Yeah, I kinda brought that up on page one, and didn't see it really expanded upon, but I'm very confused as to why gamers have what seem to be significantly higher expectations of game "journalism" than they do of, say, film journalism. Other than games costing a bit more than movies, I just don't see any reason for it.
Calling the bulk of it 'journalism' is already off the mark, it is, at best....trade press? Particularly reviews.
+5
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Uh, I don't think TFYC ever touted themselves as a feminist org. They fund other things besides that one project that isn't focused on women
However, you can see from the past pages here that many will claim they are in order to gain more legitimacy and try to shield all the other shit they may have actually done.
Yeah, I kinda brought that up on page one, and didn't see it really expanded upon, but I'm very confused as to why gamers have what seem to be significantly higher expectations of game "journalism" than they do of, say, film journalism. Other than games costing a bit more than movies, I just don't see any reason for it.
Calling the bulk of it 'journalism' is already off the mark, it is, at best....trade press? Particularly reviews.
Hell, reviews are just opinion pieces. In any medium. They're not journalism, their criticism.
It's why the animated Jon Lovitz show was called "The Critic" and not "The Journalist". Criticism is a field in and of itself. Reviews are the shallow end of that field.
Yeah, I kinda brought that up on page one, and didn't see it really expanded upon, but I'm very confused as to why gamers have what seem to be significantly higher expectations of game "journalism" than they do of, say, film journalism. Other than games costing a bit more than movies, I just don't see any reason for it.
Calling the bulk of it 'journalism' is already off the mark, it is, at best....trade press? Particularly reviews.
Complaining about ethics in game journalism is like visiting Denny's and complaining about the food.
Yeah, I kinda brought that up on page one, and didn't see it really expanded upon, but I'm very confused as to why gamers have what seem to be significantly higher expectations of game "journalism" than they do of, say, film journalism. Other than games costing a bit more than movies, I just don't see any reason for it.
Calling the bulk of it 'journalism' is already off the mark, it is, at best....trade press? Particularly reviews.
Their "higher expectations" for games journalism is actually just them wanting articles to only reflect their views and beliefs. Which is why they support that Breitbart dude and harass other actual good writers
Uh, I don't think TFYC ever touted themselves as a feminist org. They fund other things besides that one project that isn't focused on women
Ok? The tagline for the video game production is "Women in Video Games Production".
Yes and that is what is said on the TFYC's site. The article you linked said that they are trying to scam? At worse they have a misguided idea of how to help women get into the industry by exposing them to a small aspect of game production.
Uh, I don't think TFYC ever touted themselves as a feminist org. They fund other things besides that one project that isn't focused on women
However, you can see from the past pages here that many will claim they are in order to gain more legitimacy and try to shield all the other shit they may have actually done.
Sure, but I was commenting on the article that was linked.
Can somebody summarize Mordorgate/Nazghazi? That's the third time I've seen it referenced lately in this context.
I just googled it. Looks like the publisher offered independent Youtubers early review copies and money to give the game positive press. Not agreeing meant no early review copy.
This hardly sounds like hardly something new? It's only the growth of youtube personalities that's making it now happen on a new platform.
When a movie star shows up on Leno to promote their new movie Leno is never gonna mention what a piece of shit it actually is.
And when pewdiepie is suddenly playing an early release of alien isolation on his channel, I was hardly expecting him to declare that actually it sucks
Well, one, just because it's existed before doesn't mean it isn't something that should pointed out and discussed.
For another, it was a little more than "give us a good review"
“Maximize awareness for the Shadow of Mordor video game during the ‘Week of Vengeance’ through gameplay content, keybrand messaging, and information and and talent usage on Twitch channels. Persuade viewers to purchase game, catch the attention of casual and core gamers who already know and love Middle-earth.”
“Requirements involve 1 livestream, 1 YouTube video, and 1 Facebook post/tweet in support of the videos. Videos will have a strong verbal call to action, a clickable link in the description box for the viewer to go to the game’s website to learn more about the game to learn how to register and play the game. Twitch stream videos will have 5 calls to action. Videos will be of sufficient length to feature gameplay and build excitement.”
“Videos will promote positive sentiment about the game. Videos must not show bugs or glitches that may exist. Videos must include discussion of the story of the game (do NOT mention Lord of the Rings or Hobbit movies, characters, or books). “
“Videos must include discussion of the Nemesis System. This really should take up the bulk of the focus, such as how different the orcs are, how vivid their personality and dialogue are, gathering intel and domination abilities, exploiting their strengths and weaknesses. Videos must include discussion of the action and combat that takes place within the game, such as brutal finishers, execution moves, and wraith powers. The company has final approval on the YouTube video…at least 48 hours before any video goes live.”
They're basically asking for advertisements masked as reviews, which had they disclosed that was what was going on, then okay everyone could judge it on that basis. Without that disclosure, the consumer has no ability to distinguish from a legitimate review that genuinely positive and a "here's only the positive stuff from the game, in a publisher controlled and vetted video." Now, as far as I know, in America, there's not a lot of recourse for this aside from voting with your dollars (if you even find out about it in the first place.) In the UK, however, this shit is flat-out illegal.
Yeah, I kinda brought that up on page one, and didn't see it really expanded upon, but I'm very confused as to why gamers have what seem to be significantly higher expectations of game "journalism" than they do of, say, film journalism. Other than games costing a bit more than movies, I just don't see any reason for it.
