Journalism and sexism in the games industry

[Meshugger]

I have no idea what the guy is rambling about.

 

//edit: nvm, thanks for the links

Edited November 4, 2014 by Meshugger

[Volourn]

"I'd like to take this moment to remind everyone the creator and the executive producer of Bayonetta are both females."
 

And, often attacked viciously by feminists and fellow women (I seperate those two because too many feminists are sexist racist white males lol).

 

 

P.S. And, wait, int hat twitter link OPakman is being bashed for an interview he had with a scumbag well before he was arrested for some crime? WUT?

 

That's like hunting down old interviewers of OJ and labeling supporters of his more recent crimes.

 

LOGIC. NOT. FOUND.

Edited November 4, 2014 by Volourn

[Blarghagh]

So someone created a blocking bot to block GamerGate supporters on Twitter. So far there's over 15'000 accounts on it. Apparently it's not even close to all, because I've tweeted at least one GamerGate related thing using the hashtag per day for the last month and I'm not on it.

 

I thought we were supposed to be a tiny group of like 300 idiots?

 

EDIT: Arthur Chu interview is up.

 

EDIT EDIT: Holy ****, did Arthur Chu just say TotalBiscuit is a harasser? He said Pakman was giving a platform to the harassers when nobody he interviewed is implicated in harassment!

Edited November 4, 2014 by TrueNeutral

[TrashMan]

[Fighter]

The only thing I know about Chu is supposedly people mistake him for Cheong.

[Longknife]

The only thing I know about Chu is supposedly people mistake him for Cheong.

 

 

Dats cuz both azn and gamurgate iz racist haet groop

[Fighter]

Dats cuz both azn and gamurgate iz racist haet groop

 

Pretty much.

[Tale]

 

- TotalBiscuit.

Because it's largely not organized. It's targets of opportunity from bottom feeders, not grand conspiracy.

 

Employees at larger companies don't have as much invested in social media presence. For indie developers, they have to engage with it, it's their PR and marketing system. For those in studios, it's someone else's job. Some else who probably has the training to ignore it.

 

The same argument could be leveled against the idea of it being about ethics. Why are two unknown indie developers somehow the root of bad ethics? Especially when the basis of one of the ethics claims was demonstrably false? Why not the large companies and unethical journalists?

[Malcador]

 

What does he care about this, exactly ?

I believe Chu writes about vidya for Salon.

 

Oh ok. Just suddenly saw him popping up spitting fire everywhere, but wondered how he ended up in this fuss.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

So someone created a blocking bot to block GamerGate supporters on Twitter. So far there's over 15'000 accounts on it. Apparently it's not even close to all, because I've tweeted at least one GamerGate related thing using the hashtag per day for the last month and I'm not on it.

 

I thought we were supposed to be a tiny group of like 300 idiots?

 

EDIT: Arthur Chu interview is up.

 

EDIT EDIT: Holy ****, did Arthur Chu just say TotalBiscuit is a harasser? He said Pakman was giving a platform to the harassers when nobody he interviewed is implicated in harassment!

Well that was.....interesting.

[Fighter]

"Organized campaign to drive women out of the industry" is by far the dumbest thing anyone came up with. And these people call others conspiracy theorists.

 

EDIT: lol. David Pakman is on the GG block list apparently.

Edited November 4, 2014 by Fighter

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

"Organized campaign to drive women out of the industry" is by far the dumbest thing anyone came up with. And these people call others conspiracy theorists.

 

EDIT: lol. David Pakman is on the GG block list apparently.

Looks like Adam Baldwin, Boogie2988, Daniel Varva, Georgina Young, Jennie Bharaj, and Milo are as well.

EDIT: So is pornstar Mercedes Carrera.

 

Tunderf00t surprisingly didn't make it.

Edited November 4, 2014 by KaineParker

[Blarghagh]

Man, I got suckered in and wrote a huge YouTube comment as a reponse to the Chu interview (some of it sourced from here) and now I feel stupid because nobody reads Youtube comments. So I'm going to share it here so I don't feel like such a failure for it:

 

I'm sorry, but David is the one giving a platform to trolls? That's nonsense. Everytime a journalist or a blogger or a YouTube personality goes "this is just about misogyny", they are giving a platform to trolls. They, as Arthur_Chu has, literally go on and say "if you harass women, I'll make you famous with my siginificant follower base". At the same time, the people who are genuinely concerned about journalistic ethics are ignored under the guise of "we can't have this conversation because harassment happens", giving those trolls unethical control over what conversations we are or not allowed to have.

