BruceVC

Bruce, that article was on the first google page of the search term "death of the gamer", when many of the journalists' articles, even the one titled that exactly, didn't even show up. I think google's sorting algorythms are a fairly good representation of notability. It also perfectly illustrates my point of that these journalists should have redefined gamer in advance instead of in retrospect and whether or not they spoke out of malice or ignorance at this point is irrelevant, as their original articles have spawned this viewpoint and they need to own up to that. You can't make a public connection between gamers and misogyny and then play takeback. Anyway, if you had wanted an article with different credentials, you should have qualified it better. Because if you don't qualify, you're going to get what you asked for, such as when you forget to qualify that by "gamers" you mean something else. Which leads me to the Rock Paper Shotgun article, which you say actually supports your argument, however long it doesn't. My original point about takebacks not being viable aside, they never once actually state that they do not mean all gamers. They point out, hey, video games aren't just for gamers. Never once do they redefine gamer as something else than a gaming enthousiast and they never once own up to the fact that gamers are being harassed because of their careless demonisation. Oh, they point out gamers are being harassed in this section: But they are quick to qualify it that it is their side that is being harassed the most, which is simply and by far not accurate and also implies that the gamers who are being harassed are the ones on their side, not the ones that critique. I'd also like to point out this section that they claim is a description of their situation: Right here in the article it may retrospectively claim that no, not all gamers are misogynists, but then it goes on to state that all gamers supporting #GamerGate, such as the #NotYourShield and #AgainstHarrasment movements, are people who have consciously decided to stand beside a group of manipulative misogynists. No effort is made to bring up our campaign on change.org, or the diversity campaign that is #NotYourShield, or the fact that all of these movements have openly condemned misogyny, racism and homophobia at every turn. No, they go out of their way to qualify that "by the way, if you're not with us, you're with them" when that simply isn't true. In fact, they go out of their way to undermine the credibility of these gamer based movements by claiming they are astroturfing and continue to marginalise and demonise the voices of every individual supporting #NotYourShield, who are exactly the people they are still pretending to be championing. As I've already described, here again they cloud the issue. They obstinately refuse to give concrete numbers and refer to the misogynists that these movements has condemned as "many of them", i.e. a significantly large portion of these movements. Never once is it acknowledged that these movements have publicly and intensely condemned these misogynist actions and have, in fact, been taking action against them. This isn't honest debate, this is thinly disguised propaganda. Again, no effort is brought up to discuss the actual problems that have been brought up. Issues such as high profile competetitions being rigged to generate money to generate money for the creators of the contest cannot be handwaved by saying "so, people know each other" and neither can issues such as games journalists grading games based on who their advertisers are rather than the content of a game. Not honest, just "our side is the good guys and since this is our website we can ignore what we want". Here, they do it again. By virtue of language, they make a connection. It might as well say "We don't hate gamers, but we object to, and will fight, their harassment and abuse" and then they take it back again. You cannot have it both ways. Then it goes on to say that people who are harassing and attacking are the ones who object to how the games press works while, again, conveniently ignoring the fact that these movements have seen as much public harassment as they have. It plays the victim card to try and give their words weight while marginalising and demonising the other side. Then under the following heading: "Well, you still won’t engage the other side of the debate. Why isn’t that represented on RPS?" This subsection begins with qualifiying what their side is. "Because we are this side. Our own side." Okay, fair enough. I can live with that. But then they continue on qualifying their side as this: "We’re against sexism, we support feminist arguments of various kinds." Considering they qualified this as being their side, it qualifies the other side (whether all gamers or all gamers who have taken a stance behind the GamerGate, NotYourShield and AgainstHarassment movements is irrelevant as they are both diverse groups containing many different races, genders (including the various states of trans-, pan- and a-sexual) and orientations) as not being against sexism and not supporting feminism, which is again dishonest. And this is without ignoring the fact that all the questions they posed are complete strawman arguments. I can't imagine more than one or two idiots have claimed "they are doing it for sexual favors". They are misrepresenting the other side, both their people and their arguments to make it easier to attack. I think that's the very definition of a strawman, if there's any confusion. Misrepresenting the argument again. These movements have, at every turn, condemned the actions of the vocal minority of harassers and taken action against it. This once again posits that gamers have their heads in the sand and as I have pointed out very clearly several times is that since far before this, the reasonable gamers were busy removing toxicity from the communties (multiple, as the assessment that the gamer community is a single entity is also a fallacy). Awareness was being raised without lecturing and guilting call-to-arms messages. Game developers were acquiescing such as Riot Games constantly updating and changing their honor systems to attempt to battle discrimination and toxicity among players. Gamers know what is going on and never at one turn have we let others speak for them. Which is why gamers are banding together under NotYourShield to say, again, these journalists and their hatemongering (intentional or otherwise) do not speak for us either. The crux of the misrepresentation, claiming the gamers opposing them are doing it for these things. It's ridiculous. And I'm not even going to begin to touch the area that comes after this, where they begin to condescendingly lecture the readers, with the intended audience of this article containing many NotYourShield supporters whose very existence proves that games are already for everybody, that games should be for everybody. It is not a good article. It isn't even a reasonable article. It is a thinly veiled, hostile misrepresenting their opponents. And even if it wasn't, it's still just a halfhearted "takeback" without taking responsibilty for what they said before and the harassment those words have caused. Semantics about what the word "gamer" means are meaningless because they failed to redefine the word before attacking it. Whether that was intentionally malicious or unintentionally ignorant doesn't matter. They need to own up to it. Thanks for the detailed response TN I'll need time to go through it but I can't now as I am at a customer so I'll respond later