Calling the bulk of it 'journalism' is already off the mark, it is, at best....trade press? Particularly reviews.
Complaining about ethics in game journalism is like visiting Denny's and complaining about the food.
I know I keep doing this, but you want to know what's sad about this?
The people who are getting targeted here do thoughtful pieces dissecting games from a more critical perspective, doing literary analysis and exploring themes. They're people do real critical work in the enthusiast press that absolutely isn't part of the standard coverage.
They're doing work that would make the games press more respected as a whole, and they're the ones GG targets.
I mean, there's this dude called W.E.B. DuBois who wrote a pretty good speech about why all art that's worth a damn is inherently political back in the 1920s, and it's still just as true today.
This isn't some new theory getting trotted out for the first time.
Yeah, there's centuries of varied schools of thought/theory specializing in art and ideology. Plato was talking about this stuff. There's something bizarre going on when a person can somehow consider a video game art, while wanting the medium to avoid political thought. What is art to them then, some kind of hedonism trigger?
I can't believe someone is actually trying to argue that art is not or should not or can not be political.
I don't think I've ever seen this tactic before.
It really does expose how empty the claims that this is about gaming are though. If video games are art, then they most certainly can be political and more importantly they can be analysed as such. Most of the shit the #GG crowd are complaining about are some of the few instances of actually journalism or study or analysis of video games going on.
I disagree. Some games are rightly about the gameplay for the sake of gameplay, while others deliberately are very political (Spec Ops: The Line). To use a non-video game example, anyone who thinks the "implicit support for monarchism" in chess is more important than white advantage not only has nothing useful to say about chess, but I'd strongly suspect has nothing useful to say on any topic whatsoever. And hell, this applies to all art. A landscape painting that focuses on technical perfection is completely acceptable, and people reading ridiculous shit into their choice of one hill that has a tree on it vs. another is a waste of ink on paper, or bits, depending on how it is expressed.
Can somebody summarize Mordorgate/Nazghazi? That's the third time I've seen it referenced lately in this context.
I just googled it. Looks like the publisher offered independent Youtubers early review copies and money to give the game positive press. Not agreeing meant no early review copy.
This hardly sounds like hardly something new? It's only the growth of youtube personalities that's making it now happen on a new platform.
When a movie star shows up on Leno to promote their new movie Leno is never gonna mention what a piece of shit it actually is.
And when pewdiepie is suddenly playing an early release of alien isolation on his channel, I was hardly expecting him to declare that actually it sucks
Well, one, just because it's existed before doesn't mean it isn't something that should pointed out and discussed.
For another, it was a little more than "give us a good review"
“Maximize awareness for the Shadow of Mordor video game during the ‘Week of Vengeance’ through gameplay content, keybrand messaging, and information and and talent usage on Twitch channels. Persuade viewers to purchase game, catch the attention of casual and core gamers who already know and love Middle-earth.”
“Requirements involve 1 livestream, 1 YouTube video, and 1 Facebook post/tweet in support of the videos. Videos will have a strong verbal call to action, a clickable link in the description box for the viewer to go to the game’s website to learn more about the game to learn how to register and play the game. Twitch stream videos will have 5 calls to action. Videos will be of sufficient length to feature gameplay and build excitement.”
“Videos will promote positive sentiment about the game. Videos must not show bugs or glitches that may exist. Videos must include discussion of the story of the game (do NOT mention Lord of the Rings or Hobbit movies, characters, or books). “
“Videos must include discussion of the Nemesis System. This really should take up the bulk of the focus, such as how different the orcs are, how vivid their personality and dialogue are, gathering intel and domination abilities, exploiting their strengths and weaknesses. Videos must include discussion of the action and combat that takes place within the game, such as brutal finishers, execution moves, and wraith powers. The company has final approval on the YouTube video…at least 48 hours before any video goes live.”
They're basically asking for advertisements masked as reviews, which had they disclosed that was what was going on, then okay everyone could judge it on that basis. Without that disclosure, the consumer has no ability to distinguish from a legitimate review that genuinely positive and a "here's only the positive stuff from the game, in a publisher controlled and vetted video." Now, as far as I know, in America, there's not a lot of recourse for this aside from voting with your dollars (if you even find out about it in the first place.) In the UK, however, this shit is flat-out illegal.
TotalBiscuit has argued it is illegal in the US too, though I haven't done the research myself.
The weird thing about that is, at least in my opinion, Mordor is strong enough to stand on its own merits without that sort of manipulative bullshit.
I mean, there's this dude called W.E.B. DuBois who wrote a pretty good speech about why all art that's worth a damn is inherently political back in the 1920s, and it's still just as true today.
This isn't some new theory getting trotted out for the first time.
Yeah, there's centuries of varied schools of thought/theory specializing in art and ideology. Plato was talking about this stuff. There's something bizarre going on when a person can somehow consider a video game art, while wanting the medium to avoid political thought. What is art to them then, some kind of hedonism trigger?
The thought process goes
Art == protected speech.
Art == creator's intent outweighs all criticism
Art == no outside factors should influence the medium
What they fail to realize is there is no art, there's commercial art. Throughout history art has been commissioned and criticized and overlooked for lifetimes because art it a product of the culture of its time and artists have to eat.
