Drama and games journalism, soggy leg joint edition

[PrimeJunta]

Either way, still haven't explained why you think the GamerGate you hate is losing. The part GamerGate that is genuinely asking for journalistic integrity? They could be losing. The part of GamerGate that is just using that as a front for harassment and trolling? They've already won.

 

Ah. We were talking at cross-purposes, slightly. I was talking about the big picture, the cultural shift that's been going on for many years now and broke surface... perhaps with Sarkeesian's Kickstarter.

 

GamerGate might very well "win" if by winning you mean succeed in getting some clueless corporations to pull advertising from some worthless media outlets or some speakers to cancel engagements, or even -- tragically -- ruin some lives. That's all entertaining and/or unpleasant, depending on how you look at it.

 

What's far more important though is that the rest of the world has gotten a good look at what the culture that came up with GG really represents -- and has roundly rejected it. The troglodytes are now blinking in the sunlight, and their cave is being dug up. That's what counts.

 

Edit: I plead guilty to misanthropy though. I do despise most people, on most days.

Edited October 17, 2014 by PrimeJunta

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

 

 

It should be in my location. I thought it was common knowledge the third largest US city was located in Texas.

Chip in 25$ and we'll be even.

No. I do not feel any need to "be even" with you. That would be too big a step down.

Yeah, popping down from the high horse would be quite a fall.

 

You could always pitch in what you were willing to do for that island paradise thing.

[Gfted1]

Did someone have sex with a baboon? I know a dude got caught having sex with a goat, but I've never heard anything about apes. I would say this requires some research, but I have the feeling it will wind up being like this:...

Im 100% certain than someone, somewhere, had sex with a baboon. But whats a manboon? Seriously. Since it came from PJ then Im sure its intended as some withering insult but I cant even look it up. Someone help a brother out?

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

 

 

 

Those trolls have dictated literally every segment of this debate. They want attention? Well, now they've got oodles of it. They want to shut someone up? What have we heard from Zoe Quinn, Phil Fish or Anita Sarkeesian lately? What appearances were they scheduled for but had to drop? They want to keep women out of gaming? Well, all this ridiculous narrative about gamers being a misogynist hate group of basement dwelling neckbeards and development is a boys club that will keep women out has caused at least one female game design student I know personally to switch majors and I've seen a pretty large amount of messages going "what woman in their right mind would want to become a game designer". It's going to stay a boys club for a significant amount of time longer because of the big brouhaha over a couple of **** posting anonymous messages. Which pisses me off more than anything else, because we were bloody well making progress and all that work is now for nothing because the moral outrage machine blew everything out of proportion to give trolls exactly what they want.

 

In this debate, the trolls learned exactly how in control they are. They control what people are allowed to say ("we can't talk about this until the harassment stops!"), they control what people do ("I'm selling polytron because I'm sick of it!"), they control what messages go out ("I'm not speaking at this event because some kid on the other side of the planet said he'd shoot me") and they control any movement they manage to co-opt. And because they are absolutely, undeniably in control, none of the things you want will come to pass. All because you and every other cog of the moral outrage machine bought into a ridiculous narrative because you're, at your core, a misanthrope who sees only the worst in people.

I'm sorry, TN, I know you didn't mean it that way, but don't you think it's a little cold to basically pin the blame for prospective minority game devs leaving the industry on the "moral outrage machine" instead of, y'know, the actual harrassers?

I think it's a vicious circle. The harassers go to work on someone and get their jollies, they get condemned and enjoy it, and the cycle repeats itself. Perhaps not giving the harassers the attention they crave would be a good way of going about this? Condeming them doesn't seem to be stopping them, if anything its only made them worse.

[Fighter]

And it's still widely considered to be garbage by basically any movie critic! Yet if gaming reviews dare to speak anything other than praise about similarly popular video gaming franchises, they're automatically "pushing an agenda".

 

I think you're the one who missed Enoch's original point.

 

Transformers is kind of an extreme example because it is extra terrible but even so it is at a 6.1 Metacritic and not a generous 3 with 26 positive reviews 7 mediocre and 2 bad ones.

 

And ironically enough the same gamer culture that you condemn has not only raged at negative reviews but also complained for years at the scale being basically a 7.5-10. "10/10 IGN" is a joke for a reason.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

 

Did someone have sex with a baboon? I know a dude got caught having sex with a goat, but I've never heard anything about apes. I would say this requires some research, but I have the feeling it will wind up being like this:...

