The RPG Duelling League
Social Forums => Discussion => Topic started by: metroid composite on November 11, 2014, 11:54:11 AM
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Note: I make assumptions that people reading this post are pretty intelligent (which most of the regulars on this forum are). I would advise against linking this post to random people on the internet.
Gamergate on the whole, while it has not directly affected me, has been a bit of an emotional drain on me as it has affected game industry friends around me. And for better or for worse I've been reading a lot about it. Misinformation has been floating around, and also just an extraordinary amount of fluff. Things do seem to be winding down now, though, so I'm collecting my thoughts.
Origins and Zoe Quinn
Most likely everyone is familiar with the basic story now; Zoe Quinn, who is an indie developer, and who has been in the news even last year (when in December 2013 the internet got angry about...I actually don't know what they were angry about that time; possibly just her game). Anyway, this time, turns out she was cheating on her boyfriend. Boyfriend posts about the infidelity. And suddenly there's a mob of angry people on the internet.
So a little bit of context:
https://medium.com/@srachel_m/gamergate-launched-in-my-apartment-and-internet-im-sorry-not-that-sorry-13e5650fd172
This is a woman who is friends/acquaintances with Zoe and the boyfriend. She suffered from some serious sexual harassment herself in the workplace, recognized similar emotional patterns in the boyfriend, and encouraged him to make the post.
And the general evidence on the internet points towards Zoe being...not very nice. (For the Grefters who like psychological analysis, there is literally hours (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_UKErD0uGQ) of analysis on the original chat logs).
That said, being not very nice is...not illegal, and not justification for death threats, and does not imply widespread corruption of videogame journalism.
Internet propagation and 4 chan
So...this is a Cracked article written by Zoe herself. Most of this is stuff that is well-known; harassment happened. The one interesting point to me is point #5:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-i-learned-as-internets-most-hated-person/
4 chan, or sites like it, have been known to organize campaigns in the past, trying to get hashtags trending by making fake feminist twitter accounts. Zoe has been vocal about certain elements within the movement (such as #notyourshield) being planned and executed on 4 chan (complete with screenshots she took).
Meanwhile, Jennifer Allaway states that gamergate formed like a hate group, and at the time of writing, continued to operate like a hate group, detailing the recruitment tools, the way propaganda is framed to the outside world, etc.:
http://jezebel.com/gamergate-trolls-arent-ethics-crusaders-theyre-a-hate-1644984010
Ethics in Video Game Journalism
Despite "actually it's about ethics in video game journalism" becoming this year's punchline (http://actuallyethics.tumblr.com/)...there are indeed people who care about ethics in video game journalism.
Well...two camps really. There's one camp that cares about feminism in video game journalism and wants it removed. And another group that legit cares about ethical breaches. The first camp honestly comes across as the louder camp, but doesn't really present much that I find worth discussing. The second group:
http://blueplz.blogspot.com/2014/10/whose-side-am-i-on.html
Totalbiscuit here rambles on for quite a while, but nicely encapsulates a lot of ethical concerns in the massive third-to-last paragraph. Now, Totalbiscuit is someone I've been familiar with for several years now due to his involvement in the SC2 community; I've seen no sign of him being a misogynist; quite the opposite if anything. But what's interesting is combining this with Jennifer Allaway's research above. She describes hate groups as needing a leader to get started, and the effective leadership of gamergate passing a couple of times. So what happens when someone who is not hateful becomes a key leader of the movement? Because certainly it seemed like that was what was happening...to a certain degree. There were some people actively pushing back against Totalbiscuit, and certainly gamergate forums tended to contain plenty of "Mens Rights Activists".
Although that would be baseless speculation as of today, since within the last day, Totalbiscuit decided that it would be better to pursue the same ethical concerns without using the hashtag:
http://blueplz.blogspot.com/2014/11/i-spoke-to-david-rosen-of-wolfire-and.html
Impact on people in the game industry
The mood has been generally negative. More women than usual have been talking about considering a new line of work. I very much like this article on tackling the issue of recruiting and retaining female talent:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LaralynMcWilliams/20141030/229072/Shes_Not_Playing_It_Wrong.php
Feminism vs other social justice causes
Something I observed a while back that I thought was odd: 12 years ago, I could post something feminist on GameFAQs and it would not be an issue. The reaction would be "Huh, you're one of those feminist people; I've heard that people like you exist." The reaction is roughly what I would expect if I were to announce on a board that I had a nose ring. "Interesting. I'd never do that myself."
Lately the reaction has been very different, and much more negative. If I post something feminist on a game forum like Reddit, I expect to get downvoted to roughly -15 or -20. By comparison, something I've noticed at least on Starcraft forums (which does contain a few popular transgender personalities) is that positive transgender stuff tends to get upvoted, and transphobic stuff tends to get downvoted. Similarly, I've notice that internet gaming forums tend to overall be very much in support of gay marriage. This is all anecdotal, of course, but general internet mood is what leads to things blowing up rather than not being a big deal on the internet.
The #notyourshield hashtag is interesting, in that it is an anti-feminist tag, but the statements made within it are often of the form of "I'm a minority other than white female, and mainstream feminists have not been representing me well." Which...naturally evolved into bringing some attention to Disability representation, and Transgender representation in games. Not exactly what I would expect out of what is undeniably a pro-gamergate anti-feminism tag. It is also noteworthy that the guy who runs 8-chan is a disabled man, and is pretty much universally liked (hell, from the one interview I heard, I liked him too; seemed like a reasonable guy).
But it does feel like some kind of bizarre universe, where people don't support things that everyone supported when I was 10 (like feminism), but do make statements on Albeism.
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Good articles on GamerGate:
http://www.zenofdesign.com/gamergates-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-week/
https://digg.com/2014/when-gamergate-hits-the-wrong-target
Gamergate is awful.
The pro GG arguments about ethics in videogame journalism remind me of the arguments against women's suffrage, or the arguments against gay marriage.
Some real arguments against women's suffrage at the time were "Women should stay at home, or they'll stop having children and humanity will die out" There were actual misguided people who thought they were saving humanity by getting associated with the "Women shouldn't vote because they're dumb" crowd.
Something I observed a while back that I thought was odd: 12 years ago, I could post something feminist on GameFAQs and it would not be an issue. The reaction would be "Huh, you're one of those feminist people; I've heard that people like you exist." The reaction is roughly what I would expect if I were to announce on a board that I had a nose ring. "Interesting. I'd never do that myself."
Lately the reaction has been very different, and much more negative. If I post something feminist on a game forum like Reddit, I expect to get downvoted to roughly -15 or -20. By comparison, something I've noticed at least on Starcraft forums (which does contain a few popular transgender personalities) is that positive transgender stuff tends to get upvoted, and transphobic stuff tends to get downvoted. Similarly, I've notice that internet gaming forums tend to overall be very much in support of gay marriage. This is all anecdotal, of course, but general internet mood is what leads to things blowing up rather than not being a big deal on the internet.
There are been a lot of articles on Kotaku, Gamasutra, Polygon etc on the media needing to be more inclusive towards women, and I think this is a push against that. There hasn't been a lot of talk about transgender stuff in comparison.
To a random 20-ish white guy, transgender people are rather inoffensive, they don't want to remove metal bikinis from our games like evil feminists.
Minorities are praised, as long as they don't actually want to change the status quo.
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http://www.zenofdesign.com/gamergates-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-week/
Yeah, seen a number of these already; gamergate has been imploding in the past week, and a lot of people have jumped ship. Although honestly these stories are primarily valuable for a feeling of schadenfreude. Like...here's a person in gamergate who is a terrible human being...and things ended badly for him. Heh heh heh.
Granted, I don't think it's going to go away entirely, but those who are left seem primarily focused on driving Gawker Media out of existence because of a tweet (https://twitter.com/samfbiddle/status/522771721926213632) that one of its writers made. Gawker is a huge company that ought to keep gamergate occupied for quite some time (and honestly I have no particular attachment to Gawker, unlike Gamasutra which gamergate thankfully does not seem to be targeting any more).
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I have nothing to add at the moment, but this was a good read.
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The #notyourshield hashtag is interesting, in that it is an anti-feminist tag, but the statements made within it are often of the form of "I'm a minority other than white female, and mainstream feminists have not been representing me well." Which...naturally evolved into bringing some attention to Disability representation, and Transgender representation in games. Not exactly what I would expect out of what is undeniably a pro-gamergate anti-feminism tag. It is also noteworthy that the guy who runs 8-chan is a disabled man, and is pretty much universally liked (hell, from the one interview I heard, I liked him too; seemed like a reasonable guy).
But it does feel like some kind of bizarre universe, where people don't support things that everyone supported when I was 10 (like feminism), but do make statements on Albeism.
Frankly I think it's just a smokescreen. At some point it came in vogue on the internet to call any seemingly obsessive person an 'aspie' in the same vein that anyone who did something stupid was a ''tard', probably with a few other similar uses. So folks who want to deflect attention away from their own bigotry simply find the smallest example of the other side using such language (and once those sorts of insults work their way into your vocabulary it's very hard to get them back out) and call hypocrisy. "I can't be sexist, there's totally ladies over here! But by calling out 8chan you've obviously proven you're an ableist!" Drop mic.
Something I observed a while back that I thought was odd: 12 years ago, I could post something feminist on GameFAQs and it would not be an issue. The reaction would be "Huh, you're one of those feminist people; I've heard that people like you exist." The reaction is roughly what I would expect if I were to announce on a board that I had a nose ring. "Interesting. I'd never do that myself."
Lately the reaction has been very different, and much more negative. If I post something feminist on a game forum like Reddit, I expect to get downvoted to roughly -15 or -20. By comparison, something I've noticed at least on Starcraft forums (which does contain a few popular transgender personalities) is that positive transgender stuff tends to get upvoted, and transphobic stuff tends to get downvoted. Similarly, I've notice that internet gaming forums tend to overall be very much in support of gay marriage. This is all anecdotal, of course, but general internet mood is what leads to things blowing up rather than not being a big deal on the internet.
For a few reasons I think Feminism has reached the end of its lifespan as a term.
-People, men or women, in certain walks of life can easily look around themselves and not really see any gross disparity between men and women. You tend to have to be fairly well-to-do for financial ones to be obvious, and gender roles being more strongly reinforced at lower social-economic strata means that nobody would really notice reproductive issues. Victim blaming is enormously, sickeningly widespread in western (or at least USian) culture such that it's hard to convince anyone rape culture is even an issue. In other words, the traditional causes of Feminism now have to address issues that are more invisible than ever.
- Related to above, the word itself carries connotations that it is about the advancement of women, not the broader goal of gender equality.
- Division within the movement, largely re: why do we only address issues about middle class white women.
- And stemming from all three, the past 20 years misogynist of all stripes have been able to twist the narrative towards one of 'feminazis' and so forth. And even where they are not successful, the combination of the second and third have made Feminism a word with very strong negative connotations regardless. I've run across anecdotes (if there are more formal studies on the matter, please link!) where Feminist just removed the word from their front pages and logos, without making any other changes to their content, and drastically reduced click-away rates and garnered much more positive comments. People hate the word even where they agree with the message now.
And the last thing, which is more of a personal thought.
- Even knowing that Feminism is about gender equality, by using a gendered word, you influence how you approach the problems of gender inequality. And I think that unfortunately we can no longer address those problems with those approaches. The problems in the western world now are broadly caused by a) traditional gender roles, with masculine roles being the larger issue and b) the greater issues of wealth disparity and dysfunctional government creating an environment of desperation and hopelessness. My instinct is that gender equality will largely plateau until we can start healing those two wrongs, and they aren't really ones you can address by changing laws or speaking to an audience that's primarily women. At the same time I'm very uncertain that you can change the name and face of the movement to have more inclusive language, because that runs so great a risk of starting to kowtow to the MRA narrative, and while the gender disparities that men face are very much things that need to be folded better into the gender equality movement it categorically cannot encourage the existing MRA movement to lend their voice or their tactics, because they are wholly devoted to undoing gender equality as it stands now.
So um. Words. Yeah.
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My opinion of Gamergate was pretty low to start with, not because it was a loose coalition of leaderless people trying to meet a goal (I have clearly supported movements like that in the past), but because the reported targets don't seem to directly correlate and they definitely don't have much to do with the actions taken by people aligned to the movement from day one. When you are apparently rejecting the "media" defined shape of a gamer and seeking more ethical reporting from games journalism it would really help to have some linking to how modern journalism is skewing the concept of what our core audience is (which given that the things that get rated high amongst professional reviews is media targeted at Men aged 15 - 25. That has ??? To do with ethics?).
What we did see day one though is a campaign that was launched by Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend which butts heads with these "ethics" that they are purporting to back. The source doesn't have nearly enough distance, all facts should be checked and verified, not take that source and build an army around him. Since the movement has started with that you get a lot of discussion around Zoe Quinn's character, which might in fact not be very nice, but is completely irrelevant to the conversation of journalistic ethics. You can just as easily report on nasty people as you can nice people. It sure does suggest a whole lot of gender politics at play though.
With a movement that from day 1 has been motivated by gender politics and having an awful lot of discussion stemming from "how that slut fucked her at to a good score" and other verbiage along those lines, it is not really surprising that the movement continued to be incredibly gender focused.
The actions taken are the most damning to the movement though. Now I am a pretty bleak political creature, I loves me my Realpolitik and can often understand the ends justifying the means. When your ends are vague and tinged with regressive gender politics I don't really support a scorched earth policy like is deployed by the movement here. Boycotting companies to pressure them into trying to bankrupt or stifle opposing voices, harassing opposition until they give up, death threats to stop them from making public speeches. All of this is incredibly aggressive and eliminates chance for actual dialogue with the target they are actually trying to effect change on. Not to mention the other crazy unethical (if not blatantly illegal) activities like all the doxxing etc.
A peaceful protest this is most certainly not.
There is an awful lot of bemoaning of Gamergate having been cooped by Men's Rights Activists and honestly I think that misses the key fact that gender politics has been a key part of the rhetoric from day one. It is more the other way around, there is an underlying gender political issue (ermagerd GIRLS are playing my videoaaaaames and no one yes going to make games for ME anymore) and it found a public outlet through a single point of ethics scandal. People tried to use the latter but all we got was the former because the ethics scandal is rooted in gender politics to begin with.
Which is to say, fuck gamer gate. If you want to effect change in media coverage, do your part by helping those you support, not by tearing down others because you disagree. You need to be able to have open discourse, not flaming shit throwing contests. Second of all, indie games are not going to take away "normal" games. There is still a market just as big as there ever was for those games, that market will be looked after just as much as it ever was. You might see the medium as a whole expand to gather a wider user base, but it isn't reducing the number of games that are coming out. The thing that is going to kill AAA games and things like them is the already high risk nature of development for them blowing out even further.
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- Division within the movement, largely re: why do we only address issues about middle class white women.
Interestingly, problems which disproportionately affect lower income, non-white women are issues are actually being talked about a lot (domestic violence, rape, reproductive rights), but are often framed in a way to obfuscate who a large number of the victims of these crimes are. The victim of these crimes that are talked about most often are often pretty blonde girls, not impoverished racial minorities. Wage differential issues are another interesting debate -- feminist-leaning people often talk about the wage gap, but rarely seem to highlight that it is just as dependent on race as it is on gender (and that white women make more than racial minorities with the possible exception of Asian men).
On another note, did ya'll hear about Gamergate's amazing idea to send Nintendo complaints about Polygon giving Bayonetta 2 a lowish score for being sexist (so they could, what, pressure Polygon to change it?). Nothing screams ethics in gaming journalism like telling a large company to force a gaming magazine to give scores you like. Such ethics, much Gamergate, wow. Oh, no, I forgot, nothing screams ethics in gaming journalism like harassing a woman who isn't involved in the discussion in any way because you're a creepy asshole.
I could probably stream of consciousness hate-rant for a while here but I will just say:
omg i hate all of these people where is the remote for my satellite laser
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On another note, did ya'll hear about Gamergate's amazing idea to send Nintendo complaints about Polygon giving Bayonetta 2 a lowish score for being sexist
Lowish = 7.5
Interesting discussion, and I have to say that I'm pretty glad that, around here, we're all agreeing that fuck gamergate
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GamerGate is too stupid to merit serious commentary. Better to focus on the funnier parts of the fail and just call the police for the worse parts (e.g. harassment, death threats).
http://i.imgur.com/LwXs69T.png --> On the merits of whether having a fictional character repeat your stance makes it more convincing. (Be sure to read the reply boxed in the red rectangle.)
http://pastebin.com/ZCiWSsnk --> Okay guys, arguing on Twitter is bogging down, let's go convince the enemy's home base of teenage girls on Tumblr of the fundamental truths of gamergate using cute pro-GG images as replies to posts... which will convince them about our stance on video game journalism... and prove we're not against them... guys?
(Okay, fine. My serious comment: the one, and only one, "serious" issue raised by GamerGate is something like "stop whining about games using methods I disagree with." Bullshit. Commentary is let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom territory; even if half of the flowers are wrong and dumb, people will disagree about which half. If you hate Polygon & Anita Sarkeesian, don't read them! http://www.popehat.com/2014/10/26/ten-short-rants-about-gamergate/ made a good comparison - the conservatives eventually stopped whining about "liberal media bias" and went and made Fox News. Magic of the ideas marketplace. Stop trying to shut up commentary that other people enjoy, and instead make your own Brogamers Weekly site or whatever that has content you like.)
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Interesting discussion, and I have to say that I'm pretty glad that, around here, we're all agreeing that fuck gamergate
I have nothing to add.
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Thanks for the writeup, MC.
Two thoughts disposing of GamerGate:
The surest way to reveal bias against a group of people is to take two morally culpable people, one of which belongs to a particular group, the other of which is just like you, and see how you react to the two of them.
Anyone who didn't jump ship the second the filth started spewing forth deserves the derision being chucked in their general direction. Either they're conscious misogynists or simply care so little about misogyny that they're willing to allow themselves to be associated with misogynists. Which makes them misogynists.
For a few reasons I think Feminism has reached the end of its lifespan as a term.
I don't agree, CK. I think you're right that the economic downturn, which has been pretty hard on men, has reduced public receptiveness to it.
But mostly I don't agree because there's a potent strain of thought that wants men and women to remain *cough* separate but equal. And they don't mind saying it. If you ask, what forces keep men down, the answer is: the economy. If you ask, what forces keep women down, the answer is: men. And I think that that's a long-simmering fight that is sure to flare up. The term feminism will find fresh life. Bet on it.
On another note, did ya'll hear about Gamergate's amazing idea to send Nintendo complaints about Polygon giving Bayonetta 2 a lowish score for being sexist (so they could, what, pressure Polygon to change it?). Nothing screams ethics in gaming journalism like telling a large company to force a gaming magazine to give scores you like. Such ethics, much Gamergate, wow. Oh, no, I forgot, nothing screams ethics in gaming journalism like harassing a woman who isn't involved in the discussion in any way because you're a creepy asshole.
I'm gratified and more than a bit surprised that Bayonetta 2 didn't get pilloried by reviewers. The timing couldn't have been worse for it.
gamergate has been imploding in the past week, and a lot of people have jumped ship. Although honestly these stories are primarily valuable for a feeling of schadenfreude. Like...here's a person in gamergate who is a terrible human being...and things ended badly for him. Heh heh heh.
I disagree. It's important that the GamerGate movement in general and a smattering of awful human beings in specific get dragged through the mud. The anonymous, abstracted nature of the internet serves to shield wrongdoers from the consequences of their actions. The knowledge that the rest of the world treats them like a punchline is a bare minimum of what it takes to keep these people down.
Throughout this whole stupid affair I've wondered whether the quote unquote gaming community really is more toxic than your average hobbyists, or if the attention this is getting amounts to confirmation bias. Little of column A, little of column B, probably. Go to any news website, scroll through the comments on anything. Pick an article about that nurse that was quarantined, but only if you want to hate humanity. There's a lot of vileness out there, and it easily matches the GamerGate stuff, minus the death threats seriously just don't read any comments about that nurse.
Anyway, neckbeards. When did this term come into existence? I remember a time when moderately nerdy kids who loved to play videogames didn't have a pat term for the people who are less socially with it than even them (in their minds, anyway). Now people who self-identify as gamers - of all the things - are hurling invective at those neckbeards who must be the ones doxxing Anita Sarkeesian and sending death threats because girls won't date them. They're making the rest of the gamers look bad and they must be ostracized because they're NERRRRRRDS or something. As if extreme misogyny is solely the province of the extremely socially awkward. As if! This coming from self-identifying gamers. What a world. What a world.
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My nerds are better than your nerds.
That may or may not be an ironic euphemism, depending on who's making the comment.
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If you ask, what forces keep men down, the answer is: the economy. If you ask, what forces keep women down, the answer is: men.
I think this is our point of disagreement. I'd answer...
For women: Douchebag capitalists who use the weak economy as leverage to perpetuate existing disadvantages well past when they would have dissipated naturally (who are almost always men). Also men.
For men: The limited accepted definitions of masculinity. ie men.
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Anyone who didn't jump ship the second the filth started spewing forth deserves the derision being chucked in their general direction. Either they're conscious misogynists or simply care so little about misogyny that they're willing to allow themselves to be associated with misogynists. Which makes them misogynists.
I'm not sure I necessarily agree with this, at least in the case of someone who has enough clout or time to change the dialog. It's a movement, which, at a certain point had extremely unclear and poorly defined goals, and a wide range of supporters which included, yes, complete misogynists, to very well-meaning individuals.
I don't blame the people who decided "I should stand up and make my voice heard, because if I don't, then the voice of the trolls will be the only voice, and there are actually journalistic ethics issues here that I would like to see addressed, and would like to see as the main focus."
I don't even entirely mind some of the anti-feminist talk. The argument against the Bayonetta 2 review went something like "the 7.5 score gets factored into the metacritic total, and several companies give salary bonuses based on that total." I've been on the receiving end of stuff like this. I've worked on the game that got 79 instead of 80 on gamerankings, and missing out on a bonus because of that. And yes, it often is because of one low score from one reviewer for a stupid reason.
That said, I think there are much worse reasons than feminism to mark a game down. I've had Tony Hawk games reviewed where the review started with "I never really understood these games or figured out how the scoring system works." There was a SSBM review that said "I keep knocking off my opponent with what should be a finishing blow, but he keeps jumping back on. I don't understand." And Uncharted 3 got a 4/10 review largely as clickbait (if you read the review, the complaints aren't all that substantial, but the 4/10 score gets people to click on the review when they see it in a list of reviews). At least with the Bayonetta 2 review, it's clear that the reviewer made an honest effort to get into the game, and his complaints were elements that reduced his enjoyment of the game.
Honestly, when a game I've worked on gets slammed for feminism, my reaction has historically been "yuuuup."
But I can understand why there are people who don't want the salary bonuses of game developers to swing wildly depending on whether a reviewer feels strongly about feminism. Among other things, this is something that is outside of the developer's control. (Whereas more mundane review measures like framerate and hours of gameplay are within the developer's control).
I disagree. It's important that the GamerGate movement in general and a smattering of awful human beings in specific get dragged through the mud. The anonymous, abstracted nature of the internet serves to shield wrongdoers from the consequences of their actions. The knowledge that the rest of the world treats them like a punchline is a bare minimum of what it takes to keep these people down.
Oh, let me be clear, I want to see people put behind bars. It has been tricky to put people on the internet behind bars for...at least 17 years (https://www.facebook.com/notes/elizabeth-mccarty/it-happened-to-me-17-years-ago/10152441378057883) BUT there is now signs that progress is being made, that legal punishment may finally be attainable:
http://www.polygon.com/2014/11/4/7157433/brianna-wu-death-threat-reward
THAT is exciting.
By comparison, for example the biggest internal scandal of that past week in gamergate is KingOfPol falsified some evidence, it was exposed by people in gamergate, and KingOfPol is no longer particularly welcome in the movement. This makes gamergate look like a rational movement that cares about verifying sources. I mean, don't get me wrong, I read it that report with interest, it was some juicy drama, but I don't have any particularly strong conclusions from that drama.
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I don't even entirely mind some of the anti-feminist talk. The argument against the Bayonetta 2 review went something like "the 7.5 score gets factored into the metacritic total, and several companies give salary bonuses based on that total." I've been on the receiving end of stuff like this. I've worked on the game that got 79 instead of 80 on gamerankings, and missing out on a bonus because of that. And yes, it often is because of one low score from one reviewer for a stupid reason.
But that is neither A) a problem for the reviewer or B) a great way to promote ethical journalism.
A) specifically is speaking very close to my heart (to play the #justcorporatethings card) these days with bonus measures being drastically misguided by employers and their motivations (not because I missed a bonus this year because of it although I did),because what I am working on at the moment is a project where we discuss business culture a great deal and KPIs a lot. The motivation to perform being incredibly arbitrary and outside of your direct control significantly impact worker moral and drives poor behaviours (especially if they are unfeasible to obtain. If you know you are working on a piece of middleware that might be good and find an audience, prove profitable, but isn't going to review well and you know your bonus is tied to an 80 on Metacritic? What kind of incentive is that?). You need to have measures that align to the work people do and actually measure the outcomes you want (if you even HAVE them, in a healthy business you could even just rely on managers discretion). Critical success does not equal sales. It doesn't even equate to profitability. It might suggest it in a typical model where the majority of your profit is the flash in the pan first week or two of sales, but that is far from the only effective model (like fuuuuuuuuck anyone that ties bonuses like that to stuff getting Early Access or are perpetual games like MMOs).
This is an industry level problem or an employer level problem. Journalists don't have responsibility to deal with that. It isn't my customer's fault that the grade they give my entire business impacts my pay. It isn't the level designer or graphic designer's fault that the default pistol is broken in Multiplayer, but they eat the penalties just the same.
If a Journalist wants to protest this kind of ranking the answer isn't to feed into it by bumping up the average rating to an 8 to help out a bro, it is to post a positive review and refuse to partake in the system entirely. If you as a FAN want to protest it, the answer is to have a proper dialogue about it or start frequenting either publications that don't work in that framework either or reviews that don't "register" with Metacritic. It isn't to blow up at someone for giving an honest review on the game.
B) Well like I said, I don't think Gamer Gate is actually ABOUT journalism in any capacity at this (or any) point other than as a smoke screen, but inflating scores is like literally what that side of it is supposed be opposed to. So the GGer that would be supporting a higher rating on Bayonetta by not be there for the gender politics... I am not really sure what they are doing.
And CK, I don't think Feminism is anywhere near done as a term just because the term has been coopted as a slur in some parts of culture. Discarding over a hundred years of legacy in favour of something short term is counter to showing the weight of the movement I think. Where "Gay Marriage" has had very little history of success but switching the rhetoric over to "Marriage equality" helped confer the intent of the movement, Feminism has a whole lot more good to its name once you remotely educate yourself on the issue (Not just suffrage, but the advent and spread of availability of birth control is a huge huge one) and the way you can see people even still 50 years later actively seeking to tear down the work it did helps with perspective significantly.
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It isn't the level designer or graphic designer's fault that the default pistol is broken in Multiplayer, but they eat the penalties just the same.
Small quip: usually the level/graphic designer will have an opportunity to give feedback on something like that. I've been told that I affected the writing of the ending of The Last of Us. I'm a programmer whose official duties really only involved ]code, and working with designers and animators. I also wasn't even on the project for all that long. In the case of multiplayer in particular most companies will have company-wide playtests that ask for feedback.
Not that this is a guarantee you can influence things. I've certainly been at companies where people didn't listen (and then two months later figured out what I told them; could have saved yourself two months of work, dude). But in a healthy game-development company, you can have some influence on most areas of the project.
Although really, the sensible people flying under the gamergate flag (like TotalBiscuit) have been calling for things like "lets remove numbers from review scores entirely, and thereby remove metacritic from the equation." And some publications (like Kotaku) already did so way before this blew up.
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Quinn sounds pretty terrible and so is gaming media (This is a tradition going back to Nintendo Power), but that doesn't at all justify or condone the attacks or viciousness. I don't have much use for gamer culture in general on the broad scale, I find it either insufferable or full of bitter assholes.
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On another note, did ya'll hear about Gamergate's amazing idea to send Nintendo complaints about Polygon giving Bayonetta 2 a lowish score for being sexist (so they could, what, pressure Polygon to change it?). Nothing screams ethics in gaming journalism like telling a large company to force a gaming magazine to give scores you like. Such ethics, much Gamergate, wow. Oh, no, I forgot, nothing screams ethics in gaming journalism like harassing a woman who isn't involved in the discussion in any way because you're a creepy asshole.
I'm gratified and more than a bit surprised that Bayonetta 2 didn't get pilloried by reviewers. The timing couldn't have been worse for it.
Bayonetta is a bit of an interesting case because it's a pretty popular game among women, and it has an undeniably empowered if sexualized main female character. I think the game brings forth an interesting discussion about sexual empowerment and if a game can simultaneously have a sexualized-yet-empowered female main character and not "cater to the male gaze", which seems to be the chief complaint about the game(s). I think discussions on sexualization of female characters need to be taken in the context of the game's overall feminist credentials. I also think it is interesting that in the analogous 3D action game, Devil May Cry, Dante is a hot dude who doesn't wear a shirt and seems to be designed to be slobbered over by girls -- silver hair, sexy red coat, kinda bishie. I think both he and Bayonetta were consciously designed to be appealing to both genders!
http://www.negativeworld.org/feature/11720/female-gamers-speak-about-the-bayonetta-franchise-part-1-of-2#.VGMKb_nF-So
A diverse range of opinions on Bayonetta from female gamers.
That said, I think there are much worse reasons than feminism to mark a game down. I've had Tony Hawk games reviewed where the review started with "I never really understood these games or figured out how the scoring system works." There was a SSBM review that said "I keep knocking off my opponent with what should be a finishing blow, but he keeps jumping back on. I don't understand." And Uncharted 3 got a 4/10 review largely as clickbait (if you read the review, the complaints aren't all that substantial, but the 4/10 score gets people to click on the review when they see it in a list of reviews). At least with the Bayonetta 2 review, it's clear that the reviewer made an honest effort to get into the game, and his complaints were elements that reduced his enjoyment of the game.
Honestly, when a game I've worked on gets slammed for feminism, my reaction has historically been "yuuuup."
As long as your apply your standards of feminism consistently, which Polygon has failed to do. Games such as Grand Theft Auto 5 without female protags or much of a female presence (I scroll down a list of GTA5 characters and about the fifteenth character listed is a woman, and zero characters that are listed as "central characters") are given 9.5/10 without as far as I read mention of the issue, while Bayonetta 2, a game that the two bad-ass-est people in the cast are both women, is sexist? I understand that different people give different reviews, but to me I read those two reviews side-by-side and I draw that conclusion that people are more uncomfortable with having women who are 'sexualized' (in this case, in a way less pandering way than your average harem anime) than that fact that GTA barely has a female presence. In the article I linked above, there were one woman who explicitly said that she would prefer a game with no female characters than one with a sexualized female main. I find this to be a fairly absurd view that is hard to take seriously.
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http://time.com/3576870/worst-words-poll-2014/
Feminist has gotten the most votes on "words to ban in 2015".
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I can't talk about this at length because I've already spent a lot of time railing at the storm and I am just so damn pissed at everyone that it's hard to be coherent.
I work in marketing. I deal with games journalists all the time. I also spend a lot of time in market research and playtesting, speak to developers across the world, talk to Apple and Google and other first party distributors, and otherwise watch and analyze customer behavior on a micro and macro level as my job.
People suck.
I hear (and personally believe) that there is room for the kinds of games feminists would "approve" of that wouldn't alienate the gamers who consider any effort in this direction to be compromising the art of games. But, time and time again, the fucking stereotypes are true.
Men like FPS and strategy games. Women play more (mobile) games for lower average amounts of time. Women are turned away from violent or aggressive art and play. Men are drawn to it. Men spend more money on (mobile) games by a huge factor. Would having more games appealing to a female audience without alienating the male audience make women play more games? Maybe. But "maybe" does not justify millions of dollars and thousands of man hours. "Maybe" could ruin a company, even a giant one.
Game journalists are an incestuous bunch. There aren't very many of them (relative to "real" journalists), they cover the exact same pool of material, they talk to very similar audiences. They all know, talk to, and party with each other. They make money because the sites they write for make money, and getting the sites they work for money means appealing to an audience that often doesn't know what it wants but sure as hell shares and reads stupid BuzzFeed articles and talks about Polygon's sensationalist reviews and headlines.
