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#GamerGate: Stop Being Jerks on the Internet Edition

CambiataCambiata Commander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered User regular
edited October 2014 in Debate and/or Discourse
Ok guys, I got permission from @ElJeffe to start a new thread to discuss this topic, with the request that we please keep the topic completely civil and not be jerkos. I, and I'm sure others, would like for the thread to be able to remain open so that we can discuss new events as they occur.

I can't trust myself to write a "neutral" explanation of what GamerGate is for folks that are new to this business, so I'll link and copy Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy
Gamergate (sometimes referred to as GamerGate or as a hashtag #gamergate) is a controversy in video game culture which began in August 2014. It concerns ingrained[1] issues of sexism and misogyny in the gaming community, as well as journalistic ethics in the online gaming press, particularly conflicts of interest between video game journalists and developers.[2][3][4][5][6]

The controversy came to wider attention due to a sustained campaign of harassment that indie game developer Zoe Quinn was subjected to after an ex-boyfriend posted numerous allegations on his blog in August 2014, including that she had a "romantic relationship"[7] with a Kotaku journalist, which prompted concerns that the relationship led to positive media coverage for her game. Although these concerns proved unfounded,[8][a] allegations about journalistic ethics continued to clash with allegations of harassment and misogyny.[10] Other topics of debate have included perceived changes or threats to the "gamer" identity as a result of the ongoing maturation and diversification of the gaming industry

I'm also going to borrow the following compiled facts from a poster on NeoGAF, because while he does leave some stuff out, I don't have the time to compile and post everything that's happened:

This is a list of actual things that GamerGate believes and has accomplished so far

Also since it may help, here is a thoughtful video about gamergate that explains the concept of base assumptions:

http://blip.tv/foldablehuman/s4e7-gamergate-7071206


REMEMBER ABOVE ALL:

civility.gif

"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Cambiata on
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Posts

  • flamebroiledchickenflamebroiledchicken Registered User regular
    I'm honestly a little surprised that people are still talking about Gamergate. It's doomed to flare out because there is no coherent goal or even a coherent target of outrage. I'm sure they would love it if Gamasutra or Kotaku shut down, but it won't happen. Or maybe they want Anita Sarkeesian to stop making videos and public appearances? That probably won't happen either. So what do they want, then? If they're trying to keep up the charade that they're all about ethics in journalism, maybe someone should put out a statement on what sorts of changes they'd like to see in that area. But the truth is "ethics in journalism" is really just code for "we wish games websites would stop writing about social-justicey video games" and/or "some games journalists wrote op-eds that we think are mean to 'gamers'" which is not really the same thing as "ethics in journalism" and the only reasonable response is "So what?"

    y59kydgzuja4.png
  • RMS OceanicRMS Oceanic Registered User regular
    For anyone who is legitimately interested in discussing ethical concerns in Gaming Journalism, I'd advise that you do not get within seven proxies of the GamerGate name.

    There have been some people who have been steered to actually considering what problems there are in Gaming Journalism as a result of this. And that can be a positive, as if you take the time to look at it there is some shady stuff going on. Here's a partial list of things that would be worth discussing (in the whole gaming industry, not just journalism).

    However, I believe GamerGate's latching onto the ethics angle is an ex post facto justification for the awful things lobbed at Zoe Quinn after the initial allegations from her ex. That awful leaves GamerGate irrevocably tainted in my eyes.

  • V1mV1m Registered User regular
    edited October 2014
    I'd like to apologise on behalf of my gender, internet users in general, and just in case aliens are watching, my species.

    Actually, you know what: we, the Chordatae have acted inappropriately and hurtfully. I apologise on behalf of my phylum and although I was not involved I nonetheless feel associated with their actions. We hope that none of the (Acanthocephala through Xenoturbellida) will judge the great majority of Chordates by the behaviour of an unrepresentative few who are frankly a disgrace to their notochords.

    To the idiots who decided that this was an apporiate way to act:Thanks a lot you fucking chumbuckets. Because of you I had to apologise to the goddamb Annelids. That's right, you made us look like creatues that a leech can look down on.

    V1m on
  • BogartBogart Streetwise Hercules Registered User, Moderator mod
    The Guardian has run a couple of stories about it in the last few days, including one from Charlie Brooker, so hey, that video game breakthrough to the mainstream media has totally happened, just maybe not the one we wanted.

