Drama in the indy gaming biz ?

[Fighter]

"But you’ve decided that your distrust of the media is so strong that you’d rather side with dangerous bigots than believe that the media might not be corrupt, that’s a hell of a statement to be making.”

 

What a convenient argument. "Hey that protester broke a window. You are all siding with violent scum. So sit down and be quiet."

 

"And yes, there will still be games that contain women with breast-sides exposed, and there will still be unspeakable and exciting violence throughout. That’s okay, too!"

 

If "That's ok too!" Then stop collectively raging and name calling every time someone draws a sorceress with big breasts or impales a female on a spike.

Edited September 8, 2014 by Fighter

[Malcador]

Heh, Lees has been pretty amusing through out all this. Not too sure the idea that distrusting "journalists" like Walker or him (I suppose he considers himself one) means that you are automatically cool with psychos sending death threats is quite solid.

[Fighter]

They put into spotlight what they want to put into spotlight and control the narrative.

 

Jack Thompson was no different to Sarkissian, expect she doesn't call for government regulation yet. He received threats, he had games made of him where you could beat him up, he was viscously ridiculed. Was it ever about the abuse though in the gaming media? No. Was anyone told we are siding with abusers? No. Were we told there can't be a discussion while abuse exists? No.

[Blarghagh]

That is a terrible article. It glosses over and ignores so many things. Never once does it own up to the fact that gamers are being harassed and persecuted now as a direct result of the hateful articles they posted, and never once does it stop implying that aligning yourself with #Gamergate and spinoff groups like #NotYourShield and #AgainstHarassment is becoming a misogynist.

 

Venting Rant Incoming:

 

I am getting quite sick and tired of a bunch of irrelevant journalists who have fought a lot less hard for social equality than I have pretending they aren't setting feminism back twenty years with their ignorant hatemongering. Gamers don't have their head in the sand and we never did, we were making progress. Women were raising awareness through websites like Not In The Kitchen Anymore and Fat, Ugly Or Slutty without lecturing or antagonizing anyone. Usage of report functions was up by I don't know how many percent. Game developers were implementing things like honor systems to encourage positive behaviour and identify and remove toxic players. Equality, and more importantly, tolerance among gamers was winning. It was working.

 

And bam, in one fell swoop these guys decide to turn the entire community against social issues. If people didn't already dismiss people who talked about equal rights for everyone as "SJW" they certainly will now. People with actually good intentions, not this #KillAllMen and white knighting bull, will now have an infinitely harder time trying to talk about social issues by association with these sad, irrelevant journalists. The only way for them to damage feminism and the fight for social equality more is if it was a coordinated campaign, which I'm not sure it isn't. I mean, if you make freaking MADDOX seem more tolerant than you...

 

I mean, look at this Greg Costikyan guy, Gamasutra blogger and Game Dev. He literally goes out and says he is prepared to use lethal force against every single person who attacks Anita Sarkeesian to "defend her honor" because, and I quote "Good men defend women, they do not attack them". Now, condemning abuse and speaking out against it is one thing. But this guy, this journalist and game developer, is literally saying Anita Sarkeesian is a damsel in distress and he's there to protect her. When she made not one, but two widely publicized videos about making women into damsels in distress being bad. I can't believe you can attack feminist ideals and insult a feminist so badly while pretending to be defending her without it being intentional, and to threaten physical harm at the same time? How can someone be so wrong and still pretend to be the good guy?

 

At this point, it becomes not just impossible but irresponsible for any rational person, especially one who supports equality and women's rights, NOT to align themselves with #GamerGate and #NotYourShield and #AgainstHarassment against people like this. And if I am the one saying that, as someone who Malc is quick to point out is an SJW, then you know the line has been crossed.

 

Of course, maybe I'm still white knighting. It could be that I'm pissed because when my girlfriend tweeted in support of #NotYourShield some ignorant white cis male decided to respond with "even if ur too dumb to c thru ur internalizd sexism well still fight for u : - )" as if he had the right to speak for her or any woman. I will never stop advocating equal rights for everyone, but I refuse to align myself with these so-called "feminists" just as much as I decided to support these movements to make it clear I refuse to be compared to harassers. These people are making it really hard to even keep discussing the same issues they claim to champion...

[Shallow]

You're all fools! Ha! The whole campaign against gamers is a mysogynist conspiracy, and I can prove it.

Gamers are nerds, nerds like starwars, most people weren't big on the prequels, thus an evil nerd starwarsprequel fanatic mysoginist who lives in his parents basement hatched an evil plan to restore the patriarchy and destroy the SJW order!

 

A massive uprising against gamers is orchestrated by the evil MRA lord, the uprising and the ensuing civil war attracts various people over to the other side, whilst makig the okayhearted gamers hand over full controll of the responding resistance to the evil MRA-lord-in-disguise 4chan, 4chan slowly brings the most powerful yet still unstable SJW over to the dark side, the SJWs realize to late that 4chan is the evil MRA lord, they attempt to stop the MRA lord but are mostly slain by his new and powerful apprentice, the remaining SJWs throughout the internet, as well as the journalists and fake feminists the MRA lord used to start the uprising are all wiped out by the united gamers, and thus the patriarchy rises once more.