GamerGate is a minority.
It's loud, and they seem to be many, but it's not what it seems to be. And yes, hearing about it everywhere is granting it a certain sort of notoriety and attention -- but the cliche about there not being any bad publicity is painfully true. Kotaku's Alexa rank has risen more than 150% in the last six weeks. In fact, every single games news site's traffic has increased and continues to increase. GamerGate may be raising some sort of amorphous awareness about the issues of feminism and corruption and whatever the heck else they think they are, but their actions are having the opposite effect.
And so, I continue to pander to the mostly quiet masses and their wallets. I thank the fuckers that are attacking me, attacking my profession, attacking the things I love, because they have increased our sales and downloads. And they make me hate my job a little bit more every day.
*They, women, men, etc. is marketing speak for the actions of an identified group. I hate it when the whole speaks for the individual, and it doesn't adequately reflect any given individual at all, but that whole buys games in a pattern that, like it or not, divides on artificial identifiers like gender and age.
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Is it Polygon's stance on feminism in gaming or the individual reviewer's? Was it the same reviewer? You can have similar issues where someone is handed a genre they don't like to review.
What should an author do, not rate something with their political views on the table? It is a 9/10 game that I hated every second of because it made me uncomfortable to play (and presumably wasn't the point of the game). Do publishers only hire people with a message the brand wants to projects? That loads gender politics into your entire organisation, which would be fine for some brands, but isn't really Polygon's main drive.
A review is a snapshot of someone's opinion at a time, they are going to be inherently inconsistent and subjective. It isn't a science where it is repeatable and testable result. You follow a certain publication rather than an individual personality because you have past experience with them tending to have opinions that you find useful to see. It is up to editorial to try and keep that consist tone that readers are used to getting from their pool of writers (which will be shifting obviously as will the editor).
Having a sharp spike in a difference of opinion is probably not the greatest piece of journalism, but would really speak more to who was selected to cover the piece, so a possible mistake made well before the score was even thought of. It would just be a mistake though, not corruption in video game journalism or a big scandal. It is someone picked round peg for square hole when they are marketing to square peg enthusiasts.
So specifically on Bayonetta 2, are we shocked that this specific game got handed to a writer with a bit of an agenda in gender politics? I wouldn't really think so, it is the sequel to a game that already spurred a massive amount of debate about it. I can certainly see why an editor would farm that out to them. Now GTA5 definitely did bring up some interesting discussions about feminism and the roles of women in it (so did GTA4 from memory, but it was much more sedate and delayed from memory), but the discourse around it was a little less loaded, so it is easy to see why a similar process wasn't part of the he decision making there.
Does that mean the publication fucked up? Eh I don't really think so honestly. As long as the reviewer for Bayonetta consistently reviews like that that and the message is on point, they are a consistent producer of content and they don't only ever review "gender games" it is a bit of an unfortunate trend, but not the end of the world. I would argue that another review along side it would be pretty solid (noting that you should be pretty consistent about having multiple views there, not needing to chaperone the "feminist reviewer" with a "real reviewer" counterpoint), but I don't think that is particularly feasible solution just because people aren't interested in paying two people when you could just get one.
The second post holy fuck that is depressing, but it is just people being sick of hearing people talk about it.
In the development process, peer review is fantastic Met and a work environment where it is taken on board is a pretty healthy one. Or where you are accountable for everyone else's output though that you at the end of the day have no direct control of is toxic. It drives a team culture, sure, but it is a culture of "work together and make sure things are good and don't you dare fuck anything up" instead of "work together because you trust each other". You are getting your whole team to manage each other.
Edit - and to preempt a little bit. If everyone is there to make thirst possible game that they can so they aren't going to manage each other, why do you need the bonus as an incentive? Who is it motivating, what function is it actually performing? It stinks of a way to cut costs ignoring the impact it has on your staff.
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The long and short of it, for me, is I'm finding both "pro-GG" and "anti-GG" sentiments increasingly frustrating. Both sides are so polarized that it is pretty much impossible to actually discuss anything because everyone is too busy shouting "stupid SJW's" and "stupid misogynists." Which is unfortunate, since there are some worthwhile discussions being had. Frankly, I find the fence sitters (that is the people who tend not to identify themselves as either pro/anti-GG and focus on individual talking points) the most enjoyable people to follow in this discussion, as they are generally far enough removed from each camp to speak calmly.
That said, do I like "modern" #GG? Not really. Even setting aside discussions of how the movement really gained traction and how a very loud minority has often co-opted it, there are just some elements of their rhetoric that I don't like. I also think their methodology is a bit misguided, particularly when it comes to social elements. Trying to make Kotaku less "liberal" feels like a fool's errand. They'd be better served by, in all seriousness, making their own news site, or at least a centralized hub to point towards reviewers who match up with their viewpoiont. It actually isn't an unfeasible goal these days.
Is it Polygon's stance on feminism in gaming or the individual reviewer's? Was it the same reviewer? You can have similar issues where someone is handed a genre they don't like to review.
What should an author do, not rate something with their political views on the table? It is a 9/10 game that I hated every second of because it made me uncomfortable to play (and presumably wasn't the point of the game). Do publishers only hire people with a message the brand wants to projects? That loads gender politics into your entire organisation, which would be fine for some brands, but isn't really Polygon's main drive.
A review is a snapshot of someone's opinion at a time, they are going to be inherently inconsistent and subjective. It isn't a science where it is repeatable and testable result. You follow a certain publication rather than an individual personality because you have past experience with them tending to have opinions that you find useful to see. It is up to editorial to try and keep that consist tone that readers are used to getting from their pool of writers (which will be shifting obviously as will the editor).
What I've seen is that the prevailing opinion is #GG wants something like: https://www.christcenteredgamer.com/index.php/reviews/pc-mac/5520-bioshock-infinite where the social/political elements are separated from the game.
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I forget the link, but there is actually a GamerGate News site now, where it feels like they're actually trying to give the news coverage that they feel best espouses the Gater movement.
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I only read Eurogamer and sometimes Polygon.
In general I only agree with Grefter.
I hear (and personally believe) that there is room for the kinds of games feminists would "approve" of that wouldn't alienate the gamers who consider any effort in this direction to be compromising the art of games. But, time and time again, the fucking stereotypes are true.
Men like FPS and strategy games. Women play more (mobile) games for lower average amounts of time. Women are turned away from violent or aggressive art and play. Men are drawn to it. Men spend more money on (mobile) games by a huge factor. Would having more games appealing to a female audience without alienating the male audience make women play more games? Maybe. But "maybe" does not justify millions of dollars and thousands of man hours. "Maybe" could ruin a company, even a giant one.
I agree that, as far as AAA games are concerned, doing a bold move like only having a non sexualized black female main character requires some guts, and would probably result in lost sales, so it's not happening because of how AAA games work. (There's Remember Me but it's been forgotten for these reasons)
But:
- I really doubt it would hurt sales to not rely on sexist tropes, so why not raise awareness to take them away? I actually think Bioware become successful in part because it got more inclusive.
- Supposed lost sales due to female characters only happens with AAA games. I reaaaally don't think Crypt of the Necrodancer got hurt by having a female non sexualized male character. Neither did Valkyrie Profile, probably? (Bit more difficult to realize here, but hey)
- Even in AAA games, the option of having a female main character can be actually beneficial to the devs and not just a money waster. Consider this: Lords of the Fallen is a WoWified Souls knockoff. I was going to buy this game, because hey, souls is my favorite series, but when i saw that you can only play as bald angry butly white guy I just kinda stopped caring. Real lost sale there. I probably wouldn't have bought ME2-3 at a high price without Femshep. Note that all this isn't even a conscious choice. I'm in a minority but who can really say how small that minority is?
What I've seen is that the prevailing opinion is #GG wants something like: https://www.christcenteredgamer.com/index.php/reviews/pc-mac/5520-bioshock-infinite where the social/political elements are separated from the game.
Expecting this from other people is really stupid and immature.
Can you imagine movie critics like this? "Great acting and cinematography. 9/10. The movie promotes rape though, morality score: 3/10."
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Expecting this from other people is really stupid and immature.
Can you imagine movie critics like this? "Great acting and cinematography. 9/10. The movie promotes rape though, morality score: 3/10."
Not really? I mean, wanting that from EVERY reviewer, yes. But wanting it from some isn't really that different from wanting reviewers to focus on the socialogical aspects. I mean, frankly, I'm uninterested in discussions on whether Archipelago is a good/bad board game on the basis of how it handles the subject of colonialism and tend to stray away from reviewers who talk about it.
So basically, I don't think it is that unreasonable to want to see reviews that focus largely on the gameplay element and either ignore or seperate out the social stuff. I mean, that's what you do with reviews: you find folks who have similar opinions/focuses, as they are most likely to feel similarly about titles.
The movie comparison is sort of flawed because games... well... have a game element which can exist wholly independently of the story elements. Playing P4U as a competitive fighting game is a wholly different experience than playing it as a story-driven game, and these elements are so discrete that their relevance to individual gamers varies heavily. Plenty of people give no shits about the story mode and could it have it be terrible and still consider it an amazing title, and others could loathe the gameplay but adore the story mode. And some like the whole package.
So yeah. Ultimately, I think pushing for all reviewers to use the same metric is stupid, but wanting to foster some reviews that focus tighter on the "game" is fine. I'm less interested in those reviews, but there's nothing wrong with that.
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Not really? I mean, wanting that from EVERY reviewer, yes.
But that's what GG wants hence the Bayonetta 2 Polygon review controversy?
Movies can have elements existing independently of the story, like action scenes. Some people saw Inception for the story and some for the action.
As a side note I'm more of a gameplay than story person but mechanics don't exist in a vacuum and almost nothing is apolitical. (Like Mario saving the princess while the opposite never happens)
You can definitely enjoy a game and ignore its most troubling parts but I think it's pretty fair to analyze these troubling parts and want them removed if possible. Or to praise something like Shadowrun Returns for being inclusive.
Personnally I want reviews to tell me if there's horrible shit like what happens in God of War 3 and not just talk about mechanics or epicness or whatever.
I like Eurogamer
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- Even in AAA games, the option of having a female main character can be actually beneficial to the devs and not just a money waster. Consider this: Lords of the Fallen is a WoWified Souls knockoff. I was going to buy this game, because hey, souls is my favorite series, but when i saw that you can only play as bald angry butly white guy I just kinda stopped caring. Real lost sale there. I probably wouldn't have bought ME2-3 at a high price without Femshep. Note that all this isn't even a conscious choice. I'm in a minority but who can really say how small that minority is?
This is me.
But it probably shouldn't be a surprise by this point that my interest in a game plummets if I'm forced to play a dude. Cids probably not representative of any substantial demographic.
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But that's what GG wants hence the Bayonetta 2 Polygon review controversy?
Like I said, wanting it wholesale is dumb and part of why I don't actually like the GG movement. But throwing the baby out with the bathwater is silly too, which is why I brought it up. Balance in all things and what not. This is sort of why I get grumbly about the blanket dismissal of shit from GG in much the same way I get grumbly about folks from GG trying to shoot down discussions of sex/sexuality in video games by demonizing the people starting the discussions. You lose sight of the discussion and focus on the offense.
Movies can have elements existing independently of the story, like action scenes. Some people saw Inception for the story and some for the action.
Sure, but I think it is fair to say that the gap between "movie having nice action scenes and movie having nice story" vs "game having nice gameplay and game having nice story" is a much larger one, particularly in some games. Like, it is the absolute far extreme, but things like League of Legends and Persona 4 Arena can be played/read while barely ever interacting with the story/gameplay.
As a side note I'm more of a gameplay than story person but mechanics don't exist in a vacuum and almost nothing is apolitical. (Like Mario saving the princess while the opposite never happens)
You can definitely enjoy a game and ignore its most troubling parts but I think it's pretty fair to analyze these troubling parts and want them removed if possible. Or to praise something like Shadowrun Returns for being inclusive.
Yeah, definitely. But that doesn't mean I have to care or that I want to read reviews that talk about it. The board game Endeavor makes slavery really appealing and encourages the players who start in on it to make sure that abolition never comes about. Does this have the potential for interesting discussion re: socioeconomic impact of slaver or what have you? Sure. And I'm sure people have had fascinating conversations about it. Does this I'm always going to care? Not really.
So really, we're basically agreeing, near as I can tell? There is space on the net for both types of reviews and limiting ourselves to one style or the other (or, honestly, just those two!) is silly!
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Niche markets are great. They're easy to find and target, they have specific needs and wants, and you can and should take risks talking to "your people" because you have a really good sense what context they're coming from. They also spend a hell of a lot of money, so it doesn't even matter that they're a smaller group. (In mobile, niche markets like card battle games make 10-30x as much per player as do mass market titles.)
ME3 is a brilliant mass-market success in that it "takes a risk" by making a very, very minor, mostly cosmetic, change. Then you have a no fuss, no muss "everyone is happy" solution that is really just a watered down choice without choosing. Okay, yeah, so your character now has breasts! Femshep can have a relationship with another female! She carries on just the same as non-Femshep and no one even notices!
It wasn't a risk.
They got more attention because they were "edgy" on the surface, but the game was the same. The genders did not matter (except in ME1-2 relationship choices, but that's commentary on sexuality more than anything, and two brief dialogues in response to bigotry).
On one level, that is wonderful. That's exactly how some feminists would prefer it go: females are people and males are people and they get seen as people, not judged in the context of a stereotype about their gender. On another, it was the kind of bland "no duh" design decision that did nothing but expand their target audience. Shepard was abstract enough as a character that it truly didn't matter what gender s/he represented. That way they didn't offend the guys, even made some guys who like to play female avatars happy, and the girls could play as girls or else not feel bad about playing the guy because at least the girl was an option.
Anyway. Bottom line: The market is loud. I test campaigns. I do neutral, I do gender pandering, I do thematics. No matter how many variations I do, the answers remain remarkably similar. Guys respond to violence and action and scantily dressed women. Women respond to pretty things and sometimes also to scantily dressed women. Maybe those ads aren't as neutral or fair or purely thematic as they should be, but if true that just reinforces the point about risk: something that is new requires someone who can do it well. Not everyone can, and someone who does it wrong presents a potentially company-ruining mistake.
As I said, it's really damn infuriating to fall into that rut but the people who click on banners and make purchases are the people the business cares about.
I want companies to try something new. I like the success stories from when they branch out. I love it when a company does something very, very well. I get angry with games that pander to a saturated market because players look for something "new" that is actually familiar. I want more business decisions to matter on a social level, not just a fiscal level.
You want to know how my company approves new projects? Its potential to provide a player the reason to spend $10k. The furthest they care about the game itself is whether it's compelling enough to get people to play it and spend money in it. Not what the game is, or what it represents, or how players feel about it -- whether they can get players to stick around for the ad impressions they can get out of them and give the crazy few a chance to spend buckets of cash. Naturally, the company wants to spend the least amount of time and resources they can on making that happen. Filling the mold with new colors is the easiest way to do that.
Of course, that is just my company, and not all businesses are created equal. There's still the matter of why we keep choosing this, why we haven't been able to address concerns feminists are bringing up, why people say one thing and do another (mostly because "people" do not all think the same and, shockingly, are made up of individuals).
Ugh. Alright. Enough incoherent ranting.
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Oh, hey, missed a topic on this.
Not much to add, beyond that I find bonuses being tied to reviews being scummy as shit. But yeah, that's an industry problem not a reviewer problem. Since I'm horribly sheltered and don't really go much of anywhere on the internet but here/imgur/webcomics/twitch, GamerGate has largely been a thing that just...sort of existed in my peripheral vision? Interesting to read about from folks here at least.
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I am pretty much like Gate here, though I do go to more areas around the internet. The key thing is, though, while I learned about Gamergate through various avenues, I just sort of shrugged and moved on. My thought was "it's people blowing shit out of proportion and they need to just shut up and move on" and haven't paid much attention beyond it. Whenever I see a Gamergate article or discussion pop up, I usually just don't pay it any mind. My thought is "Oh boy, more of this."
Regarding the Bayonetta thing...and I am going to tangent here so BE WARNED!
First off, to be fair, Bayonetta 2 and GTA5 were reviewed by different guys. This isn't the same as the Resident Evil 6 vs. Metal Gear Solid 4 case on...IGN I think it was? Where the same guy reviewed both games and praised MGS4 for having so many cutscenes and such, then condemned RE6 for the same thing. It wasn't a case of "RE6's cutscenes suck, so it detracts from the game" contrast to MGS4 having quality ones, just simply condemning one game that he praised another game for. That could be argued poor wording of course, since as I said, a simple case of "too many poor cutscenes" would have made all the difference, as the implication would be "MGS4 got praised because it's cutscenes don't suck!" Granted, RE6 has many other issues and this is neither here nor there.
The thing about Bayonetta 2 is it came off like a click-bait review. He's praising the game on all fronts, and the game is getting all these 9-10/10s, but then he goes "oh, but it is oversexualized" and seems to criticize the game harshly, while still giving it a "technically positive review" even though it's notably lower than everything else. He also tries to smokescreen the rest of the game's qualities by constantly forcing this "The gameplay is great! But oversexualized. The plot is inoffensive! But oversexualized. It's incredibly fun! But oversexualized." Maybe I am misremembering, but it felt like the score was there because the guy didn't want his review lost among a sea of high scores. Now granted, sites just removing review scores altogether and simply rating on a metric of adjectives with pros and cons listed would have solved this.
There are cases where reviewers legitimately just seem to be making shit up so their review stands out more. Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze comes to mind from Gamespot, where the reviewer slammed the game for something just about every other single reviewer had a complete opposite reaction to, to the point of the response being "What game did you play?" Or Link Between Worlds, where the Destructoid review is filled with mostly high praise...but then he tries to make a "It lacks heart and is completely by the numbers" and then punishes the game for it, which is basically saying "screw the fact that the game is well designed, fun and has few flaws, IT'S SOULESS!"
I'm not saying these review scores should be changed so much as review scores are indeed an issue with them to begin with; if you read the reviews, you'd get a better sense of the legitimate strengths and weaknesses. Gamexplain, for example, recently completely removed all scores, and simply rates the game on things like "Likes it a lot!" "It is fun!" "Not very good" etc, not stating what the rating actually is as a numeric. I think Yahtzee, of all people, a while back stated he doesn't give review scores because he feels a game's enjoyment should not be measured on an arbitrary number metric.
Discussing this recently, I think it's worth noting that the main difference between a site like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic is what they're attempting to aggregate. Rotten Tomatoes main score, the Rotten vs. Fresh, doesn't come from "How good" the movie is, but rather "how many people liked this movie?" It demonstrates more a chance you'll like the film in question, without telling you how much. They do have the aggregate rating on there, but it's secondary; something else to look up if you're wondering "How much do reviewers like this?"
Metacritic is the other way around; it measures "how good it is" as the primary score. If you click on the game in question, it will indicate how many reviews were Good, Mixed and Bad. I think the latter is more meaningful because it demonstrates a consistent opinion better; people have different tastes, and if the focus was more on "is this good, y/n?" compared "How good is this?", then a lot of the complaints would be far lower.
In any event, some of the problems as I tried to state before with Clickbait reviews is that even when they're not that bad a score (7.5 for Bayonetta 2 for example), sometimes they're written in a way that tries to mitigate the game's strengths by just constantly shoving their own personal pet-peeve as a main feature when overall it's secondary, which vaguely defeats the purpose of the review. If something pissed you off a lot, just focus on it for one paragraph; don't keep trying to go "oh, but this strength doesn't matter because IT HAS THIS ISSUE!"
I could go on about Polygon stuff but eh, spare you; it's been beaten to death and mostly a laughing stock, though anyone asking them to change their reviews is ridiculous.
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I don't even entirely mind some of the anti-feminist talk. The argument against the Bayonetta 2 review went something like "the 7.5 score gets factored into the metacritic total, and several companies give salary bonuses based on that total." I've been on the receiving end of stuff like this. I've worked on the game that got 79 instead of 80 on gamerankings, and missing out on a bonus because of that. And yes, it often is because of one low score from one reviewer for a stupid reason.
When you say this...it sounds a lot like you are saying that the reviewer is playing the game wrong. It's the industry's problem that Metacritic scores are used for anything, not the problem of reviewers. To the extent that it is the problem of reviewers, you could argue that the industry is exerting unfair pressure on reviewers to give good grades by holding developers hostage.
Baseball actually has had a similar problem - players getting bonuses for being named as candidates for/winning various MVP awards. Those awards are decided by the Baseball writers' association. The association blasted the teams for allowing those types of incentives, citing the obvious conflict of interest it creates, and the teams have stopped offering them.
Bayonetta is a bit of an interesting case because it's a pretty popular game among women, and it has an undeniably empowered if sexualized main female character. I think the game brings forth an interesting discussion about sexual empowerment and if a game can simultaneously have a sexualized-yet-empowered female main character and not "cater to the male gaze", which seems to be the chief complaint about the game(s). I think discussions on sexualization of female characters need to be taken in the context of the game's overall feminist credentials. I also think it is interesting that in the analogous 3D action game, Devil May Cry, Dante is a hot dude who doesn't wear a shirt and seems to be designed to be slobbered over by girls -- silver hair, sexy red coat, kinda bishie. I think both he and Bayonetta were consciously designed to be appealing to both genders!
Feminism is in a Relationship with Bayonetta and It's Complicated
Seriously tho, there are things I could say about Bayonetta, but I'm sure other people have said them better already, so I'll just leave it at this: Bayonetta the character is just brimming with justified self-confidence, and the viewer is meant to admire her for it. That goes a long, long way.
http://time.com/3576870/worst-words-poll-2014/
Feminist has gotten the most votes on "words to ban in 2015".
Time can go fuck itself.
And so, I continue to pander to the mostly quiet masses and their wallets. I thank the fuckers that are attacking me, attacking my profession, attacking the things I love, because they have increased our sales and downloads. And they make me hate my job a little bit more every day.
Just think how bad you would feel about yourself if you sold AR-15s. Actually don't. Please.
Seriously, though, it's not the GamerGate movement that is driving interest. It's the part where GamerGate gets thrashed on Colbert that is doing it. To the extent your industry benefits, think of it as your immune system coming back stronger from fighting a nasty virus. A nice temporary benefit that is your body's way of saying "sorry for the trouble."
Expecting this from other people is really stupid and immature.
Can you imagine movie critics like this? "Great acting and cinematography. 9/10. The movie promotes rape though, morality score: 3/10."
Not really? I mean, wanting that from EVERY reviewer, yes. But wanting it from some isn't really that different from wanting reviewers to focus on the socialogical aspects. I mean, frankly, I'm uninterested in discussions on whether Archipelago is a good/bad board game on the basis of how it handles the subject of colonialism and tend to stray away from reviewers who talk about it.
So basically, I don't think it is that unreasonable to want to see reviews that focus largely on the gameplay element and either ignore or seperate out the social stuff. I mean, that's what you do with reviews: you find folks who have similar opinions/focuses, as they are most likely to feel similarly about titles.
Funny, thinking about Bayonetta in particular, I realized one of the reasons I'm less troubled by it than I might be is that the controls and gameplay in general are what makes Bayonetta the character work. I said she's brimming with justified self-confidence...well most of what makes it justified is that the controls are so tight that you feel powerful playing as her.
p.s. really Time can go fuck itself.
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Time is stupid
http://www.themarysue.com/damn-it-time/
Polygon does outright label itself a "progressive" publication. And one of the best things to read about their involvement was written by their editor in chief:
http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/17/6996601/on-gamergate-a-letter-from-the-editor
On GTA not getting a low score...let me preface this by saying that, Bayonetta appeals to me personally more than GTAV does. GTAV doesn't have prominent female characters that kick ass. Buuuuuut...GTAV also doesn't fall into traditional traps that other games in the industry do. The women in the game have reasonable body proportions. It passes the Beschdel test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test). It also does a lot of this:
http://maxbarry.com/2011/07/08/news.html
I have been told that this is a good thing for girls. “That makes girls more special,” said this person, who I wanted to punch in the face. That’s the problem. Being female should not be special. It should be normal. It is normal, in the real world. There are all kinds of girls. There are all kinds of women. You just wouldn’t think so, if you only paid attention to dogs and Smurfs.
Is it the positive role model thing? Because I don’t want only positive female role models. I want the spectrum. Angry girls, happy girls, mean girls. Lazy girls. Girls who lie and girls who hit people and do the wrong thing sometimes. I’m pretty sure my daughters can figure out for themselves which personality aspects they should emulate, if only they see the diversity.
GTAV, for better or for worse, has a much wider spectrum of female characters by this measurement than...frankly most of the industry.
Is it a game that appeals to women? No. Would I recommend it to Ciatos over Bayonetta 2? No. But is it a game that should be marked down for misogyny? That's an interesting question. It contains misogynist characters, for sure. But this usually doesn't end well--their girlfriends/wives leave them. They'll refer to the female vice president of a company as "that secretary" and things get verbally hostile, and ultimately end in serious disagreement. Does having a misogynist main character in a universe where misogyny has consequences make the game itself misogynist? I would argue no, but there is absolutely room for debate.
Then again, there is room for interpretation in Bayonetta 2 as well. To take some highly relevant feminists to a gamergate discussion: Brianna Wu loves it, and Anita Sarkeesian hates it.
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On GTA not getting a low score...let me preface this by saying that, Bayonetta appeals to me personally more than GTAV does. GTAV doesn't have prominent female characters that kick ass. Buuuuuut...GTAV also doesn't fall into traditional traps that other games in the industry do. The women in the game have reasonable body proportions. It passes the Beschdel test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test). It also does a lot of this:
http://maxbarry.com/2011/07/08/news.html
I have been told that this is a good thing for girls. “That makes girls more special,” said this person, who I wanted to punch in the face. That’s the problem. Being female should not be special. It should be normal. It is normal, in the real world. There are all kinds of girls. There are all kinds of women. You just wouldn’t think so, if you only paid attention to dogs and Smurfs.
Is it the positive role model thing? Because I don’t want only positive female role models. I want the spectrum. Angry girls, happy girls, mean girls. Lazy girls. Girls who lie and girls who hit people and do the wrong thing sometimes. I’m pretty sure my daughters can figure out for themselves which personality aspects they should emulate, if only they see the diversity.
GTAV, for better or for worse, has a much wider spectrum of female characters by this measurement than...frankly most of the industry.
My specific complaint about GTA5 was not that it was overtly misogynist, it was that women seem to be all side characters. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Grand_Theft_Auto_V_characters
There are fourteen characters listed on this list of GTA5 characters before a single female comes up. The first female who is mentioned is one of the main character's wives. Yawn. Most of the other research I've done indicates that women aren't very important in the story, and obviously the choice to have three male mains in a series with nothing but male mains makes me raise my eyebrows. (And passing the Bechdel test is not relevant in a discussion vs. Bayonetta, which I'm certain does. Less certain it would pass a male-male Bechdel test -- would have to watch the game again to remember that.)
Then again, there is room for interpretation in Bayonetta 2 as well. To take some highly relevant feminists to a gamergate discussion: Brianna Wu loves it, and Anita Sarkeesian hates it.
You mean feminists are not the borg? And here I was preparing for assimilation...
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Yeah Lady Door I guess it wasn't a risk.
But I like big companies taking small steps and I don't think that realistically we can ask them to take risks...?
Also, the end result of adding FemShep and its positive effects is more important than whether this was a big risk or not, really.
Hey you're not working for Marlboro, you're not going to lose your soul!
Anyway, here's a list of hyperbolic reactions from pro GG guys:
http://www.reddit.com/r/BestOfOutrageCulture/
It doesn't really tell anything IMO since it's cherry picked (Well, it shows that you can really lose yourself in your own Internet bubble) but I found it really funny.
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You mean feminists are not the borg? And here I was preparing for assimilation...
One more dream of a roborgy shattered.
On female characters in GTA5 ehhh I wouldn't say that they aren't important to the plot. Amanda and both his kids are a massive part of Michael's motivation and drive. Early on a lot of Franklin's interaction is with his Aunt who he lives with and even after that a massive portion of his character time is about his family.
A lot of pages that talk about GTA5 talk about the parts of the plot that is the characters doing things and not the character sequences,which is strange because a lot of the game is actually tied up in character sequences. For those parts the women in their lives are really important factors of both Michael and Franklin.
Trevor is weird and special, you only have two possible scenes where you meet his mother but she is massively impacted on his character. Trevor is a fucking mess and a huge part of it is because eh mother is a drugged out head case as well.
Now I would argue it isn't great that they are relegated to side characters, but on thr other hand, they are also the most consistently normal part of the game. All the other stuff in the game is over the top ridiculous and Michael especially will act out in an over the top fashion in response to plots surrounding Amanda and Tracey, but when interacting with them it is where the game is most grounded and character driven.
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http://chezapocalypse.com/episodes/s4e8-fight-club/
Lots of words about how the main enemies of men are men. Tangental but interesting, at least to me.
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Scattered thoughts here.
On Gamergate and why they suck:
The long and short of it, for me, is I'm finding both "pro-GG" and "anti-GG" sentiments increasingly frustrating. Both sides are so polarized that it is pretty much impossible to actually discuss anything because everyone is too busy shouting "stupid SJW's" and "stupid misogynists."
I really dislike just equating the two sides here. I don't think it's at all fair to say that both sides are "equally bad" or whatever. Hell, just look at the labels both throw at each other, and assume that they have some truth to them (and they do). The Gamergate crowd is guilty of misogyny. The anti-Gamergate crowd is guilty of... caring about social justice? The fact that anyone can say that as if it is an insult is kinda mindblowing. "Fuck you for caring about the downtrodden of society." I think that right there says very much about how vile the Gamergate crowd by and large is. I get that it has some good people in it, but the movement's standardbearers are... not making a good name for themselves.
I mean, I don't agree with every criticism that gets thrown at a game in the name of sexism or racism, but I applaud anyone's right to bring such things up, and think such discussions are worth having. The way the average Gamergater seems to rage against the discussions themselves (and insults others for caring about such things) smacks of insecurity.
On game reviews in general:
Y'know, reading all this just makes me think that Metacritic (or more accurately, how it's used) is awful. Like, really, are we going to complain about one bad review of a game and dismiss it as attention-grabbing? Personally I think it's completely embarrassing how little review scores vary, sometimes. FF12 got more or less uniformly high reviews, and is a game with many detractors at every RPG site I've seen; why aren't all of us who were put off by the game not represented? To say nothing of GTA, a series I find to be incredibly unappealing (and I -know- I'm not alone) but giving it a score below 8/10 is "clickbait"? Give me a break. I dunno how much Metacritic contributes to this hivemind behaviour among reviewers (as Ashley alluded to, it's already a pretty incestuous industry so maybe it would happen anyway), but it certainly doesn't help.
Bonuses being tied to Metacritic scores are dumb for a huge number of reasons, and if I hear about someone missing out on such a bonus, I don't begrudge the low review which very possibly had an interesting perspective to bring to the game. I begrudge the fact that such a bonus exists in the first place. (Also, if you MUST have a bonus, why does it have thresholds? Why not just create a formula that turns the score into a bonus? Then one review will have a minimal effect on the bonus you get, instead of potentially pushing you from "lots" to "nothing".)
On more socially progressive things being "risky":
Y'know, on the one hand, the arguments people make to defend some questionable things in games can make sense. Having your characters be physically attractive / sexy / dressed in ways that we'd associate with a risque halloween costume probably does help sell your game (while turning very few people away). So do male main characters and stories where the main players are male, much to my chagrin. I'd love to see more change there even so (I love that smurfs/dogs link, it's so true) but I can at least understand the marketing arguments for why they aren't happening as much as I'd like.
But there are definitely places where regressive/misogynist stuff persists... more out of habit than because anyone likes it? Take the way Princess Peach (damn near the only female character in the Mario series) is kidnapped in a vast majority of games. Does this help sell the games any more? I really, really doubt it. When she wasn't kidnapped in Super Mario 3D World and was playable instead, I didn't see a single complaint, but -did- see people who said "hey cool you can play as Princess Peach". I definitely think the damsel in disterss trope could be played down at little cost in terms of losing the straight male gamer but at a notable benefit to everyone else, but it doesn't happen because inertia and/or because Mario/Zelda/etc. did it and they were just that big in the 80's. And I suspect that's just one example, although I'm not in marketing so it's hard to be sure.