And artist need criticism and for the most part desperately want criticism.
Basically they don't understand what art is to artists. They only understand it as a label to use a shield against criticism of (and get this) not their art.
I rolled my eyes at the whole "but video games shouldn't be political and they used to not be political." Rather than going through listing how a few video games and explaining how some of what they touch on is political, even if some don't get that because they foolishly believe that the status quo can't be political. I'll just drop this little image off.
I mean if we can have political meaning in children storybooks, then fucking videogames can have them. Also as others have stated, political meaning in arts and literature, isn't new, it's always been there.
As for TFYC's thing. I find the whole thing incredibly insulting towards women. For now, let's not focus too much on the shit involving 4chan and /v/, where their share of the charity is being used in a way to troll (it's unclear how much of that trolling is misogynistic in nature and how much of it just dbags being debags). Or the shit about how very little of the money from this train-wreck is likely to help any women break into the industry.
Matthew Rappard, the founder, says this is to show that games developed by women can be profitable.
This mindset is incredibly fucking insulting. It implies that whatever is considered the norm demographic for developers, was a demographic that had some magical innate ability to be profitable. Intentional bigotry or not, it's just fucking insulting because it's implying they might be inferior, which is bullshit. The question isn't can women, or any other minority for that matter, make profitable games. The answer is yes, yes they can make profitable games. The better question is, can the industry find such talent, give them the proper resources and make them feel welcome?
Yeah, I kinda brought that up on page one, and didn't see it really expanded upon, but I'm very confused as to why gamers have what seem to be significantly higher expectations of game "journalism" than they do of, say, film journalism. Other than games costing a bit more than movies, I just don't see any reason for it.
Calling the bulk of it 'journalism' is already off the mark, it is, at best....trade press? Particularly reviews.
It's the myth of objectivity applied to art. I think a lot of people want to believe that we can reduce everything to a series of mathematical properties as if there are true values for all of those things.
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
I can't believe someone is actually trying to argue that art is not or should not or can not be political.
I don't think I've ever seen this tactic before.
It really does expose how empty the claims that this is about gaming are though. If video games are art, then they most certainly can be political and more importantly they can be analysed as such. Most of the shit the #GG crowd are complaining about are some of the few instances of actually journalism or study or analysis of video games going on.
I disagree. Some games are rightly about the gameplay for the sake of gameplay, while others deliberately are very political (Spec Ops: The Line). To use a non-video game example, anyone who thinks the "implicit support for monarchism" in chess is more important than white advantage not only has nothing useful to say about chess, but I'd strongly suspect has nothing useful to say on any topic whatsoever.
Is Chess "art"?
Is tic-tac-toe "art"?
And hell, this applies to all art. A landscape painting that focuses on technical perfection is completely acceptable, and people reading ridiculous shit into their choice of one hill that has a tree on it vs. another is a waste of ink on paper, or bits, depending on how it is expressed.
Your decision on what to dedicate that technical perfection to has political implications.
i.e., why part a landscape, rather than an industrial factory?
They might not be deep political implications. It could simply be "nature is pretty." But there's still an implication.
"Nature is pretty" is generally considered inoffensive, because everyone can agree with it.
But then you have conservatives whine about the movie "Wall-E" for saying "Garbage is bad," because apparently the message of "Garbage is bad" deeply offends them. In that case, they're being silly. Not because they're recognizing the message of "Garbage is bad," but because they disagree with the politics of that message.
Similarly, the people behind GamerGate don't want to see women complain about the message of "Women are objects." But they have no problems complaining about the political message of "Women are people too." It's not a matter of being political vs. non-political. It's simply a matter where they assume that their politics are so much more valid than the opposition.
This whole "no politics in my games/films/TV series/comics/breakfast cereals" thing seems to me an unholy mix between a misunderstanding of what 'political' means (nothing is entirely devoid of ideology, and any public expression of ideology, whether witting or unwitting, is inherently political - which isn't the same as party political) and unreflected anti-intellectualism ("I don't want to think about my entertainment! That's why it's called entertainment!").
Saying that games should not be political, and that people should keep politics out of games, is a political statement.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
+19
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
I can't believe someone is actually trying to argue that art is not or should not or can not be political.
I don't think I've ever seen this tactic before.
It really does expose how empty the claims that this is about gaming are though. If video games are art, then they most certainly can be political and more importantly they can be analysed as such. Most of the shit the #GG crowd are complaining about are some of the few instances of actually journalism or study or analysis of video games going on.
I disagree. Some games are rightly about the gameplay for the sake of gameplay, while others deliberately are very political (Spec Ops: The Line). To use a non-video game example, anyone who thinks the "implicit support for monarchism" in chess is more important than white advantage not only has nothing useful to say about chess, but I'd strongly suspect has nothing useful to say on any topic whatsoever.
Is Chess "art"?
Is tic-tac-toe "art"?
Well, both are video games (not originally, but are now), so if all video games are art, then yes.
And hell, this applies to all art. A landscape painting that focuses on technical perfection is completely acceptable, and people reading ridiculous shit into their choice of one hill that has a tree on it vs. another is a waste of ink on paper, or bits, depending on how it is expressed.
