If we are talking about the general subject of corporations as they relate to economics in a free market they are amoral actors. Them acting as moral agents implies that the market is substantially less free than is ideal, such to the point that they have a monopoly or oligopoly level of dominance in some section of the market.
If a market is competitive and having less scruples provides an advantage then the participant with the least scruples advances to the next round of competition while other participants do not. It has been necessary to regulate corporations because when markets work, they are incapable of acting in a manner with respect to morality. The concept that corporations can or do take moral stances has all kinds of wild implications that we should be looking at really hard.
If we are talking about the general subject of corporations as they relate to economics in a free market they are amoral actors. Them acting as moral agents implies that the market is substantially less free than is ideal, such to the point that they have a monopoly or oligopoly level of dominance in some section of the market.
If a market is competitive and having less scruples provides an advantage then the participant with the least scruples advances to the next round of competition while other participants do not. It has been necessary to regulate corporations because when markets work, they are incapable of acting in a manner with respect to morality. The concept that corporations can or do take moral stances has all kinds of wild implications that we should be looking at really hard.
That's not the implication here. The implication is that consumer movements can influence corporations to take actions that reflect the consumer's moral standing through threatening their bottom line.
Really it's the only tool consumers have when dealing with amoral actors like businesses.
the whole "censorship" has always just been an opportunity for nerds to reassure themselves that they were smarter than other people, now that i think about it
like, remember the whole militant atheism thing? which of course was just about that little buzz of superiority you get when you convince yourself that all the world's problems would go away if only everyone was as rational and level-headed as you are
i don't remember if jack thompson was actually a religious man but it seems like that whole thing occupied roughly the same mental space. oh these people with their outdated moral codes and medieval concepts of decency. don't they know we can see straight through them. i can't wait for all those silly fundamentalists to die off, then the world will be perfect
with the passing of the bush administration christian fundamentalism no longer has quite the same place on the world stage, but nerds still need something to feel better than, so they just shift all of the same attributes over to feminism with nary a thought about whether or not that makes any kind of sense
this is probably why you see so many people conflating these two radically distinct movements into one big thing, which they think about as "moral guardians", people whose grasp on ethics is not as enlightened and rational as that of nerds and who foolishly insist on imposing it upon society at large
of course, the kind of privilege nerds often have, where they have never been under any kind of serious threat from other people's social movements, makes it possible for them to just make shit up about stuff other people believe and accept it without question
What amazes me is the doublethink where people are honestly telling themselves they're not censoring GTA V. Because everyone knows censorship is bad and these silly moral busybodies think they aren't prey to the mistakes of the past.
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck...
You are saying this as a guy who took fervent part in a letter writing campaign to get a journalist fired because she wrote something that hurt your feelings.
@Pony if you were referring to people in this thread who are calling this censorship who also took part in the gamergate letter writing campaigns being hypocritical, then I'm 100% behind you. Neither were censorship and taking part in one while calling the other unacceptable censorship is a perfect example of hypocrisy and dishonesty.
That was one thrust of what I was saying, yes. I was basically making a "it is or it isn't" point.
Either it is acceptable, or it is not. For you, for Quid, for Cambiata, it is acceptable, regardless of who is doing it or why. You've declared it as such, and you've explained your reasoning why. I accept that. What's more, I agree with your reasoning, for what it's worth.
For some other people, and Thom is an example since you were rightly calling me out for using passive voice and not being specific enough in my complaints, there's a hypocrisy in saying "It's wrong when they do it but it's okay when we do it" and that's one of the things I was trying to dissect. Not even so much because it was important to point out the hypocrisy in and of itself, but because that sort of unthinking hypocrisy where a person just reflexively holds dissonant opinions without even considering what that means is something that needs to be challenged, regardless of their political stripe.
I just feel it's important to play with an open hand with this kind of thing, and be clear about it, because otherwise the easy way for people to complain is to make false equivalences or just blatantly contradictory statements because... because they're in the right, dammit! And so forth.
I've made it clear, I believe, that I don't think all forms of suppression, influence, pressure, and dare I use the word censorship are equivalent and that talking about one kind of action as if it is another is dishonest. Talking about Target's decision to not sell a video game as if it's equivalent to Nazi bookburning, for example, is hyperbolic and nonsensical. But I don't think that's entirely the fault of those who make those hyperbolic points, either. I think that a part of the discourse gets lost when all concerns, all thoughts on the matter, all misgivings about acts of suppression or influence done by one group to restrict the expression of another, get dismissed out of hand as histrionic hand-wringing or nerd snottiness. Some of it absolutely is, yes. But you look at an otherwise rational and fairly intelligent person like Jerry Holkins and the side he's coming down on this, and to simply refuse outright to engage that line of conversation in good faith is essentially dismissing a person whole-cloth who might actually be able to conversed into seeing differently.
Instead, you get folks like DirtyDirtyVagrant throwing their hands up in the air, calling Mike and Jerry "a sublime mix of white, male, and wealthy privilege, seasoned with a healthy dash of artistic pretense and drizzled in pseudo-intellectuallism. They are a perfect storm of douchebaggery."
Does she have some valid criticisms in there among the angry dismissal? I think so. But there's no interest in engaging either Mike and Jerry or the many people who are posting in this thread that agree with Jerry in any kind of good faith argument. Some of them might not be capable of a good faith argument, and that's fine. But the dismissal out of hand? The complete unwillingness to step back and say "Okay, I can see why you might be concerned, but here's why maybe you shouldn't be..."
I'm not seeing a lot of that here. I am, however, seeing a lot of "Well, this isn't technically censorship and you nerds need to calm down if you think this is anything like what real censorship is" and in general a sort of patronizing sneer at people who are like hey, I think this is wrong? Or at the very least, kinda worrisome?
It might not be a big deal to you (or really, to me), but clearly it is to them. I'm not trying to advocate on their behalf, or "raise concerns", but christ I'd like to be on the right side of shit without it stinking.
What amazes me is the doublethink where people are honestly telling themselves they're not censoring GTA V. Because everyone knows censorship is bad and these silly moral busybodies think they aren't prey to the mistakes of the past.
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck...
You are saying this as a guy who took fervent part in a letter writing campaign to get a journalist fired because she wrote something that hurt your feelings.
@Pony if you were referring to people in this thread who are calling this censorship who also took part in the gamergate letter writing campaigns being hypocritical, then I'm 100% behind you. Neither were censorship and taking part in one while calling the other unacceptable censorship is a perfect example of hypocrisy and dishonesty.
That was one thrust of what I was saying, yes. I was basically making a "it is or it isn't" point.
Either it is acceptable, or it is not. For you, for Quid, for Cambiata, it is acceptable, regardless of who is doing it or why. You've declared it as such, and you've explained your reasoning why. I accept that. What's more, I agree with your reasoning, for what it's worth.
For some other people, and Thom is an example since you were rightly calling me out for using passive voice and not being specific enough in my complaints, there's a hypocrisy in saying "It's wrong when they do it but it's okay when we do it" and that's one of the things I was trying to dissect. Not even so much because it was important to point out the hypocrisy in and of itself, but because that sort of unthinking hypocrisy where a person just reflexively holds dissonant opinions without even considering what that means is something that needs to be challenged, regardless of their political stripe.
I just feel it's important to play with an open hand with this kind of thing, and be clear about it, because otherwise the easy way for people to complain is to make false equivalences or just blatantly contradictory statements because... because they're in the right, dammit! And so forth.