On Bayonetta:
Feminism is in a Relationship with Bayonetta and It's Complicated
Seriously tho, there are things I could say about Bayonetta, but I'm sure other people have said them better already, so I'll just leave it at this: Bayonetta the character is just brimming with justified self-confidence, and the viewer is meant to admire her for it. That goes a long, long way.
I pretty much have to second all of this. I especially like that first line and may have to steal it. To this day I'm not certain how I feel about Bayonetta from a feminism standpoint. But I'm glad it exists, and I'd much rather see a game like Bayonetta than yet another game which all but ignores the existence of women (at least, ones with their own motivations who don't exist just to develop other, male characters) which are way too common.
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My specific complaint about GTA5 was not that it was overtly misogynist, it was that women seem to be all side characters. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Grand_Theft_Auto_V_characters
Mmm...that list is a bit misleading, as the characters who are listed as "central allies" and "central enemies" are the ones who get into gunfights with or against you. Whereas the women in the story are generally the ones saying things like "you should stop getting in gunfights and do honest work that won't get you or me killed." (And at least to me felt more important than a random enemy gang leader).
But...at any rate, I don't see how gender ratio of the cast alone should get it marked down by Polygon for sexism. Smash Bros games have a mostly male cast. Should they get marked down for sexism? Most Megaman games have an almost entirely male cast. In fact, there's been what, 70 megaman games and not a single one has had a female protagonist???
There are people who have argued that GTAV is sexist or contains sexist elements (Carolyn Petit, Anita Sarkeesian), but I think "gender ratio of cast" in isolation is not a good argument.
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As a a big Megaman fan, let me be the first to say that its gender ratio is certainly problematic. (A bunch of the cast are even robots, but they're all gendered as male... except for the "housekeeper robot". Great, Megaman, just fucking great.) I agree that in isolation, a lopsided gender ratio does not 100% imply that a game isn't very woman-friendly - FFX has several good/interesting female characters and it is certainly male-dominated numerically, and certainly a game telling e.g. a story about WW2 soldiers is going to be mostly men - but it's certainly a factor and not one to be dismissed idly.
Although your comments that the women and men of GTA behave pretty clearly along gender lines (men fight, women tell you not to fight) or that most of the female characters seem to exist to develop the male protagonists (per Grefter's comments), or just the marketing posters for the game I've seen with women in string bikinis... well, it isn't really endearing me to the game on any other gender-related fronts either. I haven't played GTA5 (obviously), but 3 was absolutely appalling on gender issues and given what little I do know about the series I'm skeptical that it has improved much.
Which, well, fine, but it would be great if more reviewers would actually acknowledge this, since it is a problem for at a fair number of us players (you can easily Google to find many women and their allies with serious issues with the game, it is not just confined to strident feminist critics) but apparently we don't matter to reviewers.
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I think I put that poorly. It isn't necessarily that the females are there to develop the males. Amanda specifically is also one of the most developed characters in the game. For a game that has three "mains" a whoooooole lot of stuff is really about on Michael and his family and the main narrative arc of the game seems to be about Michael and Amanda to me.
I guess that means I probably should pick it up on PC and give it a spin when it comes out so I can form a better opinion on it (since I was more of a spectator in GTA5).
Edit - Franklin's Aunt doesn't develop him, Michael really does there, but she provides a lot of backdrop to him and his life. Like I said with Trevor, his mother is very very much an explanation for why he is the way he is. Mix abandonment, oedipal complex, physical and mental abuse with all the drugs ever in to two people and that is Trevor and his mother. Edit 2 - That is to say Trevor is fucking amazing and is pretty close to best character find of 2013.
Edit Edit Edit - MEGAMAN PLOT.
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Hmm. To use two examples from media I know well...
If I were reading reviews on a website of Batman: The Dark Knight and Sin City, two movies which I greatly enjoy, and one of them gave Sin City a significantly lower score because it was sexist, I would think they were strange. Yes, the movie has a lot of T&A, but it also has several female characters who are quite capable and competent; Gail has always been one of my favorite characters. Batman: The Dark Knight has a single female character who I would say is not a terrible character but realistically is less relevant in the movie than Batman/Alfred/Gordon/Joker/Two-Faced, and she's a bit of a classic 'female' role (less so in the Batman Begins but that's not what I'm talking about). The movie doesn't completely shit the bed on its one female character, but nor is she particularly good relative to the previous characters named.
I would conclude from reading these two reviews that this website did not have the same definition of sexism as I did and I would stop reading it. Not that the reviewers are terrible people or that they should lose their jobs, but simply that they criticized sexism in a way which I found inconsistent and thus not all that valuable to me. Whereas if neither movie's review mentioned sexism, I would probably just think they didn't care about it, and if both reviews addressed the movies' respective issues, I would maybe look up what they thought about other movies such as Avengers/other Marvel movies that I actually haven't seen, trusting them to at least give me one feminist perspective if I desired such a thing.
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The persistence of misogynist, etc., stuff because of inertia is definitely a thing. I don't have much experience with it personally because mobile is not exactly a story-driven medium, but I have noticed it in books and movies and other media. Just because the main character is female doesn't mean the game isn't misogynistic, which seems to be a really hard concept for some of the pish-posh GGers to grasp.
Identifying as female myself, I'm still mystified that people think I am inherently less valuable. I have never understood how someone could see "different" and think "evil." I know I'm not alone in that, but it makes it hard to talk to people who do think that way.
Identifying as female also means I've been subjected to the occasional overt or subconscious misogyny. It's rare enough to be overt that I can't help but laugh when it happens. It's the subconscious one, the bits about being passed over for a certain project because I'm not a guy, having my ideas discarded only to have the exact thing come up again in a male voice and be lauded, being chastised for speaking up instead of being praised, and so on that are more unsettling. Those things you can wave away individually because they're based on so many subjective pieces, but that in total add up to an unpleasant scene.
How do you combat that silent beast?
Probably not by diving into the snake pit with the foamy-mouthed rabble. Research has proven that anyone entrenched in their beliefs only becomes moreso after being confronted about it. As humans we have a weird tendency to dig in and struggle to save face.
Is it enough to have characters that espouse positive models for females even though the protags are male? Is it enough to paste boobs onto a blank canvas that could be either and call it good? Is it enough to have a female protag at all, regardless of how she's portrayed? Do women need to look "more like men" to be acceptable?
I imagine those questions are behind, you know, hundreds of years of political movements, educational fields, and citizen activism.
So how do you take it on in video games, especially when it's in the subtle form that is "not at all like those angry misogynists on Twitter" but is easily rationalized by saying "well, we'd attack people like Zoe even if they were a Zander!"?
(I obviously have no answer.)
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Side comment unrelated to Gamergate: Eh, I'd definitely give MegaMan a pass on gender issues (at least from what I played of it), re Dark Holy Elf. They're all robots. Splash Woman isn't actually a woman, Mega Man isn't actually a guy, etc. There's certainly no physical differences [that couldn't be fixed with a trip to the refurbishing lab], and no reason to think that gender means anything here, nor any indication that robot gender roles matter at all - it's just decoration, like Dr. Light painting his car. I guess Dr. Light liked having his housekeeping bot appear like a human girl? It doesn't seem to *mean* anything though.
Although I guess if you want to nitpick, the plot of Mega Man 4 has a human-damsel-in-distress story on the side? But whatever, it barely matters. (Disclaimer that I haven't played any actually text-heavy MM games, so maybe MMXCM or the like is worse on this count?! I have no idea, I've played less MM than some of the DL's more hardcore fans, so I might be uninformed here if there's content in some games that makes robot gender an issue.)
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Eh I would argue the opposite really. The fact that they are robots and there is no frame of reference with their junk (other than Junk Man) to quantify their Sex then the fact that the default interpretation is that the robots are coded Masculine says an awful lot.
It isn't really something I see as a problem with Mega Man though because it isn't offensive about it, but it is very much a product of its time. I think in 50 years it will stand out more obviously as a systemic thing (such as the prevalence of white actors for all the characters in old movies) but not blatantly offensive by denigrating women especially (though Roll could be a bit uh more well ought out). To go back to the movie example, Vertigo isn't the most broadly cast movie ever made, but it stands up as a solid price of cinema without it really being a problem. Sure it would be great if it was more progressive, but it sure as shit wasn't Breakfast at Tiffany's.
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I have to agree that the fact that "They're robots"does not mean "they're technically genderless thus don't count."
Roll is openly called "Mega Man's sister" and Protoman "Mega Man's Brother"; it's not the genderless "Sibling" but clearly gendered titles. Roll has a very explicit female design, and is made to be a housekeeping robot (compared to Rock which was lab assistance) and for the longest time in Mega Man, this was the only female character in the franchise unless you count Kalinka in MM4, who literally existed to be kidnapped for purposes of Blackmail...which really isn't any better. To be fair to Mega Man, a large part of the franchise was made in the early era of Video Games, where Gender issues were barely considered. The large majority of gamers back then were adolescent boys, so it made sense to make a predominantly male oriented game. This doesn't excuse it so much as explains why no one really cared about it.
MM9 creating Splash Woman had some buzz, because "whoa, female robot master! One that actually fights unlike Roll!" The fact that Splash woman exists means they could easily create more "*Theme* Woman" Robot Masters (and technically follows the pattern because it still ends in "Man"), which unfortunately MM10 did not follow suit on. To be fair, both Splash Woman and Roll were made by Dr. Light, and you could argue that the reason all the others are male is because most of the games Robot Masters are made by Dr. Wily, who we can assume hates women! Seeing as "he's the villain", him doing things that are less than acceptable is kind of expected.
To further demonstrate the example, I reference the Mega Man Archie Comic. Roll is given a bigger purpose, and they even had a running gag (spawned by fanbase head cannon) that Iceman has a crush on Roll, in as much as Robot Masters can have them. Obviously, the comic treats them as having genders even if they technically don't. Furthermore, they introduced Splash Woman and Kalinka a lot earlier, and made a few other original female characters in a female doctor who created Quake Woman/Tempo, and that really came off as "this really needs more females" on top of one of the main police characters Mega Man interacts with being female as well IIRC. If Mega Man had more female characters, I don't think these characters would have been necessary.
The Mega Man X and after series takes it a step further and makes it clear "These robots have emotions, so gender is indeed a thing." For all that it's completely mockable, there is legitimate romance sub-plot in MMX4 between Zero and Iris, and they never once try to pretend Iris is anything but a female. I could go on a whole list of how the series got progressively better, but I wouldn't say it's a good example, and there are plenty of robots treated as females, and once the franchise established "Reploids have the same mental capabilities of a human" then emotional connections were pretty unavoidable (again, ZeroxIris)
I am not defending Mega Man X games and after to be clear, merely establishing they're a step up from the classic franchise but only because the classic franchise was really bad about females in this regard. I mostly bring them up to further indicate the "They're robots, they don't have gender!" thing is a bollocks defense. If you make machines that have human-like appearance, then the issue of "gender" can totally apply to them, since well, if you can make them look human, you can make them look male or female! If all the Mega Man Robot Masters had designs more mechanical and less human-like, maybe the argument can be made and the "Man" naming convention is just a tradition and they're not actually gendered, and it's more "Man" in the sense of "Man-kind" (which I know some would argue is a sexist term in itself, but let's not get into that), but the way they're designed? Even as far back as Mega Man 1, you can tell they were built with human-like features and meant to resemble people, and they're clearly all treated as males. Add in how Roll has existed since the first game, and has always had a blatantly female-design (with Rock having a clearly masculine one), there's really no question that these robots are meant to, at very least, be emulating the genders in question.
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I would conclude from reading these two reviews that this website did not have the same definition of sexism as I did and I would stop reading it. Not that the reviewers are terrible people or that they should lose their jobs, but simply that they criticized sexism in a way which I found inconsistent and thus not all that valuable to me.
Oh well that's fair! Of course you should try to find a reviewer who cares about the same things you care about!
The problem is that being offended, or feeling something goes over the top with misogyny to the point that it distracts you from enjoying the product? That's a very personal thing that varies from person to person.
How much is too much? Not everyone is going to take marks off for missing gender diversity in the cast. Not everyone is bothered by sexualization. Not everyone is bothered by roles being stereotypical. I think most people appreciate it when the previously mentioned issues are not the case, BUT for some people, only some of these would be "this bugged/distracted me so much that I'm lowering the score!"
And then there are subjective things. Some people would prefer to have a setting that sticks closer to realism, even if that means fewer women in combat roles, and physically weaker women. Others would like to have fantasy worlds to enable Buffy The Vampire Slayer style characters where some women are physically stronger than the men, and just as many women warriors exist as male warriors.
Actually here's a fun example--I was in university taking critical theory when Buffy was shiny and new, so of course it got discussed. Academic feminists at the time didn't really like it or consider it a feminist work because it depicts violence against women. That got an eyeroll from me (and still does). Like...I can understand how depicting women in violent situations might be a trigger for them. Domestic abuse was a problem in the 90s (and still is, granted). Some of them had probably been the victim of domestic abuse themselves. I don't blame them for feeling that way. But personally, do I care if a game or movie depicts violence against women? In general no. Not unless it's like...ridiculous levels of disturbing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKc4mK_XWCU) (click at own risk).
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Actually here's a fun example--I was in university taking critical theory when Buffy was shiny and new, so of course it got discussed. Academic feminists at the time didn't really like it or consider it a feminist work because it depicts violence against women. That got an eyeroll from me (and still does). Like...I can understand how depicting women in violent situations might be a trigger for them. Domestic abuse was a problem in the 90s (and still is, granted). Some of them had probably been the victim of domestic abuse themselves. But personally, do I care if a game or movie depicts violence against women? In general no. Not unless it's like...ridiculous levels of disturbing (click at own risk).
For obvious reasons I really hate to be all "BUT WHAT ABOUT TEH MENZ!" in a thread about feminism but I really take issue with simultaneously claiming that violence against women is bad (which it is) and implying that violence against men is okay, or at least significantly less bad. And since you say that these people take issue with Buffy not because it is violent but because some (not even most!) of the violence targets women, I'm having a hard time reading parsing the arguments you are relaying as anything but that. Maybe I'm missing something!
(Domestic abuse of course is very much a feminist issue but the violence seen in Buffy is not domestic abuse.)
Related: I watched one of Anita Sarkeesian's videos which dealt with some of the extreme, graphic violence that can be visited upon women by the player in some games. It made me extremely uncomfortable, to the point where I almost stopped watching the video (and would have left the room if I were actually watching one of my friends play said game and do said things). Yet I'm quite aware that in most of the cases the player could do analogous things to male NPCs. I mostly concluded that some games are just too graphically violent for me, moreso than I felt it was a particularly feminist issue. Although, in the video's defence, there were also some cases which felt very gender-specific, such as the player putting a (always female) prostitute in a vulnerable situation and then murdering her, which is all sorts of fucked up.
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As far as I know this brand of academic 90s feminism was anti-violence in general. I'm quite certain they didn't think of, say GI Joe as a feminist work. They just also didn't feel like if you made half the characters into women that it suddenly became a feminist work. They weren't openly protesting Buffy the Vampire Slayer and trying to censor it, but they weren't endorsing it either.
But I will agree with you that there also was a degree of hipocracy, for sure. Like...I seem to recall some SNES characters in beat-em-up games were female in the arcades, but male in the SNES games, because Nintendo did not want to be seen as supportive of violence against women. Still think that one was ridiculous.
And yeah, I think I saw that same video by Anita Sarkeesian. In those game's defence, I want to say a good chunk of what she showed was optional, and you'd really need to seek it out. (In that I played GTAV more than once, and saw almost none of the content she featured; although some of the other games she talked about made it sounds like it might have been more required in those?) In general, while I like her videos, she does say very clearly that she's critiquing the problematic aspects of a game--and so you'll see about 30 seconds of footage that was the most problematic.
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From what I understand based on comments of others, and I am speaking 100% out of hearsay here, the situations Anita Sarkeesian presented were out of context and not really fair.
Like there's a situation in one of the Hitman games where there are women being strippers, because they're forced into it, and it emphasizes them, and you can do bad things to them. Sounds bad at first, but from what I understand, the real situation?
Your target in this mission is the guy running the joint BECAUSE of how bad the situation is, to the point where you're basically trying to help these women out. Furthermore, apparently this is a game that while the option to kill women is a thing, you are apparently penalized for killing anyone other than your target. So while possible, the game actually discourages the action, not encourages it.
I'm not saying this is a pro-feminist game; the situation itself has similarities to the distressed damsel, but the way she presents it from my understanding is way worse than the situation actually is.
It's ok to critique this stuff, but a sense of context is necessary or else you give the impression of this "look at how awful this game is!" If she explained that "this is optional, and not encouraged" but them emphasized why it's bad, I think it may have worked better. Emphasizing that it's just one aspect of the game and that it's not the game as a whole.
Back to Bayonetta, I realized just how opposite God of War is to Bayonetta in this regard:
This game is just MALE POWER FANTASY cranked to the max. You run around as an overpowered male demi-god who can kill whatever he wants and gets away with it. You fight mostly demonic spawns of the underworld, sure, but then some civilians run around and you kill them and you get rewarded with health! I'd be fine with this, except there's another aspect that made me uncomfortable, and that's God of Wars treatment of women.
The first females you see in the game are two topless women, shown full frontal from waist up, after having just slept with them, and they exist to go "come on Kratos, let's have some more fun please :( " and his response is effectively "QUIET WOMAN!" Then you get to Athens and meet the Oracle of Athena who...well...
http://godofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Euphemisms
sums it up best. But hey, his wife and child are fairly dressed...and exist to get brutally killed so he can have a TRAGIC BACKSTORY!!! IOWs, it' a Woman in Refrigerators trope. The only character demonstrating any sense of dignity for females is Athena herself, who is mostly off screen, speaking through her voice primarily, and if you're trying for any sort of mythological accuracy (AHAAHAHAHAH), Athena kind of has to be modest because that's kind of a major part of her characterization in mythology.
2nd Game is a little better because at least Lakhesis wears clothes but even she was sexed up, and Clotho felt like they were trying their hardest to make something as hideous as possible but still "Fanservice" hence why she's covered entirely in boobs. Atropos is the only one who seems to have been designed with dignity, going more for a "demon woman."
Haven't played God of War 3, can't comment.
And as a reminder, God of War is a franchise that takes itself seriously, so you can't even play the satire/parody/etc. card here like you could for Bayonetta.
I get that God of War's setting is one that by nature has more Male presence than female presence, it doesn't mean the females have to either be shoved to the side for Kratos to look more awesome, or sexed up to the maximum. It just strikes me as wrong that some games get unfairly criticized for their treatment of women when a game like God of War exists where it does nothing but objectify women left and right while making the MANLY MEN!!!! seem all the more awesome.
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Yeah, for some reason God of War doesn't get criticized much. Like...Jack Thompson never went after God of War, even though it came out during the height of Jack Thompsonism.
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With Sarkeesian's latest videos, I've only heard people having issues with her argument against Hitman (several times)
People focus on the Hitman example a lot but that's not seeing the forest for the trees? I don't doubt that the Hitman example is flawed, but she shows so many exemples that the fact that one or two might not work doesn't really matter.
God of War 3 is actually shown in her latest video and it is probably the most fucked up example. Here: http://youtu.be/5i_RPr9DwMA?t=21m30s
Edit: I changed my forum title
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Holy fucking shit.
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To me as a game developer, Sarkeesian is mostly valuable for pointing out "hey, this has been done before, a lot." Game development is a young enough medium that you can fall into a trap of thinking "well, this is really risquee, but I'm not sure it's been done before, and exploring new topics is something games should try." I have been legitimately surprised at several points watching Sarkeesian's videos of "Oh, wow, there's actually 10 games that have already done this?"
In other news, while it's rare, every once in a while I actually see something legitimately about journalistic ethics get produced by gamergate, like...this:
http://i.imgur.com/bodjZfR.png
Burried under about a dozen anti-feminism posts, granted, but I found it!
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Yeah... regarding the whole Hitman thing, the folks who dislike Sarkeesian seem to be jumping on it because they feel they can show it to be demonstrably, provably wrong. And then the argument goes that because she's wrong about that one point, she is clearly lying and that every point is then suspicious at best, and probably a lie at worst. And why shouldn't you assume the worst?
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God of War is interesting because, sorta like Bayonetta, there actually is a valid narrative reason for the game to be like it is; Kratos is a fairly accurate depiction of an actual Greek Hero. THat is, in the Greek sense of the word, a man who was so powerful he could do whatever the fuck he wanted, and would only be thwarted if he failed to honor the Gods in his Hubris. More than that we actually see that this already happened to him, and the Gods are giving him a sort of ending to his story. Be our agent to end the Hubris of Ares himself, and earn redemption in our eyes.
Much like pretty much everything about the original God of War, thanks to the latent misogyny and worship of machismo in our own culture everyone missed the fucking point, so subsequent games more or less lack this aspect. Kratos IS a god now, and has become worse than ever he was, and basically becomes a modern-style villain protagonist rather than a Greek-style hero. Basically, he's supposed to be awesome in the original sense, inspiring awe and fear, but instead was perceived as awesome in the modern sense. A morality tale becomes a model of behavior, turning something that should be just a little bit uncomfortable into a huge red warning flag about how bad things actually are.
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A quick ramble on the subject of Bayonetta...
I understand why many feminists are offended by it, and I also understand why other feminists enjoy the game with an asterisk. But to me, a person who grew up in a very conservative, very anti female sexuality culture, I feel like Bayonetta is very... liberating in that sense. If you've spent your entire life hearing that "sex is bad, you should only have sex with your husband and maybe shouldn't enjoy it and if you feel sexual urges you are disgusting and should feel bad", then a risque but independent superheroine all of a sudden sounds really appealing. Part of the charm to me that she is sexual AND badass, and that those things aren't mutually exclusive (whereas in conservative culture, if you have sex or are erotic then you are nasty and damaged).
In her previous post, LD said "Is it enough to paste boobs onto a blank canvas that could be either and call it good? Is it enough to have a female protag at all, regardless of how she's portrayed? Do women need to look "more like men" to be acceptable?". The answer to me is that you should have a wide variety of female protagonists. A few I can think of from games I've seen/played relatively recently... Bayonetta goes for the over the top sexy style while being badass, FF13 Lightning is closer to the just pure badass spectrum (but could be written as male with some changes, I guess), Lara Croft (in the most recent Tomb Raider) is more of a down to earth girl who kind of starts out as just doin' what she has to do and ends up being pretty competent, and Serah, the FF13-2 protag, is a bit of a lighter-hearted character and has a bit more of a classic female design, but the game respects her enough not to make her a damsel and she handle situations competently. None of these characters are that similar to each other, but they are all written in ways that make them seem respected by the game.
And to answer the second question, I don't think a game is necessarily feminist if it has a female protagonist, but I think it's probably more likely to be. :)
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Looking at God of War 3 video, holy crap that takes things to a new level.
As I've ranted in the past, from the "Kratos is a horrible person" perspective, God of War 1 it wasn't so bad. Now make no mistake; I'm not backpedaling on the female point. What I am saying, however, is that Kratos in GoW1 was, despite being a horrible person, was clearly the lesser of two evils, so you wanted him to win because the alternative was worse. It makes him all the easier to stomach when the game well establishes the opponent is clearly way lower on the moral spectrum than your hero, even if your hero is on par with many villains. On top of that, Kratos had personal beef with Ares, who stabbed him in the back in such a cruel, horrible , unforgivable way, you do feel Kratos is justified in metaphorically returning the favor.
God of War 2, it's kind of all lost at this point. The villain has shifted from Ares, to Zeus. As I said, Ares they made it very clear was awful, but Zeus? They really failed here. The game opens by stating "Kratos, you're going TOO FAR, if you don't stop, we WILL have to intervene and you will won't like that." So you can't even use the "Kratos didn't know and the gods pulled a fast one!" argument, he was warned ahead of time, and basically ignored them. Honestly, an accurate analogy for GoW2's plot is effectively a parent punishing their child for breaking the rules and the child being angry that they were punished despite knowing exactly WHY they were punished, and deciding the parents must suffer. Insert "Greek Gods" into the mix and you have an accurate portrayal.
The fact that God of War games got only worse on female portrayal says more. It sounds like Aphrodite is the only God he doesn't kill, so HE SPARED A FEMALE!? Also sounds like he had sex with her, which ok, it is Aphrodite so totally in character, but that sounds more like a safety net excuse than actually justifiable instance. Sex works if it's handled properly; if you want a way to show how intimate two characters are in a way that shows how close they really are, and the "Romantic Kiss" just isn't enough, then sure! Just don't play it up as "hurr durr sex cool right?" Kratos screwing a woman because "she's hot and seductive!" is not that.
I think something worth noting is the evolution of Fighting Game female representation. If nothing else, look at Street Fighter:
SF2's Chun-li stood out specifically because she was female; she became the most well known character in the franchise after Ryu and maybe Ken for that reason alone. Likewise, Cammy was a big deal when SSF2 hit because "A second female character!" The roster by then was 16 characters large, 1/8th of the roster was female.
Jump ahead of USF4, and there's a lot more females. It's still predominantly male, but on top of Chun-li and Cammy, we have C. Viper, Juri, Poison (...please keep the tranny arguments out of this...), Elena, Makoto, Ibuki, Sakura, Rose and Decapre. That's 1/4th of the roster, so double the amount percentage wise. Is it ideal? Hell no, but the shear number of females to pick from and the male to female ratio being cut from 7:1 to 3:1 is a big deal in itself. Also these characters do have variable designs, ranging from Chun-li who dresses like an actual female warrior, to C. Viper's secret agent "with rocket boots and electric gloves" to Juri's "evil fanservice" outfit, there's a good range of designs to appeal to females. Again, it could be better, I don't deny this!
Then I look at a game like Mortal Kombat 9, and what do I see?
It has 31 characters, two of whom are guest characters granted (Kratos and Freddy Kreuger), so they were pre-established. Otherwise?
We have 7 females if my count is right out of that total, a little less than Street Fighter's ratio to be fair, but the difference?
We have 4 Female Ninjas who look like this but in different colors (http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110912224202/mk_/images/1/11/250px-Skarlet_renderfinal.png), a member of special forces (http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110706220545/mortalkombat/es/images/8/81/Mk9-sonya-blade.jpg), an monstrous 6 armed freak of nature (http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110721012614/mortalkombat/es/images/c/c8/Nekropolis_(4).png) who I am willing to give a pass to because she's too ugly to be sexy, and I think that was intentional since "Goro's Wife" or something. And then we have Sindel (http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110525222059/mortalkombat/es/images/c/cd/Sindelconceptrendermk9.png) who...just speaks for herself.
Not only are the designs less varied, I don't think the combined amount of clothing on all 7 women equals that of what most of the Street Fighter females wear. It says something when Cammy and Juri dress more modestly than every single female in your game.
Basically, what I am getting is I don't think "shear number of females" is enough, but you also need variety. Every single MK9 female clearly was made to be half-naked fanservice, and the fact that 4 of them have very similar designs further suggests "HOT WOMAN! PLAY AS THEM BECAUSE HOT!" When I look at Street Fighter, only a handful seem questionable, and at least their outfits look some degree of practical; I can't say the same for like any of the MK9 females, and more importantly, every single female (...sans Decapre, but that's intentional) is visually very different. It shows "yes, there are various ways females can dress and look! They don't need to be Ninjas to be capable fighters!" ...yes I know Ibuki is a Ninja, but that's ONE female out of 11.
When you think about it, this is why Smash 4 getting so many female newcomers was actually a big deal really. Brawl had 6.5 characters if we include transformations (functionally different characters), and Jigglypuff, with Nana being the "0.5' because you don't actually play as her, but she's still a female. Smash 4 practically doubled the number of potential playable females if we include Miis and situations like Wendy Koopa. I know someone tried to argue once that "female versions of male characters don't count" but my counter point is that the raw number of potential playable females is more important than the proportions. Even if Robin defaults to Male, the fact that you can play as the female version still adds another character of that gender to the roster that you can choose to use instead. Considering the game could have just had only the male version in for simplicity sake and dedicated 4 more color schemes, them putting that extra effort, voice acting, etc. to put Fem!Robin in just shows a nice gesture.
I know this wasn't really brought up, but just thought I'd start a quick analysis of Fighting Game female representation in modern times. I didn't even realize just how bad a game like MK9 was in this regard until I saw all the females; I knew the Ninjas were bad, but forgot there were 4 of them and that's over half the female representation in that game.
Considering who made it, it feels like the only reason Injustice wasn't filled with girls running around in bikinis was because these characters had pre-established designs in their comics, and they wanted to at least be somewhat accurate to that.
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So...one positive thing that is coming out of all of this is that there is attention being drawn to online harassment, and what can be done about it. This story gets pretty intense, but was worth a read:
http://randi.io/wp/archives/86
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Can't Nana be the Ice Climbers lead with one of the alt colors?
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Nana and Popo have subtle differences in facial expressions and that never changes regardless of color; you're always considered playing as Popo regardless I believe anyway.
That said, if Ice Climbers had returned in Smash 4, I would not be shocked if half the alts did swap the two characters, because Smash 4 liked to things like that. THEN AGAIN, they didn't give us a Ms. Pac-Man alt for Pac-Man even though it was probably a very easy thing to do, so who knows.
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On Gamergate and why they suck:
The long and short of it, for me, is I'm finding both "pro-GG" and "anti-GG" sentiments increasingly frustrating. Both sides are so polarized that it is pretty much impossible to actually discuss anything because everyone is too busy shouting "stupid SJW's" and "stupid misogynists."
I really dislike just equating the two sides here. I don't think it's at all fair to say that both sides are "equally bad" or whatever. Hell, just look at the labels both throw at each other, and assume that they have some truth to them (and they do). The Gamergate crowd is guilty of misogyny. The anti-Gamergate crowd is guilty of... caring about social justice? The fact that anyone can say that as if it is an insult is kinda mindblowing. "Fuck you for caring about the downtrodden of society." I think that right there says very much about how vile the Gamergate crowd by and large is. I get that it has some good people in it, but the movement's standardbearers are... not making a good name for themselves.
I mean, I don't agree with every criticism that gets thrown at a game in the name of sexism or racism, but I applaud anyone's right to bring such things up, and think such discussions are worth having. The way the average Gamergater seems to rage against the discussions themselves (and insults others for caring about such things) smacks of insecurity.
Your mileage may vary on that. I've witnessed plenty of racist and sexist material from the Anti-GG crowd, in addition to a frequent and strong desire to not want discussion, but instead desire that game/artist/writer be silenced for daring to act in a way that runs counter to their perception of just. It is a different issue, yes, but it also deserves to be smacked down.
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Oh, so the GGers actually did manage to call forth actual, original flavor, shut-the-fuck-up-check-your-privilege-I-am-right-you-are-racist SJW among all their crying? I never really ran across any, but I can't be surprised either I suppose.
That said, it's still such a false dichotomy that feeding into the GG delusion that they somehow are being persecuted is too damaging to address that issue, at least in the larger GG discussion. Their behavior is sufficiently abhorrent that backing them is always going to get someone hurt unfortunately.
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An interesting article by polygon:
http://www.polygon.com/2014/11/17/7235801/game-criticism-ideology-gamergate-and-they-live
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So, in today's news of the absurd, Jack Thompson has entered the field. In support of Gamergate. The story is, he's done an interview with the guys who are doing this "documentary" on Sarkeesian and he's supposedly their big trump card with tons of connections in the biz.
Now that the story has been leaked and the big boogeyman that they've been comparing Sarkeesian too is officially on their side, you'd hope this would lead to some horror or self-reflection. Nope. They're celebrating. The guy that pretty much all of gaming banded together to say "This guy is bad and needs to be stopped" is batting for their side and they think this is a good thing.
Of course, don't just take my word for it. Read for yourself. (http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2mp44d/thesarkeesianeffect_teaser_trailer_includes/)
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Why will my palm not detach from my face?
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did you have another glue accident while doing origami?