Feminists are fat, lazy, hate men, and are lesbians. Oh, but don't worry. When I say "feminists" I am referring to a certain types of feminists, not the majority who don't fit into my narrative. Can you understand why I take offense BruceVC? I wouldn't be offended if you said that is your opinion about a subset of feminists that have a certain perspective, I would be offended if you said this applies to all feminists Once again "gamers" doesn't apply to all gamers. This discussion boils down to semantics and I don't think we are going to agree on that despite links I have provided that highlight what gaming websites, like RPS, really mean when they say "gamers" But this is the underlying problem. When the journalists and you say gamers, you mean a very specific subset of gamers. When EVERYONE ELSE says gamers, they mean all gamers, because that is how the word was used in every circumstance ever until now. People got upset because people hijacked the term to serve their agenda. If they didn't know using it in that context would offend 99% of gamers, its because they are that out of touch with their readership. We understand that that's what they mean in this context. The issue is that they are dumb and corrupt and by using the term that way they pissed off the people who they make their money from. Fair enough, you make some good points. And yes we mean a subset of gamers. Whats your opinion on the link below that I posted https://archive.today/CeWxy

Typical response when you don't agree with someone... "lets play the old troll card" instead of engaging in debate Bruce you don't properly engage in debates. You ignore vast parts of post or altogether skip them. Maybe it's because you're a lone SJW (and only have so many tentacles), but when you ignore/skip posts that counter your views, but respond with "this is a very well reasoned post and people should read this" to every post that share your viewpoint, you look like a troll(or are trolling). It's not because Malc and others don't agree with you that they call you a troll. It's because you exhibit troll behavior. Intentionally or not. As you mentioned I cant possibly respond to every single comment, but also most of the comments don't require separate answers because the points are basically the same " I am offended by the characterisation of the word gamer. I don't like what they are saying about me" If 5 people say the same thing but use different words to express there outrage I don't need give 5 different answers, I just need to say " no guys gaming journalists aren't saying that about all gamers" and then post a link to support my view like I did with the RPS article But yes I am limited due to time by how much I can respond, its not a deliberate attempt to ignore anyone

The massive difference would be where the money generated from Scottish taxes are spent I imagine? Now this revenue will only benefit Scotland but I am also not sure exactly what independence means