Im 100% certain than someone, somewhere, had sex with a baboon. But whats a manboon? Seriously. Since it came from PJ then Im sure its intended as some withering insult but I cant even look it up. Someone help a brother out?

http://www.manboon.com

 

I guess I'm a manufacturing company. Not the worst thing I've been called, but certainly one of the strangest.

[PrimeJunta]

@KaineParker Funny, and here I thought Texas has the highest horses of them all. Surely you haven't traded them in for ponies?

[JadedWolf]

 

Has Sarkeesian had any affect on game development, actually ?

 

Not to my knowledge.

 

Which makes the "she's out to take away our vidya gaems!" screaming all the more baffling.

 

 

I think you're absolutely right. I very much doubt that in reality people need to fear that there really will be some sort of censorship that will ruin games for them. As long as there is such a thing as a large demographic with money to spend wanting something and a free market to provide it for them, nothing short of government intervention will stop the two from meeting.

 

Personally though, like I said before, I think the whole episode should serve as a wake up call for people who play games to see what a large part of the gaming press really thinks of them. There is certainly a toxic element that uses the GamerGate hashtag, and for me personally that makes it impossible for me to support it. I am of the opinion that what directly lead to it is a storm in a glass of water anyway. If you really want to look at corruption in the gaming industry you should be looking at the AAA games with hundreds of millions in budgets advertising in the same media that critique them, not at some indie game developer and her relationship with a journalist.

 

That being said I think the "gaming press" is far too eager to condemn everyone who uses the GamerGate tag under a "if you are not for us you are against us" policy. That, coupled with the comments we've seen in this thread, certainly makes me wonder how deep the contempt for gamers really runs in the industry. They could easily engage with the more reasonable elements of the "movement" while ignoring the toxic elements. They choose to do completely the opposite, and seem to be willing to throw the more reasonable among the "movement" under the bus to further their agenda. Let's say, hypothetically, that even the more reasonable elements (the people who don't support the nastiness that GamerGate is getting the negative publicity for) are in essence misguided and misinformed. Does that then excuse the things that are being thrown in their direction? If I would be a journalist I would try to get them on my side by engaging with them in a reasonable way, rather than to gleefully antagonize them and at the same time pulling in the mainstream media and feeding them everything they need to once again proclaim that gaming really is the hobby of neckbearded creeps who don't have a real life.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

 

I'm sorry, TN, I know you didn't mean it that way, but don't you think it's a little cold to basically pin the blame for prospective minority game devs leaving the industry on the "moral outrage machine" instead of, y'know, the actual harrassers?

I think it's a vicious circle. The harassers go to work on someone and get their jollies, they get condemned and enjoy it, and the cycle repeats itself. Perhaps not giving the harassers the attention they crave would be a good way of going about this? Condeming them doesn't seem to be stopping them, if anything its only made them worse.

 

 

I understand the immediate urge to seek new solutions when ones that have been tried have proven to be useless, but this kind of attitude is still putting responsibility on the harrassed party not only for their own issues, but also for gaming culture becoming objectively poorer with minority devs deciding that the current climate is actively hostile to them, and therefore they should leave. This reeks of victim-blaming and I think it should be called out.

[Malcador]

Ah. We were talking at cross-purposes, slightly. I was talking about the big picture, the cultural shift that's been going on for many years now and broke surface... perhaps with Sarkeesian's Kickstarter.

 

GamerGate might very well "win" if by winning you mean succeed in getting some clueless corporations to pull advertising from some worthless media outlets or some speakers to cancel engagements, or even -- tragically -- ruin some lives. That's all entertaining and/or unpleasant, depending on how you look at it.

 

What's far more important though is that the rest of the world has gotten a good look at what the culture that came up with GG really represents -- and has roundly rejected it. The troglodytes are now blinking in the sunlight, and their cave is being dug up. That's what counts.

 

Edit: I plead guilty to misanthropy though. I do despise most people, on most days.

Are they, though ? I highly doubt GNAA, SA, *chan trolls really care much about the offline world's view of things. Most of "rest" of the gaming world isn't tied up in this, anyway. I suppose they are the vast pool of undecided everyone's hitting up via the press (a lot with this similar tone of Our Cause's Crusaders will win through in the end).