Your decision on what to dedicate that technical perfection to has political implications.
i.e., why part a landscape, rather than an industrial factory?
They might not be deep political implications. It could simply be "nature is pretty." But there's still an implication.
"Nature is pretty" is generally considered inoffensive, because everyone can agree with it.
Not really. This sort of analysis is unmoored from any sort of objective standard, and is basically just fan fiction with a high opinion of itself.
But then you have conservatives whine about the movie "Wall-E" for saying "Garbage is bad," because apparently the message of "Garbage is bad" deeply offends them. In that case, they're being silly. Not because they're recognizing the message of "Garbage is bad," but because they disagree with the politics of that message.
I think it's worth noting that these same people are the ones who decided the reality based community is something their opponents are part of, so I wouldn't look to them for any gems of wisdom.
Similarly, the people behind GamerGate don't want to see women complain about the message of "Women are objects." But they have no problems complaining about the political message of "Women are people too." It's not a matter of being political vs. non-political. It's simply a matter where they assume that their politics are so much more valid than the opposition.
Well, all women in video games are a subset of the Object class. /badjokes
Though, yeah, it's pretty apparent a lot of them aren't apolitical.
I disagree. Some games are rightly about the gameplay for the sake of gameplay, while others deliberately are very political (Spec Ops: The Line). To use a non-video game example, anyone who thinks the "implicit support for monarchism" in chess is more important than white advantage not only has nothing useful to say about chess, but I'd strongly suspect has nothing useful to say on any topic whatsoever. And hell, this applies to all art. A landscape painting that focuses on technical perfection is completely acceptable, and people reading ridiculous shit into their choice of one hill that has a tree on it vs. another is a waste of ink on paper, or bits, depending on how it is expressed.
If art is at least in part entails an aesthetic object, which chess is, then the analysis of the political implications of that objects design and the history of how it came to be is certainly not useless is it? One can look at art without a totalizing perspective, you can see different aspects like formal characteristics, but at the same time look at how these characteristics were shaped in a context outside of the object. When someone is say reading 'ridiculous shit' into the formal elements of an image, they aren't necessarily concerned with forming an interpretation regarding the accuracy or even meaning of those elements, they may be more interested in the roots of these elements (and the meaning derived from that). They're looking to understand from an iconographic perspective.
In the case of landscape painting, any painter that makes these images is practicing based on what has come before. They have learned to paint and have then seen other images of what they want to paint. Artists who do not do this are either sheltered children or naive, somehow shut away from imagery and technique. Seeing an image is inheriting some part of cultural memory or of an archive of sorts. You can't say 'this is just this', because every image can't just be an image if a person (artist) is guiding its creation.
And hell, this applies to all art. A landscape painting that focuses on technical perfection is completely acceptable, and people reading ridiculous shit into their choice of one hill that has a tree on it vs. another is a waste of ink on paper, or bits, depending on how it is expressed.
Your decision on what to dedicate that technical perfection to has political implications.
i.e., why part a landscape, rather than an industrial factory?
They might not be deep political implications. It could simply be "nature is pretty." But there's still an implication.
"Nature is pretty" is generally considered inoffensive, because everyone can agree with it.
Not really. This sort of analysis is unmoored from any sort of objective standard, and is basically just fan fiction with a high opinion of itself.
Really? You think "nature is pretty" is over-analyzing things?
For instance, why paint a pristine mountain, and not a strip mine?
The idea could be as simple as, "Well, the image of a pristine mountain is something that should be preserve, while the image of a strip mine isn't."
Which doesn't sound political, because it sounds like common sense. Until you realize that there are people who don't share that point of view, who think that the image of a strip mine is better than the image of a mountain. And suddenly that same message has political implications.
it strikes me that a lot of the people who don't think games are political have a very limited understanding of what "political" means
chess doesn't, like, vote democrat
but the existence of chess in our society makes the statement that we find it pleasurable to engage in intellectual conflicts and consider this to be of value
everything has social ramifications if you look for them
feel free to argue about what those are but you are going to look very silly if you pretend that they just don't exist
like, I am constantly surprised that these people don't realize they can just engage in the discussion. that's not a problem! you are allowed to be, like, this game isn't sexist and here's why. just do us all a favour and don't assert that it is logically impossible for games to be sexist ever
9. In retrospect were bullets too cheap in this game and did children gain a false sense of security as to how easy it was to kill a buffalo?
Unfortunately, in real life it was all too easy to kill a buffalo with a rifle. In later decades hunters would kill vast numbers of buffalos and take only the tongues. So I wanted kids to feel a sense of shame for killing too much and then wasting the kill. That was one of the reasons for allowing the player to carry back no more than 200 pounds of meat. I wanted the kids to develop a sense of conservation while playing the game – to say “We should not shoot more meat than we can carry”. Our field testing showed that this lesson was indeed effective.
As far as Twitter goes, twitter is an amazing tool to meet like minded people, find interesting articles, promote ideas or products, and having interesting conversations.
But it's absolutely worthless at stopping any form of negative, harassing interaction. That's one thing GG has actually shed light on.
Yeah, here is a thing everyone can do that could actually be super helpful: write Twitter and encourage them to overhaul their policies and tools for dealing with harassment with input from people who have had to use them a lot. Every person I've seen that's had to deal with this stuff has had massive complaints with their systems. (I remember seeing some tweets from Zoe where they locked her out of one of their tools after she had filed some ridiculously low number of harassment complaints.)