Feminists are fat, lazy, hate men, and are lesbians. Oh, but don't worry. When I say "feminists" I am referring to a certain types of feminists, not the majority who don't fit into my narrative. Can you understand why I take offense BruceVC? I wouldn't be offended if you said that is your opinion about a subset of feminists that have a certain perspective, I would be offended if you said this applies to all feminists Once again "gamers" doesn't apply to all gamers. This discussion boils down to semantics and I don't think we are going to agree on that despite links I have provided that highlight what gaming websites, like RPS, really mean when they say "gamers"

That is a good read and is discusses many issues in an objective and reasonable way One thing that concerns me is the apparent influence that Zoe Quinn seems to have, its almost like if she doesn't approve of a particular gender equality project then its got no chance of succeeding. I have an issue with that as she shouldn't be the judge, jury and executioner of what constitutes acceptable initiatives around gender equality. Is not so much Zoe as the Silverstring media and the Digras and we should really come up with a term for all the groups that have created networks of influence to promote their ideologies. The way it functions; IMO, is a lot like 4chan and other internet communities where someone bring the information and the collective decides. These people are united by their ideology and by the means by which they try to promote it. So it bears to reason that merely introducing the information was enough, after all there's a lot of info backing up the fact that they didn't bother to check before acting against TFYC. Also, on response to one of your previous posts: "In summary the link I posted https://archive.today/CeWxy summarizes what gaming journalists are really saying, I encourage people to stop thinking there is this campaign that attacks all white, male gamers because its just not true ". Its a bit disingenuous to believe that the calculated article they have posted is what they are thinking when you can go to the tweets accounts of many of these journalists and see what they are saying. It seems that they do have something against white male gamers and anyone who stands with them. Sure I hear what you are saying about what the real intentions of RPS may be but I still believe what is most relevant is actually what they post on there website as an official explanation for proper scrutiny by all. After all this debate seems to be about a perception of "what gaming journalists are saying. As evidence I can't see how more clear my link can be around what they are saying, or at least as far as RPS is concerned? We shouldn't necessarily judge people on Twitter comments as these can be made on emotion and at the spur of the moment and definitely don't always reflect what the person really thinks

That is a good read and is discusses many issues in an objective and reasonable way One thing that concerns me is the apparent influence that Zoe Quinn seems to have, its almost like if she doesn't approve of a particular gender equality project then its got no chance of succeeding. I have an issue with that as she shouldn't be the judge, jury and executioner of what constitutes acceptable initiatives around gender equality.

Guys I'm not going to go back and respond to all comments, but I'll just say I'm not convinced that my view is incorrext In summary I'll make some general response The word gamer does not mean all gamers in this context. @ TN you posted this link https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/death-to-the-gamer/. Wow you talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel to find a link that supports your perspective. No that article is annoying and doesn't reflect what gaming journalists are saying, I mentioned websites like the Escapist and RPS that have gone to great lengths to explain what they mean by gamers which you guys have conveniently ignored as it doesn't suit your interpretation of the narrative. Read this link if you want to understand what gaming journalists mean and tell me where in this link its says "all white male gamers are misogynistic scum " https://archive.today/CeWxy @ Longknife. your entire argument that says "find me proof of one prominent figure who is misogynistic" is just completely illogical. No prominent person is going to say publically "I don't want women or gay people in my games" Obviously not, the person will get lambasted and fired as a bigot . But that doesn't mean its not what people think and feel. Sexism is something that you see around what people don't say or how they try to present justification for a lack of gender representation. Read this link about a KS game called Kingdom Come to see what I mean, http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65005-kingdom-come-deliverance-kickstarter/ Now I am not saying everyone on this thread who said " its unrealistic to have women representation in this game is misogynistic " but you can clearly see the systemic resistance to gender equality in this game. And this is just this game, I can post many more links that raises this type of perspective In summary the link I posted https://archive.today/CeWxy summarizes what gaming journalists are really saying, I encourage people to stop thinking there is this campaign that attacks all white, male gamers because its just not true