I've made it clear, I believe, that I don't think all forms of suppression, influence, pressure, and dare I use the word censorship are equivalent and that talking about one kind of action as if it is another is dishonest. Talking about Target's decision to not sell a video game as if it's equivalent to Nazi bookburning, for example, is hyperbolic and nonsensical. But I don't think that's entirely the fault of those who make those hyperbolic points, either. I think that a part of the discourse gets lost when all concerns, all thoughts on the matter, all misgivings about acts of suppression or influence done by one group to restrict the expression of another, get dismissed out of hand as histrionic hand-wringing or nerd snottiness. Some of it absolutely is, yes. But you look at an otherwise rational and fairly intelligent person like Jerry Holkins and the side he's coming down on this, and to simply refuse outright to engage that line of conversation in good faith is essentially dismissing a person whole-cloth who might actually be able to conversed into seeing differently.
Instead, you get folks like DirtyDirtyVagrant throwing their hands up in the air, calling Mike and Jerry "a sublime mix of white, male, and wealthy privilege, seasoned with a healthy dash of artistic pretense and drizzled in pseudo-intellectuallism. They are a perfect storm of douchebaggery."
Does she have some valid criticisms in there among the angry dismissal? I think so. But there's no interest in engaging either Mike and Jerry or the many people who are posting in this thread that agree with Jerry in any kind of good faith argument. Some of them might not be capable of a good faith argument, and that's fine. But the dismissal out of hand? The complete unwillingness to step back and say "Okay, I can see why you might be concerned, but here's why maybe you shouldn't be..."
I'm not seeing a lot of that here. I am, however, seeing a lot of "Well, this isn't technically censorship and you nerds need to calm down if you think this is anything like what real censorship is" and in general a sort of patronizing sneer at people who are like hey, I think this is wrong? Or at the very least, kinda worrisome?
It might not be a big deal to you (or really, to me), but clearly it is to them. I'm not trying to advocate on their behalf, or "raise concerns", but christ I'd like to be on the right side of shit without it stinking.
I wish we could talk about the reasons this is even happening, but anyone I've tried to engage with as far as the actual complaints has outright denied that the content is in the game, handwaved away the content as being "the same old moral policing", or just babbled incoherantly about Jack Thompson.
I haven't seen much in the way of any willingness to have a conversation about why a group would want this.
And that's the problem, that there is never any consideration from those against the game being pulled to at least question if there is a problem with the content in the game. If the group petitioning for this even has something resembling a point.
I've tried to go down that path in this thread. And the wall I've hit makes me realize there's a reason people jump to getting games like this pulled. What else can you do when there isn't any attempt by gamers to even acknowledge a problem could potentially exist maybe?
How do you deal with people who have been conditioned to protect their hobby with such verosity that they can't even consider the fact that sometimes media can be harmful.
But this artificial distinction you try to make, between suppression by way of consumer action and government cens-.... ahem, suppression by way of government action? The reason it's bogus is because consumer action is not intrinsically more virtuous than government action.
Therein lies my core problem, which I thought was kind of obvious but clearly I have to be the one to elucidate; Suppression by way of consumer action or other forms of activism (and, if successful, therefore corporate action) is considered no big deal, regardless of how comprehensive and potent it is capable of being, whereas suppression by way of government edict (formally called by that troublesome word) is seen as this horrendous, monstrous dystopian nightmare scenario.
As a result, people who use that troublesome word are dismissed as if they're talking about the latter out of hand (when, demonstrably, it's not the case and basically never is), and the former just sort of... happens, without people really thinking too much about it or asking too many questions or being concerned at all.
Are you okay with that?
Consumer action is more virtuous than government action for one extremely important reason: the government can legally back up its censorship with state force including fines, imprisonment, and even in extreme cases like North Korea, death. A consumer action can only threaten profits. If a company is willing to eat the potential profit loss to make a stand, it can do that without fear of the government coming in, shutting them down, and hauling the entire company away to jail. Government action is censorship because of what backs it up. Consumer action is a fundamentally different beast, a far less toothy one.
Stores have a right to determine what they will and won't sell. Consumers have a right to try and influence what stores sell using their consumer power. If other consumers want to counterbalance such efforts they can attempt to exert their power in the opposite direction -- for example, one group attempts to boycott Chik-Fil-A and another group vows to show up and buy an extra chicken sandwich to make up the losses. The appropriate response to the petition would have been to make Target-AU a counter offer -- "Please continue to sell this game and we will make up for any losses you sustain. Signed, fans of GTAV." Then Target-AU could make a choice which group it wanted to please most and make a decision based on that -- or make a decision based on the feelings and mood of the CEO whoever that is. Target-AU doesn't owe anyone any explanations for their buying policy.
What seems to be getting some gamers hot under the collar is the fact that Target-AU chose do what the other guys wanted them to do and not what the gamers wanted them to do. It always stinks to lose out like that, but it's not any kind of censorship or "suppression". Target-AU had to make a choice between making the petition-signers happy and making gamers happy, and they went with the group that's closer to their main customer demographic. Just as Chik-Fil-A had to choose who to make happy, because they weren't going to make both groups happy. No way no how. If Target-AU had sided with gamers (and let's face it, why the heck would they?) the other side would have accused them of supporting violence against women and would have thought they were fully as bad as the gamers think they are for "cen-pression" of "art." People on one side think Chik-Fil-A is an organization that supports bigotry; people on the other side admire them for sticking up for Biblical virtues and "family values." Someone is going to lose. That's all. The same instinct that causes Jerry to scream CENSORSHIP!! when it's nothing of the kind causes certain kinds of Christians to scream that they're being OPPRESSED! by gay marriage when they aren't. That basic instinct is: "There was a fight and my side lost and I'm pissed because DAMMIT WE'RE THE GOOD GUYS!" The emotions get involved and hold the thinking brain hostage and stupid flatly incorrect stuff gets spouted (Jerry's not being censored, Christians aren't being oppressed) because people don't like to lose.
But really, the whole notion that people refusing to sell your stuff in their stores is censorship is crazy. Yes, if everyone refuses to sell your stuff, you're going to have to get creative and find another distribution method (or seek another means of making a livlihood.) Maybe you'll succeed in getting your stuff out there and maybe you won't; historically, a lot of good and even great artists died penniless because they couldn't get anyone to sell their stuff. No one is entitled to a market. How could it be otherwise? Does it make any sense for either governments OR consumers to have the power to tell a store what kinds of goods it must carry? Are we supposed to start passing laws saying that since art is sacred, all stores must sell everything that is labeled "art", no matter how much they dislike it or how unlikely it is to turn a profit, just because all art is entitled to a marketplace? Just think for a second what that would result in and you'll see why it's a crazy notion. Or should we say stores are allowed to make decisions about what entertainment products they carry UNLESS there's a consumer protest, in which case the presence of the protest means they're NOT allowed to take it off the shelves because that would be "censorship"?
Not finding anyone willing to sell your stuff, for whatever reason, is by far the most common fate for artists. "We won't sell that item because everyone would hate us and stop shopping at our store" is a completely legitimate reason to stop selling an item. If the item in question is a piece of art that's so iffy or edgy or weird or obscene that the artist can't find any place at all willing to sell it -- well, them's the breaks! It's not censorship any more than your garage band not being able to get any local store to carry their homemade CDs because the lyrics are horribly offensive is censorship. You just failed to make an art product anyone wanted to sell. Make some different art and try again. Welcome to the artistic life!
Thank you. This is a legit and honest reply to the shit I was complaining about. I agree with you, to be honest.
You make a fair argument about the difference between consumer activism and government action, although I would disagree that one is inherently more virtuous or trustworthy than the other simply because it's less powerful.
That doesn't mean it should be trusted out of hand. It should be questioned, and looked at, and understood carefully what it's going to lead to, if anything, and where the motivation for that action is coming from. I didn't immediately just go "Oh, Target is making the right decision by refusing to sell GTAV" just because it's misogynistic as fuck (which it is). I thought about it and I was like "Am I cool with a major retailer just opting to do that, to take that stand, and the sort of media and consumer pressure that stand might take as a result?"
And the answer is... ehhhhhh? Sorrrrta?
