Gregorovitch55
Posts: 191
Joined: 2/11/2014 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Kayoz With the same level of precision and accuracy as your 10 games demonstrating DW's sales potential on Steam? Indeed it should be eminently amusing to see your "new" list. I sincerely hope it's as amusing as your last collection of so-called "facts". Right, that is clear evidence of deliberate rather than accidental use on your part of a "Straw Man Argument" in an attempt to ridicule an opponent's position or view, and then use this as justification to insult, intimidate and belittle the opponent personally. Let's do a little forensics here to demonstrate to folks here how you go about it: Firstly, the idea behind a Straw Man is to selectively edit or fabricate alterations to your opponents argument in such a way as to make it easy to refute or ridicule the fabricated version of it (the "Straw Man") in the hope people don't notice the refutation is invalid against the original argument and are swayed towards your position by your ruse. Wikipedia has a good example: Straw man arguments often arise in public debates such as a (hypothetical) prohibition debate: A: We should liberalize the laws on beer. B: No, any society with unrestricted access to intoxicants loses its work ethic and goes only for immediate gratification. The proposal was to relax laws on beer. Person B has exaggerated this to a position harder to defend, i.e., "unrestricted access to intoxicants". It is a logical fallacy because Person A never made that claim. So let's look at how Kayoz uses the technique: G: The reason Matrix is probably right not to use Steam to distribute it's core war game catalog is that it is itself the primary hub for serious war games and people who want to play serious war games will find their way here anyway. .... This is *not* true for space 4X games K: And as you stated previously, Matrix has a firm foothold in the strategic gaming market. G: Where you are very mistaken is that "Matrix has a firm foothold in the strategic gaming market" K: It was YOUR statement, not mine. If you want to refute your OWN statement, then go right ahead. Go ahead and argue with yourself. I'll have no part in it. I don't do schizophrenia. As we see what he has done is to change "serious war games" into "strategic gaming market" (the Straw Man) and then use that in his kicker about schizophrenia. Let's look at another example (sorry it's a bit TL;DR) K: And more importantly, those "logged in" users mean little and less without demographic data. If they're millions of teenagers who's favourite game is Counter Strike (or whatever), that is irrelevant to Matrix sales. G: The other misconception you have is that Steam is populated by teenagers playing multi-player FPS games. Sure there are a lot of those, but a glance at the top 100 games currently being played (which is actually playing now)shows a lot of people playing games of comparable complexity and depth to DW, for example: [list of games and nos of players etc] K: I'm bored, so let's look at YOUR numbers in a little detail: Given that DW is a 4x grand strategy game, I think we can safely eliminate the items in red. If it's not even a strategy game in the loosest definition, it can't be considered. Total: 186,739 Genre eliminates: 97,108 6 down, 4 left. You've lost over half of your numbers just on cursory elimination of games not even within DW's genre. Of the remaining, I think only Civ is close to DW - it's a real 4x game, while I'd debate that of the remaining, two are the same tedious spreadsheet game (EU and CK are just the same engine with different skins) and a click-fest C&C clone (AoE). So, you're left with about 1/3 the numbers that you started with. That's ONE example of the TEN you started with. Well done. A more illustrative example of Mark Twain's quote is hard to come by. 1 left standing out of 10. If this were bowling, I'd say I'm having a good night. Again we see the Straw Man erected: Kayoz originally argues there is no evidence Steam users would affect Matrix game sales because "they're millions of teenagers who's favourite game is Counter Strike (or whatever)". I refute that with evidence of how many people on Steam are playing games of comparable depth and complexity to DW. Now Kayoz could have countered that with the simple ripost that why would someone who likes playing football manager be interested in playing DW, which is is a valid question, but instead he erects a Straw Man around "If it's not even a strategy game in the loosest definition, it can't be considered." and "Of the remaining, I think only Civ is close to DW". This is a Straw Man because I quoted figures for games (I consider) of "comparable depth and complexity" to DW as evidence against his original assertion that Steam users are "irrelevant to Matrix sales" and never suggested they were strategy games or 4X games. The question arises as to whether Kayoz uses the straw man technique deliberately to intimidate and bully people, or whether he does so unknowingly perhaps because he does not read what people say properly and makes incorrect assumptions or perhaps for some other reason. If we consider the wikipedia example about alcohol deregulation then if a politician used the straw man we would assume it was a deliberate ploy to sway public opinion towards his or her view (politicians use straw men all the time). If on the other hand an person in the street was canvassed about it they might unknowingly use it simply because they imagine streets full of drunken louts running riot and react emotionally to it. In my view the balance of probabilities suggests Kayoz does this deliberately. Firstly, he has used straw men 100% of the time against the issues I raised with him. Secondly he always ends his straw men with abusive and derogatory personal attacks. Thirdly, he starts the final post with "I'm bored" and ends with "If this were bowling, I'd say I'm having a good night". I suggest this implies he had plenty of time to consider carefully how he was going to approach his arguement in that post (not acting or reacting in the heat of the moment or emotionally) and that he considers his activities on the forum as some sort of game he is out to "win". If so I submit his behaviour intolerable and I certainly cannot see how members here can have a constructive and open debate about the future of game they love, or new interested people like me join in, in the presence of someone like this.
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