Admittedly I haven't looked at how things went down in places like reddit or 4chan, but in the confines of what I have seen, my perception matches that of TrueNeutral: For the record, I don't consider abuse acceptable on either side of this (or any) conflict. @BruceVC But don't you see a problem with taking a descriptive term that an entire subculture made up of a diverse set of people have chosen to positively self-identify with, and trying to overload it with a narrow and negative meaning for rhetorical purposes? Even when sincere (rather than just an excuse for demeaning the whole group), I would call that "negligent lack of clarity" at best, and "intolerant dismissal of other people's identity" at worst. Imagine if someone started a campaign of rudely lashing out against "LGBT people". Or "members of hip-hop culture". Or "Muslims". And when confronted with backlash, said "What's your problem? I consider that label to only refer to bad people!" ...Would you respond with "Oh, okay, carry on then"? I wouldn't... No I don't really see any problem with what I am saying and trying to explain. But you have given me a way to make an excellent analogy to reinforce my point. Personally I have an issue with Muslim extremists, like ISIS and Boko Haram, but not with Muslims. But within the Muslim community there are some people who think criticism directed at extremism is the same as criticism towards the whole Muslim community. But its not and that's not what I am saying. Its not my fault that people can't distinguish between the two. The word "gamer" doesn't mean all gamers, but if people keep wanting to believe that they are creating unnecessary vexation for themselves The "Gamer" equivilent to "personally I have an issue with Muslim extremists but not with Muslims" would be "personally I have an issue with Gamer extremists but not with Gamers" not "The word "gamer" doesn't mean all gamers but those gamers who are misogynist, etc.". That would be equivalent to saying "The word "Muslim" doesn't mean all Muslims but those Muslims who are extremists like ISIS, Boko Haram, etc." Do you now see how ridiculous that statement is? The word "TV" doesn't mean all TVs, only 12" Cathode ray tubes. The word "Car" doesn't mean all cars, only Fords The word "music" doesn't mean all music, only Elvis tunes The word "Sports Fan" doesn't mean all sports fans, only fans of the Chicago Cubs The word "German" doesn't mean all Germans, only the Germans who wear lederhosen Yeah I conceded a while ago that Muslim extremist was a bad example

The chance of this being true is highly unlikely

Typical response when you don't agree with someone... "lets play the old troll card" instead of engaging in debate Bruce, I don't know if you've noticed but you're engaged in a debate with 3 people right now. I know that being our only SJW during this time of crisis must mean that you're wearing yourself short but I'm concerned that you won't be able to fulfill your SJW duties to the best of your ability. Maybe look for some help? Yeah at times its a lonely road a person walks who believes in SJ issues And people think we do it because its popular and cool. Not all, we do it for the principle

That may be a bad example, I can concede that. But to suggest I'm trolling after all the time and effort I have put into this thread is just annoying

Ready for this? I'm about to blow your mind.... Name one "gamer" that matches that definition. That's exactly the issue. You can't. Because no one has any misogynistic issues. The perceived misogynistic issues are being manufactured by pointing at nameless or nobody trolls in random comments, the very same trolls who would purposefully say ANYTHING purely to antagonize and not because they mean it. I sincerely doubt you can name a significant figure within the entirety of the video game industry who is openly misogynistic. DAT BLOW UR MIND?? That's not true I'm afraid, there are plenty of people who don't think anything has to change around inclusivity in the gaming industry. I have encountered this type of resistance on these very forums If you don't believe start a Poll on this forums with a title similar to " do we need more female representation in gaming " and see what the responses are. I guarantee you will get numerous responses that say " no ", no need to change anything. And of course the reason for some people saying no is not necessarily due to misogynistic reasons but in some cases it will be because of that, people just don't like to openly acknowledge it

Typical response when you don't agree with someone... "lets play the old troll card" instead of engaging in debate