I'm okay with it as a symbolic gesture. I'm okay with it particularly because it's somewhat toothless, ultimately, and it's largely a symbol that will engender conversation and analysis and maybe, maybe pressure Rockstar into looking at their deplorable treatment of women in their games and go "Hey, maybe this might affect our bottom line, maybe we should change?"
God, if it makes them get Lazlow Jones off their fucking writing team, fuck, fucking ban it for all of Australia. Sorry, Australians, but jesus that guy is a cancer on that series. Take the hit for all of us, bros.
If it was more comprehensive, like every single retailer in Australia stood in solidarity with Target on this and digital retailers took steps to try to inhibit sales of the game to Australians (hahahaha good luck), I'd have more misgivings, because I would feel that would be as histrionic an over-reaction to GTAV's misogyny as it is to call Target literally bookburning Nazis.
But those misgivings wouldn't turn into me saying "They shouldn't have done this! They have no right! How dare they try to suppress expression!" Which is the track Jerry is taking and not one I agree with or has any merit, I think.
It might, if I gave enough of a shit and I felt like it was a big enough deal, turn into me taking some kind of counter-action, as you suggested. But only if I felt it mattered to do so. Which, this time, I did not. The full extent of fucks I am willing to give about this subject is entirely restricted to basically talking to people about it in this internet thread. Beyond that I don't especially care?
What amazes me is the doublethink where people are honestly telling themselves they're not censoring GTA V. Because everyone knows censorship is bad and these silly moral busybodies think they aren't prey to the mistakes of the past.
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck...
You are saying this as a guy who took fervent part in a letter writing campaign to get a journalist fired because she wrote something that hurt your feelings.
@Pony if you were referring to people in this thread who are calling this censorship who also took part in the gamergate letter writing campaigns being hypocritical, then I'm 100% behind you. Neither were censorship and taking part in one while calling the other unacceptable censorship is a perfect example of hypocrisy and dishonesty.
That was one thrust of what I was saying, yes. I was basically making a "it is or it isn't" point.
Either it is acceptable, or it is not. For you, for Quid, for Cambiata, it is acceptable, regardless of who is doing it or why. You've declared it as such, and you've explained your reasoning why. I accept that. What's more, I agree with your reasoning, for what it's worth.
For some other people, and Thom is an example since you were rightly calling me out for using passive voice and not being specific enough in my complaints, there's a hypocrisy in saying "It's wrong when they do it but it's okay when we do it" and that's one of the things I was trying to dissect. Not even so much because it was important to point out the hypocrisy in and of itself, but because that sort of unthinking hypocrisy where a person just reflexively holds dissonant opinions without even considering what that means is something that needs to be challenged, regardless of their political stripe.
I just feel it's important to play with an open hand with this kind of thing, and be clear about it, because otherwise the easy way for people to complain is to make false equivalences or just blatantly contradictory statements because... because they're in the right, dammit! And so forth.
I've made it clear, I believe, that I don't think all forms of suppression, influence, pressure, and dare I use the word censorship are equivalent and that talking about one kind of action as if it is another is dishonest. Talking about Target's decision to not sell a video game as if it's equivalent to Nazi bookburning, for example, is hyperbolic and nonsensical. But I don't think that's entirely the fault of those who make those hyperbolic points, either. I think that a part of the discourse gets lost when all concerns, all thoughts on the matter, all misgivings about acts of suppression or influence done by one group to restrict the expression of another, get dismissed out of hand as histrionic hand-wringing or nerd snottiness. Some of it absolutely is, yes. But you look at an otherwise rational and fairly intelligent person like Jerry Holkins and the side he's coming down on this, and to simply refuse outright to engage that line of conversation in good faith is essentially dismissing a person whole-cloth who might actually be able to conversed into seeing differently.
Instead, you get folks like DirtyDirtyVagrant throwing their hands up in the air, calling Mike and Jerry "a sublime mix of white, male, and wealthy privilege, seasoned with a healthy dash of artistic pretense and drizzled in pseudo-intellectuallism. They are a perfect storm of douchebaggery."
Does she have some valid criticisms in there among the angry dismissal? I think so. But there's no interest in engaging either Mike and Jerry or the many people who are posting in this thread that agree with Jerry in any kind of good faith argument. Some of them might not be capable of a good faith argument, and that's fine. But the dismissal out of hand? The complete unwillingness to step back and say "Okay, I can see why you might be concerned, but here's why maybe you shouldn't be..."
I'm not seeing a lot of that here. I am, however, seeing a lot of "Well, this isn't technically censorship and you nerds need to calm down if you think this is anything like what real censorship is" and in general a sort of patronizing sneer at people who are like hey, I think this is wrong? Or at the very least, kinda worrisome?
It might not be a big deal to you (or really, to me), but clearly it is to them. I'm not trying to advocate on their behalf, or "raise concerns", but christ I'd like to be on the right side of shit without it stinking.
I wish we could talk about the reasons this is even happening, but anyone I've tried to engage with as far as the actual complaints has outright denied that the content is in the game, handwaved away the content as being "the same old moral policing", or just babbled incoherantly about Jack Thompson.
I haven't seen much in the way of any willingness to have a conversation about why a group would want this.
And that's the problem, that there is never any consideration from those against the game being pulled to at least question if there is a problem with the content in the game. If the group petitioning for this even has something resembling a point.
I've tried to go down that path in this thread. And the wall I've hit makes me realize there's a reason people jump to getting games like this pulled. What else can you do when there isn't any attempt by gamers to even acknowledge a problem could potentially exist maybe?
How do you deal with people who have been conditioned to protect their hobby with such verosity that they can't even consider the fact that sometimes media can be harmful.
I feel that's a valid counterpoint. It's one of the multitude of problems with "gamer culture", of which Jerry is a full part of and leading figure in. For many of them, it's kind of impossible to think in "half-measures" or to consider the notion that hey... maybe this... isn't... good?
Maybe this is a problem, maybe this isn't something we should be okay with, maybe this is something that people who do have a problem with it should be heard from about.
But there's so much of "gamer culture" (and just associated nerd culture in general, which I think is what Crimson King is trying to grasp at) that is tied up in narratives of persecution complexes and being ostracized by the norms of society that it's almost impossible to get some gamers to admit they are the privileged class who are being absolute shit to people.
"B-but we're geeks, we're the ones who get bullied! We can't be the bullies! We can't be the ones with unthinking privilege! That's not how the narrative I've built my personal identity around as a geek works!"
There's a whole lot of that in gamer culture and it's fucking awful. So yeah, that's tough to argue with rationally and reasonably.
Censorship is good when is us doing it. (Said by every group that censors).
You people are tying to tell adults (yes, adults, since the +18 rating means something) what media they can consume and expect no backlash because....what? Even if the game was everything that you guys say that it is (and, frankly, is just an exaggeration), given than Game of Thrones and 50 Shades or Gray are sold without issue, this is just a bunch of "moral crusaders" trying to interfere with the lives of other people.
I'm a little late to the party, but it seems most places that talk about this story either go the "Ha ha, stupid Aussies" or "what's the problem, the shops can do what they want" routes.
As an Aussie I say thanks, Jerry, for putting exactly what the problem is into simple, clear words in the story accompanying the comic.
It took us long enough to get recognition of grown ups playing games with the R18 rating. The last thing any gamer wants is the same people who opposed it for so long revving up again.
Nope. That stuff is perfectly valid. I'm just not going to argue with you if you're going to deny valid points for no reason.
I mean, are you saying that these things don't exist in the game, that getting your health back while not spending any money isn't an incentive to use and then kill a prostitute in the game, or are you just blindly defending the game by attacking the validity of their argument instead of the severity of it?
You're calling them liars. I'm saying that's not true and pointing out why.
They can tell the truth and still be wrong about what they want in regards to the game. That's a valid argument. Calling them liars is not.
The petition claims that players kill and abuse prostitutes to regain health, which is patently untrue. In reality, players can have sex to regain health, but since afterwards the women don't become immune to harm or their money doesn't disappear or whatever, apparently you think that's somehow the exact same thing.