 

Still think that regardless of this, saying you play games is probably going to get the same reaction it does now. Never did see any strange reactions to that back in my day other than "Oh ok", heh.

[PrimeJunta]

@JadedWolf thing is, nobody's saying that gaming really is the hobby of neckbeards. On the contrary, almost every MSM piece about this I've read has pointed out that gaming has gone mainstream.

What they're saying is that gaming culture and discourse about games is dominated by neckbeards, and that largely for historical reasons, because at one point they really did form a much more significant chunk of the gamer and especially game author demographic. This has changed, and the neckbeards are screaming bloody murder. Zit. Popped.

 

Seriously. There is no reasonable middle ground in this drama. There's entertainment value, especially as anyone can participate, like, say, adopting a role and posting on a thread on some forum somewhere, on one side or another.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

@KaineParker Funny, and here I thought Texas has the highest horses of them all. Surely you haven't traded them in for ponies?

'Fraid not. We also don't wear cowboy hats either surprisingly. We do have some great shelters for abused women though.

 

http://www.hawc.org/en/support-us/donate-today/

 

Feel free to chip in whatever.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

And it's still widely considered to be garbage by basically any movie critic! Yet if gaming reviews dare to speak anything other than praise about similarly popular video gaming franchises, they're automatically "pushing an agenda".

 

I think you're the one who missed Enoch's original point.

 

Transformers is kind of an extreme example because it is extra terrible but even so it is at a 6.1 Metacritic and not a generous 3 with 26 positive reviews 7 mediocre and 2 bad ones.

 

And ironically enough the same gamer culture that you condemn has not only raged at negative reviews but also complained for years at the scale being basically a 7.5-10. "10/10 IGN" is a joke for a reason.

 

 

Difference is, I condemn gaming culture for the sheer hypocrisy of always railing on about how "games are ART!" then trying to shut down any discussion of games as art.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

 

 

 

I'm sorry, TN, I know you didn't mean it that way, but don't you think it's a little cold to basically pin the blame for prospective minority game devs leaving the industry on the "moral outrage machine" instead of, y'know, the actual harrassers?

I think it's a vicious circle. The harassers go to work on someone and get their jollies, they get condemned and enjoy it, and the cycle repeats itself. Perhaps not giving the harassers the attention they crave would be a good way of going about this? Condeming them doesn't seem to be stopping them, if anything its only made them worse.

I understand the immediate urge to seek new solutions when ones that have been tried have proven to be useless, but this kind of attitude is still putting responsibility on the harrassed party not only for their own issues, but also for gaming culture becoming objectively poorer with minority devs deciding that the current climate is actively hostile to them, and therefore they should leave. This reeks of victim-blaming and I think it should be called out.

I think harassers should be prosecuted if they make death threats. By no means am I intending to imply that it is the victims responsibility to avoid being harassed. What I am saying is that perhaps tweeting about being harassed may be encouraging the harassers, because they think they've been successful in their harassment. At the very least, it warns them they may have some heat and could make them harder to catch.

 

As it is, the current response isn't working and something really needs to be done about this.

[PrimeJunta]

@KaineParker Since you're so insistent... Donate up to $100 to these guys and I'll match it for your cause.

 

Will need to see a receipt. I'll do that even though donations aren't tax-deductible where I come from, so it'll actually cost me more than you.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

@KaineParker Since you're so insistent... Donate up to $100 to these guys and I'll match it for your cause.

 

Will need to see a receipt. I'll do that even though donations aren't tax-deductible where I come from, so it'll actually cost me more than you.

Can't do that, don't support communism.

 

Would the Green party suffice?

[Longknife]

 

 

Oh, right, because Transformers is totally considered to be the height of cultural achievement.

 

 

I don't think you understand the point. Cry all you like (and personally I think Transformers is terrible movie) this IS mass mainstream culture. It's popular that's the point. This is what they put big juicy dollars into. So lets not lecture gaming using this "wider culture" thing.

 

 

And it's still widely considered to be garbage by basically any movie critic! Yet if gaming reviews dare to speak anything other than praise about similarly popular video gaming franchises, they're automatically "pushing an agenda".

 

I think you're the one who missed Enoch's original point.

 

 

 

 

Excuse me? Are we talking about the same GamerGate?

 

 

If anything, the issue is that gaming journalists are so corrupt that EVERY game is "10/10 go throw all your money at the developers now." There's no issue with critics being TOO critical.