    The comments sections are what you'd expect.

  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    Bogart wrote: »
    just maybe not the one we wanted.

    but maybe it's the one we deserved

  • SlicerSlicer Registered User regular
    Finally, this multi-billion dollar industry has gotten some mainstream attention since some people on social media said some things. It's about time.

  • RMS OceanicRMS Oceanic Registered User regular
    Bogart wrote: »
    The Guardian has run a couple of stories about it in the last few days, including one from Charlie Brooker, so hey, that video game breakthrough to the mainstream media has totally happened, just maybe not the one we wanted.

    The comments sections are what you'd expect.

    I think if anything extols the merits of avoiding comment sections, it's this kerfuffle.

  • Kipling217Kipling217 Registered User regular
    If somebody told me that this was going to be the shit-storm that it has become beforehand, I would not have believed them.

    I mean the accusations where leveled by Zoe Quinn's ex. That right there should be a huge warning sign that this was some personal drama being dragged out into the limelight for petty reasons. Ex-Boyfriends and Ex-Girlfriends are notoriously unreliable.

    To the point that even MRAs should be going "we are real men, not whiners like that dude".

    That is of course giving way to much credit to MRAs.

    The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    edited October 2014
    I'm honestly a little surprised that people are still talking about Gamergate. It's doomed to flare out because there is no coherent goal or even a coherent target of outrage. I'm sure they would love it if Gamasutra or Kotaku shut down, but it won't happen. Or maybe they want Anita Sarkeesian to stop making videos and public appearances? That probably won't happen either. So what do they want, then? If they're trying to keep up the charade that they're all about ethics in journalism, maybe someone should put out a statement on what sorts of changes they'd like to see in that area. But the truth is "ethics in journalism" is really just code for "we wish games websites would stop writing about social-justicey video games" and/or "some games journalists wrote op-eds that we think are mean to 'gamers'" which is not really the same thing as "ethics in journalism" and the only reasonable response is "So what?"

    It survives by being controversial and being linked to high profile events, which fuel its need to be relevant. It's motives, from what I'm gathered, are vague but are about shutting down dialogue that's friendly to women and minorities in video-games that they fear will change the status quo (which has been occurring in various media like comics and sff), anti-women, anti-SJW and establishing a conservative strangle-hold politically over how gaming is reviewed.

    Not every GGer is a misognist or in it for the reasons above, some want to reform gaming media so it isn't corrupt - an admiral goal in itself. Unfortunately this is not the movement for that, as those are excuses for the above reasons. GG is toxic not only for its members that harass, threaten and dox their targets it's how the majority act like MRA/Fedoras/right wing conspiracy theorists about the video-game industry. For the industry to thrive means these people will be getting less power over the games being made, like what the comic industry is going through, and they will not go quietly into the night.

    Harry Dresden on
  • PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    That this is basically a hurt ex using the internet to punish his former girlfriend always sends a chill down my spine. Especially since the chat logs of 4chan were released where he was coaching people on how to best fuck with her.

    I'm also appalled at how many false flags the gamergate movement started so as to claim they were the victims. That's some organized rat fucking on a level I didn't think those corners of the net were good at.

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
  • durandal4532durandal4532 Registered User regular
    edited October 2014
    The weirdest recent thing for me was looking at a post today trying to tie together a sinister conspiracy to get Gone Home a good review on Polygon.

    Like, Gone Home was great man. I cried! Why would it need a sinister conspiracy to be well-regarded? Even if said conspiracy had happened, why would that make it anything less than a great game that people should play? And the evidence was literally "someone had this person on their podcast before the review". Oh shit! Making the rounds on a podcast? Truly, there is no corruption too depraved for a games journalist.


    There's this deep vein of being super pissed that "non-games" have gotten attention or praise, and I just cannot fathom it. I remember being a kid in the early 90's with an Apple II. I played Taskmaker and Strategic Conquest and Chess and Spectre for most of my early years playing anything because those four games were the entire library.

    Once I got a slightly better computer, I played Dark Forces. Eventually I got Myth and StarCraft and Diablo. There were like 5 years where StarCraft and Diablo II were the end-all be-all of my electronic entertainment.

    There are now 400+ games in my library, and literal tens of thousands of games new and old free and cheap and expensive and early access and kickstarter and etc and all that on which I can choose to spend time or money. Fuck, I still have some shit to do in Skyrim.