News flash: Grand Theft Auto allows the player character to commit crimes and kill basically anyone they want with the caveat that the cops will pursue them where applicable. The fact that you think prostitutes being included among that "anyone" constitutes thoughtcrime is your own damage.
But if a retailer can stock what it wants without it being censorship how is consumers telling them what to and not to stock suddenly censorship?
Listen, if you're exerting pressure to limit the public's access to art you disapprove of then you're an asshole. The fact that you guys want to prevaricate over whether someone is attempting to use corporate versus government power to do so is nothing but a spineless dodge, and harping on about where Target fits in reeks of deflection from people who aren't used to anyone telling them anything but how right their views are.
But fine, you've convinced me, Target are assholes in this too, caving to moral authoritarian whining over an issue that nobody but a few writers at trashy clickbait websites and a small smattering of random internet people really give a shit about.
Thankfully, the entirety of modern Western popular culture has been nothing but one endless torrent of defeat for the morality-in-art police, and this latest wave won't be any different.
We in this country only just got past some real-and-for-true government censorship LAST GODDAMNED YEAR. We don't want our games to be messed with again so soon. Sure, most people don't buy games from Kmart and Target anyway. But this is all over the news. And people are opportunistic. There is every chance it will be used by some to ask "why are these games allowed at all?" Again.
Oh know what's dissapointing? Unless I've missed it neither Mike nor Jerry have said shit about GG, something that is harassing and threatening people in the game industry. Their safety. I imagine because they either agree with it, or they fear about the consequences of speaking up.
I mean, morality is apparently bad? How the fuck do I have a conversation with someone who's arguing that morality is bad?
well, you see what i mean, hey
the whole thing is just one big, shitty attempt to shoehorn all ethical criticism of video games into a familiar narrative about moral panics
it goes the hays code, mccarthyism, frederick wertham, jack thompson, anita sarkeesian
the first four are obvious villains and super easy targets, if you can convince yourself there's no difference between them and feminism you can quite comfortably become the hero in your own mind
and the basic way you do that is by calling them all "censorship" and never thinking about it ever ever again
this strategy doesn't hold up upon scrutiny, of course, but the primary way you deal with that is not to care about it
Oh know what's dissapointing? Unless I've missed it neither Mike nor Jerry have said shit about GG, something that is harassing and threatening people in the game industry. Their safety. I imagine because they either agree with it, or they fear about the consequences of speaking up.
Yet they'll speak on this.
I don't know what to take from that.
Jerry absolutely spoke out against the harassment and threatening aspects of Gamergate months ago, although he did not specifically use that word, it was abundantly clear what he was talking about.
His feelings on Gamergate were that even if anyone involved in it at some point may have had legit points about games journalism or whatever, the harassment and death threats have, and I quote, "broken your banner" and that people involved with GG should "go your own way" at this point.
So, Jerry did have a newspost about it. A comic? No.
But if a retailer can stock what it wants without it being censorship how is consumers telling them what to and not to stock suddenly censorship?
Listen, if you're exerting pressure to limit the public's access to art you disapprove of then you're an asshole. The fact that you guys want to prevaricate over whether someone is attempting to use corporate versus government power to do so is nothing but a spineless dodge, and harping on about where Target fits in reeks of deflection from people who aren't used to anyone telling them anything but how right their views are.
But fine, you've convinced me, Target are assholes in this too, caving to moral authoritarian whining over an issue that nobody but a few writers at trashy clickbait websites and a small smattering of random internet people really give a shit about.
Thankfully, the entirety of modern Western popular culture has been nothing but one endless torrent of defeat for the morality-in-art police, and this latest wave won't be any different.
So what I'm getting from this is that things which happen due to market stuff you approve of (like the quality of the game, no one stocks Ride to Hell: Retribution in stores and that's not censorship apparently) is fine but things that happen because of moral standards you disagree with are censorship?
Leaving out that Target AU really doesn't have the power to censor anyone. There's very, very few non-government bodies that can effectively censor someone (the MPAA possibly comes kinda close with how insanely they can strangle distribution of things they don't approve of) and one retail chain refusing to sell a piece of media doesn't come close. That's not a spineless dodge, that's just looking at the scale of possible harm to the product. It's not going to stop GTA5 being made. Heck it's not even going to stop sales of GTA5 in Australia at the end of the day.
I don't entirely agree with the strict idea that only governments can engage in censorship but it feels absurd to call an act that does literally next to zero harm to the product or it's creators censorship.
It is the height of ridiculousness that I feel compelled to come down on one side or another of the “death threats” issue. Like Danny Glover, I am too old for this shit. One of the ways you know I am too old is that I make references Danny Glover. Here’s what’s going on: a distilled form of Abuse is being iterated on a profound and gruesome scale. Such people cannot be allowed to win. Ever.
You can’t threaten people with death, and I resent very strongly being made to type that out. Not only can you not do that because you can’t fucking do it, it has the power to obliterate everything else you say. In fact, it obliterates everything the people around you are trying to say. That’s what has happened now. I know that this situation is more complex than anyone is willing to enunciate. I know that “Gaming Journalism” is a contradiction in terms. But they’ve broken your banner, now, and you helped them do it. I grieve for the ones who tried to do it right. When your media doesn’t represent you, or actively attacks you as it has here, it’s not your media. You’ll have to make your own, and it’s not impossible. It’s more possible now than it has ever been in human history, and you’re reading an example of it at this moment. Go your own way.
I’ve enunciated a reasonable position though, right? That you can’t threaten people’s lives? Watch me get crucified for it; let my crossbeams be made from two sturdy hashtags.
Listen, if you're exerting pressure to limit the public's access to art you disapprove of then you're an asshole.
I disapprove of the public having access to child porn.
I disapprove of the public having access to snuff films. (Yes, I know they probably don't even exist. But if they did, they'd be art. And I'd disapprove.)
If having moral standards where art is concerned makes me an asshole I'll wear that shirt proudly.
I don't happen to think that GTAV is immoral, but that's my personal line and I'll draw it where I please.
Other people have drawn the line where I would not, and they are acting on their convictions, as it their right. Just because they have drawn the line where I haven't doesn't mean they have to shut up.
The real gist of this is that you think other people shouldn't be able to express their convictions about the morality of a particular piece of art because YOU don't think it's immoral. Well, good for you, but no one else has to agree with your personal standards, and no one else has to shut up and sit down just because you think they've drawn their line in the wrong place. Other people have a right to have their own ideas about art and morality and to express those ideas. This basically comes down to "Other people shouldn't be moral arbiters because their morals are wrong, so I should be the one who gets to say GTAV is moral and has a right to be sold and that Target-AU shouldn't be allowed to listen to these moral police because they're stupid and wrong about GTAV!"
We in this country only just got past some real-and-for-true government censorship LAST GODDAMNED YEAR. We don't want our games to be messed with again so soon. Sure, most people don't buy games from Kmart and Target anyway. But this is all over the news. And people are opportunistic. There is every chance it will be used by some to ask "why are these games allowed at all?" Again.
Dude you can hate it all you want. Pretty much everyone here agrees it's dumb.
Ain't censorship.
Quid on
+1
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
You people are tying to tell adults (yes, adults, since the +18 rating means something) what media they can consume and expect no backlash because....what? Even if the game was everything that you guys say that it is (and, frankly, is just an exaggeration), given than Game of Thrones and 50 Shades or Gray are sold without issue, this is just a bunch of "moral crusaders" trying to interfere with the lives of other people.
1) The petition misses the point of what criticism should accomplish. I didn't buy GTA V for many of the reasons given (albeit, accurate ones, you don't get health points for beating women or similar in the game) in this thread already about how it treats women (which is either being irrelevant, portrayed as harpy trope like wives and general decoration).