It cannot be stated enough how bad Twitter's abuse reporting tool is. It is so obviously designed to limit reports as to be ridiculous, and even if you somehow manage to fill out a report chances are they will never, ever do anything about it. Some of the ways their tool is terrible:
-To even start an abuse report, you must click on (using their web client) an icon on the tweet, press the block/report button, THEN click an additional checkbox to file a report, THEN click another radio button that appears to report something as abusive, THEN click another box indicating what kind of abuse it is. This takes you to another form.
-On the second form, they ask you if you are directly involved in being abused. If not, tough shit. They don't want your report. You can continue to submit it, but they tell you straight up they are going to ignore it.
-After that you need to provide, among other things, a link to the offending tweet. When you reported the tweet as abusive, hope you stored that URL, because it also automatically blocked the user unless you unchecked a box that was checked by default, making it more challenging to get that URL.
-After clicking a couple dozen times on 2 different forms (including undoing default options that make it harder to complete the report), filling out details to the abuse, and hitting submit... better hope the throwaway sockpuppet account that the abuser created didn't delete the offending tweet between you reporting it and twitter getting back to you in a couple weeks. If the tweet was deleted, twitter will just tell you tough shit we can't see it anymore so it's not a problem.
This has probably been said before, but with the Shadows of Mordor YouTube boomdoggle, #Gamersgate had their one shining opportunity to show they could potentially be about something other than blatent misogyny, that at least some of them were actually serious and weren't just about racing to the bottom of the Internet, and they sat there blithly oblivious as the moment went sailing by.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
The Errant Signal videos IMO do a good job of showing how games that on the surface are 'neutral' still encode ideology - not always coherently, often probably unwittingly, but there's still stuff going on beneath the surface, unquestioned assumptions and values. The videos are pretty non-confrontational in their tone, yet apparently the guy who does them still gets shit from people complaining that he's soiling "their" hobby with his filthy politics. As with Sarkeesian's videos, it's amazing how threatened people feel by relatively mild criticism of gaming.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
The Errant Signal videos IMO do a good job of showing how games that on the surface are 'neutral' still encode ideology - not always coherently, often probably unwittingly, but there's still stuff going on beneath the surface, unquestioned assumptions and values. The videos are pretty non-confrontational in their tone, yet apparently the guy who does them still gets shit from people complaining that he's soiling "their" hobby with his filthy politics. As with Sarkeesian's videos, it's amazing how threatened people feel by relatively mild criticism of gaming.
Not to mention that Sarkeesian frequently mentions that it's okay to be a fan of media that has problematic elements, which she herself admits to doing... Like, it's not the end of the world if you like a game that has some sexist bullshit in it. It doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't mean the game is immune from criticism and critical thought, though.
Not sure why this is so hard for some people...
+18
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
This has probably been said before, but with the Shadows of Mordor YouTube boomdoggle, #Gamersgate had their one shining opportunity to show they could potentially be about something other than blatent misogyny, that at least some of them were actually serious and weren't just about racing to the bottom of the Internet, and they sat there blithly oblivious as the moment went sailing by.
Or just excusing it as "Publisher ethics" (I think that was the excuse anyway). I have brought this up before, but it's awfully curious how quick to attack traditional media they are while leaving youtube alone. I suspect it's because there is an unwritten alliance here between the fact GG only significant support anywhere is from youtube personalities and basically nobody else. Hence in a way, GG are practicing the unethical behavior they decry by ignoring (rather deliberately) the problems with youtubers in their own backyard.
Bear in mind it was only a mere couple of months before GG even started that Eurogamer did an article where they found plenty of youtubers were taking money from publishers to say great things about a game: But in no way saying they were being paid to endorse it.
They are literally trying to claim Polygons review of Gone Home was corrupt while simultaneously ignoring the elephant in the room on things like Nazghazi (btw, that is such a fantastic name).
Can you explain this? I don't know what you're talking about. As long as it is on-topic.
Milo of Breitbart London had a Google group called "GameJournoPro" leaked to him. This is a group filled with publishers of various gaming websites, a few game developers, and others. It showed collusion in how to cover certain stories, specifically for this instance, GamerGate.
What Milo "uncovered" mainly showed that many people supporting and defending gaters don't know what collusion is.
gamergate in general seems to have a very strange idea of what the video game journalism industry actually is
like, they think it's this vast shadowy conspiratorial thing full of mysterious corporate machinations and faceless men plotting in boardrooms
it's just a bunch of people who all know each other
people who all know each other having conversations is not a scandal. you should not try to ban people who all know each other from having conversations
this became especially funny when they started talking about digra as if it were a malevolent illuminati organization as opposed to a handful of loosely affiliated grad students with similar politics
Chess may not be Art(or maybe it is, what the fuck do I know), but inherently political?
Its a game of two diametrically opposed sides wherein various game pieces are given different abilities. These game pieces are given names like Knights, Bishops, Queens and Kings in a reflection of feudal values, with more strategically valuable pieces given higher feudal names. The capturing of the king piece being the object of the game. The most numerous game pieces are the Pawn or peasant pieces and players are encourage to sacrifice them to preserve the more valuable "higher" game pieces like knights and rooks. The game defends and reinforces the feudal order, the idea that the Pawns of both sides should team up and form a united Pawn's Republic is not included in the rules.