    I can't understand the idea that anything is "invading" or overshadowing "real" games, when my experience has been nothing but an exponential increase in the amount of options in literally every genre and the creation of many new genres.


    Also, did you all see this shit about Anil Dash? This style of grade-school "Well you say you don't like X but I said if you ate dirt I would stop and you didn't eat dirt so why do you love X?" is just fucking depressing.

    durandal4532 on
    Take a moment to donate what you can to Critical Resistance and Black Lives Matter.
  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    Preacher wrote: »
    That this is basically a hurt ex using the internet to punish his former girlfriend always sends a chill down my spine. Especially since the chat logs of 4chan were released where he was coaching people on how to best fuck with her.

    I'm also appalled at how many false flags the gamergate movement started so as to claim they were the victims. That's some organized rat fucking on a level I didn't think those corners of the net were good at.

    And the professional ratfuckers were taking notes.

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • AbsalonAbsalon Lands of Always WinterRegistered User regular
    edited October 2014
    But they said "Gamers were dead". As a non-reader of books who doesn't know any literary devices, this makes me decide that gaming media hates me and is anti-customer. I am 17-30 years of age and care a lot about the fake charges against Assange.

    Absalon on
  • KyouguKyougu Registered User regular
    I made the mistake of using the #gamergate tag on twitter when critizing the movement. It immedialy drew the crazy folks and the level of denial that they have about their own movement is amazing.

  • PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    Preacher wrote: »
    That this is basically a hurt ex using the internet to punish his former girlfriend always sends a chill down my spine. Especially since the chat logs of 4chan were released where he was coaching people on how to best fuck with her.

    I'm also appalled at how many false flags the gamergate movement started so as to claim they were the victims. That's some organized rat fucking on a level I didn't think those corners of the net were good at.

    And the professional ratfuckers were taking notes.

    Seriously Karl Rove should take note of how the movement self persecuted and then blamed that persecution on their own victims. It was a masterful move of fuckery.

    Honestly the most obvious example of how trumped up the gamergate stuff was, was how loudly they always proclaimed it wasn't about women or MRA shit right before they would launch into misogyny and MRA shit.

    Besides it couldn't have ever been about games journalism ethics, because game journalism doesn't have any ethics!

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
  • DjiemDjiem Registered User regular
    edited October 2014
    Kyougu wrote: »
    I made the mistake of using the #gamergate tag on twitter when critizing the movement. It immedialy drew the crazy folks and the level of denial that they have about their own movement is amazing.

    Yeah, there's a reason every time I talked about gamergate online I made sure not to use any hashtag or link or whatever.

    Preacher wrote: »
    Besides it couldn't have ever been about games journalism ethics, because game journalism doesn't have any ethics!

    I would argue that most game journalism isn't even journalism, it's just copywriting.
    The actual journalists are the people who started analyzing gaming on a social and political aspect.
    You know, the people gamergate is actually trying to silence, while claiming to fight for journalism ethics.

    Furthermore, the problems of ethics in journalism are old. Jeff Gerstmann's firing over the Kane & Lynch review will always be the biggest example of it in my mind.

    Djiem on
  • PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    There was a great article on Uproxx about gamergate where the author understood why gamers reacted so negatively about the perceived attack, but that they really literally need to grow up.

    http://uproxx.com/gammasquad/2014/10/why-gamergate-is-hurting-gamers/

    And that’s why GamerGate needs to stop, why this echo chamber needs to be broken. There’s nothing wrong with loving your hobby. I still game, of course, but I don’t take Brad Bushman being unscientific as a personal affront anymore. I’m not just a gamer.

    What too many in GamerGate want to hear is that it’s OK to have no perspective, that it’s OK for your hobby to eat your life, and it truly isn’t. Who you are shouldn’t be defined by what you buy, no matter what it is.

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
  • AbsalonAbsalon Lands of Always WinterRegistered User regular
    This image toes the line of civility, but I think it is very justified. If someone thinks it is unbecoming of the thread, I will remove it.
    tg4fj8k3lzyu.jpg

  • durandal4532durandal4532 Registered User regular
    I think part of it is that there's starting to be a much bigger pool of people who are making games in addition to playing them. And that the population of people who feel motivated to donate time and money to making usually free or really cheap games are doing it because they feel something is missing from the hobby that they can't find without making it.