Then when it comes to not attacking the AAA industry, there are several reasons why that is. One, it's a status quo. People are angry about it, but it's been that way since magazines in the 80's and these companies are too big to take on. The anger is subdued because it's become accepted. We knew all along we couldn't trust games journalists regarding AAA titles, but we thought we could trust them with indie games. Whether the allegations are true, there was perceived impropriety and breach of trust.

The anger has flared up. For example, when Jeff Gerstwinn got fired in 2007 the entire internet freaked out as much as the start of GamerGate. The difference here is that other games journalists ate Gamespot like sharks, because they were in competition. It was highly publicized and people were allowed to discuss it. Another example Chu mentions is the Shadows of Mordor scandal. It's very easy to explain why gamers didn't blow up over that - because the majority of large YouTubers either condemned it or disclosed it. TotalBiscuit was much more critical of it than any games journalist was (and that you are), and he's one of the most famous YouTubers there is (an argument could be successfully made that he's long supplanted traditional games journalism).

Do you see the key differences here? No breach of trust, competition, no censorship and disclosure, and criticism. Rest assured that, having seen how much power they can wield against large corporations, AAA publishers aren't safe from scrutiny after this is over. Not censorship and ignoring scandals because "friends are involved".

Here's the reason they're "defending AAA developers", oh wait. I can't find a single instance of this happening. I guess there's Bayonetta 2? That wasn't defended over being AAA, that was defended because it was created and designed by WOMEN and is a celebration of female empowerment and it was falsely accused of being sexist. (Even if creating "sexy" characters was sexist, in this case the argument against Bayonetta is false AND heterosexist.)

Speaking of TotalBiscuit, I hope he certainly adresses the accusation by Mr Chu that he is guilty of harassment, because that is literally what Mr Chu said here. Since the accusation is that you gave a platform to harassers, when you only gave a platform to TotalBiscuit and Jennie Bharaj. This is slander, plain and simple and Mr Chu has to answer for this.

Then there's the idea that GamerGate is going after indie developers as a whole. This is simply not true. In fact, I'd contend GamerGate to be pro-Indie developers as a whole. One of the major points of contention is the amount of awards and press Depression Quest was given. Many GamerGate proponents believe that it didn't deserve this attention, and was only given these awards because of a combination of social politics over its subject and (debatable) being part of a clique with the journalists rather than the quality of the game (although I thoroughly condemn the treatment of its developer as the problem here is the journalists and not her). The complaint says that indie developers, who need exposure much more than AAA developers, shouldn't have to get friendly or add anvilicious morals to get exposure but rather should make good games. And I agree with this. I also condemn many of these games journalists for appropriating power over other peoples careers. The malicious slandering of the creators of "Hatred" as neo-nazis proves this point - they didn't like the game and printed outrageous lies because it fit with their narrative and they didn't even look into whether it was true. They just wanted it shut down.

But ignoring those factors, here's the thing: Even if what happened really is that misogynist jerks really just made outlandish stuff up and thousands upon thousands of people actually bought into that, then those people must have already felt very alienated and distrustful towards game journalists and it is in their best interest to adress that. Engage those people, listen to what they have to say and do your best to convince them otherwise. Continually acknowledging trolls while ignoring them is only going to make you look more guilty. Especially when doing it means marginalising and downplaying thousands upon thousands of voices, many of whom are minorities (I don't believe for a second that more than a tiny fraction of #NotYourShield is bots or that they are just stupid people who internalized discrimination) and many of whom are good people who just want things to get better and are completely willing to put their money where their mouth is by donating to charities and women game jams like TFYC. It takes either a worldview so cynical that I'm not comfortable even thinking about it (a worldview that Mr Chu obviously has, and I condemn him for it) or an ulterior motive to do so.