2) Target has every right to respond to such criticism by deciding to take the game off store shelves and they are already getting backlash from people saying "Your gesture is entirely meaningless because the game already sold its ton fuckload of copies, so what was the point of this?" to everyone making petitions to ban the holy bible (which has btw, nearly 50,000 signatures), 50 shades of grey and a bunch of other things for often clever or nonsense reasons to protest this decision.
3) This is not actually censorship, because censorship is something I (as someone who lives in Australia) actually understands and better than many of you. Censorship is having games gutted and shit all over, like Left4Dead2 because the government objects to things in it and won't allow it to be released/rated. For example South Park in Australia lacks all of the anal probe scenes in the Alien Ship (as an example). Do I personally give a shit they did it where I wouldn't buy the game? Not really. Do I think it's abhorrently wrong to force a game to be censored with an R18+ rating actually in place? Yes I absolutely do (Saints Row 4 also was censored for similar reasons). Did I get really pissed off when I couldn't buy Syndicate on release here at all because it was literally actually banned from being sold anywhere. Absofuckenlutely I was. In fact, it's never been put up for rerating so it is never likely that it will be allowed to be legally sold here in Australia. Ever.
Do I think every single store in Australia that sells games should be forced to sell South Park? Nope. Do I think any of the other innumerable outlets who will sell me GTA V are going to be at all upset with Target making this decision? Nope (in fact, they probably hope target does it more as Target frequently undercuts them by miles).
It is not censorship to decide not to sell something, just like how it is equally not censorship for me to say to Target I won't buy games from them again. Now if this was the Australian Government deciding that GTA V couldn't be sold anywhere in Australia, even though I think it has a terrible depiction of women, then I would be disagreeing entirely with that decision. That I would have a full force of outrage for, because GTA V is nowhere near on the scale of "Absolutely so harmful to society nobody should ever play it".
Honestly, I can't think of very many games that would ever qualify for that beyond some really heinous rape/sexual assault stalking type simulators from extremely obscure developers (which aren't sold in shops anywhere here anyway).
Honestly, I can't think of very many games that would ever qualify for that beyond some really heinous rape/sexual assault stalking type simulators from extremely obscure developers (which aren't sold in shops anywhere here anyway).
BUT BUT BUT THOSE ARE ART! YOU CAN'T CENSOR ART!
Let's start a petition to force Target-AU to carry rape simulation games. We can't be moral arbiters here!
Are people actually defending Target for this, or simply saying "it's histrionic to claim that this is censorship?"
cause that's what I'm doing, that's what I'm seeing. I dunno, I probably missed a few posts, but it seems like the majority is split between:
"This is censorship!" & "No this isn't censorship, like it or not, disagree with it or not, it's silly and inaccurate to call it censorship."
Yep, I haven't seen any defense of Target in this thread. Target is dumb for doing this.
It's just equally dumb to call Target's stocking practices "censorship."
Do you get the feeling that some people just can't handle seeing Jerry's mis-use of the word censorship noted? (I do. I get that feeling.)
I mean, morality is apparently bad? How the fuck do I have a conversation with someone who's arguing that morality is bad?
This is why I've stayed out of the discussion -- that, and it's been going on for so long that the random people who jump in now are just showing that they didn't read everything before posting (myself included, probably). The people who most vehemently defend the game seem to be stuck in the same old "I should be able to do whatever I want, whenever I want" mindset that is so prevalent in the younger generations of today.
It makes me wonder if some of them have a moral line that can't be crossed or not. Let's forget killing prostitutes for a moment. Let's say you could abduct children, and then when you kill them you get powerups. But hey, if you beat on them for awhile first, it'll be a better powerup. The longer the beating the better the powerup. Is it still ok for all the pro-hooker-killers out there? Is it still "art?" Or would that finally cross the line and make a gamer think, "Man....this is messed up. Who made this?"
So many people are talking about how this is a slippery slope that could lead to more companies removing more video game "art" from their shelves, but there's another slope too. When society never speaks up about our disgust over things, that allows the truly depraved to keep pushing the line further and further. On the one hand, a creator should be able to make whatever they want, but on the other hand, they should have the common sense to know that some things just don't need to be made. Just sitting here, I could think of some pretty messed up @#$% to make video games about (many of which probably, sadly, already exist in some shady corner of cyberspace), but I actually have enough of a moral code to realize "Yeah, the world doesn't need that. It's messed up enough already."
Here's something fun for the pro-GTA people: Give me some examples of something productive that GTA adds to society as a whole....
MarcinMN on
"It's just as I've always said. We are being digested by an amoral universe."
I don't have particularly strong feelings one way or another about the actual target thing, it may not be the best strategy but I can't exactly get too worked up about it
but it totally is an attempt to suppress the sale of an artistic product, which can be reasonably described as an act of censorship
I hate ever bringing up the word "censorship" in any context whether I support the thing being done or not because people, and especially for a variety of reasons video gamists, get real weird about that word, on account of it being immediately likened to shit like the nazi book burnings which I'm not sure everybody actually understands the full historical significance of
I'd be down for a dedemonization of it but I personally do not have the patience for that so I'd rather just say more specifically what is being done
I do not think it is appropriate to compare a successful consumer petition to a store to the systematic and genocidal destruction of research and art in nazi germany but hey
But it totally is an attempt to suppress the sale of an artistic product, which can be reasonably described as an act of censorship
Nope. Censorship is when you say, with some kind of power backing it up, "You can't make that or we'll punish you."
A store saying "We're not going to sell this thing" isn't censorship. It's not even close.
And customers getting together to say "Hey, that thing you're selling pisses us off! We'd prefer you didn't sell it!" isn't censorship either. It's just expressing an opinion.
There isn't any official power behind the petition. No one who wrote it has the power to use force to make it happen or heck, they wouldn't need to petition, would they? ("To petition" means "to ask".) The worst those people on the petition can threaten Target-AU with is, "We hate this thing so much that if you keep it in your store, we won't come and shop there." That's not force, it's persuasion, which is in no way immoral. Now obviously that's pressure a store wants to consider since they want to keep customers in the store, but it's just not the same as saying "If you paint/write/draw/code that, you're going to be locked up or killed." The only thing the store loses by ignoring the petition is, maybe, a few customers.
I mean, what would you have of customers? To give up any hope at all of influencing stores? If not via request -- be it a formal petition, a suggestion slip in the suggestion box, or a friendly word to the store owner -- how would we customers ever get a store to stock something we DO want that they don't currently carry? Are we not supposed to make our wishes clear? Why are we supposed to be silent about a product just because some folks think it's "art"? There are a lot of people who would argue that GTAV doesn't even qualify on those grounds, you know.
Sacrificing the free choice of stores and customers on the altar of Untouchable Art is just crazy.
So many people are talking about how this is a slippery slope that could lead to more companies removing more video game "art" from their shelves, but there's another slope too. When society never speaks up about our disgust over things, that allows the truly depraved to keep pushing the line further and further.
Here's something fun for the pro-GTA people: Give me some examples of something productive that GTA adds to society as a whole....
As far as open-world games go GTA bores the shit out of and I'd much rather play a new Mafia or Sleeping Dogs but that is a silly statement.
"Here's something fun for the pro-Michelangelo's David people: Give me some examples of something productive that David adds to society as a whole...."
But it totally is an attempt to suppress the sale of an artistic product, which can be reasonably described as an act of censorship
Nope. Censorship is when you say, with some kind of power backing it up, "You can't make that or we'll punish you."
A store saying "We're not going to sell this thing" isn't censorship. It's not even close.
And customers getting together to say "Hey, that thing you're selling pisses us off! We'd prefer you didn't sell it!" isn't censorship either. It's just expressing an opinion.