    That's tying them much more inextricably to the "gaming world" than just being a consumer would even as they feel underserved by it. Some people who feel that the point of games is to consume them in the most effective manner are put off by what they perceive as these people receiving bonus attention that is not deserved and have decided it is trickery or emotional manipulation on the part of the people making these odd new games. I think that's part of why most of the supposed corruption is based on the featuring of games on news sites that are considered outside the mainstream and made by new developers about odd topics.

    Take a moment to donate what you can to Critical Resistance and Black Lives Matter.
  • DjiemDjiem Registered User regular
    Preacher wrote: »
    There was a great article on Uproxx about gamergate where the author understood why gamers reacted so negatively about the perceived attack, but that they really literally need to grow up.

    http://uproxx.com/gammasquad/2014/10/why-gamergate-is-hurting-gamers/

    And that’s why GamerGate needs to stop, why this echo chamber needs to be broken. There’s nothing wrong with loving your hobby. I still game, of course, but I don’t take Brad Bushman being unscientific as a personal affront anymore. I’m not just a gamer.

    What too many in GamerGate want to hear is that it’s OK to have no perspective, that it’s OK for your hobby to eat your life, and it truly isn’t. Who you are shouldn’t be defined by what you buy, no matter what it is.

    That's an interesting article. It reminds me of Leigh Alexander's article that so many gamergate people have taken offense at.

    Personally, I found it excellent. While the tone sounds a little aggressive, I do not feel that she is saying that the people we think of as "gamers" are bad people, or that they are dead and don't exist anymore. She is expressing perfectly that idea that gaming is evolving as a cultural item, that it's a serious medium that must be analyzed, criticized, treated like any other and that the gaming population has evolved beyond the stereotypical "bunch of white male nerds in a basement". For years now we've had the "hardcore vs casual" debate. Now the debate is expanding in scope. "Gamer" isn't a thing, or at any rate, doesn't NEED to be a thing. There's not only three groups of games and developers and players (gamers, casuals and non-gamers). Everyone is playing games to some non-binary degree. It's a huge medium. There's room for everyone. And there is room for social and political analysis and growth.


    That article then reminded me of something Jerry said on PATV re: video games.

  • CambiataCambiata Commander Shepard The likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered User regular
    Looks like Chris Kluwe has weighed in. Worth it if only because he coined the phrase "paint-huffing shitgoblins."

    "If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
  • DjiemDjiem Registered User regular
    Wow, Chris Kluwe's post is absolutely fantastic.
    Thus, when I see an article titled “Gamers are dead,” referring to the death of the popular trope of a pasty young man in a dimly lit room, it fills me with joy, because it means WE FUCKING WON. So many people are playing games now that they are popular culture. They are not going away. All sorts of cool things, that I like, are now things that a whole bunch of other people like! There’s enough space now for people to make games that are strange and disturbing and maybe highlight a different perspective of the world, because gaming is no longer a niche activity, it’s something that everybody does. There is room for art in video games. That’s awesome!

    He's expressed what I was trying to say for far better than I could.
    People who got offended over the "death of the gamer" article have missed the point.

    The death of the stereotype is fantastic news!
    It's what Nintendo was going for during their E3 speech when they introduced the Wii. They said they wanted gaming to be as natural in a conversation and in a typical person's life as watching TV is.

  • RubycatRubycat Registered User regular
    Ive watched Chris play Path of Exile when he streams, the guy is actually really polite on his stream, answers questions asked about the game and of course the ones asked of his nfl past, Its kinda interesting to read all those bad words coming from him. I would assume hes pretty angry due to the type of the junk showing up on twitter.

    steam_sig.png
    PSN: Rubycat3 / NintentdoID: Rubycat
  • PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    Kluwe can be quite sweary when he is passionate about something.

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
  • seasleepyseasleepy Registered User regular
    The weirdest recent thing for me was looking at a post today trying to tie together a sinister conspiracy to get Gone Home a good review on Polygon.

