that you'll block me" doesn't seem like a winning strategy to me
Also if anybody is into several dozen photos of pork products please come get them, somehow these people still think Muslims will spontenously combust if they see bacon
OK I'm giving up on this "get weird tech/design things to laugh about on Twitter before realizing they are really good". First the smart steamer, then the sock shoes, then no-hands-no-laces foldable step-in shoes, and now an inflatable bath tub.
Like how is it possible that a subscription-based steamer is a great device? Or socks with soles actually are super convenient? Or literally shoes that basically snap in two so my brain doesn't fail at tying shoelaces and I can just step into them? Look at this shit
And I ain't going to be posting a photo of the bathtub deployed but it's this thing and surely from the product photo it's clear that this can't be good.
But nope inflates big and deflates super small, both in under a minute and rinses easily, so I guess I own a bathtub now
Since everyone is laughing about the Suez Canal because a boat is stuck, a fun reminder that UK & French colonists "built it" by forcing over a million locals to excavate it. Tens of thousands of Egyptians died from epidemics and inhumane treatment.
That's not the only reason Egyptians died over the Suez Canal. When the UK and US didn't like Egypt's new sovereign leadership's agency, they sought to undermine it. In response, first Egyptian president Abdel Nasser claimed the canal built with Egyptian blood for Egypt.
So the UK and France conspired with Israel, which sought to remove Nasser: Israel invaded Egypt from the East towards the Canal. The UK and France then moved in to "separate the combatants to restore peace" by... taking control of the Suez Canal.
Any Muslim, Arab, or Middle Eastern person please reply & rate from 1-10 by how shocked you are seeing US military propaganda about the destruction of our people getting "analytical interviews" featuring only 3 US voices and massive promotion on the largest relevant US website.
Note the trope: the "analytical interview" about the "shoot Iraqis roguelike" and its merits is conducted exclusively by US voices. This always happens, our voices are systemically excluded, both for the real wars & real hurt and the entertainment based on it.
This is why I was so pissed off at every website going ahead running Tamte's words without our voices. I understand interviewing Tamte is easy, and getting our voices is hard. So hold back on publishing Tamte's words until you've done the work of getting counter-voices.
I watched the Six Days in Fallujah gameplay trailer so nobody else has to.
Here's a quick video with live thoughts as I watched it, and more written out thoughts continue below:
- The trailer starts with a US soldier telling about how they lost 2/3rd of their unit in the 2nd Siege of Fallujah with a Back to the Future style fade of a photo? I waited for any mention of Iraqi deaths, but there's only ragdolls there.
- The first clearly spoken Arabic words spoken are "Allahu Akbar" (Shooting ensues)
- The game has a tactical squad system similar to Binary Domain-style game design (contextual point and command).