Video Game Culture VI Justice for all... social or not

[karaddin]

You asusme that the people who identify with the GamerGate movement, like daskool, would actually look down on the PUA stuff, when my asusmption is that the membership of both groups significantly overlaps.

Oh I actually make the same assumption as you, but the GamerGaters more aware of how things look are more likely to try avoid this sort of association.

[Werthead]

http://theralphretort.com/wp-content/uploads/EVIDENCEFIX.jpg

Publishing the info that someone gave to you voluntarily isn't doxxing.

But back to the substance of your post, when 14 gaming sites in lock step post near identical op ed pieces denouncing gamers in the way they did, and then answering allegations of collusion with a blizzard of bullshit, then you're damn right things blew up. Now the latest tactic is for these same sites, and now many MSM outlets, declaring that the gamergate movement is 'over' having been exposed as a haven for misogynistic Nazis who're worse than ISIS. Is called setting the agenda, not that they need anything as trivial as evidence, they're journalists after all

So it was a blizzard of bullshit when the underlying claim of GG - that Zoe Quinn slept with a critic for a favourable review - turned out to be an irrefutable lie?

Interesting.

How is GamerGate threatening and halting the greater diversity of people making games and characters in games? By commenting on forums and twitter? The people, who are doing the commenting, aren't game developers, nor do they have any say in the company strategies of major game developing companies. Please explain to me how one group, bitching on the internet about something, will get its way, among all the other groups, who are bitching about something else?

That's the irony: they won't. The GGers are fighting an utterly futile battle which they will lose and there is nothing they can do about it. All they are doing is screaming about it, causing a fuss and making life as unpleasant as possible for those who want to see gaming move on, become more inclusive and diverse etc. And in fact GGers really don't have anything to worry about: no-one's coming along to take away their games. The new CoD out in a couple of weeks will still be the biggest-selling game of the year (probably) and no-one's going to stop making the games they like any time soon because they're so successful.

Even if we accept the journalistic ethics argument, things have actually improved markedly in recent years due to the proliferation of internet videos (many of whom have turned out to be far more ethically compromised than any gaming site or mag ever, by signing a form agreeing to give Shadow of Morder a good review in return for a pre-release copy, but hey, that'll just be ignored as well as no women are involved who can be criticised) and public opinion forcing gaming sites to mention stuff they'd previously have ignored so as not to risk their advertising money. Rome II getting lower scores for bugs when it was nowhere nearly as badly bugged as multiple previous games in the series that got 90%+ with no bugs mentioned at all is a good example of that. Colonial Marines would probably have gotten much better reviews a few years ago, and only the fact it was so obviously going to be shitcanned by the general audience that the main game reviewers had no choice but to go with it. So even that side of things is improving.

Lets assume, for a second, that maybe, just maybe, GamerGate bitches loud enough and thus manages to influence the development of games and characters a little - not much, for sure, for there are many other groups, who are pushing their agendas in that market, not to mention the game developing companies themselves, whose choice is based on whatever will yield the most profit - if it so happens, wouldn't that prove that the GamerGate movement is recognized by game developing companies as a stakeholder on the matter, whose opinion is deemed to bear enough merit to be incorporated in the development of games?

They won't, though, because there is no reason. They're a very vocal but still very tiny minority. Games pushing forwards, including more female characters etc are very successful and popular. The new Tomb Raider was huge, BioWare RPGs are huge, indie games are (collectively) huge and even the previous CoD introduced female characters, whilst GTA, for all the deserved criticism it gets, has had strong female characters (not as protagonists yet) and was one of the first series to feature black main characters, amongst all its dodgy exploitiveness (and in GTA5, outright trans-shaming). GGers can use their collective will to get Intel to pull advertising for a few weeks or something, but beyond that there really isn't anything they can do to affect anything. The gaming companies will go where the money is and that's with the larger audience. Alienating half of your audience is clearly no longer something they can afford to do, given the growing money crisis in Triple-A gaming.

And the fact is that CoD 2015 could feature an LGBT (all of them, at once) black woman with a minigun as the main character and most of the GGers would still go buy it anyway, and Activision are very much aware of that.