    Like, Gone Home was great man. I cried! Why would it need a sinister conspiracy to be well-regarded? Even if said conspiracy had happened, why would that make it anything less than a great game that people should play? And the evidence was literally "someone had this person on their podcast before the review". Oh shit! Making the rounds on a podcast? Truly, there is no corruption too depraved for a games journalist.
    That one came up shortly after the start of this and yeah. Like, instead of believing that a bi lady who grew up in the 90's might genuinely have strong positive opinions about a game featuring a same-sex coming-of-age story set in the 90's (as did many other publications who probably had less personal relation to the story), it instead makes perfect sense for the series of events to be:
    - 2008: some dudes create a podcast in their spare time
    - 2009: another dude joins them from time to time and eventually becomes a regular host in 2010
    - 2010: the podcast ends and that dude moves away to make his own game with a small team
    - July 2012: the podcast gets revived (sans the dude who has moved away, because he is still making a game)
    - Oct 2012: Polygon is created
    - August 2013: the game is finished
    - August 2013: a lady from Polygon is assigned to review the game and gives it a high score (theoretically because she has been promised rewards to come)
    - 2014: the lady guests on the podcast twice and eventually becomes a regular host of that podcast a year after the game comes out

    Also at some point during this the lady and the dude tweet at each other over a joke a mutual friend had made.
    Also the podcast hosting position is not paid.
    Also apparently it was only important to the dude to get Polygon in his pocket, I guess??

    Steam | Nintendo: seasleepy | PSN: seasleepy1
  • ArdolArdol Registered User regular
    For those who were thinking this had blown over, it is still popping up in the major media for example Grantland (ESPN) ran a piece on this just last week and yesterday there was stuff in the Boston Globe about it as well (the Globe story includes links to various other stories in the media).

    Also here is a conversation developer Brett Douville had with a GG supporter. That he was eventually able to get through to the guy (with rather extreme effort) was impressive and good to see.

  • simonwolfsimonwolf i can feel a difference today, a differenceRegistered User regular
    haWnXBs.jpg

  • CambiataCambiata Commander Shepard The likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered User regular
    I've posted this elsewhere, but for the sake of this thread I'm going to repost, because I think it's spot-on. Journalist Jesse Singal originally posted this as a comment on Reddit, but he polished the comment a little bit and posted it as an article.
    Gamergate Should Stop Lying to Journalists — and Itself

    If I, a journalist, want to learn more about the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s views on the black-white college gap, or the National Rifle Association’s on “concealed carry” laws, a straightforward path lies before me: I can call or email these organizations, or consult the voluminous history of statements their officially appointed representatives have made in newspapers, press releases, and elsewhere.

    If, on the other hand, I want to learn more about #Gamergate, the once-niche “movement” that has burst into mainstream awareness the last couple weeks, things get a bit trickier — almost mystical. I basically have to play the part of a scared teenager in a pitch-black bathroom chanting the name of some dead Sumerian god into the mirror, equal parts terrified and titillated. That is, I have to go on Twitter and post something with the #Gamergate hashtag and wait to see what pops up in response.

    Whenever I do so, I find that gamergaters are unhappy with my representation of their movement; they feel I am fundamentally misunderstanding it. The couple of times I wrote about Gamergate and argued that it certainly seems to have a lot to do with discomfort with change in the gaming industry, for example, I was inundated with angry tweets from the movement’s indignant supporters. You don’t get it, they insisted. This is about ethics in journalism. They often pointed me to long, pretty involved conspiracy theories that seemed to claim, among other things, that various gaming websites were colluding to attack the “gamer” identity they held so dear, or that an indie developer named Zoe Quinn had slept her way to positive coverage. All they were really interested in, they insisted, was in gaming journalists acting in a responsible manner.

    Okay, fine, I thought. Let’s give this idea a shot. So where should I go to see the real Gamergate?

    Gamergate’s Twitter denizens suggested a few windows to peek into: KotakuInAction, a subreddit that acts as something of an unofficial HQ (one of many — a problem I’ll return to) for gamergaters; 8chan’s Gamergate board, which has served as another GG staging area since 4chan shut down discussion of GamerGate following threats and harassment (a whole other conspiracy theory that could take several articles to explain); and a Google Hangout session with real-life gamergaters I was invited to take part in by a self-proclaimed advocate of the movement.

    So I clicked into these venues with what I hope was an open mind, wondering if they’d alter my view that Gamergate is much more a reaction to the influence of feminism and progressivism in gaming than a justified response to genuine ethical issues. Instead, after being exposed to what is ostensibly the true-blue bleeding heart of GamerGate, I found that my views of it had only hardened.