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Yeah...from the perspective of someone in the industry, honestly GamerGate and Jack Thompson felt similar. Someone outside the industry who doesn't like it. It's also not that different from former statements of some of their most prominent supporters like Milo Yiannopoulos:
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/05/27/virgin-killer-was-not-a-misogynist-but-a-madman
So ignore the shoddy, opportunistic posturing from feminists about Rodger’s crimes. It’s the blurring of fantasy and reality in today’s video game-obsessed young men that’s the real enemy. If there’s a cultural milieu that contributed to the creation of Elliot Rodger, it was that of nihilistic video games, not the myth of patriarchal oppression.
And that's far from the only anti-gamer thing Milo has said:
https://twitter.com/Nero/status/304385532367106048
https://twitter.com/Nero/status/304398843435446272
But he apologized or something, so the gamergate crowd is cool with him now.
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But back to Jack Thompson! The archived pro-Jack Thompson tweets are strangely theraputic to read:
https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/gamergate-supports-jack-thompson
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Jack Thompson, eh? Celebrating, eh? Really. #NotRealGamersGate
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On Gamergate and why they suck:
The long and short of it, for me, is I'm finding both "pro-GG" and "anti-GG" sentiments increasingly frustrating. Both sides are so polarized that it is pretty much impossible to actually discuss anything because everyone is too busy shouting "stupid SJW's" and "stupid misogynists."
I really dislike just equating the two sides here. I don't think it's at all fair to say that both sides are "equally bad" or whatever. Hell, just look at the labels both throw at each other, and assume that they have some truth to them (and they do). The Gamergate crowd is guilty of misogyny. The anti-Gamergate crowd is guilty of... caring about social justice? The fact that anyone can say that as if it is an insult is kinda mindblowing. "Fuck you for caring about the downtrodden of society." I think that right there says very much about how vile the Gamergate crowd by and large is. I get that it has some good people in it, but the movement's standardbearers are... not making a good name for themselves.
I mean, I don't agree with every criticism that gets thrown at a game in the name of sexism or racism, but I applaud anyone's right to bring such things up, and think such discussions are worth having. The way the average Gamergater seems to rage against the discussions themselves (and insults others for caring about such things) smacks of insecurity.
Your mileage may vary on that. I've witnessed plenty of racist and sexist material from the Anti-GG crowd, in addition to a frequent and strong desire to not want discussion, but instead desire that game/artist/writer be silenced for daring to act in a way that runs counter to their perception of just. It is a different issue, yes, but it also deserves to be smacked down.
Oh look, I now have something to say about gamergate. Fuck you, Andy. Fuck you six ways from Sunday.
I'm gonna have to call bullshit on that and ask for some proof on that "I've witnessed plenty of racist and sexist material from the Anti-GG crowd." I won't challenge the part where they refused to open up discussion, because I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't want to open up communication channels with a bunch of manbabies throwing a temper tantrum and harassing every woman that pops up on their radar. Granted, most of what I've seen of gamergate has filtered in through Reddit, which is filled with crying manchildren to begin with, but I haven't seen near the level of outright misogyny coming from the anti-GG crowd as I have seen from the pro-GG crowd. Case in point:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/23/felicia-days-public-details-online-gamergate
Felicia Day posts an anecdote (http://thisfeliciaday.tumblr.com/post/100700417809/the-only-thing-i-have-to-say-about-gamer-gate) about how she encountered someone wearing a video game T-shirt after gamergate hit the news, and for once instead of seeing it as a sign of comradery and a signal to be at ease around people with similar interests saw it as a reason to be on full guard around those people.
Chris Kluwe goes full Zenny on the gamergate crowd and calls them a bunch of paint-huffing shitgoblins. (https://medium.com/the-cauldron/why-gamergaters-piss-me-the-f-off-a7e4c7f6d8a6)
Guess who gets doxxed.
Yeah, gamergate and anti-gamergate are totally equivalent sides in this. Fuck that, and fuck you. Gamergate isn't about ethics in game journalism and never has been. Hell, they actively went against Jim Sterling, someone who built a fucking youtube career talking about the unethical shit that goes on in the AAA games industry, their relation to distributors, and other incredibly bad-for-the-consumer trends currently going on in the industry, and has even decided to start a patreon account so he can continue doing what he does without the taint of corporate sponsorship (http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/11/15/examining-jim-sterlings-grand-experiment-to-create-video-game-journalism-utopia/) when he refused to cotton to their game. What this guy is doing now fucking EMBODIES what the Gamergate crowd supposedly wants but because of the rampant harassment almost inherently entwined with Gamergate, both he and gamergate are now on different sides of the debate.
Gamergate is not about ethics in game journalism and the manbabies behind it don't fucking want open discourse. This movement is just co-opting something that sounds nice and reasonable to cover up the vitriol and, let's face it, utter bullshit that they actually champion and act on.
EDIT: Also, really, for fucks sakes. The gamergate hashtag crowd flock murderwhateverthefuck started over an incident when an Indie developer*, may have used personal connections to leverage positive reviews for her game*. And not even one of those steam greenlight indie games that were quickly cobbled together in 3 hours using borrowed assets in an attempt to make a few bucks for as long as they could get away with banning negative criticism on their steam review page**. Yes, totally a way to build legitimacy in the movement. Attack the indie developers. Not the triple A fuckoffs making deals with distributors for exclusive DLC in a shameless attempt to drive up pre-orders for games that may not even work right. Or who make very detailed, very specific, contracts with youtubers to let them preview the game if and only if they give it a positive review (http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/10/08/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-paid-branding-deals-should-have-gamergate-up-in-arms/). Nope guys let's stage the battlegrounds with the depressionquest girl. The one who tried to make a CYOA story about depression. And maybe she had sex with someone while she was the property of another dude. Yes. Let's do that.
*oh wow things you should already know
**seriously you should watch Jimquisition it is some good shit
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But bro, real gamers don't play indie shit. All this coverage of indie games must be proof of corruption.
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EDIT: Nevermind. I'm gonna step back from this one. GG discussions in general just annoy me.
Short story is: I don't like either tribe and I think they are both problematic for different reasons. People like Jim Sterling and Erik Kain are the real heroes. Take that as you will.
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Not only do I pretty much agree with everything Zenny said, he brought up things I didn't even know about that only further cements my agreement. Didn't even know they went after Jim Sterling, and as you said, everything he says is exactly what they're allegedly fighting for. That alone proves how bullshit their stance is.
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Let's be clear, by "went after" i mean they blew up his twitter or something for being an Esss Jay Doubleyou or some shit. They didn't doxx him or anything. I mean, he still has a penis. That would be uncouth.
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Interesting article. (http://www.popehat.com/2014/10/26/ten-short-rants-about-gamergate/)
You're going to say "but the people I was piling on/freaking out about/boycotting are totally distinguishable from the people being victimized now by piling on/freaking out/boycotting." How nice for you. Explain that distinction to them and let me know how it works out.
But too many critics of #GamerGate seem to view it as a fine opportunity to demean both groups and individuals based on attributes like weight, appearance, social isolation, and non-neurotypical status. People (including, occasionally, me) employ "fat, smelly, basement-dwelling Aspie neckbeard" rhetoric to talk about misogyny or harassment in gaming.
...
I'm sure you can construct an excellent argument about how demeaning language against women occurs in a historical context and in connection with a power structure and patriarchal vertices and thus-and-such, and that it is simply different than making fun of people for being fat or unattractive or autistic. That's swell. It would get you a solid A- in your sophomore seminar at Brown. But most of the real world thinks it is an unconvincing rationalization.
(emphasis mine)
... it's always good to exercise skepticism about how your anger about an issue is being monetized or weaponized by others.
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Let's be clear, by "went after" i mean they blew up his twitter or something for being an Esss Jay Doubleyou or some shit. They didn't doxx him or anything. I mean, he still has a penis. That would be uncouth.
I didn't actually assume any specific action against him, more just assumed a general situation; spamming his twitter is about what I expected for whatever it's worth.
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I also read that article, and so far as I'm concerned, the big thing there is that context gives meaning. Or, the quote about how if some of the people reacted to the events in Ferguson by stating that was a fine time to bring attention to the plight of convenience store clerks getting shot.
There are real people being driven away from the industry by this GG crap, real people who are having to avoid their homes because of this. And that isn't really a side effect of jostling for something good, it's the point of this whole affair. This is a movement that was never about ethics, and where they are equating people arguing that there should be change with someone who was trying to pass laws to ban games.
So, yeah. The only ethical response to GG is opposition.
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Read the whole article.
Look: yes, I agree there are some idiots who stand among the opposition to gamergate. I agree that "fat neckbeard aspie" is terminology that we should not be using, and I do not use it. I have never stood up for Gawker as a website, and my response to gamergaters going after it has been to shrug, and say "well I guess I don't have a problem with that. I'm glad they're not going after gamasutra anymore."
Look, I'm all for not demonizing people, and I really, really don't demonize people. I've been friends with a satanist (she was actually pretty cool, honestly). I've idly wondered if the KKK has cleaned up their act--they certainly seem to be moving in a more moderate direction. I was roommates with a 9/11 truther. And certainly I have friends who are everything from republican/libertarian to downright marxist. You can't say I'm not open-minded; if anything it's a fault of mine.
But I can't fault other people for being dismissive of a movement that has been categorized as a hate movement by watchdog organizations (http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/10/16/hatewatch-headlines-101614/). And if you really put me in an awkward situation--like told me I had to take a roommate that was either a satanist or a gamergater...I would probably want to learn more about the individual rather than relying on a label, but based on past experience with each label I'd lean towards the satanist. I'm still going to poke my head into gamergate forums and discussions from time to time, because I genuinely really care about ethics in video game journalism, and sometimes, every once in a while, they dig up an actual ethical breach. Although it's frustrating how much I need to dig to get at the videogame journalism stuff (http://i.imgur.com/fm72UAZ.png).
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I wrote a really long post about this and deleted it.
In summary:
- Both sides resort to "you are dumb"
- Both sides are being ridiculous
- True journalism reform folks refusing to find a new identity are just like a 5-year-old refusing to take a bath because they'll only get dirty again
- Refusing to identify as anti-#GG does not mean I'm not against what #GG-as-a-hate-group is doing
- Censorship -- either attacking advertisers and hoping to starve out publications they disagree with, or attacking game makers and gamers for perpetuating stereotypes/patriarchy -- is a slippery slope
I've pointed it out before, but challenging strongly held beliefs with facts forces people to double down. It doesn't matter if you're right. What is your goal? Convincing the wrong side they're wrong is fruitless. Attacking people who don't share your label but believe in the same things you do is destructive. Pick something else.
Stop arguing about doing or "someone should be doing". Do.
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I've pointed it out before, but challenging strongly held beliefs with facts forces people to double down. It doesn't matter if you're right. What is your goal? Convincing the wrong side they're wrong is fruitless. Attacking people who don't share your label but believe in the same things you do is destructive. Pick something else.
Stop arguing about doing or "someone should be doing". Do.
I've long held that the answer to "What can change the nature of a man?", and when you get down to it that is what trying to challenge someone's deep down beliefs is, is "Nothing". People do not change their natures. Some people can be swayed into changing their perspectives, but that too is rare. Otherwise all you can really do is wait for them to die off and hope they didn't spread their beliefs too far.
But there is a goal in continuing to tell them they are wrong.
It is to say "Go away." "You are being hateful and harmful and spreading lies and that is not welcome in this space." You can't change how people are, and you can't change what they believe, and you can't tell them how to act. But you can tell them to go be hateful in their own little space and get the fuck out of yours. And really that is the practical fallout of the whole thing, spaces like Twitter asserting the line between public space and personal space exists there as it does in the physical realm.
Or I'm overthinking this, I dunno. So tired of humans. It's all fucked, let dogs take over or something I just want to sleep.[/I]
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Yes. But it's been going on for months to the exclusion of anything else. As a whole, the loud bickering is drowning out or suppressing the attempts to change something.
(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png) (http://xkcd.com/386/)
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Well of course. Like I said, I'm waiting for the other side to die. And since that'll take a while, sometimes the bile from being reminded they are still alive spills over.
Okay, on a less flip note I don't really have the technical skill to make my own non-shit gaming media outlet, the charisma or dedication to organize movements, or the eccentric billionaire credentials to actually function in the political realm. So while I do try to only act on this front when it rears it's head, there's not a whole hell of a lot else I can do that's helping that I can figure.
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Yes. But it's been going on for months to the exclusion of anything else. As a whole, the loud bickering is drowning out or suppressing the attempts to change something.
(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png) (http://xkcd.com/386/)
But isn't all this 'talking about it' making people a lot of money? I doubt it's going to stop anytime soon. What's more, someone brought up the point earlier that all this attention to the issue is good thing in general, even if it's attracting a lot of terrible people (on both sides, though for my own views, significantly -more- terrible people on GG's side).
I don't think that all the discussion is actually interfering with attempts to change things.
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Okay, I've stayed out of this mainly because I don't feel like I can really shed any light on it (by nature of being male and not really wrapped up in game reviews and stuff because who the fuck reads professional reviews anymore? Apparently more than I thought). I do however, want to point one line from one of Zenny's article, which I think really illustrates what's wrong with the entire Gamergate deal:
"In fact, #Gamergaters, if your concern really was ethics, the very first thing you would be saying about this whole mess is, “Holy shit, get these fucking misogynistic creeps away from us. Let’s find a different hashtag to assemble under RIGHT FUCKING NOW.”
'The ends do not justify the means'. If you're so far down this rabbit hole that you're committed to ddoxing and sending death threats, you really need to re-evaluate these people in your group and what you're doing. Like Grefter, I have more of an issue with how gamergate is going about business more than the actual issue itself. I don't care if you're trying to make reviewers be more transparent, but spewing death threats is a good sign that this seems to be more about a hate campaign than anything really and that you've lost sight of your objectives.
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Here's a pretty good post by a gamergater on why they left:
http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2mqbje/are_you_a_reformed_gator_what_was_your_breaking/cm6ulpd
EDIT: and a link I saw when browsing some responses to particularly bigoted gamergate talk.
http://aebrain.blogspot.co.uk/p/transsexual-and-intersex-gender-identity.html
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http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/its-not-about-that-damn-shirt.html
Kind of wouldn't mind it if the planet caught on fire right now. That last point Edit - about Twitter., holy shit human beings are the worst.
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One of my Facebook friends gave someone a good tongue-lashing for trying to say "silly women" to the backlash on that shirt thing. Unsurprisingly, dumb misogynists like to act like women are dumb (for pretty much anything they do).
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Ok, so now I'd like to talk about a piece in detail that I did not cover in my opening post, because at the time I did not understand it. Namely
The Fine Young Capitalists
And...bear in mind, I'm not linking an article on this, because I...haven't seen everything collected nicely in one place. This post is a result of coalation and digging I've done.
To catch people up to speed, TFYC is the "feminist charity" that gamergate donated to a while back. They're also a group with which Zoe Quinn had a disagreement several months before any of this started.
So...some clarifications about them: they're not actually a charity; they're a for-profit company and have claimed so themselves. This shouldn't be too surprising with the word "capitalist" in the title, but still. They also agree with the statement:
http://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/tfyc-questions/
They are a brand new organization; they have yet to run a contest to completion with a released game. So...it might turn out that nothing will come from the project (a lot of crowdfunded projects end up being duds). And their transparency is very low (no address, no list of employees, the one known employee hides it on his linkedin).
The story of their disagreement involved Zoe calling them exploitative and transphobic, and them claiming that she doxxed and DDOSed them. Let's go through each of these.
exploitative
So this is somewhat subjective, but the structure of TFYC's competition is strange. The woman who wins provides an idea, and then a comapny in Colombia makes the game. This...isn't really what people like me are saying when we want more women in game development; we want more women actually creating content for the games. "Idea person" is not really a job within the game industry; the jobs are normally "Artist" "Animator" "Programmer" "Designer" "Producer". All of these actually create things (except producers, who still spend a lot of time on schedules, and getting resources for the team--and also not all companies have producers).
The winner of TFYC's contest just gets to be an idea person; doesn't actually make anything. And they get 8% of the profits if the game makes profits. It's not a great system to be honest.
Transphobic
So this is a bit messy...because their current policy is displayed here (http://www.thefineyoungcapitalists.com/TransgenderPolicy) but does not seem to be the policy they had back in March (and also internet archiving (https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.thefineyoungcapitalists.com/TransgenderPolicy) suggests the page didn't exist until August 22). Previous communications suggest a different wording:
https://twitter.com/TFYCapitalists/status/522251529517297664
https://docs.google.com/document/d/166fECwNpcRT3elDf0qUAnzVjU2gsJENwZaU9pGnIQdE/edit
http://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/224ktk/mozillas_ceo_steps_down/cgjm994
I couldn't find the full version of the old wording, nor could other people I talked to, BUT here is the wording according to Zoe Quinn herself, who was nice enough to reply:
http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2mseyq/question_has_tfycs_trans_policy_changed/cm7frdk
The trans policy was originally simply "Is the contest open to transgendered individuals that identify as female? Yes, as long as they transitioned before the start of the contest."
Which...I have no reason to doubt this statement given that it matches emails that they themselves wrote.
So lets look into this statement; is it problematic? For starters, I can't find the word "transitioned" defined by any human rights groups. It gets used (rarely) in sentences like these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender#Transsexual
People who have transitioned may or may not necessarily identify as transgender or transsexual any longer, but simply as a man or a woman.
Which sounds...like it's much, much further into the process than "the point at which you self-identify as a gender". Basically, according to lists of terms I'm googling, "transitioned" doesn't actually mean anything in particular, but gets used colloquially to mean something FAR, FAR different from what TFYC believe it to mean.
I'm also going to pause and paraphrase a few choice quotes from this particular discussion from...about April (a month after they interacted with Quinn):
http://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/224ktk/mozillas_ceo_steps_down/cgjm994
TFYC: [details disagreement]
fluff: "That's your fault; words mean things"
TFYC: "FUCK YOU"
fluff: "I can't imagine why people were put off by your behavior"
TFYC: "I'm tired having to deal with Cis individuals fighting for the rights of people that they have no idea about what so ever."
fluff: "I'm not cis, you ignorant asshole."
TFYC: "Your still wrong"
fluff: "live in your fantasy land if you want."
TFYC: [quotes the definition of "transition" NOT "transitioned" from here (http://transequality.org/Resources/TransTerminology_2014.pdf). Note also that the definition of transition quoted here does NOT match "self-identified".
fluff: That's not going to help you any.
The point of quoting (and shortening) this is just to demonstrate the stubbornness. This is a month after the original wording was suggested as problematic.
doxxing by Zoe
That wasn't her. Some random twitter follower of hers did. TFYC later admitted this much
DDOS by Zoe
Never happened. She linked the website from her twitter. Lots of twitter followers + small website, it crashed. But there was no malicious intent
On their participation in gamergate
So...around the time hate is blowing up around Zoe Quinn, they re-tell their story, complete with several false claims, and because they are against Zoe Quinn, they become allies of Gamergate, and Gamergate funds them. This isn't so crazy; as we've seen with Jack Thompson, gamergate is cool with "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic. So...gamergate funds them, creates the Vivian James avatar for them to use (which to an outsider looks fine, but has some issues. Notably the green and purple colouring is a reference to a 4 chan meme about rape). 4 chan also gets them to post this:
https://twitter.com/tfycapitalists/status/502528192327204864
And they defend receiving money from 4 chan, saying that to do otherwise would be to opress 4 chan:
http://thefineyoungcapitalists.tumblr.com/post/95548937520/on-opression-and-narrative
And their twitter account becomes pretty active within the gamergate hashtag, following some explicitly anti-feminist gamergaters (like...people with the tagline "feminists are stupid" in their twitter description).
So...let's rewind for a bit; is there anything particularly immoral in this section so far? The one thing I really take issue with is inserting themselves into a harassment campaign, and leveraging it for funding. This is...opportunistic at best, and harmful at worst. It's very much a "do the means justify the ends?" question. As for the rest of it...all of the 4 chan associations are hypothetically not a moral issue, HOWEVER, if your goal is to get women into making games, such strategies...might not be the best PR.
____________
So....basically....
Zoe Quinn, for all that my overall impression of her have been mixed, seems like her objections to TFYC in March were 100% valid and reasonable. Gamergate calling TFYC a "feminist charity"...they aren't a charity and never called themselves as such, and a lot of their public communication is stuff that feminists would find objectionable. (Personally, I'm not bothered by some of the TFYC stuff Zoe finds problematic such as this (http://thefineyoungcapitalists.tumblr.com/post/96169860190/on-equality-and-differences), and feel the UofT study on spatial skills means that we should be making videogames part of the standard curriculum, but others do feel uncomfortable with this "male and female brains aren't identical" talk). So...are TFYC feminist? Overall I think they do have some feminist goals and ideas, but as an organization the message they send is sometimes mixed. Will we ever find out who the winning contestant is for their competition? They've given her the option to remain anonymous, and given how closely they're connected to gamergate...she might choose to take that option, so...future still uncertain. Will we ever see a game out of this crowd-funded project? Who knows with crowd funding, although the lack of transparency is not encouraging.
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Welp, turns out this was pretty relevant, as Zoe posted this today:
http://ohdeargodbees.tumblr.com/post/103251119644/how-not-to-run-your-games-education-programs
EDIT: and here I was thinking that TFYC had understood their error and had figured out sensible wording of transgender stuff as of August 22. Well...this was posted today...:
https://twitter.com/TFYCapitalists/status/536185797926735872
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All because they are obsessed with what they see as a "legal" term for it and it's okay you guys we ran it by like two lawyers who said they didn't see what the big deal was. Ignore the entire community that is telling you this is not how people actually talk about it, this guy in Ontario and this other guy who is from San Francisco, San Fransisco you guys, there is literally no way at all we can be wrong about this.
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Thought this was pretty interesting; Brianna Wu chronicled how women's issues were covered by Game Developer Magazine in the 90s:
https://storify.com/Spacekatgal/what
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Really interesting stuff!
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Yeah, that was interesting to see. Also, tangentially, really happy they changed Dixie Kong's design <_<
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The big deal there is that the magazine just used Candy Kong's art to illustrate Dixie, which demonstrates pretty clearly how little they cared. It's also emphasized by the fact that Candy's awful from a girl representation perspective while Dixie's actually pretty cool.
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Huh, didn't even notice that was DKC1 Candy Kong, shows how long it's been!
Dixie has always stood out as an example of a clear female character who is non-human, yet not sexualized in anyway to appeal to furries. True, part of it is because she's intended to resemble a younger girl as opposed to an adult or a teen, but the point stands. Instead of going "here's a monkey with bewbs!" they just had her dress in pink, and gave her some basic effeminate features like the thick pony-tail or the elongated eyelashes. It contrasts someone like, say, Krystal from Star Fox in this regard, a character whose design was made kind of fanservicey despite being a fox.
The weirdest example I can think of for these kinds of characters, though, is Tiny Kong. I'd explain it but I think a simple demonstration through pictures gets the point across:
This is what she use to look like circa 1999 in DK64:
(http://www.mariowiki.com/images/thumb/1/1d/TinyKong.jpg/150px-TinyKong.jpg)
This is what she looks like now, in various spin offs and stuff like Diddy Kong Racing DS:
(http://www.mariowiki.com/images/thumb/6/64/Tinymss.PNG/200px-Tinymss.PNG)
Keep in mind that she's suppose to be Dixie's younger sister, and Dixie's design as remained fairly consistent since her initial appearance in DKC2. There's nothing openly wrong with Tiny's older design, though there is a sense of "make her look more attractive", just kind of a weird decision to age her up dramatically when her elder sister hasn't gotten such a treatment.
Though really, it's hard to complain about the design being offensive when Candy Kong exists, especially in her DK64 design (which is even worse when you look at the dialog, which is NOT adjusted for purposes of Tiny Kong, so yes, we have an ADULT FEMALE SEXUALIZED GORILLA hitting on a little girl monkey). I'll spare you all the screenshot because seriously <_<
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So DK64 is literally Snow fanservice? Neat. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCzsVo3gnLo)
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die
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I have missed you too dear.
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Feel good story of the day
https://twitter.com/Charalanahzard/status/538144080534847489
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Feel bad story of the day
https://archive.today/16LrY
Brianna Wu's dog is taken to the vet with some pretty lethal stuff. Reaches out for support on Twitter. Is accused of ignoring her dog in favour of arguing with people on the Internet because that is all they think Twitter is for.
Ethics so hard hard to fix them journalisms you guys.
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Potential fallacies to attribute to the responses:
"If I were going to be arguing about GamerGate, I would never bring up anything else. Therefore, she must be failing because she is no longer focusing solely on GamerGate." or "If I had a dog that was ill, I wouldn't be on Twitter, therefore because she is on Twitter she must not care about her dog."
- Mind projection
- Moral high ground (implied)
- Psychologist's (with special attention to "if" since they're coming from what they assume is an objective reflection of their own behavior)
A whole bunch of red herrings:
Ad hominem + abusive fallacy
- "She's a terrible person for not paying 100% of her attention to her sick dog, why should we listen to her?" followed by aggressive personal insults and threats
Appeal to emotion
- "She has a sick dog. She's ignoring that poor thing in favor of arguing against us. How pathetic!"
Argumentum ad baculum (implied association)
- "If you're on her side, you're the scum of the earth and you deserve every bit of abuse we're sending her way."
Fallacy of relative privation
- "Why is she talking about her sick dog? Games journalism is under siege!"
Tu quoque
- "She says she cares about women in gaming, about gaming as a whole, but she obviously doesn't care about her dog. If she doesn't care about the dog, how do we figure she cares about anything other than her own selfish desire for attention?"
--
Then again, abstraction is completely lost on the people willing to attack a woman over the anonymity of the internet (or even without it), nevermind doing so while dealing with a tough personal emergency, especially when she goes to her social media followers for support.
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And all of that is without getting into the people who are apparently sending pictures of mutilated dogs to her corporate e-mail account that she can't hand off to someone else to read.
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Yeah, that one gets really dirty. Someone made a twitter account for her dog and then tweeted at her with "lol I'm going to die soon". And then they sent pictures of dead animals to her work email. And while I'm listing super shitty harassment that happened in the last 24 hours, pretty sure this is illegal dude (https://twitter.com/freebsdgirl/status/539630899709485057).
But the story I found really interesting today was this one:
https://storify.com/hnrysmth/transphobia-and-notyourshield
Someone really dug deep into notyourshield to figure out how they managed to exist in the gamergate culture (which has gotten more extreme of late). It's...fascinating, if a little depressing.
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For what it is worth, the guy that did the twitter account is pretty demonstrably a different guy than whoever emailed the dead dog pictures to her work email. The guy who made it talked to some people and he mentioned he was going through some bad shit and lashed out cause he thought it would make him feel better. It didn't and he regretted it. Has since been deleted. Also with the plus that if it was deleted with the same Twitter name it will be tied up for a month (thanks for that bit of Twitter Trivia having read about this nonsense in the last two days), so no one can jump on it and do more shit. Small light in that I suppose?
Also a pretty well put together thought piece by Zoe Quinn
https://medium.com/@zoequinnzel/lets-talk-about-ethics-in-games-journalism-6a2fd89069ae
Which is obviously completely invalidated because she totally had sex with someone once, but you know, in case you want to read words written by someone that cares about "video games" more than discussing in public the activities involving her genitals.
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Mm. I’m going to step in it again.
I would not say Zoe's response is any more balanced than the #GG side of things, though it is decidedly less violent about making its point. She’s riding on a high horse, sure that being attacked is a sign she’s on the righteous path. (Galileo gambit/argumentum ad martyrdom, bias blindspot)
She belittles games writers that are, by her standards, abusing the industry perks by focusing on stature rather than bettering the industry. She also comments on their personal behavior:
You end up meeting them sometimes at industry events trying to impress you at the open bar with a clumsy pickup line and a flash of their badge as though you were part of their loyal viewership of five.
(argument from motives, fundamental attribution error, ultimate attribution error)
She is painting with very broad strokes when she says enthusiast press is a hotbed for low-level amateurs where very few “grow out of it,” even if she qualifies the assertion with an off-handed “Obviously not all enthusiast press is like that, or even most, but it’s definitely A Thing that has been floating around the industry as long as I’ve been a part of it.” (judgmental language, appeal to authority)
You end up with a decent number of small sites stocked with people who don’t know much about the actual craft of writing churning out mediocre regurgitation of press releases, … with a level of professionalism resembling a ‘radio station’ created with schoolyard friends where you record songs off the radio and talk over them.
That’s not even targeting #GamerGate, that’s targeting folks who aren’t already in the industry. It’s something the chosen few rise out of (“My heart goes out to anyone who has to work for people like that as they try to grind out something for a place that actually deserves their time and effort.”). It’s a slew of articles wherein the first mistake is how shitty their grasp of grammar is (appeal to accomplishment, fallacy of division, judgmental language).
I’m actually fine painting #GamerGate with broad strokes. I think I’ve mentioned before that anyone asinine enough to claim that #GamerGate covers true paragons of ethics in journalism is not perceptive enough to understand that such an association completely undermines their point and really doesn’t merit the hurt cry of the unjustly pilloried. (guilt by association)
Weirdly, she spends a lot of the article talking about all the hypocrisy of the #GGers claiming ethics violations and no time at all covering what she would really consider the pursuit of ethics in journalism other than to note those people fronting for it from #GG are wrong because of where they’re coming from. (guilt by association, Bulverism, negativity effect)
She does acknowledge there is an ethics problem, but she discounts disclaimers because of one ridiculous example (fallacy of the lonely fact). I do agree that trying to disclose all relationships in any context is too unwieldy, and the answer is less about shutting down the people who develop too many contacts as it is about encouraging those people to moderate their bias resulting from it. But the extreme example discounting the need for any disclosure goes too far.
And so it goes. It’s a subject people are passionate about and it tends to encourage an echo chamber. (confirmation bias, backfire effect) I don’t really believe there’s a middle ground here (argumentum ad temperantium/gray fallacy - also leading into Okrent’s law) but that’s not an answer either.
The excerpt from Katherine Cross's paper is excellent and I'll have to read the full piece.
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Katherine Cross has written top-notch stuff about not just Gamergate but the involvement of women in nerd culture in general. She's pretty awesome.
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Weirdly, she spends a lot of the article talking about all the hypocrisy of the #GGers claiming ethics violations and no time at all covering what she would really consider the pursuit of ethics in journalism other than to note those people fronting for it from #GG are wrong because of where they’re coming from. (guilt by association, Bulverism, negativity effect)
That seems to be intentional actually. She's more making/summarizing a case that #GG itself is an ethics problem to toss on top of the pile of them the game press has. Which makes her last paragraph rather disingenuous, but eh. Being needlessly heavy handed seems to be a personal quirk for her.
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Usual disclaimer, Grefter loves him some Gonzo writing, I tend to champion it well past the point where it is actually a good thing. Due to its very nature your mileage will drastically vary.
One thing I would note that makes more sense of Quinn's article is that it is a Gonzo piece, there is a reason she links to Gonzo Journalism in this part here.
Sometimes I still write one-off articles about these things for places like GiantBomb, Gamasutra, and Kotaku, because I think there’s value in having a wide variety of backgrounds writing on our medium and industry — a developer will have a different perspective than an academic who will have a different perspective from the critic, hardcore enthusiast, journalist, gonzo writer, and so on and so forth. This is great because each perspective brings a new way of thinking and talking about games to the table.
Which of course is set up later with the (valid IMO) claim that most gonzo writers aren't actually journalists, they don't have the same standards to be held up to (ie this isn't their day job, they should try, they likely don't have the same peer review circle). Which reads like making your own get out of jail free card for your article which is a bit problematic.
So ignoring the arguments though, do you necessarilly disagree with some of the points Ash? Like to be super stupid and anecdotal here. This site itself has had us as a community flirt with reviews and the like, we have always been aligned to games media as a thing. Out of the lot of us there is what, 4 of us that went pro in anything in the industry (You, Andy, Met and Laggy?) out of the four only yourself has anything to do with the media side of the industry directly.
I think the point there is more that there is a hedge industry of enthusiast journalism that isn't professional, has no desire to be so and shouldn't really be expected to. Like can you imagine how fucking frustrating it would have been for someone trying to go pro doing articles with us for the front page? We would be infuriating to work with because we are just in it for giggles (to which we would obviously have been pushing them to be trying elsewhere as well...), actually driving to go pro is fucking hard, especially if you don't want to start up your own little niche.