 

As I stated earlier (and it was conveniently ignored by all the opposition), the issue is when they try to judge a game by how well it adheres to their moral code, and rather than simply having a website they themselves personally rely on because it always judges games based on a moral code, they wish for ALL critics to adhere to their personal moral code. That's spoiled, plain and simple. No, the world doesn't revolve around you, the world is largely built on democracy, and capitalism runs on adapting to the situation at hand properly and providing the service desired. Thus, most journalists don't adhere to your minority opinion about games. If you try to coerce them into doing so, yes there will be backlash and yes we'll see a boiling over point, such as now.

 

  No one is suggesting their voice is entirely unwelcome. What's suggested is their voice does not trump every OTHER voice out there. And yes, I'll bet my savings that they'll lose, solely on the grounds their idea of how to run things will not survive on the free market.

[PrimeJunta]

@KaineParker Sorry, no. I don't support libertarianism, even of the Green variety.

Edited October 17, 2014 by PrimeJunta

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

I think harassers should be prosecuted if they make death threats. By no means am I intending to imply that it is the victims responsibility to avoid being harassed. What I am saying is that perhaps tweeting about being harassed may be encouraging the harassers, because they think they've been successful in their harassment. At the very least, it warns them they may have some heat and could make them harder to catch.

 

As it is, the current response isn't working and something really needs to be done about this.

 

 

Yeah, this is reasonable.

 

On the other hand, it's (sadly) extremely hard to convince authorities that they should take such threats seriously (I mean we'll-find-and-prosecute-them seriously), and I can understand the attitude of people seeking support from their immediate circle of friends and family by talking about their harrassment if they're already ****ed by the authorities. (Whom I don't intend to demonize, by the way - they might have valid reasons for assigning lower priorities to such crimes.)

[Elerond]

 

 

Whens the last time an internet threat amounted to anything?

 

If I was killed every time someone threatened me with death on the internet, I'd be dead a thousand times by now.

Seasoned internet dwellers ignore trash talk like that as the hot gas it is.

Some other people use it for sensationalism and to garner sympathy.

 

Elliot Rodger threated to shoot people in internet earlier this year before his killing spree, comes first to my mind. 

 

 

So one time out of a bajillion threats.

Go on.

 

 

There has been three mass shootings and one bombing of shopping center in past 12 years in Finland, in every of these cases except one (our newest one where perpetrator got angry in line to food kiosk and decided to get his guns and kill everybody) there has been threats from perpetrator that they will do these acts in internet beforehand and each case police deemed those threats to be nothing but empty talks in internet, so much so that in one case the even gave weapon buy permit to perpetrator for weapon that he use in his killing spree even though they knew that he had threaten to shoot his fellow students. Which is why I think that internet threats should be taken as seriously as those that are made to face to face. If we don't take threats in internet seriously they will work as mask that obscures us to see those threats from people that actually will commit acts they threat to do and changes our attitudes towards hostile language so that we don't even blink when people use crude and uncivil language when they speak to us, which just make our society so much less pleasant to live (but that maybe just me not everybody else).

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

Excuse me? Are we talking about the same GamerGate?

 

 

If anything, the issue is that gaming journalists are so corrupt that EVERY game is "10/10 go throw all your money at the developers now." There's no issue with critics being TOO critical.

 

As I stated earlier (and it was conveniently ignored by all the opposition), the issue is when they try to judge a game by how well it adheres to their moral code, and rather than simply having a website they themselves personally rely on because it always judges games based on a moral code, they wish for ALL critics to adhere to their personal moral code. That's spoiled, plain and simple. No, the world doesn't revolve around you, the world is largely built on democracy, and capitalism runs on adapting to the situation at hand properly and providing the service desired. Thus, most journalists don't adhere to your minority opinion about games. If you try to coerce them into doing so, yes there will be backlash and yes we'll see a boiling over point, such as now.

 

  No one is suggesting their voice is entirely unwelcome. What's suggested is their voice does not trump every OTHER voice out there. And yes, I'll bet my savings that they'll lose, solely on the grounds their idea of how to run things will not survive on the free market.

 

 

Yet you're still screaming about them being evil conspiracists instead of trying to trust the free market to sort the whole thing out. Despite your utter confidence in "their ideas not surviving on the free market". Huh.