    When I visited KIA on Sunday, for example — again, the subreddit I was explicitly instructed to visit if I wanted to see the real Gamergate — three of the top six posts were about the indie developer Brianna Wu (a subject of harassment and threats), the feminist commentator Anita Sarkeesian (ditto), or the “social-justice warriors” (SJWs) that Gamergaters love to ridicule for polluting gaming with their "radical" ideas. Keep in mind that merely mentioning Wu or Sarkeesian or Quinn to many Gamergaters lights a white-hot fury in them — This is not about them, they will insist, ad nauseam, to the point that the more clever of their lot have started referring to them not by name but by the label "Literally Who" (or LW) 1, 2, and 3 (as in "I literally have no idea who that is").

    But despite the fact that Gamergate “isn’t about” feminists or LWs or SJWs in general, all these figures and subjects have a weird, pesky habit of continuing to pop up wherever gamergaters assemble. Take some of the posts on 8chan from this very afternoon:
    20-8-chan-gg-1.w529.h278.png
    20-8-chan-gg-2.w529.h224.png
    20-8-chan-gg-3.w529.h186.png

    (For those keeping track at home, that’s 8chan’s gamergaters referring to Sarkeesian as Jewkeesian. Cute!)

    Then there was the Google Hangout. I was invited by Troy Rubert, a.k.a. @GhostLev. Just about everyone in there who spoke openly expressed how mad and frustrated they were that progressive politics and feminism were impinging on gaming, which they saw as an area they had enjoyed, free of politics, forever. They were extremely open about this. A day or so later, another gamergater, @Smilomaniac, asked me to read a blog post he’d written about his involvement in the movement in which he explicitly IDs as anti-feminist, and notes that while some people claim otherwise, he thinks GG is an anti-feminist movement. (He later added, via Twitter, “You're not distinguishing between feminism and 3rd wave radscum which is what ‘we’ dislike ;/ " — the clarification is appreciated.)

    I believe Smilomaniac. I also believe the various Reddit and 8chan posts and the folks in the Hangout; I think Gamergate is primarily about anger at progressive people who care about feminism and transgender rights and mental health and whatever else is getting involved in gaming, and by what gamergaters see as overly solicitous coverage of said individuals and their games.

    And here’s the thing: That’s fine! It's an opinion I happen to disagree with, but it’s a coherent, concrete viewpoint. Say what you will about the tenets of anti-progressivism, dude, but at least it’s an ethos.

    Let me address Gamergate advocates directly for a moment: Right now, journalists trying to be fair-minded about your movement simply can't win. Again, if I'm arguing with someone from the NRA or the NAACP or some other established group, I can point to actual quotes from the group's leadership. With you guys, any bad thing that happens is, by definition, not the work of A True Gamergater. It's one of the oldest logical fallacies in the book.

    So what is Gamergate “really” about? I think this is the sort of question a philosopher of language would tear apart and scatter the remnants of to the wind, because it lacks any real referent. You guys refuse to appoint a leader or write up a platform or really do any of the things real-life, adult “movements” do. I’d argue that there isn’t really any such thing as Gamergate, because any given manifestation of it can be torn down as, again, No True Gamergate by anyone who disagrees with that manifestation or views it as an inconvenient blight from an optics standpoint. And who gets to decide what is and isn’t True Gamergate? You can’t say you want a decentralized, anonymous movement and then disown the ugly parts that inevitably pop up as a result of that structure. Either everything is in, or everything is out.

    Faced with this complete lack of clarity, all I or other journalists can do, then, is journalism: We ask the people in the movement what they stand for and then try to tease out what is real and what is PR. And every, every, every substantive conversation/forum/encounter I've had with folks from your movement has led me to believe that a large part of the reason for its existence is discomfort with what you see as the burgeoning influence of so-called social-justice warriors in the gaming world.

    This is only going to be a real debate if you guys can cop to your real-life feelings and opinions. You should have a bit more courage and put your actual motives front and center. Instead, because some of you do have a certain degree of political savvy, as is evidenced whenever gamergaters on 8chan and elsewhere try to rein in their more unhinged peers (no, of course not every Gamergate proponent is a harasser), you've decided to go the "journalism ethics" route.

    Unfortunately, that sauce is incredibly weak, as has been documented capably elsewhere; to the extent there are ethical issues at play here, they are very small-bore. There was no Kotaku review of “Depression Quest,” the supposed “scandal” of journalistic impropriety that allegedly touched all this off, and fair-minded journalists will see through that line of attack right away since Quinn was receiving hate for the game long before her boyfriend posted his jeremiad.