Moreover, who has quit and from what thanks to that? I haven't heard of any notable game developers quitting

Phil Fish sold his company and the Fez IP as a result of the same wave of doxxing attacks that targeted Zoe Quinn. Though he'd already quite game development anyway, but flogging the company was a pretty big step. A few smaller indies have quit, but my guess is that once the current shitstorm dies down they may return.

it's the fact she's sold herself on a persona of being a committed gamer when clearly she's nothing of the sort

Except that she was up-front about not being a committed gamer when the whole thing started. It is also questionable about whether you need to be a 'committed gamer' to study and discuss the genre from a critical viewpoint, any more than you need to have read 10,000 books before writing an essay about books.

It is also highly questionable how many GG supporters are 'committed gamers' either. As I said before, playing the latest CoD for 500 hours and tea-bagging people is not really enough to qualify either.

He's a parasitic troll chasing attention. Convincingly playing a selfish mercenary asshole for a season's worth of a great TV show doesn't earn him much warm fuzzies in my book.

He was very good in Chuck as well. Although it was amusing when it turned out that his character's unironic hero-worshipping of Reagan turned out to be his own idea and not an idea of the writers.

[daskool]

Publishing the info that someone gave to you voluntarily isn't doxxing.

But publishing the info of someone with the deliberate intent to encourage harassment and intimidation is.

So it was a blizzard of bullshit when the underlying claim of GG - that Zoe Quinn slept with a critic for a favourable review - turned out to be an irrefutable lie?

It was a blizzard of bullshit when the sites denied colluding with each other in how to respond to the story even though every single one of them published op eds which took identical positions and used the exact same arguments.

That's the irony: they won't. The GGers are fighting an utterly futile battle which they will lose and there is nothing they can do about it. All they are doing is screaming about it, causing a fuss and making life as unpleasant as possible for those who want to see gaming move on, become more inclusive and diverse etc. And in fact GGers really don't have anything to worry about: no-one's coming along to take away their games. The new CoD out in a couple of weeks will still be the biggest-selling game of the year (probably) and no-one's going to stop making the games they like any time soon because they're so successful.

So far they've cost the premier SJW gaming site a nice chunk of change.

[daskool]

Somene should edit the Wikipedia for "No True Scotsman" to "No True Gamergater".

What's that got to do with anything? Is every Muslim supposed to take ownership of the lunatic jihadis that are chopping people's heads off? Is every SJW supposed to take ownership for all the harassing and death threats that are being directed towards gamergaters?

I'll only note that many people prominent in GG have publicly condemned the harassment and trolling going on from people associated with the movement. From the other side not so much. Even on here the SJWs have openly speculated whether the threats against the gamergaters are hoaxed. Stop deflecting, either condemn all harassment or STFU.

[DanteGabriel]

daskool, what did Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian do that deserved threats of rape, death, harm to their families, and attempts to ruin their businesses and financial situations? After all, one reaps what one "sews" right?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

daskool,

I have condemned all harassment from any party.

I'd love to get an answer to DG's question. You've been avoiding it for some time now.

daskool, what did Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian do that deserved threats of rape, death, harm to their families, and attempts to ruin their businesses and financial situations? After all, one reaps what one "sews" right?

[TerraPrime]

Stop deflecting, either condemn all harassment or STFU.

You're fucking kidding.

[daskool]

daskool, what did Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian do that deserved threats of rape, death, harm to their families, and attempts to ruin their businesses and financial situations? After all, one reaps what one "sews" right?

Nothing as far as I know. Like I said from the beginning, and to agree with Terra, hopefully all this is being fully investigated by the police and the social media that the threats were made through have been subpoena for the IP of whoever did it. I understand phone calls were made as well, I'm sure the phone company has been asked for info, hopefully arrests are imminent

daskool,

I have condemned all harassment from any party.

I'd love to get an answer to DG's question. You've been avoiding it for some time now.

There's pretty good evidence that the harassment she initially alleged to get her god awful 'game' Depression Quest through Greenlight was made up. She trawled through a website for depressed male virgins (no joke is a real thing) and found precisely two posts that said shit about her crappy game and then copy and pasted them on to her Tumblr account as 'evidence' that people were harassing her. Lo and behold all the SJWs flocked to defend her, including of course Anita.