 

Edit: also, for the nth time, I didn't suggest gaming culture has an issue with critics being TOO critical, it has an issue with critics being critical "in the wrong way". Which I find patently ridiculous.

Edited October 17, 2014 by aluminiumtrioxid

[PrimeJunta]

@AlO3 Yeh. There's nothing particularly shocking about feminist criticism. There are feminist film, book, TV, and theater critics writing all the time, and nobody raises an eyebrow. Sarkeesian et al. are only notorious because they applied it to gaming. (And no, they're not the ONLY critics. They're not even the MAJORITY of critics. It's really childish to think Sarkeesian et al. want feminist criticism to be the ONLY criticism, let alone think that's ever going to happen.)

 

It's a shame really that the manboons resorted to poo-slinging, because a good discussion could have been had. As it is, it's impossible to say anything on the topic in public, without it devolving into poo-slinging in no time flat.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

@KaineParker Sorry, no. I don't support libertarianism, even of the Green variety.

Ah well. Tell you what, I'll donate $50 to HAWC for both of us.

 

 

 

I think harassers should be prosecuted if they make death threats. By no means am I intending to imply that it is the victims responsibility to avoid being harassed. What I am saying is that perhaps tweeting about being harassed may be encouraging the harassers, because they think they've been successful in their harassment. At the very least, it warns them they may have some heat and could make them harder to catch.

 

As it is, the current response isn't working and something really needs to be done about this.

 

Yeah, this is reasonable.

 

On the other hand, it's (sadly) extremely hard to convince authorities that they should take such threats seriously (I mean we'll-find-and-prosecute-them seriously), and I can understand the attitude of people seeking support from their immediate circle of friends and family by talking about their harrassment if they're already ****ed by the authorities. (Whom I don't intend to demonize, by the way - they might have valid reasons for assigning lower priorities to such crimes.)

No doubt, outrage is perfectly natural when your friends are threatened. I just question the current effectiveness of the approach and wonder if it ends up(unintentionally) doing more harm than good.

[Blarghagh]

 

 

 

I'm sorry, TN, I know you didn't mean it that way, but don't you think it's a little cold to basically pin the blame for prospective minority game devs leaving the industry on the "moral outrage machine" instead of, y'know, the actual harrassers?

I think it's a vicious circle. The harassers go to work on someone and get their jollies, they get condemned and enjoy it, and the cycle repeats itself. Perhaps not giving the harassers the attention they crave would be a good way of going about this? Condeming them doesn't seem to be stopping them, if anything its only made them worse.

 

 

I understand the immediate urge to seek new solutions when ones that have been tried have proven to be useless, but this kind of attitude is still putting responsibility on the harrassed party not only for their own issues, but also for gaming culture becoming objectively poorer with minority devs deciding that the current climate is actively hostile to them, and therefore they should leave. This reeks of victim-blaming and I think it should be called out.

 

 

Oh push off . I'm not blaming any victims. I'm blaming the media that blew it completely out of proportion, polarized everyone, gave power to the trolls and lured them out of the woodwork to come down on the victims in force, and everyone who bought into that ridiculous narrative  It's all well and good to spin the wheel of politically correct discrediting and land on victim blaming but that doesn't make it anything else. The reason the victims continue to be victims after the trolls are done with them is because Gawker medias cronies keep giving the trolls a platform to get attention for it. Of course I condemn the trolls and I believe every single threat against any of these people should be met with consequences, but with internet anonymity being what it is that's about as useful as condemning the rain.

 

It's been my concern in the first place. It's all fine and dandy to go "gamers are troglodytes" but in reality I've never seen more people being against the mythical "SJW" than this debate has made them. It's going to take years before anyone can talk about any sort of social issues in fandom without being dismissed out of hand. The conversation is over because it "can't take place while harassment happens". The troglodytes are not so much blinking in the sunlight as they are laughing that their day in the sun has come. The reason I joined GG when it originally broke was because the opponents are hurting every cause they support by polarising, entrenching, misrepresenting and generally painting a giant target on the heads of everybody they report on yelling "trolls, go here for your lulz".

 

The trolls have won and the moral outrage machine considers it a victory and I'm pissed because they hurt everything we've worked for.

[Fighter]

Difference is, I condemn gaming culture for the sheer hypocrisy of always railing on about how "games are ART!" then trying to shut down any discussion of games as art.

 

Well game journos have beat us on the hypocrisy scale by a landslide this time.