The broad strokes for the enthusiast market is 100% done to mock up the more "sinister" Techraptor segment even more. The belittling the enthusiasts for trying to get their mack on with their ill gained press pass is a humanising technique. They are losers, they are the underdog etcetc. And yes it does place "The Industry" on a plateau as well in the same stroke. Compare that to these guys that aggressively seek to go in for a profit! The evils!
It is 100% an appeal to emotion to highlight hipocrisy amongst some of the big "news" sources that are coming out of this stuff. She hyperfocuses on one example, but it is spreading beyond just Techraptor.
For example
http://imgur.com/RhZcUn6 Here you can see an annoucement from The Ralph Retort announcing they are having an interview with RooshV for his paid for sponsored slot. So all well and good right, they have transparency in their advertising that looks like regular content? Only really if you don't understand the issues with Native Advertising.
It gets worse though, it isn't just straight up accepting pay for access to an audience, but who they are accepting it from. I needed to look up RooshV. It quickly turns dark. This is what it is about
http://www.rooshv.com/i-started-a-new-web-site-reaxxion-com
I’m starting a video game site even though I haven’t played video games seriously since the year 2000 (Starcraft was my jam). I don’t even play mobile games. I won’t blow smoke up your ass by pretending I’m a gamer or have a deep commitment in furthering game technology. My only commitment is with helping men.
I aim to protect the interests of heterosexual Western males, a category I’m in. The far-left is trying to censor and criminalize masculine behaviors that are normal. They want to relabel consensual sex as “rape” and relabel innocent flirting as “harassment,” and as I learned with #gamergate, they’ve successfully infected the gaming industry and gaming journalist sites by damaging the very nature of gaming development to fit their extreme political agenda. So while I don’t play video games, the idea of starting a pro-#gamergate site is compatible with my overall mission.
Which speaks for itself really plainly right there. Straight up paid for backing by an MRA but it is okay because they are open that he has paid for it, and it is totally relevant because he is opening a game news site so we thought you would like to know. It is just a chance for our advertisers to get together with a target audience that we think they could be really keen on.
So when she is calling all this stuff out, I do think it brings up a pretty important topic of, if you are going to campaign for Ethics in games Journalism, you probably want to run a pretty tight ship on that front and there is definitely some sites that associate themselves to the movement that do some hella skeevy things.
As an aside, I think one of the biggest harms to the Gonzo style ultimately is that it gets labelled Gonzo Journalism. Sadly most of us aren't Hunter Thompson and most definitely don't deserve to be even remotely closely associated with Journalism. I am not sure if that means Gonzo really shouldn't be a style outside journalists? But it is so appealling and fun to do, I don't know if I could comfortably editorialise (poorly) in another style.
Sort of edit (CK posted while I was writing so not real edit but don't want to work into structure of ramble) - CK, have you ever known a piece like that to be a light touch? You appeal to anecdotes and personal experience for effect.
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Sure, sure. I more mean that that is the style Zoe uses in general. From what I've seen Depression Quest is essentially that as well for example.
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Just in here to quickly reply to CK, because I don't feel I'm really qualified to speak about most of this stuff. Depression Quest is definitely not over-the-top or heavy-handed. I played through it from start to finish, and it is actually significantly (more significantly than I can put into words) more light-hearted than Depression is. It's much easier and far cheerier, IMO. Some of my absolute best days, while medicated, equal the days in Depression quest that are its "worst/lowest." And I what I have is classified as low-grade.
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Highlighting logical fallacies isn't necessarily to discredit her points. It's nearly impossible to write any argument without succumbing to a few of them. "Fallacy" is a lot like "theory" in that it doesn't mean what the colloquial usage implies.
That said: I agree with what she's getting at, but not how she's getting there. The article's actually a good example of what I mean when I say both sides take blame for shaping the arguments. The #GG side is violent about it, but the anti-#GG side is holier-than-thou.
If I had to choose a side (and I don't), I'd definitely be anti-#GG specifically because I find the tone of #GG unbearable even if we're not including the scum of the earth attaching themselves to the name. It does the argument no favors to attack people right back the way she paints some aspiring games journalists as maladjusted creeps.
I agree there are some really horrifying sites popping up in response to the furor. Approaching the subject in a deliberately bigoted way -- and achieving a following while doing so -- tests the limits of my idealism. I will not ever condone that vehicle as a constructive force in the fight.
To pretend that's all a single group is disingenuous at best, harmful at worst. Even if you agree, generally, that "#GamerGate" represents hate, viewing the misguided or just plain wrong in the same light is just compounding the problem that ended up feeding the "gamers are dead" article.
Gamers are dead. "Gamer" doesn't mean anything except some amorphous group of people who partake in games, usually of the vidya persuasion. But "gamer" as a descriptor of a person who plays electronic games is so broad as to be meaningless: it now encompasses your granny as much as your asshole, gun-nut neighbor teabagging the competition while hurling slurs.
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Gamers are dead. "Gamer" doesn't mean anything except some amorphous group of people who partake in games, usually of the vidya persuasion. But "gamer" as a descriptor of a person who plays electronic games is so broad as to be meaningless: it now encompasses your granny as much as your asshole, gun-nut neighbor teabagging the competition while hurling slurs.
I've been torn on that really. On the one hand, I've long since taken it to mean "someone for whom video games are a primary hobby", the same way that while technically "cinemaphile" just means you like movies, taking the term as a descriptor means that seeing movies and discussing them and the art thereof etc etc is a big deal for you.
On the other hand, like fuck I'm going to describe myself in the same terms as #GG.
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Not sure if it is a more isolated cultural thing, but when I tell people I am into gaming there is a decent chance I have to explain I am into video games and not gambling. Sometimes clarify it isn't table top (;( if only). No one has mistaken me for raising hens yet at least.
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Gamers are dead. "Gamer" doesn't mean anything except some amorphous group of people who partake in games, usually of the vidya persuasion. But "gamer" as a descriptor of a person who plays electronic games is so broad as to be meaningless: it now encompasses your granny as much as your asshole, gun-nut neighbor teabagging the competition while hurling slurs.
I've been torn on that really. On the one hand, I've long since taken it to mean "someone for whom video games are a primary hobby", the same way that while technically "cinemaphile" just means you like movies, taking the term as a descriptor means that seeing movies and discussing them and the art thereof etc etc is a big deal for you.
On the other hand, like fuck I'm going to describe myself in the same terms as #GG.
Pretty much. But ask someone who doesn't identify as "someone for whom video games are a primary hobby" what the word means to them. (Though it probably would have been easier to get an objective answer before #GG poisoned the well.)
Not sure if it is a more isolated cultural thing, but when I tell people I am into gaming there is a decent chance I have to explain I am into video games and not gambling. Sometimes clarify it isn't table top (;( if only). No one has mistaken me for raising hens yet at least.
Yeah, it's become a term larger than its pop culture origin. That's the problem: it lacks precision. It means different things to different people but, as I mentioned above, a layperson's understanding of "gamers" when related to the video kind is much more likely to go along with that which appeared in the "Gamers are dead" articles.
--
To jump back in, having read that Katherine Cross article Zoe linked to (http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/we-will-force-gaming-to-be-free/), I feel more strongly that the one-sided attacks are getting out of hand. She makes some really excellent points about the things #GamerGate is doing wrong, and she acknowledges once that there's a big problem to be aware of:
When I wrote about the subject I warned fellow feminists that the tendency to view our opponents as irredeemable enemies could easily take on a life of its own.
Then she goes and steps in a big pile of irony. GamerGate had taken an inflexible ideological stand, named their enemies with expansive fervour, and set about persecuting and prosecuting them. They became judge, jury, and executioner, with no court of appeal.
My absolute biggest pet peeve in any charged argument is the inability or unwillingness to identify that the writer is using the same damn rhetoric. "They are <insert gross generalization here>" comes in blue and red, liberal and conservative, pro and con. I am an absolute staunch supporter of moderate/grey debate. I don't generally believe in black/white analysis. There are very, very rarely any problems so concrete in such a large sample. Someone who relies on calling these large groups out, as a whole, to build up their argument becomes suspect.
And so, while Zoe and Katherine do reflect my feelings on a platonic level, I really don't know whether they're having the positive impact they're hoping to have.
Attacking someone because their dog is dying and they shared it on social media is whack no matter who does it. Claiming "your side" is "above that" may be true, but you're just fanning the flames by implying "their side" -- inclusive for lack of exclusion -- is mud-dwelling.
EDIT: Grey debate serves no purpose but analysis, btw. I am shitty at taking sides because I try too hard to be empathetic.
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Pretty much. But ask someone who doesn't identify as "someone for whom video games are a primary hobby" what the word means to them. (Though it probably would have been easier to get an objective answer before #GG poisoned the well.)
Yeah, but that's true of all aspects of geekdom. The difference between a fan and a fan is what it is. You just try to take the connections and make the conversations you can.
That said I think that, as with all those other terms, the channels for those who identify that way are still there, and they do still exist as a distinct marketing group (which is really what group labels boil down to, "people I can collectively address to sell an idea or product"). You just have that higher margin of miscommunication. I mean, think of it this way. You can market something as 'for Christians', and despite that descriptor technically describing something like 70% of people in the country you will largely hit the people you mean to talk to (the people more likely to buy a song if it is called Christian, etc).
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True.
Self-identification is what I was talking about, too. Do people you think of as gamers think of themselves as gamers? The ones who do are going to respond differently. Again with the context: "Gamers, check out the exciting new installment in this award-winning series!" is not the same as "Exclusive inside look: what's new for gamers" even if it's talking about the same thing.
That's pretty much what my job is, figuring out how to get at the right people. "Gamers" isn't enough. I'm combing through a 300+ page report on the many, many different types of audiences for the many, many different types of games. In mobile. Games journalism rarely touches mobile, but that's because mobile gamers, on the whole, don't read games articles. I'm willing to bet that's because mobile gamers don't consider themselves gamers.
So who does? And who is more likely to assume that someone speaking to "gamers" is speaking to them?
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When I wrote about the subject I warned fellow feminists that the tendency to view our opponents as irredeemable enemies could easily take on a life of its own.
Then she goes and steps in a big pile of irony. GamerGate had taken an inflexible ideological stand, named their enemies with expansive fervour, and set about persecuting and prosecuting them. They became judge, jury, and executioner, with no court of appeal.
In this case I think there's two different groups being referenced. The "enemies" named are LW1, LW2, LW3, LB (also known as Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian (and Macintosh as he's connected to her), Brianna Wu, and Randi Harper). Oh, and Leigh Alexander as well, who never really got a codename, but seems to have joined the "can never be forgiven" list.
You can however, call yourself a feminist, and then say that you support gamergate, and be accepted into the group, provided you don't push feminism issues too hard. Gamergate literally has people who call themselves feminists, and will proudly say so whenever they get the chance as a way to try to deflect criticism. Although their most famous one the rest of the world tends to argue is not a feminist at all, and I'm inclined to agree when she makes statements like this:
https://twitter.com/CHSommers/status/537661828743299072
---------------------
On the subject of gamer
This is actually one area in which my views have changed more towards the gamergate stance. Totalbiscuit has made some solid arguments that the word is genuinely important to some people's identity, particularly people in the autism spectrum.
And I'm sure if I look around this forum enough, I can find a post by Zenny saying something along the lines of "how sad and lonely do you have to be to identify only with 'gamer' and nothing else?" But that would just be getting into ad hominem again. Yes, such people exist for whom gamer is the primary thing they identify with. Yes, in some cases that means they might not have much else going on in their lives, but that just means that the gamer identity is more important to them relatively. I think it's fair to say "don't badmouth gamers as a group if you are a journalist for gamers".
That said, the next logical leap would be asking whether we should extend the same branch to people in gamergate, and I would argue no. It's a hashtag that has existed for three months, that people do leave. It's not like "gamer" which people may have identified with for their whole life. You could ask, as LD does, whether it's productive to bring the subject up at all. But I'm a lot less concerned about hurting someone's identity if I criticize gamergate.
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The irony is really just that she cautioned fellow feminists that absolutes about the opposition being the enemy can take a life of their own, then goes and takes an absolute about the opposition being the enemy. Ironic too that she says they're the enemy because they name their own enemies and persecute and prosecute without any checks or balances. Sound familiar? Again, different forms of action but same underlying rhetoric.
GamerGate =/= gamer, though it's not exclusive of gamers. Gamer is an identity that exists without exclusion. There are people for whom gamer is the identity around which they wrap their lives, sure, but quite a few more make it just one aspect of their identity.
Whether you agree with them or not, whether you think of "them" as a single entity or not, saying that you don't care about offending them because of their self-identification is still an attack. I'm not saying it's not warranted -- I fully recognize that you're likely to run across the strong, violent rhetoric with a gamer identifying with GamerGate -- but it's still antagonistic.
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Unrelated but I found this pretty interesting:
https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/how-chan-style-anonymous-culture-shapes-gamergate
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Very relevant, very well put.
I should stop talking when there are plenty of people in the community doing a better job of getting my points across than I ever could.
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Came here to post that link yeah.
Whether you agree with them or not, whether you think of "them" as a single entity or not, saying that you don't care about offending them because of their self-identification is still an attack. I'm not saying it's not warranted -- I fully recognize that you're likely to run across the strong, violent rhetoric with a gamer identifying with GamerGate -- but it's still antagonistic.
I'm talking more in terms of "protected group or not" here. My position is that the videogame specialist press probably should speak neutral to positively on the term "gamer". I don't feel they have the same obligation with the term gamergate (or the opposition to gamergate).
So if a journalist says something like "I don't approve of harassment", I don't give a lot of merit to arguments like "That journalist is acting unethically" (which some people will try to claim). However, I do feel a journalist, at least one meant to serve gamers could be argued as acting unethically if he calls gamers "pungent beta male bollock-scratchers" (https://twitter.com/Nero/status/304398843435446272).
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http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2014/12/limiting-the-damage-from-cultures-in-collision/
Oxford Practial Ethics blog has a post examine and expanding this same post. Still parsing it myself, but pretty decent response to what essentially looks like a Twitter rant.
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Pretty interesting article by a guy who routinely criticizes online journalism, and was summoned by gamergate to do an AMA on KiA:
https://betabeat.com/2014/12/i-was-summoned-by-gamergate-heres-what-i-saw/
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Nice article yeah.
I need help:
Youtube now recommends thunderf00t videos for me because I watched the Sarkeesian Effect for science.
What do I do to escape this.
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Nice article yeah.
I need help:
Youtube now recommends thunderf00t videos for me because I watched the Sarkeesian Effect for science.
What do I do to escape this.
You could watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsdIHK8O5yo
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Atlas shrugged so hard he almost fell off his dad's couch.
The whole video really was worth watching just for that line.
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My favourite part is
"Don't get him started on Karl Marx, a guy whose works he's totally read."
"The capitalist class stole all the money, so we're going to burn down their houses and rape their children and torture them and hang them and take their property and then we'll have a socialist utopia" - Karl Marx
"He knowwwwws, he knowwwwwws, he knowwwwwssssssss."
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Yeah you don't need to look too far to see that this guy is insane.
Actually now google also recommends the amazing atheist videos :(
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why does that guy have a skull
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like where do you get a skull
(is that 50 Cent's skull)
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Some internet thinks you can go into your YouTube account settings and delete the specific videos from your viewing history, some internet says that doesn't work.
Alternative is to go into a bunch of his shit and Dislike it.
Edit - guy' comedic timing is pretty perfect on the last part where he loses his shit over the skull.
Also to answer your question here (http://www.skullsunlimited.com/products_by_order.php?id=82) is where you buy skulls. You buy skulls from skullsunlimited.com. This is perfect.
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I kinda like the debate as to whether he simply has one skull that he moves all over the place, or simply has a skull for every room in his house.
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Woah there.
I can get you skulls for way cheaper.
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http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/718650-dragon-age-inquisition/70695319
lol
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SHININGPIKATENDO
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Wait a sec, does that mean there's only one female party member other than the MC? Or are there more and they're just not into you no matter how awesome your dialogue choices are.
Mixed Messages: "Devs, women are underrepresented in this game. We need more female party members, so I can bang them."
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There's one lesbian and one girl the player can't romance among the PCs apparently.
I had only read the first post, didn't notice the posts that said "We already talked about that a million times!!!" ....
I don't think I've ever seen entitlement that was this ridiculous and this transparent.
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God forbid these games add any PCs not interested in banging the player character.
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The term is relatively new to me, but is there anyone who unironically uses the term "SJW" as a pejorative who isn't a cretin?
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I'm not sure it's possible to use the term as a slur without sounding like a complete asshat.
The fact that anyone can say that as if it is an insult is kinda mindblowing. "Fuck you for caring about the downtrodden of society."
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It is a relatively old term that was prominent when people started getting mad at people other people for being mad on tumblr about social issues and for wanting to create little niche communities and promote acceptance for various subcultures that don't fit your social norms or promoting acceptance and caring for others feelings and problems. It was the usual "you are just posting on the Internet doing nothing" keyboard warrior stuff. Which of course completely ignores the fact that creating communities like this is in fact doing something positive for the disenfranchised. People are mad that the minority have a place that can make their voice heard amongst people that want to hear it instead of conforming and fitting the faceless mass of the internet.
So no.
I guarantee that this "unequal representation" in male romanceable characters is a direct response to market research showing that straight women care more about the romance choices in Bioware games than straight men do. This is the first time in a Bioware game that the number of romanceable characters falls down like this in 16 years of them making games with the mechanic.
The "betrayal" in Mass Effect 3 was having a whopping 2 gay male romance choices I assume.
In the cast there is a whopping 3 male characters that you can romance and one ode them is exclusively gay, one is open to both genders (because Kaidan). Oh and the last one is an alien (but it is okay it is Garrus).
There is 11 romance choices between Femshep and Maleshep, 7 that MaleShep can do. 5 that Femshep can do. #politicacorrectnessgone2far
Edit - and of course you can't just tell the best story that you can with romances that will fit into the narrative, they have to be staistically fair!!!!!!!
Edit 2 - This (http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20141022133315/dragonage/images/a/a3/CassandraFace.jpg) is the hideous mutant that you can choose to romance. No wonder they are mad.
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It's perfectly fine to complain about lack of M=>F romancin' choices in your vidjgame. It's a game, after all, and there's nothing wrong with complaining that it could have been more fun for you with X Y or Z change. Just don't preface that argument with a complain that the menfolks don't get enough compared to the wimminfolks. (The heavy implication that women should have gotten LESS just to keep them in line with men is particularly special.)
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I just love the whole "Someone has to speak up for the fans!!!" part. Because no one else would ever dare to criticize Bioware. I mean, I remember when ME3 came out, there were all these people who wanted to say something, but vocally disagreeing with Bioware? Never!
On a side note, it seems that a charity for disabled gamers decided they did not want money from GG. GG responds with a DDoS attack and mass rage.
https://archive.today/tym9I (https://archive.today/tym9I)
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Man. I looked it up and it's actually worse than that:
http://www.ablegamers.com/ablegamers-news/ablegamers-statements-about-this-weekend
"AbleGamers did not deny donations from GamerGate. We declined to be a party to an event where there was a lack of transparency, and people began discussing how to use the event as a weapon for the agenda of a political movement."
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For those of you with degrees in humanities, it's time for Sokal Hoax, gamergate edition
http://gamergate.me/2014/12/behind-the-patina-sarkeesian/
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https://twitter.com/srhbutts/status/541693082342014976
Add death threats to the list of things going on with Able Gamers. Of course the thing we should toot our horns about is "How about you PROVE" death threats came from Gamergate, because that is more important than the fact that some fucking douche is sending death threats to charities for any fucking reason.
Edit - Just with a reminder since it wasn't posted in here.
http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2ofzo3/gg_porn_charity_featuring_mercedes_carrera/
Here is the original thread where they talk specifically about not mentioning the association to Gamergate.
-Charity finally confirmed happening on January 2nd 2015, on a site called Webcams.com. I will be handing out a way to enter the site for free. Unfortunately I cannot mention directly that this is a GG stream as it might shy away BZ and others. For now it will be a charity stream.
So when AbleGamers say
AbleGamers did not deny donations from GamerGate. We declined to be a party to an event where there was a lack of transparency, and people began discussing how to use the event as a weapon for the agenda of a political movement.
It is literally about transparency and disclosure of an agenda or bias. So you know acting as an open ethical not for profit component of the games industry.
I probably should have a kermit sipping tea meme here or something.
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Also now that I have tried to read more than a paragraph of that bad fake. That shit reads more like HP Lovecraft than an academic paper. Literally substituting basic English words for "means something similar but would only ever be used in a specific scenario" words.
This is what fucking 14 year olds think academia is like.
“Knowledge is not for knowing: knowledge is for cutting” was the aphorism of France’s influential post-war thinker, Michel Foucault, who is one of Sarkeesian’s philosophical influences, and it is one that Sarkeesian could well apply to her own body of work. But employing Foucauldian tools to chisel into the nature of power and oppression in pop culture requires at the outset a characterization of power (that itself rests on assumptions), or else any sustained analysis would have no political bite. But to offer what is power leads to the pernicious effect of considering where is power. In taking Foucault’s claim in The History of Sexuality that “power is everywhere” including all that such a colorable pretense entails, the entire thing seems to become relatively homogeneous — and so power is ostensibly nowhere. Just like the perception that darkness is the privation of light, an antipode of relation to power is resistance, whose existence is dependent on a certain social actor; and since society can’t exist without power because it is omnipresent, then under Foucault’s oeuvre, human agency and emancipation is rather nonsensical.
This both reads like "I have no idea what the fuck I am talking about" and like Douglas Adams.
“Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist,'" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
While decrying capitalism foisted upon the culture industry with the Dadaist spirit which Sarkeesian affects, she has fully funded her current web series, “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games,” through a version of bottom-up capitalism (i.e., crowdfunding), and amassed six-figures over her original requested amount. It quickly becomes clear that Sarkeesian is able to reconcile her personal views of capitalism, that of a growing pillar of oppression, with her craving to become a pop culture critic. That she conveniently massages her belief system in favor of private ventures says more about her than anything else.
Now I probably should watch Sarkeesian's videos myself to find this out, but I was under the expectation that her videos on Feminism don't actually go on Socialist rants? So this would be someone going on completely unrelated rants about their own specific interpretation of the views of the presenter rather than the literal body of work presented. Someone want to fill me in on that? If they are feminist videos full of Marxist ranting then suffice to say I don't need to be donating to Able Gamers any time soon.
Also what in the actual fuck does where she got money from have to do with anything and is this seriously suggesting that she is doing terrible things because she is using the money exactly what the kickstarter said it would be for instead of taking the money and running? Or returning to private industry?
The quotes they cherry pick to use as examples of her being "Marxist" are
ike the atavistic leftovers of Marxian dialectics, Sarkeesian points to capitalism as the root and wellspring of patriarchy and class struggle:
We should have better representations, but in our fight for media justice we have to push back against the social systems that maintain dominant [sic] cultural norms such as patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism.
She later writes:
…shouldn’t the villain not be one single bad person but rather acknowledging that the root of our problems lie in institutional systems? It’s not about the singular evil corporation but the entire way corporations exist within capitalism.
Neither of which is saying anything about Capitalism being the root of all evil. It is saying Capitalism is an intrinsic social norm these days and to use a real world issue as an example, that something like say wide approval of credit far beyond people's ability to pay back might have be an institutional problem and not just the actions of one bank.
When Sarkeesian’s rhetoric twists into a personal moral prerogative, her morally loaded and provocative language brings an undercurrent of flippant, almost otiose acquiescence to an unchallenged moral authority which lays itself open to parody. Curiously enough, in all her charges of oppression (mentioned no less than twenty times), Sarkeesian never offers the basis of her criterion for the intuitive notion of “oppression,” a term which is heavily value-loaded, both morally and politically. In the Philosophische Bemerkungen, Ludgwig Wittgenstein considered when “two men mean the same by the word ‘white’,” and asserted that the meaning was determined by “how you are searching” for the answer. There is no evidence to qualify and explain Sarkeesian’s methods, or lack thereof, in answering her self-question: “what does a female hero (and even a male hero) look like outside of patriarchy?” This central question is left unanswered.
This entire paragraph is a pile of fucking stupid.
When Sarkeesian’s rhetoric twists into a personal moral prerogative, her morally loaded and provocative language brings an undercurrent of flippant, almost otiose acquiescence to an unchallenged moral authority which lays itself open to parody.
This sentence says absolutely nothing. It is literally "Because she believes something we can laugh in her face". Academic!
Curiously enough, in all her charges of oppression (mentioned no less than twenty times), Sarkeesian never offers the basis of her criterion for the intuitive notion of “oppression,” a term which is heavily value-loaded, both morally and politically.
Again, I should watch the videos, but I kind of thought she actively is trying to show people how this oppression works. I am sorry this concept couldn't be boiled down into a single line sound bite for the writer, but as someone who has read Foucault they may realise that Power structures are actually quite complex and difficult to describe within modern sociological frameworks, but even if you actively reject them out of hand like we do here, Power and the way it interacts was still quite hard to describe even in more classical structuralist frameworks.
In the Philosophische Bemerkungen, Ludgwig Wittgenstein considered when “two men mean the same by the word ‘white’,” and asserted that the meaning was determined by “how you are searching” for the answer.
If only there was some highly educated philosopher with works on definition of terminology and meaning that had already been introduced into this conversation earlier that was pertinently relevant that could be referenced instead of bringing up a singular unrelated theorist from the early 1900s instead of one more relevant to modern theories. I suppose no such theorist exists however so we must make do with what we have. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Archaeology_of_Knowledgel)
There is no evidence to qualify and explain Sarkeesian’s methods, or lack thereof, in answering her self-question: “what does a female hero (and even a male hero) look like outside of patriarchy?” This central question is left unanswered.
You mean like *gasp* that maybe the Power exerted by the Patriarchy that she is discussing might be ever present and exerting influence into all our media by subtle and complex mechanisms and that while there is a strong patriarchal society with no space that is not influenced by it, we may be entirely unable to answer this question? It sure is a shame that an inability to produce and answer completely invalidates the existence of a question to begin with. I was really looking forward to finding out what a male hero looked like outside of a patriarchy. I bet he is hot and has a huge dick.
And on that note I am out. Fuck this nonsense and fuck me for being stupid enough to even read any of it.
Edit - Nope I am a fucking moron, the last paragraph set me off more and I couldn't leave well enough alone.
Despite sciolistic posturing about ills traced to patriarchy in Western civilizations, Sarkeesian enjoys far laxer academic scrutiny and far more media acclaim, the sycophantic, often panegyrical, and nearly always smarmy push of coverage from the credulous herd of journalists on their pet idol of the hour forming the core of her widespread propaganda.
Take THAT Youtube videos! You should be peer reviewed just like all the other Academic journals! What would a woman know about "oppression" from the "Patriarchy" with her "Masters degree" in "Social and Political Thought". Clearly she is presenting a BARELY researched poorly thought out diatribe on a topic she has no education in. This clearly shows in the fact that she gets media coverage from people in the industry that she is talking about very directly. Unless of course they meant something different than Sciolistic than the dictionary definition. OH MAYBE THE DUDE FROM HARVARD IS SAYING SHE KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT VIDEO GAMES. That must be it. I mean it isn't mentioned anywhere else in the article, but that must be it. That or Harvard be fronting on York and shit gonna get real soon.
One is strongly reminded of the indefatigable Dutch feminist and political author, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, striving to recall the founding concerns of feminist theology. She writes in her memoir, Nomad:
There was a long article in The New York Times that went on and on about who [in a couple] would load and unload the dishwasher. If you have a career and you’re so intelligent, you can work that out. You don’t have to have a manifesto. There is feminism that has evolved to a kind of luxury.
This only says or means anything if you are out of hand completely dismissive of there being anything to discuss here about Feminism or that there is already a mass of equality in video games and the video games industry. No one is that fucking stupid right?
The more Sarkeesian critiques pop culture for a wide audience, the closer it circles in to the day that the world may know that all that glitters is not gold.
Indeed. The more people that see criticism of pop culture the more hopes we have that video games are not fucking flawless and perfect the way they are.
I think we had better flood the area with cool water for 20 minutes or until help arrives because that dis to Anita is an
[blink]ACID BURN[/blink]
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So...Grace Lynn (formerly Devi Ever) has a video that I found extremely valuable to watch; explains how she got roped into a hate movement in March, how she got out, how crazy she now realizes it all sounds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2cBt9QM5Iw
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Interesting followup on maninblack's talk about chan culture and how it's informing gamergate:
https://storify.com/donnie_is_ok/gamergate-chan-culture-and-identity
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Sorry, but can you expand on what you found enlightening about the youtube video you posted? I watched like 20 minutes of it but it just seemed like a really long, rambling rant where she kinda berates herself for doing shitty things and emphasizes that she realizes now that she was being shitty. I didn't really get any of the how. Definitely the "what", and maybe a little bit of the personal why (which I don't think she is introspective enough to articulate in a way that goes beyond what she was personally going through), but definitely none of the how. I dunno, maybe I went in with incorrect expectations that colored my viewing of it but it seemed pretty... uninformative, overall.
Your Storify link however basically sums up everything that didn't sit right with me about the ManInBlack's link a few posts ago but couldn't really articulate myself. Anonymity in itself is an identity and that sort of mob rule, that enforces itself socially through the philosophy of "the nail that sticks up must be beaten down" naturally leads itself to the sort of harmful hegemony that arose from the so-called "Chan culture." And while ManInBlack's posts may explain the WHY behind the behavior and feelings of those who consider themselves a part of #gamergate it does not at all give an excuse for the behavior nor forgive the (actively, demonstrably harmful*) consequences of their actions.
*A point, I would like to re-emphasize, is the reason that willful neutrality and pretending that pro- and anti-gamergate sentiment is a wholly incorrect and as willfully ignorant as it is neutral position to take. These arguments aren't happening in a vacuum.
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Sorry, but can you expand on what you found enlightening about the youtube video you posted?
Sure, and this gets a little bit into LGBT psychology. LGBT is presented to the outside world as a united front, but there's a pecking order of how people are treated, who gets privilege, etc. Gay men get more rights than lesbians. Bisexuals get...in some ways more rights, in that they can "marry straight" but they end up disliked and resented by both gay and straight groups. All three groups look down on trans. Trans itself is not uniform in terms of rights. Crossdressers get less rights than people who transition. Trans people amount of human rights depends heavily on appearance. And you can argue that appearance opens doors for everyone not just trans people, but not to the same degree; not on the level of kicking someone out of a restaurant or avoiding physical violence.
Grace had a serious inferiority complex. She felt she was simply of a lesser caste than the famous women. She found it hard to believe that they might have a rough life and be facing discrimination; she felt they had everything. (They were born into a female body; how easy life must be for them). And not entirely without reason--she most likely did not have the same level of privilege. This opened up the possibility for resentment and ultimately dehumanization, not unlike the resentment leading to dehumanization you might have seen in, say, the French Revolution.
Of course, the reality, which she would later realize, is that their level of privilege is not as high as she thought it was. The reality was that she faced online sexism as well, and didn't recognize it at the time or misinterpreted it as transphobia. (She at some points makes the claim that online sexism is as bad or possibly worse than online transphobia).
But as with a lot of things in gamergate, perceptions, even if they are false perceptions not based on facts, can and have driven people to action.
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Hm. Thanks for clarifying. It helps contextualize the video quite a bit.
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So...one of the arguments within gamergate is whether or not games are political. Which leads to me seeing links like this:
http://www.polygon.com/2014/12/12/7380831/UNICEF-video-game-stunt-south-sudan
I kinda do want that to be a real game, though. >_>
EDIT: couple more things I'll toss into these post for long term bookmarking.