She also called out Adam Baldwin for linking to nude pictures of her I guess as another example of harassment, except that he didn't do anything of the sort.

You can read about the initial condemnation and feverish back tracking here:

http://www.themarysue.com/video-game-harassment-zoe-quinn-anita-sarkeesian/

The video itself did not directly link to the doxxing as we initially reported, but can be found very easily in the comments on the video. Baldwin may not have read through all the YouTube comments before tweeting out the video, but by doing so he helped circulate that information out to a wider audience.

Baldwin is not only responsible for what he says but he's also somehow responsible for people making comments and posting links on you tube.

Now does this excuse the genuine harassment and hate ZQ faced? No of course not, but when someone makes shit up it makes it harder to feel sympathy when she really is targeted.

[Inigima]

http://www.clickhole.com/article/summary-gamergate-movement-we-will-immediately-cha-1241 :lol:

[Seli]

....

So far they've cost the premier SJW gaming site a nice chunk of change.

Which site is that?

[DanteGabriel]

Yep that was the one that came to mind, but as you say gamasutra is neither a gaming site nor particularly focussed on social justice :dunno:

Well, Leigh Alexander had that one editorial that made all the Strong Bad-ass Gamebros wet their pants with rage, so obviously Gamasutra can be judged as a SJW lunatic asylum. But again, people who support the stupid Baldwinized hashtag are too diverse to judge.

[Kalbear]

Heh, Ini.

And that’s the best part of the whole thing, right? That Gamergate, as a legitimate movement arguing in good faith, can accept criticism and dissent without resorting to vitriolic censorship or threats of violence.

Unless you guys aren’t into that. If not, then that’s totally fine. Just look this whole thing over and tell us if there’s anything we should change. Email all of your demands to[email protected]. We’ll get on it right away.

Like you, we value ethics in journalism, and will alter our content in whatever way you feel best supports those values.

Please don’t hurt us.

[mormont]

[mod] Let's not get personal. Discuss the issues, but don't pick fights. [/mod]

[Guy Kilmore]

http://www.clickhole.com/article/summary-gamergate-movement-we-will-immediately-cha-1241 :lol:

Clickhole rocks. The Onion is just a solid publication.

[daskool]

Which site is that?

Full on Godwin from Max Read

http://gawker.com/how-we-got-rolled-by-the-dishonest-fascists-of-gamergat-1649496579/all

Transparent and documented though it was, the obsessive campaign worked. Mercedes-Benz—listed on the site as a former partner, and therefore a target—briefly paused its ads on a network that serves ads to Gawker. I've been told that we've lost thousands of dollars already, and could potentially lose thousands more, if not millions.

[Crom Dubh]

http://thisfeliciaday.tumblr.com/post/100700417809/the-only-thing-i-have-to-say-about-gamer-gate

Felicia Day says things. Gamergate is bad, and they should all feel bad. I agree.

[Edda van Heefmstra Ruston]

And she's been doxxed for it, as well, apparently. http://m.imgur.com/Lrdebkq To be clear, no address details are shown.

OTOH, Chris Kluwe says he has not been doxxed, despite being far more offensive and anti-"slack-jawed pickletits" than Day. https://mobile.twitter.com/ChrisWarcraft

[karaddin]

But three women on HuffPost would disagree with her, we get to use women and minorities and shields #notyourshield!!!!

[TerraPrime]

http://thisfeliciaday.tumblr.com/post/100700417809/the-only-thing-i-have-to-say-about-gamer-gate

Felicia Day says things. Gamergate is bad, and they should all feel bad. I agree.

Beautifully written, as is her style.

But I suppose she's not a real gamer, either. Or she's an SJW for pointing out that the rampant hatred against Sarkeesian et al. is ugly, contemptible, and should stop. Or she's playing the role of professional victimhood by telling us of her past experience of being harassed to garner sympathy from us, no doubt to be capitalized later as views of her YouTube channel or somehting. Did I miss anything?

[TerraPrime]

Oh for crying out loud (re Aoife's link).

What the fuck is wrong with these people.

Oh wait, I'm sure that guy wasn't part of GamerGate either.