    Journalists donating to crowd-funding campaigns, which is another major Gamergate complaint? I bet if you asked 100 journalists you'd get 100 different opinions on whether this should be inherently off-limits (personal take is that it isn't, but that journalists should certainly disclose any projects to which they donate and shouldn't report on them).

    Collusion to strike at the heart of the gamer identity? Conservatives have been arguing that liberal journalists unfairly collude forever — I was on the “Journolist” that people wrongly claimed was coordinating pro-Obama coverage when really what we were doing, like any other listserv of ideologically like-minded people, was arguing with ourselves over everything. No: What happened was Gamasutra ran a very controversial column by Leigh Alexander, that column went viral, and a lot of people responded to it — and to then-recent high-profile harassment episodes — at the same time. This had nothing to do with cross-outlet collusion to insult gamers, and a close, honest look at the posts and articles in question will reveal that. When everyone’s writing about the same thing, that’s because the thing in question is getting a lot of discussion, which Alexander’s column and the incidents that precipitated it did.

    You guys know as well as I do that a movement based on the stated goal of regaining gaming ground lost to feminists and so-called SJWs would not do very well from a PR perspective. But you’re in a bind, because other than that, the ethics charges are all you’ve got and they happen to be (1) 98 percent false; (2) complicated to follow for the layperson; and (3) pretty clearly a ruse given the underlying ideology of the folks pushing this line forward.

    So I’d make a call, one last time, for honesty: Stop pretending this is about stuff it isn’t. Acknowledge that you do not want SJWs in gaming, that you want games to just be about games. Again: I disagree, but at least then I (and other journalists! you do want coverage, don’t you?) could at least follow what the hell is going on. If your movement requires journalists to carefully parse 8chan chains to understand it, it gets an F- in the PR department. You guys need to man and woman up and talk about what’s really on your mind, or stop whining about “biased” coverage and/or blaming it on nonexistent media conspiracies.

    "If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
  • PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    simonwolf wrote: »
    haWnXBs.jpg

    I don't even.

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
  • I needed anime to post.I needed anime to post. boom Registered User regular
    So there was an article on Breitbart today that I'm not gonna link, because they don't deserve a single ad hit, but there was an interesting quote in it:
    Make no mistake: they are winning. Gawker and Vox writers can play at smear campaigns all they like--and it's all they have left to do, because they cannot argue the case on merit--but their own advertisers are seeing through the sneering and starting to ask whether they want to be associated at all with such wildly unpleasant attitudes.

    How do I know? Because I've spent the last fortnight quietly soliciting the opinions not only of senior executives at AAA video game publishers, but also at some of the companies linked to GamerGate's boycotts and activism, such as Intel, Mercedes and BMW.

    Perhaps it won't surprise you to learn that microchip manufacturers and car companies are pretty sympathetic to the concerns of male consumers. But some of the things said to me--all, sadly, on condition of anonymity--have been nothing short of remarkable.

    There's the Intel vice president who told me via email that GamerGate was "doing great work" and that he was "sick of slander and self-loathing from the press". He was talking about male journalists who do misandrist feminists' work for them.

    "I am pressing that team, it's not mine, but I am exerting influence when I can, to stop spending money with people who hate themselves and hate our clients," he added by phone later.

    So if you thought Intel might have pulled ads based on a misunderstanding, well, maybe rethink that position.

    liEt3nH.png
  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    Preacher wrote: »
    simonwolf wrote: »
    haWnXBs.jpg

    I don't even.

    Have you come across the #notyourshield contingent before?

  • AistanAistan Tiny Bat Registered User regular
    I never really thought this was dying down, because one of my former friends is super into this whole thing. I check his twitter from time to time and it's just a solid wall of #notyourshield retweets, requests to join in on gamergate livestreams, and constant badgering questions to journalists that can mostly be inferred as "why are you so terrible?" but phrased in such a way that makes him think he's being reasonable. Like, he sends tweets to them despite there being other, better ways to get in contact with these people and actually get a reply and a discussion going, but he uses twitter (which is the worst thing in the universe for a discussion) so that when he doesn't get a reply he can say that they aren't even trying to get a dialogue going.