It's been written that the journalists involved can very easily stop this in two steps. Adopt an ethics policy > Adhere to it. It's very simple: Disclose friendships, financial ties etc. (or better yet, recuse yourself) and seperate consumer advocacy (reviews) and culture criticism (op ed) as much as possible, or at least properly explain it. There's been a lot of praise heaped upon a Christian game news site because they seperated the consumer advocacy and culture criticism simply by adding a morality score, or better yet, do away with scoring alltogether. Maybe an apology or two, since there are hurt feelings involved. These are simple changes, and if they get implemented I can guarantee the majority of what is now GamerGate will instantly join in condemning the leftover reactionaries and their harassment.

Because yes, there are reactionaries in the movement. But that is just a tiny minority. I wouldn't even call it a vocal minority. The reason they are perceived as the majority isn't that they are numerous, it's because they are the ones that get publicized. It's very self-fullfilling for these journalists to call those the vocal ones when they are the ones giving them a voice. I condemn these harassers, I condemn everyone who has harassed Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, Brianna Wu even though I do not agree with everything they've said and done. (For the record, I also condemn those who harassed Boogie2988, KingofPol, Milo, Christina Sommers, GG Feminist and Cindy Wu even though I do not agree with everything they have said either, such as that I condemn Milo's statements about transgenderism). But I also condemn the journalists who give power to the harassers and in fact contribute to the harassment by throwing its victims under the bus for sake of not having to actually address (perceived or otherwise) allegations of misconduct.

The argument about misogyny is bunk anyway, because plenty of men have been harassed, including Mr Chu himself! More men have been harassed than women. Phil Fish got chased out of the industry, and it's not because he "stood up for" one of the other victims as she posited, because Phil Fish left the industry and flipped out over getting harassed far before GamerGate was even a thought in anyones mind. The simple fact is that the women getting harassed gets more publicity for the clicks journalists so seek and they are completely willing to throw these women under the bus for clicks. None of them reported on Phil Fish getting harassed. Why? Because nobody would care and it might lead some people to look and find the IndieCade scandal they ignored because it didn't fit their story. Then there's the fact that plenty of women are championed by GG - in fact, I'd say a significant part of the ground level figureheads ARE women, such as Jennie Bharaj. That is a lot more women than the "GameJournoPros" had, showing an impressive gender gap of 1 out of 10!

What hurts me most is that people like Mr Chu don't realize how badly they're harming inclusivity. The constant publicizing of a handful of trolls making the game industry seem like a terrible place for women is driving women away when we were making enormous strides in closing the gender gap, which meant more voices would represent women in game development. The constant attacks on games as "sexist" or "racist" or anything else when those games are not is making developers afraid to add anything but the most sanitized minorities in their games out of fear of being blacklisted, if they decide adding minorities is worth the hassle at all. They're setting progress and inclusivity back by decades. All inclusivity problems like female representation in games would have solved itself, but now that's going to take longer.

David, if you're looking for more intelligent voices on GamerGate, I'd suggest Erik Kain. He's an intelligent, neutral party with various insights about it.

In closing, here's a quote from TotalBiscuit regarding the supposed "keeping women out of the industry and away from our toys": If that were true, why on earth would the targets be a controversial Youtube critic and two practically unknown indie developers? Wouldn't people be trying to drive out women of note in the industry who work at major studios and have real influence over the direction of games? If this is a harassment campaign aimed at driving women out of gaming, it is the single most unsuccessful one in the history of mankind.

 

EDIT: Man, if I put half as much effort into my professional life as I did arguing on the internet to nobody in particular I would be rich by now. Maybe I need to step away.

Edited November 4, 2014 by TrueNeutral

[Nonek]

What i'm continually perplexed by is this claim that Mr Grayson's unethical behaviour has been debunked, when in reality it was proven by himself and his editor. He slept with a developer and thus caused a conflict of interest, this would be fine if he had informed his editor and recused himself. He did not thus his impartiality was compromised and he was guilty of misconduct, even if he never wrote a single word about her. Ms Hernandez' unethical behaviour was arguably worse. However Mr Totilo's covering for his journalists and denying any wrongdoing is in my opinion the most unethical behaviour, but that is subjective, whereas the former cases are proven and admitted unethical.

