Their name was always cringe and I'm perfectly fine with them changing it to be more professional. It's a Reddit-tier sex joke. It's neither beyond the pale nor le spoopy harassment name, but it is immature.
What disappoints me is that they had to throw in some completely unnecessary white knighting. Disappoints, but does not surprise.
Sutras are an an ancient genre of (mostly) indian literature that are essentially educational texts - instructional manuals on all manner of things. They're self-help books. They're guides on all manner of topics.
The Kama Sutra, the most well known Sutra in the English-speaking world, is a self-help guide on how to manage your love life covering everything from how to develop your social skills, how to attract and keep a lover, to, yes, sexual positions.
To boil 'Gamasutra' down to a 'sex joke' is to completely fucking ignore what a sutra is like only the most culturally ignorant westerner could.
You really think were making a 'sex joke' and not thinking 'our site is about making games, the kama sutra is considered expert opinions about making love. If we call it gamasutra, people will think that we have expert opinions about making games'?
At the time the Kama Sutra was known pretty universally as "the sex positions book". Here's a small insight into the attitude toward that book in the late 90s-early 2000s. Check out the descriptions. "The classic love-making manual". "Sexual gratification remains fundamental". "Illustrates all 64 sexual postures". "The ancient art of seduction". I don't know how they view it in India, but Americans knew it for exactly one thing.
I don't discount the possibility of them making an at the time obscure reference to loving games or whatever, but that would be like calling your site "The Family Guy" and expecting people to interpret that as a statement that you're a guy writing about family life. You have to know your audience and how they'll interpret things. So either they were making a sex joke or were making an extraordinarily poorly thought out reference to Indian culture.
Their name was always cringe and I'm perfectly fine with them changing it to be more professional. It's a Reddit-tier sex joke. It's neither beyond the pale nor le spoopy harassment name, but it is immature.
What disappoints me is that they had to throw in some completely unnecessary white knighting. Disappoints, but does not surprise.
...It's not a 'sex joke'.
Sutras are an an ancient genre of (mostly) indian literature that are essentially educational texts - instructional manuals on all manner of things. They're self-help books. They're guides on all manner of topics.
The Kama Sutra, the most well known Sutra in the English-speaking world, is a self-help guide on how to manage your love life covering everything from how to develop your social skills, how to attract and keep a lover, to, yes, sexual positions.
To boil 'Gamasutra' down to a 'sex joke' is to completely fucking ignore what a sutra is like only the most culturally ignorant westerner could.
Yes, and I'm sure the ancient genre of sutra is exactly what a bunch of American gamers in the 90s had in mind when they named their site.
You really think were making a 'sex joke' and not thinking 'our site is about making games, the kama sutra is considered expert opinions about making love. If we call it gamasutra, people will think that we have expert opinions about making games'?
At the time the Kama Sutra was known pretty universally as "the sex positions book". Here's a small insight into the attitude toward that book in the late 90s-early 2000s. Check out the descriptions. "The classic love-making manual". "Sexual gratification remains fundamental". "Illustrates all 64 sexual postures". "The ancient art of seduction". I don't know how they view it in India, but Americans knew it for exactly one thing.
I don't discount the possibility of them making an at the time obscure reference to loving games or whatever, but that would be like calling your site "The Family Guy" and expecting people to interpret that as a statement that you're a guy writing about family life. You have to know your audience and how they'll interpret things. So either they were making a sex joke or were making an extraordinarily poorly thought out reference to Indian culture.
"Game Developer" is cringe too, tho