There isn't any official power behind the petition. No one who wrote it has the power to use force to make it happen or heck, they wouldn't need to petition, would they? ("To petition" means "to ask".) The worst those people on the petition can threaten Target-AU with is, "We hate this thing so much that if you keep it in your store, we won't come and shop there." That's not force, it's persuasion, which is in no way immoral. Now obviously that's pressure a store wants to consider since they want to keep customers in the store, but it's just not the same as saying "If you paint/write/draw/code that, you're going to be locked up or killed." The only thing the store loses by ignoring the petition is, maybe, a few customers.
I mean, what would you have of customers? To give up any hope at all of influencing stores? If not via request -- be it a formal petition, a suggestion slip in the suggestion box, or a friendly word to the store owner -- how would we customers ever get a store to stock something we DO want that they don't currently carry? Are we not supposed to make our wishes clear? Why are we supposed to be silent about a product just because some folks think it's "art"? There are a lot of people who would argue that GTAV doesn't even qualify on those grounds, you know.
Sacrificing the free choice of stores and customers on the altar of Untouchable Art is just crazy.
see this is exactly why I hate using the word censorship, you're attaching all sorts of baggage to it and positions that I do not support to me and now I gotta clarify all that before we can even start discussing our actual points
I don't actually have any ethical problem with a petition for target to remove gtav on the basis of its misogynistic content, it is a valid consumer action and I support the reasoning behind it because misogyny is terrible
I think a petition for target to remove dragon age inquisition on the basis of it being super gay is as valid of a consumer action, but I would not support the reasoning behind it because being super gay is actually awesome
They are both attempts to punish creators of media they consider objectionable by removing a channel of distribution, something I am comfortable calling censorship.
but I think censorship, that is to say the suppression of art considered harmful, can be okay!
this is, as you said, just a petition of consumers making their concerns heard to a retailer which then decides the patronage of the petitioners is more important to them than those who want to buy gtav. there is no coercion or threat of force to ethically compromise it. it is indeed not comparable to jailing or murdering people. some real bad censorship would be what's going on in ferguson missouri right now.
I do not think criticism is censorship, like a lot of angry video gamists seem to believe. a direct call to remove a product from sale is a different strategy though. again, not one I have an ethical problem with, but I am increasingly disillusioned with the "target their wallets" strategy because capitalism is such a volatile framework and while it can get short term results, there will always be someone with more money. I think criticism is a better long-term strategy because it can get artists to stop making misogynistic bullshit because they realize it's bullshit, not just because they want to make more money
Posts
If a market is competitive and having less scruples provides an advantage then the participant with the least scruples advances to the next round of competition while other participants do not. It has been necessary to regulate corporations because when markets work, they are incapable of acting in a manner with respect to morality. The concept that corporations can or do take moral stances has all kinds of wild implications that we should be looking at really hard.
That's not the implication here. The implication is that consumer movements can influence corporations to take actions that reflect the consumer's moral standing through threatening their bottom line.
Really it's the only tool consumers have when dealing with amoral actors like businesses.
like, remember the whole militant atheism thing? which of course was just about that little buzz of superiority you get when you convince yourself that all the world's problems would go away if only everyone was as rational and level-headed as you are
i don't remember if jack thompson was actually a religious man but it seems like that whole thing occupied roughly the same mental space. oh these people with their outdated moral codes and medieval concepts of decency. don't they know we can see straight through them. i can't wait for all those silly fundamentalists to die off, then the world will be perfect
with the passing of the bush administration christian fundamentalism no longer has quite the same place on the world stage, but nerds still need something to feel better than, so they just shift all of the same attributes over to feminism with nary a thought about whether or not that makes any kind of sense
this is probably why you see so many people conflating these two radically distinct movements into one big thing, which they think about as "moral guardians", people whose grasp on ethics is not as enlightened and rational as that of nerds and who foolishly insist on imposing it upon society at large
of course, the kind of privilege nerds often have, where they have never been under any kind of serious threat from other people's social movements, makes it possible for them to just make shit up about stuff other people believe and accept it without question
That was one thrust of what I was saying, yes. I was basically making a "it is or it isn't" point.
Either it is acceptable, or it is not. For you, for Quid, for Cambiata, it is acceptable, regardless of who is doing it or why. You've declared it as such, and you've explained your reasoning why. I accept that. What's more, I agree with your reasoning, for what it's worth.
For some other people, and Thom is an example since you were rightly calling me out for using passive voice and not being specific enough in my complaints, there's a hypocrisy in saying "It's wrong when they do it but it's okay when we do it" and that's one of the things I was trying to dissect. Not even so much because it was important to point out the hypocrisy in and of itself, but because that sort of unthinking hypocrisy where a person just reflexively holds dissonant opinions without even considering what that means is something that needs to be challenged, regardless of their political stripe.
I just feel it's important to play with an open hand with this kind of thing, and be clear about it, because otherwise the easy way for people to complain is to make false equivalences or just blatantly contradictory statements because... because they're in the right, dammit! And so forth.
I've made it clear, I believe, that I don't think all forms of suppression, influence, pressure, and dare I use the word censorship are equivalent and that talking about one kind of action as if it is another is dishonest. Talking about Target's decision to not sell a video game as if it's equivalent to Nazi bookburning, for example, is hyperbolic and nonsensical. But I don't think that's entirely the fault of those who make those hyperbolic points, either. I think that a part of the discourse gets lost when all concerns, all thoughts on the matter, all misgivings about acts of suppression or influence done by one group to restrict the expression of another, get dismissed out of hand as histrionic hand-wringing or nerd snottiness. Some of it absolutely is, yes. But you look at an otherwise rational and fairly intelligent person like Jerry Holkins and the side he's coming down on this, and to simply refuse outright to engage that line of conversation in good faith is essentially dismissing a person whole-cloth who might actually be able to conversed into seeing differently.
Instead, you get folks like DirtyDirtyVagrant throwing their hands up in the air, calling Mike and Jerry "a sublime mix of white, male, and wealthy privilege, seasoned with a healthy dash of artistic pretense and drizzled in pseudo-intellectuallism. They are a perfect storm of douchebaggery."
Does she have some valid criticisms in there among the angry dismissal? I think so. But there's no interest in engaging either Mike and Jerry or the many people who are posting in this thread that agree with Jerry in any kind of good faith argument. Some of them might not be capable of a good faith argument, and that's fine. But the dismissal out of hand? The complete unwillingness to step back and say "Okay, I can see why you might be concerned, but here's why maybe you shouldn't be..."
I'm not seeing a lot of that here. I am, however, seeing a lot of "Well, this isn't technically censorship and you nerds need to calm down if you think this is anything like what real censorship is" and in general a sort of patronizing sneer at people who are like hey, I think this is wrong? Or at the very least, kinda worrisome?
It might not be a big deal to you (or really, to me), but clearly it is to them. I'm not trying to advocate on their behalf, or "raise concerns", but christ I'd like to be on the right side of shit without it stinking.
I wish we could talk about the reasons this is even happening, but anyone I've tried to engage with as far as the actual complaints has outright denied that the content is in the game, handwaved away the content as being "the same old moral policing", or just babbled incoherantly about Jack Thompson.
I haven't seen much in the way of any willingness to have a conversation about why a group would want this.
And that's the problem, that there is never any consideration from those against the game being pulled to at least question if there is a problem with the content in the game. If the group petitioning for this even has something resembling a point.
I've tried to go down that path in this thread. And the wall I've hit makes me realize there's a reason people jump to getting games like this pulled. What else can you do when there isn't any attempt by gamers to even acknowledge a problem could potentially exist maybe?
How do you deal with people who have been conditioned to protect their hobby with such verosity that they can't even consider the fact that sometimes media can be harmful.
Thank you. This is a legit and honest reply to the shit I was complaining about. I agree with you, to be honest.
You make a fair argument about the difference between consumer activism and government action, although I would disagree that one is inherently more virtuous or trustworthy than the other simply because it's less powerful.