 

Yet the same claim that these unethical actions have been debunked keep on cropping up, do the SJF's believe that repeating the same lie will make it true somehow? Mind you it doesn't really matter, when proven wrong they will simply shift the goalposts again, so that it's not about ethics or they're not bothered about that.

 

Edit: Mr Chu came off as a paranoid hysteric in the above interview, Mr Pakman entirely reasonable.

Edited November 4, 2014 by Nonek

[Blarghagh]

This was delivered to me from GG as a "public service announcement".

 

https://screamingdoktor.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/weve-lost-our-way-gamergate/

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I certainly have no problem referring to myself as anti-corruption, think I'll try it on for a while.

[Nonek]

This was delivered to me from GG as a "public service announcement".

 

https://screamingdoktor.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/weve-lost-our-way-gamergate/

 

 

So is this Gawkers masterstoke at sowing division, seems a little...weak.

 

Edit: I assume everybody will just use both.

Edited November 4, 2014 by Nonek

[Tale]

Man, I got suckered in and wrote a huge YouTube comment as a reponse to the Chu interview (some of it sourced from here) and now I feel stupid because nobody reads Youtube comments. So I'm going to share it here so I don't feel like such a failure for it:

Here's the thing about it, TrueNeutral. It's not organized. It can't be about any one thing by virtue of that. It's own impetus was built on deception and with that gone, there's nothing that can even pretend to keep it on any singular track. There's not a solid objective or plan. It's all left to be vague and whatever someone wants to make of it.

 

It's about as many people putting down tentstakes as feel like doing it. And they all count as part of it. And some of those people are using it as a platform to be disgusting animals.

 

You want to rise up your own corner of it as being something serious, you want to lay claim to the TRUE GAMERSGATE, you can't just tell everyone else that it's their fault that the disgusting animals are there too. You have to kick those other guys out. Nobody will take talk of ethics seriously from a movement where large swaths of it clearly have none.

 

And the focus on two indies sure as heck isn't going to get it taken seriously either. That just makes it look like directionless angst. You say people are afraid to tackle the big guys because they're too disillusioned. Well, picking on the little guys because you're afraid of someone larger isn't called revolution or change, it's called bullying. I don't think that's in line with the message you're trying to be about either.

[Malcador]

Chu's on the warpath now, ah this is glorious. Heh, Khorne would be pleased.

[Blarghagh]

I get that it's not organized, which in my opinion makes the claims that it's a hate group much more unpalatable. And I disagree that the impetus was built on deception. Like Nonek points out, it hasn't been debunked at all. Nathan Grayson may have not reviewed the game in question (and I never claimed he did), but he did publicize it without disclosing his relationship, informing his editor, or recusing himself. This has created at the least the appearance of impropriety. It's debatable whether or not he went too far, but the appearance of impropriety is enough to be considered a breach of trust and since then many more breaches of trust have happened (for example, the fact that game news websites didn't publicize TFYC or the IndieCade scandal involving Polytron). I'm not seeing deception - at the very worst, it's misinterpretation.

 

Regarding kicking those guys out, I wrote a lengthy post about that before. What control does GG have over anonymous internet trolls and threats that other people don't have? There are numerous and ongoing attempts to do so from a large majority, from figureheads to ground level grunts who just "retweet" something and really, there is nothing GG can do. It's been three months and the clearest call from GamerGate is "we denounce harassment". I can't tell you how much time I've spent reporting twitter accounts this week alone. It. Does. Not. Work.  These guys get one account locked, they make four more by proxy. We once discussed this regarding trolls that banning them just gives you more problems, and that's been extremely true. Your point of it not being organized very much applies here.

 

And even then every attempt GG makes to get rid of the trolls is undermined by the opponents continually signal boosting them. We are powerless and they are giving them power. Of course, the people responsible are the trolls. But that doesn't mean I can't blame their enablers for the things they do to give the trolls power. Why don't they ever signal boost someone denouncing harassment? Because it doesn't get clicks. I don't believe for a second that it comes down to "large swathes" of the movement because I've been following this from day one and that's simply not what I've seen.