Gamergate propaganda imagery (they are remarkably good at propaganda):
http://imgur.com/a/wHQbG/#5
David Jaffe criticizes gamergate from a different angle--namely that the leaderless structure makes engaging in conversation basically impossible, to the point that it's almost impossible to bring to the negotiation table:
http://nichegamer.net/2014/12/david-jaffe-interview-ethics-censorship-and-gamergate/
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Chan culture writings, the revenge of the resurrection! This time I was told by someone in gamergate that Man in Black's storify misses some finer points of the culture and I should read this. Doesn't change my opinion too much, although there's more information I did not know:
http://kazerad.tumblr.com/tagged/anon-cultures/chrono
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Was following this story from the start; glad it had a happy ending, because oh god when KiA turned on her it got pretty ugly:
http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2pj6lt/why_i_left_gamergate_a_trans_womans_perspective/
For something a little more lighthearted:
http://i.imgur.com/gvfRDdA.png
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Pretty good article as a response to people who get super offended by feminist criticism.
http://www.themarysue.com/its-ok-to-not-be-offended/
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Brianna Wu on where she's going with all of this moving forward (basically plans to stop talking about it and giving the movement any attention):
http://spacechannel6.com/post/105699852558/our-tactics-for-gamergate-are-outdated
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Nothing really to see here, just doing some of my own independent verification.
http://i.imgur.com/KukuEE3.jpg
Someone was claiming some of the tweets in here are falsified. Let's see what I can find.
https://twitter.com/TheQuinnspiracy/status/439557804123095040
https://twitter.com/tfycapitalists/status/439560493250801664
https://twitter.com/AGBear/status/439561284024295424
https://twitter.com/legobutts/status/439563661967761409
https://twitter.com/TheQuinnspiracy/status/439564964102037504
https://twitter.com/thequinnspiracy/status/439565409780383744
https://twitter.com/thequinnspiracy/status/439565723996655616
Mmmm...some of these seem to only be retweeted, or things she replied to. Which is...moderately dishonest but not hugely inaccurate.
EDIT: and in some ethics, 10 issues gamergate is not covering:
https://medium.com/the-internet-made-me-do-it/10-big-ethical-issues-in-video-games-that-gamergate-wont-touch-7a6884de87d0
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http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2q5tt5/kia_is_losing_their_shit/
Fuck it, link straight to a Ghazi thread about it. People defend 8chan in its entirety because it hosts the main forum of Gamergate. People don't realize they you don't need to go all in on this shit. Thread involves a guy losing all faith in the movement because he actually gives a fuck about children.
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Yeah, the guy who did the article sure did a hit piece on 8-chan, but never once mentioned Gamergate as part of it. Not stopping GG from throwing a fit at anyone linking to the article, or anyone within their own movement who think that child porn is bad.
On a side note, the guy who wrote the piece has been doxxed.
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The good news is that a small number of them are speaking up...like this guy who got massively downvoted, told he was wrong:
http://imgur.com/eGyQFuE
And went to Ghazi to post "I didn't sign up for that sort of shit." (http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2q5tt5/kia_is_losing_their_shit/cn382y0?context=3) There's definitely quite a few who are leaving over this.
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But guys we shouldn't be slamming proGG posters because they have some legit complaints
Attacking the other side won't get us anywhere. We should focus on the issues and not the people.
So lets open a dialogue with these people who are defending a board that hosts CP.
Because both sides have legitimate complaints.
Now if you'll excuse me I believe I ned to clean out my ears with a knife.
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You don't HAVE to look at the trainwreck. Hey look! Flowers! Sunshine! Right outside your window!
EDIT: Just for the Zennys (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P3P2L0Q25Y)
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To be fair to the people who said such things, I never expected Gators to sink this low and I've been pretty angry at their little movement since I found out what they were. The only reason I can believe this is even happening is because I have seen it with my own eyes.
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Yeah, going to second Excal here. Early in the movement, I was genuinely giving them a chance, partially because there was so much misinformation, and partially because the people I spoke to seemed sincere, and partially because Totalbiscuit was a sensible spokesperson, so I could legit listen to him and think "well there are some crazy people in the movement, but Totabliscuit's demands are the demands of the sane people...and if it's like any normal group the sane people will vastly outnumber a few crazies."
But they have somehow gone steadily downhill from there. Totabiscuit leaving, and there being no moderates to fill in for him (or at least no moderates with any appreciable amount of reach) was really the end of any sense of legitimacy they once had.
I didn't expect them to team up with Jack Thompson.
I didn't expect them to harass a woman over her dying dog or maybe I might have, but I wouldn't expect that harassment to go all the way to the top with their most legitimate reporter joining in.
I didn't expect them to defend child pornography, and to unironically ask the question What's wrong with nazis? What's wrong with encouraging people to commit suicide? (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B5ddHRcCEAA2teZ.jpg:large)
EDIT: ladies and gentlemen, the great and wonderful feminist organization The Fine Young Capitalists:
http://thefineyoungcapitalists.tumblr.com/post/106016631460/how-do-you-feel-about-gamergate-now-outspokenly
"Not our problem"
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Good video summarizing the ethics in journalism claims out of gamergate; nothing especially new here, just in video format.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy9bisUIP3w
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Wait why is CP even an abbreviation?
Jesus Christ.
Unrelated but I went to see 8chan. There's a suicide related board where you get banned for posting anything anti suicide like
"Hey you could do X instead of trying to kill yourself" *USER WAS PERMA BANNED FOR THIS POST*
Some dude went "Hey guys I could make you disappear! :) PM me!" and some were like "Uuuh k but no torture allright" and the guy was like "Yeah yeah allright"
Some guy tried to not masturbate for 150 days on a motivation forum, here is everything that happened:
- He was thinking about sex all the time
- His work was a lot worse because he was perpetually horny
- He only saw women as vessels to get sex
- He got laid way more because he really was desperate for sex
- He broke the rules and masturbated once, and immediately began to have "beta thoughts" like seeing women as fellow humans
- He had premature ejaculation now
His conclusion: Totally awesome guys, because more sex
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So it is more easily lost in sea of acronyms by search engines.
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I read Fenrir's post and I was all "I have no idea what CP even means". Now I put two and two together and I wish I hadn't.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CULPtbETOL8
Mike Cernovich and Chris Kluwe are debating right now.
EDIT: Archive of the debate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CULPtbETOL8
EDIT: gamergate felt they had lost the debate and...now Chris Kluwe has been doxxed:
http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2qwb0y/chris_kluwe_has_been_doxxed/
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A man in black's writings on chan culture, now in article form:
http://boingboing.net/2014/12/31/how-imageboard-culture-shaped.html
EDIT: just storing this here mostly; Arthur Chu is a really good writer:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/03/cover-ups-and-concern-trolls-actually-it-s-about-ethics-in-suicide-journalism.html
EDIT2: this article is also quite good:
http://blogs.houstonpress.com/artattack/2015/01/why_gamergate_failed_a_look_back_at_2014s_most_ridiculous_movement.php
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Probably one of the better articles I've read about this ongoing subject.
http://www.newstatesman.com/laurie-penny/on-nerd-entitlement-rebel-alliance-empire
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Meanwhile, Intel budgets $300 million for diversity, cites gamergate
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/technology/intel-budgets-300-million-for-diversity.html?_r=0
In October, though, Intel unwittingly became a villain in a controversy over the treatment of women in gaming, which has come to be known as GamerGate. A loose-knit brigade of Internet users lobbied the company to pull an advertising campaign on the game website Gamasutra because it had run an essay attacking the male dominance of games culture.
Intel, which was caught off guard by the ensuing controversy over its actions, eventually resumed advertising on the site. Mr. Krzanich said he used the incident as an opportunity to think more deeply about the broader issue of diversity in the tech industry. The issue resonated with him personally.
“I have two daughters of my own coming up on college age,” he said. “I want them to have a world that’s got equal opportunity for them.”
Also cites FeministFrequency directly (along side other feminist advocacy groups. I'll vouch for the Anita Borg institute and the Grace Hopper conference at a glance):
https://twitter.com/smashtic/status/552642918255562753
EDIT2: and apparently some people on Ghazi were informed this was coming months ago
http://i.imgur.com/UPhhctw.jpg?1
EDIT: something old, but a rebuttal to the hour-long videos calling Zoe Quinn an emotional abuser:
https://medium.com/@Buttulism/the-tools-of-the-enemy-15c282c71132
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Total tangent, but I am tired of the parent argument coming into play when advocating for change. Don't get me wrong; I'm glad to have support for change no matter what the reason for it (well, almost no matter the reason - intent does matter).
Why does this stuff only happen because "I have two daughters"? Why not want it because, you know, women are people too? Why does it take until it's personal to see that there's little reason not to lift everyone up and even less to put them down just because they're different? :|
I haven't heard a peep about GamerGate in my circles since the massive info-dump about it weeks back. I'm a little sad it's so quickly dissipated in my own damn office of gamers, but hey, I'm working for a company that is 40 men and 11 women, 3 of which are in admin/HR, 3 in marketing/PR, and only 1 of which is an engineer.
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Given what they're up to these days, not talking about them while they're dying is probably for the best.
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Why does this stuff only happen because "I have two daughters"? Why not want it because, you know, women are people too? Why does it take until it's personal to see that there's little reason not to lift everyone up and even less to put them down just because they're different? :|
Because people aren't that good. They can become better and this is a super common way for it. Just like people becoming less racist/homophobic/Ableist when they interact with someone of another background/sexuality/disability, when they have a daughter they are more open to seeing how other women are treated and want better for them in their future.
That said holy fuck what that says about their relationship with their girls mother prior to this is not great.
If you want news, Ghazi is still pretty fun for it without getting TOO wrapped up in it (but still overly much so). It is worth a browse when you have a few minutes and want to see crazy shit like Chris Kluwe being sent an anonymous dildo, signing it and putting it up for sale on charity.
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I mean...I love Ghazi and all that, but given that LD seems to want neutral, non-rhetoricalized discussion, Ghazi is not it. Ghazi is a comedy board, people mimic rhetoric for comedic effect in like...80% of posts.
If you want something more neutral you can try AGG:
http://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstGamerGate/
Which...was at some point intended as a neutral discussion ground (and people will tag their username with [pro-GG] [anti-GG] and [Neutral]. But it has a reputation for being much more swarmed by the pro-GG camp.
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That said holy fuck what that says about their relationship with their girls mother prior to this is not great.
That's what I'm getting at, ultimately. His daughters are not the only females he's ever met. They're not the only ones that matter to him. They've also been around a while. Why now? Why them? (And I'm not picking on him -- "I have a daughter, man!" has come up for everything from sex trafficking to equality in the workplace.)
I mean...I love Ghazi and all that, but given that LD seems to want neutral, non-rhetoricalized discussion, Ghazi is not it. Ghazi is a comedy board, people mimic rhetoric for comedic effect in like...80% of posts.
If you want something more neutral you can try AGG:
http://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstGamerGate/
Which...was at some point intended as a neutral discussion ground (and people will tag their username with [pro-GG] [anti-GG] and [Neutral]. But it has a reputation for being much more swarmed by the pro-GG camp.
My drive for neutral is in formulating arguments about the movement as a whole. I see value in reading the biased stuff as well, and I do it for politics, it's just not the best breeding grounds for general analysis.
People trying to be neutral when they're obviously not is even funnier.
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It's disheartening but simple. People suck at empathy and having theory of mind until it becomes personal.
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I guess I just don't see much point in being neutral at this point if you want to follow it and not participate? Not with the last few months of following it anyway. Ghazi is a pretty good portal for a drama binge. Againstgamergate is more for discussion, so if you want to see the day to day defence/attack on each other's arguments it works
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While GG itself is indefensible, in the first days they tried to play it legit they hid behind some valid criticisms of the industry, and the feeling of being used by them felt by a lot of the less vile GGers was genuine. Being a literal marketing person for a major publisher I'm assuming LD wants to see those issues addressed by her peers. Which is good, but should disconnect it from the larger toxicity of GG beford getting into it y'know?
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That said holy fuck what that says about their relationship with their girls mother prior to this is not great.
That's what I'm getting at, ultimately. His daughters are not the only females he's ever met. They're not the only ones that matter to him. They've also been around a while. Why now? Why them? (And I'm not picking on him -- "I have a daughter, man!" has come up for everything from sex trafficking to equality in the workplace.)
I think part of it is as a persuasive tool. Perhaps he really -does- just care about women's rights in general? Perhaps he's just an amazing person who is completely unselfishly altruistic and wants to implement change?
But people are kind of inherently mistrustful of wholly altruistic people. Better to cite some kind of personal, semi-selfish, relatable reason.
Whether that applies to this guy specifically or not, I don't know. But it doesn't matter because if you hear this rhetoric all the time, then it's likely to be the case for at least some of them.
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There have literally been studies done finding that fathers of daughters in the House and Senate tended to have their political views shift slightly left. For fuck's sake, Dick Cheny supported gay marriage because he has a Lesbian daughter. Dick Cheny.
But this is a slight political shift, not a huge one. Dick Cheny did not pledge 300 million towards diversity initiatives in tech.
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https://twitter.com/srhbutts/status/554793461229297664
8chan has been taken down because of CP. Ethics, people.
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Sadness. It did not last, and the domain has been handed back.
Also, in addition, opponents of Gamergate have been getting SWATted. (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/13/gamergate-hits-new-low-with-attempts-to-send-swat-teams-to-critics) So yeah, there's been some attempted murder by cop going on recently.
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https://twitter.com/srhbutts/status/554793461229297664
8chan has been taken down because of CP. Ethics, people.
I'm sure the folks on the Ghazi subreddit were extremely smug about it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities)
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Let's add in a third SWATing. This one in Vancouver. (http://www.theprovince.com/cent+terrorism+Burnaby+victim+decries+Internet+swatting+that+brought+Mounties+door/10725977/story.html)
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Ashley Lynch, 40, owner of a film and television post-production studio, said she was home alone when two police officers knocked on her door just after midnight on Jan. 11 and asked if she had any weapons in the house.
The part where their attempt to provoke a violent altercation was foiled by the fact that Canadian police are still Canadian is just wonderful.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/13/former-highest-ranking-u-s-cardinal-blames-feminized-church-for-the-catholic-churchs-problems/
Blatant sexism: it isn't just for nerrrrrds anymore.
I love how he blames sexual abuse by priests on radical feminism. Dude, Vatican 2 was in 1962. Tom Lehrer recorded "My Hometown" in 1954.
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http://www.gamespot.com/articles/hotline-miami-2-banned-in-australia-update/1100-6424654/
Indie game Hotline Miami gets banned in Australia.
As a game developer, I straight up don't like seeing games outright banned; Australia used to do this regularly, but was supposed to not do it anymore given the new 18+ rating. (And I want to say pretty much everyone involved in the industry is against outright government censorship like this).
(gamergate is frothing at the mouth, meanwhile; I'm sure they're going to try and contact the classification board, but when their responses include "FUCK EVERYTHING JESUS FUCK I'M MAD", it's probably going to muddy discourse with the rating board).
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An R rating is not free license to publish anything under the sun. It still has to pass a certain degree of acceptability (like Rapelay isn't going to get an X rating even if we had THAT like we do for films).
It was never going to unilaterally allow you to publish anything down here. Also note, it is a ban on Sale of it down here. No one is going to be arrested for owning or playing it.
That said it actually 100% is a censorship issue for once so that is a thing.
It also shits me because it is pretty inconsistent application compared historic to films. I know I watch Mad Max 2 when I was an adult and that sure as shit has a straight up rape scene in the R version and that was rated 30 years ago now. Deliverance is a thing that has existed for even longer and is chilling a these years later. I feel like the medium is being treated differently than others unfairly. If it was an interactive sequence I would have more sympathy, but as usual, I don't have a great deal for the Classification board. They are consistently ultra conservative with games where they give a much wider berth in more mature mediums.
Edit - it likely would have had a better chance of passing if it wasn't the protagonist that did it.
Edit 2 - http://www.devolverdigital.com/blog/view/hotline-miami-2-australian-classification
More context! From the dev! It isn't actual rape, it is simulation of rape in a film within the game. With no thrusting. So yeah, regular day on the job for the classification board.
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The developer responds in a pretty reasonable way.
http://www.devolverdigital.com/blog/view/hotline-miami-2-australian-classification
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About a year ago one of the developers gave an illuminating interview on the subject of the portrayal of sexual assault in the game. It's worth a read.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/09/05/hotline-miami-devs-reconsidering-sexual-assault-scene/#more-167569
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oh wow
dat comment section
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In any case something should not be banned because it is seen as gross / tasteless but only if it portrays bad behavior in a positive light / exploits people.
That said, GG always answers "We only talk about JOURNALISM lol" when attacked for not talking about the most major problems in the videogame industry. So I guess they should not talk about that because there's no journalism involved here.
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oh wow
dat comment section
doin it wrong
In any case something should not be banned because it is seen as gross / tasteless but only if it portrays bad behavior in a positive light / exploits people.
who gets to police the line between tastelessness and bad behavior? If the answer to that question is anyone other than NotMiki, Whose Opinion Is The One True Measure Of Objective Value, then you have a problem.
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Obviously it is
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In any case something should not be banned because it is seen as gross / tasteless but only if it portrays bad behavior in a positive light / exploits people.
That said, GG always answers "We only talk about JOURNALISM lol" when attacked for not talking about the most major problems in the videogame industry. So I guess they should not talk about that because there's no journalism involved here.
Some GGers have expanded from journalism to boycotting "SJW games" from "SJW developers" (anyone who has a smidgen of social consciousness?) or basically anyone with a kickstarter who they perceive as misappropriating funds (Tim Schaffer for example). So it's more generally about ethics now!
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Tim Schafer is also "SJW" as fuck. There is many reasons he is super sexy other than his rugged good looks.
who gets to police the line between tastelessness and bad behavior? If the answer to that question is anyone other than NotMiki, Whose Opinion Is The One True Measure Of Objective Value, then you have a problem.
Well in this case it is a government appointed board and you deal with whatever they say because we don't actually have anything like a constitutional right to free speech. If the board says you can't sell it, you can't sell it and a whole bunch of the reasons that something can be rated the way they are (or refused classification) is based on that board's interpretation of what is socially acceptable.
Specifically from here (http://www.classification.gov.au/Information/Pages/Home.aspx)
RC (Refused Classification - Like Hotline Miami has been)
Computer games that:
(a) depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that they should not be classified; or
(b) describe or depict in a way that is likely to cause offence to a reasonable adult, a person who is, or appears to be, a child under 18 (whether the person is engaged in sexual activity or not); or
(c) promote, incite or instruct in matters of crime or violence
And when you drill down on to the specifics of what is acceptable in R18+
The content is high in impact
R 18+ material is restricted to adults. Such material may contain classifiable elements such as sex scenes and drug use that are high in impact. Some material classified R18+ may be offensive to sections of the adult community. A person may be asked for proof of their age before purchasing, hiring or viewing R18+ films and computer games at a retail store or cinema.
Also of note is the glossary definition of "reasonable adult"
Is possessing common sense and an open mind, and able to balance personal opinion with generally accepted community standards.
But, even when the broader community disagrees with the board you don't have a way of really defending it, because it is the board that determines what the community standards are. When you refuse classification the community is also hindered from making a judgement on its own, because they cannot legally acquire it.
Also note that there is still yet another rating over R18+ that is available for films but not games. For years the "community standard" dictated that Films could be that much more explicitly targeted towards adults rather than children. Even still an outright pornographic game is technically going to be illegal.
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Sounds very similar to the way movies are rated here. I recall watching a short documentary about the South Park guys trying to get their movie approved by the MPAA and it sounds really dang similar. No accountability, no real vetting process for who gets on the board, and the board's word is the LAAAAAAAAW.
Tangentially, I may have said this before but SJW is literally the best Shibboleth ever. If anyone says it seriously you are 100% guaranteed that some really super-shitty opinions are coming up.
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Sounds very similar to the way movies are rated here. I recall watching a short documentary about the South Park guys trying to get their movie approved by the MPAA and it sounds really dang similar. No accountability, no real vetting process for who gets on the board, and the board's word is the LAAAAAAAAW.
I remember that interview. Also the part where they were like "Yeah, so instead we actually made a movie making fun of the MPAA, which we also thought was much more offensive, and they said it was okay, so whatevs."
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Some humor, when someone was told she was white:
https://storify.com/IjeomaOluo/when-you-suddenly-find-out-you-re-white
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Turns out there was a fourth SWAT, the victim is choosing to try to stay quiet, but people on 8chan are celebrating the fact that actual bullets were fired and their family dog died:
https://archive.today/nu4Lv
https://twitter.com/iglvzx/status/557241721856069632
I don't know who the victim is; a few people have claimed to have spoken to the victim and confirmed it, but obviously are not releasing names due to the victim's wishes.
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#JonWick
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I really shouldn't beat this dead horse into the ground, but fuck it.
I'm finding both "pro-GG" and "anti-GG" sentiments increasingly frustrating.
people on 8chan are celebrating the fact that actual bullets were fired and their family dog died
people on 8chan are celebrating the fact ... [the victim's] family dog died
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I really shouldn't beat this dead horse into the ground, but fuck it.
I'm finding both "pro-GG" and "anti-GG" sentiments increasingly frustrating.
people on 8chan are celebrating the fact that actual bullets were fired and their family dog died
people on 8chan are celebrating the fact ... [the victim's] family dog died
You should. But I also shouldn't admit I've still been reading this topic. But hey. We both make mistakes.
Yes, two months down the road, I'm definitely, unquestionably wrong.
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Yeah you definitely should not have done all the things gamergate did, which were definitely done by you, and you definitely should have not endorsed all those things gamergate did, which you endorsed at the time you said you were "frustrated" with them, which endorsement obviously endorsed all their future actions as well. Also you should not have joined a SWAT team and shot that person's dog. bad Andy. bad.
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While yes he never endorsed nor condoned the toxic actions of GamerGate, the vehement willful ignorance toward the toxicity of the movement, the false equivalencies drawn between both pro-GG and anti-GG sides, and commitment to neutrality despite the blatantly obvious* evidence that the core of GamerGate is and was a toxic harassment campaign that only paid lip service to its stated aims, not just on Andy and Ashley's part but on the part of a large majority of the GamerGate crowd that have been trickling away and abandoning the movement as the harassment ramps up to threats of violence to actual violence, is exactly the attitude that let this group become so noteworthy. Without people holding this attitude, without the people who got played like fuckin' fiddles by /pol/ and 8chan, Gamergate would have been a blip in the news in Indie gaming circles and never would have had the legitimacy it had for a few months.
*No, not just in hindsight. If you didn't see some horrible shit coming out of GG from the very beginning you were fucking wearing blinders.
That having been said, I am sorry, Andy, because I really should just let this go because Jim's right despite my protests in the last paragraph. You never condoned the actions and frankly the core group of harassers were probably going to ramp up to shit like SWATing anyway. It justs bothers me because SO MANY PEOPLE I know, not just you and Ashley, but a lot of my gamer friends on Facebook back in Albuquerque and Norwich fell hook line and sinker for the ethics in game journalism line and gave this movement way, way more legitimacy than it ever deserved.
EDIT: Met was right below, I meant /pol/
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Hey if we are beating dead horses, I should quote that link MC posted with the deluge of really impressively convincing GG propaganda. Seriously, I read that stuff and I was like "well, I can definitely see how someone would buy into some of this, it is pretty well made."
Also, I generally agree that remaining staunchly neutral on most debates is a good place to start. Especially if you are still gathering information on a topic.
Also also, there is still something positive about all of this in that it's clear video games are going to be taken seriously as a medium at some point very soon. Once the damage GG has done(and kind of still is doing) has healed over at least.
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without the people who got played like fuckin' fiddles by /r/pol/ and 8chan, Gamergate would have been a blip in the news in Indie gaming circles and never would have had the legitimacy it had for a few months.
I believe you mean /pol/ not /r/pol. /pol/ is the neonazi board on 4chan which now moved to 8chan. /r/pol is a subreddit with 200 readers.
Like...to be clear, /pol/ is involved in gamergate. One of the key players was called KingOfPol. Neonazi website formed by a former Grand Wizard of the KKK (Stormfront) openly supported gamergate due to "userbase overlap." One of the gamergate propaganda images which used a warfare theme had Adolf Hitler on their side to represent /pol/; let's see...well you can't zoom in on the image, but you can still make out Hitler in this archive:
https://archive.today/VFWUP
(They later updated the image to remove Hitler).
But let's be clear here, gamergate and /pol/ are different beasts with different political views. Like...when Hotwheels wrote an article for a Neonazi website (http://i.imgur.com/PV9KDaf.png) to try and court /pol/ into staying on 8chan rather than returning to 4chan, and suggested a few ideas like a free speech article, /pol/ pointed out to him that Nazi's don't care much for free speech. This is a very different political stance from gamergate, which at least pays lots of lipservice to free speech. For another example, while NotYourShield was a bit of a sham in terms of some of the minorities it claimed to represent, it was founded by a black man and four white guys, and the first person I heard really advocating for gamergate was African American. And while gamergate has been bleeding away some minorities (transgender in particular, seeing as it has shifted to hating on transgender people as an even bigger "source of evil SJWness" than women) it seems to have retained key African American figures like Oliver. I would assume that /pol/ does not have equivalent popular African American community figureheads, seeing as /pol/ explicitly hates black people.
So...yeah, while some of the gamergate population came from /pol/, and the influences of /pol/ can still be felt, gamergate is its own beast with its own political views. (And arguably a smaller movement. /gamergate/ on 8chan has 2k active users; /pol/ on 8chan has 3k active users).
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Yeah, uh, even if you're not actually a nazi, associating with nazis is a pretty huge red flag.*
I'm not sure what you're getting at with that paragraph about how there are still African American figures in GamerGate. Yeah, sure, they're not full blown nazis. But... If nothing else it reminds me of my early teens when I was trying to be edgy and ironic because I wanted attention. "See? I'm not actually racist, I have a black friend! Who thinks my racist jokes are funny! Now excuse me while I go tell really racist jokes to him and about 10 white people." And in any case, it really doesn't excuse calling in shooting threats to a college to get people they don't like to cancel speaking events (http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/10/14/anita-sarkeesian-cancels-speech-after-school-shooting-threat-at-utah-state/)**, nor does it excuse members who don't condone actions like that to go "oh wow hell no" and recognize that that was just the first step in a really shitty road to SWATing*** and start divorcing themselves from the movement... which frankly is a bigger concern to me than whether there are POCs or GSMs involved in GamerGate. Minorities can be shitty people too (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Brown) (Link otherwise unrelated).
*Is that idiom even applicable? The USSR hated Nazis.
**This was well known about the time I started getting real pissed about everyone's tolerance for GG, around November.
***Of course there was no reason to expect SWATing in particular to happen, but surely this pointed to harassment tactics getting way worse and way more dangerous... which they did.
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Quick question: is the battle still raging out there in internetland? Is GamerGate still something that matters? At this point, does any new revelation about GamerGate actually change anything? Because from where I stand it looks like continuing interest is just indulging in outrage as a recreation.
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Question: Did four different people not just have SWAT teams called to their houses?
Yeah, most people no longer care. Good, the movement is no longer legitimate. It is still highly toxic and having a real, negative impact on people.
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Question: Did four different people not just have SWAT teams called to their houses?
Did Boko Haram not just massacre an entire village?
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Does rape in Africa make continued discussions of the wage gap illegitimate?
Multiple terrible things can happen at once and they aren't always equivalent.
Do I think we could get better coverage of Boko Haram in the politics thread maybe? If there was more media coverage and if more media coverage was actually obtainable since everyone is actively looking away (the local government doesn't want the negative light set on the upcoming election...), absolutely.
Is it a problem to keep having discussion about people having completely irrational outbursts in its own thread here?
Is it something that I follow more closely than I have to out of interest around the culture of fellow hobbyists? Yeah I guess? But I also closely follow career paths of developers I will never get to meet or talk to. I personally am pretty invested in this video games thing and care about the future of both how it impacts the developer and consumer community and how it colours that community to others.
Like perspective? All the children of my generation of family are girls. I would love to be able to share some of this whole video games thing with them. Gamer Gate happened. I don't really want to introduce my 10 year old niece to Steam this Christmas because of it. I am still tentative on maybe making an account for her and her sister and sharing my game library. I just want to find a way to shield them from this kind of bullshit (http://store.steampowered.com/curator/6859671-GamerGate-Recommends/) while they are still new to things beyond just playing platforming games with local coop. Even if they only play single player it is still right there in the storefront that you have access to even if you have parental lockdown to prevent them making purchases.
So yeah. It is a thing that I still give a bit of a fuck about.
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Well... It's selfish, but a big reason I still care about '0 days since GG did something terrible'?
Also also, there is still something positive about all of this in that it's clear video games are going to be taken seriously as a medium at some point very soon. Once the damage GG has done(and kind of still is doing) has healed over at least.
I think it will be decades before this is true. Frankly, all during the height of GG, seeing otherwise rational folks give them the slightest benefit of the doubt? Gaming doesn't DESERVE to be taken as a serious medium yet. And most days? I think by the time it is, they won't really make games worthy of that seriousness.
GG has driven me to renounce a bit if myself to which I can basically attribute every friend I have. It's something I've tried to do professionally. But... we're in the twilight of it all. And these fucks put on the last nails.
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Question: Did four different people not just have SWAT teams called to their houses?
Did Boko Haram not just massacre an entire village?
Jim, you're better than trying to end a dicussion like this. Shall we bring Nazism into this and go full Godwin? Oh snap GamerGate already did.
To wit, you're right. We should be focusing way more on the atrocities being committed in Nigeria than we are. To fill everyone else in on the only reason you bring this up, yes the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices is also a larger, frankly way more important travesty than this. So am I a hypocrite for harping on GamerGate while everyone else wants to let it die down, while posting articles on Facebook calling attention to how the world by and large is obsessing over and lionizing Charlie Hebdo while ignoring atrocities going on in the non-European parts of the world?
Perhaps. I'll cop to that.
But that's a strawman and a half you're building there. I don't see world leaders marching in a grand PR event to show solidarity against terrorism in light of these SWAT incidents. I barely even see any members of gaming communities condemning them. This is the only forum I've seen it even discussed on.
What I DO see are people who, through being duped into thinking GamerGate actually cared about ethics in gaym journalism and refusing to acknowledge the big red flags in front of them helped empower Gamergate to hold the brief taste of legitimacy they had, want to now just sweep the whole thing under the rug and pretend like it never happened despite having a real, negative impact on real people and the reputation of the medium as a whole.
Nobody I know personally was tried to ignore the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, nobody I know personally tried to ignore the Boko Haram attacks. People I know personally ARE trying to ignore the harmful actions of GamerGate.
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Frankly, all during the height of GG, seeing otherwise rational folks give them the slightest benefit of the doubt?
This is the problem I have that made me post in this topic in the first place.
Who the hell is "them?" The swatters? The hurdur SJW people? The people who wanted to talk game's journalism? The ones trying to use the momentum of the hashtag to bring certain talking points to the front? People who just want to watch the world burn?
At the beginning there were lots of people using the hashtag as a positive thing and tried use it to guide an actual, legitimate discussion. It did happen. Really. There were also a ton of fucks who were using it to be obnoxious douches. Which was the problem and why I took the stance I did. Engaging with the douches and letting them run the conversation only really gave them more power. It drowned out the people who did want to actually talk and, perhaps worse, made people on the fringes more defensive.
You know why people reacted so badly to the gamers are dead articles? Because they felt attacked. Obviously we could ramble about the irony of feeling persecuted and alienated, but shock and amaze, it happens. Its a nerd thing. They have their own issues of being cultural misfits. What we're seeing now, unfortunately, feels like the logical endplace: the reasonable and rational people abandoned ship and left the crazies in charge.
Basically, I'm not sure (especially early on) exactly what attacking "GG" as an entity really did except maybe hasten the inevitable implosion. Perhaps it was totally impossible to co-opt from the get-go! Perhaps too much of the base was rooted in the "hurdur SJW" thing. But I feel attempting to guide positive discussion and shutting out the assholes certainly couldn't have done worse.
I dunno, this sort of thing puts me in mind of the recent protests in East Bay. When people loot and vandalize during the protests, should we blame the whole of the protest or do we shun the morons? And yes, there does obviously need to be a line drawn where the things are unsalvagable. We're certainly at that stage now.
But back a few months ago? I felt there was enough split in the base that, even if it was just a momentary glint, that it might be able to be directed in a useful direction. That you could get people to actaully shun the scum and talk. It didn't go that way, obviously, but I also didn't see particular harm in trying then either.
Edit: And just to be abundantly clear. This does not mean you should not call out and/or shun the assholes. Everyone should be doing that. They should not even be part of the discussion. This does not mean the history of what was happened should be whitewashed or ignored. Just that, back oh so long ago, that going "lolgamergater go kill yourself" and "Oh, you're part of gamergate? Fuck you you misogynist!" did nothing to help.