But hey GamerGate is all about how games these days have become way to political. That's totally a new thing.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
As a seven year old child, Josh employs both methods of problem solving, but he tends to favor a more holistic approach. Early in the story, Josh is so reluctant to beat his father at chess, he doesn’t even want to play him. His reluctance demonstrates his desire to hold the relationship together. He doesn’t want to change the status quo—the relationship he has with his dad. He is sensitive to inequities, as demonstrated by his sensitivity to the imbalance between winning and losing, and his sensitivity toward the people around him.
After learning the two principle approaches to playing chess, Josh has to let go of both ways and listen to his own voice to win. Jonathan Poe has been taught to play one way—to win at all costs. He can’t let go of the control drilled into him by his teacher and is therefore defeated. Poe’s teacher tells Bruce that you can only teach a child so much, that ultimately he will be who he is.
Josh Waitzkin is a perfectly normal seven year old, except for the fact that he may be the greatest chess player in history. Josh enjoys playing games, but is keenly aware that in any game, if there is a winner, there must also be a loser. This is a fact that Josh is uncomfortable with, but he ultimately finds a way of adjusting to this inequity. Played by Max Pomeranc in the film.
Josh, having discovered chess, would be more than content with just playing the game in the park with his new friends. But when his father enters him into high stakes tournaments, he comes face to face with the dark side of winning: someone always loses. Josh tries to deal with this inequity by throwing games, which he realizes is not a solution. Ultimately, the only solution for Josh is to find a way to “want” to win.
Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
For clarification and out of curiosity, was any of that accusation that started all this true? Cause day one, I saw those vids "impartially" explaining everything and thought Zoe Quinn looked like a bit of a goose, though obviously not remotely comparable to the enormous prick that was her ex doxxing her.
For clarification and out of curiosity, was any of that accusation that started all this true? Cause day one, I saw those vids "impartially" explaining everything and thought Zoe Quinn looked like a bit of a goose, though obviously not remotely comparable to the enormous prick that was her ex doxxing her.
She has a restraining order against him, which it's worth noting he's actively fighting to remove because it prevents him from talking about her online. Apparently a judge recently was not very impressed at all with him trying to get it removed and didn't see "I didn't want to make a hate mob, but I made a hate mob against my ex" as a good argument.
Funny that.
Edit: And there is literally no coherent or compelling case for Zoe Quinn and Nathan Graysons relationship being in any way unethical or a breach of well, anything. He didn't even review her game and it got mentioned once on RPS and gets mentioned as part of a larger article on a Polaris led failure of a game jam (which somewhat fell apart on Zoe Quinn and several other indies disliking extremely sexist/awful comments from a guy there).
one day, a massive anti-chess lobby arises, seemingly out of nowhere, and demands that you change the rules of chess so that the pawns and the king are on equal footing, because they think as it stands chess is disgustingly monarchial
what do you do
this actually seems fairly close to how gamergate probably sees it. it's a pity they have to rely on me to come up with their analogies for them
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Also, talk show guest =/= review.
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Ok? The tagline for the video game production is "Women in Video Games Production".
Calling the bulk of it 'journalism' is already off the mark, it is, at best....trade press? Particularly reviews.
However, you can see from the past pages here that many will claim they are in order to gain more legitimacy and try to shield all the other shit they may have actually done.
Hell, reviews are just opinion pieces. In any medium. They're not journalism, their criticism.
It's why the animated Jon Lovitz show was called "The Critic" and not "The Journalist". Criticism is a field in and of itself. Reviews are the shallow end of that field.
Complaining about ethics in game journalism is like visiting Denny's and complaining about the food.
Their "higher expectations" for games journalism is actually just them wanting articles to only reflect their views and beliefs. Which is why they support that Breitbart dude and harass other actual good writers
PSN: jrrl_absent
Yes and that is what is said on the TFYC's site. The article you linked said that they are trying to scam? At worse they have a misguided idea of how to help women get into the industry by exposing them to a small aspect of game production.
Sure, but I was commenting on the article that was linked.
Streaming 8PST on weeknights
Well, one, just because it's existed before doesn't mean it isn't something that should pointed out and discussed.
For another, it was a little more than "give us a good review"
They're basically asking for advertisements masked as reviews, which had they disclosed that was what was going on, then okay everyone could judge it on that basis. Without that disclosure, the consumer has no ability to distinguish from a legitimate review that genuinely positive and a "here's only the positive stuff from the game, in a publisher controlled and vetted video." Now, as far as I know, in America, there's not a lot of recourse for this aside from voting with your dollars (if you even find out about it in the first place.) In the UK, however, this shit is flat-out illegal.
I know I keep doing this, but you want to know what's sad about this?
The people who are getting targeted here do thoughtful pieces dissecting games from a more critical perspective, doing literary analysis and exploring themes. They're people do real critical work in the enthusiast press that absolutely isn't part of the standard coverage.
They're doing work that would make the games press more respected as a whole, and they're the ones GG targets.
Yeah, there's centuries of varied schools of thought/theory specializing in art and ideology. Plato was talking about this stuff. There's something bizarre going on when a person can somehow consider a video game art, while wanting the medium to avoid political thought. What is art to them then, some kind of hedonism trigger?