 

Edit Addendum: What about the people getting harassed by those against GamerGate? People losing their jobs, getting syringes or knives in the mail, getting swatted or the fire department sent to their house, people having to deal with false plagiarism claims and losing royalties to their books, it literally destroying their livelihoods and ten year old boys being doxxed? Who is reporting those? Who is kicking those out? Why am I or any other GamerGater responsible for trolls on my side when nobody gives a hoot about those guys? Why am I compelled, almost forced, to pointlessly waste my time dealing with trolls when they don't actually have anything to do with what I want to talk about and have my efforts wasted because some "progressive" personality will paint another target for trolls to hit by giving them attention, when they don't have to denounce anyone? When most of those, in fact, approve of that harassment, such as the case of people like Chu or Movie Bob or Leigh Alexander or Devin Faraci. Because my "side" has a label, a word put on it, suddenly it's different? Fringe lunatics are fringe lunatics. I don't have to distance myself from muslim terrorists because they are air breathers like I am.

 

As for focusing on indies, I get your point but you're overstating it. It's not a focus on those developers, it is the fact that the breach of trust happened in regards to these independant developers. I think it's a false equation to bullying. Nobody wants to shut independent developers down, but we CAN make journalists accountable for how they cover them. We can't make journalists accountable for how they cover AAA developers, because the journalists are not the ones controlling that balance, and there's not much anyone thought we could do about it and also, journalists have talked about these things themselves! Like I pointed out, when Jeff Gerstwinn got fired journalists smelled blood in the water and where is Gamespot now? They used to be the biggest games website on the web! There hasn't been a situation where a consumer revolt could step in and also needed to. I mean, GG is now focusing on places like Gawker. What the hell is Gawker compared to something like EA or ActiVision? I believe after this, GG will definitely try to take them on. But baby steps, man.

 

I don't actually focus on those specific indie developers at all - the only time when I bring them up is because I understand how they became involved and whenever someone brings up the argument that "why not get pissed when this happened?" to provide context which is what I've done here. It's how journalists step out of line when dealing with indies that is the problem. In fact, a majority of GamerGate doesn't engage them. These people are referred to not by name most of the time, the accepted response inside the hashtag to posts bringing them up as "literally, who?" because GG doesn't want to bring them back into a conversation they have no place in. It looks like GG focuses on indies because those jerks (likely a significant part of which is GNAA like trolls rather than actually invested in it) are the ones getting publicized. It's simply not true. It's like the claim that Brianna Wu is getting harassed the most on Twitter yet 95% of the tweets to her using the #GamerGate hashtag are neutral or supportive? It's nonsense.

Edited November 5, 2014 by TrueNeutral

[Oerwinde]

This was delivered to me from GG as a "public service announcement".

 

https://screamingdoktor.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/weve-lost-our-way-gamergate/

 

Pointless. GamerGate rebrands as Anti-corruption, the SJW will just rebrand as anti-harrassment, and the narrative remains the same.

 

[Blarghagh]

Yeah, I think rebranding as a unity is a bad idea. There's already too much of it. GamerGate should have been the name for the scandal that's being discussed, not the name for the people doing it. I suppose I'm guilty of that as well, I got swept up in the "we can change the industry" thing again, like I did with when Kickstarter really blew up.

 

(Also I think your response was in the wrong spot.)

[Oerwinde]

Yeah. Posting on my phone gives me all sorts of formatting issues.

[Blarghagh]

TotalBiscuit responded to the Arthur Chu interview and was subsequently accused of being unethical:

 

 

Anyway, I'll probably respond to Tale if he responds to me but overall I'm going to try and put less time into this. I've spent too much time for too little return and at this point I don't think the conversation can be had until this thing dies down and it's been a giant distraction from things I should be doing. If I start monologueing in this thread again, please call me on it.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

So apparently anti-corruption is bad in the eyes of some. I tried referring to my position in this manner and was shortly shouted down because talking about ethics until harassment has been solved is wrong. Apparently wanting to talk about ethical practices is equivalent to abuse, and is part of "patriarchal oppression".

 

I think I'm going to drink some black tea and study, this rabbit hole looks a bit too insane for my current temperament.