Gaming doesn't DESERVE to be taken as a serious medium yet.
See, this is what I mean. Why are you letting the morons dictate things? They do not even deserve to be part of the conversation. The fucks who are swatting probably also enjoy watching movies, listen to music, and I bet some have even read books, and they probably bitch about the "dur sjw infestation" there too. Should we declassify them as artistic mediums that deserve to be taken seriously? No. Things deserve to be taken seriously on their own merits.
Don't diminish people's hard work because there are assholes out there. It is insulting.
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Nobody I know personally was tried to ignore the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, nobody I know personally tried to ignore the Boko Haram attacks. People I know personally ARE trying to ignore the harmful actions of GamerGate.
Fair enough. And I realize it didn't come off this way, but I really was more curious as to why you continue focusing on it than I am trying to shut you up or shame you or whatever. I brought up Boko Haram just to make the point that there are a lot of awful things in this world, and that awfulness in and of itself isn't a reason to pay attention to something. Except Florida Man (https://twitter.com/_FloridaMan/status/550119617361108992).
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Gaming doesn't DESERVE to be taken as a serious medium yet.
See, this is what I mean. Why are you letting the morons dictate things? They do not even deserve to be part of the conversation. The fucks who are swatting probably also enjoy watching movies, listen to music, and I bet some have even read books, and they probably bitch about the "dur sjw infestation" there too. Should we declassify them as artistic mediums that deserve to be taken seriously? No. Things deserve to be taken seriously on their own merits.
Don't diminish people's hard work because there are assholes out there. It is insulting.
What all this said to me is that the art form cannot advance without acts of terrorism being committed. That we cannot build a canon of gaming because nobody in gaming criticism understands that they have to ignore the frothing mobs who call for objectivity in a discipline that is by definition subjective.
And because frankly if gaming can't be better than the mediums that came before, and rise above the petty bigotry inherent to the human race then it's failed to properly express the feelings of the generation it raised, and what is the fucking point.
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what is the fucking point.
Games are fucking awesome, man, that's what the point is. Have you played, like, FFX? Shit's dope.
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What all this said to me is that the art form cannot advance without acts of terrorism being committed.
Depending on the way you mean that:
1. Except it has?
2. Once again we're invalidating all other art forms. We just had a bunch of comedians get fucking murdered for practicing their art. Is writing dead?
That we cannot build a canon of gaming because nobody in gaming criticism understands that they have to ignore the frothing mobs who call for objectivity in a discipline that is by definition subjective.
Except they do? Have you ever considered you're reading the wrong people if they're the ones caving to the cries of "Be objective!"
More to the point you're comparing apples and oranges. Criticism (as in consumer reviews) and criticism (as in critical analysis) are kinda different beasts.
And because frankly if gaming can't be better than the mediums that came before, and rise above the petty bigotry inherent to the human race then it's failed to properly express the feelings of the generation it raised,
Except that plenty of games (and, in fact, plenty of people) do exactly that? And, not to put to fine a point on it, but the generation is apparently having mixed feelings.
and what is the fucking point.
To acknowledge the beauty and artistry that people have put into amazing games instead of taking a shit on them because you're annoyed by a bunch of assholes?
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Nobody I know personally was tried to ignore the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, nobody I know personally tried to ignore the Boko Haram attacks. People I know personally ARE trying to ignore the harmful actions of GamerGate.
Fair enough. And I realize it didn't come off this way, but I really was more curious as to why you continue focusing on it than I am trying to shut you up or shame you or whatever. I brought up Boko Haram just to make the point that there are a lot of awful things in this world, and that awfulness in and of itself isn't a reason to pay attention to something. Except Florida Man (https://twitter.com/_FloridaMan/status/550119617361108992).
Word, gotcha. Arguments on the internet, tone and body language get lost, etc.
Going to respond to Andy shortly, but I'm gonna chew on it a bit before I do. A few things don't quite sit right with me there but I can't quite articulate why yet.
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Going to respond to Andy shortly, but I'm gonna chew on it a bit before I do. A few things don't quite sit right with me there but I can't quite articulate why yet.
There's a fair number of reasons, starting, foremost, with the fact that it may not work to begin with and that lack of open opposition can equal unintentional endorsement. You also need to have believed that there was a shred of legitimacy in the hashtag to begin with (which can be debated), that a large enough portion of the following is open to that idea (also fair game), and, perhaps most problematically, whether you agree with the idea of opportunism (i.e. can you transform something that came from a shitty place, but is arguably aimed in the right direction).
Especially now, it would be like attempting to co-opt MRA to talk about actual men's rights issues (custody/child support/draft stuff, for example) which... does leave a bad taste in the mouth.
I dunno. I feel like maybe because of the circles I run outside of you guys I got a very different view of what GG "could be" and what some people were trying to do with it? A lot of my "positive" exposure was TB and his stuff, which all seemed very genuine interest and tended to focus on the journalism stuff as opposed to the hurdursjw stuff that you'd see at, say, KiA or the outright aggression at the chans or something.
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I do think that's largely it. GG struck me from the beginning not as a protest that rioters and looters co-opted to do nefarious deeds but as a riot that paid lip service to what some protesters cared about in order to cloak themselves in legitimacy. The whole thing started when an indie dev's vindictive ex-boyfriend made some accusatory posts by and large in order to get an Anon army to harass the shit out of her, and it never changed. It was a harassment campaign from the start. You asked, why are we letting the morons dictate things? Because they were dictating and moving the discourse from the very beginning.
As for whether opportunism is a good thing... well, in most cases yes, but if you're consciously using this as an opportunity to talk about issues you don't get to complain when people harp on the fact that the movement you're trying to co-opt is and was a harassment campaign.
EDIT: Honestly it may have been for the best, in that case, for the talking point to be, "Yes, you know what? This started with a bunch of assholes trying to harass someone. But now that it's gotten media attention, we're gonna steal their thunder and use it to actually talk about shit." But it never was. It was always, "No no, that's not every Gamer Gater, that's just a small subset of assholes who don't REALLY care" when that was so very clearly and patently false.
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While we are talking about coopting movements without really believing in them (http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-paris-march-was-an-emotional-display-but-also-one-full-of-hypocrisy-9973675.html)or we could discuss paying lip service to an ideal in the name of public image while not really doing that thing. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/paris-march-tv-wide-shots-reveal-a-different-perspective-on-world-leaders-at-largest-demonstration-in-frances-history-9972895.html) (Independent only linked twice because it was the first google search result)
I want to talk at Jim, Andy and Zenny but really I need to shout at CK here.
For the TL;DR of this and to ready about it put much better.Go to this article about Fine-Art Photography (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-art_photography) and pay attention to this quote.
In the UK as recently as 1960, photography was not really recognised as a Fine Art. Dr S.D.Jouhar said, when he formed the Photographic Fine Art Association at that time - "At the moment photography is not generally recognized as anything more than a craft. In the USA photography has been openly accepted as Fine Art in certain official quarters. It is shown in galleries and exhibitions as an Art. There is not corresponding recognition in this country. The London Salon shows pictorial photography, but it is not generally understood as an art. Whether a work shows aesthetic qualities or not it is designated 'Pictorial Photography' which is a very ambiguous term. The photographer himself must have confidence in his work and in its dignity and aesthetic value, to force recognition as an Art rather than a Craft"
Realise how completely fucking whack this shit is. Photography is over 100 years old at that point, is a 100% visual medium directly 1:1 comparable to painting as being able to take in "visual aesthetics", has clear components of mastery of a craft baked into it and there was still fucking people saying that it was "art".
Dude what the fuck are you doing letting a bunch of close minded douchebags in a tiny community well outside your own negatively impact your own ability to consume art? Fuck these idiots that think mostly text based games or games who's primary gameplay element is walking around are real games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_(video_game))as if this was not one of the original genres and a very pervasive one for nearly 20 years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infocom). Just because they aren't super common NOW doesn't mean that they aren't games. Silent movies are still fucking movies. Don't even get me started on puzzle games not being "real" games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris).
Art critics of other mediums don't need to respect games for them to be art. All the people actually consuming games don't even need to respect games for them to be art. Games will be taken seriously as art by the people that they matter to in that way. That population will grow as the medium ages if it continues to flourish. All that it should take for it to matter is that YOU respect games on their own merits as a piece of art. They sometimes are compromised art. They are sometimes failures as art. Sometimes they might not even be art and be a completely consumer based product. I personally am certainly not going to let a bunch of regressive artistic conservatives ever hold me back from consuming the weirdest fucking games I can get my hands on to see what new things someone is trying. Of course people that want games to stay the same as they were 10 years ago decry anything different as not art. The Avant Garde is always where art is going and there is always people that will decry it as "Not Art". Say what you will about Fountain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)) nearly 100 years later it has proven to be one of the most influential pieces of its time. Not bad for something that isn't art that came from a movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada) that was also not art. That is the cool thing about the New Thing. It isn't always good, it isn't always the way things are going to end up. If the market for exploratory first person narrative focused games implodes tomorrow and never ever comes back then it would be nothing more than a tiny blip in the history of Video games, a failed branch like say Third Person Action RTS, a genre I can name at least TWO big budget titles in. Just because it failed to become popular doesn't reduce the fact that they are in fact video games and as such something I am fully capable of considering as art. They are certainly never going to be canonized and officially sanctioned as "Art" by the Video Games Academy of Collectively Notable Art Pieces, but that in no way removes the fact that Sacrifice TRIED to tell a story using both interactive and noninteractive sequences through audio and visual outputs that had objectives, win and loss states, branching path choices and impacts on those choices.
You neither need or should actively want other people's validation of your hobby as a form of art. Can you not appreciate the way a game makes you feel or respond? How well put together a game is? How sometimes the flaws in execution can actually improve them as a piece of work, whether it be by making them more fun or more emotionally affecting.
I mean seriously if Gacey clowns are art (http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2010/04/the_ten_creepiest_paintings_by.php) then we get to call Psychonauts a piece of artwork(and they are). If Mulan and other amazingly corporate Disney movies are art then so is something like Assassin's Creed (and they are).
You think video games are fucking special in this way that they get to be amazeballs pieces of art right out of the gate? Or taken extremely seriously as art straight away? We are only 40 years into Video games here dude. You know what Film had in its first 40 years? Some pretty good shit actually, like Nosferatu had even been around just over 30 years after movie cameras were invented. You know what had literally just happened then though? Sound. In that decade was when they had sound. Colour was a long way off. We were 20 years away from Citizen Kane. 30 away from Ben-Hur with Charleton Heston. Movies came a really long way in 40 years, but it barely even fucking started to get exciting. Here we are 130 years on and Movies have spun off into entirely new mediums and ways to deliver content that let you tell completely different story structures like you never could in Film when it started. Oh hey you have like 6 minutes to tell a story with no sound and in black and white. Compare that to Television now which is a spin off of movies and you can do Breaking Bad and tell a massive story over 5 years to a massive audience.
So yeah. Video games are pretty far from perfect. They have a long way to go. So does film. So does literature and it is only a few thousand years old.
They are all art. They are all exciting. Fuck what a gaggle of close-minded smeg heads on the internet have to say about it. Especially when they tout bullshit about freedom of speech, not tone policing conversations and preach inclusivity but fail at all of these things. When they try to tear down dissenting opinions of video games and silence those voices (see campaign to remove negative reviews of Bayonetta 2 and wanting to remove them from Metacritic scores), when they literally want to exclude certain genres and players with storied histories in the medium from the discussion (Text based games and lets not pretend that Myst A PUZZLE GAME THAT YOU WALK AROUND IN FIRST PERSON 100% OF THE TIME was like pretty much the best selling PC game ever until Starcraft and Halflife) and when this concept that it is incredibly inclusive to demand everyone forfeit all personality in the face of "fitting in". Inclusiveness by way of erasure is outright repulsive.
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Also also, there is still something positive about all of this in that it's clear video games are going to be taken seriously as a medium at some point very soon. Once the damage GG has done(and kind of still is doing) has healed over at least.
Sadly, I kind of feel the opposite. I personally think that GG mostly has re-(re-re?)enforced the popular view that gamers are basement dwelling antisocial dudes without a life that have deep seeded resentment toward society because they were picked on in high school and can't pick up girls and use gaming as an outlet to vent their anger. When the highest selling / highest exposure games are mostly kids games and violence simulators (in the eyes of the public), I don't think the public will take it seriously. And Grefter is arguing who cares? Which is fair.
I do think that's largely it. GG struck me from the beginning not as a protest that rioters and looters co-opted to do nefarious deeds but as a riot that paid lip service to what some protesters cared about in order to cloak themselves in legitimacy. The whole thing started when an indie dev's vindictive ex-boyfriend made some accusatory posts by and large in order to get an Anon army to harass the shit out of her, and it never changed. It was a harassment campaign from the start. You asked, why are we letting the morons dictate things? Because they were dictating and moving the discourse from the very beginning.
Pretty much agree with this. As someone who believes that gaming journalism is a complete pile of horseshit, the entire GG movement sent off major warning signs that it shouldn't be followed or trusted from Day 1.
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Posting here solely to agree with everything Grefter just said. I was trying to formulate a reply to CK and being sad that it would get me to actually post in this topic, but then he just popped off with the goods first, so yeah.
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Sadly, I kind of feel the opposite. I personally think that GG mostly has re-(re-re?)enforced the popular view that gamers are basement dwelling antisocial dudes without a life that have deep seeded resentment toward society because they were picked on in high school and can't pick up girls and use gaming as an outlet to vent their anger. When the highest selling / highest exposure games are mostly kids games and violence simulators (in the eyes of the public), I don't think the public will take it seriously. And Grefter is arguing who cares? Which is fair.
Gamergate inadvertently gave major voice to a lot of people who were relatively unknown before.
Like...the most prominent feminist in the game industry as of 2011 was Sheri Graner-Ray whom I expect nobody but me in this topic has heard of. 2012 brought Anita, but I never felt like my views and her views were all that closely aligned. 2013 added Carolyn Petit as someone who was willing to make a particularly public feminist stand, although she doesn't even mention the subject in most of her reviews since.
Now since 2014 we have Brianna Wu, who...is like a public figurehead version of me whom I hero worship. It's fucking awesome.
And I'm pretty happy with Katherine too (LD's concerns about rhetorical devices asside). And...hell, I like what I've been hearing from Anita more in the past couple of months, which I strongly suspect is related to the fact that she started a direct collaboraton with Katherine Cross recently.
Videogame feminism over the period of 3 years has gone from...being something that a few of us discussed in a small room at GDC, to having a public face but only one, and not one that I felt represented me particularly well, to suddenly having a lot of visibility.
In terms of public perception of games, yeah, that's probably gotten worse, but there's a lot of positive infrastructure now that just didn't exist before.
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Only two points I want to respond/clarify on
Dude what the fuck are you doing letting a bunch of close minded douchebags in a tiny community well outside your own negatively impact your own ability to consume art?
God no.
Affect my ability to identify with a larger 'gamer' community and have faith in gamers to develop the apparatuses found in other mediums to analyze, recommend, and enshrine the artworks we consume? Very much so.
You think video games are fucking special in this way that they get to be amazeballs pieces of art right out of the gate? Or taken extremely seriously as art straight away? We are only 40 years into Video games here dude.
Of which the majority are in the post-internet age of instant dissemination of information. In the year of our lord Two Thousand and Fifteen, yes. I do expect this medium to be a little further along the spectrum from pop-art to art-art than it is. Not so much in the sphere of public acceptance (that will change the minute our generation outnumbers our parents' and not one minute before), but in terms of having the aforementioned tools around the art.
e: I should also clarify that these are 100% unabashedly emotional thoughts, not rational ones. Like I am looking at the stuff I wrote and being very sad that I actually feel those things, but even more sad at the sequence of events that lead me to them.
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Watch the development of indie games.
Without the ROI pressures the big companies deal with, pandering to the little shitheads that like to teabag opponents in their FPSes and derive no further pleasure from the medium than immersion, indie games have been and will continue to push the medium into art. I'd cite examples but I'm feeling especially lazy, but take a look at Papers, Please as one of the first I can think of. It has social commentary, simple retro graphics, intense gameplay that does not rely on twitch, and a story. Is that not "art-art"?
There's a lot of pressure on visual media to redeem itself with cultural relevancy. Games have it, but the associated demographic is not positive. Well, I hate to break it to you, but the same is true of genuine art folk. In the same way we approach the 1%, art snobs are just that: snobs. That's not a positive association. It's distancing the way basement dwelling neckbeards is distancing. You're not going to associate yourself with "those people" just because you have a passion in common. So be it.
There's too much focus on defining and retaining group identification. I get it, it's human nature to want to belong to an established club. Legitimacy. Belonging. Etc. But so fucking what? I like games. I consider myself a gamer. I don't even play games right now, except when I'm doing market research on the mobile gamespace. But I sure as hell do not consider myself an art snob or a "gamer".
My academic approach to the topic is my way of dealing with the insanity I read. I do the same thing when I'm arguing with capital C Conservatives about the place of arts in public funding, because guess what, they are 100% against the federal government supporting something that the people so obviously aren't willing to support with their own dollars.
Also, everything Grefter said.
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Indie games also have gone crazy crazy far in just five years. I could rant about Steam and stuff, but fuck that noise, you have heard that before. You know what is the real thing that shows games ARE performing different because of this whole internet thing? X-Box Live and PSN. Both of these storefronts went from shilling ports of old titles and the occasional arcade title to aggressively marketing and courting the indie market, because there is good money in it because regardless of how niche your product is, if you can distribute it around the entire fucking planet, by gods it will find its audience finally. This IS something that video games is calitalising on significantly better than other independent mediums have . Books and comics are doing a pretty decent job at it with both getting big pushes from a main digital marketplace, but video games has it on three competing major platforms for the consoles,handhelds, iTunes, Google Play and the ever expanding number of PC digital distribution vendors. Not just the ability to publish on these either, all of them also tend to at least pay lip service to supporting indie devs and give at least nominal promotion of Indie games that are part of the broader discussion.
This is the first time I have heard of an independent scene being actively curated and getting financial push instead of being used as a breeding ground for talent and ideas. For everything else especially this early in their lifetimes other mediums either had complete control by big publishers/vendors or you were pretty much going to only publish to your local area.
We live in a time where Braid and Fez are actually games we know about and we know about them because Mocrosoft told us about it. That I would say is pretty fucking rad.
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I personally don't know much about Gamer-gate (a few memes and this thread are basically the extant of my limited knowledge), but I have a logistical question/statement regarding the people who care about videogame journalism ethics (like actually legitimately care about it). Are they harboring under the delusion that generalized journalism ethics are better? I just find it funny because even in the 90s people would laugh off the legitimacy in reviews in game magazines, and I would say that given the advent of the internet, the true "journalism" aspect is probably even further diluted due to lowered barriers of journey. And that- compared to the overall state of more "traditional" journalism- paying someone to write a good review of your game is really tame. I guess this is maybe getting into some of the issue gotten into above (just because you care about one thing doesn't mean you can't care about another)...but this feels more direct in terms of comparison. I guess it's hard for me to see why someone would be vocal about videogame journalism but not really be vocal about applying the same standards to areas of journalism where it actually matters.
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They sometimes are compromised art. They are sometimes failures as art. Sometimes they might not even be art and be a completely consumer based product.
Quibble: why is a completely consumer-based product somehow not art (http://www.marriedtothesea.com/021306/got-to-get-paid.jpg)? Anyway, I mostly agree with you. To me, it's like debating global warming deniers. Global warming is real, and videogames are art. The relevant questions are only the ones that accept that baseline (respectively: debates about climate change mitigation, and about whether certain videogame are good as art).
Gamergate inadvertently gave major voice to a lot of people who were relatively unknown before.
First they ignore you, etc. (of course, no one ignores VIDEOGAME Gandhi)
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I think the issues with ethics that mainstream media News journalism is facing is kind of the other side of the coin to Video Games journalism though? They are big structures that are finding ways to cut costs and a good way to do that is hire cheaper people (less skilled labour, hey you with the smart phone, pix plz?) hire less people (editors don't produce cotent, Fire Frei!) and then there is the whole kettle of worms of native advertising which is literally cashing in your reputation as an ethical industry at the cost of that reputation and those ethics.
Games journalism still gets a pool of talent from hobbyists. Gods bless us every one we may want to be ethical and even try to have an understanding of journalistic integrity but most of is sure as shit don't have degrees in Journalism and are probably kind of shit at it.
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So the bottom line is corporations suck and indies are the way to go. It's a true revelation, it is.
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For journalism? I was meaning like, CNN/Time compared to Games journalism as a whole, not Kotaku vs smaller sites. So like if you never want to read about World news again I guess >_>.
It was a phone post so it is super abrupt and lacks nuance. I also meant to say that even games journalism is obviously fighting the struggle of what to do with native advertising. I just think they have a lot less collateral to burn than mainstream sites. So for some it is they have kind of always been there and is just part of consuming from that vendor or it leads to an inmate distrust for them (see all of gawker essentially).
If you were talking about the art fart, well I say still watch AAA stuff. I tried to name drop big stuff from studios instead of circle jerking in my indie land. Do I think Deus Ex games are amazing pieces of art compared to something like Binding of Isaac? Not especially, but I definitely think that they are still pieces made to invoke a response and to make the player think about that they are doing. They are still art, they just compromise for the commercial success a bit more.
That is actually something else pretty cool about games at the moment, because it is still young even the incredibly commercial products still have room to either slip in interesting concepts/messages or are even still supported by the management structure within the corporations that put them out.
Even as formulaic as your modern shooter can Ben, I personally see more merit to them than say your bog standard comedy sitcom of the kind Family Guy was setup to mock or compared to the most cynical of Rom Coms (like New Years). Stuff like Remember Me, Child of Light, Mirror's Edge and the like still get published by huge studios. They are compromised often, but they all still wear their desire to be something different and to have a message on their sleeve.
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I'd argue that with journalism indies aren't necessarily the way to go either, at least in world affairs journalism. There's a lot to be said for having an establishment behind you for getting access to people when you need to get details on a story.
Indie garymes journalists are on a bit better solid footing since being out of the incestuous relationship between companies like IGN or what have you and AAA developers can be a good thing, but they're not immune to corruption either. Look at the Shadows of Mordor incident, where the publisher only sent out demo copies to Youtubers if they promised to only publish good reviews about the game. Jimquisition had a pretty good rundown on that that I think is still up on The Escapist before Sterling left.
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Some bits of news that seem worth mentioning, if for no other reason than to have them in the topic history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYUKJBZuUig&feature=youtu.be&t=1h8m12s
moot explains his views on gamergate. He...really doesn't care.
He compares it to Anonymous, which he also kicked off of 4chan. He kicked them off for the good of 4chan, because he doesn't want to get sued, as he can't handle the finances. He mentions that Anonymous also hated him for a couple years after he kicked them off of 4chan. He mentions that /v/ is visited by 1.4 million people in a month, and says "a few hundred people [gamergate] don't get to speak for the 1.4 million visitors".
Anita Sarkeesian
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/566429325/tropes-vs-women-in-video-games/posts/1115560
details the future of Tropes vs Women in Videogames, gives an explanation for the current pace of the project, talks about a much larger scope than originally planned.
And finally, some pictures. One is a comic critical of gg. One is 8chan propaganda. Both are amusing:
http://www.robot-hugs.com/comics/2015-01-23-Debate.png
http://i.imgur.com/VYFSZib.png
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The IGDA elections are up and there are...no female candidates this year (unusual).
Weird, it's almost like gamergate has been targetting female IGDA board members for several months and nobody wanted to sign up for that.
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Ghazi has a super comprehensive timeline it's putting together:
http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2tkit3/a_timeline_of_gamergate_with_sources/
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Some bits of news that seem worth mentioning, if for no other reason than to have them in the topic history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYUKJBZuUig&feature=youtu.be&t=1h8m12s
moot explains his views on gamergate. He...really doesn't care.
He compares it to Anonymous, which he also kicked off of 4chan. He kicked them off for the good of 4chan, because he doesn't want to get sued, as he can't handle the finances. He mentions that Anonymous also hated him for a couple years after he kicked them off of 4chan. He mentions that /v/ is visited by 1.4 million people in a month, and says "a few hundred people [gamergate] don't get to speak for the 1.4 million visitors".
Considering 4chan's deserved reputation, this is hilarious.
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http://femfreq.tumblr.com/post/109319269825/one-week-of-harassment-on-twitter
eeeeeetttttttthhhhhhiiiiicccccsssss
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Yeah I read that this morning after getting 3-4 hours sleep. Then read another thing where someone was justifying aggression towards Trans people that have unreasonable demands about pronouns (http://np.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2trkhq/gamasutra_david_gallants_blog_for_the_sake_of_the/co1y0kb) apparently.
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Sigh.
CAUGHT RED HANDED: BRIANNA WU GETS BUSTED FOR TALL TALE BY GAMERGATE ON TWITTER (http://www.donotlink.com/ddwy)
EDIT: Per Fenrir's comment, linking from neutral source.
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My god she's a liar! It's all clear to me now! I renounce my SJW membership!!!
This is how cross examination works in real life, by the way. You interrogate someone for a long time, they make a bunch of statements, and inevitably one of them turns out to be wrong or misremembered in some unimportant way, then you slaughter them for it and call them a liar and use the misstatement to invalidate their everything. It's bullshit, of course, but it works. Wu was doomed by her decision to talk to assholes who want to do her harm.
p.s. did not closely read the article because why the fuck would I?
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Important:
Use http://www.donotlink.com/ to link to dumb stuff
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While I like the idea of the site the kinds of links getting posted there all seem to be MRAs linking to articles with a feminist spin on them. That's a site I'd equally like to not support.
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https://storify.com/JillPantozzi/give-an-honest-answer
Enjoy a link to archive sites being used to archive stories before news outlets remove them to plausibly deny the ever existence of said articles existing (Spoiler alert they exist and are still hosted by Mary Sue) .
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My god she's a liar! It's all clear to me now! I renounce my SJW membership!!!
This is how cross examination works in real life, by the way. You interrogate someone for a long time, they make a bunch of statements, and inevitably one of them turns out to be wrong or misremembered in some unimportant way, then you slaughter them for it and call them a liar and use the misstatement to invalidate their everything. It's bullshit, of course, but it works. Wu was doomed by her decision to talk to assholes who want to do her harm.
p.s. did not closely read the article because why the fuck would I?
They actually genuinely don't seem to have caught her in a lie, though. Here's the actual conversation:
https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/490554352676130817
Brianna: "What kind of youtube personalities should I reach out to?"
Some dude: "how about totalbiscuit?"
Brianna: "Do you have their twitter"
Some dude: "it's @totalbiscuit"
Brianna: "What say you @totalbiscuit want a review copy?"
(He doesn't bother with a reply, and she doesn't mention him again)
And this is literally the only time she mentions totalbiscuit (with or without the @) before gamergate started. Like...it's pretty clear in this conversation that she does not know who totalbiscuit is, to the point that she actually asks for his twitter handle. Actually, maybe I would do better to link to the full conversation from the start, because she @s multiple youtube personalities, and starts conversations with the ones who actually respond, and it's pretty easy to tell which ones she's heard of:
https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/490551984479817728
But seriously, though, TheRalphRetort is probably the single worst journalism site I know of. Literally took the tweets of a stalker about Brianna Wu, with photographs of her car and pets, and posted them. Posted Brianna Wu's entire family tree. Never corrects blatant factual errors when requested. Like...of the obviously gamergate slanted journalism, it manages to be dramatically worse than both TechRaptor and Briebart. Which is impressive. Like...TechRaptor is probably the best journalists of the trio and...well... (https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1062/1*KRxxrkvyouUfL_N5KTQeRQ.png)
Aaaaanyway....
https://twitter.com/TheQuinnspiracy/status/561003805366448128
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TechRaptor is probably the best journalists of the trio and...well... (https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1062/1*KRxxrkvyouUfL_N5KTQeRQ.png)
What is the correct onomatopoeia for choking on foam produced by the mouth after reading something?
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They actually genuinely don't seem to have caught her in a lie, though.
You ever hear the old political adage, if you're explaining, you're losing? The fact that she's not a genuine liar is not going to change that headline. They're out to get her and that's the only relevant fact out of the whole thing. Explaining it isn't going to satisfy the crazies, because they hate her and catching her in a lie is just a convenience to them. Explaining isn't going to satisfy the disinterested observer, because anyone with an ounce of disinterest is going to look at that article, conclude the writer has rabies, and close the tab. So what do you get by explaining it in a rational manner? Just the appearance - to rational observers - that you are defensive, and therefore have something to be defensive about.
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Well, right, pretty much the same tactics gamergate has been using the whole time. See also: calling Ian Miles Cheong a Neo Nazi. Calling srhbutts a dogfucker. None of which they have any evidence for.
And Brianna's tactic has typically been to not engage with such rumors. But she actually found that sometimes when she said nothing they spread further. Her solution is to now have a special twitter account for addressing rumors that people might think are true, but which she doesn't want to legitimize by addressing on her main account:
https://twitter.com/GSXdramz
The system works okish. (Also worth noting, even on her "addressing drama" account she didn't address TheRalphRetort, because that story is so transparently stupid it doesn't need addressing. She addressed the rumors that the motorcycle she's been paying off from 2009 was paid for by the GSX patreon, though).
Meanwhile, in actually serious Brianna Wu news, a gamergater threatened to come to her house with a gun.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2u9bgg/brianna_wu_in_contact_with_police_over_gamergater/
ETHICS
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But in the mean time, some general social justice stuff that I'm finding this to be a convenient dumping place for:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/dominicholden/transgender-kids-are-not-confused-or-pretending-study-finds#.eyaBbMgVaE
http://www.cracked.com/article_21884_5-awful-realities-being-man-who-was-raped-by-woman.html
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Meanwhile, in actually serious Brianna Wu news, a gamergater threatened to come to her house with a gun.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2u9bgg/brianna_wu_in_contact_with_police_over_gamergater/
ETHICS
Jace isn't really a GamerGate partisan, he's just an untreated schizophrenic who lived with his fundie mother until a couple months ago. If Wu had actually called the police on him instead of retweeting his crash video maybe he'd be receiving mental help right now.
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Police getting people mental help? You don't seem to know much about america
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Police getting people mental help? You don't seem to know much about america
He lives in suburban Massachusetts, it's a little better than fucking Missouri or whatever about that sort of thing.
e: In breaking news Jace is currently receiving treatment for his concussion and head wound. There's NO WAY he makes it through that without a 72-hour psych hold being put on him by an ER doc.
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If Wu had actually called the police on him instead of retweeting his crash video maybe he'd be receiving mental help right now.
Hm? She called the police on him a good 12 hours before doing anything else. That's what she was doing Friday evening, and that's the link I posted. Notice the link says "Brianna wu in contact with the police...". She retweeted his video early this morning; well after spending the evening detailing the problem to the police.
Jace isn't really a GamerGate partisan
See...I have two objections to this statement:
1. Brianna Wu wouldn't be notable or a target for mentally ill anger if not for gamergate.
2. They are actively encouraging him on twitter and have started using the #wupocalypse hashtag to celebrate his exploits:
https://twitter.com/srhbutts/status/561645550681214976
https://twitter.com/srhbutts/status/561647199109783552
He may not really be gg, but he's going after Brianna because of gg, and they're encouraging him.
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Hm? She called the police on him a good 12 hours before doing anything else. That's what she was doing Friday evening, and that's the link I posted. Notice the link says "Brianna wu in contact with the police...". She retweeted his video early this morning; well after spending the evening detailing the problem to the police.
That is the claim. I'm saying that Wu apparently decided not to actually do anything about it or maybe even didn't call the police at all. The police would have hauled Jace in when they arrived on the scene of his crash yesterday if someone had called in, not waved on to go home and later ask a friend for a ride to the hospital to get his head wound looked at. He's already in the system with multiple priors and is currently on supervised probation; they'd come down on him like a brick of shit for this. But hey, retweeting the video he made after he crawled out of a car wreck is just as good, and using it to prove a point about how you are a victim and not the schizophrenic who people have convinced to do this shit? Totally cool.