That doesn't mean it should be trusted out of hand. It should be questioned, and looked at, and understood carefully what it's going to lead to, if anything, and where the motivation for that action is coming from. I didn't immediately just go "Oh, Target is making the right decision by refusing to sell GTAV" just because it's misogynistic as fuck (which it is). I thought about it and I was like "Am I cool with a major retailer just opting to do that, to take that stand, and the sort of media and consumer pressure that stand might take as a result?"
And the answer is... ehhhhhh? Sorrrrta?
I'm okay with it as a symbolic gesture. I'm okay with it particularly because it's somewhat toothless, ultimately, and it's largely a symbol that will engender conversation and analysis and maybe, maybe pressure Rockstar into looking at their deplorable treatment of women in their games and go "Hey, maybe this might affect our bottom line, maybe we should change?"
God, if it makes them get Lazlow Jones off their fucking writing team, fuck, fucking ban it for all of Australia. Sorry, Australians, but jesus that guy is a cancer on that series. Take the hit for all of us, bros.
If it was more comprehensive, like every single retailer in Australia stood in solidarity with Target on this and digital retailers took steps to try to inhibit sales of the game to Australians (hahahaha good luck), I'd have more misgivings, because I would feel that would be as histrionic an over-reaction to GTAV's misogyny as it is to call Target literally bookburning Nazis.
But those misgivings wouldn't turn into me saying "They shouldn't have done this! They have no right! How dare they try to suppress expression!" Which is the track Jerry is taking and not one I agree with or has any merit, I think.
It might, if I gave enough of a shit and I felt like it was a big enough deal, turn into me taking some kind of counter-action, as you suggested. But only if I felt it mattered to do so. Which, this time, I did not. The full extent of fucks I am willing to give about this subject is entirely restricted to basically talking to people about it in this internet thread. Beyond that I don't especially care?
Nonetheless, thank you for your honesty.
I feel that's a valid counterpoint. It's one of the multitude of problems with "gamer culture", of which Jerry is a full part of and leading figure in. For many of them, it's kind of impossible to think in "half-measures" or to consider the notion that hey... maybe this... isn't... good?
Maybe this is a problem, maybe this isn't something we should be okay with, maybe this is something that people who do have a problem with it should be heard from about.
But there's so much of "gamer culture" (and just associated nerd culture in general, which I think is what Crimson King is trying to grasp at) that is tied up in narratives of persecution complexes and being ostracized by the norms of society that it's almost impossible to get some gamers to admit they are the privileged class who are being absolute shit to people.
"B-but we're geeks, we're the ones who get bullied! We can't be the bullies! We can't be the ones with unthinking privilege! That's not how the narrative I've built my personal identity around as a geek works!"
There's a whole lot of that in gamer culture and it's fucking awful. So yeah, that's tough to argue with rationally and reasonably.
Censorship is good when is us doing it. (Said by every group that censors).
You people are tying to tell adults (yes, adults, since the +18 rating means something) what media they can consume and expect no backlash because....what? Even if the game was everything that you guys say that it is (and, frankly, is just an exaggeration), given than Game of Thrones and 50 Shades or Gray are sold without issue, this is just a bunch of "moral crusaders" trying to interfere with the lives of other people.
Instead I willed this into existence.
As an Aussie I say thanks, Jerry, for putting exactly what the problem is into simple, clear words in the story accompanying the comic.
It took us long enough to get recognition of grown ups playing games with the R18 rating. The last thing any gamer wants is the same people who opposed it for so long revving up again.
The petition claims that players kill and abuse prostitutes to regain health, which is patently untrue. In reality, players can have sex to regain health, but since afterwards the women don't become immune to harm or their money doesn't disappear or whatever, apparently you think that's somehow the exact same thing.
News flash: Grand Theft Auto allows the player character to commit crimes and kill basically anyone they want with the caveat that the cops will pursue them where applicable. The fact that you think prostitutes being included among that "anyone" constitutes thoughtcrime is your own damage.
Listen, if you're exerting pressure to limit the public's access to art you disapprove of then you're an asshole. The fact that you guys want to prevaricate over whether someone is attempting to use corporate versus government power to do so is nothing but a spineless dodge, and harping on about where Target fits in reeks of deflection from people who aren't used to anyone telling them anything but how right their views are.
But fine, you've convinced me, Target are assholes in this too, caving to moral authoritarian whining over an issue that nobody but a few writers at trashy clickbait websites and a small smattering of random internet people really give a shit about.
Thankfully, the entirety of modern Western popular culture has been nothing but one endless torrent of defeat for the morality-in-art police, and this latest wave won't be any different.
We in this country only just got past some real-and-for-true government censorship LAST GODDAMNED YEAR. We don't want our games to be messed with again so soon. Sure, most people don't buy games from Kmart and Target anyway. But this is all over the news. And people are opportunistic. There is every chance it will be used by some to ask "why are these games allowed at all?" Again.
Yet they'll speak on this.
I don't know what to take from that.
well, you see what i mean, hey
the whole thing is just one big, shitty attempt to shoehorn all ethical criticism of video games into a familiar narrative about moral panics
it goes the hays code, mccarthyism, frederick wertham, jack thompson, anita sarkeesian
the first four are obvious villains and super easy targets, if you can convince yourself there's no difference between them and feminism you can quite comfortably become the hero in your own mind
and the basic way you do that is by calling them all "censorship" and never thinking about it ever ever again
this strategy doesn't hold up upon scrutiny, of course, but the primary way you deal with that is not to care about it
I mean, if they are, what are you doing here, posting on a forum about a webcomic? Shouldn't you be working for a charity or something?
Also, this conversation IS the 90's again: A bunch of self-righteous busybodies telling other people what media they can consume.
Jerry absolutely spoke out against the harassment and threatening aspects of Gamergate months ago, although he did not specifically use that word, it was abundantly clear what he was talking about.
His feelings on Gamergate were that even if anyone involved in it at some point may have had legit points about games journalism or whatever, the harassment and death threats have, and I quote, "broken your banner" and that people involved with GG should "go your own way" at this point.
So, Jerry did have a newspost about it. A comic? No.
So what I'm getting from this is that things which happen due to market stuff you approve of (like the quality of the game, no one stocks Ride to Hell: Retribution in stores and that's not censorship apparently) is fine but things that happen because of moral standards you disagree with are censorship?
Leaving out that Target AU really doesn't have the power to censor anyone. There's very, very few non-government bodies that can effectively censor someone (the MPAA possibly comes kinda close with how insanely they can strangle distribution of things they don't approve of) and one retail chain refusing to sell a piece of media doesn't come close. That's not a spineless dodge, that's just looking at the scale of possible harm to the product. It's not going to stop GTA5 being made. Heck it's not even going to stop sales of GTA5 in Australia at the end of the day.
I don't entirely agree with the strict idea that only governments can engage in censorship but it feels absurd to call an act that does literally next to zero harm to the product or it's creators censorship.
I disapprove of the public having access to child porn.
I disapprove of the public having access to snuff films. (Yes, I know they probably don't even exist. But if they did, they'd be art. And I'd disapprove.)
If having moral standards where art is concerned makes me an asshole I'll wear that shirt proudly.
I don't happen to think that GTAV is immoral, but that's my personal line and I'll draw it where I please.
Other people have drawn the line where I would not, and they are acting on their convictions, as it their right. Just because they have drawn the line where I haven't doesn't mean they have to shut up.
The real gist of this is that you think other people shouldn't be able to express their convictions about the morality of a particular piece of art because YOU don't think it's immoral. Well, good for you, but no one else has to agree with your personal standards, and no one else has to shut up and sit down just because you think they've drawn their line in the wrong place. Other people have a right to have their own ideas about art and morality and to express those ideas. This basically comes down to "Other people shouldn't be moral arbiters because their morals are wrong, so I should be the one who gets to say GTAV is moral and has a right to be sold and that Target-AU shouldn't be allowed to listen to these moral police because they're stupid and wrong about GTAV!"