PS Anakin Skywalker is TrueNeutral.

 

It fits perfectly damnit, TrueNeutral is even trying to protect his girlfriend, this whole thing is a giant conspiracy based on the prequels, mark my words.

Edited September 8, 2014 by Shallow

[Blarghagh]

Does that mean I'm going to choke my girlfriend in a fit of rage?

 

Because it's much more likely that she'll choke me. I make her angry a lot.

 

Anyway, here's an interesting article by a webcomic author about how dumb it is to attack your audience:

 

http://kazerad.tumblr.com/post/96965701323/indie-addendum-or-why-i-benefit-from-gamergates

Edited September 8, 2014 by TrueNeutral

[Malcador]

To which end: To defend the honor of Anita Sirkeesian, Zoe Quinn, Leigh Alexander, or yes, Anna Anthropy, I will be willing to meet any of you, on horse or afoot, with sword or pistol, at a time and place of your choosing.

Ah yes, the "1v1 me brah".

[Longknife]

Seriously though, why do we even bother with this anymore?

 

And what I mean by that is, we literally do not need gaming journalists. IGN, RPS, Kotaku, you name it: they could all spontaneously combust tomorrow and we'd all be fine. We can all find you tubers we trust to give good reviews we can use because they have similar tastes to us, we all know this industry has been corrupt for ages, and they're obviously not giving us any real motivation to give a damn about what they have to say.

 

 

Why even bother continuing? Just get your news from you tubers or the companies themselves instead.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Does that mean I'm going to choke my girlfriend in a fit of rage?

 

Because it's much more likely that she'll choke me. I make her angry a lot.

While I hear you no ill will TN, I don't really want to hear about your asphyxiation fetish.

[Shallow]

 

To which end: To defend the honor of Anita Sirkeesian, Zoe Quinn, Leigh Alexander, or yes, Anna Anthropy, I will be willing to meet any of you, on horse or afoot, with sword or pistol, at a time and place of your choosing.

Ah yes, the "1v1 me brah".

 

That statement is as close to whiteknighting as can be, damn. This guy really needs to go into a warzone and try to protect women who are actually in danger, before declaring that he'll gladly die in a duel to defend the honor of someone who said a bunch of bull**** and got some overthetop reactions.

[Blarghagh]

Shallow: Don't forget that this specific someone who he will die in a duel for has condemned men trying to save damsels in distress on multiple occassions. He insults who is trying to defend.

 

 

Does that mean I'm going to choke my girlfriend in a fit of rage?

Because it's much more likely that she'll choke me. I make her angry a lot.

While I hear you no ill will TN, I don't really want to hear about your asphyxiation fetish.

 

 

I didn't even mention the fact that I enjoy it.

 

Err, I mean, I don't have that fetish!

[Keyrock]

And the journalists are moving into stage 3.  I gotta hand it to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, her model is shockingly accurate.

Edited September 8, 2014 by Keyrock

[Longknife]

And we're moving into stage 3.  I gotta hand it to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, her model is shockingly accurate.

How are we bargaining?

[Keyrock]

 

And we're moving into stage 3.  I gotta hand it to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, her model is shockingly accurate.

How are we bargaining?

 

Sorry for the confusion.  What I meant is the journalists are moving into stage 3 (while still desperately trying to control the discourse and manipulate the story).  I'll edit my post to avoid further confusion.

Edited September 8, 2014 by Keyrock

[Shallow]

Shallow: Don't forget that this specific someone who he will die in a duel for has condemned men trying to save damsels in distress on multiple occassions. He insults who is trying to defend.

Doesn't that mean he has to commit seppukku or something?

 

But seriously, to me that's slightly irrelevant, for it wasn't Anita he said he'd die for in herself, the same way it wasn't feminism, or even SJWhood, it was the principles of whiteknighting.

[kirottu]

Seriously though, why do we even bother with this anymore?

 

http://xkcd.com/386/

[Keyrock]

Yeah, good thing Walker didn't surprise himself with his own questions.

It was awfully magnanimous of him to release a piece of carefully crafted propaganda under the guise of a question and answer session while glossing over important information, engaging in broad generalizing, and turning off comments so that so that no actual debate could be had.  Awfully brave of him.  We should all look up to this shining example of inclusivity and fairness.

[Longknife]

 

Yeah, good thing Walker didn't surprise himself with his own questions.

 

It was awfully magnanimous of him to release a piece of carefully crafted propaganda under the guise of a question and answer session while glossing over important information, engaging in broad generalizing, and turning off comments so that so that no actual debate could be had.  Awfully brave of him.  We should all look up to this shining example of inclusivity and fairness.

Nonsense, he disabled comments cause that's what his hero Anita does. Disabled comments is the true key to a more equal and all-inclusive society!

[HoonDing]

[namelesshero]

Hey guys what's going on I need a diagram with red markers pls xplain conspiracy!!!1!1!

[Longknife]

I still say let's just go home, call it a day and boycott these people, from the people screaming misogyny to the indie devs who got involved with this to the award ceremonies with questionable judging methods to the game journalism websites we've always known to be corrupt.