Jace isn't really a GamerGate partisan
See...I have two objections to this statement:
1. Brianna Wu wouldn't be notable or a target for mentally ill anger if not for gamergate.
2. They are actively encouraging him on twitter and have started using the #wupocalypse hashtag to celebrate his exploits:
https://twitter.com/srhbutts/status/561645550681214976
https://twitter.com/srhbutts/status/561647199109783552
He may not really be gg, but he's going after Brianna because of gg, and they're encouraging him.
[/quote]
Yeah, they're manipulating (and I will reiterate this) an unmedicated schizophrenic. He himself is not invested in the issue because he literally does not know what it is. The last time something like this happened he spent a bunch of money conducting an "operation" in Israel trying to find the secret bunker where Tupac was being held prisoner by either Hamas or ISIS (it changed a few times). What he was doing had nothing to do with Hamas, he did not care about the Israel-Palestine situation and he can't even tell them apart from ISIS. Would you describe him as an anti-Palestinian militant or an easily-manipulated person with significant mental illness?
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Would you describe him as an anti-Palestinian militant or an easily-manipulated person with significant mental illness?
The latter obviously. The concern is that gamergate is manipulating mentally ill people into potentially murdering someone.
The police would have hauled Jace in when they arrived on the scene of his crash yesterday if someone had called in
Mmmm...not sure. Throughout all of this we've seen extremely underwhelming police response to anything online. There was actually an article written about it recently:
http://jezebel.com/the-cops-dont-care-about-violent-online-threats-what-d-1682577343/+tcberman
Brianna Wu certainly seems frustrated by the lack of response:
https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/561573970538151938
https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/561567260591280129
https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/561544757214990336
And certainly claims to have contacted the police:
https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/561314112123068417
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2u9bgg/brianna_wu_in_contact_with_police_over_gamergater/co6coyl
I can't go into details, because that's what I've been instructed to do. I can say, I'm in contact with law enforcement.
Not to mention, gamergate frequently accuses people of not going to the police, to the point that they've requested documents from police departments to determine if reports were filed or not (they did this with Anita Sarkeesian). It would be downright dumb of her to lie about going to the police, because gamergate would most likely find out, because they are creepy enough to contact her local police department and ask.
So...no, "the police didn't instantly arrest him" doesn't automatically mean that she didn't go to the police. If for some strange reason she didn't go to the police (why??) I'm sure gamergate will be making inquiries with her police department, and will let us know if she didn't.
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The latter obviously. The concern is that gamergate is manipulating mentally ill people into potentially murdering someone.
The only potential murder on the table was them tricking Jace into killing himself by challenging Wu to an "honorable street race" that would somehow resolve all of Gamergate. Of course they intentionally sent him to the middle of a blizzard that day, presumably because it would be more funny that way or some shit.
So...no, "the police didn't instantly arrest him" doesn't automatically mean that she didn't go to the police. If for some strange reason she didn't go to the police (why??) I'm sure gamergate will be making inquiries with her police department, and will let us know if she didn't.
That claim has already indeed been made as of yesterday afternoon, by King of Pol. He's currently staying overnight at a local hospital for observation, what with the head wound and concussion both potentially being life-threatening, so we'll see if the police swing by to arrest him tomorrow morning, but I wouldn't be surprised if Wu has realized that rallying an army against a schizophrenic won't look good.
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so we'll see if the police swing by to arrest him tomorrow morning, but I wouldn't be surprised if Wu has realized that rallying an army against a schizophrenic won't look good.
Hm? She's been pretty clear that he's mentally ill and needs treatment.
https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/561589400262705153
https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/561589145374846977
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so we'll see if the police swing by to arrest him tomorrow morning, but I wouldn't be surprised if Wu has realized that rallying an army against a schizophrenic won't look good.
Hm? She's been pretty clear that he's mentally ill and needs treatment.
https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/561589400262705153
https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/561589145374846977
Yes, this would be the beginning of the backpedal I was talking about.
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Been staying quiet since busy + don't know much info about this incident but I couldn't resist.
so we'll see if the police swing by to arrest him tomorrow morning, but I wouldn't be surprised if Wu has realized that rallying an army against a schizophrenic won't look good.
Hm? She's been pretty clear that he's mentally ill and needs treatment.
https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/561589400262705153
https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/561589145374846977
Yes, this would be the beginning of the backpedal I was talking about.
Nope. Couldn't be that she got that information after calling the cops and talking about it. It couldn't be that she got new information and changed her talking points based off of it. Is backpedaling. Such a flip flopper. Never gonna be president wow. #FoxNews
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It couldn't be that she got new information and changed her talking points based off of it.
That is exactly what I was saying is happening. Wu realized Jace is an unmedicated schizophrenic so calling for Internet Fatwa would not look good, and slowed that roll considerably. The fact that Republicans consider the word "backpedaling" to carry inherent judgment doesn't mean it's true, it's just finding out a situation is different than you thought and backing off. The amount of time it takes to realize he's off his gourd is one google search.
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The way you're saying it implies she's backing off in order to protect her public image, rather than because of any moral judgment that backing off is, y'know, the right thing to do.
(Personally, even if it's just for the sake of her public appearance, I'm going to give her a little slack if she reacts poorly to a fucking death threat by a crazy person.)
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so we'll see if the police swing by to arrest him tomorrow morning, but I wouldn't be surprised if Wu has realized that rallying an army against a schizophrenic won't look good.
Hm? She's been pretty clear that he's mentally ill and needs treatment.
https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/561589400262705153
https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/561589145374846977
Yes, this would be the beginning of the backpedal I was talking about.
Dude, look at the time on the tweets. Literally before you made a single post on the subject. This isn't a "backpedal" it's one of the first things she said.
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And...mysery solved: yes Brianna Wu went to the police...and the courtroom...and now has a restraining order against Jace:
https://twitter.com/giantspacekat/status/563437767183437824
https://twitter.com/giantspacekat/status/563438506400571392
Meanwhile, gamergate actually had a foray into ethics for the first time in weeks. They even made a new hashtag for it (#PinsofInterview). Buuuuut they didn't really do all their homework and just quoted Allistair Pinsof without researching his claims:
http://kotaku.com/gamergates-latest-conspiracy-theory-doesnt-hold-up-1684012308
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TotalBiscuit has written a 2000 word manifesto to the KiA mods:
http://np.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2v760f/totalbiscuit_on_the_recent_status_of/cof0rb9
It's...well if they collectively manage to do all that, I'd be fine with the movement.
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Nice thoughts. I'd be behind that kind of movement as well. Although, he keeps mentioning that there should be a 'list of achievements by gamergate' and I have no idea what those achievements are? I was pretty much under the impression that the only things they'd achieved was making gamers look bad and their more radical members sending death threats and bomb threats?
Also, just from reading the replies since MC posted this, it doesn't look like anyone is intending to follow it...
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I like that the stated reason that they shouldn't harass Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian is to "not give them attention", not because it's morally reprehensible to harass people on the Internet.
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I was pretty much under the impression that the only things they'd achieved was making gamers look bad and their more radical members sending death threats and bomb threats?
The closest thing to an organized list I've seen out of the group is this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy9bisUIP3w
Which...is not really a list of achievements, and is more a collection of snipets from interviews and videos they've done on journalism (and a few interviews and videos that had fuck all to do with them).
Although those "related videos" x_x
For stuff claimed as a victory, you can try ctrl+f for victory in this timeline:
http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/wiki/timeline
But this is a timeline put together by Ghazi, so it might be missing some points.
Also, just from reading the replies since MC posted this, it doesn't look like anyone is intending to follow it...
The mods are trying to enforce a "no drama" rule. But they've tried and failed such initiatives in the past.
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Man, Total Biscuit. What an idiot. A well meaning idiot, but an idiot nonetheless. The point he's making is good, and would certainly do a lot to bolster GamerGate's credibility. But then he says shit the point Ciato pointed out, and how sad it is that GamerGate has "been called every name under the sun and that's not fair." The best part was him reinforcing that they're not a harassment campaign because it's only harassment if you actually drive anyone out of the game's industry. And in the same breath tells them to stop bashing people in threads and harassing people because that's "being used against [GG] as proof that [GG] are a bunch of harassers." Like, seriously?
What a massive tit.
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...The best part was him reinforcing that they're not a harassment campaign because it's only harassment if you actually drive anyone out of the game's industry. And in the same breath tells them to stop bashing people in threads and harassing people because that's "being used against [GG] as proof that [GG] are a bunch of harassers." Like, seriously?
What a massive tit.
Just like when TB said Sarkeesian's harassment isn't to be taken seriously because she's "still breathing." Also, at least two prominent writers left because of this shit (Frank and Brice).
At this point, TB has engaged in so much intellectual dishonesty that it's hard to take him seriously. The weird paranoia (he does engage in what amounts to SJW conspiracy bullshit even though he doesn't use those terms), the nonstop No True Scotsman claims, the constant self aggrandizing (check how many followers I have!), and his thoughts on privilege are repulsive and myopic. I don't know that a sub that named itself after TumblrinAction is going to take very kindly to not using "SJW" since that is basically the entire point of TiA's existence as far as I can tell.
And you know what, if GG did this then I wouldn't have a ton of objections, but at this point, this an exhortation to moderates who no longer exist. The content of the sub is all propagandistic outrage, so his "Be patient" point will dry up all activity on the sub since, I don't know if you know, the ethics witch-hunt is and has always been bullshit.
Why Brianna Wu is being targeted is also incredibly puzzling to me, but that's another issue.
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Why Brianna Wu is being targeted is also incredibly puzzling to me, but that's another issue.
...yeahhhhh, had a rant about that recently
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2v66m1/brianna_wu_on_twitter_this_person_sent_a_video/coeu3c6
Replies are interesting.
And yeah, TiA initially sounds harmless, but it's only harmless if you don't let it bleed into your real attitudes, which TB.....
https://twitter.com/srhbutts/status/564529339350659075
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B8DHaaUCUAAjGdO.png
This second one he insists is "only making fun of otherkin, not transgender people"--and yes, technically there are a tiny minority of otherkin on Tumblr who have preferred pronouns relating to animals. but apparently most of them are trans anyway (http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2tfwoi/total_biscuit_twitter_drama_thread/cnyszj9).
Like, I had no idea otherkin pronouns were a thing before seeing that tweet. It's the kind of thing you only hear about if you read TumblrInAction, which digs up the most ridiculous elements of Tumblr (which, notably, is a website mostly populated by teenagers who don't have a well-formulated world-view). The concept of 30-year-old men making fun of 15-year-old girls is already a bit messed up once individual teenagers are being singled out. But it starts to become pernicious if they then use the things they've seen on Tumblr as part of their world-view, and assume others will understand their references.
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I don't think it's just that. It is pernicious because people who engage in things like TiA regularly seem to develop a warped sense of what things like feminism are. As a result, in other instances where someone even mentions identity politics, the bar for labeling and dismissing someone as an "SJW" is lowered because of all of the time these people spend in a place ridiculing strawmen. Not only that, immersing yourself a place like that also shifts how you perceive how frequent an opinion or behavior is in the wider population.
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Meanwhile, on 8chan....
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/11/1363758/-Federal-Judge-Katherine-Forrest-doxed-SSN-posted-on-8ch-net-baphomet-8chan-Admin-Destroys-Evidence?showAll=yes
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While hitting the Ghazi hot buttons on the topic
https://web.archive.org/web/20150212032240/https://twitter.com/infinitechan/status/565688109837590528
Archive and forward to the authorities? I was not aware that this was an available option.
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Filthy Frank
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOAJu4CrBUU
EDIT: cool gender research I find by hanging out on Gamerghazi:
http://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943
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http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2wiew7/do_you_people_not_remember_jack_thompson/
I figure this will get burned down quickly, but wanted to link to something dumb.
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If you want silly Ghazi shit, I had some involvement in this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LznsK7TmH4
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So....turns out Jace Connors was not schizophrenic at all. He was an actor, who thought what he was doing was funny.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/gamergates-archvillain-is-really-a-trolling-sketch-comedian#.yhX5e7DxJ
Seriously, what the fuck?
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Yeahhhhh gonna need more sources than buzzfeed on that one before I believe that is the full story.
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Yeahhhhh gonna need more sources than buzzfeed on that one before I believe that is the full story.
Fair, this was posted on ghazi:
Uh, I'm not sure if he does. This article is a bit strange to me. If you look at his recent, out of character comments on Youtube and Steam he seems to have a much more chevalier attitude about all of this. One to the effect of being quite amused that Brianna spent time and money trying to get a restraining order against "a figment of my imagination." This seems a bit inconsistent with all of it, is all.
So either he's playing both sides or... I'm not sure that this article is telling the truth. One or the other, I think.
Regardless, one thing is quite certain at this point. Jace Connors was a ruse.
His repentant attitude as displayed in the buzzfeed article may not be genuine. Aaaand I'd say some of the harassment he's gotten doesn't match 8chan's MO. (Knocking on someone's door and running away? That's like...a 90s prank, and not something that 8chan has done yet to my knowledge).
Regardless, none of this makes him look better.
EDIT: yeah, found the comment that was paraphrased above--it sounds much nastier in his original wording:
ParkourDude91 ~ 12 hours ago
Still laughing that an insane tranny wasted 2 days in court and hundreds of dollars trying to get a restraining order against a figment of my imagination
source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBlJZdSsfcw&feature=youtu.be
EDIT: a second article on the issue, but it doesn't shed much more light:
http://jezebel.com/man-who-terrorized-brianna-wu-for-months-says-he-was-ju-1687689719
EDIT2: there is now some skepticism as to whether he was ever a comedian; the comedy group he claims to be a part of doesn't have him listed. Some are thinking he might just be a gater.
In other news, this looks to be the most upvoted thing on Ghazi ever, so I'll leave it here:
http://ahs-comic.com/poseidon.png
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He gets a prize for being the first person I have heard of to have a joke that was criminally unfunny.
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The most gamergate tweet ever, courtesy of Roguestar:
http://i.imgur.com/FqZupHQ.jpg
(EDIT: archive: https://archive.today/TlozN )
A really good read on the whole Mark Kern thing:
http://www.brokentoys.org/?p=5672
A response hashtag that spun off from the above, that I thought was pretty cool:
https://storify.com/Tolvo/women-and-allies-speak-out-on-letwomenspeak
And...I actually learned quite a bit about how the press works from this piece:
https://medium.com/@ashleylynch/collusion-corruption-and-other-gamergate-myths-fc8b8a02bfa3
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This is tangential but really disheartening. Reddit witch hunts always seem to yield positive fruit.
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/witch-hunt-against-fake-female-hearthstone-player-/1100-6425551/
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Was thinking of LD as I wrote this:
https://storify.com/metroidcomposit/if-you-actually-want-to-be-neutral
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Oh hey that was you, didn't notice.
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I suspected that that was a reference to LD in your defense of the piece. Nice to see it confirmed.
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I tried reading the met-link but got "this storify api is unreachable"?
EDIT: Okay now I can read it...kinda? It gets to the bottom of the page, I see a "read the next page" button. Click it. Nothing happens. <_______>
Double EDIT: Hey finally got it to work. That sight just did not want to work for me. Will post below with thoughts.
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http://www.staresattheworld.com/2015/03/jordan-owen-absconed-budget-sarkeesien-effect/
omg
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Was thinking of LD as I wrote this:
https://storify.com/metroidcomposit/if-you-actually-want-to-be-neutral
Interesting piece. I broadly agree with the points you make, but I want to go a bit further with this. To me, neutrality is a dirty word. What people who claim neutrality really want is freedom from being criticized for refusing to condemn the contemptible. The ability to offer aid to an organization you know is corrupt without being tarred with their corruption. Finally, they want to be praised for their circumspection, for people to admire them for choosing the "right" path. Fuck that, and fuck them. Fuck Switzerland. Fuck swing voters. Fuck all of it, and fuck each and every one of those sanctimonious assholes. If you see something that's wrong, say it's wrong. If you won't say it's wrong, you're a coward, and you should just own it instead of pretending you a big fucking neutral hero. If you can't tell it's wrong, you're willfully blind. If you want to mediate...well, that's fine, but you must understand that the purpose of mediation is to create a workable agreement. Mediation is explicitly NOT about coming to the right answer on a moral question.
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So some of this is in response to met's article, most is in response to Jim's "fuck all you neutral assholes" rant.
For me, neutrality is usually a shorthand for either a) not actually caring enough about the issue to get involved. Or b) not having enough information/being skeptical of the information you have received. Which the piece there covered pretty neatly. If B, then follow all these steps! Or get off the fence. Or turn it into A if following all those steps is too much of a hassle. If A...well, then carry on not giving a fuck, that's fine. But there is something else that...kinda falls into 'neutral' but kinda doesn't.
What I see sometimes on issues(not on Gamergate because, uh, I only vaguely follow it here) is someone claiming neutrality because they can't bring themselves to agree wholly with any side of it. I see this in politics, people who like some of what one party does, but not other things. And same deal on the other party. So they have to prioritize what they care about most, or wind up sitting it out. I also see neutrality used by people who don't want to feel associated with the crazies that get the most publicity on either side of an issue.
Is that cowardice? I'm betting Jim will say yes, but I don't really think so. Because whenever someone takes a stand on an issue, the first thing opponents will do is drag up the craziest assholes that support your stance and go "oh so you think this shit is okay?". Which is dumb and bad, but people don't know how to deal with it. Condemn the extremist actions of your own side? Get ready for a deluge of "How dare you criticize us, you're not really on our side at all!" Try to brush it off or ignore it? Hey, that's just another form of refusing to condemn the contemptible! Deflect by pointing out the crazies on their side? And now we reach Business As Usual for arguments.
I'm kinda rambling at this point, but...I don't really have a good answer to the above. To speak only for myself for a moment(since I am the only person I can speak with absolute surety for), I certainly feel kinda like a hypocrite when I take a strong stance...and then my supposed allies on that issue start acting like giant douchebags and doing indefensible things in the name of a good cause. I take the route of condemning their actions, dealing with the backlash and moving on...usually right out of the arguments because I now feel ostracized by the very people I theoretically agree with. If I don't feel strongly enough about an issue to risk walking into that exhausting viper's nest again? Then I don't take an active stance and just quietly agree with the side I like more...but I stay out of the fighting. If it's a political issue I vote my conscience and stay out of the debates. I just don't have the energy to take a hard stance on every issue that crosses my path, quite frankly. Arguing is mentally exhausting and emotionally draining, only worth it if I really feel strongly about something.
So yeah, that's...not really "neutral" but it's not really taking a side either. I don't quite know what to call it, so it winds up getting lumped under "staying neutral". And while I also tend to roll my eyes at those who claim neutral is morally superior or whatnot, I also find myself curious if the "I don't have the energy to argue" or "I can't fully agree with either side so I don't know what to do" kinds of "neutral" fall into that "fuck you neutral cowards" territory?
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If I don't make it, tell my wife "Hello".
I think the difference would be between being passively "Neutral" out of ignorance or lack of investment in an issue and acting actively "Neutral". I think ambivalent might be the word you are after?
So like if you are not invested in the topic then you probably aren't (or shouldn't...) be discussing it greatly. If you are actively involved in a topic and sit on the fence on your high horse you aren't really adding much of value to the conversation. In that case, I am kind of with Jim in that people like that can kindly fuck right off.
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To be clear, I am definitely not neutral; I post on Ghazi daily, and frankly rarely even glance at kia these days. I do have a couple of gaters I keep in touch with, just so I have a second source on things.
Nor am I saying neutrality is the noble choice.
But like...look at today's events. The twitterverse against gg goes on a witch hunt against Brianna Wu. Why? Because she had coffee with Brad Wardell (a gater). Look at Athena Hollow's timeline if you're curious. The rage actually spilled over onto Ghazi (usually Ghazi is more moderate). The demand for ideological purity was pretty clearly taken too far today.
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Gref has it right. My invective is directed not at people who refuse to take sides in a bipolar conflict (or who have decided to tune the whole thing out) but rather with people who claim that there is inherent virtue in refusing to take sides. They're the ones who condone vile behavior and ask to be applauded for it. They disgust me. Think Nazi gold in Swiss banks, because hey, not our problem. (Seriously fuck Switzerland.)
I appreciate people who take a complicated stance that can acknowledge some wrong in positions they broadly agree in. I have no problem with a person who has looked at the bundle of associations on either side of a conflict and decided that neither is worth associating with. That's an problem inherent to labels. You don't have to feel like a hypocrite because people who agree with you one one important point also happen to be douchebags.
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There was definitely some fire on Twitter today about two opinionated game devs talking when they were both at convention and one of them saying that on the topic of actually running a business they agree on stuff.
So yeah, suffice to say people getting up in arms about it was pretty crazy. I feel bad for Brianna having to feel like she needed to defend herself from people that usually had her back, but Brad Wardell pushes their buttons.
That isn't to say people should have blown up at her. People should have known to take some distance themselves and remember that part of the problem is how much crazy microscopic scrutiny there already is on her life and that maybe, just maybe, who she socializes with at an industry event is her prerogative and the fact that she can come out of it with "Hey we agree with each other on some things" is something she is well within her rights to broadcast (especially noting that it is how to run a business, so nothing to do with GG related stuff more than tangentially in that some of the sketchy stuff Wardell has been accused of was in the workplace aaaand that he threw out a tweet suggesting a gater artist apply for work way early in the piece).
People lost their shit because she was trying to approach him as a human and to try and to humanise other people's interpretation of her. Just like Wardell is no devil she is no saint either.
All I hope is she gets some time to decompress after the crazy convention schedule and do some things she enjoys.
This is also obviously not to be "neutral" but to say you don't have to always be an activist 24/7. Sometimes, maybe, just possibly people are allowed to do their day job and not be constantly scrutinized for it.
Edit - Checking what people were saying.
Errrrrgh there is a lot of "we defended her even though she didn't do everything perfect all the time" sort of sentiment or being mad that she isn't 100% perfect as an activist. Do people forget what they were defending her from? Personal attacks and commonly transphobic slights as if her genital mattered to the quality of her games. Should people suddenly have stopped defending someone from that kind of shit at any point?
Gross internet is gross.
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Re: Jim/Gref - I'm...honestly quite happy to be wrong about how I read what you wrote there, then! Maybe it was the hour, or maybe it was just my recent mood, but that read like an absolutist "pick a side or fuck you forever" stance to me at first. Which...well, my discomfort with absolute stances is one of the topics I'm willing to expend the energy to argue(is that irony? It feels like irony. But I'm not an english major). On clarification, I get what you're actually saying now and p.much agree.
Re: Brianna Wu thing - ...what the fuck? She has a civil conversation with a guy on the other side of the issue at a convention and gets villified for it? <________> I don't even have words for that. Being able to have those civil discussions with someone you are on opposite sides with is...imo a mark of maturity and should be respected. Even if you can't come to any agreements on the issue in question(or aren't even looking to come to any agreements on that), being able to talk about other things without the contested issue bleeding over is good!
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Watch Tim Schafer's sock puppet account engage in hate speech. (http://www.themarysue.com/time-schafer-gamergate-joke/)
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nice.
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So...I am now the second curator for the Ghazi timeline
http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/wiki/timeline
Let me know if you have any suggestions. We're trying to
1. Try to reduce bloat; don't comment on stuff that's just petty drama
2. When stuff does cause a big blowup, report the event that caused the reaction in a Wikipedia-style neutral tone, just describing events with sources.
It still needs work, and it's missing some events, and probably includes some events it shouldn't. But it's still a pretty good timeline.
EDIT--another one of those "gamergate in a nutshell" screenshots:
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/525330622873477120
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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/03/katherine-clark-gamergate-brianna-wu
GG getting some attention from legislators.
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The sequel to """Fifteen Thousand Dollars""" is here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGbnAJR-vZA&feature=youtu.be
The original if you haven't seen it yet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsdIHK8O5yo
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the best part is the movie about people fighting in suits and fedoras and pocket squares
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Richard Dawkins is starting to join the fray. I was thinking it was a matter of time until his retrograde opinions came into alignment with GG's.
https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins
Oh aren't you clever:
https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/482781472961859584
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Dawkins references Shakespeare. Followers say "not even Tolkien"... Aahhhhhhhhh I know I have been in discussion on the value of having canon texts before but even if you don't agree with it you have to realise that the hierarchy there does not stand Tolkien above Shakespeare.
This is of course patently ignoring the parts where Tolkien books are literally about absolute good and evil and how there is always going to be a bit of wiggle room form problems coming up in that kind of text. Especially when on the page you have all the good guys being white and explicitly mentioning the only black people as evil.
"Not even Tolkien", fucking ridiculous.
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You know, I did not believe it was possible for my opinion of Richard Dawkins to get any lower. Live and learn!
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Every time I hear one of his opinions I think less of him. He is really active on social media so he isn't shy about talking about his opinions.
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Bloodborne is starting to join the fray.
(http://cdn4.gamepur.com/images/feature/bloodborne-fedora-messenger-skin-screenshot.jpg)
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Huh, I was going to post about how it isn't really the right era, with them being invented in late 1880s (as per Wiki) and I picture Victorean period being a bit earlier than that. But I was also going to say that Bloodborne imagery really screams The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde which also came out in mid 1880s, so I guess it is bang on the nose in ways I don't expect (As is usual for Miyazaki).
That said I don't know if it is shots fired or just accurate period piece or not.
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Actually I wad just making a dumb joke.
I am pretty sure this is just "you guys like fedoras right. Enjoy your stupid preorder bonus" and unrelated to GG
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these are actually pretty funny in their absurdity; storing them here
https://twitter.com/srhbutts/status/593070840071131137
https://twitter.com/freebsdgirl/status/593638911735406592
https://twitter.com/freebsdgirl/status/593632926727688192
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that...is special.
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Looks like Ghazi doesn't allow the "I'm leaving GG" or "this person left GG" posts anymore (probably because it paints a target on them, I would guess?) But this is a pretty good one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nb_Nkgyb2Y
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This is more just humor, but...
moderate GGer: "Gamergate is about ethics, not SJWs."
Milo Y: "Shut up fool, it's about SJWs."
https://twitter.com/2dAmMuslim/status/596083257470484481
https://archive.is/ASdX7
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So apparently gamergate is appropriating the confederate flag (but making it purple and green; gotta get that rape reference in there too!)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIZv2MfVEAE1hvf.png
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How is purple and green a rape reference? Hadn't heard that one before.
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http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/daily-dose-piccolo-dick is what it is attributed to.
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While it probably started that way, at this point, given how they speak in 90% cliched war movie dialogue, I'd be surprised if it hasn't just morphed from 'veiled rape reference' to 'these are our colours'. Quite frankly, what they're up to on any given day is horrid enough, there's no need to bring in ancient history that's probably not connected to why it's done anymore.
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It is definitely that yes. This is exactly what people talk about when they say they "double down" on things. Nope nothing wrong with anything ever done here in fact, fuck you for ever implying it!
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Also, since this is just a side show (most Gators these days seem to be more into the right for folks to shame fat people or that taking down the Stars and Bars is censorship), but figure I'll post this here.
Sealions of Wikipedia. (http://sealionsofwikipedia.com/) It's a place where the antics of the Gators trying to change the Wikipedia article to something of their choosing are pointed out and mocked.
In addition, while it's not filled with the usual awfulness one associates with Gators, it does come with some brain bleach. Most posts contain a clip of actual sealion antics which are adorable as opposed to horrifying.
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Art critics of other mediums don't need to respect games for them to be art. All the people actually consuming games don't even need to respect games for them to be art. Games will be taken seriously as art by the people that they matter to in that way. That population will grow as the medium ages if it continues to flourish. All that it should take for it to matter is that YOU respect games on their own merits as a piece of art. They sometimes are compromised art. They are sometimes failures as art. Sometimes they might not even be art and be a completely consumer based product. I personally am certainly not going to let a bunch of regressive artistic conservatives ever hold me back from consuming the weirdest fucking games I can get my hands on to see what new things someone is trying. Of course people that want games to stay the same as they were 10 years ago decry anything different as not art. The Avant Garde is always where art is going and there is always people that will decry it as "Not Art".
I know I'm posting in an old thread. I'll cut out my re:feminismstillrelevant re:sexismsickandtiredofbeingtiredandnotsurprised re:insidiousgamerculture re:internetandaffect responses. And in the typical pitiful manner of being in graduate school, I learned about GG in Adrianne Shaw's Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gaming Culture text. Sigh. I'll leave re:GG out as well, because I am still quite ambivalent about the appropriation of "social justice" for commodities. But I want to respond to you, Grefter.
I have a huge philosophical issue with the identity of things, and am not concerned with qualifying x in an either-or-binary. What's happened, however, is that there are scholars, critics and writers in academia. They're attempting to expand the identity of "art" as transcending traditional fine art mediums. Art History is a classed field of resources and has been slow to respond. After The Art of Video Games exhibition, meaning museums sanctioned the material, now academes are grasping for ways to engage . The field of Visual Culture developed in response to Art History's tried and true ways in the late 90s, and now people are looking at things "visual" as historical documents with a greater lens. Ivory Tower vanguards are now incorporating.
The author is absolutely correct when they said "Photography" was not Art until the 60s, and honestly, it's more an 80s situation in the United States. It does not matter if the technology, device or style existed for thousands of years. What matters is that the art-not-Art difference has continued without much disturbance by elite consumer group who finds value in collectibility, shareability and profit. You could not profit from video games as Art until video games hit the mainstream and people began searching for some teleological history of Greats (something "avant-garde discourse" perpetuates as well). I don't agree with high/low culture differences, but capital-a Art is still a prime commodity of classed tastes, and our cultural industries are not doing enough to quit pretending some reified idea of Art is for all.
I'm disturbed by the co-optation of video games in the museum and art spheres, especially since it's pushing a good moment of gaming into a Historicaltrash.bin. You don't have to be a painter to appreciate a painting, you don't have to be a gamer to appreciate gaming, but the experience of being a "User" definitely helps intensify the understanding of craft. What's great and relief to me, however, is that I have yet to see a widespread response of the gaming industry as catering to the cultural institution of Art. That's cool.
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Ugggh I had started a response and my browser ate it. I will get back to it in a bit.
Suffice to say, I was thinking of you when I posted it and knew I would get parts of it wrong. Thank you and want to keep chatting about it!
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new hbomberguy video, this time covering "Cultural Marxism"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYQo6LI3Y7c&feature=youtu.be&a
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I'm disturbed by the co-optation of video games in the museum and art spheres, especially since it's pushing a good moment of gaming into a Historicaltrash.bin. You don't have to be a painter to appreciate a painting, you don't have to be a gamer to appreciate gaming, but the experience of being a "User" definitely helps intensify the understanding of craft. What's great and relief to me, however, is that I have yet to see a widespread response of the gaming industry as catering to the cultural institution of Art. That's cool.
I kinda doubt it ever will. I remember the 'Art of Gaming' stuff, and my impression from the outside looking in was, "oh hey the Art world picked up on the fact that videogames have a visual component...aaaaaaaaaaaand that's as far as they've gotten. Like they understand that if you dissect a game you can root around in its innards and pull out some Art. But seem not to to quite get that the game as a sum of its parts has value as well.
Take Dark Souls. You're in Blighttown, you start at the top and are looking down. This in iteslf is quite cool since you were already at the bottom of the Depths(?) which seemed pretty much like they would be the bottom. Nevertheless here you are, peering off the edge of a massive aqueduct to the dimly-seen water below. You don't think you'll ever go there. It seems like just the background. Nevertheless as you advance through the path of the level it takes you lower and lower until you emerge only a couple stories above it. Now you can see greater detail, and you see that it is a place you will go. Then you get there and find out it's not even the bottom. There's a great deal of art in that, but it relies on the expectations a seasoned player has about how videogames work.
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I kinda doubt it ever will. I remember the 'Art of Gaming' stuff, and my impression from the outside looking in was, "oh hey the Art world picked up on the fact that videogames have a visual component...aaaaaaaaaaaand that's as far as they've gotten. Like they understand that if you dissect a game you can root around in its innards and pull out some Art. But seem not to to quite get that the game as a sum of its parts has value as well.
Yeah, the exhibition was a hijacking, and the catalogue is very bad. They did not appeal to any expert gamers or designers; people encountered tons of game art; many games "on view" were on unplayable mock machines and more. When I visited, I saw either old or young people and few of ages in-between. I believe Ian Bogost in game design at Ga Tech was the only to review the show. I do think of games as gesamtkunstwerk as you're describing, but museums are so outpaced by technology that the most they could do today is incorporate. RE: your second paragraph was on point.