Dude you can hate it all you want. Pretty much everyone here agrees it's dumb.
Ain't censorship.
1) The petition misses the point of what criticism should accomplish. I didn't buy GTA V for many of the reasons given (albeit, accurate ones, you don't get health points for beating women or similar in the game) in this thread already about how it treats women (which is either being irrelevant, portrayed as harpy trope like wives and general decoration).
2) Target has every right to respond to such criticism by deciding to take the game off store shelves and they are already getting backlash from people saying "Your gesture is entirely meaningless because the game already sold its ton fuckload of copies, so what was the point of this?" to everyone making petitions to ban the holy bible (which has btw, nearly 50,000 signatures), 50 shades of grey and a bunch of other things for often clever or nonsense reasons to protest this decision.
3) This is not actually censorship, because censorship is something I (as someone who lives in Australia) actually understands and better than many of you. Censorship is having games gutted and shit all over, like Left4Dead2 because the government objects to things in it and won't allow it to be released/rated. For example South Park in Australia lacks all of the anal probe scenes in the Alien Ship (as an example). Do I personally give a shit they did it where I wouldn't buy the game? Not really. Do I think it's abhorrently wrong to force a game to be censored with an R18+ rating actually in place? Yes I absolutely do (Saints Row 4 also was censored for similar reasons). Did I get really pissed off when I couldn't buy Syndicate on release here at all because it was literally actually banned from being sold anywhere. Absofuckenlutely I was. In fact, it's never been put up for rerating so it is never likely that it will be allowed to be legally sold here in Australia. Ever.
Do I think every single store in Australia that sells games should be forced to sell South Park? Nope. Do I think any of the other innumerable outlets who will sell me GTA V are going to be at all upset with Target making this decision? Nope (in fact, they probably hope target does it more as Target frequently undercuts them by miles).
It is not censorship to decide not to sell something, just like how it is equally not censorship for me to say to Target I won't buy games from them again. Now if this was the Australian Government deciding that GTA V couldn't be sold anywhere in Australia, even though I think it has a terrible depiction of women, then I would be disagreeing entirely with that decision. That I would have a full force of outrage for, because GTA V is nowhere near on the scale of "Absolutely so harmful to society nobody should ever play it".
Honestly, I can't think of very many games that would ever qualify for that beyond some really heinous rape/sexual assault stalking type simulators from extremely obscure developers (which aren't sold in shops anywhere here anyway).
BUT BUT BUT THOSE ARE ART! YOU CAN'T CENSOR ART!
Let's start a petition to force Target-AU to carry rape simulation games. We can't be moral arbiters here!
Do you get the feeling that some people just can't handle seeing Jerry's mis-use of the word censorship noted? (I do. I get that feeling.)
For a certain definition of "worked", that is.
That's pretty great.
This is why I've stayed out of the discussion -- that, and it's been going on for so long that the random people who jump in now are just showing that they didn't read everything before posting (myself included, probably). The people who most vehemently defend the game seem to be stuck in the same old "I should be able to do whatever I want, whenever I want" mindset that is so prevalent in the younger generations of today.
It makes me wonder if some of them have a moral line that can't be crossed or not. Let's forget killing prostitutes for a moment. Let's say you could abduct children, and then when you kill them you get powerups. But hey, if you beat on them for awhile first, it'll be a better powerup. The longer the beating the better the powerup. Is it still ok for all the pro-hooker-killers out there? Is it still "art?" Or would that finally cross the line and make a gamer think, "Man....this is messed up. Who made this?"
So many people are talking about how this is a slippery slope that could lead to more companies removing more video game "art" from their shelves, but there's another slope too. When society never speaks up about our disgust over things, that allows the truly depraved to keep pushing the line further and further. On the one hand, a creator should be able to make whatever they want, but on the other hand, they should have the common sense to know that some things just don't need to be made. Just sitting here, I could think of some pretty messed up @#$% to make video games about (many of which probably, sadly, already exist in some shady corner of cyberspace), but I actually have enough of a moral code to realize "Yeah, the world doesn't need that. It's messed up enough already."
Here's something fun for the pro-GTA people: Give me some examples of something productive that GTA adds to society as a whole....
-Tycho Brahe
but it totally is an attempt to suppress the sale of an artistic product, which can be reasonably described as an act of censorship
I hate ever bringing up the word "censorship" in any context whether I support the thing being done or not because people, and especially for a variety of reasons video gamists, get real weird about that word, on account of it being immediately likened to shit like the nazi book burnings which I'm not sure everybody actually understands the full historical significance of
I'd be down for a dedemonization of it but I personally do not have the patience for that so I'd rather just say more specifically what is being done
I do not think it is appropriate to compare a successful consumer petition to a store to the systematic and genocidal destruction of research and art in nazi germany but hey
Nope. Censorship is when you say, with some kind of power backing it up, "You can't make that or we'll punish you."
A store saying "We're not going to sell this thing" isn't censorship. It's not even close.
And customers getting together to say "Hey, that thing you're selling pisses us off! We'd prefer you didn't sell it!" isn't censorship either. It's just expressing an opinion.
There isn't any official power behind the petition. No one who wrote it has the power to use force to make it happen or heck, they wouldn't need to petition, would they? ("To petition" means "to ask".) The worst those people on the petition can threaten Target-AU with is, "We hate this thing so much that if you keep it in your store, we won't come and shop there." That's not force, it's persuasion, which is in no way immoral. Now obviously that's pressure a store wants to consider since they want to keep customers in the store, but it's just not the same as saying "If you paint/write/draw/code that, you're going to be locked up or killed." The only thing the store loses by ignoring the petition is, maybe, a few customers.
I mean, what would you have of customers? To give up any hope at all of influencing stores? If not via request -- be it a formal petition, a suggestion slip in the suggestion box, or a friendly word to the store owner -- how would we customers ever get a store to stock something we DO want that they don't currently carry? Are we not supposed to make our wishes clear? Why are we supposed to be silent about a product just because some folks think it's "art"? There are a lot of people who would argue that GTAV doesn't even qualify on those grounds, you know.
Sacrificing the free choice of stores and customers on the altar of Untouchable Art is just crazy.
The lines become increasingly blurry!
As far as open-world games go GTA bores the shit out of and I'd much rather play a new Mafia or Sleeping Dogs but that is a silly statement.
"Here's something fun for the pro-Michelangelo's David people: Give me some examples of something productive that David adds to society as a whole...."
see this is exactly why I hate using the word censorship, you're attaching all sorts of baggage to it and positions that I do not support to me and now I gotta clarify all that before we can even start discussing our actual points
I don't actually have any ethical problem with a petition for target to remove gtav on the basis of its misogynistic content, it is a valid consumer action and I support the reasoning behind it because misogyny is terrible
I think a petition for target to remove dragon age inquisition on the basis of it being super gay is as valid of a consumer action, but I would not support the reasoning behind it because being super gay is actually awesome
They are both attempts to punish creators of media they consider objectionable by removing a channel of distribution, something I am comfortable calling censorship.
but I think censorship, that is to say the suppression of art considered harmful, can be okay!
this is, as you said, just a petition of consumers making their concerns heard to a retailer which then decides the patronage of the petitioners is more important to them than those who want to buy gtav. there is no coercion or threat of force to ethically compromise it. it is indeed not comparable to jailing or murdering people. some real bad censorship would be what's going on in ferguson missouri right now.
I do not think criticism is censorship, like a lot of angry video gamists seem to believe. a direct call to remove a product from sale is a different strategy though. again, not one I have an ethical problem with, but I am increasingly disillusioned with the "target their wallets" strategy because capitalism is such a volatile framework and while it can get short term results, there will always be someone with more money. I think criticism is a better long-term strategy because it can get artists to stop making misogynistic bullshit because they realize it's bullshit, not just because they want to make more money
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Air_Force_roundels