I disagree. Some games are rightly about the gameplay for the sake of gameplay, while others deliberately are very political (Spec Ops: The Line). To use a non-video game example, anyone who thinks the "implicit support for monarchism" in chess is more important than white advantage not only has nothing useful to say about chess, but I'd strongly suspect has nothing useful to say on any topic whatsoever. And hell, this applies to all art. A landscape painting that focuses on technical perfection is completely acceptable, and people reading ridiculous shit into their choice of one hill that has a tree on it vs. another is a waste of ink on paper, or bits, depending on how it is expressed.
TotalBiscuit has argued it is illegal in the US too, though I haven't done the research myself.
The weird thing about that is, at least in my opinion, Mordor is strong enough to stand on its own merits without that sort of manipulative bullshit.
The thought process goes
Art == protected speech.
Art == creator's intent outweighs all criticism
Art == no outside factors should influence the medium
What they fail to realize is there is no art, there's commercial art. Throughout history art has been commissioned and criticized and overlooked for lifetimes because art it a product of the culture of its time and artists have to eat.
And artist need criticism and for the most part desperately want criticism.
Basically they don't understand what art is to artists. They only understand it as a label to use a shield against criticism of (and get this) not their art.
I mean if we can have political meaning in children storybooks, then fucking videogames can have them. Also as others have stated, political meaning in arts and literature, isn't new, it's always been there.
As for TFYC's thing. I find the whole thing incredibly insulting towards women. For now, let's not focus too much on the shit involving 4chan and /v/, where their share of the charity is being used in a way to troll (it's unclear how much of that trolling is misogynistic in nature and how much of it just dbags being debags). Or the shit about how very little of the money from this train-wreck is likely to help any women break into the industry.
This mindset is incredibly fucking insulting. It implies that whatever is considered the norm demographic for developers, was a demographic that had some magical innate ability to be profitable. Intentional bigotry or not, it's just fucking insulting because it's implying they might be inferior, which is bullshit. The question isn't can women, or any other minority for that matter, make profitable games. The answer is yes, yes they can make profitable games. The better question is, can the industry find such talent, give them the proper resources and make them feel welcome?
It's the myth of objectivity applied to art. I think a lot of people want to believe that we can reduce everything to a series of mathematical properties as if there are true values for all of those things.
Is Chess "art"?
Is tic-tac-toe "art"?
Your decision on what to dedicate that technical perfection to has political implications.
i.e., why part a landscape, rather than an industrial factory?
They might not be deep political implications. It could simply be "nature is pretty." But there's still an implication.
"Nature is pretty" is generally considered inoffensive, because everyone can agree with it.
But then you have conservatives whine about the movie "Wall-E" for saying "Garbage is bad," because apparently the message of "Garbage is bad" deeply offends them. In that case, they're being silly. Not because they're recognizing the message of "Garbage is bad," but because they disagree with the politics of that message.
Similarly, the people behind GamerGate don't want to see women complain about the message of "Women are objects." But they have no problems complaining about the political message of "Women are people too." It's not a matter of being political vs. non-political. It's simply a matter where they assume that their politics are so much more valid than the opposition.
No politics, guys.
Saying that games should not be political, and that people should keep politics out of games, is a political statement.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
we have ideas above our station.
Well, both are video games (not originally, but are now), so if all video games are art, then yes.
Not really. This sort of analysis is unmoored from any sort of objective standard, and is basically just fan fiction with a high opinion of itself.
I think it's worth noting that these same people are the ones who decided the reality based community is something their opponents are part of, so I wouldn't look to them for any gems of wisdom.
Well, all women in video games are a subset of the Object class. /badjokes
Though, yeah, it's pretty apparent a lot of them aren't apolitical.
If art is at least in part entails an aesthetic object, which chess is, then the analysis of the political implications of that objects design and the history of how it came to be is certainly not useless is it? One can look at art without a totalizing perspective, you can see different aspects like formal characteristics, but at the same time look at how these characteristics were shaped in a context outside of the object. When someone is say reading 'ridiculous shit' into the formal elements of an image, they aren't necessarily concerned with forming an interpretation regarding the accuracy or even meaning of those elements, they may be more interested in the roots of these elements (and the meaning derived from that). They're looking to understand from an iconographic perspective.
In the case of landscape painting, any painter that makes these images is practicing based on what has come before. They have learned to paint and have then seen other images of what they want to paint. Artists who do not do this are either sheltered children or naive, somehow shut away from imagery and technique. Seeing an image is inheriting some part of cultural memory or of an archive of sorts. You can't say 'this is just this', because every image can't just be an image if a person (artist) is guiding its creation.
Really? You think "nature is pretty" is over-analyzing things?
For instance, why paint a pristine mountain, and not a strip mine?
The idea could be as simple as, "Well, the image of a pristine mountain is something that should be preserve, while the image of a strip mine isn't."