    He's basically fallen completely into the whole ethics/journalistic integrity smokescreen. Decrying harassment and asking for civility while still using #gamergate in almost every single one of his tweets.

    It's depressing.

  • simonwolfsimonwolf i can feel a difference today, a differenceRegistered User regular
    It's telling that there's only one side treating this as a "war", complete with "operations" and baffling propaganda

  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    simonwolf wrote: »
    It's telling that there's only one side treating this as a "war", complete with "operations" and baffling propaganda

    That is disturbing. It's chilling when there are people in the movement that have resorted to actual crimes to get what they want.

  • PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    Preacher wrote: »
    simonwolf wrote: »
    haWnXBs.jpg

    I don't even.

    Have you come across the #notyourshield contingent before?

    Not really, though I can't stand the idea behind that hashtag like seriously it fills me with rage.

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
  • mcdermottmcdermott Registered User regular
    I had somehow managed to remain almost entirely ignorant on this whole thing. This seems to have been for the best. The somewhat crotchety and misanthropic part of me seems to think this whole thing boils down to gamers merely grumbling over the last couple decades as games "journalism" was bought with everything from vacations to swag to advertising dollars to (I can only assume) actual sacks of cash...but the minute we think a reviewer got laid over it, now we've summoned a fearsome cheeto-dust-covered monster from the deep.

    Games "journalism" has never been any such thing. I don't know if anybody listens to Laser Time (probably not), but they did a podcast (episode titled "The Perfect Score") that was (tangentially) related to this where they talked about their time writing reviews, and yeah...why do we consider game reviews and the gaming press to be "journalism" and hold them up to standards we don't, say, hold movie "journalism" up to? I don't see many people grinding axes about ethics and objectivity in movie reviews. Or maybe I'm just not looking. Seems though the entire industry of game reviews (in general, and the beast metacritic has morphed it into) is fucking absurd.

    But back to that first bit, I look at (what little I've seen of) gamergaters the same way I look at people who suddenly became very politically vocal when a black guy got elected. You can say misogyny has nothing to do with this, but where was all this rage and activism a couple years ago, when reviewers were still being pressured and rewarded over reviews? Why did it take girls speaking out about issues in gaming, or a girl (supposedly, but not really) boning a reviewer for this to become The Most Important Issue? We can say it's the straw that broke the camel's back...but why was it this straw in particular? Do we really expect anybody to believe it was random?

  • Hahnsoo1Hahnsoo1 Make Ready. We Hunt.Registered User regular
    My girlfriend was quick to point out the parallels between gamergate misogyny and the current and long running shit that has been going on with regards to atheism and feminism (short version: a lot of well-known voices in atheism should know better and a lot of women are being harassed in that online community). To her, this story is déjà by all over again, which is sad and depressing to me.

    8i1dt37buh2m.png
  • CambiataCambiata Commander Shepard The likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered User regular

    So there was an article on Breitbart today that I'm not gonna link, because they don't deserve a single ad hit, but there was an interesting quote in it:
    Make no mistake: they are winning. Gawker and Vox writers can play at smear campaigns all they like--and it's all they have left to do, because they cannot argue the case on merit--but their own advertisers are seeing through the sneering and starting to ask whether they want to be associated at all with such wildly unpleasant attitudes.

    How do I know? Because I've spent the last fortnight quietly soliciting the opinions not only of senior executives at AAA video game publishers, but also at some of the companies linked to GamerGate's boycotts and activism, such as Intel, Mercedes and BMW.

    Perhaps it won't surprise you to learn that microchip manufacturers and car companies are pretty sympathetic to the concerns of male consumers. But some of the things said to me--all, sadly, on condition of anonymity--have been nothing short of remarkable.

    There's the Intel vice president who told me via email that GamerGate was "doing great work" and that he was "sick of slander and self-loathing from the press". He was talking about male journalists who do misandrist feminists' work for them.

    "I am pressing that team, it's not mine, but I am exerting influence when I can, to stop spending money with people who hate themselves and hate our clients," he added by phone later.

    So if you thought Intel might have pulled ads based on a misunderstanding, well, maybe rethink that position.

    Well, fuck. Guess I'm not buying Intel processors after this.

    "If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
  • PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    Is that even possible anymore?

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
  • enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    edited October 2014
    Anonymously sourced quotes on Breitbart are like 90% likely to just be fictional.

    enlightenedbum on
    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
This discussion has been closed.