 

All evidence trying to highlight corruption within the indie awards etc has only been circumstantial at best, but is highly doubt it CAN get better. But the simple fact is the gaming industry has never needed any of the people saying "gamers are dead" to begin with....so **** em? Just boycott them then. Seriously it's not like it takes any effort anyways.

[Gorgon]

We all take different things away from this I guess. For me the highlights were vested interest trying to appear seperate and for a few seconds sounding completely and revealingly hypocritical in their standard spins, and redit censorship, this is from both the Quinn bebacle and the celebrity nudes. Boy has the indie sheen worn off that place now. 

[Ineth]

To be honest, I'm not very convinced by the alleged "corruption everywhere!!!11" evidence.

So, a game reviewer and the dev whose game he reviewed can be seen in the same photo, which was taken at some gaming industry event? Another reviewer may have had a romantic relationship with a dev many months after he reviewed her game? So what, I don't see why I should be outraged based on any of that kind of stuff.

 

The only part of the 'corruption evidence' that I found somewhat interesting, was the stuff relating to Fez and the IGF. But even here, I wouldn't draw the conclusion "OMG the IGF is a racketeering conspiracy!!!!11" but rather, "the IGF contest seems to have ****ty rules that benefit those who are part of the cool-guy 'clique', and is missing safeguards to ensure fairness and transparency".

 

Dunno maybe I'm wrong; If a respectable outside journalist would properly investigate that stuff and interpret & present the findings in a professional way (rather than patching together hyperbolic youtube videos based on fragments of evidence), that would probably make for an interesting read.

 

---

 

What I did take away from the whole drama though, was the sheer viciousness of the social justice warriors on twitter and on gaming sites.

 

Until now, I experienced SJW's in gaming mostly as:

1. Sometimes annoying but well-intentioned gaming community members with a little bit of a white-knighting complex, and the unshakable belief that they're helping to create a better world by "expanding other gamers' consciousness" on social and gender issues.
   Like BruceVC on this forum - he's pretty obstinate in his sticking to the social justice worldview even when it collides with reality, but he's also polite and seems to be genuinely interested in peaceful discussion.
    
2. Game magazine journalists who keep coming up with "important gaming culture issues" to write about (usually ending with some kind of emotional appeal or collective guilt-trip), instead of writing more about games. Probably to make their own jobs feel more meaningful and important.

Those I can live with; might even miss them a little if they weren't there...

 

But the anti #GamerGate and anti #NotYourShield attack squads were something else. It's not even like they went after that tiny minority of #GamerGate tweets that said stupid or potentially misogynistic things, or after the people who had something to do with threatening and hacking Anita Sarkeesian and whatever that other women was called.

They went after random casual twitter users who used those hashtags in any non-negative way. Gamers who just wanted to voice support for transparency in gaming journalism. People who just asked both sides to calm down. People who didn't even understand what's going on and were just asking questions.

Those users were crudely insulted out of the blue ("misogynist neckbeard scum" was one of the more restrained phrases), told to "shut up" and "**** off", told that they must hate women (even though some of them were women), told they were worse than ISIS terrorists, subjected to ridicule and attempts at public humiliation, in some cases threatened with violence, and in a few cases doxxed (which is a really ****ty thing to do). Not to mention the intentionally mean-spirited #DescribeAGamerInFourWords meme started by the same SJWs.

 

The irony was that many of those SJWs justified their actions by claiming they were merely "fighting people who aligned themselves with a movement that is guilty of harassment". Yeah, way to gain the moral high ground...

 

Even more mind boggling, was that some gaming journalists and devs (you know: professionals, the kind of people who ought to know better) joined in on the undifferentiated and potty-mouthed gamer-bashing "fun".
 

So yeah, I think I'll stay away from twitter and online gaming magazines for the foreseeable future, for my own sanity...

 

I'll try not to become guilty of their "sweeping generalization and intolerance is OK if you believe you're on the 'good guys' side" mentality myself, and won't let the experience cloud my judgment of the peaceful and usually positive-minded SJWs on forums like these. May they be a positive influence on their radicalized brethren, at least as much as they hope to influence the rest of us...

[Longknife]

To be honest, I'm not very convinced by the alleged "corruption everywhere!!!11" evidence.

 

Because it's circumstantial evidence. It's not evidence at all, it's just highly suspicious connections.

 

 

However, I sincerely doubt this is a situation where evidence - real evidence - can even realistically be obtained.

Having said that though, it's an elephant in the room that gaming journalism is corrupt as hell. It always has been, even before this whole debacle. All hail Doritos Pope.

 

So why not just take this opportunity as a FABULOUS time to dump the corrupt journalism market that we gamers have following us around, because we do not need them and statistics suggest people are in an uproar about this and are putting a dent in the business. Good. Let them keep being outraged, and let's stop supporting gaming journalists from big name groups we've always known to be questionable or corrupt?

 

We don't lose anything because somehow I highly doubt anyone in this thread would be like "I always get my news from Kotaku/IGN cause I know their reviews are always honest and accurate! :D"

[Gorgon]

Do I get points for never trusting them to begin with ?