Which doesn't sound political, because it sounds like common sense. Until you realize that there are people who don't share that point of view, who think that the image of a strip mine is better than the image of a mountain. And suddenly that same message has political implications.
chess doesn't, like, vote democrat
but the existence of chess in our society makes the statement that we find it pleasurable to engage in intellectual conflicts and consider this to be of value
everything has social ramifications if you look for them
feel free to argue about what those are but you are going to look very silly if you pretend that they just don't exist
like, I am constantly surprised that these people don't realize they can just engage in the discussion. that's not a problem! you are allowed to be, like, this game isn't sexist and here's why. just do us all a favour and don't assert that it is logically impossible for games to be sexist ever
It cannot be stated enough how bad Twitter's abuse reporting tool is. It is so obviously designed to limit reports as to be ridiculous, and even if you somehow manage to fill out a report chances are they will never, ever do anything about it. Some of the ways their tool is terrible:
-To even start an abuse report, you must click on (using their web client) an icon on the tweet, press the block/report button, THEN click an additional checkbox to file a report, THEN click another radio button that appears to report something as abusive, THEN click another box indicating what kind of abuse it is. This takes you to another form.
-On the second form, they ask you if you are directly involved in being abused. If not, tough shit. They don't want your report. You can continue to submit it, but they tell you straight up they are going to ignore it.
-After that you need to provide, among other things, a link to the offending tweet. When you reported the tweet as abusive, hope you stored that URL, because it also automatically blocked the user unless you unchecked a box that was checked by default, making it more challenging to get that URL.
-After clicking a couple dozen times on 2 different forms (including undoing default options that make it harder to complete the report), filling out details to the abuse, and hitting submit... better hope the throwaway sockpuppet account that the abuser created didn't delete the offending tweet between you reporting it and twitter getting back to you in a couple weeks. If the tweet was deleted, twitter will just tell you tough shit we can't see it anymore so it's not a problem.
This has probably been said before, but with the Shadows of Mordor YouTube boomdoggle, #Gamersgate had their one shining opportunity to show they could potentially be about something other than blatent misogyny, that at least some of them were actually serious and weren't just about racing to the bottom of the Internet, and they sat there blithly oblivious as the moment went sailing by.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Not to mention that Sarkeesian frequently mentions that it's okay to be a fan of media that has problematic elements, which she herself admits to doing... Like, it's not the end of the world if you like a game that has some sexist bullshit in it. It doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't mean the game is immune from criticism and critical thought, though.
Not sure why this is so hard for some people...
Or just excusing it as "Publisher ethics" (I think that was the excuse anyway). I have brought this up before, but it's awfully curious how quick to attack traditional media they are while leaving youtube alone. I suspect it's because there is an unwritten alliance here between the fact GG only significant support anywhere is from youtube personalities and basically nobody else. Hence in a way, GG are practicing the unethical behavior they decry by ignoring (rather deliberately) the problems with youtubers in their own backyard.
Bear in mind it was only a mere couple of months before GG even started that Eurogamer did an article where they found plenty of youtubers were taking money from publishers to say great things about a game: But in no way saying they were being paid to endorse it.
They are literally trying to claim Polygons review of Gone Home was corrupt while simultaneously ignoring the elephant in the room on things like Nazghazi (btw, that is such a fantastic name).
What Milo "uncovered" mainly showed that many people supporting and defending gaters don't know what collusion is.
like, they think it's this vast shadowy conspiratorial thing full of mysterious corporate machinations and faceless men plotting in boardrooms
it's just a bunch of people who all know each other
people who all know each other having conversations is not a scandal. you should not try to ban people who all know each other from having conversations
this became especially funny when they started talking about digra as if it were a malevolent illuminati organization as opposed to a handful of loosely affiliated grad students with similar politics
Its a game of two diametrically opposed sides wherein various game pieces are given different abilities. These game pieces are given names like Knights, Bishops, Queens and Kings in a reflection of feudal values, with more strategically valuable pieces given higher feudal names. The capturing of the king piece being the object of the game. The most numerous game pieces are the Pawn or peasant pieces and players are encourage to sacrifice them to preserve the more valuable "higher" game pieces like knights and rooks. The game defends and reinforces the feudal order, the idea that the Pawns of both sides should team up and form a united Pawn's Republic is not included in the rules.
But hey GamerGate is all about how games these days have become way to political. That's totally a new thing.
http://dramatica.com/analysis/searching-for-bobby-fischer
Or heck, Tic Tac Toe...
Well worth watching, especially where she talks about the role of her "Gamers are Over" article.
She has a restraining order against him, which it's worth noting he's actively fighting to remove because it prevents him from talking about her online. Apparently a judge recently was not very impressed at all with him trying to get it removed and didn't see "I didn't want to make a hate mob, but I made a hate mob against my ex" as a good argument.
Funny that.
Edit: And there is literally no coherent or compelling case for Zoe Quinn and Nathan Graysons relationship being in any way unethical or a breach of well, anything. He didn't even review her game and it got mentioned once on RPS and gets mentioned as part of a larger article on a Polaris led failure of a game jam (which somewhat fell apart on Zoe Quinn and several other indies disliking extremely sexist/awful comments from a guy there).
you might even think they are silly and you don't care about them! that's fine
it's just weird when you try to tell other people that they have to stop doing it
you're an avid chess player
one day, a massive anti-chess lobby arises, seemingly out of nowhere, and demands that you change the rules of chess so that the pawns and the king are on equal footing, because they think as it stands chess is disgustingly monarchial
what do you do
this actually seems fairly close to how gamergate probably sees it. it's a pity they have to rely on me to come up with their analogies for them