Admittedly I haven't looked at how things went down in places like reddit or 4chan, but in the confines of what I have seen, my perception matches that of TrueNeutral: For the record, I don't consider abuse acceptable on either side of this (or any) conflict. @BruceVC But don't you see a problem with taking a descriptive term that an entire subculture made up of a diverse set of people have chosen to positively self-identify with, and trying to overload it with a narrow and negative meaning for rhetorical purposes? Even when sincere (rather than just an excuse for demeaning the whole group), I would call that "negligent lack of clarity" at best, and "intolerant dismissal of other people's identity" at worst. Imagine if someone started a campaign of rudely lashing out against "LGBT people". Or "members of hip-hop culture". Or "Muslims". And when confronted with backlash, said "What's your problem? I consider that label to only refer to bad people!" ...Would you respond with "Oh, okay, carry on then"? I wouldn't... No I don't really see any problem with what I am saying and trying to explain. But you have given me a way to make an excellent analogy to reinforce my point. Personally I have an issue with Muslim extremists, like ISIS and Boko Haram, but not with Muslims. But within the Muslim community there are some people who think criticism directed at extremism is the same as criticism towards the whole Muslim community. But its not and that's not what I am saying. Its not my fault that people can't distinguish between the two. The word "gamer" doesn't mean all gamers, but if people keep wanting to believe that they are creating unnecessary vexation for themselves

Hi JFSOCC "waves" How long are you in Italy for?

I don't understand why Scotland would really to separate from such a prestigious and successful union as the UK especially with all the new concessions they are getting. I have heard most of the arguments from the SNP and Alex Salmond but they wouldn't convince me if I was Scottish I think this type of independence is overrated

I know I shouldn't find these posts funny but they did make me laugh But aren't you worried about the economic impact, the Pound has already lost some value and that's just because the Yes vote is ahead, imagine how the pound will be hammered if they actually get independence?

That doesn't bother me, I'm happy to wait that long

I have also had to fake certain expected emotions at funerals and other events. But I think we all grieve in our own way. You will probably get upset later but in your own time

If only the English language had adjectives. It means a gaming enthusiast, simple, believe it always has done that, even though you and your kind would like to redefine it to suit this purpose. In any event, that's still crap - if it means white males, that means all white males are the bad guy then ? Okay I see you guys still don't understand what the term "gamer " refers to. I'll try to explain it one more time because I have honestly explained this about 5-6 times on this thread alone The term "gamer" does not refer to all white male gamers. If you look at websites like RPS or the Escapist the majority of there fan demographic happens to be white males ( the same as these forums) so why would these websites attack and insult there own fanbase with a generalization that "gamers " are misogynistic. What business sense would this make? What are advantages of this? Its like opening a Mexican restaurant and saying you hate Mexicans. Its illogical So the answer is "they wouldn't and they haven't ". The word "gamer " refers to white males who refuse to recognise inclusivity and changes to the gaming industry. The words "the gamer is dead" applies to people who don't want to be part of the change in the industry. But this is also figurative, you mustn't take it literally. It doesn't actually mean people who are opposed to change must be killed, it just means many websites who support inclusivity won't tolerate an opinion that says " gaming is the select domain of men" You guys have decided to create your own interpretation for this word for reasons that stupefy me. If you disagree with me please find one article posted about this development, outside of radical feminists who I admit many seem to have an inbred dislike of men, that says the term "gamer" refers to all white males? In summary no gaming journalist is going to that stupid to basically suggest that the largest gaming demographic in most gaming genres , white males, is irrelevant and bigoted. That is not what gaming journalists are saying

I've been assured by people supporting the journalists that this is not the case, which is the problem. These journalists carry weight and have reach - the moment those articles went up, the connection has been made and some of their readers went on the attack. No half-hearted retraction such as the one from Rock Paper Shotgun is going to matter. What do you think the word " gamer" means in this topic? Every single person who plays games? White males who play games or something else?

You wrong. Personally i support continue of war (but not support neither side in this war) and don't like such politics of Russian government (and don't like Russian government also). Such events as wars is very good for progressive society changes (WW1 - give birth for USSR, WW2 crush colonialism), isolation of Russia is very good too... Just reminder about World Revolution 2.0. http://scepsis.net/eng/articles/id_10. I'm confused by your perspective now? Do you not support Putin and political aspirations?

Yeah that makes sense as well, its more and difficult to convince people to part with there money when there have been several subpar and disappointing KS games